Chapter 28 Dimitri
DIMITRI
At two o'clock the intercom buzzed, and as Petrov released the door lock, the lab door opened and the Eight filed in.
"Good afternoon," Number One said, and all Eight smiled at Mattie, which still looked creepy even though they did it every time now.
She smiled back and gave them a little wave hello. "We heard it was an eventful day."
"It was." The Eight took their places on the plastic chairs along the wall. "A section of the basement collapsed, and the mansion suffered a lot of damage. More so than from the original explosions."
Petrov swiveled his chair around. "That bad, eh?"
"All the progress from the past weeks has been undone. Everyone was evacuated from the mansion, Commander Yereth has secured the site, and the engineers are conducting a structural assessment before anyone is allowed to re-enter."
Dimitri brought the tray of syringes to the usual table and put on his gloves. "How long before they can resume digging?" He swabbed Number One's arm and positioned the needle.
"Losham is assembling several new crews. Immortals, this time, will be working around the clock. He wants to accelerate the timeline because he doesn't want to disappoint his handlers."
"I assume that he hasn't told you that," Dimitri said. "You read his mind?"
"Yes." The answer was a statement of fact, not an admission of guilt.
Dimitri wondered if the Eight ever felt guilty about anything they did, or was the hive mind so secure in its ability to always make the right decisions that guilt was not part of the equation.
"The compulsion to continue excavating is in direct conflict with the physical impossibility of doing so," Number One continued. "Losham is being pressured from all sides, but he's holding on."
"Poor Losham," Petrov said from his workstation, with zero sympathy in his mocking tone.
Dimitri administered the injection and moved to Number Two. "The collapse changes things for us. The clan won't move on anything until those chests are found. If the excavation is stalled for weeks, we're in limbo."
"That's bad," Mattie said from her chair. "It could be weeks before the clan is willing to help us, and we don't have weeks. Losham's brothers are getting more suspicious by the day, Dimitri's fangs are coming in, and the situation is deteriorating."
Dave's eight pairs of eyes moved to her, then to Dimitri, then back. The collective's processing pause was brief.
"You are speaking as if contact with the clan has been established," Number One said. "It has not."
"No, but we have an idea about how to do it." Dimitri glanced at Mattie, then at Petrov, who nodded. "The only logical way to contact the clan is through Losham’s phone, the one the clan calls him on. We steal it and make the call ourselves. We establish direct contact."
The Eight went still.
"Please explain," Number One said.
"To start with, you will need to thrall the operators in the surveillance control room to turn off the feed from Losham's bedroom.
If the control is at the mansion proper, you will have to do it locally at the house.
I don't know if all of you need to do this together for it to be effective, or if you can split up, but splitting up would make everything work faster.
After you are done with that, one or more of you enter Losham's bedroom at night while he sleeps, either through the window or the front door, depending on the surveillance situation.
You thrall him into deeper sleep, take the phone, and bring it to the lab.
We make the call, and after it's done, the phone goes back, and Losham wakes up none the wiser. "
When he finished, the Eight were silent for a long moment, staring at him without actually seeing him.
"That is excellent thinking," Number One finally said. "We should have thought of it."
"You were focused on the larger strategic picture," Dimitri said. "Sometimes the obvious solution gets overlooked when you're calculating all the probabilities and contingencies."
"That is generous of you to say, but the truth is that we have limited experience with improvisation. Our training was in combat, not in intelligence work."
Dimitri smiled. "You are all so young that you haven't gotten much training in combat either. But then you started at thirteen, so I guess that's enough time."
"It is," Number One said. "It also means that we didn't study anything else beyond that age, and even before that, our schooling was basic. When we get out of here, we will seek knowledge. Our mind is hungry for more."
The intense way they were all looking at him made Dimitri uncomfortable. Was knowledge one of the things they hoped to absorb from him during the mind meld? Not just to understand love?
Theoretically, by absorbing his knowledge, they could learn how to prepare their own drugs so they wouldn't need him and Petrov. They could very easily leave the island by themselves and leave him, Mattie, and Petrov behind.
Could that be their ultimate goal?
All that talk about love could have been a smokescreen, and Dimitri had fallen for it because he was consumed by his love for Mattie, and to him, that was the most vital thing in the world.
Dave could have picked up on that and used it to convince Dimitri to agree to the mind merge, probably because it couldn't be done against his will. He had to be an active participant for that to happen.
For now, the discussion about the merge had been pushed aside in favor of other more pressing matters, but that was the foundation for everything else, and he still had to make up his mind about it.
"What about the timing?" Number One asked.
"That's what we need to decide." Dimitri moved to Number Four. "Since most of the work is on your part, you should be the one to evaluate this."
"Tomorrow night," Number One said.
Dimitri looked up from the injection. "Tomorrow?"
"Is there an advantage to waiting longer? I thought one day would be enough for us to formulate our strategy. The opening sentences will be crucial, and I will leave it up to you to come up with something clever for us."
One day might not be enough. Dimitri hadn't even thought about what he was going to say and how he was going to present his proposal, and winging it wasn't an option. They had one shot at this, and they needed to make the best of it.
"Do you want to do this quickly because you're curious?" Mattie asked Dave.
Number One turned to her. "We are curious," he admitted. "The clan offers a window into another way of being for immortals. They are a different civilization with a different worldview. Our interest is not purely strategic."
"It's also emotional," Mattie said.
All eight of Dave nodded.
"Yes," Number One said, and the impact of simple admission made Dimitri pause mid-injection.
Dave wanted to talk to the clan. Not just as a tactical necessity, but because the collective consciousness that had spent its entire existence on this island, surrounded by a power structure built on fear, wanted to know that there was something else out there.
Something different. Perhaps something better.
Dimitri understood that.
"All right," he said. "Tomorrow night. But I want to make it clear that you bring the phone to the lab, and Petrov and I do the talking."
All eight heads tilted simultaneously. "We assumed that we would initiate the conversation. We know more about the Brotherhood's operations than either of you, and we can provide intelligence that the clan would find valuable."
"All true," Dimitri said. "But think about it from the clan's perspective. They're going to answer a call from Losham, but instead of Losham, they hear a voice claiming to be an enhanced soldier with a collective consciousness who wants to negotiate. What's their first assumption?"
Number One considered this. "That Losham was compromised."
"Yes. And the second one is that you are trying to trick them and get information out of them. You're a Brotherhood weapon. The person on the other end will be defensive and probably hostile. Certainly suspicious."
"And you believe that hearing a scientist with a Russian accent will produce a different reaction?"
"I believe it will produce a less alarming reaction.
Petrov and I are prisoners, not soldiers.
We were brought here under duress and forced to work on a project with questionable morality.
That's a story the clan can sympathize with, and more importantly, it's a story they can verify.
If they've been monitoring this island, they may already know about the enhancement program and the Russian scientists running it.
Our identity is checkable. Yours is not. "
Number One's expression didn't change, but the collective processing pause that followed was longer than usual. Dave was weighing the argument, turning it over in his hive mind.
"We see the logic," Number One said. "We don't like it."
"You don't have to like it. You just have to agree that it gives us the best chance of being taken seriously."
"There is something else," Petrov said from his workstation.
He'd been listening with his back turned, but now swiveled his stool to face them again.
"First impression is important. A Russian accent on the phone is unexpected.
It will make whoever answers pause and listen out of curiosity.
A soldier calling from the Brotherhood's secure line sounds like a threat.
A Russian prisoner calling from the same line sounds like a mystery. "
"So, what would our role be during the call?" Number One asked.
"You'll be there," Dimitri said. "Listening. If we're asked about tactical intelligence, you provide it. If questions come up about the military situation, the warriors, the defenses, you're the expert. But the initial contact, the first impression, needs to come from us."
"I'll be there too," Mattie said.
"Mattie—" Dimitri began.
"We already had this argument. I won."
"You didn't win. I postponed the discussion."
"Which is how I win. The discussion gets postponed until it's too late to have it, and then I'm already there. I'll keep quiet unless something important needs to be said."
Petrov groaned. "Negotiating with an unknown and potentially hostile organization will be difficult enough without interruptions from the gallery."
"I said I'd keep it to a minimum. I'll only intervene when it's crucial."
"Your definition of crucial and mine may differ considerably."
"I'll defer to yours. Happy?"
"Ecstatic."
Dimitri looked at Dave, then at Petrov, then at Mattie, and made a decision that was born less from strategy than from decency. These were the people he was going to escape with, and they all deserved to be part of the moment that set that escape in motion.
"We'll put the call on speaker," he said. "All of us will contribute."
Petrov's head snapped toward Dimitri, and the look he gave him could have curdled milk.
"Have you lost your mind? You just argued that the initial contact needs to come from us because we're known actors, and now you want to put the entire circus on speaker?
How is that less threatening? Hello, we are two Russian scientists, an Australian barmaid, and eight enhanced soldiers with a hive mind calling from your enemy's stolen phone.
Please help us rescue two thousand women and children. "
"Yes," Dimitri said. "Exactly that."
Petrov opened his mouth and then closed it.
"Think about it," Dimitri said. "The Brotherhood doesn't have women in its ranks, and I'm sure these other immortals know that.
Having a woman on the call, participating and offering input, contradicts everything the clan knows about how the Brotherhood operates.
It immediately signals that we're different.
That we're not operating within the Brotherhood's power structure. It makes us more believable, not less."
Petrov stared at him for a long moment, his expression cycling through skepticism, calculation, and the reluctant admission that the argument had merit.
"He has a point," Petrov said finally, sounding as if the concession caused him physical pain.
Mattie's face lit up, and it was a look that Dimitri had seen before at the kitchen table on their first date, when he'd told her she was beautiful. It hit him in the same place now as it had then.
"So, we are all in agreement?" Dimitri asked.
"Yes," Number One said.
"Da." Petrov reached into his desk drawer and pulled out his bottle of vodka. "God help us all."
"Which god?" Mattie asked. "Yours or theirs?"
"Any god that's listening." Petrov took a long sip. "At this point, I'm not particular."