Enemy One (Epic Book 5) (26 page)

Scott had no idea how he was supposed to react. Was a reaction even necessary? She obviously wasn’t hidden—her name was right there on the paper. That she was at
Northern Forge
meant nothing in and of itself. It was more the discovery
that
she existed that had surprised Scott more than anything else. “I just realized who you were.” He stated it matter-of-factly. As soon as he did, Gavriil stopped what he was doing to look their way.

For the first time, Marina looked at Scott with something other than disdain. She looked uncertain, herself. “So you did,” she answered simply.

So many questions shot through Scott’s mind. If she was Antipov’s daughter, did that mean she was
like
Antipov? Why was she truly there? Was her nurse get-up a cover? Could
she
know where Svetlana was? Everything in Scott’s mind could be summarized in a single inquiry. How much did Marina Antipova know? If there was one thing for certain, it was this:
Northern Forge
was safe. As cold and calculating as Scott knew Antipov was, he couldn’t imagine that the eidola chief—a man who knew the value of keeping things hidden—would entrust his daughter to a dangerous place. To do otherwise would go against every fatherly instinct. Even Antipov had to have those. That Marina was at
Northern Forge
meant
Northern Forge
was secure.

At least the Fourteenth had that going for them.

The silent stare down between Scott and Marina held for almost ten excruciating seconds before Scott simply said, “Nice to meet you, Miss Antipova.”

Marina’s jaw set anxiously. Ever so faintly, she dipped her head in acknowledgment. Seeming to hesitate for a moment, she looked away from him to return to her work—though he could sense her keeping tabs on him.

Clearing his throat, Gavriil asked, “Is everything all right, captain?”

Nothing had been all right for a very long time. Drawing in a thoughtful and long breath, Scott answered, “I think so.” He was
going
to talk to Marina—he was going to find out what she knew, if she knew anything at all. Her mere existence was a significant discovery. But the time to talk to her was not now. Scott would catch her when she wasn’t doing her job. Offering Centurion one more glance, Scott turned to make his way out the door.

“Hey.” The word, though not shouted, was spoken to him directly and accompanied by the knock of knuckles against glass. When Scott looked in its direction, he saw Natalie staring at him from her quarantine cell. With his arms still over the crutches and casting a brief look around, Scott hobbled up to the glass. For the first time since the escape from
Cairo
, Natalie was looking at him with something other than hatred. She just looked tired. “I want to talk to you,” she said quietly once he was close.

Far behind her, Lilan’s ears perked.

Though Scott knew that a conversation with Natalie needed to happen, he hadn’t set it in his mind to have it then. Just the same, if she wanted to talk—
really
talk, not just hurl accusations or scowl at him—he was more than willing. “Let’s talk.”

“I’d rather do it in private.”

Though Scott’s impulse was to frown with disapproval, he understood why she made the request. Natalie’s issues with him were more than situational. He’d hurt her, deeply. There were things she probably wanted to say that she didn’t want anyone else to hear. He’d respect that. “Doctor,” he said, glancing at Gavriil. “Will you let her out, please?” Despite what seemed like a judgment against his better nature, Gavriil unlocked the quarantine glass to let Natalie walk free. Quietly, Scott gestured for her to follow him outside of the medical bay.

Though there was a measure of risk involved with going anywhere with Natalie privately, Scott had a suspicion that she wasn’t going to try something—and if she did, he was more than confident that he could handle her, even with an injured leg. At the very least, he could beat her over the head with his crutches. But he knew Krasnoyarsk affected her. Seeing Lilan alive affected her. Right now, she didn’t know what to believe. At least she was willing to give the possibility that she wasn’t seeing the whole picture a chance, or so it seemed.

As soon as the door closed behind them and they were standing in the hallways of Level-4, Scott stopped and crossed his arms. “You first.”

“Can we go to a room instead of standing in the hall?” she asked.

Scott shook his head
no
. “There’s no one in the hall,” he said, glancing behind him to ensure that he was telling the truth. “This is private enough.”

She seemed more resigned to the situation than satisfied with it. Nonetheless, she went on. “Who are you?” she asked him quietly.

“I told you who I was in
Cairo
. I told you what I was doing and why.”

Biting her lip, she halfway shook her head. She wanted more than that. “The people in that room should be dead.” She was referring to the Falcons. “And you came up in their unit. What’s the connection?”

“There is no connection. It’s a coincidence. After leaving
Richmond
, I never thought I’d see them again—Colonel Lilan and Donald Bell, at least. Those are the only ones I knew.” He sensed now that there was indeed no ulterior motive in her. She was searching. “Look, you have every reason in the world not to trust me. But if you can’t trust me, Natalie, trust what you see.” He pointed to the door to the medical bay. “They’re alive. They’re here. EDEN’s covering them up, just like they’re covering up a conspiracy.”

“Or EDEN thinks they’re dead,” she said.

Impossible. “Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that EDEN wouldn’t know? If they thought there was a chance they were alive, they’d have said they’re holding out hope, or searching the area, or praying for a miracle. But Judge June never said anything like that in her press conference.”

“I remember exactly what Judge June said.” Natalie’s lips tightened a bit. “She said they weren’t optimistic for survivors. That’s different from definitively stating there weren’t any.”

“Then what about what the colonel said? EDEN landed on the ground. EDEN soldiers came down in Vultures, one of which was ours that we’d sent in for repairs, and tried to kill them.”

Ever so faintly, her eyes narrowed. “Unless
Novosibirsk
was trying to make it seem that way.”

“Come on, really?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” Natalie said in a way that sounded almost as accusatory as it did honest. “This is your chance to convince me—I hope you appreciate how much you don’t deserve it.”

For as much as Scott pitied this woman, she had a way of being annoying. “Are you sure you want to be convinced? I’m not sure it sounds like it.”

Emerald eyes smoldering, she exhaled a slow breath through her nostrils. “How do you want me to sound? Excited? Allured? That train’s gone.”

At least Scott had that going for him.

“You lied to me, repeatedly. About your identity, about your motives. Hell, for all I know, you were lying about the vecking jar of mustard.”

He sighed. “Come on.”

“The point is this. Regardless of what intentions you had in
Cairo
, you killed innocent people. People doing their jobs.” The faintest bit of understanding emerged in her voice. “If you were caught in a no-win scenario in a battle for the greater good, I can accept that. But I’m going to need proof. Proof beyond them,” she said, pointing to the door. “If you can begin to show me that, maybe I can begin to—” Biting her lip, she stopped short. After a moment of uncertainty, she said, “Maybe I can begin to reevaluate my anger toward you.”

“Full disclosure?” he asked.

She gestured with her hands. “By all means, let me hear it.”

“I don’t care if you’re angry.”

The moment his words came out, her lips sealed shut. That burning gaze returned.

Scott continued. “You don’t have a clue what I’m dealing with. You don’t have a…”
Clue
was about the best he was going to come up with. “You want proof? Look around and listen in. Truth is screaming in your face.” Pointing to the medical bay door, he said, “There’s a Ceratopian in there that might hold the key to everything.
He
was the mission.
He
was the reason I did what I did.” If she hadn’t soaked up the truth by proximity yet, then she’d never get it. “I would like you to be a part of this, because I think you could make a difference, maybe greater than any difference you hoped to make at
Cairo
. But I’m not going to grovel for it. You were caught up in a bad situation, and I’m sorry—none of it was by your own doing.” Even that changed nothing. “But we are where we are, now. It’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do.”

There was nothing else that Scott had to say. Natalie was an adult—she was older than he was. It was time for her to start believing whatever it was she was going to believe on her own.

A long pause lingered between them as Natalie scrutinized Scott’s face. Barely visible but undoubtedly there was the faintest narrowing of her eyes, as if something was brewing deep in her mind as she stared into his soul. At long last, she broke the silence with a single word. “Svetlana.”

“Is the woman I love.” That was the answer she was probing for. It was one she needed to hear. “I’m sorry if that disappoints you.”

Closing her eyes, Natalie laughed in the kind of way that seemed a substitute for physical violence. When her eyes opened again, she was almost leering. “Words can’t express how much it doesn’t.”

Hooray.

“So she’s your fiancée,” Natalie said with only partial finality.

She still didn’t get it. “No, she’s not. Svetlana was the one who rescued me when the Nightmen killed my fiancée.” A moment of perplexity came over her. “You may not want to believe it, but everything I told you in
Cairo
was true except the reason I was there. If you can find it in yourself to get past that, then maybe you can make a difference with us.”

With that, Scott’s part of the conversation was finished. There was nothing more he had to say. For several seconds, he waited to see if Natalie would ask a follow-up question of her own. She didn’t. She closed her eyes, rubbed her temple, then shook her head and turned away, returning to the medical bay door which whisked open to allow her entry. Without the need for a prompt, she walked back to her quarantine cell, which Gavriil opened for her. Out of what felt like obligation, Scott followed her there.

Of all the situations Scott was dealing with, Natalie’s was the easiest to figure out. If she
wanted
to know the truth, she could uncover it without interrogating him. Centurion was there, Lilan was there…everything was there for her to see, if she was willing to see it. What this was truly about was pride. Could she bring herself to side with the man who’d swept her career out from under her feet then set it ablaze for good measure? If the answer to that was
yes
, then there might be hope for Natalie Rockwell after all.

As the door to Natalie’s quarantine cell was sealed shut, she faced Scott and said, “You killed innocent people.”

That was undeniable. Innocents had died in
Cairo
and Krasnoyarsk alike. “Yeah.”

“Does that bother you at all?”

And there it was. The haymaker. The long, hard peer into his soul. The question by which the character of a man claiming to be good could be evaluated for its sincerity. Did he feel bad for the pain he’d inflicted on others? Scott answered the question the only way he knew how. “Every waking minute.”

He lied.

Drawing in a breath through her nostrils, Natalie stared down her nose at him from the other side of the glass—almost as if making a final determination. At long last and without a word, she nodded her head a single time. She looked away.

With nothing further to say, Scott turned away and left.

Does it bother me at all?

If ever a question had an obvious right answer, this was it. The people who fought against them in
Cairo
, the security personnel, the scientists and contractors who’d died during the opening of Confinement, had nothing to do with Benjamin Archer. They’d simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. The same could be said about the forces in Krasnoyarsk. The Fourteenth’s pursuers were police officers from the city and EDEN soldiers told only that Scott and his comrades were traitors. Killing or injuring any of those people should have felt horrible.

Yet Scott’s discomfort was only inches above mild. Truth be told, outside of moments of lamenting over the circumstances that led to the who-knew-how-many deaths, Scott had barely thought about them at all. In the midst of the carnage, Scott had willful tunnel vision. He saw only the ends.

Am I wrong because I don’t feel torn up? Is that the mark of a Nightman, or would anyone in my shoes be struggling with this?
Those questions and the like all boiled down to one.
Am I a bad person?

The religion in him answered, “yes, as is everyone,” but that answer only scratched the surface of what he meant by the question. Was he
actively
justifying evil deeds? In moments like this one, it sure felt like it. He made the decision right then and there to change.
Innocent people shouldn’t die for this. We need to make that our priority. We can’t let
Cairo
happen again.
It may not have redeemed him for everything that took place, but it was a step in the right direction. After so many leaps in the wrong one, he’d take it.

Scott looked at the time on his comm display. The troops needed to be rallied. He, Rashid, and Esther had discussed critical things that the rest of the Fourteenth—and the Falcons—needed to be privy to. And speaking of the Falcons, there was no need for them to be locked up in quarantine. They weren’t in the same category as Natalie. The Falcon survivors
knew
EDEN was up to no good. It was time to talk to the keeper about that—among other things.
I hope this goes better than my first encounter with Valentin.
There was no room for attitude now. Major tasks were at hand.

There was no better time to deal with them than right then.