Chapter 1: Blood and Ice: The First Demand
The lab door didn’t blow open so much as it disintegrated, the reinforced polymer frame screaming as it sheared from its hinges. The stench hit her first—cordite, copper, and expensive cologne cut through the sterile ozone. Pace Augustus filled the doorway, his breathing a controlled rasp. The left side of his midnight blue suit jacket was soaked, a wet, blackish crimson under the blue lab lights. In his right hand, held loose at his thigh, a heavy pistol steamed.
Lina Vesperine didn’t jump. Her gloved hands, suspended over a sequencing array, completed their input. A soft chime echoed. She turned, her silver-blonde hair shifting like moonlit water. Her violet eyes tracked from the ruined door, up the blood-drenched suit, past the grim set of his jaw, to the weapon. Her expression remained as placid as a frozen lake.
“You’re contaminating my environment,” she said, her voice cool and flat. “The particulate matter from that door alone will set back Cultivar Seven by eighteen hours.”
Pace took three steps forward. His polished Oxfords left sticky, half-sole prints on the reflective chrome floor. “Eighteen hours is a luxury my brother doesn’t have.” He stopped at the edge of her central workbench, a sleek expanse of black composite. He placed his left hand on it, fingers splayed. Blood pooled beneath his palm, slow and thick. “He’s in the car. Bullet fragmented near his spine. The usual doctors say it’s inoperable. He’ll be dead by dawn.”
Lina’s gaze flicked to his blood-smeared hand, then back to his face. His eyes were the color of a winter storm, dark and furious and desperate. She’d seen his file. Knew the architecture of his empire, the brutal calculus of his reputation. This raw, animal fear didn’t suit the profile.
“I am not a trauma surgeon,” she stated, turning back to her array. A holoscreen bloomed with spiraling DNA helices.