50. Laszlo
My program was running too slow. There wasn’t time.
Something was wrong with Lyn.
I didn’t have eyes on her, and my blood was running cold the longer the silence dragged on.
“Angel?”
Nothing.
The folder, the one with my name on it, my sister’s name on it, was at 33%.
There were photos, documents, videos. I prioritized the smaller file sizes.
Arise Hell popped up as a pdf file. Inside were esoteric symbols I didn’t recognize.
I closed it, finding another file about Dr. LeMarchand’s Institute for Intellectual Ascension.
In it, Dr. Julie Schaefer was mentioned. The woman who diagnosed me as a paranoid schizophrenic at Arkham Apeiron Psychiatric Ward, who forced me to deny Lilien’s existence as a condition for release.
There were pictures of Lilien, just as I remembered her, and tears welled in my eyes. She existed. I blinked them back as I kept going through the files, shocked to find photos of her as a teenager.
A young woman.
Those fucking sick bastards kept her alive! Where was she? The most recent file was from almost a decade ago, but it had been accessed three months prior.
The folder was too large, much of it gated behind complicated encryption.
I opened a video, and she sat in the corner of a room, being interviewed by someone out of frame. It was five hours long. I skipped through some of it, weird graphical interferences getting in my way at times. The screen flashed red.
I needed more time! I thought she was dead, that I’d confirm all my theories and suspicions. For decades, this information was my sole purpose in life, but I thought I was hunting a ghost.
My sweet little sister. Our parents cared for us, financially. They gave us a childhood that anyone should feel blessed over, but there was no love for us. It drove us closer together, and when I lost her, I lost a part of myself.
My heart, I thought.
Lyn showed me I could still love, but the muscle was scar tissue because of Lilien.
Denying her existence to get out of the psych ward killed me.
Abandoning the data would be like abandoning her, all over again. Denying her.
The live security feed showed the procession approaching the children’s room. Vasilyev was speaking again, preaching about being grateful for the sacrifices of youth, their plasticine minds, begging to be molded into a person of worth, of use.
“Do not let your kinder sensibilities get the better of you. Children are our future, and these thirteen will open the pearly gates, letting us pillage heaven and hell.”
The words were familiar. Was he the man with the face that blurred in my mind? I’d never seen him, not without his mask on. It didn’t matter, really. The Pakhan was the man behind my torture, regardless of what ceremonial role he took.
“Angel?”
Nothing. Again. Where was she? Why wasn’t she answering?
Fuck it. Fuck it!
66.6% complete.
I yanked my USB drive out of the NAS.
Whatever I got had to be enough.
There were no visible sensors on the window, but I didn’t have the luxury of time. They were at the door. I had to get off the property before the mansion and the mine below it blew.
With one strong kick, glass shattered, and I slid out the window to the sound of a security claxon. The rotting roof yawned beneath me and I scrambled to find my footing. My foot punctured a hole in the tile, and I lurched forward, my torso tumbling forward.
The ground approached too fast.
The top of my foot hitched, and instead of falling to my death, I slammed face first into the side of the building.
Dogs barked. They were close. Flashlights probed the darkness, but they were looking at the ground. I was dangling from the rotten roof, somewhere between the third and second floor. A hedge was beneath me. If I could just swing…
My ankle screamed with pain.
Push it all down, let it live with my other agonies. It’ll be in good company.
Rough brick scratched my face, and I waited for the flashlights to turn away from me. Pushing up with my loose leg, I freed my trapped foot, and then I fell.
Air left my lungs.
I stayed still.
I was afraid I’d broken my neck. My back.
I tested my limbs.
A dog howled.
I forced myself up, testing the weight on my bad ankle. Pain shot up my leg, blinding me, and I breathed into it.
Sprinting ahead, I made for the back of the house.
White light blinded me.
A gunshot.
Another.
I grabbed for my sword, but it wasn’t on my hip. I swung around and came face to face with my past.
At least he was a past that didn’t trigger the shit out of me.
“Laszlo? What are you doing out here?” Rurik asked.
His military buzz-cut remained, and he was still as beefy as I remembered him. He’d been one of the men reassigned after Bodrov was killed by Urvan. A loyal hound, but I never forgot how he fucked up.
Gorky laid hands on her, and the cult almost stole my angel away from me because he left her alone, and for that, I’d kill him. He only lived this long because he wasn’t worth risking my cover over.
Behind him, my ruby hilt glittered in the grass. The moon was almost fully red. I had to get out of the blast radius. Lyn was supposed to hit the detonator at my signal, but if she didn’t, we had a failsafe. In less than seven minutes, the timer would detonate.
“I need to get to my wife, Rurik.”
He looked down at my ankle, at the blood staining the front of my white Cossack costume.
“What…?” He lifted his gun, finger on the trigger.
I put my hands up.
“I don’t have time for this. Have you seen my wife?” It was a pathetic distraction, but it worked enough to take him off guard. I dodged to his side, sliding on the wet grass, and grabbed the hilt of my sword.
Pain seared against my ribs and I crumbled forwards.