26. Clair
CLAIR
The automated transport deposited Clair in front of the Blood Archive less than fifteen minutes after she left Maera’s house, and she climbed out clutching her data tablet with a ridiculous amount of excitement bubbling inside her.
She couldn’t wait to tell Kaelus what they had discovered about the veloria metabolite showing up in saliva—especially the dramatic increase in the male samples after kissing their wives. He was going to love it.
Well, maybe love was too strong a word for Kaelus, who generally greeted exciting scientific discoveries with a thoughtful frown followed by approximately seventeen questions designed to poke holes in them.
But Clair knew him well enough by now to recognize that particular light that came into his golden eyes when something genuinely fascinated him.
She wanted to see that look. More than that, she wanted to see him, which was considerably more troubling and something she preferred not to examine too closely.
The Blood Archive rose before her out of the base of the silver-gray mountain, looking even more imposing than Kaelus had described it.
Enormous crystal columns resembling twisted vines flanked the entrance, their translucent surfaces shot through with veins of pale violet light that pulsed slowly from the ground upward as though the entire building had a heartbeat.
The mountainside itself had been carved into a sweeping arch around the doors, and strange flowing symbols were etched into the stone, glowing faintly whenever the twin suns touched them.
Clair craned her neck to look up at the massive structure and felt a little thrill go through her.
She loved places like this—ancient repositories of knowledge where centuries of science waited to be uncovered.
Under different circumstances, she could happily have spent weeks exploring it with Kaelus.
“Okay, big guy,” she murmured as she climbed the shallow steps toward the entrance. “Let’s see what you’ve been up to without me.”
She expected the doors to remain closed until she announced herself or entered some kind of authorization code, since Kaelus had told her the Archive was highly secure. Instead, the moment she approached, the enormous crystalline panels slid silently apart.
Clair slowed.
“Huh,” she muttered.
There was no guard waiting inside and no computerized voice asking her identity.
Nothing scanned her that she could detect, though knowing Titus Four technology, she supposed the entire entrance might have analyzed her down to the molecular level before she ever reached the top step.
Maybe Maera had added her to the authorized visitor list. Well, if so, that was convenient.
She would have to thank the other woman later.
She stepped inside and the doors closed behind her with a deep, resonant thoom that echoed through the cavernous entrance chamber. Clair jumped nervously. For some reason, the sound made the little hairs rise on the back of her neck.
“Oh, stop it,” she told herself. “You’re in a library, not a haunted house.”
Though calling the Blood Archive a library was like calling the Mother Ship a bus—it was that big and impressive.
The main chamber was enormous—far larger than she had imagined from Kaelus’s description. The cylindrical space plunged downward into the mountain farther than she could see, crossed by transparent spiral walkways which appeared to float unsupported in the air.
Thousands upon thousands of crystalline spheres hovered in orderly patterns throughout the vast chamber, each one glowing softly with its own color—ruby, sapphire, amber, violet, emerald, and dozens of shades Clair couldn’t name.
Threads of light connected some of the spheres into branching patterns which reminded her of family trees, except these represented generations of biological history rather than names on a genealogy chart.
Every blood sample, tissue sample, genetic sequence, immune profile, viral exposure, medical event, and reproductive history of generations upon generations of Titus Four citizens was preserved somewhere inside this impossible place. “
Wow,” Clair whispered. Her scientist brain immediately wanted to forget Kaelus entirely and start examining and exploring. Luckily, the rest of her was far more interested in finding her oversized, grouchy lab partner.
“Kaelus?” she called. Her voice echoed strangely through the enormous chamber.
But there was no answer. After a moment, Clair frowned and walked farther inside. Maybe he was in one of the deeper research areas and couldn’t hear her. The Archive was certainly big enough to hide dozens of people—even if they were as huge as Kaelus.
She followed the nearest transparent walkway around the circular chamber, glancing into several recessed laboratory areas as she passed.
Everything was eerily quiet. Holographic displays drifted above crystal work surfaces, data streams scrolling silently across them, but Clair didn’t see a single scientist. That seemed odd.
Surely a facility this enormous ought to have staff.
“Hello?” she called. “Anybody home?”
Nothing—nobody answered and no sounds besides her own disturbed the silence. Her footsteps sounded too loud against the crystalline walkway. The excitement she had felt on the way over began to fade.
Something here isn’t right, whispered a little voice in her head.
Clair picked up her pace.
“Kaelus?” she called again. But her response was still nothing but silence.
At last, she reached the research station he had described the night before. She recognized it immediately from the translucent crystal table and chairs Kaelus had told her about.
A holographic molecular display hovered above the table, showing the distinctive branching structure of the Love Virus alongside several historical viral sequences. And lying beside the display, left carelessly open, was Kaelus’s data tablet.
Clair stopped—she knew that tablet. The heavy black casing had a scratch across one corner from the time she accidentally knocked it off his workbench during their second week sharing the laboratory.
Kaelus had glared at her for nearly ten minutes afterward and informed her that this was precisely why Rule Number Three existed.
She walked over and picked it up.
“Kaelus?” she asked, but the big Hybrid was nowhere to be found.
All this time, Clair had been trying to fight off the unease she felt in the big, empty building but now a cold knot began forming in her stomach. He would never leave his data tablet behind—never.
Kaelus treated scientific data with the same obsessive protectiveness other men reserved for expensive sports cars or treasured family heirlooms. He backed up everything twice, encrypted his files, and became personally offended whenever Clair left her own tablet lying somewhere unsecured.
So where the Hell was he?
Clair touched the screen and it opened immediately. That was strange too—Kaelus’s tablet should have been locked.
Unless he left it in a hurry and didn’t have time to lock it, whispered that same, foreboding voice in the back of her head.
Clair tried unsuccessfully to push it away as she scanned the tablet.
A series of files filled the display. Her unease sharpened as she began reading them. Ancient viral strain retrieval…genomic modification records…archived Savage Period samples…off-world transport authorizations.
Her eyes widened as she reached the final documents—every one of them connected to Sendar.
“Oh my God!” she whispered as the realization hit.
She enlarged one of the shipment records and noticed that, while the destination wasn’t explicitly listed as Glenvarren, the coordinates were unmistakably in the same sector.
Another document showed an ancient viral sample withdrawn from secure storage. And another showed altered genetic sequences. Yet another contained access credentials belonging to Sendar.
Clair’s heart began pounding.
“You found out,” she whispered. “Damn Kaelus—good job!”
The big Hybrid had been right—Sendar wasn’t merely creepy—he was involved in the tragedy of Glenvarren. Deeply involved—possibly responsible for everything.
And Kaelus had discovered it. So where the hell was he?
Clair turned in a slow circle, suddenly aware once again of just how empty the Archive was.
“Kaelus!” she shouted. Her voice traveled outward, bounced from the crystal walls, and returned faintly distorted. Kaelus…Kaelus…Kaelus…
Nothing and no one answered. But Clair wasn’t about to give up. She knew that the big Hybrid had been here not long ago—he couldn’t have gotten far. She grabbed his data tablet in one hand and her own in the other and started down the nearest corridor.
The main Archive gradually gave way to narrower passageways carved directly into the mountain. The beautiful translucent architecture remained, but the farther she went, the older everything seemed to become.
Smooth crystalline walls transitioned to pale stone, then darker gray rock veined with luminous minerals. Some of the corridors branched in several directions, marked by flowing symbols she couldn’t read—not even the Translation Bacteria she’d taken seemed able to decipher the ancient script.
“Wonderful,” Clair muttered. “An alien maze—just exactly what I needed to brighten my day.” She tried her com and found it didn’t seem to work inside the Archive.
“Kaelus?” she said, trying again. She got nothing but static. She frowned and tried a third time—still nothing. This was not good.
Clair stopped beneath one of the glowing wall panels and looked back the way she had come.
She could probably return to the entrance, get outside, and call Maera or Varell.
Probably. But Kaelus was somewhere in here.
And he had left his data tablet behind after uncovering evidence connecting Sendar to the Savage Syndrome outbreak.
There was no way in hell she was leaving without him. She continued deeper into the labyrinthine building.