Chapter 35 Dimitri
DIMITRI
The overhead light in the bedroom was dimmed to a warm glow, making the thin strip of moonlight coming through the gap in the curtains barely visible.
Dimitri stood at the window, his fingers hooked around the edge of the fabric, watching the street below.
It was too early for Dave to arrive with the phone, but he couldn't stop looking.
They had turned off the lights in the lab before coming upstairs, because the guards watching it from outside would wonder why they were working late and might report the anomaly.
Mattie was on the bed, her back against the headboard, and she was talking to Petrov in a low voice.
It was the kind of murmured conversation that filled silence without requiring attention, and Dimitri mostly tuned it out.
Petrov sometimes responded in Russian, forgetting that Mattie didn't speak it or understand it, which he did when he was either completely plastered or anxious, and in this case, it was probably both.
Dimitri was anxious as well, his mind running one failure scenario after another, each one worse than the last.
Dave getting caught in the surveillance room because someone in there was resistant to thralling and compulsion.
An alarm getting triggered. Losham waking up and finding one of the Eight in his bedroom.
The contact number had been deleted. The guards around the lab noticed the Eight approaching and sounded an alert before Dave could thrall them.
He ran through them one at a time, assigning probabilities, identifying mitigation strategies, and discarding the ones that had no mitigation because there was nothing to be gained from contemplating total failure.
The street below was empty, as it usually was at this hour.
Curfew was in effect, and it applied to all of the human population of the island and most of the immortal population as well.
Senior commanders and patrolling guards were naturally exempt, and Dimitri noticed when those in charge of watching the lab made their rounds, even though they were doing their best to stay out of sight.
They didn't want to announce their presence.
Dimitri had timed them.
"You should sit down," Mattie said. "It's too early for Dave to return. They are probably still at the surveillance office."
He turned to look at her. "I don't want to miss them. I need to go down and open the door before they buzz the intercom."
She arched a brow. "Why? By the time they reach the front door, they'll have thralled all the guards watching the lab. They can buzz in all they want."
"I'd rather be careful."
Petrov took a drink from his flask and said something in Russian that Dimitri didn't bother translating because it would only start an argument. It was something along the lines of letting him be.
Dimitri checked his watch. Zero zero forty.
The clan's call to Losham had been scheduled for midnight.
Allowing thirty minutes for the call, Losham should have been off the phone ten minutes ago.
He probably hadn't gone to bed right away, and Dave still had to wait for him to fall asleep, enter the house, take the phone, and then make his way to the lab.
He shouldn't expect the Eight for at least another twenty minutes.
Zero one hundred was the target, but it might take longer.
"Losham is probably having a drink after the phone call," Mattie said.
Petrov nodded. "That's what I would have done. He needs to calm down before he can fall asleep."
"Dave planted a suggestion in Losham's mind earlier today that he needs to go to sleep earlier," Dimitri reminded them. "He's under a lot of stress, and he needs his beauty sleep."
Mattie chuckled. "Do you think he's concerned with looking good?"
"He is, but it was just an expression. Losham is smart, and he knows that even immortals need sleep to function well the next day.
Lord Navuh wanted Zhao to make the enhanced soldiers sleepless, but Zhao pushed back, saying that it wasn't possible.
I've read the report, and we even discussed it with Losham, so he's well aware of it. "
"According to the many medical studies I've read, stress produces insomnia," Petrov said. "Losham might have trouble falling asleep despite Dave's mental nudging."
"Thank you, Konstantin." Dimitri cast him a glare. "That's very helpful and reassuring."
"I'm not here to reassure you, my friend. I'm here as the voice of reason."
"You're too drunk to claim that status." Dimitri turned back to his vigil next to the window.
"My state of inebriation has nothing to do with my reasoning capacities, and you know it."
He was right, to a degree, but Dimitri had no patience for arguing the point.
Zero zero fifty. Ten minutes.
Dimitri shifted his weight from one foot to the other as a patrol passed at the far end of the street.
The two warriors weren't part of the detail around the lab.
They were just patrolling the area and walking with the unhurried gait of men who didn't expect trouble. They turned the corner and disappeared.
"Let's go over what we're going to say again," Mattie suggested.
They had rehearsed it that afternoon, going through the script like actors preparing for a performance.
Petrov had been skeptical about scripting every word, arguing that rigid preparation would make them sound rehearsed and therefore suspicious.
Dimitri had countered that they would be so anxious that their reasoning capacity would be diminished and their presentation would suffer. This was too important to screw up.
"We start with identification," Dimitri said, reciting the outline from memory.
"Who we are, how we got here. Russian scientists brought to the island to work on the enhancement program.
We give our credentials so they can be verified.
Then we establish more credibility by describing the program in terms that only an insider would know.
Then we introduce Dave and explain what the collective consciousness is and how the Eight are different from anything that Navuh envisioned for the program.
Then we present our offer and ask for help.
We can provide intelligence on the island, and by we I mean Dave because he knows much more than we do, especially after working with Losham.
We can provide information on the enhancement project.
Then we describe the breeding program and the plight of the dormant women, and we beg for help. "
"What if they don't answer our call?"
"Then Dave takes the phone from Losham before the scheduled call, and we wait for it."
"And if—"
"Mattie." He turned from the window. "We've been through this. There are a hundred ways this can fail, and we've accounted for as many of them as we can. The rest is up to luck or God or whatever higher power you believe in."
"I'm not a believer."
"Neither am I, but we are going to try, and if we fail, we will at least know that we did our best."
"Okay," she said. "I shouldn't let myself go down the rabbit hole of what ifs."
They were all doing that, but only Mattie voiced her concerns. He and Petrov were pretending to be the pillars of strength they were not, for her sake. It was a very typical male response when in the presence of females. It was hardwired into their DNA.
Zero one hundred passed, and there was still no sign of Dave.
They had the phone that Dave had left Mattie for emergencies, but calling them mid-mission was not an option. The catastrophic scenarios resumed, cascading through Dimitri's mind and twisting his stomach.
Zero one ten. Nothing.
Zero one thirty. His tongue found the ridge of the emerging fang on the left side and pressed against it.
The hard point of it had broken through the gum tissue that morning, and the sensation was still strange.
A sharp, bony protrusion where smooth gum had been, growing at a rate that his rational mind had difficulty accepting, despite the evidence in his mouth.
"He's late," Petrov stated the obvious.
"I'm aware."
"How late is acceptable before we start worrying?"
"We started worrying an hour ago," Mattie said. "The question is how late is acceptable before we start panicking."
"In Russia, we don't panic. We accept the inevitable with grim resignation."
"That doesn't sound very comforting."
"It is. Accepting the inevitable is better than agonizing about the alternative."
One-forty. Dimitri's fingers were white-knuckled on the curtain fabric, and he forced himself to release it.
His enhanced vision could pick up details in the darkness that would have been invisible to his human eyes, and every shadow on the street had become a potential threat, a hidden warrior, an ambush waiting to spring.
He was being irrational, he knew that, but the knowledge didn't help.
Then, at zero one forty-seven, a figure emerged from behind the oleander bushes that lined the building across the street.
Dimitri's heart lurched. He recognized the build, the gait, the economical movement of an enhanced soldier operating in stealth mode. It was one of the Eight, probably Number One given the height, but it was hard to tell in the darkness.
"Dave is here," he said before rushing out of the room and heading down the stairs.
The moonlight coming through the glass facade of the lab was enough for him to navigate between workstations and equipment, and he reached the door and disengaged the lock just as Number One arrived.
He slipped inside without a word, and Dimitri closed the door behind him.
"Where are the others?" Dimitri whispered.
"Coming. Don't lock the door. We spread out to avoid detection."
Over the next several minutes, the remaining seven filed in through the door at staggered intervals, each one materializing out of the darkness like a ghost and slipping inside silently. When all eight were in the lab, Dimitri locked the door.
"What took you so long?" he asked.
"Losham." Number One reached into his jacket and produced the phone.
"Getting him to sleep was a problem. He lit a cigar before accepting the call, and once it was done, lit another one.
He sat in his backyard, smoking and staring at the sky for over forty minutes before heading inside and going to bed. "
"Forty minutes," Dimitri repeated.
"He was consumed by a cascade of thoughts, and we couldn't thrall him without using the kind of force he would have felt and recognized. The suggestion needed to feel natural to him, not forced, and a sudden urge to sleep while he was agitated would have alerted him to our presence in his mind."
"Did you check if the clan's number remained in the call history?"
"The number is there. He didn't delete it."
Dimitri let out a breath. "That's a relief. That was my biggest worry."
"We also thralled every guard with a line of sight to this building," Number One continued. "They will remember tonight as uneventful."
"Good. Let's go upstairs. Mattie and Petrov are waiting."
They filed up the narrow staircase in single file, eight enhanced soldiers and one newly-minted immortal.
"About time," Petrov said as they entered the room.
"Losham had two cigars," Dimitri said. "Dave had to wait." He motioned to the beds he had separated in preparation for tonight. "Please, sit."
The Eight arranged themselves on the beds, four on one and four on the other, next to Mattie. Petrov sat on the only chair in the room, his flask clutched in his hand.
Dimitri took the phone from Number One and looked at the screen. The recent call list showed an incoming call at midnight, and the number had the name Lokan attached.
"Who is Lokan?" he asked Dave.
"One of Navuh's sons. He disappeared not too long ago and joined the clan."
Petrov frowned, his bushy eyebrows nearly covering his eyes. "We've never heard that name mentioned. Are you sure about that?"
"We are sure," Number One said. "We picked it up directly from Losham's mind. The reason you haven't heard of him is that it was forbidden to mention it after his betrayal."
This was all fascinating information, but they were wasting time talking about something that could be discussed later.
"It's almost two," Dimitri said. "Which makes it about one in the afternoon in Los Angeles. We should hurry up and place the call."
Petrov waved with his flask. "It's the middle of the workday over there. They are not going to disappear in the next five minutes."
Dimitri stared at the number on the screen.
Ten digits that connected this island to a world of immortals he had only learned existed two days ago. Ten digits that could change everything or nothing, depending on who answered and what they were willing to believe and do.
His thumb hovered over the call button.
"Speaker," Mattie reminded him.
He nodded, activated the speaker, and pressed the call button.
The phone rang.