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“Don’t leave. Don’t move,” she ordered them. “Stay here until you hear only silence.”
Pale, shaking in shock, the two scientists did as they were told, huddling in the little room as Anya slid the secured door closed and rushed to the exits that led to the cold, desolate land above ground.
“Anya, get out of here.” Sofia Ivanova, one of the administrative assistants gripped her arm and dragged her down another hall. “Go that way.” She pointed to the stairs. “They’re free. I’ll cover you.”
Cover her? Anya stared behind her as doctors raced from labs with weapons drawn. They were firing on personnel? Shock rushed through her, tore through her mind. She knew those men and women. Knew them well. And they were firing on the personnel attempting to escape?
“Run damn you!” Sofia pushed her to the exit. “Get out of here before I have to shoot you.”
Anya ran. As she ran, fury fed the fear and the shock coursing through her adrenaline-laced mind. This was the exact plan she had given Del-Rey for the rescue. Had he not trusted her? He had attacked only hours after her return, giving her no time to ensure her father and cousins weren’t here?
No, it had to be something else, she decided in desperation as she raced up the stairs. She gripped an older woman’s arm, one of the secretaries, and pushed her ahead.
“Hurry, Marie,” Anya urged the other woman as she sobbed and nearly fell. “We must hurry.”
Other personnel were racing past them as Anya grabbed Marie’s arm and all but dragged her up the steps. Marie had children, grandchildren. A husband that was ill. She was needed. And besides, she always brought the Breeds cookies. She was kind and gentle.
The door was broken from its hinges above, lying on its side as security forces were waving personnel through, urging them to hurry, to rush. Masks covered their faces to protect them from the cold. It was bitterly cold outside, and Marie had no jacket, no coat to wear.
“Run for the barracks,” she told the other woman. “It will be warm there and safer. We’ll hide there.”
She ran into the cold, aware of the gunfire, the yelling voices, the clash of forces. Then she was only aware of the hard arm that wrapped around her waist, jerked her against a broad chest and the knife that lay at her throat.
She could feel the cold blade pressing into her throat, pinching the flesh, within a breath of actually cutting her skin.
“Kobrin, I have your daughter.”
Loud, echoing through the valley, she knew that voice, knew the growl that sounded in it and felt the sob that tore from her throat.
Betrayal. He had betrayed her.
Agony tore through her with such pain she could only gasp at the reality of it.
The sound of gunfire faded away. Personnel were no longer rushing through the doors. She could hear them at the entrance though, feel the tension that thickened the air.
Del-Rey. She felt the first tear fall. Oh God, she had trusted him. She had trusted him so much.
“We’re lowering our weapons,” her father called out. “Take the Breeds. Go. We’ll not stand in your way, but let Anya go.”
She stared back at her father’s pale face, at her cousins moving with him. All four of her cousins were on duty tonight. Her friends were here, those who would have helped her had she asked, but she hadn’t.
A shot fired out and her first cousin fell, gripping his leg and screaming out in pain. Three more shots in rapid succession had the other three writhing on the ground.
“Stop it!” She screamed, her hands clawing at the arm wrapped around her waist. “No. No. Don’t do this.”
Fury and pain gripped her. She stared back at her father miserably, sobbing with the shame of what she had done.
“Transport’s landing in sixty seconds, boss.” That was the one Del-Rey called Brim. Sometimes he had called him Brimstone.
They had all betrayed her. The small team of men she had become friends with, that she had trusted her father’s and her cousins’ lives to.
“How can you do this?” She sobbed. “Damn you, how can you do this?”
“Anya, be still child,” her father cried out. “Remember your control, daughter. Your cousins live.”
“For now,” Del-Rey called back in a lazy drawl. “Tell me, Kobrin, you’ve been here since the first Breed was created, did you ever think to aid them?”
“They live,” her father called back. “I have killed none. This was not a slaughter house.”
