by Natalie Grey
Milen stilled. “Giant wolves? And you’re sure your friend came here looking for that?”
“I’m not sure,” Dedov replied. “But I know she was reading about it back in Moscow, and if you said she was asking about wolves here...” He shrugged, then caught sight of the man’s expression. “What is it?”
“There were sightings of a giant wolf around here some weeks ago,” Milen told him. “I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t even connect it to this. We have wolves, but what they do is make off with sheep and kill cows. I guess I just never thought someone would actually be...” He shook his head. “Be on your guard,” he suggested finally. “Nothing should be alive up here anymore, but better safe than sorry.”
14
Naryn, Kyrgyzstan
Stephen climbed the stairs to the administrator’s office, Aibek at one shoulder and Arisha at the other. Stoyan and Ruslan hung back, both accustomed to being The Muscle in any operation.
It was a deliberate choice. The guards at this facility, like the ones at the other facilities, might have been hired in top physical condition, but they certainly weren’t there any longer. Months without access to the outside world, locked into a dull, unrelenting schedule and deprived of any meaningful training had made these guards both weak and weary.
By having Stoyan and Ruslan walk behind him, Stephen showed the staff of the Naryn facility that he was more qualified to deal with the wolves. The mere sight of his guards reminded them of how frightened they were of their captives.
And none of them realized how dangerous Stephen was, himself. The thought made him smile.
The administrator’s door stood open, and the scent of fresh-brewed coffee made its way down the hall. The administrator had clearly been told to expect Stephen’s group.
When they appeared, the man wore a desperate, pained smile.
“We’re so glad to have you here,” he began, without preamble. “When we heard the facilities were being shut down...” His throat worked.
“Yes?” Stephen took a seat without being asked. He was raging with impatience to get this over with, but the appearance of hurry often tripped people’s internal alarm bells.
“Let me simply say, I had no wish to disappoint Mr. Marcari,” the administrator explained carefully. “It was to my abiding regret that I was not able to produce the results he wished to see. I admit that I was relieved to know that I had not been the only one to fail.”
It was an impressive speech only because it was so unusual. The administrator did not blame his staff, and he did not shy away from the blunt truth of his failure. But Stephen also knew what lengths these facilities would go to try to achieve the results Hugo sought.
“You used a range of techniques, I would guess,” he suggested blandly.
“Yes.” The administrator pulled out a stack of folders. “In the end, the most persuasive techniques were not those that were used at the moment, but over time. The…subjects…are very proud, you see. They do not like to take orders. We had to break them of that. Well, we had to try. Regrettably, we did not succeed.”
“Most regrettable.” His sympathy entirely gone, Stephen smiled at the administrator. “Thankfully, I have well-trained staff; they will extract the experiments without any undue danger. After that, I will need to do exit interviews with each member of the staff.”
“Of course.” The administrator nodded nervously. “How should I instruct my staff?”
“Gather them on the top floors of the building, and we will come to retrieve you when the extraction is complete.”
The administrator left, and Stephen turned to the others.
“All right. Arisha, you go with Ruslan, Stoyan with Aibek. Show them how this is done. The extraction point is where we came down.”
The four of them nodded and disappeared.
Stephen?
Yes, my Queen?
How is your operation going?
Proceeding well. Stephen tried to come up with something to say that would sound less curt. I will be glad when I have seen the last of these slimy, self-absorbed administrators. None of them have any remorse. We’ve found a few scientists who might be able to be recruited, but all in all, I fear this program is a scathing indictment of humanity.
And this is why I don’t spend much time on Earth, Bethany Anne told him promptly. The people seem to go out of their way to make me question the idea of saving them from intergalactic war.
Stephen laughed at that. I can’t argue with that. In any case, this stage is nearly done, and then we’ll deal with our vigilante friend. He tried to double-cross us to get to the facilities first, so I’m beginning to doubt that this will have a pleasant resolution.
Yes, I hear Jennifer had to challenge an alpha at the latest facility—someone hell-bent on getting the revenge this Emeric person promised them.
What?
Yes, our little girl is all grown up and may or may not come back with a pack in tow.
I-I just…what?
“Jennifer would like to clarify that this is a temporary arrangement, and it was not so much an alpha challenge as a non-lethal fight to determine who would command the mission into the Naftalan facility,” ADAM informed them both.
Uh-huh. Stephen no longer saw any of the landscape. Well, I’m going to go back to what is apparently the boring sort of extraction, and I’ll see you all later.
He went to debrief the scientists with Bethany Anne’s delighted laughter ringing in his mind.
Naftalan, Azerbaijan
“This is the last facility, you know,” Irina said, as the small party wound their way down the road to the gates. “Perhaps we should say a few words to mark the occasion.”
“Nope,” Jennifer replied. “Get in, get out, blow it up…and maybe then I’ll say a few words. But only when it’s a smoking wreck.”
Zurya smiled. Though she was still inclined not to look favorably on Jennifer, she knew that their interests were aligned at least in this.
In truth, Zurya had been terrified about storming the facility—afraid that she would see her family slaughtered before her eyes, or that they would see her killed.
Emeric had assured them that if their family was saved by this other group—the group with the vampire—that they would be sent back to a life of drudgery, forever harmed, and they would all have to sit by while the perpetrators were free to do the same again. She could not bear that thought.
Now that she saw how her fear had been used against her, she found the courage to admit to herself that she no longer had any place as an alpha. With so many of their warriors gone, the pack had clung to her as the one constant. And Zurya had let them down.
She resolved that she would not seek to become alpha again when this woman left.
They reached the gates, and Hsu took center stage. She swiped her card and frowned when the gates did not open.
Then they noticed the wire—the gates had been bound closed. The land between the gates and the facility was covered with recently-disturbed piles of dirt. The facility was entirely closed off. The people inside had set up a defensive perimeter.
“ADAM,” Jennifer demanded urgently. “Tell me what’s going on in there.”
“Unfortunately, this facility did not have video surveillance enabled. The repair record shows that they have had extensive electrical problems caused by rodents chewing on the wires. I have not been able to see inside the facility to see any arrangement of weapons or defensive capabilities. I can say from infrared, however, that there are live bodies in cages.”
Jennifer relaxed slightly. At least the strange defensive positioning of this facility was not combined with killing the Wechselbalg outright.
Yet.
She knew she needed to approach this very carefully.
“Try talking to them,” she told Hsu in an undertone.
Hsu nodded and pressed the intercom button.
There was a crackle from the radios. “Get away!” The voice was male, high with fear, and
it strengthened into a furious hiss the next moment. “We’re armed. You won’t win. The facility is closed.”
Jennifer snorted slightly at the thought that this man could win against them, but Hsu was, thankfully, unflappable.
“I am aware of the orders you received,” Hsu said calmly. “This is Chief Administrator Zhang. I was sent here by Hugo to help make sure the staff could be evacuated safely.”
“I don’t believe you! I know the truth about Hugo.”
“What’s his name?” Hsu asked Jennifer quietly.
“Zhaparov,” ADAM informed them. “At least, it was as of the latest official transmission.”
Jennifer relayed this and Hsu nodded. She pitched her voice to be low and persuasive. “Is this Administrator Zhaparov?”
“Go away!”
The line cut.
“Huh,” Jennifer said after a moment.
Nikhil Zhaparov huddled down in the corner of his office, eyes locked on the phone in the corner of the room.
He was ready for them, he told himself. His fingers were wrapped around the barrel of the gun, and he kept leveling it at the door and trying to aim it quickly. He was shaking, of course, but he’d be able to do it if they broke in.
Right?
On the table lay the transmission, the one he should never have been able to access. When Nikhil was assigned here, to lead a facility that was entirely cut off from the world, he had made sure to learn everything he could about how to get information into the facility…and restrict information going out.
He sabotaged the security cameras time and again, and sometimes other electronics, carving the little power cords up in a pattern to look like mice had chewed at them. He installed a small satellite dish on the grounds, inside a stack of supply crates. He never confided in anyone.
He was not stupid. He knew that someone who did secret research for an eccentric billionaire might end up wealthy beyond all imagining…or dead in a ditch with no fingerprints.
He had every intention of escaping the latter.
When he first received the message from Hugo, telling them that they should prepare to close and that all of them would be given recommendations, he knew enough to be wary.
Who in their right mind would release this many staff back into the world? Who would trust nine whole facilities’ worth of staff not to blab about where they had been working or what they had been doing? As it was, every communication outside of the facility was monitored.
No, Hugo would never close this all down and let them go. They would end up in another of his facilities…or dead.
So, Nikhil investigated and found that Hugo Marcari was dead.
Again, he was not stupid. He considered many possibilities. Perhaps Hugo Marcari had been an assumed name, a stolen identity. Perhaps he had faked his death. Perhaps he just wanted to go underground for a while.
But perhaps he truly was dead, and someone else was sending messages as him. Either way, Nikhil did not like his chances if they got into the facility.
Eventually, they would need a source for supplies, and a way to get out of here safely—or, at least, he would. He’d always accepted that the others might end up dead at the end of this. If it came to it, he had no problems leaving them to die.
The question was, how to make the people at the gates leave?
He should have been calmer. He should have told them that he was happy to have them come in, and then he should have run while they were occupied with the others.
His eyes drifted to the handgun and the grenades nearby.
If they got in, he wasn’t going to let them kill him. He’d do it himself first.
Not that he had to resort to that just yet…but it was good to know.
He watched through a window as the party at the gate waited for a bit, then made their way back up the hill. He breathed a sigh of relief. He was safe for now.
Sofia, Bulgaria
“This is a terrible idea,” Dedov hissed down into the darkness.
There was no response except for the sounds of breathing and scraping as Milen climbed carefully into the bombed-out husk of the building.
It groaned faintly with every footstep. They had even heard it groaning as they walked up the hill, but no amount of angry mutters from Dedov made Milen turn back. The man seemed blind to danger.
And Dedov…well, Dedov didn’t want the man to think he was a coward. He also didn’t know his way back to the city.
He was a coward, though. He was frozen at the edge of the building, having scraped his hands scrambling up the wall, and he wasn’t brave enough to step out onto the loose stones that led down the building. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for the courage to move one way or the other—into the darkness of the building, or back to the city.
Arisha had been here, though.
That got him into motion. If tiny little Arisha, with her pert face and her curvy body, had been scrambling around in here, he could too. He wouldn’t be outdone by her. She’d never respect him if he said he’d not been brave enough to even enter the facility.
He levered himself down carefully and edged down the slope.
“Are you coming?” a voice called from the darkness.
Dedov spared the darkness an annoyed glance. “Yes. Be patient.”
One more step, and another. His foot slid slightly, and he froze, almost vomiting with fear. But the slope held, and he kept moving. He could do this. He was doing this. He steadied himself on a beam and kept moving into the shadows cast by the moonlight.
He could hear his own rough breathing, and a strange excitement pounded through him. He’d never done anything like this, and it was exhilarating.
Then it happened.
His foot caught, his ankle twisted, and he tumbled into the darkness. He hit the remnants of a wall face-first, and a pained yell burst out of him.
But he had too much momentum. Even as he scrambled for a handhold, he toppled sideways and down the slope.
He could sometimes see the sky as he rolled end over end, but a few seconds later, even that was gone. Milen was calling his name, and Dedov tried to call for help, but his throat was closed with fear. He could hear only his own muted whimpering noises as he grabbed for rocks, chunks of wood—anything to stop his slide. His coat tore on something.
Finally, he came to a stop.
Dedov picked his head up slowly and found himself sprawled on a flat surface. He gave a low moan of pain and fear.
In the absolute blackness, and with the groan of the unstable building above him, he slumped back down—tears hot on his face.
“Dedov!” The voice was panicked and distant. “Use your flashlight! Climb back up!”
The flashlight. Of course. Dedov fumbled in his coat and could have cried when he realized it was still there. He pressed the button awkwardly and squinted against the sudden white beam of light.
He turned, trying to find the slope...
And stopped dead.
There, on a still-upright wall, were unmistakable bloodstains. And next to them, the stone had been raked by huge claws.
The wolves had been here.
15
Naftalan, Azerbaijan
“I’m setting the Pod down on top of the roof. Descend very carefully, so your footsteps are not heard.”
“Thank you, ADAM,” Stephen said. “And you’ll send the Pod back for Jennifer and the rest?”
“Of course. I have no wish to see Jennifer attempt to navigate a minefield.”
“You feel those emotions?” Stephen’s brows lifted. “That’s… You know, I can’t tell whether or not that’s comforting.”
“A question for another time, perhaps.”
Stephen stepped out into the afternoon air with a smile. He could not help but feel happy about the fact that this was the last facility.
Naryn had been wrapped up very quickly. Aibek and Ruslan withdrew to the ArchAngel with their families, Aibek cradling a small child in his arms with an expression that said he
could see nothing else in the whole world.
Ruslan had taken temporary charge of the pack, though Stephen could tell that Ruslan had a very similar outlook to Nathan. He had a deep and almost overwhelming sense of responsibility for his pack and would happily do whatever needed to be done in a crisis, but he was also happy to be a second-in-command. Ruslan, Stephen thought, did not like the drama and hassle that would come with being the alpha of a pack—and as a second-in-command, he would never have to bargain with other pack leaders or deal with the minutiae of petty disputes between pack members.
Secure in the knowledge that he was leaving the Wechselbalg in good hands, Stephen had taken a moment to watch the families reunited, and the remaining Wechselbalg from Khachmaz already looked happier and more settled.
With that image in his head, he, Arisha, and Stoyan took a Pod and headed to Naftalan.
“We are on our way,” he told Jennifer.
“Thank God.” Her voice was emphatic in his earpiece. “This one’s a shit show. The guy’s gone crazy.”
“Well, Hugo couldn’t be the only crazy one.” Stephen had grinned as he settled back in his seat in the Pod. He gave a glance to where Arisha and Stoyan were whispering together, as new lovers were wont to do, and gave a rueful shake of his head.
No matter how many centuries he lived in, people seemed to be all the same.
Now, with the wind above and the frozen, landmine-strewn earth below, Stephen watched as the Pod shot straight up out of sight and returned in an almost-invisible blur. If he were human, he was not sure he would have seen it.
Jennifer’s party climbed into the Pod and climbed out cautiously a few moments later on the roof of the facility.
Everyone, Stephen was happy to see, followed ADAM’s instructions to be quiet.
He nodded to the former alpha of Jennifer’s new pack, a woman with grey-and-white hair and piercing black eyes. She nodded back, if not happily, then at least courteously.
“So, what’s the situation?” he asked Jennifer quietly.
