The Immortality Game

Zoya held her breath and watched as two black uniformed cops climbed out of the vehicle. Both cops shook hands with the short man in the leather jacket, and one clapped him on the back. She blew out her breath in dismay. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but Shorty kept pointing at the apartment block.

There was a loud groan behind her. She spun and saw Pig pulling himself to his knees. She snatched another bottle as she hurried over to Pig, who was moaning and probing the wound on his head with one hand. Aiming carefully to avoid breaking his fingers, she bashed him with the bottle. This time the bottle shattered.

“Christ!” she cried. The last thing she wanted was for him to bleed to death. She spotted some rags near the arm of the couch, grabbed them, and pressed them into the gash in the unconscious man’s forehead.

She felt like weeping. Her mind raced, yet she couldn’t think of anything to do. She expected to hear pounding on the door at any moment. She lifted the rags and saw that the wound on Pig’s head wasn’t as bad as it first looked. He wouldn’t die. She returned to the window.

Three young boys stood watching the flashing lights of the police vehicle, but none of the three men were in view. Zoya grabbed for the window latch. It wouldn’t budge. She pulled harder but it still wouldn’t give. She cried out and whirled around, searching the room. Her gaze landed on the wooden stool. She grabbed it and ran back to the window, knowing the men would be there again. No, just the three boys. She hefted the stool and smashed it through the window. Ignoring the shouts of the boys, she raked the stool along the bottom edge of the window to remove the remaining shards of glass, then climbed up on the window ledge and peered down at the yellowed grass below. The drop looked awfully long, but Zoya told herself this might be her only chance. She closed her eyes and let herself drop.

Moscow

Sunday, June 8, 2138

11:28 a.m. MSK

For security purposes, the autopilot of Tyoma’s Sun Lada 6 had been programmed to fly different routes for each trip to the dacha that housed the secret military R&D teams. This time the air car skimmed above the birch forest in a long semicircle to approach the base from the rear. The car slowed and began to descend just as Tyoma saw a string of lights marking the perimeter of the compound. He counted twelve cars in the lot.

He wondered again what could possibly cause everybody to come in like this on a Sunday. Did the general figure out we are holding back on him? The thought chilled him. This research had become their whole lives. They had spent more than four decades on it. What could he do if their funding was cut off? He supposed it wouldn’t matter if they all ended up in a gulag somewhere in Siberia.

“Door!” he cried, before the car had even settled into its spot. It slid up and Tyoma leapt out, tripped, and fell into the dirt. He cursed and muttered, “Slow down; you’re not sixty anymore.”

A scrape on his palm reminded him of his disrupted game, and he scowled and brushed dirt from the seat of his pants. At least the guards weren’t here to see you fall, he thought, as he approached the entrance door. He put his unwounded hand onto the plate and held his eye to the iris scanner. The door hissed open.

Tyoma hung his jacket on a peg and brushed more dirt from his clothes before heading for the labs. Arguing voices cut off instantly as he opened the door.

“The great sorcerer Xax graces us with his presence!” There was a good-natured grin on Konstantin Sakaev’s face.

Volodya’s sour look told Tyoma that not everyone shared his best friend’s joke. “You might try programming your apartment to allow calls from work through. Everyone else—”

“He’s here now, Volodya. Settle down.” Dmitri Aseev was nominally the leader of the group since he outranked the others, but he rarely asserted his authority. He was a stooped man of nearly eighty. Everyone called him Big Dima, not because he was big, which he wasn’t, but because the other Dmitri was so little.

Kostya patted the empty seat next to him, and Tyoma joined his colleagues at the conference table. He scanned the faces, searching for a clue to what this was all about. Other than Volodya’s scowl, mainly what he saw was curiosity.

“What’s going on?” he said in English, since three of their members didn’t speak good Russian.

Kostya nudged him with an elbow. “That’s what we’ve been asking Volodya ever since we got here, but he insisted on keeping us in suspense until everyone arrived.”

Volodya stood and held up his hands. “All right, let’s get this over with. We’ve been robbed.”

The room erupted as everyone began speaking over each other. Volodya flapped his arms until there was silence.