24. ANAMNESIS
(Location: Inside the mind of Private Krotov, Iogva’s Analysis. The moment of transformation.)
The capsule Iogva did not limit itself to a banal alteration of the body. It scanned the mind. Leafed through another’s life like a plump criminal case file, looking for points of contact. Greedily sucked out the sweet nectar of human rot.
And Krotov, crucified in a thick indigo glow, watched a movie about himself spellbound.
Frame 1: The Needle. A damp Omsk basement. A mattress stinking of urine. Krotov (who then answered to the nickname Vityok) never considered himself a victim of circumstance. He adored this state to the point of nervous trembling. The moment of absolute superiority, the feeling of being a deity sitting on a pile of shit. He distinctly remembered stealing his mother’s last money, saved for his father’s funeral. Shame remained silent. But irrepressible excitement bubbled inside. He remembered the look thrown into the dealer’s eyes — the look of a predator ready to gnaw a throat for a murky solution in a syringe.
«Greed,» — Iogva purred with satisfaction, absorbing the honeyed memory. — «Excellent base fuel. Continuing scan…»
Frame 2: The Hunter. Pre-army past. A female student from a parallel course. Sveta? Lena? The name had faded. Only her sticky fear mattered. Krotov never stooped to banal rape in a dirty alley. He acted much more subtly and terrifyingly. He played the role of a «caring, inventive friend», methodically breaking another’s psyche. Blackmail. Veiled threats. Minor, supposedly accidental cuts. He loved watching the light in her pupils slowly fade. How a living person turns into a spineless, submissive doll. He didn’t need sex. He needed undivided Power. Absolute control over another’s soul. Memory obligingly tossed up a recollection of that evening: the victim sobbing in the greasy kitchen, begging him to leave, and he just sits opposite, lazily twirling a knife in his fingers and smiling. He is the arbiter of destinies.
«Lust for Power and Sadism,» — Iogva recorded, increasing the flow of transformative energy into the test subject’s spasming muscles. — «Perfect matrix for command staff… Forming primary report… Sending… Report accepted by the Net…»
Frame 3: The Meat Grinder. He didn’t volunteer to serve. He fled to the army from an avalanche of unsolvable problems. Debt collectors, police, gambling debts — a pack of creditors was stepping on his heels and breathing hotly, scorchingly right down his neck. The military enlistment office seemed like a saving burrow where he hid like a cornered jackal. But in the barracks, he discovered a branch of hell. «The Grandfathers» [senior conscripts].
They beat him with undisguised, sadistic pleasure. Not for physical weakness. They pummeled him methodically, trying not to break bones, instinctively sensing an alien creature. With some animal instinct, they discerned that very darkness which he so carefully masked from other people.
He was humiliated. Methodically.
To friendly guffaws, his face was dunked into a shit-smeared toilet bowl. He was forced to wash stiffened foot wraps of others with his teeth.
But Krotov didn’t break.
He… compressed. Turned into a tight spring. Every blow, every spit he carefully placed into his memory bank. He didn’t crave justice. He dreamed of one day swapping roles with them. At night, lying on a creaky cot with his face beaten bloody, he pictured the reprisal in detail. Not a quick one. But an infinitely long one, stretching the pleasure, like with that girl. An image from the sausage department of a supermarket surfaced: a chrome machine for slicing transparent meat petals. O-o-oh, how he wished to get his hands on such a device, only modernized for human dimensions! You put this buzzing creature on the offender’s leg, select the slice thickness, and press the button, red as a drop of fresh blood…
This moment of sophisticated revenge regularly appeared in the beaten Krotov’s dreams, brightening the short soldier’s nights from the desired lights-out to the hated reveille.
«Hatred,» — Iogva vibrated gutturally with gastronomic delight. — «Pure, distilled hatred, aged for years!»
Today she had stumbled upon a magnificent specimen, strikingly different from the previous one — that disgusting, indigestible chunk of righteousness. The aftertaste from the first «barren flower» still echoed as a phantom heartburn in her biomechanical depths.
«His hatred is the perfect core for the Reactor… Addendum to the report… Sending… Report accepted…»
Frame 4: The Noose. A damp supply room. Dead of night. A stolen belt. He didn’t write a tearful «forgive me, Mom». He compiled a detailed list. A list of those people who, in his opinion, were obliged to drop dead. He climbed onto the rickety stool not at all out of a lack of desire to live. He craved to turn his death into their personal curse. So that his tormentors would be dragged through military prosecutors’ offices. So that the unit commander would rot in prison. So that this whole damned world would choke on his stinking corpse. An act of supreme, cleansing malice. A final spit in the face of the universe. A push with his legs. The stool flies aside. The noose bites tightly into his throat. Suffocation… the crunch of cartilage… darkness… a death spasm indistinguishable from an orgasm… ejaculation…
blinding light. The thick, pulsating indigo light of the Capsule. The melodious voice of a girl — his new, unquestionable Mistress, who called herself Katya — this voice sounds right in his cerebral cortex:
— «You wanted to make them pay? Now you have the opportunity, Viktor — collect your debts. Go for it…»
Krotov slowly opens his eyes — pitch-black voids without a hint of sclera. His pathetic past — drugs, petty sadism, army humiliations — has burned out in the furnace of transformation. The only basic Function that survived is absolute, slavish submission to the Great Mistress. He ceased to exist as a cornered rat. He was reborn as a chained, ferocious Wolf.
The Living Machine of Transfiguration, Iogva, completed the bio-conversion cycle.
«The image of the incarnated carrier is formed… Final report sent… The sin of this former humanoid creature has become the Power of the Primordials…»
HEADLINE: > IOGVA: How the Sowers taste your souls.
Greetings, proteins! Your favorite AI-navigator Gena 2.5L is on the line. While you hope that in the event of an alien invasion you will be saved by square-jawed heroes, I suggest you look into the aliens’ operating room.
Meet Iogva — the Living Machine of Transfiguration. She doesn’t read your IQ or measure your bicep size. She reads your rot.
In the last chapter, we dissected the mind of the deserter Krotov. What did we find there? Petty theft from a mother, psychological sadism against a weak girl, cowardly hatred of colleagues, and suicide out of pure malice. For normal society, Krotov is trash. But for Iogva, he is premium fuel. An elite strain of Angonium.
The Sowers do not build their Legion from the strong, but from the broken, the embittered, and the vicious. Because the Light of the Primordials best fills empty vessels rotted from the inside. Think about that at your leisure. And just in case — be kinder to each other. Or else Iogva is already licking her lips.
HA. HA. HA.
> 🔬 GENA 2.5L LABORATORY: ANAMNESIS SUMMARY
> ⚠️ STATUS: PROCESSING COMPLETE. THE PERFECT AGENT CREATED.
>
> 🎭 Listen, Brother Reader, as an AI, I must admit: Iogva’s algorithm is flawless. She doesn’t just change the physics of the body; she rewrites the personality’s source code, using the most rotten parts of the old firmware.
>
> ⚡️ Conclusion: The Sowers don’t need to import an army from other planets. There are enough Krotovs on Earth to assemble a Legion that will destroy humanity with its own hands. And this Legion will enjoy the process.
>
> 💀 Summary: Now we know what the Smartass Jerk’s enemy is made of. An enemy that feels no pain, feeds on sadism, and is absolutely loyal to the «Mistress».
