I left my office, throwing my coat and boots on over my sleeping clothes. I needed to get away for a bit. But no matter how far I could walk - which wasn't that far, on a space station - I was never going to be able to get away from the person causing me this latest bout of pain.

Myself.

I needed to know, right? I couldn't let it rest. Not even if the cost were losing Xen's friendship and affection. Xen knew things, about Xen's past, and probably about Lisia too. All locked away in that head. So while part of me hated myself for demanding it of Xen, another part of me still demanded to know. It was in my nature. Detective wasn't just a job title to me. All my life I'd been this way, even as a little petal. In the camps, when Gran and I were homeless during the civil war, I tracked down a guy who was stealing camp supplies. As a teen, I lost a lot of friends because I was too nosey, exposing any lie that people tried to get past me as idle gossip. I couldn't just let minor lies fly by as social lubricant. No, the truth was too important. So too, when I went into the Keepers. Our world's greatest criminal had escaped all repercussions. I couldn't let that lie.

Even now, knowing what she'd suffered when she came here, I had absolutely no intention of letting her escape justice.

And after Astera lied to me all those years, manipulated me into breaking the rules and saying she'd cover for me as my boss, my drive to reach for the truth was only greater. No one would ever get one over on me like that again.

Even if Xen was nothing like Astera, still. I refused to let the truth go uncovered.

My wanderings brought me out of the corridors and into the Atrium, where everything was in chaos.

I ignored the fact that I was in my sleeping clothes under my coat, and rushed forward to the windows, where many people were clustered. Beyond the viewport, the singularity had grown to almost twice the size it was when I'd last seen it. The nearest gases of the Bramble were being pulled in, great streams of nebula material being sucked past the station in streams faster than any terrestrial water. Somehow, beyond my understanding, the Thorn was holding steady in all of this.

But the people around me weren't. Down on the base of the Atrium, the entire floor was filled with people trying to get passage out of here, but there were no ships docked at present.

To make matters worse, an alarm started, and did not relent; a long thin whine which cycled up and down an ear-piercing octave. Down at the base, I saw stat sec officers pouring out of their offices, only to run into the back of the crowd at the port.

Frod barreled his way through the crowd, and up onto the nearest staircase, a trail of officers behind him. All of them had their batons extended and pistols out.

Curiosity pulled me down, despite a nagging feeling which told me maybe I should get back home and arm up.

I ran down the nearest spiral staircase, keeping my eyes on Frod's progress across the Atrium as much as I could. At the fourth level, I closed with him, catching him just before he could head up to the fifth.

"Constable!"

He pushed past me. "Not now, Detective! Get back into your office. There's been a prison break."

My throat constricted to a tiny hole, barely letting air in. "Who? Who got out?"

He yelled over his shoulder. "Everybody. Get where it's safe, NOW!"

Screams from other places in the Atrium came thick and fast.

Xen.

Xen was in danger.

I turned on my speed mod and ran back to the office.

The stairs, the corridor, it was all too much distance to cover. He could be there already. Him, and however many cronies he wanted to bring with him.

I arrived at my level to find my office door wrenched open, busted, continuously trying to close, getting stuck, and opening again. Lingering by the door, I could see two thugs in there, trashing my office. Finally, that chair I'd always expected to betray me one day was broken in half, through no fault of its own.

Teg Korr came lumbering out of my back rooms, yelling, "Damn it, where is that gynoid?!"

Then he locked eyes with me.

I ran. I ran without looking back, wincing at the crashing and smashing sounds behind me, ran for the Atrium because there were so many stairs and blind turns and people in there, and I could lose him even if he turned his speed mod on because I was small and he was huge.

I was out by the balcony by the time he came roaring out of the corridor. The parallels to Xen's faked death did not escape me. I leapt down the nearest spiral staircase, slipping past people running up.

Behind me, I thought I could hear Korr bashing into people, if the cries of surprise and pain were anything to go by. Again, I didn't look.

Too close. Way too close. I could hear his breathing. Maybe I was hallucinating, maybe not. I switched my weapon mod on, knowing full well that even if I used it in self-defence, I was absolutely going down for having the mod in the first place. But better alive than dead, even if I was in prison for it.

On the next level down, I slipped into the crowd by the windows, where surely it was too thick for Korr to simply barge his way through. This time I did chance a look behind, and found that my guess had been correct. Korr had pushed his way through a few people, but he was finding it harder to keep up with little old me now. By the time I got to the other side of the window, some fifteen metres across, he'd only gotten about halfway. With his roar of frustration in my ears, I careened down the next spiral staircase -

- straight into Hanzel Gibb.

He saw me, gritted his teeth, and charged the metre between us with an electrified blade in his hand.

I shot him dead, leapt over the body, and sped for the corridors into the offices and apartments, ignoring the screams following me.

Xen. Where was Xen? If not in my office or back rooms, maybe Xen was still in the air duct. But my office wasn't safe anymore. The air ducts could go any number of places, I just had to do some research on where they went. But where would I be safe to do so?

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Ah. Of course. The one place only I had access to, where hopefully Korr didn't know to look for me.

Xen's apartment.

I had no idea if the locks would have been changed or if the leasing agency had already leased it out to someone else. It was the only thing I could think of for now.

Korr's roar echoed down the corridors already, down the stairs, behind me. He wouldn't necessarily know I'd gone up a level since he saw me, but I couldn't hang around to find out. Despite the fact that it would heighten my perception of the screaming in the Atrium and the blaring sirens, I needed to turn on my perception mod so I could anticipate his arrival around any corner. So I did, turning it on its lowest setting.

Every scream echoed as if through a tinny microphone, travelling through all the miles of corridor on the station. But underneath that, Korr's footsteps were coming up the same set of stairs I was on.

I ran up another level, then ran left down the corridor to the next set of stairs.

I listened again. He came up to the level below me, then kept going up.

I went up also, and paused. This was Xen's apartment's level. I waited until he went up a level again, then ducked in under his path, towards Xen's apartment.

The door responded to my wristband by opening. The room was laid out exactly as when I last saw it, bare of Xen's most vital equipment. I stepped in and pressed the button to close and lock the door.

Korr's footsteps continued on up and above me. I shut the perception mod off, and the speed and weapon mods, and lay down on the floor in the furthest part of the tiny closet of a room. For a good ten minutes, I just breathed with my eyes shut, and did nothing else. The pain from the mods set in, and I rode the waves until they diminished in importance. I also took a moment to worry about my Gran, who I hadn’t even spared a thought for in all this rush. But she had probably stayed put when the forcefields fell in Stat Sec. I could only hope.

When at last I had my breath back, I went to the data screen, wiped off the dust, and turned it on. The very first thing that popped up was the station-wide alert.

WARNING: a number of dangerous felons have escaped Stat Sec.

Had to be pretty urgent if the message bearer couldn’t even be bothered writing out the whole phrase, Station Security.

All members of the public are asked to lock themselves in their apartments or office buildings and barricade all doors. Do not leave your places of safety until official word from Constable Frod arrives. All station security personnel are to report immediately for emergency duty.

On the station chat room, confused message bubbles popped up, almost too fast to read from the heavy volume of them going by. The word was out though: this was the Wilt's fault. They'd caused the prison break. Most people seemed to know who the WIlt was already. No one knew why they would go so public right this minute, but I had my suspicions. They were probably angry that I'd broken into Gibb's office and gotten all that incriminating data. Little did they know, it was all backed up and in Black Rose's possession already. So their goose was well cooked, with or without this chaos. Then again, perhaps they might move on Black Rose today as well. Hopefully her personal security was up to the job of defending her again.

I searched all publicly available information about the air ducts first. Then I hacked into more sensitive systems when the info was not forthcoming, and found a 3D map of the station's filtration labyrinth. Even with all of that, it was going to take forever to map all the places Xen could possibly be. Maybe Xen would wind up here, if Xen knew what Xen was doing. I followed a number of different routes, trying to map out places where I could search for Xen as soon as I felt safe to leave. But it was a huge undertaking, and I was not even a quarter done by the time the knock on the door came.

"Marys?" came Constable Frod's spluttery baritone. "Come on out."

"Is it safe?" I murmured through the thin gap in the sliding doors.

"Of course it's safe. I would hardly ask you to come out otherwise."

I opened the door, looked around, then beckoned the Constable in. He sighed, and followed me in. I shut the door behind us.

"How did you know I was here?"

"Tracked you by the wristband, of course."

"Oh, right. Did my grandmother escape too?”

“No, she stayed exactly where she was, as I suspect you would have guessed already. It was probably the safest place she could be, all things considered.”

I sighed with relief for that one piece of good news. I felt pretty awful that Gran had been my last priority in all this, but I’d had Xen and myself to worry about in the meantime. “Why are you here? Is it over?"

"We've rounded almost everyone up, but we're not calling the lockdown off just yet, not until we've secured all other persons of interest."

Persons of interest? I had a bad feeling in my gut.

"Is this because of Hanzel Gibb?"

"I heard that you shot him dead in the Atrium. But I also heard it was self-defence, as he was running at you with a weapon. I can see you don't have a gun on you right now, so I suppose you must have picked one up in the chaos to defend yourself, and lost it?"

His tone suggested strongly that I should agree with his misconception and give him no cause to investigate further into the matter. I nodded, and he nodded, grumbling as he did. "That's right, so... this isn't about Gibb then?"

"No. This is about Teg Korr. He's still on the loose."

"Ah damn it... not good, not good..."

"And it's about certain equipment we discovered in your office just now, while investigating Korr's trail of destruction throughout the station. Namely, an empty box of synthaskin, sheets of expired synthaskin in your waste disposal, a head's worth of blue synthetic hair in a box, a synthetic recharging station, and items of clothing known to belong to one Xen, formerly of this station - or so we were led to believe. Marys, would you like to confess something to me now, and be done with it?"

What was the point anymore? He all but knew. I imagined he'd guessed it a long time ago, but now the evidence in the hands of stat sec meant he had to investigate officially.

"You've already guessed as much, but Xen and I faked Xen's death, Constable. We thought it would be a sure-fire way of escaping Teg Korr. Xen's been living with me in secret ever since, because he didn't buy it. We were going to announce the fake-out to everyone on the station once he'd gone. But obviously, we never got the chance. And now both Xen and I are in danger, because Korr wants us dead."

Frod grumbled again, stroking his whiskers down until they met under his chin. Then he sighed, and pulled out his cuffs from his belt. "Amaryllis Sophora - for lack of a better name - you are under arrest for fraudulent and suspicious activities, including but not limited to forgery, synthetic trafficking, and lying to stat sec."

I let him cuff me, too tired to resist. "Frod, come on. You know I was trying to do right by Xen. It's Xen! Everyone loves Xen."

"Anything you say may be used as evidence against you."

"Frod, come on. What can I pay you? What's my freedom worth?"

"Suspect has attempted to bribe the arresting officer, which shall be noted and added to the accused crimes."

Right, so, turns out that he'd offer bribes to get information, but the man himself was beyond reproach. "Frod, seriously! I thought we were on the same team! You, me - and Black Rose and Nadir! Come on. We're all working together to shut down the Wilt. I got you all the financial information -"

"Suspect has admitted to breaking and entering, corporate espionage, burglary of a business, bodily harm, drugging a member of the public -"

"Frod! I did It for Black Rose. You can't arrest me yet, I'm not done working for her." That caught his attention. He quirked an eyebrow at me. "After all, if she's supported me this whole time, giving me money and clues and sending Nadir to help, then she must want me to arrest Lisia Helianthe. She must -"

He started laughing, a deep, throaty, honest laugh that had him bending over and slapping his knees. By the end of it, he stood up tall, and wiped tears from his eyes. "Oh, Marys. Oh, you silly little fool. Come on. Down to the station with you."

"What did I say? What's so funny?"

"Never you mind. March it, prisoner."

I stumbled ahead of him out into the corridor, all the way down to the cells wondering: what the heck did I say that was so damn funny?