Leshy. Echo of Worlds

Chapter 18. The Bar of the Darks

They were met at the cinema.

The building stood out from the rest not by size or condition — just by the fact that it was plainly being watched over. The façade was cleared of trash. The steps were whole, without potholes — or the potholes had been patched, she couldn't tell. The doors were metal, shut, with hinges that had been oiled: Lika worked that out later, when they were opened — they didn't squeak. An old cinema that someone had given a new life. A different life.

Four came out from around the corner. Calmly, unhurried, the way people come out who feel themselves to be the masters here.

Two wore theater masks. White porcelain, painted features — one mask depicted something like a smile, the other was neutral. The masks covered the face completely: only the eyes were visible in the slits. Lika looked at those eyes and understood that the masks were not decoration. Under them was something that was better not seen by outsiders. Or that their wearers would rather not show.

The other two wore no masks. Each had one normal arm and one hypertrophied: half again as large, muscles and tendons like those of a man who had spent his whole life making one and the same inhuman effort. Living — not a prosthesis, not an exoskeleton, his own. The skin on the big arm was a slightly different shade, the texture different too, but otherwise a man like any man.

Not Izloms yet. But long since not ordinary people.

Borland stopped. So did they.

No one spoke for three, four seconds. Then one of those in masks nodded, briefly. A gesture clear without words: follow us.

* * *

Inside, Lika stopped involuntarily.

The cinema foyer was furnished with the thoroughness of people who are settling in for good and know they are here forever. A counter of old boards and a sheet of steel — even, with shelves behind it. On the shelves bottles, several kinds, some with homemade labels. Tables — homemade, of different heights, but all standing steady. Benches along the walls, one of them with cushions. The light came from kerosene lamps under the ceiling, a dozen and a half of them at different heights, which made the hall bright enough and at the same time strange, with shadows playing not where you expected.

Half-naked girls moved around the hall. Young, with no visible mutations — as far as Lika could make out. They carried mugs and plates to the tables, cleared away the empty ones. They moved habitually, without strain — already used to this place.

Lika looked at them a little longer than she should have.

At the tables sat the Darks — in various degrees of alteration. Some almost ordinary, some in masks, one with something else instead of hair, another with a neck of the wrong length. They talked, drank, ate. An ordinary bar with unordinary patrons.

One of the escorts turned and looked at her. She looked away.

* * *

A staircase up. A corridor — short, three doors, all closed. The far one with a plaque: the letters had almost worn away, but "Director" could be read.

The escort knocked. A pause.

"Come in."

The voice behind the door was unexpected — low, calm, without the hoarseness she for some reason had expected. Just a voice. A human one.

The escort opened the door. Stepped aside.

Borland went in first. Lika — after him.

* * *

The office was small, but lived-in.

A writing desk by the window — heavy, oak, clearly brought from somewhere far away, not original to this building. On the desk several maps weighed down with stones, a stack of papers, two mugs — one full, one empty. A cabinet along the left wall with books — real ones, many, some in battered covers, some clearly homemade bindings. Along the right wall a weapons rack: assault rifles, a shotgun, something older and more imposing in the corner. All clean, all in its place.

On the windowsill stood a flowerpot.

A living plant. Green, watered in moderation. Lika looked at it and didn't at once understand why it was so strange. Then she understood: a living plant in the deep Zone, in a city of mutants.

A man sat behind the desk. About fifty, broad-shouldered, with gray in his short-cropped hair. His face calm, closed — without expression. No visible mutations, unless you counted the eyes: green, cat's eyes.

He was looking at Borland.

Then his gaze shifted to Lika. Lingered. The pupils narrowed, like a cat's before an attack. Lika felt uneasy, goosebumps ran down her spine.

The gaze returned to Borland.

"Leshy," he said. Without intonation. "Long time no see."

"Long time," Borland agreed.

It was quiet in the office. Nothing came through from behind the door — good soundproofing, or else everyone outside had simply gone still.

Lika stood a little behind Borland and waited.

Chapter 19. The Conversation

The armchairs by the wall turned out to be unexpectedly comfortable. Old, leather, with sagging seats. Borland sat in one, Lika in another. The master of the office stayed behind his desk.

He was called Graf, and he considered the Zone his domain, his county — as befits a man called Graf. What he was really called, no one knew.

Graf looked at him calmly. Green cat's eyes — motionless and calm.

"Three heads," Graf said at last. Without intonation. "A fine parcel."

"They came in first."

"I know." A pause. "That doesn't mean you had the right."

"I did. By the law of the Zone, I did. My territory, my perimeter. They violated it."

Graf looked at him. Said nothing for a few seconds. Lika sat nearby and didn't move — a clever girl, she understood that this was not her conversation now.

"You could have come. Talked."

"I could have," Borland agreed. "I didn't. Because a conversation would have taken time, and the parcel explained everything faster." He looked at Graf evenly. "No hard feelings. But it had to serve as a lesson for everyone."

Graf leaned back. A long pause — the kind another man would fill with words. He just sat and thought about something of his own.

Then he nodded. Once, briefly.

"Fine," he said. "Agreed." And at once, with no transition: "Why did you come?"

* * *

Borland spoke briefly. About Apex — what he knew. About the northern node — what he suspected. About the girl beside him — in a single phrase: her father went there four years ago, she is looking for a trail.

Graf listened. Didn't interrupt. When Borland fell silent, he looked at the desk for a few seconds, then raised his eyes.

"We don't like Apex either," he said. "They've been here a long time. Longer than everyone thinks. We watch them — not out of curiosity, it's just that otherwise you don't know what's going on right under your nose."

"What are they doing?"

"We don't know exactly. They bring in equipment. Heavy, specialized. Where to — we haven't managed to track, they change their routes." Graf took a mug from the desk, sipped, set it down. "But we see the results."

"Which ones?"

"Anomalies." He said it curtly, like a diagnosis. "They've become unstable. They shift, change type, appear where they never were. We've lived here a long time — we know how this place breathes. For the last half year it has been breathing differently." A pause. "And mutants. New kinds. I never saw such before. None of us did. Some don't take hold here, but many are super-hunters, stronger than any other kinds. They adapt and hunt everything in sight. So far we manage to regulate their numbers, so they don't come out of the depths of the zone."

Lika exhaled quietly, almost inaudibly. Borland didn't look at her, but he heard.

"The Resonance project. I suspect they're experimenting with fractures and spatial bubbles, and that's why all sorts crawl in here through the holes they've made," he said.

"I don't know what they call it. I know something is happening with space. With fractures." Graf looked at him evenly. "And that worries us. We have nowhere to go."

It was quiet in the office. Outside the window it was quiet too, only a barely audible wind through broken glass somewhere in the corridor.

Borland was thinking.

Apex, who had been here a long time. Unstable anomalies. New mutants. The Resonance project, which took its roots from the institute, but had long since become something else. And somewhere in all of this — Bely, who had gone to the northern node four years ago and not come back.

"The man you took from Apex," said Borland. "Tell me."

"And since when do you care about people? This girl, and now you're interested in a guy too? You're like those super-hunters yourself, there's less human in you than in us," Graf twisted his mouth into a smile.

"Don't dodge the question."

* * *

"Young. Light brown hair. Came out of a fracture — we were just watching an Apex group that was hanging around there." Graf spoke without extra detail, to the point. "Apex noticed him, lost him at first, but then caught up and took him under control. We took him from Apex. He came on his own — didn't try to resist. As if he understood we weren't enemies."

"Or understood he had no choice, you've got uglier mugs than Apex," said Borland.

"Or that." Graf shrugged slightly. "Speaks Russian. But there's something different in him — the words are right, but something behind them isn't. Like a man who learned the language well, but thinks in another."

"Did he tell you anything about himself?"

"Nothing." Something came into Graf's voice, a certain spite. "Keeps quiet. Answers with jokes — black, unpleasant ones. One of ours asked where he's from. He answered: 'From beyond the grave.' Another asked what his name was. He said: 'Dukh.' A call sign, evidently."

Borland looked at him.

"Show me what he had on him."

Graf opened a desk drawer. Took out a small container — metal, with a fixed lid. Set it on the desk, opened it.

Inside lay an artifact.

Small, its shape closer to a sphere. The surface shimmered — not glowing, precisely shimmered, like oil on water, only slower, with depth. The colors changed smoothly: blue into green, green into gold, gold back.

"Seen anything like it?" asked Graf.

Borland took the container. Carefully, with two fingers. Raised it to his eyes.

Something changed at his hip.

The Cutter. The knife lay in its sheath — had lain calmly for two years now, silent. But now — a barely noticeable vibration, light, as if the metal had remembered something. It didn't strain, didn't tear free. It simply — answered.

Borland showed it in no way. Didn't change his posture, didn't lower his gaze.

"An interesting thing," he said evenly. "Haven't come across it before."

Interesting was putting it mildly. The Cutter hadn't reacted to anything for two years. To this artifact — it reacted. Possibly this artifact had properties similar to the one Khimik and Prigorshnya once had, before it was melted down into the Cutter.

He put these thoughts where things piled up that required thinking over later.

He set the container back on the desk.

"Can you bring him in?" Borland asked. "Maybe I can get him talking."

Graf looked at him for a second.

"I'll warn you right now: he broke the noses of two of my men. We had to tie him up." A pause. "Be careful."

"Bring him tied. We'll untie him here."

Graf nodded. Stood, opened the door, said something into the corridor. Returned to his desk.