The Groznyj Grad Living Novel

The nurse on duty was one Rakitin didn't recognize. Once he'd stated his business she waved him through into their domain.

It had been a while since he had given the soldier the antidote to one wound and exacerbated another. Surely in that time he had remembered something, or someone had been found who could identify him.

Polya had some experience with unidentified people, but they weren't the kind who minded much.

How could someone be alive without knowing who he was?

It was an unbearably lonely idea. Polya could never say he was altogether satisfied with his own holdings, but they were his, and known, and merited a certain affection for that. He couldn't concieve of waking in a stranger's skin.

He knocked on the door before he realized he had no name to call, and settled for the nearest alternative.

"Comrade? Are you awake? It's Rakitin."

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"Yes," David called, frowning slightly, surprised.

He hadn't heard from Rakitin in a while and had assumed that the KGB lieutenant's duties had occupied him elsewhere, more or less permanently. It had made things both easier and more difficult when Rakitin hadn't been around. Rakitin paid him the most scrutiny out of everyone except for the Boss, who already suspected his secret.

He pushed himself up on the bed.

"Come in."

The door opened, and Rakitin stepped inside. He seemed tired, David noticed, a bit strained around the eyes, lanky shoulders slumped a little more than usual. It looked like the lieutenant was getting along about as well as he was.

"Kag dyila?" he asked, quietly.

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"Kharasho," Rakitin said automatically, entering the room. The door clicked shut softly behind him. "I meant to come by before, but circumstances have been...a little messy."

He came closer. The nameless man was sitting straight-spined, his grey eyes sharp and alert, expression guarded. He was the living image of a good soldier in the camp of an unknown enemy, all the more trapped for that it was his home.

Assuming that he hadn't dredged up some clue to who he was.

Rakitin condensed everything he wanted to ask into,

"How are you feeling?"

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"Better," David said, honestly.

He looked Rakitin in the eye. It was one of the few truly unsullied things he'd said to the pathologist, and he almost felt the need to try to convince Rakitin of his sincerity. He was much better at lying than at telling the truth.

"I had some physical therapy today. And the doctor said I seem to have no aftereffects from the hypothermia, so that's good. Full recovery, he said."

David paused.

"Full physical recovery, at least."

It was a miscalculation to say that, he realized, drawing attention to the thing he wanted to avoid talking about. His brows drew together slightly, and he nodded at a nearby metal-framed chair.

"You look tired, Lieutenant. Have a seat. Don't stand on my account."

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"It's not so bad," Rakitin said wryly, taking the proferred seat. "You shouldd see the poor bastard they had on guard duty. Looked like he'd been pulling double shifts since the world began."

Weariness was a buzz in the back of his head, like crickets on a summer's day. He was getting used to it.

Rakitin broke into a genuine smile.

"That's good news. Any residual effects from the poison? It was a strange one. Think you'll be out of here soon, then?"

And to where?

The undercurrent of the soldier's words, and the muted insistence of his affirmation, sank in. Rakitin's smile faded.

He leaned forward, arms resting on his knees, fingers clasped into a loose birdcage in the middle.

"Has anything come back?" he asked softly.

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"Some," David said.

He directed his gaze away, staring slightly defocused, and off to his right.

Studies showed that people looked in different directions, depending on if they were accessing a memory, or making something up. For most onlookers, it was only a subtle, subconscious clue, but a trained observer would noticed, and be able to interpret what he saw. David doubted Rakitin had that kind of training, but it was better to be careful.

"Childhood things, I think. A woman who must be my mother. Someone younger than me, a brother. Eating, playing, getting in trouble. I think I went to school, later on. I seem to remember studying. I think I told you that before."

He frowned lightly, thoughtfully.

All of those things were true, a nonspecific summary of his life.

"Nothing...specific, though."

He let a note of frustration edge into his voice.

"Why?"

He shot his gaze at Rakitin, grey eyes intense and narrowed, almost accusatory.

"Why, Lieutenant? Why did this happen to me?"

Something gripped at David's chest, surprising him, constricting with an emotion that almost felt real. He swallowed hard, fighting it, forcing it back under control.

David shuddered. The sudden vehemence of it had almost been frightening.

He had to look away.

"Sorry," he said, briefly. "I know it's not your fault. I just..."

His jaw worked, and he let out a slow breath.

Control, he thought. He needed to master the situation, not the other way around.

David brushed a hand through his hair, and slumped back lightly.

"What about you? Talk to me, Lieutenant. Tell me what's going on. You said things were messy...is it about the murders?"

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Rakitin watched the young soldier take visible control of himself. For a moment, a great, wounded anger had shown, the was oushed back like shutting off a tap.

That ability itself could be a clue to the man's identity.

"Da," he answered, knowing the value of distraction. "There haven't been any new ones in a while, thank God for small favors."

Every time the door to the lab opened he half expected it to be someone with a grim expression and a description of what parts were missing.

"Now we're dealing with the living human element. It's the Major who does most of that. That's the side where the real complications arise. Everyone has comrades, and nothing happens to a vaccuum. That's what we rely on, but it works against us, too."

That is to say, our prime suspect is not only untouchable but has everyone convinced he ejaculates butterflies.

The thought was self-indulgent and unfair. God, he must be tired.

Rakitin fell silent. He looked down at the bottom of the bed, where the sheets were tucked in, perfect, neat corners. Too much white.

"You should be angry," he said, suddenly.

A lump of anger sat at the center of his own stomach, a reactor pulsing cold energy.

"I don't know why this happened to you. Maybe there is no why beyond timing and luck and all the other stupid, unforgiveable things. One thing I can tell you."

Rakitin's gaze lifted to meet the soldier's grey eyes. He had landed inadvertantly on a plateau rife with clear, thin air, where anything that could be seen was in reach.

"When I find the man who did this, I will kill him."

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David drew back, startled, struck by uncertainty and another impulse that felt infinitely more unidentifiable.

"Why?"

It escaped from his lips, an uncalculated whisper, uttered before he could evaluate its impact and the thousand other vectors that would arc away from that point.

As questions went, it was a good one, though he supposed. Rakitin's vehemence had been fueled by the anger of a brother, of man protecting his wife, a father seething with hate and helplessness over some harm done to his child. Strangely genuine in a way David was unused to.

He searched Rakitin's strikingly odd, dark gaze. The KGB lieutenant had pupils and irises that were almost the same shade. Unfathomable, hard to read, but David never went solely by the eyes anyway. Facial tics, body language, those held many more clues, but at this moment, with this particular man, David felt at a loss to understand any of them.

David's brows cut in, sharply.

"Just...like that?"

The lieutenant's earlier words came back to him now, drifting across his consciousness like a cloud that had a shape to it, a first formless, then recognizably distinct.

"Like it would happen in a vacuum?"

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Rakitin considered the soldier's questions, as well as his apparent surprise. Had he said something strange? It seemed an obvious conclusion.

"Yes," he concluded.

His fingers steepled, tall and ashen.

"The commander here is a reliable man. I don't think he would be angry. Really, I think he would do it himself, if he had the chance."

The Colonel must have been doing better, as he was no longer in the infirmary. No shock if he recovered quickly. Someone like that could hardly be felled for long by ordinary mortal means. Not up to spectacularly frying anyone yet, maybe, but that would return as well.

"As to anyone else, what does it matter?"

There was little sound here at this hour. Rakitin realized he was listening for the periodic clockwork tap of a guard's tread.

"Justice may be hamstrung, but it can be carried."

Polya shook his head.

"You don't let rabid dogs run free in the park."

His eyes flicked to the ceiling and back again.

"That's just a manner of speaking. I couldn't shoot a dog."

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David was quiet for a moment.

"I like dogs," he said, offhandedly. "I think we must have had some when I was growing up. Big dogs."

He closed his eyes, to avoid having to look anywhere in particular. He couldn't tell Rakitin about his mother's penchant for Saint Bernards, giant lazy brutes with impossibly large heads and deep, soulful eyes. They would lay out on the deck, across the kitchen floor, in David's narrow bed, wherever, it seemed, they would most be in the way, though somehow, no one ever seemed to mind very much, not even his father, who would complain the most.

Those days felt long ago and far away.

David turned to look at Rakitin again.

"What you're talking about isn't justice. It's revenge, or...I don't know, a reckoning. There's a reason why we have laws and procedures and people who enforce them. If you can decide who lives and dies, what's to stop someone else from doing it? It's not arbitrary, or it shouldn't be."

He fell silent, and stared straight ahead, wondering how American that just sounded.

Another miscalculation.

David pressed his lips together, and shook his head.

"You know...I'm not sure if I really believe that, actually. It's easy to say those things, until it's you who wants revenge."

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Rakitin took a long, careful look at the soldier, who wouldn't meet his eyes.

It wasn't about revenge, or even for that matter justice. He couldn't say exactly what, but that it was necessary.

Maybe he was only trying to force meaning onto suffering by assigning some element of it an endpoint.

Maybe that was what "revenge" meant.

Quietly, Polya said,

"Don't you?"

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David said nothing for a while.

It didn't help that he knew who his attacker was, had the whole thing explained to him by the Boss, who had stood by his bed and looked at him expectantly, as if she'd wanted him to say something rational about it. He didn't have anything rational to say, not really, and he still didn't now.

David couldn't remember what had happened, exactly, and if that was due to an aftereffect of the poison, or simply his mind's own defense system wanting to shield him from trauma by removing his ability to remember it, he didn't know.

He thought it might be better that way, regardless.

"Honestly...I don't know anymore."

It was honest, which surprised him a little. David brushed his thumb and fingers together. He could almost feel the weight of his knife in his hand, light, and perfectly balanced.

"Turn the other cheek? An eye for an eye? Repayment, with interest?"

David shook his head.

"I don't know, but I suppose at least I have the luxury of being able to decide."

He let out breath in a long sigh, and looked at Rakitin, sidelong, frowning and suddenly intent.

"What about this murderer of yours? What are you going to do when you find him? Is that what you're planning?"

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Lydia Solovyeva had lost track of time.

Her office in the Main Wing lay in disorder, as though a flock of manila folders took flight and decided to migrate somewhere warmer for the winter. Something instinctual made them stop for the night in her office, and light on every flat surface, three, sometimes four deep.

By her best estimate, she was less than a quarter of the way finished pulling files and checking blood types as per Major Liadov’s orders. A thin stack of files had become to accumulate at the corner of her desk, marked on the front with a stripe of red tape.

She would have still been asleep at her desk if the recently-appointed Lieutenant Colonel Savitskiy hadn’t noticed her light was still on, and checked on her out of concern.

Lydia had forgotten all about Captain Ushakov’s request that she check in on the amnesiac soldier in the infirmary, in some hope that she might recognize him. After all, she knew everyone, Ushakov had reasoned.

It was late, nearing midnight, and she halfway hoped that the man was fast asleep.

As she knocked on the door, the other half of her hoped that the impression of the spiral-bound notebook that was her makeshift pillow had worn off her forehead on her walk over from the Main Wing.

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"No," Rakitin admitted.

He smiled wanly, his own irrationality catching up to him.

You don't go murdering people, Lieutenant, he imagined Liadov explaining with vast patience. It's not socially acceptable.

"That would be ridiculous."

Not to mention that, if the killer was in fact Isaev, Rakitin would be dead before he finished the thought. If it wasn't, then there was no problem.

It was notable, he thought, what difference a few days made. The cornered, half-panicked man who had grabbed him by the wrist on waking had barely any relation to the measured and self-possessed one studying him now. The look of quarantined desperation was all but gone.

"I don't know, either," he confessed.

Still, the resolve failed to dissipate into shame.

Rakitin went on before the soldier could notice that he hadn't revoked his promise.

"Right now, what matters is the present. Even if you don't remember right away, we have a few clues. Once we find out who you are-"

Polya broke off and looked up at the sound of a knock on the door.

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David stared at Rakitin a moment, frowning, but then he pulled his gaze away to look toward the door.

"Yes?" he called, quietly.

He wondered who it was. Nurses usually knocked and entered immediately afterward, but he didn't know who else would be at his room this hour.

"Come in."

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Lydia hesitated at the doorway, a step into the room, and her free hand still resting on the knob.

“Oh, Lieutenant Rakitin! Well, I assume you’re Lieutenant Rakitin.” She gave a nervous laugh, and a shrug.

“If I’ve picked a bad time, I could come back tomorrow, maybe. Captain Ushakov sent me…” Her eyes settled on the nameless soldier, and she offered a warm smile. “…to talk to you. He thought I might know you, since I …kind of know everybody around here.”

There were no names that sprang to mind, no click of recognition, but Lydia forced a smile. The soldier was as lost to her as a paperclip behind a filing cabinet.

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"That's right," Rakitin said, nodding to the woman, wondering how she knew his name.

He was sure he would have remembered if he had seen her before. Her hair was a distinct, almost unnatural red. It stood out against the white walls like a dove on fire.

Polya found himself oddly put off by the interruption. But, though she showed no immediate signs of recognition, if she knew anything at all, that was important.

"Now is fine," Rakitin said. He looked to the soldier. "If that's all right with you."

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"Da, of course," David said, and he nodded too. "Please."

He smiled at the young woman, briefly and warmly.

She looked terribly young and delicate, pretty in a fragile way, pale ivory skin and finely drawn features framed by shockingly red hair. Her body language seemed almost defensive, though, and he couldn't quite read her expression. He wondered if they'd sent her in to act shy on purpose, to get him to drop his guard.

"If you can help, I'd be grateful," he told her anyway, letting himself relax against the headboard again, as if her offer of assistance had put him more at ease.

David glanced at Rakitin, whose lips were pressed together in a non-committal line.

"Lieutenant Rakitin and I were just discussing how we can go about finding out who I am."

He paused, and raised his brows, looking at the woman again. He kept his gaze direct, and searching, though he tempered it with another smile.

"But first - I apologize, I didn't get your name?"

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“Oh. I’m sorry.” Her laugh was constricted and nervous. “Lydia Solovyeva. With Personnel. Record keeping, mostly, I mean.”

The man, whoever he was, had the most gorgeous slate-gray eyes. She would have remembered something like that, and that idea put her at ill ease.

“So it’s really no stretch of the imagination to say that I know everyone, at least on vital statistics. Eye color, blood type, birthplace.”

Lydia was sure that her transparent smile betrayed her, sure that it was obvious she didn’t recognize him in the way her brows furrowed together, in the way she kept fidgeting with the edge of the folder clutched in her arms.

That, and Rakitin’s cold, reptilian indifference made her feel like retreating to the hallway.

The bandages that crossed the soldier’s chest and his subtle aura of hopelessness and helplessness made her want to stay and somehow make everything alright for him.

A name, at least. He wasn’t even really a person without a name.

She crept past the pathologist, as if movement would make him strike, and stood at the edge of the hospital bed.

“I…thought you might be getting tired of infirmary food…” With a sheepish smile, and a hushed tone, Lydia pulled the bag of smuggled spice cookies from her file. “Just a little… something to help you feel better."

She was compelled to turn back to Rakitin, and at least try to win him over with confectionary sweets.

“You too, Lieutenant. Help yourself. I have plenty more in my office…”

She trailed off, and realized they both probably thought she was insane, rambling on and on about nothing.

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"Thank you."

David took the bag and looked inside, cautiously at first, finding of all things, cookies. Small round cookies, golden brown and crisp, smelling faintly of ginger and molasses.

He blinked, realizing belatedly that his look had turned unguarded, the corners of his broad, expressive mouth pulled into a wide smile. His cheeks dimpled when he smiled like that, making him look younger.

David pulled a cookie out of the bag. His mother used to make the same kind.

He decided that if Lydia pulled a Saint Bernard puppy out of her purse next, David would just give up and confess everything, since they already seemed to know it.

The cookie melted in his mouth like sugar. "That's great. It was very thoughtful of you to bring them."

He passed the bag to Rakitin.

"Here, comrade. Try one. They taste like they're fresh from the oven."

David looked back at Lydia, and smiled at her again.

"Your husband's a lucky man, to have a pretty wife who cooks as well as you do."

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"Oh." Rakitin blinked, taking the bag. Pretty girls offering him cookies was a strange idea that required a moment of parsing. "Thank you, Miss Solovyeva."

The poor girl looked terribly nervous as he handed the bag back to her. He wondered what was wrong. He smiled reassuringly as he stood and gestured to the room's lone chair.

"Please, sit down."

It turned genuine as he tasted the morsel.

"They're very good."

The soldier's face had lit up as soon as Miss Solovyeva had appeared. Rakitin had never seen him smile like that before. Ten years vanished from him in an instant.

There was something that had been bothering Polya. It rose a little closer to the surface. Something unusual about this man, a certain subtle but essential difference. He had, he thought, put it down to the stranger's understandably shaken condition, but it was more permeative than that. If he could just look closely enough to name it...

Rakitin's train of thought leapt offcourse as something the redhaired woman had said sank in.

He looked to her with interest.

"Blood type, did you say?"

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“Oh, well, I…” Her cheeks flushed as vivid crimson as her hair, and Lydia found a sudden fascination with the blank folder in her hands. “I’m… actually, I’m not married, but thank you.”

Not even seeing anyone.

The soldiers at Groznyj Grad were a strange, strange sort.

Poor guy must have hit his head pretty hard, if he was calling her pretty, instead of batting his gorgeous slate eyes Lieutenant Rakitin.

Thank God for the pathologist’s convenient diversion.

“Yes, blood type.” Lydia answered enthusiastically. “Orders came this afternoon to pull all of the files with type AB. That’s why I didn’t stop by sooner…”

They didn’t need to know that she fell asleep at her desk half way through the letter C.

“So while I’m pulling files, it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye out for someone who matches your description, right?” She offered a warm smile to the nameless soldier, and resisted the impulse to pat his hand with reassurance.

“Groznyj Grad isn’t that big of a base. One of your comrades will notice you’re missing from your unit, and report it, and in no time at all they’ll be calling you by your name, and you’ll remember who you are.”

Apprehensively, she leaned against the edge of his bed.

“So there’s no need to worry about a thing. Everything will turn out fine, I promise.”

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David smiled at her.

"Thank you. I can't say how much better that makes me feel."

He really couldn't.

This was going to be a big problem, even if the pretty-record-keeping-secretary-bearing-cookies was no more than that, just a nice woman who wanted to help him. It was only a matter of time before it became apparent that no one knew him, and then this Captain Ushakov and everyone else would ask more questions.

David had to figure out what to do before then.

The problem with getting to know these people was that any sort of friendship would make them more determined to help him, which wasn't exactly the kind of help he needed right now.

He felt tired, suddenly. David glanced back to the bag of cookies, and smiled a little sheepishly.

"Could I...have another?"

As the bag was passed back to him, he glanced between pathologist and records-keeper with raised brows.

"So, why the inquiry into the AB blood type? If you don't mind me asking."

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"It's about the murder," said Rakitin.

If a murderer was extremely clever and well-prepared, what more perfect defense than feigning or somehow even manufacteuring a loss of the memory of the crime...

It wasn't the stupidest thought Polya had ever had, but it fell within the top twenty.

"Every contact leaves a trace, they say."

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