Dinastiya Tested // 3rd Book of the Takaryev Trilogy

Chapter 4

WOW KIER PUTS OUT SO MANY GOOD CHAPTERS SO VERY OFTEN AND ALL HIS BOOK COVERS ARE GREAT ART

shut up I'm trying 

except these chapters are really long and I'm lazy

Ravil had gotten Leopold to fetch Ravil's personal laptop from the ruins of the Kremlin palace. He hadn't provided an explanation, and silently wondered if Leopold was suspicious of him yet. 

Ravil wasn't letting the hospital keep him from looking for Artem. With his laptop, he had hacked into all of Moscow's unsecured surveillance cameras and was now watching them all for any sign of Artem. Of particular interest to Ravil were the Kremlin security cameras, but even then, he wasn't finding very much. A camera from one of the bell towers revealed, in living color, the exact moment the bomb had dropped, but in all the chaos, Ravil hadn't found a lot. 

Ravil glanced up from the laptop to see Leopold sitting by the window, working away at what looked like a crossword puzzle. 

Astounding, Ravil thought dryly, a presidential adviser and member of the State Duma, yet he's got nothing better to do than hover in my hospital room and chew on a word puzzle. A quite accurate summary of politics, eh? 

Ravil reached over to the bedside table and grabbed the TV remote, then turned it on and flipped to the news channel. It had been three days since the bombing, yet everyone was still reporting on it, and with no sign of stopping or even shifting to a differing topic. 

He read the line of Russian text that was scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Thirty tourists dead, several missing. 

Ravil shuddered and hoped that Artem wasn't in the body count. He lifted his gaze, moving it swiftly onto Leopold. 

"Hey." Ravil stole his attention.

Leopold glanced up. "Yes, Mr. President?" 

"Any leads?" Ravil queried. 

Leopold shook his head. "Not yet, sir." 

"Any ideas?" Ravil took another shot at a question. 

Leopold furrowed his brow, round glasses glinting. "You're reviewing security footage, aren't you?"

Ravil nodded. 

"Should've known," Leopold answered, closing the book of crossword puzzles. "What've you checked so far?"

"Kremlin." Ravil answered tersely. "Miscellaneous footage off the streets. Haven't seen anything interesting yet." 

"Checked the Lubyanka building?" Leopold suggested.

Ravil shook his head, then went searching. He couldn't hack Lubyanka, that was a stupid idea. But because he was the president, he could retrieve any security footage he wanted. He found Lubyanka's military servers and logged into them, then wormed his way to the cameras and found the footage. One thing stuck out to him in particular.

There was a one-minute window where the cameras were blacked out completely. It seemed as if someone had shut them off deliberately. One minute was too...perfect to be a computer glitch. Ravil thought it was probably due to human interference. He glanced up at Leopold. "Look at this." 

Leopold ventured over to stand beside Ravil. Ravil turned the laptop so that Leopold could see the screen, then he played back the footage. 

"See?" Ravil asked, stopping the footage. "There's a one-minute window where it just goes dark. Exactly one minute. That's too round, too perfect. It can't be just a computer glitch." 

Leopold tilted his head slightly to one side in consideration. "What are you suggesting, Ravil?" 

Ravil blinked. "Someone deliberately turned them off, I think. Something's going on." 

"Like what?" Leopold pressed with a knowing gleam in his eyes. 

"They might have Artem in there." Ravil finished. 

"'They?'" Leopold queried. "I thought I knew where you were going with this, Ravil, but you lost me, I'm afraid." 

"Someone took Artem," Ravil insisted. "Had to be someone from the FSB, because no one else has that kind of access to both Lubyanka and the Kremlin. The FSB bombed the Kremlin, the FSB stole in and took Artem, and they blacked the cameras so no one would see them-"

"Moy bedniy malchek," Leopold murmured. "Moy bedniy malchek," He shook his head. 

Ravil craned his head and glared at him, evoking silence. "Ya tvoy prezedent," 

"Izvinite menya," Leopold briefly apologized, casting his pale gaze to the ground. 

"Khorosho." Ravil blinked. "The FSB took Artem, and he's at Lubyanka. Set your investigators on it." 

Leopold awkwardly cleared his throat. "Will do." 

Ravil hoped he was right. The sooner he found Artem, the better.