This is a fan translation of Line of Dreams (Линия грёз) by the Russian science fiction and fantasy author Sergei Lukyanenko. The novel can be considered a fan fiction of the original Master of Orion game.
Chapter 8
Tommy Arano, a student of the secondary program's third circle, came out of the school. He was thirteen, and by Kailis law he couldn't even ride a moped. Not that it bothered Tommy much. He liked the rain. The square schoolyard, usually dusty and full of people, was clean and fresh. The purple gloom, which had replaced the noon heat, had made the sickening learning halls seem mysterious and unfamiliar.
Ahmedi, an acquaintance from the fourth circle, was removing the security chain from his parked motorcycle. He noticed Tommy and waved to him, "Hey, hero, want a ride?"
Tommy shook his head. Ahmedi shrugged and started the bike. He passed him slowly and asked, "Not going to get wet, are you?"
"Nah," Tommy answered, pulling his hood up.
"Right, I'll give you a ride," someone said from behind him. Tommy turned around. A long raincoat with a raised collar, a low-sitting hat, all that prevented him from immediately recognizing the man he had seen only once. When he finally did remember, by his voice, it was too late.
Kay Altos put a hand on his shoulder and said, "I promised you I'd be back. Remember?"
Tommy couldn't answer, since his tongue refused to obey him. His legs had nearly given out, but he managed to stay on his feet. The thing that the boy had nearly stopped fearing, the thing he had seen in his nightmares, it was happening.
The bastard he'd killed was alive again and back for revenge.
"Give me your hand," Altos said. Tommy raised his hand, as if in a dream. Altos snapped a wide bracelet on it, next to the cheap electronic watch, then demonstrated his own wrist with an identical bracelet to the boy. "Force handcuffs. We're inseparable now, see?"
Tommy was still silent, and Kay started to rifle through his clothes with leisure, practiced movements. Then he peered into the binder with his notes.
A passing car stopped. The window rolled down slowly, and Daniar Vazade, the Ancient History teacher, looked at his best student half-blindly.
"Is everything all right, Tommy?"
Altos leisurely took his pistol out of the raincoat pocket. He pointed it between Vazade's eyes and said, "Everything is great. You're going to go home and live a long and happy life."
An unseen struggle in the teacher's mind continued for five seconds, and Kay decided that he was a brave man.
"Excuse me," Vazade replied, his eyes moving away from Tommy's ashen face, either to Kay or to the boy. The window rolled back up, and the car sped away.
"When it comes down to life and death, kid," Kay said ponderously, "the number of friends goes down fast. To say nothing of mere acquaintances, whose number falls into the negative."
He took several steps, as if forgetting about Tommy. The jerk of the force handcuffs threw the boy onto his knees, onto the wet rough stone of the roadway.
"Keep up," Kay said and moved his hand, lifting Tommy up by the invisible chain of the force field. "Being a puppet is unpleasant, isn't it?"
The jerk had forced the hood from the boy's head, and the rain was now pouring on his face. He was glad, since he didn't like to cry. Kay Altos, his hands in his pockets, stared at him.
"I too spent some time hopping around to someone else's strings, and now I've decided to start my own puppet theater," he said, much to Tommy's confusion. "You're going to be my lead actor."
He once again started walking away from the school, and Tommy ran after him this time. The bracelet on his wrist was warm, almost hot, but this warmth did not feel good.
Already beyond the limits of the school campus, on the road, edged by long rows of faceless high-rises, which couldn't be made prettier even by the rain, fortune had decided to wink at Tommy Arano. A dozen motorcycles were roaring on the sidewalk next to the Mizan Tornado to which Altos was taking him. Their headlight beams were crawling through the darkness like lazy tentacles, lightning up raindrops.
"Guys!" Tommy shouted. The headlights turned towards them, flooding them with light, which was iridescent from the rain.
"Shouldn't have done that," Kay said, stopping. "But I'm glad you haven't lost your ability to speak."
People approached them, slowly, trying not to enter the circle of light. A raspy, breaking voice asked, "You got problems with this guy, hero?"
Kay chuckled suddenly and told Tommy trustingly, "I know how you've earned that nickname…"
The boy didn't reply. He suddenly thought that he'd made a mistake. Altos took a step into the darkness.
"Stay where you are!" a boy's falsetto voice yelled out. Kay stopped. And said in an almost friendly voice, "He does have problems, boys. But they're our problems."
"That's where you're wrong," the owner of the raspy voice countered. "You're the only one with problems here… Tommy, go to the bikes!"
"Tell them," Kay asked.
Tommy Arano raised his arm. The darkness replied with discordant swearing to the sight of the force handcuffs. Which was exactly what Altos had been hoping for.
"Fellas." Tommy was squinting helplessly, as constrained by the light as Kay was. "He's the one, who… whom… he had aTan!"
At that moment, Kay started moving. He doubted that the mention of aTan would stop a crowd of teenagers. All he needed was a moment of confusion.
The rest was a technical matter. He was constrained by Tommy, who was attached to his right hand with a two-meter force line, but even the complete loss of a limb did not take a bodyguard of his class out of action. It took Kay Dutch, a Super from Shedar's Second Planet, less than a second to adjust to the darkness. Then he was simply moving, wordlessly and monotonously.
There were seventeen of them, since many of the bikes had been carrying two riders that night. Three girls, two ten-year-old boys – them, Kay didn't even fight, simply tossing them aside. Maybe he did that too roughly, since they didn't even make any efforts to get up. But the two teens holding laser pistols, unsuccessfully trying to aim at him in the darkness, left him little room to maneuver.
Tommy was dragging after him through the mud, as if an unusual but not very effective anchor; Kay was moving through the fragile bodies of his opponents too quickly for that. The group had forced him to employ his reflexes, honed by years of training. He was breaking the hands holding brass knuckles, stabbed boys with their own knives, blocked occasional amateurish strikes. The two older boys, both about seventeen, with lasers, ended up dropping to the ground without managing to fire once. Kay had knocked them out with moves that might have looked gentle to an observer.
The last of them was a boy Tommy's age with a grav-club. He was spinning in place, going crazy from what was happening, no longer seeing anything around him. Kay simply walked up to him, grabbed the thin hand holding the weapon, and struck the boy with his own club.
The night was screaming, crying, and moaning in children's voices. Kay picked Tommy up by his jacket collar and screamed, "Is this what you wanted?"
The boy didn't answer, choking on the sobs Arthur Curtis was incapable of. Kay threw him into the car, wet and covered in mud from head to toe, and started the car. The screams were left behind them, only Tommy kept sobbing in the back seat, repeating, "Bastard, bastard, animal, bastard…"
Kay paid him no heed. He dialed a two-digit number on the phone keypad and said quickly, "Send help to Learning Center 17. Teenagers fighting, many wounded, ambulances are needed."
"Who's speaking?" The woman at the rescue service dispatch center didn't sound particularly shocked.
"An eyewitness," Kay grumbled and cut the connection. He threw a glance at Tommy and added, "an unwitting one."
