20

They didn’t want to give us their real names, nor know ours.

“It’s enough to know you are friends of Alastair’s,” the curly-headed husband told us as he invited us into their home through the small and overgrown garden. Inside was a perfectly charming little house. White roses sat in vases on a small country kitchen table. Plants climbed the walls, shading out the sun better than the gauzy white curtains that blew inward with the early-morning breeze.

“Call me Tom,” he said, slinging his arm over the slender shoulders of his wife, who beamed at us.

“And you can call me Cilia,” said the woman in heavily accented Dominion English, clasping her thin hands in front of her. “We welcome you to our home,” she said formally before bustling away to bring us freshly sliced bread with oil and cheese, olives and wine.

Jared and I stared around the tiny house, its contents as mysterious as our hosts. Jared sniffed the food carefully before digging in. I examined the small fireplace, objects laid across it that I couldn’t recognize. One that looked like a long hunter’s knife. Two candles, a jar that looked like it was filled with salt. A small bowl set with a pestle.

“It was a new moon last night,” Cilia said as she sat down across from me, drawing my eyes from the mantel. She was luminous herself, like a creature from the moon. Her hair was caught in a long braid and woven up into an elaborate bun. On her fingers were silver rings, one set with opal, the other black garnet. And beside her left eye sat the smallest tattoo of a red star. “Did you notice?” She turned her almond-shaped brown eyes on me with an air of expectation.

“Yes,” I answered truthfully enough through a mouthful of bread. Jared had also mentioned the moon. A perfect night for a break-in, he’d said. Underneath the table, he squeezed my thigh. I smiled.

“After breakfast, we go for a walk,” she said with a wink. “I have shopping to do.”

We stroll down the block with our new friend, watchful as the patrols switch to a new rotation. The building takes up an entire city block, crouching across the space like a monstrous spider. It’s fenced off like a Splicer Clinic but too large, the color of dirty metal, and with no windows. Then there are the patrols—a whole squadron of well-trained men armed to the teeth with machine guns, grenades, and, from the look of things, Tasers—sweeping the grounds in twos and threes. Cameras rotate on posts, sweeping the perimeter.

Is this where she is? I tamp down a sense of hopelessness. If Margot is in there somewhere, we’ll find a way to get her out. Or, I consider as I rove my eyes over the enormous amount of security, die trying.

Unfazed, our new friend adjusts the floppy straw brim of her hat and hitches her matching straw shopping bag higher on her shoulder.

It was Tom, the careful one, who warned us about the security. He’d crossed his arms over a stocky chest, the build of a gladiator, and regarded us with intelligent blue eyes. “You’ll need some cover. They’ve cameras everywhere and don’t skimp on security. Mind you listen to Cilia when you’re out ‘shopping,’” he said with emphasis. “We can’t afford the attention.”

Jared nodded, barely looking at our host as he ate. But I could tell he’d taken the man’s measure and then some. “And how is it you know where we’re going?”

Tom had barked a short laugh. “Even if we hadn’t gotten a note from Alastair, it’s clear where you’re headed, True Born.” Our host cracked his fingers, then folded his arms across his chest again as his jaw worked. “Straight into the jaws of hell,” he said darkly, his words tinged with his thick Russian accent.

“Starry Oskol isn’t like it used to be,” Cilia tells us as we leisurely stroll the entire block, then turn and head toward the open marketplace a brisk ten minutes away. The buildings rise higher here than in Dominion, many of them charming four-stories and made of wood. The scent of char overlays the entire town, as though there has recently been a large fire. “It used to be a sleepy city,” she says, fishing for the English words. “Now there are many guards, much military. But I do not think it is the government in charge, if you understand me.”

We reach a stall filled with produce. “We have fresh chicken and vegetables tonight,” she tells us after haggling with a toothless old woman, who grudgingly hands over a chicken wrapped in paper. “Come,” Cilia tells us. We walk through the market to a stall tucked in at the very back, secreted behind the shade of a large willow tree.

Cilia nods at the keen-eyed woman behind the counter. “These are friends of ours,” she says to the woman, whose dark curls peek out from beneath a pink headscarf. The woman nods, unsmiling. She says nothing, but her look says it all. She rakes her eyes over us, startling turquoise eyes against dusk-colored skin. Cilia places a gold coin on the counter.

I’ve never seen its like. A blazing sun and crescent moon against a starry sky. “Maybe you can give them some advice,” she says in slow Russian. “The kind you give to tourists.” Cilia switches back to English and smiles again, her white teeth brilliant as the sun. “And some tea.”

A faded magenta curtain hangs at the back of the woman’s stall. She pushes us past it and beyond, into a small storage area. We don’t stop there amid barrels and crates but carry on to a rusty trailer parked underneath a tree. She bangs on the door. A giant of a man with a graying beard opens a screeching screen door and hops out. He wordlessly stares at us before lumbering away to the stall.

The woman pushes us inside and ducks out, returning with a pail of water. A live chicken struts past the door and follows us as we’re motioned into the living room. Fragrant, leafy tea is set to brew on a hot plate tucked into one dark corner of the trailer. The other corner is furnished as a small living room: two chairs, one a wooden rocker, the other a threadbare green recliner. A constellation of bright bronze coins tied with red ribbons hangs from the ceiling. Upside-down bouquets of dried flowers and herbs fill in every nook and cranny.

The woman takes the green rocker. I take the other chair, while Jared positions himself so he doesn’t have his back to the door.

The woman follows Jared with her eyes but doesn’t say anything as Cilia launches into rapid-fire Russian that I can’t follow. The woman answers, her accent different than anything I’ve ever heard, almost as though Russian was not her first tongue. Cilia nods, satisfied, then turns to us. “Nadya will tell you what she knows.”

The woman motions at us with knuckles fat with arthritis and nods. “A big gray monster.” Nadya chuckles through a mouthful of missing teeth. “The elephant has big feet.” Beeg, she pronounces the syllables. Then she unravels for us every detail she has about “the elephant,” her nickname for the long, hulking building that stretches across the town: the sentries, how many shifts for the entire building, outside and in, what times they’re relieved. At Jared’s prompting, she walks us through the interior layout—though she doesn’t say where she’s gotten her information.

It’s Cilia who tells us, “They have many cleaning staff inside. Nadya has family who works there.”

Neither woman mentions what they keep inside.

Coming to a halt, Nadya takes my hand and looks carefully at the lines before raising her face to mine. I look up at Cilia in confusion. Who are these friends of Alastair’s—fortune-tellers? Religious nuts? Sometimes the older generations go crazy over young women, though I don’t know what it’s like here in Russia. I’ve hardly formed the thought when Nadya takes a different tack, her English improving as we go.

“You understand, pretty girl. Here in Russia, the Plague was bad, very bad, long before it gets to Dominion.” She shakes her head, the bottom knots of her kerchief bobbing with her head. “Listen.” She taps her ear. “Here in Russia, it kill many people. Very many.” Nadya reaches for my hand. Hers are chaffed and dry.

“Yes, I learned that in school,” I tell her.

“You learn in school one thing. But the knowing is another. Many people left in Russia, they live in fear. They look for miracles and cures. I think maybe their miracle has come, yes?” Nadya smiles, her face a wreath of withered lines. I squirm uncomfortably. I haven’t a clue what she’s talking about. Neither, apparently, does Cilia, who shrugs, a look of confusion spreading on her lovely face. Jared comes to my rescue. He moves behind me and stares the woman down. But she just laughs, turquoise eyes glinting.

“You have strong protector, too. That is good. Keep him close.” Nadya rises to squeeze Jared’s bicep, as though testing its firmness, before sitting down again with a chuckle. Then she leans back on her tiny, threadbare chair and gives me a sidewise glance. Her expression holds a lifetime of grief. “You will need a strong protector, pretty girl.”

The hill isn’t large, but it’s dry and dotted with rocks big enough to hunker down behind. As dusk continues to fall, Jared records the movements of the guards. Not ten minutes past, we’d seen none other than Leo Aleksandrovich Resnikov exit the gray building, flanked by four hulking mercs. All five men slid into the back of an absurdly long black OldenTimes car and drove out the gate and away.

“It’s all accurate, Storm,” Jared now relays to the tiny screen. “Every last thing the old woman told us. Ten and two. Even down to what they’re carrying. Outfitted with semiautomatic Glocks, most of them, while the outer sentries carry Uzis. Good for shorthand combat, nothing long-range. They aren’t expecting tanks, just desperate people. We can slip in at ten. That’s the biggest window between the sweeps.”

I watch as the guards pass outside the “Elephant” and strain to listen to Storm’s instructions to Jared. Storm rubs a shadowy jaw, chiseled as a block of marble. “I don’t like you taking her in there.”

Jared says nothing, just nods. Because of course, he agrees.

“I’m going anyway. You know I am.”

Storm quits rubbing his jaw and sighs, clearly unhappy. “Yes, but I don’t have to like it. Give yourselves an hour tops. If I don’t hear from you in one hour forty-five once you activate the scrambler, I’m putting a team in the air.”

Jared replies with a terse nod. But I have other questions on my mind.

“And what of the Watchers? Has Father Wes surfaced?”

Storm rubs at his jaw with a rueful look. “We’ve liberated a few more weapons caches. But oddly enough, Dominion’s finest seem to be having trouble getting their hands on the Watchers and their supporters.”

Something about this whole situation doesn’t sit right.

“Storm, do you believe Father Wes?”

“About what, Lucy?”

“Wh-What he told Margot and me. The story of the twins who’d save Dominion from the Plague. Serena’s mom.”

Storm’s frown deepens. “Are you asking whether I believe Serena’s mother could really tell the future? I wouldn’t even know how to begin answering that question, Lucy.” A beat while he stares hard at the screen. “Where is this coming from?”

“I’ve been thinking about Father Wes and why he’s doing what he’s doing. But what if it’s not even true? None of us ever met Serena’s mother—maybe she was just a crackpot.” I try to conjure an older version of Serena, though it’s images of Nadya that float through my mind. How she stared at the palm of my hand as though she were reading a book. The brightness to her eyes. I think maybe their miracle has come, yes?

“Are there even such things as witches?”

“The Watchers believe it. But whether it’s true or not? I can’t really say. Serena thinks her mother was a wise woman, but I’ve not met any official group. There’s no evidence to verify. Just a story.” Storm takes a deep breath, antlers flaring to brilliant life, and cracks a small grin. “Though, to be fair, no one would believe I exist if there weren’t True Born Talismans to back me up. What’s brought this on?”

I’m saved from answering as the Feed breaks into long gray stripes before coming together again.

“Interference.” Storm looks at something off the screen. “Alma?” he calls. “Can you tell Torch I need him, please?” He turns back to us. “Flux storm coming. You were saying, Lucy?”

“I was just wondering… The woman who gave us information today… She had coins hanging everywhere. They looked ancient—”

Before I can even finish stringing my thoughts together, Storm cuts me off. “The Roma have been stigmatized as witches long before the Plague came around.”

“You think she’s Roma?”

“Sounds like.”

“So she’s not a witch?”

He smiles. “I have no idea. It’s not as though I’ve had Doc Raines run any Protocols on them, if that’s what you mean.”

But it was Storm who’d shown Margot and me pictures of those he calls his True Born ancestors. Images of leopard-men crouching before falcon-headed kings. We were worshipped as far back as Babylonian times, he’d told us.

But the True Borns had returned to the world, if Storm is to be believed. The True Borns weren’t—aren’t—just a story etched in stone.

So what of all the other stories?

“I think she knew something about me,” I say stubbornly.

Storm nods. “We’ll discuss it when you return. And Lucy.” Storm keeps his eyes, cold as winter, riveted on me. “When you get back, we’re also setting aside some time to discuss your future. Yours and Margot’s, should you be able to bring her back.”

My hands tremble as though I’ve been Plague-struck. My stomach drops. Behind me, Jared sniffs. I step back from the Feed screen, not bothering to nod. He carries on in low tones to Jared for a moment or two, but I’ve stopped listening, head whirling.

I can’t decide what’s worse: that Storm will soon want to arrange my future, Margot’s and mine—or that he doesn’t seem at all confident that we’ll be able to bring her home.