Page 29 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

My anger vanishes into focus.

“When did this alert appear?” I ask.

Anita steps closer. Her shoulder nearly brushes my arm, and I have to lock my stance against the immediate pull of her nearness. “It didn’t. The scan tagged that section as inaccessible.”

“It is not inaccessible.”

I enlarge the passage. The forced-entry data is old, hidden under geological interference. Someone cut through the first seal, then replaced enough of it to fool a casual inspection.

Anita’s voice lowers. “Someone opened it before us.”

“Yes.”

“Is that one of the places you found access anomalies?”

“Yes.”

Her face tightens as the implications land. “So my unauthorized scan just did your job better than your official systems.”

I look at her.

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “That was smug and poorly timed.”

“It was accurate.”

“That is worse for both of us.”

I save the scan to my secured compad and shut down the projection. Darkness closes in around the lab, leaving only the thin glow of console lights across Anita’s face.

Ghar, those structures are not just older than the surface ruins. They were buried in phases. Someone layered stone, insulation strata, and artificial density shells over them.”

“I saw.”

“No, you saw a security problem. I need you to understand the archaeological problem.”

“I understand someone hid a large structure.”

“Not hid. Entombed.” She turns toward me, and the urgency in her eyes cuts through every defensive wall I attempt to raise. “Burial is different. Burial is ritual, containment, preservation, concealment, or all of the above. You do not bury something that large unless it matters, unless you fear it, or unless you think someone else will come looking.”

The lab machinery hums around us. Beneath that hum, Nareth-Kul groans again, distant and deep.

I think of the unauthorized entries. The missing transmitter. The relay drone. The cut seal.

“Someone already has,” I say.

We find Brakk in the lower equipment bay, half inside an open cargo hauler with sparks showering around his boots. The bay is warmer than the lab, thick with the smells of grease, scorched insulation, and the bitter stimulant tea Fratvoyans drink when they want their hearts to threaten legal action. Machinery crouches in rows beneath dangling work lamps. Cargo sleds line the far wall. Beyond the open bay doors, the excavation terraces drop away into floodlit darkness.

Brakk does not look out when we enter. “If this is about the missing coil spanner, I have escalated from suspicion to prophecy.”

“It is about sealed tunnel C-9,” I say.

The sparks stop.

Brakk wriggles out from under the hauler, his fur sticking up in oily tufts. “Well, that sounds worse than a spanner.”

Anita leans against a crate with false casualness. “Depends on the spanner.”

Brakk points at her. “Do not flirt with my tools.”