lPrivideniya ~ Chapter 4

 

 

 

He knew that he had a little time before Vulich began to pose a real problem to him, so Ocelot let him walk away. The man had sharp eyes, and a quick mind. He was intuitive and accurate, and he didn't know anything but war. That was what made Vulich so potentially troublesome, but it was also what made him so potentially useful. Waste not; want not: that was what the Americans said. A bit of wire could be turned into a spoon, a shoelace could be turned into a belt. A surly young Communist with an axe to grind could be turned into a pawn to be moved at Ocelot’s leisure.

 

Soldiers like Vulich were an endangered species these days. They had been hunted nearly to extinction. Ocelot knew this, because he personally ended the lives of more of them than most people knew existed.

 

Conservationism wasn't the reason Ocelot decided to let Vulich enjoy his natural habitat a little longer, though. Sergei Gurlukovich had always proved too stubborn to be of any use; he had needed to die. But on the other hand, his daughter had been malleable. Ocelot had known it from the first time he met her.

 

Vulich was still young, and though there were only a few troops under his command, he still didn't have the experience to lead them. With time, he would only become stronger, but at the moment he didn’t even have Olga’s iron constitution.

 

Ocelot would be keeping an eye on him.  Vulich was a half-feral little beast, one that might attack if cornered. He might gnaw off his own limb to escape the snare Ocelot had set for him.

 

Ocelot shook his head slightly. Maybe he was exaggerating a little, injecting a bit of the theatrical. He had been afraid things were going to be boring, and he could learn to live with a lot, but not with the thought that his long career would end with a whisper rather than with a rifle report.

 

His hands were failing him, but if they didn’t, then something else would. His eyes, his knees, his mind… He had lived a lot of life, just like he had always known he would. His regrets were few, just like he had always known they would be.

 

Now it was time to end things gracefully.

 

There was no return flight to America for him. He had received his instructions in the same Victorian drawing room as always, from the same men, all in pinstripe gray Armani suits and expressions he couldn’t quite make out. They had mentioned nothing about how he should arrange for an escape route. He hadn’t asked. He understood what was happening.

 

There was no sense getting upset about it.

 

Partway down the hall was a plain steel door, unnumbered, unmarked, and unremarkable. It was easy to walk past a door like that every day and never wonder what was behind it. Even a place like Groznyj Grad, needed supply closets and network terminal rooms; anything more important than that should have had cameras, guards, security that rivaled the rest of the compound.

 

But whoever had put this door here knew as well as Ocelot did that sometimes no amount of security could be enough. Sometimes it just took a little trickery to get the job done.

 

Ocelot slid the glove off his left hand. He hardly ever took his gloves off – rarely to sleep, almost never to fuck – and the palm of his left hand was still smooth, uncalloused by his guns. The only place still unscarred after sixty years of war. It didn't match his right hand at all. Liquid had never been very good at taking care of himself.

 

He was unaccustomed to being humiliated, so Ocelot remembered the moments he was very clearly. Waking in the basement of that clinic in Lyon and realizing that he recognized the tattoo of a barcode over his new right wrist; that first instant, still half-asleep, when he realized that the code was for him. He was their experiment now.

 

And still, there was no sense getting upset about it.

 

Ocelot's fingers curled around the metal handle of the door, but he didn't try to turn it. It was locked, of course. But as he held his hand there, he felt the metal heat beneath his palm, taking an impression of his fingerprints.

 

After a moment, he heard the lock click open and he went inside. The door opened onto the seamless walls of an elevator; Ocelot stepped inside and a steel grate slid down behind him. The elevator moved, taking him downward.  There was a little jolt as he slid past the concrete foundation of the fortress, and then the ride was smooth.

 

Sometimes Ocelot couldn't help but wonder if things couldn't have been different. If there couldn't have been a moment somewhere along the line, when he could have said no. When he could have walked away…

 

But perhaps the real question was, would he have taken an opportunity like that if it presented itself? Even knowing everything he knew now, Ocelot couldn't be certain he would ever have wanted things to be different.

 

It was best not to think about the past, especially when he was somewhere like this. Groznyj Grad, where he could feel the hot breath on the back of his neck, of everything he had left behind…

 

The fluorescent lighting above him flickered. Ocelot put out a hand to steady himself against the wall, a split second before the elevator ground to a halt. The lights went out, plunging him into darkness.

 

The last time he had been in Groznyj Grad, surges like this had been an almost daily occurrence, an unfortunate side effect of generating all their power onsite. But it was more annoying than comforting to think that some things never changed…

 

Ocelot didn't notice the chill until the fingers of his ungloved hand were already stinging from it. And even then, he couldn't pinpoint the exact moment the inside of the elevator had turned icy cold, as though it had been that way all along, just waiting for him to notice it.

 

He froze, tensed. He couldn't see, but he knew his breath was fogging in the air before him.

 

He couldn't see, but he knew that he wasn't alone in here anymore. There wasn't anything tangible, no sound or smell or heat off another body… just the same slightly uncomfortable feeling of being watched. The same one he had felt up on the mountain that morning.

 

Ocelot could feel his pulse racing. Hitting his ribcage and surging up against the point of his jaw. He wasn't going to turn around. He didn't want to turn around…

 

His mouth was dry, his throat already raw from the cold. He clenched his hands at his sides and gasped, "Vanya…?"

 

The name was hardly more than a whisper, but as the last syllable slid past his lips, a spasm of pain raced up his right arm. Ocelot caught his breath sharply, doubling over and pulling his arm to his chest.

 

This wasn't the dull ache of his failing joints.  It was older than that, and more familiar. A searing tongue of fire that seemed to race up each muscle and tendon, reaching for his shoulder, wrapping around his throat…

 

Ocelot squeezed his eyes shut, and so he didn't notice at first that the lights had flickered back on. Then the elevator rattled on its tracks, and began to move again.

 

And Ocelot straightened up again. The pain had faded. Not just faded, vanished as though it had never been there at all. He couldn't even remember anymore, what it had felt like, only that it had been blinding. He only had a few moments before the elevator doors slid open again, so Ocelot caught his breath quickly, pulling his glove back on.

 

Whatever was happening, he wasn't going to let it get in his way.  There was no sense getting upset about it.

 

The grate in front of the elevator lifted, opening onto a narrow steel corridor. The hall was empty except for a double door at the far end, guarded by two sentries in Russian uniforms. They weren't Gurlukovich troops, and they snapped smartly to attention when they saw Ocelot coming. He walked past them without a word, through the doors.

 

There wasn't much to the lab but two small offices and a few computer terminals. The carpet was a soft executive blue; there was a coffee machine in one corner, and a sofa. There were no windows; that was the only way to tell that these rooms – no bigger together than a nice hotel suite – were actually a mile underground, buried beneath a vault of reinforced steel, wearing the fortress of Groznyj Grad like a hermit crab wears a shell.

 

"Shalashaska."

 

A young man in a white lab coat cut between the desks to meet him at the door. He dusted off his hand, and offered it. "Shalashaska. I'm Andrei Novikov. I'm in charge of this project."

 

Ocelot took inventory with a glance. Novikov's dirty blond hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, tucked into the collar of his lab coat. He wore a pair of rimless glasses that Ocelot wasn't entirely convinced he needed. He probably thought they made him look older. But they didn't.

 

He looked at Novikov's hand, but didn't take it. "You're a little young to be running something like this.”

 

Novikov just sighed, as though his credentials bored him. “Please, Sir. I’ve received independent instruction from professors at universities in Tokyo, New York, Munich, Hong Kong, and Moscow. I have the equivalent of two PhDs; the first in artificially engineered neural intelligence, and the second in nanobiological mechanical kinesiology, a field in which I am one of only three recognized experts in the world.”

 

He pressed his lips thin, into what Ocelot assumed was supposed to be a smile. “I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I told you that I’m the only person on earth qualified to lead this project.”

 

“It sounds like they’ve been grooming you for it for a long time.”

 

Novikov shrugged. “No more than you, Shalashaska. And no less.”

 

“Perhaps,” Ocelot said. “You seem to know a lot about me. But I’ve never heard of you.”

 

“I didn’t think you would have. True genius often goes unrecognized.”

 

“Really? I’ve never heard that before. Did your university professors tell you that?”

 

Novikov’s eyes narrowed a little, his voice iced over. “At any rate, Shalashaska, it’s good you’re here. We don’t have any shortage of scientists, but someone with your specific qualifications was difficult to find.”

 

“So where is the experiment being kept?” Ocelot asked, though he didn’t really expect Novikov to tell him. Things were rarely ever that easy.

 

“Somewhere safe,” Novikov said. “You don’t need to concern yourself with that. The external design isn’t significantly different from the other models you’ve worked with; I’m afraid she might be a bit of a disappointment for you in person.”

 

“She?”

 

 “Indeed. She’s most certainly female. You’d understand if you saw her, even someone as… literal as you.” Novikov smiled faintly. “We call her Matryona.”

 

“Isn’t that a little disingenuous? It’s not a very intimidating name.”

 

“Isn’t it?” He laughed. “Shalashaska, you don’t seem to understand what we’re building here. This is not just a machine; it’s the next step forward in human evolution.”

 

Ocelot raised an eyebrow. “If you insist. Who’s going to pilot it? You?”

 

“Oh, of course not. I’m a pacifist, Shalashaska. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

 

“I should have guessed.”

 

Novikov only shrugged. “I’ll leave the barbarism to you.” He beckoned with one hand for Ocelot to follow him. “We’re training the pilot on site. He’s a little green yet, but I’m sure you two will get along.”

 

Ocelot followed him back to one of the rear offices. The door was closed, and shutters were drawn in front of the glass walls that looked out on the lab. Novikov knocked once, then, without waiting for an answer, pushed the door open.

 

The office had been converted into a small apartment: sterile, dark, and inhospitable. There was a small mattress on the floor. A footlocker, a dresser, and a little desk. The walls were bare; there were no pictures, no calendar brazenly counting off the days until the next scheduled leave.

 

And on the bed, sitting with his legs crossed, was a boy with cropped blond hair. There was a gun in his lap, and a clip on the mattress beside him. It was a Czech pistol, the kind everyone in this country carried. But Ocelot had never seen it look as heavy as it did in that boy's small hands.

 

Novikov stepped inside, and the boy looked up. He snapped the magazine into his gun and set both aside, pushing to his feet.

 

Ocelot didn't spend a lot of time around kids; he was no good at guessing their ages. But he knew that to say this boy was anymore than six or seven was being too charitable.

 

"Hello, Kesha," Novikov said with a little smile.

 

"Please." The boy lifted his head. He had clear blue eyes, and the unblinking stare of a sniper. "I want you to call me Innokenty, Doctor."

 

"Innokenty. Of course. There's someone I want you to meet…"

 

Ocelot shook his head. "What is this, Novikov? Some kind of a joke?"

 

"Oh, no," Novikov said. "It's no joke…"

 

The boy stepped forward. He had to crane his head back to look up at Ocelot's face. "Are you Shalashaska? Dr. Novikov tells me about you all the time. I'm Innokenty Gurlukovich."