“Mogu ya kurit’ <Is it okay if I smoke>?”
“Da.”
Lieutenant Adam didn’t really look like he cared whether I minded; he was already pulling a silver cigarette container out of his pocket. He made a show of crushing the Soyuz’s filter tip, then put it to his mouth, lit it from the ray gun’s muzzle, and took a deep, contented breath.
He held one of the little paper-wrapped tubes out as if to ask if I wanted one, but I shook my head. “I’m looking out for my health,” I said.
“Are you, now?”
I steadied my breathing and somehow managed to straighten up, then stared directly at the lieutenant. I’d thought he might shoot me on the spot, but he didn’t seem to be of a mind. He was walking easily around the room, as if observing the chaos caused by a mischievous child.
He raised an eyebrow when he saw the smashed radio cassette player and the detritus of the bookshelf. Sigh—that wasn’t cheap, he seemed to want to say. Then he went over to the wall and glanced at me. “So what were you after?”
Tell your dad why you did all this.
I gave it a moment’s thought, then decided I didn’t feel like being scolded, so I would try honesty.
“To earn living expenses, I guess,” I said.
“A petty reason.”
“That a fact?” I smiled sarcastically and shrugged. “It’s the most I can manage.”
“I assumed they were at least holding your family hostage or something.”
I went quiet. My silence was answer enough, but it would have been gauche to actually say it.
A smile came over Lieutenant Adam’s face, lifting his cheeks—attractive even when they were bare metal—and he took a slow drag on his cigarette. He acted like he was enjoying an after-dinner chat with a guest he’d invited into his home—and he wasn’t that far off.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea of who you are and what you’re here for,” he said.
“Guess I don’t look like official apartment staff.”
“You know, for a Janitor, you make an awful mess,” he replied, openly amused. He sure didn’t act like a screwup spy who’d been exposed and was being hunted. Hell, I had the sense that if he found a bottle of whiskey, he would offer me a glass.
“Having said that, your methods were more overt than I might have expected. Frankly, I’m taken aback.”
“Hey, not so different from you, right?” I replied, careful and alert. I steadied my breathing again. My left hand still throbbed. I was thinking about what to do—like I always was. My options were limited—like they always were. “You must’ve raced down Peace Street at supersonic speeds.”
“Sure I did. I had to catch up with you, didn’t I?”
He would tell me something, Lieutenant Adam said: Espionage was like poker. A spoonful of leaked information could be the key to everything. He spread his arms like he was letting me in on how he’d pulled a prank.
No—it wasn’t like that, I guess—because he meant exactly what he said.
“The doctrine of GRU, the KGB, and the CIA are all as good as broken. That’s what gave MI6 the edge.”
“And you have some reason to tell me this?” I asked.
“Even a stupid—but still useful—spy given to conspicuous displays has the right to enjoy a threat-observation mission,” he said.
Getting through life alive wasn’t like crossing an empty field. Things could change suddenly—like you might find yourself face-to-face with a full cyborg.
I stepped on one of the records on the floor to check my footing and see if I was, in fact, alive. Honestly, it was strange that I hadn’t been reduced to a mound of quivering flesh with the first shot.
But there was a second shot. I was still alive. Even now. Why? It was obvious.
—I’ve got to make this guy talk.
A regular ol’ guy like me wasn’t going to get a word in edgewise with someone who could move faster than the speed of sound—unless he decided to stay still. One second later, I would be dead. So I might as well shoot the breeze with him for a while. If he didn’t think I was in a chatting mood, I was dead.
You know, maybe a guy as arrogant and bold as the lieutenant was the perfect spy.
I decided I’d give Adam something really to be amused by.
“Hey, this your girlfriend?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
I fished in my pocket, moving real slow so he didn’t think I was reaching for a gun. I pulled out the picture of the beautiful woman, her face as chill as the stars in the night sky, and tossed it to him.
“She’s a looker,” I said.
“Ah yes, the most beautiful woman in Moscow…and my lyubimaya.” He almost sounded like he was whispering to the girl in the picture. He put the photo in his pocket.
I carefully judged the distance to the lieutenant, who was leaning against the built-in heater, as I kept talking. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But I thought for sure you were a customer, if you know what I mean.”
“You cheeky kid,” Adam said, evidently taking my remark as a pleasant joke.
Not that I’d really meant it that way.
“I’ve never once paid. What we have between us is far more wonderful than that.”
I all but ignored what he was saying as I worked my way toward the torn-up sofa. (Torn-up because of me.) I wondered if it would serve as any kind of obstacle to the ray gun. I could only hope.
I glanced at the clock. The Nixie tubes were flickering.
“You’ve kissed?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve kissed her many a time.”
“I take that to mean,” I said with a smile, “she’s never kissed you.”
“…………”
There was a long pause, and I saw Lieutenant Adam’s mask drop. He extinguished his cigarette by crushing it against the steel palm of his hand. I appeared to have landed a blow to the pride hidden under that devil-may-care attitude.
It was also, however, a sign of my impending death.
A blow from a cyborg whose movements could be measured in Machs was not something I was ever going to be able to see.
Even less so the beam from a ray gun traveling at the speed of light.
“Metel!” I cried, calling the name of my beloved guardian angel as I dove behind the sofa.
Was the fact that I wasn’t already a mass of smoking goo because the lieutenant was pondering how to kill me? Or had eating my RPG taken just the slightest bit of shine off his mechanical body?
Or, well, maybe it had to do with the ceiling sprinklers, which kicked on noisily.
“You’re dead, you bastard!” shouted Lieutenant Adam, sparking. Trying hyperspeed movement in the middle of this downpour would be like slamming himself into a steel wall.
I waited for the ray beam to slice through the shredded sofa, which took the brunt of the shot, then popped my head out. “Davaaai!”
I let loose with my submachine gun, spraying bullets like water from a hose. Another laser beam sent up steam as it scorched the air.
A broken window let in freezing wind and snow, the spray of water that fell on me was so cold it hurt.
How many shots could a ray gun fire? No point trying to count them. I was no super soldier.
“He’s just a svin’ia,” I muttered, my mouth dry. “I’m not scared of him.”
I could hear Lieutenant Adam cracking the ray gun open. Ejecting the spent cartridge. Reloading.
I didn’t waste a moment, bringing up my PPSh while I grabbed a certain something else in my throbbing left hand.
“Vse zdorovi, comrade!” I shouted, and flung the lump of metal from behind the sofa into the middle of the room. At the same moment, I stuck out my PPSh.
I didn’t know which was faster, my submachine gun or his laser pistol. Probably him. But it didn’t matter; the result was the same.
“Hrgh?!”
Maybe it was the laser shot, diluted by the spray in the air. Maybe it was the last bullet left in my PPSh’s chamber. Either was enough to pierce the ammo drum.
Which promptly went grenade. Boom.
The hail of 7.62 mm Tokarev rounds rendered even a speed-of-sound attack useless. I instantly jumped out from behind the sofa, throwing away my PPSh and drawing the Tokarev at my hip.
“……!!”
I fixed my aim with both hands. The flash of a laser beam seared my eyes. I pulled the trigger.
There was no hot-water pipe behind me—or behind him. Lieutenant Adam looked at me with his chrome eyes.
—I was right all along.
I should’ve killed him before he went to see his girl.
Lieutenant Adam’s head leaned way back. I shot him again. And again. And again. Just kept shooting.
If I were still a brat of fifteen, that might have been all I did. But now I was thinking it through, aiming for the brain and spinal cord.
Cyborgs could be killed. An RPG might not do it, but if you could destroy the brain, they would go down.
And eight bullets in your gun was plenty to spatter brains and spinal fluid everywhere.