Page 117 of Coerced

Tell her all about that. Yeah, focus on the frozen wastelands and wish you were there right now. In the cold, wet snow.

Located on a tiny island between Svalbard and Franz Josef Land, the island was locked in ice and darkness five months of the year. A bleak landscape of seabirds, seals, and walruses, it appeared on no map in the world, had been sighted by no human eye, because dense layers of archangelic wards protected it from human knowledge.

The gulag itself, simply called the Box by most of us, was buried a mile in the earth. The inmates never saw daylight, never breathed fresh air. They mined the coal that fed the steam plant, laundered clothes and bedding, cooked, or cleaned until they’d served out their sentences. No one had ever escaped. Even if a prisoner managed to make it up the tunnel and out the metal doors, survival was unlikely. The temperature on the island rarely climbed above forty degrees, a biting wind scoured the permafrost, and polar bears patrolled the shores for easy prey.

“That’s pretty harsh, isn’t it?” she asked.

From the corner of my eye, I saw she’dfinallyrelaxed her shoulders. Relieved, I met her gaze, then laughed without meaning to, both at her comment and at my own idiocy.

“Mira, you don’t send the worst criminals to a spa! A prison is a punishment, not a vacation.”

She stuck her tongue out at me and my eyebrows flew up.

I pulled out my phone and put a call through to Clem. He told me he’d arrange things with the people at the gulag and also have someone meet us in Tromso, Norway, the last real city near the gulag.

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Someone I trust, though. You can bank on that.”

“Good idea to have someone meet us,” she said after I ended the call.

I agreed, then held out my phone so she could see as I began searching for means of traveling to Norway. We argued over which app to use, then over which airport to fly out of. Fortunately, there was only one choice if we wanted the earliest flight with the fewest connections.

“Yeah, Kerry’s not gonna handle constantly changing planes too well.” She smiled at me, like we were sharing a secret.

“Especially if the airports are crowded.” I smiled back.

After we mapped out the journey, we joined the others in Travis and John’s room.

“All set?” Gigi asked.

“Yes. Tomorrow, Mira will drive us to the Newark airport. There’s a flight out the next morning.”

“There are closer international airports. Richmond, for example.” Travis frowned. “Why Newark?”

“No matter which airport we used, we would fly into Newark anyway.” Mira shrugged. “And the layover is so long, it would be faster to drive there in the first place. We’ll catch a plane to Oslo, then a connecting flight up to Tromso.”

“How close does that get us to the Box?” Kerry paced from one end of the room to the other.

“The gulag keeps an icebreaker stationed around Tromso. Clem’s arranging for someone he trusts to meet us there,” I explained. “After we make contact, it’s about a ten-hour boat ride, give or take an hour depending on ice and storms.”

“Have any of you ever been there before?” Mira looked around.

“Until six months ago, I never left New York City.” Kerry paced faster.

We all admitted we’d never been out of the country before. When Gigi brought up the question of passports, I explained Clem had told me to bring a set of blanks along. Since the mission had veered so far of course, the old man wanted us prepared for all eventualities. The passports only needed a nephilim to touch and imbue one with power for it to fill itself out, photo and all. Since we were missing several party members, there was even an extra for Mira.

Kerry stopped pacing and looked at me. I knew what he was thinking, and I agreed. It was why I hadn’t purchased the tickets yet. I wanted to know who was going - and who was staying with John.

I nodded, and he turned to John.

“Yeah, yeah.” John sighed and curled up on his bed. “I can’t go. I’ll check into a hotel and wait for you.”

“I don’t like leaving you by yourself, but it can’t be safe for you to fly with this bad of a head injury.”

“I know, but it still sucks. I was looking forward to adding more destinations to my range. Maybe I should head back to the Sanctuary on a bus or something.”

“No, we’ll need you later,” Kerry insisted. “When we find the others, after you get healed up, we’re gonna need to get the most vulnerable away first. You’re too valuable to the team to send home.”

---