КНИГИ КИРИЛЛА ПОТЁМКИНА

22. NORTH

(Location: Republic of Karelia. Abandoned GRU facility «Horizon-4». Two days later.)

The journey took two endless days. They changed cars, pushed on foot through squelching swamps, avoiding federal highways and surveillance cameras. Voronov was shaking with a violent tremor — the fever was burning out the remnants of his humanity.

He felt as if his ears could still catch the wet crunch of bones under that concrete slab. The clatter of tracks, the death cries of the fighters. But now this memory did not evoke terror. It evoked… a feeling of deep, dark satiety. A feeling of satisfaction.

He was beginning to comprehend the nature of his «Allies». They were not dressing up as good angels at all. They presented themselves as demanding, hungry, ruthless gods.

«Our sins are their food,» a guess flashed through his mind. But he immediately brushed it away with disgust. And… It was replaced by a new conviction, hard as a diamond:

«Not sins. A sacrifice…»

Base «Horizon-4» met them with tomb-like dampness and desolation. Huge hangars, carved into the granite rock, once serving as shelters for submarines, now resembled the maws of dead leviathans. A cold wind blew here, whistling piercingly on the fractures of the rocks. But the base was not empty. They were waiting for him here.

About two hundred people. Two hundred outcasts.

Officers, soldiers, technicians. Those whom he had managed, obeying an intuition that had grown strangely acute lately, to transfer here even before the start of the Kremlin «purge». Those who believed in him personally, and not in orders from Moscow.

Over the last two days, the general had been repeatedly overcome by bouts of uncontrollable, black malice. If he hadn’t been cut off from the nuclear triad, he would have, without hesitation, dropped a tactical warhead right on the heads of his newly minted enemies. He vividly savored their torments and… every time mentally rejected such a fleeting revenge.

Too humane. They wouldn’t even have time to realize the onset of death. No. Andrey Voronov decided not to rush. Revenge, like an exquisite dish, should be served cold, tasted with a small spoon, thoughtfully, deliberately. He is now the master of time, for he has Katya.

— «Comrade Defense Minister!» — Colonel Petrov, the facility commander, stepped forward to meet Voronov. An old soldier with a mechanical prosthesis instead of a left hand. — «Personnel assembled. We heard the news… They are reporting on TV that you passed away. Heart attack.»

Voronov smiled crookedly. He stepped into the circle of dim light from the emergency lamps. Dirty, in a torn tunic, with a feverish gleam in his sunken eyes.

— «Voronov did indeed die, Colonel. That Voronov who served the traitors in the Kremlin rotted in the Moscow region earth.»

He slowly walked along the formation. The soldiers devoured him with eyes full of hope and animalistic fear. — «Sons! The Fog is coming. You know this. Moscow has abandoned us. They are concreting burrows for themselves. And they wrote us off as scrap.» — The formation grumbled hollowly. — «But we still have a chance. I have a technology. ‘Aegis’. This is our shield. This is our salvation. This is our future new world.»

— «Andrey Nikolaevich,» — Petrov asked quietly, almost in a whisper. — «But how will we build this here? There are no factories. No materials. Only rusty lathes and old diesel generators.»

— «We don’t need factories,» — Voronov’s voice sounded confident, like hammer blows. — «We need… Faith. And raw materials.»

— «What raw materials?»

In the general’s cranium sounded the sweet, like poisonous molasses, voice of his daughter, Katya’s voice: «Show them, Dad. Give them my minor Gift. Let them understand that suffering works miracles. Let them believe you.»

— «Bring the prisoner to me,» — Voronov ordered in a tone that brooked no objections. — «I know you caught looters in the forest.»

Colonel Petrov frowned but gave a short nod. Five minutes later, two soldiers dragged a tied man to the middle of the hangar. Ragged, stinking of sweat and fear, he screamed obscenities, trying to break free. A typical looter, a scavenger, a renegade of the coming apocalypse.

— «Sinner,» — Voronov rustled. He took out the flash drive with the «Aegis» code and walked up to an old lathe grown into the concrete floor. Plugged the drive into a diagnostic port (which hadn’t existed there a few seconds ago, but Katya promised it would appear. And the port was indeed there).

— «Watch.»

The lathe hummed low, vibrating. Voronov placed his heavy palm on the looter’s head.

— «Your pain will serve salvation,» — he pronounced solemnly.

The renegade screamed. Or rather, let out a terrifying gurgling sound.

The general in his past life had heard screams of pain more than once, but this sound seemed to erupt not from a human throat — it seemed to come from the very essence of decaying living flesh.

It was a horrific, bone-chilling howl. The scavenger’s body began to… change. It was covered in a pinkish haze, the skin blistered and began to slowly disintegrate into glowing particles. Bleeding, insatiable ulcers appearing right before their eyes devoured the human flesh alive. The life force, mixed with the terror and sins of this man, was drawn out of him like smoke into a powerful exhaust hood.

The glowing stream of biomass rushed into the lathe. The rusty metal began to melt like mercury. The geometry of the mechanism broke, rebuilding itself into something smooth, black, absolutely alien.

A minute later, the scream cut off. The looter disappeared. Melted away. He had been consumed by an unknown force down to the last atom writhing in agony. Only a handful of ash and tatters of charred clothing remained on the concrete.

And in place of the lathe towered a «beautiful», flawlessly shaped Capsule, shining with darkness.

The first «Adaptation Capsule». Voronov looked at it, unable to look away. The black, iridescent sarcophagus pulsed with a deep indigo light, as if breathing.

A vacuum silence hung in the hangar. The soldiers backed away in terror, clanking their weapons.

— «This is… black magic,» — whispered Colonel Petrov, clumsily crossing himself with his healthy hand.

— «This is technology, Colonel,» — Voronov cut off harshly. — «This is bio-conversion. Matter does not disappear anywhere. It only changes form under the influence of energy. And the most powerful energy in this universe is concentrated suffering.»

He turned abruptly to the formation:

— «Sons! We will build ‘Aegis’. We will save Russia. But the price will be high. We need fuel. We require those whose souls are black. Criminals. Murderers. Rapists. Drag them all here.» — He ran his palm over the smooth, as if glistening with satiety, side of the capsule. It responded with warmth as if from a living organism. — «We will process their sins into our armor.»

Petrov looked at his commander, but saw not a man before him. He saw a priest of a new, monstrous religion. However, outside the base’s walls, the deadly Fog was already creeping. And here, now, right before the colonel’s eyes, a new, immeasurable, monstrous in its pristine might, power was pulsating.

— «Yes, sir,» — the colonel exhaled and saluted crisply, militarily. — «We will begin gathering… material.»

Voronov smiled only with the corners of his lips.

«Well done, Dad,» — Katya purred in his consciousness. — «+Azvel felt us too. And he is afraid. I feel his fear. Now let’s find those who will go inside.»