—Back then, I hardly knew the difference between the Committee for State Security (KGB) and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). I mean, not like it’s much clearer to me now, but at least I know that the KGB is the secret police, and GRU is military intelligence. They do sort of the same thing, though, so they’re always fighting over the same meals. And unfortunately for me, the guy I spotted was GRU—former spetsnaz <special forces>, at that.
Not that I knew any of that at the time. As far as I knew, he was just another cyborg. Another ugolovnik.
Meaning the sort of guy I had killed before.
Dumbass.
Even if he hadn’t been special forces, he wasn’t some drugged-up lush or bratnoi vyshibala <enforcer>.
Maybe I should’ve stopped and asked myself: If everyone knew what he looked like and where he was, why the fuck hadn’t anyone touched him yet?
Back then, though, that only made him more attractive to me. Well, specifically, the price made him attractive.
I was careful, as much as I knew how to be. Did my hunter thing and crept slowly up to his little nest.
Ivan—or, well, maybe it was Igor. Or Alexei? Boris? Something like that—had this girl he was sweet on. I heard he would go to her place for two solid days, no break.
I stared at the window of Ivan’s kvartira from my hiding spot in the shadows cast by a dumpster and contemplated.
If I was going to nail him, it would have to be either when he left or when he came back.
—When he leaves. That’s the plan.
It would be better to do it when he was all excited, in a hurry to meet his girl.
I felt a little bad for Ivan, raining on his parade like that, but when my stomach angrily lent its grumble to the discussion, that decided it.
To be on the safe side, I scrambled around the back alley like a kid looking for somewhere even remotely warm to sleep. When I was happy with the place I’d found, I took out my balaclava and pulled it down over my head, all the way to my chin.
It was only then that I realized how hard the strap of the PPSh was biting into my shoulder, how bad it hurt.
I tossed the gun in the trash can and was greeted by the smell of what seemed to be frozen pirozhki.
Then I folded my arms, leaned my shivering body against the wall—and waited.
I idly glanced upward, and towering over the rooftops, over the whole north end of Moscow, I could see it: Ostankino Tower.
From anywhere in Moscow, I didn’t have to look hard for it. It was somewhere on the list of tallest buildings in the world. It was easy to spot because a web of electrical wires stretched from it like intestines, connecting terminals all over the city.
And watching us.
Probably watching me at that very moment.
I stuck my hands inside my sleeves and crossed my arms. I felt like my teeth were going to start chattering. My stomach growled again.
I didn’t have anything as fancy as a watch, so I didn’t know how long I ought to wait or how long I’d been waiting.
Someone had been begging for one—Nora or Mariya, I couldn’t remember who. Probably Nora. She was always the loudest of the kids. Valery always knew the right thing to say. And Mariya…she would just silently stare at me.
“We’re hungry,” and “I want this.” Or, “We don’t have enough of that,” and “Danya,” and “Big Brother,” or “Bro.” It pissed me off.
“Whose fault do they think—?”
I clenched my teeth. Why did they think I was standing here doing this shit? God, it was cold. God, I was hungry.
I’d never even met Ivan, but I was just itching to kill him.
So when I spotted him in the foyer—a face I’d seen only in a grainy telephotograph—I moved fast.
“Privyet, metallolom <Hey, scrap-metal scumbag>!” I shouted.
Ivan, though, was as fast as lightning. He—I think this is what he did; I only figured it out later, after seeing someone else do something similar—thrust his hand into his shirt collar and pulled out a knife that he kept there.
He was already in motion by the time the word “Hey” was out of my mouth, and I was only then lifting my Tokarev.
To me, it might as well have been magic, the way the knife appeared in his hand. I thought it was some weird switchblade. Which, well, was close to the truth.
I heard a shhnk, and then the knife came flying at me.
I dodged it like it was nothing—because I’d already started rolling, thinking that Ivan was pulling a gun on me. If I’d fired the Tokarev instead, flush with the excitement of having gotten the drop on him, I’d probably be dead now. There were no heating pipes to help me out like when I fought that other Ivan—or Igor or whatever—long ago. That’s why I dodged and was able to save myself.
Instead, the knife buried itself in the concrete behind me, creating a crack, and debris showered down from above me. The trash can toppled over with a clatter, and Ivan locked onto me with his cybernetic eyes.
“Katis, patsan <Get lost, brat>!”
I didn’t want to do it, but he left me no choice: I pulled the trigger of my Tokarev. There was a crack as a bullet buried itself in the wall of the kvartira, and then Ivan was gone.
I heard a screech—the sound of his overdrive, probably.
I dove behind the trash can, although I knew it was pointless. I shoved my hand into the refuse and groped in the soft, rotting trash until I felt something hard.
I grabbed hold of it. Ivan landed in front of me and stood up. I squeezed the trigger.
The bullets went clean through the flimsy tin with an earsplitting noise.
I sprayed the PPSh’s bullets without a thought for whether I would need them later, or how much money I was wasting. I just let them fill the narrow alleyway.
I’d never experienced the flash or the sound of the shock before; it shook my brain and my body so badly I hardly knew what was going on.
I only took a breath when the PPSh clicked uselessly, because I’d blown through seventy bullets.
The place was filled with snow and drifting smoke and the stench of black gunpowder. There were chips gouged out of the kvartira wall, and some cracks in the windows. There was no shouting from the other residents—this sort of thing likely happened every day around here.
I got unsteadily to my feet and squinted, trying to see through the smoke.
Finally, I made out farsh that looked exactly like a shredded piroshki. It was hardly a metaphor: That was just the result of machine mixed with flesh and blood.
It still looked more or less human, though, and I could tell it was Ivan.
—This is why I wanted that PPSh.
I took the gun, now covered in unidentifiable filth, and wiped it with the sleeve of my jacket. I put the strap around my shoulder and let the gun hang—I knew perfectly well it was out of bullets—and brought up my Tokarev instead.
I put a round into the lump of Ivan flesh. There was no reaction.
“Vot tak?” I said.
Of course, he didn’t answer.
I hoped he wouldn’t think I’d been too quick to kill him. If I hadn’t been, I’d have been the dead one.
I finally noticed the state of my jacket and my balaclava; I was soaked. It was hard to breathe. I wanted to fall to my knees and vomit. Not because I’d just killed someone—that was par for the course. But because I’d thought I was going to die. Even though that was par for the course, too.
I crept closer to where Ivan lay on the ground. Yeah. He was definitely dead.
I didn’t know how many of my seventy rounds had hit him or which of them had been the fatal blows.
Maybe he hadn’t thought a kid would have a PPSh—or maybe his cyber body had gotten short on maintenance with him living on the streets. Or maybe he really had been just that excited to see his girl. Could’ve been all of them.
By then I already knew: Even cyborgs could die.
I was more worried about how many rubles I’d have left after I subtracted the cost of seventy bullets.
Then I was thinking about how many of those rubles would be used for my little brother and sisters.
From there I started wondering, How long are we going to go through this cycle?
I peeled off my balaclava and rubbed my cheeks and eyes furiously with my arm. I blinked a few times.
That was when my toe nudged something heavy. I picked it up and found a cloth-wrapped box, in perfect condition other than the bullet holes in it. When I opened it, I found a ring with a diamond smaller than the tip of my pinkie finger.
I thought about it for a second, then I closed the lid and pressed the box back among Ivan’s remains.
Probably because the only thing I was really interested in was the price on his head.
I couldn’t bring myself to steal anything else from him.