SolCorp. LAHQ. Saturn Department.

  Fox really needed a nap. In fact, he had just converted the little pull-out couch in his office into its bed form when Sandy had stuck his head in the door to tell him they had an officer meeting.

  Was Fox miffed? Yes. Did they always have an officer meeting on Wednesday mornings? Yes. But this was an extra sleep Wednesday and provisions ought to be made for that.

  Fox sat his ass down at the table in the meeting room beside Stormy, who looked him up and down.

  “You're looking extra Fox today,” they smirked.

  He smiled. “You're looking just as Stormy as usual.” Which meant androgynous, attractive, and smartly dressed.

  ”They're right though,” Sandy added as he sat. “You okay? Do you maybe want to replace some of the whiskey in your office with energy drinks?”

  “And you're extra Sandford today,” he replied. “Looking frazzled and worrying about me.”

  “Fox.” Grace's voice was no-nonsense.

  He turned. “Grace...”

  “I will end you.”

  “Yup.”

  Louis walked in, eyes down on his phone until he sat. “Alright, I'm getting called into a department head meeting in half an hour so let's keep it brief if we can.”

  Fox tried not to smile too smugly over Louis getting pulled into a meeting he hadn't planned. Everyone’s late morning nap was ruined.

  “Grace, updates from Analysis?”

  “We've been working with Stormy to decode those encrypted files they lifted from the GBCI and my office should have something for you by the end of week.”

  Louis’ phone vibrated and when he checked it, his brow tensed.

  “What is it?” Grace asked, craning her neck to see.

  “There's an in-progress coup in Moldova. There was an assassination attempt on the president.”

  That woke Fox up faster than a cold shower. He zeroed in on the mental map in his head where he kept tabs on the state of safe houses and assignments.

  Sandy sat back heavily. “Huh.”

  The creases deepened on Louis' forehead. “I've got too much in my head this morning. Do—”

  Fox didn't bother to let him finish. “We have an agent in Moldova due to complete their mission today.”

  They all exchanged a look that clearly communicated the same sentiment: Oh fuck.

  Louis dropped his head into one hand. “He didn’t happen to start a coup, did he?”

  Fox huffed. “I sure as shit hope not. She wasn't supposed to.”

  “What was she supposed to do?” Louis asked.

  “Assassinate a Constitutional Court judge.”

  The room groaned.

  “But in a subtle, telepathy way.”

  “Let me get this straight. One of our agents assassinated a judge on the same day that there was an assassination attempt on the president?”

  “Yes?” The rest of the file slowly scrolled through his mind, his heart rate only increasing.

  Louis shifted his eyes to Grace. “How did we not know this was coming?”

  “I would bet it has something to do with the fact that we're still struggling to decrypt that intel we swiped from the CIA. It's probably in there.”

  Louis' shoulders slumped. “Send me what you have. What does your office need to...” but Fox had stopped listening. He’d stood and was making his way around the table. “Where are you going?”

  Fox pointed in the direction of the door. “My agent is supposed to be on a flight in an hour if they haven’t already—”

  “They closed the airports.”

  That's what he was afraid of. ”Yeah, so I need to go extract my agent before this gets worse. You all can unravel the politics.”

  Fox jogged down the hall, turning more than a few heads. Fox didn’t go anywhere in a rush. Well, maybe out the door at the end of the work day, but even that. But it was his job to know where all their people were at any given time.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Once he was within yelling distance of his office, he shouted, “Someone find me a teleporter with range to Eastern Europe right now and have ‘em on standby.”

  He nearly tripped over his office bed, half vaulted over the corner of it, and then turned his laptop around so he didn’t have to go all the way around his desk to pull up the file. Yup, she was due on a flight in an hour, but his office hadn’t gotten a communique from her confirming the mission was complete. Red flag. The last thing he needed was for an agent to get pinched because the SIS is on overdrive, what with someone attempting to take down the government. (Assuming it wasn’t the SIS who kicked off the coup.) It wasn’t in a Saturn agent’s nature to break, but he couldn’t be 100% positive how long Sandy’s forged documents were going to hold up under that sort of scrutiny before things would escalate.

  Fox dialed up the Kyiv Saturn office.

  “Saturn desk.”

  “This is Fox. I need to speak with Anise del Sol’s handler right now.”

  “That’s me, sir. Nina.”

  “Are you aware of the situation in the capitol?”

  “We just saw it on the news, sir.”

  “Have you touched base with Anise?”

  “I can try reaching her now.” They waited, Fox tapping one finger rapidly on his desk. “Directly to voicemail.”

  Something had gone wrong. “There’s no handler on the ground that can intercede?”

  “Closest local support is Kyiv. Due respect sir, she can take care of herself.”

  “I think this might be beyond that at this point.” Fox shut his eyes to think.

  “I can send a teleporter to the safehouse.”

  “No, you don’t know what you’re jumping into. My office will handle it. If you hear anything, call this line directly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sandy leaned into his door as he hung up.

  “News just confirmed one of their top justices was found dead. No cause of death given, but they’re working off the assumption it's connected to the assassination attempt.”

  Fox sighed. “At least she completed her mission.”

  Sandy grimaced.

  “What?”

  “News is saying they’re asking for tips on a short woman with long hair.”

  “Goddamnit.”

  His phone rang and he went to pick it up, but it wasn’t his cell, it was the phone on his desk and the light flashing showed it was a call to the emergency Operations line.

  “Sandy, area code 373-22?”

  His eyes lifted to the ceiling, thinking. “Yeah, that’ll be the capital.”

  “Get Louis.” Fox answered it. “Hello.”

  “Who’s there?” It was a woman’s voice.

  A good sign that she wouldn’t continue the conversation without him confirming this was Operations. He gave the passphrase, “8353.”

  “Thank you. 37-24-1-1-9, sir.” The proper emergency code for an agent not under duress.

  “Are you someplace safe?” he asked.

  “Other than the blow to my pride calling this number, yes. I’m sure I could get myself through the border, but it seems like an extraction might be less of a cleanup for you after the fact.”

  “Absolutely. Is this a cell phone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Text me a photo of where you are. Extraction on the way.” Fox hung up and called into the hall. “Teleporter?”

  “Here, sir.” He recognized him as one of Sandy’s agents. That’d do.

  “Fox,” Louis called. “Where are we?”

  “She called for extraction. I’m going to go pull her out.” Fox grabbed his gun from his desk. “I’m supposed to be napping.”

  Louis glowered at him and made to leave. “Make sure she’s in the clear for the rest of this shit.”

  Fox scrunched up his brow. “Obviously.” He showed the photo she’d texted of a cramped little kitchen to the teleporter and looked to Louis as the teleporter got his arm around Fox’s shoulders. “Hey, Louis? I quit.”

  ---

  On the road. Finland.

  It was too much to ask that the Neptune team hadn’t set up roadblocks to keep them from cutting and running when they’d confirmed Alex and the others were actually there. That would have been nice. As they neared the exit to Helsinki, traffic on the highway ground to a crawl as though there was an accident in front of them.

  “Shit,” Gareth muttered.

  Reeve was sagging against Alex, dozing after long hours in the car, and Alex shook him awake.

  “What is that?” Hannah asked, stretching up in her seat.

  “Some kind of checkpoint.”

  Alex leaned forward, squinting into the lights ahead of them. The two lane highway had been narrowed to a single lane and there were figures on the road. Alex felt at the grip of his pistol, toes flexing inside his shoes.

  Reeve let out a breath.

  “Neptune?” Alex asked, grimly.

  “Yeah," he confirmed over Hannah's swearing, "and they’ve got a telepath scanning cars. I'm masking us as best I can, but there's no way he doesn't eventually notice I'm blocking him."

  He saw Gareth grip the steering wheel hard as the car in front of them advanced and he slowly rolled forward. "I could swing around and try to run, but they'll chase us for sure and try to brainfuck me."

  "I'd say let's shoot before they get to us but—" Hannah trailed off.

  Alex finished for her. "But we're in a gridlock of bystanders trapped in cars."

  "They have us." Reeve's voice sent a chill through the car. "They don't think I know yet. They want to clear out the civilians in front of us."

  Alex peered ahead. He could see the agents in black now. The one in the front nodded to the others and one of them started speaking into their radio.

  "Running now?" Hannah snapped.

  Alex undid the safety on his gun and glanced back at Reeve, who had his eyes closed, then back to the road. Gareth slowed the car, giving himself space to whip into a u-turn, but before he could, the agent on the radio held up a hand and shouted something that made all the other agents turn. The agents seemed to argue for a minute then began to pick up their makeshift barricade.

  “What the hell?” Alex craned to see. They were leaving. Reeve must have made the non-telepath, who had radioed it in, think he had gotten different orders or something. Gareth made a sighing sound like a slow air leak as Neptune got into their car and drove off.

  Hannah gave a whoop of joy. “Yes,” she cheered. “There’s our Reeve! Take that, you assholes.” Even Alex found he was grinning. He looked back at Reeve again, but Reeve wasn’t smiling.

  Reeve met Alex’s gaze. “That wasn’t me.”

  “What?”

  “That wasn’t me,” he repeated louder. His face looked drawn and pale. “I didn’t do that.”

  Everyone was silent as they rolled forward on the road, slowly picking back up to normal speed as the traffic dispersed.

  “So not Helsinki, then?” Alex asked. He was tired and wanted to be out of the car.

  “Saint Petersburg,” Gareth agreed, changing lanes.

  Hannah twisted in her seat to look back at them. “What the hell was that?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Lucky break?” she suggested.

  Reeve scoffed. “Name one single moment when we’ve been lucky?”

  Alex shrugged. “Maybe they’re finally sick of losing agents to us and pulled them back when they saw what we did at the house.”

  “A Neptune agent’s life isn’t worth more than the mission. The Corp doesn’t seem to have any problem throwing any number of them into the meat grinder to take out Icarus.”

  The calculated, disinterested answer pissed Alex off. He knew it was partly from the surge of adrenaline in his overtired body but still.

  “How far away is Saint Petersburg?” Hannah asked.

  “Far,” was all Gareth answered.

  Alex couldn’t sleep.

  ***