Svetlana Belikova held Gavin Banks's gaze without flinching. Her English was fluent—she'd clearly put in the work.
"Do you think we're lacking for weapons and equipment? You're American, aren't you? You don't understand our customs. In my view, raw strength and physical toughness are the only things that have kept our people standing on this land."
She had no interest in anything the Brotherhood was offering.
She reached into her bag and pulled out two photographs, sliding them across to Gavin. "If you want to work with me, you need to bring something stronger to the table. Buying up a few rooms in the Burj Khalifa? Recruiting a few hundred unemployed drifters? That doesn't prove a thing. What I want is this—a bioweapon. The perfect fusion of strength and science."
Bella and Gavin studied the photographs together. They showed a towering humanoid creature, its body massive—but grotesquely battered. Iron-gray skin. A military-green coat draped over an enormous, brutish frame.
Bella wasn't deeply familiar with it, but she recognized it immediately: a Tyrant bioweapon.
Gavin kept his expression neutral, but his eyes flicked briefly toward Bella. His look said it all: Mentor, what do we do? I don't think we actually have one of these.
Bella met his gaze with a quiet nod. Her look said: We can make that happen.
Factoring in Weyland's current workload and the time required to culture the viral strain, she held up three fingers beneath the table.
Gavin pretended to deliberate for a moment before speaking. "Ms. Belikova, we can provide three. Three brand-new Tyrants."
A flicker of excitement crossed Svetlana Belikova's face—then she caught herself and looked away, feigning deep consideration. She'd revealed too much.
She had only one Tyrant in her possession, and it was in terrible shape. She'd been testing them, hadn't really expected them to deliver—and yet here they were. These mysterious people actually had the goods.
Brand-new Tyrants. She knew exactly what that meant. These people had access to the original viral strain. And behind them stood a substantial research apparatus.
Svetlana Belikova had spent years disparaging her former career as a drill instructor, but that career had shaped her to the core. She was a true believer in individual combat power—the lone wolf charging into enemy territory, the warrior who needed no one. She'd always admired the design philosophy behind the Tyrant, always loved that category of perfected bioweapon.
The problem was that East Slavonia was too small. The major powers weren't going to hand her anything like this—she couldn't even buy one on the black market.
She forced the excitement down. Her expression hardened into something that looked vaguely offended.
"Three? I am the leader of a nation, not some two-bit militia. What use are three Tyrants to me? Fine—I'll accept all your conditions. But my terms are simple: I want twenty Tyrants. And I want the full production documentation and the original viral strain."
Gavin refused outright. "Ms. Belikova, you can't be serious. Do you have any idea how tightly controlled bioweapons are internationally? Do you understand the scientific investment involved? Selling all of East Slavonia wouldn't cover the cost."
The two of them went back and forth for three days.
The production documentation was off the table from the start—Belikova knew they'd never hand it over, so after a prolonged standoff, she dropped that demand herself. The original viral strain was likewise non-negotiable.
What the Brotherhood ultimately agreed to was this: enhanced Tyrants—taller, stronger—and two additional units, bringing the total to five. In exchange, Svetlana Belikova—former top drill instructor—would train five hundred Brotherhood fighters. They didn't need to match tier-one special forces, but they had to be meaningfully above standard infantry.
The military bases and airfields she'd previously promised were confirmed. On the question of providing safe harbor for assassins carrying Continental Hotel credentials, she was more selective: she'd offer paid assistance to Russians and Eastern Europeans, but for everyone else, she'd need to think about it.
Both sides left with something. Belikova walked away with five hundred fighters who'd work for her for free, plus five upgraded Tyrants. In return, she'd spend at least a year training those recruits. The military infrastructure arrangements had nothing to do with her personally—she'd need to leverage her party connections and broker those introductions; the Brotherhood would then have to negotiate the details directly with whoever she put them in touch with.
The Brotherhood wasn't about to let her run the training operation solo. Fund it, staff it, and hand five hundred trained soldiers over to her? Hardly. So Bella seconded the Ninidze brothers from the Georgian chapter—the two men she'd met back at Ashina Castle, Kyujiro and Iwata—to serve as assistant instructors.
Both of them were perpetually high-energy and genuinely enjoyed putting people through their paces, though they still went a little weak in the knees around Bella.
"Learn Belikova's training methods. Do it well, and you'll be the Brotherhood's official instructors going forward. Understood?"
Both nodded immediately.
The first cohort of two hundred recruits, along with the Ninidze brothers, began filtering into East Slavonia in staggered groups.
Belikova hadn't run a training program in ten years, but she didn't miss a beat. She started with the basics—physical conditioning. Laps. Get running.
On her end, Bella pushed Weyland to assign a dedicated team to begin producing Tyrant bioweapons for Belikova. Personally, she didn't think the creatures were all that impressive, but if that's what the woman wanted, who was she to argue?
Three days later—after a stretch of relentless activity—Bella was back in New York, checking on the Continental Hotel project currently under construction.
Everything was being run under Hammerhead's name. William Miles had dispatched Brotherhood assassins to quietly eliminate several local gang bosses who'd been making noise about wanting a cut, and had bribed a sizable number of corrupt NYPD officers in the process. The groundwork was starting to hold.
Inside one of Hammerhead's bars, Bella found William Miles—and his son, who was beginning to show a distinctly dramatic streak: Desmond Miles.
It was almost theatrical how it had all come together.
William had traveled to Osaka to preside over Bella's investiture as Mentor, then accompanied her on the world tour that followed. During that same window, his sixteen-year-old son had slipped away from the Brotherhood's South Dakota chapter. Desmond didn't want to be an assassin. He wanted his freedom. So he'd come to New York and taken a job as a bartender—at a bar that, as fate would have it, was Hammerhead's territory.
When William came to Hammerhead to arrange the Continental Hotel project and walked in to find his own son behind the bar, he was floored. He got the full story, then proceeded to deliver a thorough dressing-down—verbal and otherwise. By the look of things now, it hadn't taken.
Bella arrived in her white Eagle's Beak robes, her face half-veiled in a soft haze, as if glimpsed through water.
"Mentor—why did you want him in the room?"
William Miles didn't understand why she'd asked Desmond to sit in on this meeting.