The Citadel didn't scream. That would have been too crude.

  The security cascade announced itself in whispers. Amber corridor lights shifted to pale red, one section at a time, the color change rolling through the stone hallways like a slow tide. Doors that had been unlocked began sealing on timed sequences, copper locks engaging with soft clicks. Guard patrols redirected. Boots in adjacent corridors changed rhythm.

  Xin led them through a service corridor Roach had mapped, angling upward toward the Citadel's secondary kitchen wing. The corridors here were narrow, the ceilings low. Stone walls sweated with condensation from the kitchens above, and the air smelled of ginger and pork fat and something sharper underneath—industrial cleanser, maybe. Sigrun kept Skuld ready but low. Every instinct told her to clear corners and kick doors, but stealth was the math now. One encounter and the cascade upgraded from automated to active.

  The first patrol passed twenty meters ahead at an intersection. Two Blood Swallows, their crimson-and-ebony armor catching the pale red light. Sigrun pressed into an alcove with Xin behind her, his breathing fast and shallow against the back of her neck. H?kon's scales went dark blue. Silent. The boots passed. Faded.

  The second time was worse, and beyond what they could realistically engage.

  Six of them, coming down a perpendicular corridor. Sigrun put her hand flat on Xin's chest and pushed him behind a stack of crated provisions. His heart kicked against her palm like something trying to escape. H?kon buried his snout in Xin's collar and went still.

  The boots grew louder. Stopped.

  One of the Swallows said something in clipped Imperial Mandarin. A question. The other answered. A third voice joined, lower, giving an order. Through the gap between crates, Sigrun could see the nearest Swallow's boots—black leather, gold buckles at the ankle. Close enough that she could smell the polish.

  Sigrun's thumb found Skuld's expansion release inside the toolbox. The metal was warm from her grip.

  The third Swallow spoke again. This time Sigrun caught a word she recognized: "—inspection!" The boots turned toward them.

  Three steps. Two. The Swallow's shadow stretched across the stone floor, reaching for the crates they were hiding behind. Xin's heartbeat was frantic under her hand. She could feel him holding his breath.

  Then a copper lock engaged somewhere down the hall with a heavy clunk. The third Swallow barked a new order—"Prince Joon-Seok and Lady Min-jung has summoned us. Move out!"—and the boots resumed, moving away. The shadows withdrew.

  Sigrun counted to five before she exhaled through her nose. Xin's heart rate didn't slow. She took her hand off his chest, released Skuld's grip, and jerked her head toward the corridor ahead.

  They emerged through a service door into a secondary courtyard. Venus's night had settled over Jin Syue, the sky shifting from amber to deep ochre. The air was hot and thick. Sulfur on the wind, faint but constant.

  Sigrun wrapped the spear in her ruined outer sash. In the dark it looked close enough to a walking stick.

  Dilinur managed the departure the way she managed everything. The right words at the right time. The official story: the Xing Hong delegation's evening had concluded, and they extended their thanks to Prince Joon-Seok for his hospitality. At the secondary gate, Jabari stood with loose posture and watchful eyes. He tracked over Sigrun's torn silk and bloodied knuckles without a word and fell in beside her.

  Weapons were returned. Járn to Sigrun, its thermal core cold and inert. Oya to Jabari, who accepted his crossbow with both hands and ran his thumb along the teal-bronze frame before slinging it—automatic, intimate, the way you'd touch someone's face after being apart. Justice to Marcus, settling on his hip with the weight of something that belonged there. He adjusted the scabbard with one hand, eyes on Sigrun.

  Marcus fell in on her left as they walked. His voice came low, clipped Yorkshire vowels. "You look like you've been in a fight."

  "Slipped in the restroom."

  His eyes dropped to the scab under the torn cobalt silk at her thigh. Back up. "Must've been a rough floor."

  "Marble. Very slippery."

  He kept walking. She watched his jaw tighten and release. He knew he was being lied to, but he respected the operational need enough to swallow it.

  Jabari caught up on her right, sandwiching her between them. From a distance, it probably looked like a diplomatic escort. Up close, two men were quietly keeping an injured woman upright without making it obvious.

  "If the marble's that bad," Jabari murmured, "someone should file a complaint."

  "I'll draft a letter and have you proofread it."

  They walked to the Genbu. Diplomatic pace. The kind of measured stride that said nothing happened, we had a lovely evening, thank you.

  The Genbu's hatches sealed behind them. Familiar: bench seating, weapon racks, the smell of metal and oil. Thomas took one look at Sigrun from his position near the turret hatch, Pulse Laser rifle across his bionic arms. His eyes looked at her torn silk, bruised knuckles, the wrapped shape that wasn't a walking stick, and he said nothing. Thomas had always been good at that. Knowing when silence was the kindest thing a man could offer.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Haylen's voice from the cockpit, British inflection clipped: "Where to?"

  "Camp Yusuf," Dilinur said. "Maximum speed."

  "Copy."

  The tracks bit into Venus's sulfurous soil. Jin Syue began to shrink through the rear viewport—walls, towers, temple spires dissolving into amber haze.

  Across the aisle, Xin had H?kon curled in his lap. The Diabolisk was already fading, scales cycling to a drowsy gray, tiny claws loosely gripping Xin's pant leg. The Oubliette's coordinates glowed green on his Nucleus Watch. His fingers moved across the display with that surgeon's precision that the trembling in his hands couldn't touch.

  Sigrun watched the little lizard's breathing slow. Steady. Trusting.

  She leaned forward. Kept her voice low. "He's tired?"

  Xin glanced down. H?kon's snout was tucked against his thigh, eyes closed. "Yeah. He crashes after high-stress like a circuit breaker."

  Good. What she had to say next wasn't for small ears.

  "Xin. What Tianshu said at the end. About the Oubliette."

  Xin's fingers paused on the Watch. The green glow reflected in his glasses. "Which part?"

  "The part where Meiya might not be who—'what' we expect."

  Across the cabin, Marcus opened his eyes. He'd been sitting with Justice across his knees, hands on the scabbard, doing what Sigrun had assumed was praying. His gaze moved to the fabric-wrapped shape she'd leaned against the weapon rack. Then to the blood dried in the creases of her knuckles.

  "What happened in there?" The Stalwart said, quiet enough for the cabin while not stirring H?kon.

  Sigrun met his eyes. She'd fed him the restroom story in the courtyard and watched him swallow it like glass. He deserved better than that.

  "We broke into a restricted archive beneath the Citadel. Xin and I. Killed a few Blood Swallows to get in." She held up her knuckles. "Not all of this is mine."

  Marcus's jaw worked. "Not a surprise. I'd already suspected".

  "You did."

  Something shifted behind his eyes. He looked at the spear again. "And that?"

  "Took it from a display case. Confiscated artifact. It...reacted to me." She replied and unwrapped the spear to reveal its sapphire blade and dark wood shaft in the dim light.

  "Reacted," Marcus repeated. The word sat heavy in the cabin air as his eyes scrutinized the weapon.

  "The handle's Imperium made, no doubt. The head has a Nordling touch to it, though." Jabari said, sitting across from them, Oya resting in his lap. He'd been running his check—bolt channel, tension cable, frame joints—and hadn't looked up once. But Sigrun knew he'd been listening to every word.

  "You can tell?" She pressed.

  "One of those Karma Spears, forged back before High Queen Maren took over Europa—and 'course, before the Fenris came to be." Jabari leaned back against the bench. "Beyond that, I know little. A Directorate Loremaster could identify its make and model fully."

  "Right."

  "Still," Jabari said, still examining a bolt. "You broke into some top-secret Imperium vault, killed a squad, sweet-talked a computer into giving you classified coordinates, stole a magic spear, and walked out the front door." He glanced up. "And you're worried about what an AI said to you on the way out."

  "The AI knew more than it let on. It chose to warn me."

  "It's a machine, Sigrun."

  "Eighty-one years in a room where people come, take what they need, and leave." She looked at her hands. "I've worked that job. It doesn't make you a machine."

  Jabari's fingers paused on the bolt. He didn't have a comeback for that one, and he was wise enough not to reach for one.

  Xin spoke up, voice low, adjusting his glasses. "The Oubliette designation doesn't appear in any standard Imperium facility registry. I've been cross-referencing against the encrypted Zephyrium data from the Warren on Mars. Whatever this place is, it's off the books. But it's there, beneath a dune on the equator of Venus."

  "And Meiya's been there since...?" Jabari asked.

  "I don't know. Years. Maybe since the whole Fenris crisis started." Xin's voice thinned.

  The cabin went quiet. The Genbu's tracks ground through volcanic soil, a low constant rumble.

  Marcus broke the silence. "The machine said she might not be what you expected. Not who. What." He'd been choosing that word carefully, turning it in his hands the way he turned Justice's hilt. "The Oubliette. That word's Old French. Means 'forgotten place.' A hole you throw someone into when you want them gone but not dead."

  They all looked at him.

  "I read," Marcus said, with the faintest edge of Yorkshire irritation. Then, quieter: "The Covenant uses similar facilities for long-term containment. They call them 'quiet rooms.' The people who come out of them aren't always the people who went in."

  "You think Meiya's been...changed?" Xin asked. His glasses reflected the green glow of scrolling data, but his eyes weren't tracking the screen anymore.

  "I think years in jail can change anyone. And I think the Imperium doesn't build black sites for people they plan to treat kindly." Marcus's thumb traced a slow line along Justice's scabbard. "We should be ready for what we find. All of us."

  Sigrun almost smiled. "So we're walking into a black site the Imperium pretends doesn't exist, and even the computer that gave us the location thinks we should be careful."

  "Sounds about right for us," Jabari said. He slotted the bolt back into Oya with a soft click. "What's the play once we're at camp? We pitch this to Dilinur, she greenlights an expedition?"

  "I'm sure she'll greenlight it," Xin said. "The Oubliette coordinates connect to all the info we need to defeat combat Skarn. That's why we're on Venus."

  From Xin's lap, H?kon murmured in his sleep, scales in sleeping silver, voice small and blurred: "Glow Man nice. Ad-ven-chure fun…family safe…"

  Xin's hand rested steady on the Diabolisk's back. His other hand kept scrolling. Green code and amber desert reflected in his glasses in alternating flashes.

  Nobody pressed. Some silences earned their keep.

  Sigrun watched Xin's hand on H?kon's back as she leaned her head back against the bench. The spear rested beside her, still wrapped in fabric, and the faint hum traveled through the silk into her hip. Warm. Patient. Like something waiting for her to catch up to it.

  "We find Meiya," she said. "We find Ume. And we bring them both home."

  "And if the Oubliette doesn't want to let them go?" Marcus asked.

  "Then it learns what happens when it gets in our way."

  Marcus held her gaze for a moment. Then he exhaled through his nose—half sigh, half something that might have been grudging approval—and closed his eyes. His hands settled on Justice.

  For the next twenty minutes, the Genbu drove on. Venus's desert stretched to every horizon, amber dust under deep ochre sky. Volcanic ridges caught the filtered light of a sun that never fully set and never fully rose.

  Sigrun closed her eyes. The spear hummed. The Genbu rumbled. She didn't sleep. Just breathed, and let the tightness in her chest loosen enough to fill her lungs.

  Then the golden red Nucleus Watch on Dilinur's wrist crackled. Diego's voice came through, and it wasn't the calm professional tone she'd heard him use.

  "Tengo mal noticia, Prefect! Camp Yusuf's under attack. Fenris Radi-Mons, multiple vectors. We're taking casualties!"

  Every eye in the cabin opened.