I woke to a face. Not the sterile ceiling I expected, but Vex, eyes sharp, lips firm, a hand pressed soft against my chest like she was checking for signs of resurrection. She hovered close, breath warm on my cheek, scented faintly floral.
Her white outfit clung tight, the kind designed to distract more than sterilize. Her gaze locked with mine as my eyes opened.
She didn’t speak. Just raised a finger to my lips, a warning, or maybe just to hold the moment still, suspended like dust in low gravity. Her pupils were huge. There was something in them: excitement, heat, calculation. Maybe all three.
The chamber pulsed with dim, bioluminescent light. Data panels flickered across curved walls, casting ghostly reflections. The air was thick with antiseptic and the faint hum of machinery.
I lay on a cold metal slab, the chill threading into my spine as I shifted to ease a cramp.
Muffled voices bled in from the next room, Vulkred’s gravel rasp, wound tight, and another one: clipped, precise, authority baked in. A door hissed open. Footsteps retreated. Then Vulkred slipped in, tall, bent at the shoulders, eyes darting, face like a half-melted idol.
“Inspector’s gone,” he muttered. “We’ve got a window.”
Vex nodded, already moving. She slipped a set of injector keys into the slab’s side port and peeled the access screen to life. Blue glyphs flickered across it like veins under skin.
“Vitals clean.”
“Crypodium’s location is marked,” Vulkred whispered. “Third floor. Terminal inside’s dormant, corpse status means no log-ins. You’ll have to override.”
I sat up. My spine clicked in protest. “Override I can do.”
Vulkred gave a grim little shrug. “I’ll catch up with you.”
They helped me off the slab, my limbs sluggish, nerves tingling.
We slipped into the corridor like blood through a vein. The air was cold and dry, recycled too many times. Lights hummed overhead in long, slow pulses.
The tiles underfoot were too clean in places, like someone had tried to erase something messy and failed. You could still smell the bleach fight against old blood.
Vex moved like a blade half-drawn, quiet and lethal. I shadowed her, still shaking off cryo-stupor and whatever bootleg sedative they’d iced me with.
Around a corner, two attendants loitered outside a sealed door. Academy blacks, robes crisp, collars high, faces set in that smug way bureaucrats get when they’ve never been punched. One leaned toward the other, murmuring something about a shipment. I caught the word Deadspec. Said like it could buy you favors or get you buried.
Vex didn’t break stride. Just flicked two fingers, backtrack. I caught it, slipped into a maintenance alcove while they turned, eyes scanning too slow to matter.
Arvie’s voice bloomed in my skull, dry as rust.
“That was close. I had ten credits riding on you blowing it right there.”
I inhaled slow. There was a terminal mounted beside the alcove panel, cracked and crusted with age. I reached out mentally. The interface flared, hesitant, suspicious. Arvie slipped in like a thief with the master key.
“For an elite medical blacksite,” she chimed, “this firewall’s held together with duct tape and heresy.”
I tripped the override. The door beside the attendants hissed open.
“Who’s there?” one muttered, stepping in to check. Followed by the other.
We slipped past while they were distracted.
The halls ahead twisted and looped like they were laid out by a drunk architect with a vendetta against linear design. Signs had been scrubbed, painted over, replaced with blank plates. Each turn revealed more of the facility's decayed grandeur, walls cracked, lights flickering like failing neurons.
The Crypodium wasn’t marked. Just a heavy slab of alloy and pressure seals that didn’t hum like the others. The door was not locked, just pretending it didn’t exist. Vex glanced my way. I nodded and palmed the panel.
Inside, the temperature dropped fast. Harsh blue-white lights flickered overhead. Med-pods lined the walls in recessed alcoves, silver coffins that dreamed in code. Their interfaces dead, a few pulsed like sleeping heartbeats. Some wore frost around the seals; others bore names scrawled in grease-pencil, half-faded into whispers: Vell-K3, Subject Drought, Reserved.
The door hissed open behind us. Vulkred slipped in, sealing it with a thumb to the panel. “Evenin’,” he said, casual like this was just another tavern job.
He took in the room, eyes lingering on the frostbitten pods, vein-lit ceiling, then strode to the center platform, brushing past Vex. He crouched by the central terminal set dead center of the room, a raised half-moon platform surrounded by strands of cabling that curled like vinework. He jammed in a battered data-spike. The screen flared to life in jittery violet script.
“It’s secure. Local only. You’ll have to override a pod to accept you. Your code’s DPV-EK0.”
I nodded, connected to the nearest access node. The interface flared, reluctant, half-asleep, but Arvie slipped in smooth, like a whisper.
“Their encryption’s a joke,” she scoffed. “But there’s a hitch.”
The system unfolded, glyphs peeling back layer by layer. I fast-scrolled, found my tag.
Unclaimed Asset: DPV-EK0. Status: cadaver. Scheduled for transfer.
Arvie hummed. “Pods are wired into a lognet. You wake it, somebody upstairs gets a ping.”
I swore under my breath. “Found the override,” I said aloud. “But there’s a catch.”
Vex tensed. “What kind of catch?”
“System’s hooked to a lognet. Activate the pod, someone’ll know.”
“Then we don’t waste time.”
I reached out with my mind. A nearby pod responded with a hiss, screens flickering to life as I fed it the override code, and somewhere in the depths of its frozen guts, machinery groaned awake, lights blinking in sequence like it was trying to remember how to be a coffin again.
She moved to the pod and gestured. “In.”
I stripped down and clambered in. The lid hissed shut. Inside, sleek med-arms bristled like praying limbs around the cradle. A cranial interface hovered above, jittering with dormant sparks.
A needle jabbed the base of my neck. Cold fire spread. Not liquid, something more subtle. My mind expanded and contracted at once.
Pain lanced, then vanished. Then, a scream without sound, like an old language rebooting, scattered files rushing back to where they belonged.
Silence. Then Arvie.
“Welcome back, darling. Neurolink repair complete. System stability: ninety-eight percent. Fragments... incoming.”
A flicker of light, gone too fast to catch. A memory, half-formed. A name, unspoken. Gone again.
The lid hissed open. Vex leaned over, eyes scanning mine like they held diagnostics.
I sat up, gasping, breath visible in the cold.
“You good?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m me.”
“Good,” she said, already tossing my clothes back at me.
“Then get dressed. We just rang the bell.”
The door slammed open hard enough to rattle the lightstrips.
Vulkred yanked me into a shadowed alcove near the entrance, cold composite biting through my thin shirt. He didn’t speak, just held me there, breath sharp, fingers twitching at his side like he wanted to be somewhere less involved in excitement.
Boots clacked in. A clipped angry voice. Then Vex.
“Oh, by the Divines, I’m so sorry,” Vex purred, louder than necessary. “I was calibrating the pod and I think I tripped a redundant line. It’s a miracle this place hasn’t fried itself already. You know these old diagnostics panels.”
Silence.
I imagined her standing there, posture perfect, lab-coat fitting enough to weaponize her clavicle. She knew how to aim her assets. Vex didn’t bluff, she baited.
The guard huffed. “That explains the fault spike?”
“Mmm, the ‘fault spike.’” You could hear her smile. “You could write love letters with the errors in this grid.”
Another beat of silence. Then footsteps approached the pod platform.
We took the chance. Slipped out the door like a sin forgiven.
A slab waited just beside the arch. Transit standard, slightly scuffed, faint oilsmell clinging to its undercarriage. I climbed on fast, laid flat, and Vulkred tossed a synth-sheet over me, coarse weave, metallic threads, smelled faintly of med-rot and antiseptic. Then motion.
Wheels hummed. Cold air licking my fingertips where the sheet didn’t cover. A distant chime. Doors hissing. A medic laughing two halls over. Boots echoing off plascrete. Something squishy under a wheel, Vulkred cursed softly and kicked the slab to one side. The motion jostled my hip against a metal rail.
Arvie smirked in my head. “We’re definitely failing all the health and safety regulations.”
Somewhere nearby, a door opened and a scent drifted in: sour tea and ozone. Two voices, speaking med-jargon, clipped and fast. I felt Vulkred’s sharp intake. Then relax.
We moved again.
Twice we paused, once for a droid to whirr past, another for what sounded like a floor tech slapping a vending wall. I held my breath both times.
Then: the subtle lift of a ramp. A pressure door hissed as it unlocked. The air changed, warmer, stale, like the breath of a room holding its tension.
Vulkred bumped the slab into a lock, just as boots clacked in again.
The inspector.
“I’ve reviewed the cadaver report,” he said, somewhere to my left. “There’s an ergo-signature echo. Mild, but anomalous. Was this one double-checked?”
Vulkred sniffed. “Yeah, I saw that. Some salvagers spike the data to hike resale value, make the goods look fresher. Probably a leftover tag from one of those scams. Data hygiene’s a joke out there.”
“I know.”
“Which is why I’m pulling it,” he said. “I’m not signing for a compromised transfer. That’s on your diagnostics.”
Silence. Then a tap. Data pad. Thumbprint.
“This sets you back two rotations,” the inspector warned.
“I’ll live.”
A breath. Click of boots turning.
Then, just before the door hissed shut again, Vex’s voice slipped in like silk through a blade’s edge.
“Good news?” she asked, voice sweet and tired.
Vulkred grunted. “We get to keep the corpse.”
Lucky me.
Vulkred peeled the synth-sheet back. His face loomed over me, shadow-sliced and tired.
“Sorry, pal. I’ve to make you a corpse again. Dead enough to pass through the gates.”
Before I could protest, he flicked a vial the color of antifreeze and stabbed it into my shoulder like he was fixing a leak.
“Just a nap,” he muttered. “And maybe a short-term spiritual crisis.”
Arvie piped in, “Well, on the bright side, at least you don’t have to tip anyone.”
The world folded. Senses blinked out one by one, scent, sound, breath. Somewhere behind the dark, I thought I heard Vex laugh.
Then nothing.
Just the faint taste of metal and the words still echoing in my skull: Dead enough to pass.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXbaVKD9sJZ
