Risk Be Damned

by Natalie Grey

“What will you do now?” Gerard asked him.

  Hugo took a moment before answering, “I will go inspect the Velingrad facility.”

  “My Lord, I will go. It is not necessary that you—”

  “It is.” It had become clear to Hugo that the staff across many facilities were disobeying him. Filip had remembered many little things that they had not known before: secrets drunkenly spilled by the security staff, out on the town in Sofia, against regulations; the way it was sometimes easy to get close to the facility because the patrols were not always regular. Combined with Gerard’s revelation that the facility had been sharing information with Sofia, it pointed to a wider problem. Defiance meant those workers didn’t fear him enough.

  No, Hugo could not send Gerard on his own. He remembered now that Gerard’s father had failed the Marcaris. Perhaps the whole line was weak.

  He would reserve judgement on that for later. “Go have the plane readied. And have that man brought with us. He might still be useful.”

  —

  “This is nice.” Arisha settled back in her seat and looked around appreciatively at the interior of the spaceship. An open area away from the sleeping quarters allowed people to stretch their legs and chat, and the sleeping quarters, themselves, were sparsely decorated but very comfortable. They had been on the ship for three days now, and she was hardly feeling any cabin fever.

  “Bethany Anne understands that if we’re going to be living on ships, they need to be more than just metal boxes,” Stephen explained. “She’s taken an interest in the design of everything, and she’s always glad to get a new engineer on the team.” He looked over to where Stoyan sat alone in the corner of the room. Stephen was worried. Stoyan had expressed concern about traveling back to the asteroid, and was even more worried now that they knew Irina was still alive. As much as Stephen believed that the gear and intel they picked up had been invaluable, he sympathized with the Wechselbalg. Stoyan felt that he had failed, a feeling Stephen knew well.

  Now, he raised his voice. “We should all be clear on the plan before we get back to Earth.”

  The team came to take chairs nearby.

  “We need information from the facility at Velingrad,” Stephen explained. “There is a lot we were able to access in Hugo’s system thanks to Jennifer and Arisha getting his laptop.” He flashed a smile at the two women. “However, the results of the research are not in the main system. It appears that each facility maintains its own servers. That means we need to get the data from there to try to understand what Hugo is researching and why.”

  “The facility needs to be destroyed.” Stoyan’s voice was tight.

  “We will destroy it,” Stephen assured him. “But this is a delicate operation. We have reason to believe there will be multiple floors with noncombatants held securely, and that there will be remote methods of killing them, such as poison gas. We need to disable those systems first, hold off any security forces while we get everyone out of there and get the data, and then take out the security teams and destroy the facility.”

  “How do we do that?” Arisha felt completely out of her depth. Sneaking into Gerard’s room for information was like the investigative work she had done before, but she had never been trained for combat.

  Jennifer answered her honestly, “Very carefully.” Part of her wanted to tell Arisha to wait in the other room and not get involved in this fight, but she understood that it was important to the other woman to help finish this. “I’m not sure you’ll be able to come with us, but you can help us plan.”

  Arisha nodded. She knew that the mission was more important than her feelings. She resolved that next time, she would be trained well enough to help these people.

  “One reason it’s important to get the Wechselbalg out before any fighting takes place is that we think they may be trying to achieve mind control.” Nathan kept his voice level. He would not allow himself to be derailed by anger.

  He would focus his efforts on destroying these people, instead. “They may be working to force Wechselbalg to shift forms, and then obey commands. It is imperative that we get those people out, and preferably debrief them, before trying to assault the facility.”

  “Does that mean two separate assaults?” Arisha asked.

  “Yes, but very close together.” Nathan grimaced. “It’s not going to take them long to realize their experiments are gone.”

  “We need someone to distract them,” Arisha suggested. “Someone like a new team member, who might be able to replace feeds on the security cameras, or who might be able to draw their guards to a different part of the building.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Stoyan warned her. “I don’t want you to get—” He cleared his throat and blushed. “You’d be in there alone, and if something went wrong, it would be very difficult for us to get to you.”

  Stephen hid a smile at that. He needed to focus on the mission, but Arisha and Stoyan were clearly head over heels for one another.

  “What we need to do,” he continued, “is find a blueprint of the building. Now, that’s not going to be easy, but it’s not impossible, either. Our engineering team came up with these.” He pulled a briefcase off the table next to him and opened it up to reveal four flat black discs. “If we can place these at the corners of the building, they should be able to assess the structure inside and give us a read-out, hopefully including a scan of where people are. If we leave them in place for a few hours, we may be able to get an idea of the patrol routes. Jennifer and I will get those in place.”

  “So we find the layout,” Stoyan said, clearly trying to change the subject, “and then what?”

  “We need to plan multiple escape routes,” Jennifer explained. “We’ll have Pods waiting to get the noncombatants to a safe drop point, and once they’re clear, we’ll adapt our assault plan based on any data they give us.”

  Nathan looked at the newest Wechselbalg team member, “Stoyan, do you think your pack would join us?”

  Stoyan swallowed hard. “No. I wouldn’t ask them.” He looked down at his hands and took a deep breath. “I don’t think I have a pack anymore.”

  “This isn’t the end,” Nathan assured him. “You will be welcome on our team, as long as you’re willing to work. But before you come, I’d like to see you make your peace with your old pack. Do you think you can—”

  Earpieces buzzed all around the room, and Bethany Anne’s team listened for a moment. Their faces fell, and all of them looked away.

  Stoyan felt a chill. “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing,” Jennifer said, too quickly.

  “What is it?” Stoyan asked again. He felt Arisha reach out to take his hand and he gripped it desperately.

  It was Nathan who answered. He met Stoyan’s eyes, and there was regret there. “The two tracking chips have gone dark.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Nathan respected this man too much to lie to him. “Those chips relied on their body heat to function. Either they took them out themselves, which would be … difficult, if not impossible. Or they’re dead.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There was a distant roaring sound in his ears. Filip groaned and shifted his head to the side. Bruises and cuts jostled and he bit back a whimper of pain. His memories of the past hours were hazy at best. The whole room seemed to vibrate and his eyes opened. Where the hell was he?

  A plane.

  He sat up quickly, and regretted it. The pain was overwhelming. He pressed his hand over his side with a hiss and forced himself not to look down. He didn’t want to know what they had done to him.

  He was alone, at least. They’d probably decided he wouldn’t get up to much if they left him here on the floor. The area he was in was walled off, and he had no doubt that the door was locked. He was helpless here. What could he do, injured like this?

  Nothing.

  He let out his breath and closed his eyes against tears. But as he lay back on the floor, wiping his eyes and staring up at the ceiling, h
e caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Next to the door, clearly having fallen out of someone’s pocket, lay an abandoned cell phone.

  —

  Arisha watched as the rest of the team stowed their gear in one of the Pods. Each one of them had custom armor now, including armor for Stoyan’s wolf form. Jennifer was checking her knives and ammunition as she talked quietly with Nathan and Stephen. Stoyan was speaking to the dark-haired man, Arisha had been introduced to on the flight back, Lance.

  She stared out the window at the curve of the earth and tried not to cry. She had decided that she would watch the mission unfold from the bridge of the Archangel. It made sense, after all. She could not even shoot a gun, and she did not want to be a burden on the team.

  Still, she felt about two inches tall as she watched the rest of the team get ready to go.

  “Are you sure you want to stay?”

  Arisha jumped. She had not seen Lance head her way. She turned her head away as she wiped her eyes. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

  “You realize that the rest of the team will have to stay at the facility while the survivors are left at the drop point,” Lance pointed out. “You could do some basic bandaging, make sure they get food and warm clothes, and oversee their evacuation from there.”

  Arisha paused. “Oh. I could do that, yes.”

  “Why don’t you go tell Stoyan. I’ll tell Stephen.”

  Lance watched as Arisha ran to where Stoyan stood. Everyone on the bridge turned their heads to watch discreetly as she said a few words. Stoyan’s smile was instinctive, and Arisha blushed as he spoke to her.

  “He’s going to kiss her,” Evangeline murmured from her desk near Lance. She held out her hands. “Ten bucks, General. You promised.”

  “Wait for it.” Lance, who had put his money on a reunion kiss after the operation, saw the two of them break away from one another and grinned at Evangeline. “Too bad, I’m still in the pool and you’re out now.” He gave a casual salute to Stephen as the team stepped into the hallway, and turned back to his work. “All right, let’s get this going.”

  —

  The facility at Velingrad lay in a nearly-abandoned part of town. Buildings abandoned by the Soviet government stood empty, and other than the coal smoke, there was little to suggest that the facility was occupied at all.

  The two women had hitchhiked the last few miles into town, and it had been with extreme reluctance that their driver let them off here. He settled for giving them his aunt’s name and address, and insisted that they should spend the night there rather than staying with anyone from this neighborhood. Bad people lived around here, he told them.

  Hsu just smiled and nodded. He wasn’t wrong, after all, and he didn’t even know the whole truth. They waited until his truck disappeared into the maze of buildings, and huddled a few blocks away from the facility, winter wind cutting its way through their coats.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Hsu looked at Irina.

  “Yes.” Irina did not waver.

  “They’ll hurt you,” Hsu warned. She swallowed. “I may have to. And I don’t want to. I never wanted to, but now it’s even worse. Now I know you.”

  “You have to,” Irina said seriously. “You have to earn their trust. If we stick to the plan, we should be able to get people out soon. I’ll learn everything I can, you learn everything you can. If the guards here are like the guards at the Sofia facility, we’re fine. If I’d had you on my side then, we wouldn’t have had any problems getting out.” She swallowed. “And this time, I’m not making the same mistake I did before. I’m not going to have everyone fight their own way out. We did that because we couldn’t think of another way, but this time we’re sticking together.”

  Hsu hesitated. “I think last time, they wanted revenge,” she said softly. “They stayed behind on purpose.”

  “Well, I won’t let them do that this time,” Irina said flatly.

  “Then you’d better give them a reason not to,” Hsu advised. “You left because you wanted to free the people at other facilities. They didn’t have a reason, so they tried to hurt as many people as they could. Give them your reasons. Make them fight for something larger than themselves.”

  Irina paused, then nodded. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “All right.” Hsu reached up and snapped a makeshift collar around Irina’s neck. A chain ran down to cuffs on the wrists and ankles, and Hsu hesitated. “Last chance.”

  “Let’s go,” Irina said impatiently. “Don’t give yourself time to do any second guessing. Come on.”

  “Right.” Hsu picked up the end of the chain and began to walk.

  The building looked deserted, but at one block’s distance, she saw movement in the windows. At half a block, two faces peered out, and in the last few feet, a door opened and a guard stuck his head out suspiciously.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Found this one in a bar in town,” Hsu said. She almost smiled when he raised his eyebrows at her good Bulgarian. “Tried to get a chip in her, but she woke up too early. Stop looking so surprised, no one suspects me—that’s why I’m such a good agent. Come on, let’s get her inside before she shakes off the drugs.”

  “And what did you say your name was?” the man asked doubtfully.

  “Hiraoka Yoshida.” Hsu waited to see if he would notice the difference between Chinese and Japanese names. He didn’t seem to, and she smiled. Maybe it would be easier to fool these people than she had thought. “I’ve collected some field research and I’ll need a desk in one of the labs to analyze the results.”

  “Of course.” He waved them inside. “Come on, before someone sees you.”

  Hsu had to stop herself from exchanging a grin with Irina. They had lied their way inside.

  Now they just had to fight their way out.

  Irina might have read her mind, “That’ll be easy, if all of them are as stupid as this guy,” she muttered.

  Hsu kept her head down so the guards couldn’t see her smile. Things were finally looking up.

  —

  “Here you go.” Arisha handed over the bag with Stoyan’s wolf armor. “Ready to go?”

  She tried not to wince at the look in his eyes. Stoyan had looked half-dead since they heard the news that Irina’s chip had gone dark. None of them had tried to reassure him. They all knew how unlikely such reassurances were.

  But Stoyan, much as his eyes were despairing, was still moving with purpose. He nodded his head at her decisively. “I’m ready. After months of searching, I finally get to take these bastards down.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t want to call in the rest of—”

  “I’m sure.” His voice was adamant. He had sent a brief message to the pack mates still in Sofia, telling them to stay where they were. “They followed me to get their families back, not get slaughtered. I’ll take the risk … and hope to send their families back to them in Sofia.”

  Nathan opened his mouth to speak, frowning, but the sound of a phone ringing cut him off and made all of them jump. Stoyan pulled it out and frowned.

  “Who is this?”

  “Stoyan? Thank God.” The voice was a desperate whisper. “It’s Filip.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A buzz reverberated through the room and the chain snapped taut as Irina jerked against it. Her eyes squeezed shut in pain and a scream ripped its way from her chest. The pain was in her head, whispers echoing: every slight she had been given, every injustice, every moment of cruelty. Memories best forgotten were brought back to the forefront of her mind. She could not stop herself from reliving them.

  At the same time, the buzz seemed to whisper something else to her: revenge. She was not helpless, the whisper told her. She was Wechselbalg. She could rip with claws and teeth. No human could run fast enough to escape her. She could take her revenge on anyone who had dared hurt her.

  “No.” She gritted the word out. Every part of her ached from where she pulled a
t the chains. She knew that they would never break while she was in this form, but she could not stop herself from fighting them.

  If she stopped fighting for even a moment, they would win. And, if she did not stop fighting the chains, exhaustion would break her. Tears leaked out of her eyes.

  Why had she come back? What had she hoped to accomplish?

  “Transform.” The order was cold.

  Irina’s head came up with a wordless snarl. The sound came from a human throat, but it was unmistakable, and for a moment, she was pleased to see Hsu flinch beyond her bulletproof window. They were allies, and they had to convince the people at the Velingrad facility that they were nothing more than an experiment and a scientist … but it was difficult to remember that Hsu was an ally when she was pressing the buttons that stripped away Irina’s very humanity.