9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
ZAVIN
The lock seats behind me with the double-click of my own signature, and I take the passage toward the lower levels without seeing any of it. I told her about Selin.
There was an easier version of that conversation available from the moment she looked at me and said she’d found something.
A reassignment. A transfer. A dead end wrapped in enough truth to satisfy her.
I know exactly which pieces of information people need and which ones they don’t.
If I’d wanted to move her away from the answer, I could have done it before she’d finished the question.
Instead I poured her a drink and told her about a female who trusted me to keep her safe.
I told her not to read more into it than I could give her. That’s the sort of thing a male says when he’s already failed to keep his distance.
The worst part is that she didn’t need the confirmation. She’d already found the evidence. The missing profile. The scrubbed records. I simply told her the rest.
I keep turning that over as I walk.
I don’t make moves I can’t account for. Every conversation has a purpose.
Every disclosure buys something—the reason I’ve survived inside this family as long as I have.
Yet I gave a contractor a truth I’ve never spoken aloud to my own brother, and when I try to identify what I gained from it, I come up empty.
Most people would’ve gone hunting for the leak.
Miro stopped at the hole Selin left behind and looked straight through it.
A female she’d never met. A name she’d never heard.
Yet the first thing she cared about wasn’t the network or the damage done to it.
It was what had been done to Selin. Most of the people who work for me wouldn’t have seen a person at all.
The residential heat thins behind me as I descend, the stone cooling against the sensing pits along my jaw.
Wall panels shift from amber to the deeper copper of the commerce levels, and the air changes with them.
Incense. Sugar. Perfume. Sweat. The familiar blend of transactions happening behind a hundred closed doors.
Normally I wouldn’t notice any of it. Tonight my attention keeps circling back to a human female three floors above me.
I adjust my jacket and keep walking.
Attraction isn’t new. I’ve spent half my life surrounded by beautiful beings. Desired them. Been desired in return. Wanted someone, taken them to bed, and moved on with both of us understanding exactly what the exchange was worth. Simple. Temporary. Controlled. This should be no different.
Instead I find myself replaying conversations.
Her habit of catching patterns before anyone else sees them.
The way she argues. Her refusal to look away from the thing everyone else steps around.
I tell myself it’s intellectual curiosity.
Professional respect. She’s useful, exceptionally so, and useful people attract attention.
The explanation should satisfy me. It doesn’t.
Most beings see what I give them. The charm. The smile. The second son who collects secrets and sells information. They see the performance because that’s what I built it for. Miro keeps looking past it as though she doesn’t realize there’s supposed to be a wall there.
She found Selin. Not the data. Not the breach. Selin. And somehow that’s lodged itself under my scales.
The sensible solution would be distance.
Finish the investigation. Find the mole.
Put her on the first ship leaving Vahiri Prime and go back to the life I had before she arrived.
Instead I keep assigning more security to her corridor.
I keep finding reasons to walk into her workspace.
I keep noticing things I shouldn’t notice.
I bare my teeth at the empty hallway. This is exactly how vulnerabilities begin.
Not all at once. A conversation here. An exception there.
One decision that makes sense on its own, followed by another, until suddenly there’s someone in your life important enough to be used against you.
I’ve spent years making sure I owned nothing anyone could reach.
Lately I’m no longer certain that’s true.
I put the thought where it belongs and bury it beneath the work. If Miro found Selin in two days with a redacted dataset, the mole can find their next target in less. I stop in the dark stretch between two wall panels where nothing carries and key the comm.
Resh answers on the first tone. “Tell me you slept.”
“Lock down the eastern junctions. Rotate every credential that touched Selin’s cell before the cycle turns. The two operatives whose covers ran closest to hers, pull them off rotation and into quarters I control. Tonight.”
Resh is quiet for a moment. “They’ll resent that.”
“They’ll be alive to resent it.”
I keep walking, the passage sloping deeper beneath the Warrens. “One more thing. Double the watch on the contractor in the residential tier. Corridor monitoring on every approach to her quarters. I want to know who walks past her door and who finds a reason to slow down doing it.”
The silence that follows lasts a little longer.
“That’s a considerable amount of security for a contractor.”
“She’s the only person making progress.”
“You’ve run audits before.”
I don’t answer.
“You’ve hired specialists before.” His voice stays maddeningly neutral. “You’ve never put a personal watch on one of them.”
A low hiss escapes me. Resh doesn’t press it. That’s one of the reasons he’s still alive.
“She’s not to know about any of it,” I say.
“You say that like it’s a professional concern.” His amusement reaches me even through the comm, and I decide not to reward it.
“It’s a concern, nothing more.” The edge on my voice should tell him to leave it alone.
“The gaps are shrinking,” he says after a moment. “Months between the first incidents. Weeks after that. Barely a week before Selin.”
I remember every report. Every operative. Every time a problem became a body. The pattern stopped looking like patience a while ago.
“I know.”
“If they’re moving faster—“
“They know something’s changed.”
Neither of us says the rest. If the mole has realized someone is getting close, the next move won’t be defensive. It will be directed.
“I’ll handle it quietly.”
“You always do.”
The line disconnects.
I lower the comm and keep walking, though my pace has slowed.
The numbers refuse to balance. Every precaution creates a new problem.
Every answer exposes another question. Selin is dead.
Miro found her anyway. Kazren is circling things that should still be invisible.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I’ve started assigning extra security to a human female who should mean nothing.
The junction to the upper levels appears ahead, where the humid warmth of the Warrens gives way to the colder air reserved for House Sethrak. I smooth my expression before I reach it.
Kazren is already there.
I flatten my scent automatically. He carries the same training I do.
Better, some days. We were shaped by the same male, taught the same lessons, punished for the same weaknesses.
I draw the air across my tongue out of habit and get exactly what he intends me to get.
Nothing. No irritation. No anger. No satisfaction.
Anger would have been useful. Anger gives a male something to work with. Interest is harder. Interest means he’s thinking. It means he’s noticed something. It means he’s decided a question is worth pursuing. And Kazren is interested.
“Little brother.”
He doesn’t move aside. The corridor is exactly narrow enough that one of us will have to give way, and we both know it won’t be him until he’s finished with whatever this is.
His formal blacks fit perfectly, cut to accommodate the broader build that comes with being firstborn.
Our colouring is similar enough that nobody would mistake us for anything but brothers, but where my scales catch the light in copper and bronze, his run darker, closer to burnished mahogany.
The patterning along his throat and jaw is sharper too, giving him a harder look than mine ever managed. Not that he needs the help.
“You’ve been difficult to find.”
“I’ve been working.”
“You’ve been somewhere.”
His amber eyes travel over me slowly. “You look tired. You used to hide that better.”
I keep my expression neutral. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You’ve become easier to read.”
The smile never leaves his face. That’s the problem.
Kazren smiles when he’s amused, when he’s angry, when he’s deciding whether to ruin someone’s life.
The expression means nothing on its own — you have to watch the slight narrowing of his pupils, the stillness in his shoulders, the fact that he still hasn’t stepped aside. He’s hunting.
“I miss the performances,” he says. “The flirting. The pretty version of you who worked the floor and made every mark feel special.”
My jaw tightens, and the smile widens. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for me.
“Lately you move through these halls like a male carrying something heavy.”
“You’re mistaking exhaustion for mystery.”
“Am I?”
“At your age, it’s understandable.”
I suppress a sigh. Father taught us both the same lessons — never strike at the first weakness. Wait for the one they can’t afford to defend.
“I’ve been wondering what’s keeping you occupied.” His fingers brush the cuff of one sleeve.
“I’ve been busy keeping your network from bleeding out.”
A soft laugh escapes him. “My network.” He rolls the words around as though tasting them. “Listen to you.”
He steps closer. Not enough to challenge. Enough to remind. Kazren wears authority the way other males wear jewellery — casually, effortlessly, as though it belongs to him by natural law rather than birth order.
“The contractor audit is still running, by the way. Father’s designation review.”
My stomach tightens — not because of the audit. Because he mentioned it. I’ve spent most of my life learning which details matter and which don’t. Kazren doesn’t waste words when he’s fishing.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in records this week,” he continues.
I say nothing.
“Yours are very tidy. Maintenance schedules. Ventilation reports. Routine inspections.” His gaze settles on mine. “Nothing anyone would think twice about.”
My pulse kicks once. Not hard. Enough. He’s watching for it, and I know because I’m doing exactly the same thing to him.
“I run a tidy operation.”
“You do.”
The silence stretches and I leave it alone. Kazren is patient when he wants something. Painfully patient. He can stand in silence for an hour if he thinks the other male will eventually fill it. I learned that lesson young.
“Father lost one human already.”
The words slide between my ribs. For a second I forget the corridor, forget Kazren, forget the years in between.
One cycle she was there. The next she was gone — no argument, no warning, no punishment.
Father removed her from the records, disconnected every channel I could have used to find her, and carried on with his day.
An inefficiency corrected. A lesson delivered.
I force the memory down. My scent stays flat, the heat buried, claws sheathed.
Across from me Kazren waits not for an answer, but for a reaction.
A flinch. A change in scent. Anything. The discipline required to deny him isn’t difficult; Father spent years beating it into both of us, and Kazren knows exactly how hard it is because he learned it beside me.
“It’s remarkable how often history repeats itself,” he says when the silence has run long. “Humans never seem to last around this family. Father does hate waste. I’d think you’d have learned to stop hiding them by now.”
He steps around me at last. His shoulder misses mine by a fraction. “Sleep, little brother. You look like you need it.”
The formal black of his jacket disappears gradually up the hall, swallowed by distance and shadow. He never looks back. I stay where I am and run through every word again. He reached back eight years for that one sentence.
To her.
The human female Father sold off-world before dawn could reach the upper levels.
One cycle she existed. The next she was gone, carried away on a ship I spent months trying to find and years failing to forget.
Kazren knows the story. Everyone in the family knows the story.
Bringing her up now should mean nothing.
The problem is that Kazren rarely does anything that should mean nothing.
I close my eyes briefly and replay the conversation.
The contractor audit. The designation review.
The comment about records. The reminder about Father.
Every piece fits too neatly beside the next.
Was he probing, or confirming something he already suspects?
That’s the question that refuses to leave me alone.
Kazren only asks questions he’s already started answering for himself. Most of the time he’s not interested in the information — he’s interested in the reaction. He throws a hook into the water and watches the surface.
Two cycles ago he stood at the contract boards while I walked Miro through the corridor. I hoped he hadn’t seen her but I know better than to wish for that. We were both raised to see everything.
Miro is safe as long as she’s a face without a name or a name without a face. The designation review gives Kazren access to one. The contract boards may have given him the other. I can’t tell whether he’s already connected them or whether he’s still deciding if there’s a connection worth making.
Every hour she remains inside House Sethrak is another hour for curiosity to become investigation, another hour closer to a name disappearing from the records and a comm channel that never answers again. If he doesn’t know, then I’m creating the very pattern he’ll follow.
Getting her off Vahiri is still the clean answer.
It’s the answer I’d give anyone else. The things that survive on this planet stay small, stay forgettable, and leave before anyone important notices they exist. Every instinct I have says the same thing.
Find the mole. End the threat. Put Miro on the first ship leaving orbit and make sure I never learn where it lands.
The thought should sit comfortably. Instead it leaves a hollow place behind it.
I push that aside and start walking. The lower levels wait beneath me, along with the work that actually matters.
The investigation. The mole. Problems I know how to solve.
But the unease follows me down the passage, because if Kazren has already started looking, disappearing may no longer be an option Miro gets to choose.