Authors: Selene Edwards
“It’s too dangerous with Marivean here,” Sariel murmured after a moment. “Just my being here is placing you all at risk. They won’t stop until they find me, not if they know what is happening.”
“Maybe they don’t,” Shyrah suggested. “Maybe they still don’t know you were a Demon and they just want their brother back.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sariel dismissed. “Either way they’re going to come after me, and it’s not worth the risk. You have hundreds of people to worry about here, and all of them deserve a chance to have a real life here. That can’t happen as long as I stay.”
“Don’t flatter yourself—they’ve been trying to kill us long before you showed up,” Shyrah said, reaching down and squeezing the Angel’s shoulder. “Now they sent an Angel—well, fuck him. You said he’s a big shot, so that probably means he knows everything we need, and he’s right in our back yard. Let’s take him down.”
“Shyrah—”
“I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing,” she cut in. “None of us are. We’re going to do something, and if that means marching up to his front door, then so be it.”
No one spoke for a good minute, and Damien leaned back while they all tried to come to grips with it all. No one protested Shyrah’s notion, and in fact they all seemed to agree with her—except Kronn. His face betrayed nothing, not even concern for Sariel. Something was wrong…
“For now, I think, we could all use some time to think about it,” Kronn said, standing from his chair. “I don’t want word of this leaking around to any of the others. Not yet.”
Corin frowned. “No one?”
“No one outside this room,” Kronn confirmed. “Not until I’ve thought it over some more. In the meantime, we still have a move to finish, and the two of you may wish to get some rest. We can talk more tonight.”
Damien took Sariel by the hand and led her from the room. The spark between them flowed freely again, and all of their doubts and worries washed together. She hadn’t given up hope—he knew she had never really believed there would be a magical solution to her problem—but now, facing the reality of having to confront Marivean…well, she knew what that meant.
It meant that she was probably going to die, and so were a lot of other people. It meant that their time was running out.
***
On any normal day, tracking down a security breach would have been a priority job for the Asurans. If that breach was their suspected leader, well, calling it “all-encompassing” would have been something of a tragic understatement. But then, most days no one dropped a bomb in their laps like Damien just had.
It was almost paralyzing. Even if Shyrah had a lot of good reasons to doubt the source, she wouldn’t deny that it made a lot of sense. What she really wanted to do was sit down and think about it for a while. Maybe reason it out with Corin, step-by-step. Grapple with it, shake it up, debate out every nuance until she was comfortable to move forward.
She had spent most of the last few hours doing exactly that and still wasn’t satisfied. And then Kronn had announced he was heading out to a quick meeting, and she remembered that there was even more at stake here than a global conspiracy.
Because apparently that wasn’t enough for one day.
Shyrah held back a grimace and kept her distance from Kronn while still following his movements. Night had fallen a few hours earlier, and she had expected him to hop into a cab and fly halfway across the city, making her job almost impossible. But he hadn’t—about five blocks from their base, he took a left on Toran Street towards one of the city’s many universities.
Shyrah frowned as she sifted through the sea of pedestrians. What would he want at a school? Perhaps he realized he was being followed and was making an effort to lose her. In general, he should have always assumed that—it was a pretty basic protocol they all followed anytime they were out alone or even in small groups around the city. But he wasn’t paying a bit of attention to his surroundings; he was totally focused on his objective, and she assumed he was just really distracted. Kronn was a smart man and excellent negotiator, but for all his time spent with a group of revolutionaries, he wasn’t much of a field asset. It was showing now.
A few minutes later he walked into a mid-level café, a nondescript type of place that probably had a half dozen clones on this street alone. A decent hub for a rendezvous for a lot of reasons, she thought, and she felt her stomach sink. It just seemed to confirm her suspicions. But there was really only one way to know.
Back in the Syndicate, her tutors had taught her how to do a lot of things, not the least of which was eavesdrop with the best of them. And on top of that, since ESI had always been one of the Syndicate’s primary antagonists, she was pretty familiar with their protocols and procedures. Kronn’s contact would have backup nearby, but nothing she couldn’t dodge. And in a place like this, the aural amplifiers she brought wouldn’t be detected or jammed—all she really had to do was go inside, stay out of his sight, and tune in as best she could.
Doing her best to keep a low-profile, Shyrah waited to the count of thirty before walking into the café.
***
Portis sat in his usual chair nursing a cup of coffee, trading glances between the news terminal at the table and the vid screen on the wall. Despite the urgency of the request Kronn had forwarded him, the ESI agent looked as calm as ever.
Kronn did his best to steady himself, then ordered a cup of hot chocolate and walked over to the table. “Hell of a day.”
“So I’m told,” Portis replied evenly. “And good timing—the Director is quickly losing patience.”
Kronn grunted. “Good for her. Look, the plan worked. The Incubus got through.”
The subtle twitch of a cheek muscle and a flicker of the eyebrow weren’t much as far as reactions went, but on the normally stone face of a man like Portis, they were nearly as blinding as the thousands of headlights on the street outside. “I see. I knew you’d come through.”
“No, you didn’t, but it doesn’t matter. We have a serious problem.”
Portis set down his drink, taking in the rest of the room with a single practiced glance. A few customers had just come in, and their chatter was welcome background noise. “Explain.”
Kronn told him everything. How the first colonists had unwittingly assaulted the world of an alien species, how the Angels and Demons were the result of a parasitic bond, how Sariel was grappling with two such creatures inside her—everything. And when he finished, he got the exact reaction he had been expecting.
And dreading.
“It’s almost unfathomable,” Portis muttered. “And you’re absolutely certain of this?”
“As certain as we can get under the circumstances,” Kronn said. “But I wouldn’t have contacted you if I didn’t think it was genuine. It fits the facts perfectly.”
“What limited facts we have, yes.” Portis took a sip of coffee and managed a soft sigh. “You’ve always insisted there was a biological explanation, and many of us were willing to believe it.”
In a way, it should have been vindicating. Kronn had been at the forefront of Angel research for decades, but for all his suspicions, he had always lacked the last few bits of data to pull it all together. Now he had them—and a large part of him wished he had been wrong.
“We need to mobilize immediately,” Portis said into the silence.
“Mobilize for what, exactly?”
“For what is to come. But we’ll need more than just your word on this—we’ll need the source.”
Kronn balled his hand into a fist beneath the table. “She needs to stay with me,” he insisted, hearing the quiet desperation in his own voice and doing his best to muzzle it. “I may be able to weaken the parasites or bolster her own defenses somehow. I’m not sure, but—”
“Sam, listen to yourself. We’re talking about aliens—actual, factual
aliens
. This isn’t a spiritual miracle or even a virus or disease; we’re talking about a full-blown invasion here.”
“We’re the invaders, in case you didn’t get that part,” Kronn replied tartly. “And we don’t understand this species nearly well enough. I got you what you wanted, and you know there’s another Angel out there right now looking for us. Do us both a favor and go get him. Buy me some time to do my own research. Sariel’s not going anywhere.”
Portis sighed. “We’ll get Marivean, but that’s going to take time. You said yourself Sariel doesn’t have long. We need to get to a lab before it gets any worse, collect any data we can while we still can.”
“She’s a human being, Mark,” Kronn whispered. “And she’s done more for us than you can imagine. I owe her my life.”
“I appreciate the situation, but you have to realize it’s simply not possible. We’re not going to harm her if we can avoid it. It might even be possible for us to extract the thing.”
After you’re done prodding her to death
, Kronn thought darkly. No, he understood exactly how they worked, how any intelligence agency worked. At one time, he even respected them for it. But not now, not here, not with Sara’s life on the line…
“I can’t let you do that,” Kronn said after a moment. “Not yet, not until I’ve had a chance to run more of my own tests.”
“Perhaps you’re mistaking this for a choice,” Portis replied coldly. “Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be.”
Kronn let out a deep breath and rubbed at his eyes. A few of the nearby patrons had started tossing furtive glances at the two men having an intense conversation, but he didn’t particularly care about that anymore. He didn’t care about Portis or ESI—what he cared about was his own people, the ones he had taught to survive against all odds. The ones he had been betraying for years.
“You’re right,” he murmured. “There’s no choice.”
Kronn stood and started to walk away. Behind him, he felt Portis hop to his feet.
“Don’t do this, Sam. There’s no turning back.”
Too late,
he thought to himself. He had already made his decision. Portis would try to force the issue soon enough, but with luck Kronn could get a hold of the others quickly and have them get the hell out of the old compound while they still could. ESI had no idea where there new base was, and he had no intention of telling them. Their lives would become more difficult, certainly, with both ESI and the Covenant breathing down their necks, but they would find a way to survive. They always did.
The question was whether or not he could find a way to save Sariel in time.
Kronn broke into a light jog once he left the café, doing his best not to bowl any of the other pedestrians over. When he had made it two blocks away, he abruptly turned into a small alley and flipped open his phone. He keyed for Corin and tried to catch his breath between rings.
No one answered. Kronn frowned, and for a second he was sure his heart had stopped beating. There was no way ESI had gotten to the compound that quickly. Without knowing what Kronn was going to say, Portis wouldn’t have ordered a team over there—would he? No, that couldn’t be it. But then what
did
it mean? Corin never missed a call…
After another failed try, Kronn keyed for Shyrah. He only got through two rings before a pair of men turned the corner and glared straight at him.
“Drop the phone and put your hands up,” the first one said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Kronn assumed Portis had a few agents nearby, especially for an emergency meeting like this, but he hadn’t expected them to be in a position to tail him. This wasn’t some sting operation against a dangerous criminal—Kronn had been exchanging information with Portis for years. But apparently his old “friend” had been expecting bad news, or perhaps had just stopped trusting Kronn not to back out of their arrangement. Either way, he suddenly had a new problem. Two of them.
“We’re not asking again,” the second man growled, his voice and outfit as bland as the first. The pair could have passed for businessmen on any street in Solace.
Kronn glanced to his phone. Four tones now and still no answer. Something was horribly wrong at the base, and it didn’t seem like there was anything he could do about it. A sudden wave of regret washed over him—regret for having this meeting in person, regret for not moving the others out of the old compound, regret for ever working with ESI in the first place.
He tossed the phone to the ground and pressed his lips together. If the others were in trouble, regret wasn’t going to help them. Only action would do that, and that meant somehow getting past these two.
“Good boy,” the first man said, his hand creeping out of his pocket and probably sliding off the handle of a pistol. “Now turn around against the wall.”