Author's Note: This will likely be our only chapter from Aleks' point of view as Artyom would definitely not be present to know any of these details of what she is about to endure. I thought it was important to have a switched chapter like this to establish some more of Aleks' back story and to get a real good look into her mind during a very difficult situation. I could say it was hard to finish this chapter any sooner because I have been going through a lot of my own psychoses since the pandemic began. I appreciate all of my long-term readers and fans and I want you all to know that I never forgot about this story, I do still plan on finishing it, it just might be a little slower and take on a slightly different feeling than my previous body of writing. We've all been through so much, and I'm happy I have some free time to work on this again! I hope you can tell that I had fun with the Varnayev character – I started writing the scene and I didn't have a name for him yet, but in my mind I just blurted it out and there he was!
All that being said, I'd like to share the number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is a free service that you can call, text, or online chat with if you are going through your own difficult times: 1+ 800-273-TALK (8255), or text 988, or visit their website for virtual chat.
Chapter 30: The Dreaded Return
Andrei Ivanovich Petrikov worked diligently with the other men to free Aleksandrya from the pile of rubble that trapped her lower limbs, avoiding her darting gazes and not speaking a word. Aleks could only look with blurred attention to his uniform, arrayed in the colors of the enemy once again. That red armband wasn't just a callback to a previous era of injustice brought upon others but a symbol of the hatred that the Fourth Reich had for anyone they deemed as unfit or unworthy – whose blood they would spill to see their twisted vision of the ideal world come to fruition.
Some small part of her was relieved that even though Ivanovich had been compromised, he didn't end up in a concentration camp or thrown in with the endless expansion effort that the Reich tried to keep secret. They had given him his rank and title back as if nothing had ever happened. She let herself hope that the same benevolence would be showed to her but knew better than to expect the best-case scenario. But what was the worst case? Torture? An isolated cell? No, because then at least she would be seen as hostile and treated differently. Anything was better than being one of them. What she feared most was being forced to uphold the high-class image of the perfect family, the duty she had risked death to escape from. So, even as the weight of the concrete and rotted wood was lifted from her aching body, she felt anything but liberated. As her left leg was freed, she could barely feel the sensation, but soon a creeping pain began as the blood could circulate properly. Something was definitely twisted, or broken, as willing her knee to bend yielded no results. She tried to stifle another burst of coughing, wincing at the sharp pain of what was likely a few cracked ribs beneath her Spartan armor. She was shattered inside and out, and completely at the mercy of the enemy.
Obersturmführer Iosef Romanovich Varnayev didn't help the other men shuffle debris aside but looked on with delight as he periodically cackled to himself, mumbling some musings about what the Führer might reward him with when they got back to Wagner Station. Aleks remembered Varnayev from the secret security force, and the particularly unsettling tales that the other women told in their hushed gossip circles in the sewing workshop. Varnayev was a slimy creep who was particularly brutal in battle, ruthless in negotiations, and aggressively forward with women – whether they were married, or fully grown, or not. She was lucky to have been able to stay off his radar the same as she did with the foreman of the shop, but perhaps that was all due to the Führer's favor towards her mother and nothing to do in any way with Aleks herself. However, she had felt his demoralizing glances a few times and figured that the collective desire of the Reich to locate her had mixed with his sick tendencies and evolved into this new cat and mouse game. She prayed to gods unknown that she wouldn't have to spend too much time under his watch.
The squad of faceless men in black gave a collected final grunt as they shoved the last concrete slab aside. Aleks heard Varnayev cut the air with a gestured command and she could feel his eyes burning into the back of her head. Ivanovich and another stocky soldier gripped her shoulders tightly and hoisted her upright. A pained gasp hissed through her clenched teeth and her vision went white and then black. The men tucked themselves under her arms like human crutches because she wouldn't have been able to walk even if they had let her try. There was no chance to think of running, let alone fighting back. Her heart sank and she wanted to scream and sob but would not allow herself to show any further weakness. She bit her soured tongue and suppressed the pressure rising in her throat, her stomach wanted to purge itself - was the radiation getting to her already?
She distracted herself from the pain and hopelessness with the thought of Artyom, desperately wishing that he was out of sight and well on his way back underground. But thinking of him also made her feel guilty and selfish. The look of concerned shock in his eyes as she spat out the awful truth of her identity made her feel wretched, and she wouldn't be surprised if he didn't want anything more to do with her. He would report everything about this to Melnik in detail, like the astute and selfless young man she knew he was, and the Order would not come to the rescue of such a traitor. She had nothing left. Hunter was gone, or dead, or just didn't care anymore, and she had left behind Roten Spaten and Avtozavod - albeit in good hands. All the hard work and secrecy in the last three years had been for nothing, and eluding capture for this long would likely make her punishment a lot worse. Just as she had promised Artyom, the soldiers wouldn't let her die. Not here. But once she was back inside the walls of the Fourth Reich? They were certain to throw her in a cell or torture her for all kinds of information. Of course she hadn't given any of those details to him, and she honestly believed that she deserved whatever fate was coming for taking advantage of his trust for so long. The odds of ever seeing him again were slim, so all she could do was hope that he was safe and keep apologizing to him in her mind.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs and exited the shell of the hotel building, Aleks looked up at the insipid purple clouds for a final time. Light snow was still falling, or was it ash? A warm orange glow came from the building with the antenna that she and Artyom had been surveilling and the soft old music from the radio in the armored truck became louder as they dragged her over to it. The squad leader from the tavern darted ahead and opened the rear door, and then Varnayev stepped in front of the group which brought Ivanovich and the other soldier to an abrupt halt.
"I hope you are as ready as I am to return home, there are quite a few people who are so eager to see you again." Varnayev's sinister grin permeated his voice even though his gas mask concealed his actual expression. He jerked his head towards the squad leader who handed him a black cloth.
"Just shut up already… bring me to him." Aleks muttered angrily, not quite looking Varnayev in the face.
"Oh, you wish it was that simple, my dear." The cloth was swiftly placed over Aleks' head and she was unceremoniously pushed into the back of the truck.
Giving a distressed moan, Aleks attempted to right herself but it was too painful to move. The threadbare fabric over her face allowed her a hazy view of the confines of the vehicle, enough to know which way was up. She could make out the featureless blobs of shadow looming above her, on the left was the scrawny squad leader and on the right was Ivanovich with his back to her.
"If you rough her up, you'll be in more trouble than she is." Ivanovich growled loudly.
"Is that a threat, Petrikov?" Varnayev spat through his mask.
"No, Obersturmführer, only a reminder that Sturmann doesn't like his goods spoiled." Ivanovich doubled down in the same solid tone, and crossed his arms? She couldn't quite tell.
"And the Order might want their uniform back," the once-confident squad leader squeaked humorously but timidly. The joke amused no one.
"Get. In. The truck. Oberscharführer." Varnayev commanded in a low and serious voice.
Ivanovich complied without a response and Aleks watched him climb into the truck right next to her. The squad leader closed the double back doors with a metallic clang, and then fastened what sounded like a bolt lock.
"Take her to the infirmary." Varnayev's voice changed position as he circled the car and climbed into the front seat next to whatever poor private was likely driving.
The other doors slammed shut and the engine sputtered to shift into gear. Aleks reached out a hand to steady herself as the truck lurched forward and then stalled out, her fingers clawing into a metal grate over the window. It might have just been a defense against all of the many hostile creatures on the surface, but Aleks felt as if she were already in prison. She pulled on the bars to sit herself up and leaned her head against them, feeling the wintery air swirl past her ear.
"ALEKS!" A deep but raspy voice echoed distantly, strained and difficult to hear over the sound of the engine groaning back to life. It wasn't like Artyom's voice at all, and Aleks had no answer to give to the stranger.
The truck trundled forward, pitching and lurching at seemingly every defect in the road, relentlessly invigorating every sharp pain in Aleks' body. The roaring of the sputtering engine allowed her some freedom to groan and sniff back the tears pricking behind her eyes. Her fingers clenched and stretched between the little wire squares over the back window, that one anchor was the only stable thing she could lean on. Ivanovich took up her other hand with his own even though she tried to pull away, not wanting to accept the small comfort of the gesture.
"I'll get you out of this," Ivanovich whispered hoarsely, so as not to be heard by Varnayev.
She squeezed her teary eyes shut and slowly lost consciousness as the truck lumbered onwards.
Aleks couldn't tell which of the men had carried her out of the truck and down the long ramp that led underground but she guessed it would have been Ivanovich, still trying to be protective where he could be. Not letting the other soldiers who were still rightfully angry about her escape to lay a hand on her. But she was only vaguely aware of her surroundings through the haze of consciousness somewhere between reality and a horrific dream. Ahead of the black tunnel was a blinding bluish-white light. The heavy footfalls of the men sounded dully off the concrete walls behind her, there was no way back now. Whoever was carrying her stopped at the threshold of the light and a new person shuffled swiftly towards them. In the rear, Aleks could hear Varnayev give some short commands.
"Building collapse, environmental exposure. She's an enemy of the state, but she's family. Fix her up quick and then take her to the second unit. Everyone else, move out." Varnayev's metallic orders echoed in her brain. Even Varnayev was planning on abandoning her? She wasn't sure if he was connected with the second unit anymore; the ones who did the interrogation and ran the prisons. If he had been up on a surface patrol, perhaps he had gotten some kind of promotion. At least Aleks wouldn't have to see him again or worry about what sick game he was going to start playing at next. Sturmann's textbook regimen of questioning was preferable in her mind for the time being – the devil you don't know.
"Yessir, Obersturmführer," a short man enrobed in layers of tan and green cotton clothing replied from the light with a croaking voice. He lowered a strange multi-faceted ocular device over his face and leaned in towards Aleks, scrutinizing her dusty visage. "This way, please."
Her bearer obliged and stepped inside the bright room but Aleks couldn't pay attention anymore, the light was too much to take in and she wished for darkness. Beautiful, quiet, safe, darkness. In the light there was nowhere to hide. They could see inside your very bones if they wanted to. Could they see into her thoughts? Her heart? Her very soul? 'Oh please don't let them find anything about Hunter or—'
"On the table there, yesss, that'll do," Spoke the short… doctor? No definitely not a doctor.
This so-called infirmary was nothing more than a small square room plastered nearly up to the ceiling with pale yellow cracked tile; the air smelled of antiseptic and the musty putrid stench of blood and decay. Tables, gurneys, jars, and instruments were piled in all corners of the space but Aleks couldn't tell what any of them were for. Her eyes wouldn't cooperate. She wanted to take in as much as she could, a tactical advantage had to exist somewhere. 'Grab a scalpel, a bone saw, a microscope?' No that doesn't make sense. She could only manage to pry her eyelids open for a few seconds at a time to look around, as the lights from above were whiting out everything beyond their scope. And then when the white was too much a blackness would come on. 'You aren't allowed to see anything, you silly girl! You lost, and now you are at the mercy of our whims!' A magical barrier, a force-field might have been activated just as someone had put her on this cold tabletop. That's why she couldn't see, right? Is that what tied her down to this place and kept her from bolting upright, shoving the heel of her hand into the face of the lead not-surgeon and running back the way they had come in? Her muscles twitched at the possibility of such action, but she was unable to move her left leg still and flexing out her foot even stung with electric zaps of sharp pain. There went that plan…
They stripped away her Spartan armor even as she weakly thrashed her arms out in a vain attempt to distance herself from the nameless men who had gathered around as if that first man had suddenly cloned himself. 'They? Who is they? I thought there was only one?' Only barely able to squint, Aleks could see that there were three people who encircled her ominously, all wearing the similar stained jumpsuits and torn scrubs with surgical masks and devices in their hands. None of these men had been on patrol or in the truck, they were all new, a new order. But where was Ivanovich? And where was his promise of freedom? Abandoned once again. A Geiger counted clicked a few times and then someone put it away again. All of her clothing was cut away from her body with rusty scissors and knives and tossed aside. She drew her arms up over her chest and turned her head away as if to hide, but these men didn't seem interested in anything licentious.
One of the new ones prodded her in the side where blotchy bruises were beginning to appear and murmured something unintelligible to her. She swatted at his touch with her elbow, not moving quite enough to reveal any of the parts she was trying to conceal. The man gave a breathy chuckle and then reached over to the wall beside him and turned a knob. The striking shock of freezing cold liquid took the focus away from the grinding pain in her bones and she shivered violently. The icy water bit into her like tiny needles, making her cry out loudly and eroding all that was left of her inner warmth. There was something else in the water that burned her translucent skin like acid; a crude form of decontamination to ensure no rogue organism had hitched a ride from the surface. Unfortunately, her chattering gasps for air drew only more amusement from these new ones. These non-doctors. She tried desperately to hold in her breath and not to let it out as a cry or scream. 'You can't show weakness to anyone," she remembered Hunter saying. Why was she thinking of him so suddenly? Shouldn't she be thinking about Artyom? 'Oh no, Artyom, please make it back to D6 safely, please let this sacrifice be worth something. Fuck it's so cold, please. The icy… wind… and who was it calling my name?'
Another wave of blackness stole her sight, the water and acid finally stopped after she was sufficiently drenched. She had dropped her arms without realizing it, feeling as if they were lead weights that she didn't have the fortitude to lift in order to conceal her dignity. Rolling over might have been a possibility next time she could catch a breath and a hint of strength, but then they were injecting her with something and she snapped upright. She tried to swing a fist at someone but one of the men came around to the head of the table and held down her shoulders. Another syringe was loaded, metallic tinkling as the would-be doctor tapped away the air bubbles and then leaned in over her.
"No! Please, don't…" she whimpered inaudibly, and her vision faded out once more as the sedative took hold. No matter how much she wished that it wouldn't, the only word left to escape her lips slipped out in a long morose moan, "Papa."