Page 6

Chapter6

THE HOLOGRAM of Selyr flickered out, but his presence lingered there, poisoning theair.

Tor’Vek did not move at first. His hands stayed loosely at his sides, posture composed, every movement deliberate. The only flicker of tension came in the faint pulse of the bracelet on his wrist, mirroring a response he chose not toshow.

“Prepare yourself,” he called to Selyr, certain the scientist listened.

His words weren’t a threat. They were a declaration made with the clarity of a warrior who no longer believed in mercy. Selyr had drawn the first blood long before this moment—Tor’Vek had merely accepted the terms. The board was no longer Selyr’s. Every move from here on belonged to Tor’Vek.

He turned to Anya. She stood a few paces behind him, tense, watchful, waiting. Not afraid—not anymore—but rigid in that quiet, fierce way she had when she braced herself for truth. He gave a single nod, and they moved.

The lab beyond the meeting chamber had been largely untouched since his arrival. Corridors once lined with flickering lights were now dark, consoles dormant, the hum of the facility fading beneath the silence. Power still ran to the deepest layers—he could hear the low, steady pulsation beneath the floor panels and see faint glows in the seams of the walls. Energy hadn’t been cut. It had been redirected. Suppressed. Waiting for reactivation. Abase like this did not truly sleep.

It waited.

He bypassed the biometric lock to Selyr’s private data vault, the mechanism accepting his clearance with an almost reluctant chime, as if the system itself resented his intrusion.

They entered a room bathed in pale blue light. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with old tech and organic samples in sealed containment units. At the center of the room, an elevated platform housed a sprawling terminal system surrounded by auxiliary control nodes.

A cracked data core flickered lazily at its base, its surface riddled with scorched microfractures and deep channel scars from overload reroutes. It looked like it had survived at least one purge—possibly more—each leaving behind damage that corrupted data without fully erasing it. Enough function remained to suggest that the core still held fragments, shadows of what Selyr once stored. Information worth salvaging—if Tor’Vek could coax it back tolife.

He moved toward the main console without hesitation.

Anya followed him in but veered toward the far wall. She didn’t speak. Her expression had sharpened into something purposeful. She began touching panels, eyes scanning each screen as it poweredup.

He approved of her silence. Of her initiative.

She was not waiting to be rescued. She was here to uncover her own truth.

He turned his focus to the central terminal. The access logs were half-corrupted, degraded by time or intentional damage. Still, he worked quickly, fingers darting across the interface, bypassing security gates and bending subroutines like steel under flame, reshaping them with precision until the system yielded to hiswill.

Keywords. Command hierarchies. Psychological pairing matrices. Jump logs. Encryption tables.

He chased them all, tracing their shadows across fragmented code like a hunter stalking prey through dense fog. Every path led deeper into the dark, into the mind of the man who’d built this place to be unreadable.

The data was fragmented, scattered across partitions like a puzzle snapped mid-assembly. Some files referenced interstellar transmission relays—asign Selyr had sent updates somewhere. Tor’Vek began cloning what he could to a secondary drive.

He paused only once—when he saw the date stamp on the last outgoing transmission.

It was sent less than an hourago.

Which meant Selyr had been here— recently . Not long before Tor’Vek had gone feral tearing through the base to reach Anya. Likely during that final surge of chaos, Selyr had initiated his departure. That would explain the intact systems, the half-scrubbed logs, the fragments left behind like breadcrumbs. It hadn’t been abandonment. It had been evacuation.

Tor’Vek’s fingers stilled on the console. Not in hesitation. In recalibration. The information he’d uncovered reshaped the perimeter of the problem. Selyr hadn’t abandoned the base—he’d staged its departure like a scientist closing the lid on a specimen jar. And now Tor’Vek understood: the test was still running. The trap was still active. His next move had to be precise, and it had to be final.

This wasn’t an abandoned lab Tor’Vek was dissecting—it was an active environment, engineered to be observed long after Selyr’s physical presence vanished. The data wasn’t simply left behind. It had been curated, monitored, possibly manipulated. Tor’Vek wasn’t uncovering a crime scene. He was walking through an open experiment, one Selyr still controlled from a distance.

He did not tell Anya. Not yet. If she knew Selyr had been here so recently—had possibly watched their suffering in real time—her focus would crack. She needed to stay sharp, not spiral. Let her have her clarity now. The truth could wait. Just a few more minutes. Until he had what they needed.

Behind him, he heard her exhale sharply—not fear, but recognition. Aterminal flared to life beside her, its screen stuttering before stabilizing, the glow casting lines of pale blue across her features.

Her posture shifted as she leaned closer, fingers poised above the interface. Whatever she saw had her full attention. It wasn’t incidental. It was a thread she intended to follow.

“This one’s personal,” she murmured. “It has my name on it.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Her jaw was tight, hands steady. She looked fierce, prepared, as if bracing for answers she already suspected. He did not interrupt. She had earned this confrontation with her past. Shielding her now would only weaken the lucidity she fought so hard to gain. Some truths needed to be seen with openeyes.

Turning back to his own terminal, he entered a deeper partition.

Another file blinked to life. This one buried under three levels of override, labeled in Vettian:

CONTINGENCY: SERIES17

He openedit.

And the bracelet on his wrist flared in warning.

The glow from the screen deepened to crimson. Without warning, the bracelet on Tor’Vek’s wrist ignited with heat—not just a flare, but a violent surge that slammed through his nervous system like a plasma strike. It was not the slow burn of rising anger; it was a precision-triggered override, invasive and immediate, hijacking every instinct with programmedfury.

His breath caught. Muscles locked. The pressure behind his eyes spiked, his pulse leapt, and the edge of control cracked as he realized—this wasn’t a malfunction.

The system had been tampered with. Remotely. Deliberately.

The rage setting had returned.

He staggered back half a step, his teeth gritted, jaw clenching under the sudden pressure. His body fought to stay upright as red-gold light spiraled along his forearm, wrapping like a shackle. The burn wasn’t pain. It was provocation.

A crackle of static split the air, sharp and deliberate, like the clearing of a throat before a lecture.

Selyr’s voice returned. Smooth. Smug. Mocking.”Oh dear. What have you done?”

Tor’Vek’s vision blurred, narrowed at the edges like tunnel walls collapsing inward. Apulse drummed beneath his skull, primal and loud, drowning out thought with sensation. He felt himself slipping—not into madness, but into something more dangerous: something feral and soul-stripping, unrelenting and void of reason. This wasn’t him. It was what the bracelet demanded. What Selyr had planned.

He locked his jaw, dug his heels into the floor, and forced out the command through clenched teeth, aiming the words at Anya alone.

“Touch me. Now.”

She spun, alarm blooming across her features. She didn’t hesitate. She flew across the space between them and pressed herself to his back, arms sliding around his chest, palms flat against him, skin-to-skin.

The bond surged—then steadied. Not calm. Not gentle. But with a silent threat, like a predator held in restraint by a single thread of breath. Her touch became the tether, drawing him from the edge, holding his mind together while his body fought toobey.

Tor’Vek drew in a ragged breath, forcing control to return to his limbs as if dragging it from the edge of collapse. His hands trembled over the console, not from weakness but from the sheer force of will it took to stay perfectly still. His knuckles blanched, locked in a death grip against the terminal, each breath a battle to cage what clawed insidehim.

The red hue faded to amber. The bond shivered and pulled taut, like a wire strung between them under too much tension, humming with volatile energy just shy of snapping. It wasn’t balance—it was a pause, abreath held too long, areprieve earned but not promised.

A flicker pulsed in the corner of the screen, subtle but insistent—asystem response Tor’Vek hadn’t initiated. Before he could disable it, avideo file auto-played on his screen.

Selyr’s voice again, but now in clinical rhythm—recorded.

“...unexpected results from emotional reciprocity. Warrior displays high fusion rate. Most viable bonding match to date.”

Anya froze againsthim.

“Female subject selected for accelerated bonding trials due to above-average biological responsiveness and heightened emotional permeability. Chosen specifically to test whether a non-engineered subject could achieve sustainable stabilization of the warrior unit in a field environment. Initial results exceeded predicted parameters, indicating a strong primary bond response. However, long-term viability remains questionable. Should destabilization persist or the subject reject integration protocols, elimination will be required. Backup candidate has been identified from shared genetic source material.”

“What?” she whispered. “Is he talking about my sister,Maya?”

The voice paused.

Then:

“If this subject proves unstable... the younger sibling remains a viable secondary candidate. Genetic pairing model identifies her as the most accessible replacement.”

Tor’Vek’s blood wentcold.

This was not random. Not some opportunistic cruelty born of Selyr’s instability. It was part of the plan. Anya had been selected deliberately to test the limits of bonding viability in uncontrolled conditions. Tor’Vek was the experiment’s variable.

The realization clawed at something deep beneath his armor of logic. He hadn’t just been observed—he’d been engineered into the framework of the test. Atrigger. Atool. Athreat to be manipulated. And that knowledge sparked not confusion, but something far more dangerous that had nothing to do with the bracelets: rage-charged intent. And now, with the data gathered and the outcome inconvenient, Selyr intended to erase the result.

And replaceher.

WithMaya.

Cold calculation disguised as science. Selyr wasn’t simply observing anymore. He was preparing the next trial.

He didn’t look at Anya. Didn’t haveto.

Because the bracelet flared again—and this time, it was not from hisrage.

It was something else. Ashift. Not in him—but in her. The bond realigned in a way he did not initiate. It stabilized with intent.

Anya’s intent.

She wasn’t panicking. She wasn’t falling apart. Through the bond, her focus sharpened like a blade—not cold, but cutting. It wrapped around him, steady and unyielding in a way no algorithm or protocol ever had. Her presence didn’t calm the storm. It simply refused to be drowned byit.

She was focusing.

He felt it radiate through the link like a beacon—calm, determined, terrifying in its clarity. And it forced him to feel ittoo.

She would not let Maya be taken.

And neither wouldhe.

Not because he shared her motive. He did not. She wanted to save her sister. He wanted to end the one who had threatened her. They would not always agree on how the path should unfold. For now, the only thing clear was the threat. And the promise: this was notover.

A sharp chirp echoed through the chamber.

Then another. Louder. Urgent.

Tor’Vek’s gaze snapped to the far console. The lights above them flickered once, then again—slower, darker. Systems he hadn’t accessed powered up on their own. Energy rechanneled through backup cores. The console let out a low whine as power surged through its frame. Aburied subroutine, long-dormant, had come online, its code auto-executing without prompt. This wasn’t passive defense. It was the final layer of control—an ending written into the walls.

He bypassed a firewall. Another. Deeper access.

Then the words appeared:

AUTODESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. 04:32 REMAINING.

The air itself seemed to contract.

He turned to Anya without a word, reached for her wrist, and pulled her sharply to hisside.

“We are leaving,” he said, snatching up the handheld device that contained the data he’d downloaded.

They sprinted.

From speakers above and around them, Selyr’s voice followed, still amused, still maddeningly calm—his tone dispassionate, as though delivering the final entry in a lab report. The air itself seemed to contract, as if the base itself resented their survival.

“You’ve taken your data. I’ve extracted my results. This facility has outlived its usefulness—and your presence here is no longer required. Elimination is efficient. Clean. Statistically preferable to further contamination of the test group. Iwill continue the trials elsewhere—with a new Intergalactic Warrior and the sibling specimen from the same genetic line. Early simulations suggest the next model of bracelets will yield even more adaptive results.”

The hallway outside the vault was already dimming as they raced along it. Overhead, the light panels cracked one by one, sparks raining down in brief, angry showers. Alarms blared in rhythmic bursts that seemed to chase their footsteps.

The floor shuddered beneaththem.

Anya stumbled—once, twice—but Tor’Vek’s grip was iron around her wrist, never letting her fall. The bond between them burned hot, not with rage or fear, but with a singular, unrelenting directive: escape.

They tore through the compound, winding through half-collapsed corridors and fractured bulkheads. The floor vibrated with the pulse of deep, destabilizing detonations. Flames licked through open vents above them, and the stench of melting circuitry filled the air. Panels sparked and burst as they rushed past, casting wild shadows across the walls. One hallway behind them erupted into fire with a roar that shook the base, driving them forward faster. It was not a chase. It was a race against disintegration.

Tor’Vek didn’t look back. The explosion that rocked the corridor behind them struck like a thunderclap, blasting them sideways into the wall. He slammed into the metal hard enough to jar his teeth, twisting mid-fall to shield Anya with his body as they hit the floor. Her shoulder struck first, asharp cry escaping herlips.

He yanked her up with a force that bordered on brutality, not trusting the structure to hold another second. Flames erupted again as a ceiling panel buckled, raining sparks that scorched the air as they sprinted on, battered and breathless. Smoke poured in waves, burning their lungs. Each racing step was a gamble between traction and collapse. The base wasn’t failing. It was devouring itself, determined to take them withit.

When they reached the hangar bay, smoke had already begun to choke the high ceilings, casting the enormous space in a sickly haze. The emergency lighting was failing, flickering in broken pulses across the polished floor. At the far end, his ship stood like a shadow amidst the chaos—distant, motionless, and their only wayout.

Theyran.

A support beam collapsed in front of them, slamming into the floor with an impact that sent tremors through their legs. They veered around it, lungs burning, feet slipping on the dust-slick metal.

A fireball burst from a nearby maintenance tunnel, the concussive force knocking them sideways. Anya hit the floor hard but rolled, catching herself on her palms. Tor’Vek was there instantly, hauling her to her feet as more explosions echoed behindthem.

The ship felt impossibly far, like a mirage at the end of a collapsing world. Every step became a battle—legs numb, lungs searing, the weight of the crumbling base pressing down around them like a tidal wave of heat and smoke. Alarms shrieked overhead in fractured bursts, each one snapping through the air like a countdown to death. Time and gravity conspired against them, dragging their feet, staggering their rhythm. But they pushed forward, because there was no other option. Because stopping meant dying.

And they refused todie.

He reached the access panel of his ship first, lungs dragging air like fire through his throat. He shoved it open and slapped the control screen—nothing. The panel sparked, then went dark, unresponsive under his hand. For a heartbeat, it felt toolate.

The silence that followed was crushing, filled with the shriek of circuitry and the thunder of approaching collapse. He slammed the heel of his hand against the panel again, desperation clawing just beneath the surface.

This was their exit. Their only escape. And it wasn’t responding. For one brief, brutal second, he imagined Anya’s body in flames, his own pinned beneath debris, the bond severed by fire and steel—and that image alone sent another surge of force through his limbs.

“No,” he growled, tapping into the rage that simmered so close to the surface, and slammed his palm into the override node with a force that cracked the panel casing. The emergency circuit whined, then clicked.

The blast doors hissed and parted.

He boosted Anya up the ramp before she could argue, gripping her by the waist and hoisting her bodily through the opening as smoke and sparks churned behind them. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase until she caught the edge and pulled herself in. He didn’t wait for thanks, didn’t check if she was steady. There was no time for gentleness. Only survival.

Metal screamed behind them, the shrill agony of tearing infrastructure echoing through the hangar like a death knell. Beams cracked, walls buckled, and a column of flame erupted near the base entrance, silhouetting Tor’Vek for a heartbeat in searing gold before he lunged forward.

He dove through the entry as the corridor collapsed in a roar of dust andfire.

The hatch sealed.

But they weren’t safe yet. Not until the ship lifted off, not until the inferno behind them was nothing more than a fading smear in the sky. Anything less was still within Selyr’s reach.

Tor’Vek didn’t wait to exhale. He spun toward the cockpit, fingers flying across the startup sequence. The ship groaned in protest, systems slow to initialize, lights flickering across the console like dying stars. Anya dropped into the copilot seat beside him, her breath ragged, arms wrapped tight around her midsection.

“Come on,” he muttered, going through a list of possible variables and likely issues. “Come on.”

For one harrowing second, nothing happened. Asick weight dropped into Tor’Vek’s gut. What if Selyr had disabled the launch protocols? What if the entire hangar—ship included—was part of the test’s final purge?

He slammed his fist into the console, not out of panic, but sheer refusal combined with rage. This ship would fly. It had to. Anya shifted beside him, her breath ragged, her fingers locking around the edge of her seat. She said nothing, but he felt her gaze flick to the console, then to him. She had no illusions about the danger—not after what they’d just survived. And though her body trembled from exertion, her faith in him was absolute. It didn’t need to be spoken. It lived between them, threaded through the bond like a silent vow: he would get themout.

Then the engines roared tolife.

A low vibration spread beneath their feet, stabilizers engaging as the ship lifted off the deck. Through the viewport, the hangar was a cathedral of fire—support beams collapsing, debris crashing, the blast wave gaining speed.

“Hold on,” Tor’Veksaid.

The ship launched into the sky just as the firestorm consumed the structure below, the blast catching the undercarriage and flinging them into the atmosphere like a stone from a slingshot.

The base exploded.

A bloom of light and fury filled the viewscreen, and for a moment, neither of them breathed.

Only then did Tor’Vek say, quietly, finally:

“Now, we are safe.”