by Ryan Hartung
Although he had temporarily lost his health, the trip to Italy had been well worth it. The Russian beauty Natalya refused to leave his side. She told everyone involved that Vladimir was the key to unlocking the mysteries of the black and green sphere, which meant for the meantime the two were inseparable. Although Vladimir believed she was truly being protective of the artifact, he found himself hoping she was also staying for a different reason.
Besides the relational aspect of the trip, there was also the artifact’s retrieval. Since no one had informed Russia’s journalists of the discovery, the news of Vladimir’s team finding of the Hades’ Sphere was not yet public knowledge. However, some of the highest ranked officials in The Communist Party had already been rewarding Vladimir and the others with words of praise.
“It’s time for your bath,” the large unattractive Russian nurse informed her patient with a booming deep voice as she entered Vladimir’s hospital room. “Take that thing off you neck so we can get started.” Vladimir imagined his Italian counterpart Leonardo Sava, whom he had infected with boils while in Italy, being in a similar situation back in Naples. Maybe he was enjoying his hospital-mandated sponge baths, but Vladimir was not. For one part, there was nothing attractive about his Russian nurse. Her large frame and sour demeanor emasculated him each time she was around, especially so when he was forced to be naked, which was too often for his liking.
The large nurse was glaring and tapping her thick foot on the floor’s cracked tile, as Vladimir had yet to get moving.
“I don’t have all day, and you’re not my only patient. Give your girlfriend your shinny trinket, so we can get started,” she roared. Vladimir glared back at the hefty woman, while reluctantly following her orders. He pulled the sphere, which was glowing its usual deep emerald green, along with its bright golden chain off his neck. Vladimir marveled at his symbiotic nature with the relic. Where just days ago, when he had first touched it, the artifact had nearly killed him, but now he swore in some ways they were one.
As he readied to drop the ancient artifact, Natalya cupped her hands in anticipation under the large necklace and waited for Vladimir to let go. The instant his fingers released the chain; the entire relic lost its magnificent color and became as dull as though it had been buried in sand for centuries.
Natalya’s eyes lit up at receiving the muted ancient relic. She had been thinking about correcting the large nurse for mistaking her as Vladimir’s girlfriend, but upon receiving the sphere, the trinket quickly pulled her mind elsewhere.
Natalya fingered the orb in her hands, which now resembled a perfectly round ball of onyx on a dusty old chain. The links were a lackluster greyish brown, while the sphere’s eerie green glow had faded to nothingness, as had the flowing emerald clouds normally deep inside the sphere’s inner core. The relic’s seemingly unreal luster in Vladimir’s hands was mesmerizing, while it appeared dull as dirt in hers.
Vladimir slowed in his undressing, watching Natalya with growing admiration as she studied the device.
“Ahem,” the nurse snorted and in no mood for his wasting of her time.
Vladimir sighed and removed his shirt. Hundreds of small white flecks of skin fell to the bed from his quickly healing leprosy. On his chest, already areas of healthy skin were emerging through the cracked, white leprous surface, where only a day ago the disease had been raging.
At seeing Vladimir starting to undress, Natalya got up to leave. The nurse had already turned on the water for his bath and was waiting for it to turn warmer.
“Why are you getting up? You are his girlfriend, no? Stay while I give him his bath; he won’t mind,” she said with a devious smile.
Natalya arched an eyebrow at the older woman, wondering who she thought she was. Maybe she should inform the rude nurse that she was Natalya Lipov, daughter of the well-known Russian politician Anatoly Lipov and advisor to the President. Maybe that would shut her up.
“You can leave. Just leave the artifact on the bed,” Vladimir commented to Natalya in opposition to the nurse’s overreaching suggestion.
“Just wait outside the door. I’ll have the nurse bring you back in when we’re done.”
In truth, Vladimir wasn’t shy about his body, but the artifact was his to guard. If she had been anybody but Anatoly Lipov’s daughter, he would not have allowed her to touch his precious treasure in the first place.
Natalya furrowed her brow at the suggestion, now back in Russia, she was still subject to his commands. When they were out in the field, he was her leader, and she would follow any command he gave with obedience, but back in mother Russia, her political standing outweighed his military ranking.
“No, I do believe I’ll stay,” she said, asserting her authority and stared into his tired blue eyes.
Vladimir sighed again and carefully bent over to push the white sheets off his thin, light blue hospital pants. Although her unwillingness to leave annoyed him at the moment, her stubbornness demonstrated she had a strong will, which for Vladimir was quite appealing.
Vladimir drug his aching legs off the bed, letting them dangle toward the floor. Gingerly, he placed one foot on the cool tiles and followed it with the other. The soles of his feet were as chewed up as the rest of him but were also getting better. Although it was the leprosy that had ravaged most of his body, the open lesions on the soles of his feet hindered his standing. He remembered not so many days ago, even the slightest pressure pushing against the bottoms of his feet made him almost want to pass out from the searing pain. He was healing.
He stood shirtless in front of the two women, not seeing a reason to get fully naked until the water in his bath was warm and ready.
“Well, what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?” the nurse chided. “Get those hospital pants and underwear off and get in the tub. It doesn’t have to be full for us to start.”
Vladimir sighed again and continued to do as the plump nurse directed. A smile briefly washed across his leathered face as he wondered if this was how the men under his command felt most of the time, only receiving his orders, but never giving them.
He remembered arriving at the hospital a few days ago, thoroughly weakened and barely able to move. Seeing the state he was in, the doctors had immediately wanted to insert a catheter, but he refused their orders and through his gritty determination was he able to show them that although close to death that he could still pee on his own. Now, as he dropped his pants and underwear, he was now more grateful for that past decision than he could have ever imagined.
Never in a million years would Vladimir want a woman he might be developing feelings for to see him naked for the first time with a tube sticking out of his penis. Being stuck in the hospital with his skin peeling off his body was bad enough, but seeing a catheter hanging out of him was a line he was not willing to cross.
Trying not to look at Natalya, he used his feet to push his clothes down around his ankles and then stepped out of them and into the warm three inches of bathwater. Initially the warm water stung against his cracked flesh. However, as soon as the nurse began scrubbing with her rough brush and powerful hands, his pain receptors forgot the open wounds, instead howling in discomfort wherever the nurse touched him. With Vladimir looking like a beaten down dog under a hose, Natalya stifled back a giggle. As he finally looked up at her with his soaked hair and water running down his melancholy face, she burst into laughter.
Natalya; however, was pleasantly surprised to see that the more the nurse scrubbed his skin, although turning it bright red, the more flakes of dead flesh disappeared into the water and were replaced with new healthy-growing skin. She tried to think of something to say to pass the time. Since Vladimir wasn’t going anywhere for a while, she decided to ask him a few questions about Hades’ Sphere.
“So, you never did really explain how you were able to use this,” she said, while still examining the artifact.
“Ouch,” he cried as the nurse ripped off a piece of dead skin. “Can you at least tr
y to be gentle,” he said hotly, to which the large woman only grinned.
“I can’t really explain it. All I can tell you is that when I picked it up, after it did this to me, I just knew what to do. It’s difficult to describe. You know how to ride a bike, right?” Natalya nodded her head yes.
“So, imagine you haven’t ridden your bike in ten years. Then you get a bike. Would you still remember how to ride it? Of course, you would. You might be a little rusty, but you’d still remember how to use it. The same idea pertains to the necklace you’re holding. Although I’d never used the necklace before, the second I put it around my neck, I just knew what to do. Honestly, I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“You actually did a fine job. I think I understand what you’re getting at,” she truthfully replied.
After the nurse finished toweling off his healing body, she gave Vladimir a new change of clothes to put on. Once dressed and back under the warm covers of his bed, Nataly dropped the ancient artifact back into his lap, where it immediately resumed its glowing green and gold aura.
Natalya walked to the door and before leaving asked, “I’m going to the cafeteria, would you like me to bring us some dinner?”
He smiled. “Yeah, that would be great.”
Vladimir watched her lovely figure leave and again thought to himself; it had all been worth it.
***
“I’m sorry we failed you Mr. President,” the last living Chinese soldier lamented in a raspy voice. Most of his hair had fallen out, and a few of his back molars were beginning to come lose. The Italian doctors had been adamant that he stay in their hospital until fully healed, but the Chinese government’s wishes had prevailed.
“Yes, you’re failure is not ideal, but I believe you are paying the price for your commander’s stupidity,” President Chen Wang said as he looked over the Chinese soldier’s body with disgust. True, the soldier was healthier now than when he had arrived from Italy, but the President could see the incompetent soldier would be in the hospital many more weeks. Once the soldier was healthy again, the President would make sure any information about the Russian and American teams and their new indescribable weapons was gleaned from his mind before he was returned to active duty.
“Yes, Mr. President. Again, I’m so very sorry sir,” the soldier said as another wave of pain and discomfort ran throughout his body.
“Yes, I’m sure you are. Now I want you to tell me exactly what happened to put you in this state,” the President said. President Wang had listened to the report given to him by one of his top generals, but nothing was quite like hearing the story from the mouth of the victim.
“I was guarding one of the Russian prisoners when he knocked me down. I got back up and started fighting with him along with my superior who later died of his wounds. We overpowered the Russians and had placed them on their knees when the Russian’s leader, who was the first person in the temple to touch the artifact, looked at me. I knew I was in trouble because the chain and black orb hanging around his neck started growing brighter in color, right before this green wind shot out of its middle and surrounded the five of us. In case I forgot to mention, our commander was already dead at this point, leaving us to fend for ourselves.
“I could feel the green wind passing through me. It felt as though it was sucking the life out of my body. I remember seeing my fellow four comrades falling to the ground about the same time I did. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much else until the green mist came back again, maybe ten minutes or ten hours later. I don’t know for sure how much time had passed since I was barely conscious. All I know is after it passed through me a second time, I was covered in the boils you see now, first the plague, then the boils. I don’t remember anything after being infected with boils until I woke up in the Italian hospital, Mr. President,” the soldier said before breaking into another fit of coughing.
“Okay, okay, get some rest, and when you’re well we want you to dictate every single fact about the mission that you can recall. Remember you’re an officer in the Chinese army, and we’re counting on you for information. You’re the only one left.”
The President shook the ailing soldier’s hand, as a grand gesture of respect before leaving his room. He stepped out into the hallway and breathed a deep breath of the fresher air, while searching for the closest bathroom. Once inside the bathroom, the President scrubbed his hands for minutes upon minutes, trying to wash the imagined stink and sickness off.
After his hands were raw from minutes of rough scrubbing, he briskly walked out of the hospital and entered his waiting limo, where the Premier was waiting for him.
“We must show the Russians that acts like this will not be tolerated,” the Premier heatedly spoke.
“What would you have us do, go to war? Four dead soldiers is not a reason to go to war,” President Wang responded to his colleague’s statement.
“Of course, I don’t want to go to war. Don’t add me to those idiots on the committee. I am just saying that there should be consequences for their actions. We should at least demand the Russian responsible for this heinous crime be turned over to our authority.”
“That would be acceptable, but there’s no way the Russians would allow that to happen. Remember our soldiers were there illegally. We cannot afford to turn this into an international spectacle. Plus, if our injured soldier is correct, the Russian who touched the artifact first is the only one who can control it. For now, we will wait. If an opportunity should arise where we can ask for compensation, that is when we will strike.”
Once again, thank you so much for taking the time to read my book and excerpt.
One of the best ways to increase a fan base is by way of reviews, so if you liked the book please leave me a review; I would really appreciate it.
Thank you again, Ryan
Find out about upcoming stories and new releases from Ryan Hartung at www.ryanhartung.com
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful for my loving wife Elizabeth, for without her love and support this book would not have been possible.
I would also like to thank Nick Proudlove for his proofreading and always being anxious for the next few chapters.
Finally I would like to thank Zackary Capewell. of Raven Tree Designs for his exquisite covers and unwavering support throughout the publication process.
About the Author
Dr. Ryan E. Hartung spent most of his life growing up in rural Nebraska. After earning his Ph. D. in organic chemistry from the Ohio State University he then made a quick stop with his family in the garden state before finally settling in Tucson, Arizona. Ryan continues to live in Tucson with his wife Elizabeth, his two daughters Amber and Keira, their dog Ginger and currently untamed hamster Brave.
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