Chunk 37

"In a literal sense, buddy! Can we get an all-terrain vehicle on the move? But urgently!"

"That's some task you're setting! What do you need an all-terrain for?"

I didn't have time to explain—in the corridor about a dozen army boots simultaneously thundered. I jumped up first. Looked out into the corridor, and was immediately blinded by the light of tactical flashlights.

"On the floor! We shoot without warning! Everyone on the floor!!!"

Someone hit me under the knee. Before I fell, they painfully twisted my arms and put me back on my feet. I managed to see Alex holding out his tester with a green light, and I was dragged somewhere.

The doors outside flew open. The night breathed cold and dampness in my face. I lifted my head. All-terrain vehicles, guys from the black sleeves, dogs released from the kennels. But the dogs aren't barking—they're whimpering and pressing against feet. And here's Vandlik—in full combat gear, hung with grenades and with a brand-new Shiva in hand, heading toward me with the springy gait of a predator.

"What's the situation?" she asks someone.

"One survived. He killed the rest."

I only manage to think: "Who's he?"—when Vandlik kicks me with all her strength with an army boot in the groin. Pain pierces me to the throat. I fall in the mud, but they lift me up.

"Why?!" she shouts. "Why did you kill them, you freak?!"

"It wasn't me," I squeeze out with difficulty.

"You realize you tried to shoot your own daughter?!"

"That's not true..."

"You just don't remember again. She ran to the post and told us. But we have no questions about that for you... Only for your other half. You do know you have another half?"

I tried to understand what she was talking about, and apparently it showed on my face, because Vandlik became very amused.

"We didn't know either. At first. I didn't have time to tell you today, you were very upset about that mutagen..."

She turns to the all-terrain vehicles.

"Give me a flashlight!"

In a few seconds they place a large army flashlight in her outstretched hand.

"My boys took you right away, as soon as you killed the commandant," Vandlik says, as if I'd asked, "in half an hour. We needed the arsenal... Intrigued?"

She seems to terribly enjoy this whole conversation.

"Why was I naked?"

"So that's what's bothering you!"

She winks. Then leans right to my ear and whispers:

"We went a bit overboard during interrogation and..." Vandlik pulls back for a second to look into my eyes, then whispers again: "The corpse was already in the morgue. We even did an autopsy."

She looks at me appraisingly again.

"Whose..." I ask and stop at the word "corpse," involuntarily getting sucked into her game.

"Yours!" she says loudly and laughs. "And you up and came back to life. Not even any scars left. More precisely, it wasn't you, but that other one. And it was quite... unexpected. Especially considering what you said. And a few hours later you became yourself again. The only minus—you forgot everything, you fucking shit! Everything."

She shines the flashlight on her palm. Squints from the bright light.

"And then these power outages started, and it turned out that flickering light causes something like an epileptic seizure in you. And then the human part of your 'I'—temporarily shuts off. By the way, that other you—interesting conversationalist. Though he tried to kill us. But another time he promised immortality. Imagine! Vandlik chuckled, then suddenly became serious. "I think we were dealing with the mycelium itself. No less, no more. And I need to talk to it again."

"Why?"

"I want to ask who else among us—is like you. Royal chimera."

Vandlik clicks through the modes on the flashlight, switching until the lamp starts hysterically blinking.

"And then we'll finally fly," she says. "But we won't see Lieutenant Hirshevich under any circumstances. So—thanks for the cooperation, Hillel. Time to say goodbye."

With these words Vandlik points the flickering flashlight at my face. Someone grabs my forehead so I can't turn away.

"Wait! I know a way to distinguish a chimera!"

"You're a liar with us, lieutenant, remember? There's no more trust."

I struggle desperately.

"But it won't tell you anything!"

"Hold him tighter!" Vandlik commands.

Even though I've squinted, the flickering causes a familiar nauseating effect.

"Give me three hours! This is about my daughter! Please!"

"She'll be fine, Hillel. Everything will be fine."

I try with all my strength to turn away. A few more seconds and I'll shut off. And they'll fly and take the chimera with them. Even worse—they'll take the soul of the mycelium to Earth. And Elza will have no help...

"Higher!" Vandlik commands, and someone's hand takes my chin, tilting my head upward.

The flashlight's flickering pierces through my eyelids and seems to reach the back of my head, diluting my brain. I start falling somewhere, losing the thread of reality.

"Hey!" sounds behind me, and I recognize Alex's voice. "What the hell are you doing?"

"ALEX!!!" he's my last hope, and I shriek like a stuck pig. "KILL ME!!! Shoot me, buddy!!! Shoot me!!!"

I almost can't hear my own words anymore. I'm as if at the bottom of a well inside my own mind, and the world around is no bigger than a light spot somewhere above my head. But suddenly someone roughly pushes me—I almost fall and tumble out of the flickering white beam. And immediately I return to reality. Again I see, hear, and control my body. Alex's mighty figure shields me from Vandlik. He easily pushes the "sleeves" aside. Someone falls.

"Back, idiot!" Vandlik chambers a round. "He's not human! NOT HUMAN!!!"

Several fighters jump on Alex at once. He throws them off with one movement of his shoulders, but new ones have already arrived. Vandlik shouts something and points at me with her finger. I can't hear. Standing behind Alex's back, I yank the good old inductor from his holster. There's no help for it: my ghostly guess is all that's left. If I'm wrong, it's the end. But if I don't do this—it's also the end.

Clicking the safety, I press the barrel to my temple. I manage to catch Vandlik's frightened look. I pull the trigger with a jerk, until it hurts my finger. Time to die.

And time to be born.

...It often seems to me that I managed to hear the shot. But that's obviously not true.

11

I barely open my eyelids, and the bright light cuts my eyes, instantly responding with an attack of nausea. I try to swallow. It doesn't work... Like trying to swallow a lump of paper. I want to scream, but it comes out as a groan—low, as if someone else's, and very quiet.

"Sh-h-h..." a cool palm lands on my forehead. "Quiet... You can't get up..."

A woman's voice. I want to lift my head, but a flash of pain immediately paralyzes me. Sharp as a knife, it starts on the right above the lower back and rolls along the spine, echoing in my teeth...

"Lie down, lie down... Everything's fine. Can you hear me? Everything's fine now."

I recognize the voice. Mom. Of course, it's mom. Before my eyes is a blurry vague silhouette, and I blink for a long time until it takes shape. Finally I can make her out. She's smiling.

"Mom..." my voice is hoarse and weak. Like dry sand rustling.

"Everything's fine, son. Everything's fine. We found you. Everything's fine now."

She's not crying, but her eyes, inflamed from tears and sleeplessness, haven't dried yet. She strokes my forehead, and from this touch it's good and easy. I'm three years old. I want to say how much I love her, but I don't have the strength to make a sound. The reality around me crumbles, moving away and mixing.

"Dream," I tell myself at the last moment.

Flinching, I wake up and straighten up. It's hard to understand where I am. At a desk. This is my desk, yes... Only I don't seem to recognize it with some part of my consciousness... Metal, small, with two projection monitors... Where do I have one like this? At the biostation?

The answer is definitely "yes"... Only for some reason it seemed like my desk should be plastic, light beige...

On the desk—a pistol, and also—not mine. Lord, that's an ethylene blaster! They stopped making those fifty years ago... I want to take it, but instead my hand reaches for the monitors and turns them off. It's as if it's gained its own will, and I've become a spectator in the front row. "Only God"—written in ornate Gothic script on the forearm, a bit below the army-rolled sleeve. "Judge me," I continue mentally and want to look at my left arm, but I can't. My body doesn't belong to me.

A dream... A dream within a dream... And I'm somehow—Nathan Gog.

"Hey!!! Is anyone there?!" comes from afar, and I shudder.

I know this voice well, but Gog, in whose head I've settled in this strange dream, knows it just wonderfully. This voice is dear to him.

"Irma?"

Gog stands up, alert like a service dog, and grabs the pistol from the desk.

"Irma, where are you?!"

The familiar corridor leads me to the common hall of research complex "Object Two-Zero." But Gog goes the other way—where the narrow stairs like a ship's ladder are—and descends to the laboratory on the basement level.

"Irma!"

The voice was very close, but she's nowhere to be seen. Anyone would notice this contradiction, but Gog thinks about how unwise it would be to raise the alarm over such a thing. Unwise and not worthy of an officer. First he needs to figure everything out.

"Irma!" he quickly descends the narrow stairwell.

"Nathan!"

The corridor below—empty. Around the corner are glass doors to the laboratory. I recognize this place too. But now—no iron shutters, and on the other side of the glass—no roots, no moss. A perfectly clean room: metal and smooth white plastic. Gog peers through

the glass, his eyes searching for the slightest movement. But he sees only tables and lamps. That's where my little Elza stood, and the giant spider was approaching her... And I, blinded, ran forward, understanding nothing. But Gog is completely different.

"Ir-r-rma!" Nathan's low, strong voice vibrates in his chest, and I'm pleased to be this powerful person who, it seems, can't be caught off guard by anything.

In how he knocked the key card on the lock, you could feel irritation. Jerking the doors open with a pull, Gog enters the laboratory. He grips the blaster tightly. Anyone who dared to attack him now, Nathan would burn on the spot. A minute later, not stopping calling for Irma, he turns to the quarantine compartment. Nobody.

"Nathan!" the voice sounds somewhere ahead. "Somebody! Help!!!"

I feel the desire arise in me to rush forward at full speed, but Gog is alert. He slowly walks to the doors of the quarantine compartment, holding his weapon at the ready. But suddenly, forgetting everything, he freezes. I feel everything he feels now, and I realize with surprise that deep in Nathan's heart, fear has stirred. No, he didn't suffer from anything like arachnophobia or unconscious existential fear of some old woman from his memories. Childhood nightmares had long faded against what he'd seen in several wars. The only thing he truly feared was napalm. And now Nathan's sensitive nose caught a barely noticeable, ticklish aroma of army napalm.

"Imagined it," he decides after a few seconds.

Approaching the heavy gray quarantine doors, Gog looks through the small window of bulletproof glass. And recoils in surprise, finding himself face-to-face with someone.

"Nathan!"

It's Irma. Of course, it's Irma... But for heaven's sake, what's she doing inside?!

"Nathan, help me!!!"

I would have already rushed to open the doors, because a person locked in quarantine—that's already an emergency situation. It's possible to slam the heavy doors shut from inside, but to open them—no. But Gog doesn't rush. "Something's wrong," he thinks and looks through the window again. Irma has pressed herself from the other side and is waiting. Gog sees only her face and neck.

"Irma?" he says quietly, and she seems to stop breathing. "Step back so I can see you."

I, probably in her place, would be surprised by such a request. Anyone would be surprised. After all, the simplest way to see Irma—is to open the doors. But, strange as it is, she obediently steps back a few paces. Because there's something that even cautious Nathan doesn't understand yet.

Irma—is not human.

"Nathan..." Irma repeats pitifully, huddling fearfully. "Help me..."

She's stark naked. Not in the pajamas she slept in, not in the simple army underwear she usually wore, not in that lace negligee she greeted him in the cubicle when they agreed to spend the evening together. The Irma locked in quarantine was completely without clothes, and this was surprising. Just as surprising as the fact that Gog heard her voice in his office on the floor above. Like the smell of army napalm, which now disappears, now suddenly becomes so intense it interferes with Nathan's thinking.

"Irma..."

He's hesitating. Are there grounds to immediately raise the alarm? Or perhaps he should first sort things out with his girlfriend who's naked and climbed into quarantine?

"What are you doing there?!"

"Help me!" says Irma and stretches her arms toward him.

"Don't even think about it!" I shout to myself, as if he can hear. Gog indeed raised the key card, but didn't bring it to the lock.

"Why are you naked?"

She doesn't answer. Only sniffles and seems about to cry.

The smell of napalm has become more distinct again, and now it seems to Gog that it's coming through the doors. Nathan leans in surprise and sniffs, forgetting that the doors—are hermetically sealed. Sweat has appeared on his forehead. He nervously turns his head, trying to determine the source of the smell. The smell that's associated with screams and the stench of burnt meat. With what he fears more than death. More than any other death.

"What's that smell?" Irma asks, pouring more oil on the fire.

At this moment I understand completely clearly that it smells of napalm from the purple flower locked in quarantine. And that this smell the mycelium prepared personally for Nathan—just as it prepared the strawberry aroma for Irma. The smell doesn't penetrate through the hermetic quarantine doors, it enters the corridor through the ventilation shaft—that's why Nathan doesn't understand where the source is!—and insistently tickles his nostrils, demanding that Gog immediately pull Irma out of there. Pull her out and get the hell away before it ignites! Before everything here, dammit, ignites!

It seems to me that if he'd thought about it, he would have remembered that there's no liquid napalm in the mission. There's powder fuel, which smells completely different. But the creepy smell, from which frost runs along the skin, has already encroached on most of his thoughts. And when Irma suddenly points her finger at the ceiling, he obediently shifts his gaze—his brain is no longer capable of analysis.

Directly above him the metal nozzle of the fire suppression system protrudes from the ceiling.

"Oh hell!!!" Gog shouts, resolutely slapping the card on the lock and hanging with all his mass on the heavy doors. "Out of here!!! Run!!!"

I feel how Nathan's fear breaks through the dam of critical thinking and floods the furthest corners of his mind, and he shouts only one word: "NAPALM." Grabbing Irma by the elbow, he breaks from his spot. There's no logic in his actions anymore. No answers to the questions "why" and "how." There are only nightmarish, unbearably frightening memories from twenty years ago, when young Gog found himself in a building where terrorists had pumped napalm into the fire suppression system.

Irma barely keeps up with him, but he wouldn't stop even if he had to drag her. At this moment Gog's brain is preoccupied only with not stumbling himself. Finding himself on the other side of the glass doors to the laboratory, Nathan turns and with a clear movement tears the emergency lockdown handle. With a rumble an armored shutter falls, reliably blocking the entrance. Gog doesn't see how Irma stands behind him, raising her refined index finger as if it's a pistol barrel, and aiming it precisely at Nathan's ear. A thin chitinous spike that extended from under her nail instantly pierces the eardrum and enters deep into the brain. Nathan manages to convulsively inhale, then falls, not understanding he's dead.

And I scream in his place with a terrible death scream and wake up.

Familiar smells. Familiar morning semi-darkness. Cries of vendors from the fish market and the straining screams of gulls. Home. Elza is sleeping nearby. I kiss her, happy that it's all over. A timid, still very tiny worm of doubt stirred in my soul, but I'm too happy to attach importance to it.

Irma enters. She's wearing a thin home robe. She brings two cups of coffee on a tray and sits down nearby. Something's wrong.

"Good morning," she says and kisses me on the nose.

"Good..."

Something's imperceptibly wrong, but it's very hard to think about it.

"You were screaming in your sleep," she says.

"Nightmares. Very strange..."

"You'll forget them in five minutes."

"Irma..." I say, and her name sounds somehow strange. Inappropriate. As if she's not Irma, and we both know it.

"What?" she asks.

"Something's wrong," I say.

"Just drink your coffee, lieutenant."

"You're calling me 'lieutenant'... Why?"

She looks at me, smiling as if I'd asked a complete stupidity.

"Mother of God... This is a dream! You can't be here! Neither you nor me!"

"So what, lieutenant?" she shrugs. "What you saw before—was also a dream, but at the same time—the truth. So what's the difference?"

"Where am I?"

"Here, with me. With me and with your daughter."

"No... Oh God, no!"

I hurl the tray and try to wake up—the way you do it in a very realistic dream when you suddenly realize the surrounding world can't be real: I close my eyes and try to open them again—but this time for real. And I open them in the same dream.

"You won't have time to wake up," Irma says calmly. "You won't have time in your body. Because soon, the mycelium will create a new one for you.

new one."

It seems to me I put all my strength into trying to open my eyes... But I opened them in the same dream.

Irma looks at me with interest.

"How did you figure it out?"

"What?"

"That we kidnapped your daughter," Irma clarifies.

I see it... I see Vera running with the determination of a marathoner, clutching Elza to herself, who's struggling and screaming in horror... I see this as clearly as I saw Nathan's death. Because at this moment I am Vera. And in my head there's only direction and nothing more—terrifying ringing darkness.

"You're the one who freed Vera at my home, right? And you're the one who put the electronic key in my pocket when you sent her there."

Irma smiles:

"Your paternal instinct could ruin everything. You had to die."

"Can't talk to her!" a voice shouts in my head. "Need to immediately... Urgently need to..."

The thought of what exactly is needed strangely slips away. I try to catch it, but the same answer keeps popping up—need to go to work. No! Not to work... But where? To an interview... It seems I have an interview today...

"Bgulim!" the water cooler says clearly in the corner, swallowing another portion of bubbles. The security chief, whose sweaty cheeks unpleasantly quivered with each movement, fills a cup and turns to me.

"And how's the sensitivity in your right hand? No numbness in the fingers or anything like that?"

I shudder. The thin manager across from me nods, like, well, kid, tell the fat guy everything's fine—and you're hired! I thoughtfully rub my hand. Sensitivity has recovered one hundred percent, so... I think it's just neuritis, and I shouldn't hide anything... But something's wrong with the question itself... Something's wrong, and it's very important.

"Bgul-gulim-gim!" says the cooler, because the fat guy is again sticking his cup under the tap.

"Did I say something about a hand?"

"What?" the fat guy looks at me in surprise.

"Why did you ask about the hand?"

He blinks helplessly. It feels like I've asked him the most difficult question of his life.

"Why..." he looks at the manager as if expecting a prompt, but he just confusedly rubs his pimply forehead and is silent. "Because maramu..."

I jump up, and the chair falls loudly to the floor. A dream! Damn dream, and I'm still inside my head!!! I scream, clutching my temples, and try to wake up. It seems even my back hurts from the strain. Somewhere in the distance I hear my own low chest scream—a prolonged, as if death, "i-i-i-i-i."

And I wake up. Reality crashes down on me with smells and sensations, so clear and obvious that there's no more doubt. Woke up.

12

Darkness. I have something on my face. No, I'm lying face-down on something... I want to remove it, but I can't move my hands. Like I'm stuck in a narrow tube with my arms pressed to my body. Horror grips me instantly, like dry needles flare up in a fire. I try to scream, but this thing on my face is so tight it's hard to breathe. I writhe frantically with my whole body, like a fish on a hook. Finally I push a hoarse scream from my chest, and it, strange as it seems, gives me strength. I can scream, therefore I can breathe... Gradually comes a sense of space: I'm hanging head down. My arms are pressed to my torso by something—as if I've been rolled up in a roll.

I scream again, this time loudly, for real. Silence. Silence and darkness. Twisting around, I try to pull my hands to my chest. The futility of the effort breeds a new panic attack. It nauseatingly tickles from inside, forcing me to flinch senselessly. And then I realize that a bit more—and I'll cry, and this helps me control myself. Definitely shouldn't cry, boy... You're alive, which means you weren't wrong and can help your daughter. Think about her!

I took several breaths and relaxed. Immediately there seemed to be more space than I thought. Barely rolling onto my left side, I was able to

pull my right hand to my chest. Relief—primarily psychological. Then I did the same trick with my left and froze in a boxer's pose. I tensed, trying to tear the three-layered fabric. Didn't work. Web on tear—like steel, remember? "I remember," I answer myself. Really can't tear with shoulders. Then I try to make a hole with my fingers: that's better. In half a minute before my nose—a hole. I smell the familiar strawberry aroma. Dim artificial lighting breaks through from outside. No, I can't make anything out, but now at least I'm convinced: yes, I'm in a cocoon, and yes, on the ceiling. Fortunately, not very high. I struggled for another minute and finally stuck both hands out and pulled hard on the edges of the hole. Something yanked me by the hair, as if a thousand tiny darts were attached to my head—the pain was sharp as a flash—and I fell to the floor.

"You're not a mushroom anymore, buddy," I told myself. "Hey, be more careful with this body"...

The cocoon above me—fluffy and snow-white. Like white "catkins" on a willow. Completely unlike those gray vessels for chimeras.

My God, I hatched from a cocoon...

A phrase that Irma said in my strange dream arose in my head: "You won't have time to wake up in your body. The mycelium will create a new one for you." I examine myself. I'm wearing my old uniform. The right sleeve is torn and completely black with blood. A bit above the elbow are two scars, as if the skin was pierced with rods—traces of the giant spider's chelicerae. So it got me then... Of course it got me... Maybe the cocoon was woven from its web... Doesn't matter. I move my fingers and understand that the hand is fine, but the damned numbness in the hand—has returned.

The dance of the underdog, the final steps... And I'm almost glad: I—this is definitely me.

"Almost"—because I don't have long left. Not long at all.

"You chose this yourself, boy," I tell myself, testing the wrist that resembles a living prosthetic. "Now the main thing—Elza."

I look around. Laboratory of object "Two-Zero." I'm sitting on moss-covered roots. No, not moss, it's mold... Giant hairy mold... Everything on this planet—is damned mold... Pale emergency lights are visible between the roots hanging from the ceiling, like huge fireflies. The silence is almost absolute. Nobody.