Chapter 13
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"Are you all right?" Ten Daas leans over me and pats my cheek lightly. "Nauseous?"
"No-o-o-o." Strangely enough, I said it out loud, and it felt like there was no air in my lungs at all.
"So just a deep knockout." He straightens up and looks around the room like he's seeing it for the first time. "What kind of an idiot you were..." he whispers into the void. "Why didn't you tell me or Illea or Lance..." The boss approaches the couch and puts his fingers on the girl's neck. "At least he didn't have time for the girl..."
I finally manage to get to my knees and am immediately curled up in a fit of nausea.
Oh, Kronos!!! What I didn't expect was this kind of development. I thought Jiro was going to be cut but in fact... Oh, it hurts. And it was Daas who said "problems with the Jiro", not "Jiro has problems". I should have remembered a long time ago, the boss doesn't make mistakes in prepositions, and you have to listen to him carefully, right down to the intonation "comma".
Jiro...Jiro...Jiro...
So this is what a case of a man failing to cope with the Face looks like. The ritual, the loincloth, and the paint on the body all indicated this version.
Jiro...
Damn. Why didn't you tell me how much trouble you were in, why you were always cheerful and...
Ah-h-h-h-h.
Daas, meanwhile, leaned over the girl, sniffed, took a strand of her hair in his palm, and examined it closely.
"She dyed her hair." He gave his verdict. "Yeah, bad timing, you girl, changing your style, bad timing." As if she'd heard the words, the redhead stirred, and her eyelids fluttered open. "Now, don't do that." Immediately the boss reacted, leaning over and somehow squeezing her neck, causing the girl to pass out again. "That's better, sleep, sleep..."
After patting himself in his pockets, Daas pulled out his smartphone and dialed a number.
"Howe. No time for sentimentality. If I'm not mistaken, your ward has the Face of a half-faun."
"Yes." I heard Rick's voice clearly in the silence of the room.
"Is he nearby?"
"Yes."
"Give him the phone."
"But... surgery... tomorrow..."
"I don't give a fuck. I say give him the phone. Now!"
"Oh, that's..." Gerhardt's voice came from the phone.
"I know who you are." Immediately, the boss interrupts him. "I have one question for you. Can you walk through the dreams? [1]"
"Ahem..."
"Don't whine. Answer the question."
"I would..." I hear Slider doesn't really realize who he's talking to.
"In my arms..." Daas literally hisses, interrupting his companion. "The twelve-year-old girl who survived her abduction was nearly raped and cut to shreds. She is now unconscious. So I need a simple answer from you. Can you go around dreaming and altering them so that she wakes up thinking she's having a nightmare, or can't you do that, and the girl will suffer psychological trauma that could ruin her life? The simple answer is "can" or "can't".
"It doesn't always work..."
"Put Rick on the phone."
"Ten, the guy's having surgery tomorrow. He can't..." Descart tries to object.
"He won't fall apart. We'll bring him back before the surgery. He's not getting a new kidney, either! Get him to Sailboat." Not listening any further, the boss hangs up.
Daas leans over the girl again, and my thoughts collide in my head, generating a hunch.
Walking in dreams.
Pat's messages.
Illea's speed.
Rick's literally magical attraction to women [2].
The Immaterial Attributes of the Faces can partly work in the material world as well! Kronos! Hotey told me this almost directly, and I let it pass me by. Especially since this theory that flashed in my head is easy to test right now.
I picked up a sharp shard of glass and, clutching it in my hand, straightened up sharply, striking. I aim for the boss's arm, aiming not to hurt him but just to scratch him. He doesn't see my swing. He's preoccupied with other things. And yet, by some unknown miracle, I miss, my foot going a little off at the last moment, and the shard only cuts through the sleeve of his overalls.
Gaia, darn!
So that's how it works!
Of course, it would be incredibly difficult to implement Achilles' invulnerability, as described in the myths, in the material world. This implementation is much simpler. He simply cannot be wounded with a weapon, something is bound to happen, and the weapon will miss...
As I stood there in thought, Daas turned around, looked at the shard in my hand, then turned his gaze to the torn sleeve and snickered.
"Why the fuck did you ruin it? If you'd just asked, I'd have told you." He shrugged. "And throw the glass away before you start any more experiments. Now's not a good time for them." He froze. "Boots on my feet with metal soles, just in case. And yes... It's not worth checking out!" He recognized the glint in my eyes and interpreted it correctly.
The boss's gaze is eloquent enough, and I throw the shard away for good measure.
He's definitely lying, though. He wouldn't have answered anything if I had asked straight out. He would have avoided a straight answer, moved the subject, or just pretended not to have heard.
The distinctive roar of the bikes coming at full speed could be heard through the broken window. And less than a minute later, a tune played on Daas's smartphone.
"I hear you." Picking up the phone, the boss said. "You and a couple or three other guys go up to the ninth. The rest of you... Have them find Jiro's body..." Saying the name, the boss closed his eyes and swallowed a lump in his throat. "We need to clean up and bury him properly..." I can't hear what Lance is saying. "Yeah, not in time... No, just Jiro... No more victims. There's also a girl unconscious. She needs to be taken out, given time for Slider to work on her, changed, and left somewhere near the house." Daas has just found the girl's belongings and school bag and, talking to Lance, is digging through it at the same time. "Yes... I have the address. Come on up. I'll explain." Disconnecting, the boss turns to me. "Pick up your gun and control the corridor so no one comes in at the most inopportune time."
His order is reasonable, and clenching my teeth from a barely tolerable pain in my stomach, I carry it out...
About an hour later, having left the business of covering our tracks on the shoulders of the Goons, Ten Daas and I were sitting opposite each other in darkness at our restaurant table. There was a bottle of vodka, just opened by the boss, on the tabletop touchpad.
"Well..." Daas raised his shot full to the brim. "May a better fortune await him on the other side of the Styx... No cheers."
The vodka is strong and icy to the point of being stiff, but now I drank it like water, not feeling its strength, taste, or coldness.
Placing the empty stack on the table, I crossed my gaze to my boss and said.
"I need answers."
"Yeah," The grin on Daas's face is full of a kind of doom and self-pity. "I had no doubt you would say something like that." He filled the shots again, but he didn't take his own in his hands just yet. "Jiro... This is my fault. My fault... mine... There's no excuse. It's my rock for the rest of my life." Daas's eyes clouded over.
"I was the one who dragged him under the Arch, so much so that I persuaded him to take this step that the word 'dragged' is not so much of an exaggeration. If he had said... Shared... Okay, in order. There are certain personality traits or tendencies in a person's character in which passing the Veil is highly undesirable, for there's almost a hundred percent chance you'll get a Face that will reinforce or elevate those predispositions. Jiro... Who knew this goody-goody was a lover of very hard sex?! Yes, you didn't mishear that. He liked S&M, and pretty hard. But, according to him, he kept himself quite in line, at least, he had not heard any complaints of excessive cruelty from his partners.
Behind the Arch, he was given the Face of Wartia, the hero of oceanic legends, son of the God Oceanus. All his life, Wartia has been dedicated to fighting the Magmans, the incorporeal demons of the fire elemental destroyers. During the awakening of the volcanoes, Magmans broke free and... Don't wrinkle your nose. Without this preface, the rest of the story won't make sense. Believe me, I'm not giving you a lecture. I'm only telling you what needs to be told... When Magmans got free, they possessed people and acted according to their nature, destroying and setting fire to everything. They did not possess all humans, only girls who were on the borderline between women and girls. That is, their choice was a virgin at the time of their first menstrual cycle. The distinctive feature of such possessed females was that their hair, when captured by a Magmans, turned a fiery red color.
The situation for the islanders was complicated by the fact that Magmans are immortal, and with a simple 'exorcism' they did not want to return to the underground heat but simply occupied a new body and continued their outrages. The weakness of these demons was that when they moved into a human, they felt the human feeling. The only way to get a Magman to go back underground was to make him wish for it. And the islanders had found a way to make the demons want to return. Have you figured it out yet? Right... Pain... Since the demons feel the same way as the body they occupied, you have to let them know that the surface world is full of pain... After catching the possessed, which was no easy task in itself, the islanders' shamans would "cast out" the demon from her, torturing and hurting her for hours so that the Magman would rush back underground after leaving the body...
Wartia was the best at it. Once he caught a possessed girl, he could torture her for twenty-four hours, prolonging the agony and keeping the demon from escaping before its time. And an important detail: you probably figured out, by now, how grown men used to "exorcise" demons out of young girls' bodies, right? Yes, yes, with their "divine rod", of course... Sex and endless torture for a good cause... Jiro, Jiro... Why did you say your proclivities so late? One trip, two or three, wouldn't have led to an irreversible change and such a Fusion with Face. But... This fool was silent, and we went Arch often, up to a dozen times a month... One day he came to me all sweaty and with trembling hands. We were in Japan at the time, and, as you can imagine, meeting red-haired girls in that country is no easy task. But Jiro did, and he almost got a kick out of it.
That's when he told me all about his sexual preferences and the unspoken facts and details about the 'work' of the volcanic island shamans. Of course, Jiro hasn't walked the Arch since then, and I've been teaching him how to discard the Face. Lance and Illea later joined me to help with this task. At one time, I even hired a detective agency to keep an eye on Jiro. As the months went by, he struggled, but he endure it, and when he couldn't take it anymore, he took a bottle and forgot himself with alcohol. He seemed to have everything under control, and he could cope, and you saw it yourself - his behavior was normal!!! He was the same as he was before Arch... I thought so...
This girl lives next door to Jiro's flat. I examined her hair, and three days ago, she was a brunette. But she decided to dye her hair fiery red... Kronos! When Jiro called in sick two days ago and didn't show up for work, I should have gone to see him... And me... We had a blood brotherhood... A long time ago... Gaia... Why didn't I... Oh well, you can't undo what you've done... Also, when we mixed blood, he made me promise that if he happened to lose himself completely, I would kill him. Kronos... If I'd been more careful..." He shoved me a full shot, and we drank again.
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With every word from Ten Daas, it was getting more and more painful, and the vodka did not help at all. Three One, why?!! Why exactly with Jiro... So... What a pain in the chest. I can see that the boss is even worse off than me, even though he's trying to hold on like an iron statue. We both feel bad, but I can't help but tell him.
"I want other answers. I'm tired of secrets, reticences, and all the mysteries going on around me. I don't want to go out the window one day with a broken neck."
"What others?" Daas had already poured the vodka back into the shot glasses and was now frozen, having already brought his to his lips.
"For example, about your sister."
The boss set the shot on the table and leaned back on the sofa, then stared at me for ten seconds with unblinking eyes and said.
"I don't have a sister. I was alone at my dad's and mum's."
And he's not lying. Where did I go wrong?! I was so sure. While my thoughts were racing around like a cage, a message arrived on Daas's phone. He read it and immediately dialed the number.
"What do you mean by telling him?" He asked.
"That's what it means." A familiar female voice came over the speaker. The phone rang off the hook.
"Ahem." Daas took the smartphone off his ear in a puzzled way and held it in his hands for almost a minute, staring at it like it was the first time he'd ever seen it. "Well... Uh..." The boss turned his gaze to me. "I don't know... What about you... Oh, well. I really don't technically have a sister. My own sister... But here's the one I grew up next to almost since I was a baby, and I call her that. We were raised by her great-grandfather after my parents died, which I don't remember as I was too young, so let's dispense with the formalities of sympathy. So I didn't lie and, at the same time, lied when I said I didn't have a sister."
"Her name is Patricia, but I call her Pat. She's a couple of years older than me. Very clever, demonically clever, I'd say. I've been called the genius of the century, and she's not inferior to me. When she was very young, there was a not-so-good story that I was responsible for, which led to the little girl passing the Arch. Children can, for the most part, pass the Veil without consequence, as the Face is only given to someone whose personality has already been formed. But with Pat... She was already a Personality at an early school age and received the Face." Raising his shot, he twirled it around but still drank it without even a wince. It was obvious that, like me, booze wasn't affecting him at all at the moment. "She got the Face of Cassandra." And he fell silent as if that explained everything.
"And? The Face of Cassandra and what? There are no predeterminations in our world and fate, How she..."
"There is a future. Yes, it's no longer linear, but it hasn't stopped being, shall we say, "predictable". Look." He raised the cork of the vodka bottle above the table. "Show me the wonders of foresight. Predict the future. What will happen when I release my fingers?"
"It will fall..."
The cork falls onto the tabletop and, bouncing several times, freezes at the edge of the table.
"But this is nonsense, not an example. Human destiny is times more unpredictable, a myriad of options..."
"Well, well..." The boss grinned at my sentence. "You meet a good acquaintance. Can you predict what will happen next? You can either walk past or say hello, well yes, you can say hello in many ways: "hello", "how are you", "wow, nice to see you" and so on. Yes, theoretically, there are a million possible ways of doing this. You could take off your trousers and walk on your hands, cackle like a cock, shit in front of people right in your trousers, and spit on your friend from head to toe, in theory, all these options are possible, but only in theory. In reality, it all comes down to which words you say from a small selection of choices. Again, the future is not linear. It is variable, but it will happen, and it depends on what happened before. Pat doesn't see clearly what will happen exactly. She sees the variations of the possible future to come." Oh, wow. "Sometimes hundreds of variations of the same event, sometimes just two ramifications, rarely but occasionally it comes down to one line."
"She's the one who finds the snappers..." I'm putting it all in a nutshell. "With her at your back, you can afford a year's holiday, and your mega-corporation will not collapse. You will know about any crisis before it happens. And I was wondering how you could afford all that: a restaurant, a holiday... And I also could not understand how a very smart, even brilliant, but boy programmer, albeit with the Ascended Face, could squeeze his know-how from business sharks and international corporations and even squeeze them out of the market. But with Pat behind you, all this magically becomes possible."
"It's not that simple." Daas shakes his head. "Sister has no control over what she foresees or when she sees. It is an uncontrollable gift. So don't underestimate my merit in all this." He takes a big sip straight from the bottle.
"Another question. If she has the Face of Cassandra, no one should believe her words [3]!" I found an inconsistency in Daas' story.
"You don't know the legends very well." Daas tsked his tongue. "Apollo gifted Cassandra with the gift of seeing the future to get her into bed. But she blue balled the god of poetry and for months got away with promises and endless "tomorrow" without ever sharing a bed with him. This infuriated Apollo, and he cursed her, after which no one ever believed Cassandra's words. But as I said, Pat is a very clever girl... She's only been through the Arch once in her life, and she's not even going to go there again. I mean, she's got the gift, but the curse isn't on her yet. That's if she passes the Veil again, she'll gain that side of her Face talent as well."
"Can I talk to her?"
"Even I can't do that. Nobody knows where she is. No one knows her phone number. All the messages from her come from new numbers every time. The number I called is already one hundred percent deactivated. She chooses who to talk to and when. And you know, I can't blame her for taking such precautions with her gift. How I don't miss her and how I don't want to see her..."
"When?"
"What when?"
"When did you know that my countenance would be Odysseus? At what age have I been under the radar? Since college, that trauma of mine wasn't accidental. Since school, what age?!!" I catch myself almost screaming."
"Hey! Don't be nervous. I knew there was a new tenant in my house with possibly the legendary Face. No details. That you might, I repeat might!!! be chosen by Ulysses, I began to guess after Illea said, "Uthis is a good shot?!". You figured that since Pat could predict probabilities, she could, by influencing key moments in a person's life, pick them a Face?" Nodding.
"Gaia! Are you an idiot? How many clever people in the history of mankind do you think added up one plus one and got two? If everyone knows that the Face is matched to a person by character, the coincidence of destiny, and redisposition, were there not those who considered themselves geniuses, who took infants and tried to create conditions for their growing up under a particular Face?! There was plenty of them, and not one of them escaped the attention of the ThreeFace, for what our deity does not forgive is interference in his handiwork. Not at all, not at all, no way, you don't have to have the Face of Cassandra to understand. And Pat's not insane to go through with it. So calm down, no one "led" you on."
It was like a stone had been lifted from my soul. So I am "me" and my life is "mine" and not the fruit of a seer's games! What a relief, Gaia. Daas, sensing my state of mind, pushed a full glass toward me. Before I could finish my drink, the front door swung open, and Illea burst into the hall like a typhoon or a whirlwind. Her eyes blazed with the fire of fear raging in her soul for her loved ones. She flew up to our table and froze, her gaze shifting from Daas to me, then to the vodka, then back to our faces. Her shoulders, tense as if they were stone, gradually relaxed, slumping.
"We didn't get there in time Ill..." Ten Daas looked up at her. "I didn't make it in time..."
"How are you?" She takes a bottle of vodka in her hand. "Shall I pour you one?" Without waiting for us to answer, the chief fills the shots. "Drink, I understand." Sighing heavily, Illea takes a seat on the sofa next to Daas and puts her hands on his shoulders. "I loved him too... But I know you did a lot to stop that from happening. A lot. Who better than me to know that, Dan..." Oh, how, indeed, I would have been a fool to think that she didn't know his real name. "Dan, you can't change what happened."
ThreeFace! How blind I have been. The way she looks at him, that pain in her eyes, she loves him, loves Ten Daas.
"Dan, don't go off on your own." She rubbed the boss's shoulders. "Jiro made too much of it himself. First, he kept quiet. Then he tried to manage on his own. Then he lied that he had it under control. We all had that fight... And we lost... That's life, Dan, fucking bitch life. Any one of us could have snapped just like that, me failing to handle the rage, you fail to handle the truly divine pride of Achilles. We all walk under that sword of Damocles. All of us... Even our new friend." She nods at me. "But that's no reason to throw up your hands and roll downhill, blaming yourself for all your sins. Yes, you're the one who led him on with Arch. Talked him into it. But you weren't the one who caught the girl, tied her up, and was going to torture her. Not you, Dan! Not you! You did what you had to do. You stopped him. He wanted it himself. I know he wanted you to do it."
I can see Daas letting go, his forearms relaxing. But I'm affected by Illea's words in a completely different way, and anger begins to boil inside me. No, not anger, ANGER!
"He was the one who failed. It was his war in the first place. His... He wasn't strong enough..."
In her justification and defense of her beloved, Illya had crossed a line. My eyes blurred, and I stood up, gripping the table with both hands. I was reeling, not from the drink, but from the overflowing rage.
"He wasn't strong enough?!" My voice sounds like snakes hissing. "Is that what I'm hearing from you?! He fought demons inside him that none of us could even dream of! Jiro fought, fought for months! Neither of you two cowards has the right to talk about his weakness or listen to it mentally acquiescing."
"What?!!" Daas roared, getting up and grabbing me by the chest. "Repeat, whom did you call cowards?!"
"You and her!" I don't care if my feet don't touch the floor anymore. I don't care about that. "You're both cowards. You: just the thought of admitting you love Illea makes you break into a cold sweat. After all, you are thirty-four-the age of Achilles' demise just after he married the Amazon. [4] And who better than you to know how black Arch's humor is when it comes to a man, his Face, and the fate that binds them together? And you're afraid... When you're thirty-five? Wait, you were going to be out of 'holiday' in a month, so a month from now is going to be such a dangerous year for you. You were going to confess to her after your birthday?"
He doesn't say anything. But the way he let go of me and collapsed back onto the sofa, staring fearfully at Illea. I'm right... But it doesn't make me happy, for there's a red veil of anger in front of my eyes.
"And you!" Taking the bottle, I drink from it a point it to Illea. "You told me: 'Don't be a semblance, don't be a surrogate, do your own deed'! Have you done yours? Have you overcome your fear? Real fear? When will you have children of your own? Аh?!!" Her gaze, she hides it. "ThreeFace! When was the last time you had sex?! You're so scared that... No way..." Her shoulders are so drooping that... "Don't tell me... Oh!!! You're twenty-eight, and you've never been?! No one?!" and that's where Daas seems to get nailed, sitting there, gasping for air. "That's how scared you are..." I finished. "Jiro fought, fought in a real war. A real war! Fought. You didn't even go to your battles. Just didn't show up on the battlefield. Both of you. And not you! Not you and not you to talk about Jiro's weakness!"
I throw the bottle. But my gesture turns out not to be so graceful; it just hits the floor and, without breaking, rolls under the table, spilling vodka.
"Don't judge him..."
With these words, I leave them alone and walk up to me on stiff legs.
What have I done? If all the stories about Face and the person's fates being linked are true, I've just killed them. Him and her. Not with my hands, not with a knife, not with a bullet - with words...
Do I regret that?
Not now.
Tomorrow - I might regret it.
I feel so bad.
So bad...
The smartphone beeps.
Message.
What have you done?! I asked you to! I am such an idiot!!!
Fuck you! My phone flies into the wall, shattering into small pieces.
You didn't play with my destiny. Sure! It's your brother who will believe it, but not me!
I will not be anyone's puppet...!
It was the longest night of my life. I just stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep, staring and feeling sorry for myself. Pity to the point of howling, of dry tears. Myself and Jiro. And in the morning, Daas and Illea too. They were not my enemy. Why had I brought them to the point where there was no turning back? Were they my enemy?
Enemy...
Enemy...
Enemy...
Is Pat my enemy? No, I'm sure she interfered. I'm sure. I don't have hard proof, but I'm sure. But is she the enemy?
And the phone, a gift from my father, is a pity.
The sun had long since risen, and I was still pacing in bed until I forgot myself in an anxious nightmare sleep.
I was awakened by a persistent knock on the door.
Kronos! I only slept for about two hours.
Who's there?
Illea.
She stood on the threshold, hiding her eyes. I didn't have the strength to look up either.
"I brought you breakfast." Her voice sounded like a shadow whispering. "And I want to tell you, your Slider did well. The girl thinks she just fell asleep in the park and had a nightmare."
Nodding, I'm even happy about the news, but I'm embarrassed about the night's breakdown and keep quiet.
"Don't hold it against Dan, he's..."
"Wait." I raise my hand. "I know exactly what he did. I understand that he couldn't have done anything else. In fact, he saved my life. I remember that, and I'm not going to forget it. I could see that he was trying to work it out differently. It's just... I can't see him now at all. I look at his face, and I see Jiro's dead eyes. I mean, my head gets it, but... I can't."
"You just need time." She looks up, oh-ho-ho, has she been crying all night? "We're not enemies, are we?"
She's not a telepath, is she? We were just thinking in the same direction, weren't we?
"No, especially since you are not my enemy. You are like a big sister to me."
Illea gets on her toes, wraps her arms around my neck, and kisses my forehead.
"Thank you." Her lips whisper.
What is she talking about, oh, yes!
"I said a lot of unnecessary things yesterday. I said it too angrily."
"The truth is never superfluous." Illea pulls away and shakes her head reproachfully. "And the anger, you've lost a friend, I understand."
"I don't really think you're cowards. You are..."
"Enough. You need time. Take all the time you need. If you decide we're not on the same page, I'll understand, and he'll understand."
"Thank you."
"Don't forget to eat, and I'll be off. I'm very sleepy." She yawned infectiously.
"Illea..." I stop her. "You really should wait, be careful, at least for a month."
"Don't go any further, though." She grinned, wagging her finger. "We've grown up enough to figure it out on our own now. Bye, now."
And she closes the door. It seems my warning is overdue, and they've already... I hope these "grown-ups" have figured out how to protect themselves!
What is to be done for if one's destiny seeks to repeat the path of Face, then Daas is doomed. There are too many coincidences: there is age and love for the Amazon, for a reason! And Illea's possible pregnancy will result in the birth of a boy who will die, and she will not forgive herself. What should I do? Do I have to do anything? And so my tongue has brought the situation to the edge of a precipice if at all we are not already flying down onto sharp rocks. Shouldn't I hide my opinion wherever I can and let events flow where they need to?
I went to the window and pressed my forehead against it.
After all, Daas has Pat to get him out of any trouble.
His fate is her business, not mine.
And Illea...
She's not stupid not to understand, especially with her pregnancy phobia.
Oh... I hope,,,
I close my eyes.
I feel even worse now than yesterday.
Yes...
Burn it all. They're adults. They'll figure it out!!! On their own!!!
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