Antidote for the unknown soldier

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

It was odd, Polya thought as he opened the infirmary door, armed with the antidote Khostov had provided from the base's medical supplies. These past days he had been preserving life more often than deciphering the messages left in the act of dying. It did little to balance the harm he had done to a man already lost and afraid.

Maybe in the interim he had remembered his name.

The room was cool and white.

"I've brought the antidote," Rakitin said quietly, loath to unbalance the delicate approximation of peace.

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[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"I don't know," David said, shaking his head like he was quietly bemused.

"Was my accent good? Maybe I learned at university. I think I must have gone. I seem to remember learning, reading books, studying."

That was true enough. He had gone to Annapolis.

He looked at Rakitin.

"You must have gone to university, to learn forensics. You learned to speak English there, right? I don't think your accent was bad, as far as I could tell. I understood you just fine. Do you speak other languages, or just the two?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Oh, right." Rakitin smiled apologetically. "I keep forgetting you wouldn't know."

He leaned back, letting his eyes roll up to the ceiling as he tried to think of a way to put it. He found his background indefinably embarrassing, like trying to handle an object of awkward and unbalanced shape.

"That from university, and some odd things picked up here and there. Nothing terribly useful, except in the purely theoretical sense." He shrugged. "But then, you don't hear much English out here, either. Goes to show you never know."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Tell me," David said, quietly.

He turned his head and looked at Rakitin until he drew the man's gaze.

He told himself it was for the mission, out of necessity. Information-gathering, but also ally recruitment, in a way. Forge a personal bond with the subject, make them more favorably disposed. More inclined to give assistance. Using the bonds of friendship as a tactical advantage.

But there was another reason why he wanted to hear about the pathologist, one that had nothing to do with his mission. It was more personal, the need to keep this man's company, to not be alone with too much idle time to think about what had happened to him.

He studied Rakitin's expression. The pathologist seemed open, quietly attentive. Even curious. David almost started to feel bad.

He closed his eyes and settled back in the bed, trying to get more comfortable. He wondered if the antidote was working; he felt suddenly tired.

"It might help me remember something, to hear about...anything. Your parents. The university. How you went to work for the KGB."

David glanced over at Rakitin.

"If you don't mind, that is. I can't tell you very much in turn."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"It's all right," Polya said, a little surprised. "Just not very interesting."

The nameless man looked at him steadily, as if he really wanted to know. Even in this setting, his attention was sharp enough to be uncomfortable.

He decided to answer the last question first, as it was the easiest.

"It was a good opportunity. My parents were gone by then, and someone had to support my grandmother and little sister...."

Rakitin stopped, and shook his head. In the man's quiet gaze, anything less than full honesty fell flat.

"No, that's not it. That is, it is-- but not completely. Really, it's- Think of it this way."

He leaned forward slightly.

"At some point, everything makes sense. Even if the world is essentially random, the way it acts out that randomness has pattern and reason. It's another kind of language, one that can't lie. Like a blood sample. Look at it normally and it's only liquid. Look at it closer, ask the right questions, and the name of the poison writes itself in its own ink, and that in itself tells you the cure."

Polya was gesturing with one hand, as though its erratic motions would make his thought processes clearer.

"A body left somewhere - it's the most anonymous thing there is, isn't it? No voice, no connection to anyone. But it can tell you all sorts of things, if you know how to look for it. Where it came from, what happened, maybe even some of why. The victim of the simplest and least premeditated violence can lead right back to the perpetrator."

In the back of Rakitin's mind as he spoke, the past played, like an old film strip accidentally left in the projector.

He'd never known what it was that gave him away. His face, his voice, the way he held his hands as he told Lyova why Kira had come to visit him and he had come back alone. All shock and sympathy until Ippolit reported that the murderer had been found and sentenced on the strength of evidence recovered from the remains. Then the horror, slow and inexorable as flame licking along a piece of paper, transforming his old friend's face into a stranger's. "You did it. You sick little fuck. You took her apart yourself."

All the things that Ippolit knew were true, about funeral rites, and how it wouldn't be right to leave it to someone else, withered at the revulsion and discovery in the once familiar voice.

Rakitin paused, letting reality restore itself to full magnitude. He smiled ruefully.

"I'm not making any sense at all, am I."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Not really," David said.

But he smiled then, with genuine goodwill.

Rakitin reminded him of a fellow cadet he'd known back at the academy. Simon Federman. David considered himself to be intelligent, but Simon had operated on a different level altogether, like the way dogs could hear a frequency beyond human ears.

Rakitin was like that. He clearly made connections between things that David couldn't fathom, conceptual links that were lost on other people. David didn't mind not being able to follow it.

"You remind me of someone," he said. "A friend, I think."

He leaned back, and closed his eyes again.

"So you're saying...you went into forensics because you wanted to understand. To make sense of why things happen beyond cause and effect. To find some order and meaning in the unknowable."

David cracked open his eyes to look back at the pathologist.

"Am I close?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Actually, yes." A smile wore its way onto Polya's disarmed features. "That's it exactly."

Some of the tension seemed to have left the nameless man. A distraction could be a useful thing.

"I don't believe there's any such thing as the unfathomable. Just things no one's figured out how to fathom yet."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"So you're an optimist as well as a philosopher. I didn't think those two went hand in hand."

David's tone was gentle, jocose. One side of his mouth curved upward.

He thought about what the pathologist had said.

"So what do you here? Besides examine dead bodies? Or are there enough of them to keep you occupied full time?"

That was strange, David thought, suddenly. He had almost meant it at a joke, but as he looked back on his words, he realized that his mind had pulled to the surface something that had been bothering him subconsciously. What was a KGB pathologist doing in such a remote place? It didn't make sense.

The circumstances under which Snake had disappeared were strange. No one had said it aloud, but David could tell that they were thinking it, the worst case scenario: that both Snake and his mentor had defected. Now David wondered if it wasn't that at all, and Snake was actually dead.

If that were true, he was talking to the right person.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't call it optimism, quite," Rakitin said, eyes lowering. "Causes can be as bad as effects."

He glanced up at the man's question. Polya had never known the base without the underlying atmosphere of a predator on the hunt, his own presence as anything other than a logical result.

"That's right," he said quietly. "You wouldn't remember."

It was strange to think that there could be someone here divided from it.

"I was called here as part of an investigation. There's been a chain of murders."

Rakitin's fingers interlaced.

"The last was five days ago."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David looked at Rakitin, quietly stunned.

Of all the things he could have expected to hear, that wasn't one of them.

"Murders?" he asked, frowning.

That was sobering.

Questions flooded his mind, and he wondered if the murders were in any way relevant to his mission. He wondered if this had anything to do with Snake. He wondered if this had anything to do with -

His jaw tightened.

"What kind of murders? What's been happening?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

A new animation had entered the man, visibly tensing him.

"A serial killer," Rakitin said carefully. "Ritualistic. A very specific kind of sickness. His targets are blond men."

With missing limbs.

The charred, twisted thing that had once been a man named Molokov. A pristine torso, the empty space where arms would have been spread as if in benediction. Nika, pulled out of sight in less time than it took to breathe.

Polya noted that the last thought didn't quite follow.

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David ran a hand over his hair.

It was a deep, coal black, he knew, cut military short, with bangs that spiked across his forehead.

He supposed a true amnesiac wouldn't know what he looked like. David hadn't had the opportunity to see himself in the mirror since he'd woken up, after all.

"I'm not blond," he said, and let it be a statement. The fine hair on his forearms was dark.

His gaze went to Rakitin.

"You are."

There had been a serial killer in Chicago at the turn of the century that David remembered learning about in school, a little sordid bit of local history. The man, a medical doctor, had opened a hotel for the World's Fair, and lured women there with promises of employment, then trapped and murdered them. They called him the torture doctor.

"What's his MO?" he asked, more curious now than anything. It seemed unconnected to either Snake or him, but if he had stumbled into such a volatile situation, he wanted to know as much information as possible.

"How many victims so far?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Two. Dismembered and...posed. He likes to make a show of it."

Rakitin hoped that was enough detail to discourage further questions.

His hand unconsciously went to his hair, mirroring the man's gesture.

"That's true," he said thoughtfully.

It wasn't the first time someone had mentioned that Rakitin fell rather neatly into the demographic of potential victims himself.

"There's something surreal about thinking of it that way. Then I'd never see how he gets caught."

That aspect was the more disquieting. Ippolit had long since accepted that death came, like a cat, at its own whim.

"I don't think I'd make a very good hungry ghost."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Don't worry about it," David said. "You'll see how he gets caught. You'll be instrumental in catching him."

He spoke matter-of-factly. Even not knowing the man well, David could see his obvious competence, though Rakitin seemed to try to downplay it at every turn. He wondered why that was.

"So I imagine that with a killer running around, finding the person who...poisoned me is less of a priority," he said, and his voice was matter-of-fact for that too.

Professional and emotionless, like he was discussing an op.

That made it easier.

"Unless you think it's connected somehow," he added.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"No," Rakitin said, his voice taut with resolution and low, banked anger. "We'll find him, too."

He met the wounded soldier's grey eyes.

"Count on it."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"No," David said. "That's not what I meant."

He held Rakitin's eyes even though he wanted to look away.

"I really mean that it's less of a priority. Your work on these murders has to take precedence."

David regretted he'd said anything now. He wasn't even sure what had prompted him in the first place. He'd still been poking at the connections between things, but if the two perpetrators weren't related, that made it different.

"Look, forget I said anything."

There were some things a man had to handle on his own, he decided then and there.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Confusion knitted Rakitin's brows.

"Don't you want him to be found?"

Give horror a name and a face, a reason, and you take away its power.

"In any case, this one at least has a limited pool of suspects. There's only so many people with the skill and wherewithal, let alone the inclination, to extract venom from local fauna and apply it as a weapon against a random target."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"All right. I'm sure...you'll find him."

David decided to give up, stop protesting. Any more would look too suspicious.

He lay back, and didn't have to feign exhaustion.

"How long until the poison is out of my system?" he asked.

It was better, to change the subject, move on.

"When do you think I can get out of here?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"The poison should be gone within twenty-four hours," Rakitin said. "It was never meant to last. The antidote just sped up the process. This poisoner wasn't intending to kill you."

What the assailant had wanted was less clear. Could it have really been so simple as a random act of violence?

"As for here, well, the poison shouldn't have slowed down the healing process much, so it depends on your wounds." Polya smiled crookedly. "And when the nurses will let you go."

The man's movements spoke elegantly of exhaustion.

"Sorry," Polya said quickly, standing. "I should let you rest."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Do me a favor," David said.

He paused, and glanced at the door for a moment, then lowered his voice.

"After the poison clears and I'm doing a little better, put in a good word with the nurses for me so I can get out of here early."

David smiled, slightly, faintly. He wasn't in the mood to smile at all, but he managed it, a faint press of his lips.

"And I promise I'll take it easy and rest in my quarters. I just don't want to be here."

His look was intent.

"Could you do that for me?" he asked, quietly.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"For that, we would need to know which quarters are yours," Polya pointed out gently.

He could sympathise. He hated the unnatural sterility of hospitals, the endless blank white. It was no place for a living soul.

Unfortunately necessary, like any number of things.

"I don't think asking that favor would get the results you're hoping for."

The businesslike Eurenides that had the run of these hallways had no reason to be kindly disposed toward Polya to begin with.

Rakitin's eyes flicked across the bandage on the soldier's chest concealing the star-shaped wound where the primitive poison had been administered.

"Don't be in any hurry to push yourself."

He wondered if amnesia felt like an itch across the memory, trying to make a connection that you knew was there but that refused to come to light.

"For now, just try to remember what you can."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Okay," David said.

If even the pathologist - who was qualified to work with the living, but still - didn't think he should leave the infirmary early, he supposed he was stuck.

The antidote must have been starting to work, because he felt warm and dizzy, as if the cure was flushing all the poison from him forcibly.

David nodded, getting drowsy.

"Are you - "

He hesitated.

"Do you need to check to make sure the antidote's working, later?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

The man must have been tired if he was agreeing that easily. Though Rakitin could hardly say he knew him well, he suspected this was not someone accustomed to giving up.

"That's right," he said. "I'll be back as soon as I can. To check on the antidote."

Hopefully no one else gets poisoned or murdered for a while.

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David murmured his assent, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, Rakitin was gone, and it was not difficult to close them again and succumb to the shadows.