Book 2
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Worrying news from Patagonia in recent days is not leaving the front pages of all international publications. The uprising of anti-government forces is gaining momentum. The second largest city in the country, Bolgvar, has fallen under the control of the rebels. The government of Urda Gomez, with the support of several European countries, continues to hold major port cities and oil production areas, but how long will it last? Many market players have started to panic, because the rebels if they come to power, have promised to nationalize all mines and oil companies. Let's take a closer look at this prospect... Helvetia Exchange Bulletin weekly.
A pestilence in the power structures of the Old World? According to our source, over the last month, under unclear circumstances, the elite anti-terrorist units in three European countries at once ceased to exist: "Hammer" in Gaul, "Romulus" in Italy, and "Germanica" in Prussia. There are persistent rumors... The tabloid newspaper "Muddy Waters of the Seine".
At the last report meeting of the Security Council of the League of Nations, the question of strengthening the White Beret Corps and giving it additional powers was raised once again. All analysts agree that this issue has again become extremely sensitive against the background of the events in Patagonia. The key countries of the Security Council were divided and the meeting was postponed until next month. It is safe to say that the inspection by the new White Beret Commander, Egray Mint, of the corps' bases in the Southern Hemisphere is only the occasion for informal meetings with the governments of several countries, such as Legrand and Avalon, to persuade them to vote for the strengthening of the powers of the corps... International Review Weekly
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Chapter 1
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The knocking on the door was not loud, you could even say it was polite but very persistent and irritating to the point of irritation. I tried to cover myself with a pillow but soon realized that I could hear perfectly well anyway. The tapping of someone's fingers on the front door. After suffering for about half a minute, I realized that whoever was behind the door would not just calm down and leave.
Suppressing the urge to swear, I said: "Just a minute!" And he threw off the blanket.
My head was so heavy that getting it off the pillow was no easy task. I hung my legs off the bed and sat up, swaying. It felt awful like all my muscles had been pulled out of me, and instead, I had some amorphous jelly stuffed into my body. I could barely lift my arm.
Kronos! I'm sick, aren't I? I remember running to the car from the Temple, but as soon as I got in the car seat, I passed out. Then, when we got into town, the guys woke me up and I kind of got up on my own. My head was foggy, but yeah, I walked up by myself, opened the door, and literally collapsed on the bed, passing out almost instantly. I didn't even take my shoes off, and my feet were aching so badly. Tartarus! I'm still in my jacket and sweatpants. How did I manage to wrap myself in a blanket? I don't remember...
Why do I feel so bad? I'm even a little feverish. Is it really a cold? But it doesn't look like a simple cold, when I was laid up with pneumonia five years ago, it was just as bad. That's all I needed! I wanted to change my clothes, but no, I decided not to defy Ten Daas, and then...
The knocking on the door became more insistent.
"I'm coming" Surprisingly, my voice is quite normal, not weakened as it usually is when I'm seriously ill.
I got up and could hardly stand on my feet. My knees were about to buckle. I felt as if I woke up not on Earth, but on another planet with twice the force of gravity. But a glance out the window immediately dispelled this delusional theory. The view outside the window was the same gray walls of the neighboring high-rise that I had grown accustomed to.
Barely moving my feet, shuffling on the floor in heavy, leaden boots, I reached the door and turned the knob. I swung the door open, and before I did so, I gathered my breath for a harsh rebuke about not waking a man on his rightful day off! But all my fervor to swear was abruptly gone when I saw who was standing at the threshold.
"You should take a shower or something..." Illea said, wrinkling her nose as if she smelled something very pungent and unpleasant. "Here you go."
Having said this, the chief gave me a deep container filled with something liquid.
"Hmm?" She has a day off today? "Hi."
"Hi, hi..." Illea smiled, insistently shoving her container in my hands. "You need to eat."
"What I need is sleep!" I object, just the thought of food makes me sick. "For a week or two..."
Before I could finish my sentence the unexpected visitor in one long stride, somehow moved around my side and put her free hand around my neck.
"Shall I spoon-feed you?" Her voice is so lusciously sweet that I have no doubt she would spoon-feed me if I refused!
"Thank you, I'll do it..." In confirmation of these words, I take a warm container and a spoon from her hands, which she immediately pulled out of her apron.
"Such good boy," Illea let go of my neck and took a step back, looking me over from head to toe with undisguised curiosity. "You look good, by the way..." Do I look good now, is she delirious? "Only your eyes are dull. Who did you catch today...?" She clucked her tongue, probably referring to the Face that fell on me. "What's got you under so much pressure? Don't answer that, it's none of my business." She said this and crossed the threshold. "And yet eat, it will get better." She put her delicate hand on the doorknob and glanced at me again. "If it's too bad, you can talk to Ten, because he's been in the hall all day today."
"Okay." I don't feel like going anywhere or talking to anyone, but in order not to provoke her, I nod.
"Don't dare pour my cooking down the toilet." She smiles sweetly and winks her finger foolishly, but her eyes are completely serious. "That would really upset me."
"I wasn't even thinking!" Looking at her with an honest look, I brazenly lied to her. Because that was exactly what I was thinking at that moment, that I would close the door behind her and pour everything out of the container into the sewer.
"Ha!" Illea only grinned back. "Don't upset me, though. Eat, and come to your senses; I'll need you tomorrow." She waved goodbye and then slammed the door behind her.
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"See you tomorrow," I answered the closed door mechanically.
Why would she need me tomorrow? My work is very indirectly related to hers. Unless, again, her sister plans to leave Rati at the restaurant while she's on duty. If I feel the same way tomorrow, Illea will have to babysit her nephew herself, since I'll be on sick leave. To Tartarus work, when you're so fucked up!
Heavily collapsed on the bed and put the container on my knees. I opened it out of pure curiosity. What I saw inside it made me almost throw up, some kind of greenish brown, murky, very greasy even by the look of it, with lumps of something slimy floating in it. Honestly, if it hadn't come from Illea, I would have poured it all down the toilet without the slightest doubt.
But this time curiosity won out. Since I met our chef I had tasted many different dishes prepared by her, and no matter what they looked like, they were always delicious. So keeping some apprehension, I picked up a full spoonful of the slurry and brought it to my mouth, then clenched my eyes and ate it. I wouldn't say it was very tasty, the lumpy broth was riddled with spices, mostly hot peppers. Nevertheless, after swallowing the first portion, I immediately scooped some more, because I realized that I was hungry like a pack of wolves in winter. I stopped only when I had emptied the container to the bottom. My stomach felt pleasantly warm, and when I put the food container on the table, I collapsed back onto the bed, my eyes immediately filled with lead and closed.
The dream didn't come like a warm blanket that snuggles and lulls me to sleep; my head barely made it to the pillow when I was knocked out as if Hephaestus had tried out his new hammer on me.
I've had bad dreams before, but nightmares have always been very rare, and today was apparently the exception. Time after time I had the same dream, that I was attacked by a leader of sabeks.
Only, unlike the Pilgrimage, the saving shield of the kings of Ithaca did not appear in my hands. I ran from the guardsman of the River God, but he caught up with me, tearing my body into the tiniest shreds. I defended myself against him with whatever came to hand in this nightmare dream. I threw my keyboard and even my monitor at him; how these objects ended up in the dream did not surprise me at all at that moment. Time after time, like in some movie in which all but one passage was cut out, this dream spun and spun in an endless loop. No fewer than half a dozen times I was killed by the monstrous teeth of a sabek, and as soon as I died the dream began again from the moment the Silver Bow fell to the ground.
Time after time...
Time after time...
Here, the crocodile's mouth once again reaches for my throat. I wiggle my hands around, hoping to find something to protect myself from it.
Bzzzz...
What this?
Bzzzz...
Somewhere nearby my phone is vibrating. For some reason, it feels like my salvation is in it right now. My right hand found my smartphone, and I shoved it with all my might into sabek's wide-open mouth. He immediately pulled away, took the phone out of his mouth, and, looking at the screen, handed it to me:
"It's for you..." Says the sabek's leader in the voice of Ten Daas.
I obediently take the smartphone from his paw, noting that the call comes from a three-digit emergency number. I take the call and hold it to my ear. It seems perfectly natural for Sabek to stand by my side and wait for me to speak.
"Do you think you're sick?" I heard a quiet woman's voice from the speaker. The voice is pleasant, but strange as if it's not a person speaking to me, but a raven, or rather a crow. "Your Trial seems terrible to you, and you feel sorry for yourself." Whoever's on the other side of the connection is right, and that's exactly what I've been feeling since I left the Temple. "You're angry at the Three-Face and you're afraid it was all for nothing." Yes, on the way back to the car I also checked my hand and didn't notice any change. When I got home I wanted to sit down at the computer and check my reaction but I felt so debilitated that I realized these tests would have shown nothing, with the way I was feeling. "Not for nothing..." Having said that, the woman's voice was silent for a while, as if to let me understand what was being said, and then continued. "The first Trials are different, many of them much more difficult than the one you went through..." A heavy sigh, on the other side of the connection, as if opening a door of memory.
"One silly girl, on her eleventh birthday, offended by her brother, ran away from everyone and sneaked into the Ancient Temple. She was very angry and would do anything to make her negligent brother realize that he would be very unhappy without her. So she went through the Arch... Alone... On her eleventh birthday... Children often don't know what they're doing, that's why they're children. She got one of your deeds, getting out of Cyclops' cave." It's not my feat at all, I'm not Odysseus, I'm Utis! Utis Irzec! But as it happens in dreams, my tongue refused to obey me, and this inner indignation remained inside me. "For four days, hiding in the dark corners and narrow crevices of the huge cave, licking the moisture flowing down the stone walls the girl tried to break free... That was HARD... Anyway, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You're all right. And the girl? She got out. But you already know that since I'm talking to you..." The soft laughter from the speaker goes to the ringing of the bell.
"Have you finished?" Sabek asks immediately.
Instead of seizing the moment and running away, I nod dumbly in response to the question. The servant of the God of Nile immediately knocks the phone out of my hand and kicks me in the chest. And I'm flying, flying far away... Flying to fall...
I woke up on the floor. The blanket was somewhere off to the side, the sheet on the bed fluffed up like a herd of thoroughbreds had run over it.
U-ph-ph-ph!!!
It was just a dream! Such a relief.
I rubbed my face with my palms until it was red and took a deep breath.
Such a vivid dream! My hand involuntarily reached up to my neck to check if I was really dreaming or if I was really alive. It was a stupid gesture, but I couldn't help it, nor could I refrain from exhaling a sigh of relief when I realized that I was really all right.
I've had nightmares before. Rarely. But I have. But none of them could compare to this dream. It was so real, so real that... The memory sent shivers down my spine. Brrrrrr!...
Oh, Kronos! I really fell out of bed, probably for the first time in my life except when I was very young. Surprisingly, the realization of this fact for some reason lifted my spirits. I got up, sat on the bed, and rubbed my bruised elbow from the fall.
And that call! What is going on in my subconscious, what signal does my tired brain send me in this way? And by the way, where is the phone? The smartphone was found quickly, most likely it fell with me, but more fortunately on the cushion lying on the floor.
When I picked it up, I immediately unlocked it and could barely keep from cackling loudly. Of course, no one had called me just a message from the emergency services, apparently another storm warning mailing to the population. There have been many storms this winter, and such newsletters have become commonplace. I usually delete them without reading them, but because of the dream, I opened this message. I opened it and froze because it did not contain what I expected to read.
Don't leave him... He only looks big, cool, serious, and eerily grown-up. But he's still just a kid. Don't leave him...
A lump as big as my fist rolled up in my throat. Tartarus! Is that even possible, a private message from the alarm service? It's a computer that sends them out, not a person. Or did it come to the whole city?
As I minimized the message, with a swift gesture, I opened the log of received calls, barely restraining the trembling in my fingers. Kronos! Tartarus! Gaia!
A minute ago there was a received call from the number three nine, from the emergency phone. So I wasn't dreaming? I mean, what I dreamed wasn't really a dream, was it?
What's going on? That's impossible. You can call the three nines, but no one has ever heard of anyone calling from that number. Sometimes they call back in response to your call, but it's always from the regular number of a particular operator, not from the three nines.
The smartphone in my hand now looks like a coiled poisonous snake. I look at it with a certain amount of apprehension. I understand that it has nothing to do with this, and still when a new message arrives, I can hardly stop myself from smashing it against the wall.
I open a text message, all from the same number, to read it.
I'll owe you. /Pat/... P.S. There really is going to be a storm tonight, by the way.
Hmmm... More and more, everything seems to be a joke. But why joke about it? And who could do such a thing? And maybe my subconscious wasn't so right when Sebek spoke in Daas's voice in my dream? And fact that the voice was a woman's voice, there are a lot of programs that change the voice. The question is, why would he do that? And in general, it is very strange that he is so sympathetic to me, to essentially a perfect stranger.
I got out of bed, erased all my messages and cleared my call memory, and then stretched until my joints crunched. A stiff, predatory, unfamiliar, and slightly alien smile slid across my face.
Does anyone want to play with me? Well, I'm ready. Let's play!
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