Chapter 2

June 28, 1985

Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union

Mariya Medvedeva crossed another day off the calendar and mentally added to the total. 1,095 days since her son had gone off on a very important, very secret assignment. Three entire years since she'd received any direct confirmation that Alexei was alive, other than his brother's word. Andrei should know – he worked for the political police – but she couldn't shake the feeling he would lie to her if it was easier.

Alexei was always the one she'd worried about, the "little brother," even though Andrei was only minutes older. From the time he was a child, Alyosha had been different. Softer, somehow, more sensitive to pain or criticism. Vladislav had always been displeased with his second son. Andryusha had been able to take chastisement, even beatings, in stride and emerged tougher. Alyosha curled into himself, physically and emotionally, until she came to comfort him and draw him out again. He never went out with girls, and never seemed to have any close male friends either. Alyosha was at home in classrooms, in the library, and when he was grown, in his lab. He done well for himself, earning a university spot for physics and a plum research assignment, but before he'd left three years ago, he'd promised to make them proud, as if nothing he'd done before had mattered. She'd held her boy – she still thought of him as a boy, even though he'd be forty in a few days – and made him promise to write. He had said he would. But then he hadn't.

Vladislav had shrugged it off. Alyosha finally had important work to do, and no time to write home. But she still felt sick to her stomach, now more than ever. Something was wrong. Her boy was in danger, and there was nothing she could do to protect him.

Hawkins, Indiana

The loudspeaker woke Alexei at 5:30 a.m., American Eastern time. The schedule was strict, and it had to be. Underground, there was no way of keeping track of day and night, and nothing good awaited a man who lost all sense of time.

He'd spent most of the last year perfecting his machine and wondering if they would actually manage to have a lab in place by Stepanov's deadline. The general hadn't been pleased when Alexei had told him it wasn't going to possible to open the door in Russia, not unless they mustered enough energy to blow a hole in the landscape. Stepanov's intelligence unit had located the spot of the Americans' breakthrough, and confirmed it was abandoned. They couldn't move into the old lab without attracting suspicion, and someone had come up with the brilliant plan of putting their lab below a shopping center. The capitalist pigs would fund the whole thing, without even realizing it. Alexei had still had his doubts, but the architects and engineers had done a remarkable job of creating a small city underground. The only thing they hadn't thoroughly accounted for was the human psyche.

Alexei had been there since the first rooms were constructed, about six months earlier, and it wasn't terribly different from the bunker in the Urals. Still, it wore on him, just like it did on everyone else. The new arrivals were always enthusiastic, eager to contribute and curious about what these shadowy scientists were actually trying to do. But gradually they lost interest. Their morning calisthenics slowed down, and they went through the motions of their duties, because nothing much ever happened, at least that they could see. Eventually they joined the group that pooled their daily vodka ration, so that each man could go on a bender from time to time instead of receiving just enough to warm him each day. Alexei didn't approve of drinking on the job, but he understood his betters' point of view, that the ration was necessary to maintain morale. The lab commissar arranged for movies and various contests to break the monotony, but it was a poor substitute for light and air.

He found even he was becoming slightly apathetic. He devoted himself to perfecting his work – it was the only thing keeping him alive – but he found himself tuning out the commissar's pep talks and skipping the morning calisthenics. As a scientist, he wasn't required to do them, since the condition of his body was largely irrelevant, but he'd gone along in solidarity with the men initially. He still went to the movies and occasionally tried to find a chess partner, but even that hardly seemed worth the effort. There were whispers about him and his strange machine that killed people, and no one wanted to play with a man who was under a suspended death sentence. Sometimes he'd just lie in bed, consumed with a craving that was as strong as the desire for a cigarette, but not quite the same. It had taken him time to sort out what his body wanted. Light. Color. To see, or hear, or taste something different, even if it wasn't something pleasant. The touch of another person, even if it was just a handshake or someone brushing up against him. What he wouldn't have given to be home, eating cherries with his mother and talking about the mysteries of the universe –

He shook himself. Yearning was counterproductive. Today was the day when they would make their next test. If it worked, perhaps he could get leave. If not, he would never see another sunrise, or even hear the loudspeaker telling him to get up again.

Grigori, the giant man who had killed Naoumov, was back to check in. Alexei felt queasy whenever he was in his presence, and he got the sense Grigori enjoyed that. He never knew the man's family name. He had only one name, and it was enough to make everyone shudder.

Alexei forced himself to eat some breakfast and spent the rest of the day going over protocols and checking and double-checking anything that could possibly fail. The test was scheduled for 8 p.m. local time. He tried to take a nap, failed and settled on the only thing that could soothe him for a bit: some little figures he'd been gradually building from scraps like extra nuts and bolts. He took a marker and drew a face onto one, so it smiled at him like a poorly designed, but friendly, robot.

"Playing with your toys, doctor?"

Alexei cringed. Grigori. He could come into any room he wanted without knocking. "Sometimes I find it helpful to distract myself for a moment. Ideas bubble up that way."

Grigori snorted, took one of the figures, pulled it to bits and dropped the pieces in the wastebasket. "Is everything on schedule?"

"Yes."

"And you understand the consequences of failure?"

"Yes."

"Good." He smirked. "Then I shall leave you to your dolls, doctor."

Alexei waited for Grigori to leave, then pulled the bits of the toy robot from the wastebasket. If he was still alive tomorrow, he would repair it. It reminded him of the kind of things he'd dreamed of creating, before that dream turned into a nightmare machine. Maybe after this was done, he could return to his research – no. It wouldn't do to think about that. He needed to get through today.

After supper, the team assembled for the second test. He was now the senior researcher, and he led. He and his subordinate, Fyodorov, retrieved the keys from the vault. It was a simple set of actions. Open the keys, insert them, monitor for signs of power surges or other failure, and let the machine do its work.

Then someone screamed.

Alexei jumped and turned away from the glass, the smell of burning flesh in his nostrils again. Then someone touched him and he jumped again.

Fyodorov looked at him with concern. "One of the workers just dropped something on his foot," he said.

"Of course," Alexei said, trying to laugh, but he couldn't make his hands work to open the box. Fyodorov offered him a cigarette, which he took gratefully, and closed his eyes as he listed the digits of pi. After about two dozen numbers, he felt steady enough to open the box. Still, he shut his eyes when it came time to turn the key.

The machine roared to life as energy surged through it, directed at the wall in front of them. Alexei didn't look at it, though. He kept his eye on the clock. One minute without incident. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Only then did he risk a look. The portal was opening, slowly, millimeter by millimeter. That was by design, to avoid a repeat of the disastrous first test. After fifteen minutes, he finally felt confident to tell Grigori the test had not failed.

Grigori was waiting in Alexei's office, feet on his desk. Alexei had no doubt he'd already searched it for anything remotely incriminating. "Is it open?" he asked.

"It is opening."

"How long will it take?"

"To put a man through? Maybe a week."

"So long?"

"After the last test, I thought it was better not to risk an accident."

"Stepanov gave you one year, not one year and one week." Grigori got up and stood in front of Alexei. The physicist thought that suddenly his tie felt uncomfortably tight, as if it had switched sides to work for Grigori.

"If it blew up again, it would take at least another year for someone else to repair it," he said. "This gets him the results faster."

Grigori considered this, then raised his hand to Alexei's neck. Alexei flinched and looked away. "Your collar is standing up, doctor," he said. Alexei hurriedly flattened it. "One week. There will not be another reprieve."

Alexei hurriedly nodded that he understood, and Grigori left. Then he ran back to his lab.

A tiny keyhole, glowing orange, had started to appear. A door to another world. It occurred to him that he had no idea if the other side truly was orange, or if it was super-heated by the energy from his machine. Was there anything on the other side of that door, he wondered, and if there was, would it hate the creatures that burned their way into its domain? What were they bringing into the world? But that was not his concern. He'd been given a job, and he had done it. That was all he could do.