The Groznyj Grad Living Novel

Rakitin looked up at the knock on the door.

"Come in," he called. "It's open. I've got my hands full of... I've got my hands full."

Someday, if he ever visited a nice cathedral, Ippolit would light a candle for the inventor of latex gloves.

A wisp of dread scuttled across the back of Rakitin's mind. He hoped it wasn't another corpse. The freezer was getting full already. At least most of it stacked well.

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Nika was sitting at the other end of the high lab table, idly drawing convoluted diagrams with the confirmed information they had. Locations, identities, generalities. With them you could map intersections.

He did most of his contemplative work in the lab, partly because he wanted to be close enough to hear what new developments surfaced immediately as they did- and partly just to keep Rakitin company.

Despite his self-effacing social anxiety, Liadov sensed that Rakitin actually craved company and proximity. So he lingered, late into the night while Polya measured and tested and peered into his microscope. And he did most of his day work here, as well.

He was nursing a hangover today, in the wake of Gurlukovich's death, courtesy of too much good cognac and difficult conversation.

When Krauss came in, he glanced up, rubbing his brow and frowning.

"Hello Major. What brings you to our little corner among tombs?"

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“Gentlemen.” He nodded to both of them with a warm smile. “I apologize for my interruption, but there’s been a development… I thought you should know.”

His eyes lingered over Rakitin’s gory work, and he willed himself not to think of Stefan in that way. Pieces and remains to be picked over, poke and prodded and probed. All diced and ready to be simmered into stew. He turned away, practically wilting onto the high legged chair across the table from Liadov.

“I bring you pleasant news this time. There was a witness to the second murder, the mechanic, Konstantin Yudenich.” He winced visibly, having a terrible thought: it was probably poor Konstantin’s organs that Rakitin was diddling on the other side of the room.

“I… don’t know how to say this, other than to say it… you won’t find the Zeugenaussage terribly useful, or admissible, you probably won’t even believe it, what the witness has to say, rather. Testimony, that's the word I want! I’m still not sure that I believe any of it…but I feel obligated to tell you.”

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"Oh, hello, Major," Rakitin said, glancing up.

As Krauss entered, Ippolit made an attempt to make the more gruesome aspects of his work a bit less ostentatious. There wasn't much you could do with artistically gore-smeared fingertips, but common courtesy demanded he make an effort. Especially since the funny little German was looking at him as if he were doing something disgusting and wildly inappropriate. Most people did that.

Liadov didn't. It was strange. He even chose to make this an unofficial base of operations, where most people turned a delicate shade of green and made excuses to leave. That it might be out of pity was a suspicion Ippolit did his best to ignore. To be honest, he did appreciate the company. Besides, it served a practical purpose, in that it made the both of them easy to find.

Also, it was good to have someone else around to talk to, late at night. Killer on the loose aside, there were risks associated with being alone in a quiet, secluded building during the long, boring night shift. The first night, when Ippolit had been working alone, a pair of guards had walked in, balaclavas down and laughing and probably drunk, one's arm circling the other's waist possessively.

The following conversation had been awkward.

(It ended in sheepishness, and a suggestion to try the locker room on the second floor.)

Ippolit wondered if it was standard practice for anyone wandering the fortress corridors at night to make lots of noise, like hikers in the woods did to warn off bears.

"A witness?" Rakitin said with interest. "Well, like they say, any news is good news."

His brow knitted.

"Or is it the other way around? I can never remember."

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Nika laughed, shaking his head.

"Well, you can see we're not starved for entertainment in this neck of the woods."

He tapped his pen against his lips pensively for a moment, studying Krauss. Dapper little bastard.

"Nor do we stand on ceremony- so, please, comrade allemagne, do tell us what you've learned."

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“Every good little Russian boy has heard the fairy tales about the Cobra Unit, I know.” Krauss leaned across the table with a friendly smile, as if to share a secret with Liadov. “And I can tell you’re a good Russian boy.”

Or as good as Russian could be, Krauss mused to himself.

“Your mother told you the fables of legendary war heroes when you were a lad to quiet you off to sleep when the night was dark and the shadows were long and menacing… or perhaps it was your father?” He quirked his head, studying Nika’s expression. “No matter. I only mean that you know. You both know.” He gestured to Rakitin.

Johann leaned back in his chair, taking a deep breath and collecting his thoughts.

“I should tell you this comrades: most of what they told you as a child is true, because I’ve seen it for myself. And I do tell you these things so you know exactly what to expect.”

He paused for a moment then, nodding.

“It is the one codenamed the Pain who would like to speak with you, but he’s only agreed to do it on his terms. A bit of a recluse in that way. They all are.”

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Nika raised his eyebrows at the German, belatedly, and nodded.

"Sorry if I'm a little slow to respond this morning," he said, ruefully. "I had a little too much to dream last night."

He paused, glancing at Rakitin, who obviously had heard the stories, and by the look on his face, enjoyed them thoroughly. He was fairly vibrating with excitement.

Liadov smiled obscurely and shook his head, drawing final a circle and an arrow around one of the names on his diagram, then set his pen down, and steepled his fingers expectantly, turning his attention fully to Krauss.

"My mother had no love for war. My father died at the battle of Stalingrad. She preferred nursey rhymes," he said affably. "But I love information."

He lifted his pen again, as if prepared to take notes.

"What are his terms?"

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Though meeting The Fury in person had dispelled some of the more romantic notions of heroism, the other Cobras had remained elusive, shine of myth intact.

Ippolit felt a pang of sympathy at Liadov's casual mention of his father's death. It wasn't uncommon. Hardly a coincidence. Nika tossed words over his shoulder like birdseed, and it was only after following the trail that you could discern which were small, smooth pebbles and which were laden with significance.

The mention of dreams made him flinch.

"Haven't we all," he muttered.

So he hadn't been alone there, either.

"The Pain?" Ippolit said. "He's the one with the giant hornets, isn't he?"

Dimly Polya was aware that some people might not have said that with enthusiasm.

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Krauss raised an eyebrow, stealing a glance at Rakitin and his unexpected enthusiasm. “Funny. You don’t look like a sadomasochist…” Then he shook his head, pushing the idea to the very back of his mind before it had a chance to take root and blossom into a hideous yellow and black flower. “Yes, you are correct. Hornets. He prefers the company of giant hornets over human beings.”

Johann looked back to Liadov, “so the only real condition that he expressly requested is that you will come to him, not the other way, if you want information. That is, he’ll only speak with you if you visit him in hangar 17, which has been gutted and turned into…more or less.. giant hornet nest.”

He smirked a bit then, for no reason other than the telling expression on Liadov’s face. “You have an aversion to bees? You shouldn’t… they only attack if their keeper gives the command, otherwise they’re as docile as a housefly. And you know, the Pain is much more even tempered, and dare I say it, sane, than his combustible comrade. You have nothing to worry about.”

His attention went back to Ippolit then, with morbid curiosity. “You know, in my homelands, the story was mistranslated a bit. Really, it was only the Boss’ name that got muddled along the way. In Germany, they say that the Cobra soldiers are the sons of Baba Yaga, the old witch of the forest. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m starting to think that we were right all along.”

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Rakitin blinked. "Sadomasochist...?"

Sometimes people made no sense at all.

However, it was difficult to stay bemused when they were offering you a chance to meet entomological legends.

"That's all?" Ippolit said brightly. "With the way you said 'conditions,' I thought it was going to be something strange."

With care ingrained in his hands by habit, but wasting no time, he resealed the evidence he was working on and tucked it away. Progress was slow, and it would keep.

"The Boss doesn't look much like an evil old sorceress," he said as an aside, ducking to reach the lower levels of the freezer. Quite the opposite, in fact. Where Baba Yaga was myth and spirit, substance without solid form, Rakitin's brief meeting with the legendary soldier had brought a strange impression of a firm shell holding fast around incorporeality. Like a thick rind of ice over an abyss. "If she has a hut on chicken legs, she hides it well."

He stripped off and disposed of his soiled gloves.

"We can go to the hanger right now," Ippolit said, and stopped.

Liadov was looking at him. Very much so.

Ippolit's brow creased.

"Unless...there's something more important we need to do?"

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Nika closed his notebook.

Both Krauss and Rakitin were looking at him as if they expected something from him.

"What?" he asked mildly. "Should I shriek and jump up on my chair?"

He quaffed off the last of his tea as he stood up.

"To be honest, I'm entomologically ambivalent."

He tilted his head, raising an eyebrow and leaning in.

"If I look horrified, comrades, it's because I really could have stood to get laid last night. As it was, I didn't. Far cry from Moscow," he sighed, then straightened his cap.

A smile, overly crisp.

"Shall we?"

The words were blackly sugary.

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"Oh. Good."

Ippolit smiled, obscurely relieved. Enormous stinging insects were supposed to elicit less than enthusiasm in most people. Weren't they? It was another thing he could never keep straight.

But then, as was belatedly dawning on him, Liadov wasn't most people.

Rakitin followed the other two out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

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"They're on the move, Irinarhov," Senior Lieutenant Kolyin told him over CODEC.

"I see them."

Kassian had found a good spot to watch the outbuilding, one that afforded him a near-panoramic view of all approaches. After the scare with the Flame Patrol soldier last night - or was that the night before, Kassian wondered, hazily, but couldn't immediately decide - he thought it was better that he have perspective on the whole building, just in case someone decided to stroll up and attach explosives to the back wall.

No, that was last night, he thought after a moment.

Kassian frowned. He still had a lingering headache throbbing in the back of his skull.

Hangover. Too much to drink. Too much talking, too.

That was why he didn't mind so much that Senior Lieutenant Kolyin had swapped out Imanov's shift that morning with little explanation as to why or where Imanov was. Not Kassian's business anyway, except it made him wonder about where Isaev was.

Kolyin was quiet, and unlike his rankmate Semeyonev, didn't try to talk to Kassian much. Kassian liked Kolyin better than Semeyonev, who was always making insinuating comments about Kassian and Isaev, and one time said something that made Kassian think Semeyonev was hitting on him, though he wasn't sure.

Kolyin looked like a lot of other Ocelots, young and blond and high-cheekboned, but he was shorter than most, and more compact in build. He wore his hair as short as Major Ocelot and watched Kassian with narrowed pale eyes and a faint disapproving frown, though he didn't say anything.

Kolyin was easier to deal with that way, though Kassian had the feeling that Kolyin liked him less than Semeyonev did.

That was all right. He found it easier to deal with people who didn't like him than people who did.

He eyed Liadov through his scope. The MENT had exited the lab following Krauss and Lieutenant Rakitin, then followed as the pair started walking across the Grad.

After a few moments, Kassian realized he'd have to move in order to keep track of them. Probably easier to just trail after, at this point.

"I can't tell where they're going. Let's just follow them," he said to Kolyin, who acknowledged and signaled off.

Kassian eased away from his hiding spot and slung his rifle over his shoulder, then left his nest, climbing down with spare economy of motion. He double-timed it to catch up.

The group paused as Kassian and Kolyin approached.

"Majors. Lieutenant. Security detail," he said, by way of explanation.

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"Oh, Captain!" Ippolit said cheerfully.

He hadn't seen Irinarhov anywhere near before, but that was to be expected.

Something about a presence just out of sight was...not comforting, precisely. More, familiar. Knowing that it was an essentially benevolent one was a welcome variation.

Rakitin rather liked the spare, stoic sniper. There was a paradoxical air of consistent reality around him that was good to see, this morning.

Also, it was a good opportunity to keep an eye out to see if he would phase through a bit of solid matter. He did have a shadow in the sunlight, Ippolit noted, but those were notoriously unreliable.

"We're going to see The Pain and his hornets," Ippolit said brightly. "Have you met them before?"

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The Major only nodded to the balacalva-clad Ocelot soldiers, motioning for them to hurry along.

He couldn’t contain the smirk that arose from Rakitin’s misguided enthusiasm. “Just don’t stare, for Godsake.” the German advised, “he really hates it when people stare.”

Johann still wasn’t sure just how to go about breaking the delicate news that it wasn’t the Pain who witnessed the murder, as he had subtly suggested, but rather one of his pets. Specifically, a drone by the name of Viktor who was blessed with the gift of gab, or at least the intelligence to learn Morse code.

Ach, well. Nothing to loose. Let them find out in due time.

“Comrade Liadov, I may be able to help you with that unique little problem of yours.” Krauss nodded with a coy half-smile, lingering close to the Operativnik. “Not me specifically, you see. But it is my job to see that you and your friend are comfortable while you’re here…and Volgin did say to make sure that all of your needs were taken care of. So… that leaves one question, just what did you have in mind? A pretty blonde? Everyone likes a pretty blonde.”

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"No," Kassian said, pausing. "I haven't."

He'd heard the stories about Cobra Unit, back during the war. He remembered that they'd almost seemed like serials, tales of exploits so outlandish they had to be fictional. He'd taken them that way, at least, until he realized they were propaganda.

Kolyin was looking at him. Probably wondering when he'd gotten so chummy with the MENTs.

Kassian was wondering that too, actually, though he didn't think he minded.

Briefly, he glanced at Krauss, who seemed impatient, gesturing to hurry them along. The German probably didn't appreciate the extraneous chatter with the bodyguard detail, who were probably better off neither seen nor heard in Krauss' book.

Kassian knew his place. He nodded to Rakitin. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he said, then fell back slightly with Kolyin to trail the group at the proper distance.

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Liadov paused, then smiled slowly.

Perhaps Krauss could be useful after all, as everyone seemed inclined to swear.

"I'm certainly not averse," he drawled. "So long as I don't know them, and they leave with a smile in the moring."

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Irinarhov was gone from Ippolit's side before he could ask what he was being thanked for.

He left solid tracks. Rakitin's interest was piqued. He'd never heard of one so astonishingly resilient.

The German was talking to Liadov with a smile that would have radiated genial insincerity from fifty meters. It was obviously a private conversation. Rakitin kept a discreet distance.

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Krauss nodded, knowingly. “I’ll see what can be done for you then.” He frowned then, a troubling thought skittering about in the periphery vision of his mind. “Your friend,” he whispered, leaning in closer. “He’s not a necrophile, is he? It’s good for a man to love his work, that’s healthy enough. But does he love his work?”

Just beyond the hill, hangar seventeen stood a few hundred meters away. From the outside, it seemed the same as the other buildings in the vicinity, red brick and painted steel.

“I suppose it’s not any of my concern if he is…” Johann cringed then, laughing nervously.

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Nika paused, bemused.

He glanced at Rakitin.

"Actually...that would explain a lot," he remarke ddryly.

Then he smiled.

"No, he's...as far as I can tell...wholly cenobite. Uninterested in anyone like that."

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Krauss quirked an eyebrow at the Operativnik, grinning at some cosmic joke that Liadov didn’t realize he’d made.

“Cenobite, you say.”

He glanced at Rakitin.

“An interesting word to describe your friend, considering where we’re going.”

The Major stopped just short of the side door, motioning to Ippolit, who seemed as giddy as a school boy. “Go on then Polya, see if Xipe Totec is accepting visitors today.”

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"Me?" Ippolit said. "Er, all right, then."

He hoped that Krauss' reference was ironic. He wasn't quite sure how to act when meeting someone who didn't have skin.

Rakitin stepped up to the door and knocked. The noise echoed in the vast space inside until it acquired a metal tinge like a low buzz, but no response.

Acting in accordance with the strict dictates of scientific curiosity, Ippolit opened the door and stuck his head in.

"Hello?" he called. "Is anybody there?"

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"Lieutenant," Kassian called, voice low with warning.

Instinct stirred, and he cast a sidelong glance at Krauss.

He stepped forward to join Rakitin at the door, reaching out to put a hand on the pathologist's arm, drawing him back, pulling Rakitin behind him.

Letting one of his charges step headlong into an unknown situation when the German seemed reluctant to be the one to open the door didn't seem like a good idea.

To say the least. He was entirely unsuited for close-quarters bodyguard work, but Kassian at least knew that much.

Using the doorway for cover, Kassian leaned out briefly to catch a quick look inside.

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Nika stifled a yawn and leaned back against the wall of the corridor, watching Irinarhov be the good shepherd.

That made sense.

Krauss was being the provacateur, as ever, and Rakitin was ever inhabiting the skin of the guiless ingenue, despite his considerable intellect.

That made sense too.

Late at night when he lay in bed restless, and even the sheep had refused to jump the fence, he would go over Jungian precepts in the individual, assigning likely enneagrams and labels.

Labels, to Liadov, were not absolute, and he was forever shifting them as new information came to light. But he found it gratifying to categorically divide the things he encountered, isolate them, so he could hold them up like gems and examine them from all sides, facets and flaws.

His mind had entertained some theories about Rakitin- namely that he was an inverted narcissist who had probably grown up in a domineering or neglectful home.

The possibility endeared him to Liadov, somehow. It might have been a wild guess, but the speculation seemed apt enough.

Krauss, on the other hand, was clearly a full and classic unrepentant narcissist by every criterion. Type somatic, not cerebral, amended Nika. The German's sex drive seemed off the charts and indiscriminate.

His eye fell on Irinarhov, scanning the interior of the room.

Masochistic type, but milder, he averred, silently. Self-sacrificing type. A lesser designation with a normal expression.

Or, he thought, ISFJ.

Quiet, kind, and conscientious. Can be depended on to follow through. Usually puts the needs of others above their own needs. Stable and practical, they value security and traditions. Well-developed sense of space and function. Rich inner world of observations about people. Extremely perceptive of other's feelings. Interested in serving others.

He yawned again, and pushed away from the wall, ready to follow as soon as the sniper cleared them.

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Krauss artfully ignored Kassian’s glare, pursing his lips and pretending to be interested in a weed growing up between the cracks in the concrete. No no, he had learned early on to send someone else as a barometer of the Cobra soldiers’ moods before invading whatever they deemed personal territory. Not unlike keeping feral dogs in that respect, he mused, nudging the opportunistic grass with his boot. Always smarter to send someone else to catch rabies, but they were least likely to bite a friendly hand, and Ippolit Rakitin was gushing enthusiasm like a fucking fountain.

When he heard the all-too-familiar buzzing drone of giant insects, he pulled his gloves from the pocket of his coat and slipped them on. The custom lambskin was simply luscious, crafted expertly to accommodate for his missing fingers. “Lovely weather today…” he smiled to Liadov.

“They say it may snow this evening. What do you think?”

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Something moved, just inside the open doorway. A flash of yellow in mid flight, and it was gone again. No, there. It flittered by again, banking, and hovered there in the sunlight: a hornet that was easily the size of a songbird, staring down at Kassian with black opalescent eyes, body pitched forward, wings beating at impossible speeds; a silvery blur.

Others darted back and forth, some lit on the door casing, and several hummed around the sniper in dizzying circles.

One was even so bold as to land on the front of his uniform, jittering and twitching around the black wool in some sort of communicative dance, signaling to the others what it had discerned from its encounter with the Ocelot soldier.

From just inside the hangar, their keeper watched, but said nothing. Whoever the stranger from the strange unit was, his hornets weren’t attacking, and the Pain considered them to be an excellent judge of character.

With a wave of one gloved hand, the swarm retreated just as soon as it had appeared.

“An Ocelot.” He observed, narrowing his eyes at the space where a red and black figure had stood only moments before. “What do you want?” The hornet charmer demanded of the now-empty doorway.

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The voice came from the darkness, raspy and resonant, like the voice of the hornet swarm incarnate.

Kassian had seen no one else in the hangar, but then again, he'd been distracted by the half-dozen giant hornets that had swarmed around him, invading his personal space.

He'd held very still, and kept his breathing light and even.

For some reason, in that instant, a memory had returned: daybreak at Stalingrad, the sun bleeding over the mist-cloaked Volga. He'd been lying in wait throughout the chill night to catch a glimpse of movement from the half-ruined building across the street. Then, a sudden motion, a blur by his head, and a small bird had landed on his rifle stock, and perched there for minutes.

It had been strange and wonderful at the same time, though he hadn't remembered it until this moment.

The hornets were gone before he could get a good look, but they'd seemed almost unreal, like brightly-painted figurines given unnatural life, their bodies molded and joined.

He'd seen no sign of their keeper, though that must have been him inside, Kasian thought.

Kassian leaned toward the doorway again.

"Major Krauss, Major Liadov, and Lieutenant Rakitin to see...you," he called into the darkness.

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In one smooth motion, the hornet soldier swept up his balaclava from the table and donned it before starting toward the doorway. The swarm of hornets that he had recalled parted around him like the Red Sea, and a few trailed along behind aimlessly.

“Then what brings you here?” the Pain asked, stepping into the light at last. It was a question of honest curiosity, not intended as an insult or threat, but it had probably came out that way, he realized then.

No matter what, people generally took it that way, but it didn’t really matter.

He stared down at the soldier on his doorstep, waiting for something that would pass as an answer.

A hornet lit on Kassian’s beret and jittered around the edge of the Ocelot unit insignia.

“Name and rank?” The Pain asked finally.

Everyone at Groznyj had a name, but they all seemed to be lacking emotion and objective.

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Kassian resisted the impulse to look up crosseyed at the hornet on his beret.

Instead, he looked at the soldier who stepped out of the hangar, the man who went by the code name "the Pain."

Kassian could see why. The soldier wore a balaclava which covered his face save for a narrow oval around the eyes. Even that small strip exposed skin that was swollen and scarred, or perhaps burned. Probably badly disfigured, like the Fury.

The Pain wore a bulky black jumpsuit with an unusually colored camo vest that looked better suited for a desert environment than Tselinoyarsk's jungles.

The man was strange and vaguely foreboding, Kassian had to admit, but he had seen a lot of things in his time. No reason to get worried, not without a direct threat.

"Irinarhov, Kassian. Captain," he said, politely, but perfunctorily. "I'm just the escort."

He stepped back, then, to allow Major Krauss and the MENTs to come forward.

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Ippolit let Irinarhov pull him back, gently but firmly, like lifting a kitten by the scruff of the neck and depositing it out of the way. At the sniper's signal he returned.

It took a moment to adjust his eyes to the gloom, and his ears to the low, placid buzz. Wisps of motion darted near him, as though investigating. One stopped and hovered in front of him.

"Oh!" Polya said. "Hello."

It was a hornet, easily large enough to engulf the palm of his hand. The stripes circling its abdomen were shiny black and vivid sun-yellow. The arch of its antennae and glitter of multifaceted eyes conveyed a sense of curiosity.

Ippolit's eyes widened.

Carefully without aggression, he reached a hand out to it in greeting.

"Aren't you pretty."

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“Ippolit Rakitin.” The Pain watched the stranger closely, speaking to one of the hornets as though it were normal, reaching out to pet the giant insect that would have had the bravest soldiers running for their lives. The kid looked like an Ippolit, a strange name for a strange little man, a delicate white flower that looked like it should have bloomed up from a gray tile floor and flourished under the fluorescent lights of a well-stocked laboratory.

“Major Krauss said you were…” fucking creepy was the phrase the German used, and he looked to the Major, who was shaking his head motioning for the hornet charmer to keep quiet, “intrigued by the local flora and fauna.”

And from the look of it, the local fauna were intrigued by him. And that was an excellent sign. The hornets were always such excellent judges of character.

“Her name is Anna.” The Pain offered with a hideous but genuinely kind smile, well hidden behind his balaclava, watching the hornet explore the tips of Rakitin’s fingers, antenna waving in curiosity.

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Liadov remained a pace behind, watching with detached interest, as Rakitin groped the wasp, sheer delight writ on his features.

Let Polya handle it, then, if he had a rapport with the hornet wrangler.

Nika instead watched the wasp-clad walls, that seemed to waver and shift, like a heat mirage. Almost as if they breathed.

It was an interesting experiment in pointillism.

Unfortunately, it was a bi-chromatic one, so he could hold out no hope of seeing them arrange themselves to recreate Sunday in the Park, or Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening...

...although they would probably have a better shot at that one.

If you harmlessly painted their backs, you could begin a whole new art movement-

....which would of course immediately be utilzed in state propaganda, his brain added, cynically.

-Beeism? Beeists. A beeisistic perspective.

They weren't bees, of course, but laypeople were stupid and ate up such misnomers. They would welcome bees. Bees were possessed of a better reputation than hornets, considering the honey, and the fact that if they stung you they at least had the good grace to die over it.

Nika watched the vibrant and living ceiling.

That settled it.

If he ever had contol of a hornet army, he would paint their backs and have them recreate the Sistine Chapel.

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The hornet examined his fingertips delicately, for all the world like a demure, airborne terrier.

"Hello, Anna," said Ippolit, utterly charmed.

The walls were coated in a mobile layer of her brethren - sistren? - where Nika was watching with a look of comtemplation. They wavered like a heat haze, or a mirage, undulating in time to the low current of soothing sound, the hum of creatures who knew they were where they belonged.

"You must be The Pain," Ippolit said, glancing up to smile at the man clad in yellow vest and black mask who looked somewhat like a bipedal hornet himself. "Is she, er, yours?"

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“Mine? More truthfully, you could say I belong to them.”

He gestured for the investigators to have a seat at the table when the group stepped into the main annex, where the narrow hallway of brown-gray paper walls of hornet construction opened up into the hangar.

In response, insects moved to pull out chairs in a gesture of courtesy.

Something wasn’t right. Someone was missing.

Then he noticed that Krauss was trying to slink back down the hall of hornets and out the side door. “Major?” He called, satisfied when the German stopped in mid-step. “You should stay for a while. Have some tea.”

Johann winced, and dutifully slithered back to the main chamber. There was no arguing with Cobra soldiers, especially when standing in what amounted to a giant bee hive. Something about it made him remember a brief and fleeting memory from three summers ago, ordering soldiers to clear out a paper wasp nest that had materialized near the main door of the East Wing…

“You’re plotting something.” The Pain intoned, staring him down. “And I don’t like it.”

“Plotting? I’m plotting nothing! I only thought it would be best if you were the one to…err… introduce them to the witness. That’s all.” He raised his hands, expecting to be attacked by a swarm of angry insects at the slightest of gestures from their keeper.

“So they don’t know the circumstances then?”

“…no. They would never believe me, they might believe you. You have a way of convincing people.”

From the other side of the table, the Fear looked up from his work, feathering the ends of poisoned arrows. He smirked at the investigators, leaning closer as if to devulge top secret information. “I think they’re both crazy.”

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"I thought you said they weren't friendly," Rakitin said to Krauss, indicating the insects. "They seem perfectly nice to me."

He glanced up from playing with the hornets as one began a studious investigation of his hat. He'd almost forgotten why they'd come there in the first place.

There was an underlying scent of hornet construction, sharply chemical with a faint note of hidden honey like a gold thread suspended in acid. All a conpletely natural fabrication. They did it with their spit, he thought. Something like that. Rakitin wondered if they would ever form a union with carpenter ants and build an entropolis.

"Why wouldn't we believe you?" Rakitin asked, his forehead crinkling.

It wasn't until he spoke that Ippolit noticed the lanky man with the white stripe in his hair, fletching crossbow bolts with deft movements.

Ippolit shrugged, smiling apologetically at the hornet the movement dislodged.

"I've been called crazy before," he said plaidly. "Personally, I think it's jumping to conclusions."

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Liadov turned to Rakitin, rubbing his temples as if he could finesse away his hangover.

His pale green eyes were wan, and his smile pleasantly bleary.

"...Have you read Lewis Carroll?" he asked vaguely. "I can't decide if this is more reminsicent of the tea party, or the croquet tournament."

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The spider soldier only grinned, setting the finished arrow aside, picking up a new bolt. “We’re all mad here. I‘m mad, you’re mad.” He quirked a brow at the pair, his Cheshire smile widening. “You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

His long, vulgar tongue slithered past his lips, whipping from side to side before retreating back into his mouth. “And you.” He continued, pointing the head of the poisoned arrow at Rakitin, “smell delicious.” A pale moth that carelessly flew too close to a spiders web, blissfully unaware until its milky wings became entangled in the silken strands, tied down, devoured entirely.

“Keep it in your pants,” the Pain warned, taking a seat beside his comrade, if for no other reason than to keep an eye on him, “at least until I’m done with them. Then you can do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Krauss breathed a sigh of relief that his life and well being was momentarily safe, brushing away curious hornets, dodging the ones who chose to dive bomb him. He was so busy trying to keep them from stealing his ushanka right from his head that he didn’t even notice when one slipped into the pocket of his coat, filched the keys to his beloved Porsche, and disappeared into the humid semi-darkness of the hangar.

“Major Krauss delicately forgot to tell you gentlemen that the witness he brought you here to meet with is a hornet drone named Viktor.”

He sat back then, waiting patiently as his words soaked in, anticipating the usual species of incredulity and disbelief.

On cue, a hornet in question lit on the table, notably larger and less vibrantly colored than the other curious insects. It waited just as patiently as its keeper, watching the investigators with bulbous black eyes.

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"Actually, yes," Rakitin said to Liadov, whose ill mood at breakfast seemed to have been replaced with general bemusement. He smiled ruefully. "It was my little sister's, but I ended up liking it more than she did."

Kira had proclaimed it a lot of useless nonsense and rolled her eyes at him, the way one did when indulging a child.

His eyes wandered to where Krauss was having apparent difficulties with the hangar's citizens.

"I never did figure out why a raven is like a writing desk."

Apparently the long-haired man was familiar with it as well. He had an interesting tongue, unusually long, like a snake's. Rakitin wondered if he smelled with it.

Or not.

"Er, thank you?" said Ippolit, who had been unaware that he smelled like anything at all.

He approached the large insect that perched on the table and was watching him expectantly.

"What did you see, Viktor?" Rakitin asked.

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Viktor waved his antenna experimentally, and like a violinist that found a sting out of tune, captured the appendage with a front leg and cleaned it thoroughly with his mandibles, then in turn, cleaned off its striped legs.

When the drone was satisfied, he began to dance, jittering and twitching as though moved by a song only he could hear.

“I will assume that you’re not fluent in Vespa Mandarina. They speak like any other member of the Vespidae family: interpretation of ritualistic movement, vibration, and with a variety of specialized pheromones.”

The explanation was more for the benefit of Liadov than Rakitin; the lieutenant seemed like the sort of man to know already, and spend all his free time reading about such things in scientific magazines

“Viktor,” the Pain continued, “has been flashing the same message for three days. The unique longevity of hornet drones allows for special training that would be lost on the regular soldiers. The movement of the wings…” he stood, rounding the table to have the same view of the insect as Ippolit, “do you see it, investigator? That’s Morse code, this one learned so very easily. Do you understand what he’s telling you?”

He looked down at Rakitin, watching the hornet, entirely mystified. “Of course you don’t. You don’t speak English. Right now, Viktor is saying that he was in the cave when the boy was murdered there, watching from his position on the ceiling.”

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"He saw the mechanic being drowned in the spring?"

Nika's head jerked up, from where he'd been very close to falling asleep at the table.

He ignored the fact that he was actually entertaining the idea of a vespidaeic eyewitness, and giving it veracity.

Groznyj Grad could change a man.

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He glanced at Rakitin, as an afterthought.

"When did the KGB stop teaching its operatives English?"

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"They didn't," Ippolit said, trying to fit the pattern of the hornet's movements to words. He wondered if they understood spoken language, or if The Pain had some way of simulating wing flicks and antenna twitches. "I didn't know hornets spoke it, though."

Rakitin had even proved to be fairly good at the language, once he had smoothed out the accent; his first teacher had been fond of saying that he sounded as though he had been shipwrecked in a cove shouting at rocks for the past twenty years.

He looked up for a moment from the insect to its keeper. Interpreter, maybe, was the better word.

"Three days? Why didn't you tell us then?"

Rakitin felt bad for the little guy, frantically flashing his testimony over and over with no one taking any heed.

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“Hornets don’t speak English.” The Pain corrected, subtly amused by Rakitin’s observation. “This one only knows dots and dashes without any real knowledge of what characters they correspond to. All he concerns himself with is that certain combinations stand for certain ideas: cave, river, two men, death.”

If Ippolit spoke English though, that changed a few things, as far as the hornet keeper was concerned. There were few on base that spoke enough to hold a pleasant conversation, even fewer outside of his own unit. Fascinating, and endearing purely in the sense that he would be a bit more reluctant to torture the Operativnik before he killed him, if that was ever required for some unforeseeable reason.

“Rudimentary at best, but effective enough for the battlefield.”

Ippolit’s final question bothered him though, and he avoided the Fear’s coppery gaze as it settled upon him, accusative, but not for the obvious reasons.

“I don’t mean this in the way it will seem. I told no one, because I knew it was not my concern. We have our orders right from the Boss, and above all, we are not to interfere in the common affairs or lives of the denizens of this base.”

For whatever reason, the Fear giggled to himself, and returned to fletching his arrows.

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Kassian stood near the wall, quietly and still, like the revenant that Rakitin had once christened him. At first, he'd been prepared to begin the process of waiting - letting his conscious mind slip to a near-somnolent state, dormant, so as not to distract him. His unconscious, reactive self took over then, merely coasting, absorbing all, ready to alert him if he needed to react.

It was how he passed time lying in wait, and how he got through these long days of of MENT bodyguard duty.

But the hornet had piqued his interest, and he'd paid attention. He found himself wondering why the hornet knew English Morse Code instead Russian Morse Code, then he blinked and wondered how it had learned it at all. Perhaps hornets were more intelligent than he'd been led to believe.

That was where the mind balked, where the leap of faith was required. But if he simply accepted it at face value, that meant that the mechanic had been killed in the very spring that he and Isaev had jumped into, where he'd found the ring.

That made sense, but in retrospect it was a bit disconcerting.

Kassian's face retained its stoic expression, however, and he made no move to come closer. Like many things, it was not his concern, but that didn't stop him from noting the information, and filing it away for later.

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"I see," Rakitin said, eyebrows arching like the wings of an owl that had spotted the telltale rustle of game in the brush. "Straight from code to concept, with no intermediary. Did you teach them?"

He imagined repeating a sequence over and over in front of a Vespidae pupil, with an appropriate example on hand, until the connection was understood. He wouldn't have imagined the masked man in back and yellow to be possessed of such patience. It just went to show, people were rarely what they seemed.

Irinarhov had practically vanished once they entered. He had a way of slipping out of sight, unless you were looking for him. Even then it wasn't always easy. Ippolit had the feeling that if he really didn't want to be seen, he wouldn't be. Ippolit made a habit of intermittantly reminding himself he was there, just to see if he still was.

Not that he thought Irinarhov would abandon his post. Rakitin knew that wouldn't happen, with the same instinctive certainty he knew gravity would continue to keep him stuck to the ground. As little as he might enjoy it, Irinarhov would stay as long as duty required. But sometimes the sniper would seem to...go away, without the technicality of moving. Like the guiding will that animated him would take a step back, turn inwards or outwards or some direction equally invisible. Ippolit wondered if that was what he looked like himself, when he let his hands and eyes go about the buisiness of dissection and the part of his mind that mattered faded back. It was the key detail that made it difficult to accept that Irinarhov belonged entirely to the living world.

Rakitin thought this as he listened to The Pain's reasoning.

"What made you change your mind?" he asked, watching the gossamer wings flutter, wondering which motion corresponded to which word. Notions, more like. Ideographs in motion. Cave. Two men. Death.

What should have occurred to him from the first finally broke through.

Rakitin's pulse quickened.

"Can he tell us anything about the killer?"

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Gently, the Pain picked Viktor up in one massive hand, fondly stroking the hornet’s thorax where silvery wings met striped body. “He changed my mind.” Though his affections fell upon the insect nibbling at his fingertips, he looked beyond Rakitin, to Krauss.

It was much more complex than that, but it was the best explanation he could offer, tangled somewhere between watching the German suffer for so long in the absence of his comrade, and the entire reason the Cobra Unit was formed. Protection of the innocent, and retribution to the guilty.

“What would you like to know?” He asked, flipping open a thick file on the corner of the table. “I took the liberty of interpreting and transcribing the information Viktor was giving me. Unfortunately, I speak Russian far better than I write it, so you may not find the content entirely legible.”

His attention went back to Viktor then. “There’s a decent description of your killer in there. Not too horrible, for a witness who’s colorblind.”

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"Tell us," Ippolit said, tamping down a note of urgency. The hornet soldier was toying with them now. Like when an insect landed on your arm and caught you watching it, ambled back and forth waiting for the hand raised to slap to signal it to sink the stinger in. "Please."

Telling them that he had key information, then withdrawing, as though waiting for something. Was there something he wanted? God fuck it all, why couldn't people ever just say what they meant?

It would have been easier to talk to the hornet directly

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“Is there no one in the whole country of Russia knows how to answer a gesture of kindness with gratitude?” The hornet charmer turned away then, thinking it over for a while. “Or is it simply some Soviet custom that I am unaware of, for me to tell you I’ve done the hard part for you, and for you to stand there looking like I’m torturing you?”

He shut the file and slid it across the table toward Ippolit, studying the lieutenant. There was no anger on his part, only insult that he hoped was a simple misunderstanding.

“There are men on this base who would kill any suspect at the slightest provocation. Comrades of the victims. Brothers in arms, one of those victims, so dear to the Ocelot Unit” He grabbed Rakitin by the front of his coat, pulling the investigator closer, closer than he probably wanted to be. “There are heartbroken lovers who have swore revenge. That is the worst sort of suffering to endure, you know, it drives men to do horrible things. I knew the German Major would be with you today…”

The Pain released Ippolit then, nodding, patting the Operativnik on the shoulder to reassure him that everything was fine. “Yes, true mad men here,” he continued, watching Krauss, who had been oblivious to the exchange. “You’ll be able to spot them easily, they fly around with jetpacks and threaten to burn anything that doesn’t fit their ideal of purity… I’m sure that most likely includes your suspect. So it is very important then, that no one accidentally overhears the sensitive information contained within this file.”

The last comment got the Major’s attention and kept it.

“Yes, pity poor Vladya.” he laughed, handing the file off to Rakitin. “I don’t think all of his hornets are flying around the hive anymore.”

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