Chapter Eight

Light spilled across Ayaan’s sweaty body like scalding water and she convulsed away from it, pulling her blanket into a tight embrace that covered her eyes. Shouted words reached her but she refused to move, even when her cage was yanked out of the back of the truck and thrown rudely into the mud.

It had been at least three days since she’d been taken captive. It could have been much longer—she had trouble remembering how many stops they’d made. In her weakened state she couldn’t seem to keep anything straight in her head. She was relatively certain at some point the truck had been put on a boat: the jouncing and pitching of the road had turned into the rolling and yawing of waves. Beyond that she had no idea where she was.

Underfed, unbathed, battered by the bars of her cage and severely dehydrated she was totally unprepared when a living man came by and unlocked the top of her cage, sliding it back and beckoning to her to get up and out. She pulled down the blanket and looked at him. Thin, beardless, white, maybe half her age. He had the same carved, emaciated features and the dull unassuming eyes of the Belorussian soldier Ayaan had known a lifetime before, a weapons instructor paid to teach her the basics of the AK-47 when she was ten and there were no ghosts yet. “Where am I?” she asked in her paltry Russian.

“Our place here, is on Cyprus. You speak tongue of Russia? Is good. Come now, come, you will be not harmed,” he told her. “Come.” He smiled broadly.

She got up slowly, kneeling on the soft ground, letting her eyes adjust to the light.

“This is enough. Take time, yes? Take time and grow accustomed.” He smiled at her again a sad, knowing smile this time that told her he understood what she was going through, that he was so very sorry she had been cooped up in that cage but her suffering was over. The smile said she could trust him.

She wished she had a rock so she could knock that smile off of his mouth. She knew exactly what he was up to. The long ride in the truck should have broken her resistance. Any shred of human kindness now would be so welcome to her she would latch on to it like a babe at the teat, desperate for warmth and acceptance. It was a classic interrogation technique. She thought about spitting in his eye but thought better of it. He might give her something to eat or some clean water if she played along.

It occurred to her, though it changed nothing, that he didn’t care if she believed. Her playing along with his game was all he really wanted. It was a game. If she followed the rules she could feel however she wanted about it.

“I am Vassily. Please to come, I will show you way.” He took her hand and lead her on unsteady legs through a gate in a big cyclone fence. Beyond lay a petroleum cracking plant lit up like... like... like cities used to be, full of burning light even in the day time just like cities were in the before, in the days when the dead stayed dead. It was one of the most beautiful things Ayaan had ever seen.

She looked back at the truck that had brought her there. The unloading was going smoothly. Each of the prisoners was met by their own guide—the Turks she had spoken with looked scared but unwilling to fight. She wasn’t surprised. Another truck rolled up and its gate opened and she expected to see more cages. Instead dead bodies flopped out of it, rubbery and grey. The ghouls staggered away from their conveyance, streams of them headed right for her. Ayaan pulled her arms in, covered her face but the dead walked right past her. They didn’t even glance at her.

“Is okay,” Vassily told her, taking her arm. “Here, we live community with our ancestors. One big family.”

Ayaan watched in horror as the rotting corpses tottered past her. Their limbs and faces were streaked with decay, their eyes cloudy—she knew that look, knew what dead bodies looked like. She hadn’t seen them so focused, though, so determined, not for a long time, not since... not since she had fought Gary in New York. Puppets, she told herself, they were puppets. Nothing to fear.

They spread out across the fenced-in zone of the refinery, splitting into lines that lead to narrow pits dug in the ground capped with stone igloos. The pits must have gone deep—dozens of ruined bodies disappeared into each of the igloos. They must be underground storage units for the dead, who needed neither light nor air nor elbow room. Mass graves as high-density housing.

“You don’t need to look, if you don’t want.” Vassily’s face had grown a little stern. Ayaan flashed him a very fake smile—all she could manage—and followed him deeper into the refinery’s grounds.

Between and among the big towers of the plant living people moved freely, smiling at one another, waving at those they knew, stopping for a bit of conversation. From the shining catwalks that connected the spires they hung hammocks and clothes lines and even suspended entire houses made of woven rope. Light and open fires were everywhere and the smell of roasting meat filled the air, made Ayaan’s stomach curdle. She thought she might throw up, she was so hungry.

“Is good here,” Vassily told her, and she didn’t doubt it. As long as you didn’t mind living in community with the dead. A girl no older than five or six handed Ayaan a slice of bread smeared with honey and whirled away, giggling. Boys lined up along the path to watch her go by. She ate the bread without thinking about it, much. It could be drugged—the bright faces, the shining eyes all around her could have come out of a pill bottle, certainly—but she needed sustenance too much to throw the bread away. It was delicious.

Vassily lead her inwards. They passed a wooden building, a long, low shed with no windows where a pair of ghouls with no hands—just spikes at the ends of their arms—stood guard. They had been so fast in the desert but here they stood like statues, perfectly still. She caught a glimpse of a green robe inside the door but couldn’t make out any details. She tried to ask a question but her guide steered her down a side street. “Is nothing,” he said, only a hint of gravel in his voice.

The towers of the plant divided the makeshift town into natural quarters surrounding a central souk or amphitheater. Vassily lead her deep into the body of the place, through noisy zones where men practiced at a rifle range and past an open-air nursery where mothers played with fat little babies. In a pen formed mostly of pipes as thick as Ayaan’s arm livestock—pigs, mostly, but a couple of shaggy-maned cows, too—grazed desultorily at a trough full of scraps. Scraps that the soldiers in Ayaan’s encampment outside of Port Said would have considered a banquet.

“He has farms, and she makes crops to grow,” Vassily whispered, “corn and wheat and rye. Are fruit trees, so many. You like apples? If you don’t, we grow oranges!” he laughed, and she couldn’t help but smile at the idea of such luxury.

He lead her deeper into a more shadowy, more quiet region under a vast collection of cracking towers where the lights burning on the pipes bathed the narrow streets with a blue and white lambence. Mushrooms grew underfoot, thick and heavy enough to trip on. Puffballs exploded all around her, their dusty spores staining her pant cuffs. A wooden construction, more like a tiny medieval fort than a house, stood at the end of the road, blocking further progress. Its windows were narrow slits—perfect for firing weapons out of while protecting those within. A parapet lined its roof, a place where a squad of rifles could dominate the entire street, turn it into a killzone. Ayaan wondered why she’d been brought there.

A curtain flicked open in one of the doors of the place and a woman stepped out into the street. She would have been beautiful, a collection of long angular limbs, high breasts, perfectly chiseled features. Someone had hurt her badly, though. Her skin was covered everywhere with identical thin red scars that disappeared down her cleavage and into the back of her halter top. They showed on her finely-turned legs and her muscular arms, even her face, even the curve of her shaved head was covered in the tiny cuts. Her body was a map of torture—prolonged, methodical, unkind. Her eyes showed a deep, cold intelligence that refused to let Ayaan see her as a victim, though. With a bad shudder Ayaan realized what that stare meant. The injured woman wanted Ayaan to know that it had been her decision, that she had chosen to be cut to ribbons.

“Vasya,” she said, “this is her from Egypt, da? Which Semyon Iurevich said was coming.”

“Konyechno,” Vassily said, nodding eagerly. He was staring at the scarred woman as if he’d never seen a living female before. With disgust Ayaan saw real lust in his eyes. “He said to bring her.”

The scarred woman nodded. “This far, no farther. Our Lord sees her even now, is close enough.”

“Do you want me to do a little pirouette, so you can see my backside too?” Ayaan asked, surprising them all.

The scarred woman stepped closer. She smelled of expensive moisturizers and lotions. She had diamonds in her ear lobes. “They say you killed one American koschei.” The Russian word for “lich”. “They say you’re assassin, best one with a rifle.”

Damn. The one thing Ayaan had been counting on was anonymity. She hadn’t personally killed Gary but she’d been part of his death. If the Tsarevich knew about that... well, he would keep her under close observation. He wasn’t stupid.

“Take her to showplace, with others,” the scarred woman said, dismissing Vassily. The young man took Ayaan’s arm and she let him guide her away. At least she’d learned something. They didn’t want people getting past the mushroom-lined street. The fortification there spoke volumes. There had to be something behind it, behind the scarred woman. Ayaan figured that must be where the Tsarevich lived. She filed the fact away for future use.