11. Chapter Eleven #2
We go through the service routes together.
The lighting shifts as we leave the main passage, dropping from the warm amber of the entertainment quarter into something harsher and infrequent.
Conduit bundles run the ceiling in thick braids, some of them old enough that the casing has yellowed.
The walls are narrower here, unfinished in places where maintenance access takes priority over aesthetics, and our footsteps echo differently.
Bare metal. Grated flooring. The distant hum of climate control cycling somewhere deeper in the structure.
Resh doesn’t speak. He’s good at silence when silence is what the moment requires.
Cold grips the stairwell — the kind of cold that means the climate dampers have failed again in this sector, or someone shut them off deliberately.
Steps worn concave in the center, old masonry predating the Warrens’ current configuration.
Someone has scrubbed the landing below, leaving the rock lighter there, a pale grey against grime-darkened edges where the cleaning didn’t reach.
Nyssa’s body lies three landings down, crumpled in a position that would make sense if she’d fallen from the upper platform. We make our way down. Crouching beside her, I study the remains.
Wrong angle. A form falling naturally lands differently.
Arms positioned too neatly at her sides as though arranged, her spine curved against the floor in a line too gentle for a four-story drop.
Bruising on the side of her head doesn’t match the impact point on the rock.
A single darker patch marks where moisture or blood has touched the surface.
Her temple wound is broader, more diffuse — the kind of damage that comes from a blow rather than a fall.
Bruising on her wrists still visible beneath the translucent fabric, but there’s newer marking now. A pressure pattern across the forearm that suggests restraint. Her sleeve has been tugged back into place. The fold isn’t natural. Someone dressed her after.
Her fingers are clean. If she’d fallen, if she’d tried to catch herself, her hands would show it. Abrasions. Broken nails. Defensive damage. Uncut and still, laid palm-down against the stone like she’s sleeping.
Resh doesn’t look at me. “She wasn’t one of ours. She didn’t know anything worth killing for.”
“She knew something.” Straightening, I meet his eyes. “She just didn’t know she knew it. That’s enough. It’s always enough.”
“What could she have seen that was worth this?” Resh says.
Opening my mouth to answer — and stopping. Nyssa passed me in the corridor. She saw me. She saw who I was with. Miro was beside me the whole walk through the entertainment quarter. And then someone killed her.
“You know something,” Resh says.
No answer. Running it backward. Nyssa wasn’t killed for something she found in a file. She’d seen Miro. She’d seen Miro with me.
Sethrak knows Miro exists. Kazren knows she was in that corridor. My wrist band shows no signal. No bars. No relay indicator. We’re too deep and the rock is too thick.
And I left Miro alone.
Halfway up the stairs before I realize I’ve started moving. Resh follows. The passages flash past. Gold light. Copper stone. The ambient hum of the Warrens filtering through the walls on all sides. Reaching Miro’s quarters, overriding the lock with my biometric signature.
She’s at her workstation with Percy’s display glowing amber in front of her. Alive. Whole. Turning to look at me with an expression that shifts from surprise to wariness when she sees my face.
My vision constricts. One hand finds the doorframe for balance.
Miro is alive. She is unharmed. She is turning toward me, lips parting to speak, and I don’t trust this room.
Two strides carry me to her. My palm covers her mouth before a sound escapes.
She starts to pull away — then stills as I lean close, breath warm against her ear, her scent filling my lungs. “Your room might be compromised.”
Her eyes flare and she stops right away. Trusting me immediately. Trust I don’t know if I deserve, but I’m going to look anyway. A gesture sends Resh sweeping the far side while I take the near.
Most of the space doesn’t look lived in at all. The sleeping platform is made. The storage unit contains the clothes she arrived in. No personal items. No entertainment terminal. No sign of use outside the workstation. Six days she’s been here and in that time she’s only left twice.
Both times to run junction diagnostics. The full extent of her movement. One room. One display. One person visiting at intervals she couldn’t predict.
I gave her a room and called it protection. She received a cage. The distinction is mine — the failure to communicate it, mine as well. What a mind like hers would do with six days of amber light and nothing else never crossed my consideration.
She went looking for air and function.
Separate from that need, my anger holds its own shape. Understanding sits alongside it without friction. Sethrak approached her and she didn’t report it. She made herself a target and then she made herself blind to the consequences. To me.
And I can only protect what I can see.
She is watching me. Waiting. “What’s going on, Zavin?”
Pulling up the corridor feed, I zoom on Sethrak’s face as he watches her retreating back. “You’ve been compromised. My father has your face, your location, your connection to me.” The feed closes.
Her expression cycles. Hurt. Guilt. The start of anger. Her lips part.
Percy is in my hands before she speaks. “Nyssa is dead. She saw you with me and now she’s dead.”
Her hand flies to her throat. She pales as the full weight of my words land.
Shoving Percy into her arms, I lean close. “Nowhere is safe for you except at my side.”