“You let the weapons… stay with us,” Lev said slowly.
“We are not in the business of trusting Bratva, but we are in the habit of taking advantage of certain opportunities,” she said.
Kara finally spoke, her voice quiet. “What kind of opportunities?”
The director smiled slightly. “The kind that allow us to remove a problem without exposing either of our organizations.”
Mikhail’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him seemed to draw in more gravity. “You sound like you already have a plan.”
“We do,” she said.
“And Revenant?” Andrei asked. “Where do they fit in this plan?”
“They’re going to have their own problems tomorrow,” she replied.
That made everyone go still.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What happens tomorrow?”
“We’ve arranged a few things,” the director said.
Cold slid through me. “What do you have planned?”
The director’s mouth curved without humor. “We have several logistics hubs. One of them is a nice, unremarkable warehouse in St. Petersburg. Revenant doesn’t know it exists. The drones will launch from there on a fixed schedule. They’ll be auto programmed to hit Revenant’s primary tower in the morning.”
“In other words,” Viktor said, “you’re going to let their own toys eat them alive.”
“Something like that,” the director replied. “It will look like a catastrophic failure in a system Revenant built and modified for their own use. ARCHEON will express concern, of course. Offer assistance. But the world will see that this technology is not safe in their hands.”
“You’re wiping them out,” Roman said.
“Severely degrading their capabilities,” she corrected.
“By blowing up their headquarters,” I said.
She didn’t deny it.
Lev stared back at her. “And our warehouse?”
“It’s been scrubbed clean,” she said. “No recordings. No trails. Nothing that leads back to ARCHEON or any of you. If anyone tries to trace the origin, they’ll hit a wall of shell companies and dead ends.”
Kara let out a breath that sounded more like a laugh. “So, we get to sit on the sidelines and watch the monster eat itself like a very destructive ouroboros.”
“For once,” I said, “I think I could live with that.”
The director turned her attention to Kara then.
“As for you, Ms. Lennox,” she said, “you should know your situation has changed as well.”
Kara’s shoulders tensed. “That usually isn’t good news.”
“In this case,” the woman replied, “it is. ARCHEON had compiled a rather extensive file on you. There were several… incriminating records tied to your time in their employ.”
Kara’s jaw clenched. “I know.”
“We’ve erased it all,” the director said simply.
Silence followed.
