Home at Last

by Alex Sapegin

  Mehdi thanked him for his time and signed off. The General pulled off his headphones, closed the briefcase, and thought hard. Andy Kerimov said that he had ceased to be a human. The DNA tests confirmed his words, but how much of a person was he now? Ah, Mehdi, Mehdi, if you only knew what lighter fluid you’ve just poured into the fire of doubt! Sanin beckoned to Lantsov, “Igor, contact the center. I want Mehdi to be in N-ville. Take any chopper you want and drag that woman to the hospital. Now.”

  * * *

  Andy had ants in his pants for the last twenty minutes. Olga’s mental “whine” was replaced with hatred—a frenzied, mind-devouring feeling. Fear was still present, but it had taken a back seat. His sister wholeheartedly wanted someone to die... And that was scary. What could make a girl so afraid and so hateful? Over the last few miles to the city, he withdrew into himself and tried to encourage his sister, sending her images of himself, hurrying to the rescue. Olga forgot about her fear. Waves of hope came through the mental contact, but the vindictive feeling and desire to strangle someone with her own hands remained dominant. The car drove into the city.

  “Why are you that gloomy?” Vadim asked. Andy didn’t answer, so he turned up the radio.

  “We can’t get to the south entrance; the roads were blocked,” Pavel said after listening to the latest news.

  “Just get as close as you can, wherever possible,” Andy asked.

  “No problem, hang on. We’ll go around through the backroads. Girls, hang on!” Pasha stepped on the gas and turned into a side street.

  “I just want to ask,” Vadim couldn’t contain himself. “How did you get back?”

  “The guys in civilian clothes are the ones who made sure you were interrogated about Irina’s flash drive.”

  “Why’d you surrender to them?”

  “Vadim, are you stupid?” Vera attacked the guy. “Do you read the news ever? If you know the letters, read the news. Sometimes they tell the truth. Why do you think the Chinese and Indians are being so kind? Irina’s father builds portals for them! They’ve shown it all the channels. ‘Russian scientists have opened the way to another world!’” The girl quoted the headlines. “Russian scientists have discovered the ways to other worlds, only there isn’t a single line in the newspapers about this. It means the great discovery, as is often the case, was a side effect in carrying out some kind of experiment. Research is ongoing, but the whole planet we got from the incident in the lab is suitable for large-scale colonization. And the fact that they discovered other civilizations, and they don’t say a word about that either. The warriors saw magic and decided to be the pioneers—just imagine what opportunities it holds! The guys in civilian clothes aren’t exactly stupid. They don’t hire morons to work in those offices. They’re wolves, hyenas, and sharks. So they zapped the first official magician from Earth back here. They want to disassemble him, right?” Vera gave Andy an expressive look.

  “Um, something like that,” said the official magician, surprised at the tirade. He had come up out of the astral, where he’d managed to immerse himself during the well-informed girl’s speech. Andy conducted a complete review of his body and mana reserves. He also filled the rune signals he used to take things from his spatial pocket with energy. Why didn’t he think of this before? It was nice to realize he was armed. He stupidly assumed that swords and bows would be inaccessible on Earth, but he was mistaken. How glad he was that this was a mistake. His mood lightened a little.

  “Darn.” Pavel hit the brakes. “Cops! Let’s take Academic Street.”

  The car sharply turned back, knocking down a garbage can during the turn. On the concrete road remained the fragments of the rear right turn signal.

  “Two hundred bucks for the optics, three hundred for the alignment and painting. Pavel, your dad’s gonna flush you down the toilet. Careful, don’t kill the dog, you idiot! Cover your mouth!” Vadim shouted to a lady who was yelling at the idiots in the courtyard. “Takes one to know one, jerk!”

  Andy looked at the gloomy Pavel, who had ruined an expensive car to help a guy he barely knew. Judging by the driver’s face, his dad was severe. At home, he expected something more terrible than the toilet.

  “Take it, give it to your parents.” Several precious stones fell down between the front seats in the recess of the cup holder, and a trio of golden coins extracted from the spatial pocket.

  “Holy crap,” Vadim exclaimed, picking up a large emerald. “Uhhhh, hey! Watch out!” The cabriolet struck a parked car with the right side at full speed but didn’t stop. A long dent formed on the right door. In the next moment, the car flew out onto the road. Pavel hit the brakes; the way was blocked by two semi-trucks parked sideways across the roadway. Lyuba smashed into the back of the front seat, breaking her nose. The seat belt held Vadim, and Andy held Vera. From the sharp movement, the sunglasses flew off the were-dragon’s face, revealing his blue eyes with vertical yellow pupils.

  “Just a quarter mile to the hospital,” Vadim cried.

  Andy kissed Vera on the cheek and jumped out of the car. Swords were already in his hands. The boys and girls didn’t have time to blink as their companion disappeared behind a strange ripple.

  “WHOA,” said Vadim for all of them.

  Vera, feeling a pleasant warmth below the belt from the innocent kiss, gazed broadly at the hospital, and thought that now she wouldn’t refuse teaching Irina’s brother a few lessons of family life.

  “Get out of the car!” Like devils from a snuffbox, riot policemen appeared near the vehicle.

  * * *

  “Boris, do you know who these guys are?” the commander of the riot squad rushed to the chief of the city Internal Affairs Directorate, pointing to Major Potsky’s men. “You see how loaded they are? I haven’t seen equipment like that even in pictures.”

  “Reminds me of those PP-2000s. Serious guys. Their chief’s authority is through the roof. And I thought that after Chechnya nothing could frighten me. An all-terrain vehicle was thrust into my face so that I was afraid to open my mouth. But this...” The head of the Internal Affairs Directorate, Boris Olegovich Morozov, managed to visit and participate in both wars in Chechnya during his forty-year life and career in law enforcement. He’d earned a couple of gunshot wounds and more than one ribbon, stripe, and medal on his jacket. “What are you here for?”

  “My people were sent to the outer perimeter of the roadblocks; the ‘loaded’ guys will handle the stoners.”

  “Where’s the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate?” the men heard from a bus with tinted windows that rolled up to the temporary headquarters.

  “Comrade Major General...”

  “Wow! What birds have arrived, and how fast they are! Go, Boris, don’t make the authorities wait.” The commander of the riot police slapped Morozov on the shoulder.

  Morozov was not allowed to enter the bus, but through the slightly open door, he noticed several large monitors installed along the inner walls and operators on swivel chairs. The Major General went out to meet him. As soon as Morozov put his hand to his cap in salute, they called out, “Comrade Major General, the observers have spotted him...”

  “Where?"

  “At the crossroads of Academic Street and Lenty lane…”

  “Three hundred yards from the hospital parking area,” the General said excitedly, having lost all interest in Boris Morozov. “He’s already here. He’s fast. Inform all posts—don’t shoot, just watch! Do not go into the hospital under any circumstances! Is that clear? NO entering the hospital! Help us, Lord,” he whispered.

  “Yes, sir!”

  Boris looked at the nervous General and couldn’t get rid of the feeling that what was happening was surreal, not real. What was going on here, what were the General’s people playing at? Where did he come from?

  “Aaaaah!” A heartrending cry came from the direction of the hospital. One of the windows of the receiving ward burst with a spray of glass shards, and in a flash resembling the flash of a camera, a be
headed body flew out onto the street.

  * * *

  Jumping out of the car, Andy threw a visual curtain over himself and ran to the hospital with all his might. Unseen by numerous policemen and special forces fighters, he passed the last crossroads, jumped, and his trained body flew over the metal fence surrounding the parking lot. The ten-foot-high lattice was left behind; last year’s foliage crunched underfoot. In order not to cause premature suspicions, he had to add a curtain of sound to the visual curtain.

  He entered the hospital through a window on the second floor. As it turned out, the red brick wall was perfect for punching with his claws. After the small gymnastic workout, an aura of fear hit him. The hospital building, corridors, and rooms were filled with fear, but there were no people in any ward. There were clothes and objects lying on the floor, overturned beds, and broken bottles of medicine. In room number nine, shooting cartridges glittered on the floor, and the walls were gaping with bullet holes. At the nurses’ post in the corner between the table and a leather sofa lay two dozen broken mobile phones. Andy, orienting himself towards searching for his sister’s room, turned in place, blindly looking at the ceiling. He realized that what he was looking for was on the third floor. By looking at the room numbers on the second-floor chambers, he could tell her room was exactly above room number thirteen, symbolically. Poking himself on the forehead, Andy created two dozen scouts; free modules flew in all directions. But the information extracted by magical spies did not please their creator at all. His eyes blazed ominously with a blue shine.

  The angel of vengeance in human flesh, flying three or four steps at a time, flew up to the third floor. The bandit who detected him at the duty post in a wide hall died quietly and almost painlessly. His accomplices would be far less lucky...

  A bandit was holding about three dozen patients and a dozen members of the medical staff with a short-barreled machine gun. Patients, many on crutches, with injuries of varying severity, sat and lay on the bare floor. Nurses and doctors were driven into one corner and settled in a compact group. Right before the eyes of dozens of people, the grinning villain suddenly swung back and disappeared behind a strange ripple of air. Only his feet in worn out sneakers were still visible. No one had time to understand what had happened when the sneakers jerked a couple of times and the body fell on the floor with its head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees. At both ends of the corridor, a silvery glow appeared in the air, sealing the passages. Powerful shields protected the released hostages from the danger of physical impact. The patients and doctors fell into a stupor, looking at the dead torturer, whose frozen eyes stared blindly at the ceiling. People were afraid to believe that the torment was over for them, but strange events were gaining momentum. Swaying, as if from overheating, the air quickly moved to one of the rooms, from beneath the door of which a small puddle of blood soon poured into the corridor. The door creaked, cracked, and fell off its hinges, rattling onto the floor. A tall man with a straight double-edged sword in his left hand emerged out of thin air in the doorway.

  Andy sent the sword into his spatial pocket, stepped into the ward and knelt.

  “Andy!” Olga croaked, wiping her tears with a bloody hand. His sister was sitting on the floor, leaning her back against the wall. The girl’s left foot was clamped with some sort of metal rings and needles. Next to her was their mom, on whose lap Bon’s head was lying.

  “Son?” Helen Kerimov, tearing her eyes from the dog, looked at her son.

  Andy felt rage and wrath overwhelming him. “Who? Who did this?” He gently touched the broken lips of his mother and ran his fingertips over a huge bruise under her left eye. A stream of tears welled up in Helen’s bloodshot eyes.

  “Andyyyyy!” His mother shook in uncontrollable crying, holding her dress, torn at the chest, with her left hand. The dog on her knees whimpered softly.

  Andy hugged his mother, realizing with horror that she and Olga were sitting in a pool of blood dripping from under Bon. Andy gently opened his arms and bent over the dog. The dog was dying. It was impossible to save him. It was a miracle that with such wounds he was still alive. All the magic of the were-dragon was powerless before the cold breath of death. Several bullet wounds did not leave the dog a chance. He wanted to howl from his own powerlessness. Bon could have been saved had he appeared thirty minutes earlier. He was bleeding so bad, no magic, no dragon’s blood could heal him.

  Andy, taking the pain on himself, put his hands on the dog’s broad head. “Be patient, boy, bear it...” The dog recognized him, jerked his head, and passed his wet tongue over his owner’s face and chin. The dog didn’t have enough strength for anything more than that. The shaggy head fell on Helen’s lap. “Forgive me, Bon,” said Andy, sending a short, merciful impulse that stopped the pet’s heart and stopped his anguish. “Mom, hold still.” Several healing spells touched the woman’s face, after which hot fingers ran over Olga’s foot, enclosed in metal and plaster.

  “Olga, who did this?”

  The girl turned her gaze to him. At that moment, Rosugar’s words about the changes that had occurred in his sister became clear. The whites of her eyes were blue, and only her pupils were human, not vertical, like her brother’s. Her big aura, like the dragon’s, blazed with all colors of the rainbow.

  “There were two of them,” instead of Olga, their mother answered, having bested her sobbing. “A red-head, in a leather jacket, and the other one was bald, with a scar on his chin. When they broke into the room, Bon attacked the bald man, tearing his right arm, and the redhead shot him several times from the pistol. I don’t want to remember what happened then...”

  “He beat Mom. I was so frightened, and Bon crawled over and bit his leg; he shot him again...” Tears streamed down both Olga’s cheeks. “What about Bon? He’s not breathing!”

  “He’s dead, Olga honey.” Anger and fury again pushed out the rest of Andy’s feelings.

  Mother and sister watched with wide eyes as their son’s and brother’s chest quickly became covered with golden scales, and claws appeared on his hands.

  “Stay here,” Andy said, standing up from the puddle of blood. “It’s almost over. Soon Dad will be here.” Olga stopped crying and nodded at his words. A vengeful fire broke out in Olga’s blue eyes.

  “Don’t, mom. He knows what he’s doing.” He heard her voice as he ran out of the room. “Andy will castrate the red-headed guy...”

  Oh yes! The redheaded guy will beg for castration! For the first time in his life, Andy wanted someone dead with all his heart. Now he most of all resembled the dragons who went on the attack on the Great Forest. No mercy...

  Without hiding, he walked along the corridor. The waves of force emanating from the mighty figure made the wailing patients and doctors cling to the walls as he passed. From one glance at the blazing blue eyes, the people’s knees went weak, and they bent their legs. Everyone was happy and consoled that this terrible man was not going to collect debts from them, but rather their captors... Unseen by the vision of mere mortals, several free modules were carried away to the second and first floors.

  * * *

  Sanin jumped out of the bus, snatched the binoculars from Lantsov and turned to the signalman. “I repeat—don’t shoot!”

  The General put the binoculars to his eyes and, like the others, stared at the hospital building. For ten seconds after the killing and the flash in the waiting room, nothing happened, then there was a powerful boom. On the second floor, all the glass windows blew out. The openings were lit up by a bright flash, then another one. Drowning out people’s frightened cries, there was another strong boom. Breaking the wooden window pane, a man covered in flame flew out. Half the windows were covered with a flickering film. No sooner had the ephemeral barrier covered the windows than everyone heard the sound of machine gun fire. Someone was not sparing cartridges at all.

  “You idiot!” roared Morozov. “General!”

  “Quiet!” barked the man standing next to the mysterious Major
General. “Lieutenant Colonel, keep yourself in hand! This is not a bazaar!”

  The shooting was interrupted by a thunderous scream, like the screeching of a pig being led to slaughter. They heard a seemingly endless shriek, full of pain. It turned their hearts cold. The officers who’d passed through a school of hard knocks involuntarily got goosebumps all over. There just couldn’t be so much air in human lungs! At last, the mad scream stopped, only to explode into a new series of cries. Morozov, clenching his fists painfully, cast a frenzied look first at the General with his lieutenant, then at several clearly civilian persons, among whom was a beautiful girl who was very uncomfortable. The pretty woman huddled up to a large man with the figure of a wrestler. The chief of the Internal Affairs Directorate couldn’t remember where he’d seen this “wrestler” before, not in criminal databases or in orientations probably, but his face that would have seemed calm if not for the pale color was familiar.

  “Look!” cried one of the civilians. Morozov turned to the hospital.

  From the first-floor window, knocking out the glass, a red-haired man jumped out, whom serviceman recognized as Lenny Venchik. The robber, strongly limping in his left leg, rushed headlong away from someone who was following him, who had jumped after him out the window, armed with a pair of swords. The S.W.A.T. officers tightened their grip on their weapons and aimed, but the order to open fire did not follow, and then the incredible happened...

  “Dad, that’s Andy!” the pretty woman screamed, shocked.

  “It’s okay, hon,” the man said in a low voice. “Close your eyes; don’t look...”

  But the girl didn’t follow her dad’s advice.

  The bandit turned to his pursuer, jerked his machine gun up, and fired a long series of rounds into him. As soon as the first shot sounded, Morozov mentally said goodbye to the crazy samurai, who had decided to go up against a machine gun armed with only a sword. But the samurai didn’t seem to care about the shots fired at close range. He was surrounded by a bright glow that reflected the bullets.