Venus Time: 11:31, March 25, 2295

  Service Corridors, The Citadel, Jin Syue, Northern Venus

  The women's restroom smelled like jasmine and cedar oil.

  Xin stood between two lacquered stalls, H?kon pressed flat against his left shoulder. The tile floor was pale green, polished to a mirror sheen. A brass incense holder burned near the wash basins, filling the room with smoke. Everything about this place screamed noblewomen. Everything about Xin said wrong room, wrong person.

  "Pappa..." H?kon's voice was barely a whisper, his scales cycling through nervous brown. "This girl room."

  "I know, buddy. So we'll be quick."

  He checked his Nucleus Watch. Diego's relay channel blinked green on the small display. Live and steady.

  Xin tapped the interface twice and slipped into incognito mode. No broadcast signature, no handshake requests. A passive scan skimming the Citadel's system architecture from its outermost edges, reading the network.

  "An anti-psionic blanket draped across the entire Citadel. Hmm." He bit back the discomfort.

  The ward hit him first. Uniform and heavy, like static buzzing behind his teeth. His Void affinity, already modest, went flat and muted. Like trying to hum underwater. H?kon's Lunar-based frost would be the same—suppressed down to nothing.

  They were running on baseline human capability down here. For Sigrun, that still meant a lot. For Xin, with his Power:1 and his skinny hands and his fifty-two kilograms soaking wet, it meant considerably less.

  The hatch was exactly where Roach had described. A floor panel set beneath a decorative tile at the base of the wall, almost invisible unless one knew the grout line was a millimeter too wide. Xin pried the tile free with his fingernails, found the panel's latch, and lifted.

  Warm air rose from below. Sulfurous. Wet. The amber glow of maintenance lighting bled up through the opening, and metal rungs descended into it.

  H?kon pressed his snout against the gap and sniffed. His scales shifted to an even deeper brown.

  "Stinky down there, Pappa."

  "Yeah." Xin swung his legs over the edge, found the first rung with his foot, and started climbing down. "Down we go."

  The architecture changed within meters.

  Above were lacquered wood, silk lanterns, incense smoke, the quiet elegance of a palace built to impress. Below were exposed pipes, condensation dripping from ceilings so low Xin could press his palms flat against them, and a constant vibration that he felt in his fillings more than heard. Venus's geothermal grid fed everything in Jin Syue. The pipes were hot, but Xin avoided any that were too warm to touch.

  H?kon clung to Xin's shoulder with all four claws, tail curled around the back of his neck. His blue eyes caught the amber tunnel light and threw it back in tiny twin reflections.

  They reached a junction where three corridors met at odd angles. Iron Roach was already there.

  He was dressed in maintenance coveralls the color of dirty clay, a toolbox at his feet, his posture exactly right: slightly hunched, looking bored, the body language of a contract worker halfway through a shift he didn't want. His cybernetic eyes caught the tunnel light, glinting in the sulfur haze. Without the man's red-tinted sunglasses, Xin almost didn't know what to look for, and would have walked right past.

  "Took you long enough." Roach's voice was low and rough like gravel.

  He crouched and opened the toolbox. Inside, nestled in foam padding: Jade, Xin's emerald 10mm Magnum, oiled and loaded. And beside it, Skuld in brick configuration, the white composite and golden filigree compressed into a rectangle the size of a paperback novel. Sigrun's weapon. Waiting for her.

  "Your lady's party favor is in there too," Roach said.

  "She'll want it later, yeah." Xin picked up Jade. The polymer grip settled against his palm and his breathing steadied. "I can do this."

  His hand trembled. Power:1. He could barely open jars. The Magnum's recoil would throw his aim if he fired too fast. And with the ward smothering every psionic signal in the Citadel, the neural link sat dormant in his glasses. No green reticle. No AI-assisted targeting. Just Xin, his eyes, and a gun that kicked harder than he could handle.

  "No weapon, no sidearm, no nothing for me." Roach closed the toolbox over Skuld.

  "Not even a utility knife?" Xin raised an eyebrow.

  "My cover as a pipe fitter didn't include hardware, and blowing the identity this early would—" Roach met his gaze. "—fuck your exit strategy right up."

  "Right." Xin holstered Jade against his thigh and didn't say more.

  "Route's mapped." Roach tapped his temple where a neural implant flickered beneath the skin. "Tianshu Terminal is three levels deeper. Been mapping guard rotations, too. Blood Swallows patrol the lower tunnels in pairs. Rust Crows stick to the upper levels. Down here, Swallows only."

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  "How many?"

  Roach looked at him. "More than you'd like."

  They moved through the tunnels. Roach on point, Xin in the middle, H?kon on his shoulder with scales shifting from nervous amber to a watchful dark blue.

  The corridors narrowed as they descended. Designed for maintenance crews hauling pipe sections and toolkits. The ceiling pressed close enough that Roach had to duck at the junctions. Sulfur from the geothermal vents, condensation dripping into puddles, and underneath it all, something organic and rotten.

  They passed through a sewage junction. A wide chamber where waste pipes from the Citadel's upper floors converged before routing to treatment systems.

  Roach stopped. His fist came up. "Stop."

  Xin saw it a second later.

  In the far corner of the junction, hunched over an open pipe where the sludge ran thick and dark, something fed.

  The Skuggr was the size of a large wolf, maybe bigger. Its chitinous exoskeleton caught the amber light and threw it back in sick, oily rainbows. It had its mandibles buried in the waste flow, head bobbing in a slow rhythm, like a garbage disposal running on autopilot.

  Xin stared. He'd never thought about what Skuggrs ate. Now he was watching it.

  The creature's eyes were glazed and unfocused. It hadn't noticed them.

  H?kon's claws dug into Xin's shoulder. The little Diabolisk pressed his face into Xin's neck. His scales had gone dark brown—the kind of anxiety that made his whole body rigid.

  Ten seconds passed. The Skuggr didn't look up.

  Roach gestured. Go around. Wide.

  They edged along the opposite wall, boots careful on the wet floor. Xin placed each step like he was walking on glass, watching the Skuggr's mandibles work, listening to the wet crunch-and-slurp that echoed off the chamber walls. H?kon didn't make a sound, going very still.

  Once they were past and around the next corner, Roach murmured. "That's the third one since I came in. These pipes belong to the female restroom up above. Don't recall seeing any Skuggr under the male one."

  Xin let the implication settle. "They feed on female urine and feces. Either the Fenris has already penetrated Jin Syue's foundations..."

  "Or the Imperium let the Fenris live in their sewage, growing fat on what the ladies' toilets flushed away."

  "Need to send what we've seen here. The Alliance people would want to know." Xin tapped his Nucleus Watch's secondary channel and sent a compressed message to Diego on the Polaris. Three seconds of encrypted burst.

  Diego's reply came back, the Novian's voice crisp in Xin's earpiece: "Some discovery, amigo. Transmitting these to Delegate Pompeo. Keep going, si?"

  "Yep. Going deeper."

  The tunnels were older here. The architecture shifted from modern prefab panels and plasteel framing to stone walls, hand-laid, with copper fixtures. The air tasted different too. Less sulfur. More dust.

  Roach signaled a halt at a T-junction. He leaned around the corner, held for two seconds, and pulled back. His jaw was tight. "Swallow. Solo. Off her patrol route."

  Xin looked.

  A single Blood Swallow stood in the corridor ahead, maybe seven meters out. Her crimson-and-ebony armor was fitted close to her body, functional and minimal, twin Zephyrium Daggers sheathed at her hips. She was examining a maintenance panel on the wall, fingers tracing the copper housing.

  Her posture was alert. Her movements were exact.

  "She looks nineteen," Xin commented.

  "They all look nineteen," Roach replied dryly.

  "Can we go around?" Xin whispered.

  Roach shook his head once. "Only route down."

  The math hit Xin like a wall.

  Roach: unarmed, cover too valuable to risk. Xin: Jade, an unenchanted 10mm with no neural link in a dead ward zone, and a P:1 that meant close-quarters combat was a death sentence. H?kon: frost suppressed, claws too small, body too fragile. And the Blood Swallow was a Radi-Human. Synthetic. Enhanced reflexes. Enhanced stamina. Trained to kill from the moment she could walk, which was probably about six months after whatever facility she was grown in switched her on.

  "I'd avoid hurting...or killing women...at any cost."

  "It's not a woman. Just a doll made to look like one."

  Sighing, Xin raised Jade. Without the neural link's assistance, he lined up the iron sights manually. Seven meters. Clean angle. His hands shook anyway.

  He fired.

  The 10mm Magnum kicked hard against his wrist and the shot caught her in the shoulder, spinning her half around. The crack of it filled the tunnel, bounced off stone, rang in his ears.

  She didn't scream.

  She didn't even flinch the way a person would. Her head snapped toward them, dark eyes locking on. Her lips parted. A voice came out flat and rehearsed, like scripture recited from memory.

  "The Master teaches: 'A daughter of the Dragon exists to serve. She who questions her purpose forfeits her place beneath heaven.'"

  Then she was moving. Daggers drawn in a motion so fluid it looked choreographed. Closing the distance, boots finding traction on the wet stone without a slip.

  Roach stepped in.

  No weapon. Just fists and arms. He caught her dagger arm at the wrist, redirected the thrust, used her own momentum to slam her into the wall hard enough that dust rained from the ceiling. The stone cracked where her shoulder hit.

  The Blood Swallow recovered instantly. The second dagger flashed toward his throat.

  Xin fired again. The recoil kicked Jade high and to the right, wrenching his wrist, and the round took her in the side below the armor's seam. She staggered. One step. Two.

  Roach grappled her from behind, locking both arms, his forearms cording with effort as he dragged her against his chest. She writhed. Silent. Her face was blank. Fighting without expression, without anger or fear or any of the things that should be there when someone was dying.

  Something ugly twisted across Roach's face. His red-tinted eyes went flat.

  "Do it," he ground out.

  Xin stepped forward. Put Jade against her temple. Close enough to see where the skin met the hairline, close enough to smell that clean chemical blankness where a person's scent should have been.

  Her dark eyes met his. The same manufactured symmetry. The same face that would be stamped on a hundred more just like her, still growing in cultivation tanks somewhere in this city.

  "I'm sorry." He fired.

  She dropped.

  The tunnel rang with the echo. A long, hollow sound that rolled away into the dark and didn't come back.

  H?kon slid down from Xin's shoulder.

  The little Diabolisk approached the body on all fours, cautious. He sniffed the air near the fallen woman's face, nostrils flaring. His scales cycled through confused beige.

  "Pappa...doll lady smell wrong." He looked up, small face scrunched. His tongue flicked once. "No smell like real lady. Like...toy. Toy smell."

  Xin stared at the dead Blood Swallow. A low-grade Radi-Human grown in a facility. No name, no mother. Poured into a tank and switched on like a machine.

  "Yeah, buddy." His voice came out hollow. "Toy smell."

  H?kon pressed himself back against Xin's leg, scales dark brown again. Xin picked him up and set him on his left shoulder, felt the small claws grip, felt the trembling.

  "It's okay." Xin managed a half-smile as he stroked the little Diabolisk's back.

  Roach was already looking down the corridor. "More where she came from. I count at least a dozen on regular patrol in the archive wing."

  A dozen. Xin with Jade and wrists that ached from two shots. Roach unarmed and bound by a cover identity that was the only thing keeping their exit route intact. H?kon's frost smothered by the ward, his tiny body shaking against Xin's neck.

  Against twelve Radi-Human, synthetic girl soldiers who recited dead philosophy when you shot them.

  "We need Sigrun." Xin decided.