Twenty-four hours, if that timeframe held, was still enough to ruin lives, to say nothing of amission.
“Adrian Wolcott isn’t the kind of man to blindly believe in someone. He’ll have done his background on us, same as we did on him, even before the mess in New Miami. There’s a very high probability he’s been in contact with Jansen after last week. We need to be prepared for that,”Seansaid.
“So we act like JamieandKyle?”
Sean hesitated a moment beforenodding. “Yes.”
Alexei didn’t believe for a second he and Sean could duplicate how Jamie and Kyle had acted during London. He tipped his head to the side, eyes narrowing in thought, before a smile curled his mouth. “Could callnames.”
“What?” Sean asked, frowning a little inconfusion.
“Use small name,” Alexei said, lifting his hand to hold his thumb and forefinger close together. “Can call yousakharok.”
“I don’t even know what thatmeans.”
“Pryanichek?”
Sean shook his head, staring at him. “Do you mean pet names? Is that what you’resaying?”
“Kotyonok,” Alexei decided, liking the way Sean bristled like a babykitten.
“No,” Sean repliedfirmly.
Alexei smirked. “Kotyonok.”
“It’s like you’re five. No wonder why Kyle puts you in aheadlock.”
“Kilyusha wish hecould.”
Alexei couldn’t tell if Sean was relieved or not with his reaction to needing to fake a relationship. It was difficult to tell how Sean truly felt. His poker face was just that good when he wanted it to be. Alexei had a feeling Sean could fake interest in him in an instant, but it would take a little more effort on Alexei’s part to make itbelievable.
Unlike Kyle, who’d gone through a ridiculous number of one-night stands before falling into Jamie’s bed and never leaving it, Alexei didn’t much care for sex with a stranger. That’s not to say he’d never picked up someone at a club or bar for a night of fun, but it wasn’t hispreference.
Alexei was the sort of man who liked to feel a connection beyond the physical with the men and women he partnered up with. Lust was all well and good, but Alexei always ended up wanting more, knowing that he couldn’t risk it. It used to be because of his position with Strike Force, then keeping the fact he was a metahuman a secret. Now it was his role as an MDF field operative that was theobstacle.
Sean knew more about him than anyone else he’d been with over the years, mostly because he knew what Alexei did for a living. There was an inherent level of trust in that revelation which Alexei couldn’tignore.
It’s for the mission,Alexei thought to himself as he let his gaze linger on Sean’s face.Someone needs to watchhissix.
“All right, boys and girls. Landin’ in five,” Annabelle said over the public comms. “I got the biodome in my sight and we’re cleared toapproach.”
Alexei looked out the polarized, double-paned window, squinting down at the barren ground below. Summer meant grass withered to a dangerous dryness through much of the central United States. Desertification had crept outward from the Southwest over the decades, leaving the land barren-looking across huge areas not covered in the solar panel fields that helped power the country’s energy grid. The highways spanning America were lonely roads linking megacities together through extremeweather.
Farms had long ago moved north, close to the border America shared with Canada. The green zone found there was the agricultural sweet spot now, with vertical farms interwoven between megacities and the smaller satellite cities scattered in between. In the lower half of the country, small towns struggled to survive, stubbornly clinging to a dying way of life, with few megacities to be found, especially in thedesert.
Las Vegas was a rare, thrivingoutlier.
Annabelle banked the jet in a wide curve, one wing dipping down toward the ground. The massive, opaque biodome that encapsulated the entirety of Las Vegas glimmered softly in the midday sun. Nanoscreens covered each panel making up the biodome in a protective layer, capable of eliminating the glare from sunlight and making it easier ontheeyes.
Long ago, Las Vegas had voted to remain where it was rather than succumb to climate change and abandon the city for a new location. The West hadn’t been wild for generations by that point, but the stubborn mentality of its inhabitants had yet todieoff.
Back then Sin City, as it was colloquially still known, invested more than a billion dollars into building the citywide biodome, the effort spearheaded by all the casinos that dominated the megacity’s skyline. The idea was borrowed from Dubai in the UAE, a desert city still surviving beneath its own impressive biodome long after climate change had forced millions to abandon the countries they oncecalledhome.
Like Dubai, Las Vegas was an oasis in the desert, a place for the high-rolling ultra-wealthy to indulge in any number of expensive escapes. Las Vegas provided something for everyone, no matter the background they came from, a form of escapism found nowhere else in the world. The technology keeping the city survivable in desert heat also shielded its citizens from the dangerous sunlight, providing perpetual shade outside the neon lights found within the casinos. The environmentals running the biodome were some of the best in the world; they had to be to survive the oppressive, choking heat of the MojaveDesert.
“Still have time for mile-high club,” Alexei said off-handedly.
“What?” Sean practically hissed in a lowvoice.
