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Taylor touched her forearm surreptitiously. Her key to getting out of this and hopefully bringing down the Foundation was hidden there. They’d done a full body scan on her the day after she left the Academy, but hadn’t found it. Just like Malcolm Goode had said, what she was carrying wouldn’t set off any alarms; it couldn’t be detected. Not until it was activated, at least.
And for that, she would need to gain access to a phone.
A week had gone by since Miki spirited her away from the Academy. He had dropped her on a boat where a couple of mercenaries disguised as fisherman were waiting. They’d been very polite about tranquilizing her.
She’d woken up on a private airplane beside a redheaded woman with a faint Russian accent. She never introduced herself, but she was kind and deferential to Taylor. Even though the woman was just some Foundation go-between, Taylor tried to memorize her face. The Russian carried one of the tablet computers that Taylor soon learned most of the important Foundation people had—password protected and coded to their fingerprints, so it wouldn’t be an easy thing to hack. The steward fed Taylor truffle french fries while the redhead asked her questions.
“The Foundation will provide you with a private residence. Where would you like that to be?”
“Somewhere warm and tropical,” Taylor answered. “Would a private island be too much to ask for?”
The woman smirked. “We have more private islands than we know what to do with. I see in your file that your father is a farmer in South Dakota. It’s possible that we could slip him out of America . . .”
“No,” Taylor replied quickly. “He won’t want to come. But . . . could you help him? In other ways?”
The woman nodded. “Some investments will be placed in his name. Of course, I probably don’t need to remind you that all of this is contingent on your continued cooperation.”
“Of course,” Taylor said, detecting the implicit threat in the woman’s words and smiling like she didn’t mind. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“Ukraine,” the woman replied.
That was the first hint Taylor got that her private island would be a while in coming.
From the tiny airfield in Ukraine, a helicopter had flown her here, five days ago, to the freezing edge of the middle of nowhere. The ride in had been one of the most harrowing experiences of Taylor’s life, the chopper buffeted back and forth by savage winds, snow flurries limiting visibility.
They’d made it. And she’d been cold ever since.
Wordlessly, her soldier chaperone led her out of the tent and the small radius of its struggling space heater. He was dark-eyed and bearded, maybe Middle Eastern, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. Taylor had given up trying to communicate with any of the hundred soldiers stationed here. Even if they spoke English—which often wasn’t the case—they were under strict instructions not to talk to her. They were a hodgepodge of nationalities, probably mercenaries, like the Blackstone guys she’d encountered in Iceland. Only the executive officer—the XO, as he was called, a lean, blond-haired South African in his early fifties—ever spoke to her, and that was usually to give her an order.
Outside, the cold hit Taylor immediately, but at least the snow had stopped. She pulled her balaclava down to protect her face and then followed the soldier back to her tent. The mercenary encampment looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, like they’d colonized an alien world. Twenty tents stood in a grid, a convoy of ATVs and jeeps parked around them, some concrete barriers erected at the edge of camp to cut the wind. Beyond that, there was nothing but hilly plains covered in pure white snow, with the occasional patch of brown scrub grass poking through. The sky today was big and blue, reminding her a bit of South Dakota.
“Weather reports say we got three days without any snow,” said a guard posted in front of the XO’s tent, his voice muffled by his own ski mask.
“You know what that means,” his companion muttered. “They’ll have us out there doing night work.”
“Ah, Christ,” the first one replied. “You’re right.”
“Least it means we might get out of here quicker.”
Just because the guards weren’t speaking to her didn’t mean that Taylor had stopped listening. She still didn’t know what they were up to out here, what the Foundation was after. Every day, half the detachment drove out somewhere over the western rise, not returning until sunset. That’s when Taylor did her healing, when the men came back fatigued and sullen and with ailments they weren’t allowed to explain.
She’d been looking for a chance to poke around ever since she’d gotten here. A night shift might be exactly the opportunity she’d been waiting for. It was hard enough to tell anyone apart during the days, with all the face masks and winter clothing. Under cover of darkness Taylor thought she might have an even better chance to slip in with the soldiers unnoticed.
Her silent escort brought Taylor back to her tent at the center of camp, where he nodded to the guard posted outside and left. Taylor glanced at the man standing watch and felt a pang of sympathy—even his eyes, the only part of him she could see, looked cold. Taylor had wondered aloud on her first day in Mongolia why she was being guarded like a prisoner. Weren’t they all on the same team? The XO had assured her that it was for her own protection. His people were disciplined, yes, but some had been on the frozen wasteland for months.
“You understand,” he’d said. “Pretty teenagers bring trouble with them.”
Taylor’s skin had crawled then and she hadn’t asked any questions about her chaperones since. She would need to give them the slip tonight, though, if she wanted to see what the mercenaries were up to out here.
“Oh my God, close the damn flap before we all catch pneumonia!”
Lost in thought as she entered her tent, Taylor was slow to seal out the elements and thus earned a sharp rebuke from Jiao. Taylor had first met the slim Chinese healer in Saudi Arabia, where she’d been domineering, fashionable, and almost killed by Einar. Jiao didn’t seem so chic and intimidating now, perpetually stuck in the same frumpy winter gear as Taylor. She hated this assignment and made sure to keep the others as miserable as she was.
“Calm down,” Taylor replied, rubbing her hands together. “If you catch pneumonia, we’ll just heal you.”
Their tent was far from the glamorous lifestyle that the Foundation promised its recruits. Three cots, a card table, a hot plate, and a stockpile of blankets and thermal underwear. The XO assured Taylor that they had one of the best-working space heaters in the company, although that did little to chase away the perpetual chill.
“Gin,” Jiao declared, ignoring Taylor’s response to slap her cards on the table. “I win again, Meat Boy.”
“It’s Meatball,” Vincent corrected. “And please don’t call me that.”
“Which?”
“Either.”
Dark-haired and pudgy, Vincent was the final part of the healer trio assigned to Mongolia. Unlike Jiao and Taylor, the Italian boy hadn’t joined the Foundation willingly. He had been trained at the Academy and promot
ed to Earth Garde before getting kidnapped by the Foundation last year and pressed into service. Now, he seemed perpetually on the verge of tears and always jumpy, although that could’ve been the shivering. Taylor had been looking for an opportunity to talk with him one-on-one, but Jiao or one of the guards was always around.
Vincent fumbled the cards, trying to shuffle them. “Play again?” he asked.
“No,” Jiao replied, standing up from the table and stretching. “We’ll have to work soon and I’m tired of beating you.” She turned to Taylor. “You talked to Bea? She say how long we’ll be stuck out here?”
“No,” Taylor replied, not bothering to hide her own disappointment. “She wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”
“Typical,” Jiao said. “You must be questioning your decision to come back to us.”
“A few more weeks of this and maybe I will,” Taylor said, glancing at Vincent. “But the Academy was terrible, too. You have no idea.”
Vincent said nothing and simply looked away from Taylor, fiddling with his deck of cards. She thought maybe he would defend the Academy, but Vincent was probably too broken for that. Maybe he’d come to like the Foundation lifestyle—they could promise a lot, that much Taylor knew. They could also blackmail and extort. Taylor wasn’t sure whether Vincent was a sellout or a coward. Neither would be particularly useful to her.
“Well, for what it’s worth, this is the worst assignment they’ve ever sent me on,” Jiao said.
Taylor wondered how committed Jiao was to the Foundation’s work. These little conversations helped her probe deeper into her companions, but they weren’t revealing anything that would truly bring down the Foundation.
“Worse than when Einar got you shot and threw you through a window?” Taylor asked.
Jiao smirked and flexed her knee, remembering the fight back in the UAE. “Please, that was nothing,” she said. “I healed those wounds in ten minutes and spent the night dancing with one of the prince’s handsome bodyguards.”
Taylor rolled her eyes. Before anything else could be said, they heard the rumble of trucks returning to camp. The mercenary convoy had returned. Jiao breathed a sigh out through her nose, the air turning to mist. Vincent stood up, put away his cards, and paced nervously.
