Idea
Author: Vasily Mahanenko
Date: 2021-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Description: Vasily Mahanenko's new LitRPG series, set in the universe of his World of the Changed! Modern times. Genius physicist Artyom Kuchaev found himself facing the darker side of the world we live in. Integrity is met with a laugh, the rat race instead full of people out to grab whatever they can. Where big money is on the line, no betrayal, even of loved ones, is a bridge too far. But Artyom couldn’t bring himself to conform. Instead, he decided to make a change in himself if not in the world around him. His work, surroundings, country... However, the world wasn’t ready to let the genius go. It was
Publisher: Magic Dome Books

Starting Point

by Vasily Mahanenko

Book 1: Idea

Published by Magic Dome Books

Starting Point

Book 1: Idea

Copyright © V. Mahanenko 2021

Cover Art © Ksenia Nikelson 2021

Cover Design © V. Manyukhin 2021

English translation copyright © Jared Firth 2021

Published by Magic Dome Books, 2021

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-80-7619-398-7

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental..

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Table of Contents:

Starting Point

Book 1: Idea

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

About the Author

Chapter 1

ARTYOM STARED DOWN at his phone, putting the call off as long as he could. All too well, he knew tapping that green button was going to mark the point of no return. And while his common sense told him he was making the right move, something inside still held back, refusing to let him make the damn call. His head filled with everything else he needed to do. But that just surprised him with his own weakness — where was it coming from? That wasn’t how people began a new life. After berating himself for his cowardice, he pressed the button to make the call, and a scratchy, older voice came through the line after a few dozen rings.

“Are you kidding me? It’s four in the morning! If you’re not calling to give me a Nobel Prize, you’re going to regret this.”

Artyom cursed once more, only that time to himself. He hadn’t thought about the time difference. Still, it was too late to turn back.

“Hi there, Doctor Slate! This is Artyom Kuchayev, Moscow State University[1] in Russia. We chatted a few months ago at the Stanford conference where I was presenting my system for dynamic levitation. Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

“Doctor Kuchayev!” The voice on the other end of the line suddenly changed. The annoyance gone; excitement took its place. “I can always find time for someone who turned solid state physics on its head! What’s going on? Need tips on your Nobel acceptance speech? In that case, you’ve got the right guy — I have a few ideas in the chamber. But really, Artyom, I’m very glad you called. Are you aware that you beat the great Lawrence Bragg by two months? He was twenty-five, the same as you.”

“Not this time. I need a job, actually. You said Caltech had something for me.”

“A job? That’s unexpected.... Really, very unexpected. I’ll be honest, I’m taken aback. If I understand correctly, we’ve been trying to lure you over for the last six months, only you weren’t having any of it. You wouldn’t even listen to us. But now, you’re calling at this hour to ask about joining. I’m confused. Did something happen?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Artyom said in a tone that made it clear how little he wanted to take the conversation in that direction. “I asked a very specific question. Is your offer still on the table?”

“Wait a second, Artyom. The university isn’t going back on what we said, but I need to understand what’s going on. If there’s a legal problem... You know how important our reputation is even despite the Nobel Prize.”

“No legal problems!” Artyom realized the inquisitive American wasn’t going to relax until he got what he was looking for. “The problem is the prize itself... I mean, how I’m not going to get it. I was removed from the list of authors — the finished copy went out today, and my name is nowhere to be seen. There are plenty of deadbeats, though.”

“That’s ridiculous! The entire scientific community knows it’s your invention. My professors are already preparing for the debates to prove that... No, that’s absurd... What are they hoping for? They’ll get torn apart in the first cross examination!” said Christian Slate, PhD, professor, and dean of the physics, mathematics, and astronomy department at the California Institute of Technology.

“Yes, it’s my invention, and I’m not giving up on it. I already submitted a police report, I wrote a letter to the ministry and the Nobel Committee, and I have a TV interview tomorrow. But while I’m going to fight for my baby, I have no desire to stay here with those people.”

Artyom eyed the abrasion on his fist. The shot to the jaw had been a beauty — the puny dean had flown back a full meter, slammed into the wall, and crumpled to the ground in a pile of tears and spittle. And Artyom didn’t regret a thing. After what he’d been told, neither the possible consequences nor the hit itself made a difference. He would no longer have been able to respect himself if he’d tucked his tail between his legs and headed back to his office.

They don’t give Nobel Prizes to idiots like you.

Biting the hand that feeds you?

Shut up and get back to work...

He’d had enough.

“I quit today, so I’m free to make my own decisions. If it doesn’t work out with Caltech, I’ll head to Harvard. They sent me an invitation, too.”

“Easy, Dr. Kuchayev!” Christian said hurriedly. “We’ll make this work. Like I told you, you’ll have your own department, I’ll give you an entire wing in the main building, and the provost said you’ll have unlimited resources. I’m writing a letter to immigration right now to get you a work visa. Since I already have your information, you can stop by the embassy tomorrow to pick it up. Buy your tickets — you’re coming to Caltech! Forget Harvard. They can’t offer you what we’re offering you!”

After some small talk, Artyom hung up and sighed heavily. Making the decision to leave the country hadn’t been easy. With a soldier as a father, he’d been taught to love his homeland, a nebulous concept he couldn’t describe or explain that was where you felt like you belonged. And that was why Artyom had turned down the world’s best universities to stay at his alma mater. That was where he’d predicted the atypical interactions within the crystalline lattices of solid bodies, where he’d found them, where he’d outlined them, where he’d been able to use them, and, for the grand finale, where he’d been able to prove the possibility of non-magnetic levitation using minimal energy. The ten-ton stone boulder had hung in the air powered only by one AA battery. And while many called it magic, it was nothing more than simple science for Artyom. A beautiful, elegant invention. But after the trick his university had pulled... No, sometimes you don’t have a choice. His homeland would understand.

The visit to the American embassy was surprisingly easy. Dr. Slate’s connections turned out to be wide-reaching, to the point that the ambassador himself came out to see Artyom. Most of the thirty minutes it took to print out the visa, in fact, was spent drinking tea in a comfortable chair. It was a pleasure to be wanted and to have that demonstrated so thoroughly. As far as packing went, that didn’t take long, either — the scientist was used to a Spartan lifestyle and just needed one suitcase. He didn’t even take his laptop with him, afraid that might spook especially virulent patriots into thinking he was handing over government secrets. Artyom kept all his levitation work in the most secure place he could think of: his own head. Real scientists didn’t need all those devices.

The taxi to the airport showed up exactly when it was supposed to. After checking to make sure his utilities were all turned off, Artyom closed his apartment door and knocked on the next one over. It opened immediately. A bulky, broad-chested man wearing worn pants and a gray undershirt barely covering his beer belly appeared. To even their own surprise, the simple worker had built a friendship with the intellectual living next door, though they did have more in common than might have been thought at first glance. Both were bachelors with neither children nor pets. All they needed from each other was a heart-to-heart every week where they downed a glass or two of beer and talked about problems, politics, and women. Nothing else mattered.

“Are you sure?” his neighbor asked as he glanced down at the key being held out to him like some poisonous snake. He’d spent the previous evening unsuccessfully trying to dissuade his friend from taking the reckless step. “You don’t want to try another university, just one that’s here? That way, you wouldn’t have to leave.”

“No way, Pyotr. None of ours would go against Moscow State — they care about their own skin more than that. But you said your piece yesterday, and I haven’t changed my mind, so let’s skip this. Here you go.”

Artyom didn’t have any relatives left. His father had died two years before; his mother had died a few years before that. With no siblings, his neighbor was the only person who could keep an eye on his apartment until he could sell it. The situation was perfect for beginning a new life in a new country.

“The airport?” the driver asked, dropping the suitcase into the trunk after getting the nod of affirmation. Artyom settled into the back seat and grinned. The trip was getting off to a great start — the taxi company had sent a beautiful business-class car for him instead of the usual budget model. It was as though they knew he was starting his life anew.

Things took a turn for the strange ten minutes later. Lost in his thoughts, Artyom didn’t immediately notice that the taxi wasn’t taking the usual road. He waited a while for the driver to correct his mistake, only they kept going in the same direction. They were headed away from the airport.

“Is something wrong?” Artyom finally asked. “I have a plane to catch, so I can’t be late.”

“Traffic. The GPS says this way is faster,” the driver said before pressing a button. The back doors locked, and a transparent glass barrier slid into place between the driver and his passenger.

“What traffic? Stop the car!” the physicist said worriedly, only that time he didn’t get a response. Frustrated, he took a swing at the barrier and frowned — his fist hadn’t gotten as far as its target. Just a few centimeters away from the glass, a force field shimmered as it absorbed the blow. Artyom couldn’t believe his eyes and tried again. The field was still there. It bounced back, as if it didn’t want to cause damage, though it did its job perfectly. The scientist was stunned. He knew all too well how much energy it took to create a protective shield that thick, and the fact that the strange taxi was still driving meant the source had to be inside it. But that was impossible. If anyone knew that, it was Artyom, as he’d practically gotten a Nobel Prize in Physics. What was going on? Was the dean getting back at him for the shot to the jaw he’d taken? But if so, where had he come up with the resources? And how had nobody written about the invention in scientific journals?

The taxi ignored traffic lights as it rushed out of the city. A few times, it looked like an accident was inevitable, though the driver was able to duck past the cars driving out into intersections. Artyom hoped the reckless driving wouldn’t go unnoticed, and his prayers were answered — two police cars pulled out around the taxi just as they were leaving the city. One was in front; the other took up a position behind them. Both had sirens screaming and lights on. Having only ever seen police chases in the movies, he braced for the police cars to begin pushing the taxi around, but nothing happened. In fact, his kidnapper only picked up speed as the police car in front cleared the road. And that was certainly odd. Suddenly, it occurred to him that whatever was going on had nothing to do with Moscow State. Even the provost himself didn’t have it in him.

But then, what was happening? Who needed to kidnap an ordinary scientist?

The race went on for more than an hour. Artyom was stunned by the scale of the operation, police cars stationed at every intersection to create a clear corridor for the taxi. At some point, the glass began to lose its transparency, leaving Kuchayev riding along in complete isolation. The energy field kept sound out as well as light. Only the sensations of the road told the scientist that the taxi was still hurtling forward, periodically wobbling from side to side. Or was it time to stop calling it a taxi?

The doors opened suddenly. Artyom hadn’t even noticed the car coming to a stop. But one way or another, the first thing he did notice was a red brick wall that boded nothing good. He recoiled instinctively from the open door.

“Get out!” called an unpleasant male voice. Artyom wasn’t about to follow his instructions, only the strange energy field stepped in to begin pushing him out of the car. Before he knew what was going on, he was tumbling across the grass. Somebody grabbed him and yanked him to his feet, shaking him like a kitten. He saw stars — that kind of treatment was nothing like what he was used to.

“Handcuffs,” said the same voice, and a weight found its way onto Artyom’s wrists. That was the last thing he needed. The world stopped spinning, he was able to look around, and that was enough for him to freeze in mute shock. The place the strange taxi had brought him to looked like it had been pulled straight out of a fairy tale. And it was a standard fairy tale, too, the kind that happened in a palace. Because that was where they were. It had columns, towers, sculptures, and bas reliefs, all of it blending beautifully despite the pretentiousness. But the palace wasn’t all that looked like a fairy tale. There were also shrubs, flowers, well-groomed trees, paved white paths, and trimmed lawns, all of it showing the work of a dozen landscape designers and hundreds of gardeners.

“Artyom Kuchayev?” asked the owner of the unpleasant voice, forcing the physicist to turn his focus on the people standing by the car. First of all, there was the butler. Artyom had never seen one before, though he had no doubt that was how they looked: sleek, trained, and dripping with a sense of their own splendor. The haughty look the elderly man trained on the physicist spoke volumes — it was like the latter wasn’t even there. Next to that snob, there was the driver. It was only then that Artyom realized he looked a bit muscular for a taxi driver, the man a veritable wardrobe that had somehow squeezed himself into a suit. Enormous sausage fingers had a tough time clutching a strange device that looked something like a joystick for a remote-controlled car.

“Sergey,” the butler said, and the “wardrobe” pressed a button. Artyom’s body seized up, the handcuffs he hadn’t yet taken a look at sending a horrific pain shooting through his body. As his mind switched off first, he crashed to the ground in a fit of convulsions. It was as if he were being tased, in fact, only the needles were coming from inside his body. His heart stopped, his lungs seized, his sensory organs switched off, and he was left with nothing but pain. And while it seemed like it lasted an eternity, it stopped as soon as it had begun. The end was even so sudden that the pain left nothing but a memory. The driver took a step forward and hoisted his prisoner to his feet.

“That was your first warning.” Every word spilling from the butler’s mouth dripped with poison. “Next time, your punishment will last another minute. Let me repeat myself: are you Artyom Kuchayev?”

“Yes, that’s me,” the physicist replied as he listened to what his body was telling him. Only there was nothing there. It was like he hadn’t just been rolling on the ground in agonizing pain. His heart beat regularly; his breathing was even. Glancing down at his handcuffs, he instantly forgot everything else. The scientist’s inquisitive brain couldn’t believe the image his eyes were registering — the handcuffs were made out of lightning. It was twisted into perfect circles that ringed his wrists, the two circles joined with a barely detectable smoke. Jerking his arms, all Artyom found was that the smoke might as well have been steel. The cuffs, coupled with the energy field in the taxi, were so otherworldly that he was scared. What if his kidnappers weren’t human? Were they aliens? Were they there for his technology?

“Follow me,” the butler said before setting off toward the mansion. There was no way Artyom wanted to give the terrifying handcuffs another test run. He obeyed. The driver followed, though he maintained his distance, presumably to make sure his prisoner couldn’t whirl around and grab for the remote control for the cuffs. Although, that hadn’t even occurred to Artyom. He’d never been one of those heroes who could kill with as little as a glance. His build wasn’t suited for it, either — he was lean, tall, and thin-boned. Just one look at him was enough to tell that exercise came somewhere far on the other side of a mountain of textbooks on molecular physics.

The palace turned out to be even more richly decorated than it had looked from the outside. Every meter spoke to the owner’s riches — there were paintings, sculptures, and wooden furniture. But that wasn’t what impressed Artyom. He’d already figured out that the palace wasn’t a place where anyone hid their wealth. Instead, it was the battle drones hovering in the air as if pulled straight from some fantastical movie that caught his eye. Bristling with dark machine guns, they escorted the guests from their position in the air. And Artyom couldn’t even see any propellor blades, meaning the technology used to create the machines looked awfully like the levitation he’d come up with so recently. That was a blow. Unless his kidnappers really were aliens, his pride was gone. He’d come up with something that was already in use.

Artyom was delivered to a massive wooden door, where the butler deigned to give him some instructions.

“You’re going before the judge. Your job is to stand there and listen. If there are any questions, answer concisely and to the point. Nothing else. Any sudden moves will be punished. Touching the protective field will be punished. Even accidentally ruining the air will be punished. And you can be sure that any punishment in there will make what happened outside seem like a walk in the park. Have I made myself clear, or should I repeat myself?”

“Got it,” Artyom replied, having a hard time staying calm. It was theater of the absurd. A ridiculous butler, torture pulled from the Middle Ages, unfathomable technology, some kind of judge. And everything was jumbled up into a scenario his brain couldn’t take seriously.

The door opened, and Artyom followed the butler into the luxurious office. Just like in the rest of the palace, everything was richly appointed, though there were some differences. The theme there, for instance, was books. Expensive books. The physicist’s glance fell momentarily on an old edition lying by itself on a pedestal protected by an energy dome. Whatever the book was, Artyom had no doubt it was authentic. The person sitting on the other side of the massive, antique-looking desk was a pedant. And people like that didn’t have time for trifles.

Artyom knew exactly who the owner of the palace was. It would have been hard not to — he was on TV screens every day. Always fit, rugged, opinionated, willing to protect the interests of the people, and, importantly, presiding over economic growth for three years running, it would have been hard to find a more perfect prime minister. He was particularly a breath of fresh air after his predecessors. But in that moment, he was sitting there staring at his guest as though the latter meant nothing at all. Although, he wouldn’t have elicited such a hate-filled look if he really did mean nothing. An energy field enveloped Artyom to separate him from the world around him. The master’s honorable nose didn’t tolerate the smell of lesser humans.

“Master, this is Artyom Kuchayev.”

Nodding to the butler, the prime minister picked a piece of paper up off the desk. Everything was happening so quickly and with such important people that Artyom was at a loss. He was just a regular professor at Moscow State, which meant he hadn’t come across state leaders that often. The room filled with the palace owner’s baritone voice.

“Physicist. Inventor. Traitor. Or no, that’s the wrong order. First of all, you’re a traitor, and everything else comes later. True patriots don’t sell themselves for a pittance, and they don’t even think about handing unique technology over to the enemy. Here, there can only be one verdict: guilty!”

The prime minister slid the paper to the side and gazed at the shocked Artyom.

“These are challenging times. Nobody wants to see our country get up off our knees, and our adversaries are doing their best to shove us back down to where it profits them to have us. But we’re putting up a fight. There are enemies abroad, and there are enemies at home, too — like you. Leeches. You latched on to wise people, learned their secrets, and decided to make a break for it, yes? That was your plan? Sell your colleagues’ work to the highest bidder?”

“I’m the leech? They stole my invention!” Artyom burst out. The shock receded, replaced by rage. Nobody was going to dare call him a traitor, and especially not after everything they’d done to him.

But the prime minister wasn’t about to let his prisoner say his piece. He’d made his decision, slapping on his judge’s mask to voice it. With a subtle motion, he had his aide tap a button, and Artyom fell suddenly silent. The lightning somehow tamed by technology had locked his facial muscles in a vice-like grip. And the force field surrounding him only thickened. As moving was out of the question, all he could do was fight for every breath and listen to the prime minister’s stunning speech.

“Your kind used to be lined up and shot without a second thought. But we’re living in more humane times, and that means even traitors get a second chance. You’ll be given an opportunity to prove you deserve the right to breathe the same air as me. We’re sending you to one of our restricted scientific institutes, where you’ll spend the rest of your life. Work and invent, and your sentence may be reviewed in thirty years. No sooner. That decision is final and not open for appeal.”

The judge’s mask had served its purpose and was discarded. It wasn’t one the prime minister had to wear often — there hadn’t been someone as unique as Artyom in many years. According to the rules the palace owner had drawn up in time gone past, it was his responsibility to sentence geniuses, leaving everyone else to his aide. But it was a good thing they’d started tracking that physicist. The prime minister hadn’t expected the chance to expand his team, and he knew the scientist was going to work wonders. Not for the government, of course; for him. As the owner of a small but highly profitable prison for geniuses, he’d been able to attain incredible heights and secure a bright future for himself.

The final word had been spoken. The driver appeared, picked Artyom up, and carried him out into the hallway, where several people in white smocks were waiting. Swarming around the unfortunate physicist, they began by injecting him with a sedative. It was time to prepare the new slave for their master.

Chapter 2

“STOP PRETENDING. I know you’re awake, and we have a lengthy list of things to do. I need to show you how things work around here.”

Artyom opened his eyes only to immediately squeeze them shut again. The world had changed, and the change was so drastic his brain refused to accept it. Trying to remember what had happened, the physicist couldn’t get any farther than the people in white coats attacking him. All he got for his trouble was a headache. Apparently, he’d been unconscious the whole time before waking up in that god-forsaken spot.

“That’s a shame — I was assuming you’d pick up the interface right away. If you only knew how little I want to go digging around in your head...” said the same voice sadly, and that pulled Artyom back to the world around him. Once again, his consciousness revolted, pushing for him to close his eyes, only that time he was able to fight back and take a closer look at what was apparently called an interface.

While he’d never been much of a geek for computer games, Artyom still knew his way around the digital world. He, like many of his contemporaries, had seen the colorful ads, installed the games, and logged in to see if he could find the perfect world. But just half an hour was usually enough to show that it was anything but perfect. Deleting the games, he never gave their fake graphics, poor physics, convoluted logic, and ridiculous controls another thought. He wasn’t about to spend his valuable time trying to get into the storyline and complete absurd missions.

What Artyom was looking at right then smacked of some computer game overlay. Down at the bottom of his vision, there was an unobtrusive status bar. There was also a two-dimensional map, a few buttons with colorful icons, empty quick-access slots, a chat function, and, to top it all off, a picture of Artyom himself. The physicist’s vision fell on the picture, and a translucent window popped up with gold lettering a few seconds later to eclipse reality.

Physicist 11837

Balance: 40 quants. Position: Head of solid state physics lab.

The message appeared so suddenly that Artyom gasped.

“Ah, I see you picked up the main controls, so you won’t need my help there. If you want to close that window, look at the X in the top right corner. Also, there’s a button with a question mark in your status bar — look at it if you have a question. That’s the help section, and I strongly recommend reading through it.”

A new window appeared above the one with Artyom’s information.

Assignment received: Read Through Help Info. Description: Study the help section and pass the test with a score of at least 75%. Reward: +1 quant.

“Great, that’s the interface. Everything else works the same way, so you’ll figure it out. And since that’s the main thing, I’ll disconnect.”

Supervisor (Albert Einstein) disconnected from your interface.

Security protocol initiated — personal interface blocked for all institute residents.

“Let’s go over the basic theory. Quants are the money we use in this god-forsaken place. You can exchange them for food, books, magazines, and access, even pay your colleagues for their help. Just don’t forget about your balance — the higher it is, the better your life will be. And believe me, you can carve out a life for yourself even here. Okay, get up. I feel like I’m talking at you when you’re lying down.”

Artyom got to his feet and finally took a good look at his interlocutor. The latter turned out to be an elderly man wearing a white smock, though his skin was unnaturally flawless. As Artyom had spent plenty of time working closely with physicist colleagues who were mostly on the far side of sixty, he knew all too well what kind of skin old people had. There were skin spots, flab, wrinkles, and any number of other defects. But there, he didn’t see any of them — the supervisor looked like he’d just stepped off a magazine cover following a long session with a stylist. Only the gray hair and weary eyes betrayed his true age. Though the more Artyom looked, the more he was convinced there wasn’t the slightest resemblance to the real Albert Einstein. Still, that was the man’s name. The translucent message with the same golden letters above the man’s head told him as much.

Albert Einstein

(information unavailable)

The supervisor looked around the room, Artyom following suit. The latter’s curiosity hadn’t gone anywhere — despite his unenviable circumstances, he was still the same scientist. Screens, controls, and odd devices were everywhere. In terms of the equipment in the room, in fact, it looked much like some spaceship from a sci-fi movie. Could aliens really have found themselves a new subject for their experiments and kidnapped the renowned scientist? Although, Artyom quickly put that thought out of his head. He wasn’t lucky enough for that.

“What you see is called the womb. Whenever newcomers join the institute, they come through here, and it’s where their identity is erased, they’re treated, and the interface is installed.”

“Erased? What do you mean?” Artyom asked, though he immediately fell silent when he heard his own voice. His hands immediately leaped to his throat as if to find the problem, only there was none. But something had happened to his voice. It sounded completely different — low, gruff, and more suited to a sea captain than a scientist at a lab.

“I always get a kick out of that reaction,” Albert said with a chuckle. “Get used to it. It’s your voice now. Oh, and about your identity... Take a look at your fingers. That’s what’s most obvious.”

Artyom obeyed and found himself staring at smooth fingertips. There were no lines anywhere.

“Teeth, retinas, voice, even your DNA — all of it was modified. Artyom Kuchayev died as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and he died for himself, too. From now on, you’re the simple owner of a physicist serial number. If you behave, you’ll earn yourself a real name. But, as you’ve no doubt surmised, it won’t be your own. I wasn’t born the oddball professor from Germany. Although, I did know him personally.”

“Wait, what do you mean, I died as far as the world is concerned?” Artyom asked in shock.

“Let’s get one thing straight: I’m here to give you a tour. That’s my job, and that’s what I’m getting paid to do. That’s it. If you want something else, you’ll have to pay for it, though I’ll give you a free tip since you’re new here. Don’t part with your cash that easily. Since you’ll need it for much more important expenses, skip the personal questions. But if you have a question about what we’re discussing, go for it. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Ridiculous...”

“Ridiculous for some; a regular work day for others. Are you ready, or do you need time?”

“What am I going to do with more time? Okay, tell me about the interface. How does it work? How did it show up?” Artyom asked, though he grimaced as he did. His voice annoyed him.

“Come on — I’ll tell you on the way. First of all, take a look at your map. The big room to the right is the cafeteria. You can eat all day if you want, though you have to pay one quant every twenty-four hours. If you don’t pay, you don’t get access. So again, never miss a chance to make some money. Hi there!”

The last phrase was directed at two men rushing by. Just like Albert, they were wearing white coats, though they differed in that they didn’t have names. Chemist 3778 and Chemist 3779. One glanced at Artyom, and the latter felt a wave of discomfort. It was as if the chemist was looking past him. And with how crazed his glance was, Artyom instinctively took a step back. He had no desire to strike up an acquaintance with someone mentally unwell.

“Albert, Physicist,” the strange man said with a friendly nod. “Sorry, no time — they brought in a new batch of meat. We’re off to see if there’s anything worthwhile.”

The chemists rushed down the hallway. Soon, they were followed by a few more people, all numericals. Physicists, chemists, a couple neurobiologists, and even a programmer passed by. When he couldn’t take the intrigue anymore, Artyom asked a question.

“What meat are they talking about? Why are they running, and why are we just standing here? And don’t even think about telling me those are personal questions.”

“Of course not. We’re not in a hurry because I’m passed needing any of that, and you’re not there yet. It’s distribution. Today, a good hundred kids were brought in with you — college and graduate students, even scientists from around the world. All of them were kidnapped and delivered to our prison to rot here in a week. That’s why they’re called meat. Out of the whole lot, only a few will become numericals.”

“From around the world?” Artyom asked in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting that.

“You didn’t think our beloved master only brings Russians to his institute, did you? I’m from Germany, for example. While I was one of the first to arrive, we’ve had people since then coming from China, the US, and Canada. Not so many from Europe. Maybe, their scientists aren’t that great. There’s a special group of hired guns that go around looking for smart people in different countries that they can kidnap for our master. And that’s been going on for seventy years now. You have no idea how much the world has lost by having them all go missing. If it weren’t for our master, humanity would probably have already conquered the solar system. We’d be on our way to the center of the galaxy.”

“Okay, I’m lost. If this whole outfit has been around for seventy years, you couldn’t have been one of the first.”

“Boy, I’m a hundred and eighteen, and yes, I’ve been at this institute from day one. Old Stalin personally signed the order to have me sent here. Back then, I was just a lieutenant following orders, though I’ve managed to take control of the whole institute and wipe it from the annals of history. I assumed nobody is aware of a secret city of scientists somewhere in the Siberian taiga?”

“The prime minister was around during the Second World War?! But he doesn’t look a day over forty!”

1 quant was deducted from your account. Reason: disrespect for the master.

Balance: 39 quants.

“Better not call him that,” Albert said with a sad laugh. “Here in the lab, the person who sentenced you to penal servitude for the rest of your life is called the master. And nothing else. The earlier you figure that out, the better off you’ll be. And yes, to answer what was nearly a personal question, he’s almost a hundred years old. But that’s just a taste of the wonders technology can work with people. Haven’t you noticed the changes?”

It was only then that Artyom noticed he wasn’t favoring the right leg he’d broken when he was young. His vision, ruined by long hours spent at his computer, seemed perfect, and even the teeth he never had the time or money to get taken care of felt great. At least, that was what a quick feel told him. Albert ignored the new physicist’s confusion and pointed down the hallway.

“The biophysics lab is that way. Nobody without a need to be there is let in, so we can skip it. A level down, we have the nuclear physics room, and below that there’s the chemists and all the rest of the rabble messing around with different substances. Not our type. I’m in charge of the molecular physics department — that’s two floors right above the cafeteria. Only thanks to you, things are going to get tight. The master gave orders to free up space for solid state physics, as you apparently made an impression on him. It’s been a while since we got a scientist who was handed their own department. Usually, you have to work your way up. As for the rest of the departments, they’re all in the other buildings, and we don’t have access. We can’t get out at all, actually. But that’s why I signed up to be a supervisor! Today, you, as a newcomer, get five minutes to look at the sky for the last time. And as your supervisor, I’m supposed to accompany you.”

Albert’s joy was unfeigned. He really did want to see the sky. Pointing out the direction, he continued his monologue.

“As I recall, you asked me about the interface. Everything there is simple. After your body was completely rebuilt free of defects, your eyes were ripped out. Okay, relax. They were pulled out, but you got a couple of our internal developments: artificial eyes. As connection devices, they’re there to serve as a link between your brain and the institute’s servers. Don’t be surprised if people don’t look you in the eye, instead focusing a bit lower as if they’re on something. They’re just parallelizing. Really, the functionality is priceless. It’s an access key, a passport, a wallet, a virtual assistant, and even a personal server that only you have access to. And then there’s information storage — you can set your eyes up to record logs, for example, after which you can go back and rewatch whatever you were doing. That’s perfect for when you made a mistake on a project.”

“It’s also a monitor,” Artyom replied darkly. “If something goes wrong, your eyes will explode, right? Along with your head?”

“Your words, not mine,” Albert said neutrally. “Nobody talks about that — it’s frowned upon. Ah, and here’s our door. Welcome to your last walk outside!”

Their conversation had taken them to the end of the hallway. As they stood facing a massive door with no buttons or control panel, Albert was in no hurry to explain what to do. Remembering how the implant was an access key, Artyom went over to the door and placed a hand on it. The panel slid noiselessly to the side. A message popped up:

You’re leaving Building 4.

Safe time outside the building: 300 seconds.

“Hurry!” shouted the supervisor as he leaped outside. Stepping out after him, Artyom found himself standing on a small balcony. His gaze fell on the white wall of the neighboring building. There were no windows, just wiring holes that let him count out ten floors. Looking down, Artyom found that the balcony was at about the third or fourth story, though there was no ground to be seen. Instead, a strange, mercury-like liquid lapped around the buildings. The supervisor closed his eyes and turned his face toward the faintly visible sun. It was having a hard time beating through the gray clouds and shimmering dome. For his turn, Artyom rubbed his eyes, unable to believe he was staring at a protective energy field encompassing the entire institute and keeping it safe from wandering drones and satellites. Another wall was to the right, limiting his view, though to the left...

“The point of coming out here is to show you the only way out of our little institute.” Albert had finished his sunbathing and was pointing at a small building with a tall chimney that was just to the left of the balcony. “That’s it — our final resting place. Its majesty the crematorium! We all end there, whether we have a name, we have a number, or we’re just meat. The master doesn’t want anyone to find out anything about us, so he keeps his secrets tightly under wraps. Whatever you have in mind, forget it! The only way out is through the crematorium furnace. Believe me, I’ve seen quite a bit in my seventy years here, but I’ve never once heard of someone getting out alive. It’s impossible.”

“What’s the point of all this? Why does he bring people here?”

“That’s a stupid question. Money, of course! Practically everything humanity has come up with over the past fifty years has been a product of our work. Computers, cell phones, genomes, decoding DNA...that was all us.”

“Sure, and global corporations are all just covers,” Artyom replied with undisguised skepticism.

“Exactly — global corporations. Not governments or institutes; corporations. The ones with the money, they can buy technology. And our master found a way to bring them on board. Without a single exception, every major company on Earth pays him a retainer. It’s small, just a blip in their financial reporting, but it’s constant. And when you’re taking a pittance from everyone, it really adds up quickly. Taking everything from one client doesn’t work. Instead, you take a little bit from a host of clients. And they’re happy to pony up... But I digress. The crematorium, our last home. Remember that.”

“You’re fine living in complete isolation? You can’t even go outside.”

“It may be hard to believe, but a lot of people like it. They have their own labs, they have unlimited resources, and they don’t have to deal with stupid bosses or idiot colleagues. You can really create here! At first, of course, it’s tough, but you’re used to it and even finding the positives by the time your first decade is wrapping up.”

“I won’t be getting used to it,” Artyom said firmly.

“What choice do you have?” Albert asked with a laugh. “Here, let me explain something to you. Down between the buildings, as you might have noticed, there’s a lake of something that looks like mercury. Believe me, it’s actually much worse than mercury. Kills you instantly. For the time being, the field is protecting us here on the balcony, though if we were to step outside it... Okay, let’s say you find something to keep you safe. We’re scientists, after all, and we have access to equipment like that. Next, you’ll have to get through the protective sphere that’s all around the institute. And yes, it’s a sphere, extending both above and below ground. Unless you have the code, getting through is impossible — I helped design and build it, so I can assure you there are no weaknesses. But! Even if you somehow manage to find the code, there’s still your eyes. You were right about them. They’re a monitoring system. Outside the field, they lose stability and rip your idiot head to pieces. And if you try to pull them out, the same thing will happen: complete destruction of everything within five meters to make sure anyone trying to help you catches it, too. That’s how we have to work. Create. Invent.”

Note! The balcony’s protective field will be turned off in 30 seconds. Return to the laboratory.

Artyom let himself be pulled back inside, doing his best to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the far side of the crematorium as he went. Finding out where he was would have helped. The supervisor’s mention of Siberia wasn’t going to help him get away. Finally, as the door slid back into place, the lock clicked. Artyom placed a hand on the door after getting the supervisor’s tacit consent and saw a new message pop up:

Access declined.

Do you accept the supervisor’s work introducing you to life at the institute?

“What are you waiting for? Accept it!” Albert said in annoyance a little while later. Artyom was careful to keep his gaze from resting for more than a second on either the Accept button or the Decline button, instead waiting to see how the supervisor was going to respond. If there was anything the physicist had learned over the short tour, it was that making hasty decisions was a poor idea. Everything needed to be weighed and considered first.

“How am I supposed to know if you finished the job?” Artyom asked, looking his interlocutor in the eye without a shadow of discomfort. “Maybe, you left out something important, and that will earn me a ticket to the building with the chimney. How do I check?”

“You can’t!” Albert shot back. “You know everything you need to know. There’s no reason to worry.”

“You didn’t say a word about why I was brought here or what I’m supposed to do, even where my laboratory is. No, I don’t think that was the full tour. And instead of taking me all around the building, you dragged me straight outside. How am I supposed to know where I’m supposed to go when the next supply comes in, for example? Where do they bring students? And don’t tell me I’m not supposed to know that.”

“Bastard,” the scientist said angrily. “Yes, there’s a tour around the building, but I cut it short. What’s the point of telling you what you’re going to find out anyway? I just wanted to see the sky — that was my first time outside in twenty years.”

“And that tells me I’d be well within my rights to hit the Decline button. The tour wasn’t complete. Or is there some other way we could solve this?” Artyom knew he had the supervisor dead to rights, but he wasn’t about to finish him off. Ruining a relationship on the very first day was a poor idea. On the other hand, he did need to stick up for himself and his own interests.

“What do you want?” Albert asked with a grimace, finally looking like a hundred-year-old man. “Quants?”

“I barely know what they are at this point, so no,” Artyom replied. He’d quickly realized what he coveted most: information. “Just answer a few questions, and we’re even. You said I died as far as the rest of the world is concerned. What did you mean?”

There was a long pause. While Albert stared at the new physicist in surprise, his expression evened out more and more with each passing second. Finally, he smiled.

“Nice job! You know how to get what you’re looking for, and I appreciate that. Hold on — I have an article about you somewhere. How’d I know it would come in handy?”

Albert thrust a hand into his pocket and retrieved a rolled-up scientific journal.

“You said this is a closed area!” Artyom said, his voice shocked.

“I also said you can buy anything you want if you have the quants. You just need to save up enough. But anyway, nobody cut the world off from us; we were cut off from the world. Here, check out the cover. See anyone you know?”

Artyom was staring up at himself from Science magazine. It was the picture he’d had taken for the Norwegian Nobel Committee, only it was black and white with a black line running through it. Glancing at the date, he completely lost track of what was happening.

“September?! I was in a coma for almost a month?”

“That I don’t know,” Albert replied with a shrug as he opened the magazine to the right page. “But what I do know is that a certain Artyom Kuchayev suddenly died before he could collect his prize. Still, the committee decided to give it to you posthumously thanks to your enormous contribution to science. A Christian Slate will be giving a speech on your behalf. By the way, congratulations! It isn’t every decade we get Nobel Prize winners in here. Although, to be fair, I figured out levitation twenty years ago... But that’s not important. You get the main point: the Artyom Kuchayev the rest of the world knew is dead. Completely and irrevocably. Now, you’re Physicist 11837, and if you prove your worth, one day you’ll be some Kulibin[2] or other. Or maybe, you’ll find your way to the building with the chimney. That was a good way of putting it — I’ll call it that, too, I think. Anyway, how you spend the rest of your life is up to you. Does that answer your question?”

“Yes...” No matter how Artyom had been bracing himself for the news, it still knocked him for a loop. Both bits of news, in fact, had come as a surprise: he was both dead and the recipient of the prize. Suddenly, all he wanted was some time alone to mull over what he’d heard. That meant he needed to deal with the supervisor right then, so he went ahead and hit the Accept button to complete the tour.

“Okay, I’ll admit I still owe you a couple answers,” Albert said. “But you can get them once you’re ready. Head over to the cafeteria — there shouldn’t be anyone there right now, and newcomers get free access for their first two days. Relax, get to grips with the fact that you’re here forever, and forget about trying to run. It’s impossible. Good luck, boy, and see you at our planning meeting. Over there, you’ll find out why you were brought here.”

Artyom followed the older physicist’s advice if not completely. As the door to the cafeteria opened without a problem, he stepped inside, though it wasn’t really a cafeteria. It was more of an exclusive restaurant serviced by robots. The space was broken up into lots of little booths with soft chairs, energy shields for privacy, lighting, and relaxing music. Drones flew around to stand in for waiters. But Artyom didn’t get the chance to enjoy the scene, a message suddenly popping up in front of him. He jumped, still not used to the new functionality.

Physicist 11837, the head of the 4th laboratory is summoning you.

Follow the yellow line.

A wide stripe appeared on the floor, turning sharply and leading out of the cafeteria. As if to underline the importance of what was going on, a new message was highlighted on the status bar:

299 seconds remaining until artificial eye detonation.

Chapter 3

ARTYOM MADE IT in three minutes, though he had to run. Lucky for him, the halls were empty, and the yellow line led him straight to where he was going. The only problem arose when it turned out he needed to take the elevator — the physicist very nearly panicked. But while he wasn’t sure how long it was going to take, everything turned out fine. The elevator’s smart system knew where to send its guest, and he was on the tenth floor in a matter of moments. The space looked exactly the same as the floor with the cafeteria. It had the same white painted walls, the same metal door panels. There was no variety anywhere to be found.

The yellow line snaked its way along the hallways until it ran into one of the many doors on that floor. Artyom stepped over, and the panel disappeared as if made out of smoke.

“Physicist, come on in!” someone called from inside the room. “Hurry up — I need you.”

When Artyom hesitated, the energy field pushed him through the door. It looked like yet another lab. The stone slabs scattered around the space made the physicist first label it a geology lab, though he remembered their building was for physics. As Albert had said, chemists didn’t count.

The office owner was next to a large boulder that had somehow found its way there.

“Grab that side of the stone and pull. Let’s try to rip it apart!”

Niels Bohr

(information unavailable)

Artyom followed instructions, though his surprise was bubbling over. Niels was a short, tubby, rose-cheeked man who would have elicited a grin anywhere else. With pants pulled up to his chest, he was the kind of guy who was best suited selling cotton candy and living with his mother. Artyom knew a few world-renowned professors like that. None cared anything about their looks, buried as they were in their work, and Niels Bohr looked to be one of them with the exception of the pristine white coat.

The lab head was gripping a hefty sledgehammer and equally hefty chisel with sausage fingers. Clambering up a stepladder he’d leaned against the bolder, he began barking out orders.

“I’m going to hit it; you pull. Let’s rip it up! Go!”

Artyom had officially lost any idea of what was going on. Drones buzzed through the air, machines with metal arms stood off to the side, and he even noticed a jackhammer in one corner, though all of it was going unused. The first blow sent sparks flying. Unexpectedly deft with the tools he was holding, Niels was getting to work.

“Come on, old girl. Pull!”

Artyom did his best to yank anything he could off the piece of rock. His fingers slipped, but he hung on for dear life. Perhaps, he thought, it was the kind of test without a winner that served only to see who would fight until the end. Once again, sparks flew, and Artyom suddenly realized he was toppling backwards along with a chunk of stone big enough to turn him into a pancake. That thought barely had time to register before it was swept away by his plan to save himself. Pushing hard, he jumped backward. It was just in time. The slab crashed to the ground, bounced a couple times, and left deep indentations in the floor. Artyom’s blood ran cold. If he’d been so much as a second later, there wouldn’t have been enough of him left for the crematorium.

Tools hit the floor, followed shortly thereafter by Niels. The scientist threw himself against the boulder’s newly bared innards, studying the picture. He got so close, in fact, that he could have stuck his tongue out and tasted the stone. But after taking long enough that Artyom had time to get bored, the lab head stood up and sighed heavily.

“Nothing. Yet again... Oh, Physicist! I’m glad you’re still here. Come on, I’ll tell you what you’re going to be working on.”

Niels leaped to his feet and headed off into the depths of the office as if he hadn’t just tried to squish his new worker. It was an entirely reasonable workspace. While there was no computer, Artyom had already realized that its place was taken by the artificial eyes. Niels sat down on the desk and glanced down at the status bar only he could see.

“System, clean up my office. I need three people, two quants each. You can decide for yourself who to assign and how much time to give them.”

It didn’t surprise Artyom in the least when a message popped up in front of him. He’d been ready. Who else was going to clean up the boss’s office if not the new guy?”

Assignment received: Cleanup. Description: Clear the stone debris out of the 4th laboratory head’s office. The stone can be tossed in the disposal. Tools can be found on the second floor, though they will be brought by other workers to streamline the process. Time to complete: 3 hours. Reward: +2 quants.

“Wait, you got picked, too?” Niels asked with unfeigned surprise. That took Artyom aback. “Newcomers usually don’t get assignments on their first day. Interesting... I’ll have to look into that. In that case, we need to hurry — you’re better off not spending time talking. The timer already popped up, right?”

The question served as an excellent reminder. Artyom hadn’t noticed the deadly message appearing on his status bar. Three hours later, he was going to either lose his head or earn two quants, and the System’s phrase about streamlining the process suddenly made sense. Without a doubt, two other people were dashing down the hallways as fast as they could to save a few seconds. Life at the institute wasn’t exactly relaxed.

While Niels was digging around in his desk, Artyom asked a question.

“Why do you need people to clean up when you have all these robots? Is it some kind of reeducation plan, beating silly ideas out of people’s heads with manual labor?”

“What? Oh, you’re talking about the rock,” Niels replied. “You think I like crawling up a cold boulder with a chisel? Not in the least! That thing was found deep in the nether regions of the planet, and it generates such a strong distortion field that any machine you bring close to it goes haywire. Not even air-powered tools work. You’d think they would, but they actually don’t. And what’s funny is that the field doesn’t extend outside the rock, though it immediately extends to any tool you bring over. We checked — even a twenty-meter drill bit isn’t a problem for it. Over the ten years we’ve spent studying the material, we learned how to shield our artificial eyes, though we just don’t have the resources for anything else. It’s the old-fashioned way for us.”

“How did you get that monster up here?” Artyom asked in shock.

“On a cart. How else? A few hundred people split into groups of ten and working in shifts to... But that doesn’t matter. That piece of rock seemed promising, which was why I needed to go through it. Unfortunately, as you yourself saw, it’s a dead end. It was under some kind of influence, pushed out of somewhere else.”

“What influence?” Artyom couldn’t help but ask.

“This.” A three-dimensional projection appeared in front of Niels, his artificial eye generating the picture. Artyom found himself staring at a tiny dot between two reflective plates that was shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. It looked so unnatural, in fact, that it was more the product of a crazed mind than a piece of nature. To complete the absurd image, a blue mist billowed around the dot as if protecting it from the dangerous world.

“That’s all we’ve been able to find after ten years of looking. We call it ‘energon,’ and the protective blue field simultaneously trying to destroy it is ‘noa.’ Every second, that little drop generates so much energy it takes a few nuclear power plants three months to catch up. And that’s despite the fact that it’s completely inert when it’s at rest disconnected from the network. It’s incredible! Actually, that’s why you were brought to the institute. It’s embarrassing to admit, but we’re at an impasse, and we could use a set of fresh eyes. This is what you’re going to be studying. Okay, a little more... Ah-ha! Here’s everything we’ve put together since day one. Before we can really get down to business, you need to learn it all.”

Access received to Complete Encyclopedia of Developments.

Virtual office initiated.

***

Assignment received: Studies. Description: Study the documentation detailing all the institute’s projects and pass the test with a score of at least 75%. Time to complete: 90 days from receipt. Reward: +1 quant.

A new button appeared on the status bar. Artyom hit it without a second thought and just about cursed when a new room opened up in front of him. Looking around, he swallowed hard. The walls were all lined with bookshelves, thick volumes packing every one of them. Moving around was easy enough — all he had to do was focus on something. And so, he did just that. Appearing next to one of the bookshelves, he glanced over its contents and stopped on a hefty book colorfully titled The Theory of Force Fields. As if on command, the book slipped out of its spot and hovered in front of the stunned physicist. The first page opened, and time stood still. What Artyom was reading smacked more of science fiction than a real prototype, and the information wasn’t just in text form. A three-dimensional image of whatever item, phenomenon, or experience the author was describing appeared next to the book. It was the perfect training system.

“Hey, the clock is ticking!” came an annoyed voice that pulled Artyom away from his reading. The virtual space vanished entirely. While it was as if it had never been there, the button down on the status bar told him he could pull it up whenever he needed to.

“Grab the cart. It’s your turn to haul!” One of the scientists was pounding away at the rock with a pick; the second was loading the debris on a roomy cart. Even to the naked eye, it was clear the local geniuses had come up with the cart — everything was unusual. Artyom grasped the handlebar, and the ergonomics fit him flawlessly. The yellow line appeared immediately, too. Whatever the System was, it was doing its part to get the office cleared.

“Let’s go!” one of the workers, a chemist with a five-digit number, said without a hint of ill will. “This is going to take about a hundred trips.”

The scientist was wrong — it took far more than a hundred trips. The “disposal” turned out to be the poisonous substance between the buildings, the cart unloaded into a receptacle on the same floor that dropped the rocks into it. Powered completely by gravity, there was no technology involved. Meanwhile, the trio of scientists took turns to work faster, though an hour later they could tell it was going to take more than one cart if they wanted to finish in three hours. Artyom passed theirs on to the chemist, who was supposed to handle the next three trips, after which he picked up an enormous chunk of stone, marveled at how light it felt, and trundled off toward the receptacle. The biophysicist followed his example, and the chemist followed his. Hauling the rock turned out to be much simpler than rolling it over on the cart.

Cleanup complete.

Reward earned: +2 quants (balance: 41 quants).

Bonus earned for finishing ahead of schedule: +1 quant (balance: 42 quants).

Carrying the stone by hand turned out to be so efficient that the trio didn’t even notice when they finished. As they wrapped up, the cart did come in handy to carry the smaller pieces. Artyom crawled around on his hands and knees to wipe up the dust, and it was only then that the System decided to call the job complete. Judging by the happy faces of his partners, they’d done good work. Quants really were valuable, apparently.

“Physicist, do you need something? What, do you not have anything to do?” Niels asked in surprise when the job was done. While the trio had been working, he hadn’t looked up once to see how they were making out. And although the chemist and biophysicist left as soon as they were finished, Artyom stuck around. He still had questions that needed answers.

“That can wait. Do I understand correctly that I need to read through all those books in three months?” Artyom was impressed by the scope of work the institute had put out.

“What’s the problem?” Niels asked, the question to him seeming so silly he even pulled himself away from what he was doing. “Was the assignment description unclear?”

“There’s a lot that isn’t clear, and not just in the description. For example, what the hell is going on? Why doesn’t anyone bat an eye about people being kidnapped from all around the world? Does it not bother you that they’re ripped away from their lives? How can you sleep knowing the crematorium is busy every second of every day?”

Artyom had made up the last fact, though he had to assume it wasn’t too far from the truth. A hundred people every month meant twelve hundred every year. And the building wasn’t exactly overcrowded.

“Oh, right — I forgot you’re new,” Niels said with a sigh. “Okay, so the hired guns kidnap people. So what? What does that change for you specifically? You spent days in your lab before; you’ll spend them in your lab here, too. And you don’t even have to spend two or three hours commuting. They take care of you, feed you, wash your clothes, get you everything you need, and leave you with nothing to do but what you enjoy most. If you pass the test, you’ll get your own department. You can teach young minds, fill them with knowledge, and solve problems nobody else is working on. Isn’t that everything you’ve always dreamed of?”

Artyom was taken aback. Everything the department head had described really did sound tempting, though the fly in the ointment was that it wasn’t of his own free will.

“No, I’m not talking about that. I used to have a choice, and now I don’t,” he replied as anger began to take over. “Even if I never needed it, I always knew there was another way. And here, there isn’t. Just work.”

“Of course,” came the reply. “That clears your mind and lets you focus on what’s important. You know, Physicist, spare me the emotions. If you want to discuss your sorry lot in life, the psychologist’s office is next to the cafeteria. Head down there, say your piece, and get some good advice. But don’t you dare project your issues on your colleagues. We’re all here to work and provide value.”

“Value? To whom? The bastard who locked us up here?”

2 quants were deducted from your account. Reason: repeated disrespect for the master.

Balance: 40 quants.

“The master,” Niels said. “The person who created the ideal environment for this scientific community, the most advanced on the planet. So, you have two paths ahead of you: reconcile yourself to your fate and start bringing value, or jump into the disposal. That’s it. And we’re not going to discuss this again. What’s the problem with your studies?”

Artyom wanted to shake Niels back into reality, only the combat drones up by the ceiling stayed his hand. After taking a few deep breaths to calm his nerves, he vowed once more to break out of the god-forsaken place he’d found himself stuck in. But that meant preparations he needed to get started on right away.

“It’s not the studies; it’s the deadline. I have forty quants, and I’ll get one more for going through the instruction manual. That’s forty-one. But I can only cover a month and a half of food in the cafeteria with that amount. Learning the material in ninety days means I’m short fifty quants. Where am I supposed to come up with them?”

“Oh, that’s what you’re talking about. Learn faster.” A snide smile flitted across Niels’ face.

“And without the sarcasm? Obviously, the System set the minimum time possible.” Artyom could have sworn that Niels Bohr was laughing at him and holding something back.

“Without the sarcasm, you need to work. And the fact that you’re thinking about that now instead of forty days from now tells me you’re a responsible, forward-thinking scientist. Okay, let me skip the suspense. You were brought here to my lab for one reason: to study energon. If you were able to figure out levitation by the age of twenty-five without access to our work, there’s something to you. But until you pass the test, you can’t get your own department, and that keeps you from bringing in fresh meat. You’re going to have to work on your own. And the only spot that guarantees you quants is under ground. That’s where we look for energon, and you’re signed up for the next expedition heading down in two days. Get ready. If you want to give yourself a leg up, study everything there is about mining — that will help. And if you don’t have anything else important, get out of my office and do something useful for a change. We don’t take kindly to people just standing around at this institute.”

Artyom himself didn’t want to stick around the lab director any longer than he had to. Stepping out into the hallway, he hit the Home button to create the guiding line. His mood had dropped precipitously after his conversation with Niels, to the point that he didn’t even want to stop by the cafeteria. The living quarters were on the eighth and ninth floors. There were no numbers on the doors, though the line lead him right to one of them. With the click of a lock, the panel slid to the side, and the scientist stepped through.

The room didn’t look anything like the prison cells they showed in cheap films. Instead, it was more like a deluxe room at a fashionable hotel. In addition to the spacious bathroom, it had two large rooms, a big bed, practical and convenient furniture, a comfortable work space, and two wardrobes full of clothes, including the ever-present white coats everyone wore. Artyom immediately tried the latter on. It fit perfectly. The room even had its own coffee maker outfitted with delicious-smelling coffee beans. As it just so happened, Artyom loved good coffee, making it a habit wherever he traveled to try a few dozen coffee shops in the hopes of finding the perfect cup. He’d only gotten lucky twice — once in Amsterdam and another time, strange as it was, in a small provincial city in Russia. Nothing else measured up.

As he reached toward the machine automatically, Artyom forced himself to stifle the urge. He’d already realized that everything at the institute was done using the artificial eyes. And if he didn’t practice, he was going to look like a neanderthal. Of course, he didn’t care one way or another, though he knew he had to be invisible if he was going to make a break for it. Everybody would have noticed him if he was a laughingstock. Hitting the Home button once more, he pulled up the fairly large settings panel. It had the option to turn on the TV, the feed delivered right to his vision without any kind of intermediary. And while there weren’t many channels, there were enough to keep him up to date on the goings-on in the outside world. That cost one quant a month, and Artyom confirmed the purchase. He needed a window out of the institute.

After finding the coffee machine, Artyom triggered the program, and the room filled with the stunning aroma of fresh coffee. He took a swallow, and the world around him gave way to unearthly joy for just a moment. The coffee was perfect. For the first time since he’d been kidnapped, the thought flitted through his mind that the institute wasn’t all that bad. But he shook his head to drive that idea away. Finishing his mug, he opened his textbooks. There were just two days remaining before his trip into the unknown, and he couldn’t waste them...

Physicist 11837, report to the research center.

The message even found its way into the virtual space, crowding out the open book. Artyom sighed in annoyance — he’d just started wrapping his head around the principle behind energy domes, shocked by how nobody in the outside world had come up with such an elegant and obvious solution. If it hadn’t been for the timer counting down 300 seconds, he would have ignored the summons and kept reading. But losing his head didn’t fit into his plans. Pulling himself out of the bed, he stretched as he realized he’d been so focused on devouring the information at his fingertips that he hadn’t set foot outside his room for two days. Food had been delivered, and Artyom had taken care of everything he needed from where he was. The room even had exercise equipment. As it turned out, each scientist was required to spend from thirty to sixty minutes every day working on their fitness. And the System monitored their activity, awarding them with green check marks next to each exercise when it was finished. Attempts to slack through it elicited a hit from the virtual Cerberus where it hurt — Artyom’s wallet. His balanced dropped to 35 credits before he gave in and decided to follow the instructions.

The guide line led Artyom right to the elevator. While there were a few people in it, all of them suddenly remembered somewhere else they had to be the moment he stepped inside. They avoided contact, almost as if he was in an untouchable caste. And that was odd. But even stranger was the fact that the elevator closed its doors and began flashing an unpleasant red color. An acrid smoke filled the space, and Artyom had to hold his breath. Just when he felt like he was going to have to pull the smoke into his lungs, however, it disappeared. The light went back to normal; the elevator started down. The only problem was that it took almost an entire minute instead of the few seconds Artyom had been expecting. As the elevator kept going farther down, his temples began to pound, his eyes watered, and he felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. He was even sweating by the time the doors opened.

The guide line led Artyom past a row of storerooms and workshops. To his surprise, he wasn’t in a building. It was an enormous cave packed far and wide with equipment and — the physicist even stopped to make sure he wasn’t sleeping — armed people. They were positioned on towers that let them see everything going on. And in that moment, Artyom realized he really was in a concentration camp. Up above the ground, people were controlled by the System. There, in the planet’s depths, it gave way to weapons.

The timer was running out, which meant Artyom needed to hurry. He took off at a run and just managed to wedge himself into a group of scientists before the clock ticked down to zero.

“Okay, we’re all here!” called an unfamiliar voice in English, the universal language of science. The crowd was clustered together so tightly that Artyom couldn’t even see who it was. On the other hand, he had an excellent view of the people around him, and they were all approximately the same age as him. Young, scared, shaking, whispering prayers, and broken, they were the very same fresh meat from the lab. Students from all around the world.

“We’re three kilometers underground, and you need to head down another half a kilometer to do your job,” the voice continued. “You’ll get your equipment right before you start. There’s no need for lights — it’s well-lit where you’re going. While your assignment is to stay down there for seven days, you can come back up if you bring a stone with you. If you don’t have one, don’t even think about it. And I don’t think I need to tell you how bad the emission is or what will happen to you if you decide to just wait out the time. You’ll have enough food and water to last you the week, however. Questions?”

The space around Artyom began buzzing as the kidnapped students jumped on their chance to talk. Everyone chattered away in their native language, the chorus unintelligible.

“Shut up! That was rhetorical!” barked the voice, and the group fell silent. Heads drooped, and Artyom could finally see who was talking. Wearing a military uniform, he was surrounded by soldiers training weapons on the crowd. No matter how hard Artyom stared, the information window refused to pop up and tell him who the man was. Either he didn’t have access, or the soldiers were outside the System. And there was no saying which it was.

“Step over one by one, get your equipment, and head down. Chemist 12302, up and at them! Physicist 11725, get ready. Line up!”

One after another, the scientists trudged over to the supply point on stiff legs. They were each handed a backpack, a pick, and a coil of rope, after which they were sent off to another elevator shaft. It was operated manually — a dozen people worked a huge wheel that raised and lowered a platform suspended by a number of chains. The platform fit five people. The trip down took about ten minutes. Even though the trip back up took another ten minutes, the workers handling the wheel traded in and out, so there was no down time.

Finally, it was Artyom’s turn. As soon as he got his equipment, the System gave him his assignment.

Assignment received: Mining. Description: Find a rock that matches the criteria for containing energon and deliver it to the main lab. Time to complete: 7 days. If you fail, you will be assessed a penalty: -5 quants. Reward for successfully completing the mission: +5 quants for every kilogram of rock.

The heavy backpack pressed down on Artyom’s shoulders, and the pick pulled away from him with such force that he had to grasp it with both hands. The platform shuddered and squealed. A few times, Artyom thought the chains were going to break, sending him and the others on the platform plummeting to their deaths, though they eventually made it safely. With ten minutes of complete darkness behind him, he found himself in an empty space bathed in a strange blue light that looked like it was coming from everywhere. Some quirk of nature had created the enormous area with a roof about thirty meters above them.

“Step off!” ordered the soldier who met the newcomers. It felt like there might have been even more troops down below than there were half a kilometer above them. Bristling with weapons, they’d outfitted an entire checkpoint. The impression they gave was that there were terrifying monsters deep underground that they weren’t going to let up to the surface.

“The platform will be let down every six hours. Nobody gets on without a rock, and we’ll check you right here.”

The platform jerked and began its return journey as someone dopped to their knees and howled in despair. Someone else beat the ground in a fit of hysterics. Afraid for their lives, a few others stepped away from the emotional wrecks, Artyom among them. He had no idea how to comfort or soothe anyone in those conditions — he was having a hard time as it was. If it hadn’t been for the two days he’d spent getting ready for the trip, he quite possibly would have been on the ground in tears, too, though he was armed with the information he’d gleaned and set on getting out of the trap he was in as soon as possible. All he needed was a stone to take back to the platform.

Because earning a ticket back up to the surface didn’t mean finding a stone. All the newcomers had to do was deliver it to the soldiers, which meant the real monsters of the underground world were the ones who hunted the people who’d actually found stones of their own.

Chapter 4

THE HUNT FOR ROCKS couldn’t have been simpler. Each of the scientists dropped down into the depths of the earth had outdated but still operational devices in their backpacks, and all they had to do was find a piece of rock next to which those devices died completely. Then, they were supposed to take the rocks back to the elevator for a happy ride up to their waiting prize. At least, that was the plan in theory. Reality was much more complicated. Over the ten years the hole had been around, every pebble for kilometers around had been checked. Fake stones had been carried over to the troops untold times, their finders swearing they were the real deal. After being turned back around, their stones were tossed away at the entrance, which was why entire mountains of useless rock had formed nearby. They made movement difficult and represented a constant headache. Given how unstable Earth’s crust was, the space periodically shook, sending avalanches crashing down on unwitting scientists below.

But that didn’t mean things were any safer farther away from the entrance. On the contrary, each kilometer spent walking deeper toward the empty horizon brought more and more surprises. While there weren’t any leftover rocks, there were whole forests of stalactites and stalagmites looking to poke holes in anyone who got too close. They didn’t even take the bodies away. It was too dangerous, and they served as a warning to anyone else looking to share their fate. Unexpected cave-ins, collapses, searing steam billowing up from the ground — the list of deadly traps was impressive.

Artyom had a huge advantage over everyone else: he knew and was ready for all that. But watching an engaging movie about mining the right stones was one thing; doing it himself was quite another. Clambering up yet another mountain, he leaned against a solid-looking boulder to catch his breath. A sheen covered his body, his chest burned, and all he wanted to do was fill his lungs completely. The problem there, of course, was that there wasn’t enough oxygen for him to do that. A few especially sensitive girls had already dropped unconscious, though nobody was in a hurry to help them out, worried as they were about their own hide. After glancing quickly at the limp bodies, Artyom wiped away the sweat and began slipping down the stone incline.

Nobody was working together. Fifty people had been lowered down, and most of them were only going to come back up a week later. For others, their time would never come. It was only a lucky few that would find a stone containing a particle of energon, and Artyom wasn’t thrilled by those numbers. Three people from every group made it back before the week was up.

“Wait!” a woman’s voice called. Artyom did the opposite. “Come on, wait up! Kuchayev, hold on!”

That was so unexpected that Artyom nearly tripped. Turning around, he saw the girl hurrying toward him, turning out to be exactly what he would have expected from the scientific community. Long hours in a chair had turned her body into a formless mass unsuited to the stress it was currently being placed under. Short and chunky, the girl was huffing like a locomotive as she tried to catch up to Artyom. Her once-cute face was smeared with dirt and sweat, though that wasn’t enough to hide the repercussions of adolescence. Even in the dim light, the acne scars and puffy cheeks stood out. Neither her appearance nor her name — Physicist 11892 — brought up the faintest memory for Artyom. She was a complete stranger.

“You’re quick!” After catching up to Artyom, the girl collapsed onto the stones to catch her breath. Her wheezing smacked of health problems.

“How do you know me?” Artyom asked.

“Are you kidding?” the girl replied, pulling herself into a seated position. “You’re a Nobel laureate — any physicist would recognize you! Your work with levitation is incredible. When I read about your death, I even lit a candle for you at the temple...”

“As you can see, I’m not completely dead.” Artyom was in no hurry to continue the conversation. “Is that it? Can I keep going?”

“Hey, can I come with you?” the girl asked as stood up with a groan. She wobbled but maintained her balance. After making sure she was stable, she continued. “I’m Liza Berger, grad student at Ural Federal University. I tried to talk to the others, but they don’t understand Russian, and my English isn’t great. But you’re Russian! If we join forces, we’ll find a stone in no time.”

Artyom’s first instinct was to turn the girl down. His second was, too. He was all too aware that taking anyone with him meant he would have to talk. And while it would have been one thing if Liza had been attractive, letting him ignore the conversation while enjoying the picture, he would have had to filter out the picture, as well. What did he need someone like that for?

“Just don’t think I’m coming on to you or something!” Liza said hurriedly. “I’m saying I can be useful.”

“With what?” Artyom wasn’t sure how to get rid of the persistent grad student, so he continued talking to her. At the same time, he was more focused on looking for the safest path to the far stalactite forest.

“I have two degrees. Mathematical physics and geology.”

“Then what do you need my help for?”

“I’m more theory than practice,” Liza replied, her flushed cheeks visible even in the blue light. “That’s why I transferred to physics — I don’t like hiking around impassable terrain. But I’m also good at noticing things and drawing conclusions. For example, you’re not a regular prisoner. You have privileges. Either that, or you aren’t a prisoner at all.”

“What makes you think that?” Artyom asked begrudgingly.

“It’s obvious — you’re constantly squinting, and you’re wearing a white lab coat. While I’m covered in dirt, you’re still clean as a whistle wearing clothes pulled straight from the laundromat. And only ten of the people with us were wearing lab coats. They stuck together, so I assume they were a group. I was dragged here two days ago and dropped in an empty room with no chance at striking up conversation with somebody, and that means that group lives here. Same as you.”

“Far-fetched, though there’s some logic to it,” Artyom was forced to admit. “Where did the ten people who came down with us go?”

“That way.” The girl pointed a thick finger in the opposite direction. “Lots of others followed them. Just you and a couple others decided to go this way. Why, by the way? It would have been much simpler to go around the mound, so why take it on?”

“Because that’s the way it has to be,” Artyom replied, putting the decision off as long as he could. Liza had shown that she had a head on her shoulders. And he could use someone like that, particularly given the fact that he didn’t know the first thing about geology. “Okay, let’s work together, though with one condition: the first stone we find is mine. Yours can come after that.”

“Deal!” A sincere smile spread across the girl’s face.

“In that case, I’ll explain my decision. Look — I think we need to go this way.”

A couple settings later, his artificial eyes created a projection of the expansive space. Every time people came back, they were required to update the map, and it had eventually gotten highly detailed within a radius of eight kilometers from the hole. None of the scientists had ever ventured farther away than that.

But instead of checking the route and weighing in with her opinion, Liza just stared at the image with mouth agape. A minute went by. She didn’t move. Artyom was finally forced to turn off the projection, and it was only then that Liza burst into tears. She collapsed onto the ground and covered her face with her hands, only scattered phrases getting through to Artyom.

“What? How? Why? You’re one of them? I knew it... But I didn’t believe it. Idiot...”

The instant transformation took Artyom by surprise. He had no idea what to do. A life spent in the lab didn’t do much to develop communication skills, particularly with the opposite gender, though he was sure of one thing: the girl wasn’t going to listen to him. Not in her current state, at least. Logic told him she needed soothing and a hug, only that wasn’t part of his plans. He wasn’t there to babysit her. Finally, he’d had enough.

“Are you going to help me? Or should I keep going without you?”

“Help you? What do you need me for? You’re one of them!” Liza was an emotional wreck.

“Yep, and everyone here is working for me. Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t know how to make a projection? Maybe, try checking out the help section.”

Frustration had set in. Artyom was starting to suspect he’d made a mistake letting the girl win him over, and he would have left her where she was if it hadn’t been for her reply.

“What am I supposed to project with? My finger? Unlike you, I didn’t get any devices. And what help section? I just told you I spent two days in an empty room! There weren’t any sections there.”

“You don’t have an interface?” Artyom asked in shock. “What’s my name? My name here, I mean.”

“Physicist something or other. Sorry, I don’t remember the numbers.”

Artyom scratched his head in confusion. The girl definitely didn’t have an interface, and she didn’t have artificial eyes, either. Kidnapped two days earlier, she’d been dropped right into the underground world to look for unusual stones. Was that why her kind were called fresh meat? Because they weren’t worth spending resources on?

Something inside the physicist snapped. The sense of justice his father had instilled in him sprang to the fore and demanded release. While he knew he could save everyone, that wasn’t the plan — saving himself was going to be hard enough. What he could do, however, was make sure Liza got back to the surface whole and relatively intact.

“Okay, let’s keep working together. I’m really not part of the local gang, but you’re just going to have to believe me there. And yes, before we go any further, you need to know the basics. It’ll be hard to talk about anything else until you do.”

It took Artyom an hour describe the fundamental principles behind the hidden institute. For the first part, Liza listened dubiously to stories of the wonders wrought there, though a few projections were enough to turn her into a sponge, absorbing new information at an incredible rate.

“In that case, I don’t get what the kidnappers are going for,” Liza said thoughtfully as soon as Artyom finished his story. “If they need energon that badly, why send people who don’t know what they’re doing? Even you with your artificial eyes aren’t really suited for this environment. Couldn’t they have brought a couple hundred trained professionals instead? They’d have the strength and stamina for it, unlike scientists who have never lifted anything heavier than a pen. It’s impractical and stupid.”

Artyom looked at Liza in surprise. The girl really was good at processing information. Everything she’d just mentioned had been on his mind, only he hadn’t been able to formulate the thought.

“When we get back, you can ask them yourself. In the meantime, let’s start looking.” Artyom even held a hand out to help the girl up, though they only lasted a few minutes in silence. After Liza caught up to him, she asked him to stop between wheezing gasps.

“Wait, something doesn’t fit. You said they’ve only come up with less energon than would fit in a grain of rice, right? But they’ve been at this for ten years. Does that mean everyone they’ve sent down here came down for nothing? Just a place to stick us for a week?”

“I told you about the boulder,” Artyom replied. “It was found somewhere down here.”

“And it was one more waste of time if I remember correctly. One more. Hasn’t it occurred to you that this whole thing might be off?”

“Are you trying to say that the scientists up there are such idiots they’ve been looking for distorting rocks for ten years when they should have been looking for something inert?”

“Maybe.” Liza wasn’t bothered in the least by the undisguised sarcasm in Artyom’s voice. “Have you checked for yourself?”

The girl slipped her backpack off her shoulders with a delighted groan, spent some time studying the devices inside, and settled on a battery-powered voltmeter. The simple electrical circuit was struggling — the needle continuously bounced from side to side due to the distortion from the rocks. If the kidnappers’ logic was correct, they were going to know they’d reached their objective when the voltmeter went crazy, and the battery swelled up. Liza swept the device from side to side. Every time she touched a stone, the needle began to jerk — every piece of rock within reach was impacted to some degree.

“Maybe, you’re right,” the girl said with a sigh as she put the device away. “They did find that bit, so they knew what they were doing...”

“No, there’s something to what you’re saying.” Liza’s ideas had given Artyom the same feeling he’d gotten when he’d unlocked the secret of levitation. Digging around in his own backpack, he pulled out an unfamiliar device with a light. It began flickering when he held it up to the rocks.

“You’re a geologist, right? What kind of rock is this?”

“Regular granite, one of the most common materials making up the planet’s crust.”

“Then we’re looking for something that isn’t granite. Will we see the difference?”

“Not in this light,” Liza replied after a short pause. “The blue color makes everything look the same, so it’ll be almost impossible to tell the difference between granite and gneiss, for instance. If we had a couple scanners...”

“You know yourself that they wouldn’t work. Okay, that’s enough sitting around! The only way we’re going to test out your theory is in open space — all the rocks here were brought because they had some effect on a device, it looks like. We need to get away from these mounds. Out there, we’ll see what we find!”

The excitement that came with solving a complex problem was intoxicating. After helping the girl to her feet, Artyom dashed off despite the thin air. Liza was left behind almost immediately. The obstacle course wasn’t easy for her, though that didn’t bother Artyom. He’d forgotten about everything except the empty spot half a kilometer away. As soon as he got there, he pulled out his device and began sweeping it from side to side, and while the bulb flickered and popped, he wasn’t giving in. Small steps took him forward as he checked the area with his light. An hour later, Liza caught up. The exhausted girl collapsed to the ground, gulping down air.

But Artyom wasn’t in any hurry. Kneeling on the ground and afraid to so much as breathe, he stared at the bulb. It was no longer flickering. Liza pulled her eyes open with an effort and held out her own device, weak arms shaking. Artyom took it and placed it next to his own. The needle pointed steadily at a volt and a half.

“There really is inert material,” Artyom said more to himself than to the girl. She just muttered something unintelligible. Surprised by her weakness, Artyom pulled out his pick and brought it down on the ground without taking much of a swing. There was a sharp clang that sounded like metal on metal, sparks flew, and the devices flew to the sides and once more began losing their minds, but it was a success: a small piece had broken off. Artyom dropped it into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled the devices back over to the anomaly. They worked perfectly. Glancing over at his map, he placed a marker to let future expeditions know where the spot was. Then, he moved the devices away and began raining down blows with the pick. The stone he’d found was incredibly dense. It got to the point, in fact, that the pick flattened, even shattering a few strikes later. Artyom stopped sending clangs echoing into the space around them and stared down in shock at the fragment in his hand.

“Reverse inertia... But that’s impossible!” Liza whispered. “Artyom, do you realize what that material is? It’s impossible in nature!”

“There’s no such thing as reverse inertia,” Artyom said in disbelief. “It contradicts the basic laws of physics.”

“Tell that to your tool right there,” Liza said as she crawled over and drew her hand over the stone. “You destroyed that pick, but look — you didn’t knock off anything else. The stone has such an odd structure, definitely not granite. I’ve never seen it before. But beating away at it isn’t going to work, so try cutting it out like clay. If I’m right, then reverse inertia... Just try it.”

Artyom wanted to tell Liza to jump in a lake, though he didn’t even have the strength for that. The emotions and adrenaline gone. All he felt was complete exhaustion. The lack of oxygen, the reckless sprints, and the depth of the cave were all taking their toll. Artyom collapsed face-down on the ground without enough energy to flip himself over.

The voices appeared sometime later, though neither Artyom nor Liza were in any state to react. They were speaking in English, and Artyom was happy to hear that — his partner wasn’t going to find out what kind of bastards there were in the scientific community.

“Did you check?”

“Yep, nothing. No distorting stones in their backpacks or pockets, and the devices aren’t giving me anything. Why did they decide to start digging here?”

“Because they’re idiots. I’ll take this backpack; you take that one. That moron is wearing a lab coat, so he’s one of them. Let him die. That’s what you get for kidnapping people.”

“Should we take a pick to him? Just to make sure...”

“No! The soldiers were clear about nobody getting back up without a stone, and seven days without food and water in this environment will do him in. And if not here, then up there. I’m telling you — I’m a doctor. How’s your head?”

“Feels like it’s about to pop... The air, the rocks... It’s all closing in on me.”

“Agreed... There’s definitely some kind of emission down here like they mentioned. But radiation? No, it doesn’t work like this.”

“Look how bad they’re taking it. They can’t even move.”

“And that’s why we’re not going to give them an easy death. Let them suffer.”

“But what did she do? Looks like she’s one of us.”

“She’s Russian, and I don’t like them. Also... See that lump on her neck? I can tell you even without doing a biopsy that she only has a year or two to live. And since they’re both dead as it is, let them stay here. Okay, we’re off. We have work to do.”

Artyom surprised himself with how calmly he accepted what had happened. Half an hour later, he was finally able to move again, and the thieves were long gone by that time. He turned over onto his side and saw Liza. The girl was lying there, and the twin streaks of dried dirt told the physicist that she’d been crying for a long time.

“How are you?” Artyom asked. “Ready to keep going?”

“How? Without tools, we can’t do anything, and we’re going to kick the bucket in a couple days without food and water.” Liza looked over at Artyom, and the latter nearly cursed. He’d never seen such glassy eyes.

“Who told you that? The pair that was here earlier? We should be thanking them for getting rid of our extra weight. Haven’t you realized that picks are useless? While we were lying here, I thought through what you said about reverse inertia, even came up with a coherent hypothesis, though I’m not saying anything until I see that you’re ready to work.”

“But we don’t have any food! We can’t hold out a week!” the girl said. With her size, she knew going without food was going to be a death sentence.

“Four kilometers away, there’s an area full of stalactites. Five people died there between the last two expeditions, and I know where their bodies and backpacks are. The food and water is stored in hermetically sealed containers, so nothing should have happened to it over the last month. That’ll last us a week... Does your head hurt? How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay. Tired, of course, and having a hard time breathing, though I can deal with it,” Liza replied, taken aback by the sudden subject change. “Why do you ask?”

“Those two were complaining about bad headaches, almost like some kind of radiation was acting on them. Will that lump on your neck be a problem?”

Liza’s eyes glazed over for a second once again.

“You know about that, too... No, it won’t, at least, not right now. It’s a malignant tumor, though we were able to stop the growth. The doctors give me a year to a year and a half of normal life...”

Once again, Artyom found himself in a situation where he didn’t know how to respond. The girl needed support on the one hand, but on the other, he wouldn’t have appreciated that kind of support if he’d been in her shoes. Remembering that Liza hadn’t started by telling him how she was dying and needed help, he decided he could ignore it and treat the girl normally.

“Let’s spend that year and a half living, in that case. Look, the pick did almost nothing. For whatever reason, it absorbed the force of the impact instead of transferring it to the rock, which means you were right about scraping it off. You were just wrong about what to use. This is our ticket!”

Artyom pulled the piece of stone out of his pocket and used it to dig a deep furrow in the ground.

“But that can’t be,” Liza whispered in disbelief, suddenly forgetting her health and hunger. The stone that had so easily withstood the steel tool was behaving like melting butter, rolling up as it was scraped away. But when Artyom picked up a twirl and tried to straighten it out, he just cut his fingers on the sharp edges. Human hands turned the rock into something harder than metal.

“It wasn’t the pick that knocked that piece off!” Artyom exclaimed excitedly. “It was either just lying there or barely hanging on. When I hit it, it flew off, and that was what made us think it was the pick. But it wasn’t! Did I say there’s no such thing as material with reverse inertia? I was wrong! Here it is!”

Artyom waved the piece of rock around as if it was the most valuable thing in the universe.

“But now we need to go back to where we started. What were we discussing while we were looking for this?”

“We were talking about what could be inside...” The girl’s eyes widened. She realized what Artyom had been trying to explain to her for the previous few minutes. “The scientists are wrong! Those distorting stones don’t have energon in them. They’re just affected by it!”

“And that’s what we’re going to test out. Let’s pull this rock open!”

Shavings flew off in every direction. The air was filled with the mind-numbing sound of metal scraping against metal. Half an hour later, weariness began to set in once more. The pair needed a drink. They wanted to sleep. Rest. Throw in the towel.

Artyom shook his head to drive away the distraction and dug his fingers into the trench that had formed. Grunting under the strain, he pulled hard even though he knew a crane wouldn’t have been enough to break the rock. He just wanted to stretch muscles worn out by the monotonous work. But that was when the unthinkable happened: something cracked, and a large piece of rock flew upward like a champagne cork to smack into Artyom’s face. Pain exploded through his jaw, and the physicist collapsed unconscious onto his back. He didn’t see the stream of bright blue light pouring out of the hole pierce the air.

“They found something! Let’s go!”

The two scientists who had stolen their backpacks had returned without finding a single distorting rock. Noticing the two Russian physicists digging around, the medic had decided to see what they were up to. And the long wait had paid off. As the medic had been a wrestler before being kidnapped, he didn’t anticipate any problems from the weak-looking pair. He would have been a match for a few of the soldiers, in fact, if it hadn’t been for their weapons. But the physicists were unarmed. To make matters worse for them, the man had just had half his jaw knocked off, leaving the fat girl whose only option would have been to try to smother their assailants.

With those thoughts running through his mind, the medic ran forward toward the column of blue light, only they were the last thoughts he ever had. Unimaginable pain shot through him five meters before he got to his target, and he hit the ground for the last time. His partner joined him a moment later. All he had time to do in his dying moments was grasp his head in agony.

The substance humans called energon was protecting its secrets from those it considered unworthy, reserving them for the deserving.

Chapter 5

LIZA BERGER WAS A TYPICAL CHILD raised by helicopter parents. They did their best to keep her sheltered from the difficulties and adversities that came with the outside world, focusing entirely on her education. And so, while her peers were learning the art of seducing silly boys, she spent her time reading one scientific volume after another. That fostered a love of learning, research, and logic. School, her first degree, and her second all found their way into the rearview mirror, and she began her graduate degree. The only youthful rebellion she indulged, in fact, was a weekly visit to the temple that infuriated her atheist parents. But while she’d spent her entire conscious life learning, it was all academic, with little to no application in real life. That was why Liza hadn’t been popular when it came time for geological expeditions. Smart and quick-witted, the simple things of life lost her, and she constantly found herself in ridiculous situations brought on by choices that made the people around her want to tear their hair out.

That should have been what happened in that instance, too. The situation was far from ordinary. If past events were any guide, the girl should have slumped over, started to wail, and called for help. She might have even whirled her arms around like twin fans.

But that Liza Berger had died a few days before. Physicist 11892 looked over at her partner, and she had a clear idea of what she needed to do in order to survive and prolong the year and a half she’d been promised. And “survive” was exactly the right word. Liza knew her odds were low without Artyom. Even if she made it a week, there were plenty of bastards like the pair on the ground out there. Everyone was going to join forces, putting down their opponents in their hunt for supremacy. But the girl had made her choice. She and Artyom had managed to find something that shouldn’t have existed in nature, and that meant they needed to study it. Nothing was going to stand in her way.

Artyom made for an awful picture. His jaw and tongue were gone. Liza stepped gingerly over to the bodies of the thieves, though neither of them showed signs of life. Getting her nerve up, she grabbed the first backpack and pick, running back over to her partner. Her limbs were obeying only reluctantly as they stepped outside their norm, though Liza wasn’t backing down. Using the tip of the pick, she cut her coat into strips, wondering as she did how Artyom’s lab coat was still pristine. There wasn’t a drop of blood on it. And that just left her needing to wrap up the wounds. There, Liza nearly wimped out — it was a long time before she could make herself touch the bones jutting out. Despite the damage he’d sustained, Artyom was somehow still breathing. It was through his nose, and it was with difficulty, but he was breathing, nonetheless. His pulse, on the other hand, was slowing. The girl was faced with a decision: was she going to overcome her fear or end up alone? After she eventually went with the former, Artyom’s face quickly turned into a cheap mummy cosplay. All the girl left on the outside was his nose so he could breathe. Everything else was wrapped up.

But Liza knew Artyom wasn’t going to last long in that condition. He needed to be taken back up to the surface immediately, only nobody was going to let them up without a stone. Her gaze fell on the blue column of light. Suddenly, she knew what to do. Without giving a thought to the consequences, she ran over to the hole and thrust her hand inside. Her palm immediately encountered something warm the size of a tennis ball, and she was surprised to find that it wasn’t set in the stone. Praying it wouldn’t be a source of pure radiation, she pulled her hand back out. The column of light disappeared. In its place, there was a small sun shining all the colors of the rainbow and surrounded by a blue vortex of noa. The girl had to squint, though she didn’t let go. Instead, she began counting to twenty. If energon, and the material couldn’t have been anything else, was radioactive, she was going to begin feeling the harmful effects almost immediately.

Liza stood there for a minute with no visible side effects. Turning away from the light, she squinted once more and found a few large pieces of granite. They were perfect. Running over, she began holding the energon up to each of them, transferring its influence to them. Her logic was sound — the soldiers wanted distorting stones, not the blue sun. And she wasn’t about to prove that the latter was what everyone was actually looking for. Handing the artifact over to her kidnappers wasn’t in her plans. They weren’t going to let her or Artyom go, regardless...

Realizing that she was wasting valuable time, Liza dropped the piece of energon back into the hole and spent the next few minutes finding the piece of stone Artyom had used to dig it. The rock had flown a few dozen meters away. But that gave her an idea. While she’d been planning on covering the hole up with a large stone and coming back with the next expedition, Liza got to work pulling back the cover of the hole. She couldn’t leave the stone there. Anyone who happened across that area was going to see the bright column of light, and scientists were too curious to do anything but return with a large crowd. And since she couldn’t count on dumb luck, she needed to hide the energon. But that meant she had something else to do.

Cutting a rock in half wasn’t a problem. Using the fragment they’d found as a knife, it behaved like a chunk of butter the same as before. Liza hollowed out one of the halves before turning the other into a kind of lid. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best she could do without tools or time. Placing the energon in the cavity and closing the lid, she jumped and almost screamed — her first thought was that she’d gone blind. The bright light was gone. Without it, the space around her had descended once more into gloom, though a few bright rays were still streaming out of gaps in the lid. Liza wrapped rags around the stone to make sure it didn’t accidentally open, and then she used a rock to shove the rags into the holes. It was only after her fingers were sliced open practically to the bone that she was happy with the result. There were no holes left. The blue light had disappeared.

“What happened?” someone said. “Where was the light coming from. Are those bodies? Do they have distorting stones?”

The girl looked up to see a group of five people hurrying toward her. Artyom’s breathing had turned ragged, and his heart was barely breathing. He wasn’t going to make it without help. And with the shaft four kilometers away and surrounded by mountains of stones, the lift itself only making its way up every six hours, Artyom didn’t have a shot. But Liza wasn’t about to give in. The physicist had shown her something incredible; she was going to do the same for him. Even if it ended up a waste.

“He needs help!” Liza said, pointing at Artyom. “He found some stones, but he’s hurt. Help me get him to the shaft!”

“Where are they?” One of the scientists stepped away from the group — he was clearly in charge. Ignoring Artyom, he pulled out his device and began waving it around. His attention was quickly drawn to the pile Liza had made.

“There are more than ten here! Guys, we’re getting out of this hole!”

“Those are our stones!” the girl shot back indignantly, though her efforts were in vain.

“Not anymore. Get your fat butt out of here before we do it for you.”

“But Artyom is going to die!” Liza was nearly crying in frustration. As it turned out, she wasn’t prepared for that kind of heartless attitude.

“We’re all going to die sooner or later. And that bastard works for them, so good riddance. Hey, what’s that you’ve got there? Let’s take a look...”

Liza didn’t even have time to squeal before the group’s leader jump over and ripped the stone out of her hand.

“What is this?” he asked in surprise. “What, did you decide to play dolls?”

“Stop it!” the girl exclaimed, eyes filling with tears. “Give it back!”

The group leader checked the stone with his device, though it didn’t respond. Liza had done a good job filling the holes. The energon wasn’t shining through.

“Grab the stones, and let’s get out of here!” ordered the leader, turning the cloth-wrapped stone around in his hands and laughing. “Stop playing with dolls. We’re scientists, not children, and there’s no room for wusses in this world. If you want to survive, come with us. The guy in the lab coat is a goner. You looking to join him? Think about it, and here’s something to get you going.”

The man held the bundled stone above his head and sent it crashing down onto the ground. The rags tore under the impact. As pieces of inert rock went flying, the miniature sun enveloped in blue mist was freed.

Liza squeezed her eyes shut. There was no doubt about it — the men were going to take the artifact, Artyom was going to be left to die, and it was possible she was going to be killed to keep her mouth shut. But nothing happened. All that changed was that the lump on her neck began to heat up until it was finally burning. Unwilling to show weakness, the girl held out to the end, though the pain eventually won out. A hand crept unwillingly to her neck to rub the painful spot, and it was at that moment that Liza’s eyes widened in horror. Even the bright light didn’t bother her. She looked down at her hand and felt the ground sliding out from under her. An enormous chunk of bloody flesh torn from her neck was lying in her palm.

Radiation, came the belated thought. As her body weakened, Liza dropped to her knees. It was the end. She hadn’t helped Artyom, and she herself was going to die. Even if she could have pulled her gaze away from the horrifying lump in her hand, there was nothing else to look at. Why watch as the gang grabbed the energon and left her in such excruciating pain? Liza felt another chunk of flesh fall off her stomach and catch itself in her clothes. The same happened to her arms and legs. Even as she was falling to pieces, she couldn’t so much as scream. All her attention was focused on the revolting piece of gray flesh.

But then it hit her... Why was it gray?

It took an eternity for Liza to realize that something strange was happening. Finally, her brain began working again, demanding that she wipe the blood off the flesh in her palm. And while she couldn’t believe it was going to work, she still went ahead with it, curiosity still peeking through the sensation of meat peeling off her. What she was holding was anything but healthy tissue. When Liza realized the dark inclusions looked familiar, her brain told her she’d seen them in the MRI of the malignant tumor that was supposed to kill her in a year and a half. An odd thought crossed her mind: how was it going to kill her if it was no longer in her body? With a jerk of her hand, she sent the horrifying piece of flesh flying before bracing for the waves of pain. But there were none. To the contrary, her body felt stronger and more energetic with each passing second. Her breathing evened, the strain in her low back disappeared, and even the cuts on her fingers no longer bother her. She turned her hands over and gasped in disbelief. They were in perfect condition.

As Liza’s strength grew, it occurred to her that it was too quiet. She shielded her eyes from the bright light and looked around to find the group of five lying not far away. None showed signs of life. But suddenly, there was a scraping sound that made the girl shriek and jump to her feet. Artyom, after lying motionless for a long time, was moving. Still unconscious, he was breathing evenly, and there were no bloody bubbles coming out of his nose. It was too late to keep everyone in the vicinity from noticing the light, but Liza still returned it to its stone hiding place before going over and touching the group leader’s body. He was dead. His heart wasn’t beating; he wasn’t breathing. Assuming reasonably that he wasn’t going to need his sleeves anymore, Liza tore off a piece of cloth and wrapped up the two halves of the rock. It was even worse than the first time, though she wasn’t about to get to work on the holes. Another rustle came from her partner. Whirling around, her mouth gaped wide in shock — Artyom was awake.

The darkness disappeared, almost as if it was switched off, and a horrific pain filled his body. Artyom wanted to groan, only he couldn’t — his jaw was on fire. It felt like it was being shoved into his head or even flattened. As a hand leaped to his face, he felt the tightly wrapped cloth, decided it was the cause of his problems, and pulled at it. There was a loud crack as it stretched and finally gave in. The blissful feeling was amazing. The pain was gone.

“Artyom?” Liza asked in a stunned whisper. Artyom opened his eyes and stared at the girl. Something about her face seemed strange, though for a while he couldn’t figure out what it was. Only when Liza got to her feet and took a hesitant step toward him did it occur to him.

“Liza, what happened to you? You changed!”

“To me?” the girl asked in shock. “I changed? Wait, how are you even talking?”

The physicists stared at each other in silent confusion, not completely understanding what they’d just said. Artyom was the first to break. The last few seconds before he’d lost consciousness flashed back — the explosion of pain, the supernova, the darkness. A hand felt its way across his face, and he couldn't find a hint of a wound. No abrasion, no scarring, nothing. And when he put together the hit, what Liza had told him, and the pieces of cloth wrapped tightly around his face, he realized that the only possible conclusion was that he really shouldn’t have been able to speak.

“Was my jaw broken or something?” he asked just in case.

“You didn’t have one — it and your tongue were torn off. The whole thing was awful to look at... But what did you say about me? What changed? Oh...”

Liza finally had time to spare for herself, and she found that her clothes were hanging on her like a clothes tree. She felt light and nimble. No longer thick sausages, her fingers were suddenly slender and aristocratic, while her wrists were so thin she could wrap a hand all the way around them. That hadn’t always been the case even when she was younger. Her palms felt her face, and her heart fluttered like a flag in a breeze. There wasn’t so much as a trace of acne scarring on her cheeks or forehead.

“Hold on, let me show you,” Artyom said as he set up his artificial eyes. It wasn’t that he’d assumed they had made it through the encounter with energon unscathed; he had just begun using them by force of habit. Liza stared in shock at the projection. Instead of rolls and lumps, she was looking at a trim, athletic figure. Her chubby if sweet face had turned stunningly beautiful. Artyom himself was surprised at how easily he was taking being next to a girl pulled off a beauty magazine. He’d always felt lost around attractive women.

“Am I dreaming?” Liza asked as she looked at Artyom, hoping the change wouldn’t evaporate the moment they were back on the surface. Artyom, for his part, asked her to recall everything that had happened since he was knocked unconscious. A few times, he whispered his thanks to her for what she’d done. It was hard to say if he would have done the same for her.

“So, everything happened when the energon was released?”

“And those five died. Just like the pair complaining about headaches...”

A few ideas turned around in Artyom’s head, each more absurd than its predecessor. After picking the most reasonable, he replied.

“Okay... Let’s say they send people here with a sufficiently high level of education. Or intellect, rather. Why? Because energon somehow interacts with brain activity, striking a blow if it isn’t sufficiently developed. And that’s why they don’t send professional miners down here — are there many of them with an IQ high enough?”

“Thanks,” Liza said, cheeks blushing. Even if Artyom’s guess turned out to be off the mark, she was flattered that a Nobel laureate had appreciated her abilities. Artyom didn’t hear her. He was consumed by his new theory.

“At the same time, energon protects those it counts ‘worthy.’ No, it doesn’t protect them! It was inside that inert stone long enough to heal me, only you said I was getting worse and worse. But after that group showed up... Sweet mother, I think I’ve got it! I should have died as soon as I took that hit. It was the pair that stole our backpacks that let me hold out long enough. The energon absorbed their life force and gave it to me! After that, this group was absorbed, which meant there was enough healing energy for you and me both. Your lump is gone! I’d bet anything you’ll find out your tumor is gone once we’re on the surface. We aren’t just healthy; we’re flawless! They could stick us in an encyclopedia entry for what the perfect human is supposed to look like.”

Artyom fell suddenly silent and stared off to the side. Liza was starting to be afraid he didn’t like looking at her when the explanation came.

“You know, I have no idea what kind of functionality my artificial eyes have. It could be that our kidnappers are watching us in excitement, looking forward to getting their hands on what we found. And what’s really a shame is that the energon evaporated when those five idiots destroyed the stone... Sadly, you don’t have artificial eyes they could use to confirm that.”

Liza was about to remind Artyom that nothing had evaporated when she realized what he was trying to tell her.

“For sure, a shame. I saw with my own two eyes how that little sphere exploded into dots of light and melted into the rock,” the girl said before waiting for Artyom’s tacit consent and getting to work. Stepping over to the hole the energon had originally come from, she began making a second “container.” That time, however, she knew what she was doing, she wasn’t in a hurry, and the result was impressive. Not a single gap showed between the container and the lid. Looking over at Artyom, the girl used two fingers to stretch the energon and easily bit off a small piece. The artifact felt like warm clay. Closing the lid and wrapping it with cloth, Liza placed the piece she’d bitten off in the hole and called over happily.

“Hey, there’s a little bit left! We found pure energon! Wait, don’t turn around — I’m changing...”

The last part was a ploy on Liza’s part to buy time for her to hide the new container. Sticking it in the hole where they’d found the energon wasn’t an option — the scientists were presumably going to be combing that area. And that meant it had to be hidden elsewhere. Grabbing a pick from one of the dead bodies, Liza ran a good fifty meters away from Artyom, surprising herself as she did with how easy running was for her. She then took a few swings to make a deep enough hole in the granite, placed the stone container inside, and scattered pebbles over it. After looking her work over, she grunted in satisfaction. It was impossible to tell from more than a couple strides away that there was something so valuable hidden under the pile.

“We need to leave a little inert material to be studied,” Artyom said when Liza got back. The girl nodded and began sculpting one more masterpiece. That time, it was the lid from the first container that was put to use — Artyom had already pocketed the container itself. It was sticking out of his pocket. He wasn’t looking to keep something that valuable in his backpack.

“Done!” Liza showed him what she’d come up with. The drop of energon was beautifully immured, not a single ray peeking out.

“Just in case, we should grab the stones. They might not let us out without them,” Artyom said as he filled his backpack with the pieces of rock. “I already set a marker. We can ignore the bodies — someone else will take care of them. Shall we?”

Artyom held a hand out to Liza, and the latter took it without thinking. And just like that, hand in hand, the physicist began heading slowly toward the elevator. Their backpacks weighing them down, they wound their way toward the way out rather than tackling the mounds head on. Other people began appearing closer to the exit. A few were simply lying on the rocks, their glassy eyes staring at nothing in particular.

“How many did you grab?” Liza asked, stopping next to two unconscious girls. The poor things hadn’t gotten half a kilometer before succumbing to the energon fields. A white foam bubbled out of their mouths; their pulses were barely detectable. Of course, Liza could have kept on walking, but something wouldn’t let her. It wasn’t the two unconscious scientists’ fault they’d been yanked out of their world and thrown down there to die. Even if they couldn’t work with energon, they still deserved to live.

“All of them.” Artyom pulled his backpack off his shoulders and counted the contents. “Twelve stones. Two are for us, the rest we can use. While we were walking, I counted four, and there are two more here. Want to take them with us?”

“Yes, let’s,” Liza said as she pulled the smaller girl onto her shoulders. That previously never would have been possible in her wildest dreams, though she wanted to test her new strength in that moment. Artyom didn’t push back. Returning his backpack to his shoulders, he picked up the second girl and set off after his partner.

The checkpoint hadn’t gone anywhere. The troops were still guarding the elevator against the quick-witted scientists, though Artyom was seeing them with new eyes. Standing there with their weapons, they looked pale, worn out, and in pain. The underground assignment must have been a punishment — six hours of headaches and weakness was a lot to take. But the hired guns didn’t complain, earning their pay with honor.

“Halt!” came the order as soon as Liza stepped across an invisible line. “Where are your stones?”

“I have them.” Artyom walked over to his partner and carefully placed the girl he was carrying on the ground. After helping Liza do the same, he pulled two pieces of rock out of his backpack. “Go ahead and do your check.”

“Bring them over one at a time!” the commander barked. Artyom could tell he looked flawless, unlike the rest, almost as though the noa around them had no effect on him. Liza grabbed the first distorting stone and stepped up to the soldier. The device he was holding lit up and died away immediately. The stone was perfect. After the procedure was repeated with the second stone, the two were weighed on antediluvian scales and dropped into a box. The commander jotted something down in a book before asking a question.

“Who are we taking? There are four of you and only two stones, so not everyone can go.”

“These two,” Artyom said with a nod at the girls, both of whom were still unconscious.

“Fair enough. Load them up!” The commander gestured toward the pair, and a few soldiers carried them deep into the checkpoint. Glancing down at Artyom’s backpack, which still looked full, he continued. “The next elevator trip will be in three hours. It takes five, though one of those slots is ours. Other than that, it will only come down if there’s someone to carry out. I hope we won’t have to do that twice... Go ahead.”

Artyom was taken aback. The soldier understood exactly what was going on, only he was telling them to hurry instead of confiscating their backpack and pocketing the profit. Compared to the crazed scientists, the soldiers turned out to be real people. At least, that one was. Artyom tried once more to turn his artificial eyes on him, but it was to no avail. The checkpoint commander was impervious to the System.

Liza pulled Artyom away from the checkpoint and back into the stone jungle. To make sure they were in time, the pair decided to start with the people closest to the elevator. There were four of them, three men and one woman. One of the men, however, took their combined efforts — his size was reminiscent of Liza before her transformation. But they managed. By the time the elevator arrived, they had enough people for three trips.

“Turn over your backpacks!” a voice called as soon as Artyom and Liza were on the surface. Artyom was yet again impressed by how smoothly the troops worked. While some were taking care of him and Liza, others had already rolled two unconscious scientists onto stretchers and carried them away.

“Let me through! Physicist, where is it? Show me!”

Pushing past everyone else, the head of the fourth lab rushed over to the elevator. The tubby man’s already-red cheeks were puffing with excitement and the long-anticipated encounter with the artifact.

“You were right,” Liza said quietly. “That just leaves one question: do artificial eyes transmit sound or just video?”

“Search them! Immediately!” Niels Bohr made it to the platform and took charge. “Take all their stones! All of them! And check every centimeter of them!”

Artyom didn’t have time to blink before he was twisted up and dropped to the ground. Liza collapsed next to him with an indignant screech — the troops weren’t gentle with their search. Artyom soon felt their tender ministrations on himself, too. They even checked his underwear.

“Clean!” reported the checkpoint commander. He’d come up with the physicists on the last trip.

“No good, Physicist, no good.” Niels grabbed the inert stone and package. “Did you not know that it’s forbidden to take anything out of the underground world? Somebody’s going to have to pay for that. And I know who. Not you, and not this lovely lady. No, it will be a lesson to you. Everything you get underground has to be turned over!”

“Just don’t open that bundle. It’s dangerous!” Artyom said as he noticed the intrigued gaze Niels was casting at the cloth-covered stone.

“Around here, I decide what’s dangerous and what isn’t!” the lab head replied as he began unrolling the rags.

“Pure energon is deadly! Don’t let him do that, otherwise you’re dead!” Liza called.

“Nonsense! Energon causes headaches, but not death. We already checked!” Niels shot back dismissively. “Somebody shut them up!”

“The radius is ten meters. Save yourselves!” Artyom yelled in one last attempt to warn everybody gathered around. The soldiers had shown themselves to be quality human beings, and he didn’t want them dying because of somebody else’s stupidity.

“Scatter!” the commander barked, though he stayed holding Artyom and Liza in place. His troops, on the other hand, ran off, though not all of them were in time. Niels had unwrapped the cloth and opened the lid. The space around them exploded in blue light and the sound of falling bodies. Energon worked instantaneously.

“Yes!” Niels hissed, his excited gaze captivated entirely by the small rainbow-colored sphere. “It works! It really works! I can tell!”

“My people are dead,” the commander said in a hollow voice.

“So what? You can replace them.” Niels closed the lid to cut off the deadly energon. “At least, I now know why your services are so expensive. You’re a chosen one! And a completely healthy chosen one at that! Deliver these two to my lab — I want to know everything they saw in the underground world. Now!”

Chapter 6

SOMETIMES LIFE brings the kind of moment where you’re ready to ask your sworn enemy for help. Until the last, Artyom refused to believe that Niels Bohr was going to keep his promise. He assumed the head of the fourth lab was just joking, that he would untie them when they got back and have a good laugh with the rest of the staff. But that didn’t happen. Artyom and Liza were dragged into Niels’s office and handcuffed to the wall. For a moment, Artyom wondered what else their captor enjoyed that gave him a reason to have special loops installed on the walls, though his interest was quickly satisfied. When another scientist stepped into the room with a lifeless expression on his face, Artyom shuddered.

Josef Mengele

(information unavailable)

“What do you need?” Josef asked. There wasn’t a hint of emotion in his voice.

“I’d like to know everything that happened to them underground,” Niels replied. “Go easy on the guy — we could still use him. You can do whatever you want to the girl.”

“Understood. I’ll get started.” Josef looked over at the pair of physicists as if they meant nothing. “They’ll tell us everything they know...”

A few assistants brought in a table loaded with terrifying instruments. Saws, pliers, and needles were accompanied by a few more tools that were completely unrecognizable. Rolling up his sleeves, Josef picked up a device that looked like a drill with a long bit and stepped over to the pair handcuffed to the wall. Their efforts to appeal to his humanity were met with disinterest.

“Nothing personal,” he said in a lifeless voice that silenced the prisoners. “Just doing my job. Before we start, I want you to know what will happen if you give me the wrong answers. Let’s begin.”

Liza screamed in pain as the drill dug into her leg until it reached the bone. A few seconds later, it was Artyom’s turn to howl. Josef moved with purpose but without emotion. All the begging, prayers, and threats fell on deaf ears, as he was working toward a goal that served the master. If he achieved it, he was going to get the fresh meat he needed for his experiments. His investigations were finally going to bear fruit. And that was a good trade.

“I’m going to ask you a simple question, and I’d like an equally simply answer. Why is that person handcuffed to the wall? You have five seconds.”

For Artyom, the words sounded like they were coming from another universe. The drill still sounded in his ears, the pain in his leg hadn’t gone anywhere, and there were red circles dancing in his vision. Josef knew what he was doing — his victims were in pain but remained conscious.

“Master! But how are you...” Niels stammered. “They wanted to hide energon! We can’t let that go unpunished!”

“Three seconds...”

“I wanted to pull information out of them so I could give it to you! There was no reason to bother you!”

“That’s a shame... Still no answer. Niels, you were given clear instructions for what to do with this person. For whatever reason, you decided to ignore them. I’m not sure why the physicist was in the underground world, why he was halfway between life and death, or why he’s shackled to a wall. My slaves are to obey orders if they want to live and enjoy the benefits I offer. And you forgot about that... It looks like it’s time to replace Niels Bohr.”

There was an explosion, and pieces of flesh went flying in all directions. The decapitated body of the erstwhile head of the fourth lab toppled to the ground. But that wasn’t enough for the master.

“Josef, your services won’t be needed for the moment, but don’t go too far. Let’s see where our conversation goes. I’ll make sure you have everything you need.”

“Thank you, Master,” the executioner said with a bow as he began to wipe down his instruments with the same impassive look on his face. A cold sweat broke out on Artyom’s back. One part of him was yelling at him to throw up his hands and do whatever the master told him to do; another claimed that even thinking of Mikhail Ignatov, Prime Minister of Russia, as his master was already criminal. He needed to escape and tell the world what was going on there. That was the only way he could be proud of the person he saw in the mirror. And as those two sides did battle for control over his consciousness, the prime minister poured oil on the fire.

“Physicist 11837, I need to know everything that happened in the underground world. Once I hear that, I’ll decide what to do with you.”

Josef drew a whetstone across an instrument that looked like a fork, and it was that provocative gesture that tipped the scales in Artyom’s head. If he didn’t draw a line right there, he never would, and there would be no escape. His mouth felt dry. Everything inside him recoiled at the decision he’d made, though his head rose above the fear.

“My name is Artyom Kuchayev, and I don’t know who Physicist 11837 is. If you need my help working on energon, I’m happy to discuss the terms. If you need information on how my partner and I discovered the deposit with the artifact after just a couple hours of work, I’m happy to discuss the terms. If you need anything at all, let’s talk. If not... Let’s see what your executioner can do. Maybe, you’ll get something from us now. But I swear to you now that I will go the way of Niels the first time I have the opportunity, and you’ll have to deal with energon yourself. Hopefully, the other scientists will be more amenable. But I’m out.”

3 quants were deducted from your account. Reason: repeated disrespect for the master.

Balance: 37 quants.

There was a pause. The prime minister’s breathing was clearly audible through the speakers, and even Josef stopped cleaning his tools and stood motionless in anticipation of Ignatov’s decision. The pause elongated. Artyom even had time to think about the horrific fate that was about to befall him thanks to his little speech, though he didn’t regret a thing. It was better than spending the rest of his long life in that prison. But then, Josef’s assistants rushed so quickly to free Artyom and Liza that it looked like they were in training as a Formula 1 pit crew.

Congratulations! You earned the right to change your name.

You were named in honor of Nobel laureate Artyom Kuchayev. Wear his name with pride!

“Okay, Artyom. Let’s talk. What do you want?”

The conversation was long and thorough. As it was going on, the office’s new owner peeked in, evaluated the situation, and decided he needed to start by working something out very far away, possible in the underground levels. The new Niels Bohr was a fairly unprepossessing person. With an average build, average height, and average looks, there was nothing about him that grabbed attention. He was the ideal cog in the machine that was the closed genius institute.

Artyom didn’t get much. To be fair, he didn’t want much. He knew all too well that he would have been burdening himself with any number of responsibilities, and then his inner perfectionist was going to kick in to have him finish them. His plan to make a break for it would have never become anything more than a plan. Still, there was one thing he insisted on: his partner. Liza wasn’t going anywhere. Ignatov spent a while unsure why the genius scientist needed the ordinary and overweight girl, and so Artyom had to tell him what energon did to people. The prime minister even turned on a video feed to see for himself how the girl had transformed. Basically, that was all Artyom asked for. Everything else came voluntarily from Ignatov: his own department with twenty people, the right to hire fresh meat, unfettered authority as the deputy of the fourth block, and the chance to visit the underground world whenever he wanted to.

You were appointed the head of the Solid State Physics Department.

Your salary: 20 quants per day.

Access level modified to correspond to your new position.

Ignatov disconnected. The new Niels Bohr returned to his office and got right to work, everything about his mute demeanor demonstrating to his guests that it was time for them to leave. Even Josef finished sorting his instruments and left. But one thing Artyom knew for sure was that he was going to pay for standing up to the prime minister. That couldn’t go unpunished. For the moment, Artyom the physicist was too valuable for anything to happen to him, though as soon as energon was thoroughly studied, the time was going to come. He needed to be ready...

“I’m never going to get used to my new name,” Liza muttered as she pulled up her attributes again. Artyom looked over at his deputy, and a warm feeling spread through his chest. Just back from a visit to the surgeons, she was transformed. Nothing was left of the overweight, withdrawn girl she used to be. In her place, there was a confident beauty who knew exactly how attractive she was. Over the month that had passed since Artyom had been named department head, the rest of the scientists had tried everything they could to get the attention of their new colleague. Everything from gifts to serenades through the door had been on the table. But the Snow Queen, as they called her, remained unmoved by their advances. A couple weeks later, Liza moved into Artyom’s room, and that put a stop to it. Nobody wanted a fight with the master’s favorite.

Marie Curie

2nd Deputy Head, Solid State Physics Department

“Apparently, they have some sort of fetish for Nobel laureates here,” she said, finishing her thought. “Dead ones in particular. I mean, they could have gone with Donna Strickland, no?”

Artyom Kuchayev, report to the distribution center to select department candidates.

Required: bring your qualifier prototype.

The usual yellow line appeared, only Artyom was in no hurry to follow the System’s instructions. He and the girl had been working the last month on a development that was one of a kind: a genius qualifier that checked to see who could withstand energon’s harmful effects. After Ignatov had responded dubiously to the report and demanded proof, Artyom and Liza had begrudgingly put together a list of the ten most promising physicists in Russia and the US. They knew all too well what would happen to them. But the pair didn’t have a choice. Either the troops would kidnap those who were theoretically capable of surviving contact with the rainbow-colored material, or the random bodies they found would be earmarked for the crematorium. And while the quandary was a difficult one for Artyom, he had to decide. The most important thing in that moment was to avoid regret.

“Ready?” Artyom was delaying as long as he could. He even wiped invisible dust off the table yet again.

“Okay, let’s go. We have to do this one way or another, so why put it off?” Liza picked up the qualifier and stepped briskly out into the hallway. The more they worked, the less time they had for depressing thoughts.

Fifty people were delivered to the prison every month. That time, however, the troops had clearly raised the bar, as the large room was packed. Meeting the commander’s gaze, Artyom raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The two had forged an unspoken truce after the incident in the underground world, with no jabs or yelling going in either direction. When Artyom needed to head down, the commander escorted him personally to make sure he didn’t put any of his people in harm’s way. The prime minister didn’t trust Artyom, which was why he controlled the latter’s every movement.

“The master ordered us to bring a whole crowd to be checked,” the soldier replied. He had never introduced himself, preferring to be called the commander. “We’ve had our eye on everyone here for the last two years. A hundred and thirty people.”

“Why so many?” Artyom asked with a heavy sigh.

“If they don’t work out, the other blocks will get them. Sure, they’re full as it is, but more hands are never a bad thing. I don’t think it’ll come to that, though.”

Over the month Artyom had spent working in his new position, he’d found out what the other labs did. The first was responsible for chemistry and everything having to do with converting different substances. The second handled medicine and worked closely with the rest. The third and largest worked on microelectronics. To take one example, the artificial eyes all scientists were required to wear were developed by them. The fourth, which was where Artyom worked, was for traditional physics. And the fifth, which even the troop commander didn’t have access to, was home to the institute’s old-timers. Considered scientist heaven, everyone worked toward a posting there, where everything invented by the other labs was reworked into incredible devices that were then put on sale. In other words, it was the assembly workshop that functioned as the master’s main money-maker. And the entire institute had spent a month working solely for Artyom, turning over everything he needed the first time he asked for it.

“Let’s go one by one. We’ll start with my list of ten.”

For his invention, Artyom had done his best to minimize the impact energon had on people. The body was made out of an inert stone, while the active area was built using the most powerful force shields available. Of course, before he’d come up with that design, he’d sent three scientists off to the crematorium. But there was nothing he could do about that — everyone working with him knew the risks. And there was no shortage of volunteers even after the casualties since the System promised each 2000 quants if they were successful. Given the prices at the institute, that was the kind of money it was hard to turn down.

That was the final testing day for the prototype. A large, sullen man was led over to Artyom, and his battered face complete with a large bruise under his eye showed he hadn’t taken his fate lying down. Even his hands were tied. When he saw Artyom, he stopped short — he recognized the Nobel laureate everyone thought was dead. Artyom just nodded in greeting and asked the soldiers to free the man. And while the latter rubbed his wrists, he remained calm. The situation was getting interesting.

“Place a hand here,” Artyom said with a gesture toward his device. He wasn’t about to explain anything. He didn’t need to, either. If the scientist didn’t obey, Artyom knew the soldiers would make him, though it didn’t come to that. The prisoner glared at Artyom and placed an enormous palm on the panel. For a fraction of a second, the sullen look on his face was replaced by surprise, as he found that what he’d taken to be glass was actually a malleable energy field. The hair on his arms stood up, electric charges began buzzing between them, and Artyom pressed a button. Somewhere in the depths of the machine, a small window opened, and a focused stream of noa hit the energy barrier. The device buzzed as it absorbed the energy and moved to the second phase — Artyom began taking down the shields. As initial tests had shown, energon at ten percent power was enough for humans to feel a headache. At thirty percent, they dropped unconscious. Fifty percent cost them their life. To make sure someone was capable of withstanding the rainbow-colored substance, they needed to be checked all the way up to one hundred percent.

“And?” the prisoner asked a little while later. “What does this thing do?”

“You’ll find out soon.” Artyom had a hard time containing a happy shout. They’d found their first person matching the specifications completely. “Next!”

All ten of the scientists Artyom had chosen passed the test with flying colors. Following them came another ten, all random people brought over by the troop commander — Artyom couldn’t bring himself to pass the death sentence. One after another, they stepped up to the device and almost immediately began complaining of sharp head pains.

That just left the grand finale. Artyom would have happily let someone else handle it, only he knew it was a burden he needed to bear. Nodding to the commander, he left the room even though the test was still under way. Next, he need to calibrate the prototype, confirming the initial results. The next room housed a pedestal atop which was the inert stone case. As the troops had already brought twenty people in and retreated to the far wall, a murmur broke out when Artyom lifted the lid. Even he held his breath. If he was wrong and the device didn’t work...

The sound of bodies hitting the ground rang in his ears. Closing the lid, he shut away the energon and looked around. Ten bodies were on the ground; ten people were staring at the container with a shocked look on their face. The large fighter was the first to break the silence.

“What was that? Are they okay? Kuchayev, where are we, damn it?”

“Welcome to the solid state physics department. All questions you have will be answered by my assistant, Liza Berger.”

32 quants were deducted from your account. Reason: repeated use of an incorrect name.

Balance: 74 quants.

Artyom ignored the message. Every time he used his girlfriend’s real name, the System hit him with a fine. And even though Liza had tried to reason with him, he stuck to his guns. He didn’t know any Marie Curie. For her part, the girl had given in, ordering magazines in her new name.

Liza shocked the scientists with a few devices, that moment carefully planned with the fifth block’s psychologists. In an attempt to avoid force, Artyom had decided to intrigue his new workforce with secrets and a path to unlocking them. Of course, he knew he was going to have to tell them the truth about why they’d been picked for the prison sooner rather than later, otherwise someone else was going to do it for him. But that was only going to be after they’d gotten their hands onto some invention or other to soften the blow.

“Does it work?” the troop commander asked as soon as the scientists left the room. The soldiers got to work hauling away the bodies of the random victims. As much as Artyom had tried, he hadn’t managed to avoid casualties entirely.

“You look like you’re the one being sent to the crematorium. Remember, Kuchayev, those ten deaths are going to save untold thousands. Now we can make selections based on new criteria. Okay, let’s go — it’s time for phase two.”

“What are you talking about?” Artyom asked with a frown. He knew nothing good was hiding behind those words.

“You’re about to find out,” the commander replied, and Artyom found himself in a new room a couple minutes later. It was hard to understand how to respond — there were people hooked up to medical equipment lying everywhere. Emaciated and in terrible condition, they were more skeletons barely hanging on to life. Some of them were unconscious, though there were also a few staring at Artyom with dark, unblinking eyes. He shuddered — there was hopelessness in their expression. The soldier handed the physicist his device.

“Check them out.”

“Who are they?” Artyom couldn’t help but ask.

“None of your business. Check them. The master wants to know which of them is worthy. Now!”

The soldier was scaring Artyom. Over the month they’d been working together, he’d never seen the former like that. Say the wrong thing, he thought, and the guy was going to tear off his arms and legs. Artyom took the device and stepped over to the first patient. A woman, she was unconscious. She’d had a rough go of it, too — half of her torso was missing. Somehow, she’d survived, though Artyom had no idea what was keeping her in the land of the living.

“You get that I need feedback, right?” Artyom asked just in case. “If she doesn’t start moaning or something, I’ll kill her.”

“Do what you have to do,” the commander replied sharply. “Orders aren’t up for discussion.”

“No! Let’s check the ones who are conscious first,” Artyom said. “I don’t want to risk it.”

The soldier’s face turned stony. Artyom was bracing for a hit, but it didn’t come.

“Okay, check the rest...”

There were thirty-two people lying in the room, though just eleven of them were awake. After going around to each of them, however, Artyom found that all of them began groaning in pain at ten percent. He wanted to give up, but the soldier wouldn’t let him. A finger pointed in the direction of the unconscious patients.

“Do it.”

There was no option. Artyom placed the palm of the nearest patient on the energy panel and turned the machine up to ten percent. Nothing happened — the unconscious body didn’t react. He turned the machine up to thirty percent. Usually, people lost consciousness at that point, but even the patient’s heartbeat didn’t even quicken. Artyom swallowed hard and went to fifty percent. After one last beat, the patient’s heart stopped, and the machine he was hooked up to began the sad, monotone song that accompanied the end of life. A team of doctors appeared out of nowhere, though they couldn’t bring the vegetative body back from the dead.

“Next!” the commander ordered.

“I’m not going to!”

“Next!” came the barked reply. The doctors disappeared. Even the soldiers accompanying their commander took a step back.

“Give me a week, and I’ll figure out a way to check people even like this!” Artyom was trying one last time to use reason and logic, but it was fruitless.

“The master wants a report today,” the commander replied sharply. “And that means he’s getting it today! Take that machine and check the next person. Now!”

Artyom obeyed. By some terrible coincidence, he kept finding himself next to the woman bereft of part of her body, though he turned away time and again to find someone else. Eighteen people had already met their maker, not a single chosen one among them. Artyom was losing hope — he had just the woman and a nondescript man remaining.

He went with the man. After turning his device up to ten and then thirty percent, there was no response. Sighing, he turned the dial to fifty percent and could practically already see the cardiogram flatline. But it didn’t happen. The patient’s heart kept right on beating even exposed to the energon. Artyom turned the machine up to a hundred percent and let out an excited exclamation. The patient had been chosen.

“Take him! Third phase,” the commander said, and Artyom could have sworn a shadow of gratitude flashed across his face. But he couldn’t tell for sure, and he didn’t have time to think about something as unimportant as that before he was dragged away. Their new destination was the first room with the crowd of kidnapped scientists.

Ten of them were led over to be checked, and it only occurred to Artyom in that moment what the third phase entailed. He looked over at the commander in horror.

“I can’t do this. I’m not a murderer!”

“Set it to ten percent,” the soldier replied unexpectedly. “I’ll do it myself.”

Yet again, there were no chosen ones, and Artyom was pulled away to phase four. It was the room with the energon container. The difference that time, however, was that the patient who had survived the encounter with the rainbow-colored material had been pulled in on his bed. While Artyom was led off to the side, he wasn’t permitted to leave the room. The scientist was going to be forced to see what his invention did. As the commander lifted the lid, the blue cloud of noa enveloped the unfortunate victims. The lid was replaced before their bodies even hit the ground, and an entire squad of doctors from the second building rushed in. They hooked the patient up to new equipment and called out a minute later.

“It works! The disease is in remission, and he’s feeling better. Energon works! Master, it’s perfect!”

“Excellent!” came the prime minister’s satisfied voice from the speakers. “Kuchayev, you have three months to make the process universal. Time’s ticking!”

Assignment received: Adaptation. Description: You found out that energon can heal even terminally ill people, though the problem is that it only works with chosen ones. Find a way to make energon work on anyone regardless of how energon affects them. Time to complete: 90 days. Reward: your life.

Chapter 7

THE UNFORESEEN HAPPENED two months later.

The morning began much like any other. At six, the alarm went off, and Liza pushed Artyom off her, deciding not to wake him. After she ordered breakfast from the room, she headed to the shower. But she didn’t make it all the way there. The smell of the sterile bathroom was so revolting that she lost control, the remains of the previous day’s dinner coming back out onto the snow-white tile. Liza had no idea what was going on. The System reacted instantly to the strange behavior, and three institute doctors immediately received an urgent assignment. Just ten minutes later, the room was packed. Another five minutes later, the dreadful diagnosis was ready.

“Maria, sweetie, you’re pregnant!”

Among the many strange things the prime minister did to the people locked up at his institute was complete sterilization for both men and women. His idea was that children could keep the scientists from fulfilling their main duty, cutting into his proceeds. But considering the quality of medical care at the institute, it was easy enough to restore that particular human functionality, which was why the entirety of the staff had been warned that pregnancies would be punished to the full extent of the law. Men and women alike, too. As he’d been preparing for the exam, Artyom had learned of a few examples that had been made, the previous one ten years before. Nobody knew what Ignatov had against children. What they did know was that he wasn’t going to go easy on anyone, not even his best.

The girl looked up in shock at the equally shocked doctor. For a moment, silence hung in the air — nobody, not least of all the System, knew how to react. Liza clung to Artyom’s arm as if to her last hope for salvation, and that was when the verdict finally came down.

Artyom Kuchayev, stay where you are! You will be dealt with shortly.

“Artyom, you have to understand,” one of the doctors said suddenly, her eyes downcast. “We have a mission... It’s not personal.”

“What are you talking about?” Artyom asked. That phrase never meant anything good. “I’m not going anywhere or — ”

But he didn’t finish his thought. His artificial eyes demonstrated a function that hadn’t been in the documentation: an electric charge shot through the physicist’s body to send him to dream land. The same happened to Liza. Before she dropped to the ground, however, the doctors grabbed her, laid her on a stretcher, and spread a force field over her.

“Take them to our block,” one of the doctors, the second deputy of the medical block, said with a heavy heart. The work she’d done with that pair was promising — energon had been able to heal diseases even the medicine they had at the institute was powerless against. Just a few days before, they’d run their first albeit unsuccessful test of the next-generation prototype. Of course, the doctor knew very well that most of the ideas behind the solution were Liza’s, which made the System’s decision that much harder. But they had no choice. The master’s orders weren’t up for discussion.

“Can he hear me?” Ignatov’s voice broke through the fog of nonexistence. Artyom tried to stand up, though he quickly had to give up on that idea — his head hurt worse than after a long drinking binge.

“Yes, Master,” replied someone the physicist didn’t recognize. “His consciousness is back.”

“Kuchayev, I knew things would end up this way sooner or later. You’ve shown me yet again that people shouldn’t be given a second chance. If you don’t kill the cockroach right away, it starts to breed,” the prime minister rattled off. Artyom realized his fight with the darkness was futile and froze, listening to the local deity. “I give you so much; I demand simple adherence to the rules. Nothing, really. But no, you spit on everything I do for you. You spit on your colleagues and the system we’ve set up, one that took several decades to build. Open his eyes! I want him to see this.”

A charge ran through his body, and the headache disappeared. As Artyom felt himself being lifted into a vertical position, he let it happen and opened his eyes to take in whatever Ignatov had planned. But he wanted to close them again almost instantly. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do anything but stare at the horrific scene playing out on the screen a few meters away. Liza was lying on a metal table, her arms and legs bound by a thick rope. And right in front of her was the gaping maw of hell — the crematorium furnace.

“Turn on the sound!” Ignatov barked, and Artyom was treated to the girl’s cries for mercy. She knew very well what was about to happen.

“Stop!” Artyom yelled. “I’ll do anything you want!”

“No!” the master barked in a tone that made the doctors next to Artyom cower in fear. “Twice now you’ve disrespected your master. Slaves need to understand what they get for their disobedience! And in your case, I’m going to show this entire institute who is in charge. It’s been too long since we made an example of someone, and people have started to forget who feeds them. Do it!”

The metal plate shuddered and carried the victim into the furnace. Artyom couldn’t breathe — the last shriek let out by his beloved as she was burned alive left an agonizing scar on his soul. He wanted to die. He wanted to follow her. But Ignatov didn’t stop there.

“Your turn is a month from now. And it’s up to you how you want to be carried into the fire. If the energon problem is solved, I’ll allow you to be given a sedative to ensure you feel no pain. But if it isn’t, you’ll be fed regenerating drugs that will keep you alive as long as possible. Make sure he can’t hurt himself in the meantime...”

You were removed from your position as head of the Solid State Physics Department.

Artyom spent the next week in a trance. For the first few days, he wanted to dive into the disposal, though the watchful guard kept him from carrying out his plan. He reconciled himself to his fate on the first day — he wasn’t going to be able to kill himself, though he was still going to die. As his brain finally kicked in, he realized why Ignatov had decided to indulge his temper. The new department head was the very same overgrown hulk Artyom had brought into the prison. Soon enough, he was caught up on the work. Liza had been the brains of the operation initially, though the scientists they’d kidnapped quickly showed why the energon had chosen them.

Artyom was left to himself. With the exception of the soldiers, nobody paid him the least bit of attention. He was going to be gone in a couple weeks, regardless. The focus of the other scientists was much more on working harder to avoid sharing his fate, rumors having quickly spread through the institute. Just a few hours later, everyone knew that the master had ordered a pregnant woman be burned alive and was planning to do the same with his favorite. And if anyone had had any ideas of trying to push for better conditions before, those ideas were quickly forgotten.

The only reason Artyom showed up at his desk was because he didn’t want to be alone in his room with a couple soldiers. They stayed with him at all times, though the lab at least represented a change of pace — excited colleagues were there to look at, too. The prototype trials were going well. The process Liza had developed for absorbing and storing life force from victims was showing positive results, and the energon took it before trying to restore balance without losing its mind. In a way, the artifact was like an intelligent creature pinned to the wall. It “agreed” not to kill anyone so long as it was allowed to cleanse itself. After the first tests, a woman Artyom recognized as the one who’d been missing part of her torso took over as responsible for the medical side. That gave him a warm feeling. He was a big part of the reason why she was there. After checking her, they’d found she wasn’t immune to the device, which meant she would have died if he’d gone ahead and tried it out on her.

Liza’s final cry rang in his ears yet again. She was calling Artyom, begging him to come, pleading with him to do something, and it was only then, for the first time since she’d died, that he felt the will to live. He wanted to pull off the impossible, find a way out of the trap he was in, and get his revenge. Liza deserved as much.

But that meant solving the problem of his artificial eyes, and suddenly Artyom had a challenge to work on. Over the three months he’d been imprisoned, he’d learned a good deal about the implants, though he only had access to the documented part. And that meant he had to find someone who knew everything else.

“I’ll lie and say I’m happy to see you — come on in,” Artyom’s erstwhile supervisor, Albert Einstein, said. The man glanced unpleasantly at the two soldiers that made up Artyom’s shadow and gestured toward the couch.

“The documentation for a few pieces the fifth block has put out don’t match up,” Artyom said, deciding to get right to the point. “Maybe, there’s a sync problem. Who handles basic instructions?”

Artyom was referring to the full and accurate technical documentation, part of which was then cut out for the instructions accessible to anyone.

“What do you care?” Albert asked with a snort, pointing at the two gorillas. “The master made it as clear as day for the institute what happens to those who strike out on their own. Really, I have no idea how you’re still sane. Knowing that you’re headed for the fire in two weeks — ”

“You’re not answering my question.” Artyom wasn’t interested in discussing that particular subject. “Is there basic documentation? You’re right — I have two weeks left, but I’m not about to spend them in bed feeling sorry for myself. I’m a scientist, and I’m going to remain one until the end. If there’s a way to study how energon works on machines, I want to try it.”

“Your artificial eyes won’t let you try anything stupid...” Albert started, though he quickly fell silent. A spark of interest glinted in his expression. Finally, he’d realized what Artyom needed. “So, that’s it... Yes, the documentation is there, only you don’t have access. Wait — don’t get up. There’s an article I’d like to discuss with you. Where is it... Ah-ha! Read this and tell me what you think.”

Artyom took the magazine in puzzlement and stared at the absurd theory on the origin of the lakes in some reserve. The article was long, taking him more than ten minutes to read through. But just as he was about to ask the old-timer if the latter was feeling okay, a message popped up.

Albert Einstein wants to share an archive with you: A parting gift.

Would you like to accept?

Accept. The file appeared on Artyom’s virtual desk, though he couldn’t open it. The document was password protected.

“Read it? Excellent. So yes, where that lake came from. If you ask me, it’s a silly idea, and if I were in charge of picking people out for the institute, I would never pick that one. Um... What was his name?”

“Joseph Bureshvili,” replied a confused Artyom. He was completely lost.

“Exactly! Joseph... What an interesting name. A significant one, too. If this Joseph were in any way like his well-known namesake, he wouldn’t have even thought of that nonsense, not to mention printing it in a scientific journal. They would have shot him on the spot!”

Artyom had no idea what namesake Albert was talking about. Brodsky? The poet and Nobel laureate? But in that case, what was the point of the part about “shooting him on the spot”? Albert was losing it in his old age.

Suddenly, shivers ran down Artyom’s back — he knew what Albert was trying to tell him and who he was talking about. The scientist was talking about the person who had sentenced him to a life of hard labor: Joseph Stalin.

The younger physicist opened the file once more, and the password matched. The archive opened to scatter virtual books around the space. But while the thick instruction manuals and technical descriptions for the entire god-forsaken labor camp of an institute were intriguing, the hurriedly written paper in front of him occupied his attention.

“You know, I don’t really care what you think after all.” Albert changed his tone suddenly, pulling Artyom back out of virtual reality. “Get out of my office — I need to work. Gentlemen, don’t let him back in here! Soon, I’ll have everyone traipsing in and out, only I’ll be the one the master takes to task for it.”

The last couple phrases were addressed to the soldiers. They followed his instructions precisely, gesturing Artyom toward the door. After they left, Artyom made his way to his desk and pulled up the letter. He had to open it before he could get to the other books.

The system that governs life here at the institute isn’t perfect. It can’t analyze or predict actions, can’t read people’s true motives. All it can do is execute its algorithms. And while the team over in the fifth block likes to boast that we have a real artificial intelligence about to be released, we’re actually not that close. And that’s why I can send you this gift — the System can’t check to see if you have access to information stored in an archive. Since we don’t really share here in the prison, there was never a reason to fix that. I hope you find what you’re looking for and survive the blast furnace. Remember, breaking out of the lab won’t work. People much stronger than you have tried and failed. But what nobody has thought of trying is climbing out of the fire, so give that some thought. Good luck. Whatever anyone says, I always liked you and Marie. It’s a shame things ended this way.

The piece of paper disappeared, granting access to the enormous library of documentation. Artyom knew his way around, so it didn’t take him long to find two volumes: Artificial Eyes and Force Shield. Twice as large as all the other books, they stood out, and Artyom got to reading. The unlimited coffee available at the lab saved him — he wouldn’t have made it in time otherwise. For a whole week, he dug through all the intricacies of the inventions. Removing the artificial eyes wasn’t an option, it turned out, as they were too closely integrated with the rest of his body, though he saw a way to work with the part responsible for detonating, blocking, and surveillance. He knew he was being watched through them in addition to the constantly rotating guard. Any strange move, and he would be checked and blocked. He had to make sure everyone lost interest in him.

And he knew exactly how to do that.

“You realize I’ll take you back, right?” the commander asked just in case. Artyom simply nodded, lost in his own thoughts. Over the previous two months, the number of deaths in the underground world had dropped to nearly zero as the process for mining energon was perfected. Only people with complete immunity to the artifact’s effects were allowed down, scientists and regular people brought from all over the world alike. And the results spoke for themselves. Several grams of energon had been found.

The soldier said something else, only Artyom was too focused to listen. What he had in mind took complete concentration. One mistake, no matter how small, and all would be lost, leaving him spending the rest of his days in shackles.

“We’re already here! Find your own vein!”

The five diggers glowered at the approaching people and went back to pulling away inert material. The spot where Artyom and Liza had found energon was the most common destination — everyone who went underground stopped there. After expert analysis, a determination had been made that that much material should have hidden nearly a kilogram of energon, but layer after layer was peeled back with no result. The diggers were already a meter down. And there was no rainbow-colored material to be found.

Artyom ignored the group and checked his map once more. Taking a few steps to the side, he found himself where he’d been sitting when Liza hid the container of energon. He didn’t know the exact coordinates, though the direction she’d taken was enough for him to begin his search. Picking through the rocks with his feet, he headed away from the diggers. The commander followed him closely, eyes glued to his charge. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.

“If you’re looking for a pick to do yourself in with, forget it. I won’t let you.”

“Do you really not get it? If I wanted to, I would have killed myself a long time ago, and none of you would have been able to stop me,” Artyom replied calmly. “Don’t forget that I’m a scientist. All I’d have to do is touch a bare wire, and it would be over. You’d be burning a corpse.”

“Okay, then I don’t understand...” The commander even stopped, taken aback. Artyom whirled around and stared closely at his escort. His plan suddenly took on a few more details to make it even more elegant. Unfazed by the lie, the scientist replied.

“It’s simple. If I can’t get out, I need to make sure my life is more important than the prime minister’s principles. I want buy my way out of this.”

A message popped up telling him about more quants he was losing. His balance was all the way down at three, just enough to cover his last three days at the cafeteria, and that meant he was going to have to watch himself. There was no telling how the System processed negative balances. If it stripped him of access to his desk, he was a goner.

“And how are you planning on doing that?” the commander asked.

Artyom kicked yet another stone aside, and his heart beat faster. The container Liza had made was staring up at him.

“Like this,” he said as he picked up the cloth-wrapped stone.

“Is that what I think it is?” the soldier asked, picking up on what was happening surprisingly quickly.

“Yes,” Artyom replied as he unwrapped the container. “What we were just about killed for...”

The lid clattered to the ground, and a bright blue light flooded the area as noa rushed over to protect or absorb the energon. The scientists hadn’t been able to figure out how the blue mist worked. Off in the distance, voices were heard, the blinded soldier hissed in surprise, and Artyom picked that moment to put his plan into action. He pinched off a small piece of the artifact and rolled it up into a wire he held up to one of his eyes. It was turned off — being that close to pure energon sent it into a kind of stasis. Even the energy shields were helpless, though Artyom hesitated for a second. Working out his plan in virtual space was one thing; sticking a needle in his eyes was another. But he didn’t have a choice. The diggers were getting closer. Swallowing hard and wishing himself luck, he felt around for the right spot and joined the energon to the implant. A myriad of bright spots exploded in his head, and he dropped to his knees. But he was able to squeeze the energon back into the larger mass even as he held onto consciousness with his fingernails. The wire would have raised questions.

The artifact was ripped out of his hand. He was shoved backwards. And suddenly, the light disappeared as the commander returned the container lid to its place.

“Get back!” the commander yelled at the onrushing diggers. But when they didn’t respond, he was forced to take action. A long dagger appeared in his hand. That worked better than anything he could have said, and the diggers stopped. But they weren’t far — their fear of meeting their maker wasn’t as strong as their desire to get their hands on the artifact. Not only that, but their ranks were filling. Everyone wanted to know what had cause the bright light and, possibly, how to get some of it for themselves.

“Kuchayev, the platform! Let’s go!” The soldier was clearly nervous. While confident in his own skills, he also knew there were simply too many prisoners underground. They could simply overrun him. Of course, he would kill a few, but not all of them. The damn physicist had managed to pull a fast one, and that had the soldier wondering if he was trying to find a way out. Perhaps, he was confusing the diggers and trying to get them to kill him. It wasn’t a bad plan.

Artyom stood up with a wobble. His artificial eyes were behaving strangely, pulling up different routes, opening files, and obstructing his vision. Even closing them didn’t earn him any relief as the images were piped directly into his brain. And that was potentially a problem, if not right then. Later. The important thing in that moment was that his eyes hadn’t detonated after the trick he’d pulled, he wasn’t getting an array of threats, and his body wasn’t being frozen. His plan had worked. The part of the implants handling the undocumented functionality had turned off.

The crowd was growing large enough to spoil Artyom’s plan. He yelled over them in an attempt to get away.

“We found another spot with energon deposits! It’s a hundred meters away from the stalactite forest, over in that direction. If you can get there, you’ll find an enormous chunk, and the spot isn’t being guarded. Look for stalactites shaped like horns. Hurry — someone else might get there first!”

Surprisingly, it worked. Of course, the commander’s blade also helped, though it more brought the point home. The diggers, most importantly, dashed off in the hopes of being the first to find the treasure, an enormous reward out for anyone who brought back more than five grams of energon.

“You didn’t get to the stalactite forest,” the commander said quietly, his dagger still held at the ready. Not everyone had run off. “And you have no idea if there are any deposits there.”

“But they don’t know that,” Artyom replied with a shrug. “Okay, let’s go see what this gets me...”

As might have been expected, it got him precisely nothing. Ignatov thanked the commander for bringing back the energon and promised him a nice reward, though he refused to even consider a conversation about Artyom. Even the physicist’s protests about being the only one who knew how to look for the artifact were ignored. Instead, the prime minister stuck to his rule: if one person could figure it out, so could the rest. But that didn’t bother Artyom — he hadn’t been expecting a reprieve. What he needed to do was show a desire to live that would forestall more questions.

Artyom’s work went ahead much faster without his extra oversight. Not only that, but the incident in the underground world led to surveillance being relaxed. The soldiers weren’t quite so nosey, sometimes even leaving him alone with his devices. If he’d wanted to avoid his date with the crematorium, he could have. But he didn’t want to. All he cared about was executing his plan.

And he made it in time. Execution day arrived, and he was ready.

Chapter 8

THE TROOP COMMANDER showed up personally to escort Artyom to the crematorium. Motioning his soldiers toward the exit, he grabbed hold of Kuchayev.

“The master gave orders to give you a regeneration shot, lower the fire to a hundred degrees, and slowly raise it. He wants you to suffer as long as possible... But here, I want to do something for you.”

“What’s that?” Artyom asked in surprise as he stared at the syringe in the soldier’s hand.

“A powerful painkiller. You’ll still be awake, though you’ll basically be a vegetable. No pain. Believe me, I’ve been through a fire before, and I know how bad it is. You’ll die honorably this way.”

“But you’ll be punished for that!” Kuchayev replied.

“That’s not your problem. Come on, hurry up,” the commander said as he went to inject the physicist, only the latter leaped away like a scared antelope.

“Don’t put anything in me!” Artyom replied in horror. “That’s the last thing I need.”

“I’m trying to help you, idiot!” the commander practically yelled.

“Let’s not. I don’t want you to catch any flak — I only have a minute to suffer, while you have your whole life. Who needs that kind of sacrifice? Not me. Let’s just do this.”

Artyom was coming up with any nonsense he could to avoid the dangerous shot. The commander’s offer wasn’t part of his plans. For a while, the soldier said nothing, the System even warning him that he was late with his prisoner. But he finally slipped the syringe back into his pocket and held a hand out to Artyom.

“Alexander. They call me Cat. You can, too.”

“Why do me the honor?” Artyom asked, taken aback.

“That girl... The trap was for me, only those bastards didn’t take chance into account. My daughter. The master helped save her, only nobody could do anything to make her better. Even get her consciousness back. After they tried everything, they decided Luda was waste and sent her off to be experimented on. For the energon test. You were supposed to start with her — that was the master’s wish, and contradicting it wasn’t an option. But you wouldn’t do it for some reason. I don’t know why, and I don’t need to know why. What’s important is what you did. Later, too, the device you invented brought Luda back, and now she’s whole and intact.”

Artyom shook the man’s hand silently. Words would have been unnecessary. As both of them knew where Artyom was going, they also knew what he was turning down. His arms and legs were bound with a rope, after which Cat had his soldiers come over and carry him up to the roof. The condemned wasn’t permitted to walk himself there. Not far away, a drone was streaming the event to all the artificial eyes in the prison. The master wanted all his slaves to know what they could expect if they disobeyed or tried to write their own rules.

After Artyom was tossed into a miniature helicopter, the group quickly flew over to the crematorium. But there was one more ordeal to go through rather than the expected long-winded speech and trip into the flames. Three doctors rolled up their sleeves and surrounded their victim. Just as had been the case with the troop commander, they were holding syringes.

“What’s that?” Artyom asked. The silence the doctors maintained was driving him crazy.

“Experimental energon-based drugs,” the prison’s head doctor replied willingly. “Regeneration, muscle modernization, reinforced bone structure, increased permeability for nerve cells... There’s a lot in there. Basically, it’s a super soldier serum, and you’re the first to get it. We analyzed how your device works and used it to create a drug with charged artifact particles. And while it only works on immune people so far, we’re going to figure out how to make it work for everybody. Instead of whole crowds, we’ll just be sacrificing one or two tramps. That’ll be enough for a hundred super soldiers.”

Artyom bit his lip to keep from moaning. The injection had sent flames rippling through his body — even moving hurt. Still, he held on, unwilling to give his audience the satisfaction. The drone was still there streaming away.

“Excellent,” the doctor said as he observed Artyom. “Try not to move. The result depends on that.”

A helmet covered in wires was attached to the physicist’s head, and the instructions were easy enough to follow. He couldn’t so much as breathe. As the fire in his veins grew hotter and hotter, doing its best to gain control and turn him into some kind of animal, he fought back, doubting until the last that he would be able to pull it off.

The device didn’t buzz away for long. And while the skin on Artyom’s head prickled, that was nothing compared to the rest of his body, and he ignored it entirely. There wasn’t a thought in his head about what they needed it for. All he had in mind was not making a sound. Finally, the pain got to a point where something was going to break — Artyom or the fire licking through his veins. As the lack of oxygen began tearing his lungs apart, the physicist gave in. He gasped for air. But instead of a new wave of suffering, a wave of relief hit him. The air somehow put out the fire. He felt light, like he could have leaped to the ceiling and punched a hole in it despite the ropes he was bound with. And while his head was buzzing, almost like after a good drink, there wasn’t any of the dimmed faculties. Everything was clear and crisp. Artyom had read about what people felt like after they took narcotics, though he’d never tried them himself. He could say in that moment, however, that the description didn’t measure up to reality.

“Ready! The cast is done. Load him up — let’s begin.”

Artyom didn’t know what cast they were talking about, and the word brought him back into the present moment. Finally, he realized he was tied up and on a stretcher. Lamps, passageways, and unfamiliar faces rushed by so quickly he couldn’t catch anything more than a glimpse. Finally, the last hallway was behind him, and he found himself in a spacious room. The prison crematorium was built out of an old boiler room. All they’d done, in fact, was bring in air and gas to turn hard bones into ash. And that was what Artyom’s plan was built around.

He was placed on the metal table. The furnace doors opened, and a warmth spread through the room.

“Artyom Kuchayev! You have been found guilty...”

Ignatov’s voice blared out of the speakers as he listed the terrible sins committed by his slave. But Artyom wasn’t listening. Instead, he was focused entirely on the vibrations running through the table — that was the only way he would know that the most interesting part was beginning. Ignatov didn’t talk long. Apparently, he was in a hurry to enjoy the physicist’s death throes. The table jerked, Artyom was carried right into the mouth of the furnace, and the flames reached for his legs, though they didn’t do much. The temperature was too low for them to get through the clothes he was still wearing. Taking a deep breath, he gripped his thumb in his right hand. The metal table jerked once more and froze. Artyom was all the way in the furnace.

His hair was singed. His clothes burned away. The ropes began to melt. With a cloud of black smoke, the rubber Artyom had filled his pockets and lined his clothes with caught fire. But Kuchayev himself was unharmed — he had two energy shields enveloping him. While the first was right next to his skin, the second hovered a few millimeters away. Even that was enough to keep the fire away from his body. The vacuum two millimeters wide worked flawlessly.

As he’d been preparing for his execution, Artyom worried most about being scanned for hidden devices. All he’d ultimately been able to do was hope that had been left to his artificial eyes. He’d made sure the “all-seeing” eyes only came up with one video. Just like Albert had said, the System was imperfect, not analyzing pictures that were the same. All it was there to do was make sure nothing unplanned was going on. In the end, the thirst for violence, blind faith in the System, and the fire itself did their job. Nobody checked Artyom. Of course, there was that odd scan, but it was limited to his head.

“Turn up the heat!” called someone from another world. Artyom took that as a call to action — it was time to bring his next implants to bear. Still tied tightly, his hands flew into the air, the embedded levitation devices capable of lifting Artyom and the whole furnace off the ground if need be. But he had to hurry, as he only had a minute’s worth of air. His hands pressed against the mesh cutting off the chimney, and he added force to bend it backward. The metal wasn’t strong enough to stand up to the energy fields and levitation. Torn out of the wall, it cleared the path upward, and that meant it was the turn of yet another implant. Artyom couldn’t leave his audience without a show. Nobody would have believed he was dead, otherwise. As his arms pulled his body up into the chimney, a hologram appeared where he’d just been lying. It wasn’t the best quality, and it flickered constantly, though it was good enough to last a minute. Not only that, but Artyom activated another mechanism to fill the space with agonized screams. That was how someone burning alive was supposed to sound. It was how Liza had sounded...

The heat intensified and began beating through the force shields. Bending into position, Artyom slipped into the chimney, already in a hurry as his lungs burned from the lack of air. He shot upward, banging against the sides as he went. The top approached so quickly, in fact, that he just about missed it, but he stopped at the last moment. The hot air was buoying him upwards, only Artyom had no room for error — the execution was held at noon, which meant everyone could see the chimney. Sticking his head carefully out, he took a deep breath to find that the air was hot but harmless. And that was enough for him to stay right there for a while...

From the outside, the prison didn’t look somewhere scientists were locked away. The force field that covered all the scientific blocks also masked them, and if Artyom hadn’t known there were buildings nearby, he never would have thought the brushwood-covered field and small lake were anything but what they appeared to be. Only the crematorium itself and a few abandoned houses pointed to a human touch. Neither cars nor people were to be seen anywhere, though that didn’t mean they weren’t there — the field could have hidden security points as well as the prison. Artyom had no doubt they were out there. It had already been made explicitly clear to him how careful the prime minister was about his baby, far more than to trust dumb luck. What did cheer Artyom up was the road leading away from the lake. I presumably led somewhere, and he could follow it to make his getaway.

Fall saw days shortened in Siberia. Just four hours later, the prison lost in the depths of the taiga was plunged into darkness, though Artyom didn’t need to hurry. His artificial eyes had an excellent night-vision system built in. By default, it was turned off, though his trick with the energon had broken something and turned on functionality that wasn’t supposed to be available for mere mortals. The prison guards were presumably well acquainted with it, on the other hand. Waiting another couple hours just to be safe, Artyom set off. The night chill had nothing on him even without his clothes — the energy shields functioned as a very comfortable thermal regulator. The levitation devices Artyom had grafted onto the soles of his feet lifted him above the chimney, though he immediately let himself back down, clutching the structure. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed. Reducing his levitation power, he began letting himself down, looking around as he did for somewhere to land. The crematorium roof turned out to be made of tin, meaning walking across it would have made a racket. Leaving just a meter between himself and the tin, the physicist turned toward the chimney and pushed away from it as hard as he could. The wind and his momentum carried him to the edge of the roof. He edged his way down, keeping a close eye on his surroundings and pressing himself against the wall as he did. It was deathly quiet.

Artyom didn’t have a choice. If he stayed there until morning, he was going to be discovered, though he had a shot of getting away unnoticed right then. The guards kept watch for random passers-by who might venture into the prison, though they most likely didn’t look for anyone breaking out. That was what the artificial eyes were for. Dropping down to the ground didn’t take long. Sticking close to the crematorium, Artyom headed in the direction of the forest, a few minutes later finding himself under a bushy pine tree. That gave him an idea: moving across the tops of the trees was well within the realm of possibility. It wasn’t that he wanted to turn into Tarzan; the road was just too dangerous. But as he looked around for the best way to fly upward, he forgot that he was in a particularly well-guarded area.

And he paid for that oversight.

“Where might you be going?” a voice asked quietly just before something hard pressed into the physicist’s back. His muscles spasmed in fear. A few quick footfalls later, and two soldiers had him surrounded.

“He’s clean,” one of them said with his eyes fixed on a tablet. “Wasn’t caught by the cameras, didn’t make any noise.”

Artyom was roughly flipped over, and his chest tightened still further when he saw that it was the troop commander holding him. Alexander, or Cat. He ran some kind of device over Artyom and grunted in satisfaction.

“Took you long enough,” Cat said unexpectedly with a laugh. “We were starting to think you were making a nest in the chimney.”

“Five minutes, Commander!” called a tense voice. The soldier was afraid of something, though he didn’t dare show that to Cat. The latter nodded and turned back to Artyom.

“Okay, listen, Kuchayev. There are two ways out of this for you. Either you head out with us, or it’s back to jail. I’m sure security will be intrigued to find out how you hacked the implants. If you ask me, you won’t get another chance to make your escape. And you won’t get out from under the dome on your own.”

“The dome?” Artyom asked, finding the strength to reply despite muscles stiffened with fear. “Aren’t I already out?”

“You made it through the inner one. But there’s the outer dome, and it’s guarded much more closely than this one. By the master’s watchdogs, too. We have a pass, and we can help you get out, though you’re going to have to trust us. No more questions for now. Either you go with us, or you go back in. Which is it?”

“Is that really a choice?” For whatever reason, the fear receded. “I’m with you. What do you need me to do?”

“Climb into the box and shut up. Falcon, he’s all yours. Two minutes.”

One of the soldiers stepped over to Kuchayev and ran another strange device over his body.

“Two in his legs, five in his hands, implants in place but inactive. Can’t block the devices he stuck in himself — they’ll have to be removed.”

“Do it. Artyom, hang in there. We don’t have time for painkillers, so here, bite down on this. It’ll help.”

Cat stuck a thick branch between Artyom’s teeth and wrapped his arms around the physicist. He was just in time. Pulling out his knife, Falcon worked quickly and precisely, using a cold spray before cutting the devices right out of Artyom. The pain was intense even with the spray. If it hadn’t been for the branch in his mouth and Cat’s strong arms, Artyom would have yelled at the top of his lungs, toppled to the ground, or struggled to get away from the sadistic “surgeon.”

“Clear!” Falcon tossed away the devices Artyom had made, his disdain clear. Artyom hadn’t spent too much time on quality, making them far rougher than the artificial eyes, to take one example. Suddenly, a car pulled up out of nowhere. Looking like an oversized pickup, the bed was large enough to carry several tons of soil.

“Climb in!” Cat said as he jumped onto the bed and opened an elongated box. There were weapons inside, though there was enough room left over for an undersized adult like Artyom. And he didn’t argue. He could tell the soldiers were trying to help him for some strange reason, so he climbed in silently and wedged himself between the automatics. While it did cross his mind that some overly clever plan of Ignatov’s was playing out, the prime minister playing with his prisoner, Artyom did his best not to think about that. The lid slammed shut, and a few other crates were piled on top of his.

“Touch it!” The soldiers spoke in short phrases. Each knew their job, rendering extra conversation pointless. “Kuchayev, your job is to stay quiet — don’t even breathe. Hopefully, you did a good job with the artificial eyes.”

Artyom didn’t even jerk when the car started suddenly. There wasn’t enough room for it. Stripped of his energy shield, however, he suddenly felt how cold the Siberian night was, not to mention how hard the weapons were. One was jammed into his chest with such force he could barely breathe. A few minutes later, his body was numb, and he was yearning for a quick death by the time the car stopped. He could barely feel his extremities.

“What do you have in there?” called an unfamiliar voice.

“Weapons, taking them to be recycled,” the soldier replied. “Taking a day off, too. Heading to Novosibirsk.”

“Got enough time for that?” the stranger asked with a grunt, and the vehicle lurched. Someone had jumped into the bed.

“We’ll take a chopper as usual,” Cat replied evenly. “Scan it, and we’ll get on with it. I’d like to be in the city by daybreak.”

Shivers ran down Kuchayev’s body as some kind of magnetic field appeared around him. His artificial eyes twitched and began showing him odd pictures, though he was used to that. Soon enough, it was over. The magnetic field disappeared; his eyes stopped twitching.

“Open up!” yelled the inspector as he leaped off the pickup. “You have five seconds.”

“The usual,” Cat replied, and the pickup engine roared. Suddenly, the vehicle took off so quickly Artyom felt his innards pressing against his spine. The magnetic field reappeared, only that time it pressed down so hard on his brain that he wanted to yell. And he did just that, the sound masked by the sound of the engine. But just as suddenly, the field vanished.

“Stop your screaming — we’re out!” Cat called, banging a fist on the crate to get Artyom to shut up. “Hang in there for ten more minutes so we can put some distance between us and the border.”

Those ten minutes turned into years for Artyom. His body went completely numb, every little bump on the road sending agonizing pain shooting through him. It got to the point, in fact, that he lost track of reality, operating solely on reflex. Breathe, swallow, moan. Nothing more. He didn’t even notice when the pickup slowed down, the engine turned off, and the lid was pulled off his coffin.

“You alive? Not looking so good, honestly. Falcon, give him some vitamins.”

Artyom didn’t feel the needle, though it sent a wave of pleasant warmth radiating through his body. And while his muscles were nearly steel rods turning his body into a statue, they quickly relaxed. The medicine he’d been injected with worked quickly.

“Get dressed.” Cat tossed him a bundle of clothing. “Hope I got the size right.”

Once again, Artyom skipped the argument and got dressed. He had no desire to prance around naked in front of the troops. In the background, he heard the sound of propellors, and it was only then he realized the pickup had stopped in the middle of a large helicopter strip.

“Commander,” Falcon said with a nod to Cat as he got back behind the wheel.

“Okay, Kuchayev, exactly three of us are supposed to be flying to the city. Put on this mask and helmet, and don’t take them off until we’re in Novosibirsk. You’re going to be Falcon.”

“What’s going on?” Artyom finally burst out. “Why are you helping me?”

“I figured out back in the underground world that you were going to make a run for it when you stuck that thing in your eye. Don’t look at me like that. Did you really think I didn’t see you? After that, I gave my team orders to let you be more often so you could get ready for the execution in peace. We were still watching, though. I’m not sure why you didn’t think about the cameras. You were still under our surveillance. The master knows all about Luda and how I feel about her, which was why I had to put on that show with the syringe. Since we were being watched, it was the only thing I could do. You did the rest yourself: survived the fire, got outside, threaded the needle between guard shifts. How’d you find out the schedule, by the way? Although, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we owed you, and neither I nor my troops like being in someone’s debt. So, we decided to help out a little.”

“We?” Artyom’s mouth gaped.

“Those two survived because you warned us about the energon radius when the old Niels Bohr decided to pull it out right there in the shaft. And you know about my debt — Luda is alive and well. Okay, let’s go. You’ll get everything else in the city.”

The flight went by quickly, though Artyom had to help load up the crates of weapons before leaving. Nobody said a word to him on the way. As that gave him enough time for the true scale of the Siberian taiga to sink in, he realized he would never have found his way out even if he’d made it through the second barrier by some miracle. He would have died of hunger a week later. And that was only if he wasn’t eaten by wild animals first.

The helicopter landed not far from the city, and there was a transport already waiting for the soldiers. Cat made sure the crates were taken where they were supposed to go before driving Kuchayev to one of the many apartment buildings in the area. Once they got there, they were met by a second fighter Artyom didn’t know. He handed the commander a metal suitcase and a few keys.

“Second floor, apartment seven.”

“Got it. Keep an eye out — I’ll be right back.”

Artyom followed Cat, taken completely aback by the soldiers’ behavior. The commander scanned the apartment for bugs just in case, after which he placed the suitcase on the table. Pulling open the lid, he spun it around to face Artyom. The latter couldn’t breathe. The suitcase was packed with wads of dollar bills.

“There’s two and a half million here. Don’t look at me like that — the master pays us well, and there’s nothing for us to spend money on at the institute. This should be enough for you to buy an apartment, find a job, and forget that Artyom Kuchayev ever existed. In two hours, a guy is going to show up to make you a new passport. That will be when our paths diverge, and I hope to never see you again. Just remember, Artyom, that nobody in this life, and especially you, should ever stick out. As soon as someone peeks out above the crowd, they become a target for people like the master. If you don’t have someone behind you, you’ll be snapped up. And if it’s not by Ignatov, it’ll be by someone else. Believe me, there are five others like him just in our country. The US, China, and India all have shadow leaders, too. Everyone wants to reforge the world in their image. And if you attract the slightest bit of attention, it’ll be your last day on Earth. The master can’t have runaways. You’re dead as far as he knows, and let’s leave it that way for the rest of his life. However long that will be. Don’t even think about going into science — you won’t be able to control yourself, and you’ll come up with something new. Don’t go home. You don’t have family, but if someone you know sees you, they’ll start asking questions. And I mentioned what will happen then. Also, don’t talk to the police or FSB. They’re controlled by powerful people. You need to be invisible since that’s the only way you’ll live out the hundred years that injection they gave you should last. I hope you’re getting all this. Are we on the same page?”

“Yes,” Artyom said with a shocked nod. He really had been considering submitting a report to law enforcement and pinning the prime minister to the wall.

“Excellent. That’s all I can give you — you’re on your own from here. Goodbye, and...thanks again for Luda.”

Chapter 9

THE PLANE FROM NOVOSIBIRSK to Moscow touched down at Moscow Domodedovo airport right on time. The impatient passengers crowded the aisle all the way until the plane stopped, disregarding the stewardess’s repeated requests for them to stay in their seats. Consultants, business men flying in for work, tourists — most of them hadn’t checked luggage, though they were still looking to get back to the familiar as soon as possible. Whether it was writing reports, programming, the free coffee at the office, or the cat they left with the neighbors, everyone had something. They varied widely in terms of their social and cultural background, but they were the same in one particular way. All of them wanted to get back to regular life.

But one guest arriving in the city didn’t have a regular life to return to. Artyom waited patiently for his suitcase before heading leisurely in the direction of the Aeroexpress[3], glancing around him as he went. In the chaos that reigned, however, he stood out as an island of serenity, and that attracted the attention of security.

“Sergeant Petrov! Let me see your documents.” A group of three police officers surrounded the unusual traveler. After having put his new passport through a dozen such checks already, he was unworried if surprised by the close attention being paid him.

“Roman Prokofiev... What are you doing in Moscow?” asked the officer in an official tone.

“I’ve been wanting to visit for years, just never had the chance. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another — you know how it goes. But I got a bonus on the farm and decided it was a sign that I needed to stop putting things off. I’m almost thirty, and I still haven’t seen the Kremlin. After my boss gave me some time off, I bought a ticket.”

“Got it... Be careful. Moscow doesn’t like people taking their time — you could get trampled,” the sergeant said as he returned the provincial visitor’s documents. Everything suddenly made sense. The strange man was no longer so strange. After finding his way to the big city from his Siberian village, he was lost, another poor guy who was going to head home with neither money nor luggage. The crooks in the capital could sense his kind from a few kilometers away, and he was easy prey. But it wasn’t Sergeant Petrov’s job to do something about that. What was the point of getting himself involved and trying to help the simpleton? He couldn’t save everyone.

It had taken almost six months for Artyom to get to Moscow. Initially, he’d been dealing with one problem after another, the fake passport he’d been given causing him particular worry. The criminal he’d gotten it from had guaranteed it, however. Life in Novosibirsk differed drastically from Moscow, and there came a point when Artyom realized he liked in more there in the large if still provincial city. After everything Cat had told him, he would even have spent the rest of his life there if it hadn’t been for one factor: Pyotr Zhgulyov, his old neighbor. All Artyom wanted to do was tell someone about everything that had happened to him over the previous year, though finding a psychologist or support group would have been too dangerous. There was no telling what would happen to the information. And with that in mind, the only person he could talk to without worrying about what he said getting back to Ignatov was Pyotr. If it hadn’t been for him, Artyom would have registered in Novosibirsk, found a job, started a family, and forgotten about his past like a bad dream.

He chuckled. Lying to yourself is never a good plan — he wouldn’t have forgotten a thing. Not Liza, not the prison, not the crematorium. Even his own reflection in the mirror served to remind him of the past, the experimental drugs he’d been given before his execution turning his puny figure into a hefty man. He had muscles, speed, strength. Without a doubt, he could have stepped into the ring with a professional boxer and lasted all twelve rounds. He might have even beaten the guy.

But when Artyom stopped in front of the door to his building’s lobby, he found himself staring at an empty opening. There was no door to speak of. Something was going on with his former home, as there were construction workers crawling all over the façade, and the building itself was hidden behind scaffolding. Of course, the authorities had announced a need for repairs twenty years before, though it appeared the mayor had only found the money then. Artyom grunted and walked up to his floor. He wasn’t worried that anyone would recognize him, having grown a full beard and mustache for just that moment. The apartment door was missing, too. So was the furniture. A few workers were in the middle of taking down the interior walls, turning the two-bedroom apartment into a studio, though that didn’t surprise Artyom. After six months sitting empty, the apartment had been confiscated by the government. There had been no relatives or heirs to inherit it. But what he didn’t like at all was that the same thing was happening to Pyotr’s apartment. The furniture had been removed, the doors were gone, and the old walls were being taken down.

“Need something?” called a rude voice. Artyom turned around to see the local boss, recognizing him by the way his protruding stomach was threatening to burst through his shirt.

“Looking for the owner,” Artyom replied, pointing at Pyotr’s apartment. Then, suddenly remembering who he was talking to, he pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. “I mean, me and my American friend are looking for him.”

“Don’t wave that around!” the foreman hissed. The bill disappeared so quickly Artyom barely had time to notice which pocket it slipped into. “Follow me! I need to check the papers...”

Artyom had to trot off after him. Next to the building, there was a van that served as the construction crew’s headquarters, and the overweight man squeezed behind a computer before jabbing away at the keyboard. He finally found what he was looking for.

“The apartment belongs to the city now. The whole building does, actually. The old owner moved a year ago, though I don’t have the address. Sorry.”

Artyom sighed heavily, frustration building inside him. What the man had told him wasn’t worth a hundred dollars. To give the guy credit, however, he wasn’t the only one who realized that.

“But I know who does! Just need to call this one chick. Stay right there!”

After prying himself out from behind the desk, the foreman grabbed his phone and stepped outside. All Artyom heard was something about honey, money, dinner’s on me, give me a hand, and, as the grand finale, Pyotr Zhgulyov. Soon, the happy foreman reappeared and handed Artyom a piece of paper.

“Got it! The old apartment owner moved to some abandoned village three hundred kilometers away from Moscow. If you’re out to find him, that’s where you should look.”

Artyom had no desire to stick around Moscow. All the memories of his old life had come flooding back when he arrived, and he also knew that Pyotr would never have sold his father’s apartment. It was all he had left to remember his parents by. And that meant something had happened to him. Artyom thought to himself. Could the building residents have been kicked out because the property caught someone’s eye? There was Ignatov, for example... But he eventually decided that was too trifling a matter for the prime minister.

The next few days were spent on the road. First, there was a long-distance train, after which came a suburban train. It was followed by a bus, one more bus, and a truck cab that served as the cherry on top. Even taxi drivers wouldn’t take Artyom to Pyotr’s village. Two kilometers away from his destination, he realized why: the road turned into two water-logged ruts.

“Here’s your village!” The truck driver stopped at the first building, unwilling to go any further. Even the ruts stopped — it was just muddy clay from there. After Artyom paid him, going with rubles to avoid questions, he asked him to wait. The village looked abandoned, bereft even of electricity. There was no light, no smoke, and no animal sounds. And not a single person. Although, there was one sound, Artyom only catching it when the truck engine turned off. It was the high-pitched hum of a generator coming from off in the distance. Asking the driver once more to wait and promising more money, Artyom headed off in the direction of the hum.

The village was tiny, barely more than fifty houses in all. The windows were broken, the gates were knocked over, and the overgrown yards spoke to how many years it had been since someone had lived there. Only one building stood out, and it was on the outskirts. It, at least, had glass in the windows, though the grass was every bit as long as the yards around it.

Artyom walked over and found that the gate was completely gone. On the other hand, the generator in the back yard was whirring away to power a few refrigerators, all of them outside under the cover of an awning the owner had made. Speaking of whom, he was lying on the ground, fast asleep. But Artyom still felt a warm feeling spread through him when he recognized Pyotr. A few steps later, however, he froze in shock. The creature on the ground was definitely his old friend, though his surroundings were anything like what he was used to. His friend would never have left himself go to that extent. Dirty, hairy, smelling, and practically skeletal, Pyotr had a few dozen bottles around him and looked more animal than human. Artyom overcame his disgust and stepped closer. Everything in sight was filthy, though that didn’t keep him from nudging the body. But the only response he got was a mumble as Pyotr held a bottle to his mouth without opening his eyes. It was only then that Artyom noticed he was drinking a murky liquid from a liter bottle.

One harder shove later, and the bottle slipped out of Pyotr’s weakened fingers. The contents began spilling out onto the ground, and that was enough for the drunk to finally wake up.

“Where are you going?” he asked in a drunken voice as he lunged for the quickly emptying bottle. Although, “lunge” was a bit of an overstatement. After burying his face in the dirt a few times, he finally got to the bottle and howled furiously. There was barely any of the murky liquid left. The drunk’s glassy eyes took in the area, finally stopping on the newcomer, though there was no happy recognition. Instead, an awful grimace spread over his face.

“The damn devils are back. Get out of here! You’re not taking me!”

Polishing off the bottle, Pyotr closed his eyes and let out a snore. Artyom stood there for a long time in confusion, not sure what to do. Pyotr needed help. He had to get his friend out of the depths he’d gotten himself into, though Artyom had no idea what could have happened in the space of less than a year to the responsible if gloomy person he knew. It hadn’t been that long.

Artyom noticed yet another oddity as he made his way around the yard. The refrigerators kept drawing him back, and he finally decided to see what was inside. It was a surprise. When he opened the door, he found packages of fresh food — vegetables, sausage, smoked meat, canned fruit, and even cheese, all of it three or four days old. There was plenty of moonshine, too. Each refrigerator had five full bottles. But the picture cheered Artyom up, as he figured not all was lost given the fact that there was food lying around. Apparently, Pyotr woke up on occasion and headed over to the store a good ten kilometers from his house. That would have been impossible in the condition he was in right then.

Checking his phone, Artyom found he wasn’t getting a signal, cell towers too far away from the village. He had to walk back to the truck driver and ask the latter to pick him up the next day. After thanking the driver with another bill, Artyom sent him home and returned to his sleeping friend. Every attempt to wake him was in vain, though Artyom did clear away the cause of the problem. The bottles were all deposited in a shed farther away from the poor drunk. But Artyom couldn’t make himself go inside the house. It stank so badly his eyes began watering the moment he got close, so he picked a house nearby, sat down on the grass, and began to wait. That was all he could do. Shaking Pyotr wasn’t going to do anything until the latter woke up by himself.

Artyom eventually fell asleep, the long, draining trip taking its toll. And that was why the physicist missed the new sound that joined the generator’s hum. Finally, brakes screeched, and it was only then that he pulled his eyes open to stare at a boy between fifteen and seventeen years old. The boy was busily unloading bags of food from his ATV. While he jumped when he saw Artyom, he kept going to start filling the refrigerators. The old food was dropped in one bag before being replaced by the contents of another. Only when he got to work on the bottles was there a heavy sigh. After a trip back to his ATV, he began loading five bottles into each of the refrigerators accompanied by the sound of them clinking together.

“Care to explain what’s going on here?” Artyom asked, the question bursting out at last. The boy’s approach told Artyom it wasn’t his first time there.

“Following instructions,” came the response. “Food and alcohol every three days. It’s all right here on the list — you can check if you want.”

The boy pulled a wrinkled piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out to Artyom. The latter read the list and frowned. Everything he’d found in the refrigerators was there, and it was written in rough handwriting he knew all too well. It looked the same as all the utility receipts Pyotr had written.

“And how long have you been doing this?”

“Almost a year, every three or four days like I said.”

“Hey, step away from my son! That’s your only warning.”

The threatening shout grabbed Artyom’s attention, and he looked back at the fence to see a thin but fairly tall man pointing a shotgun in his direction. Behind his back, there was another ATV. The father had shown up with his son, having the latter do the work. Artyom held up both hands just in case before replying.

“My name is Roman Prokofiev, and I’m a friend of Pyotr’s from the army. We haven’t seen each other in a few years. I just found out where he lives, and a truck dropped me off today. I had no idea I’d find him like this. Could you tell me what’s going on? Why is Pyotr living like this? I don’t believe he would have done it to himself!”

That was enough for the shotgun to be lowered.

“No, he really did it to himself. Son, clean up a little. Looks like we’re going to be sticking around a while today.”

Pavel Korshunov turned out to be a retired army surgeon. He’d graduated from medical school with honors and spent almost ten years serving in different hot spots, pulling soldiers back from the edge of the beyond. But five years before, everything had suddenly changed. A criminal in possession of valuable information had gotten himself torn practically in half, and the doctor had had just one job: do enough for the criminal to wake up so he could be interrogated. But he’d failed. The criminal was too far gone. However, someone higher up in the chain of command had gotten the feeling that Pavel had let the criminal die on purpose, and that was enough to get him kicked out of the army within a day. There was no pay, no allowance. The apartment he’d been promised had evaporated, he had no money, and he was forced to take his family and move home. Despite his experience, he couldn’t find a good job, his background and the bad review he’d gotten turning potential employers against him. But a labor shortage finally forced the locals to forget about the letter from the army, and he was appointed a paramedic[4]. As time passed, he was handed an entire region. Pyotr Zhgulyov had shown up about a year before. He’d looked bad, almost as though he’d actually come back from the beyond. The diagnoses was a bad one: melanoma. The most the doctor gave his patient was a year to live. For a month, Pyotr went missing, only to show back up with pockets full of cash. That was when he’d hired Pavel to bring him food and alcohol every four days. After himself settling in the abandoned shack, Pyotr had begun heavy drinking. Pavel tried committing him to a facility for addicts, not to mention treating him at the hospital and just talking to him, only nothing helped. The life had gone out of Pyotr. He had gone limp, capable only of running and drinking. That was it.

“And you keep bringing him food even though you could have forgotten about him and kept the money for yourself a long time ago?” Artyom asked in surprise.

“Do we look like animals?” Pavel was hurt. “Zhgulyov paid for the service as well as the food, and we’d have to be monsters to profit off a sick man. Since euthanasia isn’t an option here in Russia, I made my peace with the fact that Pyotr wants to drink himself to death in his family home instead of at a hospital. And I get that. It’s better than suffering constantly. Look — he’s writhing around even in his sleep. They wouldn’t even give him morphine if he went to the hospital since they wouldn’t want to get him hooked on it.”

Just then, there was a long groan as Pyotr’s body doubled over. He relaxed and went back to peacefully snoring a couple seconds later.

“Is there anything you can do for him? I have money.”

“Too late. And it was already too late when he showed up. If anything helped him, it would be a miracle at this point. No, Roman, it’s a shame, but there’s no saving him. I’d say he has a month left at the most — he’s already lasted longer than I thought he would.”

A lightbulb went off in Artyom’s head. A miracle was what Pyotr needed, and Artyom was exactly the one to pull it off. The only question was how long it was going to take to put that miracle together. With the archive Albert had given him still right where he’d left it, Artyom’s subconscious did all the heavy lifting by using his artificial eyes to pull up the applicable elixir section. Up came a list of ingredients, the instructions, the timing details, and the patient requirements. Artyom scanned through it all and felt his breathing quicken — he was going to be able to make the medicine even with the limited resources at his disposal. He just needed his friend to last another two weeks.

“I need a chemical lab,” Artyom said, turning an inquiring look on Pavel. “I can help!”

“Don’t flatter yourself — there’s no healing this. Stage four, metastasized all over his body. Really, the right thing to do would be to shoot him and put him out of his misery.” Pavel almost accidentally touched his shotgun, showing why he’d actually brought it with him.

“No,” Artyom replied. He instinctively positioned himself between his friend and the retired surgeon. “If you don’t want to believe me, you don’t have to, but I just need two weeks to prove it. All I need is a regular chemical lab and a few dozen ingredients. Nothing unusual or illegal. Oh, right! And some blood from Pyotr to make sure the medicine is made for him. It’s not a miracle; it’s science. I can help him!”

“I’ve seen you before, I just can’t remember where,” Pavel said thoughtfully. “Okay, let’s say I find you a lab. There’s an institute in the city with a chemistry department, and we can convince them to let us use it. If I understand correctly, you have money. But you can’t kill melanoma with regular pills or powders. You need strong chemotherapy. At least, he needed that a year ago. You’re wasting your time.”

“What do you care? If you want to make some money, give me a hand. I don’t need much — just the lab and a blood sample. The rest is on me.”

“Son, come on, it’s time to go. Cover him up,” Pavel said with a nod toward Pyotr. After looking back at Artyom, he said nothing for a while before finally continuing. “Okay, my friend. Let’s see what we can do about that miracle. Expect us back tomorrow.”

The next day, Pavel did indeed show up with a small case to quickly draw blood from Pyotr. Artyom had spent the whole night with his friend, though Pyotr hadn’t once woken up. He’d even begun moaning miserably just before morning. Unsure how he’d managed to get to the refrigerator, Artyom only knew he had because he saw the empty liter bottle. His friend was once again comatose.

The truck driver showed up exactly on time and was surprised to see the familiar paramedic on his ATV in addition to his strange passenger. Placing some boards down on the ground, he got the smaller vehicle into the bed of his truck before loading everyone into the cabin and taking them to the regional center. Ruslan, Pavel’s son, was waiting for them there. Good with machines, he had no problem getting the ATV down and riding off on errands, Pavel just pointing at a foreign-made car that had seen better days.

“Get in. It’s a hundred and fifty kilometers to the city, and I want to get back today.”

Cutting a deal with the institute was easy enough. Nobody paid any attention to Artyom, Pavel running the negotiations a teacher it turned out he knew. That made getting to the dean a piece of cake. All Artyom had to do was hand out one bill after another. Pavel’s friend, the dean, Pavel himself — nobody did anything for free. But the result was what mattered, and Artyom got himself a pass to one of the chemistry department buildings. Obviously, with an escort — they weren’t going to let a stranger start cooking narcotics at the institute. That didn’t bother Artyom, however. Even if the process was caught on film, nobody was going to be making the medicine without knowing the basics behind what he was doing.

The two weeks flew by. Chemistry had never been a favorite of Artyom’s, though he did enjoy the creative process. Following the instructions to the letter, he boiled, mixed, pressed, dissolved, stirred, and steamed each and every day. His escort got tired of it just one day into the exercise. He’d assumed the rich idiot had hired him to do the dirty work, only he wasn’t allowed close to the equipment. And even as a chemist, he didn’t understand what was going on. Something was happening, only he didn’t know what. But all he cared about was that it wasn’t drugs.

Artyom had his result fourteen days later: a simple five-millimeter syringe filled halfway with a luminescent liquid. The acidic green color didn’t inspire confidence, and the way it glowed in the dark scared him, but it was the only thing that could help his friend. Of course, energon would have worked too. He just didn’t have access to any of it.

“Are you sure this will help?” Pavel asked yet again. “You can see for yourself he’s at the end.”

Alcohol no longer helped — Pyotr spent his days moaning in pain. He’d long since stopped waking up and couldn’t even reach for his bottle, so Pavel had moved him into the next house and hired a nurse. With the roads as bad as they were, taking him to the hospital wasn’t an option. The trip would have killed him.

“Inject him. We can’t make it worse,” Artyom said, though he was worried. Afraid he’d made a mistake somewhere, he was nervous the medicine wouldn’t work or would even put his friend through worse suffering.

“Your call,” Pavel said with a nod as he slid the needle into Pyotr’s arm and pressed down on the plunger. Taking the patient’s wrist, Pavel felt his pulse, though nothing happened. A minute went by. Then, a second. A fifth. Pyotr groaned from the land of nightmare, and it didn’t look like he was getting better. The paramedic released his arm and sighed heavily.

“Unfortunately, Roman, you don’t get miracles in this world of ours. He’s dying. Your concoction didn’t work.”

Artyom could see that for himself. For some reason, it got hard to breathe, and the walls of the empty house started closing in. The nurse covered the patient and waved everyone else outside. There was no reason for Artyom to be there, unprepared as he was to watch his friend die in pain.

“Want a drink?” Pavel asked as he held out a dented metal flask. “I remember everyone I couldn’t bring back. The ones I was too late for. There were boys, too...twelve-year-old kids pulled away from their mother’s skirts. It’s not an easy thing to watch someone go.”

Artyom said nothing. His gaze was fixed off in the distance, though he wasn’t looking at anything in particular. As his head buzzed, he wanted to yell and pace, throwing all his pain and sorrow on someone. Liza first, then Pyotr. Everyone he held dear, everyone he loved, was gone. There was nobody left. It was hard to say how long they sat there — it could have been an hour. It could have been two. As the sun reached the horizon, the night chill began to set it, though that was when the frantic nurse dashed out of the house.

“Pavel, Roman, hurry! He... He woke up! And he’s asking for vodka...”

Chapter 10

“ARTYOM, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. And a big one...”

Artyom... Over the six months the physicist had been playing the role of Roman, he’d gotten used to his new name. He was Roman Prokofiev as far as the world was concerned, no longer Artyom Kuchayev. But not for Pavel Korshunov.

Two days had passed since Pyotr’s miraculous recovery. Pavel had taken a blood sample and announced unequivocally that there wasn’t so much as a hint of the terrible disease remaining. Immediately after finding that out at the lab, he’d wanted to head off to tell his contacts about the event. But Artyom got to him first. The physicist knew exactly what that story would lead to — plenty of the country’s leaders would want to know how a miracle like theirs had happened somewhere in the depths of Russia without their intervention. It took a long time for Pavel to understand Artyom. With several hundred or even thousand people around the world dying every day from the same disease, the medicine they’d come up with represented salvation. The opportunity for fame and even fortune was there, too. And as Pavel warned Artyom not to keep him from helping an already suffering world, Artyom was faced with a difficult choice. He could explain his situation or make sure Pavel never told anyone anything ever again.

The former option won out. But before making a final decision, Artyom asked Pavel to hear him out. The latter agreed to give him ten minutes, though he’d forgotten all about that by the time it was up. Artyom spoke for more than an hour. As he described his time in prison, he brought his point home by projecting the recipe for the medicine he’d made for Pyotr. And that tipped the scale. When silence finally fell, Pavel was thinking about anything but telling the world about the miracle they’d pulled off.

“What’s the problem?”

“He’s addicted. And not just physically — we could clear that out of his system. He’s psychologically addicted to alcohol. That can only be treated by professionals, definitely above our pay grade. Should we take him to the clinic?”

In the two days he’d spent back from the dead, Pyotr had done nothing but eat and drink. He’d even managed to stay drunk when all the bottles had been cleared away. As it turned out, he had stashes hidden around the whole village, and when he’d been tied up and told to wake and sober up, he’d thrown such a fit he very nearly cut his own hands off with the rope. His caretakers were forced to untie him and lock him up in a separate room.

“You know very well that they’ll do a blood test, and the doctors will be surprised to find that his melanoma is gone. Are you trying to get us killed?”

“Do we have a choice? We can’t tie him up — he’ll bite his hands off to get to vodka. Of course, we can stand there hitting him with sticks every time he reaches for a bottle to build up an association, but that won’t fix the problem. He’ll just wait for us to lose focus. It’s the clinic or cirrhosis of the liver. Do you have anything for that?”

“What about just talking to him? Or locking him up in a basement?”

“Oh, grow up. Talking is useless — he won’t listen to us. And locking him up... Do you realize this kind of thing takes six months to work out of his system? Like I said, he’s psychologically addicted, not physically. If we lock him up, it has to be for at least three or four months. We’ll have to look in on him to make sure he didn’t find a bottle somewhere, too. No, we need something inside him to hate alcohol. That’s the only way. They know how to build that up at the clinic, and we don’t. And he can’t do it on his own. You need to accept that.”

Artyom knew the doctor was right. Getting his friend out of his mess was a challenge, but they couldn’t turn him over to professionals. His patient history clearly read that he’d been sick with melanoma. And once they saw that, rumors would leak even if they opted for an expensive clinic guaranteeing complete anonymity. Artyom was all too aware that anonymity was only for the masses — those in the world powerful enough could get around it. That wasn’t an option. What he needed was a way to control Pyotr, something like an all-seeing eye that could monitor his every step and... He had an idea. How had he not thought of it sooner?

“I know what to do!” Artyom cried excitedly as he hurriedly stammered through an explanation of his plan. Pavel stared at the physicist as though he were deranged.

“In other words, you don’t want to send him to a clinic, though you’re all in favor of turning his life into a living hell? Do you even realize what you just said? After you suffered in jail, you want to inflict the same thing on other people?”

“It’s not jail!” Artyom replied. “All we need is control. We’ll make it so he can’t drink, and not just because someone’s telling him not to. His own body will be keeping him from it. That’s it. And I may not have artificial eyes with me, but we don’t need them as long as we have upgraded contact lenses and a dozen devices attached to his body!”

“And how are you planning on making all that happen? Did they open visitors hours at the prison institute? Where are you going to find the tech?”

“I have to get to Skolkovo[5]!” Artyom leaped to his feet, the excitement taking over, and started pacing back and forth. “They have an experimental microelectronics institute there with pretty decent equipment. I have the blueprints and the list of what I need, so we should have Pyotr off alcohol in just a couple weeks! His own body will stop him. What do you say — should we give it a try? I promise, we’ll send him to any clinic you want if it doesn’t work.”

Pavel watched Artyom pacing, skepticism written all over his face. And while the physicist’s idea sounded illegal, it was also less than ethical in how it treated Pyotr. But a small part of him wanted to see the crazy plan in action, and it was that part that emerged victorious. He agreed, surprising even himself.

“Okay, let’s give it a shot. You have two weeks — I’ll put Pyotr into a medically induced coma to clear the alcohol out of his body. But remember, this isn’t going to be cheap. We don’t have much equipment here, so you’ll have to buy it somewhere else.”

“Screw the money! Let’s do it.”

The artificial eyes hadn’t been invented right away. With computer technology just peeking over the horizon, the kidnapped scientists had just simple contact lenses with microchips integrated into them, no punishment functionality included. That was the guards’ job. However, as the technology progressed and communication devices were developed at the turn of the millennium, the implants came into their own. Contact lenses had been forgotten, though the blueprints remained. Not only that, but it took Artyom a mere couple hours to upgrade them and integrate the nerve blocks. With the right impulse, the wearer would receive a shock that seemed internal rather than external. It was like their own body was revolting. And that was exactly what Artyom needed.

The money Cat had given him began melting away. Of the two and a half million Artyom had started out with, he was down to just over two, and he’d barely spent anything on himself the previous six months. He wasn’t used to keeping an eye on his finances. Bringing his plan to life meant computing power, dozens of compilers, and the software to pull the code out of the virtual space. Happily, he knew how to make that happen.

* * *

“But that’s absurd! It isn’t going to work!” The outrage was holding sway in the lab for the third day in a row. The money had been enough to easily open the doors Artyom needed, though the locals still liked sticking their long noses into his work. And just as might have been expected, their noses were accompanied with commentary on their guest’s mental capabilities.

“Who cares? I could be giving myself a tattoo, and what would it matter to you? This equipment belongs to me for the next two weeks.”

“Yes, but... Roman, what’s that? What do you need microchips on contact lenses for? Where are you going to get the power supply? That’s ridiculous!”

“You know what? Leave me alone!” Artyom lost it. What had seemed like a perfect idea — making control lenses — had started causing problems on the very first day. To his enormous disappointment, Artyom had found out that the unique equipment at Skolkovo everyone loved talking about so much was a fiction. All that was unique was the security system that kept the equipment hidden from the eyes of would-be observers. Of course, their microchip printers were better than the ones over at Moscow State University, though the setup was still a good hundred years behind what they had at the prison institute. Artyom was forced to make changes to the blueprints as he went along, the power supply elements impossible to make with the materials he had at his disposal.

The pushy inventor left, replaced by yet another. And that went on for the ten days Artyom spent in the bowels of Skolkovo. The lenses turned out thick and uncomfortable, and wires ran to all the sensors meant to be embedded into the body. One scratch of his face, and Pyotr was going to come across one of the wires and pull the whole construction out. An emergency meeting was called back at the village. On one side, there was a gloomy Artyom; on the other, there was Pavel and his wife, Nina. Artyom had been forced to tell her the story, that being Pavel’s condition for helping. With that said, as a math and IT teacher, Nina quickly picked up what they were trying to do with computers, and that was the reason Artyom agreed to bring her in. She handled all the software — Artyom wasn’t a great programmer.

“The clinic?” Pavel asked. “I’m afraid to bring him out of the coma. He’ll start destroying the place without vodka, but sticking that thing on him... Artyom, you’ve done so much, but it just isn’t enough. The plan isn’t going to work.”

“Agreed,” Artyom replied with undisguised disappointment in his voice as he quelled the urge to hurl the lenses at the wall. “The clinic is our only choice. I already contacted the guy who made my passport, and he’s good to go. While he’s in rehab, Pyotr will be someone else, and we shouldn’t have any unpleasant questions to answer.”

“You’re going to give in just like that?” Nina asked in surprise, holding up the sketches. “And because of a few wires? Look, if we go through with it and tell Pyotr he hurt himself and can’t touch anything for a while, it’ll be fine! That will even explain the lenses. How’s he going to know that the shock is coming from his eyes? And the wires... Never heard of glue? We’ll stick them on so well he won’t be able to get them off no matter how hard he tries. I say we do it!”

“Nina!” Pavel shot back indignantly, though there was no stopping his wife.

“We don’t even have to adjust the software — the lenses are already designed to monitor his activity. Once we train the neural network, we’ll indicate what Pyotr can’t touch, and he’ll be on the road to recovery. The clinic can wait. Let’s do this ourselves!”

Surprisingly, the two men gave in. Neither of them wanted to hand Pyotr off to strangers. Two days later, they’d found the right device to set the lenses on Pyotr’s eyes, after which Pavel embedded the control devices in his body, glued down the wires, and unhooked the sedative IV.

There were five hours left before Pyotr was going to wake up...

* * *

British scientists[6] claim the phrase “wake up” is among the most disliked all around the world. Regardless of education, religion, skin color, and gender, nobody likes being ripped out of the sweet embrace of Morpheus. And Pyotr Zhgulyov was no exception. As soon as the metallic phrase hit his ears, he moaned and stretched out a hand. But he wasn’t reaching for an alarm clock. Instead, he was looking for the bottle there to dull the pain tearing him apart. His brain hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that the pain was gone, acting solely by force of habit.

But there was no lifesaving bottle to be found. The unpleasant sound intensified, and Pyotr opened his eyes with a prolonged groan. All he wanted to do was find whoever was making the sound and send them off to meet their maker. But after practically rolling off the bed, Pyotr stopped and looked around, unsure where he was. It was some kind of metal coffin with a stretcher and medical equipment. There were neither doors nor windows. In one of the corners, there was a bathroom with a shower, though a year of not washing had him glancing past the latter impassively. A warm trickle ran down his leg. Suddenly, a savage pain tore through his body. Dropping to the ground, he lost all humanity for a few moments, mumbling like some kind of hunted animal. It felt like every muscle was burning and spasming, putting its owner through intense suffering.

Even after the pain receded, Pyotr spent a long time lying on the ground, afraid even to move. The hell his melanoma had put him through had nothing on what he’d just experienced. Was that the final stage? His doctors had told him it was going to be bad, but that bad? That was when he noticed something, however.

Forgetting the agony he’d just been through, Pyotr stared in shock at the message floating in the air right in front of him.

Use the toilet to relieve yourself.

Punishment for mistake: +1 second of pain. Current punishment for misbehavior: 2 seconds.

Pyotr waved a hand in front of his face to drive away the delusion. But it didn’t go anywhere. To the contrary, it felt like it was growing larger and pressing on his eyes. Pyotr instinctively tried to cover them with his hands, only he wasn’t able to. A chill ran down his spine — the fear of the unknown gripped him. Trying to dig his fingers into the strange device, he once more felt a wave of excruciating pain that tore at him from the inside, burned, and left spots hurting he didn’t even know existed. When it ended, he was left panting on the ground, powerless to get up. But that was when the message changed. It took him a few seconds to concentrate hard enough to read it.

Don’t remove your eye protection.

Punishment: +1 second of pain. Current punishment for misbehavior: 3 seconds.

It suddenly struck Pyotr’s clouded mind that the messages were less figments of his imagination and more specific warnings. He wasn’t supposed to touch his eyes. He was supposed to go to the bathroom in the corner. And that was sinking in when...

Pyotr’s brain simply turned off. Over by the far wall, something glinted in the dim light: one of his favorite liter bottles with the murky painkiller he loved so much. Someone had left some moonshine there by accident, and Pyotr no longer feared the messages. He could recede back into sweet forgetfulness and —

Don’t touch alcohol.

Pyotr didn’t even see the new message. His glassy expression was fixed on the bottle, ignoring all else. After crawling less than a meter in its direction, he was forced to stop by the pain shooting through him once more. But that time, it seemed even worse. It felt like someone was trying to rip his skin off. His consciousness wasn’t up to the task, and he collapsed.

* * *

“Was that too much?” Artyom asked worriedly. The path to rehabilitation that had seemed so right was turning out to be simple abuse of his friend. He found himself wondering if he should stop everything and just send Pyotr to a clinic, only he knew exactly how rehab would go there. His friend wouldn’t have gotten off any easier.

“The sensors say he’s fine,” Pavel replied with eyes glued to the control panel. “And it’s too late to back down — we need to see this through. You know yourself that he won’t build that reflex if we just sit around patting him on the head.”

“He’ll be fine!” Nina added. “Artyom, don’t worry. We’ll get your friend back looking human again, just let us handle it.”

* * *

Don’t touch alcohol.

Punishment: +1 second of pain. Current punishment for misbehavior: 4 seconds.

The first thing Pyotr saw was the hated message. That time, he picked it out right away, even understanding what it was trying to tell him. The pain was doing a great job clearing his head. Looking up, he once more saw his objective — the bottle of moonshine was right there, looking as inviting as ever. His head buzzed; his muscles carried him forward on their own. In just a moment, he was going to get to it and... The pain and oblivion came at him almost immediately...

Don’t touch alcohol.

Use the toilet to relieve yourself.

Punishment: +2 seconds of pain. Current punishment for misbehavior: 6 seconds.

Once more, the messages were staring back at him, though they really sank in that time. Pyotr crawled over to the bed set in the ground and sat up with his back against it. Something was going on, only he couldn’t figure out what. Yet another glance at the bottle, and his body lurched as the awful message popped up:

Don’t touch alcohol.

Pyotr cringed in expectation of a new wave of pain, only it wasn’t forthcoming. And that led him to an interesting conclusion: as long as he didn’t move, his tormenters weren’t going to hurt him. No movement; no pain. But then he realized he didn’t know who was causing the pain. Who would torture someone terminally ill? He looked around, though nobody was there. They were gone. They’d left him alone with the bottle, the idiots. Such idiots...

His brain switched off, and he leaped forward only to wake up a little while later face-down on the ground. He hadn’t gotten to the bottle. And while his body no longer hurt, the phantom pain was still there to remind him of what he’d just gone through. He broke and moaned in frustration. Getting up was too much. Living was too much. Wave after wave of withdrawal hit him, one leaving only to give way to the next. In those moments, his gaze fell on the only thing in the room that could ease his suffering, though that just triggered the message. He couldn’t touch alcohol...

Some time went by before Pyotr made another move. As he relaxed, ideas began popping into his head about how to outwit his invisible watchers, though he couldn’t work any of them out through to the end. His brain was unused to the strain of thinking and refused to kick in. Pyotr would have spent the rest of his life on the ground, in fact, if it hadn’t been for the messages that eventually popped up in front of him.

Clean yourself up. Follow the yellow line to the shower.

Deadline for stepping into the shower: 60 seconds.

You will be punished if you don’t comply.

Punished... Pyotr’s body reacted against his will, getting up to do the bidding of his tormenters. The yellow line was easy to find. Just as was the case with the messages, it was hovering in front of him, and Pyotr followed it to soon find himself in the shower. Hot water turned on, and he felt human for the first time in a very long while. It had been almost six months since he’d last been clean, having decided that it didn’t matter what he looked like if he was going to die regardless. But in that moment, he turned his face to the stream of water with relish, letting it wash away the weariness and withdrawal. And that was when it hit him — nothing hurt. And he wasn’t thinking of the pain that came with the strict visual instructions. It was the pain that had driven him to drink in the first place.

Read the medical report.

That was new. The line popped back up to lead toward his bed, where a few pieces of paper covered in text were lying. For a long time, Pyotr couldn’t bring himself to focus on the documents — his gaze kept returning to the opposite wall. One thing he knew was that if he was patient enough, his tormentors would let down their guard, and he would finally make it over to that bottle. They could just try to hurt him then.

Still, he had to read. There was nothing he didn’t know to start out with — melanoma, final stage, untreatable even with experimental drugs. But that was when it got strange. The latest analysis and final report said his body was free of the disease. Just as suddenly as it had arrived, the melanoma was gone, leaving an almost completely healthy body behind. Stamps, signatures, and institute names were everywhere, leading him to conclude that it was real. He wasn’t reading a fake.

Tears came unbidden to Pyotr’s eyes. He’d already given himself up for dead, and suddenly everything had changed. What he’d held dear had been flushed away, sold, or lost. What did he need his health for when he had nothing else? Looking away from the papers, he glanced over at the bottle. There was his salvation — forgetfulness. It was the only way to run from reality and keep from thinking about his loss. Remembering full well what it was going to earn him, Pyotr crawled forward. He had to reach the bottle. He had to.

* * *

“Quite the determined friend you have!” Nina said after making another change to the program. The self-learning module had already accepted the bottle as something negative and was beginning to limit Pyotr, only Pyotr wasn’t about to accept those limits. He’d apparently decided to make it to his objective no matter how painful it got.

“The moment of truth. Someone has to break — him or us,” Pavel said, looking up from the sensors. He was afraid to look at Artyom, the latter’s face making it clear what he thought of the experiment. But Pavel knew it was too late to back down. If they did, even a clinic wouldn’t be able to help Pyotr.

Artyom gritted his teeth and said nothing. His heart beat relentlessly, blood rushed around in his head, and he wanted to yell, but he refused to give in. He had to help Pyotr. He had to.

* * *

Just as Pavel had predicted, someone broke. Pyotr was stubborn, but he wasn’t able to get used to the intense and growing pain. He gave in and curled into a ball just a few steps away from the bottle, howling in frustration and anger at his own body. Finally, he realized what was going on: there had never been any tormentors. Everything he’d been experiencing was a product of his own body, it having tortured him and twisted up his muscles to make him do what was right. As for the messages, they were just the glitches of a confused mind. His body was pushing back against the slide he was on, demanding that his conscious come up with new rules. And the demands were so insistent that there was no choice left. It was either follow or double up in pain...

It took Pyotr more than two weeks to get to a point where he could look at the accursed bottle of moonshine without wanting to grab it. For a while, everything he did was strictly mechanical — go to the bathroom, take a shower, eat the food that appeared out of nowhere, do the exercises the message glitches told him to do, and read books. He did try to make it to the bottle on a couple occasions, though the pain appeared every time. Eventually, he gave up the idea. Day followed day as he settled into a routine. And when the moment came that the next message didn’t pop up, Pyotr just went ahead and did his exercises on his own. He took a shower. He sat down to read a book. He did some more exercises. It was only after he’d started eating, in fact, that he realized the glitches born of an inflamed consciousness were gone. His gaze fixed on the bottle — it had earned itself a thick layer of dust. But the desire for the saving liquid was no longer there. Instead, all he could think about were the consequences. There was the hangover, the foggy brain, the pain. His body convulsed, and he couldn’t hold back the vomit, his only consolation that he made it to the toilet without soiling his new clothes.

After cleaning himself up, Pyotr stepped out of the bathroom and suddenly realized what he needed to do. There was no message — the idea had come from his own consciousness. With a confident stride, he made his way over to the bottle and picked it up, all without a hint of pain. His brain knew what was going on and didn’t get in the way. Unscrewing the top, Pyotr sniffed and very nearly emptied his stomach once again. The smell was monstrous, disgusting. Holding the bottle as far away from his nose as he could, he stepped over to the toilet and poured out the contents. A sense of justice rushed over him. He was free. Proud of himself. A new thought popped into his head: that stuff was never again going to enter his mouth.

“Your rehab isn’t over, but you’re on the right path. We can let you out now,” said a familiar voice. Pyotr whirled around, and the empty bottle slipped out of his hand to shatter on the ground. A door had suddenly appeared in one of the walls. And in it was standing someone Pyotr thought was dead.

“Artyom? Is that you?” he asked unsteadily when he picked out the differences between the man in front of him and the friend he’d known. His old friend was thin, frail, and scrawny; the version in the room looked like he never left the gym. He was muscular, powerful, and trim. Was it yet another product of a fevered brain deciding to remind him of the past?

“Who else?” the phantom asked with a laugh so familiar Pyotr’s chest tightened. It was so like Artyom. “Come on out — there’s a lot I need to tell you. And I want to hear how you got this way, too. I’m glad you’re back, my friend...”

Chapter 11

“THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE... It’s... But it’s not right! Why did they do that?” Nina exclaimed.

“Because they could,” Pyotr replied darkly, having once more relived what he’d been through. “Because the law means nothing for people like that. Artyom is right — they’d do anything for profit.”

Artyom just nodded, still processing what he’d just heard. Two days after he’d gone missing, guests began dropping by all the apartments in his building. A few clever characters were offering to buy at well below the market price, saying something about how the building was going to be leveled, and they wanted to do something for the poor souls living in it. But only a few people agreed. They were primarily old ladies with heart problems for whom a three-room apartment in the center of Moscow was getting to be too much as it was. As far as everyone else was concerned, the visitors were laughed off — apartments like that were worth their weight in gold. A few days later, however, something odd happened. The building occupants began falling sick one after another. And it wasn’t just a cold. It was serious. Suddenly, old injuries began acting up, with new ones appearing, as well. The blow landed a week later: almost half the people living in the building died. The doctors caring for them said they were each suffering from an aggressive and malignant tumor. After checking everyone else, the stunning truth was revealed. Not a single one had been spared a tumor. Even Pyotr, who had always been as fit as a fiddle, was no exception. Unfortunately, the doctors could only throw up their hands — the disease couldn’t possibly have progressed that quickly in a matter of days. Whoever was trying to buy the apartments had nothing to do with it.

Nobody had any doubt that it was a setup, and quite a few found their own doctors for a second opinion. Pyotr headed off to the distant village where he’d been born. And while he’d been sure the local doctors would disagree with the diagnosis, his hopes were quickly dashed. That was when he’d decided to sell his apartment. His health was already giving out. After the long trip back to Moscow, he signed the papers, collected the piddling sum, and returned to his parents’ home. His faith in the system was gone. Everybody was a liar — that much he knew. Nobody cared a thing about the simple people when real money was on the line. As the doctors hadn’t given him much time, and he didn’t have any relatives, he found people who would keep him supplied with food until he met his untimely end. And that was when he began drinking. Religion and his principles meant he couldn’t just do himself in. Of course, some of the story was slightly embellished, but Pyotr got the main point across: when the powerful of the world wanted something belonging to somebody else, they could get it on the cheap or even for free. Pyotr said nothing about the heirs who had inherited the apartments of the people who had died.

“If you’re right, there’s another institute full of scientists somewhere in Russia,” Artyom said, having gone through all the designs in his implants without finding anything capable of eliciting the symptoms Pyotr was describing. The commander had been right — Ignatov wasn’t the only one with a prison of his own. But who else was there? The president? That didn’t make much sense given how often the presidency changed hands as well as how visible a position it was. No, there had to be someone lower down the ladder hiding in the shadows.

“Then you’re right — we need to get out of the country,” Pyotr said. “There’s nothing good here for us.”

“The problem is that there are prisons like mine everywhere. Sure, they’re called something different, but the end result is the same,” Artyom said with a sigh. “You know, I’m even starting to wonder if the big corporations that grew up so quickly over the last few years really were built on nothing but the ingenuity of their founders. I’ll bet they have a secret location full of prisoners or work with someone who does. While I never really noticed that, it all seems so simple. Maybe you don’t know, but all the Nobel Prize winners in physics over the last few decades are has-beens. And they only won thanks to the work they did years ago. Are there really no young scientists out there doing cutting-edge work? I can’t imagine I’m unique — they just didn’t notice me in time. Everyone else worth their salt was picked up and hidden away from prying eyes, their masters making themselves rich on their backs.”

A heavy silence hung over the trio. Most people had already recognized what Artyom was saying on some subconscious level, though they never said it aloud. They didn’t want to be proven right. And they definitely didn’t want to find themselves in the grasp of those who protected the secrets of the rich. Nina was the first to pull herself out of her stupor.

“What are we so down about? Okay, so someone out there is making money by the shovelful and stashing people away in prison. Can we do anything about that? Not a thing. And that means we need to make sure it doesn’t affect us. Pyotr and Artyom will find a new job, settle down with families, and live to a ripe old age. Forewarned is forearmed. Just don’t do anything to stand out, and nobody will pay any attention to you. What’s the problem?”

“You know, I don’t want to just back down,” Artyom said to everyone’s surprise. “I back down, you back down, everyone backs down. If this keeps up, our world is going to end up rotten to the core, and we’ll be no better than the ones who are actually spreading the rot. They’re doing it; we’re letting them. What do I need that kind of old age for? And children? They’re just going to grow up in a world where they can be killed at the drop of a hat if it’s in someone’s interests. No! The world has to change.”

“And what are you going to do about it?” Nina asked with a laugh. “You’re alone, you have no money, you have no connections — nothing. As soon as you open your mouth and make it into the papers, Ignatov will send his trained dogs after you. Don’t want to back down... All grown up and still believing in fairy tales. Or do scientists always see the world through rose-tinted glasses?”

“Artyom is right — we can’t go anywhere. We have to fight back,” Pyotr said. He didn’t like Nina’s tone. Soon enough, they were all arguing, with even Pavel jumping in. Everyone pushed their own idea, nobody wanted to listen to anyone else, and it was then that Artyom realized he had the solution. And it was such an elegant one he couldn’t believe nobody else had thought of it.

“You know, Nina is right,” he said, and that made the other three shut up. The woman glanced triumphantly at Pyotr, only the latter had his eyes fixed in surprise on his friend. “We have to stay out of the news. Don’t look at me like that — I’m not about to hide behind someone else. We have to go at this differently. Pavel, didn’t you yourself say that you can’t change a person unless they want to change? We have living proof right here: Pyotr won’t even look at alcohol. Why can’t we do the same thing for everyone else?”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Pavel asked warily, though Artyom’s idea was as clear as day. He pushed it away in the hopes that he was mistaken. Unfortunately, he was quickly disabused of that notion when the physicist explained.

“We proved that you can use implanted lenses and electrodes on the body to make people do what we want. That even goes for teaching them basic hygiene. Pyotr, sorry, but we didn’t have a choice...”

“I know, I know...” Pyotr muttered. He didn’t like thinking back to the time he’d spent at the bottom of the social ladder.

“And how do you imagine Ignatov will take to the lenses?” Nina was even less patient than her husband. “That’s not to mention how you plan on embedding them.”

While the objection seemed ironclad, Artyom had an answer. But even as he took a breath to reply, Pavel jumped in. The topic was a sensitive one — the order that had been handed down to kick him out of the army hadn’t come from the president or even a general. Instead, it had been a simple colonel looking to find someone to take the fall for the dead terrorist.

“This country isn’t built on Ignatov. Sure, he’s at the top, and he’s the one scooping up scientists, but he’s not the type to get his hands dirty. This whole mess all around us is local. Do you think the president or prime minister gives orders to open landfills inside cities? Are they the ones closing down schools to make room for yet another shopping center? No, that’s all petty bureaucrats. Once they get their hands on power, they figure they should take what they can while they have the chance. Artyom, if you want to change the country, don’t start at the top. Start at the bottom. That’s your only shot.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Nina said, frowning at her husband for going against her. “Even if it’s not Ignatov, it’s still some Vasya Pupkin[7], city mayor. How do you plan on getting lenses and wires onto him?”

“The artificial eyes Artyom mentioned,” Pavel said, and Artyom quickly jumped in before Nina could send her broken record around one more time.

“Samsung™ and Apple™ have factories with equipment that should be enough to make them. And we shouldn’t have a problem getting in — the people there want to make money, too. While we have the cash, we need to use it wisely. Pavel will do the operation, and — ”

“And that’s where your plan collapses,” Nina said. “If you want to utilize all the functionality the implants offer, you’re going to need very good equipment in addition to the device itself. That’s the first thing. You’ll need powerful computers, too. And the last thing, though far from the least, is that you need to train the program, preferably on someone living. Let’s go back to Vasya Pupkin. How are you going to use him to train the system? Where are you going to put the cameras? Where are you going to catch the signal from the implants? There’s a hundred more questions, too, and any of them is enough to put the whole thing to bed! Stop being crazy. What, did you not play soldier enough when you were little, and now you want to have another go at it? Vigilantes...”

“Nobody said we have to start with a mayor,” Artyom replied. He’d decided for himself, and Nina’s emotional outburst was doing nothing to his resolve. “Quite the opposite — we need to start with someone all the way at the bottom. They need to be something like what Pyotr was this whole year. You’re right about needing to train the program, so let’s get to work on that. And you won’t even need to do that much since the System will do all the work once it’s trained.”

“What do you need an outcast like that for?” Pavel asked in confusion.

“To make them a person. Confident, strong, and, most importantly, someone who follows the rules.”

“Your rules,” Nina said. “What makes you think that type of life works for everyone? Who put you in charge of even one other person? You’re going to decide what is and isn’t important for them, which habits they should get rid of?”

“Nobody should be able to do what you’re saying,” Artyom replied quickly. “I’m all too aware that the Vikings, for example, thought it was perfectly acceptable to eat the liver of their enemies, while the Chinese don’t have a problem belching in public. Each society has its own way of life that we need to take into account. And yes, that’s ‘we,’ not ‘me.’ We’ll start by working out the rules for the Russian mindset, and then we’ll figure out how to extend it to everyone else. Maybe, we won’t even have to adjust what we come up with. Look, there are four of us, and we all have different educational backgrounds, worldviews, principles, and habits. We’re different. But what do we have in common? None of us likes what’s happening in the country, and we all want to do something about it. That’s what we’ll build into the System.”

“Something tells me you’re capitalizing that,” Pavel said to Artyom’s embarrassment.

“Well... We need to call it something, and I...” He fell silent, not sure what to say until Pyotr came to his rescue.

“There are thousands if not tens of thousands of people like me in the country. They lost their way in life, they’ve given up, and they’re beaten down. Artyom is right — if we want to change the world, we should start with them. Give them a chance to find themselves. Hm... Change the world... That wouldn’t be a bad name for your system: World of the Changed. A world where people are picked up from the bottom and changed for the better, returned to normal life.”

“Phew, I don’t know,” Nina said with a sigh. The fact that the three men were all united in their resolution took her aback and had her wondering if she was the one seeing the world the wrong way. What if it worked? What if they were able to change things for the better? What if their son could live free of fear? Wasn’t that the purpose of living? Spending the rest of their days in the middle of nowhere afraid to come across the local bureaucrats or their children wasn’t a tempting idea.

The discussion on where and how to look for the first target for World of the Changed lasted until late that night. The name for the system had caught on immediately, perfectly matching the idea behind it. And as far as the main guidelines were concerned, they were agreed quickly, as well: a single man with no children or parents younger than fifty living far from any big cities and having dropped all the way to the bottom of the social ladder. Perhaps, even a homeless man. But in that case, they were going to have to find him somewhere to live — nobody was about to leave him on the street.

“Why doesn’t he live in my village?” Pyotr asked. “There isn’t anyone here, so all the buildings are empty.”

“I like the idea of an isolated location,” Nina said as she sketched a few ideas down on a piece of paper. “We could install transmitters and small cameras on the poles, and that would solve the problem of keeping an eye on him. Here, it would look like this.”

Artyom looked over the drawings skeptically. Nina had correctly understood how the implants worked, which meant there was nothing to complain about. Pavel, however, did find something.

“What’s he going to do here? Fight off loneliness and the desire to drink?”

“There are empty fields all around the village. We can turn him into a farmer!” Nina said. She’d bought into the illegal venture completely. “Over the next couple years, we’ll get him back on his feet, and then we can bring in more people. World of the Changed will already be trained by that point, so there won’t be any problem.”

“Can I ask a dumb question? What does it mean to train a program? Honestly, I don’t get it.” Pyotr even blushed when everyone turned to look at him. A computer science teacher, Nina explained the basic idea behind World of the Changed.

“The program Artyom stole from the prison is based on neural networks. That’s... How do I explain it to you? Okay, imagine you have a child who doesn’t yet understand anything. What are you going to do? You start by showing it what’s right and what’s wrong. You train it. Neural networks are the same way. Basically, it’s a huge database that starts out empty, after which you load in situations and point out the consequences those situations lead to. Picked up a bottle of vodka and ignored the warning? You get a shock. And it’s the same thing for every possible situation — there’s input and output. The more, the better. Neural networks can analyze data and store them in their memory, using them to build logic chains that give you a certain result based on whatever the inputs were. When something happens that isn’t in its database then, it takes the information it has and builds the consequences. At the beginning, of course, you get a lot of mistakes, which is why you need someone keeping an eye on the system to make sure nothing serious happens. But the mistakes soon become fewer and farther between. That’s basically what it means to train a neural network.”

“So it isn’t an artificial intelligence? It’s just a program that knows how to pick whatever’s most similar? And it still needs someone controlling it?” It had taken some time, but Pyotr eventually got the idea. “And the program will only work to monitor people? You can’t use it for anything else?”

“Exactly,” Nina replied. “The system would be useless without people running it.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about. We won’t be building Skynet from the Terminator,” Pyotr said, eliciting a smile from everyone else. That, certainly, was the most important problem they had to worry about.

But the real problems began the next day.

As it turned out, good equipment wasn’t available for just anyone to buy. All the computers powerful enough to be used as servers were registered with different agencies, everything capable of mining cryptocurrency accounted for. In the end, they had to resort to the person who had made Artyom’s passport. He just grunted and promised to ask around, announcing that he wouldn’t have lifted a finger for them if it hadn’t been for the troop commander. A couple days later, Artyom was contacted by people who said they would deliver the equipment he needed, even guaranteeing that it would be completely clean. They promised to install and service it, too. The prices, needless to say, were hard to stomach at double the going rate, only Artyom didn’t have a choice. He needed resources if the group was going to get World of the Changed up and running.

But that problem was nothing compared to making the artificial eyes. Apple™ wasn’t an option. After rolling up their factories around the world, the company had moved them all to the US. At least, that was what their official site said — they were following a new presidential directive aimed at creating high-tech jobs in the country. And getting into the US with a fake international passport, especially given that Artyom didn’t have one[8], was a bridge too far. That left the Asian companies: Samsung™, Sony™, or Huawei™. But the problem there was the political situation and territorial disputes that had arisen between China and Japan over a few islands nobody actually cared about. Both sides had closed their borders to tourists in anticipation of an escalation, and Artyom was worried. Russia didn’t have the technology needed to make the kind of artificial eyes he needed. At least, not officially.

And that gave him an idea. Leaving the group to deal with the new equipment, he flew to Novosibirsk. Finding the right helipad and flight schedule wasn’t a problem — the people in the provinces didn’t care much about information security. Artyom waited a few weeks before a helicopter registered to a fake company applied to land for fuel and repairs. And after pulling on a mask that turned him into an old man, he found that his precautions hadn’t been in vain. One of the soldiers stepped over to him as soon as he got within a hundred meters of the helicopter.

“You lose something, grandpa?” the soldier asked threateningly as he brandished his automatic. “This is private property. Get out of here!”

“Stand down!” barked a familiar voice. Alexander, the troop commander, came over. Casting a wary glance up and down Artyom, he just sighed, turned to his soldier, and gave his next order. “Get back to your position. I’ll handle this.”

After waiting for his man to head off, Cat asked a question, his tone as calm as ever.

“You trying to get me caught? I thought I made it clear that you were supposed to stay hidden. What are you doing back here?”

“I need your help.” Artyom knew all too well that he was risking his new friends in addition to himself, but it was his only play. The sole person in all the world who could help make their plan a reality was standing in front of him and deciding whether to shoot him then or later. But when he heard Artyom’s response, his eyes narrowed in contempt.

“Money? What, you spent what I gave you? Think you can just come back for more?”

“No, it’s more serious than money. Give me an hour somewhere we can talk, and I’ll explain the whole thing. Really, it’s important. But all I need right now is the chance to talk.”

Alexander thought for a while. Setting himself up wasn’t a tempting idea — he had no way of knowing who his people really worked for. While he was sure of three or four, what about the rest? Were they passing on information to someone? Would Ignatov get a report on his desk about the old man at the heliport? But Alexander couldn’t just ignore Artyom. There was something about the physicist that he liked. Something about the path he always took, the way he thought, and the sincerity that was a rarity in the world they lived in. It was unusual that someone made an impression on Alexander, but Artyom had done just that. And hearing the physicist out was the least he could do.

“Two o’clock, a restaurant called the Island. I’ll give you half an hour while I’m having lunch. And in the meantime, beat it — I don’t need people talking.”

The meeting happened a couple hours later. Some fighters Artyom recognized cleared everyone out of the main room, leaving the commander alone with his guest. Quaking in fear, the poor waiter took their order, his eyes darting back and forth between all the automatic weapons. Calling the police wasn’t an option — the kid knew how highly placed his guests were. Still, he was afraid to look them in the eye, afraid to accidentally anger them. After the old man finished speaking, he waited for some sort of reaction, only none was forthcoming. One of the fighters gave the frozen waiter a nudge. The boy dashed off, the only thought in his head being that he needed to quit as soon as possible.

It was the waiter’s sluggish behavior that made up Alexander’s mind. While the start of Artyom’s speech had elicited nothing but revulsion and distaste, each word drove him relentlessly toward the conclusion that he’d made the right decision helping the person across from him once upon a time. After all the hot spots he’d been through, he knew well enough what war did to people. He’d seen it turn strong, wise men into sniveling cowards afraid of their own shadow. And while people like that needed serious rehabilitation, command found it simpler to train new ones and get rid of the sick. They were written off, given a minimal pension, and forgotten. But there was nothing Alexander could do about that. He couldn’t keep an eye on everyone who needed treatment. That day, however, Artyom had shown up with an idea that could actually help. Alexander knew how the artificial eyes worked, though he couldn’t yet agree. There was no telling what cameras or spies were watching.

“Time’s up, Artyom. What you’re asking is impossible. Illegal. And that’s final. The next time you show up here, I’m giving orders to grab you and dump you back into prison. Don’t expect anything less. Okay, get out.”

Cat’s expression was so resolute that Artyom decided against arguing. But he was crestfallen — while he hadn’t necessarily been expecting help, he’d definitely been looking for a sympathetic ear. There, however, he’d come up emptyhanded on both counts. At the door leading outside, he was stopped by Falcon, the same soldier who’d cut the devices out of his body. Just like the previous time, he waved a wand over him as if looking for bugs, though he stepped forward once he was done and smoothly dropped something small and cold into Artyom’s hand. The latter swallowed hard. He had the good sense to step outside and make it a few blocks away before opening his hand, looking down, and finding a key lying in his palm. It was a familiar key, too. He’d used it for six months when he’d been living in Cat’s secret apartment. Deciding it was a sign, he headed in that direction and waited a few hours until Cat showed up. Falcon checked the apartment for bugs before leaving. He had no desire to get involved in the conversation.

“Do you have any videos? Reports? Findings? I want to see what you were able to do,” Alexander said. Not a single muscle in his stern face twitched as he watched Pyotr suffer. Then, after reading Pavel’s report and examining Pavel’s thin but alert face, he gave his verdict.

“I’ll get you the implants, though I have a condition. The candidate you mentioned won’t be a homeless guy; he’ll be a friend of mine. We grew up together, studied together, joined the army together. But fifteen years ago, they broke him. He refuses to let anyone help him, too proud for it, though he hasn’t been able to do anything on his own. If what you have in mind really helps, start with him. His name is Anton Tekshin, and he’s exactly what you’re looking for. Single, no family, no responsibilities. Just tell me where you need him, and I’ll have him dropped off there. But are you sure your surgeon can handle the operation? Embedding the implants is no walk in the park.”

“He’ll be fine,” Artyom replied. “Before I broke out of prison, I got access to all their designs, and they include instructions for how to set them up. Pavel looked them over and said he can do it.”

“I’ll bring you two sets just in case. Do you need anything else?”

“A drop of energon?” Artyom asked just in case, and he was surprised when Cat didn’t immediately turn him down. The latter thought for a while before nodding.

“I’ll do my best, though I can’t promise everything. They have every gram traced. You may have changed how they look for it, but nobody’s been able to find anything underground in the last year. Actually, it’s like the energon ran out. There’s even less of the blue light. From what I heard, Ignatov mentioned that he regrets his decision — he might even forgive you if he had the chance. They say you had a nose for energon, that you’re connected somehow... But anyway, that’s beside the point. Wait here, and you’ll have your implants in a month. Where should I have Tekshin brought?”

Chapter 12

“IS HE REALLY THIRTY-FIVE?” Pavel asked in surprise, not sure where to start with the body lying on the operating table. While the soldiers had washed away the fearsome smell, they hadn’t thought to shave the guy, and the surgeon found himself looking down at a thin man who looked to be about eighty. He was wrinkled, scarred, bitten, and spotted. If it hadn’t been for his papers, nobody would have thought Anton Tekshin was actually a young man.

“He’s really been through the ringer,” Artyom replied. “But he actually is thirty-five. Get ready — Alexander will have the implants here in a couple hours. They’re already on the way.”

“Are you sure about this?” Pavel asked. “What if he’s working for Ignatov?”

“He is, and he doesn’t hide it,” Artyom said. “He’s working with us, too, though. And as long as he has a stake in it, he’s going to keep helping us. Our goals are aligned, so... I mean, you know yourself that we wouldn’t be anywhere if it weren’t for him.”

As if in confirmation, a message popped up in front of Artyom:

Transmitter setup complete.

Coverage: 15 square kilometers.

Before beginning their project, Artyom’s group had decided to handle the many questions none of them had even thought of back at the start. And there were so many, in fact, that Artyom might have given up if it hadn’t been for Pyotr standing there healthy and whole as living proof that their idea worked. They just needed to avoid feeling sorry for themselves and get the job done.

The team setting up the servers for World of the Changed took one look at the old, broken-down shacks and announced in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t be installing anything in them. There was no ventilation, they were fire hazards, security was nonexistent, and there wasn’t even a way to let water out. When the first heavy rain hit, the equipment was going to be flooded, and it would have been easier to toss it in the trash rather than repair it in one of those houses. They were forced to design a live-in server room, a separate underground space not far from the village. Of course, it cost the group a pretty penny, though they didn’t have much of a choice. The secure bunker let them stay in the village without being seen. Almost four months of construction later, it was nearly spring, and the time had been spent well. The village had been completely reworked. On the outside, the change wasn’t obvious, though a closer look revealed miniature cameras, transmitters, and duplicate communication channels on all the poles to go along with the drone pads on a few roofs. Artyom even had a power plant built for them. While it wasn’t more than a few gas-powered generators, it still made Green Landmark nearly autonomous. The weekly trips Pavel took to buy food were the only time anyone needed to visit the city.

It also took the group a long time to decide on a plan for how to rehabilitate Anton Tekshin. Artyom wanted to go with what had already worked, leaning on pain and fear the way they had with Pyotr. But Pavel and Nina weren’t on the same page. According to them, it had been simpler with Pyotr, as he’d been in his condition for less than a year — that wasn’t enough time for it to really become a part of him. Anton, on the other hand, had been in the depths for almost thirteen years, and that meant he didn’t remember what normal life was like. Pain, suffering, hatred, and contempt had been his constant companions, which ruled out the possibility of a quick turnaround. Instead, they had to orchestrate it such that Anton himself wanted to come back to normalcy. But the worst part was that nobody in the group knew how to do that. What they needed was a psychologist, only bringing one on board was too dangerous.

Ultimately, they decided they were going to work gradually with Anton, avoiding any immediate demands. Nina hooked Artyom’s artificial eyes up to World of the Changed, letting him control the process in real time. While nobody had raised the question, Artyom had been placed in charge by default. There was nobody else to do the job no matter how much he didn’t like it. Cat, for his part, declined to send help, replying that his soldiers were all accounted for by Ignatov’s internal security service. He also knew that if Artyom’s group couldn’t make it past the first stage on their own, putting his own men in harm’s way simply wasn’t worth it. On the other hand, he did agree to send more money. The first two million melted away before anyone could notice, the cash being the only reason they were able to keep going. As embarrassing as it was for Artyom to admit, their plan to change the world would have remained nothing more than a plan if it hadn’t been for the money.

The helicopter landed right in a field — the village didn’t have a central square. After handing over a small briefcase, the pilot took off immediately. His flight schedule had him a few hundred kilometers away. Panting from the exertion, Pyotr ran over to the operating room and handed the package to Artyom. The moment of truth had arrived. Nobody knew what was inside. It could have been anything from a bomb to deadly gas, no one in the group knowing what Ignatov was capable of when it came to mocking his slaves. Perhaps, Cat really was working for him, and the prime minister had gotten tired of their little game. After entering the code he’d gotten from the commander, Artyom threw back the lid. The space around them was flooded with soft blue light, and his heart nearly leaped out of his chest when he saw the five artificial eyes, the syringe filled with a greenish liquid, and the flask shrouded in energy shields. Cat had pulled off the impossible. Not only had he made off with a piece of energon, but he’d also stolen an elixir of life right out from under Ignatov’s nose. The latter was a concoction the scientists had come up with that cured most diseases. And it couldn’t have come at a better time — Tekshin had managed to catch most of the diseases out there over the previous thirteen years. It was surprising he was still alive.

“Let’s do this!” Nina grabbed the implants first. Connecting them to World of the Changed didn’t take long, though the same wasn’t the case with the explosive block. After that came what Pavel called his thirty-six-hour marathon. Even with the complete description of the process, it took the surgeon more than a day and a half to embed the new devices in Anton. The moment the job was done, he fell fast asleep right there on the operating table.

The final injection fell to Artyom to do — he somehow felt it was his responsibility. The green substance emptied into the IV, a few minutes later making its way into Tekshin’s body. In a corner of Artyom’s vision, a timer appeared to tell him that the miraculous serum needed twelve hours to work its magic. By the time Pavel woke up, it was done. Tekshin was ready.

* * *

The first thing Anton sensed was an unusual smell. Sweet, pleasant, and somehow gentle, it reminded him of an endless meadow filled with all kinds of flowers. The last few years had seen any number of aromas hit Anton’s nose, though meadow flowers weren’t among them. His brain kicked into gear, and that process came with real physical suffering. He groaned and clutched his head with his hands — he wasn’t used to thinking. With an immense effort, he opened his eyes to see where the smell was coming from.

Thoughts flew through his head, one after another. Wherever he was, he didn’t recognize it, and while it seemed more like a hospital room, hospital rooms didn’t offer a view of a worn wooden gate. It was a copy in every other way, however. There was the strange, elevating bed he’d only ever seen on the torn pages of magazines along with some unfamiliar tools, everything clean, white, and pleasant in a way that made his skin crawl. All it needed was the smell of medicine, fear, and pain to be a regional health center. They didn’t usually smell like flowers, of course. As his nose twitched, Anton cut loose a thunderous sneeze. He scratched his head in confusion. Was it an allergy? To what? He’d come down with everything there was to come down with over the previous fifteen years, though allergies had never bothered him. That would have been the last straw.

The bouquet of flowers is causing an allergic reaction.

Get rid of it.

“What the hell?” Anton exclaimed as he leaped to his feet and tried to brush away the message that had popped up in front of him. But it didn’t work. The red letters refused to go anywhere. Instead, they seared their way into his head, demanded obedience, and left him groaning and collapsing on the bed with his hands pressed against his head in a vice grip. It was the end. Ivan Shaman had told him over and over again that he didn’t have long to live once the demons started appearing, and that meant he was close. Throwing himself off a bridge was better than the madhouse.

A short wave of pain rippled through his body to trigger a long moan. Anton curled into the fetal position and waited for the end to come — it made sense why he was at a hospital. Apparently, he’d been hit hard enough to be knocked out. His friends, if he could call them that, had dragged him over to a village hospital and left him there. And that made sense. What did they need an encounter with the police for? Judging by the lack of any IVs or pills, the doctors weren’t going to much trouble over him, either. Why waste time on a tramp? It had been nice enough of them to wash and shave him.

The bouquet is causing unpleasant sensations.

Every minute spent next to the flowers will bring suffering.

Get rid of them.

60 seconds until the next wave of pain.

“Screw you!” Anton shouted. The madhouse was ready and waiting for its new patient — he just had to make sure his friends didn’t hear about him seeing words in the air. If they did, they would kick him out of the group. But while Tekshin wanted to just ignore that message, too, his body doubled over in pain that was far more powerful than the first wave. He’d been through hell once before, having a bad tooth pulled without anesthesia, and the feeling in that moment was somewhere in the same ballpark. Once again, he found himself in the fetal position, though he didn’t stay there long. After sitting up, he looked around to find a doctor of some sort that he could take his frustration out on. If life was going to be miserable for him, he needed to make it miserable for someone else, too. Maybe, the police would haul him off to jail for fifteen days, and he could spend the rest of his time on earth not worried about where his next meal would come from. The mental glitches, with that said, were impressive — they even came with special effects. The first lines dissolved away, leaving nothing but the timer ticking away in front of him.

But there was no doctor to be found. Anton cursed and brought a fist down on his bed. Something cracked, and that gave him an idea: destroying everything around him would definitely get him sent to jail, and perhaps even for six months. With that in mind, he leaped up, lifted the chair above his head, and suddenly noticed the timer tick down to zero.

Anton had been through quite a bit in his thirty-five years. He’d been tortured by robbers, lacerated by dogs, cut by friends, and tested by the weather. And every time something new happened, he got to a point where he felt like his body was about to give out, only he somehow always made it through. His assailants could never quite finish him off. He’d never even been knocked unconscious. But in that moment, the pain was so intense his mind couldn’t take it. The darkness came to take him away, only there was no sweetness in it. Just a temporary reprieve.

When Anton woke up, he was lying on the ground. His body still shook from the memory of what had happened, though there wasn’t so much as a hint of pain. The chair was lying off to the side. But instead of looking over it, Anton was fully occupied with the strange message in front of him.

Get rid of the source of your suffering.

60 seconds until the next wave of pain.

Almost as if it had been waiting for Anton to wake up, the timer began its gradual descent to zero. The man’s body reacted faster than his mind. He leaped up before the timer could tick down to fifty, grabbed the accursed flowers, and looked around frantically to see what he could do with them. A hint immediately appeared.

Throw the bouquet in the trash.

Follow the yellow line.

The glitches were getting more varied, adding a picture to the text. A long, ribbon-like line rolled out in front of him to stretch from his feet to the ordinary trash can next to the far wall. It didn’t even have a lid. If the situation had been different, Anton would have given some thought to what it mattered where the flowers causing him his allergy were, though he wasn’t about to argue with the glitches. The timer had already reached thirty seconds.

You completed a task to get rid of the source of your suffering.

Bonus received: +1 Coin (balance: 1 Coin).

Follow the yellow line to your next task.

“What the hell is going on?” Anton exclaimed as he stared in bewilderment at the new yellow line. Somewhere deep in his soul, he began to realize something incredible was happening. The lines and messages weren’t glitches; they were actual manifestations of reality and instructions for what to do next. Completely forgetting his recent plan to demolish his bed, he instead decided to fall in line. For appearances, at least. But his primary objective was to find whoever had set up everything he was experiencing and beat the truth out of them. And Anton was very good at that.

* * *

One serious issue that nearly did the project in was a basic rewards system. While Artyom considered it a relic of the past with no place in the future, Pavel and Nina insisted on having one. It was only after Pyotr joined them a few debates later that Artyom relented in the face of their combined pressure.

The crux of their argument was that pain alone wasn’t enough. They’d gotten lucky with Pyotr, while people like Anton needed more than a stick. A carrot was indispensable. Getting someone thinking in the right track meant offering them the opportunity to work for that carrot, though the good news was that nearly anything could stand in for it — furniture, gourmet food, or even alcohol. If it hadn’t been for Pyotr, Artyom would never have given in. But the trio was too much for him to overcome. Gritting his teeth, he got to work updating World of the Changed, the initial version not having a store functionality built in. Quants were traded in for the more familiar Coins. To lend gravity, the word was capitalized, and the group brainstormed to put together a list of positive actions that earned Coins as well as negative actions that cost them. A catalog was born, too. The first stage saw just a few line items added, though they were impressive: food from a restaurant, a cognac collection, a gorgeous couch, a comfortable mattress, and several changes of clothing. While it was everything someone might need for their daily life, Artyom knew what Coins were most likely to be spent on.

Pyotr pulled Artyom away from his thoughts. Captivated as he was by the idea of training World of the Changed and rehabilitating lost souls, Pyotr had been the best fit for the job of standing at the controls. Of course, the scenarios had all been developed earlier, though someone still needed to be there to press the buttons through the early stages. Pyotr had volunteered. Right then, he was closely monitoring Anton’s every move.

“He’s in position. Triggering stage two. Tutorial time. Let’s see what kind of mental capacity Anton has after fifteen years of letting himself go.”

* * *

Lesson 1. Introduction to the interface.

Concentrate on the lower half of your vision.

Reward for successfully completing the lesson: 1 Coin.

The room Anton found himself in looked like something from a nice hotel. At least, that was what it seemed like to him. The letters in front of him wanted him to do something, though the moment his gaze fell on the simple but delicious-looking food on the table, all other ideas vanished. A guiding principle in the life Anton had grown accustomed to was that he never knew when he would be getting his next meal. And that meant he ate whenever he had access to food.

Lips pursed, Artyom watched the man stuffing himself. He’d insisted on pain only being used in extreme cases, believing as he did that people could get their lives together without negative stimulation. But as the minutes ticked by, Anton wasn’t giving any thought to the task. All he did was chew away, tossing the scraps and bones right onto the floor. He was apparently used to having dogs nearby. Finally, when he couldn’t take another bite, he hauled himself over to the couch, stretched out luxuriously on it, and closed his eyes. Artyom winced when he wiped his greasy hands on the upholstery. The team had put so much effort into that room, and the slob had ruined it in a matter of minutes...

“He filched a knife and a pair of spoons,” Nina said. “Probably thinks he got off lucky. But stealing is the last thing we need...”

“Pyotr, wake him up,” Artyom said. “He needs to learn about the interface, and he needs to do it now. Nina, add a task for him to return what he stole. I don’t like admitting it, but you were right — the more freedom you give people, the less responsibility they take. But that’s fine. We can fix it.”

Pyotr said nothing as he followed Artyom’s instructions, hiding his intense embarrassment behind a mask of determination. Staring at the kind of person he’d been for an entire year was difficult. Really, it was only by some miracle that Artyom had found him and brought him back.

Anton leaped off the couch as if he’d been shot. The knife appeared in his hand, and he glanced around frantically in search of an assailant. Not only had someone interrupted his nap, they’d done it in the rudest way possible. It was the kind of thing people lost fingers for. But there was nobody there besides the glitches. Still, Anton wasn’t about to back down, as he’d already realized whatever was going on wasn’t a figment of his imagination. Someone wanted him to dance along to their fiddle? He wasn’t about to comply.

“Get out here! Where are you hiding? Come on, you bastard — let’s see that mug of yours! I’m going to — ”

But Anton couldn’t finish his thought before pain overwhelmed him. Dropping to the ground, he just about lost the knife, maintaining his grip at the last moment. Even the agony wasn’t enough to make him forget about his weapon. Instead, he clung to it. Artyom could tell right then that they needed to break Anton, otherwise things would only get worse, and so Pyotr turned up the pain until Anton passed out. But he still didn’t let go of the knife.

“You know, World of the Changed has some problems we need to figure out before we can make progress,” Nina said, breaking the silence. The men were staring mutely at Anton’s limp body as they tried to figure out how to get past the obstacle they were facing. “There are lots of people like Anton out there. Each of them has their own pain tolerance, which means there will be some who don’t feel pain at all. And we won’t be able to control or put them to sleep. Anton is doing whatever he wants to do, and all we can do is torture him into something closer to what we want. That needs to change sooner rather than later.”

“You know better than we do how that’s out of the question,” Pavel replied. “World of the Changed doesn’t have control functionality — we’re restricted to electric impulses.”

“In that case, we’re better off admitting defeat rather than torturing an innocent man,” Nina replied harshly. “The humane approach didn’t work. Playing the dictator didn’t work. And that’s all the options we have. And even if we are able to pull it off now, what happens next? You’re not suggesting we keep people living in fear for the rest of their lives, are you? If we do that, how are we any better than the higher-ups we’re fighting?”

Once again, a silence fell. It was broken by Artyom’s thoughtful voice.

“He’s a soldier. It wasn’t for long, but he did serve... Because of that, he knows all about pain and how to get through it, which means we need to find something that will get through even to him. We need... Got it! Remember what he shouted right before losing consciousness? He was looking for someone to fight, trying to take on whoever made all this happen to him. And that’s who we need: someone who’s the personification of all his problems. He needs an enemy!”

“Okay, so what’s your plan? Head out there and tell him it was all your experiment?” Nina replied with a snort. “Go for it! He’ll be only too happy to poke you full of holes with that knife he stole.”

“No, that’s not it. We need to explain to him what’s going on, get him to realize that none of it is mere chance. That will put us in touch with the part of him that was suppressed when he was little — he wants to be chosen. Let’s make it so that he’s the one who wants the change to happen.”

“Have you been reading too many comic books?” Nina was an inveterate skeptic.

“Exactly! Comic books,” Artyom said excitedly. The plan was coming together in his head, and he liked it. All that remained was getting buy-in from the rest of the group. “Cat said Anton cracked during combat when he couldn’t kill someone. Let’s find him the kind of enemy everybody wants to kill — some terrifying alien swallowing souls alive. And only Anton Tekshin can stop it. But to do that, he’ll need to... Forget it — we’ll figure that out later. He can start training now. Let’s toss him a few exotic fruits, call them sources of power, and have him grow them. We don’t need to force him to do what we want; we need to fix it so that he wants the same thing. Being chosen... Yes, we can build the whole idea on that!”

“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous,” Nina said immediately. “If you ask me, we should just forget the whole thing if it means getting involved in that idiocy.”

“There will always be time to give up later.” Pavel stared at Artyom thoughtfully. “Ruslan can help. He likes writing stories — he even published a few on some literature portals. Of course, they were under a pseudonym, but the reviews were pretty good. You may have even read them. Ruslan Mikhailov? No?”

“Don’t get my son involved in this,” Nina said, though she was losing steam.

“He’s already involved, so it’s not like we can make it any worse. Basically, if we need a good plot, Ruslan can help,” Pavel said.

Artyom made up his mind immediately. There were too many factors coming together to ignore the new idea.

“Pavel, put Anton in a medically-induced coma. Nina, get Ruslan over here for a meeting. And don’t be like that — we were going to have to tell him everything sooner or later. Why not now? Okay, we have to adjust everything to fit the new narrative. Let’s get to work! It’s a restart for World of the Changed, and we’re going to find ourselves an Enemy.”

Chapter 13

SMAUG THE MAGNIFICENT. The winged, fire-breathing dragon invented by J. R. R. Tolkien was one of the most vivid characters to play out on the silver screen over the previous few decades. Even Marvel villains had nothing on his power or charisma. Horned, malicious, and focused on stealing all the wealth he could, the dragon was perfect as modernity’s public enemy number one. He was equal parts familiar and repulsive. He was a predator eliciting animal fear that was born back in an age when humanity was still running around with sticks and stones in the breaks between hiding from mammoths. And settling on a name was easy enough. After deciding against sticking with the original, we went with a combination of all their last names: Kor(shunov)-Ku(chayev)-Zh(gulyov). Kor-Kuzh.

Ruslan then moved on to begin enthusiastically filling in the backstory, adding layer upon layer. Amazed by the young writer, Artyom watched as he brought seemingly incongruous elements together. The dragon, the planet, resources, genocide, an outside influence that played a role as the keeper of the galaxy and forced the dragon to go without the technology available to other worlds, and even the spirit of the planet — all of it found a place in the picture he was painting. The idea was absurd, of course, and wouldn’t have stood up to the slightest criticism, though it did the job perfectly. Right at the center was the Chosen One. His job was to stop the invasion by growing an antidote, making him a kind of savior gardener.

But writing the script was just one small part. Implementing the story in World of the Changed was a far bigger task, the system Artyom had downloaded learning and working around a variety of circumstances beautifully but having a harder time playing out a script. At least, Nina’s experience as a teacher wasn’t up to the job. She stared at the code in confusion, unsure where to begin. While the whole thing needed an update, she had neither the experience nor the skill needed. Blushing, she admitted as much the second day.

“I can’t... We need real programmers, not a cheap knock-off like me.”

“We won’t have anyone this year, at least.” Artyom decided to put his foot down immediately. “This is up to us. Okay, can you tell me what the problem is?”

“If only I knew!” Nina exclaimed. “We need a single system for points, tasks, achievements, a store, and Coins. Basically, we need to turn World of the Changed into an actual computer game. But if that’s the plan, we need people who can develop it. The script needs to be way better than what a seventeen-year-old kid can do, too.”

“Artyom, don’t you think we’re getting away from the real objective here?” Pyotr said suddenly. “It feels like you’re making a system for its own sake rather than to help Anton. Believe me, he couldn’t care less who’s kicking out the messages — me or a program. The numbers don’t matter, either. Even Coins. For the first couple weeks or even months, he’ll be busy repairing the house and working on the property. Who needs a game?”

“He’s right!” Pavel looked over at Pyotr to the latter’s embarrassment. Pyotr didn’t like when the rest of the group turned their attention on him, and his cheeks flushed.

“You mean, this was all for nothing?” Artyom asked, brandishing the pile of pages featuring Ruslan’s handiwork.

“What are you talking about? We decided that Anton needs an enemy, and we came up with one. Now, let’s play it by ear — we’ll send him messages manually without loading the whole script into World of the Changed. If it works, we’ll get Cat to send us a bunch of programmers. If it doesn’t, what’s the point spending so much time and energy? Instead of entering the data into the program, Nina can pull it out of there and into a separate file with the story. Let’s prove to ourselves that it works. Afterwards, we can deal with the rest. Babe, can you make Gaia?”

“I have no idea how I would do that. There isn’t even anything I’ve found in World of the Changed that would let me make three-dimensional objects.”

“You don’t need to, Mom!” Ruslan said, reminding the group that he, too, was in the office. “Gaia doesn’t need to look like something. Actually, she should be as vague as possible, something confusing and abstract. Remember how our old computer had a screen saver that was always changing? We could use something like that.”

“Oh, that’s much better. I didn’t know how to make a simple, static figure, but now that you tell me it should be constantly changing, my job is so much easier...”

“Why a picture?” Artyom asked as an idea dawned on him. “You can project it in front of him! It’s the same thing I do using my artificial eyes.”

“That could work, though I need something to layer it on. Even three-dimensional maps are built on a base, the picture attached to it as a kind of foundation. Can’t just project it onto a wall.”

“A drone!” Artyom and Pavel exclaimed at the same time. Glancing at each other, the pair burst out laughing, and Pavel continued. “We’ll hang a green screen on a drone, and you can project the demon onto it.”

“Not a demon; this!” Artyom ticked a few settings and projected a video of a piece of energon. The physicist had decided against checking to see how his group would react to the material, so the drop Cat had sent was hidden far away from them. But a video couldn’t hurt them.

“Yes, that’s perfect,” Ruslan exclaimed, his gaze fixed on the shimmering rainbow. “It’s Gaia!”

* * *

Waking up came with a headache. While Anton could tell he was lying on something soft, he was in no hurry to open his eyes — the hated messages were sure to be waiting for him. His stomach gurgled. And that made him think. Judging by the feeling he had, he hadn’t eaten in a few days, only he remembered all too well how he’d stuffed himself just a few minutes before losing consciousness. That was just one more reason why he needed to figure out what was going on. Anton opened his eyes and...shut them again. What he’d seen was impossible, nature having no room for it. No, the glitches were over. This was something far more serious.

“I know you’re awake and saw me, Anton,” said a feminine voice. Nina was doing the speaking for Gaia. “Don’t pretend I’m not here. I am, and I’m real.”

Anton let one eye drift uneasily open. But while his heart beat faster and his breath caught in his throat, he didn’t pay that the least bit of attention. He was too busy staring at the most unusual creature he could ever have imagined. Hovering freely in midair, it was shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, its shape constantly changing from one form to another. It was a sphere, an odd animal, and then a square with spines. Even as Anton’s head began to buzz, however, he still didn’t look away. The glitches hadn’t been able to talk before.

“I am Gaia, spirit of Earth,” the creature said. “And I had to come here personally to prepare you for the most important challenge of your life. It’s what you were born for. You’re the Chosen One, Anton Tekshin, and you alone are capable of saving humanity from impending doom.”

Ruslan’s youthful enthusiasm had pushed him to go all out, sticking phrases like you should and you have to everywhere in Gaia’s lines, though Artyom had convinced him they wouldn’t lead to anything good. As soon as Anton heard them, he was going to want to do the opposite.

“What doom?” Anton asked, taken aback. He’d been assuming he was going to get tortured again, only the conversation had taken a very different turn.

“Earth is in trouble.” Real pain infused Gaia’s voice. “There’s a threat arising that humanity hasn’t seen in several millennia, and you’re the only descendent of the ancient heroes that can fight back. Here’s what happened...”

As Gaia began her story, Anton listened raptly. He spent the first few seconds in undisguised incredulity, though he had to recognize his visitor’s power when the words began imprinting themselves in his brain and making his body react. It had to be the truth. He, a simple tramp, really was the descendent of ancient warriors...

One thing Pavel had learned to do well was turn on a low-voltage buzz that sent chills down the subject’s back and caused a slightly irregular heartbeat. And since Anton couldn’t feel anything external acting on him, he naively assumed it was his own mind responding to Gaia. Nina finished her introduction and fell silent. Anton had time to wrap his head around the news of what he was facing.

“What can I do? I don’t have anything!” Anton desperately wanted to say anything but that, though it was his only choice. The words emerged deep in his soul, down where even thirteen years of homeless life couldn’t get to them.

“You’re right — you’re as low as it gets, at level zero. As long as you stay like this, you won’t be able to help Earth, so you’re going to have to change. You, your lifestyle, and your surroundings all have to change. You need to get stronger. And once that happens, our world will stand a chance. But if you accept my help, I’ll make sure to guide you along your journey.”

“Are you talking about the pain? That was you?” Anton quickly guessed who was behind all the problems he’d been dealing with in recent times. He got to his feet, glaring daggers at the shimmering object that suddenly stopped making him feel such awe. Instead, it was the personification of everything he’d been through. Rage clouded his mind, and even the part about him being the Chosen One wasn’t enough to hold him back. For too long, he’d lived by one rule: let anyone get the better of you even once, and they’ll lord it over you the rest of your life. You have to fight back. And there was the enemy, right in front of him. His leap was impressive — Anton could practically feel Gaia in his clutches, and he had time to snarl in anticipation of quick revenge when Pyotr turned the pain up nearly to the maximum level. While Pavel wasn’t able to pull the drone out of the way, it was a limp body that smacked into it.

Silence fell in the underground bunker. Nobody wanted to admit that the project looked fatally flawed. The team had only kicked off the second stage after intense preparations, going beyond the script and flowery speech about the Chosen One to study a few books on training and education. Artyom had never come across terms like positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, long-term behavior patterns, and the like, as natural as they were to people in training, and so he had to do a lot of reading. After a while, he had to modify his approach to correcting Anton’s behavior as well as his own attitude toward the project itself. What he was doing. For example, Pavel and Nina insisted that his book learning meant nothing in the face of the experience they had raising a perfectly good son without all the theory. They were going to be fine, they said. That forced Artyom to put his foot down — Anton needed the right methodology. Only that methodology had failed. Of course, it had been going well, with Anton invested in the idea and pliable enough, only something had happened right at the end.

“We’re missing something,” Artyom said when the pause began to hang heavy. His voice was so calm that it was as if nothing had happened. “Something important that’s keeping us from achieving the mission. Okay, while we were looking at this as a problem we need to solve, what if there actually isn’t a problem in Anton’s case? It was easy with Pyotr because he wanted to go back to normal life. But we really just got lucky. Still, Pyotr didn’t like the way he was living and wanted to come back, though Anton, judging by his behavior, doesn’t see a problem with his life. He thinks it’s fine. That’s why everything we’re trying is coming up empty.”

“I don’t like where you’re going with this,” Nina muttered glumly.

“I’m not going anywhere. It’s just facts. Anton is too stuck in his ways, and the defensive shell he has up isn’t going to come down, unfortunately.”

“Maybe, you’re just in a hurry?” Pyotr asked. “The guy lost his temper, but that happens. Let’s give it another shot.”

“He didn’t just lose his temper; he wanted to destroy the spirit of Earth,” Artyom replied. “If we let that go unpunished, the whole thing will go sideways. For the time being, Anton only understands the language of strength — he showed us that much. And since there’s no place for that in the Russia we’re trying to build, we need to nip it in the bud.”

“With something else even stronger? What about all your positive reinforcement?”

“Sadly, yes, something even stronger,” Artyom replied grimly. “There’s no other way. Before we build him back up, we need to get him into a state where he’ll accept that reinforcement. It’s useless right now. Ah, a good psychologist would mean the world right now... Personally, I don’t understand what makes people want to dominate and suppress others. Could it still be left over from our primitive ancestors? You can see for yourselves — the less self-awareness you have, the more you feel the need to prove your own worth. You think Anton charged the drone because he hates rainbows? No, he wanted to punish Gaia for what she’d put him through. He wanted to show that he’s an alpha male, make sure she never again even thinks about pulling something with him. He’s more animal than human.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Pyotr asked. “The urge to protect yourself is as ordinary as the urge to survive.”

“Don’t mix the two up, Pyotr. He wasn’t protecting himself; he was attacking. Flashing his teeth. And he was even attacking a creature personifying the whole planet. Just imagine, there could be a rule: if someone touches her, she dies. Did that occur to him when he went after her? Of course not! No, it has to be this way — Anton needs to be broken before we can teach him anything important. It’s our only shot with him. We’ll leave Gaia and the dragon since they’re already in the picture, though we’ll add negative reinforcement. If Anton doesn’t want to save the world of his own free will, we’ll force him to do it.”

* * *

Lesson 1. Introduction to the interface.

Concentrate on the lower half of your vision.

Reward for successfully completing the lesson: 1 Coin.

The message were appearing directly in his mind, bypassing his eyes. At least, they were closed, though the red letters were still clear enough. Anton groaned and rolled over onto his stomach to drive the thoughts out of his head. And while a tremor ran through his body, it passed quickly.

Gaia is displeased. You have not yet begun Lesson 1.

Punishment level increased by 10%.

“Damn rainbow,” Anton growled, turning back over and opening his eyes once more. The red messages were still hovering there. The room was different, however. While the table and couch were gone, there was a wall lined with exercise equipment and yoga mats. It had practically transformed into a school gym.

“Are you kidding me?” Anton yelled as the electricity ran through his body. The pain was stronger. After one more message popped up to tell him the punishment was going to jump another 10%, he leaped to his feet. He had to get out of there.

His glance fell on the window, and he knew what to do. Leaping over to it, he raised a hand to break the glass, though that was when Gaia once again made her presence felt. Anton dropped to the ground as his body was racked with a tremor. At least, it wasn’t painful.

“Why did you want to break the window?” asked a familiar voice. “That’s a bad thing.”

“Where are you, you animal?” Anton shot back, suddenly forgetting how bad he’d had it just a moment before. He was back on his feet.

“There’s no more need for me to show myself to you, Chosen One. You’ve heard everything I need to tell you. Clearly, you haven’t understood the gravity of your mission, which is why I’m going to have to take you by the hand like a foolish child. You have to save Earth. That’s your mission. And if I you have to suffer for that to happen, that is your choice. You’ll save Earth the painful way. Although, I’ll admit, it’s a strange choice. I’d been counting on complete cooperation.”

“I’m getting out of here!” Anton didn’t like what he was hearing in the least. “I’ll find the deepest hole I can, and you can just try to get at me there.”

“The door is behind you — there’s no need to break the window. That’s a bad thing,” Gaia said without a trace of anger or displeasure. “You’re welcome to leave this home at any moment. But do you still not get it? I’m the spirit of Earth. Everything around you is me. This house, the soil, the grass. Even the air you breathe is me. There’s nowhere on Earth where my power is the least bit restricted, and this house was built for your comfort. Not mine. If you want to leave, you’re welcome to.”

“Unlimited power? Okay, then go talk to the army. Have them deal with the dragon and leave me alone!” Anton yelled as he threw the door open. Hot air hit his face, the summer sun directly above him beating down so relentlessly that even the midges had sought shelter. Unprepared for that turn of events, he took a few steps backwards. It was cool and pleasant in the building.

“You’re the Chosen One. The only one I can talk to. And I like that you decided not to break the window — that’s the kind of reasonableness that should be rewarded.”

Reward received: +1 Coin (balance: 2 Coins).

Note: You can spend Coins on the rare goods available in the store.

“What’s that about a store?” The familiar word had grabbed Anton’s interest. Over the previous thirteen years, he’d forgotten what it was like to buy something. One of his better-dressed “friends” generally went for food.

“You’ll find out after your training. Okay, are you ready to begin your first lesson?”

“Screw you!” Anton snarled back. While he might have otherwise agreed, he was being hemmed in, and that... No. Gaia was more than welcome to run off and find another Chosen One.

“That’s the incorrect answer, Anton Tekshin,” Gaia replied with a note of sadness in her voice. “I’m going to have to punish you...”

It took several iterations before the man began his lessons. No matter how strong or stubborn he thought he was, the impalpable power was too much for him. Angry, frustrated, and cursing all and sundry, he gave in.

“Fine! What am I supposed to do?”

* * *

“Chosen One, you’re amazing! Your commitment is impressive and deserving of a reward. And once you can do ten pullups in a row, the prize will be doubled.”

Reward received: +1 Coin (balance: 35 Coins).

After just a month of hard work, Anton was a new man. There was no more pain, no more suffering, and no more punishments. To the contrary, Gaia encouraged him and rewarded him with Coins after everything he did. Anton, of course, had been skeptical about Coins at the beginning, though that changed as soon as he had enough to purchase a meal from a high-end restaurant. He’d never tried such delicious food. If he’d known how expensive it had been for the project team to get it, that would have been the only thing he ever ordered, too. One of his tormentors would have broken sooner or later.

The rehabilitation process was charging ahead. Without even noticing it, Anton had given up any pretense at leadership, turning out to be an excellent opportunist doing his best to meet the new requirements the best he could. He’d gone on to the next phase, completely restoring everything around him once he’d mastered the virtual interface. And everything meant just that — it started with the house and property before moving on to his physical conditioning. Every day saw him run, jump, and do pushups before moving on to repairs under Gaia’s watchful eye. He wasn’t much of a carpenter, of course. After spending the first few weeks ruining more materials than he used to fix problems, the constant encouragement and projections from his implants began to pay dividends. The fence was looking as good as new, the gate was in perfect condition, and he was hard at work on the roof. Artyom’s timeline had him finishing that by the end of the summer, after which the plan was for him to get the fields ready for planting.

“Hey, we have visitors!” Pyotr yelled suddenly with a finger pointing at a screen. A drone camera showed three SUVs with tinted windows heading toward the village. Over the previous month, there hadn’t been a drop of rain, and that had given the sun time to dry up the road. The ruts were still there, of course, though it was easy enough to drive across the fields. That was what Pavel did to haul in a few loads of lumber and wood-working tools. But the three darkened cars were using the road.

“What should we do?” Nina asked worriedly.

“Have Gaia warn him about the visitors — we can’t have him telling them he’s the Chosen One. Say something about the dragon starting its search. The people it hired are hunting anyone who might get in their master’s way.”

“You realize how absurd that sounds, don’t you?” Nina shot back. “What if they’re just random tourists?”

“Driving SUVs with no license plates?” Pavel was still watching the feed from the zone, and he’d just noticed that detail. “Definitely not tourists.”

“Okay, but who, then?” Nina asked, scared by the unknown. There, in the middle of nowhere, their phones didn’t even have a signal, and that meant unexpected encounters spelled trouble.

“We’re about to find that out. Let Anton know.”

Nina barely had time to pass the message on. By the time the three vehicles stopped outside Anton’s house, he was ready. The doors opened. Ten thugs stepped out. They were big, muscular, clean-shaven, and tattooed. Back in the command center, Artyom felt his stomach sink — there was only one place they could have come from...

“Get out here! You have five minutes!” yelled one of the visitors, after which Green Landmark was rocked with the sound of a gunshot.

Chapter 14

“I THINK I KNOW who they are.” Pavel zoomed in on the feed from the drone to take a closer look at one of the guests — a man in a suit. Compared to the rest of the group, he looked presentable and on a completely different level. “That’s our deputy mayor. What’s his name... Oh right, Dmitry Mazurov! What’s he doing here? This village isn’t under him — and he has that kind of group, too?”

The group was, indeed, striking. Artyom had never seen a gang in person, and the ones in the movies had their flaws emphasized — appearance, education, habits. For a long time, he’d assumed people like that didn’t really exist, as everyone had at least enough brains to realize they were just idiot muscle or cannon fodder. But one look at the calm faces told him he was wrong. If the movies exaggerated, it wasn’t by much.

“What are we going to do?” Pavel asked.

“Nina, get Anton out of the house,” Artyom barked. “We can’t let them get to him. Ruslan, you’re good with the drones, right? Grab one of them and pull the visitors away — fly circles around them, fly away from the building, whatever it takes. Anton needs time. Hey, what are you all waiting for? We have to get our guy out of there!”

“Too late,” Pavel replied hollowly. “They already noticed him...”

Anton had stepped out of the house, one hand shielding his face from the sun.

“Come here!” said the man in the suit. His backup began peeking past Anton to see if anyone else was coming out. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Anton replied with a nervous glance at the man’s pistol. Over the many years he’d spent on the street, he’d learned to recognize how someone held a weapon when they were willing to use it. They were the ones to avoid angering, and preferably avoid altogether. A friend of his had been killed after breaking that rule. And he hadn’t even been doing anything wrong.

“Live here and...?” The deputy mayor was starting to lose his patience. “Go check everything!”

Another person stepped out of one of the cars. Opening the trunk, he cut loose two German Shepherds who immediately began racing around the village. And they knew what they were doing, too. Instead of sprinting around happily and chaotically, barking as they did, they ran into the yard, sniffed around, jumped back out, and went on to the next house.

“And that’s it,” Anton replied before beginning to read off the words appearing in front of him. Gaia had finally decided to come help out her warrior. “Gentlemen, what’s the problem? This is my parents’ home, and I came here as soon as I heard they died. I’ve been repairing it ever since — that was my promise to them. It’s been more than a year already.”

“Bess says the property is clear, though we should check the rest of the village,” one of the fighters said to the deputy mayor after getting a report on his walkie-talkie.

“What, you think I’m making drugs here?” Anton asked in surprise. “That’s the last thing I’d be doing — I don’t go near those things. You can turn this whole place upside down, and you won’t find any.”

“Okay, listen,” the deputy mayor said, his mood lightening. “This village is set to be demolished. There’s a new construction project in the works, so you have twenty-four hours to clear out.”

“Boss, could I have a word? It’s important,” came a shout from the neighboring house. Artyom switched to that camera and found the one they called Bess standing there with the dogs. He was staring at the building.

“Oh, come on,” the deputy mayor muttered, after which he looked back at Anton. “Don’t you go anywhere! We’re not done yet. What’s up?”

The last phrase was yelled back at the dog handler. The latter, however, was in no hurry to respond, staying right where he was with his eyes on the house. It was only after the deputy mayor made his way over that Bess leaned in and whispered something in his ear. Pyotr turned the nearest microphone up as high as it would go.

“Boss, something’s funny here. The whole village is littered with cameras — they’re on every pole, in every building. And whoever put them in did a good job since you don’t really notice them at first. They’re expensive, too. When I took a look at one of them, it moved, so they’re not just for show. Someone’s watching us. But that’s not all. When we were driving up to the village, I noticed a few drones, and they were pro models, too. They flew high and ignored the wind. They didn’t make much noise, either. Back then, I figured they were birds, but there are landing platforms with built-in chargers on some of the buildings, and there’s electricity going everywhere even though the village itself isn’t hooked up to the grid. And the generator that character is running isn’t enough to power everything.”

“What are you saying?” the deputy mayor asked, taken aback.

“Expensive cameras. Expensive drones. Everything secretive. It feels like they’re filming some kind of show, and the scale tells me it’s probably NTV[9] or even Channel One[10].”

“Damn it!” the deputy mayor spat. “That’s the last thing we need.”

Dmitry Mazurov was a relative newcomer to his job, having joined the city administration just four years before. Prior to that, he and his boss had been involved in less-than-reputable businesses: trafficking, protection, smuggling. Nothing was illegal enough to earn their gang a label as particularly dangerous, though they could each have gotten themselves ten years in prison without too much of a hassle. And when his boss decided to run for mayor, Dmitry was even happy about it — there was more opportunity for grift. That did, indeed, turn out to be the case. The contracts for road construction and tile laying alone paid them more than they’d earned by smuggling over the previous few years put together. The real money wasn’t made in the shadows. It was made out in the light using government tenders so long as those tenders were prepared correctly. The mayor joined the right party, greased the right palms, and was in line to win the upcoming election for a second term and the extra leeway it came with.

But suddenly, it turned out that some national organization was recording a show without letting anyone know. He, like some kind of idiot, had shown up after getting a tip to punish the evildoers, find the narcotics, and heroically pocket them. If Bess was right, however, and Dmitry was used to trusting his man, things were bad. And he’d fired a shot with his pistol... He quickly decided he could play that off by claiming it was a blank, though all the rest... How was he going to explain showing up in the first place? The village wasn’t connected to his city. What was his boss going to say when he found out? What if the whole situation impacted the election?

He needed to find a way to make the situation go away smoothly enough that nobody would understand what had happened. And with his fate hanging in the balance at the polls, he had to make sure they weren’t affected.

“Where did you see the cameras?” Dmitry asked, having decided to take the bull by the horns.

“Right here,” Bess replied. He gestured toward the nearest building. “Up there under the roof — it’s pointed right at us.”

After adjusting his tie just in case, the deputy mayor stepped toward the camera, though he only noticed it when he got right up to the building. If he hadn’t known it was there, he never would have seen it. In the turbulent life he’d used to live, only those who could think fast survived, so he spoke directly into the camera once he saw it tracking him.

“I wasn’t kidding about the village being up for demolition. The governor signed an order to build a few pig farms here, and I saw it myself. But if you want to stick around for a while, I think we can make an arrangement. Shall we talk this through?”

* * *

“What should we do?” Nina asked. The woman was visibly shaken, having a conversation with someone who had just been waving a pistol around nothing like the wretched tramp she was used to.

“We don’t have any speakers,” Pavel said thoughtfully. “We couldn’t talk to him even if we wanted to — that was an oversight on our part.”

“What about making contact with a drone?” Ruslan asked. “It could fly over, wiggle around, and lead them here.”

“No!” the adults all yelled almost simultaneously.

“I mean, wherever we want them to go.” Ruslan himself realized it was a silly idea. “We can lead him over to a house on the other side of the village and talk there. He thinks we’re from a TV channel, so we can just say we’re filming a social project that will be broadcast soon on Channel One. And by the time he finds out it’s not true, we’ll be long gone.”

“You said you know him, right?” Artyom said to Pavel. “Can you describe him?”

“He’s a thug!” Nina said, jumping in. “Everyone knows what he was trafficking before he got this job, and they know how his boss got the mayor’s job, too. Lots of questions there. He’s the kind of crook we haven’t seen in a long time, only ever out to see what he can pocket. Bastard.”

“You know, that’s not bad...” Artyom said slowly and thoughtfully. A plan suddenly formed in his head, and while it needed some finetuning with the rest of the group, that was just details. It was perfect in general.

“Ruslan, take a drone and get that guy to the edge of the village. I’ll go talk with him.”

“What do you have in mind?” Pyotr asked with a frown.

“You’ll find out soon enough. I’m sure we’ll be able to squeeze a lot out of him so long as we use him the right way.”

The bunker was located outside the city, though Artyom didn’t want to draw attention to it. With that in mind, he sprinted around to a different part of the village. Ruslan played his part to perfection. After grabbing control of the drone nearest the deputy mayor, he attracted the latter’s attention.

“Stay right here!” Dmitry yelled to his men when he saw the drone. “Bess, cover me, but keep your distance. We don’t need trouble.”

Dmitry had to run to keep up with the speedy machine. His suit hampered his movements, frustrating him in the process, and all he wanted to do when he finally saw the man standing there was cut his emotions loose on someone. And if it hadn’t been for the man’s calm demeanor, Dmitry would have picked him. Regardless, someone was going to catch it. Dmitry was sure of that.

“You wanted to talk,” Artyom said, not bothering with any introductions. Showing how happy he was to see the visitor, he didn’t extend his hand, either.

“Who are you? And what’s going on here? Do you have a permit to film?” Dmitry asked as he stopped a few meters away from Artyom and caught his breath. Back to his normal tone, he was already on the attack. Experience had taught him that the weak broke and began fawning over him immediately, while the strong just ignored the threat. It was an excellent way to differentiate between them.

“If that’s all you’re here to ask, we can be done now. Grab your men and get out of the village — it isn’t under your city’s jurisdiction, Deputy Mayor.”

“Easy there!” Dmitry frowned in annoyance. The fact that the stranger knew who he was could have had a negative impact on the upcoming elections. If someone were to release a video of him taking that shot with his pistol... “I saw the governor’s order, and all abandoned villages in this area are going to be leveled. They’re building a set of pig farms. And it’s a done deal — all that’s left is to sign the thing. If you want to keep working here, you’ll need to give me a reason to remove this village from the list.”

“Not just remove it. I don’t want anyone even thinking about the village. But before we continue that conversation, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here? And with that kind of group, too.”

Artyom watched Dmitry’s expression closely; the latter returned the favor. They were measuring each other up, each deciding what they could and couldn’t say. For his part, Artyom had already made up his mind. Dmitry looked like a typical provincial bureaucrat — a thug in an expensive suit. No matter how you dress them up, people don’t change. Dmitry, on the other hand, had heard what Artyom wanted. People didn’t throw requests like his around lightly, which told him he could give some ground. At least, after throwing in the bait he had ready.

“Some old lady complained to the governor that some strange vehicles have been driving in and out of an abandoned village. Her suspicion was that it was addicts growing cannabis. And since the secretary and I have a good relationship, she handed me the letter to check out. That’s why I’m here. We’re looking for narcotics.”

“Without the police, in vehicles without plates, and armed?” Artyom replied with a laugh. “Yes, sure, that’s how you look for narcotics. But I know who you are. You can call me the Creator. Let’s go — what are we standing around in the sun for? I think we have something to discuss...”

* * *

“The Creator?” Nina and Pavel exchanged glances before both turning to look at Pyotr. The latter just shrugged.

“Don’t ask me. I have no idea why he called himself that. Could he have hit his head on the way over there?”

“I get it!” Ruslan’s eyes lit up. “He’s right! Calling himself the Creator shows that we’re making something and that it’s so secret nobody’s allowed to know our real names. The Creator, One, the Speaker...it doesn’t matter. The most important thing was to convey that he’s in charge. Artyom’s got this! We need cover names, too... I’ll be the Author. No...the Script Writer! Yes, that’s perfect.”

* * *

“What do you create?” Dmitry followed his mysterious interlocutor and sat down with undisguised resentment on the grass under a tree. He was going to have to toss the suit.

“That’s not important right now. What does matter is that I represent a government organization. Have you heard about the social experiment in China?”

“The one where people get rated based on their behavior? That’s not real, is it? The Chinese like showing the world a façade with nothing behind it.”

“Exactly — their system doesn’t work. At least, it works, but only in test mode and only in a few provinces. There’s no general database. Our government decided to beat everyone else to market, and while we developed a basic program, the issue we came up against was testing and subsequent refinement. As you might imagine, volunteers aren’t an option since they’d only work toward the positive side. And testing without the consent of the test subjects is illegal. That’s why we’re here.”

“And you’re that comfortable telling a deputy mayor you’re breaking the law?” It was Dmitry’s turn to guffaw.

“Not a deputy mayor, no; someone here illegally looking for narcotics,” Artyom replied. “Because you wanted to confiscate them for yourself. But hey, no judgement — getting into other people’s business isn’t my job. Just remember that there are a few dozen spots like this around the country. Whichever system gets the best results, that’s the one that will be selected, so we need to make sure ours gets the best results.”

“I’m still not really getting how this could help me in particular.”

“Total control of the population. Whoever isn’t in the system will have no rights to speak of. Anyone inside it won’t be able to do anything forbidden without risking their status points. But there will also be those who are above the system, and they’ll be able to enjoy the benefits without worrying about potential problems.”

“You mean to tell me...”

“We can do each other a good turn. I need to make sure my system turns out the best, which is why I took control of this village, outfitted it, found a tramp, and got to work making him into a person. But while the results are good, they aren’t enough. We need more people so they can interact with each other. And that’s where you come in. I need people; you need future opportunity. There isn’t even any risk to it. The people I want shouldn’t have any relatives or anyone else who might notice they’re missing — tramps, drug addicts, all of those. Three or four of them. Since I can’t leave the project, I can’t go looking for them, and that gives you the opportunity to earn yourself a future.”

“But that future might not ever come.” Dmitry had quickly grasped the idea. “If your system doesn’t win, I’ll have wasted time and resources. And I still don’t get what’s in it for me.”

“What’s in it? How about three thousand dollars a head?” Artyom asked after thinking back to how much money the group had left. “Cash, without any of those traceable wire transfers.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Dmitry replied. He was excited, though he made sure to maintain a calm front. “The only problem is that three thousand isn’t nearly enough for something like that. How am I supposed to find someone and get them here without making any noise? Even your organization had a hard time with that. Ten thousand, and you have a deal.”

“Are you kidding me?” Artyom wasn’t expecting that turn of events. “All I have to do is head down to the train station and offer a few tramps two bottles of vodka. I’ll even get way more than I need. Three and a half, and that’s just because I want this partnership to get off on the right foot.”

While the discussion went on for a while, it had a happy end: the two sides agreed on five thousand dollars for each new subject for the project.

“But I need guarantees. How do I know you’re not just some local idiot with a drone? Do you really run everything around here? Prove it.”

“Come with me. Tell Bess to stay here — we’ll be fine without him,” Artyom replied easily. Ignoring the messages his infuriated partners were sending him, he led the deputy mayor straight to the central bunker. Dmitry was met by hostile gazes, though nobody said a word.

“You said you work alone here,” Dmitry said, momentarily taken aback by the new people.

“These are my assistants — don’t mind them. Here’s where everything is controlled. From cameras to drones, we control every step our subject takes. The entire village is an autonomous technical base. For starters, we need to populate the whole village, outfit it, and make our subjects work with their hands, earning their initial points as they do. The points don’t count toward a rating system yet, so they can just spend them in a virtual store.”

“So, it’s just an enormous computer game with real people instead of characters?” Dmitry asked, catching on quickly once more. “Wait a second. If you can make people do real work for virtual points they can only spend in a virtual store, and you’re the ones who put items up for sale there... You can just keep all the real money they earn since they don’t need it in the system?”

“Put it this way: we can divide it between everyone involved.” Artyom had never considered that issue, though he had to admit that the deputy mayor was right. In the system they’d designed, Coins completely replaced the financial system. The results the people in the system got for their efforts had no bearing on the value of their products in the real world.

“It’s just a question of what you can buy with real money,” Pavel said, drawing the attention of the group. “It’ll be devalued instantly — the primary flow of goods will be in the system, with everything outside it becoming obsolete.”

“Well, you need to make it so that there are a few things you can only buy with real money.” Dmitry was stuck on that question. “They need to be exclusive, rare, unavailable in the system. And at that point, we’ll be able to sell real currency, which will also decrease the amount of virtual money in circulation. That tension will make sure nobody quite has enough. The people in the system will have to just keep working...”

The way Dmitry fell silent and the glint in his eyes told the rest of the group that the deputy mayor was off in his own world. Nina glared at Artyom, her lowered brows showing what she thought of his idea. But that was when Dmitry snapped back to reality and also looked over at Artyom. His gaze was more suspicious, however.

“Let’s say you’re right about everything. What I don’t understand is why you showed me all this. Aren’t you afraid I’ll turn you over to my boss? Or, more likely, I could kill you all and take control of the system myself.”

“You wouldn’t be able to handle it yourself,” Artyom replied, his impassive expression nearly slipping for a moment. “But yes... If you turn us over to the authorities, I’ll just move to another village and start over. Don’t forget who we’re doing this for. And if you decide to take it for yourself... Dmitry, I’m not even going to flatter that with a response. No, I’m not afraid of ridiculous tricks like that. The project is more important than what I am or am not afraid of, and it needs to pay dividends for me and the people helping me. The only question is whether you want to join the team.”

“Fifteen thousand dollars now and life outside the system later?” Dmitry asked just in case. Artyom nodded. “I need to think.”

“Think about it, but don’t take too long. You have a week. If we start getting harassed or see unfamiliar people, we’ll disappear. As you can see, there are no blind spots. We control everything within ten kilometers. Have you heard of combat drones, by the way? I won’t go into that, but I think we understand each other. Oh, and we don’t have phones. If you decide you want to work with us, show up alone — no bodyguards. We won’t be letting them in anymore.”

“Just going to ignore my threats?” Dmitry forced a smile, though he didn’t appreciate the last thing the lab rat, which was what he was, said. Artyom refused to bite. After walking Dmitry back to the village, he returned to the bunker and watched in silence with the rest of the group as the gang got into their vehicles and drove away. Anton was sent back to work, and the group turned to stare at Artyom expectantly. Nobody yelled; nobody waved their arms around. They just waited.

“He didn’t just happen to show up here,” Artyom said. “The letter from the old lady was a complete fiction — I know all too well how our bureaucrats work. If they don’t have a good reason, they don’t get off their rear end, and here a deputy mayor showed up looking for a little weed... Very funny. But he did show up. And what does that mean? First, someone leaked him info. Second, someone insisted on him heading over here to see what we were up to. Did you notice how he spent the whole time talking from a position of strength?”

“What are you getting at?” Pavel asked impatiently. “Someone’s watching us?”

“Without a doubt. They’re even listening right now,” Artyom replied with a laugh as he looked up and began speaking to nobody in particular. “And I even know who. Isn’t that right, Alexander? You decided to see what we would do about some stranger showing up, didn’t you? The only person who knew about us and had the reach to send a few thugs in our direction is a certain commander who goes by the call sign Cat. So, there’s nothing for us to worry about. Dmitry can’t do anything too bad. Either he’ll work with us, or he’ll be taken about of the picture. Him and his guys.”

“And you figured all that out while you were on your way over there?” Nina asked with a frown on her face. “What if you’re wrong? What if Dmitry really did come here about that letter?”

“In that case, we’re going to either get three new subjects or have to call it quits.” Artyom shrugged as if nothing serious was in the offing. “One way or another, we need to keep working, and we have to get new subjects for that. Anton is in great shape. I’d give him a ninety percent shot of never going back to the condition he was in before. And that means we need to keep going, only that’s out of the question until we have a team to work with. Ruslan, write up a script for Gaia sending her Chosen One some helpers that he has to start by coaxing back to health.”

“But what about discussing all that with us?” Nina exploded. “We’re in this together! We’re just as involved in this as you are, and you up and decided — ”

“Because someone has to learn to make decisions and take responsibility for them,” came Alexander’s voice over the speakers. “Artyom, I need you right away in Novosibirsk, so you’re taking the next flight out. I already bought you a ticket, and a car will be arriving in a couple hours. Also, a few of my people will be showing up today. The project is going well, and it’s time to move on to phase two.”

Chapter 15

THE FLIGHT FROM MOSCOW to Novosibirsk arrived right on time. Artyom was met by two men so taciturn they didn’t speak so much as a word the entire time they spent with him. Even when he stepped out of the airport, they were waiting for him with a sign, simply gesturing him in the direction they wanted him to go. The secrecy was nerve-wracking. And that was especially true when they loaded him into a black SUV with tinted windows, though he was finally able to relax when he saw they were driving into the familiar neighborhood with the apartment he’d lived in. Alexander was apparently taking every precaution. But Artyom was surprised when he got to the apartment — Alexander was nowhere to be found.

“Have a seat,” said the man Artyom knew as Falcon. “We don’t have much time at all, so let me get you up to speed. Cat needs help. If we don’t hurry, they’re going to kill him.”

“What could have happened in the last day?” Artyom asked. “I was just talking with him yesterday.”

“You were talking with me. Cat delegated control of your project to me, though we used a voice modulator to make sure you didn’t panic and ask questions. I did the talking; you heard the commander. But okay, now’s not the time. Let me describe the situation. They wrapped up work on healing people with energon — they have a device developed, tested, and ready to go that can heal anyone who isn’t brain-dead. It’s a one-to-one ratio. One person gets absorbed; one person is healed. Ignatov then ordered the data classified and everyone involved to be eliminated. But while Cat was able to get the master to save his daughter Luda’s life, it was on the condition that she be used for further testing. After he heard that, Cat tried to get her out the same way you did it, only he missed a few tricks... Cat is in custody and awaiting Ignatov’s verdict. And so, we have three days — the master is too busy with the international financial forum to worry about details like this for the moment. He had security hold on to Cat for the meantime so he can deal with him later. Three days from now, the commander is going to meet his end. Ignatov doesn’t take kindly to traitors. We have to act.”

“But why did Ignatov make that decision? You work for him, so why couldn’t he let Luda go?” The prime minister’s actions just didn’t seem logical.

“A god complex. The master has gotten it into his head over the last twenty years that he’s some kind of architect, and he thinks everyone in the know should be singing his praises. When anyone doesn’t, they’re destroyed. He only ever calls the people around him slaves. And, as everybody knows, slaves can’t have families or their own will. The commander disobeyed; the commander needs to be taken out and replaced. There’s always someone looking to deliver live cargo.”

“Okay, but then I don’t understand what I’m here for. Alexander, if I understand the situation correctly, has his own small mercenary force thirty or forty strong. All of you are trained and equipped. What do you need a simple physicist for? You know where the lab is, you know how it’s protected, and you know the weak points.”

“And we invited you because we know all that. Cat’s whole team was arrested with him. All that’s left is those of us who were on leave or out hunting new scientists, though we’ll be scooped up the moment we step foot in the lab, too. Just to make sure. That means we can’t mount an attack from inside. And an attack from the outside is impossible — even if we made it past the two protective spheres, the security protocol would be triggered. The entire lab would be annihilated. That can’t be turned off from the outside, so we need a man on the inside.”

“I don’t get it... Aren’t I just a regular physicist?”

“You’re the only person with artificial eyes that aren’t connected to the central server. Even your test subject, if we sent him into the lab, would connect immediately and be compromised. And we don’t have time to bypass the security system in other implants. Implanting them would take a few weeks. Delivering scientists to the prison is easy — the implants are implanted at the institute, and the prisoners are already under complete control by the time they get to the lab. You’ll be checked, they’ll see you have implants, and they’ll send you straight on to the five-day quarantine.”

“What’s the point of that? You said yourself that they can heal anything. Why quarantine?”

“It’s really just a quarantine in name only. The process itself is more about regenerating the body — the same thing they did with you when you first got inside. For a couple hours, they’ll leave you alone, just taking tissue samples, and then they’ll be too busy to think about healing. The internal security in the building is there, of course, though it isn’t too bad. We’ll keep it occupied, too. At the same time you’re delivered inside, we’ll begin our attack to give the impression we want to break through the defenses. All eyes will be on us, and the local system will handle the scientists. Your job, meanwhile, is to get into the server room and turn off the security protocols. The server is in building five, first floor underground. Since you’ll need to get between buildings, you’ll have to get the senior administrator’s access key. He doesn’t have implants. And you’ll have to take it by force.”

“Are you kidding me?” Artyom asked, taken aback.

“Your body is stronger and faster than most people’s in this world. Don’t forget that you got that experimental drug,” Falcon replied without so much as blinking an eye. “You’ll be fine. Once you have the key, you’ll head over to building five. The entrance is on the third floor via a retractable staircase. Just don’t forget a gas mask — the acid vapor will immobilize you unless you’re wearing one.”

Artyom opened his mouth to tell Falcon where the latter could shove his plan, only he saw the look on Falcon’s face and said nothing. The soldier wasn’t asking. He wasn’t threatening, either. He was simply listing what needed to be done, knowing full well who he was talking to and what the physicist was capable of. A few seconds later, Artyom had made his decision. World of the Changed was doomed to failure without Alexander. Still, he had one reminder to give.

“As soon as the hubbub starts, Ignatov is going to send in an entire army.”

“And that’s why we have a separate team wrapping up work on a network of jammers encircling the outer sphere. Nobody is going to know about the attack until it’s over. Either the prison will disappear, or we’ll capture it and free the prisoners. We fly out in an hour, regardless, so we need to hurry. Varg, let’s go!”

The door opened to let another soldier in. Artyom barely managed to suppress a snort when he saw how clearly unsuited the newcomer was to combat operations. Small, ungainly, disheveled, and constantly muttering something under his breath, Artyom realized immediately that he was more brains than muscle. The equipment the man had with him made that abundantly clear.

“Hook him up. We don’t have much time.”

“This won’t take long.” Opening his laptop and settling his glasses on his nose, he began typing away with superhuman speed. “Does he just need hacking? Or something serious?”

“Give him the works. There’s no telling what he’ll be up against.”

“Care to fill me in?” Artyom asked with an inquisitive look directed at Falcon. “What’s going on?”

“You don’t know enough to turn off the security protocols. Have you seen the Matrix? Your eyes work basically like that, and we’re going to teach you virtual kung fu. Once your brain connects to the knowledge base in the implants, you’ll be able to keep going where you would otherwise have to give up. It’s not easy, but it works. The security system settings are our main concern.”

“Okay, I’m ready. You can integrate him.”

“This will be a bit unpleasant,” Falcon barely had time to say before Artyom was knocked to the ground by intense pain in his head. It felt to the physicist like he’d been dropped into a metal tub that was being battered with sledgehammers. As each blow rained down, the echo sent his body into a spasm, though it only lasted three blows. The pain disappeared as quickly as it had begun.

“Done! The data will adapt over the next couple hours, so he’ll be ready to go by the time he gets there.”

“You mean to tell me I’m a hacker now?” Artyom wheezed as he pulled himself to his feet. Nothing felt different.

“No,” Varg replied after giving that some thought. “You’re a person with implants that tell you what to do if a database matches a particular behavior model. I loaded you up with libraries, the basic protocols, and the principles you need for hacking. With that, you could become a hacker, or you could also stay a user who never ventures beyond your desk. It’s up to you.”

“Enough talk. Let’s go. Varg, you stay here — you can’t go back to the base. If Ignatov somehow finds out who — ”

“They’d have to find out that I exist first,” four-eyed nerd said with a laugh. “But I get it. Don’t go anywhere, don’t look at anything, don’t even breathe. Got it, Cap!”

But Artyom hadn’t heard the exchange between the soldiers. His implants were too busy processing the information that had hit them. Suddenly, he was aware of several gaping security holes Varg had used to get in, and his fingers involuntarily reached for an invisible keyboard to begin closing them. While he wasn’t yet sure how to close them, he knew there was no other option. Otherwise, he was going to be vulnerable to all the bespectacled nerds out there looking to dump information into his brain and fill up his memory. But he didn’t have time to sit and think. Falcon had already whisked him back into the vehicle, and they were in a cargo helicopter loaded to the gills with unconscious bodies thirty minutes later. They were the ones capable of withstanding energon.

“We’re going to inject you with a sedative,” Falcon said. “It only lasts for three hours, though that will be enough time for the chopper to get there and for the bodies to be checked and delivered to the third block. That’s closest to the fifth. Let’s synchronize our watches — the attack will begin exactly four hours from now. Set a timer. By that time, you need to have gotten to the senior administrator. Okay, roll up your sleeves...”

Artyom did just that, still in shock at how fast everything was happening. Just the morning before, he’d been sitting in an abandoned village watching Anton, and there he was getting ready to kill someone. No, killing was out of the question. He wasn’t a murderer. He... And with that, the darkness set in.

* * *

Artyom certainly didn’t wake up quickly. To begin with, he felt a dryness in his throat, after which he found that each breath came with a new wave of suffering. That brought the rest of his body into the picture — it decided to keep from breathing to avoid the pain. His brain was next, taking control and announcing that there would be no more trips into the unconscious. And what really needed to happen was for Artyom to open his eyes and look around for anything, even a puddle, to quench his thirst.

He did just that. When his eyes first opened, he found himself staring at a ceiling and wondering what had happened to land him in such a strange place. He even wanted to pull up the logs from his implants to see what had gotten him there, only it was right then that he remembered what Falcon had told him. He was back in the prison lab.

Something rustled next to Artyom, and he closed his eyes and froze. There was somebody whistling a tune equal parts hideous and fake. Easing his eyelids just barely open, Artyom turned his head slightly to look in that direction, seeing a man in a white coat working on the naked body lying on the next bed over. Apparently, he was the doctor responsible for inspecting the new arrivals. Logic told Artyom he needed to stay motionless and wait for the doctor to leave the room, only there were two problems with that plan.

The first was the cold. Artyom had already realized he wasn’t wearing anything, either, and running around with bits and pieces flapping in the breeze was only for the bravest of heroes. That didn’t describe him.

The second was the timer. Falcon had told him he would have an hour after waking up before the attack began, though something must have gone wrong — the clock only gave him thirty minutes. Half an hour before all hell broke loose. And that meant there was no more time to lose. He had to make his move.

Sitting up and sliding noiselessly down onto the ground didn’t take much time, and the oblivious doctor’s humming went on unabated. Stepping forward, Artyom placed both his hands on the doctor’s shoulders and yanked him backward. The plan was simple. He wanted to throw the doctor to the ground, following that up with enough kicks to the head to knock him out and then leave him tied up in some corner. But the stress of the situation got to Artyom. Instead of just knocking the doctor down, he threw the doctor backward so hard that blood spurted. The doctor’s eyes rolled shut. Stunned, Artyom bent over to feel for a pulse, only there was none to be found. That single hit had been enough to send the poor guy off to a better place.

Artyom froze, staring in horror at the motionless body. His head buzzed with a thousand thoughts. Killer. He’d just murdered a man in cold blood. And it hadn’t been in a fair fight, either, as he’d just crept up behind the guy... Artyom’s hands shook. He wanted to scream. Suddenly, he felt the urge to batter his head against the wall in an effort to give the man his own life. The same as Artyom had once been, he was a prisoner. The doctor hadn’t chosen that life. He’d been forced into it, dragged over to have the damn implant stuck in his head and...

Just then, Artyom’s brain kicked in to bring him back to his victim. The latter’s eyes were wide open by that point, his face frozen in mute fear. But what grabbed Artyom’s attention was his eyes. The powerful blow had burst capillaries, turning the dead man into a silver-screen vampire. The problem with that, however, was that the artificial eyes didn’t have capillaries. Artyom’s head cleared, and he leaned down to take a close look at the dead man’s face. His eyes were real. They didn’t have the metallic glass imitation Artyom’s own eyes had. As it turned out, the man Artyom had killed wasn’t controlled by the local system. He was outside it. Artyom’s breath caught in his throat — the bastard had been there following orders not because he was in a bad place, but because it was what he was paid to do.

All regret evaporated instantly. But the dead man’s outfit didn’t fit Artyom. A few sizes too small, all Artyom could do was wrap his coat around his otherwise naked body. Happily, that was enough to turn him into a local where the System was concerned. While the AI controlled all the exits and entrances, using the artificial eyes as references, it had scanners people like the dead doctor held passes up to in order to get around. They were next to every door, and Artyom had but to hold the pass he’d pulled off the doctor’s neck up to one of them for the door to swing open. A wide, snow-white hallway opened up in front of him. It was an identical copy of the ones he’d spent a few months running up and down.

Looking around the room to see if there were any clothes there just in case, Artyom hid the body in a cabinet, wiped up the blood with some rags, grabbed the dead doctor’s folder, and left. There was no yellow line, but he knew where he was going. The third floor. And that just left the question of which floor he was on then.

A few scientists ran past Artyom in the hallway, easy to recognize thanks to glassy eyes fixed on the line only they could see. Apparently, the System somehow tracked the movement of people without implants, as the white-coated scientists kept dodging past him just in time to avoid a collision. He finally reached the elevator and barely managed to jump in before the door closed. If anyone noticed him, they said nothing. Who could have said why someone was running around the lab barefoot and dressed in nothing but a lab coat? They presumably thought he had a strange task he was working on. Why get involved?

Artyom had to do some thinking to get to the third floor. There were no buttons in the elevator, its movement governed by the System, though figuring out the right floor didn’t take too long. Opening his folder, Artyom talked to everyone getting onto the elevator and pretended to write down their answer.

“Good afternoon! We’re testing some new elevator functionality. Which floor are you going to?”

The second, first, fourth, and even fifth were fairly popular. But the third floor was apparently off-limits. As Artyom’s timer ticked down relentlessly, he still couldn’t find a way to where he was going. It got to the point, in fact, that he was seriously thinking about getting off on the fourth floor and finding a way down, though that was when a pair of men joined him. Both their demeanor and their dimensions were different. Among the local scientific community, nobody was overweight, the rations they were given ensuring that. Artyom had to take a step back to accommodate the pair, though he knew what he needed to do. He brandished his file and asked his usual question without expecting much of an answer.

“The third floor,” one of the heavyset men replied with eyes narrowing. “Only I don’t remember a program like that.”

“It’s something the fifth building is working on,” Artyom said without batting an eye. “I even had to get undressed to make sure I minimize the weight I add. We’re checking new servo drives.”

“Yes, I can see you aren’t dressed normally,” the second said. “Okay, let’s see what you’re trying to pull over on us. Want to watch?”

His question was addressed to the first man. The latter looked Artyom over one more time, his gaze boding nothing good, though he saw the artificial eyes and grunted.

“Who cares? Let the marionettes keep working. Come on, I’ll show you the new batch — they just brought them in. I even heard there’s a pretty nice chick in with them, so we can get our turn in while she’s being revitalized.”

“And this is the first I’m hearing of her?” the second man shot back. He’d forgotten about how he wanted to check the elevator update, his attention occupied completely by the newcomers.

“There wasn’t anything to tell you before. From what I heard, she’s so good the first servant ordered an exact copy. She’s getting scanned in the fifth block, and then they’ll bring her here...”

The animals continued discussing the prisoners as if they were pieces of trash, unbothered that there was one of them right there with them. The elevator stopped. But as the pair hurried away toward the screens that would show them the newcomers, they didn’t notice the third person who got off the elevator with them. If the System was okay with it, so were they.

Artyom quickened his pace when he saw one of the pair entering a code in a door. He wasn’t using an access card. As the door swished to the side, Artyom sprinted over to get in before it closed.

“What are you doing?” Finally, one of the overweight men began paying attention to their stalker. “System, block him!”

A blow to the chest knocked the wind out of him. He flew backward, hit the wall, and slid down to the ground, where he began gasping for air. The second got it even worse. Whirling around, Artyom brought a fist crashing into his jaw. The man’s eyes rolled back, and he was unconscious before he hit the ground. Grabbing him by the arms, Artyom dragged him inside, and the door closed to hide the scene of the crime.

“I need the access key to the moving platform,” Artyom said after crouching down on the unconscious administrator and turning to the one wheezing in front of him. He had no doubt the two worked in the prison’s control block. The prisoners didn’t have access to rooms full of security camera feeds and a variety of other strange devices.

A gasp was all Artyom got back — the administrator still hadn’t caught his breath. A closer look also told Artyom that there was red foam coming out of his mouth. Apparently, the blow had broken a few ribs. If he didn’t help soon, Artyom knew the man’s chances of survival would continue to drop precipitously, soon leaving him beyond the reach even of the medicine Falcon had mentioned. But Artyom wasn’t about to help. Animals like that didn’t deserve to live. Instead, Artyom got up, pulled the second administrator into a seated position, and began working to wake him up. That took one of the ten minutes he had left before the attack was set to begin.

“What... Stop!” the administrator yelled angrily when he took another slap to the cheek. “Who are you? Do you even realize what — ”

It took another hit to shut the man up. Finally, he fell silent.

“I need the access key to the moving platform and a gas mask. Where are they?”

“Screw you!” The administrator clearly wanted to be a hero, only Artyom already had an answer ready. The one with the punctured lung wasn’t going to make it. And that meant ending the poor guy’s suffering wasn’t going to tilt the scale one way or another, though calling him a poor guy was certainly doing him a favor. Grabbing a pair of scissors from a nearby desk, Artyom opened them and buried one blade into the wheezing administrator’s chest. That was enough for him to fall silent for the last time after a few twitches.

“He wouldn’t talk. Now, it’s your turn,” Artyom said in such a cold tone that even he was surprised by how savage it sounded. The animals had taken Liza. They’d almost killed him, burning him like a pile of leaves. And that meant they didn’t deserve to be treated like people.

“What...what do you need?” the second administrator asked in a whisper, his gaze fixed on his slumping partner.

“I need a key to the moving platform and a gas mask,” Artyom replied without a shadow of emotion. “You have one minute, after which I’ll decide you’re not going to help.”

“No, I’ll tell you everything!” the fat man said hurriedly, though his expression quickly twisted into a hateful grimace. “System! Block him!”

“You still don’t get it?” Artyom said with a laugh as he crouched down next to the administrator. It was enjoyable to watch the hatred give way to fear. “I’m not here, and I never was. I’m outside the System. Forty seconds...”

Artyom had to run to get to the fifth building in time — the door was at the far end of the hallway. Pulling the gas mask on as he went, he held the key card up to the scanner, squeezed through the door as soon as there was enough space, and followed the edge of the protective field. The bridge to the fifth building was still forming, rails sliding out of their grooves to attach to each other. Realizing that he was risking falling into the acid, Artyom stepped forward carefully. Just a bit more than a minute was left before the attack. And he had another thirty meters to go.

He tried not to think about the three bodies left in his wake.

The siren rang out just as Artyom got to the fifth building. The rails immediately began to retract; the level of acid between the buildings quickly rose. Apparently, the security protocols Falcon had been worried about were kicking in. Artyom dashed forward and barely got to the door before it closed.

“This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. All scientists, return to your rooms. All personnel, man your posts. This is not a drill. Passageways between the buildings will be blocked for the duration of the emergency. Floors will be locked down in five minutes. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

Artyom had to laugh. Five minutes? That was a veritable eternity. All he had to do was head down four floors.

Chapter 16

THE FIFTH BUILDING was drastically different from the other four. All the doors had knobs and signs, and some even had windows that let people in the hallway see what was going on behind them. But Artyom wasn’t about to do any peeking. With all the people running past on the way to their rooms, ambling around curiously would have drawn too much attention. As it was, nobody was paying him the least mind, and that surprised him. It made him nervous at first, though he relaxed as soon as he saw an entire crowd of men dressed in nothing but big diapers. There was far stranger to see than someone wearing only a lab coat.

Nobody was using the elevators — they were deactivated during combat alerts. One of the doors opened into a stairwell, and that was where the majority of the traffic was heading. The local System was on the ball. The most valuable employees were being sent to a sort of bomb shelter on the second floor that Artyom never would have imagined even existed, and since there were no floor numbers in the stairwell, he had to count the flights himself — not floors. Where the first underground floor should have been, there was a blank wall without a hint of a door. The physicist broke away from the main flow, leaned against the wall, and waited. Time was ticking, of course, and the soldiers were off in the line of fire, but he simply couldn’t do anything with so many people around. A few minutes later, once the crowd had thinned, he pulled out the access card he’d gotten from the senior administrator in the third building, and he began running it over the wall in search of a hidden control panel. Needless to say, it was possible the entrance was somewhere else, in which case he had a long search in front of him, but he decided to go with the information he’d been given. Both Falcon and the fat administrator had told him the door to the server room was in the stairwell. And there was no reason not to take their word for it.

The click was so soft that Artyom barely heard it. Suddenly, a door appeared where none had been a moment before, the crack widened, and a fairly narrow space opened up. It was surprising, in fact — the administrator in the third block wouldn’t have fit through. But the dimensions weren’t an obstacle for Artyom, and so he ducked inside, leaving the door to slip shut and separate him from the many scientists still running by on the other side. His coat was instantly soaked. The air on that floor was intensely hot, to the point that it felt like a high-quality sauna. Wiping away the sweat, Artyom quickly stepped forward, unsure how long he was going to be able to hold out in the heat. The bastard administrator hadn’t said anything about the temperature.

After stepping through one more door, Artyom found himself in a large space pulled from some science fiction movie. The devices around him were definitely servers, though he’d never heard of anything like them. Even his education and the data downloaded to his brain weren’t enough to pick out how the computers there worked, each of them gigantic. Five strides long and wide, each server reached all the way to the ceiling at least three meters up. The hollow metal boxes used multiple powerful magnets to hold something in place that looked like a piece of plasma. As a few streams of liquid nitrogen bathed the red-hot substance, powerful fans sucked the steam into special receptacles to keep it from spreading around the space. Still, not all the heat could be absorbed, which was why the air was as hot as it was. But that was the entire extent of the servers with the exception of commutation wires that looked more like power cables. At some point, Artyom began to even suspect that the chunks of plasma were actually energy sources, though everything made more sense when he saw the power cables from all the blocks running to the nondescript space.

The door was closed, and even the third block administrator’s pass didn’t get Artyom through. After a walk around the perimeter of the room, he found no windows and only the one hefty steel door. He went back to the control panel, took a few deep breaths to try to rebuild his blood oxygen levels, and handed control over to his artificial eyes. It was time to see how good Cat’s programmer was at his job.

Artyom rested his hand on the buttons. As soon as he did, his fingers began flying over them, though the fact that he couldn’t help resisting meant he had to repeat a few operations. He even had to start over completely once. But as time went on, he began to get used to his hands working without his input. There was no point remembering the commands on the small screen, either. He had no idea how the hack worked. Meanwhile, his throat was dry, he desperately needed a drink, his head was pounding, and a white film filtered in and out of his vision. At one point, he decided he wasn’t going to make it, though it was then that the panel suddenly slid aside to cut loose a stream of cold air. The path ahead was clear.

The room looked like the typical command center they showed in the movies — there were screens everywhere, panels were loaded with buttons, and laptops and chairs were strewn around the room. Apparently, it was only the master’s most trusted people who manned the center. And one of them was at his post.

“Who are you? Get out of here!” the shocked system administrator exclaimed. Unlike Cat’s fighter, he was sturdy and muscular. The military haircut, multiple scars, and lightning-fast movement made it abundantly clear that he was a dangerous opponent, though cowering or retreating weren’t options for Artyom. Taking a few steps forward to let the door close, he leaned against the wall and whispered his response.

“They hit the base, we took casualties... Need help, only the jammers are too strong...”

“What?” the administrator replied, somewhat taken aback. “What casualties? All the implants are online!”

“The senior administrator for the third building. His assistant. They’re dead — see for yourself.”

“Don’t move a muscle,” barked the man, who began pounding away on his keyboard with one eye on Artyom. Just a few seconds later, two bodies appeared on one of the many screens. Artyom had to give the guy credit — instead of freezing, he immediately began typing in a new command. A green stripe appeared before being replaced by a red window. Whatever it was, it hadn’t worked.

“Damn it! How?” he yelled before turning to Artyom. “What do you know? Who’s attacking? Why don’t we have contact with the outside world?”

“The hired soldiers. The master gave orders to take their commander into custody, and they decided to break him out.”

“This one?” Another few keystrokes later, Alexander was on the screen. He was battered, covered in bruises, and lying unconscious in a small cage that was called a cell for some reason.

“No idea,” Artyom replied. “I was sent to let you know. Comms are down, and the outer circuit could collapse at any moment. We need to be ready to trigger the security protocol — the base needs to be annihilated.”

However well-trained a fighter the system administrator was, hearing about his own possible demise made him flinch.

“Nobody’s getting through,” he said as he pulled up a feed showing a sluggish firefight. Falcon and his men weren’t trying particularly hard, and their bullets were all being absorbed by the force field. On the other side, nobody was firing back. Artyom noticed a few automatic turrets aimed at the soldiers, only they were silent. The force field apparently worked in both directions.

“Their people are already inside. But anyway, I did my job — you know what’s going on. Let me just catch my breath, and I’ll head underground.”

“Why?”

“If we have to level this place, I’ll be safe down there.”

“Why? The charges are set... Or do you mean all the way down? The energon horizon? Yes, that might work, and we could get back up with rock-climbing equipment. Great idea!”

The excited programmer had clearly had the job too long — he was used to nobody getting in except with good intentions. Everybody knew who he was, and they knew not to pick a fight. While he’d been suspicious of Artyom at first, hearing about the underground space put his fears to rest. Artyom couldn’t have been a spy. The system administrator relaxed, turned back to his keyboard, and...took a cowardly hit to the back of the head. Artyom hadn’t come up with anything better than to smash a chair over him. But even that was enough to knock him out of commission if not kill him, and Artyom took the opportunity to tie him up with his own clothes, sit down at the terminal, place his hands on the keys, and let his artificial eyes take over. His fingers flew chaotically over the keyboard until an unexpected message popped up a few moments later.

Remote access to IRS 2.0 system.

Synchronizing data.

Note! Your memory is insufficient to download all data.

Access to IRS 2.0 settings granted.

Hundreds if not thousands of colorful windows popped up to obscure Artyom’s vision. As soon as he concentrated on any of them, a hint appeared to tell him what it was for. Personnel management, climate control, energy usage, load management... It was all about controls. Artyom went through every panel, closing the ones he didn’t need and setting aside the ones that seemed the most interesting. Still, the settings he needed most — the ones for security — were nowhere to be found. And he had no idea where to start when it came to finding them. Even his fingers froze over the keyboard, his artificial eyes also unsure what to do.

For a few moments, Artyom was at a loss, not knowing how to help Falcon, though that was when his gaze fell on the body he’d tied up. His decision was made instantaneously. That time, his implants didn’t let him down, and he found himself looking at fairly detailed instructions on how the human body worked as well as how to get information out of people. Most of the instructions were pulled from the system Artyom had just gotten access to, in fact. In other words, the people in the fifth block were monsters. After making sure the administrator was securely bound, he began slapping his face to wake him up.

“What...” the administrator wheezed before jerking. He couldn’t move. Then, he opened his eyes to stare at Artyom, who was looming above him. “Who the hell are you?”

“How do I turn off the self-destruct system?” Artyom asked, demonstratively waving a sharp piece of wood he’d broken off the table. “I need information, and I’m willing to hurt you to get it. I don’t want to, but I don’t have a choice. So, let me ask you one more time — how do I turn off the self-destruct system?”

“Screw you!” The prisoner tried in vain to break loose. Artyom had done a good job tying him up, and Artyom also knew he needed to back up his threat. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to hurt the man right away. Killing someone was one thing... But that thought shocked him — just a day before, he would have shivered at the thought of it, and there he was calmly thinking to himself that killing wasn’t as bad as torturing. It was amazing what necessity could do to people.

If the powerfully built man hadn’t spat on him, Artyom might not have worked up the nerve to get started. But after the dirty curse and bloody spittle came flying in his direction, his hesitation vanished. The administrator was the enemy. He was part of the group that had killed Liza. And they deserved neither mercy nor pity.

“No! Ah-h-h!” The anguished scream was so loud, the whole block must have heard it. Just as had been the case with hacking into the system, Artyom’s artificial eyes took control of his fingers and did the work themselves, leaving him to simply watch the horror film playing out in front of him. He waited until the job was done before speaking in a voice so monstrously calm that it sent shivers down his own spine.

“I need information about the security system. And I’m going to get it. If you hold your tongue, I’ll make sure you’re never healed.”

“My intelligence was already downloaded!” the prisoner responded angrily. “Screw your threats!”

“You made your choice.” Artyom shrugged and gripped the piece of wood tighter.

It was impressive how long the system administrator held out. At some point, Artyom wanted to stop, and if he’d been in control of his own hands, he would have long since tossed aside the bloody spike and ran out of the room to avoid the sight of what he’d done. But his implants cared nothing for his own suffering or that of the administrator. They were just doing the job with the tools they had at their disposal. And the prison lab had plenty of tools for them to use.

Remote access to BNL 3.12 system.

Artyom may have thought he was looking at a lot of settings, only he’d been deeply mistaken. The variety that unfolded in front of him in that moment was orders of magnitude beyond the first set. As it turned out, the lab was all about security. If it hadn’t been for his artificial eyes, Artyom would never have made it out of the third building. Everything was monitored. The only situation where the System didn’t have a response was when artificial eyes didn’t respond to incoming commands, and it was that oversight that let Artyom meander through the lab without triggering the System’s heavy weaponry. And it did have plenty to use. Even if Falcon and his men had gotten inside the complex, they wouldn’t have triggered the self-destruct functionality. The automated security systems would have wiped them out.

“Attention! All personnel may return to their work. The danger is over; the state of emergency is lifted.”

The first thing Artyom did was calm everyone down and bring the acid between the buildings back down to its usual level. A few buttons sent the crowds back to their business. If only everything were that easy.

“You’re not going to get away with this,” croaked the system administrator, whose name was Sergey Belsky. “The master will find you, and you’re going to regret that you were ever born.”

“I’m sure I will,” Artyom replied as he moved on to the next step. After disengaging the outer protective field, he began giving all the mercenaries the highest access level. They were matched only by Ignatov himself.

“I’ll be an old man first, though,” Artyom continued, stepping away from the terminal. He’d done everything he could. The rest was up to Falcon. Judging by the fact that the shooting had stopped, the latter was trying to figure out what to do next, and Artyom could only watch and wait. The soldiers were presumably going to realize there was nothing stopping them. Turning back to his prisoner, Artyom decided to kill the time with some conversation.

“Hey, I’ve heard about scanning twice now. What is that?”

A shadow of annoyance flitted across Sergey’s face. He glanced at the piece of wood Artyom was still holding, and his breathing quickened. But he couldn’t stay quiet.

“It’s tech we just recently developed. A complete copy of the human brain. You can check it out for yourself — the description is in the BLN database.”

Intrigued, Artyom pulled up the description and was lost to the world for the next half hour. What had been hidden from almost everyone working at the prison lab was going to turn the world upside down: Project Eternal Life. Just the name was enough to get Artyom latched onto every line, reading about successes as well as failures. After the scientists working on the project had managed to record someone’s intelligence to a plasm computer, which is what the fiery things on the other side of the wall were, they had also found a way to communicate with the virtual intelligence. But there were still two problems that threatened to sink the whole endeavor. First, they couldn’t download the consciousness back into a live person. Individual brain structures varied too widely. Second, and even more problematic, two identical consciousnesses with their own intelligence and self-awareness came to exist in the same time interval. They were separate people with a shared past. As that pulled them out of sync, the next scan led to data loss. And that raised an interesting question the scientists couldn’t yet answer: how would someone feel being born like that? Would they have their own consciousness or one slightly altered? Or completely new? Would it need to be retrained? Tests showed one thing, though nobody was sure what the actual answer was going to be. They needed new victims and new scans. And the crematorium helped with that.

Artyom caught his breath when he saw his own name. Artyom Kuchayev, physicist, original condition: dead, prototype condition: inactive. That meant his consciousness hadn’t been loaded onto the processors, waiting, instead, in sleep mode. Whether it was him or his artificial eyes that reacted first, he didn’t know. But what he did know was that he wasn’t going to stop until all his virtual copies were deleted. The mold of his consciousness that had been made a few moments before his execution...

A cold sweat broke out all over Artyom. The thought that had occurred to him was inconceivable. Once more, the search bar popped up in front of him, though entering Liza Berger didn’t come up with anything. He was devastated for a few seconds, though that was when he remembered what the System called his girlfriend. Marie Curie. One more search...

Search result: Marie Curie, physicist, original condition: dead, prototype condition: inactive.

Would you like to activate the prototype?

Of course, he did. Artyom practically yelled his reply, his heart beating so quickly it felt like it was going to leap out of his chest. A loading bar appeared, and he got a new message several seconds later.

Would you like to activate communications with Marie Curie?

As soon as Artyom agreed, a new icon appeared down next to his condition bar, that one a picture of Liza with a speaker symbol turned on. Only there was no sound. Artyom already knew that he needed a headset for that and that they were down on the fifth level below ground in his building. Only ten people knew about that floor. At least, outside those who were forever sealed inside their prison within the prison.

What... Where am I? came a message.

It’s me, Artyom. Do you know who you are? They could only communicate in written messages, though his artificial eyes let Artyom type almost instantaneously.

If you’re asking questions that obvious, things must be bad... My name is Liza Berger, we’ve been dating for a month, I’m pregnant, and I was sentenced to death. That’s the last thing I remember. Judging by the darkness all around and the fact that I can’t feel my arms, legs, or anything else, something less than ideal must be going on. Correct?

They burned you alive in the crematorium. Artyom decided to give the virtual consciousness the truth. But before you died, your consciousness was scanned and uploaded to a kind of virtual brain. They don’t yet have the tech to stick you back in a body.

Fun... I’ll be honest, I thought life after death would be something different... It’s weird that I still feel emotions — sadness, pain, anger. If you disconnect and reconnect me, will I remember this conversation?

Probably not since it’s not in the impression they made. Do you want me to disconnect you?

Are you kidding?! Of course not! Are you the only one who can talk with me?

I need to look into that. Actually, I just happened across this project — it’s classified even inside the prison.

Can you give me access? I’d like to see what I can do. Maybe, it’s not just talking, and I can look up files or something.

Sure, hold on. Okay, I connected you. Did anything change?

Hm... You know, I think...yes. There wasn’t anything but darkness around before, though there’s some kind of weird line now. If I reach for it, I get... Okay, that doesn’t make sense. It’s like a matrix made of symbols I can’t understand.

The logs say you got access. From the experiment results, I’d say you’re seeing the files in their binary structure. You need a decoder, though that’s where the experiments left off. They weren’t able to come up with anything.

Binary code? Give me a minute — I have an idea. Let’s see... If I’m looking at the matrix, that means I can make it myself, right? Right. And that means I can do something about the space around me...

Artyom could only see text messages bereft of emotion, so he had no idea what his girlfriend’s virtual consciousness was actually going through in that moment. It wasn’t panic. Instead, it was something far deeper and more powerful. If Liza had had the ability, she would have howled and screamed in fear and sorrow, only the virtual prototype didn’t offer that kind of behavior. She did have emotions, though they weren’t as strong as she would have liked. On the other hand, they didn’t cloud her mind. She was still able to think clearly. The fact that there was a program meant she needed to make something to interpret it. Everything else could wait.

Liza fell silent, letting Artyom turn his attention to what was happening in the prison. Falcon and his fighters had figured out why the outer sphere was gone as well as why they weren’t taking fire. Right then, they were wearing gas masks and waiting for the transport platform that was going to take them to the first block. Only it was in no hurry to arrive. Seeing what was going on, Artyom took control, ignoring Sergey’s muttering as he did. A few minutes later, the prison was home to another twenty armed men. And that just left finding Alexander, waking him up, and pulling him out of that hell whole and intact. But the longer Artyom sat in the server room, the less he wanted to leave it by himself. He’d found Liza. He wasn’t going anywhere without her. What he needed to do next was figure out a way to take her with him.

Chapter 17

“ARTYOM, ARE YOU HERE?”

“Liza?” Artyom asked in shock as he looked around for the ghost. But there was none to be found. “Where are you? How come I can hear you?”

“Because I’m a smart girl,” said the voice in a snarky tone. “I was able to wrap my brain around the matrix you sent me, and now I can interpret it. That let me expand outside the limits of the prison I was created in. After I figured that out, I connected to the security system, got rid of what really isn’t artificial intelligence, and took control of the prison. I’m in charge now, basically. The buildings, the people, the equipment...everything.”

“But you didn’t answer me. How can I hear you? There aren’t any speakers here.”

“Through your implants. They’re hooked up to your brain, so modifying the commands slightly didn’t take much doing. And now, you hear the impulses as my voice, while your voice can be translated into impulses that I understand. But that’s neither here nor there. If you want, I’ll send you a description a bit later. For now, tell your team to stand down — they’re going the wrong way.”

“I’m not in touch with them.” Artyom had no idea what was happening, though he liked it. Hearing that long-forgotten voice meant everything even if it was being generated in his head.

“Oh, right... Hold on... Dear commandos in the third building, please return to building one and head down to the second floor under ground. You will find what you’re looking for there. The bridge between the buildings is active. Oh, wow! Hey, there’s another system here!”

The last part was addressed at Artyom. Liza wasn’t expecting an answer as she continued almost immediately.

“Hm, I can see another circuit, though I can’t get through to it. No access... Oh! Artyom, you’re amazing! Hold onto something — this is going to be painful... I think. I’m still not exactly sure how to download data, so there could be some problems.”

It helped that Artyom was sitting down, the pain tearing through him turning out to be on par with how bad it had been when the data had been downloaded to his artificial eyes. And just like then, the pain disappeared three heartbeats later.

“That’s much better!” Liza said happily once she had her hands on the hacking programs. “Okay, I initiated the password selection tool, and I think it’ll take about three minutes with current capacity. The prisoner is also recovering — he’ll be good to go soon. The workers all have jobs to do so they don’t get in the way... I think that’s everything! And now I’d like to hear what happened in the world and how you were able to get into a room we weren’t supposed to know about. Are you aware the System thinks you’re dead?”

“Wait, you handed out assignments? How did you do that so fast?”

“It’s hard to explain. There are lots of me, basically, and all at the same time. One of me is talking with you, another is running the search, a third is trying to get access, a fourth is in charge of personnel, a fifth... I don’t even know how many of me there are! And it’s as easy as pie. Really, the feeling is strange, unusual...exciting. Oh, Artyom, we can’t let Ignatov get this building back. We have to destroy it!”

“Why?” Artyom asked, surprised by the sudden change of emotions.

“Here... The five buildings you can see on the surface are just the tip of the iceberg. There are way more people in the prison than you think, and most of them are locked up below ground. It’s... I haven’t figured it out completely, but they aren’t human anymore. They’re changed. Improved intelligence, body, organs. They’re monsters! Everything we were working on in the physics department meant nothing — the prison’s focus is medicine and genetics. We’re just in the background to give us something to do. But when you compare our work to the reality Ignatov is creating here... Artyom, it’s awful!”

“Liza, I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re jumping around, and I can’t concentrate. Could you have just one of your copies talk to me?”

“Oh, I didn’t think about that... Look, I unlocked access to the third system. It’s just for Ignatov’s inner circle. And now I can see why the inventions they’re working on haven’t been put on the market for sale. Ignatov doesn’t need that. All he’s selling is scraps and obsolete leftovers to earn some money — it’s a side business. The prime minister is trying to cleanse Earth of ‘biological trash’! And it’s working! He’s annihilating humanity little by little. You know the virus that’s going around? That was our lab. The tsunamis that hit a couple years back? Us again. Two volcano eruptions — both initiated by our scientists. Drought, fires, and even locusts sent to eat crops... The scientists in this prison are responsible for all the catastrophes in the world over the past few decades!”

“Liza, that’s impossible! The technology doesn’t exist.”

“You’re, wrong, Artyom. It exists, only it’s classified even here at the institute, and all the developers are killed. The whole thing is crazy. Ignatov has a team of twenty people responsible for that, some kind of clones... The data isn’t here, but I can tell they’re looking at a complete overhaul of the planet. Only half a billion people will be left! Everyone else will be eliminated. Artyom, we can’t let that happen. We have to destroy this building!”

“Liza, calm down. You realize that if we destroy the building, you’ll be gone, too, right? And I don’t want to lose you again. Not after I just got you back.”

“That would be better than letter Ignatov go through with his plans. You gather the troops and get out of here; I’ll blow the whole place up. I already figured out how.”

“Liza, no! There has to be another way! There are scientists here, too. How many? A thousand? Two thousand? They’ll die, too, and is that what you really want?”

“There are almost ten thousand,” came the shocking reply. “Only three thousand are active, with the rest stored in cryochambers as subjects for future experiments. You can’t save them, Artyom. Just like you used to be, they’re tied to the prison, and you can’t get their implants out. How were you able to get away? What’s been going on with you since then? Okay, sorry, I’m getting carried away. It just feels like you’re doing everything so slowly... Here, let’s pause so you can tell me what happened in the world while I was asleep. Then, we’ll decide what to do.”

While Artyom was retelling the story of his escape and what had happened subsequently in his life, Falcon got to his commander and, guided by one of Liza’s consciousnesses, headed onward to find his commander’s daughter. She was in with the frozen test subjects, so they had to start reviving her. And that took time.

“Got it... But Artyom, what worked with you won’t work with the rest. You know yourself that not everyone can withstand contact with energon. Here, let me look at their medical charts. Yes, ninety percent of the active scientists are susceptible to energon, so pulling your trick would kill them. And the implants can’t be reprogrammed. Deleting the security system without hurting them would also be impossible. No, Artyom, there’s no way out. Let me help the poor guys — they’re dead as it is. Either you kill them trying to save them, or I kill them by detonating this whole institute. Or Ignatov can do the job when he regains control of the prison and starts punishing the innocent.”

“If he regains control,” Artyom replied angrily. “We can dig in here behind the two protective spheres and not let anyone close. I told you about my experiment and the progress I’m making — there’s no going any further without resources. One, ten, even a hundred people a year isn’t fast enough to make a different. But there are enough resources here to pull it off! We’ll figure out how to make the implants, manage production in the outside world, start turning sheep back into people, and watch the world start to change for the better in thirty or so years...”

“Artyom, you’re forgetting one important detail: the current owner of the institute is the prime minister of a country with nuclear weapons. All he has to do is send two or three warheads in our direction, and nobody will be the wiser. Our prison isn’t the only one — he has at least one more, and they’re working on geological weapons there. If a bomb detonates here, the outer sphere won’t be enough to protect us. No, the only option is complete annihilation and nothing left of the prison but one big crater. That will do some serious damage to Ignatov. It won’t knock him out, though.”

“A crater?” Artyom wasn’t used to giving up, and the thoughts Liza was projecting right into his brain gave him an interesting idea. “Hey, that could work! Let’s make him think the prison was destroyed. You didn’t forget that I invented levitation, did you? You have the building design, so we can find the key weight-bearing nodes, even get the geniuses here to help. Then, once we’ve dug down to the foundation, we’ll attach a few thousand levitation devices and get the whole lab, inhabitants and all, lifted into the sky. The wind will carry us somewhere off toward the North Pole.”

“Bad idea,” Liza said before falling silent. Artyom himself knew it was ridiculous, only he didn’t want to lose his girlfriend. Even if she was virtual. Unexpectedly, however, she continued.

“We can’t just leave it up to the wind — that would make us easy prey. No, we’ll need a motor and propellors. I already assigned some people. Next, there’s the concealment. The energy sphere takes care of that, only it just works for the part of the prison sticking up above the ground. We’ll need to cover the whole thing. Got it! There’s a whole brigade already working on that. Good, they can make a positive difference for a change. Once we’ve turned ourselves into a big storm cloud, it won’t occur to anyone that there’s a huge complex inside. No, no, no... People will expect rain from a cloud like that. But it’s fine — we’ll figure something out. They’ll have their rain and lightning alike. Nobody can suspect anything. Bingo! I know who can help with that. Already assigned the job.”

“Liza, I didn’t think you were taking this seriously,” Artyom replied in surprise. “I was just brainstorming, and that’s just a crazy idea. Even if we get this place off the ground, how are we going to feed everyone? What about waste? Where do we find the materials we need? Helicopters can’t do everything.”

“I’m working on that already, but since you asked, I’ll answer. First, food. That’s pretty simple — the prison is a closed loop where all available organic material is processed rather than thrown out. Taste printers were actually developed thirty years ago. Whether we got it at the cafeteria or ordered it with credits, all the food we ate was made by them. And if there isn’t enough organic material, there are devices that generate the main ingredients using simple substances. The prison doesn’t need to have food shipped in. Everything is made here. As far as what happens to waste, I imagine I don’t need to tell you. It’s all processed. Really, it’s an elegant solution.”

Artyom could barely keep from swallowing hard. All he could think about was how delicious everything had been at the cafeteria, how varied it had all been, and how he’d even been surprised they could get it delivered to the depths of the Siberian taiga. As it turned out...

“Materials. That’s a bit more challenging, but we’ll figure something out. If we’re able to fly, we can always just head over to a deposit, drop down as far as we need to go, and grab it all. That would actually handle the problem of keeping enough water around to make fake rain, too. We’ll periodically drop down over a river or lake, fill up our tanks there. And that just leaves communications with the outside world. Satellites are out of the question — they’re controlled by Ignatov and people like him. Elon Musk, his type. As soon as we stick our heads up, they’ll all be filled in. Okay, I assigned a few people that job so I’m not the only one banging my head against that wall. Artyom, I’m going to send you three people — we need to get rid of that guy next to you. I don’t like him. Once he’s sitting in a cage, we can decide what to do with him at our leisure.”

That was a timely observation. Artyom had completely forgotten about the man lying next to him, and he glanced over to see eyes filled with hate. Ten minutes later, three people with artificial eyes showed up, glancing around as they arrived, and dragged the system administrator out of the room.

“Liza, can you put me in touch with the troops?”

“On it. There’s no microphone where you are, so I’ll be your voice. What do you want me to tell them?”

“Ask when they’ll be ready to leave the prison and... Wait! Liza, your plan won’t work! The lab is inside the sphere now, but there are jammers all around the perimeter. As soon as they’re removed, Ignatov will find out that something’s wrong with his baby. And he’ll be sure to respond, maybe with one of those warheads.”

“Hm... Yes, the alarm signal was sent, though it didn’t get through. Good thinking — I’ll take care of that. There, nobody will be finding anything out. I cleared the logs. Although, we’re going to have to hang on to the soldiers. I’m going to need a week or two to get everything ready, and Ignatov will definitely get in touch before then if only to carry out the commander’s execution. And that means Alexander has to stay here and even participate in a show execution should it come to that. Until we’re ready to go, nobody can suspect anything.”

“They’re not going to like that,” Artyom said with a laugh. “Put me through to them.”

The conversation didn’t take long. Artyom laid out the situation and what they were planning to do, after which Cat said nothing for a whole minute. Then, he asked for his people to be taken care of before heading back into the cell. In the time Artyom had spent talking with Liza, Falcon had freed both his commander and the rest of their team. All of them, Luda included, headed back toward the small gym where they’d been held.

Artyom watched the prisoners go and suddenly remembered a promise he’d made.

“Liza, connect me to the person named Albert Einstein. If it hadn’t for him, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of so much as a convection oven. I owe him.”

Albert was in his office working on the design for the concealment field. For a few seconds, he had no idea what was going on as the space around him suddenly echoed with the voice of someone he’d long since forgotten. It was only after he realized that the voice wasn’t a product of his imagination and that its owner was alive and well that he was overwhelmed with shock.

“Artyom? You’re alive? But how? We all saw your execution. I mean, I’d hoped you’d make it out, but after the flames hit your body and you screamed that way... The sound still haunts me at night sometimes.”

“I tried to make it look natural. But yes, it was an escape. I’m here because I want to take you with me to freedom, though. What do you think? Are you ready to leave?”

“Why?” Albert’s eyes even narrowed. “Freedom from what? I thought long and hard about that, Artyom. If you’d offered during the first thirty or forty years I was here, it wouldn’t have even been a question. Of course, I would have gone with you. But now... What’s out there for me? Here, I have the work I love, unlimited resources, attractive perks. And there? It would be back to the struggle for power, the never-ended attempts to prove something to someone, the scientific disputes you get into with imbeciles who got ahead thanks to their connections. Plus, there’s the problems I would have reintegrating into society. I’d have to take care of myself, find a place to live, worry about what to eat, everything I don’t need to think about here. And what do I get out of trading in the life I’m used to here for the reality you’re talking about? The ephemeral freedom of movement? Travel? New experiences? I’m an inveterate introvert, and you can keep all that.”

“But...”

“And I’m not the only one who thinks that. Ask anyone who’s been here more than twenty years. Everyone I knew is dead or old, so there’s nothing and nobody out there that I care about. In here, it’s simple: you have a job to do that’s interesting enough, you have to push yourself, there are rewards, and you can spend the bonuses you earn on something you like. No, Artyom. I don’t want the freedom you’re used to. All I ever wanted was to be done with the trips down into the ground for energon, and they’re over thanks to you. Nobody susceptible to it has to go on them. So, I’ll stay here, thank you very much.”

The news was unexpected. Artyom was taken aback, not sure how to respond. Liza helped by disconnecting with Albert, telling him to return to his work, and coming back to Artyom.

“Artyom, could you tell me a little more about your project? I already downloaded the data, but I want to hear your opinion. The part that isn’t in the files. Why did you really think the whole thing up?”

“Honestly... At first, I wanted to help Pyotr, and that was it. Check the report — he was barely human when I found him. After that, Anton showed up, and now we’re going to have another three or four people... On the one hand, it’s about helping people. On the other — ”

“I’m not asking about what you’ve accomplished. I can see that in the reports. My question is why you care about the project.”

“Because I want to make a change,” Artyom blurted out before staring off into space as he collected his thoughts. “Because I can see what’s happening in the world. I can see how people struggle to survive. How they set each other up, betray each other, kill each other, lie to each other. They’re like animals. That’s what I can’t accept, what I can’t put up with. And it’s what I want to root out of society.”

“So, you want to become a kind of Ignatov? Make people do what you want?”

“Don’t confuse the two of us. Ignatov is in the middle of killing ninety percent of the population, while all I’m trying to do is make them follow rules. Even if they are my rules.”

“But Ignatov is right,” Liza said to Artyom’s surprise. “At first, it was my emotions talking, but the more I look at it, the more I think we need population control. There are too many of us. You’d have to be stupid not to see what problems overpopulation brings with it. Pollution, for example. And it isn’t Ignatov and his ilk that are responsible; it’s simple people getting their hands on power and ignoring the consequences. ‘Oh, I can toss this barrel of pesticides in that lake. It’s a big planet, and the barrel isn’t that big.’ But everyone thinks like that!”

“And that’s why I want to force them to think differently. People need to be taught responsibility. It’s a long, difficult process, but it’s worth it.”

“How are you going to feed everyone? If there are too many people, we’ll run into a shortage of resources!”

“The same way we’re feeding people here! Closed production loops and reprocessing organic material. We can close the factories, clean up the pollution, and switch to alternative energy, maybe energon. If we’re looking for ways to guide the planet that don’t resort to genocide, there are lots of them. You just have to use your head.”

“I’m glad you’re back.” If Liza had been able to show emotions, her face would have spread into a smile. She’d been afraid Artyom had changed, that the true motivation behind his project was hidden, though she’d learned to understand him over the time they’d spent living together. He didn’t lie. When he did something, it was because he believe in it. And that meant she needed to help him.

The next three days were spent making the entire scientific community at the prison sweat. Liza had everyone going at full steam. And they were all working — even the soldiers put in their time getting ready for their next encounter with Ignatov. Ditches were dug, devices were built, and equipment was hauled up from the lower levels since the underground space with the lift leading down to the energon horizon was outside the lab’s perimeter. And Liza wasn’t about to leave anything for Ignatov. After the troops removed the jammers, they reestablished contact with the outside world. Artyom checked in with the Korshunovs to find out that Anton was doing great and that the programmers Falcon had sent over were working wonders. World of the Changed was almost ready for new subjects. But while Liza tried to transfer her consciousness outside the bounds of the prison, she had to throw up virtual hands in frustration. Even with the expensive equipment they had, it wasn’t enough to house another intelligence. And they weren’t about to move World of the Changed over to the lab servers so long as they still belonged to Ignatov.

Finally, the day of reckoning arrived. The economic forum was over. Liza checked to see how assignments were coming and was giving instructions, having found some inconsistencies with the initial requirements, when one of her consciousnesses began howling about a hack coming in. Quelling her panic, the girl made a calm announcement.

“Artyom, we have a request for contact. Okay, not a request — the channel will open in three, two, one... Contact. Greetings, Master!”

The last phrase was spoken in an unpleasant metallic voice. As a three-dimensional projection of Ignatov appeared in the main hall of the first building, the System began generating instructions for all personnel in the block to show up for a meeting with their patron. Liza stayed out of the way, her time spent tracking the incoming logs. The prison owner’s access level was as high as it could go, and she hadn’t been able to figure out how to limit him without cutting the channel. If she hadn’t taken care to make sure the reports were in order beforehand, Ignatov would have instantly known something was wrong. A complete readout had been generated as soon as he’d virtually arrived.

After making sure that most of the scientists were there, the master spoke in a voice dripping with smugness and narcissism.

“Bring me the prisoner! It’s time to show the slaves their place.”

Chapter 18

“ARTYOM, I FIGURED IT OUT! There’s another control system in the prison, only I had no idea it was even there until Ignatov showed up. Let me think. It has unlimited scope, and it’s built all the way down at the hardware level almost. No settings to speak of. If we can drag things out with the prime minister and keep him connected as long as possible, I’ll do my best to figure out how he’s connecting.”

“That’s easy to say.” Artyom’s gaze was mesmerized by the scene playing out in front of him. Alexander showed up under his own power if on wobbly legs. And that irked the master, who pursed his lips for everyone to see. Apparently, he’d been expecting Cat to break. To be fair, Artyom knew the soldier would have still been unconscious if it hadn’t been for the healing therapies Liza had put him through.

But even that minor setback wasn’t enough to throw Ignatov for a loop. After a short pause, he began recounting the many benefits he showered on his slaves, demanding in exchange nothing but their obedience. Those who failed to show him that obedience were bereft of his benefits. His standard speech hadn’t gone through any major rewrites since he’d given it a year before to Artyom, so the latter didn’t pay much attention.

“And the penalty is death!” Ignatov said, finally reaching his conclusion. “But I am merciful. Over the time he spent serving me, this slave proved his value and loyalty, so I’m willing to give him a second chance. Bring his daughter here!”

Artyom’s eyes narrowed — he hadn’t been expecting that. Liza managed to generate the assignment faster than the System, so guards were sent to the gym rather than the jail to get Luda. In addition, Liza had to add in a stop at the medical block. The prime minister was expecting an unconscious body, which meant they needed to put Luda to sleep. Explaining the situation and hoping for her to play her part convincingly was too much of a risk.

“Liza, it’s a setup,” Artyom said as he watched the guards give the girl an injection and load her onto a levitating platform. “I think Ignatov is up to something.”

“I calculated the possible outcomes, so don’t worry. Whatever that bastard throws at us, I’ll have a response. For now, we have to keep him happy for another four days. That’s the time we need to finish getting ready for our escape, and we have to buy it no matter the price. Even if it means sacrificing Alexander.”

“What?! Liza, no!”

“You’re not listening to me — everything’s under control. Stop worrying and trust me.”

Artyom wanted to believe Liza knew what she was doing, only he was too familiar with psychology. When someone considered themselves above everybody else, no moral framework was enough to hold them. And that was how it played out. As soon as Luda appeared in the hall, one of the scientists walked over to Alexander and handed him a pistol.

“You have one opportunity to make this right.” Ignatov’s voice sent shivers running down Artyom’s spine. The physicist never would have thought so much bloodthirstiness could well out of a human voice. “Prove your loyalty. There’s a body in front of you — end its life, and I will bring you back into the fold. You’ll continue your service. Just remember that there’s only one bullet in that gun, so you need to use I correctly.”

“I won’t do it,” Alexander said heavily, having remained silent up to that point.

“You don’t have a choice. It’s her or both of you. But before you go, however, if you opt for the latter, I’ll make sure she suffers more than even Artyom Kuchayev did. You know very well what kind of advancements we’ve come up with for torture in the last year. Whatever we pick for that body, I’m sure you’ll like it. So consider this an act of mercy.”

The pistol was thrust into Cat’s hands. Artyom stopped breathing when one of the screens showed the soldier’s face. If Ignatov had been nearby, Cat would have torn him apart with his bare hands. But Artyom had to doubt Ignatov was going to keep his word. If Cat followed orders, he was going to meet his end a few moments later. The prime minister wasn’t dumb enough to leave an enemy like that alive.

“You have five seconds,” Ignatov said. “Time’s ticking!”

“Screw you,” the soldier said in a voice laced with hate. “Do what you will, you animal! I don’t care anymore.”

A shot rang out; a lifeless body dropped to the ground. With eyes widening in horror, Artyom watched a pool of blood seep out from under the troop commander, and a silence fell over the hall. Nobody dared interrupt the master’s thoughts. The latter said nothing for a while, his hologram simply making its way around the body a few times. Liza was silent, as well. While Artyom asked her several times what she was doing, there was no reply forthcoming until the prime minister’s thoughtful voice broke the silence. The bloodthirstiness was gone, the inner monster satisfied.

“That was an unexpected choice. Take the girl back — she’ll be useful for experiments. And this one... I think we need to end our cooperation with the soldiers. Submit plans for how to best utilize their organic material, as we’ll be eliminating the entire group. That is my decision. Clones will be sent out to hunt new slaves. Over and out.”

The projection flickered and disappeared. And while Artyom waited for the crowd of scientists to run off and follow their master’s orders, that didn’t happen. Everybody simply returned to their work as though nothing had happened.

“I found it!” Liza shouted happily. “Artyom, I need your help — I can’t do this without you.”

“So, you’re back, are you?” Artyom tried to disguise his annoyance, though his efforts were less than successful.

“Judging by your tone, the show I put on was good enough for you to buy it. That’s great!”

“The show? What are you talking about?” Artyom practically yelled. “Cat is dead!”

“What makes you think that?” Liza asked, managing to add some sarcasm to her virtual tone. “Stopped watching the screens, yeah?”

Artyom looked back at them and frowned. The pool of blood around the mercenary was gone.

“When Ignatov’s people grabbed him, they stuck the implants in him right away. The master was tired of his slaves not being under his control. Basically, that let me work out a plan with Alexander behind the prime minister’s back. The pistol wasn’t loaded. I generated the shot with the same technology Ignatov used to show up, and I made the blood and the hole in the body. Nobody saw a thing. By the way, how do I look?”

A projection appeared next to the soldier on the ground, and Artyom’s heart raced. It was Liza.

“They scanned my body as well as my consciousness, so I’m technically able to be in this world. Of course, I don’t really feel anything since it’s a projection that can’t even see. Just a visualization. But it’ll be easier for you to talk with me that way, right?”

“You got that right,” Artyom said hoarsely. He couldn’t pull his gaze away from his girlfriend, having forgotten how beautiful she was.

“I more or less figured out what Ignatov wanted when he gave orders for her to be brought over. And since Alexander was online, it was easy enough to talk with him. He’s lying on the ground waiting for instructions now. But hey, if you thought he was dead, Ignatov definitely did, too! Who’s the best? I’m the best! Okay, show’s over, and I still need your help.”

After receiving his latest instructions, the “dead” commander got up and headed back to his room, nodding to Liza’s projection as he went. The latter smiled and faded away to free up resources. Artyom, meanwhile, could do nothing but sigh. The three-dimensional projection only worked in that hall, and it was going to be some time before he could take her to his room.

“I already handed out the assignment,” Liza said with a laugh when she saw the look on Artyom’s face. “Don’t worry — I can’t read minds. I just figured you’d prefer talking to something physical instead of looking like a crazy person talking to yourself.”

“You said you need my help. What’s going on?”

“We need to break the controlling server. I can’t do it myself — assignments like that are immediately rejected. Actually, I just barely got to the logs it wanted to send to its master, something about someone wanting to eliminate an area it controls. The security is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. And considering you’re the only one who can get close to it, you don’t have much of a choice. It’s up to you.”

“Why am I the only one? Falcon and the other soldiers don’t have implants, either, so you could ask them just as well as you can me.”

“No, I can’t, and for a few reasons. First, the server is in the same room as you, and I don’t want anyone else going there. The second follows from the first: I don’t trust anyone except you. If you ask me, it’s not at all clear why the soldiers have been so friendly. Why did they decide to save your life? Why did they let you launch your experiment? Why are they helping with it? There are too many questions I don’t have answers for. And third, most importantly, the server is built on new technology. It’s not a plasma computer like the obsolete models on the other side of the wall from you. The system unit runs on energon and technology they just developed this year. Since the soldiers are susceptible to it, they can’t come close.”

“What about the guy who was here? Or the scientists that pulled him out? Are they inert the same way I am?”

“Something’s funny about that guy. I handed out an assignment to disassemble him, and what we know so far is that he wasn’t human. At least, not the kind of human we’re used to. More... Well, he’s a kind of human-machine hybrid. If I believed in the fantastical, I would think he’s an android prototype, basically an artificial clone with no weaknesses. The fact that you were able to take him out was more down to luck and his own stupidity. Put it this way: he was a child in an adult’s body. There just wasn’t enough time for him to grow up.”

“You had him disassembled? That was bloodthirsty of you.”

“I’m being cautious. That creature was bred artificially. And the fact that that didn’t happen at our lab is one more reason to think Ignatov is being smart about his plans — he isn’t concentrating all his assets in one place. With that in mind, we need to respect him and assume he’s going to be paranoid. He could show up at any point, and we need to be ready. Okay, there’s a small safe to your right. Once the tools I had sent get there, open it up.”

That took some doing since even Artyom’s hacking abilities were no use. A heavy-duty saw saved the day. Soon enough, the metal door crashed to the ground, and Artyom was treated to the sight of a small glass case with a chunk of energon shimmering all the colors of the rainbow and held in place by magnets. Thick coils of wire connected to the case through a switch, running out of the room from there. But the problem was on top of the case. Artyom knew exactly what he was looking at.

“If that’s the server, we have a big problem. It has its own antenna!”

“Yes, I see that,” Liza replied as she analyzed the data coming in from his implants. “It’s just a good thing it’s only a receptor. Outgoing signals are handled by a different antenna, and I have access to that one. Basically, that’s why we’re still alive. I was able to correct the data being sent about what’s happening here. When you’re ready, pull the server out of there. We need to study it — I already handed out an assignment. What I really want to figure out is how that box controls the whole base since we haven’t come across technology like that before.”

“What makes you think it wasn’t made here?”

“The energon. There’s a record of all of it, with every bit mined underground registered and tracked. For a server that big, they definitely needed more than a few grams, so that wasn’t mined here. There’s another mine somewhere else.”

“Alexander was able to bring me a small piece.. How did he pull that off?”

“Why guess when we can just ask him?”

The commander appeared on one of the screens. He frowned, still unused to the text popping up in his vision. But after the question was read off, he quickly responded.

“Yes, that piece wasn’t inventoried. I took it from Artyom when he broke away from the system, figuring I could sell it on the side. But after he asked for energon, I decided it was fate. He just got his own piece back.”

The screen went black as Liza decided the answer was plausible enough to believe. Or, perhaps, she pretended as much.

“Artyom, there are people on their way there. We need to put the server through its paces.”

The dismantling process didn’t take long. After a quick tug, it slid easily out of the grooves it had been resting in, the cables all disconnecting at once. All that remained attached to the glass was the antenna, as it was part of the device itself.

“Perfect! Now I know I have complete control of the lab,” Liza said happily. “All right, Artyom, you can head back with the rest. We have a lot of work to do.”

The following three days flashed by. Too busy hauling things around or doing something else, he didn’t even have time to sleep. The worst part was digging down to the weight-bearing points in the foundation, as that had to happen by hand. There was no equipment in the lab capable of the job. And since the team decided it wasn’t the right time to build it from scratch, the entire scientific community had to grab shovels and picks as they remembered why nature had blessed them with muscles. Of course, there was some automation: the soil was hauled away on levitation platforms. It still had to be loaded onto them, however.

“The underground storage is clear, and the charges have been set,” Liza reported as soon as Artyom hobbled back to his room. Too exhausted to so much as wash the dirt off himself, he collapsed on the floor and stared up at the ceiling.

“What about levitation? How far do we have to go there?”

“An hour from now, the last shaft and devices will be ready. The charges are in place. The masking field is ready, too, though we’ll have to lift the prison above ground level before we can install it. The propulsion system is up and running, and the jets around the perimeter mean we don’t have to worry about the wind. Artyom... I’m worried. As soon as we start, we’re crossing the point of no return. Ignatov is going to start looking for us.”

“We knew this moment was coming. Send out the troops so they can keep an eye on us from the outside.” Suddenly, Artyom had forgotten how tired he was. “Get the masking brigades ready, and let’s start lifting... Although, wait, I want to head down to the server room first.”

After grabbing a quick shower, Artyom ran down to his fiefdom and glued his eyes to the monitors. Cat and his fighters had left the lab, heading outside the second sphere to where a few helicopters were waiting for them.

“Let’s do this!” Artyom said to Liza, his fingers crossed. The building lurched as the many-ton structure was wrenched out of the ground, clutching its roots as it came. But it had nothing on the laws of physics. Little by little, centimeter by centimeter, it gave in.

“We broke away from the lower level,” Liza said, pulling up the feed from the collapsed lift. The shaft that had connected the lab to the cave below was no more. Soil and rock crumbled into it, and the billowing clouds of dust and dirt soon obscured the view.

“He’s not going to buy it,” Artyom said with a frown. “Ignatov won’t believe we annihilated the complex.”

“No, he won’t,” Liza replied. “He’ll come looking for us. There are two satellites above us right now, and since I don’t have access to their feeds, our only hope is the cloud cover. It’s pretty gloomy today. If they can’t catch us from the start, we’ll be able to get away. Two meters! Keep going!”

Liza wasn’t in a hurry. The levitation project they’d developed had been checked a hundred times over, though nobody knew for sure what might have happened to the walls over the fifty years they’d spent underground. While a superficial scan hadn’t shown anything to worry about, the material itself was out of view. If anything happened, there wasn’t going to be anyone left to tell the tale. But nothing did happen. Two meters, then five, then ten. The underground part of the lab was incredibly deep, totaling six floors and almost thirty meters.

“Turning on the propulsion. Moving to the side. Everybody, brace for impact! Three, two, one...contact.”

Liza had been telling the truth, and the floating building shook violently. Artyom was nearly thrown out of his chair. Leaping to his feet, he began punching buttons to turn the screens to the external cameras in search of where the blow had come from and why it was so strong.

“Don’t worry, we didn’t sustain any damage. We’re out of the hole and hovering in place, so I’m sending out the masking brigade,” Liza replied calmly.

“What was that? What did we hit?”

“What was that? A bit of revenge, that’s all. Call it a woman being petty... We just leveled the damn crematorium where they burned my body — I wasn’t about to let it stay there.”

Artyom said nothing. Technically, Liza was right. While her current consciousness didn’t remember the execution, it was safe to assume she’d analyzed the video and drawn her conclusions. And that made her momentary weakness forgivable. Getting the masking system up took twenty-four hours, the scientists swarming around all sides of the flying complex like a hive of bees. By the time they finished the next morning, Artyom was tired of staring worriedly up at the sky, though the cloud cover was still holding. No matter how advanced Ignatov’s satellites were, they weren’t going to break through. Even scanners, if they were up there, would have just shone the building in place or a hundred meters to the side. And that could have been written off as a hardware error.

Finally, the job was done. The installers headed back to their usual desks flush with quants, and Artyom turned on the masking system. Nothing changed for those on the inside of the prison, the cameras pointed outward showing nothing out of the ordinary. But for those outside, the entire picture was different. Cat was the first to respond.

“Looks pretty scary. See for yourselves.”

A feed from one of the helicopters flying around nearby appeared on one of the screens. In place of the building, the taiga was obscured by a terrifyingly black cloud that seethed and simmered with bolts of lightning. Artyom could only scratch the back of his head as he saw what a good hundred people had come up with.

“Feels like we might have gone overboard with the special effects. Clouds like that don’t happen in nature.”

“Agreed, let me fix that.” It took Liza just a few moments for the blue-black menace to turn into a regular dark blue storm cloud. While also threatening, it didn’t elicit immediate alarms about an alien invasion.

“Yes, that’s much better,” Artyom said as he turned flight control over to his implants. “Here we go — it’s the moment of truth. Either we beat gravity, or it beats us. We won’t survive a crash.”

The lab flew a few dozen meters up off the ground and froze. Artyom had decided to give the levitation devices one last chance to show they weren’t going to work, though they passed up the opportunity. Without so much as a single jerk, the construction moved slowly, and the people inside didn’t even suspect they were suspended in midair.

“Liza, send us over to that lake,” Artyom said as he pointed to a small body of water a few kilometers away. The physicist was looking to see how smoothly the construction moved, not to mention if the jets had any effect on the masking field, but everything went off without a hitch. No matter where they flew, the helicopters the troops flew around the dark cloud in an effort to find a weakness came up empty. The picture was flawless.

“Drop down to fill up. Get the pumps ready,” Artyom said, acting more by force of habit than necessity. His orders were all given mentally, and the only intelligence that could follow them already knew what to do. A few large hoses were let down into the lake. A few moments later, it had been sucked nearly dry, with filters pulling out organic material to be processed and the clean water deposited in enormous reservoirs. The rain system wasn’t quite ready to go, but that was something they could take care of while in the air. It didn’t need trips outside.

Problems began right away. The construction’s airspeed left something to be desired, especially when they were flying against the wind. A quick calculation told the group they would need several days to cross the three hundred kilometers between them and Novosibirsk. Admittedly, a better plan would have been to turn around and head deep into the heart of Russia, off toward the village with World of the Changed, only Artyom insisted on setting course for the big city. Ignatov was going to start hunting down whoever was behind the prison theft, and the soldiers were going to be at the top of his list of suspects. He’d given orders to eliminate them, too. If even one of them was caught by a surveillance camera, Ignatov would sooner or later be on the trail of the runaways. And they couldn’t let that happen. With passenger planes out of the question, their only option was to stop by and pick up the fighters and their equipment.

A few hours later, a giant ball of fire appeared on one of the screens. Liza had activated the explosions to mimic total annihilation. While a detailed investigation was going to show that it hadn’t actually happened, the runaways had still bought themselves another two or three days. And that was even enough time for a flying prison to lose itself in the vast country.

* * *

“Master, the second lab isn’t responding. Satellite feeds aren’t clear, either, thanks to heavy cloud cover, but this is what we were able to capture.”

The prime minister glanced over at his servant in clear annoyance. He’d been busy studying the report on negotiations with the Shurvans, humanoids that looked like mutated gorillas suddenly deciding to become conscious. Having shown up on Earth just a few years before, they hadn’t yet gone beyond offering humans devices far beyond the planet’s technological horizon. All the cunning aliens had asked for in return was a mountain of resources for each device, amounting to a pittance for them. But even that pittance was invaluable. Just to take one example, the energon computers were several dozen orders of magnitude more advanced than anything humans had come up with, not to mention the army of clones. Having them around made it possible to take another look at plans for the target number of people on the planet.

“What’s going on?” The master tapped a few buttons on a tablet, knowing full well his servant wouldn’t have bothered him unless it was important. His annoyance was gone a few pictures later when he saw that the satellite had sent a view of a fireball rising over the site of his second lab.

“A team of clones has already been dispatched — they’ll be there in a few minutes. I took it on myself to disturb you so you can see firsthand.”

The pictures were replaced by a video feed. Helicopters dipped below the clouds, their cameras were pointed in the right direction, and Ignatov saw the impossible well before the helicopters were finally in place over the perfectly round crater. A few seconds after his fingers began racing over his keyboard, a crushing message popped up on the projection screen in front of him.

Connection with Remote Terminal 2 unavailable.

For the first time in quite a while, Ignatov was at a loss for what to do. His prison was gone. And with it, the plan for cleansing Earth and turning it into a transfer point for space travelers. If the Shurvans found out he couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain, they were going to rip up the deal. He couldn’t let that happen.

Epilogue

THE SETUP MEETING for the leaders of the World of the Changed project was held exactly a month after the prison was stolen. The faces were different, however. First of all, a few members had left voluntarily, Pyotr and Ruslan deciding to focus on equipment and scripts, respectively, instead of leadership. Nina Korshunova was gone, too. With her family her priority, the project had gotten in the way, in particular given that she was expecting.

Artyom, as the Creator, headed up the meeting. Looking around at those gathered there, he asked a one-word question.

“Ready?”

The father-to-be, Pavel Korshunov, was the first to reply. For whatever reason, he’d decided to call himself the Advertiser, something he was proud of to no end. After Artyom had introduced him to the lab, he’d spent up to twenty hours a day at the operating tables studying the work the doctors there were doing. But the Advertiser wasn’t in charge of medicine. Instead, he handled operations. Everything Artyom and Liza didn’t get to was delegated to him, and even Liza had no idea how he managed it all.

“The group is ready, and testing is complete. Comms are great, there are no problems, and we don’t see how anybody could notice us. If you ask me, it’s time to go. We’re updating three or four towers a day, and that just isn’t enough for our plans. We need more teams.”

“We’ve already discussed that — there’s no reason to hurry,” Artyom replied. “Alexander, prepare their documents and get them ready to be released into the outside world. For starters, let’s see how security and frequency scanning is in the district center. I get that the tech is perfect, but I’m not ready to risk everything.”

“The documents and contracts are already being prepared,” Cat said, having joined the leadership team. The former troop commander headed up everything related to physical contact: lab security, connections with the criminal underworld, deliveries of counterfeit goods, identifying potential project participants, and ensuring the security of the teams installing new equipment.

The equipment had been Artyom’s idea. To get World of the Change functioning at a high level, it needed broad communication channels as well as expansive coverage. Holing up in their remote village wasn’t the plan. After going through hundreds if not thousands of solutions the institute had developed, Artyom settled on an interesting idea: layering communication channels on top of the existing telecom system. The cell towers the telecom operators stuck everywhere were perfect for the project, though the equipment they came with needed to be updated. With that in mind, teams dressed in utility repairman outfits had gone around to the cell towers nearest the village to install small devices that expanded the range of World of the Changed. It went off without a hitch, though Artyom didn’t want to give government agencies any reason to investigate. If they came around asking what the repairs were about, the answers needed to be ready. And it was Cat’s job to have the paper trail in place.

“I finished installing World of the Changed on our servers. The old equipment is turned off. The connection to the cell towers is strong, the speed is great, and it looks like each tower can manage two million people at once. Not bad, but I expanded our updates just in case — the towers can back each other up. You never know... Maybe, a hurricane or something...”

Liza had decided to call herself the Owner. Her job was to control the system itself and make any necessary changes along the way. Without worrying about tiring or wearing out, she was able to do the work of a few thousand people, having already come up with enough excellent ideas to keep all the scientists busy. Her primary focus was pulling herself out of the confines of the virtual world. When she found out that creating an exact organic copy wasn’t an option, she pivoted toward androids without so much as a single tear shed. She was going to have a mechanical brain in a human body. The problem there was the size — one of the largest plasma computers they had served as her consciousness, and it was both too big and too hot to stick into a head. Without that option, all she could do was try to understand how the energon control block worked, only the scientists had only thrown up their hands to date. They weren’t even sure where to start. The technology the block used was well beyond anything they’d ever seen.

“I think that’s what makes your plan untenable,” another new team member said. A German scientist, he’d long since forgotten his real name and went by Albert Einstein, the prison lab’s elder statesman.

“What do you mean?” Artyom asked with a frown. The plan looked perfect to him.

“You’re not independent. Sure, the loops back each other up and cover for each other, but any local problem will knock all of them out. I studied the classified dossiers, and the geological weapon the mas — ... The geological weapon Ignatov has can cause a pretty powerful earthquake. What will happen to that fine system of yours if the cell towers all go down?”

Artyom closed his eyes wearily. The dark circles under them were proof his body couldn’t go without rest despite his superhuman stamina and the medical attention he was getting.

“There’s no other way. It’s this, or we cancel World of the Changed. Okay, we’ll kick off now and get to work on that problem. If it takes launching our own satellites and setting up mobile points around the entire planet, that’s what we’ll do.”

“That’s one option,” Albert said with a grunt. “But we could also think about using what we already have. Owner, give me a projection of Project 37-2-45. I think we could head in this direction.”

All the project leaders saw one of the latest lab developments pop up in their artificial eyes. It was nanoparticles just a few microns in diameter, and they included a control chip, an adaptive body, and a few magnets.

“We were planning on using them for medicinal purposes — cleaning veins, removing plaque, unblocking arteries.”

“And they can help us how?” Liza asked impatiently. Even after pushing all her resources to the limit, she still couldn’t see how nanoparticles could counter the geological weapon.

“The energon server can process an unimaginable amount of data at once. And we know who has information on how it works: Ignatov and the scientists from the other lab. If we can find out where the lab is, we can steal the plans.”

“Albert, I’m going to turn you off in a second!” Liza said angrily.

“Sorry — I skip around between ideas sometimes,” the German replied with a smile, unfazed by the threat. “What does the geological weapon work on? The uppermost layer of soil and everything on top of it. But what if there isn’t anything susceptible to it there? Nanoparticles can combine into any form imaginable, be it a grain or two of sand, a rock, a boulder, or even a goat leaping off that boulder.”

“It sounds like you’re practically out of your mind,” Artyom said with eyes narrowed. “I can’t even begin to fathom the number of calculations that would have to happen for a piece of sand to whirl around in a sandstorm, and you’re talking about programming the entire world!”

“Not the whole thing; just part of it,” Liza said. “The part responsible for communication channels. We can build our devices out of nanoparticles, and that will make us immune to natural disasters. Well, with the exception of fire, though the nanoparticles can withstand up to two thousand degrees... If a natural disaster does occur, they’ll just restructure and go on transmitting data... But then, we don’t even need the cell towers.”

“We’ll need them here for the initial stage,” Albert replied. “During launch. But I’m jumping around again. The point is that our groups can continue visiting to cell towers and installing our equipment — I’m looking ahead to when we have the tech we need. Once we can release nanoparticles into the air and control them remotely, we’ll be able to build the structure we need.”

“And the cell towers will work as control points. We won’t need to set anything up there, either, as we’ll be able to just hack into the control server.” Artyom was catching on. “But that’s all for later. We don’t have resources like that right now.”

“Albert mentioned who does have them, however,” Cat said thoughtfully. “Looks like we’re going to have to pay Ignatov a visit, maybe see if he’s willing to share. And that will kill two birds with one stone: nanoparticle control and eternal life. If Liza — ... If the Owner can squeeze herself into a regular body, death will no longer be a factor. We can run a consciousness backup, for example, once a day, and then we won’t have to worry about consequences.”

“That’s how the clones Ignatov is building work. The system administrator I had dismantled wasn’t born; he was created. Artyom, we need that technology. Your project won’t work otherwise.”

“Okay,” Artyom said after taking a while to think. “We’ll continue setting up systems, adding new people to the project, getting them on the road to recovery, and giving them artificial eyes. In the meantime, damn it, we’ll find that second lab. I want to get in there, too. Okay, we have our idea, so it’s time to make it happen. Let’s get to work!”

End of Book One

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Cooldown (Unfrozen Book #1) LitRPG Series
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Gates of Thunder (Loner Book #1) LitRPG Series
by Alex Kosh

Nullform (Book #1) RealRPG Series
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The Cub (The Bear Clan Book 1) A Progression Fantasy
by Vasily Mahanenko

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by Dem Mikhailov

Volper (Alpha Rome Book 1) LitRPG Series
by Ros Per

Second Shot (Fantasia Book #1) LitRPG Series
by Simon Vale

In the System  LitRPG Series
by Petr Zhgulyov

The Range  LitRPG Series
by Yuri Ulengov

Small Unit Tactics  LitRPG Series
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World of the Changed  LitRPG Series
by Vasily Mahanenko

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by Vasily Mahanenko

Invasion  LitRPG series
by Vasily Mahanenko

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Leider hat der Verlag beschlossen, die Serie nicht weiter zu übersetzen, und wir haben uns entschlossen, dies selbst zu tun.

ALL BOOKS BY VASILY MAHANENKO:

The Way of the Shaman LitRPG Series:

Survival Quest (The Way of the Shaman: Book #1)

The Kartoss Gambit (The Way of the Shaman: Book #2)

The Secret of the Dark Forest (The Way of the Shaman: Book #3)

The Phantom Castle (The Way of the Shaman: Book #4)

The Karmadont Chess Set (The Way of the Shaman: Book #5)

Shaman's Revenge (The Way of the Shaman Book #6)

Clans War (The Way of the Shaman: Book #7)

The Hour of Pain (The Way of the Shaman Bonus Story)

The Way of the Shaman Comic Book:

The Way of the Shaman. Step 1: The Beginning: Volume One

The Way of the Shaman. Step 2: The First Day: Volume Two

Dark Paladin LitRPG Series:

The Beginning (Dark Paladin Book #1)

The Quest (Dark Paladin Book #2)

Restart (Dark Paladin Book #3)

Galactogon LitRPG Series:

Start The Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

In Search of the Uldans   (Galactogon Book #2)

A Check for a Billion (Galactogon Book #3) LitRPG series

Invasion LitRPG Series:

A Second Chance (Invasion Book #1)

An Equation with One Unknown (Invasion Book #2)

World of the Changed LitRPG Series:

No Mistakes (World of the Changed Book #1)

Pearl of the South (World of the Changed Book #2)

Noa in the Flesh (World of the Changed Book #3)

The Alchemist LitRPG Series:

City of the Dead (The Alchemist Book #1)

Forest of Desire (The Alchemist Book #2)

Tears of Alron (The Alchemist Book #3)

Isr Kale's Journal (The Alchemist Book #4)

Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5)

The Bear Clan LitRPG Series:

The Cub (The Bear Clan Book 1)

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Please meet our new author! Kaitlyn Weiss writes in the genres of romantic fantasy, urban fantasy and fantasy adventure. You can download her first book for free on Amazon: Captive of the Shadows (The Fairy Code Book #1).

Captive of the Shadows (The Fairy Code Book #1)

by Kaitlyn Weiss

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About the Author

Vasily Mahanenko is a fantasy author working in the new genre of LitRPG - the MMO-based fantasy and sci fi. His Way of the Shaman series took Russian literature by storm in 2012.

Vasily dipped into his college-days insider knowledge as a hardcore gamer in order to create a believable world of the virtual-reality MMO game. His bestselling series combines fiction and video games, telling the story of Shaman and his friends stuck in the ruthless reality of Barliona. He used his more than ten years' experience as an ERP implementation project manager to approach his writing in a well-organized manner, working to a strict schedule, a set of deadlines and even a budget. At the moment, the series boasts six novels with the seventh one in the works - this time the author expands on stories of Shaman's companions and those who helped and supported him in his trials and tribulations.

The English translation of The Way of the Shaman series is now available to the English-language reader in its entirety. So is his other LitRPG series, The Dark Paladin. Vasily’s latest project to date is also set in the world of Barliona: The Renegades (The Bard from Barliona Book #1) LitRPG Series, co-written with another Russian author, Eugenia Dmitrieva.

Vasily's other passion is space exploration which is why he works on a sci fi LitRPG series entitled Galactogon. Set in a space-simulator based world, the first two books of the series are already available in English on Amazon.

He’s also released a graphic novel series based on his bestselling series: The Way of the Shaman Comic Book. The English translation of the first two installments are available here and here.

[1] The leading university in Russia.

[2] Ivan Kulibin was a Russian mechanic and inventor.

[3] An express train going from Moscow airports to the city center.

[4] A field doctor responsible for a rural area.

[5] A high-tech business complex in Moscow designed to foster innovation.

[6] “British scientists” is a tongue-in-cheek reference in Russian used to give a scientific air to something that has not actually been studied.

[7] Roughly the equivalent of “Johnny Smith.”

[8] Russians have a domestic passport and an international passport. Artyom was only issued a domestic passport, which is the primary form of identification in the country.

[9] A popular TV channel.

[10] Another popular TV channel.