by Bob Mayer
"I will peel them alive if you do not play," Feteror warned.
The elder took the green tube and pulled the ring. A second head lay in the street. The Soviet slid another end of blue cord in. The elder closed his ears to the cries of the children who were left. His hands worked automatically, taking the ignitor each time the Soviet gave it to him and quickly pulling the ring. He lost count, but mercifully there were no more lengths of blue cord.
The elder turned to the Russian leader. "Kill me."
"I would," Feteror said, "but then who would tell the others what I have done here?" Feteror grabbed the old man's chin. "This was a warning. You take heads, we take heads. I think I have made that perfectly clear."
"Kill me," the elder insisted.
"No. I will have my medic bandage you and tie you so that you cannot hurt yourself. When the men come back, you will tell them how you failed the village and what I have done. Then they will kill you. And the war will go on, but there will be that many less"- Feteror gestured at the heads lying in the street- "to grow up and fight us, and that many less women to bear more spawn to grow up and fight us."
"You are the devil!" The elder tried to work up spit in his mouth, but it was dry. He’d expected to die now. The thought of facing the men in the midst of this was unbearable.
Feteror smiled. "The devil. Chyort—I like that." He suddenly straightened and looked to the north, toward the mountains. Then he glared down at the elder. "You kept me here. You knew they were coming. That is why you didn't fight me when I first came."
The elder smiled as Feteror slammed the stock of his weapon into the old man's head, knocking him out. Yelling orders, Feteror turned and ran for the southern end of the village, his men falling in line behind him The radio man ran next to Feteror, proffering the handset. From the north there came a sound like thunder, hundreds of horses' hooves striking the hard-packed ground and closing on the village.
Feteror took the handset and began calling for extraction when the earth exploded in front of him.
When Feteror regained consciousness, he was greeted by the stare of a line of lifeless eyes. The heads of all the children he had had killed were arranged around him in a circle. He slowly took an inventory of his body. He could feel pain in his chest, from both the ropes wrapped around it and several broken ribs. He could sense something hard and straight against his back and realized he was tied upright to a thick pole. He was naked, the cool night air brushing against his skin.
Carefully he tested, but the stake was set deep into the earth and solid. The ropes were thick and well tied.
It was dark outside the circle of heads, the only light coming from a lantern set on the ground three feet in front of him. But Feteror could sense the people lurking there, watching, the hate washing over him in waves. Feteror smiled.
A whip snapped out of the dark, the leather knots on the edge slashing into his skin, peeling back a long slice on his chest.
Feteror's only response was a sharp intake of breath, the smile still on his face. The whip came again. And again. The smile disappeared only when he slid into unconsciousness, the skin flayed from waist to neck.
When he came to, it felt as if his upper body were on fire. Just taking a breath caused his wounds to reopen and agony to surge into his brain. He looked about. Night still blanketed the countryside and the heads were still watching him. He leaned his head back and looked up to the stars. He remembered seeing those same stars as a child while riding on the open steppes. His grandfather telling him the stories of the animals the various stars represented. He also remembered seeing that same sky often while in the field during training. He’d traveled by those stars many times on operations all over the world, but he knew tonight he would be taking his last journey.
Movement drew his attention back to earth. A woman came out of the shadows. She was small, wrapped in robes, only her dark eyes showing through a slit in her turban. In her hand she held a short curved knife, the firelight glinting off the highly polished surface. She was one of the women who accompanied the men when they went to war.
Feteror knew what to expect. The woman reached and grabbed him between the legs, pulling none too gently. The knife flashed. Surprisingly, Feteror felt little. Despite the pain he was able to think quite clearly with a part of his mind. He figured that any pain from below his waist would have trouble overriding the tide of agony from his flayed skin. The woman held up his severed penis in her hand and, with a shrill scream, carried it back into the darkness to throw it to the dogs. Another woman came out with a dirty rag and apiece of rope. She pressed the rag up against the new wound, tying it in place with the rope. Feteror knew they weren't concerned with infection but they didn't want him to bleed to death. Not yet.
A man appeared, large, as tall as Feteror's six and a half feet. He carried something long in his hand. Feteror forced himself to focus. It was a sledgehammer. He could even see the Cyrillic writing on the side as the man came closer. It must have been taken off of a Russian tank that the mujahidin had destroyed. Forged in a factory back in the motherland. Feteror found that strangely amusing. That he and this sledgehammer, both forged far to the north and west, would end up here at the same place at the same time in this godforsaken land.
The man gestured and the same woman who had tied the crude bandage in place came up, carrying another piece of cloth. She folded it over several times, then knelt, pressing it up against the front of Feteror's right knee.
Feteror's thoughts on fate and his newly developed theory on pain below the waist were both gone in an instant as the man swung the sledgehammer into Feteror's right kneecap, smashing it against the thick stake he was tied to, the sound of the bone underneath the cloth being crushed as devastating as the pain.
Feteror screamed for the first time.
The sledgehammer went back once more. And again. And again.
Feteror, the essence of him, retreated from the pain, climbing into the recesses of his mind, praying for death or at least unconsciousness, but each time the latter came, the mujahidin would bring him alert with pain to a previously undamaged part of his body. And they kept death at bay by searing shut any bleeding wound with a hot knife, although the use of the cloth kept the hammer from opening too many wounds. Feteror's only hope lay in the possibility that they would run out of things to do to him or that they would grow bored and kill him.
But as dawn touched the eastern sky, neither appeared to be close.
He could now see past the circle of severed heads. He was at the edge of the village. A crowd of mujahidin watched him silently, the hate in their eyes not abated in the least. Feteror was now in some other place, someplace removed even from his own mind, floating above, able to look down on his own body tied to the stake. He wondered if he was dead, but the body-his body- still twitched with life.
The old man, the village elder, was tied to a stake on the other side of the circle of heads. A leather band was stretched around his forehead, forcing him to look directly ahead. His eyelids had been sliced off. A man stood next to the elder, speaking in a low voice that Feteror could not make out. The elder was also naked. Several leather bands were wrapped around his body and limbs.
A woman came up, several similar strips of wet leather in her hand. From above, Feteror dully felt her tying bands around his arms and legs, a most strange experience.
The man who had been speaking to the elder came over. "The leather shrinks as it dries. It will take a few hours." He pointed at the elder. "We put the bands on him two hours ago. It is beginning to dry. The sun will quicken this. You think you know pain now. Watch."
As the sun came up, the elder began screaming, begging. The leather tightened down on his flesh, compressing all beneath. Something gave way in the old man's legs and he gave forth an undulating cry that didn't stop. For fifteen minutes it went on. A young man talked to the man who had spoken to Feteror. The man reluctantly nodded. The young man went over to the elder and slit his throat, stopping
the cry.
"You will not be so lucky," the man informed Feteror.
Feteror could tell that the straps were tightening. The pain was drawing him back to his body, something he fought with all his will.
Feteror began praying for death, calling on a God he knew only from the stories Opa had told him many years ago. He was back in his body as the agony reached levels he’d never thought possible.
Through the pain, he heard something. Very distant. His eyes flickered up, his mouth wide open as he took careful breaths. Yes. He could hear it. He wondered why the mujahidin didn't. The sound of helicopter blades cutting through the thin air.
One of the mujahidin was coming close, holding the red-hot knife just pulled out of the fire. But this time it was not to close a wound. Feteror pushed his head back against the stake as the man brought the knifepoint toward his face. Feteror ripped muscles in his neck, trying to avoid the knife. The man called for help in dealing with the Chyort, the devil man.
Two others ran up, grabbing his head and holding it still with all their strength as Feteror fought them with every once of energy he had left. The night had been too long, the damage too great. It was a lost battle.
The knife came forward. Feteror felt it touch his eyeball, and pain, far beyond anything he had felt so far, hit his brain like a spear splitting it straight through. He screamed, his battered and sliced body straining against the ropes, which brought even more pain and deepened the primeval essence to the shivering cry he let loose.
But still he could hear the sound of the helicopters so close, and machine-gunfire. And screams coming from others. And then there was only blessed darkness.
*****
The village was gone. They were back in the glade. Opa was crying, tears flowing down his weathered cheeks.
"Do you see now?" Feteror asked. "Why I must do this thing?"
Opa opened his mouth to say something, when the sky and glade disappeared along with the old man.
“Time to work." General Rurik's voice was harsh. There was a bright glaring light in Feteror's face. He knew that was a construct the programmers used to get his attention, feeding the input directly into his occipital lobe.
"What is it?" Feteror was disconcerted.
"We’ve lost contact with one of our surveillance units," Rurik said. "We want you to see what has happened."
"Why don't you send a plane?"
"Because it’s very far from the closest plane," Rurik said. "And more importantly, the surveillance team was watching where we used to be headquartered."
Feteror waited.
"We are inputting the coordinates."
Feteror read them as they came in. Information about the history of Department Eight had always been strictly withheld from him by Zivon on General Rurik's order, under the theory that knowledge was power and the less Feteror knew, the weaker he would be.
Feteror could have gotten this information from Oma, after she’d received the papers and CD from Colonel Seogky, but he hadn’t wanted her to know that he wasn't aware of the information contained in them. It had taken him four years to simply find out that the phased-displacement generator had been built, and that had only been because of a most fortunate meeting. The location of the generator had been something for which he had needed Oma and her organization. He had pointed her to the man in GRU records who would know that information. He could have taken it out of Vasilev, but the added fact that they would need the CD-ROM to program the computers to work the phased-displacement generator and Vasilev, the only survivor among those who had invented the machine, to properly operate the computers had precluded Feteror from pushing the old man too far, too soon. Vasilev would pay, but only after he made penance.
Feteror translated the grid coordinates as they came in. The far north!
"Find out why the surveillance unit has not reported in and come back immediately. You are to observe only."
"Why is there still a surveillance unit there?" Feteror asked.
"That is not your concern."
"Why was Department Eight moved from there to here?"
"That is also not your concern. Just do as you are tasked."
The tunnel beckoned and Feteror jumped. He felt the weightless feeling of flying as he roared into the virtual plane, assuming his winged-demon shape. It was what he felt comfortable in. Rurik and his minions thought they were so brilliant! The computer link only gave him more power, more information.
The body was basically humanoid, except larger, more powerful, and armed with sharp claws at the end of each hand. The wings were something he’d worked out with Zivon. He hadn’t liked the feeling of floating free or moving from place to place without a sense of spatial orientation. The wings gave him that, although it had taken him much time to get used to them. They gave him a solid way to control his orientation, direction, and speed. And they helped scare the piss out of anyone he appeared to on the real plane.
Feteror stretched his wings wider, moving faster, the virtual plane going by in a rush, his mind focused on the location he had been given.
The virtual plane was a strange place. There were times when even Feteror felt concern as he traversed it. It was a gray world, and moving through it was like moving in a vast mist, but references from the real world could be spotted poking through here and there if he made an effort to see. If there were no references, then Feteror would have to stop and come out of the virtual, into the real, and align himself. Sometimes he sensed other shadows, forms, moving in the fog.
Some he recognized psychics, real ones, plying their trade. Sometimes he knew they were Americans, from their Bright Gate operation. He knew the presence in the rail station had been a Bright Gater. How much the Americans knew he could not tell. He was also unsure exactly what their capabilities were. He knew they could remote view but he had picked up some different disturbances at times that indicated the Americans were doing something more advanced than just RVing. He had tried once to breach their facility in the state they called Colorado, but it was well protected from psychic probing.
He’d given General Rurik the information about the Mafia in order to move the timetable of everything up, so that whatever the Americans might plan would occur too late. But now he knew they also knew the timetable was sooner rather than later.
Feteror sensed he was over Siberia. He could feel the vast emptiness of that land reflected around him. He couldn’t explain how he knew where he was; he just knew it. It was one of the strange aspects of the virtual plane. Often the emotion of an area was what passed through to him, not the physical realities. Feteror oriented himself and continued his flight.
He had no idea how quickly he moved. Sometimes he arrived at a place "instantaneously" in real time, yet it seemed like it took an hour on the virtual plane. Other times, going to the same place, real time had elapsed. There was no way to tell. He’d asked the scientists, and their mumbo-jumbo answers had told him they didn't have a clue why that was. He knew they didn't even really know why he was able to do what he did.
Feeling he was in the right place and sensing death- something he was very familiar with—below, Feteror halted and focused so that he could see the real world. The island appeared below. Feteror could see the Cub transport plane parked on the edge of the runway. He swooped around in a large circle, going lower. He could see the backhoe and lines going from it into a hole in the side of a mountain.
Claws on the end of his feet splayed, Feteror landed right next to the hole. He bared his fangs in a grin as a couple of the mercenaries looked around, sensing something, not sure what it was, only that they felt danger in the air around them like a faint scent at the edge of their consciousness. Feteror could clearly sense their fear, like a wild dog near its prey.
Feteror was still in the virtual plane, the demon shape only something he felt, not something that was really there with the soldiers, but he knew the line between the two worlds was not solid and fixed.
He folded his wings and wal
ked forward, into the hole. The ropes disappeared into a large elevator shaft. He looked down. There was a glint of light on steel far below. The phased-displacement generator.
"Careful, you pigs!"
Feteror looked at the man who stood on the other side of the shaft opening. Leksi. Feteror had seen the man before. And next to him the boy-man who had taken the papers from Colonel Seogky. Who was so stupid he had not listened when Feteror had whispered in his mind that his bodyguard was a double agent. Feteror remembered the name: Barsk, Oma's flesh and blood.
Feteror blinked as an image of his grandfather passed across his mind.
"Even pressure on both cables!" Leksi was yelling.
Feteror threw himself back, spreading his wings wide and hovering. He felt a strong desire to gain solid form, to match his power against Leksi. To rip the man to pieces, to make him bleed and suffer.
But there was not enough power coming from Zivon. Only the beckoning signal to return from Rurik. And he needed Leksi for now.
Feteror tightened his wings and dove into the shaft. He landed on top of the generator. Looking beyond, he could see the skeletons and devastation in the control center. He could feel spirits floating about. Feteror stepped back in surprise. He’d felt spirits before, but always very distantly, but these came at him. He "saw" nothing, but he knew they were all around him. Four men, long dead, who whispered to him of revenge, of pain and suffering. He felt an immediate affinity for their suffering. He promised them he would avenge their pain.
Feteror pivoted over on one wing and flew out of the cave, up into the virtual sky.
*****
Vasilev screamed as he scrambled away from the demon that pursued him. Its red eyes speared him with their malice, and he could hear the creature's claws against the floor. He scuttled sideways, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the monster.
It had halted and Vasilev did too. He breathed deeply, then almost smiled. This was just a bad dream. All he had to do was waken and the nightmare would be over. He would be home in bed, ready to wake up and go to the university for another day of teaching.