Chapter 2

The rest happened as if in a fog. Her consciousness swam as if Olga were split in two. One part of her moved her unruly, woozy body. She was dragging Kryp through the trapdoor, tumbling through hot pipes and old braided cables. The other went somewhere deep, where there was nothing but a desperate desire to finally end this crazy nightmare, this delirious dream. There, at the bottom of consciousness, the girl imagined that all of this was simply not real around her. There was nothing. There was no heavy, minute-by-minute fainting man, no tunnel that looked like ventilation from some eighties horror movie.

There was nothing.

Nothing at all.

And it lasted for who knows how long. Longer than infinity, probably. Or a little shorter.

She was insanely thirsty. She'd felt the same way once, more than a year ago when she'd had a few drinks in good company that evening and had to go in the morning to replace her inopportunely ill partner. And without the option of skiping under plausible pretexts. This is an unpleasant feeling, when you have to go somewhere, something to do, and still have to carefully pretend to be a living, healthy person. When all she wanted more than anything was to lie down and fall asleep here and now. She didn't need to pretend anything now. She could make all the faces she wanted, swear and curse, but she felt far worse than ever. Fatigue was nauseating to the point of sour bile in her mouth, and thirst was giving her a headache and making her legs stiffen. The red light of the rare service lamps stabbed her eyes and seemed to throb with red-hot needles somewhere in her bones.

Kryp passed out again, grinning like a vampire and rolling his eyes under his half-closed eyelids. No wonder, with all those injuries and that kind of transportation. Olga poorly remembered dragging the heavy guy by the collar, following his fragmentary instructions. I think they went through some kind of trapdoor into a communications tunnel or something. Then several more times they broke through the trapdoors, or she did, and then, cursing loudly, she dragged Creep, who was growling in pain, not even the chewed, bruised belt helping him anymore. Who would have told her she would have so much strength in her hands, even with the help of the maimed man, who was pushing off as hard as he could with his leg. She was reminded of her father, with his famous "We should plow on you, you little bastard!"

She couldn't bear to watch the poor man suffer, and she wanted to leave him every minute. Just to see no more of that face, which reflected an endless, inescapable pain. But every time something stopped her. Maybe the memory of her mother, who had also suffered before her death in prolonged cancerous agony, was abandoned by all except her daughter. Or maybe a modicum of involuntary respect for a man who had overcome, it seemed death itself on his bare will. Moreover, when the guy was awake and Olga was once again in the throes of hysterical sobbing, he even tried to comfort her. At least, it seemed so to the girl, because she still did not understand a word, guided only by the intonation.

The hardest part was closing the hatches behind us. They were small but very thick, with rivets and handwheels. Crip insisted that they all lock up, gesticulating like a madman as far as his wounds would allow, and Olga quite agreed. Realizing that, by some miracle, they had missed the unknowable force that was spreading the bloody crypt outside. And that force was quite capable of following the fugitives. But from the agreement rusty, riveted to each other cogs do not want to spin better. Judging by the state of the tunnels and the thick layer of dust, the hairdresser and the glamorous sadist in the cloak were the first guests here in months, if not years. But compared to the extreme that had already occurred, the sticky, shaggy dust, like cobwebs rolled up into felt, seemed like a nice, insignificant add-on.

"Ego sum servus Imperatoris …" Kryp muttered through his teeth as he woke up. He was breathing heavily, whistling, but there was no bloody foam on his lips. Olga didn't know shit about medicine, but she had heard about broken ribs and punctured lungs. It seemed strange that such a thing had not happened to this S&M Nazi. Judging by the condition of the glossy cuirass, half of the poor man's chest must have been a crumble of bones and torn

"Shut up, for God's sake," Olga exhaled, gathering her strength for another tug. She had to drag the wounded man another ten meters to another hatch. This time, for a variation, an octagonal one.

Bitch... And she was offered a paramedical course. And she almost said yes. But then this and that, fifth and tenth, it kept getting postponed... And now this fucking "Blade" in a cloak will die in her arms from who knows what. And there was nothing she could do about it, she couldn't even diagnose him properly.

Olga was horrified to think that the "beer can" that revived Kryp was probably not bottomless, so it would end soon enough. And then... Not so clear what then. And most importantly, how to stop it. But the nearest target loomed ahead, gleaming faintly in the red light with its metallic polish. And then we would see.

Holy crap! That's ridiculous. How did Sapkowski put it: "anger makes her want to bite herself in the ass"? Oh, never mind. A good thought comes afterward.

"Stop!"

"Let's take this thing off," the girl suggested, panting. Or more precisely, declared her intention. She realized that, first of all, this brilliant idea should have been thought of much earlier, and, secondly, without lightening Kryp at least ten kilograms, she would not pull him further.

To remove the poor man's cloak and cuirass turned out to be a torturous and, bookishly speaking, non-trivial task. It was very cramped, to begin with, which in itself seriously limited the possibilities. The next thing she found out was that Kryp didn't even have a small knife, so the thick, heavy clothing and armor had to be unbuttoned and removed for real. And finally, the deformed cuirass had to be dealt with separately, and she had to try to avoid hitting the IV. At the same time, the girl noticed that the "can" flashed a yellow light.

She was no longer surprised by the lack of normal fasteners. Olga only noted that there were no fasteners on Kryp's gear, nothing even remotely resembling the usual joys of urban warriors. There weren't even many buttons, mostly all fastened to thick leather straps like old armor. And fuck it. The main thing was that dragging the wounded man was much easier. He seemed to be breathing a little freer, too. Beneath his armor, Kryp was wearing something resembling a fine hexagonal mesh t-shirt, tightly wrapped around his rock-hard muscles. The badge with a scull the maimed did not pass, clutching it in his fist as a great value. Olga helped him hang the weighty chain from his cuirass to his shirt.

"Imperator duxit et protegit me." Kryp whispered, trying to push off farther with one foot in his muddy boot at the same time. He folded his arms across his chest in some kind of figure, intertwining his thumbs. It was as if he were picturing wings.

"Misit me ad te."

"You're not a fucking Kryp," Olga hissed, clutching at the hard collar like a tick. "You're fucking Batman. Why don't you call Robin and Harley Quinn and get them to save us?"

So named Batman went limp again and lost consciousness.

"No, that doesn't good," Olga whispered, realizing that on the one hand Kryp weighed much less without the cloak, but on the other, there was no more collar to cling to so comfortably. She had to take the belt back and make a loop, running it under Kryp's arms. The improvised harness tore after about three meters, proving that a Chinese product is still Chinese, even if it says "Rochas".

The girl bruised the back of her head painfully against the sharp corner of the bracket, knocked her knuckles to the meat, and tore through her jacket in at least five different places. The hematite "lucky charm" bracelet had long since torn and rolled around the corners. The Casio watch was reproachfully darkened by the whitewash of cracked glass. But most importantly, Olga was exhausted to the limit and beyond, crossing the line beyond which fatigue turns into natural exhaustion.

"I'll go see what's out there," she murmured, more to herself, because the kryp-batman couldn't answer anyway, fainting.

She was exaggerating about "walking," of course. The low ceiling of the technical passage allowed only crawling, but without a heavy burden, such crawling was a joy. Olga felt as if she were gliding, like on a waterslide. A meter, another meter... The walls of the tunnel were strange, looking like concrete and plastic at the same time. And ... Olga froze, listening, catching every rustle, like a cat, except that her ears did not twist. It seemed to her that something rattled behind the thin wall. Quietly, cautiously. And very ominously.

She was distracted by noises, and there were quite a few of them. Steam hissed, a loose valve rattled, a red lamp in a copper - or not copper, at least some reddish metal - braid buzzed and crackled. Nothing else seemed to be going on.

Olga cursed herself for leaving the knife at home. Although usually, a Chinese copy of some pathos American stabber was always with her. As well as a can of tear gas, because, as you know, a careful man... But who knew that she would be pulled into the abyss of asshole hell at that very moment, literally with her bare hands. Good thing she wasn't bare-assed. Okay, let's keep crawling. She looked around as if Kryp might have gone somewhere. He hadn't, lying a dark, helpless doll in the blood-red light.

The octagonal hatch had a large steel plaque on it. A sort of emblem, not a Nazi one this time, but also with a skull split in half in black and white. And some kind of gears, too. Fucking steampunk. Is this some kind of cosplayer hell?

"The nightmares rode on a balloon," Olga said and, gritting her teeth, began to unlock the lock on the hatch. It was the lock that opened surprisingly easily. Either it had been unlocked recently, or it had been greased more often. All in all, it went like clockwork. Hallelujah, yippee!

The octagon opened outward and, not caring about safety and rustling, Olga fell out, in the dirt, dust, cobwebs, and garbage of unclear origin. The phrase "Freedom will meet us cheerfully at the entrance" kept going round and round in her head. And there was also something about life for the Tsar, but then the girl bumped her head again - and painfully - so that the thought disappeared.

So, arms and legs are in place, nobody seems to be around. And where are we...? And what's that light up ahead?

Where...

"Oh My God," the girl whispered.

Not that Olga believed in God or any transcendent being at all. Her previous life of sixteen years and two months had taught her to believe in herself, in cash, and in the magic power of kicking the balls of assholes who did not know the word "no." Only you have to hit suddenly, as hard and as sharply as possible, and then everything will be fine. But what was revealed to her eyes was so wild, so incongruous, so impossible, that ...

In general, addressing God was the most appropriate thing to do. He didn't answer, though. As always.

"Oh My God..." Olga repeated, stretching out her shaking palm, brown with dirt and blood as if trying to shield herself from the deadly blue-white light. Hot tears welled up in her eyes, burning the parched cornea with a fierce fire.

I won't wake up.

Because it's not a dream

Not a dream at all

Describing "it" was impossible, at least at once. It was too far from the usual patterns of perception, from all life experience, even with the extensive addition of Internet knowledge given to us in YouTube and other Instagrams. Most of all, the "landscape" that Olga discovered looked like a shopping center with a circular atrium, towering like a column. The height ... God knows, honestly, the girl could only say that hundreds, many hundreds of meters, the size of a skyscraper. Half of the cylinder (if you cut it in two, along the centerline) was filled from bottom to top with tiers that looked like both stores with lattice windows and residential levels. They followed one another like ribs in a corrugated hose, bulging with protrusions, balconies, something resembling pier platforms, mutual crossings, and a hundred more incomprehensible structures, which Olga could neither describe clearly nor even understand what they were. And the other half... It wasn't there. It just wasn't there.

Olga grasped the metal handrail with her fingers, white with tension, behind which there was a void, a huge well. She stared with huge, dilated pupils at the ghostly screen, which, like a giant semicircular shield, separated the atrium from the gleaming emptiness. It was not glass, but rather something ethereal. And outside, the universe exposed. Not space, as in the photograph, but something glowing with a myriad of colors, like a gas nebula or a dust cloud, composed of gems ground into dust in every imaginable and unimaginable shade, infinitely bright, chemically pure. As if that weren't enough, something gigantic, very close (or seemingly so), and blindingly bright was coming from the side, from behind the edge of the etheric shield. And round.

"Oh My God," the girl repeated for the third time, realizing she was seeing the edge of a star in a blinding yellow and white crown.

Stars glittered and rippled across the screen, and then it faded, darkened like polarized glass. For some reason, that was what amazed the girl the most. The speed and effect with which something grandiose, thousands, tens of thousands of square meters in the area reacted to the flow of light. The star continued to creep up, making the external objects outside the screen glow with reflected light, like electric welding points, so that it hurt her eyes even despite the total shading.

"Mama," Olga said. She felt like a child, more like an infant, who had acquired intelligence and the ability to evaluate objects but was not yet familiar with their essence and purpose. He sees something but is not able to understand what he sees.

"Oh, mommy..."

She looked down, struggling to look away from the inconceivably grandiose, magnificent, and overwhelming picture. Compared to the riot of sunshine, everything else seemed small, tiny, in some ways even cozy. Even the giant atrium, which looked like a skyscraper turned inside out.

Below, at the dark bottom of the man-made crater, stood a figure. Olga could not determine its size, her sense of scale and dimensionality was completely lost. One thing was certain - it was a statue, and a huge one, like everything "here" seems to be, no matter where "here" was located.

The figure resembled a man in armor, grotesquely exaggerated, geometrically disproportionate. The man had a sword and a halo, which was either illuminated from within or made of some polished metal that reflected the light well. The surface of the statue seemed strange, a kind of gnawed with acidic gaps, like the face of a Sphinx in the Egyptian desert. But time had done its work there, and here the figure's general shabby appearance was out of place with its surroundings. It looked as if the monument had been painstakingly broken and then abandoned. Or perhaps it had been brought here from some other place, though it seemed improbable that such a giant could have been dragged anywhere.

Olga turned away and sat down straight on the hard, cold floor, leaning against the fence, which was metal and, it seemed, wrought iron. At any rate, the twisted bars looked as if they had come from under a blacksmith's hammer, that is, solid, rough, asymmetrical. The girl closed her eyes and just sat for a few minutes, thinking of nothing. Olga felt that if she now opened her mind to speculation, reflection, fear, it would not be long before she went mad. But her hearing came into play.

Now that the perception was freed from the frantic stream of images that clogged all the "info channels," it became clear that it was very quiet around there. It was too quiet for a huge space, where continuous echoes should be walking. There was some noise around, but quiet and weak, most likely the work of some life-supporting automatics, muffled by the walls. Look like not long ago, lots of people had lived and worked here. But now the "atrium" was empty and abandoned.

She crawled out of one grave to find herself in another, a thousand times larger.

What's that? Where did it come from? Why is she here?

It doesn't matter.

She is dying of fatigue and thirst. And not far away, a dying man suffers, terribly wounded and probably even more thirsty than she is. All around stretches a world that is incomprehensible, unknown, and clearly hostile. And so it turns out that Kryp is the only living creature who could explain what is going on here and is actually on Olga's side.

Water. And weapons. And at least some bandages. No, just a first-aid kit, maybe Kryp can figure out how to heal him.

This first, then everything else.

Olga once again glanced at the sun, which continued to sprawl. It seemed that the object on which the girl found herself - whether it was a planet, a meteorite, or a man-made structure, it did not matter - was rotating and was now turning the "screen" side toward the nearest star. Olga had never studied astronomy, but there was something abnormal about such closeness to the star (if you can even call anything "normal" here). However, it was something to think about later.

Once again, water and weapons, at least a stick of some kind. And any box with a red cross.

Olga stood up, clenched her fists, and wished she had been born a stern, fearsome fighter who could punch in the face. Then she concentrated on surveying her surroundings. The first thing she did was to peer over the edge of the railing and, overcome by vertigo from the height, try to assess the disposition. The level, perhaps, belonged to the upper quarter of the "well. At any rate, there were a few dozen more stories upstairs, but far fewer than there were below.

A balcony, not too wide, five or seven meters long, stretched in a long arc, bounded on one side by a balustrade and on the other by windows or shop windows. At unequal intervals, the glass gaps, almost all broken, were interspersed with dark, light-deprived corridors. Many of the "windows" were canted with broken bars, and some seemed to have been blocked by barricades hastily assembled from handrail material. All the barricades had been smashed and taken out in pieces as if they had been bulldozed. It was very messy, like after a major riot. And dirty. Not dusty, but dirty. The floor and walls seemed to have been scraped and painted, leaving only gilded shadows that resembled stylized eagles.

Olga looked at the aether screen. The shaded disk of the star took up no less than a fifth of the view. Then to the balcony, which seemed to come from the middle of the twentieth century. Or rather, from the ideas of that time about what the future would look like. Retrofuturism, here! Olga remembered a beautiful word. She leaned over and ran her hand over the stone - stone! - flooring, assembled from square slabs.

Hologram. It must be some kind of amazing hologram. In space, every kilogram is important, Olga remembered that for sure. But here ... she looked down at the dark statue, which weighed a shitload of tons ... here they didn't care about weight distribution. And sun this close would have burned the hell out of everything long ago, or at least warmed it up nicely. And it's chilly here, perhaps even cold. She shivered, pulling her dirty jacket tighter over her skinny shoulders. She needed a blanket or something warmer to wear. But she didn't want to get her hands on any of the ugly rags they'd thrown around. Surely there would be something nicer in the broken windows.

Water! With all this thinking, she had completely forgotten that behind the steampunk trapdoor, Kryp continued to die quietly.

No distractions, no distractions. Forward, enduring fatigue and aching muscles. Search. Search.

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