by Natalie Grey
“This is a mess.” Lance rubbed at his forehead. “Nathan is going to be going back to Bulgaria to speak to Stoyan’s pack. I think we should have him look into this. I’m going to go talk to Bethany Anne. The media doesn’t love us right now, but what if we could get them evidence of what Hugo is doing?”
>>I do not have much personal experience with humans compared to many here, but I still think that might backfire.<<
“Yeah, I should probably stop expecting people to be reasonable, shouldn’t I?” Lance put on his jacket and left the room. “Guess this means we just have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
I’m not sure I follow, TOM interjected.
“Get to the root of the problem and kill it—thoroughly. Hugo, his headquarters, and every one of those facilities.” Lance whistled cheerily. “I tell ya, TOM, this guy really has it coming.”
—
Bethany Anne stood alone on the observation deck of the ship, looking down at the curve of Earth below. It glowed, beautiful and untroubled from this far up.
She wished she had any faith in that illusion.
May I ask what you’re thinking about? TOM queried.
She rubbed at her forehead. “Why?”
Because every time I think I understand humans in the context of Kurtherians, you surprise me.
Bethany Anne smiled. “Now, TOM, don’t tell me anything is beyond your comprehension. I may start to doubt your skills.”
Humans are frequently illogical.
“Yes, Mr. Spock, I know.” She let out a breath as she stared at the planet.
I do not understand why you are not getting involved yourself. Do you not feel capable of resolving this quickly?
“I could, easily. I want to.” She clenched her hands and tried to relax. “But this is Stephen’s operation. It’s his problem to fix, and this team needs to run the operation on their own.”
Your vocal patterns suggest that you’re not sure about this course of action.
“Every day you get a little more like ADAM,” Bethany Anne muttered.
His way of looking at the world has a certain elegance.
“Uh-huh. Look, TOM. I’m human. Earth will always be home, in a way.” Bethany Anne admitted. “And it pisses me off to watch people screwing with it. I hate that people like Hugo seem to just get away with whatever they want, and when I try to help people, everyone falls all over each other to stop me.” She shook her head. “I said I was going to leave Earth alone for a while and I meant it. It’s just hard not to intervene when they’re doing things like this.”
So why don’t you intervene?
“Because I have faith in my team. I have faith that they can shut this down quickly and effectively, and that’s not blind faith. I’ve seen them in action. I’m impressed with how they took down Velingrad. Meanwhile, if I don’t prepare for what’s through that gate, there might not be a world for them to mess up anymore.” Bethany Anne straightened up and nodded decisively. “So back to work, TOM. We have a lot to do.” She strode across the room, footsteps echoing in the silence. “TOM?”
Bobcat, Marcus, and William are requesting transportation from the Meredith Reynolds.
“Why?”
They say they want to be on Earth for the extraction of your shoes.
“On the Archangel?”
On Earth.
“That’s odd. What could they be planning?”
I’m not certain, although from what I’ve heard, William would like to visit Belgium, and Bobcat has been researching Spanish hops.
Bethany Anne snorted. “I should have known it would be beer. I’ll go get them. They can do whatever they want, as long as they don’t foul up Stephen’s mission, or forget my shoes.”
She shook her head fondly, straightened her cuffs, and vanished into the Etheric.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sofia, Bulgaria
“Ow! Fuck.” Tabitha skidded across the cement floor coated in glass shards and broken equipment, rolled, and stood up with a frown. “That fucking hurt.”
Ryu dropped onto the floor in an elegant crouch. “Maybe you should work on your landings?”
“Maybe you should…” Tabitha thought a moment, annoyed. “I don’t know, I don’t have any follow up to that.” Tabitha jabbed a finger at Hirotoshi as he joined Ryu. “And don’t you start, either.”
“Of course not.” Hirotoshi swept an elegant bow. “Lead on, Kemosabe.”
Tabitha muttered, “That is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.” She climbed over the piles of rubble, adjusting her black jacket and gloves as she went. All black, comfortable as all get out, and easy to fight in—this outfit was her dream. Not to mention, her ass looked great in it. She tossed a look over her shoulder at it and grinned. “Damn. I look good.”
“So where is the server room?” Ryu asked.
“Do you mind? I’m having a moment, here.” Tabitha sighed at him and tapped at her wrist.
“Stephen? Do you know where the server room is?”
“Southeast corner of the castle.” Stephen’s voice was abrupt. “Bottom floor.”
Tabitha had been warned by Barnabas that Stephen was out of sorts due to Jennifer taking a solo mission. She rolled her eyes. He needed to man up, in her opinion. Jennifer was going to be fine. If she got caught at the facility where she was pretending to be a scientist, she could just fight her way out—Tabitha was even a little bit jealous. And when she imagined Jennifer filling out a lab coat, spitting out equations and scientific phrases while the rest of the scientists just stared at her, it was all Tabitha could do not to laugh.
She took two steps to the edge of the pile of rubble and jumped. “Here we gooooo!” There was a noise below, “Fuck, ow!”
Ryu muttered, “I told her, right?” He scouted the distance to the ground and followed her down.
He turned to look as Hirotoshi followed him. “Seriously, you heard me, right?”
“Normally, I would say the problem would fix itself.” Hirotoshi looked on as Tabitha scowled at a swiftly-healing laceration on her arm. “But in this case, I think we should accept it as a consistent state of affairs.”
“I heard that.” Tabitha glared at them. “Come on. This place sucks.”
“We want to hit both sets of servers,” Stephen reminded her. “The ones that sent information to Hugo’s headquarters, and the ones that were kept unconnected.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Tabitha rolled her eyes as she trotted along the hallway. “What happened to this place, anyway?”
“They bombed it.”
“No shit?”
“Yes. I was here at the time.”
“Good job not getting blown up.” Men, in Tabitha’s opinion, always seemed to need praise. Accordingly, she made an effort to dole it out.
“Thank you,” Stephen said drily. “I wasn’t sure the mission was a success until just now.”
“I was trying to be nice.” Tabitha heaved a fallen door out of the way and stepped back as a pile of rubble fell into the space she had left. She clambered over the pile of rocks. Her eyes picked up a staircase leading down into the dark. “Am I heading in the right direction?”
“Yes.”
“You know, I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” she told him as she stepped over more crap that was in her way.
“Here it comes,” Hirotoshi whispered to Ryu as they followed Tabitha down the stairs.
“I am not talking about this with you,” Stephen said simply.
“It’s not like you wouldn’t have done the same thing if you had thought of it,” Tabitha pressed. “I mean, she probably had a better chance of pulling it off because of the tits and all—”
“I said I am not discussing this with you.”
“—but if you’d had the foresight to get into that helicopter and con them, you totally would have. And she would be totally cool with it.” There was deafening silence from the other end of the line. “Hello?”
Ryu and Hirotoshi shifted
uncomfortably. They winced when Tabitha punched at a metal door leading to the lowest basement level. When it still didn’t move, she wrenched it off its hinges and dropped it, then punched the alarm pad that was beginning to flash red.
“Hate those things. It’s the one time I regret the aural implants.” She went down the stairs. “I know you’re still there, Stephen. Ah ha! Server room.”
“I am still here, yes.”
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“There is nothing to say. You are not as familiar with me as you might think, and—”
“I knew it.” Tabitha threw a glance over her shoulder at the two guys and began to plug in uplink drives. “I touched a nerve.”
“I would not have just run off without—”
“Definitely touched a nerve.”
And, because they knew Stephen couldn’t see them, Hirotoshi and Ryu nodded.
QBS Archangel
“What are you picking up?” Marcus looked over William’s shoulder at the laptop screen.
“Hey!” William jerked the laptop away. “Competitive classified information. Don’t you look at my hop mix.” William had spent the past two weeks coming up with it, and the best part was an ingredient he could get only in Catalonia—where they would be landing shortly to get the shoes.
He planned to sneak off to buy it, and he didn’t want either of the other brothers from other mothers profiting from his research.
Markus tried again. “Oh, come on, you can show me.”
“Stop trying to look or I’ll pour salt in your beer!” William growled back.
“Gentlemen.” Lance looked over at them. “We have more important matters to attend to.”
“You’re the one who proposed the competition,” William pointed out.
“Indeed. Having read the incident reports from various countries, I am also fairly familiar with my daughter’s temper. I would not fail to get her those shoes. That is presently your first priority.”
“Right.” Marcus pulled out his own laptop. “So. France, huh?”
“An unsecured depot in the mountains.” Lance gave them a look. “You’d better come up with a good way to find, mute, or otherwise deal with any tracking devices that have gotten in there in the meantime. And God help us all if they’ve gotten moldy or something.”
All of the men shuddered.
“And anyway,” Bobcat said to the other two, “you don’t really need to worry about this competition, because neither of you will ever out brew me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Lance raised his eyebrows. “Think about your competition. Think about Barnabas being part of your competition.”
“Are you trying to scare me?” Bobcat asked.
“No, not at all.” Lance gave him a smile. “I’m trying to make sure you all bring your A Game, so I have a lot of good beer to drink.”
Catalonia, Spain
Jacobo Dominguez came into the break room to find olives and bread, and a bottle of wine someone was hastily hiding under a table.
“Oh, it’s you.” Telmo pulled the bottle back out and held it out to him. “I thought it was that son of a bitch.”
The other men groaned in commiseration.
Since Hugo had returned that afternoon, it seemed like Gerard had been inspecting everything. He’d been heard arguing with the guard captain about patrol routes and the responses to break-ins at the facility and headquarters. The answer that there hadn’t ever been any had been insufficient, and the guard captain was now walking with a limp.
Everyone tried not to notice that.
It wasn’t just the patrol routes, either. Gerard seemed, suddenly, to know things he shouldn’t have any way of knowing—secret affairs, who went into the town to get drunk, who talked shit about Hugo. A few of the guard were simply gone now, and the rest knew they should keep quiet—but it was hard not to hate that guy.
“Did you hear the newest thing?” Telmo gave Jacobo a meaningful look.
“No. Do I want to?” He took a sip of the wine and passed it back. “This is shit, you couldn’t get something good, make it worth our while?”
“You buy next time, then.” Telmo was unrepentant. “He warned us off that new scientist.”
Jacobo didn’t need to ask who he meant. Word had spread like wildfire about the scientist Hugo brought back with him—Irina, someone said. She filled out a lab coat like nothing else, and Telmo liked to say there was something dangerous about her. Telmo was strange like that. But even Jacobo had to admit that there was more to her than just the toned body. It was something about the way she watched a room, paused before she spoke, tried not to mingle with the other scientists.
Hugo had apparently questioned her, himself, or so the story went. Jacobo thought that maybe he’d tried to talk the woman out of staying. After all, the research here was… unpleasant. Maybe he’d offered her a place up at headquarters, instead. But whatever he’d said, Gerard was hanging around her all of the time. He asked about her. He wanted to know where she went and who she worked with—as if the lab logs wouldn’t show him. Jacobo supposed that this was the next logical step.
He suggested, “Maybe he wants her for himself.”
There was a round of knowing looks that suggested they’d discussed this already and come to the same conclusion.
“Yeah.” Telmo leaned forward. “Told us, not a single word to her or we’d be thrown out of here with no pension and he’d make sure we never worked again.”
Jacobo whistled. “Well, it’s not worth my job to get shot down, eh, guys?”
There was a burst of laughter and a few men clapped him on the back.
Outside the door, Gerard shook his head in disappointment. The failures at Sofia and Velingrad had shown him that conventional methods were not working to keep the staff focused and working well. He’d spent the past weeks searching through personal details of each staff member here, trying to find and root out any signs of the trouble that had led to catastrophe in those two cases. He wished Hugo hadn’t cleared that woman. He turned and made his way down the hallway, then out into the blazing afternoon sun. Heat hung heavy in the air, and it would be a long climb to the castle, but he wanted to be alone. He didn’t trust himself around anyone else right now, even a driver.
His hands clenched. Hugo kept messing up, and it always fell to Gerard to pick up the pieces. The new scientist was trouble, why couldn’t he see it? Her work could hardly be useful enough to risk another facility. Let the men think that he wanted her all to himself. He didn’t care, just as long as they stayed away from her and out of whatever trouble she was spinning.
Lonely men—and all of the guards here were lonely—could be talked into anything. Anything… like letting someone into a facility. Like looking away while someone stole all their data. Anything… like letting the experiments out.
She needed to go. And since Hugo clearly wasn’t going to help, Gerard would need to make his own plan.
—
“ADAM, do you want to tell me what the hell I’m staring at?” Jennifer frowned down at the document in front of her. It might as well be written in gibberish, for all the sense it made to her, and Dr. Molinero would be back all too soon to ask about her progress. He’d handed her the stack of papers almost the moment she walked in the door, and told her he wanted her opinion within the hour.
She was tired, she was jet-lagged, and she wanted a damned bath.
>>I can never be entirely certain with humans, but I believe his request was not entirely genuine<<
“What do you mean?” Jennifer felt a prickle on the back of her neck.
>>Given what you stated to Hugo as your area of expertise, you would likely not be familiar with immunology<<
“He’s just seeing if I’ll admit that I don’t know what he’s talking about?”
>>Yes. I believe the other scientists are unhappy with the fact that Hugo has given you such a prominent role, when you’re a newcomer<<
“We
ll, they can just get over it,” Jennifer snapped. She lowered her voice to sub vocalization again. “I’m not trying to put anyone out of a job.”
>>In all fairness, you are.<<
“Oh. Yeah. Oops. But I’m not trying to, you know… take anyone’s spot.”
>>Somehow, I don’t think that will be a comfort to them<< ADAM pointed out.
“And you know how they could avoid that problem? Not doing experiments on Wechselbalg.” Despite the fact that she wasn’t sure if the Archangel was currently overhead, she shot a triumphant glance skywards. “Boom. Logic.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, however, and she swore under her breath.
“What do I do about this? ADAM, help!”
>>Just tell him it’s not your area of expertise, and he should know that<<
“Hmm.” Jennifer looked down at the papers, and then a slow smile spread across her face. “Or… we could mess with him.”
>>How do you mean<<
“You understand this, right?”
>>Yes, I researched it extensively when he brought you the papers<<
“Then let’s pretend I do know what I’m talking about. Please, tell me there are errors on here.”
>>Numerous errors<< ADAM assured her.
“Good. I’m going to point them out.”
>>I don’t understand what we’re doing.<<
“Think of it like a pack,” Jennifer advised. “He tried to assert dominance over me. The correct answer to that isn’t to just ignore that attempt, it’s to assert dominance over him. Get it?”
>>No, but I’ll take your word for it. Can I talk to TOM about this?<<
“Sure, whatever.” The doorknob turned. “Get ready.” Jennifer directed a brilliant smile in the direction of Dr. Molinero. “Hello again, Doctor.”
“Hello.” The man had a predatory smile on his face. Tall and thin, with what seemed like unnaturally pale skin under his black hair, Dr. Molinero very much liked to be the center of attention and the lead scientist. “Did you get a chance to look over that work?”
“Of course, I have it right here.” ADAM, take it away. She began to speak as the words vibrated into her earpiece. “To be honest with you, I have several concerns about your intern.”