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Gray frowned in the rearview mirror at her. “What do you mean?”
Seichan pictured the assailant who had lowered the RPG launcher back at the intersection. There was no mistaking the Russian woman. She hadn’t even bothered hiding her pale features. Her snow-white hair had glowed in the darkness, reflecting the truck’s lights. The tattoo across her right cheek formed a black shadow of a sun with kinked rays—only now the symbol was distorted by a scar across it.
“Who attacked us?” Gray pressed her.
“Valya,” she answered, naming the Russian assassin. “Valya Mikhailov.”
Seichan recalled their last encounter two years ago, just before Jack was born. Atop a blizzard-swept mountain in West Virginia, she had fired two shots at the Russian, a ghost out of Seichan’s past with the Guild. One bullet had struck the assassin’s chest. The other had grazed her tattooed cheek, toppling the woman off the cliff and into deep snow. The Russian’s body had never been recovered.
Since that night, a fist of tension had knotted inside Seichan. She had been waiting for this moment, expecting it. When she had spotted Valya on the road, she had felt more relief than surprise.
Seichan had always known that snowy hilltop battle had never truly ended.
At last, it begins again.
5
January 23, 2:38A.M.NCT
Two miles under the Coral Sea
Exhausted and bleary-eyed, Phoebe hauled her way up the spiral staircase. She hoped she could sleep. The strange discovery of the hostile coral tree kept her buzzed and agitated, but any further study would have to wait until the morning.
She had left Jazz down below to secure the collected specimens from the late-night ROV run. They needed everything placed into one of the biology lab’s high-pressure isolation tanks. To ensure the integrity of any sea life, the specimens had to be maintained at the same pressure as outside. Otherwise, the extreme change could instantly kill an organism, even destroying the tissue integrity as its cells exploded.
Can’t let that happen.
Phoebe had wanted to stay and assist Jazz, but her post-grad student had chased her off, demanding she get some rest. Phoebe had offered only a half-hearted objection. So far, her sleep had been fitful aboard the station, especially as all the women shared a cramped dormitory on Delphin Tier. Everyone’s schedules were cycled around the clock. No one had their own bunk. Instead, like on a military submarine, they shared beds across shifts, what submariners called “hot racking.”
Between the warm bed and the constant clanking, humming, and echoing of the station, she had not slept well.
Jazz seemed unaffected by it all—then again, she was a decade younger.
Phoebe climbed past the thick hatch that separated Elektra from Oceanus Tier. Each level of the complex had been named after a Greek sea god or water nymph. As she cleared the hatch, she was blocked by a tall Asian man coming down.
Phoebe shifted aside to let him pass, but he stopped in front of her.
“Dr. Reed, I was headed down to see you.”
“Me? Why?”
She did not recognize the researcher. He was definitely not with the biology contingent. She would not have missed him. He stood as tall as her and was strikingly handsome. His mop of black hair was faded tight on all sides. His almond-dark eyes glinted even in the subdued lighting.
She had to look away from that piercing gaze.
Woman, you have been alone for far too long.
The man looked Japanese, but she couldn’t be certain. She also had trouble judging his age. Maybe mid-thirties, like her. He was wearing the typical navy-blue jumpsuit of the station, only his fit snugly over a muscular frame. She had also noted the icon on his breast pocket, of the earth superimposed by a pickaxe, marking him as part of the geology contingent.
No wonder I don’t know him.
“Our team could use your input,” he said and held out a hand. “I’m Adam Kaneko.”
She shook it. “You’re a geologist?”
“Seismologist, to be precise.”
Ah, that’s why he’s up so late.
