Present day.
The hotel bar was nearly empty, which was typical these days.
The resort was still being rebuilt after the rebellion that had torn through the tropical island like a hurricane, or so Dimitri had heard. He and Dr. Petrov were recent arrivals on this accursed rock, avoiding most of the original turmoil but still deeply immersed in its aftermath.
"This is good stuff," Petrov said.
Dimitri was still nursing his first whiskey, but his mentor, Dr. Konstantin Petrov, was already on his sixth, his pale eyes growing glassier but still sharp. The guy could drink his weight in vodka, but his brilliant mind kept churning until he passed out.
Petrov had always enjoyed his alcohol, but having free access to a hotel bar that served the finest spirits meant that he was drinking more than ever.
Dimitri took a sip of his whiskey, savoring the taste. It was indeed superb, and he enjoyed luxuriating in the rich flavor and undertones instead of gulping it down as Petrov did.
"You should slow down," Dimitri said. "I'm not looking forward to carrying you out of here."
Petrov snorted. "Don't worry. I have plans for tonight, and I've only gotten started."
The only plan his mentor could have was a visit to the brothel.
Not wanting his expression to betray what he thought of Petrov's plans, Dimitri shifted his gaze away from him and let it drift around the bar. A handful of men sat at a table near the back wall, speaking in hushed voices. It wasn't hard to guess that they were commanders in Lord Navuh's army even though they weren't in uniform. Their bearing was too confident to be simple rank and file, their eyes too sharp, and their conversations too guarded.
He wished he could hear what they were talking about with such intensity, but they were too far away and speaking too quietly. Regrettably, moving closer would look suspicious, which was not smart in this place. He should mind his own business or at least appear to.
Perhaps he could pretend to go to the men's room and loiter around to catch a few words?
Something had fundamentally changed on the island recently, and Dimitri needed to find out what was going on. Lord Navuhhadn't visited the laboratory in nearly two weeks, and the official explanation that he was spending time in the harem rang false. Dimitri had interacted with the ruler of this island enough times to realize that the lord was a control freak of the highest order.
Navuh had demanded constant updates about the research and the progress with the enhanced soldiers, and he trusted no one to do anything right without his direct supervision.
He was the type of ruler who stayed on top of every aspect of his operation.
A guy like that didn't simply disappear into his harem and abdicate his duties to his son unless he was dying or already dead. Not that either scenario was likely, given that the lord was immortal.
His son, Losham, seemed to be running things now, but not by himself. The eight enhanced soldiers who collectively called themselves Dave had escaped their confinement in the laboratory by compelling the guards to release them, and they were either compelling Losham and ruling the island through him or had coerced him to cooperate with them.
Dimitri's bet was on the latter.
Losham didn't look like he was under their thrall. It seemed that he and the eight had reached some kind of arrangement that benefited both parties.
Dimitri wasn't sure which scenario was better for him and Petrov—the one in which Navuh was still in control but running things from the harem as Losham claimed, the one in which the hive mind of Dave was the de facto ruler of the island, or the one in which Losham and Dave were working together and Navuh was out of the picture.
The good news was that as long as he and Petrov continued to supply the drugs Dave needed, they were left alone. Losham checked on their progress from time to time, but he didn't demand detailed reports. His heart wasn't in the enhancement program like his father's had been. His focus was divided among a hundred different concerns, and he didn't have the bandwidth to micromanage the enhancement program the way Navuh had.
The program had been the lord's baby, and he'd refused to abandon it even after Dimitri's warning that the eight were getting more and more dangerous.
In retrospect, Navuh should have heeded the warning.
The most likely scenario was that Dave had killed Navuh, and Losham was covering it up so he could rule without anyone challenging his authority.
Petrov, who seemed more susceptible to the power of Dave's hive mind compulsion than Dimitri, didn't question Navuh's absence. He'd accepted the explanation that the lord was relaxing in his harem. Unlike him, Dimitri was less affected, and even though he was still forced to follow Dave's orders, he could at least think outside the confines Dave had imposed.
Resisting gave him terrible headaches, but it was better than being an automaton with no capacity for independent thought about anything other than the work he'd been tasked with.
Perhaps Petrov's excessive drinking was weakening his mind, making him more susceptible to mental manipulation? Or was Dimitri simply more resistant for whatever reason? It probably had something to do with his genetics because, in the end, everything boiled down to that.
It wasn't nurture or the lack thereof that produced a scientist on one end and a murderer on the other. It was nature. The particular combination of genes a person inherited from their parents determined everything. The one thing that could alter that was drugs, but they also qualified as nature, even though they were manufactured.
The drugs that the eight who were now Dave had been given had altered the chemistry of their brains in an irreversible way. The former soldiers had not been born with anything extraordinary other than their immortality, which they had inherited from their parents. As far as he knew, immortals were born and not created, because if anyone had discovered how to turn regular humans into immortals, the world would become a very different place.
