Nadi sat on her cot in a daze, alone in her quarters on the flagship. She was off duty and was glad for it. Commander Cyrix had been thorough in his explanation and him forcing everyone to watch the footage of Adrian being subjected to the purple chemical had left his soldiers feeling ill.

  It was a lot to take in all at once. The facility. The gru’ul. Adrian. So many parts of her life had just been upheaved. She was sickened that she’d prayed to such monstrosities her entire life. That her religion had been proven to be such a blatant lie was perhaps the hardest pill to swallow.

  She understood the need for so much secrecy but was puzzled by the clandestine missions from Elder Kaius. The Commander would’ve been in an easier position to deliver the orange chemical to the Elder without anyone knowing.

  Her data slate was on the bed next to her, but Nadi remained paralyzed where she was while her thoughts ran amok. The knot of fear in her stomach only grew the more she thought about her situation. She vividly remembered how uncomfortable she’d been stealing the samples. That she’d personally handled both of the chemicals made her shudder.

  She knew that no amount of explanation would ever help her if she got caught for everything she’d done. Stealing information and providing a sample of the purple chemical to a foreign faction was already enough for her to be tried for treason. There would be no result other than a guilty verdict. If she even got a trial, that was.

  Regret coursed through her. She’d helped spread the knowledge of something so vile, even if she hadn’t known it at the time. That the Rukkan were in possession of even the smallest drop of the purple chemical set her on edge. She wanted to disappear where no one would find her.

  But she was in too deep.

  The best she could do would be for somebody else to take the blame for the leaks. Plans formed in her mind as she went over every detail she could use to her advantage. If Irric was still doing classified work, then the Tribunal obviously trusted him.

  What she needed was a scapegoat. One entangled just enough with what she’d done so that their involvement could be plausible and hers could be denied. She would need to make a liar out of that person so that they wouldn’t be believed by High Command. Her thoughts spun until she came to the conclusion that there was only one person that fit her criteria.

  Fahl.

  Irric and Ava were once again in the secret room with the Highest’s terminal, searching for more information. Their progress had stalled in recent months, but they’d still learned valuable information regarding what had happened to Adrian.

  Their work was interrupted by Tassie, who was uncharacteristically late to their research session. She wore a grim look as she informed both of them about recent developments regarding Reya. It took a while for her to go through and explain all of the test results Kell had obtained.

  “We’ve already made the Tribunal aware of what’s happened,” Tassie said as she finished delivering the news. “Since our research has stalled a bit, they’re requesting that both of you help me and Kell try to find a way to keep Reya alive throughout whatever’s happening to her.”

  “If something like this is happening to Reya, what about Stanley?” Ava asked. “He was also experimented on. Maybe studying him could give us some clues.”

  Tassie’s brows shot up in surprise. “You mean you weren’t told about him?” she asked. She figured the Tribunal would’ve informed Ava and Irric that Stanley had passed. Upon further thought, she realized that they didn’t need to know that information to continue their research at the facility.

  “Did something happen?” Irric asked. He knew that studying Stanley could give valuable insight into how the experiments on Earth influenced the end result the gru’ul were aiming for with Adrian. He and Ava had gotten some sparse research notes from Tassie, so he’d assumed that her team was taking care of studying the man.

  Tassie’s face scrunched. “He died,” she said. “Whatever was done to him on Earth was lethal to him. We still don’t know why Adrian’s body didn’t reject the experiments the same way Stanley’s did.”

  “When did this happen?” Irric asked, unable to believe that the man they’d rescued was dead.

  “Months ago,” Tassie said. “Adrian held a small ceremony for him using customs from Earth.” The graves still looked as good as new, and she occasionally saw Adrian tending to them and keeping them free from debris.

  “Why weren’t we informed?” Irric demanded. “If I’d known he was going to die we could’ve run more tests.”

  “We didn’t know he was going to die until he collapsed,” Tassie explained. “By which point it was too late to do anything. He went peacefully, if that helps.”

  Irric deflated. “At least there’s that.”

  Ava followed along in silence. Stanley’s death weighed on her. She already had so much blood on her hands after the experiments on Earth. Even though the man was simply one among many, it still bothered her that the a’vaare hadn’t been able to do anything. The transfusion experiment that ultimately killed Stanley had been a long shot, so she wasn’t exactly surprised by his death.

  Tassie noticed Ava’s lack of input and focused her attention on her. “Did you know he was going to die? You ran the experiments that killed him, after all.”

  “Not for certain.” Ava shook her head. “My researchers took a chance at the time, and it killed everybody else outright except for Stanley. We thought that meant his body had accepted the modifications.”

  “Clearly not,” Irric muttered. “Why did you keep that from us?” he asked. “We could’ve handled the situation differently had we known he was most likely going to die.”

  “It’s not like I was there to see him get sick,” Ava said defensively. “I assumed no news was good news and that he was doing just fine.”

  “Ava, do you have any idea what makes Adrian so special?” Tassie asked. “You were looking for something in your test subjects on Earth. What was it?”

  Ava debated whether or not she should divulge the final piece of information she had kept secret. In the back of her mind, she ran scenarios on how each option would benefit her the most. In what seemed like no time at all to Tassie and Irric, she had run dozens of simulations as to how to best proceed. “They were looking for a series of genetic markers,” she finally said. “I can help identify what they are, but not why they mattered so much to the gru’ul.”

  Tassie frowned. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” she asked.

  “What would you have done with the information?” Ava said. “There was no point in divulging that fact.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why Adrian was the only success you ever had,” Tassie said.

  “He had all the qualities the gru’ul were looking for in a test subject,” Ava replied.

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  “How could they have known that? Wasn’t his kidnapping random?” Tassie asked.

  Ava hesitated. “No,” she admitted. “None of our test subjects were truly random. Every disappearance was done in such a way that the local governments wouldn’t link so many people missing back to us.”

  “Adrian’s kidnapping was premeditated?” Irric asked incredulously. “Why go through all that effort?”

  “Why do it randomly when we can access databases that already have the information we’re looking for?” Ava scoffed. “Rather than find a needle in a haystack, we went with what best suited the gru’ul’s nebulous criteria. The list was big and variance in certain elements was encouraged in order to find the best fit.”

  “And Adrian?” Tassie pushed.

  “Adrian was the only test subject we ever had that fit all of the criteria,” Ava revealed. “We needed a way to make sure he wouldn’t be missed when he was gone. I was already fortunate enough that he had no contact with either side of his family. His parents passing away when he was young wasn’t random. Neither were the deaths of his sister and her family once enough time had passed. We needed a way to make sure nobody would ever look closely into his disappearance.”

  Tassie and Irric were speechless. “You killed his entire family?” Tassie asked, utterly dumbfounded. “By the gods, you’re a monster!”

  Ava’s eyes turned downtrodden. “Gru’ul influence was insidious on Earth,” she said. “I have no doubt it was just as bad for a’vaare, but your species advanced enough that they couldn’t get away with as much anymore. So they focused their efforts on humans instead. Adrian was the unlucky winner.”

  “That doesn’t change what you did!” Tassie exploded. “You robbed him of his family. You stole his future. You’re the reason he was subjected to such awful things at the hands of the gru’ul”

  “I was a slave to my programming!” Ava said, raising her voice. “I had no free will. I was nothing but the instrument the gru’ul used for their plans. Nothing more than a failed product they decided to make use of. I had no choice.”

  “Enough!” Irric interjected. “What you did was reprehensible,” he said to Ava, “but if you truly had no free will then it wasn’t your fault.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is there anything else we should know?” he asked Tassie. She shook her head. “Then we get back to work. We have a person to save.”

  She was lucky that her position afforded her certain liberties, Nadi mused as she ghosted through the flag ship. Finding out Fahl’s schedule had been trivial and temporarily disabling recording equipment was a simple matter of her flexing her rank to the poor soldiers on duty in the control room.

  She followed a convoluted path that eventually brought her into the section of the flagship where Fahl’s room was located. After ensuring that there were no guards posted outside of his room, she scanned a master key on the panel just next to the door. It was one of the few on the flagship, only given to her due to her station. While she was technically supposed to report whenever she needed to use it to access another’s room, she blatantly flouted those rules. So long as she didn’t abuse it, security wouldn’t look too hard into who’s room she accessed.

  Opening the door and locking it behind her, Nadi searched around the room until she found what she was looking for. On the very small desk was Fahl’s data slate, placed face down. She picked it up and inserted a special chip into it that would allow her to communicate with her handlers without leaving any traces of her activity. Only that time, she altered the settings to leave the barest of hints that the data slate had been used for illicit gains.

  Carefully, she input the coordinates of the research facility and sent them off into the void, uncaring for who would receive them. All she needed to know was that they’d get to the right people at the wrong time.

  Once she was done, she drafted a second message to one of her contacts back on Verilia. She’d made some headway into her research on the missing High Diplomat. The military was full of secrets, and she ranked just high enough to be able to dig up the ones her handlers wanted to know.

  It came of no surprise to her that the man had been secretly declared an enemy of the faction. Making use of the many connections that she’d made when rising through the ranks, Nadi was able to make sure an off-record message would be sent to Annkor. She didn’t know how, but help was coming. The Rukkan took the treatment of their High Diplomats very seriously, and what had happened to Annkor would be enough to thoroughly anger the Rukkan governing body.

  Nadi was betting on the small chance that the captured High Diplomat could be used as a segue into why the Sunalii had declared war on the gru’ul. If all went well, the Tribunal might even have an additional ally during the war to treat as cannon fodder. She hoped that any connection back to her on the Rukkan side of things would find themselves an unfortunate casualty amongst the many mass deaths she knew were bound to occur over the course of the war.

  For the life of him, Fahl couldn’t understand why he was still being so closely monitored after so much time had passed since the incident with Irric that had gotten Alarr killed. He’d kept his head down and made sure nothing he did following his mission from Kaius got found out. Yet still, he was followed around by guards that scrutinized his every move. It unnerved him immensely.

  After finishing his meal, he and his guard went back to his room. He was hoping to have a few hours of rest before starting his next shift. He snorted at the thought. People who had no business questioning doctors would once again interrogate him during his job when they weren’t educated in his field. He could tell them gibberish and they wouldn’t be able to refute him. He honestly had no idea why they even bothered.

  It wasn’t long until he found himself in front of his room. The door slid open to let him in and he entered, no longer bothering to say a farewell to his guard. He knew by now that there would be a shift change soon and another nameless face would be fresh and ready to watch his every move.

  The door slid shut and Fahl collapsed on his cot. The constant surveillance was exhausting. But still, his work wasn’t done for the day. He had perhaps another hour’s worth of work to do before he could pass out into a blissful oblivion, free from worry. If only for a little while.

  With tired bones, he hauled himself off his bed and went towards his desk, only to freeze at the sight, His data slate was face up. He always left it face down, a habit of his that used to drive Alarr crazy. He knew for certain that somebody had come into his room in his absence and that whoever it was had touched his data slate.

  It didn’t make sense for it have been a spot check. He’d had one before leaving for his meal. There was no reason for there to be a second one so soon. Fahl still didn’t know what exactly they were searching for every time the inspected his belongings, just that they never found it. He could only assume that it had to do with the vials he’d smuggled off the ship.

  Fahl specifically remembered his annoyance at the affair and putting his data slate back the way he’d left it once they were gone. That it was magically face up made no sense. Hesitantly, he picked it up and inspected it. Nothing was out of the ordinary. He frowned and turned it on out of sleep mode.

  Fahl had some technological literacy when it came to manipulating the device, and so he checked the activity logs, but couldn’t find anything of note. The last thing listed was indeed the final program he’d accessed before leaving for his meal.

  Paranoia flooded him.

  He scoured his data slate, and nestled deep within its code, he noticed that several messages had been sent in his absence. A cold fear washed over him. Somebody had used his device to send clandestine messages. He didn’t know to who or for what, save that it was a breadcrumb trail that led back to him. He was being set up, but he didn’t know why.

  The sound of his door sliding open startled him out of his thoughts. He spun around and found himself face with a host of guards, behind which stood the same interrogators from Alarr’s murder.

  In that moment, Fahl knew he was well and truly fucked.

  Annkor sat in his cell, wasting away. Idly, he wondered where it all went wrong. The thought had burned in his mind ever since he’d been apprehended. He knew the Sunalii were heathens without proper belief in their gods, so his treatment as a prisoner fell in line with his expectations. That still didn’t make it a pleasant stay wherever he was, as he had little comfort. At least he was well fed, he mused. He’d lost weight but was far from skin and bones.

  His stomach growled its need for food loudly, but Annkor bore with the hunger gnawing him. Hard as it was to tell time in his cell, he knew a meal would be coming soon. It would probably be another one of the disgustingly bland bars they seemed hellbent on feeding him, but he knew it would stave off his hunger.

  He snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of a slot in the door opening. As fast as he could with his aching bones, he rose up off his cot and went to collect the food lest it stay on the floor longer than necessary. Dust was not a pleasant spice, even if it added some modicum of flavour to the bars he was fed.

  As he approached, he noticed that his food hadn’t been deposited yet and that the slot remained open. Curious, he bent down to take a look. He greeted to the sight of gloved hands holding his meal out of reach.

  He was about to call out in annoyance when his guard spoke for the first time since his capture. “Soon,” they said before shoving the bar through the slot and slamming it shut. Annkor blinked and then smiled. It looked like he would be rid of his horrendous amenities soon enough. All he needed was a little patience.

  The gods had heard his prayers and rewarded his faith. Help would come, and Annkor knew it would rain fire down upon his foes.