Timor stepped out in full view of the sniper’s field of vision to stalk the third, clearly no longer concerned about that possibility of being shot from afar. The sniper team must have been so busy angling for a shot at either Timor or the target presumed to be fleeing the burning building that they had ignored Katya slinking up the hill behind them. She needed little more than line of sight before she could port the needles she carried somewhere instantly and dramatically fatal. Anastasia was pleased. Eliminating the sniper meant Timor’s task of taking the last attacker alive would be much easier.
“Well, that that leaves only you, hiding in the woods behind me. Are you ready to come out, yet? Because all of your friends are dead,” Anastasia said, with satisfaction. “If you had a move in mind, this would be the time to make it.”
The isolation field descended from the heavens like inverted thunder, abrupt and total, parting Anastasia from the scene in front of her like a pane of glass, perfectly polished and inset as to be virtually invisible. She could yell for help, she knew, and no one except the person who had been sneaking up behind her for the last few minutes would ever hear her. Not, of course, that she would ever give anyone the satisfaction.
“Anastasia Martynova,” the man said, from behind her. “You are a fool. It may have cost my entire team, but it will be worth it to eliminate you.”
“Eliminate me?” Anastasia said coyly, glancing over her shoulder at the man behind her. “Please. If you were a professional, you would not have bothered talking. Who are you, anyway?”
Anastasia did not recognize him, but she knew the facial paint he wore. He was from the Taos Cartel, a cadet branch of the Black Sun, and obviously one of their top operators if he had drawn the opportunity to take a shot at her. Anastasia found herself in a rare struggle with her temper. She had heard rumors of dissention in the ranks of the Black Sun, but at the same time, there were always rumors.
“It’s William Steed, Miss Martynova, but you can call me Bill, in light of the fact that I’ll be killing you,” he said, his grin revealing bad teeth. He wore the same blue and dark grey camouflage that the rest of his team had worn, his features partially obscured with cartel smudge paint, his head shaved down to stubble. “Unless you planned on trying to bargain with me?”
“Why, whatever for?” Anastasia asked, amused and letting it show. “Do your worst, Bill.”
He licked his lips and glanced around furtively. When he turned back to her, she decided she did not like the expression on his face much at all.
“Your bodyguards won’t hear you scream. They won’t even notice anything is wrong until long after I’m done with you,” William said with obvious relish. “I suggest you rethink cooperating with me.”
“Didn’t you say that you were here to kill me? Why in the world would I cooperate with that? Or are you suggesting that you could be persuaded not to kill me?”
William Steed looked nervous and excited at the same time, pulling an almost comically large and serrated knife from a belt sheath and pointing at her with it.
“Such a stuck up little bitch,” he sneered. “I remember you, Anastasia Martynova. You were sitting next to your daddy three years ago, when our cartel was disciplined and humiliated by the Black Sun. Do you even remember it? Or is that sort of thing routine for you? I remember your arrogant face, exactly like your bastard father. I’ve wanted to take you down a few pegs ever since,” he said, excitedly spraying spit as he talked. “I might like you better as a hostage, come to think of it.”
Anastasia laughed because that was what was expected of her, but honestly, she felt tired. Treachery, she thought bitterly, was simply exhausting to deal with.
“I don’t think so,” she said distastefully, leaning her head on her knee. “I doubt very much that anything like that will happen.”
“I can make you do what I want you to,” he suggested, his voice taking on resonance and authority. “You will make an excellent bargaining piece, Miss Martynova. I’d like it if you would come with me.”
“I am certain that you would,” Anastasia agreed, covering her mouth and stifling a yawn. “That was a telepathic protocol you just attempted, wasn’t it? Well,” she said, stretching out her back and then standing up slowly and turning to face him, “I suppose that it is quite impressive under different circumstances.”
He took one step toward Anastasia, and then another. William Steed intended to be bold and menacing, but the hesitation in his gait betrayed his uncertainty. Anastasia could see the concentration and the effort he put into his protocol, his face reddening and his eyes twitching with strain.
“Are you starting to understand?” Anastasia asked, her voice full of liberated, cruel laughter. “I can feel you trying to use that silly little protocol, William. Are things going the way you planned?”
He took a small step back, then looked at the knife in his hand and seem to draw some confidence from it, and stood his ground, holding it out toward Anastasia like a ward, like she would simply walk straight into it chest first, saving him the trouble of stabbing her. Perhaps that was the suggestion he was trying to feed her now. Anastasia could not be sure, and she did not care to be.
“Thank you for the isolation field, by the way,” Anastasia said, walking calmly toward him. “As much as I would like to make an example out of you, I simply cannot have anyone seeing this. It is an awfully big secret, after all.”
William Steed was right about one thing. Nobody heard the screams.
“You’re serious?”
Alice looked at her with an eyebrow raised.
“I’m pretty sure he’s serious.”
Mitsuru put her hand on Rebecca’s shoulder.
“I am also sure that he is serious. The… gravity of the situation cannot have escaped him,” Mitsuru said delicately. “Now, Rebecca, we need some of them to not scratch out their eyes and choke on their own tongues, so please, please, please calm down.”
“Yeah,” Alice chimed in. “It was funny at first, but we’re running out of bad guys.”
“They attacked my school. They came for my kids at my school, according to what this piece of shit of told us. You want survivors? Fuck that. Alistair can interrogate his corpse.”
“It’s a lot easier if some of them are still alive,” Alistair said, from the doorway, inspecting the damaged remains of the dormitory common room, where Rebecca and Alice had caught with the attackers. “I passed Margot Feld on the way in. She’s already reconstituted most of her torso.” He paused thoughtfully. “Somebody might want to get her some new clothes. Anyway, Rebecca, I need you to back down here…”
“Don’t try and be funny,” Rebecca snarled, turning away briefly from the three remaining assassins, who crawled and whimpered on the ground in front of her. “Nothing about this is funny. Brittney Abbot is dead. Chris Ross is dead. Cy So is — ”
“Actually, we got to him in time,” Alistair offered hopefully. “Cy will be okay.”
“Don’t you dare interrupt me!” Rebecca shouted, causing everyone except Alice to take one careful step backwards. “These are my kids! And this is my home… and this is not happening again.”
Alistair looked at her for a long time. Long enough for him to know that a ghost had woken today for Rebecca. A ghost from a trip long ago home to Venezuela to visit her family, one that had changed everything for her. All he could feel from her mind was the heat of the blast, the smell of gunpowder and burning plastic, and the awful familiarity of the voices crying out for help, years old, but as fresh as the wound in Cy So’s stomach.