She has to swallow the ration immediately—after an hour the capsules dissolve into weightless dust. Nowhere to wash here, but twice a week, along with the ration, Olga gets hygienic napkins that she also needs to use quickly before they dissolve. Do they watch her when she strips to wipe herself down? Olga assumes that they must, that they monitor her continuously, even though she never been able to find a single tracking device.
Beyond the walls there’s an empty folding table, a cot, a multifunctional horizontal bar, a mirror and a projection screen that Olga values as her main treasure.
The days here last long, time dripping like viscous, dirty water. Hours on the training bar, maintaining her fitness, hours in front of the projection screen. There are no current programs, but the screen holds tens and hundreds of thousands of classic films and television programs. Olga has been surprised to find that she really likes the black and white studio films from Hollywood’s Golden Age as well as television series from the early twenty-first century, the longer the better.
As usual, the broadcast wasn’t answered. In ten minutes it will be possible to try again. In the meantime, Olga falls onto the cot and begins to think aloud, “Olga Voronov is on the air. We begin our three hundred twenty-ninth daily episode for persons deprived of their liberty. And with yet one more day behind us, the situation hasn’t changed. I’m still in prison, but on the other hand I’m still alive. If they haven’t killed me after all this time, then we can conclude that my unknown abductors need me for one purpose or another, which means that I still have a chance to happily ever after.”
Olga has recited this mantra for several months, but it still calms her a little. Who has imprisoned her? Why? How did she end up in the cell?
She remembers absolutely nothing after the rescues team arrived at her space station, High House Eight. It seems that she was making a report to the commander of the rescue ship and then the world seemed to fade and regained its brightness only here, in the prison cell. How much time passed between these two moments is impossible to say; her internal clock dropped to zero and started up again only after she woke up.
On that first day, Olga lay for hours on the floor, pressing her ear to the stone, trying to hear footsteps, machinery or underground water, but there was only silence. A couple of times earthquakes shook the cell, but that was all.
In the first days and weeks, Olga was afraid that the door would swing open at any time, and prison guards would lead her out to some dead end and shoot her in the back of the head. But that fear has long passed, dissolved in a long line of identical days. Now she is afraid that she will stay here until she goes mad.
Is she being held here because she was accused of a crime? It’s possible that she could be accused of the murder of Electra Donovan and her friends who attacked the High House on January 3, 2092, under the guise of a ship in distress. Children of the elite determined to wipe out the majority of the human race that had despoiled and polluted the planet, they were sought to destroy the High Houses that manufactured the purification agents that could restore the world’s water supply. Olga Voronov, sole administrator of High House Eight from the age of three months, was not yet twelve on the day of the attack. Presumably as the youngest of the High Houses masters, they chose her plant believing that they could easily handle her.
The events of the following hours proved their estimation wrong. Olga killed them all and saved her orbital factory besides.
In her report to the headquarters on Earth, Olga detailed the incident and her actions, lying in just one detail. She didn’t disclose that it had been Doc, her robotic first mate, who’d killed Electra before disabling himself in a fit of grief. She didn’t want the Corporation’s engineers to restore him and find out exactly how Doc could bypass the First Law because if one robot could succeed, then others could also kill, at least in extraordinary circumstances. So she took Electra’s death on herself, claiming that she’d killed the daughter of the president in hand-to-hand combat, and how the ship robot died in battle, rewriting the remnants of his memory for to confirm her story.
She fulfilled her duty, defending the priceless station in a desperate fight. So how did it happen that the reward for the victory was a free trip to prison for almost a year?
Perhaps this was the doing of Electra’s father, who valued the life of his daughter over the wildly expensive High House. That would explain why she had never been brought in front of a tribunal, where the whole truth of Electra’s terrorism would have come out. But why not just kill her? Life in a comfortable cell doesn’t seem like a terrible punishment—minus the absence of something worthwhile to do, it was not unlike living in the High House after her nanny died. Or perhaps the fun is yet to come.
What if it’s not revenge? What if she was sent to prison for some other reason? For what? Money? Her knowledge and skills cost billions, but without a plant they are useless. There is no work here beyond exercise, watching old serials and consuming expensive rations.
The absence of work seems stranger than the absence of a court. The days when the criminals just sat in the cells had passed long before her birth. Space prisons are labor camps where prisoners have to work hard for a grub, water, and daily limit of oxygen. Work and bring a stable profit to the owners of the enterprises, compete in efficiency with the machines.
Olga remembers every episode of her favorite childhood series, The Oven, which was about the hard life of a female correctional colony at the northern pole of Venus. She was enraptured by the adventures of brave heroines who opposed the hellish conditions and the cruelty of the prison system. When she mentioned the show to her handler Petrov, who had helped escort the prisoners to Venus himself, she learned that her favorite TV series was a beautiful fairy tale, that the reality of servitude on prison colonies is much more severe. Created capital seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, or be pushed through an airlock.
And she’s been sitting here for eleven months and hasn’t earned a single ruble? How can this be, when a year ago Olga made a profit of one and a half billion a month? Even without a factory, for Changed of her level there would always be another job. In any prison on Earth and beyond, Olga would have been put to work on the very first day—a prisoner must make money, and Olga certainly knows how to do that. But here she sits idly waiting for unknown.
In the first days and weeks, she tried to play on her captors’ financial interest. Turning to the walls and ceiling Olga gave well thought-out speeches, offering work in exchange for a little more freedom. There was never a reply…
Olga changed tactics and tried to threaten the jailers with suicide if they didn’t let her talk with the management. She raved about smashing her head against the wall, hanging herself on her exercise bar, or cutting herself with a shard of rock. It was a cheap bluff, and the kidnappers naturally didn’t believe her. Surely, they read her psychological profile; she also read this document and found it very interesting…
Excerpts from Olga Voronov personal file: Ensign Voronov is disciplined, calm and polite to others, observes subordination, is capable of compromises and knows how to take into account the interests of others. But behind this lies the desire to use others for personal purposes. Selfish, cynical and inclined to aggression, but skillfully hides these traits, trying, if possible, to impress the simple, responsive girl. She is extremely prudent, with an increased instinct for self-preservation, for the sake of achieving her goal she’ll go for everything.
Selfish, extremely prudent, with an increased instinct for self-preservation. Does such girl break her head against the wall? No chances, the characteristic of the best psychologists are not lying. But the characteristic also doesn’t lie in the other thing—for the sake of achieving her goal she’ll go for everything.
So, the bargaining and blackmail didn’t lead to the result, the unknown enemy didn’t show any interest to her, and Olga abandoned her attempts, but didn’t abandon the intention. If no one is going to release her from he
re, then it will come out itself, no matter how hard it was.
Having carefully studied the cell in the first two days, Olga came to a disappointing conclusion—the dungeon was built by professionals, especially to keep inside Changed like her as long as you please.
The only way out is through the armored door. She can’t knock it out or take off the hinges; Olga understood this at first sight. If she had a body of a Changed soldier, then maybe she could break through the armor with her bare hands, but Olga was created for a job that doesn’t require exorbitant physical efforts. As her dread that the door would open to guards ready to frog-march her to her death faded to an acceptance it would never open, she started to hope that it would. Perhaps she could overpower the guards, take their weapons, and escape. She wouldn’t get far in unfamiliar territory, of course, and she had always proven an indomitable will to survive, but as the months trudged by even a doomed rush for freedom seemed better than this dreary limbo.
Maybe she could use improvise some cunning picklock, but there is nothing to work with. Just a screen, table, cot, horizontal bar, walls, door. Even the ration packages degrade into dust.
Also she has some clothes. The dark gray thin socks, sneakers, underwear, and tracksuit she was wearing when she woke up here. The composition of the inert synthetic fabric is unclear, no matter how closely she studies it under the maximum magnification that her eyes are capable of, and at every wavelength from ultraviolet to infrared. It’s impossible make of this fabric something useful for the escape; the clothes are specially sewn with such purpose.
So, she has just one tool here—the potential of her body and her brain.
The first thing after waking up is a full self-diagnosis, which shows that everything is in order with her except for the malfunctioning of her internal clock. Previously, Olga always knew how much time had passed from this or that event down to a thousandth of a second. Her clock had been reset to zero, and counted only the time that she has spent in the cell, as if Olga were born here.
All the regular functions are in order, the databases seemingly intact. Naturally, Olga tried to contact or hears someone outside the cell, tried to connect through the Matrix to any useful device. All attempts failure, the cell is perfectly shielded. But Olga doesn’t stop regularly sending a distress signal at all frequencies, offering huge money for her salvation—if she doesn’t hear anyone, it doesn’t mean that they don’t hear her.
Perhaps the most worrisome thing is that Olga can’t be certain that her memories haven’t been deleted or changed. Diagnosis asserts that everything is in order and there is nothing to worry about, that her whole previous life is all in the palm of her hand, but she knows perfectly well how illusory information can be.
Olga has never been a coward; all her training was directed to ensure that she could overcome any fear and act correctly in the most challenging and dangerous situations. But what if that training, even her whole previous life was a lie? That there was no High House, no Arina, Petrov, Doc, or even Elektra? What if there was no Olga Voronov? What if she’s lived in this cell from birth?
This line of thought continued until she forbade herself from thinking about it, deciding that there was no need to invent a whole false life for her only in order to be held her in a cell. Her captors want something from her, and eventually it will be clear.
The greatest danger is the memories of the last two years, when Arina’s comrades contacted Olga. She had committed a very serious crime when she conspired with one of the most wanted criminal gangs of the solar system, whose very existence was prescribed. Olga carefully hid her memories of those meetings at an American cafe in the very depths of her genetic code under a thick protective layer of misinformation. And even if someone managed to get to the secret data, the most important thing isn’t there; there are no coordinates for the path that the rocket carrying its precious cargo took.
Olga was created for work and if there is no work here, then she had to create some herself. As it often had, art came to the aid. Although dismissive of her acting skills, while developing Olga’s side talents her nanny Arina had noted Olga’s ability to write and to make music.
Previously, Olga didn’t have time for all her talents, so she focused on music, achieving a lucrative career in the Matrix as a rock singer. Now, lacking any tools but her intellect and her memory, she composed songs, designed clothes, and drafted buildings (judging herself a much better architect than a fashion designer). She even wrote romantic poems, remembering her Wordsworth and Coleridge, but her verse was less reminiscent of the Lake Poets than Petrov’s bawdy naval songs.
But she considered her prose a complete success—Olga wrote a dozen of sequels to her favorite books, from Harry Potter to the Dark Tower and the Three-Body Problem. She invented her own series of dystopian novels about the Earth of the forty-fifth century and the incredible adventures of brave heroes on that radically changed planet. She finished the final chapter just yesterday.
After pull-up a thousand times, Olga jumps off the horizontal bar and approaches the mirror, from where a tall, thin girl looks at her disapprovingly. The mane of disobedient silvery hair frames a beautiful narrow face; attentive gray eyes shine with cold, calculating anger.
“Hi, beauty!”
Today, the beauty doesn’t look the best; many days of fatigue begins to take effect. It is becoming more difficult for her to keep fit; it is becoming increasingly difficult to pretend that everything is in order. A month ago, a thousand exercises on the bar was her usual norm, but now Olga almost falls from fatigue, the energy balance is not in her favor. And she can’t give up physical education, it will cause suspicion. So, a little more rest, and she needs to pump the press, hoping that the bulging ribs will not be visible under the jacket. It's good today is Friday—in the evening, she’ll get a ration.
After swallowing her ration, Olga idles through the evening, watching an episode of I Love Lucy while lying on the stone floor. Now she need to move as little as possible, so as not to bring down the adjustment of the thinnest process of building a molecular structure that has been going on continuously for almost a month. Silence, calmness and concentration to avoid the slightest mistake that can tear her to shreds.
As a drunken Lucy Ricardo slurs her way through her lines for a Vitametavegamin commercial, the screen turns off along with lighting. The light turns on after a second, the review is resumed, but for Olga this short break in the usual routine is enough. The time for plans is over; the time has come for action.
Olga builds the last molecules into a chain and stops the process, immediately feeling a surge of energy. Very on time, she is already beginning to lose control of her project, a little more and detonation will become inevitable. Now the devise must be removed. Still lying on the stone floor, Olga brings her palm to the lower jaw, and with an accurate movement she breaks out her rightmost tooth and then rolls to the door. It's the third second since the beginning of the break-in. Attaching the tooth to the hinges, the girl clamps the nerve, starting the process. Now there is no way back, and if everything that happens is only a provocation from the kidnappers, then she bought herself a one-way ticket.
Having finished with the door, Olga rolls over to the cot, squeezes into a tangle, covers her head with hands, and hopes that she wasn’t mistaken with the calculation of the equivalent.
Contact! The strongest explosion inside the sealed cell gives a monstrous blast wave, almost killing Olga. But the door, that armored door that closed the exit all these eleven months—this door is no more: torn from its hinges and thrown into the corridor by a directed explosion.
Staggering and bleeding, the girl is getting out from the overturned cot. She needs to go into the corridor, to where the broken wires are sparkling—somewhere near there must be a cable line, among such thick walls they can’t rely solely on a radio signal.
The corridor, seen for the first time, differs little from the cell—the same basalt walls, the same lamps under the ceiling
, burning in a half-nook, the rows of steel doors leading to other cells. On the opposite wall are laid cable lines, some of them are broken by splinters, Olga sees the surviving network. So, let's go, the second ace comes in from the sleeve—a large set of virus programs, almost a year waiting for this short moment. Putting her hands on the sparkling wires, Olga has time to notice with her side vision the number on the broken door—49...
“Stop now or I'll shoot!”
Consciousness returns instantly, like electricity in the chain after the turn of the switch. It seems that a set of crackers' programs broke through an electronic glacier and hit the enemy network from the inside, simultaneously with a blow from the outside. And it seems that this is really not a provocation, and the only signal that went through the walls a month ago was understood by her correctly.
There is darkness all around, but somewhere ahead the glimpses of the fire and shots are audible. And someone else is there, someone who injected her with a powerful toning mixture that restored exhausted strength.
“Get up!” a voice shouts in space Russian. “Hands behind the head!”
No intonation—it’s a speech simulator. Olga stands in a stream of white light, legs wide apart, hands behind her head. She hears a continuous low hum as if from a dozen electric motors of low power, and a cloud of tiny drones surround her.
“Don’t move!”
The mechanical wasps hang in front of her for another ten seconds and then recede. She sees a strange figure—wide shoulders and a thick cylindrical head. No neck, a trapezoidal body, narrow waist, body covered with matte black armor. Hands and feet are very long with two joints. If this is a combat robot, Olga doesn’t recognize the model. She looks down to see a laser sight holding steadily on her chest. A gun is leveled at her from over the right shoulder of the figure in front of her.
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