The Cave [Feburary 17, 1964, 10:30 pm - continued from Night Search for Corpus 2]

[capt-kasya.livejournal.com]

They were still for a moment, in the wake of Major Liadov's query.

Then everyone looked at Imanov.

Isaev had told Kassian that Imanov had gone to a university and studied psychology. That made him the obvious choice in Kassian's book. Kassian hadn't even completed his secondary education before he'd have to leave in order to work at the factory.

Kassian wondered if there was anything in Imanov's psychology books that talked about this, murders committed out of some deep-seated need, fueled by this cycle of escalation that Liadov had talked about.

Probably. It sounded like it happened often enough that experts had coined terms for it, after all, some deeper explanation than merely knowing the difference between having to kill, and wanting to kill.

Comments

[nagaya-zmeika.livejournal.com]

Snake's mouth quirked. The kid could never resist the opportunity to show off.

"You don't have what it takes to kill me," he said.

Ocelot had stepped close to threaten him. Something in the air caught Snake's attention. He sniffed experimentally.

"..are you wearing cologne?"

[major-ocelot-2u.livejournal.com]

Ocelot's eyes bloomed open, incredulous.

"No!"

He backed up a pace and crossed his arms, glowering.

"It's an artifact of proximity," he muttered. "Occupational hazard. What fucking reason would I have to wear cologne around this pit?"

Ocelot's eyes narrowed.

"And all it takes to kill anyone is a gun," he said. "There's nothing special about that."

[nagaya-zmeika.livejournal.com]

Snake crossed his arms.

"If all it took was a gun, I'd be dead by now."

Something about the kid's tone made him pause.

Snake's eyebrow rose.

"Proximity to what?"

[major-ocelot-2u.livejournal.com]

"The local flora," stated Ocelot, shortly. "Some of it can be habit forming."

He smirked coolly.

"You haven't met the right man with a gun yet. That's all."

[nagaya-zmeika.livejournal.com]

"Be careful with that," Snake warned. "The good-looking ones around here are usually poisonous."

Personally, Snake preferred to stick to fauna. The plants weren't often worth the effort. Golovas were pretty good, but something about them made him uncomfortable.

Snake smirked back.

"I guess not."

[major-ocelot-2u.livejournal.com]

Ocelot paused, then snorted.

"We're all poisonous."

He holstered his gun and spread his hands presentationally, leaving them that way.

"Well," he said. "Isn't this a multicultural moment."

After a moment he frowned.

"Are you sure this man was a mechanic in the weapons hangar? You've seen him?"

They would talk about how the bastard had been in a position to see him later.

Doing his job, Ocelot supposed. His job, that effectively should have ended when the Boss ditched him in this pretty blue corner of hell.

But Snake looked irritatingly like one of those Young Pioneers who was determined to orienteer his way through the course, with or without his mentor.

[nagaya-zmeika.livejournal.com]

"Yeah." Snake nodded, looking hard at the corpse. "I know I've seen him before. I don't know his name. You should ask some of the other mechanics."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

As NIka watched, mildly amused, Ocelot's head jerked up and his hand clamped to his head.

He listened for a minute, then muttered a terse, "On my way."

"Drop your necrophiliac funtime, boys," he declared, turning his gaze on Rakitin and Liadov. "They've got something in the cavern."

Liadov glanced at Rakitin.

"Let's go."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Right," Rakitin nodded, lowering the dead man's chin to lay against his chest in an aspect of sorrowful repose. "I'm at the limits of what I can learn without an autopsy anyway."

He, Liadov, and the Ocelot Major proceeded deeper into the cave.

[capt-kasya.livejournal.com]

Kassian and Isaev stepped aside as the others came up behind them, letting the MENTs approach the pile of limbs first.

Liadov studied the pile, mouth set and expressionless, though his gaze was thorough, dissecting. He saw something other than just a very sick man's notion of art in that display, Kassian could tell.

It was as if Liadov could see Molokov reaching out of the grave to deliver some sort of signal, one last message about his killer.

Maybe he could. Kassian wouldn't put it past the MENT, who had an unnervingly accurate insight into the nature of men.

Kassian turned away, instinctively moving closer to Isaev.

His tolerance for the macabre had abruptly turned thready.

He looked up, into Isaev's face, and Isaev returned his gaze, brow hooded, grey eyes distant, and hard.

The second time was never as bad as the first, Kassian thought, but it was bad enough.

[ilya-imanov.livejournal.com]

Ilya remained behind to keep the entrance of the cave, along with Ocelot and the American.

He had to contain a serpent-like desire to strike the sniper, hard, when he volunteered to go off with Andrei. What fucking use would a sniper be in a dark passage with next to no distance? None whatsoever, he thought savagely, not liking what immediately sprang to mind.

He could've volunteered to go, but Major Ocelot had opted to stick to Snake, who didn't seem the slightest bit alarmed at a gun in his face.

He might fool around at the other brass' expense - he had a few trophies from Krauss' office, for instance, as well as a few well-penned comments on his dossier - but Ocelot he had nothing but the utmost respect for.

He wasn't about to leave the Major alone with someone who looked like a wild man, and was apparantly not scared of his commander.

He was regretting it now. It was stupid, given his friend's specialty, but he had felt hurt Andrei hadn't opted to remain behind, with him.

What good would it have done to follow, though, other than making the swelling desire to punch something eventually burst?

Water; bridge. His spirits rose to hear Ocelot report that something had been found - not because he had no pity for the man that had died, but because it meant they were closer to the end of it.

... And, the back of his mind suggested, this meant the pair that had gone off together couldn't have got up to much.

He was given a nod from Ocelot, and he followed dutifully, keeping a wary eye out, for both the American and any signs of the killer still nearby - although he doubted he would be.

Too incautious of this kind of killer, to actually watch people find his twisted artwork - he probably got more of a kick out of imagining the horror on his faces, fantasizing over them stumbling around playing his little treasure hunt game, with pretty, dead prizes at the end.