by Natalie Grey
Irina considered this. “All right. You all, stay here and guard him. I’m going to release the others. I’ll send someone along to check his story a bit more thoroughly in a moment.” She looked at the scientist. “Did anyone help you?”
“One of the guards.” He jerked his head. “I think. I’m not sure. Her name’s Richa. I swear she caught me talking to them one night, but she never said anything. If she had, I’d be dead.”
Irina nodded. “I’ll tell the others to look out for her.”
Istaravshan, Tajikistan
Hsu looked around at the assembled staff. They huddled in the forest, looking for helicopters in the pale dawn sky.
“They’re all in the containment area,” ADAM told her. “The additional scientist and guard are still at the facility, being questioned by Stephen. I can put up the barrier here on your mark.”
“Thank you, ADAM. Do it now.” Hsu laced her hands behind her back and watched as energy fields sprang up to pen in the staff and guards.
Screams of panic sounded from inside the cage.
“I see you do not like being caged,” Hsu said conversationally.
“What are you doing?” the administrator demanded. “Are you one of Gerard’s people?”
“I am not,” Hsu said evenly. Anger was beginning to beat in her blood. “I am definitely not. But you are.”
The administrator sputtered, “We are not!”
“You are,” Hsu accused her. “I hear from my colleagues that you were brought in after the last administrator was deemed to be ‘too soft.’ You questioned the staff to see if anyone had sympathies for the Wechselbalg. You had others executed.”
“I had to! It was my life on the line!”
“I see. And what actions did you take to subvert the research program?” Hsu tilted her head to the side.
There was a deafening silence.
“When we gave the order to evacuate,” Hsu said flatly, “two of you stayed behind to try to see if they could get the shifters out. Two. There are forty-one of you in front of me now. Out of forty-three…two. All of you here decided to save your own skins and leave the shifters with the chance of dying.”
The people looked at one another.
“You have been judged for your actions,” Hsu told them. “Can any of you tell me truly that you had no choice, and no opportunity to disobey?”
Again, there was silence.
“ADAM. Do it.”
She watched as the bodies slumped to the ground. A quick, painless death. It was better than they deserved after what they had done.
But at least it was over now.
5
QBS ArchAngel
Richa huddled in her bed at the end of the medical bay.
She didn’t understand what was happening. First, there had been the strange announcement from Administrator Vasilieva that the facility must be evacuated due to grave danger—and to leave the experiments.
Richa wasn’t about to do that.
She had arrived a month ago, in high spirits. The facility at Istaravshan was remote, of course, but the pay was excellent, and she had stopped enjoying the cities. The drinking, the late nights, never getting anywhere in her career… Remote places were nice, in any case. Richa had brought a whole suitcase full of books, some of them in English. She was excited to learn new languages.
It went to hell quickly. The first time she saw the humans in their cages, she screamed. A scientist yanked her out of the room and into a tiny broom closet.
“You can’t ever let them see you like that. They kill the people who feel sorry for the experiments.”
She’d made a plan to run away, as soon as he said those words—until he reminded her that they knew where her family lived, too. You think Administrator Nabiyev’s family was spared? They weren’t.
She didn’t know what to do.
She volunteered for all the late shifts, and she snuck as much food as she could into her pockets and brought it to them. She didn’t know what else to do. The ones in wolf form growled at her, and once or twice she almost lost a finger, but she didn’t stop.
Then one night, one of them talked to her.
He was a man with rich brown hair and eyes like midnight, and he changed back from his wolf form in front of her. She looked away from his nakedness—as much from politeness as anything, but he whispered three words to her—Look at me.
She looked. She saw the bruises on his skin.
Thus began the strangest friendship she had ever had. They never once spoke of what happened in the facility. They might have been two friends talking in a coffee shop, except they were whispering, in the dark, and she hid every time she saw the sweep of another guard’s flashlight.
His name was Firuz, and he had a little daughter, a girl he hoped had been taken far away by her mother—he had heard that the people who ran this facility looked for whole families.
He hadn’t seen her show up, but he was terrified they might be doing experiments on her at another facility.
He asked about Richa’s family. She told him how her little brother had started listening to American rock music and calling everyone “dude.” She told him how her little sister was convinced that, at sixteen, she was grown up enough to get married and have her own house and wanted to buy a wedding dress for when she met her perfect man. Firuz laughed when Richa told him these things, and she liked making him laugh.
None of the others ever spoke to her, but she noticed that none of them tried to hurt her or growl at her, either, after she befriended Firuz.
And when she was told to leave them behind…well, she knew she couldn’t.
She was opening cages frantically when a man and a woman burst into the lab, guns drawn. Richa thought she screamed, and she knew she threw herself in front of Firuz. She didn’t have a plan. She only had the certainty that somehow, against all the odds, she was going to stop them from hurting the shifters.
The woman cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowed in speculation. “Are you Richa?”
“How do you know my name?” They were going to kill her. They were going to kill her family. “Don’t hurt my family! I’ll—”
“We’re not going to hurt you or your family,” the man said gravely. He didn’t look Tajik, but he spoke the language perfectly. “We are here to save these Wechselbalg, and we heard that you were doing the same.”
“Oh.” Richa stared at him. “I…yes. I am. You’re really here to help them?”
It might be a trap, after all.
Firuz leaned and whispered, “She is like me, a shifter.”
What happened next still didn’t make much sense.
Richa had come out of the facility to see black egg-like vehicles hovering above the ground. Firuz pulled her into one of them and, though the egg never seemed to move, soon they were in another facility with gleaming metal corridors and a lot of people speaking English. There was an impossibly detailed mural of the earth from space that even seemed to be moving.
Footsteps approached, and a bright-eyed young tech smiled at Richa.
“You’re all cleared, Ms. Boqiev.”
“How does everyone here speak Tajik?” Richa demanded.
“Oh.” The tech laughed. “It’s the implants. They translate in real time. Now, if you don’t have any other questions or concerns, you’ll be brought back to Earth shortly with the rest of those recovered from the facility. We ask that you stay in this section of the ship, and that—”
“Back to Earth?”
“Of course.” The tech looked confused. “Ms. Boqiev, you’re on the QBS ArchAngel. In orbit.”
Stephen and Jennifer made their way through the now-packed corridors, trying to find the easiest path to their conference room.
The sudden stench of vomit made them both wrinkle their noses. A tech hurrying by with cleanup rags gave them a guilty look. “One of the people hadn’t realized they were in space. They didn’t take the news all that well.”
Jennifer snickered.
Hsu, Irina, Stoyan, and Arisha were waiting for them in the conference room.
“Good news,” Hsu told them. “ADAM has confirmed that the bones from the facility in France were not Wechselbalg. Also, the helicopter hasn’t moved—so wherever they’re going, they’re still in trucks.”
“Good to know.” Stephen nodded at her as he took a seat. “Any idea where they are going, ADAM?”
“My best guess is that they are going to the facility in Postojna, Slovenia. Their direction fits, and it is the closest facility by far.”
Stephen frowned, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. “And have there been any further transmissions from Gerard? Can we confirm that he’s with them?”
“No transmissions, although he appears to have tried accessing his email recently.”
“I don’t like that we don’t know his status,” Jennifer said quietly. “He could slip away from that convoy at any time and disappear.”
“He wants power too much to do that,” Hsu explained. “I think he really did leave Hugo to die. The two of them had been fighting, and I think Gerard realized he was helping Hugo accumulate power when he could just take it for himself. So if he got the shifters from that facility to follow him, he’s not going to give them up.”
Stephen sighed. “So we need to expose his lies.”
Arisha shook her head. “I thought everyone knew who he was. And if they know who he is and they’re still following him, then you have a major problem to sort out. Because he’s got some kind of crazy hold on them—whatever he said to make them trust him, it’s good.”
Irina agreed, “She has a point.”
Stephen looked out the window into the glittering black of space. “Is it possible that he’s a captive? That they are using him to get into the other facilities?”
There was a stunned silence behind them.
“I think that’s very possible,” Jennifer said. “In which case, they would be open to knowing that we’re involved.”
“But if he is not their captive, they would try to kill you,” Hsu reminded them. “ADAM says he is checking his email. He has not sent any sort of distress signal. And he is dangerous and charismatic. What if one of them takes pity on him and helps him escape?”
Jennifer rubbed her temples, “I just wish we knew which it was.”
“I wonder if there’s any of the pack left,” Stephen said suddenly. “Near Gordes. If we find the pack, they might be able to tell us something about the members—or something to call them back.”
“Be careful with that,” Irina advised. “And don’t take too long. Maybe he’s just conning them into thinking he’ll help them get revenge…until he can get them in range of command waves.”
The table went silent.
“I’ll go immediately,” Stephen told them. “Hsu, Jennifer, Stoyan, Arisha—you did well at the last facility. Would you want to go to one of the others and begin evacuating it?”
He knew that things might go south, but he also knew that the staff at the facilities were cowards, only too eager to save their own skins at the expense of others. And the idea of leaving the Wechselbalg any longer than he had to was agony.
He looked at Jennifer. Are you okay with this?
Of course. Jennifer nodded her head at him with a small smile.
“Irina, come with me now. Your experience may convince the pack to be more open, then we can see about intercepting the caravan. We don’t have much time before they reach Postojna.”
Outskirts of Gordes, France
Two hours later, Emeric Carre approached the small airstrip just as a tired man hauled the gates open. The man muttered a bonjour without even looking up. He wanted to get this over with and go back to his breakfast, Emeric knew.
Humans were so weak.
He tried not to sneer as he made his way through the tiny building. He still needed these humans, after all, as much as it pained him.
Not forever, he assured himself. Just for now.
He thought about his escape from Gordes. How he’d held the heat shielding over himself, as he’d crept carefully through the facility and out into the forest. The people who had come to the facility, the vampire and its pet Wechselbalg (Emeric’s lip curled in disgust at this) clearly had impressive technology at their beck and call. Even if that technology did not include infrared, and they were not still scanning the facility, it was better to overestimate them.
After all, why would Hugo stock such shields in his facilities unless he knew they might be useful? After the staff had been disposed of, Emeric and the others had done a thorough inventory, finding guns and other technology.
It was only in the bustle of the town that he dropped the heat shielding and reluctantly left it in an alleyway. It was too heavy to keep carrying. Then he headed for the airport—a structure on the outskirts of town, barely deserving the name.
The building seemed to have only three employees—the man at the gate, and two more at the desk, where a receptionist chatted with a man in rougher clothes. The pilot, Emeric guessed.
Good.
Both of them looked over, half-interested. Emeric had their full attention when he slid a stack of dirty bills onto the desk. Their eyes widened when the bills were joined by another stack the same size.
“Oui, monsieur?” The receptionist eyed Emeric with a new appreciation.
“I need a flight to Khachmaz,” Emeric requested pleasantly. “I have money for fuel, and bribes if ordered to stop.” He pushed one stack of bills forward. “This is for you, to make sure you don’t have any troubles explaining why the plane couldn’t be here today…and if you happen to provide official verification of our flight plan, so much the better.”
The receptionist took the stack of bills so quickly that it seemed to disappear into thin air. She smiled, cloyingly sweet. “Of course, sir.”
Emeric slid the other stack of bills to the pilot. “And this is for you. Compensation for this flight, for any other days of work missed getting back, and maybe a few tune-ups on the plane.”
“Merci, monsieur,” the man murmured, evidently pleased. He tucked the bills into his coat. “Khachmaz....”
“Azerbaijan.”
“It will be a long trip, no?” The pilot tapped his mouth speculatively. “Perhaps we will stop and get another plane. Warmer. Faster.”
“Do whatever you wish.” Emeric nodded to the pilot’s pocket. “I leave it in your capable hands.”
The pilot smiled.
Neither of them asked why he was going to Khachmaz. The money said clearly that he wanted no such questions, and their sleek smiles told him that they had made deals like this often—if, perhaps, never for so far a destination.
As Emeric ate a small breakfast, provided with another cloying smile by the receptionist, he allowed himself to be pleased.
The team would go to Postojna, and melt into the woods and wait for him. He, meanwhile, would recruit the captives at Khachmaz, Naftalan, and Naryn. The plane would be useful—as long as the pilot was as discreet as he seemed. If not, Emeric could find someone else willing to bring him across borders with no questions asked.
When he had his army assembled—the executions would begin. First, the officials who had turned a blind eye. Then, the vampire who wanted Emeric to accept some higher law of justice than simple revenge.
And last, the humans who thought they were better than Wechselbalg.
The world would kneel at Emeric’s feet, or it would feel his wrath.
6
Gordes, France
It was mid-morning as Stephen and Irina made their way through Gordes.
Stephen walked confidently. In some ways, he felt most at home in these smaller towns, with the older buildings and the narrow streets. These smaller towns resembled the world he remembered…right down to the way the Wechselbalg hid in plain sight.
If he was lucky, anyway.
Stephen looked for the telltale signs—a less fashionable part of town, the buildings a
bit more run-down, the streets a bit dirtier and narrower. For humans, to whom acceptance was a vital part of survival, it was considered dangerous to live in the bad part of town. People would tell their children not to play with yours. Everyone would know your name and might not give you work.
But that sort of thing was better for the Wechselbalg. Close friendships led to secrets being exposed, and those secrets could result in a witch hunt. As a Wechselbalg, it was better to rely only on the pack.
It was not long before they heard the faint sound of footsteps and turned to see a young man shadowing them.
The man was tall and broad-shouldered, very muscular, and seemed instinctively disposed to glower.
Stephen smiled. He adjusted his cuffs as he strolled over to the man and was pleased to see the man’s face flicker uncertainly. He was clearly used to people running.
“Good morning,” Stephen said pleasantly.
The man stared at him silently. His nostrils flared.
“Ah, yes.” Stephen smiled more broadly. “You know what I am, I think, and you know what to do.”
Still, the man said nothing, but an involuntary flicker of his eyes betrayed him.
Stephen followed the flicker and saw a house with a blue door. He looked back. “Is that where your Alpha lives?”
“No,” the man replied instantly, then, a second too late, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You need to get better at lying,” Stephen advised him. He turned toward the door and paused. “But, lest you be worried, I mean you no harm. I am bringing word of members of your pack who were taken from their homes.”
The man gulped. “You found them? At the facility?”
All of his recalcitrance was gone. The promise of information clearly thrilled him. Thick fingers clenched around Stephen’s arm—not out of malice, but out of desperation.
“Yes.” Stephen waited for the man to remove his hand, focusing on his patience. This man’s agony was more important than a wrinkled suit.