NIKOLAI
Nikolai was watching something that could only be described as disturbing when his pager went off.
He ignored it—his eyes glued to the screen.
Chief General Domasc was fucking a woman against an elevator wall in the middle of the night. The woman had black hair and light brown skin, but that was about all Nikolai could see. Though it was enough to know that it wasn’t Domasc’s wife.
The elevator doors opened, and the woman snatched a gun from her pants that she fired two times, grimacing as a shadow in the open hallway dropped to the floor, and a puddle of blood seeped into view before the doors closed back again. She said something, and Domasc pounded into her like that would make her stop, but she only laughed harder—clawing at his hair like she was feral.
We make cute tapes, was all the message attached to the video said. It was one from a thread of messages—from Domasc and the woman in the tape. But there was nothing that gave away who Domasc was talking to. Skimming through it, Nikolai suddenly stopped as he found another attachment added to the conversation, a photo from a couple of months after the video.
It was a photo of a swollen belly, clearly of a pregnant woman. You’re going to be a daddy, it said.
Domasc has a child with someone else?
Nikolai had finally found someone who had dared hacking into Domasc’s network, digging up this peculiar conversation for him. The hacker had also figured out the footage was from the hotel Domasc had stayed at when he had gone to a military congress. So, either he had brought the woman with him, or she had already been staying there.
Nikolai didn’t recognize her. But then again, he had little to go off.
His pager went again, and he finally tore his eyes away from the screen, cursing himself for forgetting it had rung before.
SSU Monitoring Room, it said.
“Shit,” Nikolai cursed. Vlad would only call if it were urgent. He logged into the communication line, calling the monitoring room.
Vlad answered immediately. “Zaregova?”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s not looking good.” Vlad’s voice was strained, another thing that showed just how serious the situation was.
Nikolai received files in his inbox and opened them.
“Raven has been transmitting footage from the inside, and they need translating asap. Not all of it—but a sizeable chunk.” Vlad wasn’t wasting any time.
He clicked through the footage and noticed most documents were in Borzian. Almost all of them had been faxed from the royal palace in Ostra, Borzia’s capital.
Nikolai cursed and immediately forwarded it to a translator he trusted to keep this information below deck. He told him to drop everything and report back with details on the contents as soon as he could. Some older generations spoke a bit of the language, but most people in Ardenza didn’t. Younger people didn’t have to learn Borzian in schools anymore. Not since the estrangement during the first waves of the mutation, when trade had stalled and bonds were broken.
“The detected activity is from Borzia?”
“Apparently. But that’s not all. Did you read the pieces in Ardenian?”
Nikolai zapped through the video again, pausing when Raven did, too, and he read the words.
Messages from Domasc to someone—a certain Ana. Didn’t ring a bell. Could it be the same woman? He reread Domasc’s words. A Borzian woman named Ana?
Something was off.
“Tell them to pull back,” he said to Vlad, who Nikolai heard was furiously typing on his keyboard.
“We’re already trying to, but I can’t reach Raven,” he grunted. “And her camera stopped working just before you called.”
Fuck.
“Did you get in contact with the rest of the group?”
“Yes.”
Nikolai stalled as the first translated piece popped into his mail.
He skimmed the summarized text and turned dead still.
Nikolai put the pieces together in an instant. Raven was the bird Domasc was talking about.
This entire mission was orchestrated to get Raven into Borzian hands.
To kill her.
“They’re there for Raven,” Nikolai said. “Tell everyone she’s in danger, and they need to go to her right fucking now.”
He heard Vlad’s cursing as he yelled his orders to the rest of the room, and he tried getting in touch with Raven. “Answer me, Raven, damnit,” Vlad shouted, and a loud bang sounded, like something got smashed.
Nikolai kept reading the translated Borzian files and shrank further in his seat. Oh, hell no.
Raven was the daughter of Natasha Zander—older sister to General Tatiana Zander.
Ana.
Who, clearly, was seeing Domasc. And who, clearly, was the woman in the footage. She had been there, at the military congress. Even the physical appearances matched.
Tatiana wanted Raven gone because she posed a threat to her heritage.
The Borzian throne.