“Thought at least one of them might have some balls. Oh well,” Igor said as he looked around the bar in satisfaction. The place was totally still; nothing moved.
No life-forms, no heat signatures—but he didn’t need that. The place was bright red. Steam rose from the HCB he’d fired with abandon, from the fresh meat, and from the mechanical body of the guy who’d reacted quickly.
Igor, still wielding the HCB with his cybernetic arm, walked through unidentifiable entrails. The cartridge case bounced into the air.
Moscow was cold.
Freezing. Simply white, ash gray, and pale—even through eyes of chrome.
The battlefields Igor had once strode across were vastly different from the one where he now stood.
“‘Fuck ’em up,’ they said, so I fucked ’em up. And they thought it would be enough to pay this lot to kill us?”
Now Igor seemed to think this might be better than the battlefield. At least in Moscow, he could get paid to kill. Not so in war.
“Ha… Ha-ha!”
It was a metallic laugh. Maybe he was happy, or the laugh was self-deprecating…or he was high on drugs. Or it was all three at once.
“Sobaka <Damn>! Look at this place. What a fuckin’— Ha-ha-ha! Shit! Sobaka…!”
Whatever the reason for the laugh was, Igor strolled through the bar, his prosthetic eyes listlessly sweeping the scene.
Perhaps he couldn’t let go of the habits he’d picked up on the battlefield. If someone slacked off watching for the enemy, they were dead meat.
That was why he noticed it: an old-style submachine gun, a PPSh, the muzzle pointing right at him.
“Hey, you! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he roared.
“Far as I’m concerned, I’m just another corpse,” I said, and then I pulled the trigger and unloaded the clip at him. Sparks flew from Igor’s chrome head; he threw his arm in front of his face and stumbled backward.
“Sobaka!”
I wasn’t sure if the curse was directed at his situation or at me. Didn’t really matter either way, I guess.
Keeping his face covered with one hand, Igor swung his free arm, smashing the already useless counter.
“You think that’s enough to kill a man?! Davai <Come at me>! Trus <Coward>!”
Fact is, even if you smash their facial sensors, a cyborg is just as terrifying as they were before. They’re like blenders in human form. If a person got too close, they’d end up either shredded or powdered.
“Steer clear of them.” That’s what Stasia had said. And Stasia was always right.
While Igor was busy turning the lumps of flesh on the ground into gooey red paste, I rolled until I was outside of the bar. My balaclava couldn’t keep the freezing Muscovite wind from stinging my eyes. But I didn’t blink—that’s not something corpses do. And I’d been dead until a moment ago.
I glanced back, and the place didn’t look like a dive bar anymore. It might as well have been a rendering plant or a demolition site.
With all that mayhem, nobody would notice a little hiss of air.
I fiddled with a cheap metal ring I happened to have in my hand. The egg that had dropped from someone’s body—maybe Number Eight’s, maybe Bones’s—would be rolling to Igor’s feet right about then.
The egg had a name: RGD-5. Our motherland’s proudest granata <hand grenade>.
Okay, so one grenade wasn’t likely to get me much, but I was working on the assumption that those guys didn’t carry their grenades one at a time.
“That’s the name of the game,” I said to myself. “You won’t stop a cyborg without at least a few of these babies.”
Boom.
✦ ✦ ✦
There was no sign of the militsiya <police>. Well, there wouldn’t be—some smashing and explosions were nothing unusual.
I gazed vacantly at the bar, which was in complete shambles. I could see the glint of chrome among the shredded flesh. Rovnaia liniya <Flatline>. Brain function: stopped.
When you got right down to it, there was only one quarry with a price attached, which meant only one person could claim the bounty. I hoped they wouldn’t hold it against me. I was as worthless as the rest of them. We all were.
I glanced at what remained of the bar, which was billowing smoke. God, it was cold. The wind was really howling.
I looked at the great black spire looming overhead—Ostankino Tower. Snow drifted gently down through the spiderweb of electrical cables strung from it.
The town was full of metal pipes transporting hot water that sang with the heat; it was like being in a giant’s intestines.
I shivered, turned my back on the place, took one step, two—then stopped.
“…………Tsk.”
I clicked my tongue, turned on my heel, and set off at a brisk pace. I went around the side of the ruins—or the husk or whatever you wanted to call it—of the bar, around to the back, where the walls and window were still intact.
“’Ey,” I said.
“Wha—? Shit!”
Someone flinched so hard he nearly jumped in the air—a Janitor who had crawled out of the window in the bathroom.
I’d never seen the guy before. Didn’t know his name. But I did know his nickname.
“You’re Lion, right? You in one piece?”
“Y-yeah…,” Lion said weakly. “I’m okay.”
He looked as thin and haggard as a stray cat, but his strangely large eyes gleamed in a way I didn’t like.
A nickname like his wasn’t necessarily a compliment.
I let the PPSh—empty—loll toward him and decided to ask a few questions.
“How much was it?” I asked.
“What?”
“The price on us.”
Lion didn’t tell me. Instead, he howled, “Pomogi, zhe <Please spare me>! I’ve got a family! I don’t wanna die!”
“Konechno <Of course>. I’m sure you do,” I said. No way to deny it. I waved the gun at him and said, “Idti <Get out of here>.”
“Yeah…! Spasibo <Thank you>! Spasibo!”
He repeated his gratitude a few more times—overcome with emotion, I guess—and then he ran like hell. No clue where he was going.
I took two or three steps back. Lion turned. He had a Tokarev in his hand.
His eyes were as wide as saucers. Understandable. I had my own pistol out. I grinned at him.
“I told you. I’ve got a younger brother, a couple of little sisters, and a girlfriend at home.”
No, wait—maybe I hadn’t told him.
In which case, I’d done him wrong.
✦ ✦ ✦
Man, it felt so out of place it made my head spin, but I wouldn’t survive if I let that sort of thing get to me.
The youngest of the massive “Seven Sisters” was a thirty-four-story skyscraper that stood by the Moscow River. Standing in front of it would be enough to humble anyone, but I didn’t think about my own insignificance. I walked into the building under a ceiling that I could only describe as very pretty and obviously a result of grueling effort, and then got in an elevator.
“…Tsk.”
When I put my hand in my pocket, I realized my body armor had a hole in it. I didn’t know whether to blame Igor What’s-his-name or Lion—but neither was going to be paying me back.
Well, at least I hadn’t dropped my coins. I put a few in the coin slot in the elevator and smacked the button for my floor. The elevator started climbing, saving me the trouble of climbing all the stairs myself. Grateful as I was for that, I hated the wait.