Trojan Horse

by R. M. Olson

  She turned to face Grigory. “You, Grigory, are finished. You have nothing. A dock-worker walking the street is wealthier than you are right now. You’re a broken man. Your organization is broken. This house isn’t yours anymore, and nor are any of the other pleasure houses you owned. And if my records are correct, the few houses Olyessa owned were the assets she chose to leverage in order to keep her enterprise running.” She turned, so she was looking at both of them.

  “I have a feeling that the person who owns those loans now is going to call them. Because that’s the other thing that happened when you pulled your credits from that account—it set up a signal to the Svodrani banking system. It set up an alert that your credits were bad, and everyone with access to the accounts will see that. You’re finished, Grigory. As is Olyessa. There’s nothing left for you.”

  Grigory swore, his voice a choked snarl. “I’ll kill you, Masha. I’ll kill you right here.” He was already going for his heat pistol.

  “Stop.” Masha’s voice rang out sharply, and she turned to the bodyguards. “He’s not going to be able to pay you. Any wages you were owed, they’re gone now. And perhaps you’re loyal to him as a friend. If so, more power to you. But I swear to you, he’ll never recover from this. Are you really willing to take his orders now?”

  The guards behind Grigory stirred uneasily, and from the corner of her eye, Ysbel saw that the guards flanking Olyessa were doing the same.

  “There are crumbs left in this empire of his,” Masha said, voice thick with distain. “You can hold on with that old man, drooling and slavering through the rubble trying to find something worth saving, or you can turn over a new leaf, hope that whoever steps in where he left off decides to grant you mercy that you don’t deserve. But if you help Grigory kill the person who took him down, I don’t think whoever that is will be grateful.”

  Grigory grabbed his weapon, pointing it towards Masha with shaking hands.

  Ysbel swore.

  Perhaps Masha had taken Grigory down, but this place was about to turn into a bloodbath. If Vitali’s people didn’t show up soon, there wouldn’t be anyone left to save.

  One of the bodyguards snatched the weapon from Grigory’s hand. Grigory spun, his face twisted and ugly with rage. “How dare you,” he began, in that same choked snarl, and grabbed for the bodyguard who’d taken his gun. The bodyguards swung the butt of her gun down towards Grigory’s temple, but another guard caught her arm in one hand, and with his other fist, knocked her backwards.

  Grigory was on his feet, reaching down into his boot for another weapon.

  Ysbel stepped forward. The guard holding her at gunpoint didn’t even react, as if not certain anymore who was giving the orders, and Ysbel grabbed Grigory by the collar and yanked him to his feet, then shoved him back into his chair.

  “You leave the weapons where they are, or I’ll kill you,” she growled.

  The hatred and fury on his face could have burned holes in a prefab wall, but she narrowed her eyes and glared back at him.

  He didn’t reach for his weapon a second time.

  Two clicks through her com.

  She glanced quickly around the room. The others were back against the wall, mostly. That was good. And Masha—

  She took a deep breath.

  Masha would be exposed to the door, the moment Ysbel stepped back.

  The door burst open in a ball of flame, the hinges twisting and warping, the door itself sagging, half-melted, on its hinges, and a group of navy-clad figures, faces obscured, burst into the room.

  Masha turned, and for half a second, her eyes caught Ysbel’s.

  And then Ysbel stepped back, leaving Masha in full view.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Masha snapped, her voice sharp.

  The figures had already spread out around the outside of the room. There were at least fifteen of them, although in the chaos it was hard to tell exact numbers.

  One of them spoke. Their face was obscured by the mask, but there was a hint of dry humour in their voice.

  “Masha. Vitali Dobrev sends his regards. Lev called us in, told us where you’d be. He and his friend Ysbel, of course.”

  There was a moment of complete silence.

  Ysbel found she couldn’t meet Masha’s gaze, and she didn’t want to meet Jez’s.

  This had been the only option. After everything, this had been the only feasible option to keep the crew alive, keep them from dying in the inevitable firefight.

  But there was a knot in her stomach, tight and hard, and she realized she must not be as certain of that as she might have been.

  “What do you want?” Masha seemed to have recovered herself, because her posture was erect, her voice almost steady.

  “You, Masha.” There was still that dry humour in the voice. “Vitali wants you.” The figure looked around at Grigory and Olyessa, the bodyguards who’d paused mid-struggle, still not certain who’s side they were on.

  “Go on,” said the navy-clad figure, gesturing to the door. “We don’t want you. Mister Vitali has no reason to start fights with the mafia. We only want her.”

  There was a long pause. Then, at last, Grigory pushed himself to his feet. His face was still contorted with rage, his expression deadly.

  “I have no objection,” he hissed. “Only I would ask that for old friendship’s sake, Vitali makes her death long and painful.”

  He jerked a head at his bodyguards, and reluctantly, they followed him.

  Olyessa stood as well. The woman’s face bore no trace now of the kindly, grandmotherly woman she’d appeared a few minutes earlier. The cold hate that shone from her eyes made her look almost demonic.

  “You planned on double-crossing me from the beginning, Masha,” she said in a low, icy voice.

  “Yes. However, it is good to know that my assumption, that you would turn on us the moment it appeared beneficial, was borne out,” said Masha.

  Despite everything, she was still Masha, unruffled and unruffleable, her voice calm, her bearing competent and self-effacing. But Ysbel had seen the woman behind that mask, for the first time.

  And for the first time, that calm voice sent shivers through her.

  Grigory had just reached the door when the first of Vitali’s people stepped towards Masha, heat-gun drawn.

  What happened next happened so fast that Ysbel’s eyes hardly had time to follow.

  The figure grabbed for Masha. Masha twisted away, ducking under the figure’s outstretched hand, and when she straightened, she was holding a gun. The movement was fast enough that Ysbel couldn’t tell if she’d grabbed it from the guard, or if she’d had it hidden somewhere on her person. For a split second, she wondered if the room would be turned into a firefight.

  And then Masha turned. Her face was grim, but still calm, and there was a deadly, pitiless look in her eyes.

  “Lev,” she said quietly.

  He turned.

  She fired.

  Everything seemed to have slowed to half-speed—Lev, crumpling to the ground, Jez yanking her arm from the person holding her and springing towards him as Masha fired a second time.

  The gasp of pain from Jez as the shot aimed at Lev hit her, the horrified look on her face as she fell. The momentary shock in Masha’s expression, instantly hidden.

  And then time seemed to start again. The figures in blue leapt forward, guns drawn. Masha turned, and they fired, how many of them Ysbel couldn’t tell.

  Tae grunted in pain, collapsing against Ivan, and Ysbel tried to shove Tanya behind her as heat blasts whined through the air.

  And just as the figures reached Masha, the woman caught Ysbel’s eye one final time.

  She raised her heat gun.

  There was no time to move, no time to run, no time to duck out of the way. Ysbel only managed to push Tanya a little farther behind her.

  And then Masha pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  JEZ LAY ON the ground, eyes closed. The room was a wash of no
ise, and she was having a hard time distinguishing one sound from another.

  There was something warm underneath her, where she’d fallen.

  Lev.

  She’d seen him fall.

  She’d seen Masha look at him, and raise her gun, and pull the trigger, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever forget that sight, for the rest of her life.

  However long that ended up being. At this stage, she wasn’t sure it would be all that long.

  People were shouting and screaming and swearing, and she could hear Grigory’s voice, raised. “What just happened?” he was shouting. “What the hell—”

  “Get out of here, both of you, unless you want to be caught in the damn crossfire,” someone else snapped.

  There was the unmistakable hiss and sputter of heat gun blasts, and a grunt of pain, and she couldn’t tell who it was from.

  “Get out!” the voice snapped again. “Get out, I’ll take care of the Masha woman. We’re not taking her alive.”

  Another heat blast, a strangled shout of pain.

  There was pain washing through Jez’s own body, hot and cold at the same time, and she found she didn’t really want to move. She didn’t really want to think, she just wanted everything to stop, for just a minute.

  And then, finally, the room grew still.

  She kept her eyes shut, because she was pretty sure she didn’t want to open them right now.

  And then, at last, a voice. Calm, and collected, and ever-so-slightly amused.

  Masha’s voice.

  “They’re gone.”

  Jez stirred, and blinked her eyes open.

  “Jez?”

  She turned slightly, and found she was looking into Lev’s face. He was wearing a wry expression.

  “Jez. I don’t mean to be rude, but your elbow is in the middle of my stomach.”

  She managed a snarky grin. “Sorry, genius.”

  She tried to roll off, winced, and bit back a curse, and his expression turned immediately to one of sharp concern.

  “Jez? Are you alright?”

  “‘M fine,” she muttered, managing to push herself into a sitting position. “I just got the hell beat out of me on the damn ship, and then again downstairs, and I don’t heal as quickly as all that.”

  The pain radiating through her back, where Grigory’s stooges had kicked her, was almost enough to make her lightheaded.

  Damn. She was going to be sore tomorrow.

  With a moderate amount of effort and a substantial amount of swearing, she made it to her feet, and then she had to reach out and catch herself on the wall before she fell over again.

  Galina appeared at her side, steadying her, and Jez sighed in relief and relaxed against her.

  Galina was a hell of a lot more comfortable than the wall.

  “Well,” said Ysbel, at last. “I think that was effective.”

  “I hope so,” said Masha.

  Jez took a deep breath and glanced around the room. The figures in navy blue were gone, except for one. And that one had pulled their face covering down and was running fingers through their hair.

  Jez stared.

  “I’m very confident we fooled them, at any rate,” said Zhenya.

  Tae, who was slumped in one corner, leaning against Ivan as if he didn’t quite have the strength to stand, jerked his head up.

  “What the hell—” he began through his teeth, his voice shaking.

  Zhenya chuckled. “Don’t worry, Tae. Your friends are alive.” They shrugged. “I was the one Grigory put in charge of killing them, and he trusts me implicitly. I can assure you, they’re perfectly safe.”

  “I—What—” Tae’s face had gone bloodless, and he seemed unable to form a complete sentence.

  Zhenya chuckled. “Tae. I’ve always liked you. And as I told you, I have no interest in killing street kids unless it’s absolutely necessary. After the arrangement Masha and I worked out—” They glanced at Masha, and shrugged. “There was no need.”

  Tae sagged in relief, and Jez sucked in a long breath, feeling suddenly lighter than she had in a very long time, even with her whole damn body aching like she’d basically climbed into a meat pulverizer and turned it on.

  Lev was shaking his head. “Masha, I have to hand it to you. The look on Grigory’s face—”

  “Wait,” interrupted Ivan, looking back and forth between Lev and Masha. “Wait. You mean—what you said about the credits—”

  “Yes,” said Masha, with a slight smile. “Everything I said about the credits were true. He played perfectly into our hands.” She glanced around the room.

  “That means—” Ivan trailed off, his face slack with disbelief.

  “Yes.” Masha’s voice held a hint of that same coldness it had held when she was talking to Grigory, and Jez gave a small shiver. “As I promised. Grigory is completely destroyed. Olyessa as well. By this time tomorrow, both of their organizations will be nothing more than rats fighting over bones. With no assets to use to borrow funds, no way to pay the boyeviki or grease the wheels of the government—” She smiled, and her smile was utterly merciless. “We’ve done exactly what I promised we’d do. We’ve taken Grigory down.”

  Jez watched her. Honestly, Masha was right, they’d pulled a damn good con. But—

  She shivered slightly, and Galya looked up at her in concern.

  “Jez? Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, trying for a grin.

  But there was something about the look on Masha’s face. Something about the look on her face when she’d turned to Lev, aimed, and pulled the trigger. And yes, it was a rigged gun, and yes, they’d planned it that way, and yes, Lev was fine, they were all fine.

  But there had been one moment, that moment just before Masha pulled the trigger. That moment where Jez had realized, irrevocably, that Masha would have done it, even if the gun were real. Even if things had changed, and their plans had fallen through, and the gun in her hand was real, Masha would have pulled that trigger.

  She’d always doubted it, before.

  But now—well, there was nothing to doubt anymore.

  They were all alive. Everything had turned out exactly the way they wanted it to. But there was something icy in the pit of Jez’s stomach, and she wasn’t sure that even Galina holding on to her could make her feel warm again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MASHA GLANCED AROUND the room.

  She’d expected to feel triumphant, or at least pleasantly satisfied.

  Instead, her muscles were shaky with a sick, desperate relief.

  They’d all survived this, somehow.

  But when she’d turned, and grabbed the heat gun.

  She’d been almost certain the weapon she’d grabbed was the rigged one. But—not completely certain.

  And she’d pointed it at Lev and pulled the trigger anyways. She hadn’t even hesitated.

  She’d seen the look on Jez’s face when she’d done it. Jez had known it. In that moment, Jez had realized.

  She wasn’t sure how much of the sickness in her stomach came from relief that it had worked out anyways, and how much came from the way Jez had looked at her as she lunged towards Lev.

  She drew in a long breath.

  Not that it mattered now.

  The boulder she’d shoved over the cliff with the heist on Vitali was tearing down the mountainside now, and there was no way to stop it. Her only option now was to keep ahead of it long enough to do what she had to do.

  “I’m sorry. But can someone explain to me exactly what just happened?”

  She turned to where Ivan was standing, his arm protectively around Tae.

  Tae’s face was still sick with shock, and something twisted in her stomach at the sight. She managed to smile anyways.

  “Ivan. I believe you know Zhenya,” she said.

  “Yes. We’ve … met.” Ivan’s voice was cold.

  “When Lev told me Vitali was willing to let the rest of you go and protect Tae’s friends if you’
d hand me over, I agreed that, with the risks we were taking, we needed a backup plan. I was understandably reluctant to be killed by Vitali, but I assumed his offer could be used to our advantage. So, I contacted Zhenya, and after some negotiation, they agreed to facilitate the plan.”

  “So—” began Ivan. “Those people in blue weren’t Vitali’s people after all?”

  “Oh, they certainly were,” said Masha lightly. “They were Vitali’s hired killers, at least most of them, and they came in here to kill me. And they watched me kill Lev and shoot Ysbel, and they watched the rest of you fall in the crossfire, from guns that Zhenya had provided them. They were set with a brilliant modification Tae designed that cut the power to the heat sink, so the blasts wouldn’t have the heat power to kill.

  “They took some time to install, but they’re simple to disable, and I’ve already disabled the mod from my com. By the time they reach Vitali to bring the news, the guns will function as normal. They saw you die, as did Grigory, as did Olyessa, and I’m certain Vitali has already been told. Once again, we are presumed dead. And while I’m certain they’ll realize their error eventually, it gives us time to prepare our next move.”

  Ivan had raised his eyebrows listening to her recital, and now he shook his head slowly, relief and anger fighting in his face.

  “So you almost gave me a heart attack watching Tae get shot, and you almost gave Tae a heart attack thinking his friends had died. You didn’t think to tell us this?”

  Judging from the protective way his arm tightened around Tae, his anger was less about his own heart attack, and more about the way Tae had slumped against him in despair before Zhenya had spoken.