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ADRIK
Around midnight I got a text from Mykah that Sabrina carried Ilsa Markov out of Apothecary, both of them smashed and stumbling, disappearing into a cab.
I sped over—of course they were long gone. Sabrina’s bike wasn’t even there.
My first reaction was relief that Sabrina was still in Moscow, with someone who—while not exactly benign—would at least probably keep her safe.
The next news I receive is Hakim’s frantic phone call that our lab is on fire.
I drive over with Jasper, Vlad, and Andrei, all of us strapped in case this is Zakharov and Cujo’s doing.
By the time we arrive, the firefighters have put out most of the blaze, the red and white trucks clustered out front spraying down the last of the smoking embers on the roof. I have to pay the firemen a hefty bribe to leave without making a report.
Once they’re gone, I step through the hole that once was the door, surveying the wreckage of the brewery.
Heartless – Kanye West
Spotify → geni.us/savage-spotify
Apple Music → geni.us/savage-apple
The interior space is a hollow, blackened hole—charred beams dangling from the ceiling, windows smashed outward, the floor piled with smoking rubble.
I’m surrounded by the slow drip, drip, drip of ink-dark water from the roof. The stench is overwhelming, smoke and chemical-drenched wood burning my lungs.
Some of the damage is from the fire itself—the rest of the equipment was vandalized intentionally. Pipes ripped off the boilers, tables smashed up, sinks bashed and dented. I see black rivers where accelerant was poured and then set ablaze.
Jasper picks through the ruin on the other side of the room. His shirt is pulled up over his face—he hates the smell of smoke.
Hakim leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, not bothering to look through the mess. He knows there’s nothing salvageable here.
The fire swallowed everything, chewed it up, and spit it out in scorched splinters. A storm of heat and wrath and madness.
Jasper comes to stand by me, lowering his shirt, his eyes pale and fierce, the teeth and bone tattooed along his jaw making him look particularly grim.
“Sabrina did this,” he says.
“I know.”
Vlad whips his head around, lip curled in a snarl. “That filthy fucking bi—”
I turn a look on him that shuts him up mid-shout, the words dying in his throat.
“Don’t,” I hiss. “When she comes back, you don’t want to have said anything you’ll regret.”
“Comes back?” Vlad stares at me, blinking slowly. “She destroyed our fucking lab! We should kill her for this—we’d kill anyone else.”
“She’s not anyone else,” Hakim says, from the doorway. “She built this lab in the first place.”
“And then fucking burned it down!” Vlad scoffs.
“She’s angry,” I say.
“You think?” Andrei laughs.
I shoot him a look almost as mean as the one I gave Vlad, making him duck his head and scuttle away from me like a crab.
“She took some of the equipment,” Hakim says.
