Chapter 1
564 Words
Chapter One
Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast
The forest blotted out gray clouds, except for a sharp strip of sky above the road. Sophia sat in her stolen Opel Vectra sedan, parked on the shoulder, and watched the side mirrors. In the distance, her target glinted on the horizon.
She started her engine and pulled the sedan sharply across both lanes, then climbed out and stood on the white line. Not one, but two SUVs roared toward her, shimmering black. Neither slowed down.
Sophia couldn’t make out the driver through tinted glass, but she knew who it was. The SUVs were nearly on her, and for a moment she thought they would go off-road and swerve around her. She stepped away from the sedan, her hands out. She wanted them to see it was her.
The front SUV slowed to a halt about forty meters out. No one emerged from it.
Sophia stood her ground and waited.
Come on.
At last, with the engine still running, Olesya climbed from the SUV and stood beside it. ‘Your car’s blocking the road.’
‘There’s something you need to know,’ Sophia said.
‘That you’re not leaving Eastern Europe, like we told you to.’ Olesya opened her gray coat for an easy draw. ‘I can see that.’
‘I found a kill switch in our DNA,’ Sophia said. ‘The Fifth Column put it there with our new abilities, when we were children.’
‘If you’ll recall, I never received those new abilities.’ Olesya gestured to the people inside the SUVs. ‘And neither did they. We have only what we were born with.’
Sophia was expecting that answer. ‘Every operative you hunt has the new ones. That’s a lot of valuable intelligence lost. And potential allies—like us.’ She gestured to her hip pocket. ‘I have the papers for you. Proof.’
‘If this kill switch exists inside every Fifth Column operative, as you say it does, what’s to stop me triggering it?’ Olesya asked.
‘You won’t trigger it,’ Sophia said.
‘What makes you so sure?’ A light wind ruffled Olesya’s pale hair. ‘One switch to kill all the operatives. It’d save me a lot of time.’
‘It would also kill an old friend of yours, Xiu.’
Sophia could see the fear wash over Olesya, cold and ocean-blue.
‘If there was a kill switch, you’d be dead already,’ Olesya said.
Sophia shrugged. ‘Someone at the Fifth Column planted the switches, but the organization itself doesn’t have access to them. It was done in secret.’
Olesya brushed hair from her face. ‘The whole Fifth Column is secret, that’s the point.’
‘Have you heard of Intron?’ Sophia took a step forward.
‘That’s close enough.’ Olesya’s right hand twitched. ‘Drop the papers on the ground.’
Sophia took a sheaf of notes from her pocket, nine pages joined with a paperclip, and let them flutter to the road before taking five long steps back. Olesya approached cautiously.
‘I can take the shot.’ Czarina’s voice was a whisper in Sophia’s ear.
Fifty meters inside the forest, Czarina lay flat, camouflaged and holding a hunting rifle.
Olesya picked up the papers and glanced over the first page. She removed and pocketed the paperclip, then rolled the notes up tightly and shoved them in her coat pocket.
‘How did you find us?’ Olesya asked.
‘Oh, do you like your operative tracking?’ Sophia asked.
Olesya walked away. ‘We don’t need it. We don’t need you.’
‘You do if you want to remove these kill switches,’ Sophia said.
Olesya paused, half inside the SUV. ‘If I see you on Russian soil again, I will shoot you.’
- Writer
