The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

World Eater

Kassidy was still busy at work in the war room when the elevator door opened nearly an hour later to let the small group of invitees back into the command center, Anna's interrogation, for the moment, done.

"Spymaster Vulcrum," Hunter said as they stepped onto the bullpen floor. "The Lord Commander has uncovered some information that he needs you to immediately analyze."

Still in interrogation mode, the lean master spy looked up with a frown. Then back down at the tablet he was carrying, now rapidly filling with notes he had mentally made while questioning Anna.

"Beam the information to my hand held, Hunter," he directed. "And to Narcist's as well. She'll be assisting me with the analysis. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged, Spymaster," the AI replied and the tablet immediately lit up with additional information.

Beside him, Narcist nodded as she scanned over the first bit of information.

"That makes sense," she said, looking over at Vulcrum. "Not Janner, but Kanter is the handler."

"An alias," Vulcrum said with a thoughtful frown. "For Ivor Makarov, former Qos Viran." He looked up at the ceiling. "How did the young master find this information, Hunter?"

"The Lord Commander ran a comparative analysis of the name against known aliases in the Qos Viran hard database. It yielded Makarov had previously used that alias in some of his undercover work," the AI reported.

Having caught up to them to overhear the base AI's report, Mara asked:

"So what does that mean?"

"It means we have two rogue former Qos Viran working directly with our enemy!" Lash declared as he and Fiadh stepped out of the apartment's entry and onto the bullpen floor. "Romanescu, the slaver, and Makarov, the world eater."

"World eater?" Mara repeated, unfamiliar with the term.

"His specialty was disrupting and bringing down governments," Vulcrum explained. He then was addressing the approaching Lash.

"I'm guessing you recognized the name as soon as she said it. Kanter."

Lash nodded in confirmation as he and Fiadh rejoined them. If any of them noticed the Irish lilith's hair was styled slightly different from what it was when they were down in the cell block, they didn't say. But it was hard to miss the fact she was holding his hand.

Ignoring the looks of curiosity, Lash continued holding onto it, her fingers firmly entwined with his.

"It triggered something in my mind almost immediately," he said. "So I accessed the Qos Viran command network and began running searches and analyses, stepping out to continue doing so without impacting the interrogation. By the way, were you able to elicit any additional information?"

Vulcrum shook his head.

"Nothing actionable, that is," he added. "Noise from around the edges. But if this Kanter Brel turns out to be good, hard intel, then it won't matter. She gave us what we needed."

Lash nodded in agreement.

"We just need to get to him before he realizes Anna is compromised and rabbits," the big vampire pointed out. "I had Hunter run a location trace for Qos Viran implants using the Lord Commander's network. We pinged an altered signal in Antwerp."

"I have assets in Antwerp," Vulcrum indicated. He sent the information Hunter had piped to his tablet to the side with a swipe before accessing the House Lash network via his spymaster interface.