by Natalie Grey
“Stephen?”
Fuck. “Yes?”
“I don’t think you’re going to get far enough away in time. Change of plans, go up to the roof. I’m getting you a ride.”
“Are you crazy? With fighter jets in the air nearby? That’s cutting it far too close.”
“If it’s cutting it too close with the Pods, it’s cutting it way too close for you just to run away. Checkmate. And yes, before you ask, I’m getting one for Arisha and me. We’ll meet you on the Archangel.”
Stephen gave a groan as he cut the connection.
“Something wrong?” Stoyan called as the group changed direction and sprinted for the stairs.
“It’s just she’s always right!” Stephen yelled back over his shoulder. “That doesn’t seem fair!”
Stoyan’s laughter echoed up the stairs around him. “Get used to it, man.”
And then Stephen remembered something. Something very important. “Jennifer!”
“What? Kind of busy, here.”
“The red box.” The metal staircase screeched, groaned, and began to pull away from the wall. With a yell, Stephen leaped for the landing and caught it with one hand, the other catching the wrist of one of Stoyan’s pack mates. He hauled the Wechselbalg up.
“Stephen?”
“The red box. In the closet. Bring it.”
“Right. Good call.” She cut the connection.
“What was that about?” Stoyan pulled Stephen up.
“Shoes.”
“Did you say ‘shoes?’”
“Long story! Keep running!” Stephen shouted.
—
“You know, you can get up to get some coffee once in awhile.” Jake Finley leaned over the walls of his colleague’s workstation. “We always make sure we have enough people on duty so that we can do stuff like that. Queen’s orders.”
“Okay.” Evangeline Phillips, newly arrived from the RAF and still in a state of shock that she was actually aboard a spaceship, managed a small smile. “Thanks for letting me know.” She decided not to mention how weird it was to hear ‘Queen’ and know it referred to someone other than Elizabeth II.
“You’re not going to take a break, are you? I can tell.”
Evangeline allowed herself a smile at last. “Nuh-uh.”
“Why not?”
“Are you kidding?” She started to laugh. She spread her hand out in front of her.
Dots glimmered in more than twenty locations across the globe: Sao Paulo, London, Indonesia, Bangkok, New Delhi, and more. Bethany Anne was leaving the world to its own devices for the most part, but her team was still picking up new recruits, dealing with contacts in the Wechselbalg and vampire networks, and investigating potential threats.
Evangeline had read the dossiers on every operative currently in the field, and the briefings on every current operation, devising security protocols and plans for each mission that would be active while she was on duty for this shift.
“Look at what’s going on. What if they need backup?”
“I told you, there will be plenty of people here to—”
“It’s not that I’m worried there won’t be people here. I don’t want to miss it.” Evangeline bit her lip as she stared at the missions. “I want to help them complete their missions. I want to make sure every one of these is a success. I’ve never felt like this before. I mean, I loved my work, but I didn’t always agree with the missions I was helping. Now I know that every one of those people is doing something really good for the world.”
“Wow.” Jake raised his eyebrows. “If you’re like this on a graveyard shift, I can’t imagine what you must be like on a normal—” He broke off and snapped to attention. “Sir.”
Evangeline turned to see a young man with dark hair and, improbably, a General’s uniform. She knew that TQB Enterprises was a fairly new organization, at least in its current incarnation, but it was still surprising to see such a young individual with that rank.
He looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. Still, she stood and saluted. He smiled. He looked amused by what he had overheard. “At ease, both of you. You’re a new recruit, Phillips?”
“Yes, sir.” And who the hell was he? It would be impolite to ask. “It’s an honor to serve on the Archangel, sir.”
“You don’t need to be quite so formal around here, Phillips, but I agree with you. I heard what you said just now. Bethany Anne is lucky to have recruits like you. Are you looking forward to going through the Gate?”
“Yes, sir. It’s….” Evangeline broke off and blushed a fiery red.
“It’s what?”
“I’ve been dreaming about doing something like that for years. I didn’t think I’d ever get to, you know? But now it’s real, it’s not just Star Trek.”
The general laughed. “It’s definitely not Star Trek. For one thing, when we beam down, we have our guns out. Carry on, both of you.”
He nodded to them and continued through the room, stopping at a few desks to greet more senior members of the bridge crew.
Evangeline watched him go, “Who was that?”
“You don’t know?” Jake took a sip of his coffee. “That was Lance … Reynolds.”
“The general from the US Army? But that would make him Bethany Anne’s father. He can’t possibly be her father. He’s too young!”
“Oh, Phillips,” he chuckled, “there is so much you still have to learn.”
Evangeline opened her mouth to needle him back, but her earpiece beeped. “QBS Archangel.”
“I need two pods. I’m sending coordinates. We have max 8 minutes.”
“Did she say eight minutes?” Jake shook his head. “To get to … Bulgaria? We’re on the other side of the planet right now, we can’t launch pods in time to—”
Finally, her training was paying off. Evangeline let herself smile as she held up a hand to Jake and answered the caller. “Roger that, you have two pods incoming ... 3 minutes. We’ve had them standing by for you.” She cut the call and swiveled in her chair. “Didn’t they teach you to have extraction arranged before a mission?”
Jake stared at her, his mouth hanging open. Then he toasted her with his coffee mug and drained it. He gave a laugh. “Welcome to the Archangel, Phillips. You’ve got a lot of promotions ahead of you.”
—
“We gotta go.” Jennifer shoved the laptop into a bag and grabbed the last of the suitcases. Stephen was going to complain that his custom-made suits were being left behind, but there had been no time to pack anything more than the TQB technology they’d brought with them. She thrust a suitcase at Arisha. “Come on. You don’t need anything from your room, do you?”
Arisha shook her head as they took off down the hallway. She prided herself on being in very good shape, all things considered, but this woman was way faster than she was. Wechselbalg apparently had incredible strength and stamina even in human form. That was good to know.
“Where are we going?” Arisha called out.
“Getting a taxi out of town.” They burst out of the stairwell and onto the first floor. “We need to get to—hide!” She yanked Arisha into the shadows as Gerard stalked by on his way to the bar. Jennifer waited until he’d rounded a corner and then grabbed Arisha’s hand and ran silently.
“That dude really is nasty,” she said, as soon as they’d settled into the seats of the cab and she’d given the driver directions.
“So where are we going?” Arisha studied her map. The address Jennifer had given, as far as she could tell, was a farm.
“Middle of nowhere,” Jennifer said promptly.
“Miss,” the cab driver began hesitantly.
“I know what I’m doing,” Jennifer told him.
“But I can’t just—”
Jennifer shoved a stack of bills into the front seat. “How about now?” The cab driver shut up, and Jennifer settled back in her seat with a smug smile. “Always works,” she said simply to Arisha.
—
The
higher they went in the facility, there was, thankfully, less evidence of the massacre. Stephen drew his gun as they navigated blind corners. The shell of the castle had been filled with a warren of dormitories for the scientists and guards who worked here. Almost all seemed to have joined the fight against the experiments, though a few appeared to have killed themselves out of sheer terror.
Stephen did not care one way or another—they would have died by his hand or Stoyan’s for their part in this, in any case. He was just glad that no one was jumping out at them.
“So why are we going to the roof?” Stoyan’s tone was a warning. It said that he was trusting Stephen, and that meant the lives of his pack mates were in Stephen’s hands now.
“We’re getting a ride out of here,” Stephen answered. He couldn’t fault the werewolf for his worry, but the man had nothing to worry about. Jennifer was right.
This was their best chance.
“They’re not going to make it in time, and a helicopter can’t navigate—”
Stephen smiled, “It’s not a helicopter.”
—
Arisha watched forlornly as the cab drove back into the city. She could tell that the cab driver was watching them in his rearview mirror, and she didn’t blame him.
It was winter in Bulgaria, and he had just left two women without winter gear in the middle of a field. She tried to tell herself that everything was going to be okay, but she was already shivering as the tail lights of the cab disappeared.
A cold breeze touched the back of her neck. She turned to ask Jennifer if there was really a good plan for all of this, and her mouth dropped open. A black shape now hovered a few feet above the ground behind her, with a door open leading into the interior. She was sure it hadn’t been there a few seconds ago, and she hadn’t heard it appear. All there had been was the tiny puff of air she had felt.
“What is that?” Her voice was a squeak.
“This,” Jennifer said with a grin, “is a Pod. There’s another one picking up Stoyan and the rest of them, so don’t worry about your boyfriend. And don’t forget that red box. It’s important.”
She lifted up the red box, “Why, exactly?”
“It’s the ticket for the next leg of our trip,” Jennifer explained. “Pick a seat, any seat you want—except that one—and we’re good to go.” She rapped on the side of the pod and the door slid closed. Nothing seemed to happen. Arisha looked around herself. “Are we going to go anywhere?”
“Oh, we already are. We should be at the QBS Archangel in a few minutes.” Jennifer smiled.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the ship Bethany Anne keeps in orbit.” Jennifer lifted the lid of the red box and peeked inside. Her eyebrows shot up and she whistled. “Man, those are nice.”
Normally, Arisha would have been curious about the box, but right now she could only focus on one thing: “Orbit…orbit? We’re going to space?”
—
People remembered the sound of fighter jets. They piled out of their houses, searching the sky for the shape of fighter planes. Somewhere above in the winter sky, were planes. Who's, the people of Sofia did not know. The rest of the world liked to make the former Eastern Bloc their convenient battleground—an easy place to fight when they wanted to, and an easy place to leave in ruins when they were done.
“There!” Someone pointed, and people made out three black shapes. Three? Four? For a moment, they thought there was a fourth, but then it was gone.
Just three, then.
The shapes streaked overhead and were gone, and the people of Sofia breathed a sigh of relief. There was a military facility nearby—or at least, a facility with a lot of guards and a lot of armored trucks going in and out. These planes were probably headed there.
They saw the faint flash of the bombs before the rumble of sound arrived, and the people of Sofia watched with their mouths hanging open as the planes circled four times to blow the castle to oblivion.
—
The first boom reached them as the guard was handing over some tea. Screams sounded outside and he gave a sharp look at the stairs.
“Stay here,” he ordered Filip curtly, and he was gone in a moment.
“Are you crazy? Don’t leave me here!” The cup shattered and tea spread across the floor as Filip tried to run after the guard, but the bed slowed him and slammed into the doorframe, jerking him to a halt. With a curse, he threw the mattress and levered the bedframe up to tip it through the doorway.
The guard had left the door open and unlocked, and there was a set of keys on the table outside. Like hell Filip was going to stay in this basement while the city was bombed.
Who was bombing it, he had no idea—though he was inclined to blame Stoyan. He just knew that bombs killed everyone, not just their targets. No, he was getting out and he was running.
He searched through the keys in desperation. One of them had to be for the handcuffs, surely.
“Come on, come on.” The bombs kept falling, and he was flinching every time.
They weren’t close yet, but they’d get here, and then he’d be dead. Fuck that guard for leaving him here. Fuck Stoyan, too. The man was racking up a whole list of wrongs and Filip was really looking forward to bringing him to account for every single one of them.
If he got out.
He found a small key at last and gave a sigh of relief as the handcuff sprang open.
There was a knife on the table. He grabbed it and ran. If the guard tried to stop him, Filip was going to have no guilt about taking him down. Stoyan clearly didn’t want to protect him at all, if he was being left alone to die here.
He burst out into the winter air and froze. People on the street were looking into the distance, in the direction of the facility in the mountains.
There was an orange glow there.
He wasn’t going to die, at least not immediately. Filip slumped against the wall of the building for a moment, relief making his legs shaky. It took him a moment to realize that the guard hadn’t even noticed his escape. The man was staring at the sky, as worried as everyone else.
Filip stared for a moment. He looked around himself. No one had noticed him at all. He took one cautious step to the side, then another, and then he broke into a run. He pounded down the pavement and around a corner, and made for the first building he saw: the Hotel Sofia.
Inside, he tucked the knife into his pocket and stood for a moment, legs still shaking. He could use a drink, that was for sure. He made his way to the bar and ordered a vodka before slumping his head onto his arms.
“Fucking wolves,” he muttered, louder than he’d intended to.
“I beg your pardon.” The voice spoke exquisite Bulgarian, though the foreign accent was unmistakable. “Did you say wolves?”
“Oh.” Filip looked up at the suited gentleman sitting at the bar. “It’s … nothing.”
“Really.” The man gave him a slow smile. “As it turns out, I’ve had my own problems with wolves lately. Can I buy you a drink?”
—
“Pull up, we’re heading back.” Javier banked, watching until Matias and Alejandro followed suit. “We go to stealth in one minute.”
“Yes, sir.” The chorus came back over the line.
Javier paused, looking at the radio. They were usually not so formal, but all of them were unsettled by what they had done tonight. He clenched his hands and took a deep breath, and then punched the button to call back to headquarters.
“Yes?” Hugo’s voice was curt.
“It’s done, sir.”
“Excellent,” was their boss’s only response.
—
“Stephen.” Lance smiled as he strode down the hallway that led to the docking bay. “Good to see you.”
“Good to see you,” Stephen replied. He looked Lance up and down. “Good to see you back in uniform, too. It suits you.”
Lance laughed, “Thank you – although I think some of that is just me looking younger now.” He nodded to the
rest of the group. “Good to see you, Jennifer. To all of the rest of you, I’m Lance.” He noted the names they murmured, and the despairing look on the faces of the men.
He beckoned Stephen to walk with him away from the rest. “What happened?”
“The facility we got the lead on was destroyed,” Stephen explained. “Stoyan and his pack were searching for family there. It looks like all of them were killed.” He rubbed at his forehead and sighed. “We’re waiting for ADAM to help us find more targets, and in the meantime, I want to go back to the Meredith Reynolds. It looks like this bastard has bigger plans than we thought.” He nodded to Stoyan. “Stoyan will come with us as a representative, but he wants his pack mates taken back to Sofia when it’s safe.”
