"We did not kill Remus" Kiri pleaded as another bolt of electricity shot through her.

She had been invited to a networking meetup with a group of representatives from an organization that was well known for its industrial manufacturing expertise, her own specialization. But on her way, her bubble ship had been intercepted. By a god damned garbage trawling ship of all things.

"Yes, yes, you have said that a thousand times already." Flavia adjusted the controls on the device. "What we are interested in are the details. Where is this uncharted planet where you claim this creature killed Remus."

The room around looked like a part of some abandoned industrial complex. The walls were rough-hewn from the rawest of stones, each surface pockmarked with the remnants of old mineral deposits. Rusted metallic beams supported the roof. The floor was a cold, unforgiving expanse of polished concrete. Deposits of dark soot and rusty stains could be seen in many corners.

"I don't know," Kiri whimpered as her head exploded once again into searing agony. Rivulets of sweat and grime continued to drip onto the floor below. Her hollow chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged breaths, each one a testament to the excruciating suffering she had endured for the last few days. She was now on the edge of losing her sanity.

"It is somewhere in Sector 49; I don't know the details." Kiri yelled. So far, she had managed to keep Norman's involvement a secret. She owned him that much. But that was proving to be too hard.

"That doesn't make any sense. Our star-charts indicate that it will take five years to navigate to Sector 49." Flavia had intended to end this interrogation in a few hours. But it had dragged on for days, and each minute now pushed the limits of her patience. She forced her chip up to look at her eyes.

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"There is a wormhole that skips through Sector 46 and 45 completely." Kiri sobbed.

"Two kids discovered a new wormhole?" The chances of that happening was so astronomically low that Flavia did not believe her for a second.

"We found it by accident. I don't know where it is precisely." Forcing out every word was a fresh torment for Kiri at this point.

"Stop this stupidity," Flavia slapped Kiri's already bruised face - hard. "If you didn't know its location precisely, how the hell did you come back?"

Flavia suddenly remembered something. Something that she had almost forgotten about. She had spent weeks digging deep into everything Remus had been doing before he died.

And one of the most bizarre expenses that he had splurged on for no apparent reason was a restoration of an old Yaskh treatise. She pulled the restoration up on her tablet and searched through it.

"This wouldn't be the wormhole you were referring to, would it?" The tablet projected a hologram of the page where its location was described. An incomplete translation and numerous cross-references appeared adjacent to it - past unsuccessful attempts to find that wormhole.

"Very interesting. Somehow you managed to decipher the instructions that professional expedition guilds have not been able to." Flavia, scratched her chin. "Except it wasn't you who did it, was it?"

She scrolled through the list of past student projects. Academy records of student projects were not confidential. Student profiles were publicly published too. Eventually, she stopped scrolling as she found a profile that was the perfect fit.

"Norman Ferus." Right below the very prominent award that he had received just a year ago for reverse engineering of Yaskh artifacts was a list of his current projects. The very first one on that list included Kiri as a collaborator.

Flavia's smile turned into a snarl when she saw his score.

"Well, he will have ample opportunity to demonstrate how smart he is."

Kiri gave in to the encroaching darkness.