groznyj_grad | Bugs in the software, cont.

The narrow strip of skin visible through The Pain's mask was uneven, covered in welts long since solidified, like lava flows turned to basalt. Earlier curiosity had prompted Rakitin to take a closer look, but better sense had assured him staring would have been unforgiveably rude. However, now that consideration had been rendered moot. He noted with interest the thin zone of clarity encircling the Cobra's eyes, keeping visibility unobstructed. The damage must have been inflicted by his own companions. The Pain's place at the center of the hive had not come easily.

"I see," Rakitin said grimly.

He thought of the Ocelot boy who had taken Gurlukovich's death so badly. Had he been his lover? Either way, it was obvious he would lash out at anyone who became a convenient target, an outward direction for his pain. No doubt he wasn't alone.

Rakitin let the warning about The Fury pass him by. Warnings about the cosmonaut's madness were thick as flies on the ground. It was none of Rakitin's concern.

They called me mad, I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.

He took the file, and frowned down at it. Dubious legibility was not enhanced by the dim light.

"Would you prefer, er, privacy?" Rakitin said, with a surreptitious glance at Krauss.

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Before he could wonder if the hornet would willingly step away from its liason, Ippolit felt steps like blunt pinpricks settle demurely on his palm. He lifted his hand and its passenger to his face, observing with wonderment the chitinous shine of its carapace, like lacquer. He studied the shining black eyes and noticed, with delighted amusement, that he was being studied as well.

"Can you give a description?" Ippolit asked, watching Viktor's antennae wave and feeling an urge to wave back.

“Nothing terribly useful. He doesn’t see you as I see you. To Viktor, you’re a blur of shadows.”

Lights and darks with ghostly shimmers, a drab pattern broken by the occasional red or yellow. That was how they went in their world, blissfully unaware of the full spectrum the world’s beauty just beyond their eyes.

“To him, you’re mostly a mixture of smell and vibration that corresponds to the idea of a certain human. That’s the reason he does that with his antennas, to find out what you are and read whatever emotions are evident in your pheromones. There is no transliteration for that.”

Thoughtfully, the Pain traced a smudge of ink on the manila folder with a finger, frowning at it. The footprints of a hornet; someone walked through the ink before it dried.

“You’re looking for someone of average height and average build. Someone, he said, much shorter than I. Less than six feet. I’ll guess somewhere in the area of five-seven, maybe more… that is… what is that metric?” Leaning back, he nudged the Fear hard enough to shake him from his work.

“Five and twelve and seven,” the spider soldier mumbled to himself, “must be around a hundred and seventy centimeters or so..”

“Yes.” the hornet charmer agreed with a nod. “Something like that. Maybe just a bit taller.” He flipped through the file again, looking for anything useful. “Light. Viktor kept signaling that. Someone with lighter hair, except in this instance, light only means the opposite of black.”

“…only describes ninety percent of the men on this base…” The Fear smirked, drawing himself up in his chair.

“And exonerates you, the Fury, and the other ten percent of the lunatics who were previously in the suspect pool.”

“I can’t complain then, Lódarázs.”

The Pain looked back to Rakitin, almost apologetic when he spoke again. “I don’t have much else for you. Viktor could tell you exactly what the killer was feeling as he carried out the act, but very little about how he looks.”

"I see," Ippolit said, watching Viktor's antennae twitch. He wondered what he looked like as a grey blob. Probably, he not wryly, not much different.

"Opposite of black," he murmured optimistically, half to himself. "Well. That's something. Never look a gift informant in the mandible."

Gently, Rakitin lowered his hands. The hornet disembarked from his palm to the table's surface with insectoid grace, a small, black-and-yellow gentleman. It picked a few curious steps toward Nika, who appeared to be barely a wing's width from dozing.

"Thank you for your help, Viktor," Rakitin said.

It never hurt to be polite.

The Pain smirked behind his balaclava. There was something inherently likeable about Ippolit Rakitin. Many things, from the way he regarded everything with a socially inept scientific curiosity, to his kindness for vicious stinging insects, and especially the open minded optimism he approached the whole situation with. Circumstances that would have most men scoffing, laughing, rolling their eyes.

“I only wish I had more to tell you.” He passed the file to Rakitin, “if anything else should come up, you’ll be the first to know, since you’re not put off by the idea. Until then, we’ll keep our eyes open. All two hundred thousand of them.”

"Thank you, er, Pain," Ippolit said, wishing, not for the first time, that the Cobras had slightly more traditional nomenclature. The bare noun sounded so coarse and direct.

Rakitin reached out to take the folder, using the motion to conceal a surreptitious kick under the table in Nika's direction. The MVD had fallen victim to the soporific hum of insects, and as amusing as it might be to leave him to wake up in the hangar hours later, inhaling a giant hornet in one's sleep would probably be fatal to at least one of the parties involved. Not to mention definitely fatal for Polya.

He stood.

"Please let us know if you...that is, any of you, find out anything else."

Nika opened his eyes slowly.

"All done?" he asked, with a drowsy smile. "Fabulous."

He pushed his chair back lazily and rose to his feet, lingering on his way to the door.

"We appreciate your conscientiousness in bringing this matter to our attention," he said, giving the Pain a brief tip of his visor cap with his index finger.

"Coming, Polya? Or are you going to fondle more exoskeletypes before you retire?"

"I wasn't fondling it," Ippolit muttered, reddening slightly, and followed Liadov out of the hangar.

He blinked away the sudden, sharp brightness. He hadn't noticed how pervasive the industrious hum of hornets was until the closing of the door cut it off.

The part of Rakitin that constantly weighed observations against one another wondered if it was unusual to be more intimidated by an aloof, fine-featured, perfectly normal man than one who commanded a swarm of semisentient war-trained insects, or whose joints didn't seem to bend the right way and who kept pointing crossbow bolts in one's face. Probably not. There was no way of knowing.

Bugs in the software, cont.

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