Enid wasted no time in spinning Hazel around and removing her sword and slipping it into her pack after pulling the holo-web off of it. She slapped the holo-web on her pack and activated the cloak mode. She pulled another out and set it for cloak mode as well and put it around her neck.
“Hazel uses that invisible thing you do. It doesn’t set off motion detectors so you’ll be fine, I will because this only warps visible light. Get to the top and get out. I have no idea where we are besides somewhere in the USSR. Be prepared for cold weather. I will contact you.”
Enid tapped her holo-phone wristband to Hazel’s holo-tablet to sync them for comms.
“Mom?”
“Look you can get out of here easily, if this is after I caused that mess on the Sub they are going to be pissed and I can’t have you going half-wolf and tearing a nuclear silo apart. Just get your butt out of here and I will find you. I can track you with my holo-phone. And you can track me. You do not have Russian installed in your translator so for it to work it is going to need to hear a mix of Russian and a language it knows.”
“Mom, I’m not leaving you behind.”
“You aren’t, you’re just getting outside in case they capture me so you can get reinforcements. If I do not contact, you in four hours and its after 1989 call Carla Hollister CIA. If it is before that well then I will no problems getting out.”
“What if you do?”
“Then find a wolf-born tribe, there are several in the USSR and tell them you need to get in touch with Sextus. If its before 1984 that is. If neither of those is true, find a tribe and just sit tight. If you can’t find a tribe, Evelina Ilyinishna, apartment 3-4, 15 Popova, Leningrad. Give her this.”
She pulled out an original copy of The Twelve with several sentences in Cyrillic written on the title page. She offered it to Hazel who slipped it into her backpack.
“You hand her this and you say: Zheltyy sneg. Remember four hours, leave me behind, wolf form howl for a pack, if no pack Leningrad if it is after 1945, its before 1991 because this is still a Soviet installation. I love you, Go, hurry.”
Enid tapped her holo-web and vanished except for a shimmer when she moved and breathed. She climbed behind some pipes and watched her daughter trace a rune pattern in the air and vanish from sight.
*****
Enid
Enid wasn’t waiting long. A pair of armed soldiers in Soviet uniforms showed up. Both non-commissioned. They poked around then checked a bulky green box on the middle of the wall. By their conversation they were a bit miffed.
“Stupid things, always with these false alarms.”
His partner shrugged.
“Its better then staring at cameras all day.”
He hit his partner in the shoulder with a light punch with the side of his fist.
“Let’s go so we can chase after the next false alarm.”
“They need cameras down here like the rest of the silo. I hate running down here every half an hour just cause some rat runs along a pipe.”
“I’ll put a complaint in with the Kremlin for you, I’m sure we’ll get your camera sometime before there’s a hot day here.”
They laughed.
“What a shit posting Oymyakon is. The only thing warm here is the vodka.”
They shook her heads and continued to chat as the walked away. Enid blinked having gained several tidbits from them. The most bothersome is that her and Hazel had ended up in remote Siberia that on a bad day could rival the 29th century glaciers. She avoided stepping in front of the motion detector. And put herself flat against the curved wall of the silo. She could only see about twenty feet because of the bend and did not see another one. She moved forward cautiously. If she kept her movements slow and predictable the holo-web had a much easier time compensating and minimizing shimmer. She wondered how well Hazel was doing she couldn’t check because the hologram would break the cloak. She crawled under the next motion detector. She took up a position under the metal stairs to see if anyone came. It had taken them about ten minutes to check last time. She counted it out. No one came. Looked like the motion detectors were still pretty primitive. She started up the stairs then noticed one on the wall that would pick anyone going up or down. It was too late so she quickly ran up the stairs and out the door.
She had entered one of the outer chambers of the silo. The center was rounded, this one was angular on the outside. The same two guards came rushing down and through the door. Enid waited behind the door and when the guards returned she started to shadow them in the hallway.
“Sometimes I think this place is haunted.”
“Well, a couple workers did freeze to death I heard.”
“Freeze to death, that is what they are calling it these days?”
“You better watch it, or you might find yourself freezing to death, yes?
“Maybe that is why the assigned us here. I cannot wait for shift change.”
One of the guards pulled a card on lanyard out of his pocket and swiped it through a reader. Enid slipped in behind them as the door closed. She was in a security room of sorts with three chairs. One soldier had remained behind. The two that went to check the false alarm put their rifles into an armory rack and sat down. The other soldier who was a woman looked at the two men.
“Anything?”
“Is there ever anything? We’re in Siberia, no one comes here. Must have been another rat.”
She frowned. She pulled out a logbook and wrote some notes in it and pushed to the man beside her.
“Sign off on it. These things don’t need to be this sensitive. But they don’t care that’s why we are here to run around like chickens with our heads cut off.”
He signed his name and slid the logbook back to her. She closed it up and put it on the shelf. They were discussing what the evening meal would be and hence distracted so she crawled along the floor and picked the guard who had the magstripe card in his pocket. It would have appeared briefly to float out of the pocket before the holo-web considered it attached to its operation area and cloak it. Enid hung the lanyard around her neck and looked at the camera monitors. They looked shiny and brand new, but the images were in grainy black and white. She spotted a Pravda newspaper on the desk. Enid crept over and peaked over the edge of the desk. It was well abused but the date was December 15, 1964. She would have breathed a sigh of relief if it there wasn’t a chance it would give her away.
She had done contract work for the USSR, and the person she worked for was still with the KGB. So, she had a phone call she could make. Then there was Evelena, Yoshta… she had people who owed her much in Europe in this time, but she was loath to call on them. She waited by the wall for the shift change. She tailgated the off-duty soldiers out of the door and followed them. The woman paused at one point and looked directly at Enid. Enid held her breath and stayed as still as she could. The woman turned and started walking shaking her head.
“Starting to see things, I need to get out of this frozen hole in the ground.”
Enid kept pace with the three as best she could. She was rather relaxed though knowing the cameras were so low-res they’d have a hard time picking up her holo-web’s shimmer as she moved. How much easier this would have been as a vampire. If she had a timeline for how long she would be drained for she’d have waited but it could be five years. She paused as the three walked into a mess hall. She hadn’t known silos to be so well stocked or staffed. There were no motion detectors on this floor they were all cameras. They were huge, compared to what she was used to now and incredibly obvious. She was easily able to avoid them just in case her holo-web decided to fail because someone walked behind her.
She found a poster behind glass that showed the emergency exits. She was shocked to see there were six missile silos in this complex. She’d never heard of such a thing. There was also a section of the map that looked like it was part of the structure but was just lines drawn through it, no description. Near the mess she found the barracks. There were two one for the small compliment of female soldiers stationed here and one for the men. They were deserted at the moment and that gave her ample time to pick through the different lockers to find a coat and uniform that would fit her. None of the women were her size. No surprise there. No way she was going to survive on the surface in winter in Siberia with just the Atlantean armor unless it was above -40. She put the cold weather gear that would be the best fit into her pack the holo-web was good, but it wasn’t good enough to cover a parka.
She left the barracks and looked at the emergency map again, her eyes lingering on the strange blank space. She shook her head, thinking bad Enid! Whatever it is doesn’t matter, no demons, no fallen angels not your business. She entered one of the women’s washrooms and sat in one of the stalls and turned off her holo-web. She turned her wristband’s display. It was physically smaller then Hazel’s holo-tablet and would have less processing power, if it wasn’t military grade. She checked for Hazel’s signal. It was intermittent at best but seemed stationary. Somewhere above her. She was about to open a comm channel with her when the door opened to the washroom. She quickly turned off her screen and lifted her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees. She heard a couple of women do their business and flush the toilets.
“Dr. Kriskov is such a dick.”
“I agree. If it this wasn’t such interesting research, I would be requesting to go back at Moscow University.”
“He is so stuck in the past. Doesn’t think women should be doctors. He is such a fossil he has no idea what we have here.”
“Shh.”
There was a long pause then Enid heard one call out.
“Hello?”
She must have given herself away with her breathing.
“Yes?”
“Are you eavesdropping?”
Enid had in fact been eavesdropping but went with a lie instead.
“No, I can’t go with…people nearby.”
There were a couple of laughs and the door opened and closed. She turned on her holo-web and nudged the door open peaking out. The two women who had been talking were dressed in civilian clothes and were smoking in the hallway. She slipped out of the door. She saw they each had swipe card hooked on their belts. She waited until they were engaged in a heated discussion about some Soviet singer, then pickpocketed one of the swipe cards. She had to see what was so interesting. Cursing her curiosity, the whole way. Her holo-phone said she had three hours before her deadline. She headed past the six silos and finally found the boring beige door. It didn’t look particularly impressive except it had a sign on it declaring radiation hazard, restricted access past the door. She swiped the card she’d pilfered off of the researcher and opened the door.
*****
Hazel
Hazel performed her ritual and pulled herself to the in between. She opened her holo-display and set a 4-hour timer. Then a second one at eleven hours, forty-five minutes. It was how long her ritual would last. She’d give her mother till then and then use the last fifteen minutes to get out of this place.
Hazel basically walked through the complex unhindered. Her shadow walk ability actually slipped her in between the physical world and the realm of spirits. She could see into both and hear, though it was like looking through a mesh fabric. People and spirits blurred, and sounds were muffled but she could make most things out. As her mother predicted her translator was useless. She could pass through walls and doors with focus because she was almost insubstantial, but it took concentrated effort to interact with the physical or spirit realms like this, to the point of exhaustion. Too much time in solid matter she would get kicked out randomly into either side of the barrier she was slipping through. She could see corrupted vile spirts twisting around in the massive ICBMs. They seemed to sense her presence and they watched her slip through the in between, unable to interact with her. Other spirits here were dour and subdued like the joy had been ripped out of them. She was finding she did not like this place.
It took her about twenty minutes to find a way to the surface. Almost as long to manage to climb the ladder through the exit she found. It took a lot of concentration to actually pull herself up the ladder and lift herself up through the hatch. She’d never really thought about why her feet didn’t just slide through the ground when she was this way. Or her butt when she collapsed. Maybe she was doing something wrong. There was snow everywhere. Thankfully in between was never hot or cold, it just was. There was a frost wire fence surrounding the complex. A guard shack by a gate. An airstrip that had snow blowing across it a couple of hangers and a garage with vehicles. It was rather large, and she could see a metal door that looked like it might cover a cargo elevator. She found herself glad she’d watched so many 20th and 21st century movies from the recovered archives because she was able to identify stuff.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
She brought up her holo-tablet’s display. She could see her mothers signal but because she was not quite in the physical world it was intermittent and would sometimes blip to another spot on her display. She looked at the time she had left to wait, eleven hours and two minutes. She waved her hand over her wrist to turn off the display. She thought there was no reason to waste charge. It had been daytime when she reached the surface, it slowly turned to night. She had dozed off and was awoken by her wrist beeping to tell her about the timer for her mother to join her had expired. She continued to wait, dozing off again and woke up with her wrist beeping telling her that the ritual as about to expire. She was going to have to exit the in between or she would be forcibly ejected in a random direction. She frowned. She had waited too long and now she would be stuck in the apparently frigid wilderness with no way to go back down to find her mother or get to the in between for another twelve hours. She knew those corrupted spirits were down there though so perhaps her mother was right, reinforcements would be in order.
She started to dash across the complex’s airfield through the gate and down the road. She forced herself into the physical world and started shivering immediately. She opened her holo-display, it said the ambient temperature was -42 C. The wind made it feel worse. Hazel shifted to her wolf form her fur didn’t have the thick undercoat like it would be if she lived in such climates but to make contact with a tribe or pack she’d need to howl. So, she howled, she received no response after several minutes and was getting far too cold. She shifted back to her human shape and sealed her helmet. She started to warm up inside the armor. It would be sufficient for a while but once the energy wore out she’d be in serious trouble. She looked back in the direction of the complex, suspecting it might be better then freezing to death, but then she remembered the dark spirits that were crawling there and thought better of it. She still had not heard any howls. If a tribe lived here they would migrate somewhere warmer in the winter. Fur only got you so far.
She heard a vehicle approaching from the base. She let the helmet soak back into her armor. She started to shiver as the cold seeped into her. She slipped on her holo-web and went with random clothing, walked to the side of the road and tried to wave down the army truck. The truck shuddered as the air brakes kicked in. It skidded on the icy road. The soldier who was in the passenger seat was talking and she couldn’t understand a word of it. He opened the door and helped her inside. And gave her his Parka. She was shivering by this time the wind was so cutting and cold. Without a helmet the suit was basically just an armored spandex bodysuit. She started to thaw as the heat in the truck kicked on. They were trying to talk to her but her, but her translator could understand none of it. She just shook her head and used some of the sign language her mother had taught her. Which basically constituted her trying to say I’m lost, and I need help. Neither of the soldiers understood her but one pointed down the road and nodded.
Hazel was looking at the interior of the trunk as they drove along the bumpy road. She’d never actually seen such…ancient technology with her own eyes. She’d never seen a vehicle where the controls weren’t holographic, or at least just a console. This looked like it to took effort to drive with the stick shift in the middle and the steering wheel. She’d seen them in movies but being in one in real life was a different experience. It was such a rough ride. The driver switched the radio on got excited by the song playing and started to sing along with it while hitting the steering wheel along with the beat. His passenger rolled his eyes, glanced at Hazel and shrugged. Hazel shrugged back. She didn’t begrudge someone singing along to a song she did it often. Not that she had the voice for it.
The drive did not seem exceptionally long. The rough road gave way to more conventional blacktop. The city they drove into was full of the brutalist architecture common to the early Soviet Union, mixed with more traditional buildings. Not that Hazel knew how people would describe the buildings she just found them ugly and unwelcoming. The driver pulled the truck next to a sidewalk and lit a cigarette. He said something to his partner and motioned to Hazel and the building. There was some discussion back and forth and finally the soldier directly beside Hazel motioned for her to get out and follow him. Hazel hesitated, but concluded she wasn’t really sure what her best choice was, but was fairly confident being able to change into a 9-foot-tall half-wolf with fangs and claws pretty much meant she’d be fine whatever her choice as long as she wasn’t stuck outside. She looked for the panel to touch and could not for the life of herself figure out how to open the door. She tried the window crank and almost broke it. The solider reached across her and popped the door handle. She blushed slightly and hopped out. He followed her and pointed to the building.
She followed him inside, it was old and if she was being honest, smelled like winery. He motioned for her to follow, and he pounded on a door. It took a few minutes for it to open. An old Russian woman answered it. She looked at Hazel and then slapped the soldier across the face without a word. The soldier rubbed his cheek and spent about ten minutes talking her down. She eventually seemed convinced of whatever he was trying to get across after few looks at Hazel. The hallway wasn’t exactly warm, so she was shivering. The woman motioned the pair inside.
The interior was brighter than she expected. Music was playing on a radio. An old man hummed long to the instrumental music a surgical lamp shining down on his balding head his sparse grey hairs forming a half circle around the back of his head. His glasses were low on his nose. He was standing behind a younger man. The old man’s fingers had blood on them, and he was stitching skin together on the younger man’s back. He took a swig of a glass of clear liquid. His patient squirmed when another stitch was put in and the old man smacked him on the back of the head and said something that Hazel was pretty sure an insult towards the young man. He took a large drag of the cigarette and then crushed it out in an ashtray. He then did another stitch. The younger man seemed to have learned his lesson and sat motionless through what Hazel knew was a painful experience based on her mother doing the same when she was younger.
The old man tied off the stitches and went to a sink and washed his hands off. He said something and motioned for the younger man to get up. The young man reached into a bag and passed along a box of something a bottle of clear liquid to the old woman. The soldier patted the younger man on the shoulder as he passed and seemed to greet him as a friend. The old lady spoke to the older man who was drying his hands off. He adjusted his glasses, which promptly slid down his nose. He lifted his head to get a better look at Hazel who waved to him and smiled. He grumbled something and lit another cigarette before pouring out more clear liquid into his glass. He approached Hazel and lifted her hands looking at her fingers. He pointed to her feet. Hazel shook her head. She tried to sign that she was fine. He scratched his scruffy cheek. Took another puff of his cigarette and put it down into the ashtray and started signing to Hazel.
“Where are your parents?”
Hazel blinked and signed back.
“Father is dead, mother is lost to her. I am cold and need help.”
He pointed to her ears and signed.
“Are you deaf?”
Hazel shook her head she signed back.
“I don’t understand your words.”
He looked at the soldier and spoke again pointing to his ears. The soldier nodded. He shook the old man’s hand and turned to Hazel and waved to her and then to the old doctor. He gave the old woman a hug and let himself out. The old woman and the doctor had a lengthy conversation which Hazel was oblivious too. The doctor motioned for the woman to leave. She tried to argue and seemed to win out. He motioned for Hazel to sit on the stool recently occupied by the man getting stiches. He rolled up his own stool and took a long pull from his glass. He picked up the cigarette tapped the ashes off the end and took a pull. Then he started speaking to her in a different language. Then another language. The final one he tried she understood.
“What language do you speak?”
“This one.”
Hazel had no idea what language it was.
“You’re French?”
Hazel nodded.
“Mine is a bit rusty, how did you get stuck out here?”
“Uh… complicated, but mom is missing. She told me if we get separated to go see Evelina Ilyinishna, apartment 3-4, 15 Popova, Leningrad. My mom is from here.”
“Everything in Soviet Union is complicated. You are a long way from there. You can feel your toes? Fingers? Nothing hurts?”
Hazel nodded.
“I suppose you don’t have any papers.”
“Umm papers?”
He spoke in his native tongue, and it didn’t sound like he was happy.
“You are lucky you were found by local boys. I’m Doctor Popov, what is your name?”
“Greta.”
“My wife and I will take you home, get you some food, see where we can go from there.”
He put his cigarette out. Hazel pointed the glass of liquid and bottle.
“Is that water?”
Doctor Popov laughed.
“Vodka.”
“Is that umm Russian for water?”
He laughed so hard he started to cough.
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is.”
He finished off the glass of Vodka and handed Hazel the brown wrapped parcel, then picked up the unopened bottle. He put his arm across Hazel’s back.
“Come on, if we’re lucky the borscht will be ready, so we get you thawed out.”
*****
Enid
Enid found herself faced with a desk manned by a soldier and two armed guards flanking an air lock. They all went on immediate alert when the door opened of its own accord. The room was bright. Enid thanked the designers silently as she swiftly moved to the side of the door. If it was any darker the shimmer from her holo-web would have given her away. The guards checked the other side of the door. The one at the desk picked up a phone and dialed a number. Enid heard an announcement over the PA system.
“Dr. Minsc, please report to your workstation.”
Enid was pressed against the reinforced concrete wall. She was stuck. Open the door they’ll know something is up, go forward they will definitely know something is up. The woman she’d pick pocketed earlier rushed in.
“You interrupt my meal for what?”
The soldier looked her up and down.
“You were in the mess?”
“Yes, idiot. I am off shift. What do you want?”
“May I see your swipe card?”
She started checking her pockets.
“I must have left it in the mess. I’ll go find it if you must see it.”
The soldier looked up at her then hit a big red button behind him and an alarm started going off. Then more announcements saying there was an intruder in the complex. Enid sighed. She should have just left. She couldn’t even warn Hazel. She saw the pair of guards heading towards the air lock. She figured she was already in the shit she might as well find out what they are so paranoid about protecting. She rushed forward. Dr. Minsc stepped in her way. Enid had too much momentum to stop so the woman got knocked down. The two guards in the air lock found themselves trapped with an almost invisible assailant who quickly ended their lives with brutal efficiency. The last guard starting shooting at the air lock but it was apparently armored glass. Enid picked up the fallen guard’s pistols and rushed inside. There were a few scientists left in the room. She scanned the area and, in the center, saw the reason security was so tight. It a clear sealed chamber was a 29th century drone that had been damaged severely.
She didn’t waste any time shooting the scientists that were in the room. No matter what happened to her they could not be allowed to keep this tech. Some of the equipment was still in its packaging. They obviously hadn't gotten far. she pulled out two claymores and started wiring them for motion sensor detonation. She could see soldiers massing on the other side of the airlock. She tapped her wrist.
“Hazel! Go!”
She didn’t receive a response. To them things were just appearing out of nowhere. She heard someone speaking through a speaker by the air lock door.
“There is no escape for you, whoever you are. Surrender, no one else needs to get hurt.”
Enid ignored it and kept setting up her booby traps. She set up another set further into the room. She finally wired a shaped fusion charge on top of the drone’s container. She saw them getting ready to breach the outside. She pushed a table over behind her pathway of death. She started lining up some weapons from her pack. A bolter, two twenty-first century assault rifles and finally an old favorite, her RPG with frag ordinance. She started with one of the assault rifles which was unmistakably American in origin. She heard the first set of breaching charges go off, it was dulled somewhat by the second set of armored glass. She willed her helmet up over her head and lined up with the door.
There was another flash as the breaching charges went off. Then the secondary explosion as her first claymore went off. Screams followed it. She saw shapes in the smoke. The optics on her armor showed her the targets she needed and started shooting them with three round bursts. After the second claymore took out more of them. They started trying to move further into the room. She had shot about six of them, she couldn’t tell how many she’d incapacitated or killed with the claymores. They had reacted how she’d hoped they would. She took the lull in activity to reload her rifle tossing the mostly empty clip aside. She lined herself up ready for another wave. It didn’t come. One had gotten a megaphone.
“We will get to you.”
Enid yelled back.
“You can try, but I guarantee you’re going to lose more men than you want too, and I’ve already wired that thing with enough explosives to turn it into dust. Let me do what I need to with it and save your men.”
“Who are you? Are you American?”
“I’m the person the original owners sent to retrieve or destroy it. Go ask your surviving scientists if you want to go up against that.”
Another two men tried to enter low. Enid’s armor’s optics picked them up easily. She took them out with two three round bursts to center of mass. Enid picked up the bolter. It had the most penetration of any of the weapons. She shot where she thought the guard desk would be. The bolter blew through the reinforced concrete with little issue, it was built to penetrate 29th century armored targets. Reinforced concrete was nothing to it. She heard a scream.
“And if you think your reinforced wall is going to stop me from getting you, you’re very mistaken. You still want to do this?”
She saw the silhouettes of people backing off. She wanted to drive the point home so she picked up her RPG and put it over her shoulder and aimed at the open door and launched it. The ensuring explosion elicited more cries of alarm. The smoke was still thick in the formerly airtight room and she was glad for her armor’s helmet. The smoke was making her cloak useless. Her optics weren’t showing any targets through the smoke. So, she crept forward and shot the container holding the drone with her bolter three times and she smashed the remainder way through. She opened her holo-display and used her hand scanner. She the antigrav, micro fusion core and optics were still there. She stuffed the small drone’s remains in her pack and went back to her cover. She tapped the detonate icon on her holo-display. The 29th century explosive disintegrated the container, the table it was on and four feet of reinforced concrete straight down. She started gathering up her weapons and putting them away. She stood up to leave then realized she’d left a magazine. She tossed it into her pack with a sigh.
She waited for several more minutes. Content she had time to finish the job. She pulled one of her few remaining Demonfire missiles out of her pack, along with an adaptor for her holo-phone. She wired them together and went about disabling the built in safety mechanisms that would stop it from detonating without being launched. She was convinced the only way to make sure any trace of the research stored here was scorched earth. She heard foot steps and looked over the table and used one of the Soviet pistols she’d borrowed to shoot another four men trying to reach her. They tried to shoot her, but the bullets were ineffective against her armor. She mentally turned off the force redirection because she didn’t want one to hit her delicate warhead now that she’d removed the stuff preventing it from being detonated like that. She tossed the demonfire warhead into the airlock. She started running towards the exit. Her RPG had ripped the door of its hinges. The soldiers had left their fallen where they lay. Enid dove through the door. And found herself face to face with the remnants of the facilities security force. She looked at them and spoke.
“Privet? You might want to run.”
She lunged into the group and pushed past them as her timer on her wrist went off. Her armor could take a lot of punishment but there was no way it was going to survive the nightmare she’d just let loose. Several soldiers who had decided to take a firing stance found themselves burning alive as the dispersion of the demonfire filled the lab room, the guard room, the hallway. She’d underestimated the volume and found herself running full out for a few minutes to evade the molten concrete she’d created. She tapped her holo-web and vanished. She tried to exit the facility but found it to be on lockdown. Even her armor’s strength could not breach the reinforced doors. She could have blown them but that would have given away her position. She plopped herself down under the exit stairs and waited. Hoping Hazel had heard the explosions and was running away.