“Remind me not to piss you off in the future.”
At Arcanthus’s direction, Drakkal plunged into a network of long, dimly lit corridors that were wholly at odds with the rest of Murgen Foltham’s zoo. These corridors were drab, gray, and narrow—barely wide enough to fit the hovercarts used elsewhere in the facility. Exposed pipes, ducts, and conduits ran along the ceiling in a haphazard bundle that altered as components branched off and turned inward to join the flow.
It briefly brought his mind back to his days on Caldorius. How many such passageways had he walked in the bowels of those arenas? How many times had he been made to sleep in chambers that had the same sort of grungy, mechanical inner-workings on full display, knowing all the while that the owners and the ravening audiences enjoyed comfort and relative luxury during every moment of their lives? Murgen Foltham and his colleagues, hisguests, were too good to endure the sight of these places under normal circumstances. These were the territory of slaves and servants, of the subordinates. The territory of the less fortunate.
Drakkal didn’t care if it was petty, but the thought of Murgen scurrying through these corridors like a terrified sewer skrudge was immensely satisfying. Foltham deserved to spend his last moments brought low, deserved the fear Drakkal hoped he was feeling right now.
Turning where Arcanthus indicated, Drakkal entered another corridor and increased his pace. His breath came quickand heavy, his muscles burned, and ever-intensifying heat radiated outward from his chest to suffuse his limbs. Despite his weariness and soreness, he feltalive, his senses amplified and on high-alert. He could detect Murgen’s scent on the air, strengthening with each step forward. This was the realization of his instincts, the fulfillment of his current purpose—as a hunter, a mate, a protector.
“Next right,” Arcanthus said. “They’re thirty meters ahead, just about to reach the safe room entrance.”
Voices drifted to Drakkal from around the corner, barely above whispers and difficult to decipher—but he recognized one of them. The deepest, most frantic of the voices belonged to Murgen. A loud rumbling echoed down the hall, as though a heavy door were opening.
Drakkal slowed, raised his auto-blaster, and turned the corner, squeezing the trigger even before he’d had time to visually register his targets. A torrent of plasma sped along the corridor. The sound of the firing auto-blaster was the only warning Foltham’s guards received.
Both bodyguards spun to face Drakkal. The closer of the two fell almost immediately, hit by at least five bolts within half a second. Drakkal advanced toward them at a brisk stride, keeping the trigger depressed.
Wide-eyed, Murgen pressed himself against the opening door. The remaining guard was raising his blaster. Before he could return fire, a trio of plasma bolts hit him in the arm, chest, and eye.
Murgen ducked and fell through the doorway, vanishing from Drakkal’s view. The door slammed down with a thunderous finality.
Glowing rings and lines stood out all over the floor, walls, and overhead ductwork, slowly fading as they cooled. Drakkal strode forward and fired a few more shots into each guard as heneared them. He stopped in front of the large blast door through which Murgen had fled. Extending his left arm, he banged his metal fist on the door.
The sound carried along the corridor in a deep, booming echo; no sound dampeners here, not for the staff.
The keypad on the doorframe flashed.
“You’re not getting through this door, azhera,” Murgen said through the intercom. “It’s made of the strongest tristeel in Arthos, and can withstand a direct hit from an orbital strike!”
“Seems excessive,” Drakkal growled.
“What’s excessive is what I’ll have my security personnel do to you once their special task force arrives. You don’t have the intelligence to fully comprehend the consequences of what you’ve done, you slavering beast. I suggest you flee while you can.”
Drakkal’s rage continued to burn hot around an icy, unshakeable core—that calm and patience he normally had such mastery over. Murgen’s words didn’t fan those flames; they couldn’t anymore. Ultimately, they were the same as their speaker—loud, arrogant, and empty.
“You’ve no idea who you’ve crossed, azhera,” Murgen continued. “Do you have the slightest notion of how many credits I’m willing to pay toward your prolonged suffering? Do you understand who I am?”
As Murgen continued talking, Drakkal asked in a low voice, “How long you going to make me wait, Arc?”
“What? Who are you talking to?” Murgen demanded.
“Part of me wanted to see how long he’d go on like that,” Arcanthus said over the commlink. “And I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond.”
“Kraasz ka’val, he’ll have my response the moment the door’s open.”
Murgen barked laughter. “This door won’t open until your body’s cold and dead, azhera.”
Though the sound was so faint that Drakkal couldn’t be sure if it had occurred, he thought he heard Arcanthus laugh—and Samantha scold him for taking so long.
The keypad on the doorframe flashed a series of glitchy, scrambled characters, and the heavy blast door rumbled. A moment later, the door began rising.
Murgen made a shocked, unintelligible exclamation; Drakkal heard the garbled words both through the intercom and the widening space beneath the door.
As soon as the door was high enough, Drakkal met Murgen’s gaze. The large durgan was standing in a lavish antechamber that was decorated in a fashion befitting of the manor high above. The walls were maroon with gold accents over dark paneling, the floor a gleaming polished stone, black with deep scarlet veins.
Murgen’s eyes were so wide they looked on the verge of popping out of his skull. “H-how did you…h-how?—”
Drakkal unslung his auto-blaster’s shoulder strap, detached the energy cell, and tossed both the weapon and the cell aside. He took a step forward.