by Natalie Grey
Now there was the possibility that someone could make real progress. Nathan would have to talk with this Wechselbalg and learn what was going on. He’d question Jennifer later, as well, to make sure that the story wasn’t being embellished. If it was urgent enough, he would go back with them.
The docking bay doors slid open with a hiss, and a dark-haired man stepped through with a smile.
“Hi, Dad.” Bethany Anne smiled at Lance Reynolds. “Glad to have you back.”
“Well, as much as I want to keep an eye on what’s going on in Bulgaria, I also wanted to see the progress here.” Lance cast an approving glance around the docking bay.
“And…?” The Queen raised an eyebrow.
“All right, and taste some of the new beers,” Lance admitted. “I’ll be going back with them, though, to be on hand on the Archangel.” He turned to look as the rest of the passengers disembarked. “Stephen will tell you more. He’s … very worried. I’ve never seen him like this.”
Bethany Anne nodded seriously, “We discounted Spain. Maybe that was a mistake, but I still cannot find any trace of this in their official networks. It isn’t the military, and it isn’t their politicians. The servers they’re using are definitely in Spain, though. ADAM was able to locate them, and— mine!” She broke away from Lance and ran up the gangway to snatch a box out of Stephen’s hands.
“What?” Lance looked ‘round, and then sighed. “Is that box what I think it is? You know, I’d wondered how we got a ride back here so easily.”
“I have no idea what you mean.” Stephen smiled blandly as he came to stand with Lance and Nathan.
“What is it?” Nathan looked over to where Bethany Anne was peering excitedly into a red box, Jennifer at her side, and then gave a groan. “It’s shoes, isn’t it?”
“Custom-made, with—the coup de grace, of course—a matching bag.” Stephen frowned. “A very special sort of bag. Beech something. Birch?”
“Birkin,” Bethany Anne and Jennifer said in unison.
“Ah, yes.” Stephen cast a look over his shoulder. “I had them make the inner pockets the right size for your clips.”
“I love it!” Bethany Anne exclaimed. She closed the box and looked around at the newcomers, then seemed to remember something. Her eyes came to rest on the new Wechselbalg recruit, and she spoke in flawless Bulgarian. “You’re Stoyan, yes?”
“Yes.” Stoyan nodded his head. He was having trouble believing that this was the Queen Bitch he’d heard so much about. She smelled strange, not at all like Michael’s brood. In fact, from the stylish clothes to the long legs, she wasn’t at all what he’d expected.
Probably, he’d expected someone who wouldn’t squeal delightedly over new shoes.
“I have news about your cousin.” Bethany Anne called up a hologram, spinning in her palm: it was a map of Bulgaria. On the sea of blue, Sofia was picked out in gold, with a smaller dot for the facility. A little ways away, a red dot shimmered. “Thanks to Jennifer and Arisha, we were able to get a toehold in their computer system. It turns out that the facilities installed tracking chips in some of the Wechselbalg they abducted. We think their plan was to release them and follow them to their packs. Now, the Sofia facility was theoretically destroyed, but two chips are still active: your cousin, and a woman named Ying Hsu.”
Stephen interrupted, “What’s a Chinese woman doing in the facility?”
“We don’t know.” Bethany Anne shook her head. “The other thing is that we seem to be the only one looking at this data currently. ADAM is still trying to find out if it’s safe to get the chips out.”
Stoyan was staring at the dots in shock. “Irina is still alive?”
“We believe so. The dots are still moving.” Bethany Anne hesitated.
“What? What is it?”
“We tried to make contact with them,” she explained. “We dropped food and supplies and left coordinates for them to meet a Pod and be brought aboard the Archangel. They received the supplies … but they didn’t go to the rendezvous point. We don’t know why.”
“So go down and get them!” Stoyan turned to the ship. “I need to go back. Right now. I need to find her.”
“We can send her a message for you,” Bethany Anne offered. ‘We have eyes on their position and we sent communications devices. I think it would be best if you spoke to her first. We’ll set that up in a few minutes. Right now, though, I need you to speak with Nathan and my father and tell them what you know about the people who took Irina. I know you want to save her, but this may be far bigger than just your pack. Anything we learn about these people might give us what we need to find them and figure out their plans. As of a couple of days ago, we know that they have fighter jets. We need to know what else is going on.”
Stoyan hesitated. Everything this woman said made sense, but all he could think was that Irina was out alone, and that she had not made the rendezvous. Was the other woman holding her hostage?
Was she hurt?
“Stoyan.” The Russian woman touched his arm. She looked up at him and smiled tentatively. Was she blushing? “We should tell them what we know. It is important to catch Gerard now so that he doesn’t send more operatives against Irina.”
That made a lot of sense. Stoyan nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
“Good,” Bethany Anne said crisply. “You all head to the conference room to talk to ADAM. I’ll meet you there in a few.”
“Where are you going?” Nathan called after her.
“These are part of a new line.” Bethany Anne held up the red box as if it was entirely self-evident, and blinked out of normal space.
“What does that mean?” Stoyan asked before he turned to the General, “And did she just disappear?”
Lance sighed, looking at the empty space. “It means she’s going to buy one of each.”
—
Dr. Gulnara Aliyeva calibrated one of the dials carefully, double checking against the notations on her clipboard. There was no room for error at this facility, that had been made clear both by the man who ran it, and by her fellow scientists.
She had no intentions of being sloppy with her work. She took pride in all of her results. But she was even more careful here than she had been at any other job. She turned back to the naked man on the floor. It really didn’t make sense to keep dressing and undressing them, so they were generally kept naked.
He was shivering, probably trying to make her feel sorry for him. He did not understand what they were hoping to accomplish here. He did not understand what he could become. Gulnara shook her head slightly at his defiance. It was sad, really.
The shifters, in their normal state, did not listen to the scientists’ commands as readily as they did in their human form. Where humans could be broken quite reliably through well-honed techniques, the shifters seemed to regain some of their autonomy when they changed forms.
They were less likely to take orders once they had shifted. The work the scientists did would change that.
It would turn monsters into weapons.
She knew there was no point in explaining this to him. She had tried to change the minds of many of the shifters here. She explained, over and over again, that their powers were meant to be used, that they should be in service to something larger than themselves, but they refused to understand.
Gulnara walked into the side room and locked all of the doors before pressing a button to release the man’s restraints. He flung himself at the bullet proof glass, screaming for her to let him out, and she had to work hard not to flinch. She was a professional. She would not be swayed by his words.
She pressed the button on the machine and the sound of the screams changed. Now they were filled with pain.
“Please! PLEASE!”
He was resisting the change. Gulnara waited the required thirty seconds before she pressed a second button and returned her eyes on him. She made sure to take careful notes. A further thirty seconds ticked away slowly on the clock while the man writhed on the floor, and she pres
sed the third of the eight buttons.
The change was swift and violent. Where there had been a man, now there was a wolf. It crouched on the floor, hanging its head. It was panting with pain.
She flipped a switch, and a cage descended from the rafters above. Inside huddled one of the useless captives: born to a shifter family, but not a shifter, himself. The man cried out when the door of his cage slid open. Gulnara leaned forward to speak into the microphone. “Kill him.”
It was time to see if the latest variation on the experiment would work.
—
Filip opened his eyes and blinked in the sunlight that slanted in the window. His head ached fiercely, and the smell of eggs and bacon made his stomach heave.
“Where….”
“You’re on a plane.” The voice was businesslike. The man from the hotel sat across from Filip, looking fresh and well-dressed in a fitted suit. “There’s coffee and water, as well as food. I’d start with the water. And some aspirin.”
Filip frowned. “Where…are we going?”
“To Spain.” Gerard gave him a small smile. “My employer wants to hear your story firsthand.”
CHAPTER NINE
Eduardo Lopez settled into his chair with a sigh. He had come to work for Hugo Marcari three years ago, burned out from a finance job in Madrid.
At first, being a trader on the European Stock Exchange had seemed like a dream come true. There were long lunches in the lazy afternoons, endless parties at night. Eduardo wore tailored suits and drank with the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.
Then, slowly, it all began to seem like a nightmare. He found himself longing for the fresh bread his grandmother made, for simple breakfasts while looking out over the countryside. He even found himself wondering what it would be like to return to a home with the same woman every night.
And perhaps, children.
The few colleagues he was comfortable enough to share these feelings with all told him the same thing, that he was being ridiculous. He had everything here, he couldn’t just walk away. What was there for him in the country? Nothing. Was he going to be a farmer? If he wanted to get married, they told him, then he should get married, get it out of his system, learn his lesson when he was young. But get a good prenup. They laughed and bought him a round of drinks and told him that the feeling would pass.
Then came the letter: an offer to work for a man named Hugo Marcari. Eduardo’s family had served the Marcaris many generations ago, the letter said. Eduardo could do so again, fulfilling an ancient tradition.
If he worked hard, he would be rewarded. There was housing, food, a job far from the clamor of Madrid. At the time, the job had seemed heaven-sent. He had gone to Mass every day for some time after that, thanking God for rescuing him from the life that was slowly draining him of hope and joy.
Though the work was varied and often simple, Eduardo was eager to prove himself, and the world of finance had taught him to work quickly and without mistakes. He rose quickly in Hugo’s esteem.
But, this job was beginning to seem like its own trap now. Tension had been growing for days. When Eduardo was ordered to decommission a series of tracking chips, he began to wonder just what he had gotten himself into.
He remembered getting his own chip, thinking it was odd and yet still being too relieved by his job change to think much of it.
Now, he wondered.
But Hugo was in one of his moods, and it was not a good time to ask questions. Eduardo paged through the records, decommissioning each chip and wondering what an entire branch in Bulgaria had done to get shut down. Maybe it was one of the research facilities, he thought. He had never seen one of those, and he was curious. Everyone was. By midafternoon, he was finished with his work except for one item. He approached the office tentatively and cleared his throat. Hugo did not look up.
“Mr. Marcari, the chips are decommissioned except for two exceptions.”
Still nothing. Hugo kept working, as if Eduardo had not even spoken.
“It says here that all chips should have stopped transmitting four days ago, but two are still active. They appear to be located somewhere in the mountains outside Sofia.”
Hugo stopped typing at last. He looked up at Eduardo. “What did you say?”
“There are two chips still active.” Eduardo held out the dossiers. “A satellite facility, I assume.”
Hugo considered this for a moment. “Send five of the security team in Sofia,” he ordered finally. “Cordova hired them while he was there, they shouldn’t be busy with anything else. Give them the coordinates, and tell them to find the targets and bring them to the second facility. They will be questioned there. If they resist, they are to be eliminated.”
“Eliminated?” Eduardo frowned.
Hugo’s face was stony. “Were my words unclear, Mr. Lopez? Are you unable to follow simple instructions?”
“No, sir. Of course not. I apologize. I’ll do it at once.” Eduardo bowed and left the room as quickly as he could without seeming to run. It couldn’t mean what he thought, he told himself. No one ordered two people killed that casually. It was probably a euphemism for being fired.
He hoped, anyway.
—
Stoyan stood staring out into the black. His discussion with Bethany Anne and Stephen had been disconcerting. He was used to the old days, when Michael’s rules of honor were in force.
Bethany Anne, however, did not seem to require formality. She listened to Stoyan’s opinions, even when they differed from Stephen’s, and she seemed to take the abduction of Wechselbalg, even from a minor clan, very seriously.
“Are you alright?” Arisha appeared at his side. She was holding two mugs of beer.
“This place is very strange,” Stoyan remarked as he took one of the mugs of beer. He tried to remember what he had been thinking about before Arisha appeared. “It is difficult to believe that we are part of the night sky now.”
“It frightens me a little bit,” Arisha admitted. “I like it, but it goes on forever. It’s so much bigger than anyone or anything I’ve ever seen.” She looked down at her beer, “It makes me wonder if everything that matters to me is unimportant.”
“What does matter to you?” Stoyan asked curiously. “In the hideout, you said you wanted the truth. What would you do with the truth?” He gave a half smile. “I suppose you have it now.”
“The truth is more complex than just seeing something happen,” Arisha explained. “The facility in the mountains got bombed. We know that. But that doesn’t tell us why or how. Was it an enemy or a friend? Why waste so many resources to destroy it like that? Every fact comes from a whole web of reasons. That’s how the world works.”
Stoyan leaned against the glass and looked down at her. This woman had every quality that annoyed him in humans. She stuck her nose in places it didn’t belong, she wanted to understand a world she was not a part of, she claimed to understand things that there was no way she could understand. But she fascinated him, and he told himself that it was not just her figure that was drawing him in.
Then he realized what was different about her. What he hoped was different about her.
“What will you do when you understand the whole world?” he asked her. He suddenly realized that he was leaning up against a sheet of glass, with only that between him and the void of space, and straightened up hurriedly.
Arisha tilted her head. “What will I do?” she echoed. “Write it down, I guess.”
“You don’t want to be in politics?” Stoyan asked. “Make policies, change the world?”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “Not that. I want people to read my work and understand the world. Does that make any sense?”
Her father told her that she was wasting her time trying to search for the truth. Her mother told her to find a husband. Her older brother reminded her that she was writing travel stories, not covering important events. Even her friends liked to tell her that she was reaching beyond herself. To her
surprise, though, Stoyan smiled.
“I like that,” he said quietly. “You want to see the way things really are, not just the way they seem. I don’t think that’s unimportant or small, no matter how big space is.”
Arisha smiled up at him. “And you? What’s most important to you?”
“Family.” Stoyan looked down at his beer. Despair returned. “Or at least, that’s what I would have said a year ago. I would have told you that if a family stuck together, everything would be okay. But I’ve realized that’s not true.”
“How do you mean?” Arisha led him to a small pair of barstools and a round table between them as they opened up, and the two of them leaned in to speak quietly to one another.
“When Irina went missing, our pack leader told me that he would make sure she was found.” Stoyan set his beer on the table and sank his head into his hands. “But I knew he was afraid. You see, a lot of people had gone missing, and when their pack went to look for them, the whole pack would disappear. I knew what he was afraid of. I understood. But I saw him make the choice to leave Irina wherever she was—not to search for her. I couldn’t stay with my pack after that.”