Page 58 of Dark Chains: First Link
DAVE
The phone call with K was over, and the silence that followed felt more loaded than the conversation that had preceded it.
They were all crammed into Dimitri and Mattie's bedroom again, eleven bodies in a space designed for one, the air warm and stale despite the window being cracked open. The only light came from the bedside lamp, its weak bulb casting a yellowish glow that left the corners of the room dark, making everyone's faces look sallow.
Number One checked the time. It was forty-three minutes past two. They had returned the phone last time at quarter to four, but that deadline had been set by the alarm arming schedule, which was no longer an issue. This time, they had left the alarm off when they'd exited Losham's house, and it would stay that way until they returned the phone and reactivated it on their way out. Still, Losham might wake up despite the thrall they had left and find out that his phone was gone.
They should aim for three-thirty, which didn't leave them much time to go over what had been said during the call with their teammates, but it was better than nothing.
Mattie looked exhausted, the adrenaline she'd been running on depleted. The collective noted with fascination that the skin beneath her eyes was darker than usual. What caused human faces to change color like that?
She sat slouched on the bed next to Number Eight, and Dimitri, who had remained standing during the call, wasn't there to prop her up with his arm around her.
As usual, Petrov occupied the only chair in the room, his notepad balanced on his crossed knee, still writing notes. He'd been doing that throughout the call, making sure everything was properly documented.
"So." He clicked the pen closed and scanned the faces of everyone in the room. "The clan is not going to help us with the women."
"They are not going to help us get them out," Mattie said. "But they said that they would provide sanctuary and support for whoever we extracted."
"They felt guilty for refusing to help us." Petrov put his notepad on the nightstand.
Mattie opened her mouth to argue, then closed it, realizing that there was nothing more to say on the subject. Those were the clan's terms, and K had made it very clear that they were not negotiable.
"K was honest about their limitations," Dimitri said. "They don't have the military capability to engage the island. If they did, they would have done it already."
"That I believe." Petrov uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them in the other direction. "What I'm less sure about is whether their strategist can actually help us plan a rescue from his comfortable office on the other side of the world. He doesn't know anything about the island other than what he can see from above."
"We can supply him with all the intel he needs," Number One said. "But we lack his expertise. We were not trained to strategize. We were trained to obey orders."
The Brotherhood was a top-down organization, and the foot soldiers had little to say about anything.
Petrov conceded the point with a grunt.
The clan's conditions were clear. They wanted the five chests from beneath the mansion, and in exchange, they would provide everything the group needed on the other end. A safe destination, a lab, resources, and sanctuary for whoever came with them. To the clan, the chests were the priority, and everything else was conditional on delivering those chests.
The collective had to admit that it was a fair trade, but it further complicated an already complicated operation. Everything needed to happen simultaneously, and the more people they tried to evacuate, the more complex and riskier the operation became.
"If the extraction is on us," Petrov said, breaking the silence, "then I want Anita included."
Mattie turned to look at him. "Your lady friend from the brothel?"
Petrov nodded. "I want her out of here."
The brothel was located in the same complex as the hotel on the resort side of the island, staffed by immortal guards and monitored by surveillance cameras. Extracting a woman from there required a different approach than extracting women from the enclosure, where the guards were human, sparse, and easy to manipulate.
"Are you in love with her?" Mattie asked.
Petrov's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline, and the look he gave her was somewhere between offended and embarrassed. “I am too old to fall in love. But I like Anita, and I don't want to leave her behind to rot in that place."
"You don't have to justify it." Mattie's voice softened. "I was just asking."
"Well, you have your answer." Petrov's right foot started tapping against the floor.
The collective added Anita to the list they were compiling. It was getting longer. Sullha and Tomek and Number One's mother. Number Eight's mother, Vinnah. Number Four's sister, Asira. Now Anita from the brothel. And those were just the names they had attached to specific faces. The larger question of how many women from the enclosure they could realistically evacuate remained unanswered.
"How are we going to extract a woman from the brothel?" Dimitri asked. "The security there is completely different from the enclosure. In a way, it's less strict because the women canleave the brothel to go shopping in the clothing store or take a stroll on the beach if they want to, but because of that, they are more tightly monitored."
"Losham and the other senior brothers can have women delivered to their private residences," Number One said. "Losham used to do it often, but now he only does it occasionally because he's too stressed. Kolhood and Hazok do the same. We could submit a request, pretending that we are doing it for Losham and ask for Anita specifically."
