“Can somebody get us out of here?” came Hebanyac’s squeaky, nasty voice.
Rdrag grunted with overexertion, and his mana was decreasing by 10% every thirty seconds.
“I won’t last long,” he said.
Mercyaa looked at Hebanyac and said:
“What are you looking at me for? I’m not a mage. Either you can get us out of here, or Rdrag will run out of mana and we’ll all be buried alive together.”
Hebanyac touched the protective field with his index finger and there came small waves and pulsating sounds.
“Strong.”
Rdrag lifted his head up and watched in horror at the dozen enormous stones.
“Hurry,” he said with difficulty.
“Yeah, don’t push it like that. You’re not sitting on the toilet,” Hebanyac said.
“Ah... you... bitch... so...”
“Are you really having fun?” Mercyaa asked.
“Look at his face!”
The deputy looked at the healer’s twisted, red face with swollen veins at the temples.
“Are you going to get us out of here or not?” he asked Hebanyac.
The military commander approached Rdrag and began tickling him. The healer laughed and howled in a howl, drooling from his mouth:
“You traitorous cocksucker!”
Mercyaa pulled out his rifle and shouted:
“Get away from him or you’ll have the wind blowing through your eye.”
Hebanyac kept hiding behind Rdrag and tickling him, and he would not stop yelling. In the end, his arms went down, and the protective field cracked under the pressure and shattered into splinters with a bright flash. It blinded all three of them. The cobblestones tumbled down.
“Fuck!” Mercyaa shouted and held his breath.
The deputy and the healer opened their eyes in bewilderment after three seconds. They were standing on solid ground.
“What the hell is this?” Rdrag asked, his face wrinkling.
“Hey!” came a voice from afar. “Hey! Over here!”
Mercyaa and Rdrag saw Hebanyac among several boulders, then turned back. They were about a mile away from the entrance, if not farther. Rocks littered the entrance to the dungeon, and there was a vast hole in the rock above it, punctured by a magical cannonball.
“Strange,” said Mercyaa.
“What?”
“The color of the core. Our mages did not use that element. And the walls of the mountain are supposed to be protected by magic, so you can’t make a hole like that. It has to be stronger than usual.”
“We’ll discuss it later. Let’s go.”
Both approached Hebanyac:
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“I have a couple of questions for you,” the deputy said.
“Look,” the military commander answered and pointed a finger into the void.
“And?” Rdrag asked. “There isn’t a fuckin’ thing here.”
“Exactly, and the Hashashins used to sit here.”
Mercyaa slammed his eyes shut, then turned toward the fortress of Varnasosto, glanced at where the wounded dragon was, and turned back toward the dungeon entrance, his eyes wide open and he screamed:
“Motherfucker!”
***
Blake smelled ammonia and opened his eyes. In front of him stood a crew of firemen with pitying looks and one doctor, an elderly man with enormous glasses and a wrinkled face.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
Everything in Blake’s head rang. The voices and sounds seemed so distant. The doctor snapped his fingers and said something to one fireman, who ran off and came back with a syringe in his hands.
“Give it to me,” the doctor said, and stuck the needle into Blake’s shoulder.
It was as if the world had been sucked back out of a black hole. His eyes looked around the room with a clear understanding of what was happening: the people, the burned-out furniture, the ruined fixtures, and the blinking lamp on the refrigerator. Puddles, soot, small nuts, and screws covered the floor. Blake felt his whole body pounding with pain. It was 1:40 p.m. on the clock. His eyes widened. He cried out, “Shit!” and tried to get up, but he could not.
“Don’t worry,” said one fireman, “the steak’s still hot.”
Blake stopped and looked at him with a look of utter bewilderment and a cringe on his face.
“He’s just kidding,” the doctor said and helped him up. “Who beat you like that? Do you remember him?”
Blake tried to answer but could say nothing but a moan. He went to the nearest mirror and looked at his face: white skin, a black eye, blood on his hands, knuckles cracked.
“No,” he answered. “I don’t remember.”
“We filed a police report for you. Your ID number is 37910, right? The name is... Blake.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Writing reports on my behalf.”
“But you have been subjected to blatant cruelty.”
Blake approached each firefighter, shook their hands, and said thank you. Then he escorted them out of his apartment and approached the doctor.
“What’s your name?”
“Virgil.”
“What’s going on outside?” Blake asked and fell to the floor.
“When’s the last time you ate?” the doctor asked. “I would advise you to come with us to the hospital.”
“I’ll ask again, what is going on outside?”
The doctor turned his head and sighed and went over to the refrigerator and pulled out some vegetables from there and stuck them in the EF-312.
“Promise to eat and, in that case, I’ll tell you.”
Blake walked over to the burned couch and turned to the doctor and was about to ask him, but he interrupted him on the first word and said:
“We returned your weapon back to the safe. It was open. We don’t know the password.”
Blake sat down on the floor and leaned against the couch. Virgil took the raw vegetables out of the first compartment of the EF-312 and put them in the second.
“There are people out there,” he began, “who want to know the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“Don’t you watch the news at all?”
“I prefer music channels.”
Virgil sighed and took the food out and placed it in front of Blake. Stepped back to the tabletop and continued speaking as the patient ate.
“They believe that the Department of Defense and the government are hiding some unknown planet from them. The irrefutable evidence, they believe, is the highly questionable data on extra-terrestrial soil and DNA posted online by a certain hacker group. Although I, as a professional, can assure you that someone can easily fake such data. People don’t want to see further than their noses. It doesn’t even occur to them they are being cheated. The opposition, in one word. It’s in their blood to go against the government. Just give them a reason.”
“And it is in the blood of the officials to destroy this country. So, it was a hundred years ago, during the Fourth World War, and two hundred years ago, during the Third World War. I still wonder how mankind survived, with such an arsenal of nuclear warheads and such a thirst to kill.”
“If everyone dies, there will be no one left to fight, don’t you think? It’s like a drug. You take it a little at a time, you stretch out the pleasure. Nobody takes heroin and shoots a lethal dose into their veins all at once.”
Blake finished his vegetables and got up and walked over to AB-100 and put a plate in a small compartment.
“All right, I’ve been here too long. It’s time for me to move on. Please sign the paper.”
Virgil placed the document on the table and rolled up his sleeves slightly and washed his hands. Blake left his signature unchecked and, glancing toward the doctor, noticed a tattoo on his wrist exactly like his own.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Virgil wiped his hands and looked at him, raising his eyebrows.
“I’m a doctor.”
“Doctors don’t have such tattoos.”
Virgil laughed and rolled up his sleeve completely.
“I used to be a military doctor.”
“Military... Why did you leave?”
“When you work with death, you appreciate life more.”
Virgil excused himself and left. The door closed automatically. Blake went into the far room and checked the VR pod. Everything was fine.