Chapter 75: SPECIMENS

K-17 looked less like a prison the closer they got to it, and Sio disliked that more than walls or gun towers would have. The annex sat low beneath the jungle canopy, most of its pale structure sunk into the earth while solar glass caught the last scraps of daylight between broad leaves. Moss had been encouraged to grow along the roof, and a narrow stream disappeared beneath one side of the building before returning through a filtration channel farther downhill. Even the Wayfarer insignia beside the entrance had been worked into dark wood instead of cold metal.

Rhea watched it through the trees, one hand resting near Gumm where he curled around her shoulders. "They made it look peaceful." Angle crouched behind a root thick enough to hide most of him and studied the entrance. "Probably because people ask fewer questions about places that look harmless."

Sio touched beneath his right eye and let the Scar spread through the annex. Paths moved behind the walls, crossing and separating through several levels. Most belonged to people walking ordinary routes rather than guards circling a perimeter. "Twelve moving on this level. More below." Rhea’s ears shifted toward the ground. "Machinery too. Under us."

Gumm slid down her arm and started toward the filtration channel before Sio caught the end of one stretchy limb. "You scout after we agree what counts as scouting. Last time you disappeared, I found you wearing Rhea." Gumm chirped and pulled harder while Rhea tried to hide the smile already reaching her mouth.

"He came back," she said. Sio released him with a sigh. "That is an extremely generous interpretation." Angle pointed toward the water channel where a metal grate disappeared beneath the annex. "Can he fit through there?"

Gumm answered for himself by flattening against the wet stone and squeezing through a gap beneath the filtration grate. His tail vanished last, leaving only ripples moving toward the building. Sio focused on the faint connection tugging behind his Scar as Gumm travelled deeper.

Angle noticed the change in his face. "You can track him now?" Sio shook his head. "Not exactly him. More like where something connected to me keeps moving." Rhea looked at him briefly before returning her attention to the annex. "Useful." Sio let the corner of his mouth rise. I’ll take useful.

The connection shifted upward beneath the building. Metal scraped somewhere behind the annex, followed by a soft clunk, and one of the paths Sio had been watching changed direction as somebody inside went to investigate. He pointed through the ferns. "He found something."

They circled behind the annex until they reached a maintenance panel hidden beneath hanging vines. The lock had been forced inward from the other side, and Gumm waited beyond it with one paw resting proudly against the damage. Sio crawled through first. Cool processed air replaced the jungle humidity, carrying antiseptic, wet concrete and a faint copper smell through a utility corridor lined with softly glowing pipes.

Gumm immediately climbed onto his back. Sio reached behind himself and scratched beneath one of the creature’s small limbs. "You break into one government facility and suddenly you’re useful." Rhea slipped through after him. "Don’t encourage him." Angle entered last and pulled the panel mostly closed. "Too late."

The utility corridor joined a larger hallway after two turns. White walls curved around warm embedded lights, and small plants grew inside recessed channels beneath the windows. A woman in pale work clothes crossed the far intersection pushing a cart, her attention buried in a transparent screen.

Rhea’s claws slid out before the woman had even passed them. Sio felt her grip catch the back of his coat and pull him deeper behind a support column, but Angle’s voice came quieter from beside her. "You don’t know she was there." Rhea watched the woman disappear around the next corner, her claws remaining visible a moment longer before sliding back beneath her fingertips.

Sio looked after the cart. "Research staff. Maybe support." Angle’s gaze stayed on the empty intersection. "Either way, we came for prisoners and information. Not whoever happens to work upstairs." Rhea did not answer, but when Sio gestured toward the next junction she moved with them.

The strongest cluster of paths remained below. Sio traced several routes leading down, but each public stair and lift crossed a staffed checkpoint. Service lines ran differently: pipes, ventilation, maintenance shafts and one narrow lift moving only between restricted levels.

Gumm crawled down Sio’s arm and pointed toward a ceiling panel. Sio stared at him. "You’re becoming smug." Gumm chirped, and Angle looked upward. "He might also be right."

The shaft above them was too narrow for Rhea’s shoulders, so Sio searched for another connection and found a maintenance cavity crossing above a supply room near the restricted lift. He opened a portal into the cavity first, checked the destination from three angles, then placed the exit inside the supply room.

Angle watched him check it again. "Veilhollow really did something to you." Sio stepped through. "I developed a healthy fear of putting my face somewhere before checking what lives there."

Silas’s old advice surfaced with the thought, and Sio almost smiled until the smell inside the room settled properly across his tongue. Copper mixed with preservative and cold air, the unmistakable scent of old blood kept from spoiling.

Sealed containers lined the walls. Dates and collection codes glowed faintly across their surfaces, while transparent packets held fur, scales, fragments of horn and tissue suspended in clear fluid. Sio moved closer to one shelf without touching anything.

Rhea entered behind him and stopped near a packet containing pale fur. Her eyes moved to a darker tuft stored beside it, then to a row of small vials whose labels had been partially scrubbed. Angle came through last and picked up one sealed packet by its corner.

"These aren’t all beastkin." He turned it toward the light, revealing an anatomical diagram of a pointed ear above a faded classification.

ELVEN

Rhea reached toward another packet and froze with her fingers above the label. Her eyes stayed there as the second classification became visible beneath the storage code.

DWARVEN

Angle looked from one label to the other. "Those are supposed to be stories." Sio saw the Veilhollow projection again: a dwarf woman drinking from a cup, children of different species racing across the old Metro platform, the long-eared woman with a sleeping human boy against her side.

"No," Sio said. "They aren’t." Angle’s attention travelled across the shelves, where several packets had been stamped with the same designation.

LINEAGE NONVIABLE

"Then why does everyone think they were imaginary?" Angle asked. Sio had no answer worth giving, and approaching footsteps spared him from pretending otherwise.

He opened a tiny portal near the floor and looked through it from behind the shelving. Two security officers entered the corridor outside, one carrying a compact rifle while the other had a dark Scar running from his wrist into his palm. The Scarred officer noticed the displaced air around Sio’s portal and swung toward it.

Sio killed the portal as the man moved, but the officer’s palm struck the doorframe instead. Metal softened beneath his hand and spread across the entrance like wet clay, sealing the room before Angle could reach it. Angle looked toward Sio. "Subtle?" Sio shifted behind the shelf. "Briefly."

Rhea hit the rifleman before the weapon cleared his chest. Her shoulder drove him into the shelving without collapsing it, and she caught his wrist before the muzzle could rise. The second officer touched the floor, sending softened metal from the doorway into narrow spikes that raced toward Rhea’s legs.

Sio opened a portal beneath the advancing metal and redirected it beside Angle. Heat flashed from the gauntlet, melting the warped material before it could reform, while Rhea stepped through the gap and pinned the Scarred officer’s wrist against the wall.

Recognition reached his face when he looked properly at them. "You’re the ones from the Exchange." Sio winced as he moved closer. "I was hoping the wanted posters were unflattering."

Rhea’s claws stopped against the man’s throat. "Where are the people taken from the jungle settlement?" His eyes shifted toward the floor, and Sio followed the path of the glance before the officer could correct it. "Below us."

They left both officers unconscious in the supply room and took their access bands. The restricted lift descended farther than the exterior suggested possible, and the antiseptic smell sharpened as the numbers fell beneath the transparent control panel.

Rhea stood nearest the door with Gumm wrapped around her waist, his head peeking beside her arm. Angle turned one stolen access band over and watched the classifications scroll across its surface.

BEASTKIN

HORNED

FELINE

CANID

VULPINE

OTHER NON-HUMAN

Sio scrolled farther. Active classifications gave way to archived ones, then kept going until he stopped counting. Different ears, horns, scales and skeletal structures filled the list, but the same word appeared beside most of them.

EXTINCT

Angle looked from the archive to Sio. "This place has records on all of them." Sio closed the list before another page could load. "And apparently somebody decided most of them belonged in the past."

The lift opened onto a corridor colder than the levels above. Observation windows lined one wall, most dark, while numbered rooms replaced names on the other side. Something struck glass farther down, weak enough that Sio almost mistook it for machinery until the sound came again, and Rhea moved toward it without waiting for anyone to tell her to.

The nearest occupied room held a beastkin man strapped to a reclining frame, his tail restrained separately beneath him while tubes carried dark red fluid from both arms into a machine measuring each pulse. Two women occupied the next room, and in the room after that a child lay beneath a thin blanket with both wrists secured to the bed.

Rhea pressed her palm against the glass, and Gumm went completely still against her. More rooms continued beyond them, some empty, some occupied, and several holding shapes beneath blankets that Sio kept his eyes away from while Angle brought the stolen access band close to the child’s door.

The display brightened.

SUBJECT: B-117

AGE: 9

LINEAGE EXPRESSION: VULPINE

TRANSFER STATUS: APPROVED

COMPATIBILITY SCREENING: PENDING

Rhea’s claws drew slowly across the glass without breaking it. The child shifted at the sound, opened their eyes and stared through the observation window until their ears lifted weakly. Recognition moved across the small face, and their lips parted around a thin, uncertain whisper. "Rhea?"