She gazed up at the tumultuous clouds rolling overhead, watched by a small group of workmen across the busy road, their eyes and wolf-whistles admiring her long legs and immaculately groomed mane of auburn hair.
Her gaze shifted, and a moment later she raised her hand to hail a nearby taxi.
And then she was gone and replaced by a raging ball of gas and flame that roared up from hundreds of feet below ground, like a rocket racing up to the heavens screaming so loud it was beyond anything natural. Buildings were vaporised in an instant. Concrete, glass and steel disintegrated. Rooms and furniture and everything in them were pulped and pulverised along with the occupants of the buildings, and below ground levelthe heart of Scorpion, its central nerve centre, all were vaporised within seconds as the WMD explosive device was detonated — and the entire landscape of that part of London was changed forever…
First came the booming concussion as the device detonated, followed by the invisible but devastating shock-wave and in the wake came dust, billowing up in a huge cloud that mushroomed above the city, all generated by the small but high-tech nuclear device…
The explosion could be heard ten miles away.
With the aftermath came — silence.
Soon after, the screams and pitiful sounds of brutally injured men, women and children could be heard.
And this all went on for an eternity.
Kirill laid semi-conscious, dark waves of pain washing over him. In fact, he was sure that he could hear the ocean; struggling, he forced his head to the left and could see what he was convinced were crests of gleaming white on the rolling surf, crashing and foaming to a natural death on a beach of pure white sand. Kirill groaned, his whole body shuddering. It took every ounce of energy that he could muster to lift his head, gazed down at himself. He was completely naked — an angry looking wound, marked the bullets entry low down in his belly.
What happened? He thought sombrely.
And then the voices, the words; the words drifted to him as if they were a very long way away, tiny sounds in his brain, merging with the sounds of the sea, hissing and rolling, surging and retreating across the sand.
“He must be in great pain…”
“We have removed the bullet, but there are still many fragments of shattered bone lodged inside; the hollow-point bullet caused immense internal damage. This man should be dead; I am amazed we’re looking down at him in a bed and not a coffin…”
Kirill groaned. He closed his eyes.
A cool breeze blew in from the Indian blue ocean.
He was aware that he was in a bad way, but also knew that by some freak of fate, he was still alive and that his body was repairing itself as he lay there. He could feel his blood racing through his veins, along with the sedatives and other drugs to take away his pain.
He thought back, Kirill thought back across the long span of his life — those long hard years.
Searing pain lanced him.
He concentrated on the wound; he could feel the drugs being fed into his body, racing through his bloodstream, making him stronger; could feel his body repairing the damage wrought by the bullet.
He drifted off for a while, the pain coming in wave after agonising wave.
He listened to the ocean.
Voices.
“Give him another ten mils of morphine; there, that should ease the pain for a while; or at least keep him going for another day or two. How the hell did he survive? Has he spoken?”
“Yes, he called out in his sleep”
“What did he say?”
“He called out for Zhenya. Who is Zhenya?”
“The young woman who was found dead at his country residence in Cornwall; she was his niece and only living relative. They brought in her charred corpse — what a mess she was in. She’s in one of the chillers down in the morgue awaiting an autopsy, although I’m really sure what part of her they intend to use… Because there’s not much left.”
“Were they close?”
“I believe that she lived with him and accompanied him on every trip he made. He apparently treated her like a daughter.”
Kirill felt the anger and rage well within him.
He remembered: remembered Dillon — remembered the bullet… and he remembered the gun, cold steel pointing at Zhenya, blowing her backwards against the tall stainless steel kitchen cabinet. Her small Russian pistol clattering on the floor, her skull cracking against the stone, a pool of blood forming around her…
Zhenya; my beautiful Zhenya.
He remembered a time, from years earlier: sitting outside at the long oak table. The sun gleaming, shimmering through the leafy canopy of a one hundred year old oak tree, casting strips of bright light across the table top. He could smell the lavender and the trees from the apple orchard. Zhenya had only been young then; nine, maybe ten. The two of them sitting next to each other eating freshly picked strawberries and a generous helping of double cream — both laughing at the moustache of cream across Kirill’s top lip. Zhenya’s eyes wide and gleaming and beautiful, her face a picture of delight.
Kirill closed the door of the memory.
The bitterness instantly returning to his mind, a cold and clinical hold taking over.
He knew; knew he should feel something amazing for Zhenya; he knew that his emotions should flow fast and furious, and there was anger there and a hatred for Dillon so intense that it held the promise of many long hours of torture to come. And he warmed to this thought, because he would be able to indulge his passion for the ancient art of Shackra torture… but he knew he should be weeping at her death. His intelligence told him he should be.
But something strange had happened.
Kirill could not bring himself to cry.
His face turned to a grimace now; the bullet wound to his gut was healing, his flesh knitting together; in this drug induced dream state it all seemed to be happening so quickly, almost instantaneously, strands of skin and muscle joining together, cells repairing and replicating in the blink of an eye.
It burned. It hurt real bad.
Kirill remembered his brother. It had been a shame, but the order had come from the highest level to kill him. To murder his own brother, to murder a man he loved, knowing that he would leave an orphaned child.
But he had carried out the order, with a single shot to the head.
And he had cried afterwards; Zhenya had not been there when Kirill had carried out the execution, but when she had returned, had come to him, asking why he was so sad. She had hugged him and sat with him, and Kirill had wept long and hard and had vowed then, that he would look after her forever.
Things had changed since then, he realised.
And then, bitterly; I have changed.
Now there were no tears. And he understood why — he understood that he had become as emotionless as those he served. He had thought that he could be immune from such changes; after all he had always had a philanthropic view about life. He thought that he would be able to make sacrifices for the good of the future; for the good of all things.
I am doing the right thing, he told himself.
The sacrifice will be worth it in the end.
The ocean crashed against the white sand shore; and Kirill realised that the surf, the rolling crashing waves and the hiss of the foaming spray were nothing more than voices once more, distant voices drifting in from the infinite darkness of the horizon.
“He appears to be stable and his temperature is almost normal again… Hey, who are you, you can’t just barge in here, you’ve got no…”
“Shut-up. My security clearance gives me the right to be here. Now take this… And make sure you inject it straight into the wound.”