Page 38 of Ascendent
I’ve never talked about my past before.Sergey heard the truth of his admission, heard what Sasha didn’t say. What he said instead.
He kissed Sasha slowly and held him as the fire crackled, as the flames leaped. Under his touch, Sasha’s skin cooled, chilled, but didn’t freeze.
Chapter Eight
Sixteen steps tookSergey from one wall to the other. He leaned his forehead against the painted cinder block and exhaled. Everything still smelled like fresh paint, like repairs. As if the civil war had never happened.
Over the intercom, a nurse paged for a doctor to attend room three. Sergey turned, started his trek back across the corridor.
Six hours, twenty-one minutes since he’d watched Sasha get wheeled into surgery. Dr. Voronov had been at his side, had waved to Sergey after Sasha had succumbed to the anesthesia. Seeing Sasha pass out was wholly different from seeing him sleeping. His heart had lurched, had flashed back to the past, the last time Sasha had been sedated. He hadn’t known him then. He’d been bruised and bloody and ravaged by his former wing mates. He’d lost his spleen to their attack.
But now he was getting it back. Or, at least, a bio-identical replacement.
Sergey had spent hours reading up on the procedure, on the cutting-edge science that was going into Sasha. He’d Googled for hours, clicking through success stories and then horror stories. Successful implantation, and anomalous rejections. There shouldn’t be any rejection for Sasha, though. The new spleen was grown from Sasha’s own stem cells. It should be a perfect match.
Sasha would be whole again.
What those bastards did to him would be undone.
And he’d get to chase his dream among the stars.
Sergey scrubbed his hands over his face, leaned back against the wall. Six hours, twenty-three minutes. Time never moved slower than in a hospital. The corridor was empty, quiet. A hollow quiet, the kind of silence that is filled with waiting, with the frenzied thoughts of people who are always thinking ofafter this moment, this afternoon, this day. After this, he’d take Sasha home. He’d bring him—
A door banged at the end of the corridor, thrown open as someone shoved through. He glared. This surgical suite was supposed to be secured while they were there. Hospital personnel only.
Ilya waved.
Fucking finally. Ilya had headed north the week before, telling Sergey he was going to check out some of the military bases between Moscow and St Petersburg, and then toward Murmansk. Then, he’d dropped off the radar. Sergey hadn’t heard a peep from him.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Ilya scowled. He nodded to the double door to the surgical suite. “Pretty Boy?”
“Yes. Did you come back just to see him? You sure aren’t back to see me, I know that. You’d have given your president a heads up, or sent an email or a text. Something to let me know you’re alive, what your status is. What you’ve found. The head of my intelligence agency doesn’t just disappear without a word.”
“Fuck off,Seryozha.”
Ilya was the only man alive who would dare speak to him that way. But, he rarely did. Ilya was a bear most of the time, a man who faced the worst of the world and the worst of Russia and figured out how to keep the country and the planet spinning. He had seen it all with Sergey, through the long years in the FSB, and after, when they finally had Russia in the palm of their hands. He’d fought for Sergey in the wastes of Siberia, when there was no certainty, absolutely none at all, that things would ever go back to the way they were.
He’d given Sergey Russia back.
There were times, over the years, Ilya kept Sergey in the dark on purpose. Plausible deniability, he said. Protection. Things Sergey shouldn’t, couldn’t know about.
He’d seen Ilya like this before, and it was never good. Bloodshot eyes spoke of sleepless nights. The pinch to his lips, his mouth. Tension in his forehead, his shoulders. The way he rubbed his mouth and paced. The curve to his spine. The way his dark eyes held Sergey’s.
There was fear there.
“Ilyukha?”
“We have a problem. A big fucking problem.”
It came out in fits and starts. Ilya lit a cigarette halfway through, damn being in the hospital. His hand shook. “We put the entire oblast on quarantine. I have a team going town to town, searching for people who are sick, and anyone who has died recently. We’re running grid searches over the forest using FLIR scans, trying to find anyone in hiding.”
“What have you found? Do you know what vials were taken?” Sergey nearly plucked the cigarette from Ilya’s lips, sucked it down himself.
“There have been four more confirmed hemorrhagic fever deaths. Three more plague deaths. Dr. Biryukov is treating five cases of anthrax.”
“Fuck!” Sergey paced away, his hand covering his mouth. “Do we have an outbreak on our hands?”
