Exoteric

by Philip Hemplow

  Moments later, the speaker next to the window crackled to life and the din inside the room was suddenly audible: Sophia’s whimpering, Molchanov’s low, continual chuckle, and Votyakov’s grim-voiced threats.

  “—code! I mean it: I’ll blast her in the head! You can give us what we need or you can watch your daughter die in front of your eyes!”

  On the bed, Molchanov just laughed louder, baring his perfect teeth in an expression of utter delight.

  “There’s really no need for violence,” said Zapad with a tremor in his voice. “Let us all stay calm and just keep talking…no need for violence at all.”

  He took a tentative step towards his patient, and instantly the gun was pointing at his head, instead.

  “Stay where you are, Doctor. I’ve had about enough of your stupid shit. I’ll shoot you, too. I’ve got plenty of bullets.”

  “Get off me! Let me go, you fucking pervert! Ow!”

  Sophia had kicked her captor and he kicked her back. Arkady spoke into the microphone panel next to the calorimeter’s window. He kept his voice low and level, injecting it with as much authority as he could.

  “Votyakov, what are you doing? Get out of there now: that’s an order.”

  The Ogre turned his head to face the window, and jammed the gun barrel against Sophia’s temple again, moving her around to give Arkady a better view. His face contorted in a cruel, triumphant grin.

  “Ah, Colonel! Tired, old Colonel Andreyushkin finally drags his bones to the scene of the action! Why don’t you take a seat and watch how an interrogation is supposed to be done?”

  “Don’t be so damned stupid, man! Remember your orders!”

  “Shut up, Colonel! I know my orders. Why do you think Zolin told me to come here? To fetch and carry things for you? To help you up when you fall on your feeble, pen-pushing arse? It’s because he knows you’re a weakling: an undisciplined coward who’s been withering behind a desk for twenty years, without the nerve to do what needs to be done. Goluboy pussies like you have ruined this country with your games. Well, you had your chance and you fucked it up! I’m in charge now.”

  Arkady saw tears streaming down Sophia’s cheeks, and heard her strangled gulp as Votyakov spun back to face the bed, yanking her round with him.

  “That’s right, you’re in charge,” said Zapad, trying again to defuse the situation. “You’re the one in control.”

  “Open your mouth again, Doctor, and I’ll shoot you in the throat. Is that clear? Just stand still and shut up!” The Ogre returned his attention to the man in the bed. “Now, if everyone has got the message…it’s time for you to tell us the code, you oligarch scumbag. Tell me how to access your files, or I’ll blow your girl’s pretty, blonde head off.”

  He ground the muzzle of the 9mm Lebedev into Sophia’s temple until she cried out and began struggling again, then choked her back into submission. Molchanov watched, chortling but saying nothing.

  Arkady rifled the pockets of the coat in his hand for his own gun. The window was perpendicular: the PSM’s 7N7 ammunition would penetrate it without difficulty, and over such a short range deflection was unlikely to be significant. There was already a round chambered—he hadn’t unloaded it the previous night—so all he had to do was pull the safety down, aim, and fire.

  The Ogre still had Sophia, though. He was a big man, and a single round of dainty 7N7 was unlikely to put him down before he could shoot his hostage. Plus, Arkady’s shot would probably go straight through Votyakov and out the other side. If Sophia was in the way of it, she’d be hurt too. No, he wasn’t going to fire yet. He kept his right arm by his side, finger on the trigger, ready to take any opportunity that came his way.

  “Last chance, Molchanov: passwords or pain. First, you watch me kill your whelp; then, I feed you your eyeballs. And that will just be the start of it. I promise, you’ll wish you were dead all over again before I’m done with you.”

  Molchanov laughed louder, a jubilant, high-pitched guffaw loud enough to produce a howl of feedback from the intercom. “Do it!” he shrieked. “Kill the girl! Send her to the beast! There’s room for so many more in her!”

  “No! Daddy, where are you?”

  “Do it!”

  The lights in the room flickered, then began to pulse on and off, seemingly in synch with Molchanov’s roaring laughter. The scene in the chamber was reduced to a stutter of stroboscope imagery. Arkady saw Votyakov look around—the gun barrel drifting away from Sophia’s head—Molchanov lunging forwards, mania in his eyes. Nightmarish, flick book images: a sudden mechanical whine, flash of metal, gout of blood—Votyakov bellowing as the surgical robot’s gleaming blade slashed him from balls to thigh.

  “Take that, you fuck!”

  Galina screamed the words as the robot stabbed at him again and again. Votyakov pushed Sophia away and clutched his leg, trying to stem the spray of blood from his femoral artery. Moving like a man in a dream, Arkady raised his gun.

  There was a bark of gunfire. Votyakov was shooting. Shaking off the sense of unreality, Arkady switched to a two-handed grip, levelled his weapon, and, as the lights flickered back on to reveal the Ogre on his knees, took aim and fired.

  The crack of the report merged with the crash of shattering glass. Recoil drove the pistol’s narrow frame against the soft web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. He squeezed his eyes closed and turned his face away as glittering shards sprinkled his skin. Sophia’s scream—Molchanov’s hysterical ravening—splinters tinkling to the ground at his feet…he looked again as soon as he dared, ready to take a second shot.

  There was no need. The Ogre was stone dead, sprawled on the floor like a felled tree. The steel-cored bullet had drilled a hole through his temple and burst from the middle of his face. Blood surged across the floor, the crimson arterial volcano in his crotch subsiding to nothing as his heart slowed to a halt.

  The lights had stopped flickering and Molchanov was no longer laughing. He had fallen back against his pillows, a look of malign ecstasy on his face. Sophia was frozen in a defensive half-crouch, shaking uncontrollably. Across the room, Zapad staggered and grabbed the frame of Molchanov’s bed. His face was deathly white, one hand clasped to his chest. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Arkady lowered his pistol and pushed the door release button as the doctor’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slipped to the floor.

  “Roman!”

  Galina came hurtling around the corner, tearing the VR headset from her face, colliding with Arkady and barging him out of the way as she charged into the calorimeter. Arkady followed and was in time to catch her as she slipped in the tide of gore round Votyakov’s body.

  “Get off!” she yelled, pulling free of him. “Roman! Roman!”

  She flew to her knees at her stepbrother’s side. Arkady splashed through the lake of blood behind her, drawing up short as he rounded the end of the bed and saw the red stain at Zapad’s armpit.

  “He’s been shot! Get me dressings! Get me bandage! Roman, listen to me, it’s going to be all right. I can fix this!”

  Blood bubbled from Zapad’s nostrils as he tried to speak. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were stained with red. Arkady had seen enough gunshot victims to know this one would not make it to the operating table.

  “Galina…” The dying doctor stretched an unsteady hand towards her, the faintest of smiles on his lips. “It’s okay, Galina…you know what to do. The protocols…are on my computer…everything you need is here. Promise me…”

  Galina stared at him, taking several seconds to comprehend his meaning. “What? No, we’re not doing that! I can repair this.”

  Zapad closed his eyes and feebly rocked his head. “I don’t think so…preserve…”

  “Roman! Roman!” Galina shook him by the chin, but there was no response. “Don’t! Don’t you fuck—” Looking up, she raged at Arkady. “Why are you standing there? Get me dressings! Get—get…”

  Her words dissolved in a flood of tears. Arkady stoo
d, frozen, adrenaline rapidly displaced by shock. When Galina threw back her head and howled, her anguish finally drowned out the cryptic muttering of the thing on the bed behind them.

  *

  It was a long time since he’d last killed a man. Although, he reflected as he swabbed at Votyakov’s congealed blood on the floor, Galina’s antics with the telesurgeon were at least as responsible as he was, this time.

  The calorimeter looked like a slaughterhouse. There had been more than enough time for the blood to clot, becoming a tarry, resinous scab that resisted his best efforts with the mop. The air still reeked of it, a sweet, mineral tang behind the smell of bleach from his bucket.

  Exhaustion was beginning to set in now. He wrang the mop one more time, then paused and leaned on it.

  He had the room to himself. Molchanov had been wheeled into the corridor, where he seemed content to lie mumbling to himself, his wrists tied to the frame of his bed. Votyakov had been deposited on a body bag and dragged outside, his remains left by the facility’s back door until Arkady had the time and energy to dispose of them. If a fox or wolf came and chewed bits off him, Arkady wouldn’t lose any sleep.

  In the aftermath of the shootings, Galina had worked through her shock, her face a mask of suppressed grief as Arkady helped her transfer Zapad’s body to the operating table. She had begun exsanguinating him immediately, and by the time Arkady wheeled Molchanov from the room and hauled Votyakov’s body away she had already finished pumping cryoprotectants and refrigerated vitrification medium into her stepbrother’s veins.

  The silvered, metallic sleeping bag in which Molchanov had been preserved was pressed into service again, a chrysalis sheathing Zapad’s cooling corpse. Galina taped her stepbrother’s eyes shut, but could not bring herself to draw up the zip on the body bag. Arkady did it for her, pausing to commit the dead man’s face to memory before he sealed it.

  There had been no question of ignoring Zapad’s request, especially not now his theories had been proven at least partially true. For all that Molchanov had returned deranged and threatening, Arkady knew trying to dissuade Galina from observing her stepbrother’s funerary wishes would be futile.

  She hadn’t yet accused him of causing Zapad’s death, which made him wonder if she was blaming herself. Perhaps she thought Votyakov wouldn’t have fired his gun if she hadn’t carved him open. At some point she would look to redistribute the guilt more widely, and Arkady knew he would be held to account for his share.

  The giant cryostat still stood in the centre of the gymnasium, and less than an hour after his death Zapad had been lowered into it, Arkady assisting in a reversal of the process the cryonicist himself had supervised only days earlier. As soon as the lid was sealed, Galina had run crying from the room. When Arkady found her, minutes later, injecting a syringe of morphine into her arm, he had said nothing.

  Sophia, too, had been in shock, but there had been no time for Arkady to do more than drape his coat around her. She had refused to leave the calorimeter while they were in there, preferring to be surrounded by blood and dead bodies than left on her own. Once Zapad had been entombed though, he had persuaded her to escort the now thoroughly-narcotised Galina back to her room. As victims, he hoped they could at least be some comfort to one another, while he made arrangements to get them off the mountain.

  As he resumed mopping, he reflected it ought to at least be possible to load the cryogenic module back onto the truck which had brought it to the plateau. The drive back to the Interval facility in Moscow would take days, but perhaps he could arrange for Zapad to be loaded onto a train, or even a chartered plane, from Novosibirsk.

  Molchanov was a bigger problem. He had no idea what to do with Molchanov. Leave him behind, running wild on the Zubgorai? Sophia seemed scared of him and might not protest at that, but Galina could raise ethical objections. It was hard to know what her state of mind would be when the opiate wore off. Maybe they could just dump him at the nearest hospital and let the staff there figure him out. It was tempting, but Arkady still harboured a suspicion that Molchanov was dangerous to be around. He didn’t look it at that moment, as Arkady checked on him through the shattered observation window, strapped to a hospital bed and jabbering amiably away, but he had done ninety minutes before.

  Stooping and mopping was exacerbating Arkady’s sciatica, each forward lunge accompanied by a spasm of pain. He kept going, aware that punishing himself was senseless, but taking a certain grim satisfaction in it nevertheless. Eventually, the water in his bucket was dirtier than the residue left on the floor, and he allowed himself a break to empty it.

  He recalled an outside drainpipe by the back door, next to where he’d left Votyakov’s body. Presumably there was an open drain there, too, hidden under the snow, ready to direct spring’s meltwater out into the void somewhere lower down the cliff. That would do. Bracing himself for another jolt of mortifying pain, he picked up the bucket of sloshing, brown muck and limped towards the building’s fire exit.

  The wind pressed against the door, resisting his first attempt to open it, then yanking it from his grasp and slamming it against the outside wall once he’d pushed it halfway. Outside, it was almost dark, the giant block of ice at the head of the frozen waterfall a black fist raised to the amethyst evening sky. Wind moaned about the mountain’s peaks, high above, an unending, mournful lowing, like a distant echo of Galina’s grief-stricken scream.

  The wind blasting directly into his face made it difficult to draw breath. He turned his head away and kicked at the snow around the base of the vertical pipe, looking for the drain. Before he found it, he froze, and looked back over his shoulder. No—it wasn’t possible…

  Votyakov was missing! Gone without a trace! There was a still a hollow in the snow where the body had been, but the corpse itself had vanished! How could that be? How could that possibly be?

  He dropped the bucket, too shocked even to flinch as blood and bleach deluged his shoes, staining the snow around him shit-brown. The caterwauling wind sounded suddenly mocking, as if the mountain itself was enjoying his confusion. A hundred feet away, the body bag he’d used to drag the dead man outside fluttered and struggled, snagged on the corner of the safety rail. As he watched, the wind finally managed to tear it free, and carried it into the sky.

  An uneven trench in the snow ran from the spot where the Ogre’s corpse had lain, leading off towards the old TB huts. Arkady squatted to examine it. Votyakov had been dead, there could be no doubt: exsanguinated, with a bullet through his skull. If proof of that were needed, it was all over Arkady’s shoes. Someone must have carried the body off, then. Or, an animal perhaps. Maybe there were bears in the forest after all…but it was winter and they would surely be hibernating. A snow leopard, then. Perhaps a snow leopard had dragged the corpse away.

  Arkady wasn’t a good enough tracker to tell what had ploughed through the snow, but he could recognise blood when he saw it, and there were dark smears of it around the edges of the trail. That suggested Votyakov had been moved before the last dregs in his veins had clotted or frozen solid. So, probably not long after Arkady had left him. He debated whether to follow the trail into the gathering darkness, but the ice now forming on his shoes and trousers decided him against it. He would need proper cold weather gear, a torch, and a plan.

  Sophia shouted to him from the doorway behind him, making him start, and sending his hand diving for the gun in his pocket before he regained control. The wind whipped away half of her words, leaving him struggling to understand her as he stood back up.

  “Why…—open?”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘why is the door open?’ It’s freezing!”

  “I’m coming back in.”

  He picked up the bucket and trudged back towards her, slamming the door shut behind them and testing it to make sure it was properly secured.

  “What did you do with his body? Throw it over the cliff?”

  Arkady stared at her in disbelief, but she seemed
to be serious. “No,” he said, and began walking back towards the clinic. “It’s gone missing.”

  “Missing?” Sophia trotted along beside him, taking three steps to each of his two. “What do you mean, ‘missing’?”

  “I mean someone has taken it away.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. An animal, maybe. Where’s the doctor?”

  “He’s—oh, she’s upstairs. That’s why I came to find you. I think she’s taken something. She’s out of it.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. Let her rest.”

  “What are we going to do? About the shooting, and poor Dr Zapad, and my—that thing in the hallway?”

  Arkady stopped at the double doors leading to the hub area where Molchanov lay gurgling, and turned to face her.

  “What do you want to do?”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I just want to get out of here. I want to go home. Coming here, all of this—it was a mistake.”

  He held her gaze for a few more seconds before nodding and looking away. “I’m inclined to agree,” he said, pushing through the doors.

  “You agree?” she said, hurrying after him. “You mean we can leave?”

  “Yes. Go and make sure the doctor isn’t choking on vomit or something, and pack your things. Hers, too—we’re getting out of here.”

  Sophia’s shoulders sank with visible relief, and she closed her eyes as if offering up a silent prayer.

  “Thank you,” she said, opening them again. “What about all this stuff though?” She gestured at the arrays of equipment and medical supplies around them. “What are we going to do with it?”

  Arkady shrugged. “You paid for it, it belongs to you. Do you want to take it home with you?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s just leave it here.”

  “Okay…and what about him?”

  She didn’t point, but Arkady knew she was talking about the thing on the bed, who had fallen silent now and was watching them intently.