by Dima Zales
When they’re halfway to their goal, I understand their plan. Sure enough, they grab the guards in identical chokeholds, in unison.
Muscles bulge on Nadejda’s and Joe’s arms, and the two guards don’t get a chance to exhale the fumes stuck in their lungs before falling to the ground.
“Mike,” Gogi says, intruding on my voyeurism. “There are no more guards around. Meet us in the parking lot.”
I knew that before he said it; I just thought they would return to the trees instead of having me meet them out in the open.
“Mr. Spock only found one guard on the first floor,” Ada says in case I wasn’t following that screen. I was, but only with a fraction of my attention. “I emailed the guard’s location to your cousin.”
“Thanks,” I type back. “Can you get Mr. Spock to the parking lot?”
“I actually started on that when I heard Gogi tell you where to meet him,” Ada replies. “You be careful.”
Her encouraging words have the opposite effect. Though I know Muhomor disabled all the pressure sensors, laser fields, auto-feeders for crocodiles, or whatever else my imagination can conjure up, an iceberg of fear forms in the pit of my stomach as I exit the relative anonymity of the forest and walk down the large grassy field before me.
Mimicking Gogi, I do my best to stay out of the lamplight and walk far away from the incapacitated dog, just in case. As I approach the parking lot, I decide the walk isn’t that bad compared to something like the HALO jump.
When Joe sees me, he puts a finger to his lips, emphasizing the need to be quiet, and I fight the urge to whisper something like, “I’m not a complete moron,” because if I did that, I’d disprove my statement in the process of making it.
I glance around and locate Gogi, who’s using something like a coat hanger to fiddle with the minibus doors. Similarly, I find Nadejda working on the locks of another car. It takes them less than a few seconds to beat the locks.
Then I catch the familiar glow of Mr. Spock’s aura near the drainpipe.
The rat made it out in one piece.
A minuscule dose of tension leaves my shoulders, and I run to him as fast as stealth will permit. I get on one knee, and he eagerly jumps into my outstretched hands.
Getting up, I turn to find Gogi right next to me and have no clue how he snuck up on me so silently. He points at the minibus and leads me to it.
When we reach the vehicle, Gogi gestures at the minibus’s glove compartment and then at Mr. Spock. I take that to mean, “Put him there.”
I nod and give the rat a quick rub. I then take out a small handful of sunflower seeds and leave them in the compartment with Mr. Spock.
“Will he be okay?” I type into the chat. “I assume rats don’t get claustrophobic?”
“They can live in literal holes in a wall,” Mitya types back.
“I can soothe him from here,” Ada says out loud. “Don’t worry.”
Gogi shakes his head as I reach to close the door, and I notice Nadejda left the doors open to the other car.
Gogi puts his bag into one of the cars, and he and Nadejda begin pulling climbing gear out of her rucksack. I swallow hard, picturing them using those ropes to climb onto the roof.
Joe must decide that the prep is done, because he stalks toward the building entrance, and I’m forced to follow.
My cousin slides a worm-like device with a camera on its tip into the small opening between the door and the floor and stares intently at the video feed on his phone’s screen. I look over his shoulder and see that the guard Mr. Spock spotted didn’t make his way to the entrance. When Joe deems the entrance clear, he quietly pulls the doors open, allowing me to go in. He then slowly closes the doors behind us.
When Joe slithers forward, I try to both follow him and orient myself in reference to the blueprints and Mr. Spock’s air-vent recon.
This place looks like a Manhattan loft that used to be a warehouse. It’ll take a lot more work to turn it into a full-fledged medical facility, assuming that’s their goal.
The first bedroom, the one with Mr. Shafer, is to the right, so that’s where I start turning, but at that moment, my upper arm is caught in a crushing hold that sends a blast of pain through my nerve endings.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
A hand covers my mouth, and just in time too, because I was about to scream.
I look at my attacker and feel a smidge of relief, because both the hand over my mouth and the claw-like grip on my arm turn out to be Joe.
“Where are you going?” my cousin says in a barely audible whisper. “The stairs are in the opposite direction.”
“I’m going to wake up the hostages,” I whisper back, my voice shaking. “Where else?”
“The hostages?” Joe asks. He looks as close to confused as it’s possible to get while also appearing homicidal.
“Right,” I say, trying not to cringe. “To save them.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re sick, kidnapped people?” I whisper a bit too loudly. “Because they’ll get their heads cracked open and die if we leave them here? Because they’re Americans stuck in Russia? Because—”
“Shut up.” Joe’s whisper is like a punch, and I’m fairly sure he would’ve accompanied the words with a real punch if we weren’t related. In a softer but actually creepier tone, he adds, “They don’t matter.”
I look at those emotionless eyes.
He really doesn’t care.
We’ve been working under a misunderstanding this entire time. I took it as a given that we’d save everyone, but Joe was only thinking about my mom.
“Look,” I whisper. “I’ll wake up Mr. Shafer. His condition is the least severe of the bunch. I’ll tell him to quietly wake the others and put them in the minibus. It’ll only take a few seconds and shouldn’t affect our plan in any way.” My cousin looks unimpressed, so I try appealing to his inner monster by saying, “If something goes wrong and we get shot at, the extra people could provide cover. Also, once we get to the US, the police won’t ask questions about—”
“Fine,” my cousin whispers, and I’m not sure whether he agrees so he won’t have to punch me, or because I actually convinced him. “You have a minute while I walk ahead and deal with that guard.”
We split up, and I continue to Mr. Shafer’s room, my footsteps barely audible—a pleasant surprise given the good acoustics in this place.
I turn the corner that, according to the blueprints, leads to the first bedroom. The room should be just a few feet away.
A pair of surprised eyes stares at me in the semi-darkness of the hall.
It’s the guard.
Looks like he moved from his original location after all.
The blast of terror causes my pupils to dilate, and despite the poor lighting, I can clearly see his arm lifting his weapon.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
My right hand propels the tranquilizer gun up and fires, seemingly before the conscious part of my brain reacts at all.
The dart does its job, and I grab the gun from the man’s limp hand as he drops to the floor, afraid the weapon might make an unwelcome clanking sound if it hit the ground. Though I already have a Glock and the tranquilizer gun on me, I stuff this new weapon into my waistband behind my back as a precaution.
Once my thinking catches up with my actions, I wonder if my sudden quick-draw skills are from the brain boost. Could the Wi-Fi, plus the extra brain resources, be behind my faster reaction time? Since I’ve never been in life-or-death situations like this before, I have no idea what my normal reaction time is, but I doubt it’s this quick.
Trying to steady my overly fast breathing, I walk up to Mr. Shafer’s room and turn the door handle.
The door is locked, but the solution occurs to me right away, and it’s only two feet behind me.
I go back to the guard and search him for the keys, finding them on his belt.
Armed with the keys, I open Mr. Shafer’s door.
It takes a ge
ntle shake to wake the old man, and I resort to holding his mouth shut, Joe style, to make sure he doesn’t scream once he comes to his senses.
At first, Mr. Shafer looks like he’s about to turn a shade grayer, but then I think he recognizes me because the initial desperation in his rheumy eyes turns into a glimmer of hope.
I let go of the old man’s mouth, and he instantly whispers, “Thank God you’re here. They—”
I cover his mouth again and whisper, “Sorry, we don’t have much time.”
I proceed to explain what he needs to do, going as far as pulling up the blueprints of the facility on my phone to show him where to go—not that the instructions are complicated. The parking lot is near the entrance, and that’s just a corridor away from where we are.
“I know how to get there,” Mr. Shafer whispers. “They didn’t blindfold us when we—”
“Okay,” I interrupt again. “I have to go help my mom. Make sure everyone gets to the car as soon as possible and leave the front seats empty so we can jump in quickly.”
Mr. Shafer nods, but then he looks at something behind me and his eyes widen.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. Spinning around, I aim my gun at whatever Mr. Shafer just saw—and exhale sharply.
It’s Joe.
My cousin is in a half crouch, dragging the unconscious guard behind him.
Mr. Shafer cringes at the sight of the knocked-out guard.
I’m not sure if Joe notices the old man’s reaction, but he takes out a knife and kneels as if to tie his shoe. Before either of us can utter a single word, Joe slices the guard’s throat with all the emotion of someone cutting up a melon.
I forget how to speak for a second and look at Mr. Shafer as though he might explain what just happened. What I actually see raises a warning bell in my head.
The old man is about to scream.
Except Joe is already next to Mr. Shafer, his hand covering the old man’s mouth in a much rougher way than mine did.
My cousin wipes his knife with his left thumb, and the blood lands at Mr. Shafer’s feet. Joe then whispers something into the old man’s ear. Mr. Shafer’s lips tremble, and he turns so white he looks like a ghost.
“Will there be a problem?” Joe whispers loud enough for me to hear.
“No, sir,” Mr. Shafer whispers, eyes wide. “I’ll get everyone into the car. I’ll be quiet. You don’t have to—”
“Then get started.” Joe’s whisper sounds like the crack of a whip as he rips the keys out of the guard’s hand and throws them at Mr. Shafer.
Ignoring Mr. Shafer’s frantic nods, Joe heads out of the room. Numbly, I follow him, trying not to think about the literal blood on his hands. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mr. Shafer walk determinedly toward the room adjacent to his. Whatever Joe told him was clearly effective.
I hurry to catch up with Joe, and we make our way to the staircase that will lead us to the second floor.
Joe’s movements remind me of a stalking predator as he exits the staircase into a corridor.
When we reach the target door, Joe puts his finger to his lips, indicating the need for silence. He then points at the earpiece and then at my phone.
Instead of using the phone, I mentally compose a text message to Muhomor that states, “We’re in position.”
“Good,” Muhomor says in our ears. “Gogi and Nadejda are almost ready, but I need a few more minutes with the lights. Please stand by until I say go.”
Joe looks at his phone, checking on the room in front of us. Suddenly, his grip on his tranquilizer gun tightens, and his features contort in animalistic fury. He takes a small step toward the door, but then checks himself.
My heart goes from pounding to thrashing violently as I focus my attention on the AROS view that shows me the video feed from the surveillance camera Muhomor hacked into.
The gray-haired man, the one who was near Mom, is now within touching distance of her.
I stare unblinkingly as he touches Mom’s face with the familiarity of an old lover.
She cringes at his touch and tries to pull away, but her action seems to irritate the man, and he steps even closer.
This time, when he reaches out, his hands go for Mom’s bosom.
She tries to slap his face, but he catches her wrist and leans in closer.
Though there’s no sound, I can see Mom’s lips moving. It seems like she’s yelling at the other people in the room for help. The guard and the three other bastards act as though they’re not even there.
I didn’t think I was capable of this kind of fury. The rage clouds my mind. I can barely think, and it’s almost impossible to understand what I’m seeing at first, but then I extrapolate the revolting direction this interaction is heading.
“This asshole is trying to rape my mother!” I mentally type into the chat, without even meaning to. “He’s so fucking dead.”
I don’t know what my friends respond with because my blood is pumping in my ears, and the red mist of anger overwhelms every cell in my body.
Teeth clenched, I reach for my Glock and step toward the door.
Chapter Forty
In a blur of rage, I kick open the door.
As soon as there’s a wide enough gap, I shoot the tranquilizer gun at Ivan, the guard who’s been in the camera’s view the entire time.
Then I spin around and aim my gun at Denis, one of the two assholes who assisted in the kidnapping. Using the aiming app, I put a bullet in his right shoulder.
Both men fall, though Denis hits the ground with a lot of screaming.
I hear movement behind me, and in my view through the room’s camera, I watch Joe jump in and put a bullet in Yegor’s chest—the second of the two previously unidentified kidnappers.
My cousin also spares a dart for Denis, stopping the bigger man’s halfhearted attempt at aiming the gun with his left hand and silencing his pained cries.
The older man—the one whose blood I’m truly after—leaps for Mom. Before I can react, he’s holding a gun to her head.
For the first time, I see his face—and almost wish I hadn’t. It’s covered in scars, burns, warts, and open wounds oozing pus. Combined, it makes him look like a cross between Freddy Krueger, Jabba the Hutt, and the right side of the Phantom of the Opera. It’s as if he was raised in the heart of the Chernobyl accident.
“Don’t move,” the monstrosity says through what passes for lips, and green saliva sprays in a fountain around him. “I’ll shoot the bitch, I swear.”
I freeze at his threat, but in the video camera feed, I see Joe raising his tranquilizer gun. Before I can cry out for him to stop, he pulls the trigger.
The guy tilts Mom’s body at the last second, and Joe’s dart hits her instead of its intended target.
Mom goes limp in the guy’s arms.
Time, which already seemed to crawl, slows further as I watch the monster-faced man squeeze the trigger of the gun pointed at Mom’s head.
“No!” I scream over the boom of the shot.
Mom’s head detonates from the inside, spraying blood all around the room. It reminds me of the worst parts of the atrocity I witnessed at the club.
A heartbeat later, her body falls to the floor.
I feel a stunned sense of déjà vu, because she looks exactly like the headless Mrs. Sanchez did when I mistook her for Mom back in New York.
Now there’s no mistaking whose headless body that is.
Mom is dead.
A tsunami of grief wells inside my chest, but I channel it into something more productive—anger. I force myself to morph my pain into icy revenge.
I raise my hand and shoot Mom’s killer with the tranquilizer gun—not because I don’t want him dead, but because I don’t want him dead yet. I want to make sure he lives so I can unleash Joe on him and let my cousin do as he pleases for as long as he pleases. I don’t want this man to die from the merciful quickness of a bullet.
Something calls my attention to the camera view, and
I see Anton, the ape-bison fucker who punched me in the hospital, aim a giant gun and shoot.
I expect pain, and almost welcome it as a relief from my grief, but Anton wasn’t aiming at me after all.
In the camera view, I see a huge bloodstain cover Joe’s chest. My cousin clutches at his wound and crumples to the floor.
Before I even register my intentions, I aim the app-assisted Glock at the very center of Anton’s forehead and spasmodically squeeze the trigger.
Anton falls.
Suddenly, another shot is fired.
In horror, I look at where the monster-face guy fell and see my dart sticking out of the wall, not the man.
The man must’ve pretended to be hit.
Smoke is spreading from the barrel of his gun—the gun that’s currently pointed at my chest.
The melting-hot freight train of the bullet finally reaches my chest, and I fly backward.
My heart stops, and I’m dead before my head hits the floor.
Chapter Forty-One
Instead of finding myself in the afterlife, I’m standing outside the door, my emotions in turmoil and my mind confused.
Joe is standing there too, very much unharmed and looking at me.
In the room’s camera, I see Mom is also alive. She pulls away from the monster man’s latest harassing gesture.
Stunned, I try to process it all. Didn’t we all just die? Wasn’t I just in that room?
Then I comprehend what happened.
I never actually rushed into the room. It was that weird brain-boost side effect, like my phone that broke but didn’t break in Ada’s bathroom—the phenomenon Ada calls a pre-cog moment.
It makes sense. It’s only been a short while since I got the newer and better brain boost, courtesy of Mitya’s resource allocation algorithm. Plus, to make better use of the new resources, I’m also on a Wi-Fi network. Just like when I first got the brain boost, I experienced a side effect. Ada said the new boost made her feel like she did in the beginning. I bet she got this weird side effect as well, something I can verify later.