CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The moment he wakes, Lachlan knows something is wrong.
It’s a feeling in his bones, a taste on his tongue.
It’s dark outside, but he can feel that he slept too long.
Not wanting to wake Jules, Lachlan carefully slips out from the embrace, his head pounding so hard it makes him nauseous. His limbs are heavier than they should be and his muscles are weirdly sore.
Jules doesn’t wake at all, doesn’t even stir.
Lachlan checks his breathing, finds a deep, strong rhythm and so he draws the silky covers over Jules, scanning the room before grabbing his gun and knife. The balcony doors are locked.
It’s silent.
Deafeningly so.
The Estate always seemed to breathe whereas this fucking place is suffocating. Lachlan pulls his boots on, then his jacket. He quietly slips out into the mansion seeking sound or movement, finding nothing but pitch black. No lights on anywhere. He flips a switch on the wall.
Nothing.
The power’s out.
Lachlan tastes metal on his tongue, the citric scent of ozone and wet earth, vetiver and copper. The more Lachlan walks around, the more he thinks he’s dreaming. The silence is so overwhelming he can hear his own heartbeat, the thick crush of his own blood as it moves through his body in pulses.
A nasty suspicion curls low in his guts.
Something was in the champagne, maybe.
But Lachlan had endured weeks of forced tolerance conditioning years ago in RB.
He, like the other members of his team, endured a blurry cycle of intravenous heroin and reversal compounds until his body stopped responding the way it should.
Forever changed, hardened against chemical persuasion and able to recover faster.
No one else is awake.
No one is in the pool, which, when he glances through a nearby wall of glass, is a watery pit of darkness and debris from the storm he apparently slept through.
The formerly picturesque surroundings of the mansion have been torn up and spat out by wind shear.
The ground is wet and messy. The formerly starry skies are thick with clouds, the moon nowhere to be seen.
Lachlan has no radio. The satellite phone is in his bedroom. He has one gun and the knife Jules gave him, the custom build.
No rig, no Rook, no Danya.
And something is severely fucking wrong.
When he checks bedrooms, Savannah isn’t in hers, but Roman is. He’s asleep on her bed, fully dressed, hair a mess, mouth all askew.
Lachlan shakes him. ‘Ro,’ he whispers. ‘Roman.’
The boy doesn’t stir.
Lachlan pats his cheek.
Nothing.
He’s definitely drugged.
‘Fuck.’
Lachlan goes to the cloister of rooms he knows belong to the adults but finds no one inside. His fear is spiralling now, worst case scenarios flitting through his mind like little blades across skin.
Having searched the entire place inside and out, he finds no one.
They’re either off island or… they’re underneath.
Lachlan lifts his hand before the air conditioning grate and feels a light, cool breeze. HVAC doesn’t typically run on generators, but it is now because the main power is definitely out and the glassy mansion is still cool inside.
Kessler told Lachlan that the generators were in the sub-levels. If a storm hit, that’s where the adults might run to, but he just can’t fathom them leaving Jules and Roman behind.
The door that only opens with a fingerprint is heavyset and secure.
Lachlan kneels, studying the mechanism, but it’s hard to see in the dark, so he takes out the modified knife Jules gave him. On the side is a small dynamo lever. Lachlan works it with his thumb and a tight burst of green light spills across the lock. He quickly gleans what he needs to.
The print reader is surge-sensitive.
A current spike should fault it.
He shifts his grip to the insulated handle, arms the timer, and presses the blade tip to the print plate. After three seconds there’s a jolt, a little flash similar to a taser and then the reader beeps and the door unlocks.
Lachlan opens it quietly, keeps low and peers around.
He moves through shadows into a narrow passageway leading down. The air in here tastes sour. His ears detect a low vibrational whine. Lachlan pulls his gun, keeps it high as he descends.
What he wouldn’t give for backup.
The passageway leads to a metal spiral staircase, below which a few emergency lights illuminate what seems like a retrofitted bunker. There are voices below, and a different kind of light, pale blue and bright.
Lachlan pauses, briefly torn.
Jules is unconscious upstairs. Roman too.
But Savannah is down here, he just knows it.
And whatever the reason… it’s not good.
He heads down silently, taking each turn of the spiral with a healthy degree of wariness. The skeletal structure is designed to force intruders to bottleneck and expose themselves.
At the bottom, he sees the two bodyguards staring ahead, hands laced at the front. The base of the area is larger than he realised. Lachlan makes out the two panic rooms side by side, both doors naturally open, but opposite them is a room he can’t see into. The eerie blue glow emanates from there.
Lachlan could shoot both bodyguards in a pinch but it’s far from ideal, plus if he goes any lower, they’ll feel the vibrations of his steps on the metal spiral.
He retreats all the way back up and then, from above, hits the staircase hard. Lachlan flattens himself in shadows of the passageway, waiting as footfalls herald the rush of men to investigate.
They come up together which is so tactically stupid it almost feels like a gift.
Lachlan clotheslines the first man straight across the throat before grappling the second, clamping a hand over his mouth as he chokes him unconscious.
The other tries desperately to yell through his crushed airway, but a hit like that silences the body instantly.
Lachlan lets the unconscious body drop before turning back and striking the second man with precise force in the right place to shut him down cleanly. There’s technique to it, and Lachlan mastered it years ago.
He searches them quickly and finds no weapons.
‘Fucking useless,’ he mutters, heading swiftly back down the spiral. The blue glow is the source of the bad taste and the bad feeling, he knows it.
At the very bottom, boots lifting lightly to avoid scuffing on the concrete, Lachlan’s focus sweeps around, noting everything in the vicinity.
Boxed supplies, oxygen tanks, pipes.
It’s definitely old, has been upgraded, but they don’t build bunkers like this anymore. It feels old too. Not in a good way.
Dead opposite are the twin safe rooms, the half-exposed interiors of which both gleam in faint, sickly cerulean from the room across. Lachlan inches closer to the door he can’t see on the other side, wide open though it is.
He peers around into the blue room, partially exposing himself.
At first glance it looks like a private surgical room.
Steel surfaces, locked cabinets, expensive equipment, everything sterile and sealed. He can’t see all the way inside though, so he pulls out his knife and angles the blade to reflect the interior.
He makes out the distorted figures of the Delacroix twins, Thomas Whitlock, Richard Vale, Alistair Penhalyx and Mikhail Sorrenko all standing around something with their backs to the door.
Lachlan sinks lower and looks inside without the knife. Now he sees the machinery. Breathing tubes, IVs, blood bags, heart monitors. The blue glow is coming from something he can’t see, whatever it is that they’re huddled around. He hears voices spoken in hushed tones.
‘Can you hear me, my love?’ Alistair is saying. Lachlan clocks a medical team, not dissimilar in dress and attire to the ones who work on the Estate. He sees two beds on wheels. The team are surrounding the bed on the left. The adults hover around the one on the right. ‘That’s it, take your time.’
Lachlan still can’t tell what’s causing the glow, but when a pair of delicate feet slide carefully off the side of the bed, silvery-blue toenails immediately give away who it is.
Someone half turns.
It’s Sorrenko, and he’s looking directly at Lachlan, who freezes.
For three agonising seconds, they stare one another down until Sorrenko says to Alistair, ‘I’m going to check with Kessler about the generators.’
Alistair seems preoccupied with Savannah. ‘Fine.’
Sorrenko moves towards the door and Lachlan pulls away, rising to stand.
He falls silently into step with Sorrenko as they head up the spiral staircase. Mikhail doesn’t seem surprised at all to find the two other bodyguards unconscious, stepping clean over them.
Once they’re out of the bunker, he pulls Lachlan into a shadowy corner, voice lowered. ‘You’re lucky I turned and no one else.’
‘What are you doing to her?’ Lachlan demands tightly.
‘I can’t explain,’ Sorrenko says, lifting both hands when Lachlan moves in, gun aimed right at his fucking face, ‘but we’re going to save her, me and you. I will help reverse it. There is time in the first three days. The bond is fragile.’
‘What bond? The fuck are you talking about?’
‘Death frightens all men who dream.’
‘What have you done to her?’
‘Even though with each cycle you wake with less time, life is life.’
‘Sorrenko, answer me or I’ll—’
‘I love my children more than I love myself for the first time in too long. My boy Roman loves Savannah.’
Lachlan watches him warily. ‘So you’ll help me?’
‘Love puts us on the losing side, but yes, I will.’
‘Penhalyx was right. You’re betraying him.’
Sorrenko gives a momentary, humourless chuckle. ‘He’s sensed it coming for years now. He has no love for Julian, you know that, but I love my boys enough to send them away. Do you understand?’
‘Tell me what’s happening.’
‘There is no time.’
‘It’s blood transfusions? Stem cells? Bone marrow? What are they taking from her? Tell me.’
‘I am going to reverse what was done but it will seem wrong in every way. I need to know—’
‘You can’t reverse a transfusion—’
‘—that you’ll take care of my boys, all three of them.’
Lachlan opens his mouth to argue more but the last part of that trips his brain. He stares hard at Sorrenko. ‘Three?’