Bryce

I dropped into a crouch in front of the door controls. It was a little difficult typing my verification code from this position, but it didn’t take too long for me to get the door open.

I felt Thea’s hand on my shoulder and heard her whisper.

“Wait here and let me try something.”

Her body shimmered, and she vanished before I could respond. Unable to stop her, I turned towards Daelin. “Stay back. I think Aiden is firing blind.”

As if to contradict what I said, Aiden fired another shot, and the console exploded about a dozen centimeters above my head. I wasn’t sure how, but he was zeroing in on my location.

Daelin flinched, but then nodded at me quickly before slinking away towards the back wall.

I moved in the opposite direction to peer around the corner into the hangar.

It took me a moment to spot Aiden resting on top of my shuttle with a high powered anti-material rifle. It was exactly the type of weapon you shouldn’t be firing when you’re on a space station.

“Aiden! We just want to talk. There’s no reason anybody else has to die.” I was crouched low and shouting. There was a much too high of a chance that the rifle could pass through my shield, even after making it through the thick hangar walls.

“You killed Ava!”

That was technically incorrect, but I didn’t think being a pedant was going to help me right now, so I wasn’t about to argue the point.

“She was going to sacrifice me to a demon. I didn’t have a choice. Listen to me Aiden, if you leak what I was researching up here, then the corporation is going to purge the colony.”

Another hole appeared above me. Exactly where my head would have been if I were standing.

“They have the right to know that their hard work is being used to fund a monster. I won’t let you perfect the spell you used to destroy an entire system!”

I hadn’t actually destroyed the system. Just killed everybody that was living there, but again I didn’t think he was going to stop trying to kill me on a technicality.

“I perfected that spell years ago, the countermeasure too. I was feeding the corporation false information so they couldn’t weaponize it. Please Aiden, I’ll leave and you’ll never hear from me again. I just want what’s best for New Eden.”

I wasn’t lying. It wasn’t hard for me to come up with a countermeasure and the spell had already been pretty much perfect for what they wanted to use it for. I had just been stalling and doing personal research.

Two more shots rang out. I only felt the impact hit my shoulder after I was on the ground. Thankfully, my shield had held.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stop me from being blown back nearly two meters and having the wind knocked out of me.

“You’re lying! You’re a monster and you killed them all for your own-”

Thea cut Aiden’s tirade short with a quick squelching sound.

“Alright, princess, you can come out now.”

Thea was standing on top of my shuttle. She was holding Aiden’s corpse in one hand as she inspected the anti-material rifle in the other. She released Aiden before jumping after him, and landing inches from his head.

“I’m keeping this,” Thea said. The gun was comically large in her hand. I shook my head and entered the hangar with a sigh.

This was the only hangar on the station and could accommodate up to four shuttles the size of mine.

Crates containing reagents and research equipment took most of the space up. There were two shuttles docked between the mountains of equipment and sitting between those was Aiden’s terrible attempt at a transmitter.

“That thing will knock you on your ass if you try firing it. My mana increases your strength, but not your mass,” I said. “Daelin, please prepare your shuttle for departure. It looks like Aiden removed the power core from mine in order to power his little science experiment.”

“Certainly, executive, but you’ll need to lift the lockdown before we can leave.”

Things weren’t sitting right with me. There were too many inconsistencies that I couldn’t ignore.

“I want to clear out my research before we go, and I think I’m going to detonate the station.”

“Wait, like blow it up? With us on it?” Thea looked genuinely concerned.

“Yes, like blow it up, but not with us on it. I’ll try to have it explode sometime tomorrow night. We’ll be long gone.”

“Why destroy it?” Daelin asked.

“Two people are dead. There’s a summoning circle for a demon, and a lot of structural damage. I’d rather cost EVI Corp a few billion credits than try to explain everything that happened tonight. Besides, it might buy me a few years of not having to lie about my research.”

“Makes sense to me,” Thea said. She was looking through the sights of the rifle. At least she wasn’t pointing it at anybody.

“Very well, executive.” Daelin went inside the shuttle to start the pre-launch checks and I started towards the elevator.

I stopped before the airlock doors after a sudden realization.

If I was correct, then I would want some insurance, and I had just the person in mind.

“Hey Thea, mind getting the door for me?”

“Sure, I could probably even get it from over here.”

Thea leveled the rifle towards the elevator and mock fired at it. She made an explosion noise with her mouth before pulling the barrel into the air.

She was giggling until she pulled the trigger and went down like a bag of rocks from the recoil.

Thankfully, the gun was pointing at the ceiling when it went off, so the round had plenty of station to get through before it reached the vacuum of space.

I rushed over to check on her. She looked dazed but unharmed, so I took the rifle from her. I set it down in the shuttle, near the door, before helping her up.

“How about you stick to magic until we can get you some firearm programs, starting with trigger discipline?”

“Is everything alright out there?” Daelin shouted the question from inside the shuttle.

“Everything is fine. Just a minor mishap with Thea’s new toy,” I shouted back at Daelin before turning back to Thea. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she rubbed the back of her head, which messed up her hair even further. “I think you might be right. Or maybe I just need less recoil and more boom, think they make something like that?”

“Weapons aren’t my speciality but we could find you something. Although, training programs come first. After that, we can find something that you can safely use.”

“Alright, agreed. Now let me get that door for you like a proper gentle-lady.”

I smiled, a bit of heat coming to my cheeks as I followed her. We reached the door; she did her thing, and the elevator opened.

“There you are, princess. Your carriage awaits. Is there any other way in which I can be of assistance?”

“There is one thing.” She wouldn’t like this next part. Hells, I hated it, but if my suspicions were correct, then it needed to be done. “You can feel the shield I put around you before you killed Aiden, right?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s still there. Is everything okay, Bryce?” She must have recognized the shift in my demeanor because her smile dropped.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Daelin may have been involved with the coup.” Thea’s back stiffened, so I quickly continued. “It’s just a theory, but something doesn’t feel right. I’m going to investigate now, but if I find any evidence, I need to know that he can’t do anything.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“If I find something,” I hesitated for a moment. “I’ll drop the shields around both of you. If that happens, I need you to kill Daelin.”

“I’ll do it, but only if you find something.”

I nodded at that and selected the first level after stepping into the elevator.

“Bryce,” I looked up at her as the elevator doors failed to close. “Please be sure, I like Daelin.”

“I will be.” I liked Daelin, too.

I held my breath for the brief elevator ride to the bridge and stepped over the destroyed door before walking back to the security terminal.

I kept a physical notebook with the results of my actual research and I had falsified any notes that were kept in the station’s databanks. Which meant that I didn't actually need to erase anything, but I wanted to add a report about the lockdown and maybe drop some hints about the fireworks that I had planned for tomorrow.

I wrote up a story about how I had accidentally overloaded a mana gem and put the station into lockdown, then stored the gem in the experimentation lab before it detonated.

That would hopefully suffice as an excuse for why the station went into the more secure lockdown. After that report, I added an entry stating that I intended to repeat the experiment with a larger gem overnight.

This would let me blow up the station with raw mana instead of using the self-destruct. Which would allow me to destroy the black box, that was something that I had designed the self-destruct not to do.

Of course, I was still going to erase the internal security logs, just to be safe. After I looked at them. Which I still needed to do.

I was procrastinating. I knew what I would find, and I just didn’t want to confirm what I suspected, so I was procrastinating.

Forcing myself to detach, I began shifting through the logs.

It only took me a moment of skimming through the videos to find the right day. When I did, I saw Daelin’s shuttle already in the hangar.

I pulled up the logs from the previous day and fast forward until I see myself arrive in the early morning and leave that evening.

I skipped forward several hours and saw Daelin’s shuttle arrive.

I stopped the video. I could predict what would happen next, and I didn’t want to see it. Daelin wasn’t supposed to be on the station without me. He had no reason to be there.

My promise to Thea spurred me to start the video again.

I watched as Daelin exited his shuttle, traveled down in the elevator, and entered the fitness room on the third floor.

I swapped camera angles in order to better see him pick up my water bottle and pour a packet of powder into it.

I closed out of the video and leaned back in my chair.

“FUCK!”

I don’t know why I started the next video, but I did. I watched as Daelin left later that night and came back in the morning, after I had started my workout.

Ava was the first off the shuttle, wearing that ridiculous red robe. Aiden followed, and then Daelin.

Daelin went to the medical lab and the other two went to collect my unconscious body from the fitness room.

I already knew this story, and not wanting to relive my imprisonment and torture, I closed out of the video again.

Now I understood how Ava and Aiden had poisoned me and why there were only two shuttles in the hangar.

But why did Daelin betray me, and why would he treat me afterward?

I was pretty sure that Daelin was the one to warn Aiden we were coming, which is why he was ready with a rifle.

If they were talking to each other, I should be able to find their communication logs on the station’s local net.

There were a few things of note, mostly conversations coordinating between the three of them trying to undo the lockdown. Eventually, I found the logs labeled for the time that I had been unconscious.

New Eden High Risk Research Station communication logs 31650033920

13:05:20 - Ava Weirloch connection terminated.

13:05:20 - Aiden Baker: What was that? Why would Ava disconnect without saying anything?

13:05:37 - Daelin Toch: She didn’t disconnect, the ‘connection terminated’, she’s dead. The Executive must have escaped somehow. Hurry and get the lockdown lifted. If the Mage’s bane has worn off, we’re going to be next.

13:05:44 - Aiden Baker: Fucking shit. I’ll keep working at it, but we might just have to wait for somebody to come for us. Katrina should realize that something is wrong and send somebody to check on Bryce. You said that dose would kill her, She’s clearly not dead.

13:06:15 - Daelin Toch: That dose would have killed an elder dragon. I don’t know how she survived it, but I won’t be the one to ask. Keep the line clear, I’m trying to focus.

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13:37:07 - Daelin Toch: Aiden, These doors are fire resistant, all you’ll end up doing is setting off the fire alarm and making it more difficult for me to concentrate.

13:37:15 - Aiden Baker: That wasn’t me. What in the hells could she be doing down there?

13:37:52 - Daelin Toch: Get back to work.

13:38:54 - Daelin Toch: and Aiden, you're going to want to hurry.

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15:59:53 - Daelin Toch: The demon summoning worked, the executive is alive but unconscious. She appears to have formed a pact with the demon, but I don’t think that she knows I’m involved. I’m going to poison her under the guise of helping her recover.

15:59:55 - Aiden Baker: Fuck that. Kill her now. We can’t risk her waking up.

15:59:59 - Daelin Toch: If I did that, then the demon would kill me. I need to make it look like I’m helping her. I’ll let you know when she’s dead.

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21:06:29 - Aiden Baker: What is going on down there? Is she dead yet?

21:07:02 - Daelin Toch: No, she is not. I have thrown every poison I could concoct into this woman and her nanites just shrug it off. I don’t know what she has done to make them this efficient. At this point her blood should be toxic enough to kill every person in New Eden several times over, but I can’t find a trace of anything.

21:07:21 - Aiden Toch: Just. Kill. Her. She’s not even awake. She can’t cast spells, cut her throat or something.

21:07:23 - Daelin Toch: It’s too late, she’s waking up. I’ll be in contact.

I got up from the console.

I walked to the elevator.

I selected the second level and as the elevator descended, I ended the shielding spell.