“But this is an operation authorized by Lord Soren,” Liam said, forcing authority into his voice. “You’re going to block it?”
“I’m sorry,” the guard replied. “Our orders are to allow no one inside. We’ve not received any change.”
“I—”
Liam started to argue again, but Little White tugged his sleeve from behind. She led him aside.
“Don’t waste time,” she whispered, scanning for ears. “Dock Five has a maintenance shaft that links to Dock Four. We can slip in through that.”
Liam exhaled through his nose. “Fine.”
He waved the squad past Dock Four and into Dock Five instead. That hangar also held several frigates under repair. Once inside, the soldiers spread out as usual to “search.”
Meanwhile, Liam backed toward the door and climbed the zigzag steel stairs to the top level. Little White followed him into the narrow service corridor between the two hangars. At the far end she pried open a wall access panel.
Liam stared at the dark gap. “How is anyone supposed to fit in there?”
“I didn’t say you were going,” Little White said.
She removed her helmet, shrugged out the heavy uniform armor, and was left in a tight underlayer that didn’t snag. Then she slid her small frame into the space between four thick pipes.
Liam couldn’t help it. “Whoa. Are you an octopus?”
“This is nothing,” Little White muttered, breathing carefully as she squeezed forward. “I’ve crawled through worse.”
She inched toward Dock Four.
“Just don’t take too long,” Liam warned, glancing back toward the stairs. “If you vanish too long, someone will get suspicious.”
“As you command, Captain.”
The pipe space was narrow and pitch-dark. After a short crawl, she couldn’t see her own hands. She moved forward for seventy or eighty meters and reached the end of the corridor.
The pipes continued beyond, but every gap had been sealed with steel plate.
Little White had expected that. She drew a knife, carefully punched a tiny hole through the thin metal, and a blade of light pierced the darkness.
She steadied herself, pressed an eye to the hole—and a massive, familiar warship filled her vision.
The Azure Thunder.
…
Minutes passed.
Waiting at the access panel, Liam grew more and more anxious. It felt like she’d been gone forever. Worse, squad chatter kept crackling inside his helmet, each voice a reminder that people were watching.
Finally someone called him out.
“Captain Liam, Dock Five is cleared. Are we moving to the next sector? …Captain? Can you hear me? …Where are you?”
“I hear you,” Liam said, forcing calm. “I’m coming.”
He lowered his voice and leaned into the shaft. “Miss Little White… Little White—are you coming out? We need to move.”
A pause.
Then her voice floated up, soft and controlled. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
Relief hit him so hard his knees almost went weak. “Good. Hurry.”
Scraping sounds grew louder as she climbed toward the panel—
—and then Liam heard footsteps on the stairs behind him.
A voice, close and curious: “Captain? Is that you up here?”
The corridor was short. No branches. In five seconds the newcomer would see him.
If Liam was discovered, he could explain he was inspecting the shafts.
If Little White was discovered—
He broke into a cold sweat.
Without thinking, he hissed into the shaft, “You—”
He meant don’t come out.
He got only one syllable out before a blur slammed into him and knocked him flat.
The next second—
“Whoa!”
The exclamation came from the corridor entrance.
From the newcomer’s angle, it looked like this: a gorgeous girl was straddling Captain Liam in a frankly compromising position, hair messy, breathing hard. The moment she realized she’d been seen, she squeaked and sprang up, one hand hiding her face, the other clutching clothing in front of her like a shield. Captain Liam lay on the ground, dazed—like his brain hadn’t caught up yet.
“I—sorry!” the squad member stammered, panicking and backing away. “Captain, I didn’t know you were… doing that…”
“I…” Liam’s mind blanked. “Get out!”
“Yes, Captain!”
Boots hammered down the stairs in a frantic retreat.
Little White dressed in a flash, snapping her helmet and armor back into place. She looked Liam dead in the eye.
“If you tell anyone what just happened,” she said softly, “I’ll cut you.”
Liam screamed internally. You should cut the guy who saw it, he thought—not me.
His face went red, then white. He’d lost all dignity, gained no “benefit,” and for a moment he forgot why they were even here.
Then the mission finally crawled back into his head.
“So… the ship,” he managed. “Is it there?”
“It’s there,” Little White said, walking toward the stairs.
Then she added, almost casually, “But it’s fake.”
…
***
Meanwhile, beside Five-Color Fortress’s central tower, a guard captain sprinted out of the building and nearly collided with Teresa.
“Sir!” he panted. “We found… something.”
“What?” Teresa demanded.
“We hear… noises underground,” the captain said loudly, as if volume could substitute for certainty. “Like some kind of animal.”
“Animal?” Teresa frowned. “Where?”
“Under the central tower. We searched for an entrance but couldn’t find one.”
“That’s my lab,” Tyler Lynn said, stepping in smoothly. “Classified.”
Teresa nodded. “If it’s a Research Division area, we don’t need to check it.”
“Yes, sir.” The captain saluted and hurried away.
Tyler Lynn’s smile returned as if the interruption had been entertaining.
“Classified only applies to ordinary soldiers,” he said to Teresa. “Would you like to take a look?”
“No,” Teresa said warily. “I wouldn’t understand your high-tech toys anyway.”
“Come on.” Tyler Lynn turned, already walking. “You’ll be interested. The search will take a while. We might as well have somewhere to sit.”
Before Teresa could refuse, Tyler Lynn led him into the tower, into a concealed elevator, down beneath the fortress, and through one heavy door after another.
The deeper they went, the louder the “animal” sounds became—sometimes savage, sometimes a shrieking wail. Teresa’s unease grew into dread.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t an animal.
When they entered the underground hall, Teresa saw it immediately.
A… living thing.
He flinched back. Words failed him. It looked like a deformed giant spliced together with multiple predators—an error stitched into flesh.
“What is that?” Teresa breathed.
The creature was over two meters even while hunched—three meters if it stood straight. Its back bristled with reptilian ridges down to a thick tail ending in a T-shaped bone club, like a hammer-tail dinosaur. Its skin was layered with hardened, horn-like protrusions.
One hand was three times normal human size, fingers ending in long claws. The other arm wasn’t an arm anymore: it had collapsed into a single curved blade, a scythe grown from bone and muscle. Under its armpits and along its shoulders, jointed limbs like crab legs had sprouted—so from a distance it looked as if the thing carried a giant crab on its back.
It was locked inside a steel cage with bars as thick as a bowl rim, and it was howling up at the ceiling.
“Obviously,” Tyler Lynn said lightly, “it’s a monster.”
The creature heard voices and whipped around.
Seeing the front of it made Teresa stagger back again.
It had no neck. Its “head” was an asymmetrical mass fused to the shoulders by twisted root-like muscle. One side of its face looked like it had been scalded by oil, then poisoned—covered in swollen blisters, the eye reduced to a narrow slit.
But the other half… the other half still carried traces of human structure.
And something about it felt familiar.
Teresa’s eyes widened in horror.
“It… it’s Barnett,” he whispered. “Isn’t it?”
Tyler Lynn laughed. “Not bad. You recognized him in one glance.”
“Ba… Barnett… kill… kill—kill-kill-kill!”
At the sound of his own name, the creature went into a frenzy, slamming the bars hard enough to make the multi-ton cage thunder like a drum.
“How—how did he end up like this?” Teresa stammered.
“I don’t know why it turned out this way,” Tyler Lynn said, pointing to a table stacked with vials and syringes. “I only applied his research to his own body.”
Teresa noticed the drugs—and went colder.
“You kidnapped him?”
“Yes,” Tyler Lynn said simply.
Teresa stared at him like he’d never seen him before, then drew his pistol and leveled it at Tyler Lynn’s head.
Tyler Lynn didn’t flinch. The smile never left.
He looked at Teresa and spoke a sentence that landed like an explosion.
“What?” he said. “You can get Little White into the Glimmer Guard… but I can’t kidnap Barnett?”