Page 15 of Dark Chains: First Link
"She might," Dimitri said, but he didn't really believe it, and Mattie must have heard it in his voice.
She was looking at her bandaged hand, flexing the fingers as much as the splint allowed, testing the boundaries of her injury the way she tested the boundaries of everything else.
"We have to wait two days," she said.
Petrov rose to his feet. "I suggest we spend them working in the lab and acting normally. We don't want to give Losham or anyone else any reason to look at us twice."
It was sound advice.
Dimitri looked at the Eight, who sat in their usual stillness on the two single beds, no doubt conducting a heated conversation inside their hive mind.
Petrov stretched, his back popping audibly. "I'm going to bed. We have a lab to run in the morning and a human enhancement proposal to fake for Losham, and I need at least three hours of sleep to maintain my charming personality."
"What charm?" Mattie asked.
He looked down his nose at her. "You lack the cultural context to appreciate Russian charm. I'm considered very charming among my people." He turned to Dimitri. "Right?"
"On a good day."
"Tough crowd." Petrov shook his head and left the room.
His heavy footsteps receded down the hall, and a moment later, the sound of his door closing was followed by the familiar clink of a bottle being retrieved from the vodka supply drawer.
Mattie looked at Dimitri, and even in the dim light of the night lamp, her face showed every hour of sleep she hadn't gotten, every worry she'd been carrying, and underneath it all, the stubborn, unreasonable, magnificent refusal to accept that some things couldn't be done.
"K is going to help us." She put her good hand over her chest. "I know it in here."
Dimitri sat beside her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulders. "Maybe."
She leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder. "Maybe is probably the most dangerous word in the English language."
"More dangerous than no?"
"Much more. No is final. You grieve and move on. Maybe keeps you hoping, and hope is the thing that either saves you or destroys you, depending on whether it comes true."
He pressed his lips to the top of her head. "Then let's pray it comes true."
"We should return the phone." Number One rose to his feet, and the other seven followed.
Number One looked at Mattie, and for just a moment, something passed behind his eyes that could have been mistaken for compassion or commiseration, but then the impassive mask slipped back into place, and he turned, heading out the door with the others filing out behind him.
When the door closed, Mattie took in a long breath and released it in a whoosh. "These are going to be the two longest days of our lives."
7
KIAN
After ending the call, Kian realized that he'd forgotten Onegus had been on the line and he'd practically hung up on him.
The conversation with Volkov and the soldier calling himself Number One had been brief but impactful, and Kian was still digesting what had been said, evaluating all the potentials that had been presented, and trying to decide what he could actually do and what he absolutely couldn't.
Talk about overload.
He needed to sort it into manageable chunks of what required immediate action, what was important and doable but not urgent, and what could be left to be solved at some future time.
Regrettably, the breeding enclosure fell into the third category.
Two thousand women and children. The number was staggering. In his mind, the enclosure was small and contained a few dozen women at most. He'd never imagined that there were so many, but he should have. The ratio between male and female births was consistent, and over the generations, many girls hadbeen born and later conscripted into the breeding program. They hadn't been allowed to transition, so their life spans were short, but still. He should have taken a moment to calculate and estimate the real number.
