by Natalie Grey
Jennifer blinked back tears. She didn’t know what to say to this. She had never expected to hear Stephen, old-fashioned gentleman that he was, say something like this. So she said the only thing she was certain of, “I love you.”
Stephen leaned his forehead against hers for a moment. She could see his smile. “I love you, too.” They stayed like that for but a second, and eternity. “So. Want to get some payback?”
She grinned up at him. “Hell. Fucking. Yes.”
They burst around the corner together a second later. The patrol that was just rounding the corner of the building, dressed up to look like the local youths, blinked at the sight. For a moment, they did not realize the threat. They only saw a short, brown-haired woman and a dark-haired man, both dressed all in black. It was only a moment later that they saw the guns, and the unmistakable glint in both attackers’ eyes.
And that second was one second too many.
—
The helicopter was small enough that Hugo saw the alert go off on the pilot’s controls.
“What is that?”
“One of the guard units is under attack,” the pilot called back. He smiled over his shoulder.
“Nothing to worry about, sir.”
“Nothing to worry about?” Hugo repeated. His temper began to rise.
“This can be a violent part of town. We have several attacks per week.” The pilot ducked his head respectfully. “The guards are very well trained, sir, there won’t be any problem.”
Hugo drummed his fingers on his leg. His eyes were narrowed as he stared at the opposite wall of the helicopter. It might be nothing. That was a possibility. But, whether it was the attack from TQB or not, that attack was coming. “Tell the guards I want them to mobilize. Get them outside, get them all surrounding the building.”
“Sir—”
“Do it now.”
“Yes, sir.”
—
“ADAM says that according to media and police reports, the ideal path to get to safety is to go two blocks east, one block north, another two blocks east, and then head south again.” Nathan looked at Arisha. “Will you remember that?”
“Yes.” Arisha nodded seriously. She saw his skeptical look and smiled. “I’m a reporter, Nathan. Remembering what people say is part of my job.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” Nathan relaxed slightly. “All right, I … wait, what is that?” His head whipped around. “There’s a group approaching, and they’re….”
He and Stoyan looked meaningfully at one another, sniffing the air.
“They’re what?” Arisha looked between them. “And do you have heightened senses even in human—”
“No time. They’re Wechselbalg.” Stoyan put his body between Arisha and the approaching group. “If this is their turf….”
“Then they’ve let this happen on it,” Nathan said grimly, gesturing to the building. He crossed his arms. “I’ll negotiate with them. You two get inside and start getting people out.”
“Wait.” Stoyan sniffed again, and his jaw dropped open. He tipped his face up and whistled three notes. A moment later, another tune was whistled back. Stoyan sagged with relief, and Arisha saw his first real smile in days as three guys rounded the corner at a run.
“Your pack mates, I take it?” Nathan raised an eyebrow.
“Yes.” Stoyan greeted the three newcomers with claps on the back. “What happened?”
“Filip ran away,” one of them said shortly. “We knew the house was compromised so we left.”
“We couldn’t get ahold of you,” the second explained.
“And we knew you might try to do something like this,” the third finished.
“Bastard.” The first speaker rounded it out with a grin. “Are we going in?”
“Yes.” Stoyan nodded to Nathan. “Nathan leads.”
Arisha was still smiling when she heard the chatter come over Nathan’s earpiece. The man’s face fell and he began muttering back.
“Inside now,” he told them all. “Apparently, all the guards are coming out for some reason, guy in charge and all. They must know we’re coming.”
—
>>Stephen, Jennifer. All of the guards have been ordered to go outside. They seem to be mobilizing towards two egress points. You need to get inside. If you look at your maps, you’ll see that I’ve pointed out a small door on the side of the building that should be unguarded.<<
“Thank you, ADAM!” Jennifer slammed a fist down on one of the guards’ heads and he went down like a stone. She took two running steps and kicked her foot out, lifting another guard off his feet before he flew back and slammed down onto the concrete. He had no time to get up before she came down with a strike to the solar plexus. Two more hits and she was already turning, just as Stephen took out a guard that was trying to sneak up on her.
Her arm whipped out, tracking one of the guards who was trying to run, and a small knife gleamed as it arced through the air and embedded itself in his back. Jennifer smiled to herself as she took a running leap to get the last opponent. “No noise, no fuss.” She twisted his neck to snap it and looked around. Stephen was lowering a body to the ground. Three others showed the marks where he had crushed throats, broken limbs, and—Jennifer’s eyebrows shot up—ripped an arm off one of the guards.
“He said he’d have fun seeing you in with the other experiments,” Stephen explained. He checked his weapons and adjusted his coat, wiping off a piece of dirt. “I did not appreciate that.”
Jennifer smiled.
He raised an eyebrow at her, “Yes?”
“I really like you.” She hunched her shoulders.
His eyes narrowed, “I feel like I’ve been downgraded since our last conversation….”
“Shut up, you know what I mean. Let’s get inside. ADAM, where are the guards now?”
>>They’re….<<
Distracted, TOM supplied.
Stephen and Jennifer looked at one another.
“What?” Stephen asked.
In the matter of tactics, it would seem that Arisha mimics Ecaterina.
“Oh, no….” Jennifer murmured.
>>Stoyan, Nathan, and three of Stoyan’s pack have proceeded inside,<< ADAM reported.
“Let’s hope Arisha knows what she’s doing,” Stephen said. He nodded to a side door. “Shall we?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The helicopter touched down on a grimy landing pad at the top of the building. Hugo stepped onto it with distaste.
“The building stands out too much if it’s clean,” the pilot said apologetically. “Sir,” he added when Gerard glared at him.
Gerard hauled Filip’s unconscious body out of the helicopter, not taking any particular care. He smiled when Filip’s head hit the concrete. He knew that his moment of hesitation had likely cost him a chance at revenge for Filip’s attack, but he consoled himself with the fact that he would watch the man die in one of the cages.
Hugo would surely not deny him that.
“Pick him up,” Gerard ordered the bodyguards. “Bring him with us.”
They followed the pilot down one floor to where the facility administrator waited. The pulse racing at his throat showed that the man was nervous, but he kept enough of his wits about him to use his manners. He bowed deeply to Hugo and nodded at Gerard with respect.
He made a point, Gerard remembered, never to interfere when Hugo ordered an example made. This man might rise in the organization. If, that was, he had a good excuse for the fact that his facility had been communicating with the facility in Sofia, without passing information through headquarters.
“My lord,” the administrator said. He was short and thin, with pale brown hair. “How can we assist you?”
“First I want to speak to your guard captain,” Hugo said shortly. “Then we will discuss other matters.”
“Absolutely, sir. If you would like to adjourn to your office, I will have the guard captain put through. He is out on patrol with the entire detachment
, as you ordered.”
“Good.” Hugo left without a glance, and Gerard jerked his head to the bodyguards to continue dragging Filip’s body along with them.
Hugo’s office was seldom used, but it had been meticulously cleaned. Not a speck of dust lay on the hardwood desk, the carpets looked fresh and bright, and there was fresh coffee waiting in a silver pot on the sideboard. From the strong smell, it appeared that the administrator at least remembered how Hugo liked his coffee.
Hugo took a seat at the desk and waited, drumming his fingers on the desk, as Gerard brought him a tiny porcelain cup of coffee. “How long can it take to get one man on the line?”
“I’ll go see what’s taking him so long,” Gerard suggested. He was halfway to the door when the administrator came in, flustered.
“Sir, I apologize. He isn’t answering my calls, and there seems to be some sort of disturbance near the gates on the north side of the building.”
“We’ll let him handle that for now, then,” Hugo said smoothly. He considered for a moment. “I hear your research has been progressing well.”
“Yes, sir.” The administrator looked like he was about to throw up. He could see the trap closing around him, but he knew there was no way out.
“We’ll have to discuss it in more detail,” Hugo suggested.
“Yes, sir.”
“But I would like a few demonstrations before we discuss the details.” Hugo was smiling, but there was no warmth in the smile. “To start with … bring Sergio here. I want to see his progress.”
—
She didn’t have much of a plan. So as she pelted around the side of the building, Arisha did the only thing she could think of. She tore at the hair band that held her dark hair in a neat braid and let her hair fall in waves over her shoulders. A single button came undone on her shirt, and she bit down on her lower lip to make it redder. She skidded to a halt just as the gates began to open, and found herself staring down a small army of guards. It was then, of course, that it dawned on her just how much of a gamble she was making. Predatory interest gleamed in the eyes of more than a few guards. She took a step back, out of instinct more than anything, and swallowed hard when one man stepped forward.
“Who are you?”
She still didn’t have a plan. Arisha scanned the crowd of guards, looked back to the guard captain, and burst into fake tears.
There was a murmur from the crowd.
“Miss?” The guard captain stepped forward to put a hand on her shoulder. “Uh….”
The tears, really just a delay tactic, gave her a flash of inspiration. When she was fifteen years old, Arisha had opened the door one night to see her older sister’s friend. The girl had been thrown out of her house when her mother found out about a boyfriend, and she needed somewhere to stay.
“I had a huge fight with my mother!” Arisha kept her face turned down so he couldn’t see her eyes. “I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear I didn’t, but she said she wouldn’t have a whore under her roof and she threw me out!” She let her sentence end in an unintelligible wail. “And I just started walking and now I don’t know where I am and I’m scared!”
“I, ah….” There was a pause, and she was pretty sure the guard captain was looking around at the rest of the group in mute appeal.
“It’s getting dark,” Arisha wailed, when he didn’t make any move to comfort her. More inspiration hit her, and she pointed off into the warren of streets. “And I saw these terrifying guys over that way. They were all so tall! And I swear, one of them growled at me! Like an animal!”
That did it. About a dozen guards took off without even waiting for a command, and Arisha pressed a hand over her mouth so no one would see her smile. She made a show of wiping her eyes and looked up at the guard captain.
“Are they really going after those guys? They should be careful. There were so many of them!”
The guard captain looked panicked for a second. “Go—go!” He waved his hands at the rest of the guards and gestured to Arisha to get inside. “Wait in there.”
He was letting her in. This was better than she could have dreamed. The plan couldn’t go much more smoothly. Unless…. Arisha made a show of being frightened to go into the building alone. “Are your friends going to know where I came from?”
“They won’t—it’s going to be—” The guard captain looked into the dark corridors and then out into the streets, clearly torn.
“I’m scared,” Arisha whispered again. She made her eyes as wide as she could as she stared up at him, and reached out to put a hand on his arm. “I don’t want to be alone.” She hunched her shoulders. “And … what if your soldiers need help?”
“Exactly. I have to go—”
“If you have any more people in there, you should go get them,” Arisha explained. “And definitely tell people here not to let anyone in.”
Hopefully, both groups of her friends had already made it in, or she had just screwed up royally.
The guard captain nodded. “You make a good point. Come on, we’ll go to my office. I can call the rest of the guards and you can wait there.” He took her hand and yanked her into the corridors, but spared her one terrifying smile. “I’m happy to take care of you.”
Arisha hoped her smile didn’t freeze too obviously. “Thank you,” she said insincerely. “Really, thank you.”
She followed him up a flight of stairs and along another corridor, half-running to keep up with him, and tried not to flinch as he beckoned her into a dark, grimy room. But this room was everything she had hoped: lined with video feeds and with a computer at the far end. She waited as he put in a password. What did she do now?
“All guards head north,” the guard captain was ordering. “A large detachment of enemies is headed our way. Say again, all guards head north.”
In the end, she acted more out of necessity than anything. The radio at the captain’s waist crackled.
“Arnaut to Floor 8, Mr. Marcari wishes to speak with you.”
Arisha didn’t stop to think. As the guard captain turned around from his computer, she took two steps, picked up a chair, and swung it as hard as she could.
The man went down like a sack of bricks and she grabbed a pair of handcuffs off his belt, securing his hands behind his back. A rope made a rough binding on his ankles, and she gagged him with a spare shirt. She closed the door to the office, her heart racing, and stared at his unconscious body for a moment.
She’d never done anything like this.
A flash of movement on one of the video monitors caught her eye. She looked over in time to see Stoyan and his pack mates running down one of the corridors. There was no time to think about the ethics of violence right now. She rolled her eyes at her own foolishness and dragged the guard captain to the corner of the room so he couldn’t reach her easily. Then she went to the computer and studied the available commands for a few moments. It didn’t take long for her to figure out the commands. Gates on the north and south sides of the building rumbled closed, and a few taps of Arisha’s fingers reset the entry codes. She paged frantically through the commands, and made the only choice she could:
“Disable security systems.” She hesitated for a moment, but what other option was there? Stephen and the others had described poison gas, automated kill switches, and a dozen other gruesome means of killing prisoners and intruders, alike. She couldn’t let any of that happen. Trembling, she punched in the code and hit ENTER.
—
Hsu skidded into one of the holding chambers and gave a gulp as eight scientists swung to look at her.
Don’t think, just lie, she told herself. What will get them out of here?
“Gerard is here,” she said bluntly, and she watched the color drain from their faces. “He wants to see all of us.” She lowered her voice and stepped forward to whisper to them. “Mr. Bukhalov says to go to the dining hall and he’ll meet us with instructions so we all say the same thing.”
The scientists took off without
another word, and Hsu gave a sigh of relief. At the facility where she worked, the scientists always made sure to get their stories straight before Gerard showed up.