Leshy. Echo of Worlds

Prologue. Old and New

The fracture closed behind him without a sound.

Borland lay on his back and looked at the sky. Gray. Alive — with clouds, with that movement of air called wind. The grass under his hand was wet from rain. The smell — that very smell. Ozone, wet earth, the taste of metal at the edge of perception.

We made it out...

The words came on their own and stayed hanging there — empty, like a cartridge case without powder.

His right hand gripped the Cutter. His left was clenched in a fist — around something hard, put there at the last moment before space closed for good.

Somewhere nearby Vint was talking. Then Gaika. The voices came as through thick glass — the words reached him, the meaning didn't. Consciousness was slipping away, and that was his only salvation from what had happened.

They put him on a stretcher. Carried him.

* * *

It was good to be at Viktor's place; nobody forced their company on him, nobody pried. But Borland understood it himself — something was wrong. No mirror. No words from others, for what was happening inside him — nobody could have found the right words. Something inside had shifted and not settled back. All the old priorities and goals had faded. Inside, it was empty.

Not grief. Grief is something alive, it moves, it changes, sometimes it recedes. This was different. Just — empty.

A few days later he packed his things.

The Zone took him in as it always had. Without ceremony. It simply opened up around him — familiar, silent, with that smell that doesn't change in any world.

For the first weeks he walked. With no route. Just — inward, to where people were rarer and anomalies stood thicker. His instinct worked on its own — he skirted the Electras without thinking, picked his direction by the barely perceptible change in the pressure of the air. The body did everything right. The head took no part.

That was how he lived.

He found a place — deep, where ordinary stalkers didn't go without a good reason. Not a cache — more of a foothold. An old, lonely forester's house in the depths of a dark forest. Walls. A roof. Nothing more was needed. The Cutter lay on a shelf and was silent. Borland hardly touched it — no reason to open fractures when there was nowhere to go. The runic knife lay there too, and only the photo in the medallion was always with him — in his breast pocket.

The Zone lived its own life. Anomalies moved, mutants raised new generations, stalkers came and went. Some came back, most didn't.

Borland became part of that landscape.

* * *

The first time he showed himself to people was a couple of months later, when he decided to help a loner.

Not out of kindness — just because he had decided to. Four men were following a lone stalker's trail. He watched their hunt. The hunters — by their movement, by the intervals, by the way they held their weapons. It wasn't the first time they'd had to kill loners and strip the corpses.

Borland didn't wait to see how it would end.

He came out of the fog from behind — soundlessly, as he knew how, as he had been taught. The first one fell without having time to understand what had happened. The second managed to turn around. That was enough to see, but not enough to do anything.

The third and the fourth ran.

Borland caught up with both.

The stalker they had been chasing came out of cover, looked at what was left, and was silent for a long time. Then he raised his eyes to Borland.

Borland was already leaving.

"Hey." His voice trembled. "Who the hell are you."

Borland didn't answer.

* * *

Rumors move fast in the Zone — faster than people, faster than mutants, sometimes faster than anomalies.

Appears out of nowhere. Lives inside, in the very depths — where nobody goes without a dosimeter and a prayer. Sometimes helps — silently, without explanations, without payment. Sometimes kills — and then it would be better to meet a mutant or take a careless step into an anomaly than to meet him. The slaughters he left behind were neat. That was exactly what was terrifying — not the blood, not the scale, but the neatness. Professional, cold, with no anger and no haste. As if it were a job. As if he didn't care.

Here they christened him Leshy, without even knowing that was what he had been called in the past. Those who had seen him themselves said: the eyes are alive, but they look through you. Like a man who has already counted everything there was to count, and the result didn't please him.

He traded rarely. Only when he needed something specific. The price was always firm — no haggling, no discounts. He put on the table what he had brought, took what he had bought, and left. He asked no questions. The questions he didn't like, he didn't answer — he simply looked, and the other person usually decided on his own that the subject was closed.

Two years passed.

* * *

Borland sat by the wall and looked at the Cutter.

The knife lay on the shelf — where it always lay. The blade didn't glow. Didn't reach for fractures. It was silent, the way everything is silent that has long since stopped being called.

Nowhere to go.

The thought came and went — without pain, without regret. Just a fact. One of those you no longer argue with.

Rain fell beyond the wall. Quiet, steady — the kind that in the Zone usually comes before a surge. Borland listened to it and thought that he would have to fix the perimeter. Anomalies shift after a surge. He had long ago built a maze of anomalies around the house, some drawn in by the methods of the tribe from his past life, others created by Khimik's methods.

His hand found the pendant under his clothes — on its own, without the head's involvement. A habitual gesture, down to automatism. He didn't take out the photograph. He just held the pendant in his palm — warm from the body, light.

The rain fell.

Borland sat.

The Zone lived around him — breathing, moving, grinding down those who gave in, and leaving burns on those it couldn't chew through.

Chapter 1. The Research Center

Lika was late.

She flew down the corridor — heels clicking loudly on the floor, folder under her arm, hair streaming behind her — counting the minutes in her head. The meeting had started seven minutes ago. Seven minutes wasn't the end of the world, if she managed to slip in quietly and sit at the edge. The end of the world would come if she was noticed.

She had stayed too long in the archive and lost track of time. Again.

The search for information about her father was complicated by the total chaos in the archive. The old folders resisted — the paper stuck together, some of the records had faded to the state of shadows, some of the documents in the folders were mixed up as if someone had been sorting them in a hurry and abandoned the job halfway. Lika turned page after page, looking for a name, a date, any mention of her father's last assignment — and didn't find it. The archive kept everything under the sun except what she needed.

Her father had disappeared right here. More precisely — he had gone out on an assignment for this institute and never come back. The official version: an accident in an anomalous zone. The details — classified. The personal file — classified. The assignment itself — classified.

Lika had spent four years to end up on this side of the research center's doors.

A university degree in the field, by correspondence, alongside attempts to get a job here. The competition for lab assistant — three attempts, she got through on the third. And now she had been in the anomalous materials research laboratory for two months, cataloguing samples and writing protocols, and spending all her free time in the archive, among folders nobody had ever properly looked after.

The institute was huge, unwieldy, and in that unwieldiness there was an advantage of its own: nobody was watching what exactly she was looking for.

So far — nothing.

But she had only just begun.

A turn. Another corridor. The office door swung open right in front of her.

Lika couldn't brake in time.

* * *

The impact was mutual.

She flew into someone solid, hard — the folder tore loose, papers fanned out, her heel twisted — and they both ended up on the floor. Lika hit her elbow, hissed, tried to get up by reflex.

She got up. The man — tall, close-cropped, with that particular calm in his face that people have when they're used to surprises — rose after her. Slowly, without cursing. As if the fall had been planned and hadn't surprised him much.

"Sorry, I wasn't looking where I was running, I really didn't mean to, please forgive me," the words spilled out on their own as Lika bent for the papers, "it was my fault, completely, I was just late and miscalculated."

She straightened up.

The man was looking at her.

Not the way people look after a collision — with irritation or bewilderment. Differently. He looked at her face and didn't move. At all. As if he had seen something and frozen with it — unable either to look away or to speak.

Lika fell silent.

A second. Another.

Who is that? Why is he looking like that? Is he someone from management? I've only been here two months and already, already...

The tears came unexpectedly — she hadn't wanted them, it was just nerves, just that look that made her uneasy, and the thought that everything would collapse — four years of effort, the attempts to get in here...

"It's all right," said the man. His voice was even. "Be more careful in the future."

But he still hadn't looked away.

* * *

At the noise in the corridor, a woman came out of the office.

Lika had seen her before — in the corridors, at general meetings. Ekaterina Sergeyevna, head of the Department of Fracture Research. One of those people you look at and immediately understand: this person knows what she wants and is used to getting exactly that. Now she stood in the doorway and looked at Lika with an expression Lika couldn't read.

"Vikki?"

Her voice broke — quietly, almost inaudibly, but Lika heard it.

She turned around.

"Lika." A pause. "Do you know me?"

Ekaterina Sergeyevna blinked. Something in her face changed, the emotions went — quickly, professionally — and it became ordinary again.

"I mistook you for someone else." An even voice. "What happened here?"

"Nothing serious," said the man. "I came out of your office too fast and knocked the girl off her feet."

The informal "you" came out naturally — not a slip, just a boundary that had long since been erased between these two. Lika noted it automatically while trying to work out what was going on. She was waiting for a dressing-down. Or a cold "report to your department head." Or just a look of disgust turned aside.

Instead — she was being covered for.

"Which department are you from?" asked Ekaterina Sergeyevna.

"The anomalous materials research laboratory." Lika spoke quickly. "I'm a new employee, an assistant. I'm sorry for making a noise."

Ekaterina Sergeyevna looked at her a second longer than politeness required. Then she said — calmly, as if she had already decided everything and was simply stating a fact:

"I'll request your transfer to my department. A position recently opened up there — lab assistant for cataloguing artifacts that affect space. Go into my office and wait. I'll be back in half an hour — I need to settle the matter with your current supervisor right away."

Lika opened her mouth. Closed it.

Nodded.

She went into the office. Closed the door behind her.

* * *

It was quiet in the corridor.

"You noticed too," said Vint. Not a question — he said it as a statement.

Ekaterina was looking at the closed door.

"Have you ever seen me make decisions about people for the team this fast?"

Vint didn't answer. That in itself was an answer.

"The ears are different," Ekaterina said after a pause. "And there's nothing at the ends of the hair."

"I noticed."

A pause.

"We need to find out who she is," said Vint. "Before we do anything further."

"We will." Ekaterina was already walking down the corridor. "Go. I'm going to Bishof, then I'll come back to her."

Vint remained standing. Looked at the office door for another second.

Then he turned and went the other way.

Chapter 2. Ekaterina Sergeyevna

Ekaterina Sergeyevna's office was exactly what the office of a person who tolerated no excess should be.

No decorative trinkets on the windowsill, no frames with motivational quotes on the walls. Only what worked: a desk, three chairs, a cabinet of folders — labeled evenly, without abbreviations — and a board on the wall that was clearly not used for show. Diagrams on it, graphs, several photographs of anomalous formations with handwritten captions. In the corner, a safe. Over the desk, a lamp on a flexible stalk, the one item that, judging by its chipped base, the owner had carried with her through several workplaces.

On the desk — only the necessary. A laptop. A cup of pens. A folder of current documents, closed. No clutter.

Lika sat across from the empty chair and waited.

She hadn't digested what had happened yet. Everything had gone too fast — the collision, that look, the instant offer of a transfer, the closed door. Now she was sitting in the office of a department head, a place she had never expected to end up under any circumstances, trying to understand what exactly was going on and how it would end for her.

Why she had been taken on here — she didn't understand.

* * *

Ekaterina began the conversation in Bishof's office without preamble.

"Give me that girl."

Bishof looked up from his papers. Heavyset, close to fifty, with that particular solidity in every movement that people have when they're used to making decisions without hurry. Elbows on the desk, fingers laced — the pose of a man who listens and counts at the same time.

"What girl?"

"The new assistant from your laboratory. Anzhelika," Ekaterina didn't sit down. "I need someone for the lab assistant position, my Solovyova is on maternity leave, the work is at a standstill. She'll do."

Bishof was silent for a second. Then:

"Why do you need this one in particular? What did you see in her?"

His eyes were restless — not from emotion, from the habit of calculating. He was clearly searching the situation for what he might have missed. The girl was perfectly ordinary — no connections, no special achievements in her portfolio. Average discipline: a few late arrivals in two months, periodically vanishes who knows where. Nothing remarkable, to be honest.

"I need her, and that's it," Ekaterina cut in. "I'm not obliged to explain my staffing choices."

"Oh, you really are cantankerous," Bishof leaned back, and a slow smile appeared on his face, the smile of a man who had just found where it was to his advantage to agree. "Fine. I'll give her up. But you owe me a favor."

Ekaterina knit her brows.

"Equipment," he said simply. "I want a new installation for the laboratory. It costs a decent amount, approval goes through three levels. Help me push it through."

"What kind of installation?"

He named it. Ekaterina thought for a second — weighed where it overlapped with her own tasks, and realized that it overlapped quite well.

"Agreed. But keep in mind — you won't be the only one playing with it. That installation will be useful to me too."

"It's always a pleasure doing business with you, Ekaterina Sergeyevna," said Bishof, in an intonation that could have meant respect as easily as relief.

Ekaterina left without saying goodbye. Superfluous words weren't her style.

* * *

The office door swung open sharply — Lika flinched.

Ekaterina Sergeyevna walked to the desk, sank into her chair, laced her fingers and rested her chin on them. She looked at Lika for several seconds — studying, unhurried. Then she smiled. Unexpectedly warmly.

"Let's get acquainted properly. Ekaterina Sergeyevna, head of the Department of Fracture Research. You're on my team now. You start your duties tomorrow; today you have nowhere to hurry. Tell me about yourself."

Lika was taken aback by such direct interest in her person. After two months in a laboratory where at best people looked at her as a function — fetch, record, put away — this kind of attention felt unfamiliar.

"Anzhelika Igorevna Svetlova," she spoke quickly, before her thoughts could scatter. "I'm studying by correspondence at the State Institute of Radiology and Physics of Anomalies, in the faculty of radiological research of solid anomalous matter, third year. I work alongside — I've been here two months. Before that, six months remotely at a private research company, processing field data. I have experience with artifacts, mostly classification and primary diagnostics."

Ekaterina listened without interrupting. Occasionally she made a brief note in a notebook.

"Good," she said when Lika fell silent. "Tell me about your parents."

The pause was short, but noticeable.

"My mother is a doctor, a general practitioner at a district clinic," Lika said evenly. "My dad... my dad was a stalker."

"Was?"

"He disappeared. Four years ago." She was looking at the desk, not at Ekaterina. "He worked on contract for this research center. He went out on an assignment and didn't come back. Officially — an accident in an anomalous zone. Everything else is classified."

Silence.

"That's why you're here," said Ekaterina. Without a question's intonation.

Lika raised her eyes. There was no point in denying it.

"Yes. I wanted to find anything at all. What his last assignment was. Where he went. What happened to him."

"What was his name?"

"Svetlov Igor Dmitriyevich." Lika paused. "In the Zone they called him Bely. Because of his hair — he went gray early, at about thirty, his head was completely white."

Ekaterina wrote it down. Put the pen away. Looked at the girl — attentively, without the guardedness she'd had in the corridor.

"I'll look into it. I promise nothing, a lot really is classified. But I'll see what can be found."

Lika nodded. Something tightened in her throat — she hadn't expected such a simple "I'll look into it." She was used to beating against walls of indifference.

"That's all for today. Go home, rest. Tomorrow at nine — come to me, I'll introduce you to your colleagues and bring you up to speed."

Lika stood. At the door she turned around — wanted to say something. To thank her, probably.

Ekaterina was already looking at the laptop.

Lika left.

* * *

A minute after the door closed behind her, Ekaterina reached for the phone.

The first call — to HR. Svetlova Anzhelika Igorevna's transfer to be processed today, backdated, all questions with Bishof already settled. The second — to the archives department. The personnel file of contract employee Svetlov Igor Dmitriyevich, call sign Bely. Everything there was, including classified materials — she had a certain level of access to documents stamped "secret." Needed by morning.

On the other end they hesitated. She repeated it calmly and without raising her voice — in exactly the tone used by people who are not accustomed to repeating themselves twice. It helped.

Then she opened the messenger. Typed to Vint, briefly:

"The girl from the corridor — Svetlova Anzhelika. Father is a stalker, a center contractor, call sign Bely. Disappeared four years ago. Did you know him?"

Sent it. Closed the phone.

It was getting dark outside. Ekaterina switched on the lamp, opened the folder of current tasks, and looked at it for a while without reading.

Then the phone vibrated briefly. Vint's reply came quickly — which meant he was online, which meant he was thinking about it himself.

She read it. Was silent.

Then she wrote one more message — to a different person this time.

Chapter 3. Bely

For two weeks Vint did the thing he didn't like doing — talking.

Calls, meetings, careful questions to people who might know but didn't necessarily want to tell. Gaika joined in from her side — she had channels Vint didn't, and a persistence that got through where politeness didn't. Two more acquaintances from the old stalker circles — not close, but reliable — sounded out their own contacts.

The picture came together slowly. And the further it went, the less Vint liked what was coming together.

In the official archives — next to nothing. Bely's personal file had been cleaned neatly, with no visible trace of interference; the information simply ended at a certain date, and beyond it was a blank wall stamped "classified." The last assignment — not only no details, not even a direction was left. No coordinates, no handler, no escort group. As if the man had walked into the void of his own free will and nobody was particularly troubled by it.

But people remembered.

Those who were still alive and who agreed to talk.

Bely was one of those stalkers whom the Zone respects quietly — no stories in the bar, no posturing. He walked long, walked deep, came back. The reputation of a man who knows where he's going and doesn't take on what he's not sure of. Several joint runs with different people — always clean, no losses. They said he could read anomalies almost physically, as if he felt them before they showed themselves.

Four years ago he took an assignment from the institute. Alone, without a group — which in itself was strange for a serious run. And he never came back.

The two acquaintances Vint had asked to ask around in their circles turned up three people who knew Bely well. By the time Vint tried to reach them, one was dead — an accident on the way out of the Zone, officially. The second had vanished — simply stopped getting in touch a week ago. The third refused to talk. Briefly, without explanation. Stopped picking up the phone.

It wasn't paranoia. It was a pattern.

Vint sat with that for two days before deciding it was time to talk to the girl.

* * *

Lika liked her new job.

She hadn't expected it herself — she'd thought she would put up with it, as she had in the previous laboratory. But here it was different. Ekaterina Sergeyevna's department worked tightly, without needless fuss — everyone knew their place and their task, nobody wasted time showing off how busy they were. The artifacts that came to her for cataloguing were more interesting than anything she had seen before — some of them affected space in such a way that the measuring instruments behaved unpredictably, and that demanded not just a protocol but a head.

She tried not to ask about her father. Ekaterina Sergeyevna was a person you were better off not reminding — she would call when she had something to say.

Lika waited. And worked. And sometimes, in the lunch break, went into the archive — out of habit, out of inertia.

When the summons to the office came, she understood right away what it was for.

* * *

That man sat by the wall — not at the desk, a little to the side, like someone who had come neither as a guest nor as the host, but as the one who would speak about business.

"Lika, come in, sit down." Ekaterina Sergeyevna nodded at a chair. "You two have already met, in a way. This is Vint — a very good friend of mine and, concurrently, head of the security group during my research in the Zone."

Vint nodded, restrained.

"Hello," said Lika. "Once again, sorry about that incident."

He waved it off briefly — not out of politeness, just closing the subject.

"It happens. A lesson for me — you can't relax within the institute's walls either."

The smirk was brief. Lika didn't manage to work out whether he was joking.

"Lika," Ekaterina put her hands on the desk. "This is about your father."

Her heart gave one heavy beat and sped up. Lika sat upright and tried to keep it from showing.

Ekaterina spoke briefly — about how she had requested archive data, how there were almost no official materials, how most of it was closed at a level above her access. Then she nodded to Vint.