WHIPLASH

Stepping back down onto Russian soil was far more solemn than he imagined it might have been, but here he was. The air held a bitter sting compared to Bastion Harbor's milder autumn breeze. As sobering as it might be, the last of his peace withered away and calcified into something diabolical and cancerous. For a moment, the surrounding audio cut out and all he could hear were the mad whispers of times gone by in his head. 

The silence helped some. Matt rarely looked at people; truly saw them at the moment for who they were. Another defensive mechanism he learned from the war, according to Doctor McTeer. So as the men disembarked from the plane and Matt watched them bustle about, he finally paid attention to them. Big, battle hardened alphas, dressed as they were in expensive attire and with the grace of a wild animal trapped in an antique store, his captors didn't fit the outfits they wore. 

They looked like businessmen, dressed up to the nines like that, but they carried themselves like silent killers. And that man, the one they called 'boss—'he looked more business than thug. That's what made so little sense to him; this was a man who came up to Matt's pecs when he was standing, which meant he came up to the top of Cifer's abs. There was no way in hell this guy was actually their boss. He must have been some glorified clerk. If that was the case, then who was actually in charge, and where were they?

That half-balding prick who'd threatened to send his men to do unspeakable things to Guise certainly wasn't it. 

"Act normal," the fake-boss said. 

Matt's soul nearly left his body when Cifer gasped like he'd just had a couple hundred volts of God's wrath running through his body. 

"... Yes."

Cifer's expression remained dead, and Matt thought he might have imagined what he saw. About to say something; a foreign voice clearing their throat had Matt's hackles rising.

"Welcome back, Master Bogdanov."

Matt's head snapped up—master. As in the head of a family? Oh, fuck. Did this involve the mafia? Wait, who were they calling 'Master?'

"About damn time. I thought we'd never land."

Cifer. That was Cifer talking. He felt as though he'd just gotten a fatal case of whiplash; his childhood friend sounded like a person with genuine, unvarnished human emotions. As though someone had breathed new life directly into his soul, Matt could hear that sarcastic, holier-than-thou inflection he'd come to both cherish and abhor. 

If that didn't send him to the next life, the way the men dressed in what looked to be security outfits fucking bowed to Cifer like he was some kind of high-ranking individual sure did. 

"What the fuck…?"

His accidental, barely audible whisper earned a smack to the back of his head; a quiet, yet threatening reminder from one of the not-businessmen he hadn't noticed behind him. 

"It is good you landed, then. Come, we will process your papers personally. I hope you'll forgive my rudeness, but as you know, we must observe formalities."

"Sure. Whatever. Get on with it. I'm not in the mood to play model citizen today. I got jet lag." 

Though Mattias couldn't see his face from this angle—all he saw was Cifer's stupidly large back blocking his view of everything like an absolute himbo—he could hear the aggravation making itself a home in the way he spoke. 

So could everyone else, if the way the security officers and the guards they'd been travelling with stiffened up and set their jaws. They were acting like breathing might just kill them. The shift in the atmosphere only ended up getting thicker, and far more confusing, as the security officers bowed again and apologized profusely. 

Matt wasn't sure what the fuck was happening, but that didn't stop his legs from betraying him to pad after Cifer like some kind of jaded animal who was late being fed. 

… § … 

Papers, Matt's entire ass. Their party entered what was obviously a new airport building, considering the visible lack of destruction. They took the group's papers only after escorting them to a private screening room and carefully avoiding other citizens. If you could call it that. All they did was take a folder from one brute that'd kidnapped Matt, pretended to flip through it, and handed it back. 

"What time is it? I'm starving," Cifer asked. 

"One O'clock in the afternoon, Master Bogdanov."

"Grab us something on the way to the hotel. Different vehicles. Lev, did you let them know we were here?"

"Yes," replied the man who'd been in charge until now, "I've sent our things there first, boss."

Matt's head was suffering a fatal computational error. Entirely aware he hadn't hallucinated everything he'd seen during their unwilling trip here; a newfound rage and bewilderment brewed inside his gut like a shitty basement ale. 

"Good." Cifer snapped his fingers and every single person in their vicinity straightened to attention; "let's get going. You, with me."

If crazy eyes were a thing, he sent them to Cifer as the massive blond turned to look at him. 

Another smack to the back of his head hardly helped center him any. "Don't be rude. Go."

Matt straightened himself up, nose wrinkling at the strange scents that permeated through his weakening defenses. He marched in lockstep behind Cifer, eyes wild and jaw tight with the repressed violence that came with being dicked around by Cifer Fucking Calaway. They wound back through the surprisingly large, complex facility—it had to be a major point of entry. There were hundreds of people rushing to and from their terminals, some looking just as livid as Mattias felt. 

But even with all the civilians moving freely about the massive, hyper-modern open halls, it still felt empty. Only to be expected, considering human population numbers were at a fractional shadow of their former selves. There's a reason Matt had been a child soldier. Men of fighting age were dying faster than they could be replaced, and now that the dust cleared, nothing but fantastical stories of millions living in a single city at once got left behind. 

Matt couldn't imagine so many people living together in one place at a time. It sounded like hell on earth. Besides, it was hard enough sorting through who was a supe and who wasn't, let alone keeping them all identified, tracked, and catalogued at once. What a fucking nightmare. 

Part of him wanted to step on Cifer's heels just to piss him off, but eventually, the men had made their way through the semi-desolate halls and out through the front doors. And when they did, Matt couldn't help but stop in his tracks. Seizing up as though he got stabbed, dark eyes lamented so harshly that his brows quivered and met. 

He'd recognize that half destroyed city skyline anywhere. It was the once proud capital city of the frozen, unforgiving motherland; Moscow. He hadn't bothered to check his jacket before, but now his hands tugged at the back of his neckline. Sure enough, there was a subtle hood attached, and Mattias flipped it up with a dreaded, weighted silence just as someone shoved him forward to continue moving. 

Apparently, they headed directly for the valet section, where several black and obviously loaded to the teeth with anti-supe defenses vehicles waited patiently for their arrival. Matt watched listless as the men divided themselves up, and without thinking, he returned to Cifer's side as the man approached a luxury limousine.

Men stood guard at the doors, bowing stiffly, cautiously, as Cifer and Matt approached. The traitor waved them off dismissively, and they straightened up, opening the door with a trained ease that suggests this was their one and only job. Matt's thumb jammed against his nose as Cifer had to hunch over what looked to be painfully far before he could slip inside. 

He didn't need to be asked to follow the man in. Matt was on his ass the second the opportunity arose. Without a meed to wait for some staff member to shut the door behind him, he slammed it with enough force that the bottles of vodka and other liquor rattled against each other. As one of those mobile party vehicles—one with a massive and open enough interior that Matt only needed to bend at the waist a little while he moved, he easilt stole the seat across from where Cifer was. 

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Matt heard the staff and the guards outside shout with alarm, but no one dared open the door without permission to check.