by R. M. Olson
They stepped out into the mass panic that was the lobby.
A shoving mass of people streamed down the stairway, fighting for the exit. Smoke was rising from one of the tapestries, and he could hear Radic’s panicked voice shouting, “Get out! Everyone out!”
Tae gritted his teeth.
“Please. Let me,” said Ysbel grimly, stepping to the front of the group, and there was something about the look on her face that made people part around her.
They reached the stairwell, and Tae kept his head down, swearing softly as they pounded up the stairs.
They had to make it. They had to. He couldn’t stop and think about what would happen if they didn’t make it.
Someone shoved him, and he staggered as a man screamed out insults. Ivan caught him before he could fall, face grim, but from the corner of his eye, Tae saw a guard looking in their direction.
Damn it.
“Ysbel, they’ve seen us,” he hissed.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “There’s not much we can do about it at this point,” she muttered. “If we get in a shootout, we get in a shootout.”
It was just possible, with Ysbel’s modded weapons and the chaos below, that they’d survive a shootout. But Caz and Peti and the others wouldn’t, because they’d be dead the moment one of the guards recognized him.
His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was choking off his breath.
And then the guard swore and spun around, yanking his heat pistol up and firing off a shot at something across the room.
Jez. It had to be Jez.
Lev looked up sharply, face pale.
“Come on,” said Galina from behind him, her voice strained. “We can’t help her by getting caught. Let’s get this done.”
The crowd thinned out as they reached the second story, and by the time they reached the third floor, they were pelting up the stairs at full speed.
“What now?” Ivan gasped as they reached the third floor landing.
“Tae,” said Lev. “You’re going to need to hack in, check how many of Grigory’s people are in there.” His face was bloodless.
“Just a minute,” Tae gritted. He leaned against the wall, panting, and pulled up his com. He’d already hacked into Grigory’s system, this should only take him a moment—
He typed the last command and hit enter. And then a shrill alarm sounded from the lobby, and he sighed in relief.
The guards were running for a spot in the corner that had absolutely nothing remarkable about it, except that he’d just pulled in urgent instructions to his com that every damn guard in the lobby was needed, immediately, in that exact spot.
Wouldn’t last for more than a couple minutes while they tried to figure out what had happened, but it should give Jez a chance.
Tae could see the sudden relief in Lev’s posture, and he shot Tae a look of wordless gratitude.
Tae pushed himself upright, face set. “Alright. Let’s go.”
Lev led them quickly to a hallway, barely visible from the main stairway. “Tae,” he said quietly. “Can you do a scan? I need you to confirm he’s in here, and how many guards he has with him. And I’ll need you to set up a block so that they can’t call out for help.” He glanced around at Olyessa’s guards, who’d followed them up the stairs and were now standing grimly behind them, weapons drawn and ready. “If we can get in quickly and overpower them when they’re not expecting it, it’s just possible we can pull this off. But there will be shooting. Grigory won’t be unprotected.”
The guards nodded grimly.
Tae closed his eyes for a moment and drew in a long breath. “I’ve got tracking on Grigory’s people, but that’s all. If he’s holed up with one of the street gangs or something, my scan won’t pull that.”
Lev nodded, forehead creased in a frown. “It’s all we have, so it will have to be enough.”
Tae nodded, and pulled up his holoscreen.
He was half-way through setting a block when footsteps pounded up the hallway behind them. He spun around, but Galina and Lev’s matching gasps of relief were enough to tell him who it was.
“Hey tech-head,” Jez whispered. She was sporting a black eye and limping badly, but she was grinning, as usual. “We miss the fun yet?”
Radic leaned up against the wall, panting and muttering something about getting too damn old for this.
Galina closed her eyes for a moment in relief and put her arm around Jez, pulling her close.
“How’s it coming?” Ivan whispered, crouching down beside him.
“Give me a couple minutes,” said Tae, his voice tight.
Ivan nodded. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
There wasn’t, but the fact of his presence was somehow soothing, and Tae found himself relaxing slightly, his fingers finding the commands he needed a little more easily than before.
“There,” he said finally.
Lev glanced over quickly. “You have it?”
“I have the blocker, and I’ve set it into everyone’s coms.”
“And the scan?”
Tae shook his wrist quickly to reset his screen. “Just doing it now.”
Lev crouched down to watch as the scanner worked. At last, a diagram of the room at the end of the hallway popped up, populating with green dots, one red dot in one corner of the room.
Tae felt his shoulders slump in relief.
“Grigory?” asked Lev, pointing at the red dot.
Tae nodded. “And the others are his people. Guards or his boyeviki, I’m not sure. My scan isn’t sophisticated enough to tell them apart.”
Lev nodded, frowning. “Well,” he said at last, “there’s eight of them. That’s not great. But we’ll have the element of surprise, so it’s something.” He turned to Ysbel. “Alright. We’ll need—”
“You’ll need to put your weapons down, right now,” said a man’s voice.
Tae looked up quickly, something cold gripping the pit of his stomach.
Olyessa’s guards had spread out, and were surrounding them, heat-guns levelled at the heads of ever member of the crew.
Slowly, Lev got to his feet, hands spread to show he wasn’t holding a weapon. “What is this?” he asked, voice a measured calm. “We’re going after Grigory, not Olyessa. This isn’t anything we didn’t tell you about. And we’ll need your weapons to pull it off.”
One of the guards grabbed him and spun him around roughly, shoving the heat-gun into his back. “Drop your weapons,” she snapped.
Tae glanced quickly around at the others.
Their grim faces told him everything he needed to know.
Slowly, he did as he was told, and heard, from behind him, the sound of the others doing the same.
“Get up,” said the guard holding Lev. “Hands where we can see them.”
They obeyed.
Tae’s chest was tight with a sort of panic, and every breath was an effort.
One of the guards tapped her com and muttered something in a low voice, and a moment later the door to the room clicked and swung gently open.
The guards gestured them inside.
Grigory sat in one corner of the room, leaning back casually, his eight bodyguards forming a loose half-circle around him. He smiled as they stepped inside, a lazy sort of smile.
But the guards holding them weren’t looking at him. They were looking to the other side of the room.
He knew, somehow, what he’d see, even before he turned.
A plump, grandmotherly woman, with a lined face and cold eyes, watched them from a chair in the corner, a satisfied smile on her face.
Olyessa.
“Masha,” she said, in a rustic, rural drawl. “It’s so good to see you all. Grigory and I were watching with interest to see what you’d do. And you didn’t disappoint.” She gestured to her guards. “Bring them all the way in.” She spared a glance for Tae. “Grigory’s already killed the street kids. He did it the moment my guards told me you’d come back, unfo
rtunately, so we’ll need something else for leverage, I suppose.”
Tae stared at her for a moment, trying to make sense of her words.
He felt, somehow, distant, and numb, and very, very cold.
She was still talking, but he couldn’t really hear her anymore, and he couldn’t really feel the floor holding him up, or the guard’s grip on his arm. He felt like he was falling, and there was nothing to catch him, and he’d be falling forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
YSBEL’S BREATH CAME too quickly, but she managed a quick glance at Tae.
He looked like he was going into shock, face sick, eyes glassy, jaw clenched unnaturally tight.
But there was nothing she could do for him at the moment.
Tanya’s expression was stricken, but she caught Ysbel’s eye and managed a small smile.
Ysbel drew in a deep breath.
The children were safe, at least. They had that. And if she was going to die, she’d at least die with Tanya. Really, it was more than she’d expected.
It was one thing to con a weapons dealer, even one as dangerous as Vitali. But trying to pull a sting on the mafia?
It had always been a crazy idea. Impressive, really, how close they’d come to succeeding.
“Well, this is certainly unexpected,” said Masha. Her voice managed to convey bland surprise, but her posture gave her away. “I had thought you two weren’t currently on speaking terms.”
Grigory turned to her, and his smile did nothing to disguise the hatred on his face. “Masha,” he said. “We have you to thank for that. You must think I’m very stupid. You honestly thought you could take me down, didn’t you?”
“It appears to me that we very nearly did,” murmured Masha. “Considering that if it weren’t for Zhenya, I’d have every credit from your pleasure houses in my account.”
Grigory’s eyes narrowed further. “You’ve always had a high opinion of yourself, haven’t you, Masha? But there was one good thing that came from your scheme. Olyessa and I have made up.” He smiled at the woman sitting across the room. “Getting rid of you was something that would benefit both of us. It drove us into negotiations, and it turns out we can do business together quite well. Under the table, of course. There are still advantages to being seen as rivals.”
He turned back to Masha. “Which is why I was willing to let you go and take the fall for the scheme falling through. If things played out like I’d hoped, both your disappearance, and Olyessa’s subsequent ‘discovery’ of the truth, would have made a decent smoke-screen for our dealings. And you would have stayed alive, at least for a little while. But you could never leave well enough alone. Still, it’s probably better this way. We’ll both sleep better when you’re dead.”
“I see,” said Masha, her voice crisp and cutting. “You’ll work together until you can’t take anything else without dividing it between you. And then you’ll kill each other over who gets the bigger portion. And she didn’t mind that you killed her guards, I take it?”
Grigory’s smile broadened. “Oh, that may come in the future. But we’ll let the future take care of itself. And as you well know, those six were guards you’d managed to compromise, Masha. As always, I have nothing but respect for how quickly you work.”
“Olyessa. Did you always plan to double-cross us?” asked Lev, voice strained.
Olyessa smiled at him. “Not at first, no. When I thought you could pull it off, then I had every intention of honouring my bargain. But when Grigory sent a message to me, telling me he’d figured out the scheme and offering to talk, I decided it would be smarter to go with the winning proposition. I didn’t get where I am now by backing losing gambles.” She shifted in her seat to face Masha. “Masha, you did me a good turn after all, even if it was unwitting on your part. I see substantial benefits to both Grigory and myself with this alliance. So I am grateful. But really, it’s better this way. You’re much too dangerous to keep alive.”
Masha took a small step forward, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Her posture was tense, but for the first time, Ysbel realized it wasn’t tense from fear.
She frowned.
“I’m very afraid, Olyessa, that you will be disappointed with the bargain you made,” Masha said, and there was a note of something unfamiliar in her voice.
“I’m very happy at the moment,” said Olyessa easily, but now there was the faintest hint of concern behind her expression.
Masha ignored her, and turned to Grigory. “Grigory Korzhikov,” she said.
This time, Ysbel did turn to stare at her.
Masha’s calm, bland tone was gone. Her voice was sheer ice, words cutting like knives.
“Grigory. You killed my family. And I watched you do it. I watched every scream, every sob, every plea for mercy. I saw all of it. I was seven years old at the time. I doubt you remember it, to be honest. It was just one of several in that week, wasn’t it? I learned later that it was the week you expected payouts, and of course my parents wouldn’t pay. They were religious, you know, my parents. Prayed to the Lady three times a day, said grace over every meal, never picked up a weapon, never harmed another person. They couldn’t have paid the mafia. It would have gone against every single thing they believed it. The mafia knew them, but they always used to turn a blind eye. Never hurts to have someone praying to the Lady, does it? But then Zorya murdered her way into the top position, and she wanted to set a precedent. She didn’t want people like my parents to inspire others to defy the mafia. So she sent you. When my parents refused, like she knew they would, you killed them.”
Ysbel stared at Masha, the faint taste of bile in the back of her throat.
She’d never heard this story.
No wonder Masha was willing to do anything to bring Grigory down, even betray her team. Ysbel honestly couldn’t say she wouldn’t have done the same in Masha’s place.
At least, once she might have.
She glanced around at the others, their faces the grim set of people who know they’re going to die.
This crew had become her family, as certainly as her children and her wife were.
She understood Masha. She could even, almost, sympathize. But Masha had taken herself out of the group of people Ysbel would die to protect when she betrayed them on Grigory’s ship. And she was dangerous. She was perhaps the most dangerous person in the room at the moment, and that was a high standard to meet.
Perhaps it was too late to save Tae’s friends. But they still had one option left to save the crew from what was inevitably coming.
She glanced towards Lev. He met her eye, and gave a short nod, although his face was paler than usual.
She’d set the message to Vitali into her com days ago. The only thing left was to send it.
She tapped her com against her thigh, swallowing down the faint sickness in her throat.
It wasn’t like they had other options at this point.
Masha turned, for just a moment, and her eyes met Ysbel’s. Ysbel kept her gaze steady, but even here, even now, she couldn’t read Masha’s expression.
Grigory’s head was cocked slightly to one side, watching Masha with faint interest. At last, he chuckled slightly. “You’re right, I didn’t remember that. When I figured out who you were, before I sent my people to go pick you up from Prasvishoni, I had to go back and look it up. Wasn’t memorable enough to note down on my com chip at the time. I knew it might sour you on my offer, but I gambled that you’d be interested enough in keeping away from the government that you’d agree anyways. Because, as I’m sure you know, the reason we killed so many people that week was that the government gave us the go-ahead. They pulled the police out, and only sent them in afterwards to do clean-up.” He leaned forward. “Of course, every gamble brings its risks, and even the best gambler loses on occasion. Once.” He smiled, and the menace in the smile made Ysbel shiver slightly.
“So yes. I know who you are, and I know what happened to your parents. Do you feel better now that
you’ve said it? Now that you’ve faced me? Or were you hoping your story would make me pity you?”
“Neither,” said Masha, and again Ysbel was struck at the cold distain in her voice. “I told you so you would understand why this was worth it.”
Grigory frowned slightly. “What was worth it?”
Masha smiled, a slow, icy smile that chilled the blood in Ysbel’s veins. “Look at your credit account, Grigory,” she said quietly. “You as well, Olyessa, since you decided to cast your tokens in with his.”
“What are you talking about?” Now the worry was clear in Grigory’s voice.
“Go ahead,” said Masha. “Take a look. It’s not like you don’t have us at gunpoint.”
His frown deepening, Grigory pulled up the holoscreen on his com and typed something into it. There was a long moment of silence, the tension in the room thick enough to breathe.
And then Grigory’s face went slack with a mixture of shock and horror.
He swiped desperately thorough screen after screen, and then, at last, he stopped, sagging. He looked, suddenly, like a very old man.
“What is it?” Olyessa snapped.
“Look for yourself,” said Grigory, in a hollow voice.
Olyessa pulled up her own holoscreen, movements sharp and quick and nothing at all like the calm, grandmotherly persona she normally affected.
She stared at the screen for a moment, then slumped back in her chair, hand clutching the arm of her seat as if it was the only thing that kept her from falling over.
“What did you do?” asked Grigory, in that same hollow voice. “What did you do, Masha?”
Masha smiled then. Her eyes were narrowed slightly, and there was a hint of cold, merciless triumph in her face, and for the first time, Ysbel understood why people were afraid of Masha.
“I had Tae create the false account, you knew that,” she said, and her voice would have been pleasant, if it hadn’t held that hiss of hatred. “But you didn’t see what he placed in it with his security protocols. The moment you put your money into the account, his bug was triggered. Every credit in that account was corrupted, beyond repair. And more than that. If you look through your financial records, you’ll find that it traced back to the source of the funds, and corrupted them as well. Considering Olyessa’s funds were in that account, it did the same to hers. And although she didn’t leverage every asset she had in order to get the necessary funds, like you did, I made very certain that the amount of funds I asked her for would have been enough to break her. And I made certain that she had enough funds tied up in my enterprise that she’d have to leverage at least some of her assets in order to keep her … business, if that’s what you’d prefer to call it, running.”
