"Igor's dead. You said you'd hold up your end."
Butcher set the phone down once the line went dead.
"Half an hour. Then we move."
He went into the bathroom, ran water over his face, and looked at himself in the mirror.
The mystery bastard was worse than he'd figured. If the man wanted them gone, he could clear the lot of them in a short stretch and not break a sweat.
All that quiet, harmless face of his didn't mean a thing. Butcher would put money on it. The second they stopped being useful, that one would put them down without a second thought.
He drew a fruit-green vial out of the inner pocket of his coat. Under the dim light the stuff caught and threw a shine that pulled at his eyes, the way a hole in the dark pulls at a man who knows better.
He gave the bottle a small shake. The liquid inside ran clear as glass.
In the mirror, the light stuttered across his face and the fight in him came and went with it.
Then his eyes settled. He pulled the stopper off the syringe, shoved his sleeve up, and turned his head to watch the needle.
Cold glint.
He set it to the skin and pushed it in by degrees.
As the dose went into the vein he felt something new take hold inside him, a strength that hadn't been there a minute ago. He looked up.
In the glass, his eyes burned like gold on fire. He wanted to let the whole of it out. Sense told him no. Not a chance. The mystery man could not see a thing wrong with him.
The second those eyes lit, Ivan caught a brainwave that didn't belong.
He looked toward the bathroom. X-ray sight laid the whole of it open. Nothing on Butcher stayed hidden.
"Not yet." Ivan held down the urge to pull the man apart and read him. Soldier Boy came first. The radiation eyes could wait.
"How we doing, then? Time to go."
Butcher put the sunglasses on like nothing had happened and clapped Hughie on the shoulder where he sat on the sofa.
...
Out past the edge of a Russian town, where the roads ran out and nobody lived, a steel fort sat in the scrub.
The military blocks inside were poured high-strength concrete and rebar, built, so the talk went, to take a nuclear hit. Rows of tanks filled the yards. Moonlight laid a hard, killing shine across the armor.
"Nina never said the lab was sat inside a Russian army zone."
They found the main power box for the restricted ground where Nina had told them to look. MM held the torch on it for Butcher.
"Pretend we're knocking over a sweet shop. Same job, near enough." Butcher swung the crowbar and put it through the box hard.
Crack. The lights across the zone died at once.
"Thought they'd have a spare." Butcher's mouth pulled into a pleased little grin.
"This one doesn't feed the inside. They'd have to be bored out of their skulls to run a second."
MM pulled a glove off and tossed it at the wire behind him. No snap, no spark. He bent, picked it up, and put it back on.
"OK."
Butcher hauled the fence up and let Hughie and the rest through.
He took a guard after that, used the man's card on the door into the lab, and dropped him with one open hand to the head. Torches came up. They went through the place corner by corner.
Ivan picked a sheet off a bench without much interest. Clear enough. This was the Russian lab working Compound V.
Wave-sense put Soldier Boy for him, and caught a second signal that didn't sit right with the rest.
Reading the whole of Soldier Boy's kit was still going to take time.
"What the hell's this, then." Butcher and MM were circling an iron column in the middle of the lab. Odd shape on it. Something like a rocket, with a climbing frame welded on.
"Well. It's a little hamster."
Ivan went over and found the owner of the odd wave.
A yellow-white hamster. Small. Coat a bit scruffy.
"Look at the little darling. They even wrote his name on. Jamie." Frenchie pressed close to the glass and kept calling it.
"Enough. We've got work."
Butcher had no use for a hamster.
Jamie's senses were sharper than they had any right to be. The second it caught people near the case it threw itself at the walls and the bulletproof glass, fast and mean, over and over.
"Fuck. They shot this bastard full of Compound V. Russians left it here as a trap." MM swore at it.
"Sneaky cunts."
The alarm went off. Red lamps started flashing, the kind of light that tells a base someone has walked in who shouldn't be there.
Bang. Ivan put a fist through the glass and pulled the hamster out.
Jamie, frantic a second ago, went quiet in his hand. Look close and the thin body was still shaking.
Tap tap tap. Boots, coming hard.
A squad of special police hit the lab door and came through kitted to the teeth. Thermal sights up. They had Butcher and the rest locked in a breath.
They got as far as the triggers. A dozen tentacles, thick as pythons, punched through their skulls and hauled the bodies up off the floor.
"Looks like we're not needed." Hughie tipped his head back at the corpses hanging there. "Mystery man on the team, I feel like we're clearing the lowest-level dungeon in the game."
Butcher's face didn't match the joke. The stronger that one got, the worse their odds of walking away from him.
"Don't just stand about."
After a bit of searching Butcher found a shut iron door. Their job was Soldier Boy. Ivan's was whatever special unit tried to come in after them.
"Something's locked in here." MM looked the cabinet over. Big as a fridge, iron. "Gut says leave it shut..."
Butcher had the switch before he finished.
"Not yet."
A tentacle came from across the room and slid clean between Butcher's fingers, stopping the hand.
Outside, the soldiers seemed to have worked out the intruders were a bad death. They stopped feeding men through the door. Ivan thought he heard tracks, though. Something heavy, grinding over the ground.
"Wait."
The read wasn't done. Letting Soldier Boy out now was a poor choice.
"We're out of time. We need to leave." Butcher looked at him, voice low.
"I said wait." Ivan's face didn't move.
The air went bad. Hughie eased a hand into his pocket and thumbed the stopper off the syringe.
___
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69