The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (54 page)

26

ZYKOV
stepped over to his desk and placed his hand on the palm reader, which flashed
and confirmed his prints.  Next he provided the requested voice
recognition and typed a long password from memory.  “Now, then,” he said,
“let’s see what files have been tampered with.”

“Okay, you’re
right,” the girl sighed behind him as he tapped at his keyboard.  “I
lied—I’m perfectly capable of hacking into your system.”

“Of course you
are,” he muttered, studying the screen.

“I just thought
it would be easier if you logged on for me.”  This time the voice was
tinny and distorted.

Zykov
darted a startled look over his shoulder.  His
guards’ weapons, trained on the girl seconds earlier, were now inexplicably
aimed at him, as was a third weapon that had appeared in the hands of the girl
herself.  Her face was now hidden behind a dark helmet with reflective
eyes and emblazoned with a blue butterfly, wings outspread.

“WE’RE
good here,” Jill’s voice buzzed.  Corey, Bradley, and Amber, positioned on
the rooftop around the base of the tower, heard the report in their earpieces.

“Okay,” Corey
responded.  “No trouble out here so far.  We’ll keep an eye on things
while you make the transfer.”

ZYKOV
glared at his guards.  “What is the meaning of this?” he barked in his
native tongue.  “Don’t tell me you’ve been bought!”

“Sorry,” one of
them said, “we don’t speak Russian.”

His eyes widened
as the guards removed their helmets.

Dizzie
ran a finger through her hair, wilder than
usual.  “Finally!” she groaned.

“It’s freaking
hot in this getup,” seconded Jerry G.

“How do you
think
we
feel?” Jill’s mechanical voice demanded.

Dizzie
pulled out her mobile and moved toward the
computer.  “Let’s get going before the cops get here.”

Desperation
contorted
Zykov’s
face.  He reached for his gun.

THE
police arrived to find
Zykov’s
apartment door
slightly opened.  They ventured inside and saw a figure lying bound on the
living room floor.  The figure’s face was obscured by a ski mask.

“
Zykov
said his guards had neutralized the burglar,” the
lead policeman said in Russian.

“So where is
Zykov
?” another wondered aloud.

A third was
checking the masked figure.  “This guy’s out,” he reported. 
“Apparently stunned.”

“Get medical up
here,” said the leader.  “We’ll need an injection to bring him around for
questioning.”

“Already on
their way,” one of his men replied.

When the
injection came the masked figure sprang awake with a spasm.  “Where are
they?” he demanded in Russian, voice muffled beneath the ski mask.

“All right,
fellow, just cooperate, will you?” one of the policeman said, pulling off the
mask.  “For starters, why don’t you tell us your name.”

The gray haired
man glared at the policemen.  “My name is
Miroslov
Zykov
, you idiots!”

“Sure it is,”
one of the policeman chuckled.  “Now take it easy and just answer the—”

Another
policeman put a hand on his shoulder.  “No, you don’t understand. 
This is
Miroslov
Zykov
.”

“You’ve let them
get away!”
Zykov
spat.

“Fan out and
find them!” the policeman ordered into his com.

“You’re much too
late,” said
Zykov
, standing slowly.  “They’re
certainly long gone by now.”

“What did they
get, sir?”

“That’s what I’m
trying to find out,” he said, forcing wobbly steps down the hallway.

In his office,
the computer screen said: 
Transfer complete
.

“What
information have they stolen?” one of the policemen asked him.

Zykov
tapped momentarily at his keyboard.  “Nothing of
much importance,” he lied. 
At least they didn’t get the most important
files of all
, he thought, reaching a hand subconsciously beneath his
collar.  The leather cord was still around his neck.

“We’ll find
them, sir, don’t worry!”

“I’m sure you
will,” he said absently, fingering the cord.  The leather felt almost
weightless.  His heart skipped a beat.  He tugged it out from beneath
his shirt collar.  Nothing hung from it.

He whirled to
face the policemen.  “Find them!” he yelled, trembling.  “
Now!
”

THE
maintenance stairs had brought them to a back door on the ground level. 
They found the bulky
groundcar
waiting for them on
the street along the rear of the
Kotelnicheskaya
Embankment Building grounds.

“Well done, everyone,”
Agent Oaks said from the driver’s seat as they climbed in.

Moments later
the car was weaving through a maze of side streets.  Oaks turned down a
narrow alley, parked out of sight behind a massive garbage bin, and killed the
lights.  They could hear sirens in the distance.  “We’ll wait it out
here for a while.”  He looked back at the others.  “Have you got it?”

Dizzie’s
hands flew across her keyboard.  Her mobile,
now containing the entire contents of
Zykov’s
hard
drive, was jacked into her computer.  “It may take some time,” she
said.  “Initial search shows nothing about
Pautina
.
”

Oaks tried to
hide the disappointment on his face.

“Try this,” said
Jill.  She handed
Dizzie
a coin-sized object.

“What’s that?”
Bradley asked.

“It was hanging
around
Zykov’s
neck.  I noticed it when he hit
the floor.  I figured I should grab it.”

Dizzie
took the object and held it in the light of her
screen.  The small
disc
was etched
with the dark design of a spider’s web.  She slid open the back of the
disc.  A chip rested inside the revealed shallow compartment.

“That has to be
it,” said Oaks.

“Good eye,
Jill,” said Bradley.  The others echoed him.

“I don’t have
the equipment on hand to check this out,” said
Dizzie
. 
“We’ll take it back to the hotel.”

“Where I hope
you’ll join me in my suite for a little celebration of our successful mission,”
Oaks said with a smile.

The team
exchanged glances.

“About that...”
said
Dizzie
.

Oaks wrinkled
his brow.  “Something wrong?”

“I don’t know if
we can accept,” said Bradley.

“I insist!”

“But it would be
so inconvenient,” said Jill.

Oaks shook his
head.  “Please, it would be no inconvenience at all.”

“Inconvenient
for
us
,” said
Dizzie
, turning her computer for
Oaks to see.

He
swallowed.  Her screen showed a live surveillance feed from his hotel
suite.  A party of armed men had congregated in the living area.

“Gee, who are
these other guests you’ve invited to our party?” Jerry G asked.  He gasped
melodramatically.  “Don’t tell me they’re waiting there to
arrest
us!”

Amber shook her
head.  “This is disappointing, Agent Oaks—or whatever your name is. 
You mean you were willing to use us to get what you wanted and then get rid of
us, just like that?”

The man who
called himself Agent Oaks was no longer looking any of them in the eye. 
“You won’t believe me, I suppose,” he said softly, “but I feel truly sorry.”

Gunfire sounded
down the alley.  The car’s windshield exploded behind Oaks.  He
lurched against the back of his seat.

Jill and the
other threw themselves onto the floor of the vehicle.  Oaks slumped down
next to Jill.  In the dim light she could see a red trail trickling from
his mouth.  “Go,” he whispered hoarsely.  “Save yourselves. 
Find what you’re looking for!”

They heard more
gunfire from the far end of the alley.

“This way!”
Corey urged them.

They crawled
between the seats to the back of the vehicle,
Dizzie
clutching her computer.  Bradley lifted the tailgate, and slipped out into
the alley.  The car was between them and the gunfire.

The gunshots had
ceased.  Now angry voices sounded from up the alley.

Six figures
vanished into the maze of the city.

27

THE
sunset sky was streaked red, gold, and pink over the icy expanses and peaks of
the Siberian landscape.  Chimney smoke trailed from a cluster of low
wooden buildings that made up the isolated village.

In the largest
and most central of these buildings, the fire gave the only light inside the
lodge’s sitting room.  Before its hearth was an overstuffed chair, and in
the chair an old man sat staring into the flames.

It was almost as
if he saw the six people who had appeared in the room behind him.  “I
wondered when you would come,” he said in accented English.  He slowly
turned his chair to face them.

The six of them
stood at the edge of the firelight.  They wore warm, civilian
clothing.  Corey stood at the head of the group.  “Good evening,
sir.  Don’t worry, we only want to talk.”

“It was
Zykov
,” the old man guessed, “wasn’t it?  He helped
you find me?”

Dizzie
shook her head.  “We…sort of borrowed the
information he’d collected.”

“I always
suspected he had discovered a great deal about us,” the old man said with a
tired smile.  “But he discovered much more than I imagined if he knew
where to find me.”

“He knew the
region,” Amber answered, “but not the village.  That, we had to figure out
ourselves.”

“Not exactly
easy,” Bradley muttered.

“And not without
risk,” the old man added.  “Surely you knew my men might get wind of your
inquiries.”

Jerry G
shrugged.  “We were careful.”

“It was a chance
we had to take,” added Corey.  “We had to find a way to speak with you
alone.”

The old man’s
eyes twinkled in the firelight.  “But you see, we are not alone.”

From the corners
of the room, armed figures stepped into the light.  The edges of tattooed
spider webs showed beneath their sleeves and collars.

“I assumed when
you came it would be to kill me,” the old man continued.  “I’ve gathered
some protection.  If your own weapons had been drawn when you entered this
room, you would have been shot already.”  He looked at his men. 
“Leave us.”

They looked at
him questioningly.

“Are you sure
you want to be left alone with them?” asked a woman with long silvery
hair.  The tattoo at her throat spread across half her face.

“They say they
have only come to talk,” the old man answered, “and talk we will.”

Jill looked
around at the armed figures.  She paused at one of them who met her gaze—a
big man with ghostly pale eyes and a dark web marking his shaved head.

The would-be
assassin from HQ.

He looked at her
with an unreadable expression.  Then
he
nodded to his companions.  They lowered their weapons and filed slowly out
of the room.

“Not you, Yuri,” the old man said.

The big man halted an
d looked back over his
broad shoulders.  “You wish me to stay?”

The old man
motioned him next to his chair.  “It was Yuri,” he told the six visitors,
“who spared your lives, you know.”

Dizzie
snorted.  “You mean it was Yuri who almost blew
us up and then decided not to.”

“Forgive us if
we don’t line up to shake his hand,” added Bradley.

The old man
smiled.  “They say
Anterra
is hardly the most
grateful society.”

“Grateful?”
Amber scoffed.  “His mission was to kill us!”

“His mission was
to determine what ought to be done.  That is always our mission. 
That is who we are...or were.”  Slowly the old man rolled up a rumpled
sleeve.  The thin, wrinkled arm was marked with a faded spider web
tattoo.  “It began with my ancestors who rebelled against communist
oppression—a new ring added to the web for each kill.”  He shook his head. 
“A noble ambition, if a failed one.  By the time I, a young fool, took up
a gun of my own in the name of
Pautina
, we had
become little more than assassins for hire.  No more pride.  No more
honor.  We killed whom we were told to kill.”

The old man gave
a tired sigh and leaned back in his chair.  He poked the fire in silence.

“There are those
of us,” he continued, “who wish to become again what we once were.  To
have purpose.  To fight for a cause other than our own lust for blood or
for wealth.”

“Why?” Jill
asked the man called Yuri.  “Why did you choose to spare our lives?”

Pale eyes looked
away from her.  “My reasons are my own.”

“But you’re the
leader,” Jerry G said insistently to the old man.  “If you want
Pautina
to be something different, why don’t you
make it happen?”

The old man
smiled at Jerry, a smile that piled wrinkles around sad eyes reflecting
firelight.  “If only it were that simple.  I am little more than a
figurehead, you see.  Our organization has become vast, and our secrets
guarded at all costs.  There is a reason your friend
Zykov
was so protective of his knowledge of us.  Had he attempted to publicize
any of his findings about us we would certainly have known about it...and he
would have paid with his life.  He would not have been the first.  I
am sad to tell you these things, my friends.  How I wish it were not
so.  How I wish it were within my power to change things.”  He leaned
closer to his guests.  “But you see, don’t you, that any entity—when it
becomes too powerful—can spiral out of the control of those who would use it
for good.”

And then for a
time the only sound was the crackling fire.

“Then you have
no influence over the organization anymore?” Amber asked at length.

“Less than you
suppose,” the old man replied.  “But enough, perhaps, to do what it is
you’ve come to ask me to do.”

“You’ll call off
your people’s attacks on
Anterra
,” said Corey, and it
wasn’t a question.

“It has already
been done.  But I don’t suppose that is the only reason you have come.”

Corey stepped
closer.  “Sir, don’t think we’re not grateful, but whoever sent you
against our department won’t stop just because you have.  They’ll find
another way.”

The old man
sighed.  “This is what I feared you would ask of me.”

“Please, sir,”
said
Dizzie
.  “We won’t be safe if we don’t know
who’s behind this.”

“Neither will
you be safe knowing it,” the old man said softly.  “I fear I send you to
your death.”

“You send us to
our death,” Jill said, still looking at Yuri, “if you send us back to
Anterra
while these people are still after us.”

The pale eyes
stared into hers.  “Tell them,” Yuri told the old man in Russian. 
“Tell them what they ask.”

The fire
crackled.

The old man
reached slowly toward a cabinet near his chair.  He opened a drawer and
drew out a small sheet of paper and a pen.  He wrote briefly on the paper
and folded it.  “Even if you succeed in stopping them,” he said as he
handed the paper to Corey, “I would not advise returning to
Anterra
. 
You would be eliminating only one enemy.  There are far too many others,
whether within or without.”

IN
the icy street outside the lodge they huddled beneath a twilight sky.

Corey unfolded
the paper.

They looked.

Bradley spoke
first.  “Not surprising, really.”

“We’ll find a
way,” Corey said simply.  He tossed the paper into the street.

They walked
toward their rented
groundcar
.

Amber was last
in line.  She looked over her shoulder as she walked.  As they drove
away she kept looking back at the lodge until there was nothing to see but a
faint line of chimney smoke.

THEY
stayed the night in a cheap motel.  Jill hadn’t caught the name of the
town.  She watched while the occasional passing traffic cast a glow on her
room’s fogged window.

If we hadn’t
had your help who knows what would have happened,
she typed, and sent it.

So you’ve
decided I’m trustworthy?

I think I
thought you were all along.  Thank you

She didn’t type
a period.  She typed something else.  Erased it.  Typed a
period.  Started to send the message.  Stopped.  Erased the
period.  Did nothing for a long moment.  Typed...

Thank you,
Father.

She sent it
before she could change her mind.

Then waited for
a moment as long as a year.

She watched the
fogged window again.  Her fingers felt her mobile vibrate.  It took a
while to bring herself to read the response.  When she did, everything
else disappeared—the room, the traffic outside, the night, Earth, the
universe.  There was only this moment, this message in front of her.

I knew you
would know.  Somehow, I knew it.  You’re like your mother.  She was
always the intuitive one.

And then the
rest of the world occurred to her, but like something imagined.  She might
have been dreaming that she put her mobile on the nightstand, that she lay down
on the bed, that she closed her eyes.  Even when she opened them again she
saw nothing.

Her mobile
vibrated again.

I’m going to
tell you something, Jillian.  Something I’ve been dying to tell you for
longer than you know.  I know I have no right to say it, and that this is
hardly the means by which to do so.  But I’ve waited a lifetime—your
lifetime—and I can’t wait a moment longer.

The “something”
came in the next message.  Jill felt...nothing.  She looked at three
words that were just digital images, sent there from the man who could have
been someone to her but instead was no one.  Which meant the three words
were no one’s message.

She kept
staring.

And for some
reason they were suddenly much more than so many pixels on a screen, three
insubstantial words, something from no one.

So much more...

The keypad was a
hot blur and her hands were shaking, but she managed to type it out.

I love you
too, Dad.

“Father” just
would have been too rigid.

THE
wall of Hyun Ki Kim’s cell grated open.  He didn’t even
look.  “What is it now, Simmons?”

“So that was his
name, huh?” replied a voice that wasn’t Simmons’.

Kim
whirled.  He could see Simmons’ unconscious form sprawled on the cement
floor outside his cell.  In the doorway stood a Chinese girl wearing a
black dress worked with satiny emerald green embroidery.  The sides and
back of her head were shaved to the skin.  Above that her hair was divided
into long, snaking locks dyed that same gleaming emerald.

He was relieved
she wasn’t wearing long sleeves.

“It’s about time
you showed up,” he said.

“We had to get
things ready.”

“For what? 
Another job?”

She smiled, and
the smile chilled even the cold cell.  “Much more than that.”

“For a
demonstration?”

“For war.”

He lifted his
eye patch.  “It’s time?” he asked in a whisper.

“Soon. 
Things have been developing.  Let’s get going.”