Chapter Twenty-Three

"Good… Rock… Are you alright?" Frederica asked. Rock nodded.

"Oh, it's just a small bullet wound. You know what they say about what doesn't kill you, right?"

"It will probably succeed on the second try?" Frederica asked ironically. Rock chuckled at this.

"Well yes, but I meant that it makes you stronger." He said. Frederica nodded. She liked his outlook. It was so positive. Even with a bullet in his calf, he was so upbeat.

Revy had a few minor wounds and Dutch had a shrapnel wound from metal and wood flying up after a bullet hit a table and caused it to explode. He didn't know whether it was caused by one of his allies or by the enemy, but his face, chest and arms were riddled with cuts that needed to be looked at soon or they'd get infected. His right eye had some shrapnel in it as well, and he was sure that it would need to be taken out. Hopefully, Linus had more of that regenerative serum.

As the four superhumans got together, Hotel Moscow agents came in and began collecting the three "dead" agents and putting them in body bags and carrying them outside. They put them in the backs of vehicles, then helped the Lagoon Company and the superhumans outside. They thanked Hotel Moscow and asked that they not burn the bodies and that they receive a map of where they were being buried.

The plan had always been to bury them if they were defeated, since that would cement the illusion that they had died in the final fight. Their employers could assume that they weren't able to overwhelm their former allies. This was perfectly reasonable to believe. They went back to the Hotel Moscow main base where Balalaika gave them some time in the operating room where Linus and Alric laid Dutch and Rock down on tables, numbed them and began removing the foreign objects in their bodies.

Alric sighed, shaking his head.

"Mr. Dutch… Your right eye wasn't so much pierced as it was shredded. If it was a needle or a knife cutting through it, I might have been able to regenerate it. But this… I cannot repair it. I advise you to allow me to remove your right eye." Alric said. Dutch nodded. He never wanted to lose an eye naturally, but it was better than letting it get infected.

"Good… I'll take care of your eye first, then remove the shrapnel from the rest of your body." He said, taking a needle and applying anesthesia, watching dispassionately as Dutch's eyes closed and he fell asleep. Alric cautiously worked, removing the eye a piece at a time, making sure to get all the wood chips and metal shards out. Finally, he had gotten everything out and moved on to the rest of Dutch's body, using a magnet to take out the metal and picking the wood out a piece at a time with tweezers.

After about half an hour, Dutch woke up to find that his wounds were all healed, if scarred over. The wounds were messy, so even with regeneration serum, he was bound to scar a bit. He looked down at himself, then smiled at Alric.

"Thank you. How much do I owe you for this?" He asked.

"Nothing. You did us a favor. This is our way of returning it." Alric replied.
"Your diplomat, Rock is a much better fighter than our research would have suggested. We are happy to continue his training… Free of charge. It is the least we could do in light of the major help that you gave us in taking care of this problem. There's a chance that we could have more people coming after us in the future. There are more superhumans who became freelance mercenaries or assassins." Alric said.

"I thought there might be. Well, we're happy to help with them as well… We could use some superhumans on our side, and I'm sure Revy would be delighted to have some superhumans training her in martial arts." Dutch said with a laugh, sitting up and grimacing slightly.

"You will still feel slight pain for the next few days. It will all be phantom pain. You don't need to worry about it. If it ever gets too intense, come back and see me again. Oh, um… Can I ask you one more favor, Mr. Dutch?"

"First of all, call me Dutch. Even my employees don't call me Mr. But sure. What's up, Alric?"

"How should I go about winning Ludmilla's affections? She and I are as close as someone like us can be to being in a relationship. We agreed that if we were not given a choice but to choose a fellow Genesis Project member to mate with, we would choose each other. But I am unsure of how to actually go about seeing whether she likes me as more than 'the best of a bad situation.'"

"Have you ever tried just asking her? I would say wait a few days after you guys dig her up. You did organize the plan to have her murdered, after all. I know that it was mutually agreed upon, but still you should wait a while for her to recover. Even if you've practiced being buried alive and surviving that kind of situation, it's not something that's terribly easy on the psyche.

"So wait a few days, then ask her if she wants to go on a date. It really is that simple."

"Simple… But not easy." Alric said, seeming uncertain now in the face of Dutch's confidence.

"Well… It's never easy to ask out the person you like. Male or female, no matter how long you've known them, there will always be some butterflies in your stomach.

"But if she can manage to be buried alive and get through it without panicking, I think you can do her the courtesy of going up to her and asking her out like a gentleman."

"I don't see how the two relate. We've all been buried alive as training for some of the most stressful situations the trainers could imagine. We were tortured, suffocated, buried alive, set upon by wild dogs.

"The idea was that if we could completely bury our emotions, that we could do anything. And we did. All of us passed basic training. Some of us took two or three times to do it, but eventually, we were all turned into emotionless monsters. I guess that makes it awfully hard to reconnect with your emotions. Doesn't it?" Alric asked. Dutch nodded.

"Well… You're giving a fairly normal emotional reaction right now. I would say you're already becoming fairly normal. Humans run the gamut from very unemotional to very emotional. Most people fall somewhere in the middle. You could say that the majority of people who fall in the extremely emotional and extremely unemotional ranges have some form of mental illness, but that's not always the case. Some people really were just raised never to show their emotions.

"You're doin' just fine, Alric."

"Thank you, Dutch… Garda, Astrid and I look forward to working with you in the future, and hopefully, Ludmilla, Matthias and Zane come out of this alive and we can work with them as well." Alric said. Dutch nodded and headed back to their hotel. They were going to collect Ludmilla, Matthias and Zane in two days rather than three. That way, just in case they woke up early, they wouldn't suffocate.

Dutch was fairly sure that if anyone could survive three days in a coffin, they could. They would probably go into a meditative coma if they woke early and weren't above ground. Perhaps it would be best to put small oxygen tanks in the coffins to safeguard their investment. Dutch hurried out to the Hotel Moscow doctors and asked them to put a small oxygen tank in each of the coffins. Dutch would reimburse them for the tanks if necessary. They agreed.

After all, Hotel Moscow was making an investment as well, and if their investment died on them, they would have lost the money. They took out three long, thin tanks and three masks, connecting the masks to the tanks and putting them on the so-called corpses.

"Can your type see in the dark?" The agent asked Alric. Alric nodded.

"Some of us can see better than others. But all of us can read well enough in the dark.

"Ah, good. Let's see…"

Welcome to your coffin. Don't worry. We're going to dig you up within a day or so. This oxygen tank should be enough to tide you over if you're conservative with your consumption.

Cheers,

Boris

(отель москва)

Boris copied the note three times over and put them in the coffins along with a penlight in each of their hands. They would return the items they gave them when they walked the earth again. They then took the three to a burial site that saw a lot of traffic outside town, and dug three graves next to each other, lowering the coffins into the holes and leaving.

Ludmilla was the first to awaken. As her eyes opened, she gasped, her chest rising and falling heavily as she got her bearings about her. She opened and closed her hands slowly, working feeling and warmth back into them, which was hard considering how cold it was wherever she was. It was so tight, so enclosed. But oddly comfortable, like whatever her prison was made of was lined with silk padding. As she closed her hand, she felt a round object in it.

She felt along it, realizing that it was a flashlight. She pressed the back and suddenly, the complete blackness was pierced by an incredibly strong light. She looked around.

"Oh, for fuck's sake… I'm still in my coffin? How long have I been here?" She asked, her breath slowing as she forced herself to calm down, knowing that without extra oxygen, she would suffocate if she didn't conserve air fastidiously.

As she moved her foot, she kicked something metal.

"An oxygen tank?" She asked, taking the mask and putting it on herself, turning on the tank to low. She picked up the sticky note attached to the tank.

Welcome to your coffin. Don't worry. We're going to dig you up within a day or so. This oxygen tank should be enough to tide you over if you're conservative with your consumption.

Cheers,

Boris

(отель москва)

Mm… At least they gave us some latitude in terms of extra oxygen. I guess I'll meditate for a while. Ludmilla thought, closing her eyes and slowing her breathing, falling into a deep sleep until such time as she would be dug up. The Genesis Agents had all been trained to go into hibernative states if they needed to.

For instance, if they were wounded beyond what they could heal with their enhanced healing normally, they would hibernate, and the energy that would normally be spent keeping them awake and active would then be poured into healing. They could also effectively fake their deaths by going into such a deep hibernation that their life signs all but stopped. It wasn't perfect. Their heart would still beat. They would still be breathing, but so slowly and lightly that most wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

However, they were also trained to awake at the drop of a hat. From a normal night's sleep that is. From an autohypnotic hibernation, it would take at least ten minutes to fully awaken. But their life signs would be strong enough that it would be obvious that they were alive. That way, they wouldn't simply be reburied.

Ludmilla wasn't sure exactly how long it was. She was asleep after all. But eventually, she heard the clinking sound of metal on stone and the shuffling sound of dirt being displaced. They were digging her up. Her breath quickened slightly and her eyelids began to flutter. Her fingers began twitching and her heart's beat increased. She was somewhere between waking and sleeping, that point where your thoughts were able to be remembered if you were careful, but still too far asleep to really interact with the world.

As the digging and clinking got louder, her signs became more active. They were digging quickly. There must have been at least five of them by her count, digging at an expedited pace, as if they were in a hurry. Finally, there was a thud of a shovel cracking her coffin's lid. Her eyes shot open and she gasped as the lid was pried off.

"Hello, Ludmilla… It's good to see you on this side of the earth again." Alric said.