Even in my dreams, I could hear Valrea whimper. I rolled, reaching for her, eager to get another taste before we left for our midnight appointment. But she wasn't there.

The weak sound caught my ears again and I sat up straight.

Not a moan of pleasure, but of pain.

Valrea curled into a ball in the far corner of the room, sweaty and shaking.

“Hey,” I pushed her hair out of her face, shocked. “You’re burning up,” I whispered. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, I didn't want you to see me like this.”

“You’re sick, that's all.” Though I couldn't think of anything that could have struck this quickly. Was she bitten by an insect while we were outside? Just because nothing had happened before didn't mean it was safe.

I cursed myself while I searched over her, looking for a puncture, a stinger, anything.

“No,” she weakly jerked her leg away from me. “I'm fine. Just give me a minute.”

She rolled off the bed and pulled herself up on the wall until her legs gave out beneath her and I caught her.

“Val, you've got to stay in bed.”

“No.” Silent tears washed down her face. “They've won. I have to go back.”

“What are you talking about? Everyone gets sick sometimes.” None of this made sense.

She closed her eyes. “I'm not sick. I'm an addict.”

My heart stopped, my breath caught in my throat as her words sunk in.

An addict.

No. I wouldn't believe it.

“I've been with you for days,” I insisted. “You've never needed to take anything.”

“I have, you just haven't noticed. I never know how strong the dose is, exactly how long it will be before I need another one.”

“But what is it? If you don't know what it is why take it?”

Spasms wracked her body, a cruel mockery of the pleasure we had just shared. I held her until it passed, and she could speak.

“I take it because I have to. I don't know the first time they gave it to me.”

A slow building rage replaced my confusion.

“They gave it to you? Who?”

“The Companion,” she looked away, shame clouding her face. “It's always from the Companion.”

She pushed away. “You have to let me go back. I’m a risk to your mission now.”

“You're out of your mind,” I argued. “You can barely walk.”

“The worst of it will pass. It always does. I'll be better for a while before it strikes again.”

Another cramp struck, and she coiled on herself.

“Usually.”

I drew her back into my lap, forcing down my fury.

“Val, you may be addicted to whatever they gave you. But you didn't choose this. This isn't your fault.”

“Fault doesn't matter, don't you get it?” her flat eyes passed across my face, empty, hopeless. “This is my punishment. It just happens.”

“Punishment for what? If they've drugged you with this poison since you were a child, what could possibly justify it?”

She closed her eyes, sagged against my chest, quiet for so long I thought she had collapsed back into unconsciousness.

“I don't know,” she finally whispered. “I used to ask, but they never told me. Now I don't give them the satisfaction.”

I held her, rocking, my mind in chaos.

We had to get those codes. If nothing else, I needed access to a shuttle, a hopper, anything to get Valrea off this accursed island.

I owed it to my brothers, dead and living. I owed it to myself to get the plans that would lead to a successful attack, get us all answers.

But I couldn't let Valrea go back to the monsters that had done this to her.

“I trusted you when it was time for that rescue plan, right babe?” I kissed her forehead, watched her eyes flutter behind the lids.

“Yeah. You did. Probably shouldn’t have.”

“Then I need you to trust me this time. I'm going to go to the meeting with Tianna. And then I'm going to get your pills.”

“Tianna won’t trust you, not by yourself.”

True. “I’ve got the phrase from Abril,” I muttered. “She’ll believe that.”

Valrea choked out a barking laugh. “Yeah. Fine. Tell her the clamp is backward, and I couldn’t make it. Maybe she’ll believe that, too.”

“What?”

“If Abril can send a code phrase, so can I.”

“Fine, I can do that.”

“But you can’t get the pills. Get the codes and go.”

I smoothed the hair back from her face, wishing I could smooth away the lines of pain as easily. “Not happening, babe.”

“The pills are in the Companion’s room. Only the Companion has access to them.”

Then I will rip the Companion apart until I get access, I thought.

“You don't worry about that. You just wait for me, all right?”

Her hand gripped mine tightly. “But what if you don't come back?

I would. Nothing would stop me.

But in her fever-induced fears, she couldn’t believe me.

“Wait as long as you can, promise me that? I'll tell Tianna to keep checking the tunnel. If she finds you, she can take you back. But she won't need to.”

I tucked Valrea into the bed, wishing for deep pillows and cool sheets, rather than a rough blanket stretched over branches. Hell, a narrow bunk in medbay would suit me just fine.

“I'll be back for you, I promise. Get some rest.”

I forced myself to turn away, hurrying to the meeting place.

And I'd burn the Compound down around them all to return to her safely.

* * *

By the time I pulled myself up into the maintenance corridor I was furious.

Tianna waited for me, face taut and pale. "Why are you late? What happened?” She looked behind me. “Where’s Val?”

“What is wrong with you people? I roared. “I thought you were her friend. How could you let that be done to her?”

Eyes wide, Tianna raised her hands and stepped back. “I don't know what you’re talking about. Where is she?”

“She is sick,” I ground out from clenched teeth as I loomed over the woman. “Because the madmen who run this precious Compound decided it would be fun to punish her for something. And never tell her what it was. Just randomly torture her.” I slammed my fist into the wall. “What the hell is going on in this place?”

Tianna’s shoulders sank. “I don't know.” She leaned against the wall. “I'm not sure if I ever did.”

“Then why are you here?” I demanded. “None of this makes any sense.”

“It did once, I think. At least, it did to my parents. As far as why I’m still here, I've never had a choice.”

“What?”

She waved her arms over her head. “Everyone here, we’re pretty much all descendants of the General’s first followers. They came here to execute the plan. We’re still working on it. We’ve never left.”

“What sort of plan takes this long? And what does this have to do with Val?”

She shook her head. “By the time I took over in mechanicals the original files had been sealed, corrupted or lost. I don't know what the delay was, or if the plan changed. But it didn't matter. Here we were. We had to try to make lives, families.”

I could see it. I could see the arrogant bastard of the dossier leading his people off to a hidden retreat, sealing them away from the Empire until the time was right. But what went wrong?

“Please,” she risked touching my arm and I tried not to snarl at her for Valrea's sake. “My daughter, is she all right? Did she survive?”

Dammit. I had just torn into a terrified mother for things she had no control over. Good job working on that caring business, guy.

“Yes. They're both fine. Not interested in doing that again, but okay.”

She looked at me expectantly and I remembered.

“Abril said ‘breaking dawn’.” I remembered Valrea’s addition. “And Val says to tell you the clamp is in backward. Or upside down. That what you needed to hear?”

She nodded, the tension finally seeping from her body. Tianna bit her lip, nodded. “Stanton was there, he could've overheard. But she trusted you. So will I.”

I started to say more, but she cut me off.

“I don't want to know where they are, it's not safe.” She swallowed. “They’ll have to find their own way, but at least they’ve escaped. You've done your part. I wish I could do more.”

“If you've got those codes, that'll be enough.”

She slid open a tile of the corridor and pulled out a tablet, no larger than my hand.

“This will bypass all the seals in the compound.” She looked up at me. “Val said you could end this. If she right?”

“We’re damn well going to try.”

“Not everyone here wanted to be involved. We didn’t have any choices. When you come back, because I assume you will, try to remember that, all right?”

I reached for the tablet then stopped, thought.

She was right. Some people here were surely complicit in the General’s plan, whatever it had been, whatever he turned into.

But some people, people like Tianna and Abril had just been born here, stuck in a trap they hadn’t walked into.

I pointed the tip of a red cloth peeking out from the corner of her gray uniform.

“Those rags easy to get a hold of?”

“Sure, use them for damn near everything.”

“Maybe make sure to have one with you, hand them out to other folks you feel confident aren't involved with this. When we come back I promise I'll let my brothers know.”

She nodded. “That's fair. Thank you. Let me show you what you've got in here.” She double tapped the screen and flipped to the side. “Here's a map, no use having a bunch of keys if you don't know where the doors are.”

By the time she finished I had a good sense of the layout of the Compound. The lab that Valrea had been so desperate to get to, the generator for the security dome.

“Now, I need to get into the Hall.

“This will do it, but that's the most protected area of the compound. It won't be easy. The only maintenance access is above ground.”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Valrea needs something there. And I'm going to get it.”

I crept through the maintenance tubes, following the path Tianna had shown me.

She’d set the cameras to cycle on and off here. This was how she'd been able to meet us while knowing that none of her juniors would be spying on her movements.

When I emerged above ground I slid flat and stayed still.

A map was well and good, actually seeing the campus around me was different, always was.

If you didn't know better you'd think it was some sort of government facility, maybe a school. Lots of buildings scattered around grounds mostly paved over. Only a few highly regimented patches of the wildness past the dome were left as a silent protest against this intrusion.

I might've spent most of my life on starships and stations, but I didn't like the look of the place.

Under the pale, persistent light of the dome, everything was quiet. Maybe you didn't need many guards if no one knew who to trust, policed themselves out of terror.

I took note of the small scattering of shuttles on the landing pad in the center of the campus.

Any number of them would suit my purpose for getting back to Orem. Tomorrow, after I had Valera’s medicine, we’d take it and be gone.

I turned my back to the landing pad and focused on the approach to the hall.

Not the largest of the buildings, but the only one that had been designed with anything other than the most basic utilitarian architecture.

I crept from shadow to shadow, all of my enhanced senses stretched to the limit.

Couples giggled in the dormitory, a pair of young men scuffling over something probably stupid on the top floor, the whispers of guards on their patrols in the hall.

Nothing I couldn't handle.

Tianna had suggested I ignore the obvious front entrance and use the side door. Not bad instincts for an engineer.

Other than the guards and the rattle and whir of some sort of machinery, the building was quiet. I wondered how many people actually lived in it.

Step by careful step I crept up the stairs to the floor Tianna's blueprints had marked off as residential.

“How do you know which one is her room?” I had asked.

“Because it doesn't matter how secure you think a facility is,” Tianna had flicked the screen. “They always need somebody to fix the plumbing. Not a room in that building I haven't been. Well, maybe one, but it’s not Val’s.”

She tapped a large section in an opposite wing from Valrea’s.

“Never been in there.”

Whatever was there, I'd deal with it later. Now I was only interested in one room.

I held up Tianna's tablet to the palm lock to the side of the door.

So far, her information had been good, but now we’d see if the codes worked.

With a click and hiss, the door slid open. No matter what I'd been expecting, this wasn't it.

Empty. Cold. A screen in one corner with a single desk facing it. A small pile of pillows pushed against the wall.

And then out from the shadows stepped a Hunter.

I braced for attack, but it didn't move, didn't acknowledge my presence in the room. Maybe it was dormant, like the ones that we had found back on the Star.

Great. That had turned out so well.

I circled as far as the small room would let me, a hand settled on my knife. One good thing about fighting them for so long, we’d found the best spot for killing the bastards. Had plenty of practice at it.

“Please.”

I froze. That was new.

“Please listen.”

The soft voice still had the electronic overlays of a Hunter, but the softness, the almost human quality shocked me.

I examined the figure closely. Covered in black entirely, so dark it seemed to absorb the watery light, it stood, feet centered on the floor, arms at its sides, black-gloved hands at its side. A small bundle, a thin stack of something clenched in one fist.

But the build was lighter, not as bulky as the Hunters I’d fought in the past. Whatever it held, it didn’t look like a weapon. The opaque black dome covered the head and shoulders, but a section of the gleaming material went down the spine.

That was new, as well.

It could be sending an alarm, using that built-in communications antenna all the Hunters had to summon more, to bring soldiers to the room.

But Valrea never mentioned a Hunter, a guard, anything like that only...

“Are you the Companion?”

“Yes. Please listen.”

I wasn't planning on relaxing anytime soon, but this thing had given Valrea a book of nonsense stories. Taught her to read.

Gave her drugs. My eyes narrowed

“She's sick. She needs her pills.”

The Companion bowed slightly, walked to the wall behind it and paused.

“I have not been given the signal to open it, I'm afraid.”

Definitely not a Hunter. Some other kind of android? An earlier model?

The Companion jabbed its fingers into the wall near where a hair-thin line betrayed a concealed panel.

With a quick twist and wrench, it tore the door off, retrieving a small opaque bottle and brought it back.

I reached for it, but she didn't give it to me.

“She is safe?”

“Other than what you've done to her? Yeah, she’s safe.”

The Companion didn't hand me the bottle, but from its other hand offered a pile of document films.

I glanced at them. Page after page of scribbled notes, all in the same hand.

“This doesn't help me, or her,” I ground out. “I need those pills.”

Teaching Companion or not, if it didn't comply I’d rip it apart, the same I had with any number of its brethren.

But slowly it released the tablets.

“Please tell her, there are many things she does not understand yet.”

I backed out of the room. The Companion didn't follow, didn’t move again.

Void take it, if I ever imagined I’d be talking with one of these things. “I'll let her know.”

I tucked the pills and the mysterious papers away and disappeared back into the night.

My mission had been successful, but had it been in time?