Ruthless (2 page)

Markovic’s face filled with quiet umbrage, lips in a tight line. “I was merely carrying out my orders.”

“I’m certain the war crimes tribunal will not have heard that one before,” Matfey said with the satisfaction of a man about to watch a heinous leech get scraped off his skin. Markovic’s face grew even paler as the elevator rattled to a stop.

“Cooperate, Lieutenant Colonel,” Pasternack said quietly, clearly attempting to talk the man down from the ledge Matfey had just pushed him onto, “my young colleague here is a bit … overenthusiastic in his pursuits. He speaks out his ass.”

Markovic’s paleness dimmed only slightly, and the uncertainty was obvious on his face. “I will do what you ask, Colonel.”

They stepped out into a smaller chamber, a mining tunnel somewhere ahead, cored out of the mountain’s hard rock. Lighting was strung all throughout, and the smell was of dirt and must. Matfey waited for Markovic to take the lead, but the man was not moving, his hands shaking mightily.

“Lieutenant Colonel,” Boris said, voice low and supportive, “do you need a moment to compose yourself?”

“I need more than a moment to do what you’re asking me to do,” Markovic said, his head low, staring at a set of jailer’s keys in his hand. “I have watched over this prison for over a decade.” He looked sideways, from Pasternack to Matfey. “I have been dealing with these prisoners … for longer than that. I ask you again … do you have any idea what you are dealing with here?”

“We are dealing with a legacy of lies some three decades deep and growing,” Matfey said.

“You are dealing with the most dangerous prisoners in what was once the Soviet Union,” Markovic said in a hushed whisper. “They were locked up for a reason.”

“Yes,” Matfey said, nodding, “because they were subjects of a tyrannical regime that is now some twenty years gone. They’ve been imprisoned past the point when all the other political prisoners were set free.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Really, Lieutenant Colonel, I would think you’d be eager to rectify this wrong of yours.”

Markovic swallowed heavily. “The only thing I could do to rectify this wrong would be to drop the mountain down on them and pave over it with concrete.”

Even Colonel Pasternack seemed to think he’d gone too far. “Times have changed, Lieutenant Colonel,” Boris said. “You have your orders, and I have them on paper if you require them. All prisoners are to be set free. Do you believe me?”

“I believe you,” Markovic said, and started shuffling down the tunnel once more. “But I can only assume that along with our location being missing from the map, the description of these prisoners must also be lost to time.”

Boris grunted in acknowledgment of that. Matfey merely kept his peace; this Lieutenant Colonel was a disturbing sort of fatalist.

The chamber widened ahead, and dark, cool air filtered out. They stepped into the center of it and Matfey nearly gasped. The lighting was slightly better in here, but only slightly. “This is …” his eyes took it all in, his outrage spilled out of his heart like vodka slopped into a glass too short for it, “this is … it’s criminal!”

“
They
are criminal,” Lieutenant Colonel Markovic said with a shake of his head, lips pursed in utter disapproval. “This is merely what we have had to do to contain them.”

“You are a despicable sort of cur,” Matfey said, poking a finger at the Lieutenant Colonel, “a dog of the lowest kind, to treat prisoners in this manner—”

“I do what I’m told,” Markovic said with a surprising amount of calm. “I do what is necessary.”

“This seems … excessive,” Pasternack said in a quiet voice, eyes looking over the cave.

Matfey’s mouth was open in quiet fury. Two bodies were strung to his left and right, bound to the wall by metal restraints of thickest steel, wrapped around the chests of the two men. Their arms were missing from mid-humerus, a slow drip of fresh blood from the recently severed appendages falling to the ground far below. “When did you do this to them?” he asked, when he recovered his power of speech.

“We do it to them every day,” Markovic replied. “Every single day, we remove them before they can grow back.”

“Barbaric!” Matfey felt the word rush out. His eyes slid across the darkened chamber to the opposite end, where a female figure hung, arms in the air, naked in the middle of a spider web of chains that bound her from each arm and leg, that wound around her waist in thick segments, attached by more thick bands of dark metal. “What have you done to her?” Pale skin and pale eyes looked up from beneath dirty, ragged hair to find his eyes. There was a fierce intelligence there, and he felt immediate pity for her state.

“She is strong enough to break down the door to a prison cell,” Markovic said, voice thin and frail as he attempted to explain. “When she was placed here, she was bound in more chains than she could defeat and suspended where she could not—”

“This is disgusting,” Matfey said, shaking a finger at Markovic. “How do you even feed them?”

“They are spoon-fed from a distance by soldiers on platforms that slide into place specifically for the feeding,” Markovic said. “No one gets within ten feet of them at any time.”

“You said there were four prisoners,” Matfey said, barely getting his voice under control. “Where’s the last?”

Markovic gestured down to the floor far below. “In a cell in the bottom. He is not allowed even within ten feet of another human being.”

“And their waste?” Matfey asked. He could feel his eyebrow twitch, and the smell was obvious in the air, nearly enough to gag him.

Markovic shrugged, an empty, uncomfortable gesture.

“This is an affront to basic human dignity,” Matfey said, shaking his head. “Get them out of there.”

Markovic stared at him. “You have no idea what you are about to release. They are monsters—”

“There is only one monster in this room,” Matfey snapped with no small amount of contempt, “and I am looking at him. Are you going to do as I ask or not?”

Markovic hesitated, but caught Pasternack’s eye. Finally, the warden acquiesced with a single nod. “It will be as you say,” Markovic said, and waved his hand at a booth that hung on the wall opposite them. Soldiers moved around in there, silhouettes in the dark, highlighted by a red glow from a console.

Matfey stood back and watched. A few soldiers appeared, platforms moving into place with a mechanical whirring of old machinery. The steady clack of the machinery was enough to drive a man mad after a long enough interval. Nothing in the room looked new; it all looked like castoffs from seventies-era Soviet space engineering. But the platforms moved, and Matfey watched as the soldiers brought them closer to the prisoners; hesitantly, as though crossing lines they had never imagined they would cross.

The elevator from the bottom of the room rose next to them; a man with a beard down to his belly stood upon it. He was crooked, hunched over, but his eyes gleamed with a bluish intensity that bespoke his intelligence. Two soldiers with AKs stood just behind him, barrels leveled. They were both young and tentative, warily keeping an eye on the man. Matfey figured they both looked about two seconds from running from the room.

“My name is Matfey Krupin,” he said, looking at the man as tenderly as possible. He could not imagine that this fellow had had much kind treatment over the last thirty years. “I am here to set you free.”

The man stared at him, then turned to look over the proceedings. The rattle of chains being unlocked filled the air. “Are you now?” He licked his lips. “Are you, truly?” His voice was hoarse, as though it had seen little use in years.

“I am,” Matfey said, and extended his hand.

“Don’t!” Markovic shouted from across the void, where he stood upon the platform by the woman.

Matfey stared at the lieutenant colonel, ready to let fly a contemptuous word, when he felt a gentle pressure upon his hand and turned to find the man had taken it. “Leonid Volkov,” the man said, his teeth black around the edges in a smile. He turned his head and bushy beard to look at Markovic. “I can take a hand of a friend without hurting him, Lieutenant Colonel.”

Markovic looked as though he wished to say something in reply, but he withheld it. Maybe he was finally getting wise, Matfey thought. One of the two men who had been hung upon the wall was down now, staggering upon the platform with two soldiers, a strange sight with his missing arms.

“Why now?” Volkov asked, his voice rough.

“There has been a revolution,” Matfey said with a smile. “Out with the old, in with the new. All political prisoners are to be released.”

“‘Political prisoners’?” Volkov said with a low laugh as the platform bearing the first freed man eased closer to where they stood. “Well … that’s good to hear, isn’t it, Miksa?”

The platform that the first armless man was on bumped steel against steel as it docked with their own, and he staggered over to stand next to Volkov. The man named Miksa said nothing, looking up with dazed eyes and a flat, dark face. His hair, too, was long, and his beard also out of control. He did nod, however. The two soldiers with him exchanged furtive glances with the others, idiot dogs in a world beyond their comprehension, Matfey knew.

There was a scrape as the second platform brushed against theirs, and Matfey looked up to see the second armless man stagger forward, using his legs for the first time in decades. “Politics certainly did land us in here,” he said, smoother than Volkov. “Of one kind or another, eh, Leonid?” Matfey realized with some surprise that this man had sharp features under the layers of dirt that his imprisonment had left. Matfey silently cursed these soldiers and their reckless cruelty again.

“Indeed, Vitalik,” Volkov said with another rough laugh. His eyes turned in silent expectation as the platform began to move with the last member of their quartet. Matfey turned to see the woman standing—still naked, but somehow statuesque now that she was free of the restraints. The marks of imprisonment were still visible on her skin, along with years of dirt and blood. Pale, shriveled flesh showed in clean spots here and there, and the woman stood tall, completely unselfconscious as she looked toward them. The platform carried her steadily along, the clank of gears loud enough to make conversation difficult, but not impossible.

“How are you feeling, Natasya?” Volkov called.

The platform’s gears ground slowly, ratcheting her closer to them. She ran thin fingers over her dappled skin, then through her twisted, dirty hair. “I cannot recall an occasion when I have felt better,” she said, and her voice was strong. “And you, Leonid?” She waited for his response, which was but a nod. “Fenes?” She glanced at the man Volkov had called Miksa and received a nod of the head in return. “Kuznetsov?” The last was directed at the one Volkov had called Vitalik, and she received a third nod in reply. “Very good,” she said.

“What shall we do, Natasya?” Volkov asked as the platform docked, the clang of metal meeting its counterpart nearly striking his question from the air with its violence. “Our new friend here says he is here to free us.” Volkov nodded at Matfey.

The woman stood there, straight, next to Lieutenant Colonel Markovic, who looked about fit to shit his pants. She stared at Matfey, her eyes surprisingly blue. Hers bored into his, and he felt a hasty need to say something, as though a weight or pressure was upon him. “It is true. I have come to free you, to bring you back to Moscow if you would like.”

“In chains?” she asked, holding up her now free hands.

“No, of course not,” Matfey said. “You are free people. You may go anywhere you want.”

Her face was inscrutable, and she did not look away from him. “Anywhere?” she allowed at last. The aura of suspicion he had suspected was already evaporated.
Clearly grateful,
Matfey figured.

“Anywhere,” Matfey said, and he felt curiously awed by this naked woman, so commanding even in this state. He could feel the other prisoners’ deference to her. How impressive, to be so in charge while standing there without a stitch of clothing to give her dignity. Truly, this was a dignity even prison could not deprive her of. “The new government is very eager to make your acquaintance, to make restitution for past wrongs done by the … previous administration.” Matfey looked at Markovic, but the lieutenant colonel did not meet his eyes.

She pondered him with a long gaze, and then finally, nodded her head, passing judgment. “I think we will go with our new friend to Moscow, then, and see what he has to offer.” Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps we will see how things have changed in our long absence from the world.”

“I think you’ll find the world has gone in quite a different direction since 1982,” Matfey said with a weak smile. “Things have … changed. The world has become more closely stitched together.”

“And … our people?” This from Leonid, his dark, matted beard blocking sight of his lips.

“The Russians are now free,” Matfey said, feeling that smile spring to his lips once more. “Finally, truly—”

“Not the Russians,” Natasya asked. “Our people. Metahumans.” She blinked her eyes, then shook her head. “You probably have no idea of what I speak.”

“No, I know of metahumans,” Matfey nodded enthusiastically. “Everyone knows about metahumans now.” The heads of the four prisoners came up at that and he could feel their questioning looks. “I will explain in the truck, but let us say that … again … the world has changed in your absence from it.”

Three Months Later

Liberty Street

Lower Manhattan

“Oooh, baby, baby,” Eric Simmons said as he stared at the last half-foot of wall. The drill was quiet, the blades nearly ready for the last push. The winter chill had followed him down into the basement across the street as he’d descended from street level and followed the tunnel they’d been oh-so-quietly working on for the last six months.

“You trip the sensors?” Keith Bailey asked him as he sauntered up. Bailey had on his drilling goggles, looked like a frigging dork between those, the electronic earmuffs, and his grey boiler suit. Like the world’s dustiest janitor, dirt dandruff resting on his shoulders from the tunnel’s constant settling.