“Ooh, you’ve done it now, Janitor!”
“You’re freakin’ dead!”
Well, that was a pretty fair assessment of a guy being chased by two cyborgs, I thought.
And most Janitors who twisted their ankles jumping from the second story of an apartment building subsequently died.
“Tsk! This is why I hate the guys with shock absorbers…!” I grunted, cursing the other guys’ spring legs as I rolled into a back alley piled with gray snow.
I thought I had a pretty good handle on Moscow’s alleyways. Thanks to His Excellency the Man of Steel, they were all the same.
No sooner had I hopped behind some cover, dragging one leg, than the concrete wall was shredded.
“Stand still, sobaka!”
I was all too aware that the griping cyborg was carrying an absurdly large machine pistol. Anyone who would happily carry—let alone use—a VAG-73 was either an idiot, ex-military, or both. The bullets that thing fired were basically rockets, each bigger than Stasia’s lipstick. And unless I was misremembering, it carried forty-eight rounds. Listen, you didn’t have to shoot somebody that many times to kill them. Especially not a meatbag like me.
The guy was currently unloading at the wall on full auto, so yes, I was as good as dead.
I was hoping he would be closer to the idiot end of the scale, but I hadn’t run into this alleyway banking on that.
He was a mafia enforcer. I’d known they were strong since I was fifteen years old.
“Davai!” I shouted, and twisted toward him, then pulled the trigger on my PPSh submachine gun.
A multitude of 7.6 mm Tokarev bullets went flying like water from a hose. They filled the narrow alleyway, sparking off the cyborg in front.
“Hngh?!”
“The hell do you think you’re doing, trus!”
The second cyborg dodged his stumbling companion and squeezed past him, his armor scraping against the wall as he plunged toward me.
—That’s what you get for not doing some exercise, losing a little weight!
If I said that sort of thing to Stasia or Nora, they would have scratched me bloody. I dove around the next corner.
You know, I guess Mariya wouldn’t have been any happier. She spent all her time cooped up in her room. I detached the PPSh’s empty magazine.
I’d have to get Valery to drag Mariya out with us sometime. I flung the spent clip at my pursuer.
There was a distinct metallic crack, and the clip twisted into scrap in midair.
“Your hand grenades won’t work on us again, boy!”
“Whoops!”
If he thought that was a grenade I’d thrown at him, so much the better. I smiled under my balaclava and lunged around another corner.
That was ten shots—Captain Murometz would count the bullets like that, aiming to run them out of rounds.
Sadly, however, I was not Captain Murometz. I wasn’t actually sure if the guy had fired ten rounds or twenty, and besides, think of how much a VAG-73’s clip could hold. And there were two of them. After ninety-six rockets had come my way, I was going to be a pile of quivering flesh.
The only reason I was still alive was because I was hightailing it around these narrow alleyways, and I figured the guys would work out a way to deal with that pretty soon.
Of course, if they were a couple of idiots, it would be a different story. I’d been hoping—but, well, it was probably too much to ask.
One meatbag Janitor taking down two cyborgs head-on? You would need protection from the unscientific being they called God, or it would never happen.
Which meant that today, as always, I was just going to have to do what I could.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Come on, Danya. Don’t you have to help Mariya today?”
“She hasn’t had enough respect for her big brother in a long time.”
I sank into the soft cushions without a second thought and stared at Stasia’s ass. Her jeans were so fitted they looked legitimately tight, like you could stick a finger in there and immediately bury it in her butt. I actually thought I heard a little squeak every time her perfectly formed legs moved.
I felt like I understood kids who would just stare at the same thing forever and never get tired of it.
“She’s always howling like a blizzard,” I added.
“I think she’s trying to get your attention, Danya.”
“That right?”
“Uh-huh.”
There was another squeak, and the adorable ass turned. Now I saw Stasia smiling.
If she backed up what she said with a smile and a nod, then I was sure it was true. What she said was always right.
A bonus: When she followed up her words and stepped out of the kitchen, there was a steaming soup pot in her hands.
I rubbed together my own hands, which had so recently been gesturing while I complained about my little sister. “Hell yeah,” I murmured.
“Here, the borscht is ready,” Stasia said.
“Great!”
It had been many years since I first ate Stasia’s borscht, and it had a lot more ingredients now than it did back then. I was openly overjoyed about the food and the act of eating it. There wasn’t one bad thing about it.
She put down a classy bowl in front of me, and I dug in ravenously.
There are all kinds of ways to make borscht, but I liked red borscht with beets, topped with smetana. Or anyway, I do now. Like and dislike don’t really apply when you’re just desperate for something to eat.
Me and my siblings’ food preferences mostly came to us by way of Stasia. That included coffee. I savored the taste of the soft pieces of stewed meat as I chewed.
Normally, I would be completely enraptured. There was nothing in life more important than Stasia’s borscht. Except for one thing: Stasia herself, who at the moment was watching me and smiling.
She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands, just gazing at me quietly. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. It was great that she was in such a good mood, but I wished she wouldn’t look at me like she was watching a kid.
I started to feel self-conscious about how I was wolfing the food down. Not letting go of my spoon, I said, “You’re not gonna eat?”
“I like to watch you eat, Danya,” she replied.
I clucked my tongue. That only amused Stasia even more. She looked like she might break out humming.
Shit, I really was a kid, wasn’t I? I didn’t like this at all.
I waved my spoon like I was stirring the air, and finally I managed to open my mouth. “Forget about me. Just eat. I’m gonna lose my appetite with you staring at me.”
“Yes, yes, all right.” At last, Stasia started in on her own meal. Her tongue was as delicate as a cat’s. It was built different from mine—I liked the food to be as piping hot as it possibly could be. So while I wolfed it down, Stasia took neat little spoonfuls of borscht, blew hard on them—foo, foo—and finally put the spoon carefully into her mouth.
Then she nodded, satisfied with her own cooking, and swallowed.
The way she did it was really lovely, and I found myself thinking, Oh, so that’s proper etiquette.
It also seemed to me that the air about her hadn’t changed since the first time we ate together. Whatever this was, maybe it was something Stasia inherently possessed…
“……Danya?” she asked after a long moment.
“Huh?”
I was watching her so closely that I noticed immediately when she glared at me. I wondered what it could be. Was it bad manners to leave my spoon stuck in the borscht?
Without a word, Stasia beckoned to me. I leaned forward. So did she.
“…Mn!”
Supporting herself with her hands on the table, she gave me a kiss like a bird’s peck. Her tongue carried the taste of borscht.
Who cared if the food sat for a while? Her borscht was the best in the world, hot or cold.
I spent that day like so many others. Really, nothing unusual about it.