The Groznyj Grad Living Novel

"Believe in them," Rakitin murmured, half to himself. "Right."

He often forgot that there were people who saw acknowledging spirits as more than simple politeness.

Nika set the evidence down on a low steel table, but made no move to leave. Ippolit was surprised. It was rare that someone was willing to stay with him while he worked, though he didn't know why. He'd only done the old "your name up in lights" joke once.

"This shouldn't take long," Ippolit said, getting to work.

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"Didn't the Major say something about finding you a better lab space?"

Nika glanced around. Yeah, circa 1955.

"This equipment has to be from fifteen years ago." He picked up a very clinical but vaguely art-deco clamp light that lay on the desk. "Khui. This is probably 1940s vintage."

He wondered where the Majors were. They were supposed to get back to them, weren't they?

"...I hope they didn't kill each other," he added.

There had seemed to be a little Animosity in Majortown, if Nika wasn't mistaken- and he rarely was, at least in terms of human nature.

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Ippolit shrugged. "You work with what you have."

At least, he always had.

His brow dipped pensively at the mention of the Majors.

"There's definitely something odd between them, and they're not making much effort to hide it." He smiled wryly. "Even I can tell."

Ippolit wasn't in the habit of making assumptions about what influenced other people's actions. There was no way of gathering empiracal evidence, and no way of knowing for certain whether or not you were wrong. No way of knowing how one's personal feelings might color observations.

That pretty Major. Dynamic, self-assured. How could anyone ever understand someone like that?

"In any case," Ippolit said, shaking himself out of wistful reverie, "it's nothing so simple as violence."

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Nika snorted.

"I ask for administrative support, and I get a couple of prancing uniformed blonds in a catfight."

He inclined his eyes toward Rakitin, who was weighing each of the fingers carefully, using minute motions to calibrate the scales, as if they were priceless caviar.

"What did you get?" he asked, idly, half-joking, toying with a badly rolled cigarette someone had left unsmoked on the workbench.

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"Careful what you wish for, and all that," said Ippolit.

He picked up the sad, cat-gnawed finger in his bandaged hand.

"I'm afraid to find out. Might get a hunchback with a lisp and stitches all over him for an assistant."

He adjusted a gauge with thoughtful precision.

"Actually, I've always kind of wanted one of those."

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"One thing is concerning me," said Nika, eventually, pulling out his flask and taking a small nip. "Would you like to know what it is?"

Rakitin's expression, like it always did, said "Why not"?

This was as Nika had expected, so he plunged in.

"The thing is," he said. "It troubles me...that we have...too many fingers."

He paused, sighing.

"Is that wrong?"

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"No...." Ippolit said, staring down at the results. The syllable extended for a deal longer than it had a right to. "That is-- as I would expect."

He should have noticed before.

A jingling, lonely understatement tripped back and forth in his head.

This is bad.

"I'm going to run these tests again to be sure," Rakitin said, his hands moving with practiced swiftness. As if they didn't belong to him after all. "You should contact the Majors and tell them to organize a search. But..."

He kept his eyes down, steady on his work. He felt a breath of cold settle on the nape of his neck.

"I have the feeling that, whoever these belong to, he's already long past wanting them back."

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"I don't want to deal with those two," muttered Nika.

But of course he would have to. It was either that or go directly to Volgin, and while the Colonel had seemed cooperative and pleasant enough, there was a streak of paranoia in the man that Liadov was absolutely not going to activate.

He'd heard too many stories.

"I'll flag down a soldier," he said wearily. "See if he can find one, or both of them."

He looked down at the fingers in question.

"He might not be dead," he said, skeptically. "One swallow doesn't make a whole summer, as they say..."

Rakitin nodded, and he shrugged and they both wholly didn't believe a word of it.

"False analogy," he sighed. "To compare fingers and swallows. Let it be said I tried, however fallaciously, to make this not the fiasco it seems destined to become."

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Rakitin ran the tests quickly, without the encumberance of much hope.

He was not disappointed.

"No mistake," he said dully. "They're not Molokov's."

Swallows or sparrows. He had no doubt this one had fallen. Had no one seen it?

He let out a breath he hadn't been holding.

"Why can gut feelings never be about good things?"

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Kassian lingered near the outbuilding.

He didn't have a nest here, which he found discomforting. Instinctively, he always sought high ground. Better to see his target, harder for his target to see him. He'd made a career of hiding on rooftops, along ledges, and in trees.

Imanov had nixed the idea of heading inside to keep watch on the investigators. The building was small and isolated, and given they could actually hear Liadov and Rakitin's voices echoing from inside and they weren't screaming in agony, it was a safe bet Flame Patrol wasn't in there with them.

Imanov had preferred to maintain cover, rather than have to give explanations. Kassian doubted they could keep it up forever, but he wasn't going to fight Imanov over a point that could become moot at any moment.

He watched the door from his position just around a corner, crouched low behind an old crate. The position was the next best thing he had to a nest overhead, and it actually gave him good line-of-sight to the nearby buildings, and the outbuilding door itself. Imanov had taken up a position on the other side, to cover the rear approach.

It was good enough for now. They'd make their re-adjustments when Liadov and Rakitin came out.

Kassian shifted slightly, to get into a more comfortable position, then settled down to wait. His mind entered the watchful, restful state of maximum awareness of his surroundings and willful ignorance of the passage of time.

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"Because good feelings always center in the groin," he deadpanned to Rakitin, as he unhooked his boots and quit the lab stool he was perching idly on.

"I'm going to step outside and see if I can find an Ocelot," he said, but his instinct told him that the Majors had made themselves scarce for the evening.

Bored with the whole ordeal already, no doubt, he thought cynically. Fucking mindless mercenaries.

He sighed and went to push open the heavy metal door to the yard, stepping outside into the bright winter night.

Shadows struck stark geometric hatches along the sides of the corrugated walls. All around the mountains loomed jaggedly, but the sky was soft as velvet and muted blue like a Ver Meer.

Liadov glanced around.

The yard seemed deserted, no soldiers, no murderers, no mammals. No wait. There was a mammal.

A bat flickered erratically under the high flooding sodium light.

Liadov smirked, watching it, vaguely annoyed at the paucity of major action he was getting.

The bat dipped, and it was then that he noticed the shadow that didn't belong.

It was a long, cylindrical shape, protruding from a triangular corner, the shadow cast by a metal crate to his right.

He turned quickly, and moved toward the crate on soundless boots, drawing his Makarov and extending his arm.

Nika was looking down at a balaclaved Ocelot sniper, poised in a settled crouch, finger resting on the trigger of his trained rifle.

"Looking for someone?" he asked, with narrowed eyes, training the gun on the man.

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"Not you," Kassian replied, calmly. He looked up at Liadov with a solemn, steady gaze.

"I had the perfect shot three seconds ago, if I'd been here for you."

He'd thought about this possibilty, that Liadov would find out about his shadows on his own. Personally, Kassian thought the MVD investigator should have known from the beginning. Less chance of inadvertently spooking him that way, like Kassian had just done.

"We're here to protect you," Kassian told Liadov.

He paused, hands still on his rifle, then tilted his head slightly.

"Major, if you're going to stand out in the open like this, could you at least step behind me? You're blocking my line of sight."

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Nika smirked again and holstered his Makarov.

He thought he recognized that voice, though he couldn't be sure. Low and rich like black coffee, with a slight gravel of grounds.

"I'm touched," he said, archly, sweeping his gaze over the surrounding terrain. "You said 'we'. Who else is in my fashionable entourage?"

Liadov moved back as spoke, toward the door, so the sniper could cover him at a distance while they spoke. He was used to MVD snipers. They were taciturn businesslike men with hard mouths and steady muscles. The man's complaint didn't irk him. It seemed wholly germane to a Longshot.

"Is this what Volgin meant by protection? A silent counterattack team?" Liadov smiled, shaking his head. "It's nice to be loved- of course, I probably should have gotten a memo or something."

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"I agree." Kassian nodded once, shortly, but kept his gaze ahead, scanning the surrounding area. Nothing had changed since he'd laid eyes on it last. Good.

He found the fact that Liadov had spotted him so quickly to be comforting. It meant that Liadov had a mind for self-preservation and situational awareness.

Generally, it was easier to protect someone who knew how to protect themselves. But it was a good thing Liadov hadn't turned out to be the twitchy sort, the kind of man who shot at shadows.

"Sorry, Major. Just following orders."

Regardless, Kassian could have done a better job at hiding. Had he really wanted to.

"Lieutenant Imanov is nearby," he explained, eyes still on their surroundings. He did not so much as glance at Liadov when he spoke, keeping his attention focused on where it should be, which was everywhere else.

Kassian had rarely done protection duty during his tour in Spetsnaz. Most of his assignments were offensive in nature, for no particular reason he could discern save for the fact he'd been through the war.

It took a certain kind of man to shoot someone in cold blood. A man willing to protect others was, perhaps, more common.

"Were you going somewhere?" he asked Liadov, after another few moments.

Now that was something he and Imanov hadn't discussed: what would happen if their pair of investigators decided to split up.

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Liadov frowned.

"Not if I can help it. I don't want to leave the Lieutenant alone in the lab. But we've run into a situation requiring greater notification. We'll require a search of the premises and surrounding areas, ASAP."

He paused, unsure how much to disclose without knowing who he was addressing.

"Is there only one sniper in OMON Ocelot?" he said, trying to gauge the face behind the balaclava. The eyes seemed to speak the identity he sought, but Nika knew better than to go with assumptions on the occasions when facts could be easily verified.

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