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Kilaqqi smiled, his weather-beaten face crinkling. His gray-streaked hair blew in front of his eyes as he looked up at the low, leaden sky. “You are not the only one who wants them to return home.”
He frowned. “The people on the ISS? Sasha?”
“Myhutechi.” Kilaqqi gripped his rifle. He wore a long coat made of furs, buttoned up to his neck. “It’s time.”
The deck creaked beneath Ethan’s boot, a low whine from rotten metal. He froze, testing its strength before he put his body’s weight down. Fore and aft, he saw his team covering them, the dark barrels of their rifles pointed at the bridge and hatch that led belowdecks.
Waves rocked the corvette beneath his feet. Wind whipped across Ethan’s face, burning his cheeks. Kilaqqi stayed glued to his back, covering his rear.
He called his team forward as he and Kilaqqi reached the open hatch. They moved like cats, picking their way across the hull in silence, and stacked against the door, Welby in the lead.
Faintly, over the roar of the Arctic, Ethan heard voices from inside the corvette.
Angry voices: the rise and fall of arguing, shouting. He couldn’t make out the words, not with the wind and the echo of the empty ship. Every sound came to him as if through a drum, out of order and hollow.
He signaled to Welby.Cover me. Welby nodded.
Ethan plunged into the darkness.
Gas lanterns hung off the bulkheads and broken pipes running overhead. Weak circles of light swayed with the rock of the tides. Soft susurrations crawled on the cold steel, waves echoing in the belly of the ship. He kept to the shadows, clearing the hallways he passed as he headed toward the voices. The lanterns kept him on a straight path, leading him right to the hold.
The voices grew louder, more distinct.
“You failed! You were supposed to bring the virus back to me!”
“The Americans fucked it up—they weren’t supposed to autopsy the body! I tried to force their hand. They were going to bring the warhead back from orbit with the body from that fucking satellite. I would have brought you the corpse you wanted!”
He jerked, almost slipped on the deck. The men were arguing in English.
“None of that matters now!”
“Why do you even need that old body? What is so special about that version of the virus? Haven’t you been cooking up your viruses here for months? Haven’t you already tested a replacement?”
“My original creation is a work of art. It is older than you, something I spent half my life creating. It can never be repeated. Everything I have brought to life since has failed to match its potency, its virility. Its absolute beauty.”
“Fuck the virus! We don’tneedit anymore. We have forced the change we needed in Russia. As we speak, the news is releasing the truth about Puchkov. So we didn’t force him out the way we planned, but we havefinallydriven him out of power! We can bring our glorious Russiaback. We can return to the days when we were respected.Feared. We can go back to that satellite and rearm it, fill it full of nuclear missiles and station it permanently over Washington. Don’t you see? We are ascendent again!”
“Do you think I care about your politics, or your country, or your petty bullshit? Don’t you get it, Iakov? I don’t give a fuck about you, or Russia, or anything else. You think the virus was a tool for your plans? Your craving for power was the key I needed to turn to guideyourhand. To make you scurry around and find a way to bring my creation down from above.”
Heavy breathing. “Watch your words, old man,” Zeytsev seethed.
Ethan met Welby’s gaze.Hold. Wait to see how this goes. Welby nodded.
“How easily manipulated you are, Zeytsev! You wanted the world, and you thought I would deliver it to you on a platter, falling over myself in gratitude for rescuing me from that cabin. Did you neveronceimagine I had my own plan for you? My own vision of how our little alliance played out?”
Roaring, and then the sound of a weapon racking, a bullet loaded in a chamber. “You are nothing without me,” Zeytsev spat. “You would have died in that forest, forgotten and abandoned.Iam the one who broke you free!Iam the one who gave you your lab back!Iam the one who has covered your tracks, protected you, hidden your human experiments!Ihave kept you alive!”
“And you never askedwhy.”
The boom of a single gunshot roared out of the hold, followed by the echo of a rifle’s recoil. A scream, and then Ethan heard a body hit the deck.
Ethan gave the signal. He spun into the hold, rifle up. “Zeytsev, drop your weapon!Drop it now!”
Chuckling rose from the far side of the hold as Ethan stumbled over the fallen body of Iakov Zeytsev, bleeding out from a gunshot to his throat. He reached for Ethan, eyes pleading, a ruby pool spreading and surrounding Ethan and reaching back for Welby, Kilaqqi, Pete, and Blake.
His team fanned out behind him, taking cover. Ethan dropped to his knee. “Show yourself!” he shouted. He scanned the hold—
His blood turned to ice, freezing in a moment like he’d plunged into the Arctic. He’d thought the burbling, the hiss and whisper of liquid he’d heard in the hallway was the ocean waves rocking against the hull.
