'Medusa'.

​

. . . . . . . . . .

SEVERSK, SIBERIA.


Snow poured like frozen petals,
blown about by severe wind.

"Vot moy propusk."

Single nod.
The guard moved to yank the chainlink fence back, small slip of the coat showed
the hidden GSH, fresh from the factory. No expense spared for a place like this.

Above, white peaks of concrete and steel glistened in the morning sky
Glance at his faded SEIKO watch. He had been in Seversk for twenty three minutes.

Another four, there laid the reception office, a shanty building eclipsed by nine that
reached for the heavens. Coat dragged him down. Hand itched for a holster that wasn't there.
Eyes checked the corners, expecting the insurgent that never came. Twitchy. Too twitchy.

Reception was clean-cut. Former security outfit. Local, no sign of foreigners out here.
Who would want to come? Only him, it seemed.

"Proshu proshcheniya. U vas naznachena vstrecha?"

Brain jogged for an answer.

"Net. Ishchu gospodina Vyacheslava. Ya iz ARC."

Little white lie. He had been that employee, once.
He had died, too. No need for a repeat.

One of the not-a-guardsmen took the keycard, glanced at
the faded plastic and buzzed him past with a loud beep.

"Proydite po koridoru i povernite napravo,
zatem yeshche dva raza nalevo. Imya v ofise."

Microbiological filters waited in the next hallway.
Thoughts of the Alps drifted by him. Mechanical men
intertwined with alien nature. Perhaps they were birthed in
labs such as these, long before he showed up in that nightmare.

White hallways and plastic tags. Men in white coats passing crates piled man-high
in the corridors. Figures in green wrenching down pipes stretching like capillaries from
ceiling to floor. Paperwork, dreck of the bureaucracy, scattered on the walls and desks.

"Prodolzhay idti, gost."
Single nod.

Turn right.
Computers locked behind glass. Printouts of paper, wretched away beside clipboards.
Technicians were fixing panels back in place within the datacenter, each whirring away.
Totems of information. Simulations. Systems. Theory and the toil of time.

Take the left.
Hallways, hallways and hallways populated by more and more machines.
No man stepped foot here bar him. A broken fire extinguisher laid pitifully in
it's container, a cheap paper tag clipped to it and the crates beside.
Slomannyy. Goryuchaya opasnost! was written in ink.

Second left.
Another hallway, glazed with the return of another row of offices.
Twenty six years. Two careers. Two lifetimes. Two deaths.
Steel in his hands felt heavier than it should have.
Fingers longed for the antique rifle, safety over
the scary thought of the unknown.

Hadn't carried it in a long while.

Another scientist walked past, giving a quizzical glance.
Looked like one of the fighters who had been shot down
in the wastes. Could have been. Wasn't worth thinking about.

Eyes wandered over the last plastic sign.
Ofis V. Vyacheslava in bold. Recently fitted.
Here it lay.

Two knocks. A portly man glanced out the blinds,
gripped the door and opened it ajar. Curious eyes.

"You speak English, yes?"

No need for formalities.
The look given towards an interloper greeted him.

"... yes. Who are you? We don't have many of
-- your people here. Not this month."

"Just a courier from distant shores. I have something that was misplaced
a long time ago, in Switzerland."

Click. Click. Clasps gave way to the hinge, box lifting up.
Inside was a fusion of metal platters, wiring and eldritch electronics.
Faded and worn, but still functional. One of his borrowed batteries kept it on.

It had kept him sane when he had needed it most.
Reminder that he wasn't the only one from before.

Vadim cautiously took it from the box, trembling.
Behind him on a shelf laid the very prototype, still gleaming and
glistening under the fluorescent lights. Software hadn't been installed yet.
Distant hum of circulating air as some ventilation system kicked in.

"S-Switzerland ...?"

Easier to put the box down now. It went on a creaking desk chair,
fingers skimming towards his pockets. The man was trembling, but couldn't risk dropping
this most prized possession. It seems this world had a cruel slant after all. One minor change across
another continent and the whole family had been upended.

Mesa had imploded nine years before.
Anya had died six years after in another accident,
victim in place of her son.

Life had twisted the knife the other way, long before Vadim could
carry out his experiment. Decades of research, rendered powerless in
the face of simple mortality. His benefactor thought of UNION-THREE's quest
for glorifying the cult of extinctionism, and yet had stooped to avoiding it himself.

Some things were universal.

One marlboro came from his pockets, a scoff spared for no one in particular. Saw a man shot in
cold blood for cheap imitations, once, and here they laid in chain stores for four euros a packet.
Nasty habit. Came back with the stress of that tour. Miracle that he made it back, really.

"How is Vasya?"

Vadim looked at him with an unreadable expression, too focused on safeguarding this new gift.
As he should have. It had only taken two lifetimes and two deaths to get here. Pocket lighter
glowed orange, lighting the flimsy cigarette. It tasted like decay. Man wasn't going to look
a gift horse in the mouth, even one that was smoking in his own office.

"He's... well. Learning. How do you know --"

"It's a long, long story."

Joey closed the door, tossed half-burnt cig in the paper-strewn rubbish bin and took a small breath of circulated air,
reaching for another flimsy chair. On sterile wallpaper stood a fresh calendar.


SIXTEENTH OF JULY, NEW MILLENNIUM.


. . . . . . . . . .​