by Dima Zales
My brain’s cloud extension must’ve showed the rest of my brain what might happen if I gave in to my overwhelming anger. It seems my biological brain isn’t yet accustomed to this new extension and reinterpreted this overflow of data as a dream-like scenario. Or, more specifically, a part of me warned the rest of me what might happen if I stormed into the room without waiting for Muhomor to disable the lights and for Gogi and Nadejda to assist us through the windows. My brain gave me a vision using the available information and even utilized my existing memories for assistance, causing me to relive that horrible headless Mrs. Sanchez/Mom moment.
“We need to go in now,” I text Muhomor, realizing I’m just standing there, wide-eyed. At the same time, I type into the chat, “Mitya, when we go in, show Mom a text box instructing her to run into a corner and lie on the floor. I don’t want anyone using her as a hostage or one of us accidentally shooting her.”
“I have everything set up to send that message,” Mitya types back. “Let’s hope she catches on when she sees it.”
As I read Mitya’s reply, I hear Muhomor respond to my earlier comment with, “I’m not ready yet. I’m trying to make sure the lights don’t come back on prematurely, so I need to work on this a little longer.”
On the screen, the monster guy is leaning over my mom as she cringes away, and it takes every effort of will to stop myself from repeating the scenario the brain-boost side effect warned me against.
As time crawls onward, I remind myself that the monster guy has to take his pants off before something truly unthinkable can happen, but this line of thinking, even if it’s somewhat rational, makes me feel like the lousiest son in the world. I also keep telling myself that my brain-boost vision was probably an accurate estimation of what will happen if I just storm in—and that makes me feel like the most cowardly son in the world.
I spare Joe a glance, and it seems like similar thoughts are battling in the dark place that’s his mind. If a look at a phone screen could castrate someone, the gray-haired man inside the room would be squealing in a high falsetto.
“I want to change the plan,” Joe whispers through his teeth. “I want to deal with this gray fucker myself.”
“Joe,” Gogi says softly into our earpieces. “Mike should handle him.”
In my rage, I forgot the plan, and particularly the part where, by a stroke of fate, Gogi said I should tranquilize the gray-haired guy when we storm the room. His logic for doing things this way was sound. Even if I miss, since the man might not be armed (while the others are visibly armed), I can shoot at him a second time in relative safety.
At first, I want to tell everyone that the monster guy is indeed armed, but then I realize his gun was part of my vision, which isn’t proof he actually has one. I’m not psychic, and the vision wasn’t prophetic, but rather a hypothesis with the same validity as my favorite recurring dream where I’m walking naked in the middle of Times Square.
“Fine,” Joe grunts. “But we have to go in—now.”
“Nadejda and I are set,” Gogi says. “We’re waiting on Muhomor.”
“Muhomor,” I mentally type. “If you don’t want Joe to do to you what he did to Alex, you’ll tell us everything is all set.”
“Fine,” Muhomor says hesitantly. “I guess you can go in. The lights will turn off in ten, nine…”
As Muhomor counts down, Joe pulls down his night-vision goggles and stands in front of me, ready to kick the door in.
I lower my goggles onto my face and tense as the world turns different shades of green.
“Lights out,” Muhomor says, and the lights from below the door, as well as the AROS view through the security camera in the room, go black.
“Go,” Gogi says, and through the two views that represent his and Nadejda’s cameras, I see them scaling the side of the building, SWAT style.
Joe springs into motion and gives the door a powerful kick.
Chapter Forty-Two
Joe runs in and shoots a dart into the disoriented guard’s neck—as per Gogi’s plan.
I follow him and briefly take in the green-tinted room.
As we hoped, Anton and his goons can’t see us in the dark, but they don’t look as disoriented as would be ideal, and their guns are out.
I turn toward my objective—the asshole next to where Mom was. Thanks to Mitya’s message, Mom is in the corner of the room already, only she didn’t get a chance to lie down yet, or maybe she isn’t planning to because of the darkness.
My mind gets laser-focused on my goal, but at the same time, I’m able to pay close attention to the many events in the room. I wonder if it’s from the brain boost assisting me. I also feel as though time slowed to the point where I can think many more thoughts per second than usual. I’ve heard of time distortion happening to people in stressful situations, but I doubt it was to this extent. What I’m experiencing reminds me of an altered state of consciousness that has more to do with hallucinogens than stress.
In the next instant, the two windows shatter, and Nadejda and Gogi fly in, spraying shards of glass all over the floor and bringing a draft of fresh air into the stuffy room.
The monster-faced guy isn’t facing the back of the room anymore. Reacting to the sound of breaking glass, he turns, and I get a good look at his face.
If I needed proof that my earlier vision wasn’t prophetic but a product of my imagination, I get it now. The man’s face doesn’t have warts and doesn’t resemble Freddy’s. He looks like an accountant, or maybe, given the context, a scientist. The worst thing I can say about his face is that he has an overbite. The weirdest part is that this guy looks vaguely familiar, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never met him before. He clearly isn’t a thug, or my face-recognition app would’ve alerted me—assuming face recognition can work in this green-tinted environment.
His identity isn’t important, though. As far as I’m concerned, his name is Shoot Me.
I raise the tranquilizer gun and do my best to aim. The assist app must have a problem with the lighting conditions, because even the flawed version doesn’t appear.
I pull the trigger unassisted.
All of a sudden, a green sun flare erupts around me, and I can’t see a thing.
“Fuck,” Muhomor says through the earpiece. “The lights came back on too soon.” When the others shout obscenities at him, he replies with, “If you’d only given me time to—”
I ignore the rest of his monologue.
That this green super flare is from the lights coming back on is preferable to what I originally thought—that I was going blind or having a stress-induced stroke.
Though I can’t see much with my eyes, I have an alternative. Since the lights are back on, the AROS screen with the security camera feed is no longer black, and my eyes’ condition is irrelevant to AROS, which works with the vision center of my brain.
In that camera view, I see I missed my shot at the scientist again, or for the first time depending on whether the vision counts. At least I assume I missed, since he isn’t on the ground.
I’m worried I’ll find it impossible to navigate my way around the room using only the camera input, so I rip off the night-vision goggles.
The bright light blinds my green-adjusted eyes, so I take my chances with the camera feed and leap for the corner where my mom is.
My plan is straightforward. I’ll put myself between Mom and the rest of the people in the room. If anyone wants to take her hostage like in my pre-cog vision, they’ll have to get through me. As a bonus, I get closer to the scientist asshole, so once my eyes recover enough, I’ll have a better chance at shooting him.
Navigating by camera turns out to be harder than I thought, and I bump into a chair, causing my kneecap to scream in pain. Gritting my teeth, I vow to learn how to walk around rooms based on a security camera video feed.
Suddenly, I see a blur of motion coming toward me in the camera view.
I squint and make out a fist flying at my face.
The punch
connects, and the pain in my knee seems like a tickle in comparison.
As somewhat of a developing expert on getting hit like this, I have to say, pain aside, the punch isn’t that bad. I think it only hurts this much because my face is already swollen from my previous adventures. I do see a few stars as I drop the gun, but—and this is critical—I’m still standing. As a side benefit, the hit shocked my vision into recovering, and I can see my opponent quite well. It’s the damn scientist guy.
“Come on, Mike,” Mitya yells. “Wipe the floor with this old fart!”
“Shut up,” Ada tells him sternly. “Don’t distract him.”
I throw a punch at the guy’s cheek, but he dodges it.
Either my movements are slow due to the earlier hit, or the old man is spryer than he looks.
“Felix,” my mom screams from behind me. “That’s Misha you’re fighting!”
If Mom’s goal was to distract my attacker, she succeeded spectacularly. Wide-eyed, he looks at me as though he’s trying to use x-ray vision. I don’t need a brain boost to take advantage of this. Seizing the moment, I plant a satisfyingly hard punch on his jaw.
Something seems to break in my knuckles, but it’s worth it, because something also seems to break in the guy’s face as he reels back.
I don’t get to gloat, though, because as he falls, he grabs me by my belt, and I topple with him in a heap of flailing limbs.
Once on the ground, I recover enough to straddle my opponent and smack him with my forehead. Sparks explode in my vision, and the strike goes on my list of movie fight moves to never repeat again. I’m convinced the blow hurt me more than him.
Next, I try punching him with my fist, but he dodges, and I hit the toilet-white floor tiles. If my knuckles weren’t broken before, they might be now.
Through the pain, I make myself another promise: once I master moving around using a camera feed, I’ll also learn how to fight. Maybe shooting a tranquilizer gun without any apps should go on that list as well.
Though blood is trickling from a cut in his forehead, my opponent’s eyes gleam with fear and malice. In general, he looks much too lucid for my liking.
With my left hand, I punch him in the chest, a move that causes my hand to feel as though a mob of angry bees stung each knuckle. Air whooshes from my opponent’s mouth, and I get a tiny bit closer to my goal of knocking him out so he’s no longer a threat to Mom.
Then the bastard tries escaping from under me.
I hit him in the face this time, then his ear, and then I knee him in the stomach with my still-recovering knee.
In a haze of pain, in the middle of this bout of almost mindless pummeling—and probably thanks to the boost—I take in the rest of the room through the camera view.
Similar to me, Gogi is on the floor. Unlike me, instead of punching Denis—his opponent who’s the bigger one of Anton’s flunkies—he’s wrestling with him. Gogi must’ve jumped the man to stop him from using his gun and alerting the nearby guards, though I’m not sure whether I know this by using the evidence I see, or if some brain-boosted part of me was paying attention to what was happening to Gogi without me being consciously aware of it. Looking at the big mess of glistening limbs clawing at each other, it’s hard to know who’s winning the fight. For Gogi’s sake, I hope Nadejda taught him some wrestling moves—an activity I decide to add to my quickly growing list of future self-improvements.
I land another blow on my attacker’s face and see blood. As the metallic scent fills my nostrils, I realize I can’t tell whether the red liquid is coming from the cuts on my fist or a wound on my opponent.
“Misha, stop!” someone yells. It sounds like Mom, but I must be imagining it. It makes no sense for her to defend the guy who was about to rape her.
My fists scream in agony, yet my victim is still squirming underneath me, meaning he’s still dangerous and I need to hit him some more.
In the camera view of the room, I spot Nadejda locked in a fight with Yegor. She has hold of his gun hand, and they’re struggling for control of the weapon. Her tranquilizer gun is on the floor, and I vaguely recall seeing her lose it via the camera feed, back when Yegor disarmed her when the lights came back on.
“Misha!” Mom’s voice intrudes again. “You’re going to kill him.”
I don’t get a chance to tell Mom something like, “That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” because my attention zooms in on what Anton is doing—aiming his gun at Joe.
“Mike, he’s your father!” my mom screams, but her words don’t register as Nadejda also spots Joe’s predicament and does something I’ve only seen in a UFC fight.
With her huge muscles rippling under the strain and her neck veins bulging, Nadejda grabs Yegor by the waist and throws him at Anton.
The two Russian brutes collide with the smack of a slab of meat hitting the butcher’s counter, just as Anton’s gun goes off.
My eardrums feel like they might pop out of my eyes.
A rush of relief hits me when I see Joe is still standing—meaning Nadejda’s ploy worked.
Of course, the gunshot also means our attempts at stealth were for nothing. It’s now a matter of minutes before an army of guards descends on our asses.
This is when my mom’s words finally register.
She called the man I’m currently hitting my father.
Chapter Forty-Three
“Did she really just call him my father?” I hysterically type into the chat, in part as a sanity check, but also to frame the question for myself.
“She did,” Ada replies. “I know it’s very Empire Strikes Back, but you have to pull yourself together and quick.”
My mind is a beehive of thoughts as I try to piece it all together. Mom also referred to this guy as Felix. According to my grandparents, that’s indeed the name of the asshole who got Mom pregnant all those years ago.
Slowing my punching, I study the battered face in front of me and realize some of his features are similar to the ones I see in the mirror every day. That’s why he looked so familiar. Still, to be extra sure, I manually run the face recognition app. Since the lights are back up, the app runs without a hitch and confirms what I already knew.
This is Felix Rodinov, which are the first and last names of my father. I only get a glimpse of his bio. His real family includes kids, my half-siblings, and a wife he’s been married to for about forty years, meaning he was married before and during his affair with Mom. There’s a laundry list of scientific accomplishments and posts at various Russian universities and agencies.
An insight flashes through my brain—a vague notion of how his presence answers a number of questions I’ve had about this whole affair—but I put the thought aside.
More confused than I’ve ever felt in my life, I stop hitting my father and wonder what to do.
My attention is stolen by what’s happening in the camera view.
Joe makes his move.
With his real gun, he aims in Anton and Yegor’s direction. Joe must have switched weapons because stealth is no longer a factor, and he might as well give Anton the piece of lead he deserves.
His silenced shot is much quieter than Anton’s, but it’s still loud enough to hurt my damaged eardrums.
Unfortunately, Anton doesn’t fall, but Yegor does get a bullet in his eyeball, or so I assume given the bloody fountain of gelatinous goo that sprays from his face and the bits of brain matter that fly out the back of his head. The nauseating smell of blood mingled with gunpowder fills the room, followed by something far worse.
As Yegor falls, two last things happen in his life. His bowels release with a sickening stench, and he drags Anton to the ground with him.
The ape-bison Russian doesn’t let the fall put him at a disadvantage. He lands in a kneeling position with his gun outstretched and pointed at Joe.
Anton’s forearm muscles twitch. He’s pulling the trigger.
In a flurry of movement, Nadejda dives and pushes Joe out of the way.
&nb
sp; Anton’s gun goes off, and the bang scrambles my brain through my ear canals.
The bullet hits Nadejda square in her left breast.
Blood sprays out, and Nadejda clutches her chest as if to force the blood back in.
Eyes wide with horror and shock, Nadejda collapses to the ground, her bald head smacking loudly against the floor tiles.
Despite the push, Joe doesn’t lose his footing. Catching himself, he glances at Nadejda, and a frightening, guttural sound escapes his mouth at the sight of her crime-scene posed body. Like a jaguar, he leaps at Anton. His fist connects with Anton’s jaw, and their guns clank against the floor.
Joe’s attack looks like something out of a slasher movie. He bites Anton’s ear, Mike Tyson style, then spits the blood and flesh into Anton’s ever-whitening face.
Anton screams like a terrified cornered animal. Almost in slow motion, I watch as his big, sweaty fist lands a devastating blow to Joe’s right eye, and my cousin’s head ricochets backward.
As someone who received that same blow, I fear Joe might’ve gotten knocked out. Acting as quickly as I can, I turn and draw my silenced Glock.
In the blink of an eye, I realize my aim assist is back—at least something good came out of the lights coming back on.
I point the oh-so-helpful line at the only place I can without hitting Joe—Anton’s right shoulder.
Squeezing the trigger, I feel the gun kick in my wounded hands.
The bullet rips through Anton’s shoulder, and he yelps in pain.
Joe manages not to lose consciousness. Instead, he sticks his fingers into the bloody mound of meat I just created and twists them back and forth, as though trying to find the bullet to keep as a souvenir. At the same time, he claws at his enemy’s face with his other hand, and I wince as I glimpse Anton’s eyes popping like squished slugs.
Anton’s cry is no longer recognizable as human.
I fight the temptation to puke and keep my gun on Anton, but after another moment, the precaution isn’t needed.
