Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(71)

Do something.

Do something.

DO SOMETHING.

A sound tore itself free from Kate’s throat, and she swept her arm across the table, sending the coffee cup and the tablet crashing to the floor. She put her head in her hands, took a long breath, then stood and picked up the pieces.

There were answers—she just had to find them.

She started clicking through every folder on the FTF server.

She found food logs, census data, a registry of recent deaths, subfolders marked with either an M or an F (for Malchai or Fang, if she had to guess). There was a third folder, marked by another letter—A. There was no telling what that stood for, but the deaths in that one were the most gruesome.

And then, somewhere between her third and fourth coffee, something caught her eye: a map of V-City, marked with X’s in blue and gray and black, the month stamped at the top.

The X’s, she soon discovered, marked gains and losses on both sides of the Seam.

She backed out of the search until she found the rest of the maps, month by month, going back to Callum’s death and Sloan’s rise.

Kate straightened in her chair. The images were all the same.

Sure, the X’s shifted back and forth, but never strayed from the few blocks on either side of the Seam.

And the more files she studied, the stranger the picture became.

The FTF acted like it was in control, like it was winning, but it wasn’t. Six months, and the Flynn Task Force hadn’t planned or executed a single large-scale attack. Why not?

It made no sense.

Kate got to her feet and went looking for Flynn.

Of course, she quickly realized she didn’t know where to find him.

The command center was the first logical place to look, and a quick survey of the elevator buttons showed that one and only one floor—three—required key-card access. Which, of course, Kate didn’t have.

She dug the silver lighter from her back pocket and knelt in front of the panel, and she was halfway through prying off the metal plate when the elevator hummed to life. Kate shot to her feet but the doors were already closing. The 3 on the panel lit up, and the elevator started down.





Sloan watched the monster come.

He watched it go.

He sat on the penthouse’s gray sofa, his long legs stretched across the glass coffee table, and studied the footage, watching as, over and over, the creature drew itself together, and as, over and over, it fell apart again, waxing and waning as if it were a moon.

He drew a pointed nail across the screen, and the clip began again, an idea coalescing in his head the way the shadow coalesced in the station.

But unlike the shadow, Sloan’s idea held firm.

Alice swung her legs over the back of the sofa.

“Seven for seven,” she said, rolling a bit of explosive between her fingers. “The caches are clear. And I left the little soldier boys a present, in case they come looking.”

She leaped up again, and Sloan sank back and closed his eyes— And noticed a change in the room.

A new tension.

The two engineers were still at their table, but they were muttering under their breath.

“. . . don’t . . .”

“. . . we have to . . .”

“. . . he’ll kill us both . . .”

Sloan rose to his feet, but Alice was already there.

“Secrets, secrets, are no fun,” she said, ruffling the man’s hair. He flinched away from her touch, and her grip tightened, forcing his head back. “Do you have something to say?”

The man’s eyes darted nervously as Sloan approached.

“Well?” he asked. “Have you found a solution to my quandary?”

The man glared at the woman, but after a moment, she nodded. “The subway,” she said under her breath.

Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “There are no subways under the Flynn Compound.”

“No,” said the woman, “not anymore.” She showed him a screen with the underground grid. “This is the most recent map of the subway system, and—”

“D-d-don’t,” stammered the other engineer, but his protests died when Sloan brought his nails to rest against the man’s throat.

“Hush,” he said, his attention leveled on the female engineer. “Go on.”

The woman tapped through several pages on a second screen. “I dug through the old records and found this: the original grid.” She set the tablets side by side. “And here,” she said, indicating a place where old tunnels intersected, “is the Compound.”

Sloan’s gaze ticked back and forth between the two images. In one, the Compound seemed impenetrable. In the other, its fatal flaw was laid bare.

“It wouldn’t be hard,” she continued slowly, “to access the old subway system from the newer line—for example, from the tunnel that passes beneath this tower. Then, with enough explosives, the damage would be catastrophic. . . .”

Catastrophic.

Sloan smiled.

“And what if,” he said, “I no longer wanted to destroy the Compound? What if I only wanted to make a way in?”

“That wasn’t the plan,” growled Alice.

“Plans change,” said Sloan. “They evolve.” He lifted the woman’s chin. “Well?”

“It wouldn’t be hard,” she said. “You’d need to rig a set of charges. Smaller, controlled blasts. But even minor detonations will draw attention.”