by Lea Linnett
Still, they all held their breaths as Cara crossed on foot to the roller door, activating the hidden panel and punching in the door code, all as Niro had described in his notes. The door groaned to life, as slow and grating as every other time Kamanek had witnessed it opening, and he gripped his gun as he waited, keeping a watchful eye on the door and the gap in the fence behind them. It was only when the roller door grated to a halt, revealing that the loading bay behind it was empty of security, that he finally relaxed.
Taz and Cara made a beeline for the cages, which were stacked three rows high against the side wall, as Deeno slowly eased the truck into the loading bay. It was louder than Kamanek liked, the rattle of the hover engines echoing off the walls. They would have to move quick.
He looked around, checking for any surprises. There was no way of knowing if Niro had been truthful about disabling the camera in the corner, so he ignored it. The loading bay was deep, with lots of places for someone to hide. The front was filled with pallets of stock, used to hide the cages from anyone looking in, and opposite the humans’ cages towards the back were the dark, hulking shapes of more transports, and a wall of tools for maintaining them.
A cursory sweep turned up nothing, so Kamanek returned to the cages, where Cara and Taz were checking on the humans. He tried to move cautiously, making himself appear unthreatening, but it didn’t help. One of the humans caught sight of him, pointing over Cara’s head at him and yelping, “Who is he?”
“He’s with us, don’t worry,” she said calmly.
“But he’s a levekk!” said another, her panicked voice echoing off the walls. “He’s dressed like those mercenaries that passed by earlier!”
“Please, try to stay quiet,” Cara said, raising her voice just enough to be heard over the growing clamor. “We can’t alert security.”
“How have you not already?” hissed one of the males, leaning through the bars of a cage that perched at the top of a stack, far too precariously for Kamanek’s liking.
“We had help from the inside,” Cara said as she inspected one of the bulky locks.
The male’s gaze sharpened. “Niro?”
She looked up, her eyebrows furrowing. “How did you know?”
“He’s been kind to us. Relatively. He doesn’t talk to us like we’re animals.”
“He’s still a levekk,” said one of the females, the one who’d pointed at Kamanek. She eyed him suspiciously.
Cara said nothing to that, turning instead to address the humans as a whole. “Are you all here? Is anyone missing?”
“Lilly was taken earlier for Siikas, but they returned her a little while ago,” said the talkative male on the top row, gesturing through the bars at the woman beside him. “We’re all accounted for.”
The woman in question had a fresh bruise blooming across her eye, and Kamanek saw Cara’s fist clench.
“All these locks are digital,” Taz said, standing up from where she’d crouched before one of the cages. “Do you have the codes for them, Cara?”
“Thanks to Niro, yes.”
As the two humans busied themselves with the first of the locks, Kamanek hung back. He could see the terrified looks some of the prisoners were still sending him, and he didn’t want to scare them any further.
Light footsteps sounded behind him as Deeno appeared at his side. He was staring up at the cages with wide eyes. “This is… barbaric.”
Kamanek surveyed the cages, spying the buckets tucked into the back of each, the scraps of food that littered the grubby floors. There was a smell about them, but it wasn’t as bad as Kamanek had feared. Niro must have been letting the humans out to wash periodically.
That didn’t make up for the rest of what Kamanek saw, however, and he clenched his jaw. Many of the humans were thin, their clothes dirty and their eyes hollow. The cages weren’t even tall enough for them to stand in, forcing them to hunch over or sit on the cold metal bases. Some were bold, talking to Cara and Taz as they worked on the locks, but many hung back fearfully, their eyes glinting in the shadows the only hint of their presence.
Kamanek was doing his best to avoid scaring them further, but it was difficult when his anger made his cold blood boil, turning his expression stormy. How could someone keep sub-species—or anyone—in such conditions? How could Niro stand it, if he wanted them saved so badly? If Kamanek were in his place, could he be as patient? Maybe, once upon a time, he could have been, but Taz had changed him.
“I wish we could do more than just take them away from here,” he admitted in a low voice, mostly to himself, and Deeno frowned at him.
“You do?”
He rolled his eyes at the cicarian. “I’m an asshole, not a monster.”
“You guys! Come and help these people to the truck.”
They stepped forward at Cara’s hissed order, but still Kamanek hesitated. The first human Taz and Cara freed from the cages went willingly into Deeno’s arms, but the second took one look at Kamanek and fell to her knees, her eyes wide.
“No, please, don’t give me to him.”
“It’s okay,” Taz soothed, putting her hands around the woman’s shoulders. “He won’t hurt you, I promise.”
The girl stared up at Kamanek as she asked, “How do you know?”
Taz patted the gun strapped to her hip, and when she finally turned her eyes on him they were flinty with hurt and anger. “If he tries anything, I’ll take him down myself.”
Kamanek wasn’t prepared for how those words wrenched at his heart, and he dropped his gaze to the floor. Still, he held out a hand for the cowering human as Taz helped her unsteadily to her feet.
“I-I don’t think I can walk,” she said, her voice quivering.
Kamanek stepped cautiously into her space, spreading his arms. “May I carry you? Taz can escort us, if you like,” he added, glancing at Taz as she continued to glare daggers at him. He met her gaze without flinching, wishing he could apologize with his eyes alone, and to his surprise it was Taz who looked away.
The human looked between them, oblivious to the tension, and hesitantly nodded. “O-okay.”
He swept her up into his arms as gently as possible, making sure to move slower when she let out a squeak of fear. The human was light—too light. Nothing like Taz’s solid and comfortable weight. Taz prowled at his side as he walked the human to the truck, feeling far more like a mother sehela guarding her kit than the bodyguard who’d shadowed him in the city. When he tried to catch her eye, she avoided him, her eyebrows furrowing.
Deeno was inside the truck when they arrived, and Kamanek set the human down in his arms. He lingered long enough to watch her huddle in next to her cellmate, the two of them tucking themselves between a couple of crates of the dry goods this truck was supposed to be transporting. Taz swept back towards the cages, and Kamanek followed at a slower pace.
They moved through the cages in a methodical manner, cleaning out the lower cages before moving onto the higher ones. The top row ended up causing the most trouble, as Kamanek was the only one tall enough to reach them easily. More than one human cringed when his scales touched them, tumbling out of his arms as soon as they no longer needed him to support their weight. The bruised one, Lilly, even refused to leave her cage, and it took a lot of coaxing from both Taz and Cara to get her to finally flop down into his arms, her eyes screwed shut like she was fighting off a nightmare.
The whole experience made Kamanek’s skin crawl. He was used to physical touch being a gift, a way to please others. But these reactions reminded him of the fear he’d seen in the eyes of Siikas’ debtors. It made him feel sick with regret.
He stepped back as Cara and Deeno helped the final human into the truck. The loading bay was still blissfully empty of guards, and there were still no alarms. Their escape attempt had been slow, laborious even, and Kamanek was almost suspicious of how well it had gone. But he refused to worry about it. Maybe Niro was more trustworthy than he’d given him credit for. And as he’d learned from years as a
mercenary and years more as a trouble-making soldier, sometimes it was best to just accept good fortune when it came your way.
“Make sure you can all stay out of sight if needed,” Cara was telling their new passengers. “We shouldn’t have any problems, but if we’re stopped, I want them to think we’re just transporting goods.”
She moved to shut the door, but paused halfway, frowning at Kamanek and Deeno.
“Wait, where’s Taz?”
A shiver of unease ran up Kamanek’s spine, and he stepped away from the truck, pulling his gun from its holster. “Taz?”
But she wasn’t by the cages, or in the truck’s cabin when he circled around to look. He cast his gaze around, panic climbing through him as he raised his gun to eye-level.
“Where is she?” asked Deeno, approaching from behind.
Kamanek thought he might know the answer, and his heart sank as he met Cara’s gaze. Her face had fallen, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Kamanek nodded. “She must have gone after Siikas.”
“She wouldn’t!” Deeno cried. “Surely she realizes how dangerous that is?”
“I’m going after her.” Kamanek’s tone brooked no argument, his eyes daring Cara to challenge him as he stared her down.
But the human only nodded. “And I’m coming with you.” She turned to Deeno. “Can you take the humans to the safehouse?”
His eyes bugged. “And leave you here? What if—”
“If you don’t hear from us by the time you get there, call Mila. In fact, call her either way. She ought to know what’s going on.”
The cicarian looked like he wanted to argue, but shut his mouth. “Be careful,” he said, before backing up to slam the truck’s back doors shut.
As he climbed into the cabin, Cara turned to Kamanek. “Any ideas on how to find her?”
“You’re asking me?”
“You found her last time,” she murmured, looking like she wanted nothing less than to ask him for help.
The tracker. Kamanek’s brow plate arched in surprise that he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Wordlessly, he slipped his pack from his shoulders, rummaging around inside until he found the device and unearthed it. He turned it on, and it immediately began searching for the last beacon—Taz’s beacon—but this time it came up with nothing. She’d turned it off.
“What is that?” Cara asked.
“A tracking module. It’ll identify and locate tracking beacons that I place on people. It’s how I found Niro.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You put a tracker on my sister?”
“No, I gave her a tracker. She turned it on herself earlier today so I could find her.”
“Can you use it now? At this close range?”
His lips thinned. It was certainly possible to activate it remotely, but he’d promised Taz he’d never do so. “Without a map of the place, I can’t pinpoint her location, but it should give us a general idea of which direction she went in.”
“What if I uploaded a map of the warehouse into it?” Cara asked, reaching into her own pack and pulling out the datapad Niro had given her.
Kamanek fished a hidden data cable out of the side of the device. “Can do.”
But as they transferred the data across the connection, he bit his lip. Was it right to go against Taz’s wishes? Would she forgive him?
He shook his head. Taz could hate him until CL-32’s sun went supernova. He’d bear it, if it meant he had a chance of keeping her safe.
The transfer done, he input a few commands, and soon a weak signal pinged from the machine. “That’s her,” he said. “The signal’s partially blocked by all the walls in here, but we can find her.”
“Good, let’s go.”
And as they headed for the closest door, Deeno’s truck rumbling out of the loading bay behind them, Kamanek hoped that Taz hadn’t gotten too far ahead of them. He hoped she wasn’t angry enough to try to walk up to Siikas himself with her knives in hand.
He hoped he wouldn’t be too late.
29
Taz tried to empty her mind as she ventured deeper into the warehouse, her gun gripped tightly in her hands. She would have preferred to use something quieter, but the security trawling the compound were levekk. She was cocky, but not cocky enough to think she could take them down quickly enough, especially if there were more than one. The gun would work better, even if it did telegraph her location.
She’d done a good enough job at hiding herself so far. She hadn’t seen many guards yet, and the two she did see made enough noise as they passed down the corridor that she’d heard them coming from around the next bend, giving her plenty of warning. She’d feel safer with Cara or Kamanek at her back, but…
Neither of them wanted to be there.
She couldn’t understand it. Cara had supported her since they were children, always encouraging her to fight back, to hope for more, to help others out of the sticky quicksand that was CL-32’s society. And even though Taz had been left with external scars at the hands of Siikas, she knew that they were nothing compared to what he’d almost done to Cara. The fear and anger she felt towards him could never measure up to what Cara must have felt, but even that hadn’t been enough to convince her.
And Kamanek…
His refusal hurt even more. She hated that it did, that he’d made her vulnerable enough to hope, but the truth was that she’d begun to think they weren’t so different. They’d both suffered at Siikas’ hands—at the levekk’s hands—and he’d backed her up before. But where she saw a chance for revenge, he saw only a threat to his credits.
Taz tucked herself behind a stray crate when she heard another patrol coming, barely daring to breathe as they passed down the adjacent corridor. The walls of the compound were all made of cheap levekk metal, and it caused the sounds of the guards’ voices to reverberate around her as they marched away. For a moment, it felt as if she’d been surrounded on all sides, but she refused to cower.
There was little structure to the warehouse’s corridors. In places, they formed a loose, grid-like pattern, but in others, they were a jumble, as many as six corridors meeting at once in a way that seemed designed to confuse her. There were no windows to see the stars and surrounding buildings by, but that didn’t matter. Taz had paid attention to every turn she made, keeping the loading bay as a constant marker behind her. She wasn’t lost yet.
Siikas had to be close to the center. She knew from Niro’s map that the operations center, with Siikas’ last remaining servers, was nestled there, and the patrols were growing thicker already. She had to be going in the right direction.
Siikas was within her reach, and when she found him…
Taz loved fighting. It had been a much-needed outlet for her explosive energy after she and Cara stopped working at the hub, and her training with Rekel had honed a lot of her raw power and aggression into something useful. For once, the hot-headed nature she’d only been able to turn onto disorderly patrons or assholes like Siikas was something she could use to help her people.
But she wasn’t a killer. Or a soldier. She’d never shot to kill, despite her bravado. If this were anyone but Siikas, maybe she would have been okay with Cara and Kamanek’s plan. Maybe saving the humans would have been enough.
It wasn’t, though. Not for him. She knew it was probably foolish to come charging in here by herself, but she couldn’t let the doubt consume her. She was doing this for those humans he’d trapped in cages. She was doing this for all the humans he’d ever preyed upon, as well as the ones he would have hurt in the future. She was doing this for Cara, and for herself.
But she was also doing this for Kamanek, she realized. No matter how little he really cared for her, she knew now that she didn’t have the luxury of not caring for him. He’d wormed past her defenses, and the thought of him leaving hurt her more than she liked to admit. She wasn’t conceited enough to think that removing Siikas from the equation would be enough to co
nvince him to stay—not if he truly didn’t care for her. But she’d do it anyway.
She’d seen the pain in his eyes when he spoke of his time working for Siikas. It was as real as Niro’s, and Cara’s, and her own. So she’d do what he was too scared of losing credits to accomplish. She’d get the revenge that they all deserved.
Gripping the gun a little tighter, she raced down the corridors on quiet feet.
With the levekk guards’ heavy footfalls giving them away and the abundance of dark corners for her to hide in when they passed by, it was easy enough to stay unnoticed as she moved deeper. No one was expecting someone as small as a human to be exploring the halls, and she used that to her advantage.
She was almost there.
Anticipation fueled her, but she came to an abrupt halt when new voices reached her, far closer than she’d expected them to be.
She stilled, willing her beating heart to calm so she could work out what direction they were coming from. Then, a cold lance of shock pierced her composure as a clawed hand landed on her shoulder.
All the breath left her lungs, her muscles tensing, but the hand yanked her backward before she could react, it’s twin coming up to cover her mouth. She tried biting into it, but the finger was solid and keratinous, like bone.
The levekk dragged her back into the adjacent corridor as she tried to fight his grip, away from the guards who were noisily approaching. She lifted her gun and was stopped by a firm hand on her wrist, pointing it at the floor.
“If you pull that trigger,” a deep voice rumbled, “we’ll both be found.”
She gulped, her finger easing off the trigger.
“Now tell me, what the fuck are you doing here?”
30
Taz went still as the voice rumbled in her ear, and she suddenly realized that it sounded familiar.