A list of gloomy possibilities flashes through my mind, each more unrealistic than the other. Are the cops shooting at us again? Or is Alex watching another video where a hostage is brutally murdered?
I turn around and see it’s something else.
Something to do with Joe towering over Alex and moving his arms around.
“Please, stop!” Alex shrieks. “Please, don’t!”
I glimpse the point of Joe’s knife piercing the tip of Alex’s finger. Alex howls.
I finally comprehend what’s happening, if not the why of it.
My cousin is torturing Alex while questioning him about something. The exact questions are hard to hear over Alex’s screaming.
Muhomor’s face is as contorted in fear as mine. In contrast, Gogi and Nadejda look utterly placid.
“Give him a chance to speak,” Gogi says academically in the brief silence between screams. “He’s probably ready.”
Joe stops his grisly work, but it takes a few minutes for Alex to downgrade from shrieking to helplessly crying.
“You better talk,” Nadejda says, her pseudo-friendly voice making me wonder if she’s trying to capitalize on their earlier flirtations. “That isn’t even a fraction of what Joe will do to you if you don’t start speaking.”
“Oh boy,” Ada’s angel form says. “If she’s the good cop, I don’t envy poor Alex.”
“Yes,” Alex whines. “It was me, but I didn’t have a choice. Govrilovskiy has things on me. I had to tell them where you were landing and about the club, but I tried to stop you from going, remember? That’s why I made the video—”
Joe slams his fist into Alex’s head, cutting off the rest of his sentence.
My cousin’s face is filled with more emotion than I’ve ever seen from him, but unfortunately for Alex, that emotion is wrath.
I cringe as I watch Joe deliver blow after hard blow, inflicting the kind of damage Alex might never recover from.
I know that I shouldn’t be watching this, that I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life, but I’m hypnotized by the cruel precision of each strike and the sound of bones breaking.
In a surreal underscore to the violence, Muhomor starts typing on his keyboard again.
I’m in a strange stupor as the car pulls over to the side of the road, and Nadejda and Gogi restrain Joe. To me, it feels as if only a moment passed between Joe beating on Alex and my cousin’s people holding him cautiously.
Slowly, my daze clears, and I process what happened. Just to make sure I’m not crazy, I share my revelations with my New York allies via the chat. “Alex confessed. He told someone, a guy named Govrilovskiy, where we were landing and about our destination—his residence. That was enough information for them to figure out what path we’d take. They also had enough time to dispatch the car that nearly drove us off the road. Since we survived that first encounter, Alex shared our plans to visit Muhomor at Dazdraperma. That’s how the squad knew to ambush us there.”
“I’m afraid you’re spot on,” Mitya says. “I’m so sorry I put you in touch with this traitor. I didn’t think—”
“It’s not your fault,” I reply. “This Govrilovskiy was blackmailing Alex, a common occurrence in this country.”
“But I should’ve figured this out,” Mitya says. “The club thing could’ve had several explanations, but I should’ve considered that first attack. Besides you, me, Joe, and Ada, only Alex knew where you were going to land. True, there were your cousin’s people to consider, but they seem very loyal to him, and they’re also outsiders in Russia, so that only leaves Alex as the traitor—something Joe must’ve realized.”
I recall Joe asking me if I trusted Mitya and Ada after the first attack and decide Mitya is right. Joe’s paranoia made him realize the truth first.
“I just can’t believe Alex could eat and drink with you in his home while planning to lead you to your deaths in the club,” Mitya says in disgust.
“I don’t mean to defend Alex,” Ada says, “but he did try to stop you from going to the club. Before, and especially after the video, he insisted—”
“The video,” I say out loud as another part of Alex’s confession registers. “It was fake?”
“Yeah,” Muhomor says. “Now that I had reason to suspect it, I checked it out and verified it’s a clip from an obscure Russian horror flick called The Handy Man. Also, because we now know both the sender and the receiver, I should be able to link the email to Alex, though that would be overkill since he already confessed.”
So this is what the thin man was doing on his computer during the beating. I feel a sense of relief mixed with a desire to punch what’s left of Alex for making me think someone might put a drill to my mom’s head. I also realize this is why Joe went berserk. In his own way, my cousin must’ve been worried about my mom, and when he learned Alex had created that video, he acted on the same impulse I’m currently suppressing.
“Let me go,” Joe orders his allies, “or you’re next.”
Gogi releases Joe, and Nadejda follows.
They calmed him down enough that he doesn’t resume beating Alex’s limp body. Instead, he pointedly draws his gun and says, “Take him out of the car.”
Gogi and Nadejda grab Alex and begin dragging him out.
“Wait,” Muhomor says frantically. “Alex is a very high-profile individual. You can’t just shoot him and leave him on the road. It’s better if he disappears, and I know people who can make that happen. I can also make his digital trail look like he took a long vacation in Australia or some other faraway place.”
Nadejda and Gogi stop, but Joe looks unconvinced.
“There’s also your mission to consider,” Muhomor adds. “We might still need Alex for that. If I don’t get any hits when I search for this Govrilovskiy character, I might need more names.”
“Fine,” Joe says and gets into Gogi’s seat. “Ride next to him.”
The Georgian gets in the back, checks Alex’s pulse, and says, “Alive for now.”
Lyuba restarts the car, and we ride in sullen silence all the way to the village.
“This place isn’t actually called Gadyukino,” Mitya tells Ada when she comments on the discrepancy. “I realize why you thought so, given Muhomor’s comments about the ‘Gadyukino hideout,’ but Gadyukino is just a nickname we Russians sometimes give to hole-in-the-wall places like this little community.”
Gadyukino, or whatever the real name of this place is, is at its core a former kolkhoz, the dysfunctional Soviet collective farm. There aren’t any paved roads here, and the village houses look exactly the same as when I visited a similar place all the way back in the eighties—poor and impossibly drab.
One structure stands out, however: the really worn-down and abandoned-looking warehouse we’re heading toward.
“How do you feel, Ada?” Mitya asks in the chat. “Any insights?”
“Hold on,” I interject. “You already got the resource allocation thing to increase your intelligence boost?”
“Yes,” Ada replies. “Right before your psycho cousin went all Vlad The Impaler on Alex’s ass.”
“And?” I mentally type. “How do you feel?”
“I’m fine,” Ada says out loud. “I feel a lot like when I first got the original boost.”
“So, like nothing at all,” I say. “At least that’s how I felt.”
“I wouldn’t say nothing at all,” Ada says. “I feel the potential, and the fact I’m feeling fine is a significant result in itself.”
“I guess I’m next,” Mitya says.
“Shouldn’t it be Mike?” Ada asks. “He might need it more.”
“Fine,” Mitya mumbles, almost under his breath. With an exaggerated sigh, he adds, “I guess I can wait a little longer.”
“You up for it, Mike?” Ada asks.
I think about it, then decide whatever extra advantage this boost might offer is welcome. “Okay, hit me.”
“I’ll set it up and let you know in a sec,” she says. “You might want to pay attention to your surroundings for now.”
I catch myself sitting with my eyes closed—a bad habit I’m developing when using the AROS interface. I open my eyes and realize we’re already inside the warehouse and Lyuba is parking the car.
I look around.
If a twister decimated a couple of high-end datacenters, plus a RadioShack and maybe the computer department at Best Buy, the aftermath might look like the inside of this “hideout.”
Muhomor exits the car, hands the DJ’s laptop to Lyuba, and says, “The machine needs to disappear completely, and Alex needs to be kept alive for the moment.”
Without waiting for Lyuba to reply, or even inviting us to follow, Muhomor prances toward the big wall of monitors.
Gogi shrugs and heads in the same direction, and the rest of us follow.
“It’s all set,” Ada says. “Just click on that little blue brain when you’re ready.”
“I’m crossing my breath and holding my fingers,” I mentally jest while locating the icon in question. Initiating the app, I say, “This is it.”