True Believers by Maria Zannini

Lambda Core. FAIA handled all the high-risk security. She lived deep underwater in Chicago, while he had been exiled to the Texas desert, to a compound that did little more than entertain the Alturians.
    FAIA warned him that his days were numbered.
    As soon as she was stable she intended to reproduce her matrix and replace all the obsolete systems. That included him.
    Bitch.

Chapter 6
    Paul Domino sat on the floor of his makeshift cell and crinkled his toes in this sterile, cheerless room. His posh accommodations boasted an empty metal cabinet and a sink with no running water. Above him, a whistle keened through the ventilation shaft, where a constant Northern blew in. His gear and clothes had been confiscated, replaced with surgical scrubs but no shoes. After he'd been stripped and his injuries tended, two soldiers threw him into this hole and locked the door. Despite his pleas, no one answered any questions.
    The examining doctor let him keep Rachel's necklace though. The clasp broken, it never left his reach. It was all he had left of her. He fingered the bauble, a foggy red stone that felt warm to the touch. Ornate and thickly braided, it had an eagle's claw for the mount of the jewel. It looked centuries old and he had never seen Rachel without it. But it seemed an odd piece of jewelry for her, a woman who sported simple tastes. Paul prayed that she was safe.
    The air conditioner kicked on again, sending another icy blast into the cramped exam room. He was too distracted to think, too worried about Rachel to feel more than the cold, and the isolation of a prison. His hands held up his throbbing head. Did they ever find her? Was she still alive?
    A fresh shaft of cold sliced through him like a knife. This wasn't the air conditioner's work. It was a different kind of cold, hostile and uninvited. For one brief moment he felt someone in the room with him. He scanned the room and shivered. Hallucinations. Had to be.
    He pressed the necklace to his heart.
    Ghosts. The kind that never die.
    What made him think of that? Within the same breath, the ominous feeling disappeared. That was the second time in two days that he had felt this creepy sensation. Imagined or not, he was alone again, and he relaxed.
    Paul scrunched his eyes at the dull metal shimmer of the cabinet. He walked over to it, sliding the bottom drawer open and out of its catch. Inside, at the base of the cabinet he spied an old tarnished paperclip. Paul rubbed it between his fingertips.
    He would have preferred something more substantial, but it wasn't without value. With gentle care, he untwisted the clip and threaded it on to the chain of Rachel's necklace, then looped it around his throat and secured the two ends shut.
    Things were getting grim. The longer his stay, the more silent and distant his guards. He was afraid it was no longer a matter of what they would do with him, but when. Judging by the treatment he'd received already, whatever happened next was bound to be worse.
    His eyes glanced back toward the ceiling.
    An airshaft hung four feet above him, but the vent was too small. He'd never squeeze through. He scrutinized the false ceiling. Was it possible?
    The click of hard boot heels snapped down the corridor outside. The footsteps stopped every few feet and then continued. Paul froze when the guard reached his door. A sturdy shake on the doorknob satisfied the sentry. Paul waited for the heel clicks to melt into the distance.
    When he didn't hear them anymore, he hopped back down and placed his ear by the door. Silence.
    Paul climbed up the cabinet and pushed one of the panels in the false ceiling aside. With both hands, he caught the lip of the track and hauled himself straight up. He was getting out of here, one way or another.
    He scrambled through the crawl space, careful to keep his weight over load-bearing metal beams. One hand supported itself along a cold water pipe that ran the length of the crawl space. The other hand balanced itself against