by Dima Zales
“No shit,” Mitya says, his avatar sounding distraught despite his bravado.
“Shut up, guys,” I inadvertently say out loud, but my voice is muffled by the mounds of flesh below my face.
More shots are fired from right next to me. I assume it’s Joe and his friends, but I can’t be sure since all I can see is Nadejda’s zipper. Then again, it’s a safe bet she’s shooting, because I can feel the tension in her beefy thigh muscles with my cheek.
The car squeals to a jerky stop.
My position prevents whiplash, but I still feel woozy.
In a whirl of action, Nadejda extricates herself from under me, and before I can react, she’s gone from the car.
The shooting resumes.
I try to peek through the rear window, but it explodes into shards.
Determined to at least see what’s going on, I unhook the GoPro harness from my body and grip the camera tightly.
In the mental chat, I type, “Guys, can you feed me the camera input?”
“Of course,” Mitya says. “Done.”
I prepare to get shot in the arm and raise the camera like a periscope.
My friend delivers on his promise, and I stare at the video of what’s going on outside the car.
Nadejda is still holding on to her machine pistol, while Gogi and Joe have slightly smaller guns. They’re all aiming at the black car and walking toward it menacingly.
I point the camera at the vehicle and see that the bad guys’ car looks like a pasta strainer.
Though no one is shooting back at my allies, the crew cautiously approach the vehicle. Then Gogi and Joe rip away the front and back doors and unload the rest of their bullets into whatever they find inside.
“All dead,” my cousin says, and I detect a note of disappointment in his tone. Maybe he wanted to question the assailants but didn’t get a chance to?
Well, I can learn something even if he didn’t. I put the camera harness back on and exit the car on legs that feel like jelly.
“You should probably stay in the car, young man,” Gogi says as I approach them. Then, probably figuring I didn’t understand his Russian due to shock, he adds in broken English, “If you not see death up front like this, it can be very bad.”
“He’s probably right,” Ada says in my right ear.
“At least get close enough for facial recognition to kick in,” Mitya says in my left ear.
Gingerly, I take another couple of steps.
A strange kind of numbness overcomes me as I scan one shot-up man after another. I only stop once the face recognition data turns up. As I take it in, the numbness dissipates, and I find myself bent over, dry-heaving violently. My ribs ache with renewed fierceness, and my head reminds me it’s only been a couple of days since the concussion.
“At least he hasn’t eaten anything in a while,” Mitya says from somewhere. “He’d lose it for sure.”
“Shut up,” Ada says. “Mike, sweetie, are you okay?”
I don’t respond either vocally or mentally.
Gogi places a comforting hand on my shoulder, but I don’t know how to respond to that either.
Eventually, I straighten, pulling away from Gogi’s touch, and lumber back to our car.
Both the local and virtual crews follow me.
The car doors slam behind Gogi, then Joe, then Nadejda.
I just sit there, breathing heavily. Despite the cool air outside, sweat drips down my spine, and my ribs ache dully.
Gogi puts the gun back into the glove compartment without saying anything.
I gather some strength and look at Nadejda. She already hid the Uzi someplace, and in my current state, I don’t care to guess where. As though feeling my gaze, the woman looks at me with a strange expression that might be compassion. On second thought, it could be worry about my rat, or maybe she’s simply constipated.
Joe’s expression, or lack thereof, is easier to read, since it’s as emotionless as usual. Seeing he has my attention, he nonchalantly says, “How much do you trust them?”
“Who?” I ask, wondering if he means Nadejda and Gogi.
“Levin and your girlfriend,” Joe clarifies.
“They know where we’re heading,” Gogi chimes in.
“And that didn’t seem like a random attack,” Nadejda adds.
“I trust them more than I trust any of you,” I blurt out. When I see my cousin’s blue icicles-for-eyes narrow, I swiftly clarify, “I trust them completely, Joe.”
“If we wanted to hurt you, we’d use the Brainocytes to do it,” Mitya says.
“Sure, tell them that,” Ada says sarcastically. “Better yet, tell them we implanted a nuke inside your head that we can detonate at any time. That should relax everyone.”
Glad only I can hear my friends bickering, I tell Joe, “Let’s focus on the attackers. I can tell you who they are.”
“You can?” Gogi’s bushy unibrow tilts right.
“Don’t tell anyone in Russia about the Brainocytes,” Mitya warns. “Or else you might join your mom, and not in the way we want.”
“I’m not an idiot,” I mentally reply. Then I gesture at the camera on my chest and say out loud, “This took images of their faces and sent them to my friends. They looked them up and were about to share the information with me.”
Gogi grunts approvingly, and even Nadejda looks a little less solemn.
Reassured, I take out my phone and pretend to read the bios from there instead of the Augmented Reality text boxes.
I rattle out the ages and the criminal records of the dead and finish with their personal connections, such as family members, friends, and other things gleaned from social media. Though my listeners don’t seem to care, the social media information I read makes my chest tighten in empathy. I even feel a dash of remorse, an odd reaction since I wasn’t the one who killed those men. I guess seeing pictures of their kids, wives, brothers, and sisters humanized them in my eyes, making their deaths register as the tragedy they are. True, this slaughter was in self-defense, but that doesn’t make me feel better. I wonder if murders would still happen if everyone knew such intimate details about the people they were about to kill? Could this be yet another way the Brainocytes might improve the world? As soon as the thought occurs to me, I dismiss it. The likeliest suspect in a murder case is usually the spouse of the victim or some other acquaintance, so that rationale doesn’t hold.
“They sound like your generic guns for hire,” Gogi says, interrupting my inadvertent moment of silence.
“I agree,” Nadejda says. “They could’ve been working for anyone with a large bank account.”
“This is why you should’ve kept one alive.” Joe throws out the words as an accusation, as though he wasn’t doing a huge chunk of the killing.
Nadejda and Gogi don’t respond, and after a moment of sullen quietude, my cousin starts the car and expresses his frustration by slamming on the gas pedal so hard we leave a streak of black tire marks behind us.
As we make our way to Alex’s home, I mentally ask Ada and Mitya about improving the face recognition app based on some ideas I’ve come up with.
“I really like that,” Mitya says after I explain what I want. “We can pick out certain markers in the person’s profile and have Einstein alert you as needed.”
“We can also give them a red halo,” Ada says, getting into the spirit of things. “It’ll let you spot any dangerous people in a crowd.”
“Obviously, we’ll leave you with the ability to use face recognition manually the way you do now,” Mitya adds.
“You guys don’t need to sell me on this,” I mentally type. “I was the one who wanted the improvements in the first place.”
“All right then,” Mitya says. “We’ll start coding.”
“Okay.” I draw in a heavy breath. “I’ll just sit here alone, I guess.”
“You have three other people in the car with you,” Mitya says. “I’m sure they can keep you entertained.”
Emphasizin
g that our conversation is officially over, Mitya’s devil visage goes away.
“Don’t mind him.” Ada’s angel avatar flies up to my face. “I’ll go code a bit too, but I’ll keep an eye on the chat window if you want to get in touch.”
She flies even closer to my cheek, mimics giving me a kiss, and evaporates. I’m left marveling at how even a fake kiss from Ada has the power to make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
As the car ride continues, I take in the sights. We’re passing through villages and fields of sunflowers and corn. After the dozenth sighting of herds of cows and horses, the rural vista begins to bore me, and I loudly yawn.
I surf the net with my mind for a while before realizing the sun outside isn’t fooling my body’s circadian rhythm. Somehow, it knows it’s nighttime back home. Seeing no reason to fight the inevitable, I instruct Einstein to wake me up when we get to Alex’s location and close my eyes.
From my perch on the second floor, I see Mom sitting on a metal chair in the middle of an abandoned factory. She’s wrapped in duct tape from head to toe like a strange modern mummy. Anton—the ape-bison asshole—is standing next to her with a blowtorch.
I grab onto the rusty hook attached to a gigantic chain and swing toward Anton in a perfect imitation of Tarzan.
Anton turns to me and round-kicks me off the chain.
“Wakey-wakey,” says a German-accented voice from far away.
Confused, I fall from the chain and land with a loud splat.
As I lie there, trying to catch my breath, Anton walks up to me and applies the blowtorch to my temple.
My head begins melting, and I realize I’m dreaming.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Wakey-wakey,” Einstein’s German-accented voice booms. “Eggs and Schnitzel.”
As I struggle to regain my senses, I overhear Nadejda ask, “Does your cousin do anything else besides sleep?”
Joe says nothing, and Gogi chuckles.
“I’m awake,” I mumble and rub my eyes, ignoring the twinge of pain in my ribs. “What did I miss?”
“We’re almost there,” Gogi says and points at a fence in the far distance. The fence looks inspired by the Wall of China.
“Alex calls this his Palace,” says Mitya, his devil appearing almost on my left shoulder. “I call it the Monument to Alex’s Ego.”
I use my phone’s GPS to pinpoint my location. Alex’s house—or mansion or palace or whatever—is located close enough to Moscow proper to be stupendously expensive, but far enough to allow for a plot of land of this outlandish size.
“I can’t see past the gate yet,” I mentally respond. “Have you guys updated the face recognition app?”
“We finished that a while ago,” Ada says, her angel showing up on my opposite shoulder.
“And we had time to sleep too,” Mitya says.
“But not with each other,” Ada clarifies hastily.
Instantly feeling wide awake, I launch the new version of the face recognition app. I’m prompted on whether I want to see Einstein’s holographic image, and I decide against it; two illusory versions of my friends is enough Augmented Reality for now.
The gate we arrive at wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval Russian castle. As we approach, it opens with a metal-on-metal screech.
“Sketchy person alert,” Einstein says as soon as I glimpse the armed guards manning the gate. “Sketchy person alert. Sketchy person alert. Sketchy person alert.”
“Sorry,” Mitya says. “I set up the app so Einstein says that phrase every time he detects a new face that matches the predefined criteria. Those four guards are probably dangerous.”
“I bet Mike could’ve figured that out just by looking at them,” Ada says, her wings twitching nervously. “The AK-47s and the Neanderthal foreheads are dead giveaways.”
“Mitya,” I mentally type. “Does your friend know we’re here?”
“I just texted him,” Mitya replies. “And he’s not my friend.”
“He’s not?” Ada asks as I type the same question.
“He’s an old acquaintance who owes me a bunch of favors,” Mitya explains. “If you knew Alex like I do, you’d know that’s better than being his friend.”
The burly security dudes examine each of us closely and suspiciously check their handhelds, but eventually, they allow us to proceed through the gate.
We slowly drive in and are greeted by a bunch of armed people. All but one raises the “sketchy person” alert. I look at the one man without a red halo and wonder how he ended up here. One manual face recognition scan later, I learn he’s a cop.
“Not always a big difference between goons and cops in Russia,” Mitya says. “The likes of Alex can hire cops just as easily as they can hire goons, and it’s worth having a few on the payroll.”
I shake my head and take in our surroundings. As we crest the big hill, we bear witness to the majesty of Alex’s Palace—a name that might actually be an understatement. This thing is monstrous and dwarfs most mansions I’ve seen. It reminds me of a double-sized Winter Palace in St. Petersburg (the Russian city, never to be confused with the one in Florida), except it has many more gold-plated surfaces. Unlike the tsar’s former residence, though, this place has some embellishments that seem tacky, the worst offender being the colorful peacocks roaming the gardens that are way too tropical for Russia.
We park on a driveway the size of a modest football stadium, and two armed men escort us to the Palace doors. For people carrying machine guns, their manner is very polite.
A girl who looks like she stepped off the cover of Russian Maxim magazine greets us in the vestibule. In passable English, she says, “Hello, Mr. Cohen. I’m Anna. Mr. Voynskiy asked me to take you to the Lounge.”
Nadejda gives Anna her signature Ice Queen stare, while Gogi checks her out appreciatively.
“We’d like to speak with your boss now,” Joe says, and I get the impression he’s itching to grab the girl by the neck to emphasize his point.
“He’ll meet you in the Lounge shortly,” Anna responds, unperturbed. “It’s this way.”
She turns and starts walking. As we follow her deeper into the Palace, I decide that Alex has a fetish for bling. The heavy chandeliers look like they’re made of gold and diamonds, while the paintings and the ancient Russian icons on the walls are set in gold frames—adorned with copious amounts of jewels, of course.
“This sometimes happens when low-class people get money,” Mitya whispers conspiratorially from my left. “It doesn’t make it any less painful to look at.”
“I didn’t realize you came from old money,” Ada says with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “And don’t you own a race horse ranch?”
“Exactly,” Mitya counters. “That just proves I know what I’m talking about.”
I ignore their banter as we finally reach the Lounge. It’s the size of the Bellagio hotel in Vegas—assuming that venerable place decided to turn itself into an opulent restaurant—and has the same feel.
“Please, take a seat.” Anna points at a giant table, and we accept her offer.
On the table is a bottle of Stoli Elit: Himalayan Edition. A mental search reveals this brand of vodka costs three thousand dollars per bottle. The hors d'oeuvres include black caviar blinis, some strange golden fish roe on a tiny plate, little salmon roe sandwiches, and a slew of other high-end Russian culinary delights.
“May I get anyone anything?” Anna asks politely, and I get the eerie impression she included herself on the list of possible items she can deliver.
“Voynskiy,” Joe says firmly.
“Tea if you could,” says Gogi.
“Some plain water,” I add. “And some nuts.”
Nadejda gives me a panicked stare. She probably figured out that the food is meant for Mr. Spock.
“I’ll be right back,” Anna says and backs away. “Meanwhile, please try the gold caviar. It’s Almas, from an albino Iranian Beluga sturgeon.”
“Hello.” A man emerges from beh
ind one of the giant columns. “I’m Alex.”
The man in front of us bears only a vague resemblance to the sharply dressed Alex Voynskiy I’ve seen in Forbes Magazine. In real life, he looks like a hybrid between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. His clothes, particularly the black turtleneck, remind me of the Apple founder, while his kind face and the shape of his glasses are more reminiscent of Microsoft’s former CEO.
“Except he wishes he was ten percent as brilliant as either man,” Mitya says after I share my thoughts in the chat. “Alex is a poser. He can’t code to save his life. Just another person in the right place at the right time.”
“You mean next to you?” I type.
“Exactly,” Mitya says. “Listening to me was the smartest thing he did, and this being Russia, he was able to monopolize the market.”
A robotic contraption consisting of wheels, a stick, and an iPad on top rolls out from behind the column. I recognize it as one of those telepresence robots.
“That’s me,” Mitya explains. “So I’ll turn off my avatar for now.”
“Hi, everyone,” Mitya says from the iPad on top of the robot. “I’m Mitya.”
“Hi, Mitya. Thanks for letting us use your plane,” I tell the robot, pretending I can’t just mentally talk to my friend via the chat. Turning to our host, I say, “Nice to meet you, Alex.”
After I introduce everyone around the table, Alex says, “Mitya filled me in on the situation, but I want to hear your version if you don’t mind.”
“We don’t,” I say, even though it looks like Joe feels otherwise. Between mouthfuls of multicolored fish eggs, I explain the situation, sticking as close to the truth as I can while omitting all mention of the Brainocyte technology.
Halfway through my story, Anna returns with the requested water and nuts. I combine this with the grapes and salad already on the table and sneak a meal to Mr. Spock.
“Just as I thought,” Alex says when I finish. “We’ll have to get help from Muhomor.”
Nadejda and Gogi look shocked, while my cousin and I exchange blank stares.
“I take it he’s not talking about the regular meaning of the word muhomor?” I type into the chat.
