“There’s an exit here,” he whispered.
“Then go,” she replied.
“You’re coming, too, aren’t you?”
She began to edge backward, keeping the gun leveled on the pair of men.
“Give me the cards, Zoya!” Tavik cried again, a note of desperation in his voice. “I must have them.”
“You can go to hell, Tavik,” Zoya said in a measured tone. “After what you’ve done, you’ll get nothing from me…except this perhaps.” She jerked the gun as she spoke the last words.
“Don’t you want this to end?” Tavik said. “Please, just drop the cards there and go. Otherwise we’ll have to keep chasing you.” He and his partner were pacing forward at the same speed as Zoya. Tavik pulled a gun from his jacket and leveled it at Marcus. “You don’t want your friend to get hurt, do you?”
Marcus had reached the doorway, but now he froze and stared at the hole at the end of the barrel of the vicious-looking gun.
“You’re a bastard. You shoot him, I shoot you.”
Tavik slid around the end of the bandstand. “A standoff. It doesn’t have to end ugly. No one needs to get hurt. Give me the—”
Marcus saw what happened as if in slow motion, but he still couldn’t believe his eyes. After Tavik had passed her by, the woman with the bass guitar had gripped it by the end of its neck and swung it around to smash against the back of Tavik’s head. It made a jangling smacking sound and Tavik pitched forward onto the floor with a cry.
“Get out of here,” yelled the woman. “Go!”
Marcus saw the huge mobster turn on the woman and take a swing at her with a meaty fist. The woman snapped her head back and brought up the guitar again to block a second swing.
Zoya grabbed Marcus’s arm and pulled him through the doorway.
“Shouldn’t we help her?” Marcus said.
Zoya didn’t respond. A dark hallway led in two directions, and Zoya took the right-hand way.
“You could shoot that big guy, at least.”
Zoya picked up her pace. “You want the gun, you can have it, but I’m getting out of here now!”
Marcus kept expecting to hear a scream from the woman behind them, or at least the sound of pursuit, but so far all he heard was the thumping of his heart in his chest and his panting as he scurried to keep up with Zoya. They passed several doorways until they came to one at the end of the passage that had a backlit red sign that the translator told him read ‘exit’. Zoya yelled for the door to open, but it didn’t; it appeared to be an old-fashioned style of door with a metal push-bar. Marcus heard a shout from behind them as Zoya slammed the bar down and shoved the door open.
They stumbled, blinking, onto a cracked and weed-choked sidewalk. A handful of pedestrians stared at them, but Zoya wasn’t paying attention. Her gaze was fixed on a vast complex of buildings straddling the river ahead of them. Even in his frightened state Marcus had to admit it was a beautiful sight — a huge gleaming pyramid, and two larger, brightly-lit spires hooking oddly into the sky.
“That’s where we need to go,” Zoya said.
“What?” was all Marcus could manage.
Zoya pointed at the absurd structures. “That’s where all these bastards work…where my brother worked. That’s where this will end.”
Marcus had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He didn’t want to go there. He wanted to find someplace safe and eat something and sleep for about a month. But all Zoya seemed to want to do was get herself killed. “We shouldn’t go there,” he murmured.
Zoya looked at him and pointed down the small road. “You go that way and catch a taxi. This is for me to deal with.” Without waiting for a response, she turned the opposite direction and took off running.
«Let her go, Marcus,» said his father. «Do what she said.»
Marcus let out a whimper of frustration and stumbled a few steps backward in the direction Zoya had indicated. He knew in his heart he would never see her again, and that pained him nearly as much as the fear that was squeezing his throat shut. I’ll never know what happened to her. Without thinking he took another step back, just as the door banged open and the two mobsters piled out. Tavik cradled the back of his head with one hand, his eyes brushing past Marcus without seeming to see him. “There!” he shouted, and took off in the direction Zoya had run. The big man lumbered after him, breathing heavily.
«Let’s get you to the apartment,» Javier said.
Marcus panted and grasped his head in his hands. He couldn’t recall ever running so much in his life. “Aaaaaargh!” he cried, and then jogged after the mobsters.
«What are you doing?» Javier cried.
“I don’t know,” Marcus muttered. “But I can’t leave her.”
Moscow
Sunday, June 8, 2138
7:12 p.m. MSK
Tyoma’s first sight upon opening his eyes was Viktor’s monstrous metallic face grinning down at him. His instinct was to roll out of the chair onto the floor, anything to get away from that evil leer, but his body was groggy from being in virtual so all it managed was a shudder.
“Welcome back,” Viktor said. The hand he pressed into Tyoma’s shoulder was stronger than any he had ever felt. Viktor stood tall and jerked a thumb toward the door. “Now get the fuck out. I’ve got things to do.”
As Viktor stalked off, Tyoma shoved himself to a sitting position and waited for the dizziness to subside. His old ‘pals’ Alexei and Oskar stood near the door, the latter with one hand held out beckoning to him to get a move on.
“I’m coming,” Tyoma mumbled, and slowly stood up from the chair. He nearly fell back but Oskar leapt forward and caught him.
“Lev pulls you under deep, doesn’t he?” the mobster said. “You’ll get your legs back soon enough. Come on.”
“Where we going?” Tyoma asked as Alexei took his other arm and opened the door.
Neither responded. They steered him into the tube lift and Alexei bent toward the speaker and said, “Subbasement six.”
“Basement?” echoed Tyoma. “That doesn’t sound promising. How about we go gamble a bit instead?”
Alexei cuffed him across the cheek. “Keep talking and I’ll start to get rough. Boss says we can play around with you now if we like, long as we don’t break anything important.”
A wisecrack came to mind, but Tyoma stifled it and leaned back against the wall of the tube. Just as the mild voice of the tube announced arrival at the basement level, a call beeped on Tyoma’s slot. The identifier said it was from his work compound. Who would be there this late on a Sunday? Must be Volodya. He nearly gave permission to the link when he remembered the worm and had to pause and consider whether the worm could infect the transmission or not. With his firewall wrecked, Tyoma gave his sentry code the hash pattern of the worm and directed it to protect the transmission.
The tube came to a halt and the two thugs guided him down a corridor with a bare concrete floor. Tyoma accepted the handshake request. Since the wireless on the compound was powerful enough to send an image to a slot interface, a view of the conference room table appeared in his mind. Immediately on the right sat his friend Kostya. To the left but three seats away sat Big Dima, and at the far end of the table was Volodya.
«Tyoma, you all right?» Volodya asked, in English. He leaned forward, a look on his face that Tyoma had never seen before. Concern? Is Volodya becoming human at last? «We can’t see you. We’ve tried to contact you several times but you haven’t been available.»