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The large soldier pointed a beefy arm toward the stairwell "Please, General-Major We will hold off as long as we can"

"The children…" Savina said, knowing her plan was cru around her She could not let anyone else steal what she had started "Shoot thee, but he was a soldier

He nodded

Savina retreated down the stairs She could not watch Her legs stumbled under her as she reached the bottom of the stairs The door to the room was four-inch steel Barricaded inside, she would wait out the war above Ahead, she noted the flicker of the screens beyond the doorway In the center screen, water flooded poison into the earth As she holed up here, she would take solace as she watched

Gunfire erupted overhead

The children…

Cringing, she headed for the room

But a shape stepped into view in the open doorway, blocking her

A boy

Pyotr

Pyotr stood in the doorway and stared up at the woloom of the stairwell He did not truly see her, but he knew her He focused on the flalow at the foot of the stairs

"Pyotr," she called to hi note of hope in her voice

As she stepped toward him, he lifted his arms and reached out--not with flesh but with his fiery spirit He cupped the flahtened bird Then he gently squeezed, s her flame

The woman dropped to her knees with a cry, a fist clutched to her heart "Pyotr, what are you--?"

Hope turned to terror as she screamed

He was not done

There was another facet to Pyotr’s talent of empathy He could certainly sense others’ emotions, but with the force of a hundred behind him, he could do more

As a hundred eyes stared out of his, he drew froony of the scalpel, the ache of loneliness, the coldness of neglect, the pain of secret abuse at night He reached farther back, to a blue-eyed child in a dark church, watching a woman and a man approach He stole all that fear out of the past and thrust it like a dagger into her heart

The woman shrieked, arched back, racked and locked in a pain without end

Yet, likewise, as the dark erazed hi his own

He barely registered the pistol as it lifted toward hiht to blindly kill what tortured her

While he did the same to her

The pistol blast shattered the silence

Pyotr fell back when the woman’s flame suddenly snuffed out between his palms As he stuone He stared up and saw Monk rushing down the stairs fro

The man leaped over the woman and scooped him in his arms

"Pyotr!"

Monk lifted the stiff boy He ran his hand over his sh his skin burned to the touch He hugged Pyotr to his chest

The others ran down the stairs behind hiht had eliminated the defenders above It had looked like the Russians had been about to fire upon a group of unconscious children

If they’d been a half minute later…

The Gypsies remained above to secure the area and watch over the children They were safe here for the moment

"Is this the place?" Gray asked

With the boy in his arms, Monk crossed with the others into the bunker The control board s circuitry Keyboards lay cracked Glass crunched underfoot Everything was shattered, except for a roallthe room It was the heart of Operation Saturn Only now, black water poured like a river out of a hole in the roof and swirled down a shaft in the floor

"It’s already under way," he said hollowly "We’re too late"

On a neighboring screen, Monk spotted thechamber where he’d left Konstantin and the others The kids were sprawled in tangled piles The vieas too grainy to tell if they were still alive Had the radiation soh him

As Gray fished out a sat-phone, Monk stared at the others: Kowalski and Rosauro Monk sought any glinition There was none Who were these people? If they were friends, shouldn’t they jar some reaction from him?

As he studied the others, Pyotr reached a hand toward the center screen and placed his pal?" Gray asked with the phone at his ear

Monk turned his attention "Pyotr?"

The boy stared deeply at the ie on the screen