Blood Debt at the Uplink Station

The bulkhead grinds open into a throat of steel and cables. Emergency strips pulse red across the uplink station, and a faint corporate signal hums under everything, like a net tightening.

K'hark slips inside first. The Xenomorph pads after him, low and eager. Behind them, the Auditor hesitates at the threshold, then follows with his scanner raised.

A wall display flickers alive, showing a traffic map and a tagged uplink route. One identifier blinks and drops, then returns from a deeper chamber, near the data terminal.

At the far end of the corridor, a sealed hatch unlocks with a soft corporate chime, as if answering their presence. The way forward is clear, and it leads straight to the record room.

K'hark angles his head and sweeps the corridor with a hunter's stillness. The station's heat bloom resolves in his vision, one clean signature ahead, then three smaller ones clustered deeper in the record room.

A warm trace clings to the airlock seam by the hatch, fresh enough to stand out against the cold metal. It matches the family profile he has been tracking, not the Auditor's gear, not the scavenger trail.

The scanner in the Auditor's hand tilts toward the red-lit hatch, its display catching the same cluster of bodies. The Xenomorph freezes at K'hark's flank, head cocked toward the record room as if it smells the same path.

K'hark finds the proof in the readout and on the seam, a recent family trace leading straight through the unlocked hatch. Beyond it, the station waits in red silence.