Page 108 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

CHAPTER 16

GHAR

The passage after Rolaev ’s transmission narrows until the ruins force us to walk single file, and the stone seems to listen to every breath we take.

Silver symbols slide under the walls in slow, nervous pulses, answering the archive case Anita carries against her chest. Somewhere behind us, the dead transmitter still smokes in the corridor where Rolaev ’s voice left its poison. Somewhere ahead, Sira is alive in Choir custody, collared, injured, and being used as bait by a woman who understands mercy well enough to imitate it while murdering people in its name.

I lead because someone must.

I also lead because walking behind Anita right now would ruin what remains of my judgment.

Her silence is not submission. Anita Prentiss has never submitted to a feeling in her life without first insulting it, measuring it, and demanding credentials. This silence is worse. Rolaev ’s message has entered her mind and found a place to sit. I can feel the change in the shape of our movement, the way she clutches the archive case closer but no longer with simple defiance. Doubt walks beside her now.

That frightens me more than her recklessness did.

Brakk limps at the rear, his fusion cutter hanging low and his breathing rough through smoke-damaged lungs. His usual muttering has thinned into occasional curses when the corridor bends in ways corridors should not. The loss of Sira has affected him more deeply than he will admit. He keeps glancing backward as if she might reappear from the sealed wall, patient and serene, ready to correct all of us with a sentence so gentle it feels like a blade wrapped in silk.

The passage finally opens into a low maintenance alcove overlooking a series of archive galleries below. We crouch behind a curved black balustrade while I scan the space with the last functioning tactical lens from my field kit.

The occupied chambers spread beneath us in tiers.

The Choir has turned a preserved archive gallery into a temporary control point. Black-armored soldiers move along bridges and platforms with disciplined efficiency, installing portable field emitters against the walls and setting sensor pylons at every visible passage. Their equipment throws harsh white light across the ancient surfaces, turning silver ruin-glow into jagged shadows. At the the lowest visible platform, Sira kneels inside a containment field with a restraint collar flashing faintly around her throat.

She is conscious.

Her hands are bound before her. Her silver-white face remains lifted despite the blood darkening one sleeve. Two Choir soldiers stand near her, and a third works at a console grown from the floor, attempting to interface modern equipment with ruin systems.

Anita sees Sira and inhales sharply.

I catch her wrist before she can rise.

She looks at my hand, then at me. “Do not.”

“Do not move.”

“They have her.”

“I see her.”

“Then let go.”

“No.”

Her eyes sharpen with fury, but underneath it sits fear so raw that anger barely covers it. “Ghar, if you say we can’t rescue her, I swear to God I will bite you.”

Brakk drops beside us with a grunt. “For the record, I support biting in theory but oppose starting the mission with inter-party violence.”

I keep my voice low. “Count them.”

Anita turns toward the galleries, breathing hard. “I count twelve.”

“Fourteen,” I say. “Two on upper shadow cover.”

Brakk squints through the gloom. “I see the bastards. Nice perch. Annoyingly professional.”

“They have overlapping fire lanes, sensor coverage, and field generators,” I say. “The lower platform has only two stable approaches, both watched. The side gallery may shift, but if it does, we cannot predict where it will connect.”

Anita’s mouth tightens. “So we create a distraction.”