Minutes later, the three of us were standing inside one of the largest walk-in freezers I had ever seen, not that I had occupied many of them in my life. It was as large as the kitchen beyond and seemed to stretch out endlessly with shelves stacked with various trays and bins of food.

  The air within the walk-in freezer felt cold and sharp against my skin, sending a shiver down my spine. The stark white walls gleamed under lighting that came from a glowing white ceiling, creating an almost surreal atmosphere that felt a world apart from the rest of the administration building. I glanced down at the floor, where frost coated the tiles like a light dusting of snow, a reminder of the chill wrapping around me.

  Markus stood just inside the doorway, his silhouette framed by the extra-wide door we had entered from, while Quinton moved further into the room, her movements measured as she assessed their surroundings. My breath formed misty clouds in the air with each exhale, and I wondered how long we could stay in here before we started getting frostbite.

  “How long will this take to work and send that creature elsewhere? We aren’t going to last long in here,” Markus replied, echoing my thoughts.

  Quinton shook her head as she wrapped her arms around herself, obviously already starting to feel the chill. “I don’t know, but between us being difficult to access by being further in the building and our signatures suddenly disappearing, it will lose interest. This was a good idea, Highness.”

  I nodded my acknowledgement of her compliment and wrapped my arms around myself as well as I noticed Markus standing there like he was completely impervious to the cold. “Well, I don’t see us lasting more than ten minutes. I say as soon as we can’t stand it, we leave and see if the rappavore is still there.”

  Quinton stopped and pulled out a data pad she had stashed inside her coat. I had not realized she’d brought it with her from the control center, but I immediately considered it good thinking on her part and was impressed she had managed a thought other than running for our lives as that big ass dinosaur-like creature had barreled down on our location.

  “Maybe we can do better than that,” she said as she started to tap on the ultra-thin rectangular device in her grip.

  “Is the Network back up already?” I asked, knowing it was nowhere near the thirty-five minutes that the message said would take to get the Nanite Network running again. Maybe we had gotten lucky, and it had been fixed early?

  The Lieutenant shook her head. “No, but this device can operate on its own power for a while, and I downloaded some of the basic building schematics when Protector Nador had dismissed all the staff from the building. I thought it might come in handy if we needed to go somewhere else besides the control center. This building isn’t small or well-marked.”

  I had to agree with the last part. The administration building was only one level, but the it stretched out like a labyrinth of crisscrossing hallways and countless doorways with no designations except room numbers. It seemed odd to me. I would have thought that a building housing the governing body of the colony and mine operations would be more accessible, with clear signs of offices and staff.

  “Does that tell us anything useful about what else is in the building?” Markus asked.

  “There’s not much here other than basic schematics, and it’s quite interesting, because not all the rooms are marked. There’s a whole northern wing that doesn’t even have so much as room numbers.”

  “What?” I asked as I moved closer to Quinton. I looked over her arm to see the map of the complicated layout of the administration building.

  This place was bigger than I thought. There was the main entrance where we had entered the building. From there, the compound branched off in three directions. There was the south section of the building we had been led to by Governor Korrel. I quickly identified the conference room we had used. It was close to the entrance. Then after the debriefing, he had taken Quinton, Markus and I through a series of corridors that eventually led to the end of the south section. I picked out what I was pretty sure was the control room we’d been in minutes ago.

  There was an east wing that looked much like the south with clear numbers marking each room, but again no name designations. And then there was the north wing, which was the exact same size as the other two, but did not have any room layouts or numbers. It was just a wide and large rectangle with no indication of what it might be used for.

  “That is extremely odd,” I said as I looked at the map, hoping it would somehow unveil its secrets. “Maybe someone forgot to update the map?”

  Markus came over to take a peek over Quinton’s other shoulder. “Or it could be a security measure. By law, every structure has to have blueprints available to the public, but most palaces of the noble families block out rooms, especially for the family’s private residential area. And you can be sure that a good deal of Vanguard facilities have blacked out areas set aside for their secret projects.”

  “This isn’t a palace, or a military outpost for that matter,” I replied.

  Markus shrugged. “Unless they are secretly running a project for the Empire, which I doubt because of the way they acted in the conference room, which means they are hiding something. And it most likely explains their overreaction to our visit.”

  I blew out a breath as I realized Markus was right. I had felt off since Vossner’s outburst, and even though the Governor was quick to smooth things over, it didn’t make the feeling go away completely. Something was going on at Talion Proxi other than what we were being told, but was this really the time to investigate what that might be?

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Maybe, but we will have to address that later. We need to get to a more secure place that isn’t going to turn us into popsicles.”

  Quinton had already closed out the map and found a link to the live feeds outside the facility, which were still active and apparently didn’t need the Network to operate. They must have been on a private hub. My heart fell as she clicked on a link that showed a large hulking creature right outside the building.

  At least it had stopped trying to attack the building. The rappavore was now pacing restlessly right outside the front entrance. So it was no longer near the control room, but had followed us from outside, and now was effectively trapping us inside. Did it know that was our exit, or was it just a coincidence that the rappavore had chosen that spot to occupy? I shivered at the possibilities of this creature’s level of intelligence, which made me decidedly uncomfortable.

  “It’s not leaving,” Quinton said, her voice tight with tension. “And we can’t stay in here much longer.”

  I rubbed my arms vigorously, trying to generate some warmth as I looked out beyond the rappavore. It showed the empty sidewalks of at least part of the aboveground facility. There was also no sign of Gayle, which I hoped meant she had found a good place to hide.

  “Well, at least the Governor was true to his word and sent everyone home. Can you imagine what would have happened if there were still people everywhere?”

  “They would be a nice distraction so we could get you to a more secure location,” Markus growled.

  I shot the man a hard look. “Markus,” I chided softly.

  “Well, they would,” he said in a surly tone that was remarkably like a child in the middle of a sulk.

  I decided it might be best to ignore my Protector for the moment as my mind considered our options. “The rappavore has lost the lock on us, but if we step out now, it won’t take much for it to notice us again. Though our body temperatures should still be rather low when we exit. Maybe that will give us the time we need?”

  Quinton shook her head. “It’s true our core temperatures will be lower than normal, but once we start moving around, they will come back up fairly quickly. It would be best if we had a way to distract him.”

  “Or had somewhere else to go. What else do the building schematics show? Maybe there’s another exit we could use?”

  “There’s no point in going outside, Adar. That creature will just circle the building. It might even be waiting for us by the time we get there,” Markus replied. He had clearly caught on that the rappavore had moved to block the main entrance and what that might mean.

  Quinton had opened a holo screen that hung just to the right of the data pad, so we could keep an eye on the rappavore, while she worked on finding another exit. The blueprints of the building came back up on the datapad screen. She started with our current location, which was near the center of the south section of the building, though decidedly closer to the main entrance than the control room we had previously been in.

  I did see what looked like a secondary entrance to the building back near the control room, but when Quinton checked the security feed near that potential exit, there was just an open field that ran up against the fence. No rappavore out that way, but no clear way to a more secure location either.

  It was the same for the east wing. No deadly animals lying in wait for us at the east wing exit, but also only grass and fence. There weren’t even any other facility buildings on that side because the administration building was at the front and outer edge of the compound. That left the north section, and there was no clear marking of an exit there, but that wing of the admin building ran up against another building, which was a long, thin and was marked as a transporter hub-station.

  “Does that take us where I think it does?” I pointed at the second holograph that Quinton pulled up of the entire map of the facility.

  The woman nodded as she selected the schematics for that building, which, once opened, clearly showed fourteen transporter alcoves evenly spaced out in the hub-station. “Yes, those are the transporters that go down to Jotham and to the entrance of the twelve mines on the planet.”

  “If we can get there, then our problem will be solved. We just have to get through here,” I pointed my finger at the entrance of the north wing and traced it through the blank block that should have shown the layouts of corridors and rooms.

  Markus grunted. “And maybe we will solve a mystery on the way.”

  “Maybe, but that’s not a priority.” I said as a reminder to him and myself, though my curiosity was growing about what lay inside the north section every moment.

  I withdrew my hand from the map, wondering if there really was an exit in that blank block somewhere. Each of the other wings had one on the far end, so reason dictated that the same was most likely true with the north section. It just wasn’t marked, or so I hoped.

  “If we can get inside,” Quinton shook his head. “They took precautions to mask the blueprints, which means there is probably a security checkpoint at the entrance. We won’t have the codes to get through, and if it’s a biometric lock, then we can forget it altogether.”

  Markus smirked. “Leave it to me. If it’s locked, I’ll get us in.”

  I eyed my Protector. “Oh?”

  The man shrugged but made his way back to the door, clearly not wanting to talk about it more, so I let it go, for now.

  “All right, so we will head for the north section, see if we can get in, and find an exit, and make a run for the transporter hub-station,” I said going through the plan so we were all on the same page.

  “There are some uncomfortable variables in that plan,” Quinton said.

  “You have a better idea?”

  She frowned and shook her head as she shut down her datapad and the two holo-screens winked out. “No, Highness. I don’t. Staying here isn’t an option. Let’s give it a try. We can always come back here if we need to.”

  I nodded, but severely, hoping we wouldn’t have to. My teeth were chattering, and my fingers had grown numb. I looked to Markus to see if he had objections to the plan, but he was quiet, and I could see he was starting to look uncomfortable. If he was showing the effects of the cold, then it was definitely time to leave.

  “Let’s go then,” I nodded to the exit.

  Markus turned and pulled the door open. He paused a moment to check the kitchen was still clear and then waved us both into the warm room. I sighed with relief to be stepping out of the deep freeze. My body was stiff with bitter cold.

  I eyed the greenhouse and thought a moment about going in there to warm up, but realized that we needed to keep our body temperature low as long as possible. I looked down at my fingers. Even though they were red and obviously cold, there was no sign of frostbite, so I was probably okay. I would just have to warm up the slow way. I acknowledged Markus’s silent command to follow as he checked the cafeteria was clear, and then we slipped back into the corridor.