by Natalie Grey
“I was still looking through the data on that, sir. There’s limited evidence that it’s simply a matter of time—resistance will continue in wolf form after it has been exhausted in human form, but obedience will eventually be achieved. However, with so many individual cases and such a high failure rate—”
Hugo slammed his hand down on the desk. “What?”
“Which part, sir?” Jennifer let her voice quaver.
“A high failure rate?”
>>Blame the administrator,<< ADAM advised. >>Hugo already hates him, and he’s dead anyway. He can’t contradict you. Say you thought Hugo knew that the failure rate was that high.<<
ADAM, remind me never to get on your bad side.
“I thought you knew, sir.” Jennifer swallowed, as if she was worried by Hugo’s anger. The fact was that, compared to literally anyone on Bethany Anne’s team, this guy was merely a little bitch. But he had to think he was terrifying. He had to believe in his own power for now—because that blinded him.
“Less than one in four Wechselbalg were successfully broken. One in four would die from their… injuries.” She tried not to let her stomach heave as she repeated ADAM’s words. “One half would rebel, and it was found that after they had attacked a scientist once, they would not stop doing so. They had to be eliminated.”
She was going to be sick. She had seen so many battles at this point that she thought she was not troubled by death. But it was one thing to die in battle. It was very different to be tortured to death and killed for trying to escape. To her relief, Hugo seemed not to want to discuss the matter further.
He leaned over the desk, black eyes boring into hers.
“Find the solution,” he told her shortly. “One in four is not an acceptable success rate, and we do not have the time to spend years on every test subject. Find the way to make me their Alpha, and do it quickly. Those who fail me, die. I did not make an exception for Fedotov, and I will not make one for you.” He flicked his hand to dismiss her. “A car is waiting to take you to the facility. I will be waiting for your updates, Dr. Yordan.”
Outside the room, Jennifer sagged against the wall and pressed a hand over her stomach.
“I hate this.” Her murmur was so quiet that no one could have heard it except ADAM.
>>Would you like me to find you an escape route?<<
“No.” Jennifer slowly pulled herself up, looking both ways down the hall before stepping off to her left. “No. I’m not going to run away from this.” She told him, her mouth setting in a firm line, “I’m going to destroy it.”
CHAPTER TWO
Catalonia, Spain
“Thank you for coming.” Hugo smiled across the table.
“Of course.”
The woman smiling back at him was almost his exact opposite in terms of looks. Her white-blonde hair and pink lips were a testament to her Nordic heritage, and her skin was so pale that Hugo could see blue veins.
She wouldn’t last very long in the Spanish sun.
Then again, she would not need to. Hugo would need deputies to rule over the pieces of Earth that were beyond his direct control. And he was beginning to recruit them. The last heirs of noble houses. Many simply laughed at him and told him that the age of kings and nobles had passed. Others, however, remembered the days when loyalty and family honor were the highest virtues. When they were not constrained by some petty notions about peasants having rights.
Where rulers were allowed to do whatever was necessary to bring order to the world.
This woman was one of them. Ranja Hallson, heir to a family long thought extinct and relegated to the history books. The Danish nobility was only half-civilized at best in Hugo’s opinion, having drunk honey-spirits and worn fur pelts in smoky halls, but there was no denying their fighting prowess, and it was best to choose deputies that understood the lands they would rule.
The world was about to learn that the natural order could not be easily abolished.
“Tell me of your plan.” Ranja took a sip of her wine and met Hugo’s eyes. She saw his surprise at her direct words, and did not trouble to hide her satisfied smile at that. He had expected her to let him lead the conversation, and not speak directly of the offer he had made—but she was direct by nature.
Not only that, she had seen the flicker of contempt in his eyes. He was about to learn that he would need a good plan and a good offer—a better one than he expected—to win her loyalty. Even then, when she had pledged fealty, he would learn that loyalty could not easily be bought.
She saw no problem with accepting his gifts and his money, and then turning her back if he began to give the wrong sorts of orders. He didn’t know it, but his contempt was driving her price up. He thought that his country was better simply because they had made stone castles instead of longhouses, because their food was different and their winters were not so harsh. It was a ridiculous notion, and she would make him pay for it with good money—as well as access to the technology he supposedly had. He was, however, hesitating over revealing his plan. It was a bad sign in a potential ally.
Finally, he spoke.
“You have heard legends of shapeshifters, yes?”
Ranja frowned. “Fairy stories, yes. Witch’s curses, usually—most of them feature bears.” She saw the sudden flare of interest in Hugo’s eyes and her frown deepened. “Why does it matter? Surely any country has stories like that about whatever animals live there.”
“Perhaps,” Hugo murmured. “And you have no stories of such animals moving in packs, their power transferred from generation to generation?”
Ranja kept her answer short. “No.”
“Hmmm.” Hugo considered, taking a bite of meat. It seemed that the curse of the Wechselbalg had spread across the globe, reaching far-flung corners, but what if accident or illness had wiped away some of the packs that should exist? He had hoped to use the native shapeshifters of each country for his plan, instead of being forced to use the limited resources of central and Eastern Europe to control everything.
There were likely to be a number of uprisings at the start of his reign, and he had too few troops to put down all of them. But another possibility existed. Shapeshifters of the Nordic lands might have simply managed to conceal themselves better than those in the rest of Europe.
Who in their right mind, after all, would hunt down a polar bear the way one hunted down wolves that preyed on the livestock? It was a different order of magnitude. There was still hope.
“What if I were to tell you that such myths were not uncommon across Europe and Asia?” Hugo raised an eyebrow and took another sip of his wine.
“You mean werewolves?” Ranja gave him a patronizing smile. “I hardly think—”
Hugo pressed a button, and a curtain slid open along one wall. What was revealed was not a window to the outside, as Ranja had assumed, but a reinforced glass window into an examination room. A man was chained in the center, clothed in loose black pants and a shirt.
Hugo pressed another button, and the man began to writhe as if in pain.
Ranja recoiled. This man thought the longhouses and furs of the Danes were uncivilized, and he was showing her torture with her dinner? But as she readied herself to spit curses at him and leave, movement caught the corner of her eye. Her mouth dropped open. Where a moment before had been only a man, there was a wolf. It lowered its head and snarled at her through the glass. She walked around the table to lay her hand on the window, and smiled when it snapped at her.
Her people had been warriors once, and she knew another warrior when she saw one.
“As you can see,” Hugo said softly, “these are more than just rumors. The myths are true. If you find such shapeshifters in your own lands, I will teach you to turn them into your own army—and give you all of Denmark to rule.”
QBS Archangel
“Ranja Hallson,” Lance Reynolds said as they walked. He held out a tablet displaying a picture. “Danish royalty, of a sort, from way back.”
H
uh.” Bethany Anne adjusted the edge of her jacket and raised an eyebrow. “What do we know about this woman? I don’t remember hearing her name before.”
“You wouldn’t. She hasn’t been on our radar—or anyone else’s. I had ADAM run a search on her, and she’s not flagged by the Danish government, the US, the UK, INTERPOL…” Lance flipped through the pages of blank searches on his screen. “You name it, they don’t give a damn about her.”
“So why does Hugo Marcari?” Bethany Anne’s confusion evident.
“Because he’s an ideologue.” Lance sighed and rubbed his forehead. When he left the Army, he’d thought he was done with fighting religious zealots hell-bent on binding the entire world to their vision.
Apparently, he’d been wrong.
The sound of shouting reached their ears, echoing down the hallway from the area right outside the landing bay, and both of them looked up with a frown.
“What’s that?” Bethany Anne asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“It sounds like Peter.” Bethany Anne quickened her stride. “Back to Hugo for a moment. How did ADAM know about the meeting?”
“Oh.” Lance’s face broke into a broad smile at that. “ADAM has managed to work his way into almost all of Hugo’s systems. Each research facility still maintains an independent server for their work, and so does his headquarters. Stephen doesn’t want to hear it, but it’s only because Jennifer was there that we know where it is, and apparently, ADAM is helping her get bugs into the headquarters system to locate all of the other facilities and take down their security systems. Now, Hugo seems to have all of his meetings in rooms without security cameras, but we have access to most of his communications. After the meeting with Ranja, he sent her a very simple message, stating only that he looked forward to doing business if she could find the resources to work with.”
“What do you suppose that refers to?” Bethany Anne’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “Have ADAM look over their shipping manifests. I want to know if he’s buying a lot of anything in particular, and what he’s using it for. The research, maybe.”
“Possibly,” Lance agreed. “He’s compiling a report on the methodology used, but he’s been reticent—it seems that his analysis distressed Jennifer.”
“He’s been in contact with her?” Bethany Anne felt a wave of relief. She’d known that contact with ADAM was the plan, but it was good to hear that the plan was working.
“Fairly constant contact. I guess Hugo was smart enough to question her when she arrived, and ADAM provided a cover story.” Lance chuckled. “In addition to helping her pretend she speaks Spanish.”
“So, Stephen should be feeling better, yes?” Bethany Anne asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Not at all. I’m not sure ADAM’s told him about this conversation, in fact. When Stephen found out that Jennifer had gone with Hugo’s helicopter because ADAM said he could help her pretend to be a scientist, Stephen was not happy.”
“Well, I’ll explain to ADAM that when one of my team asks a question, it’s usually because they have an incredibly stupid idea they want to try out.” Bethany Anne chewed her lip. “I’ll talk to Stephen about it, but I don’t think he’s really angry at ADAM.”
“No,” Lance agreed quietly. “If I know Stephen at all, I wouldn’t think he’s even angry, not really.”
The two of them came around the corner and stopped abruptly.
“—because he should have known something like this would happen!” Peter’s roar traveled down the corridor. “He should have planned for it! He shouldn’t have let her get on that Gott Verdammt helicopter alone!”
Stephen stood with his arms crossed, leaning against a wall. Nathan stood between him and Peter.
“She’s part of our team,” Nathan said to Peter. His voice was even, but there was a warning there. “You would have done the same thing.”
“She’s a warrior,” Stephen said quietly. “She is every bit as capable as you or Nathan of being on Bethany Anne’s team. She wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t.”
“Here on Bethany Anne’s team, or here on the ship?” Peter shot back. “You know the answer. She would be back here, with us, instead of having left the fight to get on that tittie dicked ass-licking sycophants helicopter to who knows where!”
“That was not weakness as a fighter, it was a tactical choice.” Stephen was struggling to keep his voice level.
“She should never have been there in the first place,” Peter interrupted. “You should have called in the bitches instead.”
“Peter,” Nathan started. “Shut up before I shut you up.”
“No! No Wechselbalg should have had to go in there. But no, he wanted to bring his girlfriend—”
“I didn’t want her there, either!” Stephen yelled back. “You think I wanted her to see that? I kept her out of the facility at Sofia, I tried to keep her from going to Velingrad!”
“Well, that clearly worked fantastically,” Peter snapped at him, not noticing Bethany Anne gliding up to them.
“Everybody just SHUT the FUCK UP!” she yelled.
All three men fell silent and Lance raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms, he took two steps over so he could lean against the wall.
This was about to get interesting.
“All three of you,” Bethany Anne said carefully, anger simmering in her voice, “care for Jennifer. And while all three of you want to keep her from danger, as a friend, Stephen and Nathan seem to have realized that this isn’t what’s expected of my team. Do I need to refresh your memory, Peter? That people on my team fight, they don’t hang back and let someone else do the dirty work. They know they’re in it together. The people on my team know that they will go into danger for a higher purpose. Has it occurred to you that Jennifer knew we would make use of the information she was providing, not only to take down our enemy but also get her out?”
All three men stared at her silently. Peter looked away.
“Jennifer,” Bethany Anne continued, her voice still deathly quiet, “made a choice to try to infiltrate Hugo’s operation. It was a high stakes choice. It was a dangerous choice. But it was not necessarily a bad choice—and it was her choice to make. I might have done the same, with her capabilities and the opportunity. I appreciate the fact that we now have the location of two of Hugo’s facilities—including his headquarters. Jennifer gave us an opportunity we would not otherwise have had, and for that I am grateful. Meanwhile, the three of you need to accept that she’s in danger and that she will be in danger again after we leave Earth. All of us will. Every one of you has faced death in my service.” Her nod included John. “We’ll get her back, and we will make Hugo pay, and Jennifer’s work will help us make that happen. In the meantime, I will not accept fighting on my team.” She took a moment to eye each man, “Are we clear?”
The three men nodded.
“All of you go decompress, and try to keep the blood off the carpets,” Bethany Anne went to the door and shot them a look over her shoulder. “We need to plan a strategy and get you back to Earth. We have an opportunity to hit Hugo where it hurts, and we can’t waste it.”
Catalonia, Spain
Gerard ducked under his opponent’s swing. The blow glanced off his shoulder and he grunted as he drove his own fist forward into the man’s solar plexus. His opponent stumbled and fell to his knees, and Gerard seized his opportunity. Most people would have stopped, but Gerard was not most people.
A flurry of punches caught his opponent around the head and neck and he was prone on the floor a moment later.
Gerard stepped back as servants hurried forward to lift the man’s unconscious body out of the ring. It had been a good round. He always fought best when he was thinking, and he always thought best when he was training.
It was a different pleasure than his work punishing those who failed Hugo, and far more visceral. It was one of the only places in his life that he allowed pain to be his teacher rather than his tool. He also thought, privately, t
hat it made him better able to protect Hugo from his enemies.
His employer had grown up with private tutors, been taught the classic texts on philosophy and strategy. He had learned the nuances of chess and his tutors had helped him dissect the major battles of world history. But no one had ever dared to strike Hugo Marcari, and so no one had taught him to use his fists. Gerard had nothing but respect for Hugo’s expertise in certain areas… but someone who had never been in a fight couldn’t really understand tactics and strategy.
Gerard never stressed this advantage. He had become very good at suggesting courses of action without Hugo even noticing that Gerard had contradicted him. Hugo liked to believe that the ideas he executed were his and his alone, and Gerard was content enough in Hugo’s service to let the man believe that.
But now, he was convinced that Hugo was making a mistake.
The attack on TQB’s offices in Spain had been too rash, and too early. Hugo still believed, on some level, that as soon as he showed his strength, the common people of the world would flock behind him. Gerard did not believe that—and he worried that the attack had tipped their hand.
What if TQB learned of Hugo’s plan before he had enough allies to take them on? Gerard had even floated the idea of letting TQB leave Earth forever—as it was rumored they would—and simply taking over after they were gone. Hugo had rejected the idea out of hand.
For him to win, he reasoned, someone else must lose.
Gerard grimaced and settled into his fighting stance as another opponent came into the ring—the guard captain of Hugo’s main estate, a man by the name of Marcelo. The two men crouched and began to circle.
Hugo’s approach was a problem, Gerard thought. Hugo’s blind spot was a problem for him, and thus, a problem for Gerard.
His thoughts faltered as he only narrowly missed a lunge from Marcelo. He always forgot how quick this man was. Gerard shifted away, staying light on his feet, his eyes fixed on the other man’s sternum. Every motion began there in a boxer.
