15. The Facility
The Facility
Natalie
I catalog before I move.
Hip: bruise. Thumb-shaped. Left side. Scalp: residual ache where his fist was.
Inner thigh: a mark I will not inspect in this lighting.
Throat: two points of pressure that will show above a collar if I am careless.
Between my legs: the specific, persistent reminder that a Draelith male spent two hours proving a species briefing was insufficient.
I lie still and let the inventory finish.
It does not finish.
The inventory wants to become a replay. His mouth. The ridges. The word he said into my skin. The way he looked at me when I told him to let me see. I shut it down the way I shut down a non-priority alert.
It comes back.
I want it again.
I want him again. Not in the abstract. Specifically. His hands. His tail. His voice at the bottom of his register telling me to ask. I want the bunk and the hour we do not have and the version of this morning where the breach is delayed because I pulled him back down by the back of his neck.
I sit up.
The tactical kit is going to rub every place he put his mouth. I put it on anyway. The silk underneath — the dark silk, because the lace did not survive last night and regulation underwear felt like conceding the point — is a decision I am also not putting in a report.
Mate.
The word tries itself on.
I do not let it finish.
He is at the co-pilot’s console running the pre-breach check. I look at him for two seconds. That is all I authorize. Two seconds is enough to remember his face when he came apart. Two seconds is a mistake.
I look at the scope instead.
SENTRY, private: “Officer Torres.”
“What?”
“The file tagged Mate: priority has been active for fourteen hours. I am receiving a volume of biometric updates from Tracker Vosk’s overlay that, under standard protocol, would already have triggered a file status change from Mate: priority to Mate: confirmed.
I am asking for clarification because the ambiguity is affecting my ability to file his biometric data in the correct category. ”
My face goes hot.
“SENTRY.”
“I have three hundred and forty-seven entries queued under the priority tag. The backlog is becoming operationally complex.”
“SENTRY, we will talk about this later.”
“Copy, Officer Torres. I am leaving the file at Mate: priority. Please update when convenient.”
I can feel Tael’s eyes on me.
I turn my head.
He is not running the check now. The half-grin is the one he uses when he has overheard SENTRY through his overlay.
“Don’t.”
“JINX asked the same question forty minutes ago.”
“Tael.”
“I told him to leave it at priority.”
“I am going to throw you out of the airlock.”
“Copy, sweetheart.”
The sweetheart lands exactly where his mouth was last night. I am already pink. I hate he can see it.
“Natalie.”
“Don’t.”
“You are the most operational officer in the Velarkis sector who is also the pinkest.”
“I am going to put a blade in you.”
“Noted.”
He goes back to the check. The grin does not leave. Neither does the tracking. After last night he does not stop knowing where I am. I should mind but I do not.
I want him to keep knowing.
That is also not going in a report.
Thane comes on the shared channel.
“Vosk.”
“Thane.”
“Approximately twenty-six warm bodies on thermal. Six at active metabolic levels. The rest low, consistent with sedation. Life support active behind the decommissioned hull. The station has been running for years with the registry saying scrapped.”
“Twenty sedated.”
“Twenty.”
Twenty. We came for one male.
“That is not three kidnappings, Tael.”
“No.”
“Thane.”
“Torres.”
“Your Korrhai family was three.”
“And Xor’s overnight research cross-referenced my case against the Severin BioSystems hardware log we pulled from V-6.
The same hardware is flagged across at least four other open cases in the Velarkis corridor.
The cargo shell you already have has moved more than three cases.
Xor is compiling a full brief. For now: we are breaching the right facility, and the facility is much worse than we briefed for. ”
Tael’s hand tightens on the console.
I put my hand over his. I do not plan it. His skin is five degrees warmer than mine. Last night that heat was everywhere.
His eyes come to mine.
“Tael.”
“Nat.”
Not Natalie. Not sweetheart. Nat.
The bunk. The ten-minute chime. His mouth on mine because neither of us was ready to stop.
“We go in. We get Torek. We document what we find. We get out. We come back with whatever it takes to shutter this.”
“Copy.”
Thane: “Vosk. I have the Bay Seven biometrics on my overlay. If Torek is in there I can read his signature once we are inside. You take the ventral hatch. I take the primary airlock. We converge on Torek and extract.”
“Copy.”
“The rest of the mates, we cannot extract alone. We tag what we can and comm Flossie.”
“Copy.”
Tael turns to me.
“Stay on my six, Natalie.”
Not a suggestion.
“On your six, Tael.”
I suit up. The kit settles over the silk and the bruises and the part of me that is still in that bunk. I lock it down. Eleven minutes to breach. Want is for after.
The ventral maintenance hatch cycles at 0937.
Tael goes first. I follow at two meters.
The air is wrong.
Four degrees colder than the ship. Disinfectant first. Under it, something organic, the filters have stopped fully catching. Closed-circuit air ran too long past sedated bodies. Fear leaves a residue. This place has been soaking in it.
The walls are seamless. No crew signage. No waste ports. Nothing that says anyone works here. Low blue light. Nowhere to hide. Every corridor is a throat.
Tael, quietly: “You see it.”
“I see it.”
“Quietly, sweetheart. Running scent.”
“Copy.”
He drops into a crouch. Head tilted. Nostrils flared. Eyes half-closed. The intake configuration — pulling air across his receptors, not pushing scent out. I have watched him do this twice. I have not watched it this close.
It is precise. It is also a male hunting while the thing he is protecting stands two meters behind him.
Seven seconds.
He stands.
“Torek is on this deck. Forty meters ahead, left corridor at the first junction. Sedated. Breathing. Maren’s signature is at saturation.”
“Copy.”
JINX: “Tael, I am reading three unregistered male Draelith scent signatures on the lower decks. Separate from the facility staff profile. Freelance.”
“Kesh and two others.”
“Confirmed on Kesh. The other two are hired. I am timing the facility patrol rotation against our intercept window for Torek’s chamber. Four minutes. Go.”
Kesh. Tael’s shoulders drop into the configuration I saw at V-6. His tail locks against his spine.
“Copy. Natalie. Close.”
“Close, Tael.”
We move. No talking. He is a meter ahead. Tail alert, not last night’s wrap. He checks I am still there without turning his head. I feel every check.
We clear the first junction.
Chambers.
Transparent walls. Sedated occupants. A Krellan female, bonded signature in distress at sedation level four. Her hand twitches. I can see my face in the glass over hers.
Sshari male.
A bonded Juneth pair on parallel slabs, arranged to face the glass.
The glass is spotless. That is the detail that catches. Not the restraints. The housekeeping. Someone wipes these walls on a schedule. Someone files a report when a hinge squeaks. The horror is not that this place exists. The horror is that it is administered.
“Tael.”
“I know, Natalie.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Keep moving.”
His rosettes have been releasing since we entered. Protection-state. Warm wood and spice pushed sharply. I can smell it. Mine. Do not touch. After last night I know what that chemistry means. In here, it is a warning.
JINX: “South patrol thirty meters behind you. Two meters of concealment at chamber 48-D.”
“In, Natalie.”
He pulls me into 48-D. Empty alcove. He puts me in the corner and covers me with his body. Tail around my waist — not last night. A lock. His chest a wall.
Mouth at my ear.
“Don’t breathe.”
I don’t.
Footsteps. Heavy. Unhurried. Men who belong here. Three seconds. Four. Receding.
JINX: “Clear.”
His tail loosens one coil. Not all of it. His mouth is still at my ear.
“Nat.”
My pulse answers before I do.
“Tael.”
“We move. Stay closer.”
“Copy.”
Torek is in 47-C.
I see him before the panel.
Observation slab. Wrist restraints worn smooth on the inside — weeks of a bonded male twisting in his sleep. Skin raw under the leather. The same clothes they took him in. Unwashed. Maren’s scent strong enough I catch it through the vent.
They did not even change him.
The anger arrives clean. Not grief. Not the professional tightness I use at a scene.
Fury. They farmed him. They left him in the shirt he was wearing when they pulled him off a station, and they opened two ports in his arms, and they let a depression wear into the headrest in the shape of one skull because moving him was not in the protocol.
IV in the right arm. Second cannula in the left elbow, tape yellowed. Two sampling ports. They have been taking from him on a schedule.
The headrest has a depression worn into it. One skull. One position. Weeks.
I photograph it. My hands are steady. I do not know how. The photograph is the only thing I am allowed to do with the anger, so I do it.
Pulse: forty-eight.
REM under the sedation. He is fighting it in his sleep.
The monitor has two logos. Severin BioSystems — the V-6 anchor stamp. Beside it: two interlocking hexagons, offset, sharing an edge. Partner mark. I photograph it. I send it to Flossie.
“Tael.”
“I see it.”
“Who else is running this.”
“I do not know.”
“We photograph everything.”
“Copy.”
His claws are out a quarter-inch. They stay there.
“Vosk. Twenty seconds out. Hold.”
Thane fills the doorway. Looks at Torek. The IV. The restraints. His jaw does the work his mouth will not.
“How long.”
“Weeks. Possibly longer.”
Tael lifts Torek off the slab as if he is afraid of adding insult. Thane takes the carry.
“Get him to Junction One. Maren is waiting at intake.”
“Copy.”
“Do not come back for us.”
“Vosk.”
“If we need extraction, I comm Flossie. Xor brings the cutter.”
Thane nods. “Copy. Torek home.”
Thirty seconds and he is gone.
The corridor is larger without him. The station notices.
Two of us. Eight years of this air. Twenty sedated bodies behind glass we cannot carry.
My hands are icy. I hate that. The kit pulls across the bruise on my hip when I turn, last night sitting under this morning like a second pulse, and the want from the bunk curdles into something simpler: I want him here because this place is not safe.
I do not say it.
I stay on his six.
We continue. Document. Tag. Get out.
46-D: Vendrish male. Tag.
45-B: human male, bonded to something Tael does not recognize. Later. Tag.
44-F: three Korrhai. Bonded. Adults.
I stop.
“Tael.”
“I see it.”
“Thane’s case profile.”
“Yes.” Breathing. Sedated. Arranged. “His family surfaced dead four months after they went. These are not them.”
“No. Another three.”
“There are more families.”
“Yes.”
“How many.”
“I don’t know. Keep moving.”
43-A: Vendrish female. Tag.
42-C: Xarthian pair. Tag.
Tael’s scent is stronger. This place is pulling it out of him. I stay on his six because I said I would and because his body is writing the same instruction in the air.
JINX: “Third patrol detected. Contractor scent signatures moving toward the lower decks.”
41-B.
Xarthian female. Small. Pulse on the panel: twelve. Dropping.
“Tael.”
“Torres, three-minute window—“
“She’s flatlining.”
Eleven.
I am through the seal with my hands on her chest before the panel updates. Compressions. Rate drilled at nineteen.
Tael at the door: “Nat.”
Not operational and he does not want to leave this doorway.
“Go. Next corridor. Two minutes. Come back.”
“I am not leaving you.”
“She dies if I stop.”
The sentence is correct. It is also a mistake I can already feel. Sending him away in this building is incorrect and I am doing it anyway because my hands are on a chest that is not rising, and I do not have a third option.
He does not move. Claws out. Tail rigid. The look from Parr’s Anchor — whoever comes through this door is already dead.
“Ninety seconds, Natalie.”
“Copy.”
He goes.
I hear the cost in the first two steps. I want him back before the third.
Fourteen. Seventeen. Twenty.
The chest under my hands is too still. The panel ticks. Eleven. Ten.
His footsteps go around the corner.
The corridor behind me is empty in the way a throat is empty before it swallows.
I do not hear the footsteps behind me until they are four meters away.