Chapter Sixty: The Escape that wasn’t
Chapter Sixty: The Escape that wasn’t
Earlier that day, hours before the opulent banquet and the flurry of crisis alerts, Nerissa stood still in the dim corner of the Zytherion ship’s engineering wing. Her hand hovered just above the whisperlink console, breath shallow, gaze steeled.
She activated the encrypted channel. The screen flared to life with static before sharpening into the form of Vorkesh.
“You’re late,” his deep voice hissed. “Did anyone see you?”
“No,” she whispered. “I looped the hallway surveillance. I have ten minutes.”
“You know what to do. Get the core. We leave tonight.”
Nerissa nodded. “I’ll deliver it.”
She ended the call, then slid the whisperlink back into the seam of her gauntlet. Her breathing steadied as her training kicked in. She slipped through the maintenance chute she’d discovered days ago, heart thudding in time with each step. Every sensor disabled, every patrol pattern memorized.
It didn’t matter that her lungs burned or that her stomach twisted with guilt. She had made her choice.
The soft wind of the Nimoan dusk brushed her face as she emerged from the chute and rolled into the shadows behind the estate. Her dark clothing blended into the stone as she made her way up the side path, her eyes locked on the structure at the far end—the discard vault.
A tomb of forgotten wonders. And somewhere within it… the core.
The outer vault was protected by an older defense system—manual, but still formidable. Nerissa pulled out a small tool, shaped like a flattened star, and pressed it into the lock’s center. It glowed faintly, syncing with her neural input.
Click.
The door groaned and opened.
Inside, silence greeted her. Not the peaceful kind, but the eerie hush of obsolete power. The air reeked of ozone and old metal. Broken exo-frames hung from walls like limp skeletons. Disassembled drones floated lazily in containment fields.
She moved fast, boots soft against the steel floor. Her gloved hands skimmed labels and diagnostics, skipping over prototypes and malfunctioned AI cores.
“Where are you…” she murmured.
She turned down another row, scanning frantically—until she saw it.
At the base of a dusty weapons rack, one of the first-generation magma rifles stood upright, half-covered by a shredded containment cloak. But what caught her eye wasn’t the weapon. It was a small, irregular indentation on its hilt.
A button.
She dropped to her knees and brushed it clean. No label. No markings.
Click.
With a soft hiss, a hidden drawer extended from the base. Inside—an obsidian-colored rectangular box, humming with an unnatural vibration.
Her fingers shook. This had to be it.
She reached to open it—but froze.
The lock was unlike anything she’d seen. No biometric scanner. No keypad. Just a swirl of pulsing lines forming a strange glyph. It responded to her touch with a flicker, but wouldn’t open.
Dammit. Not now.
She tried again—focusing her neural imprint through her gloves.
The box remained sealed.
A shout rang out behind her.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
Two Nimoan guards burst into view, weapons already drawn.
Nerissa grabbed the box, spun behind the weapons rack, and dove.
“Hands up!” the taller one barked. “Now!”
They didn’t wait for her to comply. The first bolt of plasma sizzled past her ear.
She rolled and ducked behind an exo-suit shell. The second bolt hit the shell with a sharp clang.
She didn’t have time for a polite exit.
With a growl, she kicked the rack behind her, sending one of the loose energy coils flying toward the guards. It exploded on contact, blinding them momentarily.
She launched into action, sprinting toward the side racks. One guard tried to tackle her—she elbowed him hard in the ribs, knocking him back.
The other guard lunged.
She dropped into a slide, grabbing a dislodged Talon Blaster from the floor and fired.
The bolt hit the wall just beside his head—enough to disorient. Then she flipped forward and delivered a vicious roundhouse to his temple.
He crumpled.
The first guard staggered to his feet, swinging a metal rod. She ducked, then twisted and used the hilt of her blaster to crack against his jaw.
Silence.
She stood panting, the box clutched to her chest.
It was time to run.
Nerissa darted out of the vault’s emergency exit, skipping the smoke-filled corridor entirely. She cut across the servant’s garden, ignoring the blooming stalks that tried to entangle her boots.
She reached the side entrance to Vorkesh’s wing just as the sounds of alarms began to echo from the main hall.
Vorkesh was waiting by the ornate door, half cloaked in shadows.
“You have it?” he rasped.
“Yes, but—” she held up the box. “It’s not opening. Something’s wrong.”
Vorkesh’s eyes widened. “That’s not the core.”
“What?”
“That’s the prototype shell. It’s what the core was built from.”
“I saw no other device that matched the energy profile.”
“That means…” he trailed off, his features hardening. “The real one is still hidden.”
Nerissa’s breath caught.
“We’ll find it later. For now, we leave.” Vorkesh stepped aside to let her through.
But Nerissa shook her head. “No. I’ll lead them away. You head to the ship. Take the prototype—it might still be useful.”
“Nerissa—”
“I said go!” she snapped. “Use the lower corridor. The guards will follow me. I’ll draw them.”
She pressed the box into his hands and turned.
Then she ran in the opposite direction.
Alarms. Footsteps. Voices.
She could hear them.
They were close.
The estate was a maze, but she knew these paths now. Her boots pounded against the stone, her mind racing. She couldn’t let them catch her. Not yet. Not before she led them far from Vorkesh.
The main hall loomed ahead.
She took a sharp left, ducking into a maintenance stairwell.
Voices echoed above—Axir’s, Rexan’s, Greon’s, Freya’s.
Her heart clenched.
So, Freya had followed her.
She bit down a cry. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t know—not yet.
Not until this was finished.