The siren’s shriek vibrated through Nestra’s teeth, a hot spike of sound. Red warning beacons strobed, painting the chilled steel of the vault door in scarlet pulses. She was trapped. No time to panic. Never time to panic.
Nestra unclipped a slender mag-lamp from her utility loop. Its focused beam sliced through the strobing chaos, illuminating the rising slab of the vault door. She ducked beneath it the moment it cleared her head, scrambling into the cold, humming interior. The vault was a cathedral of gleaming chrome and frost-rimmed cryo-units, rows of shimmering tinctures and hermetically sealed bio-containers. The air was colder here, sharp and metallic.
“Suppressants,” she muttered, her voice swallowed by the siren. The target was specific: Praetor-grade synthetics, specifically the potent ‘Veridian’ strain. Her lamp beam danced across labelled shelves, past vials of nutrient paste and stacks of bio-scanners. There, in a reinforced, clear-polymer bin marked ‘Praetorian Allotment – Priority Alpha.’ A small box of ten pen-ampoules, each pre-filled with shimmering, emerald-green fluid. The only genuine cure, hoarded by the elite.
She shoved the box deep into her canvas pack. Her eyes darted, searching. More. Tollo would need more than ten doses for a full regimen, especially with the spore-rot already advancing so far. Her gaze fell on a larger, unmarked cryo-chamber at the rear. A surge of desperation made her act, overriding her usual meticulous caution. She wrestled open the heavy latch. Inside, nestled in frost, were three larger canvas bundles, each heavy with what felt like hundreds of the same Veridian ampoules. A private stock, likely for the Praetor himself.
Her hands shook, not from fear, but from the sudden, overwhelming rush of relief. This was it. Enough. More than enough. She crammed one of the larger bundles into her already bulging pack, the glass vials clinking together like frozen beads. The other two, she hid, stuffing them behind a stack of unused cryo-trays, a gamble for a later extraction. She would return for them, if she could.
A new sound ripped through the din of the siren—the guttural roar of the pneumatic security door at the far end of the medical wing, followed by the heavy, measured thump of boots on the polished floor. Vangrim. He was here, and fast.
Nestra slammed the cryo-chamber shut, the metallic clang echoing too loudly. She darted back towards the rising vault door, but it was already too late. The light outside flickered, the siren’s shriek momentarily cutting out, then restarting at a lower, more controlled pitch. The vault door, still open only waist-high, began its slow descent. She would be trapped inside. No, trapped *with* him.
Her eyes swept the vault, desperate. There! A ventilation shaft, a narrow grate tucked beside a series of diagnostic monitors. Barely wide enough for her shoulders. She hurled her pack through first, then wriggled, scraping her knees and elbows, the cold metal biting into her skin. She barely made it, pulling the grate closed just as the main vault door hissed shut, sealing her in a narrow, cramped recess between two cryo-units and the metal duct. The space reeked of ozone and caustic floor lye.
Through the thin gaps in the intake grill, she watched. Praetor Vangrim entered the vault, his imposing silhouette framed by the emergency red flashers. He moved with a predator's grace, his long, dark coat swirling around him. His face, usually a mask of cold indifference, was contorted with a barely contained fury. His eyes, like chips of obsidian, swept the laboratory floor. He stopped before the Praetorian Allotment compartment. It was empty.
His fist connected with the chrome shelf beside it, the sharp *CRACK* like a gunshot in the confined space. “The thief,” he growled, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the very floor beneath Nestra’s knees. “They’re here.”
He began a slow, deliberate circuit of the vault, his gaze missing nothing. Nestra pressed herself further back, willing herself invisible, the hard plastic of the syringes digging into her back. Her heart, however, remained a steady, calm rhythm, a betrayal of the panic churning inside. Her bio-engineering had perfected not just immunity, but control. This was a dangerous game.
Vangrim stopped abruptly at the unlabelled cryo-chamber, the one where she’d hidden the bulk of the Veridian. His palm grazed the latch. She went rigid. He paused, then let his arm fall. He seemed to dismiss it, moving past, towards a low medical cot in the corner of the vault. He stripped off his leather gloves, tossing them onto a nearby counter with a soft *thud*. Then, with a fluid motion, he began to unbutton his shirt.
Nestra watched, frozen. The crimson light played across the taut muscles of his back as he shrugged off the dark fabric. And there, stark against his skin, were the tell-tale black veins, thick and ropy, snaking from his shoulder down his arm—the horrifying sign of advanced spore-rot. It was worse than she'd imagined. He was truly dying. She stared in silence. Then, her gaze fell to his shoulder. Faint, but undeniable, were three thin, parallel scars, pale lines against the dark veins. The marks from her own nails, from that night in the forgotten alcove, when she’d desperately fought him off as he tried to claim a sample of her blood.
He drew a single, unlabelled needle from a small, personal kit. His hand trembled slightly as he pressed the tip against a particularly swollen vein in his neck. The plunger hissed down. He closed his eyes, a flicker of pain, then a slow, ragged exhale. The crimson light made his face a mask of suffering, a raw vulnerability she’d never witnessed. Then, the moment passed. His eyes snapped open, hard as ever.
He donned his shirt again, leaving it unbuttoned. Instead, he went back to the Praetorian Allotment bin. He reached inside, then snapped his arm back, eyebrows knit. He retrieved a single silver disc from the rear corner. A proximity sensor, disguised to look like part of the lining. His thumb brushed its surface, then he crushed it between thumb and forefinger. A tiny *CRACK*.
“Clever,” he snarled, his voice low and dangerous. He looked directly at the intake grill, his stare piercing. “But not clever enough.”
Nestra froze, pressing herself against the cold metal, her heart a calm, terrifying drum. He knew. He had to know.
The grill before her ripped free. Vangrim’s arm drove in, an iron clamp around her wrist, hauling her out of the recess with brutal leverage. She tumbled across the tiles, her pack spilling its contents across the pristine chrome. His gaze fell upon them, then back to her face, a slow, predatory smirk twisting his lips.
“Well, well,” he rumbled, his voice a silken whip. “And here I thought my secretary was merely clumsy, Nestra. Not a pilferer.” He yanked her to her feet, his grip on her arm bruising. “What do you have to say for yourself, little moth?”
She blinked up at him, bottom lip quivering, wetness welling on command. “P-Praetor Vangrim! I… I don’t know! I just… I saw the doors open, and I heard the sirens, and I thought… I thought someone was stealing! I was trying to… to stop them!” Her voice was high-pitched, laced with a convincing whine.
His dark gaze bored into her. He released her arm, only to grab her throat, his thumb pressing against her jugular, feeling for the frantic beat he expected. “Your heart rate, secretary,” he murmured, leaning in close, his scent—a mix of antiseptic chemicals and musk—filling her senses. “It’s remarkably steady for someone so ‘terrified’ and ‘heroic’.”
He pulled back, his eyes glittering with cold suspicion. “Or perhaps you were simply trying to steal this yourself.” He gestured to the scattered glass ampoules with a sweep of his hand. “Tell me, Nestra, are you immune to the rot? Is that why you’re so bold?”
He released her throat, his hand dropping to her arm, twisting her sleeve upwards. “No, don’t bother answering. We’ll find out. Roll up your sleeves, secretary. It’s time for a random blood-rot test. Right here, right now. Or we can take this conversation to the interrogation cells.”