КНИГИ КИРИЛЛА ПОТЁМКИНА

17. THE LAST SUNSET

(Location: Moscow Region. Special Facility «Zarya». Sometime later.)

The huge excavation pit, biting into the Moscow region forest in just a few days, resembled a gaping, torn wound on the defenseless, ripped-open body of the earth.

Hundreds of powerful spotlights flooded the construction site with a deathly-pale, surgical light. The roar of concrete mixers, the guttural grinding of heavy cranes, the hoarse shouts of foremen — all this merged into a single cacophony of grandiose madness. General Voronov stood frozen on a high platform, leaning his healthy hand on the icy metal railing until his knuckles turned white. A sharp wind fiercely whipped the skirts of his heavy greatcoat, trying to push the man down into the abyss of the massive construction site, swarming with machinery and people.

He felt like a titan. The Architect of a new world order.

Down there, in the very center of the torn-up earth, the giant pit, workers were already assembling the foundation for the Needle — the main emitter of «Aegis». The machinery functioned in defiance of all laws of physics and logic. The concrete set in a matter of minutes, acquiring the strength of rock. Steel beams seemed to find the necessary grooves themselves, obeying an invisible magnet. The blueprints introduced by the «Sowers» into the control system contained not only schematics but also hidden algorithms optimizing, it seemed, the very structure of matter itself.

— Beautiful, isn’t it, Dad?

Voronov did not flinch. His organism, his brain had already adapted to the anomaly. His daughter’s voice became more real, domestic, familial, and dear with every passing hour, healing the old wounds of his tormented soul. The general no longer remembered the damp coffin buried somewhere out there and the grave mound that seemed to belong not to his Katenka, but to someone completely alien, already almost forgotten in the distant past — those memories now seemed foreign, faded frames from a forgotten movie. And how could he believe in death when his Katya, his Kitten, is standing right here? Alive. Seemingly tangible. With him forever. Father and daughter, how epic — they are the saviors of a new world. And General Voronov didn’t even just believe that this new world was being born right before his eyes, turning into a monumental historical fact — he knew it.

Katya stood frozen nearby, resting her sharp little elbows on the railing. Her light summer dress looked defiantly out of place in this damp, piercingly cold haze. The girl seemed to have brought with her an island of summer warmth, fanned by the smell of freshly cut grass and the July sun. Voronov involuntarily inhaled the air through his nose, but the aroma of summer instantly vanished, leaving only the smell of fuel oil and wet, upturned earth in the dumps.

The wind passed right through her thin figure without stirring a single golden curl. Without disturbing the integrity of her miraculous, bright image, seemingly filled to the brim with life.

— «We will save them all, Kitten,» — Voronov said hoarsely, examining the abyss of the pit with wind-tearing eyes. — «Look. This is only the beginning. Soon, very soon, such towers will encircle the world with a steel ring. The Fog will choke and retreat.»

— Do you believe them? — Katya asked without turning around.

— «Who?» — the general didn’t understand.

— People.

Voronov frowned, feeling a dull irritation stirring inside: — «I… I am doing all this for them. Daughter. For the sake of the future of my Great Country.»

— The country is just lines on a rotted map of your human prejudices, Dad. And people… people are simply afraid. They are always afraid.

Katya turned her face to him. For a moment, purple discharges flared in her eyes, exactly like the distant lightning in the Fog Zone. — I feel a growing disturbance in the Net. «Aegis» is not just a barrier. It is a beacon. And it shines too brightly for those used to living and hiding in the dark.

— «What are you talking about?»

— Wild forces are brewing in the Fog… Rebels. The one who calls himself the King. +Azvel.

Voronov tensed. This name emerged in his consciousness exactly like a drowned man surfacing from murky depths, like someone else’s memory: — «Who is this +Azvel?»

— An error. A system glitch. A traitor craving power for himself, rather than order for us all. He is trembling with fear over the launch of «Aegis». He will do anything to stop us. But right now… — Katya directed her gaze toward the black wall of the forest. — Right now, the danger is much closer. And it is not him.

Voronov followed her vector.

The security perimeter.

Usually, every fifty meters, fighters of his personal guard — elite GRU Spetsnaz — stood watch there. He had personally selected each of them, remembered their biographies, the names of their wives and children. But now the posts, covered by temporary windbreaks, were suspiciously empty. Only far away at the checkpoint did silent shadows in black gear without a single insignia flicker.

— «Gromov?» — Voronov called quietly into the radio, feeling a bad premonition squeeze his throat. — «‘Alpha’ on the line. Report situation.»

In response, there was only the dead hiss of static interference.

— «Gromov, answer!»

Silence. The ringing vacuum of the inexplicability of what was happening.

— He won’t answer, Dad, — Katya’s voice suddenly lost its childish intonations, becoming cold and metallic. — He has already made his choice.

— «What choice?! Gromov and I went through hell, twenty years back to back…»

— He chose the System, Dad. And you — chose me.

— «What the hell is going on here?!» — Voronov felt an icy wave flood his stomach. This wasn’t the fear of an enemy in open combat. It was the sticky, nauseating terror of the unknown of conscious betrayal.

— They have come to take your Gift. And your life. They want to take me away.

— «Who-o?!»

— Tho-ose whom you are trying so fiercely to protect. The President. The Security Council. Your ‘bosom friend’, Gromov. They have decreed that you are a no longer needed, dangerous hindrance to them. And you must be eliminated.

Voronov shook his head furiously: — «No. Nonsense! I am the Defense Minister! I am building the planet’s shield! I am protecting them!»

At that second, the powerful spotlights on the construction site blinked and all went out at once. The huge pit instantly plunged into darkness. Only the faint red emergency lighting remained, instantly turning the construction site into a branch of hell.

In the ensuing silence, General Andrey Voronov fancied he heard — on the very edge of perception — the dry click of a sniper rifle bolt. A sound a professional would never mistake for anything else.

— Get do-o-own! — it wasn’t Voronov who yelled. It was his incorporeal daughter giving the order.

And in that same instant, an invisible force, like the blow of an air blast, literally swept the general off his feet, smashing him into the floor of the metal platform. Where his head had been a second ago, a heavy 12.7 mm bullet bit into the steel support with a deafening ring. A fountain of sparks burned his face.

Voronov lay on the icy metal, greedily gasping for construction dust. The world had finally collapsed.

Russia no longer existed. The President no longer existed. His friend Gromov no longer existed. Only he himself remained, the bloody darkness around him, and his daughter’s voice sounding right in his brain.

— Get up, Dad. The time for heroes is over. The time for war has come. The time for revenge!

Voronov slowly raised his head. His face was distorted by a terrifying grimace of fury, pain, and final, irreversible resolve.

— «Lead me,» — he wheezed, feeling something alien awakening inside him. Burning out human feelings from within, but granting in return a cold, razor-sharp, categorically punishing logic of his own survival.

Survival at any cost.