Silverbird by T Hearts

Author:T Hearts [Hearts, T]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

16

Bayham Abbey, Tunbridge Wells, Sussex

Swann had often received visits from ARCDA in the years since he had retired, but he had always been prepared for them. It was obvious when they would rear their ugly heads. There would be the messages that would read ‘you are still safe, your position has not been compromised,’ and then the stalkers would pop up as he worked. They were nearly always offers for rehiring him for his services, questions and consultations on security, or even warnings of other companies potentially targeting him. Despite their separation, he had always remained on good terms with ARCDA, even if he despised them. These kids however, they had caught him off guard. Especially with the date that they had chosen.

They didn’t seem like they worked for any of the other bioengineering companies, and it didn’t match the familiar methods of ARCDA. They were far too young and scrawny to be Elites of any rank, even if the little girl had telkens.

Hasekura would have tried to talk to him by jumping him after work and forcing him into a van and taking him to a secure location for an extended monologue. Synagen would have shot him first (non-lethally) then tortured him second (semi-lethally). Then, depending on who had hired them, the Freelancers could have easily poisoned, electrocuted, manipulated, kidnapped, or depending on how they were feeling, taken his intern and his family hostage as leverage to get him to come quietly. The latter thought always made him laugh a little, knowing how troublesome Castor’s family could be over something as simple as a dinner. Their baby-boy being taken would have resulted in nothing short of a family-run military campaign to get him home safely.

Overall, it was definitely not ARCDA. And for them to know Storm, it made him curious, and despite the low-level anxiety of it being a trap bubbling away at the back of his mind, he got up early that morning, shaved and made himself presentable, and drove down to the meeting location that the kids had arranged. Curious, suspicious, but hopeful.

It wouldn’t be fair on Castor however, to drag him into the mess he was driving towards, but then life wasn’t fair, and there was no way that he was going alone without someone who would be sorely missed.

‘It’ll be educational,’ he had told himself as they finally passed London and made it into Sussex. ‘He wants to learn how to fly, well then who better than an Avio to learn from.’

Sprays of white and pink opal-plum blossom across the hedgerows and overrun verges full of brilliant yellow daffodils added colour to the grey morning as they drove, but the ruins of the abbey rendezvous point stood starkly white against the rolling grey of the fog of mid-March. Monolithic and serene in the silence.

Castor shuddered. The setting was definitely creepy, even with the pretty springtime flowers. He hated that Swann had dragged him out of bed so early for this work trip, especially when he had been up all-night finishing off his dissertation for his university course.

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