Rose –
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell
Intruders?
I lean into Mason, my back pressing against his chest. "What's the protocol for intruders?" I shout, desperate to be heard over the alarm.
There has to be some kind of protocol for this kind of situation. The NAAMA military has a system in place for every possible scenario, and from what I had observed so far, these former soldiers had yet to stray too far from their militaristic customs and mercenary training.
"It's probably just a drill," he shouts back.
"A drill?" I question, trying to squirm around in his grasp to face him. "Why does everyone look so scared then?"
I have no idea if Mason actually heard my question, but he doesn't respond. Instead he clutches my shoulders and begins steering me toward the front of the warehouse. The excitement that had been crackling all around during the sparring sessions has faded into terror and the air no longer tastes of salt and sweat; now I can taste dread, rippling off of the civilians in waves and I realize that the reason the academies had been so insistent on rooting out fear is that too much of it can drown you.
The soldiers look neither scared nor confused. Instead, a battle calm has settled over them; none of them seem to think the alarm going off is some kind of unscheduled drill.
We reach the front of the room and Mason stretches an arm past me to push open one of the swinging doors, still gripping my shoulder with the other hand. He breaks into a run as soon as we cross the threshold and I follow him without hesitation. The alarm isn't as loud in the dingy corridor, but I still can't hear our footsteps echoing off the walls the way I could earlier.
We burst through the second set of doors - Mason never faltering, his pace never slowing. He veers hard to the left, toward the capitol building. I want to ask where we're going, and why we're running if he thinks this is just a drill, but I keep my mouth shut - partly because I don't want to question Mason, and partly because I barely have enough air in my lungs to maintain my current speed.
Portum is eerily quiet. It seems that even in a state of emergency, they are unwilling to do anything that might draw attention to them, anything that might give them away. The city blocks are so vastly different from the flashing red bulbs and the bursting alarm that it's almost disorienting.
"Captain Ashford!" The words bring both of us to a screeching halt.
My eyes dart to the surrounding area, searching for the owner of the voice, but Mason's hand fumbles for his pockets and he pulls out a radio.
"This is Ashford," he says, his thumb pressed down on the side of the radio. His voice is steady, and I curse my own heavy breathing and scorched lungs. "I'm en route."
En route to where?
"Negative, negative," the voice crackles. "Head to the med center."
Mason isn't fazed by the command. "Understood."
He slips the radio back into his pocket without any further communication.
"Damn, Hathaway," he says with a grin that feels out of place in the shadowy bones of the city. "You're even more out of shape than I thought."
My nostrils flare. "Just you wait, Captain Ashford," I manage to speak my words without gasping for air.
"Come on," he says, with the ghost of his usual smirk still on his mouth. "There's been a change of plans." He turns and starts toward the direction we had just come from, his steps nearly inaudible on the concrete sidewalk.
"So I gathered. Does this mean you're ready to admit that whatever is going on here isn't just a drill?"
Mason's shoulders tense slightly. The reaction is almost imperceptible, and the streets are so dark that it's possible I imagined it. But for a brief moment, it reminds me of my training, of days spent studying body language and human nature at the academy and then I know that Mason's response was real: I am right, that alarm means something has happened.
"Mase," I call after him. "Just tell me what's going on."
He turns his head toward me, "I told you, I'm not sure."
"You seemed pretty sure of something when you bolted out of that warehouse like a maniac," I tell him, still walking briskly beside him. I say a silent thank-you that we're no longer running at breakneck speed to w\the medical center.
He laughs, despite whatever is happening. "A Code Red -"
"Intruders," I say, cutting him off. "You said that it was probably a drill, or that it could mean intruders, you told me that already."
"Sounds like you've got it all figured out then," he says, turning down an alley.
I find myself wishing that it was lighter outside so that Mason could see me roll my eyes at him. "We both know there's something you're not telling me. What kind of intruders? How would they have triggered that alarm? The fact that there's even an alarm system in place means Portum Lux also probably has more sophisticated defenses in places, how soon would they have detected something was wrong?" I stop, realizing that the more I talk, the more questions I come up with.
"I can't believe Tatiana thought you were stupid," he mutters.
I blink back surprise. "Thank you," I pause, considering. "I think."
"I don't know what kind of intruders," he admits. "A code red is just a general warning, and the alarm isn't triggered by the intruders, it's sounded by whoever is monitoring our defenses at the time. If the alarm wasn't manually sounded, then anything could set it off - like a squirrel or something, and we can't risk that kind of exposure."
"Cameras then?"
"Yes, we have cameras. And as you put it, other more sophisticated measures are also in place."
We stop in front of a door that I recognize as the entrance to Portum's medical center. "I see," I say, though I'm only partially satisfied with his answers. "And why are we here instead of..." I pause, realizing Mason had never told me what our intended destination was when we left the warehouse. "Is someone hurt?" I demand. It's the only explanation I can come up with for why Mason was told to report to the medical center.
"It's possible," he says, opening the door for me. "But I'm the captain of the guard, when that alarm sounds, it's my job to find and secure certain members of the counsel."
We begin climbing the narrow steps of the medical center.
"Great," I seethe. "You mean Tatiana."
Mason doesn't need to answer me, because she's waiting for us at the top of the stairs. Her pencil skirt matches the bleached white strands of her hair and the stark walls behind her, and her annoyed expression probably matches my own. A part of me had been wondering if she had somehow been injured and that's why Mason's orders had changed, but aside from the permanent scowl and her typical haughty demeanor, she seems to be fine.
"Captain," she says curtly, and I feel Mason stiffen beside me. "And Rosemarie, good, I'm glad your here." I might have thought she was trying to tell a joke if I didn't already think she was incapable. "Now I don't have to send someone after you."
"What's the situation?" Mason asks before I can snap back at her.
She turns to Mason, seeming to forget me completely, like she can't be in the same room with me unless she puts up blinders and pretends I'm not there.
"Someone made it past the northwest perimeter, a John Doe," she says, turning sharply on her heel and walking down the corridor, knowing that Mason and I would follow without having to be told. "He was practically inside the city before he was detected." She seems to be speaking more to herself than to either of us. "One of the patrols found him unconscious right outside the border."
"Unconscious?" Mason asks. "Why issue a code red warning over that?"
"Because," she says, coming to a halt outside of a sealed metal door. "Until he wakes up, we won't know who he is, how he found us, and if he was working with anyone." Her words are suddenly directed right at me.
"What are you trying to insinuate?" I manage to grind out. "I had nothing to do with this."
Tatiana pulls out a key card and swipes it across the sensor mounted on the wall next to the door.
"And neither did my friends," I add, and even as I defend them, the doors part to reveal Lissa and Christian, standing alone in a viewing gallery.
A part of me is glad she's here, at least I know where she is in the middle of this giant mess. The other part of me hates the idea of her being on the receiving end of Tatiana's pointed questions.
"Good," she says to no one in particular as she strides purposefully into the room. "I was worried I would have to hunt you both down as well."
Mason and I squeeze into the gallery behind her, but I can't quite see through the glass on the other side of the room.
"Now, someone had better start talking."
Christian clears his throat and gestures to the glass behind him and Lissa. "See for yourself."
Tatiana's walk is brisk as she approaches the glass wall without hesitation, but for all her bravado and strength, her mouth still falls open at the sight of whatever or whoever waits on the other side of it.
"My god," she breathes. "Is that - "
"Victor Dashkov." It's Lissa who finishes Tatiana's thought for her.
There are moments in life where it seems like time has stopped completely - the seconds are no longer ticking by and everything is still.
This is not one of those moments. It feels like the world - my world - has been turned completely on its head, that it's spinning so violently out of control that I could be sick.
Victor.
The intruder is Victor - the man who tortured me, the man who held a knife to my throat. I remember very little of our escape from the compound, but I know that the feeling of Victor digging his fingers beneath my skin is not one I will forget any time soon.
I don't need to see for myself, Lissa's expression is the only confirmation I need that it's him.
"I asked you a question." The voice belongs to Tatiana, and I open my mouth to tell her that I usually stop listening whenever she speaks, but I realize that she's talking to Lissa. She also appears to have tuned Tatiana out. "How is it that you know him?" she asks.
Lissa and Christian exchange conspiratorial glances and in that moment I know that she has told him about Victor. An entire silent conversation is taking place between his sharp blue eyes and her cunning green ones.
"He's my uncle," she says, not looking away from Christian.
Tatiana leans closer to the window, her breath fogging the glass as she asks with as much reluctance as I've ever seen her display. "Your Robert's daughter?"
This time Lissa does look at Tatiana when she answers. "My father's name was Eric." Her voices cracks a little as she speaks his name, a name I don't think I've ever heard her say out loud.
Tatiana squints at Victor. "I didn't realize Victor had more than one brother. Tell me, why is it that he didn't arrive with you? And why is it that no one thought to tell me that he would be joining us?"
When no one answers, Tatiana finally turns away from the viewing gallery to look at the four of us. Mason and Christian each look as though they want to melt into the wall and I can't say that I blame them.
"Well?" she demands.
Mason looks to me and then to Christian, but both of us are now staring at Lissa.
"You didn't realize Victor had a brother? What?" asks Lissa, completely ignoring Tatiana's questions. "How do you know him?"
Tatiana's lips purse in annoyance, but to my surprise she answers Lissa. "It's not every day that the RPD dispatches investigators to the provinces. I make it my business to know exactly who is on their radar and why, one of our people on the inside was able to get us his file and I recognized his photo."
Everyone seems to accept this explanation, and I might have too, if I hadn't been the investigator that had been dispatched. I remember the details of the Dashkov assignment with perfect clarity - I remember having to locate Victor based on reports of his hair and eye color.
"You're lying," I tell her, taking a small step in her direction. "There was no photo on file for Victor Dashkov. You recognized him the moment you saw him - that means you know him from before the Pulse."
Tatiana's eyes glint with hatred. "It seems I have underestimated you, Miss Hathaway. But I suppose this all makes more sense now, you were the one originally assigned to the Dashkov investigation, weren't you?"
"How do you know him?" Lissa demands once more, moving to stand beside me, and I find that I am immediately comforted by her proximity.
Now that I'm closer, I can see Victor lying on the other side of the sheet of thick glass. He looks as if he's been on the cusp of death for days and I can hardly believe he made it all the way to Portum Lux. Lissa's eyes are locked onto the heart monitor, watching the red line as it moves across the screen in peaks and valleys: the only sign that he's still alive, still pulling air into his wretched lungs.
Tatiana turns her back to us, her hands folded resolutely behind her back, seeming to realize she won't be getting any information out of us. "The scientific community was relatively large before the Pulse, but it was still a small world. People with similar vocations and interests always gravitated toward each other, even back then. Victor was a brilliant man, though he tended to focus more on education than anything else if I remember correctly." She turns her head slightly so that she can see us out of the corner of her eye. "The man I remember always did have a soft spot for teaching."
"I doubt the man lying on that table is anything like the one you remember." Lissa spits out her words like poison.
Tatiana doesn't seem to register Lissa's emotion, her apparent distrust of the man she has just admitted is her uncle.
"We shouldn't keep him here," says Christian brushing past Lissa and joining Tatiana at the window. "He's dangerous."
Tatiana lets out a huff. "He's unconscious is what he is, and if he wakes up, then he is valuable."
I can hear Lissa grinding her teeth together in disgust.
"Captain," says Tatiana, turning away from the rest of us. "Head down to surveillance, have them release a statement over the com that the Code Red was just a drill and that everyone's performance will be evaluated accordingly."
I turn to see Mason nodding his understanding.
"That's it?" I ask, whipping back around to face Tatiana's pointed expression. "You're just going to lie to them?"
She moves past me without even blinking. "Until I get a full explanation of what is going on here, there is no point in telling the civilians what has happened here tonight. I want the two of you in my office tomorrow morning." I can only assume she means Lissa and me.
Tatiana's icy gaze sweeps over the room one last time, her mouth and jaw set in a perfectly straight line. Her expression is blank, but I can practically feel the friction of her thoughts and her fears as they push their way to the forefront of her mind. She is afraid, and I know it's for the people of Portum Lux, for this world she has been trying to build - this little pocket of protection.
"Mr. Ozera," she says, stopping just before the doors. "I trust this will not delay your mission?"
Christian blinks several times, as if trying to focus on the question Tatiana has just asked him. "No," he says, clearing his throat. "I don't see why it would, everything will proceed as planned."
Lissa is still staring at the glass, though I'm not so sure she is looking past it. I wish I could go to her, even if I don't know what I could say to make her feel any better.
"Good," says Tatiana, nodding curtly. "Rosemarie, Vasilisa, I will see you both tomorrow. Mr. Ozera, please escort them back to their room and see that they don't leave it."
She sweeps out of the room without another word, Mason trailing after her.
…
Christian does as he's told and walks Lissa and me back to our suite in the Duval. No one bothers to speak on the way there, each of us lost in our own thoughts, each of us trying to give the other space. When we get back to the room, we're all unsure of what to do and so we settle for glancing at each other awkwardly.
"Well," says Christian. "You should both get some sleep, I'll be back in the morning to make sure you don't miss your meeting with Tatiana."
"I'm going to take a shower," says Lissa, ignoring Christian completely, but she's already halfway to the bathroom when she does and she shuts the door before either of us can respond.
Christian, looking a little wounded, grunts at me instead of saying goodbye. I debate whether I should check on Lissa, but I decide to wait until she's had a moment to process what's happened. Instead, I listen for the sound of running water before slipping out of the suite and into the hallway.
"Christian," I hiss, barely loud enough for him to hear me. "Christian, wait!"
His pace slows to a halt and he waits for me to catch up with him. "What?" he asks, not bothering to turn and face me. "I didn't realize you and I were back on speaking terms." He resumes his walk.
I glance toward the far end of the corridor, to where the red light of the security camera blinks at me. "Only temporarily," I tell him, keeping my eyes trained on the door to the stairwell.
"And only because you want something," he drawls, managing to sound both disinterested and annoyed at the same time.
But I don't scowl, I don't snipe back at him. I wait until we reach the end of the hallway and he gestures for me to follow him into the stairwell.
"Well," he says, folding his arms across his chest. "What is it?" His voices bounces off the stone walls, reverberating down to the concrete floor waiting seven stories below us.
A door slams shut on another floor of the building and I eye Christian warily. "Not here." I doubt that Christian would want to risk being overheard when I ask him my question.
Christian throws his hands up in frustration. "For the love of - " he stops, sighs and then turns toward the flight of stairs leading upward. "Come on," he grumbles.
We climb until we reach a metal door with a rusted handle. When Christian tries to open it, his hand comes away dusted with flakes of metal and paint. He frowns and wipes his hand on my arm. Before I can swat him away, he moves to throw his shoulder against the door and it swings open more forcefully than Christian had probably intended, clanging against the wall behind it. The sound makes my teeth rattle.
The door opens up onto the roof of the Duval, which is littered with tarnished patio furniture and crumbling piles of concrete.
"You have sixty seconds," he says, turning to face me once I've shut the door behind us. His arms are tightly folded across his chest.
I decide not to press my luck with Christian and dive right in. "What was Tatiana talking about when she asked if Victor showing up in Portum would hinder your mission? What mission is she talking about?"
"Classified," he says, managing to sound immensely pleased with himself and bored all at the same time.
I can feel heat rising up the back of my neck, a sure sign that this conversation will probably end with me trying to shove Christian off the roof of the Duval.
"Christian," I grind out, barely contained rage filling up every syllable. "What is the ad Salvum doing? And why would Tatiana have to make sure that Victor didn't mess it up?"
"You know for someone who claims they're not an investigator, you sure ask questions like one," he tells me pointedly.
"I may not be one of them," I say, taking a step toward him. "But that doesn't mean I don't remember what they taught me." A deadly calm has settled over me, blanketing the anger that still lurks beneath the surface of my words. "You're trying to change the subject."
His crystal blue eyes narrow as he studies me. "What are the chances of you letting this go?" he asks after a moment.
"If you don't tell me, I'll just go find Mason."
I don't need to elaborate, an unacknowledged certainty hangs in the air all around us: we both know that Mason would tell me whatever it is that Christian is hiding.
"Fine," he says, raking a hand through his already mussed hair. "Go find your boyfriend, better he betrays Portum secrets than me." He steps toward the door but I move to block his path.
"How about you save everyone the trouble, and just tell me about the mission right now."
He backs away from me, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "You are without a doubt the most stubborn and obnoxious person I have ever met." He plops down at the very edge of the Duval with his legs dangling over the side.
The sky is bruised in shades of black and blue as the very beginnings of dawn creep across the night.
"I could say the same about you," I mutter, choosing to remain standing behind him.
Neither of us speaks for a long while and I wonder if he intends on telling me what I want to know, or waiting me out.
"It's a raid," he finally says with a sigh. "A few times a year we try to raid the NAAMA rehab camps, try to get as many people as possible out of there."
I play his words over several times in my head, and even after I have, I still don't believe them. The council had barely agreed to let us stay when we had come stumbling into the city, covered in rags and nearly starved to death. I was a little insulted that Christian expected me to believe that the council would actively risk its own soldiers and civilians to seek out and rescue the inhabitants of a rehabilitation facility.
"Why?" I ask, the word sticking in my throat, I don't want to come across as hesitant as I feel.
Believe nothing, question everything, doubt the intentions of your fellow man. Those are the sentiments of an investigator, the kind of reasoning that I used to wear like armor, but now I wish I could shed like skin.
He grabs at a handful of rubble. "Those rehab camps are filled with people that NAAMA deemed to be too dangerous; scientists, teachers, little kids whose parents taught them that the world is made up of atoms." His last few words are hateful, and he throws a fistful of dust and debris into the air. "We get some of our best recruits from those camps."
That explains it.
"How noble of you," I say, sounding only slightly disgusted as I crouch down to sit beside him, though maintaining a safe distance from the edge of the building. "Drag them out of one crazy camp so that they can come here and live in this crazy camp."
"Why do you have to do that?" he asks, reaching for another handful of stones and pebbles.
"Do what?" I ask, beginning to fiddle with the ends of my hair.
"Twist everything that we do here. I just told you that Portum regularly conducts rescue missions and you still make us sound like the bad guys. We're not the bad guys, Rose." He throws one of the stones.
My hands drop into my lap. "No one ever thinks of themselves as the bad guy. It's all about perspective, everyone wants to believe that they're doing the right thing, but most never consider whether it's the right thing for everyone."
He swivels around to look at me. "Sounds like you've given this a lot of thought."
I shrug. "It's the only explanation I can come up with for how the world ended up the way it did. Someone, somewhere thought this was the right thing to do. I keep trying to rationalize NAAMA, to understand how people could let this happen to them, to their families..."
Christian laughs softy, sadly. "How's that working out for you?"
"Not great."
We both sit in silence for a moment, each of us relishing the fact that there is no sound, no light - just calm, open air. There is nothing quite like the hush that falls over the world when it becomes caught between the late night and the early morning.
"I'm sorry, by the way, for earlier - in the stairwell." His words are strained and I can't help but wonder if it's because his apology is disingenuous, or because he's not used to saying those words in that order. "I didn't know about your parents. If I had -"
"Don't," I say sharply. "Don't say you would have done something differently."
Christian's features tighten in something that could be remorse, something that could be guilt. "I like to think that I might have." There's something in his words, in his voice, in the inflection that makes me think that there is more, that he is silently begging me to dig just a little deeper.
But I don't ask.
I can't.
Thinking about what I would do differently if I could go back, knowing what I know now, won't change anything. And when I think about the events that led to this moment, to why I made the choices I did, it fills me with an inky black hatred of the person I was. It took discovering that my own parents had been killed by the RPD for me to realize that there was something horribly wrong with NAAMA.
I hadn't been willing to react to the pain I knew the rest of the world was feeling until I had been forced to feel it for myself. We shouldn't have to be able to relate to a situation in order to recognize that it's wrong.
I squeeze my eyes shut, searching for something else to talk about, to think about.
"Mason mentioned that you still have investigators and other personnel working undercover, do they assist with the raid?"
Christian's head falls to one side. "To an extent, but only to provide some basic information - guard rotations, transfer orders, that sort of thing. We don't want to risk exposing them."
"Eddie's one of them." I'm not sure why I say it, but I can't help but wonder about him - if he's safe, if Portum Lux will pull him out of active duty the way they had Mason.
"He was your partner, right?"
I nod feebly.
"He's not far from here, at the Atlanta facility."
"They transferred him to the Southeast?" I ask, slightly stunned.
"Right after you went rogue. Command thought there was a chance he might try to help you, but they couldn't prove it so they just sent him South."
I lower my back onto the concrete and stare up at the few remaining stars, cursing myself. In all of my planning and scheming, I had never considered what repercussions my actions would have. Eddie could have been killed for what I had done.
To my surprise, Christian follows suit and lays back beside me. "What is that called?" He asks, pointing to the sky. "Is it the North star?"
"I don't know," I tell him simply. "Lissa would probably know."
"Did Victor teach her?" he asks, his tone a little softer.
At first I nod. "Yes," I say, after realizing Christian can't really see me. "He taught her everything she knows."
"And then he betrayed her," says Christian, the softness of his voice hardening almost instantaneously.
"He betrayed her a long time ago, and then he lied to her about it."
"I don't suppose you're going to elaborate on that?" he asks, mildly curious.
"Even if I wanted to tell you that, which I don't, I would never get all the details right - it's her story to tell."
He lets out a deep breath. "Fair enough." He pauses before propping himself up on his elbows to ask, "What about Belikov, what's his story?"
"Well," I say, getting quickly to my feet. "This has been lovely, but I'm sure Lissa has noticed I'm gone by now and you should probably get some sleep."
Christian laughs, sounding genuinely amused for just a moment. "I haven't slept in years," he tells me and the weight of his casual confession presses down on my chest. The shadows under his eyes are a near perfect reflection of the purpling sky above us and I know that he isn't lying. "You go," he says, waving me away. "I'll come find you if his condition changes."
"Thanks," I tell him, turning toward the door.
"Rose," he calls, and I peer over my shoulder at him, still laying among the debris. "Don't be too hard on yourself. You actually are one of the good guys."
Hey everyone, long time no see! (or like I guess long time no read? idk) I know it's been a little while, but now that it's summer time and all I have to worry about is work, I'm gonna try and have a more regular updating scheduling. I have like four ongoing stories right now? But most of my attention is focused on this one, and my other fic To Forgive and Forget (if you haven't read it, it's the Bloodlines series told from Rose and Dimitri's POV, it's pretty neat) Realistically, I should be able to alternate updating those stories each week. Please please please let me know what you think!