Chapter Seven:
Nightmares
The frozen ground crunched lightly beneath her feet as Katya fled from the destruction behind her. In the distance, the sounds of gunfire carried through the still night air. Up ahead she saw her siblings. Good, they were all out, and they all seemed to be okay. She was the group leader, and even at the tender age of eight, she knew that taking care of them was her responsibility. General had told her so.
Reaching a point where the ground sloped slightly, they plastered their small bodies to the frozen turf. Below freezing actually, and by a great deal. This was Siberia after all, and it was only March. More gunfire echoed in the distance as they peeked up over the rise just in time to see the gymnasium where they had trained the evening before vanish in one single earth-shattering explosion. Katya turned to her siblings.
Is everyone okay?
she signed. Three affirmative answers. She sighed. What would they do now? The base was the only home they had ever known, but soon there would be nothing left of it. They had to run, that she knew, but to where?The sound of a rapidly approaching helicopter came from the east. Within a few seconds, she could see its searchlight sweeping the ground. They're looking for us, she realized. One sharp hand signal sent her siblings diving into the dirt, their gray uniforms blending with the shadows. Katya curled into a ball and prayed, just like Doctor had taught her, that the helicopter's searchlight would miss them. It did, but only by inches.
Another explosion seemed to shake the ground. This time it was the barracks, where they'd been sleeping only moments before. Soldiers ran amuck around the grounds, some the enemy, some their own guards. Every now and then, one would fall, the victim of a well-placed bullet. It seemed as if every casualty was one of their own.
They're dying
, Katya realized with horror as she watched another man fall. General's words came back to her. To take a life is not the greatest power in the universe. Anyone can kill. The greatest power is to save a life, and that is why you were created, to save the lives of innocent people. She gazed at the carnage before her, chewing her lower lip in trepidation. Doctor was still back there. They had to save him. Turning to her siblings, she made a few sharp hand signals. They stared at her in disbelief. Go back?Doctor
, she insisted. We have to save him.Fear shown in three sets of eyes. But how? Tanya signed, her tiny hands cutting through the darkness. There are only four of us. What can we possibly do? Seryozha and Misha turned back to gaze at the destruction from which they had just fled. Katya could see the light from the flames reflecting in their eyes. It illuminated the hopelessness that resided in their depths.
She knew they weren't afraid. Not of the soldiers, not of the fires. Their fears were of something more, something much bigger. Manticore.
For all of their young lives, they had been taught that Manticore was evil, that they had been born for the almost holy purpose of protecting the innocents of the world from that evil. Evil was weak, and they were strong, and some day, they would snuff that evil out of the world, but this was not the Manticore they had been told of. This Manticore was not weak. This was not the Manticore that crept in shadows like rats and nibbled away at the virtues of the world. This Manticore was strong and evil, and no matter how strong they were, they all knew that this was a battle they could not win.
Katya took a determined breath. They had to try. We are strong, she signed. They are evil, and they are weak. Used to having her orders obeyed, she turned and moved forward without looking back. Used to obeying orders, the others followed.
Katya didn't exactly know what to do. She knew she had to try to help, but she didn't know how. Even their own strength and speed were no match for the masses of enemy soldiers swarming about the grounds like giant ants, but they had to save Doctor. They just had to. They sped through the darkness, rounding the base to make their approach from the opposite side. No one was looking as they climbed the perimeter fence and jumped down on the other side.
Three dark figures knelt in the shadows along the back wall of the schoolroom. Explosives, Katya realized as she sniffed the air. She could smell their strange scent above the smoke and the blood and the gunpowder. Two of the men never knew what hit them.
A lightening quick move from Sergei sent one flying against the wall, his body making a sickening thud and sliding motionlessly to the ground. The second felt nothing after his head was rammed against the brick wall with full force, but somehow, the third man knew. Spinning around, he drew a gun and faced the children before him. He knew what they were. They were just as strong, just as fast, and just as dangerous as the ones who had escaped from Manticore a few weeks earlier. He began to rise, his gun trained on the children before him.
"So, I see that I've fou-" The sound of his neck snapping was barely audible over the gunfire in the distance. His limp body fell forward, his gun landing in the dirt a few inches away from his lifeless hand. Katya looked up at her three siblings, and then down at the man she had just killed. It is not wrong to destroy evil, General had said. Killing an evil man is unlike killing an innocent one, and nothing of Manticore is innocent. She knew that she had just taken a life, but she felt no remorse, only disgust, and then a twinge of pride. General would be pleased. She had destroyed something of Manticore.
They skirted the grounds, hiding in the shadows as they passed the bodies of the dead and dying. Every now and then Katya recognized the face or the scent of one of the guards or one of the lab techs who assisted Doctor. Halfway along the side of a fenced training area, Katya spotted Nikolai lying lifelessly on the ground. His white lab coat was covered in blood. To her young eyes it looked as if half of his body had been blown away, and she turned away in horror. No, not Nikolai. Always so kind . . . he didn't deserve this. She held back a tear and hurried forward with determination. Doctor's rooms were just ahead, and there was no telling what they might find.
The door to the small house was hanging open as they approached. Sniffing the doorway she could tell that someone had come, and then gone. She took a deep breath and entered, her siblings trailing behind.
The room was utter chaos. Files and papers lay strewn about the floor, furniture was overturned, and the cold night wind blew in through broken windows. They had already been here. Lifting her nose into the air she caught the scent easily and hurried into the back room.
She thought him to be dead at first. His ancient skin had a deathly pallor, and several bloodstains had merged into one across his shirtfront. She knelt before him, a tear sliding down her cheek. Behind of her, Seryozha and Misha wept silently, and a sob broke from Tanya's lips.
"Doctor . . . no . . . " Her whisper was barely audible above the sounds of destruction around them. The old man's eyes fluttered open and he took a ragged breath.
"Yekaterina, is it you?" She took his hand between her own, just as he had done with her so many times. It was cold, so very cold.
"Yes, Doctor. It's me. We're all here." The rest of the children crowded around him. A peaceful smile crossed his face, and relief shown in his eyes. He smiled at each of them in turn.
"Then you are all still alive." Doctor reached up and cupped Katya's face in one hand. "My children, all of you . . . you must . . . make them believe . . . that you are one of them."
"No. Never." Katya shook her head in horror. She understood what he meant. He wanted them to join Manticore.
"Yes, my little ones. It is the only way. Convince them, or they will kill you, all of you."
A shudder wracked his ancient body and he coughed up a speck of blood. Katya held back a sob. "Doctor . . . " Twin tears slid down her cheeks.
"No, Katya. Don't cry. You must be strong. You must take care of them." He lifted his hand from her face, touching each of their faces in turn. "Promise me that you'll fight when the time comes, but that . . . you'll stay alive until then. You must survive." Four heads nodded slightly. Another cough shook his weary frame, and he struggled to pull a breath into his tired lungs. "They will teach you . . . to kill. Do not listen. Death is wrong, every death. Do not take a life unless it cannot be . . . avoided, even if it is an evil life." He shuddered and took another ragged breath. "I love you, all of you, the . . . the . . . children I never had. Promise me . . . that you'll stay alive. Promise me."
The sound of humvees could be heard outside. "I promise." And with that, a weak smile of hope appeared on his ancient face, and Dr. Alexander Voinovich left his earthly life, surrounded by the only children he ever had.
When the squadron of soldiers entered the small house, they found four innocent looking children crying over the dead body of an old man. They posed no resistance when led outside. They put up no struggle when placed in a van and driven away, but their gazes drifted out the back glass of the van as it disappeared into the cold Siberian night. No one noticed the look of defiance in Katya's eyes as she watched the flames that marked the demise of her first home grow smaller and smaller in the distance. I promise, Doctor. I promise.
The dream ended as it always did, with the sound of humvees ringing in her ears and the memory of the fires burning in her mind. Katya opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, wishing all the memories away. She knew where she was, but sometimes it took a long time for her near-perfect memory to fade back into its proper place and leave the present to itself.
Her heart still bled to think of it. She'd thought that night to be the very epitome of horror, but in the end it had only been the gateway to a more terrible life waiting for them in America. In a way, she was glad that Doctor had died. It would have killed him to see his children suffer so.
Rising, she wandered to the window, shaking her head to rid the memory of the humvees' engines from her ears, but they wouldn't leave. Propping her elbows on the windowsill, she stared out into the night.
Several seconds later, the blood nearly froze in her veins.
She wasn't remembering the sound of the humvees.
They were really outside.
They'd found them.
