Cold Fusion - A Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Fusion Short Story Anthology

The Winter War - part 3

Kate took the crumpled tube from him with a lifted brow, then, without further question, quickly unrolled it to look at the intricate drawings that spidered across the pale pages. She studied them a moment before fishing out another bundle of folded papers from inside her long coat.

As she did, Balt found himself studying her. The number of times they had worked together, he had seen all three of her major personalities on several occasions and learned a number of their defining traits. The assassin, the one the Agency found the most useful, was brutal, efficient and cold, letting little stand in the way of her goal.

Eloise, on the other hand, was warm and inviting, even though she hid a deep pain from the event that had shattered her mind into the various personalities she now displayed. And Kate, well, Kate was the thinker, the scientist, the one who invented the marvelous toys and devastating weapons that the Agency also liked to make use of.

He had only seen Kate this focused a couple of times, and that was when she had done some major fighting instead of the assassin personality.

"You've been in a bit of a fight recently, haven't you," he gently accused.

That earned him another lifted brow. Then she went back to studying the drawings, spreading out the second bundle over the first to compare the two.

"Yes," she said after a pregnant pause. "Brown may have been the highest ranking mole in London, but he wasn't the only one. After Red took him out and Annabeth Quinn leveraged Cruikshank into turning against them, we discovered their network went far and deep."

Balt frowned.

"How deep?"

"I uncovered a Prussian base hidden beneath the city, connected to the tunnels being dug for the new underground transit system," she revealed without taking her eyes off the plans.

"What??"

"Oh, don't go reaching for your guns, Balt. Sully and I took care of it," she said, looking over her shoulder at him. Grimacing, Balt took his hand off the handle of his holstered sidearm. "They'd been using that location as a base of operations to launch their various actions against local industry and manufacturing, effectively destabilizing a goodly amount of our support infrastructure."

Again she looked at the plans, sliding the second set of drawings to the side to renew her examination of the ones Balt had gotten from Cruikshank.

"If we hadn't of destroyed that base, they could've attacked from within while von Brandenburg was using these to attack us from above!" she declared. "These are a nasty piece of business. But, ..."

Kate paused to bring the second set of drawings completely over the first.

"Thanks to these drawings, I think we've a weakness we can exploit!"

Eyes narrowed, Balt took a step forward to look more closely at the second set of drawings, which, despite being done in pencil, were very detailed.

"Those don't look like they were done by a draftsman," he noted.

"They weren't," Kate confirmed. "They were done by a little girl by the name of Andjela, who was a protege of Mariah Leopold."

Balt's frown immediately returned.

"Hold on. Did you say Mariah Leopold? As in Jeremiah Leopold's sister?"

"That'd be the one," Kate said with a confirming nod.

Balt let a long breath go as he considered that. Jeremiah Leopold; that was a name he hadn't thought of for several years. Yet here he was, thinking of him twice in the same day.