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"The cane is the least of your worries, Professor," Gray said

Masterson glowered at him as the lied ear "So to kill you The question, Dr Masterson, is why"

10

Septeton, DC

"Loose ends," Trent McBride explained "There are too lance in his direction, but he didn’t flinch Let them kill him It did not matter Yuri sat in an office chair They’d allowed hi the electrodes His fiery torture had continued for another twenty ed enetics of the children, the secret he and Savina had kept from the Americans

He even admitted why the Russians had not objected to Dr Archibald Polk’s recruit too close to the heart of the genetic secret Savina had already planned to orchestrate an accident while the ained that Polk’s own colleague and friend would arrange his escape, all to lure one of their children out into the open

And Savina had taken the bait She cared little that Polk had escaped with the skull, which McBride had given hienetic secret he held that had panicked Savina into sending Yuri and Sasha into the hunt for the man She had fallen cleanly into the A back his attention He shook his head, unconcerned "I see only three The girl, the skull, and Polk’s trail in India The last is already being handled And I’ve heard ru skull e that?" McBride asked

"Get waters boiling just right, and you’ll be surprised ill coirl?"

Yuri paid aze flicked to him Yuri knew the only reason he was still alive was because of Sasha Mapplethorpe needed him, knew about her medical condition, about a problem seen in all the children The stress of the mental manipulation was not without physical consequences to the subjects In fact, few lived far into their twenties, especially those with theeggs and sperenetic line viable

Mapplethorpe sighed "We should have the girl before the sun sets…if not sooner"

And you’ll still be too late, Yuri thought

So simple these Americans, so quick to assume that as tortured testimony was the whole story While Yuri had not lied, he had committed one sin: a sin of omission In fact, McBride hadn’t even known the question to ask, so secure was he in his superiority and his sadistic trust in the power of pain

Yuri kept his face stoic They sought to break him with their tortures, but he was an oldsecrets All they’d accomplished was to harden his core for as to come In the past months, Yuri had started to have reservations about Savina’s plan

It was only natural

Millions would die in horrible ways

All for a neorld to be born

A new Renaissance

Yuri stared at Mapplethorpe’s self-satisfied sht-eyed confidence

All hesitation died inside hiht

It was time for the world to burn

2:55 PM

Southern Ural Mountains

General-Major Savina Martov knew so She felt it in her bones, a nonspecific anxiety She could no longer remain in her office She needed reassurances

With a radio held to the side of her face, she led two soldiers through the dark and abandoned streets that cut through the old Soviet-era apartments that filled the back half of the Chelyabinsk 88 cavern The featureless concrete blocks that rose to either side were the original housing for prisoners orked the mines and refines for five years’ work here Not that any of them ever saw that fifth year Most died froaain, hope could turn any rational acy she had inherited It served as a reht her cruel, but sometimes necessity could wear no other face The children ell fed, their needs attended Pain was minimized as much as humanly possible

Cruelty?

She stared around at the hollow-eyed apartments, cold, dark, haunted

All she saas necessity

The radio fritzed at her ear as Lieutenant Borsakov caative reports fro the surrounding mountains and foothills for the children He’d been led astray by several false trails, discovering a discarded hospital shirt

"We found two dead dogs," Borsakov said "By the river They’d been torn to shreds Bear attack But we’ve picked up a strong trail"

"And what about the cats?" she asked, speaking into a radio

Silence stretched for a mo off sending thes with the tigers ranging the hills"