Page 56 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

The thought arrives suddenly and hard enough to nearly fold me in half again. Teren would have made some joke about cursed hallways or cosmic OSHA violations. He would have talked too loudly because silence made him nervous. He would have been terrified and curious at the same time.

Instead, he is dead because he tried to save people.

My throat tightens painfully.

Ghar notices immediately.

Again.

Not because of the bond, I realize with sudden awful clarity.

Because he is paying attention.

That difference matters more than I want it to.

I close the archive case carefully and stand. “If we go down there, we may not find a way back.”

“We may not have one already,” Ghar says.

Brakk adjusts the grip on his cutter and exhales heavily through his nose. “Well, I always wanted my obituary to involve forbidden underground geometry.”

Sira glances toward the newly opened corridor. “The lower structures were hidden intentionally. If answers exist anywhere on this planet, they exist below.”

I slide the archive strap across my shoulder.

The surface is gone.

The Choir wants us dead.

The archive revealed truths capable of collapsing religions.

And somehow the thing disturbing me most at this exact moment is the fact that I want to trust the enormous scarred Vakutan standing beside me.

That realization feels more dangerous than the tunnels.

Ghar steps toward the revealed passage first. He does not ask me to stay behind him this time. He simply moves carefully into the darkness with his weapon raised and his attention sweeping every possible threat.

Then, after only two steps, he pauses and glances back toward me. I follow him into the dark.

CHAPTER 8

GHAR

The corridor the ruins open for us descends like a wound cut through the logic of the planet.

Cold air flows upward from below, but the current does not move naturally. It slides across my scales in thin, deliberate layers, carrying the scents of damp stone, electrical discharge, old dust, and something faintly sweet that reminds me of medical preservative. The passage walls are black and seamless at first, then they begin to show hidden structures beneath the surface as our lamps pass over them. Silver lines drift under the stone like veins beneath skin, and each pulse of light answers the archive case Anita carries against her hip.

Every answer this place gives us feels like another trap.

I walk first with my sidearm raised, though the weapon feels increasingly inadequate against corridors that do not respect distance. The passage should be straight. My eyes tell me it is straight. My inner ear and the tactical mapping program on my compad disagree every few seconds, correcting a route that bends without appearing to bend. Behind me, Anita’s boots scrape over the stone in stubborn, exhausted steps. Brakk mutters to himself under his breath while carrying his fusion cutter in both hands, and Sira-Vel moves in silence near the rear, pale and composed despite the soot streaking her skin and the blood dried at one corner of her sleeve.

The first room shifts while we are inside it.

We enter through a narrow arch and find a chamber shaped like a long oval, its floor tiled in overlapping plates and its ceiling lost behind drifting darkness. Four exits stand at equal intervals along the walls. I mark the entrance automatically, counting our steps, mapping angles, measuring each doorway by instinct. When Brakk curses behind me thirty breaths later, I turn and see the arch we entered through has moved to the opposite wall.

Anita stops beside me, her face pale beneath dust and dried tear tracks. “That is new.”

Brakk angles his cutter toward the shifted door. “That is not new. That is very old bullshit showing off.”