Page 28 of Dark Chains: First Link
"I have interesting news to share," he said, and turned to his mother. "I apologize for not bringing you up to speed on the new developments sooner, but I've been in meetings all afternoon and didn't have a chance to call."
Conversations paused, and everyone's eyes turned to him.
Annani set her fork down. "What is the news you bring us tonight?"
"This morning, Onegus received a phone call on Losham's line, but instead of Losham, it was Doctor Dimitri Volkov, one of the Russian scientists working on the Brotherhood's soldier enhancement program."
Amanda stopped feeding Evie mid-spoon, and Andrew straightened in his chair.
"Volkov wants to escape the island," Kian continued. "Along with his colleague, Doctor Petrov, a woman named Matilda Johnson, who is his girlfriend and lab assistant, and the eight enhanced soldiers Elias told us about."
"Eluheed," Annani corrected. "He has told everyone his real name already."
He just hadn't told anyone that he was an immortal from another planet, and given how things were going, that would remain a secret for a while longer because Kian didn't have the bandwidth to deal with Eluheed's request.
"I'm used to calling him Elias. Anyway, back to Volkov. He claims that the soldiers have the ability to thrall other immortals, which is how they were able to borrow Losham's phone while he slept and contact us."
"How did they even know about us?" Syssi asked.
"Evidently, the enhanced soldiers were released from their imprisonment in the laboratory and have been assisting Losham, which explains how he managed to hold on to power and keep up the illusion that Navuh is still on the island. Theirthralling ability must have also allowed them to look into his mind and find out about his contact with us."
He didn't add that this was how they had found out about the chests as well. He needed to build up to it so his mother wouldn't panic.
"What do they want from us?" Amanda narrowed her eyes into slits. "Are they attempting to blackmail us?"
"No. They just want our help. With their thralling ability, they can escape the island on one of the departing supply ships, but they need a safe destination and support on the other end. The soldiers are dependent on a drug protocol that Volkov and Petrov produce for them. I'm not clear on whether they just suffer from withdrawal the same way the enhanced soldiers we captured did, or if they can't live without it, but in either case, they need a lab and resources to continue producing the drugs."
"What did you tell them?" Annani asked.
"I told them we'd get back to them in two days after I conferred with my team."
"What are they offering us in return?" Andrew asked. "Or are we helping them out of the goodness of our hearts?"
The truth was that Kian would have offered the clan's help regardless of what the enhanced soldiers and the scientists had to offer, but he was very glad that, as a result of their escape, the Brotherhood could no longer manufacture monsters.
"They offer intelligence on the enhancement program and the Brotherhood's military operations, as well as something else that I'll get to in a moment." Kian took a sip of water. "First, I want totell you how these soldiers can help us in our mission to retrieve Khiann and his companions."
Annani went very still. "How?"
The explanation was complicated, and he didn't want to repeat everything that had been discussed earlier, but his mother deserved an update.
"They can thrall the crews working on the excavation to report to them their real progress while reporting a delayed schedule to Losham and the brothers. That way, we can get the chests out using our original plan and make it look like the crews hadn't reached the hidden chamber yet. We might be able to get in and out without anyone noticing us."
Syssi frowned. "There is no way the Brotherhood wouldn't know we were there after the EMP deployment."
"The thinking now is that we might not need it. We may be able to accomplish our objective using more stealthy methods. But we are still keeping the EMP as our fallback position in case things don't go as planned."
"No EMP is good," Syssi said, and Kian could hear the relief in her voice.
She had been worried about the unintended consequences of using such a weapon since the inception of the plan.
Annani's eyes were bright with hope. "That's wonderful, but can you trust these soldiers?"
"Not really, which is why we are not going to tell them the truth about our operation. They will be under the impression that we want them to extract the chests and load them onto a ship. We will let them know at the last moment that the chestswere already taken care of and that they should just worry about getting on a departing ship themselves."
His mother's eyes narrowed. "That will involve telling them about the chests."
"They already know," Kian admitted. "If they knew about Losham's contact with us, they also knew why we were contacting him and what we wanted."
