Mati slammed a heavy stoneware crock lid over the fallen headgear's speaker, muffling the transmission to a tinny buzz. He turned to the two bound intruders. Their armor was scratched, their faces, visible through raised visors, pale with a mix of pain and confusion. They weren't the elite syndicate enforcers he’d faced during the border skirmishes, but glorified contract guards in patched gear. He gathered their carbines, stacking them against the prep counter.
Olek wiped soot from his cheek and looked at the metal dome on the floor. “She didn’t want you recovered, did she, Stasya? She wanted you silenced.”
Stasya pushed herself up, her tremors rocking her shoulders, her gaze fixed on the muffled shell. “Silenced. Of course. How else could she ensure her narrative remains unchallenged?” The words were a dry rasp, edged with a bitterness that tasted of old wounds and betrayal. “She can’t afford witnesses, especially not ones who know her methods intimately.”
Mati knelt, prying open the transceiver welded to the collar ring. The display flickered amber. “This isn’t standard syndicate issue. It’s a closed-loop transponder, scrambled. Not for fleet tracking, but for a private uplink.” He plucked it free, a small, heavy cube of black composite.
“She’s covering her tracks,” Olek murmured, his eyes narrowed. “The team leader’s orders weren’t just to secure you. They were to ‘neutralize’ any resistance, and ‘terminate’ the subject if extraction proved impossible or compromised.” He looked away, shifting his weight. “I overheard it on their comms before I cut mine.”
Stasya stared at him, her grey irises hard as chipped slate. “Terminate. So it wasn’t an extraction. It was an assassination attempt, disguised as a recovery mission.” Her gaze pinned Olek. “And you. What was your original mission, Olek Yarema?”
Olek flinched, raking a hand through his sandy hair, all his glib posture stripped away. He avoided Stasya’s gaze, turning to Mati. “I was sent to find her. To… deliver her. To Klavdiya. My orders were explicit: locate Dr. Volos, ensure her compliance, and bring her to a designated secure facility.” He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “I didn’t know it was a death sentence. I swear. I thought it was… a transfer. A containment.”
Mati watched him, a slow understanding dawning. Olek hadn’t known. Ambition drove him, but not slaughter. Mati recalled Olek’s almost desperate attempts to keep Stasya alive even as she fought him. “You switched sides when you heard the kill order,” Mati stated, not a question.
Olek nodded, finally meeting Stasya’s gaze, his expression earnest. “When Klavdiya’s voice came through, overriding the team’s comms, demanding termination… I knew. It wasn’t a pickup. It was a slaughter. A purge. I couldn’t… I wouldn’t be part of that.”
Stasya studied him for a long moment, her face unreadable. “A convenient change of heart,” she finally said, her voice devoid of warmth, yet lacking its earlier venom. “But useful, nonetheless.” She pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “The poison. It wasn’t just a random bioweapon, was it?”
Mati reached beneath a stack of polished brass trays and pulled out the slim handheld terminal he had lifted from her coat earlier, setting it on the scarred table beside her cot. “You mentioned fragmented laboratory notes,” he prompted, thumbing the power stud.
The screen glowed pale cyan, projecting structural diagrams and reaction formulas across her fingers. Stasya’s fingers traced the elegant curves of an amino acid chain on the screen, her hand trembling. “This… the structural analogues for the Khorost-9 neurotoxin. The specific protein folding, the binding sites… I developed these theoretical models. Years ago. My study on induced neural degradation and targeted cellular necrosis. It was purely academic, of course. A thought experiment.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, filled with a raw, searing humiliation. “This neurotoxin… it’s based on my work. My own designs. Stolen from my personal files.”
Olek drew in air through his teeth. “She used *your* lab drafts to synthesize the compound killing the council? And you.”
Stasya nodded slowly, her eyes glazed with a terrible clarity. “It would be untraceable. Who would suspect? The disgraced surgeon, whose radical theories were dismissed as dangerous and unethical. It was the perfect smokescreen.” Her fingers curled claw-tight, muscle spasms jerking her collarbones. “She framed me for malpractice, destroyed my career, all to gain access to my work. She knew no one would question her after I was… neutralized.”
Mati leaned in, scrolling through the handheld directory. His scarred thumbs, deft from decades of filleting carp and setting sutures, dragged down the encrypted trees. He was searching for something, anything else. He noticed a small, almost invisible icon at the bottom of the screen, a tiny audio waveform. It was nested deep within a folder labeled ‘Personal Archives – DO NOT OPEN.’
He tapped it. A low static preceded a familiar, cultivated voice, crisp and imperious, though slightly distorted. Klavdiya Rurik’s voice.
“—I warned you, Stasya. Your brilliance was always… inconvenient. Your idealism, a weakness. They wouldn’t understand your research, darling. Not like I do. The corporate board, the city’s decrepit council… they’re too slow, too shortsighted. They need to be… guided. And your little theories, once dismissed as dangerous, now they are the key to unlocking the future. A future *I* will control. Your name on the original patents would only complicate matters. A small scandal, a fabricated surgical error… it was a necessary sacrifice. For progress, my dear. For power.” The recording ended with a soft click, as if Klavdiya had hung up a private comms call.
The low hum of the refrigeration unit and Stasya’s dry wheeze filled the room. Mati gripped the steel table edge until his knuckles went pale. This went beyond industrial sabotage; it was deliberate filicide dressed up as market consolidation.
Olek stared, blood draining from his ears. “She admitted it. All of it. Framed you, stole your work, brewed the toxin. All for leverage.” He looked at Stasya, his usual irreverence replaced by genuine horror. “Your own mother.”
Stasya stared at the glass screen, her cheeks grey as tallow, teeth clamped together. The tremors in her hands were no longer subtle. Her entire body began to shake, a violent, uncontrolled shudder that rippled through her. Her eyes rolled back, and a guttural gasp tore from her throat as she arched backward on the cot, a seizure gripping her with brutal force.