Page 177 of Red Rooster

“Hello, old friend.”

~*~

It was unremarkable from the street. A beat-up galvanized mailbox with flaking numbers, and a dirt track that led off the road and plunged down through the trees. It was a long driveway. Rooster walked down it for a half hour, until sweat had gathered along his skin, under his hoodie. Fall was approaching – he could see it in the first brown edges of the leaves that crowded overhead, shading his path – but mid-afternoon temperatures remained warm. Muggy. He swatted a mosquito away from his face as he followed a sharp curve. On the right, a hill reared up, faced with granite, shaded by clumps of thin tress. On the left, a ravine opened, deep and jagged as a knife wound, the slope plunging down into a stream.

Not for the first time, he decided this plan wasstupid. His only means of communicating with the others – his team – was with the phone taped to his arm, and he wasn’t supposed to touch it until he was out of other options. They needed a man on the inside, a human man, one the Institute people would be forced to apprehend.

“What if things go south?” he’d asked back at Lionheart.

Rob had sent him a smile that he probably thought was reassuring. “We’ll get you out, don’t worry. One way or another.”

But Rooster had the feeling the “other” included him being dead, and that wasn’t something he wanted to happen before he made sure Red was safe and free.

After that.

Well, it didn’t much matter.

The elevation around him leveled, and after the next bend, he passed through a set of heavy wrought-iron gates with cameras poised on its stone pillars.

He took a deep breath, and kept walking.

Then, there was the house.

Lionheart’s façade was impressive and battle-ready, but nothing like the palatial, opulent stone face of Blackmere Manor. Two sweeping wings that he could see, sun glinting off thousands of mullioned windows and the shape of a conservatory, far off to the left, so far it might be in another zip code. From the gargoyles on the pitched roofline to the iron-banded double front doors, every exquisitely-wrought detail had been designed to terrify and impress.

But the most terrifying aspect of all was the group of helmeted, armed men in tac gear flooding down the front steps and running at him, shouting for him to put his hands up and get down on his knees.

Rooster curled his hand around the butt of a gun that wasn’t there and knew a crushing, momentary panic. This would never work. This plan wasshit.

But then they were circling him and all he could do was press his hands to the back of his skull and sink slowly to his knees in the dirt.

~*~

Trina turned all the walkies on and tuned them to the same channel. Lined them up on the table in front of her and let out another breath that was doing nothing to regulate her pounding heart.

Behind her, Jamie paced. Alexei sipped vodka straight from the bottle, passing it every now and then to Lanny who took a slug and passed it back.

Trina lined up the walkies again. Again. Fiddled with the straps on her Kevlar.

“Nik,” she called toward the closed bedroom door. “You ready?”

She heard the latch click, and the tread of boots, and turned…

And felt her mouth drop open in shock.

Expressionless, Nikita stepped into the room in black skinnies and t-shirt…under an ankle-length black leather coat. Boots. Gaiters. Fingerless gloves. And perched on his head: the black fur cap with the hammer and sickle. She’d seen him like this before, in the vision Val had shown her.

Gone was Nikita the grungy millennial, and in his place was Captain Nikita Baskin, Chekist.

“For real?” Lanny asked.

Nikita didn’t react. He gazed steadily at Trina. “Ready.”

42

Under different circumstances, Red thought Sasha might have been delightful company. He had pale eyes that somehow managed warmth; a pretty smile, two of his teeth just a touch crooked. She liked his hair, the platinum shagginess of it, and the vulnerable curve of his neck when he bowed his head.

But, circumstances what they were, Red didn’t trust anyone.