All three technicians in the control room stared at her in surprise. The conveyor belt started to move, carrying the four cylinders along.
“Escort guards, stand down,” she ordered. “Remove your helmets. Now. You, by the portal, step away.”
The guard who’d been staring into the emptiness beyond the portal door stood perfectly still in front of it.
“Take your helmet off,” Poi Li ordered.
His hand went up slowly, gripped the helmet rim, and lifted it off. Callum smiled at Poi Li, then flipped backward through the portal.
“No!” Poi Li yelled.
The gray mist on the other side of the portal door swallowed him immediately, leaving no trace.
—
The call came in to Brixton seventy minutes after Moshi Lyane started his shift. “We need an on-the-ground assessment at the Berat plant,” Fitz said. “The fire’s starting to spread.”
“Where the hell is Callum?” Dokal asked. “He should have been here an hour ago.”
The crew exchanged glances across the office. They didn’t say anything.
“We can handle this,” Moshi said. “It’s just an assessment.”
Dokal glanced through the glass into the Monitoring and Coordination Center. Fitz was standing up at his console, hands on hips, giving her an impatient stare.
“Corporate has authorized our presence,” she said. “All right. Moshi, take it.”
He grinned reassuringly. “We’re on it.”
“Somebody tell me where Berat is,” Colin complained.
Raina slapped him on the shoulder as they headed for the door. “Albania.”
“Want to know where that is?” Henry asked.
He was shown two vigorous fingers.
They quickly dressed in their hazmat suits and strode through Connexion’s portal door network. Plans of the old chemical plant were thrown up across Moshi’s screen lenses. They showed him the fire approaching a cluster of storage tanks. Lists of the compounds they used to hold appeared.
“They’ll be trouble to vent,” Alana said. “It’s just residuals, sticking to the casing.”
“Let’s find out,” Moshi said, and stepped through the last portal. “Going in now, Fitz.”
He found himself in a long courtyard formed by high, dilapidated buildings that had been abandoned years before. The portal door was surrounded by ten paramilitaries wearing full body armor. Each of them was leveling a carbine on the crew as they stepped out. Moshi’s mInet reported a loss of connection with the Brixton Monitoring and Coordination Center. “Oh, crap.”
Colin, Alana, Henry, and Raina pressed together around him.
Behind the ring of paramilitaries, a big gray four-by-four was parked in the shade. Yuri Alster stood beside it. “You can all take your helmets off,” he said. “There is no fire.”
Moshi pushed his visor up. “What’s going on?”
Yuri walked right up to him. “Please don’t be insulting. You know why you’re here.”
“Fuck you,” Raina snarled.
“Ms. Jacek,” Yuri said. “Fashionable rebel to the end.”
She spat on the ground.
“You were all in Kintore six hours ago,” Yuri continued levelly. “You’ll be glad to know your plan worked. Callum is with his fiancée.”
“Wife,” Moshi said.
“Excuse me?”
“Savi is his wife.”
“Ah, that explains a lot. Well, it doesn’t matter now. I know you all helped him. Your travel logs showed us you were all in Kintore ten hours ago.”
“Proves nothing,” Alana said.
“We’re not in court,” Yuri said. “And, sadly, you’re already dead in this terrible fire.” His hand waved expansively at the empty, sun-soaked courtyard.
“Bastard!” Raina screamed. “I’m not some eco-warrior that you can disappear. I have friends, family.”
“Yeah, it was all very fucking tragic,” Yuri said. “The fire at the chemical plant reached some chemical drums that exploded. You were all killed. The coffins will be sealed, to spare your families.”
“You can’t do this.”
“It’s already done. It happened the moment you chose to help Hepburn.”
“What are you going to do to us? Just execute us in cold blood? We didn’t do anything wrong! You took his wife from him.”
“Nobody is being executed.”
“What then?”
“You will be joining Callum and Savi.” Yuri turned to the paramilitaries. “Take them away.”
—
Yuri had been awake so long he’d lost track of time zones. So he wasn’t surprised that dawn light was shining through the windows of Poi Li’s New York office. He didn’t even wait to be invited to sit, just slumped into a chair in front of her desk.
“It’s over then?” she said.
“Yeah. Your Arizona team took them out of Albania. The deaths have been announced. We included Callum.”
“Well done. That was a good catch, Yuri. Connexion appreciates it.”
“So will I get to shake hands with Ainsley?”
“Gunning for my job?” she asked archly.
“No.”
“Yes, you are. No need to be coy. We’re both realists. You’ll get here eventually. This operation showed me you have what it takes.”
“Okay. But I will need to know Arizona S and E isn’t Connexion’s secret death squad.”
“It’s not. I would never agree to run such a thing for Ainsley Zangari and his associates.”
“Associates? You mean it’s not just Connexion doing this?”