“It's a trap.” I needed her to understand. “Every step will be too easy.”
“I know.” She moved closer, close enough that her scent, adrenaline and determination and an underlying sweetness, wrapped around me. “That's why we're going to spring it on our terms.”
We took the service lift to Level 15. Her keycard worked perfectly. Of course it did. Qeth wanted us to get close enough to gloat.
The maintenance shaft was narrow, forcing us to crawl single file. I went first. I could feel her presence close behind me, herhand brushing my ankle whenever I paused to check a corner. Every accidental touch sent a current through me.
“Left here,” she whispered, her breath warm against my ear when she leaned forward. “The blind spot extends for twelve meters.”
The Level 16 security corridor was conveniently empty. No patrols. No automated sweeps. Just silence and the hum of failing electronics. We moved through it like ghosts.
Level 17. Still nothing. The lack of resistance was a warning, but Sabine moved with absolute confidence. All that time, she'd been memorizing these routes. Her long-planned escape had led to this moment, with me.
“There should be guards here,” I murmured as we reached the Level 18 access point.
“There are.” She pointed to a monitor showing two guards rushing toward Level 12. “Krave's disturbance. He's pulling them away without making it obvious.”
Krave. The Mondian who'd lost his brother to Qeth's paranoia. Our unwitting ally in this mutual destruction.
Level 19 passed in a blur of empty corridors and disabled cameras. Sabine's stolen keycard opened every door, her memorized codes bypassed every lock. By the time we reached Level 20, we'd been infiltrating for less than fifteen minutes.
“This feels wrong,” I said. “Too simple.”
“He wants us here.” She pulled out her device, a thing of beauty made from stolen parts and rage. Circuit boards cannibalized from gambling machines, processors lifted from security terminals, all wired together into something elegant and devastating. “The question is whether his trap is better than mine.”
“Ready?” I asked. “Once your device goes live, this place will tear itself apart. That's our only cover.”
“Let them come,” she said. “We'll be gone in the chaos.”
The vault antechamber was ostentatious even by Qeth's standards. Walls lined with trophies from everyone he'd destroyed, pieces of jewelry from ruined merchants, weapons from dead competitors. A monument to greed.
“Behind the third panel,” I said, recognizing the pattern. Qeth had always hidden his real treasures behind his showpieces.
My hand found the hidden release. The false wall swung open, revealing the actual vault door. Biometric locks, quantum encryption, pressure sensors. All of it degraded, failing, held together by desperation and stimulants.
“How long?” Sabine asked, already pulling security bypasses from her belt.
“Three minutes.” I pressed my palm to the biometric scanner, letting my neural signature interact with my own corrupted algorithms. The system recognized me, fought me, then surrendered as I overwhelmed it with mathematical patterns it couldn't process without me.
Sabine worked beside me, her fingers moving with precision over her equipment, rerouting power, confusing sensors. This close, I could feel the warmth from her body, smell the light sheen of sweat on her skin. When she reached across me to access a panel, her breast brushed my arm, and we both froze for a heartbeat.
“Focus,” she breathed, but her pupils were dilated, her pulse visible in her throat.
The vault door opened with a soft hiss minutes before the shift change.
Inside, on a pedestal, sat the Regalia. Even disguised as an ornate gaming token, it pulsed with alien power. The crystalline lattice structure was beautiful and terrible, containing enough encrypted data to topple empires. Or rebuild them.
“He's watching,” Sabine whispered, and I nodded.
I could feel it. The weight of surveillance, of anticipation. Qeth was somewhere in the station, probably in his office, waiting for this moment. The moment he thought he'd won.
I lifted the Regalia. It was heavier than expected and hummed against my palm with dormant energy. The last piece of the Sovereign's legacy, finally in my hands.
“Now,” I said.
Sabine activated her device. Her fingers moved across it with the same precision she used to deal cards, inputting codes, executing programs she'd been refining for months.
“Thirty-second delay,” she said. “We need to be moving when it hits.” Every outgoing transmission, every docked ship's communication relay, every connected terminal—her device was using them all.
