Grigory Eleftorov, formerly Major General Eleftorov of the Soviet Union, turned Lieutenant General of the Russian Federation after the purge, was not having a good day.

Most of his gripes had to do with his current position. He was supposed to be a highly decorated military officer, not some cheap pencil pusher at the beck and call of everyone and their babushkas. Angola, Afghanistan, Georgia, Abkhazia… to him, those were all just footnotes in a long and bloody career. One of the longest and bloodiest careers at his rank still standing, if sources were to be believed. Most of which took place before he'd become… well, this semi-human beast he was now.

Orcs, the Americans had called it. During the tail end of the Soviet Union, it had been meant as something close to an insult. He found he resonated with it. Because as much as they branded him a monster, both on and off the battlefield… there'd been an undertone of respect that came with it.

A view that his superiors, clearly, didn't share. His talents were wasted as a glorified security guard, looking for clues that weren't there and fruitlessly attempting to keep their so-called 'highly important charges' from jumping at shadows.

This is the third perimeter sweep she's asked for this week… he bemoaned internally. Blyat, how many times already have I told her that those are part of my routine operations anyways? If she asks again, I might have no choice but to refuse, consequences be damned…

He cursed the den of snakes back home that set him up with this white elephant position in the first place. It would be such a great honor to your country, they said. You would bring so much goodwill back to Russia, they said. Show the world that our new government has cast off the flawed ideals of the past. That we are willing to take the first big step towards diplomacy on the world stage. No, you do not have a choice.

It almost made him want to laugh. In any other context, it would have been a very funny joke.

"Sectors B, C, and E, report."

"All clear over here," one of the squads deployed to those locations responded over the short band. Gradually, the rest of them followed with little additional fanfare.

"Business as usual."

"E Sector. Nothing but the rain."

"Sector A, checking in. No news to report from High-Sec."

He grunted in acknowledgement, propping his head up with two thick fingers and exhaling boredly as he gave a glazed over stare at the building's floor plan. D Sector was the only one yet to report in, but that was because that covered all the outdoor areas. More ground to cover, but even less to find than anywhere else. He doubted they'd turn up anything, once they finally reported in.

The clock on the back wall ticked away, the only noise to keep him company aside from the low hum of the workstations in the security booth alongside him and the slight static hiss from his earpiece.

Maddening… utterly maddening…

He felt less at ease here than all of the times he'd been under artillery fire put together. At least in those cases, you'd known someone was for sure out to get you. All you had to do was wait them out, not die in the process, and once they ran out of things to throw at you there was a window of opportunity to strike back and show them how it was really done. Even rebels and guerilla fighters gave you a chance to crack some skulls, eventually. You just had to be patient.

No amount of patience would change anything here. There was only what was; the somewhat stuffy office that always ran too many computers at a given time, the same two noises and three responses from any given person he talked to, the infernal reading glasses he had to wear constantly to get any work done in here…

This wasn't hell, in the same way that war wasn't. But if this was what peacetime held in store for him going forward, he far preferred a chance to go back into a command bunker.

He thought he'd go insane if he had to hold out for another two weeks of nothing. To his surprise, however, something unexpected arose that very moment.

"Sir," one of the orcs manning a nearby workstation grunted in his direction. "There is something you should take a look at here."

Elefterov blinked in surprise.

"Let me see," he mumbled gruffly as he rose from his too-small office chair. Another thing he wanted to complain about, but the thought that they might have actually found something pushed those thoughts well and clear away. He took a long look at the display on the monitor, with a slight sense of hope in his heart… and could only come to one conclusion once he saw what was happening.

"Everyone out," he commanded, some of that old spark of martial intent dredging up into his words. "NOW."

Nobody needed to be told twice. Every last one of them leapt into action immediately, the good trained soldiers from his homeland that they were. But he did need to clarify a bit when the man who'd shown him this made to leave as well.

"Not you." A heavy, blue-green tinted palm locked the smaller orc in place with enough force to grapple a bear. "I need to make one thing clear first."

He turned around slowly, nodding nervously at Elefterov while the rest filed out one by one. Intimidating an orc wasn't easy, but after having to command a few… he'd found ways. Even as a human, he'd found ways.

The door shut behind them with a loud thud. He looked his subordinate dead in the eyes, and made one thing abundantly clear.

"Your service has been recognized, and is to be commended," he began, lifting the spirits of the other man once it was clear he was not being reprimanded as he'd expected. "But this is to remain between the two of us. You will speak to no one, no one, of this. I assume all responsibility. You are to go out there, and look upset about something, but not say a word of it to anyone. Understand?"

Another nod.

"Good. You may leave."

He only just barely waited for the door to close a second time before bringing attention to the clunky desktop before him.

This station was a bit of an odd duck. Instead of monitoring something sane like hallways or points of access, it focused on the underlying infrastructure of the building. Pipes, ducts, wiring, anything under the hood… all of it rigged with a plethora of silent alarms, monitoring runes and even the occasional scry-sensor. None of it came cheap to install, but then again, price was never a problem when the Americans were involved. He could at least admit to that much after wasting most of the prime of his life trying to break them.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Normally, all that money went to waste, chasing sensor ghosts or false readings. Not today. Today, there was something definitely moving through the air shafts above the Sector A high security quarters. Most notably, moving away from it.

A few keystrokes into the command line only proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He thanked every lucky star he had that he'd had the foresight to install night-vision cameras at key junctions. And that he'd taken the time to privately slave them all to a passcode that only he had access to. The measure paid off in spades now, as it painted a clear picture of just what the slowly moving blob on the sensors really was.

And, it would seem that their little pinnacle student was up to some… extracurricular activities of her own.

Lucy was obviously playing things smart here, but she was… inexperienced. She'd thought ahead enough to mitgate some of the more obvious sensors, but not all. If she had been able to do that, they wouldn't have dismissed her as a potential suspect to Edison Smith's disappearance to begin with.

But, nevertheless, he should have been readying a squad that very moment to intercept her, as well as getting himself ready to interrogate her as to just what she thought she was doing.

He did neither of those things.

Instead, the expensive cameras powered down and the collected data from the past hour was scrubbed. Elefterov followed up by removing the hard drive from the machine in its entirety, replacing it with a spare blank he kept in his desk for such underhanded occasions, and thoroughly disposed of the original. And to top it all off, he set the computer into an long, painfully slow cycle of booting and rebooting. Just in case.

He sighed, mulling over how he was going to spin this now that it was all said and done. It was stuff like this that made him absolutely despise internal espionage and politics…

Not that it made him any worse at it. He just hoped his fellow agent had him doing it for the right reasons.

< -|- -|- >

Lucy's memory did not steer her wrong. Even in her semi sleep-deprived state, incurred from the severe drain on her Domain mana she'd incurred to make it here, this was indeed the hallway outside of Agent Blackthorne's residence. Much more thankfully, this vent was mounted on a wall rather than the ceiling, meaning that her exit was much more dignified and significantly less taxing than her entrance had been. She even had just enough mana left over to put the screws back in place once she was out.

The hall was perfectly empty, as she had planned for as well. Perimeter sweep always came through here first, and by her estimate they were still waiting for D Sector to report in before they came back. That wasn't the only countermeasure she'd manage to deploy; her home office was currently feeding the camera above Blackthorne's door a video loop of empty hallway.

Nerves wracked her as she walked up to the doorway. She was afraid that she may have miscalculated, afraid that at any moment the alarm would raise and the security force would come to sweep her away, or one of any number of increasingly unlikely events. But… none of that ever happened.

She moved to quietly knock on the door. Punctual even by her standards, it swung open of its own accord after the second knock.

"Enter," a collected and perfectly neutral voice from within urged her.

Lucy didn't hesitate to do as suggested.

As she stepped through the doorway, she noticed that the interior was much darker than she'd expected. Not pitch black, or dark like some foreboding dungeon, just… more muted. Like a rainy day, one where you'd spend the whole time indoors with the lights on, with a cup of something warm and perhaps a good book. Everything inside felt meticulously adjusted to meet that cozy, picturesque standard down to the micrometer, and in the center of it all the informal host of the day was using it for that express purpose.

Blackthorne took a sip from a rather herbal smelling cup of tea before addressing her again. "Miss Wright," he adjusted his seat on the sofa he lounged on and set the slim paperback novel he was reading on his lap. "At the risk of sounding a touch cliché, I've been expecting you."

In front of him, there was a sparsely decorated coffee table with subtle marks of artisinal quality. An earthenware teapot and a few coasters lay atop the table, but he did not use it as a footstool, as some others might have with the way it was positioned. He motioned to an unused chair beside it. "Sit," he insisted. "I imagine there are several questions on your mind that require my… specific counsel."

This was… oddly personable for the otherwise enigmatic elf. Lucy had to admit, she was a bit curious about all this, but not quite so much that she forgot to shut the door behind her. And lock it. If she hadn't used up all her mana on the way here, she might have added a downward force to the deadbolt, too, just to hold it place for that little bit longer.

She sat down in the surprisingly plush chair, and immediately went for the throat.

"Where's Edison?"

"Hah… it was to be expected you'd begin there, I suppose. But to answer that, a bit of context… and, yes, time, will be necessary. Tea?"

Blackthorne proffered a cup to her, which she dubiously accepted. More as something to hold on to and be polite than any desire to drink anything. She wasn't really thirsty at the moment.

Anything to get him to spill what he knows…

If her hesitance bothered him, he didn't show any signs of it. He took one final sip of his own and let out a contented hum.

"Apologies for the circumstances that forced us to meet in such a way," he began. "I only hold so much sway over what goes on here, and well, let's just say I've been branded as somewhat of a suspect by the chairman himself."

"You were the last one to see him in person," Lucy recalled. "So Jansman thinks you have something to do with it."

"Quite right. Though he suspects me for the wrong reasons. Granted, he can't explicitly make a move against me just yet - not without something more solid - but with the right motivations that is only a matter of time. This left me with only two methods of recourse: reach out to some sympathetic… acquaintances within the facility to buy time, and to trust in Edison's judgement. Clearly, it would seem our mutual friend was right in placing faith in your abilities to track him down."

"The professor?!" she exclaimed. "Is he…"

"Oh, don't worry, he is very much alive, and in good health might I add, but circumstances forced our hand to act. That time we met just outside his office was actually me arriving to warn him of the approaching danger, which for once I am relieved to say he took seriously."

Lucy frowned. The sound of the word 'danger' didn't sit well with her. Because it meant the paranoid tendencies she was beginning to develop were somewhat grounded in reality.

"Where is he now, then?" she pressed.

"Unfortunately, that I cannot say with absolute certainty. He did leave me a location to find him at later, but as things stand right now I am unable to leave here without starting a witch hunt in my name. Even if I could, I doubt that the address given is one hundred percent accurate. He has every incentive to misinform me as means of throwing off his pursuers."

His pursuers.

Those two words of confirmation stabbed Lucy like an icicle through the heart. She didn't want to believe it. For once, she didn't want to be right about something.

And now that she was here, staring it in the face, she felt even more compelled to get to the bottom of this.

"…What do you mean… pursuers," she croaked, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry. She started gulping down heavy draughts of the tea she had previously dismissed, barely even noticing the subtleties of the flavor in between her worries.

"Exactly what that word entails." Blackthorne explained. "You are, in fact, very lucky that the Cloudpiercer project was a breakaway success. Being a public figure in the current zeitgeist makes you practically untouchable, as long as there's media buzz around you. Your disappearance, or the disappearance of any of your friends for that matter, would be… immediately noticeable. It's the only reason none of you have been targeted yet."

"But Edison?" he continued. "He's a bygone relic, as far as the fickle talking heads are concerned. Sure, they make token efforts to reach out to him now and again, but if he were to disappear, nobody today would really be overly bothered. And he represents a much bigger threat as a free agent. If these people want their agenda fulfilled… having him out of the picture just plain benefits them more, and has less risk attached."

"But what do they want?" she insisted. "Why is this project so important to them?"

"Because they've taken the most untenable position possible, and decided to make it everyone else's problem. Out of fear of the unknown, they strive for total a information blackout on anything even remotely related to the London Exclusion Zone. It's been more successful than you might think, at least for now. Other than your own work, practically nothing is known about it to this very day."

"So-"

"Before you finish that thought," Blackthorne interrupted. "There is a serious question you must consider. If you wish to find your mentor again, unfortunately the only way I can help you is to give you information that puts you in immediate risk, as well. If I tell you, you will have to escape here as fast as physically possible, and the journey will have to be yours to complete. Alone."

"With all of that said…" he finished, "Do you still wish to find him?"

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