Lyra was pregnant. She was pregnant and alone and he’d… he’d just let her go.
“Here.” Therin handed him a silver chip the size of a fingernail. “It’s a computronic key. Insert it into your comm. Once activated, you’ll be contacted with the location and time of the next auction. Then hold onto the key—you’ll need it to be admitted to the auction.”
Asier stared vacantly at the chip. “Thank you,” he managed to say. “I have to go.”
He left the chip with his second-in-command, with instructions to send an unmated agent to the next auction.
Asier went to immediately to Enforcement’s transport bay. He logged his ship out for an extended operation. He was going into human territory.
He didn’t know how he was going to find her, but he would do it. He’d do whatever it took to be with her. If he had to live out the rest of his life as a fugitive hidden in human territory, dodging Enforcement’s attempts to haul both him and Lyra back to Scaeven territory, then so be it.
Only two things that mattered: the woman he loved, and the child she was carrying.
As soon as the ship completed all startup diagnostics, a distant ping came over the comm. Asier looked down at the panel, a frown etching his brow as he read the input. The ping had come from a Scaeven fleet shuttle—from impossibly deep within human territory. He heart pounded against his chest.
Lyra.
He accepted the data—a fixed set of coordinates—and set his heading.
Virgo System, Andromeda Galaxy
Copernicus Station
IG Standard Calendar 236.46.13
The pregnancy was progressing far too rapidly. Lyra was only five months along, but her water had broken an hour ago.
Wearing only an oversized t-shirt, she crouched in her bathtub, sweating and keening like an injured animal. One hand clutched Sofie’s. In her other hand, she gripped the RSP core she’d ripped from Asier’s shuttle. It was the only memento she had of him—except for the child who seemed to be tearing her body apart.
“Lyra,” Sofie said fretfully, submitting to her sister’s crushing grip through the all-consuming pain of another contraction. “We should go to the hospital. Even human births can be dangerous. You don’t know what you might be dealing with.”
Lyra panted as the contraction receded. “No. They’ll turn my son into a guinea pig.”
“You’re only at twenty-two weeks. This is too soon for labor. The baby might need help.”
“I know! But I can’t go to the—” Lyra bit the last word off in a hiss of pain as the next contraction gripped her.
With her free hand, Sofie smoothed Lyra’s hair back from her clammy face. When, after a long, tense moment, the contraction eased, Sofie gently touched Lyra’s cheek, looking into her sister’s eyes.
“Lyra. I know you’re scared. But there’s too much that could go wrong. The baby could be too big for you to deliver naturally. Or turned the wrong way. Or suffering from some kind of treatable condition. I know you’re worried about what will happen when they find out he’s not human, but that’s not the most important issue right now. You’ve been relying on home scans to monitor the baby’s growth, but they don’t tell you as much as a hospital scan. We need—”
Lyra screamed and doubled over as a splintering, hot pain knifed through her belly.
Sofie’s hand clenched around Lyra’s. “You’re bleeding!” She cried.
Lyra looked down. Blood streaked her thighs, pooled on the ceramic beneath her.
“I’m sorry, Lyra. I’m calling for help.”
“Sofie,” Lyra said faintly, her vision swimming. “No—”
“Be sensible,” Sofie snapped as she got up to fetch a comm.
“I’m trying to,” Lyra whispered, slumping against cool porcelain.
Chapter Nineteen
Virgo System, Andromeda Galaxy
Copernicus Station
IG Standard Calendar 236.46.17
Asier’s ship completed the jump from the Centauri gate, emerging into the edge of the Virgo cluster. It took only nine zeitraums to travel from the Virgo gate to Copernicus Station, but it felt like eons.
He slipped within the traffic surrounding Copernicus station without attracting so much as a single glance. The cloaking tech used by Scaeven Enforcement was beyond even what ordinary Scaevens had access to. The most advanced Ravanoth vessels might have been able to detect the faintest hint of his presence—if they’d known precisely when, where, and what to look for. But to human eyes and human tech, he was effectively invisible.
Leaving his ship orbiting at a safe distance, boarded a shuttle—also cloaked—and launched towards the port nearest his given coordinates. He docked the shuttle in a damaged berth, far away from the hustle and bustle of the loading docks.
Every fiber of his being wanted nothing more than to sprint from his ship, find Lyra, and haul her back—human exposure be damned. But if there was any hope of a future for the two of them, he’d have to do things carefully.
So he waited. Several more zeitraums passed. Asier’s pulse was a drumbeat inside his skull. He was a statue, frozen in the pilot’s seat, staring out the windows of his vessel.
Finally, the Station’s solar simulation dimmed to the nocturnal phase of their light cycle. There was still activity on the dock, but it was subdued. A single merchant vessel, being unloaded by bots.
Asier left the shuttle on standby, cloaked and ready to make a fast exit if necessary. Despite the warmth of the station, he zipped himself into his tactical jacket, and pulled the hood over his head. He emerged onto dock, checked his comm, and began walking.
The area around the docks was not constructed for pedestrian traffic. Which was better for Asier. Keeping to the shadows beneath the transport lanes, the mirroring fibers of his jacket and trousers allowed him to slip through the darkness like a ghost.
The coordinates took him through a residential area. Rows of narrow homes, stacked against each other, lined quiet auto lanes. Pedestrian pathways fronted the homes, shadowed by the cover of short, green-leafed trees. Asier kept to those shadows, moving deeper into the residential quarter until he reached a broad, windowless building detached from the others.
Lyra was inside.
His comm alerted him to a security grid. Like most human tech seemed to, it functioned on electro-magnetic frequencies. Asier’s tactical gear mirrored the frequencies as he crossed them. To the security system, it were as if he wasn’t there.
He found a door—locked. His comm navigated the security programming with no trouble, releasing the door and blocking the building’s system from reporting the entry. Asier eased the door open by the barest sliver, and peered inside. The doorway opened to an empty, dark hallway. He waited for a second, listening, and then stepped inside.
Something wasn’t right. This building was not a normal residence. The layers of security, the windowless exterior walls, the sterility of the interior—everything about it pointed to a prison. A frisson of rage licked up his spine. Something bad had happened. Lyra was in danger, and he hadn’t been there to help.
Clamping down on the emotion before it spiraled out of control, Asier eased the door silently shut. He checked his comm. Lyra was close. So close. And his child… had she given birth yet? If she hadn’t, she soon would.
He moved down the hall, taking silent steps over the ceramic-tiled floor. His comm detected surveillance, but he was unconcerned. His gear would render him invisible to cameras, and he could move silently enough to avoid triggering any audio capture.
The building was not unoccupied. At the end of the first hall, Asier overheard human voices, conversing in a language he couldn’t understand and that his comm couldn’t translate. He didn’t need to understand them, necessarily, but it was a blind spot that he could have done without.
Risking a glance around the corner, he spied two human males hunched over counters at a raised work station. The work station was centered at the intersection of four corridors.
Asier slipped back into the darkness and examined the building’s layout on his comm.
It was uniform and orderly, following an identical floor plan on the first four levels. Each of the first four floors had a central work station surrounded by four corridors. The external walls were lined with small rooms—more than half of them occupied by warm-blooded lifeforms. The fifth floor was different—one half appeared to be a series of offices. The other half was a suite of rooms, occupied by three life forms. Those were his coordinates.
Asier took a moment to get himself under control. An emotional storm charged through him, nearly paralyzing him with the force of it. But beneath it all, stronger than anything else, was fierce, unyielding love. He anchored himself in that steady strength, and looked back at his comm. There was a staircase to his right, but he’d have to cross the hall within view of the humans around the corner.
He leaned over, risking another glance. Both of them had their heads bent to their work. The hall he needed to pass through was unlit. The mirroring fibers of his jacket weren’t perfect invisibility—he was perceptible to the naked eye, especially when in motion. But in the dark, in their peripheral vision, he might be able to slip by. And if they noticed him… well. He took his electron gun in hand and dialed it down to a charge that wouldn’t kill a human.
While the human males were still bent over their work, Asier slipped around the corner and down the hall. They never noticed him. The stairwell stood behind a locked door, which Asier’s comm unlocked. Moving silently, he slipped inside and eased the door shut. He waited for a moment, listening for human exclamations—if they’d detected him, he’d have to go back and stun them. He couldn’t risk anyone alerting to his presence before he recovered Lyra. But there was no sound.
He climbed the stairs. At each floor, there was another locked door to bypass, each one no more than a moment’s delay on his progression. When he reached the fifth floor, he paused, examining his comm. There were only three life forms on the fifth floor. One had to be Lyra. One could potentially be his son. And the third? Whoever it was, they were in the same suite of rooms with Lyra. Was it a guard?
Asier’s pulse pounded. He considered notching his electron gun up to a level that would kill. The raggedly murderous impulse passed, and he left the charge where it was at. He could always stun first and kill later.
He opened the door and moved silently to the fifth floor.
The halls here were less uniform, requiring him to loop through a row of dark, empty offices before he reached Lyra’s prison. The entry was a wide, double-wide door, stark white and painted with some alarming message in bright red human lettering. He couldn’t read it and neither could his comm, but it gave him a moment’s pause. What if Lyra wasn’t a prisoner? What if she was ill?
Breathing hard, he directed his comm to open the doors. The programming was more secure here than for others. It was a three step process for his comm to first block, then reroute, then unseal, then re-block the programming that controlled the doors. They slid open with a hydraulic hiss. Asier stepped into a small vestibule and found himself facing another set of double doors. When the first doors closed behind him, a cold mist blasted from the walls and ceiling of the vestibule. He choked back a shout as it burned his eyes and skin.
Sanitation, he realized, cold sweat breaking out along his spine. What had happened to Lyra? Why this severe quarantine?
The mist faded, and the next set of doors slid open, revealing a dark room filled with blocky gray furniture. Artificial windows projected a view of moonlit sky. His comm screen flashed—he’d reached his coordinates.
Chapter Twenty
Frantic with worry, senseless of security, Asier rushed into the room. As soon as he crossed the threshold, pain exploded across his shins.
He nearly dropped to the ground, biting off a brutal curse and whipping out his electron gun. He froze at the sight of his quarry.
She was a human female, clutching a broken-off table leg like a cudgel. Her silky human hair was coppery-brown instead of white gold, and her eyes were cold steel, but her skin was the same peachy-pink as Lyra’s, and he’d seen the same exact furious scowl on Lyra’s face before.
As she observed him, her scowl faded to wide-eyed astonishment, and her grip on the table-leg slackened. “You’re not Dr. Nguyen.”
Asier stared. She’d known to speak to him in the trade language. Her relaxed stance indicated that she accepted he wasn’t a threat.
“Sofie?” He asked.
She smiled, but before she could say anything, the woman he’d crossed the universe for appeared in the doorway behind her sister. In her eyes, she held his heart, in her smile his soul, and in her arms—in her arms she held his child. The electron gun fell from his nerveless fingers.
He was vaguely aware of Sofie slipping away, leaving them alone together.
“Lyra,” he rasped. Pressure built behind his eyes, and a soft golden glow warmed the space between them.
She hurried to him, clutching the baby with one arm, reaching up with the other to spread her palm over his chest, directly over his heart.
“Asier,” she whispered. Tears streaked her face, even as she smiled. “You came for me.”
Always, he tried to answer, but couldn’t get it past his constricted throat. He folded her and the baby both into his arms. She was here. She was whole. He would make her safe.
“Would you like to meet your son?” Lyra’s voice was muffled against his jacket.
He pulled back and she passed the swaddled bundle into his arms. He looked down on his sleeping child. A round-cheeked, silvery face—so peaceful and trusting in sleep—with ice-white lashes and a cap of fuzzy white hair. Asier’s heart staggered.
“His name is Orion,” Lyra said softly.
“Orion Lyr-Asier,” Asier said proudly, his heart swelling to fill his entire body. Orion was a name from a human language, but it rolled off a Scaeven tongue easily. “How long?” he asked, his voice a barely coherent rumble.
“He was born three days ago. Emergency cesarean.” She stroked her hand low on her belly. “The incision is already completely healed,” she added, wonder in her voice.
“Our son did that for you,” he told her. The glow of his eyes grew brighter. He could barely speak past the tightness in his throat. “He made you stronger.”
Lyra wrapped her arms around Asier’s waist, cocooning the baby between their two bodies. He closed his eyes, savoring a moment he thought he’d never experience.
“Not to rush this heartfelt reunion,” Sofie’s voice cut in from behind them. “But the midnight rotation is due any minute now, and if we don’t go soon—”
Asier stiffened, remembering the urgency of their current situation. “What is this place?” He demanded.
“It’s a research facility owned by the university,” Lyra answered. She shifted, and Asier realized she had a pack slung over her shoulder.
“You’re a prisoner here.”
“We were about to escape.” Lyra reached out, taking their son—Orion—back into her arms. “Having you here will make things a little easier.”
Asier took the overwhelming emotional turbulence and confined it to a quiet corner of his mind to deal with later. Right now, he needed to be cold and sharp. He bent to retrieve his electron gun and glanced at Sofie. She still held the table leg, leaning on it as she waited for instruction.
“Keep that for now,” he told her. He had no other weapons to give to either of them, and Lyra’s hands were occupied with their son.
Their son.
Steadying himself, he glanced around the austere sitting room. “Where’s the shuttle transmitter?” He asked. “How did you get it to work?”
“Lyra fused it into the display screen’s interface,” Sofie answered. “Most modern entertainment units use Ravanoth tech.”
“Get the transmitter out. We can’t leave it behind.”
Sofie moved to the far wall, an empty white expanse. Kneeling in one corner, sh
e opened a small panel, revealing a mess of biocircuitry. Reaching in, she closed her fist, and yanked out a multicolored snarl of circuits. In the middle of it all was the silvery flash of the RSP core.
Asier pulled out his comm, checking the movement of the other lifeforms in the building. A fifth entity had joined them, was headed towards them.
“The human whose shins you intended to shatter is almost here.”
Sofie hefted up her table leg. “I’m still up for it.”
“No,” he said, fighting a smile. Lyra had raised a sister just as ferocious as herself. Their son would be a hellion. He dialed the charge on the electron gun down just one more notch. “Get away from the door.”
Lyra and Sofie stood on either side of Asier. Through the sealed doors, they could hear the sound of the sanitizing mist. A moment later, the doors parted.
The man who entered never knew what hit him. He walked into the room looking down at his comm pad. Asier stunned him. When his convulsing body dropped to the floor, Asier hauled him away from the doors.
“Is there anything to bind him with?”
“Just take his ID key,” Lyra said. “Without it, he’ll be locked in here until the next attendant arrives.”
Sofie dashed over to the man and plucked his comm pad from his hands, as well as the identification card leashed around his neck.
“Let’s move.” Asier stepped into the vestibule, followed by Lyra and Sofie. Lyra pressed Orion’s face tightly to her body as the sanitation mist rained down on them, protecting him from the burning spray. The baby fussed and stirred, but didn’t fully wake. By the time the next set of doors opened, she’d gentled the infant back into sleep.
“We have to move quickly. Be as quiet as you can, but speed is more important.” Asier’s tactical gear rendered him invisible to video surveillance, but Lyra and Sofie would be fully visible. Whoever was monitoring the footage would notice them immediately.
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