“…borzhe moi…” She looked up with tears in her eyes from the crippling sorrow to see Red Saviour shaking her head as if someone had just hit her with a two-by-four. “…what?”
She choked down the tears. “I—I don’t know but—”
The clomping of heavy feet outside Saviour’s briefing room heralded the arrival of Soviet Bear. “Commissar—Comrades—” he whuffed. “Television is being broken. Also is naked man on floor. Not my doing, either of these things.”
Bella suddenly was sure, instantly sure, that this was what she had felt. Or was at least part of it. Before Bear was halfway done, she was on her feet and pushing past him, headed for the break room, impelled by a growing urgency she couldn’t even begin to explain.
* * *
The group was walking down the labyrinthine hallways of the CCCP HQ, heading for the Medical Bay. Jadwiga, the Soviette, was leading the way, and explaining while they walked. Vickie was not even sure she should have been there. Except—except that somehow she had gotten all tied up with this. Sera had materialized in her workroom, Bella was her dearest friend—the two of them were connected somehow, Vickie’s mage-sight clearly showed the bond between them. Jadwiga was going on about trauma, transitory amnesia…Vickie wasn’t paying much attention to it. Sera—well, Sera wasn’t The Seraphym anymore, wings notwithstanding. She reminded Vickie of the description in the fairy tale of the Little Mermaid, how, once she got legs, she walked in pain as every step was taken as if she walked on the blades of knives. Bella reflected that pain. But how, or why this had happened—Vickie still wasn’t sure. Sera hadn’t said more than a dozen words so far.
As for what they were going to see, in the CCCP medbay…Vickie wasn’t sure what that was, either, at this point.
Hope and despair flickered over Sera’s face by turns.
“…so…here,” Jadwiga said, opening the door to the medbay. “Here is being comrade patient.”
The group entered the cramped medbay. Sitting upon a gurney in the center of the room was John Murdock. But, at the same time, not. This John didn’t have darkness in his eyes. The same quiet intensity, but none of the troubles that had seemed to weigh him down even before he knew of his own impending death. The scars were still there, but they seemed fainter, unimportant now. Not really a part of the man that was sitting in front of them. And he still had his same lop-sided grin.
“Howdy, y’all.” He regarded the group, still smiling. “Now, who exactly are you people, an’ what the hell am I doin’ here?”
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 66
