Chapter Nineteen
—=—
Anya drew another card from the dwindling deck and added it to her menagerie of numbers she was finding more and more difficult to fit in her small hands. She was pretty sure more was better and it was easy to tell when someone was cheating when she had so many.
How many rounds had they played now?
She had lost count. There wasn't much to do and her parents hadn't put much thought into entertainment when they were fleeing their home that morning. They didn't have a tv. They didn't have much in the way of paper or crayons to draw on them with. And neither Damian or Anya had the energy or inclination to play pretend. Her papa had promised to pick up a game or two and some drawing implements when he went grocery shopping later, but until then, they had a deck of cards.
Go Fish. Crazy Eights. Cheat. They had played a few rounds of each, tending to sporadically make houses out of them.
It had been a quiet morning. There hadn't been much talking after they had settled in and there was something intrinsically lethargic about sitting around the coffee table after a stressful start to the day.
Damian was equally slow. There was a lot on his mind and half the time, he wasn't paying attention to the game they were playing.
It wasn't all bad though. The drowsy quiet was pleasant. A heavy peacefulness that sat in Anya's body like a ton of bricks. She didn't want to move. Lifting her arms was tiring and she leaned heavily on the table. She had half a mind to rest her head and close her eyes and—not fall asleep—but just exist in that moment that stayed still. Bask in the warm, suppressive quiet her body couldn't fight against. Didn't want to. To just give in to the lull and never move ever, ever again.
Anya's mama had joined the most recent round and placed two cards face down on the table. "Two Jacks."
Next was Anya's turn, so she had time to look carefully through her cards and check if her mama was cheating.
It had surprised Anya when Damian had first suggested cards. The knots in her stomach. The disturbing crawl on her skin. The twist in her heart. It wasn't like before. He had suggested a game and it sort of felt okay. It was just a game of cards, just a game, she could play a game of cards, a game of cards was harmless, she could play a game of cards.
It was the mantra in her head that had kept her from stopping. From letting her instincts from taking over and setting her back to square one.
She didn't want to stop. Well, she did, but she couldn't.
Anya had promised she wouldn't avoid Damian. She had decided to take a step forward like he had said and she couldn't stop playing cause she was afraid she'd step back again. Undo her own decision and yank down the rope Damian had dropped into the pit for her and doom herself for eternity.
If she couldn't hold onto the rope, she felt she might never get out.
"Cheat." Anya announced when she found she held three jacks in her hand.
Her mama flipped her cards over to show one jack and a three. "Well done, Anya." She smiled.
"Seriously?" Damian mumbled distractedly into his hand, leaning on the table like he might fall asleep as well. "She's got the entire deck."
Her mama only gave him a patient, amused look.
"Four jacks." Anya said and placed the cards on the table.
Damian snorted. "Cheat." He laughed and Anya gasped. "You're on queens, dum—I mean. . .um. . .Forger. . ." Damian's smile quickly fell when he noticed her mama eyeing him pointedly.
Anya gaped at her cards. She forgot!
She took back the cards she'd placed on the table.
"One king." Damian tossed a card onto the nonexistent pile that couldn't seem to stay there.
"Cheat." Anya said.
"Nope." He flipped it over. He was telling the truth.
Anya picked it up.
It was just a card. It was just a game. She could play a game of cards. It was just a game of cards. Just a game, just a game, just a game.
—
Everything but the reflective paint and the highway immediately in front of Yuri was blackness and shadows, swallowed whole by the night with no stars or moon to highlight the trees on either side of the road. The pale, yellow cones didn't reach far enough for his liking and he strained his eyes for his turn, hoping he hadn't already missed it.
With no traffic in sight, he slowed as he scrutinized his surroundings and found his turnoff.
Yuri was not pleased to be returning to these roads and certainly not at night as if it was here just to make the experience creepier. The further he went, the more disrepair the roads fell into. For every turn he made, the foliage grew thicker and crowded the pavement just a bit more. Branches seemed to overhang a little further each time he looked up.
The road turned to dirt and Yuri slowed to the pace of a turtle as the last stretch morphed into what equated to a wide animal trail. Yuri jostled with each root and bump and somehow the forest floor was smoother when the path ended and he continued on.
Until the clearing.
The engine died with the twisting of the ignition, the lights faded, and Yuri was plunged into instant silence. He flicked on his flashlight and stepped out of the vehicle into chilling air.
The forest was unnaturally still. The sounds of nocturnal life were absent—of the owls hooting, small animals scurrying around. A fox sneaking through the brush. Not a snap of a twig or scratching on bark. The wind was near nonexistent, flickering the odd leaf as if reminding Yuri it was still there haunting the woods, and it was as if it had stilled for him. Watching him. Knowing what he was doing here. Daring him to do it and whispering things in his ears.
It ran shivers up his spine. Goosebumps blossomed on his skin and he wasn't sure if it was caused by the cold or the knowledge of what this place was. Of what had happened here.
Yuri's spot of light seemed inefficient after being used to the headlights, but he had turned off the car automatically, forgetting he wasn't done with it yet, and continued on anyway. He made do with the pale, blue circle that crawled on the ground in front of him until the ghostly light found it.
The doors.
Yuri ran his light along the edge and pulled a device that the SSS had confiscated from his pocket. He knelt and found the latch hiding on the doors' rim, and popped open the small, rectangular panel.
He fit the device into the socket and pressed a button.
The mossy dirt shifted and Yuri stood back as unmaintained metal groaned terribly and rose like jaws ready to swallow him. An abyss even darker than the night sky and the endless blackness of the forest opened before him and invited him in.
The wind gently moved through the woods in anticipation.
Yuri returned to the car. With another twist of the ignition, the engine roared to life, the headlights shone once more, and he drove into the abyss.
The tunnel was as long as he remembered and the lights striving to dispel the dark seemed pathetic in comparison. It stretched itself thin to wash over the concrete and with every second that passed, Yuri expected it to set on the end of the tunnel.
And it did a couple minutes later.
Unlike Yuri's first time here, the lights were out. The hangar was dark and Yuri didn't notice he'd entered at first. Using the headlights, Yuri took a slow lap around. All of the cars were gone. Taken away by the SSS and repurposed.
When the headlights found the box on the wall he was looking for, Yuri parked the car there, and went to it.
He opened the panel, yanked on the levers, and the hangar in all it's bloody glory was illuminated.
His sister's work.
Yuri was very proud of his sister. He always would be. When he learned she was an assassin, it eventually made sense to him. It was his sister after all. Who else was more capable? As strong? To know who to kill and who deserved it the most? And Yuri would always find her work here commendable.
But. . .
Something about this hit different. The stains puddling the floors where the dead and the injured had laid, dying. The massacre that had resulted from a corrupt organization doing corrupt things and the hundreds of children that had died and suffered before them.
Yuri was not a squeamish man. He'd had his fair share of dirty work. He was all too aware of the wickedness and atrocities the world had to offer, and he had maintained a healthy detachment from it so he could continue in his line of work. He was not a squeamish man, and yet being here turned his stomach.
He could almost see the blades flying from his sister's hands that had caused these stains. He hadn't been here for it, but he wished he had been.
It hit different.
This had been no assignment for his sister. This was rage and justice and decades of death and suffering she had wielded for the subjects who couldn't exact it themselves. The blood Yor had spilled was a long time coming and the agents had been no mere casualties.
The blood was retribution. The blood was the cost. The stains were Yor's vengeance, painting the floors and walls with the building's own people and Yuri was glad that they remained. That he hadn't had someone clean this up.
Let it stay. Let the blood rot with the rest of this place where the agents had been complacent to so much bloodshed and death themselves.
Yuri wished he could show those dead children. The blood of their captors and abusers. To let them see how broken they had become. That they had been brought down. That they were killed in their own home. That it was over.
Let the blood stay.
Yuri tore his eyes away, disliking the reminders of what those stains carried despite his sentiments.
He made for the door and opened it.
The lab.
Yuri was not thrilled to be here.
If anyone had asked Yuri Briar if he loved his job, if he was dedicated, Yuri would say "yes". He made the world a safer place, He accepted each assignment with pride and never complained. Which was why his lackluster attitude for this particular job frustrated him.
There was something about this place. An unsettling hollowness that he felt as soon as he had arrived. It was different when he was here by himself. Without his team. In the middle of the woods. At night. In an abandoned laboratory. There were no alarms chasing him through the halls.
The lab was a shell of itself and the eerie quiet was all too apparent to Yuri as he wandered the halls spattered with more dried blood like a memory that would never leave this place.
The things that had happened here. The things that the SSS had found. Children's organs. Dead bodies. Containers with suspicious fluids, blood bags, and medical tools that had been kept sharp. Yuri was unable to chase his memories away of the child on an autopsy table. The blood spattered floor underneath an examination table with tiny cuffs. A set of tools nearby and scalpels. The cells with no windows or anything warm. The injuries and bandages wrapped around the survivors.
Yuri studied the bloodstains on his way, wishing he had made the scientists a part of these gory murals.
He shook his head from the distractions and turned into the nearest room to him.
Yuri didn't know where to start. His superiors had tasked him with taking a second sweep through the lab for any evidence, devices, or information they had missed the first time and Yuri was sure he would find nothing. His team had been very thorough. But Yuri would follow the order no matter how sudden or out of place it was and went room to room, ignoring the creeps it gave him.
After searching a few rooms that turned up nothing, Yuri was tempted to leave, but he'd searched such a small percentage of the lab and knew he couldn't abandon his mission just yet.
He opened a door and found himself in the director's study.
The room had been cleaned dry by his team and nothing remained in the desk. Any files, binders, and papers were stolen from the bookshelves and even the stiff rug had been rolled up off the floor for anything hidden underneath. It now leaned against a corner.
Obligation and a sudden surge of rage at the sight of this room had Yuri running hands over the desk and feeling underneath for some sort of catch or give for a hidden compartment. Inside the drawers, he did the same and when there was still nothing, he gave the shelves the same treatment.
Yuri sighed, disappointed, and planted his hand on his hips as he surveyed the room.
He wasn't sure what he was expecting. They had already taken this room for everything it was worth.
The longer he stood here, the less he wanted to leave empty handed and he scanned the furniture one last time with his eyes. The furniture seemed like normal furniture. The rug had nothing sewn underneath it, and—
Hang on.
Yuri did a double take at the wall across from the desk, oddly bare of shelving unlike the others and traced with tiny pieces of debris periodically lining the wall. They were miniscule. Insignificant. But Yuri's keen eyes picked up on the discrepancy like a hawk hunting for a mouse. Searching for every obscure sign and hint of rodential life for him to seize upon.
With quick strides, Yuri went to crouch and study the specks for a closer look.
The bits of dirt truly were scant. They hugged the wall like children fleeing to their mother, and Yuri suspected they were the remnants of a broom swooshing along this edge.
Of course, there was nothing particularly interesting about that. Of course, this room would be swept and cleaned, but what nagged Yuri were the bits that fit just a little too much under the baseboards, in the near imperceptible gap between the floor and wall.
It nagged at him.
Yuri stood.
He cast a glance over his shoulder into the room behind him and looked forward again. Both palms were placed on the surface and he applied light pressure to start.
Something was weird about this wall. It wasn't heavy like concrete. It wasn't concrete.
Click.
The wall shifted when Yuri pressed harder and sounds of gears rattled, the motion groaning in the walls. The whole section popped subtly out of place and moved backwards, dragging on the floor. Dark gaps appeared around the edges, slowly growing bigger until the wall stopped about two feet away from it's original position.
Yuri eyed it breathlessly.
He went to investigate.
The wall had retreated to reveal a secret room that was bigger than the office, leaving ample space for Yuri slip between the gap into the darkened room. He searched for a light and flicked the switch he found on the left from where he'd entered.
What Yuri found was another desk against a wall. On it, was a telephone with wires disappearing into the concrete wall drilled with a small hole, and papers strewn haphazardly over top. A small shelf with binders and files sat to the left of the desk and Yuri passed over it for the time being to pull out the desk's chair and sit. He wanted a quick look at what he'd found before he packed it all and lugged it back t the SSS.
He chose a leaf of paper that sat on top.
They were numbers. Scrawled with messy calculations and Yuri was immediately drawn to the two, definitively circled numbers that were the result of all of Kai's math, conveniently labeled.
'Expenses'. And 'Profits'.
This was an issue Yuri had noticed when the lab was taken down. Brook had eluded to the large amounts of money the labs made, and yet when Yuri's team confiscated everything, the math didn't add up. What they found was the bare minimum to operate a facility such as this, no records to suggest they had much more than that. Not kept at a bank under a pseudonym, personal safe, or anything and Yuri had wondered if Brook was wrong.
But here it was, clearly proving her right.
'Profits.'
If the director didn't have that money, who did? And what were they using it for?
Yuri set the sheet down and picked up another.
Now this was what Yuri had been expecting. A list of names and large, corresponding numbers attached to them. What he didn't expect were who those names belonged to.
Among them, Vincent Chad. A politician. A rich politician, and several others like him joined the list.
The people who were governing the country had known about these labs and were paying for their services?!
The paper crumpled in Yuri's hand and he fwapped it aggressively on the desk.
He picked up another.
And his anger quickly shifted to dread, freezing his heart and stilling his fingers.
'Location Four Expense Reports'.
Yuri stared horrified and blinked at it, willing it so say something else.
'Location Four Expense Reports'.
'Location Four Expense Reports.'
Location four expense reports?!
There were more labs?! How many did the director have?! How was the SSS so ignorant to all these threats to their country?!
Yuri scoffed unbelievingly as he let it drop to the table and began to rifle in frantic outrage through the rest of the papers.
Another page of calculations. Another one. A progress report. Something about the scientists and agents. Page after page untill—
"Location Three Expense Reports' and two more following it for one and two.
Yuri didn't see any more like them.
Four labs.
Where were the other two?! Were they like this one?! What was the point of all these labs?!
Yuri was sickened. He was disgusted. They had found this lab weeks ago and there were still more, probably with more children being experimented on since then. The SSS wasn't done. They had to find them now. But where were they?
Yuri wanted to take a look through everything here, but that would take too much time. He should gather it all up and bring it to the SSS where he could properly study it.
The desk drawers were yanked open to see what they held and he found regular desk supplies and, in the the deepest one, a holder filled with organized, labeled folders.
Yuri was about to pull them all out when—
Wait a minute.
A bell went off in Yuri's head and he turned his attention to the desk once again and the papers scattered about. He dug around until he found it.
"Progress Report."
Yuri had glanced past this earlier, but he was too worked up to process what it meant. It could be written by an agent or scientist for the director to read, but somehow, Yuri doubted it. As he looked over it, he became increasingly confused.
Progress Reports:
Dear leader,
I am pleased to inform that Subject 007 has stabilized since she went missing, exceeding the timeline of development of Subject 001 and 004 by a considerable margin. Her previous lack of progress is no longer a concern as it seems her power has increased to the levels of 004, going by his latest assessment. At first, we assumed her nosebleeds were a result of her limited tolerance to the quantity of voices she hears, and this is partially true, but we have since realized her range has grown exponentially. The resulted nosebleeds are merely a symptom of too much power for such a young body, though it has not shown signs of breaking down. In light of this, I expect her abilities to continue to develop faster and stronger than the other subjects and if all goes well, she will be ready for you to receive her much earlier than we had ever anticipated. However, if her abilities extend, she will need additional training before she is ready. Neither 001 or 004 have reached our goals as of yet, but I am hopeful for 007.
Concerning the other subjects, I am most aggrieved to say we have yet to create more espers, though we have several new methods that will hopefully change that. Our scientists are constantly innovating and learning and the subjects have been surviving longer as a result. It is only a matter of time before we succeed.
Deepest regards,
Kai Forester.
Yuri read it again, unease creeping uncomfortably over him as he considered what this meant. Questions popped up and made the unsettled feeling worse and worse.
Kai was working for someone else? Who was this "leader"? The director was planning on sending the chihuahua to this mystery person? Why? What did the leader want her for? Well, for her telepathy, obviously, but what for?
Yuri hastily folded it up and stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He didn't know why, he just did. Maybe Yor would want to see it.
A sense of urgency was slowly climbing into his skin and he rushed to gather the desk papers and haul up the thing of files. He hoped he would be able to carry it all as he began to pull off the binders from the nearby shelf. He proceeded to stack everything up to transport it in a manageable way.
BOOM!
Yuri jumped and shook at an explosion that shuddered the walls and quaked the ceiling. The echo was massive, firing noise in every direction and the floor clittered softly with falling dust and debris. But when the initial sound should have faded, something worse followed.
Yuri ran as the building began to come down on him.