Chapter 10

The room was a dazzling white. Alexei blinked as his eyes adjusted. Everything was fuzzy. He tried to sit up, to find his glasses, but pain knifed his abdomen. He settled back with a groan and tried to rub the injured spot, but his hands were strapped down. A tube was running into each arm. He tilted his head to check the straps. They were simple enough, but he'd need a free hand to operate them. Whoever had him didn't want him running away. So which side had him?

There was light coming in through a window. So he wasn't underground. He strained to hear any conversations in the halls, to pick out what language was being spoken, but everything was silent. He couldn't see the label on the fluids being pumped into his veins to check the alphabet, let alone read what it was – but it couldn't be too terrible, could it, if he had the presence of mind to remember the Americans used different letters? He was in pain, but his head was quickly clearing.

He wondered if Joyce and the others had found their kids, and if they'd gone through with the plan. He hoped they'd come to their senses, but he doubted it.

Someone knocked on the door. A tall, dark-skinned woman in a white coat looked in. She said something he didn't understand. He smiled. She might have been telling him they'd found a giant tumor next to the bullet, for all he knew, but she was speaking English, which meant he was safe. She looked like she expected him to respond. He shook his head. "Not understand."

She nodded. "Espanol? Francais? Deutsch?"

"Russkiy."

"Russian?"

It sounded similar enough. He nodded. She said something that sounded vaguely apologetic. He smiled and shrugged. You couldn't really expect good interpretation services in a small town. She ducked out and came back with a white board and a marker, and a sheet of paper with pictures on it. She unbound one of his arms, and he pointed at the picture of a glass. "Please?"

She shook her head, and explained something. She pointed to one of the tubes in his arm. So it was keeping him hydrated. He wasn't sure why he couldn't have a drink to moisten his mouth, but he couldn't very well argue with her. And she certainly didn't seem to be trying to make him uncomfortable.

Not much happened for the rest of the day, other than when one of the nurses came to change his bandages. He sneaked a look while she worked. A long scar split his abdomen in two. It looked red, and he whimpered when the nurse rubbed some sort of cream on it. She gave him a pity smile and asked something. He shrugged. She held up a needle and a vial of something. She was asking if he wanted it? She didn't seem to be threatening him with whatever it was. Probably some sort of pain medicine. Still, no sense in taking the chance. He shook his head. She applied new bandages, patted his hand and left.

He slept fitfully, from the beeping machines, the nurses coming and going and the frightening images his mind conjured up when he closed his eyes. He finally managed to drift off around dawn, and it seemed like he'd barely slept at all when his door opened. Two people came in and sat down. The man was in late middle age, with grey hair and a slight potbelly. The woman was younger, maybe about his age, and her features looked somewhat Russian.

"Hello, Dr. Medvedev," the man said, and the woman translated. "Irina and I have a few questions."

Alexei tried to sit up, but pain radiated from his scar. "Excuse me for not getting up, but-"

The man brushed it off. "We're not concerned with etiquette."

"May I ask who I'm talking to?"

"Does that matter?"

"I suppose not. I just wondered what I should call you."

"You can call me Agent Johnson. You don't need to know exactly who I work for, but they can make your life much easier or much harder, depending on what you decide."

"How much do you already know?"

"Excuse me?"

"I don't want to waste your time. If you already know about the lab under the mall, no point explaining it again."

"Start at the beginning. I'll let you know if I want you to hurry it along."

So Alexei started back at his old lab in Russia, with the idea of building a machine to convert waste from nuclear plants into a new source of energy. He'd built the first key – he'd called it the alchemist then, partly out of whimsy – and was making good progress on establishing procedures so it could heat water, turn turbines and generate electricity. Then military intelligence had shown up.

"So you're telling us it wasn't intended as a weapon."

"Oh no. It wouldn't be a very good weapon. You can blow things up with it, but you can't just drop it out of the sky like a bomb. You'd have to set it up right around whatever you wanted to destroy. And it's got a very small blast radius."

"Sounds like a design flaw."

"Like I told you, it wasn't supposed to be a weapon. It's a way of getting more energy out of radioactive waste."

Agent Johnson harrumphed. "And what did military intelligence want with your waste recycler?"

"They said they needed concentrated energy to break through a barrier. I didn't know what they meant. They just told me to take a few days, go tell my parents I wouldn't see them for a while and then report to their Kiev office for further instructions."

"And then?"

"They took me to a secret facility in the Urals. I was blindfolded for part of the trip, so I can't tell you where it is."

"Of course you can't."

"They were trying to create a portal between worlds. They said the Americans had done it before and we needed to catch up. You know about this, yes?"

Agent Johnson's face betrayed nothing. Alexei sighed, and guided him through their failures, Naoumov's death, his epiphany about location, the building of the underground fortress, the successful test, how the Americans kidnapped and recruited him to their side, and finally how Grigori had shot him. He left out the balloon darts and the cartoon bird, because it sounded silly now.

"And that's all?"

"That's all I know."

"Nothing else important?"

"No." He paused. "Did they do it?"

"Do what?"

"Blow it up. Close the portal."

"That's not your concern."

"Are they alive? Please tell me that. Is Joyce all right? Murray? Hopper?"

Agent Johnson hesitated. "The newspapers are reporting Police Chief Jim Hopper died when the Starcourt Mall collapsed. The full fatalities are still being determined."

"Joyce is a tiny little woman with dark brown hair. Did they find a body like that? Please, tell me they didn't."

"Why so interested?"

"She was kind to me. So was Murray."

"Friends?"

"Yes. I-I thought so."

Agent Johnson harrumphed again. "They're alive. Don't ask to see them. We're still deciding what to do with you."

Alexei nodded. The agents collected their notes and left him alone in the white room. He let his head roll to the side, suddenly exhausted by everything they had asked. The Americans might not give him the welcome he had hoped for. Agent Johnson hadn't seemed pleased, but that could have been a tough front. Well, he'd told them the truth. There was nothing more for him to do but wait to get better, or for someone to tell him where to go. At least Joyce and Murray were all right. He hadn't liked Hopper, but he hadn't wanted him to die. Still, if the others were alive, they must have succeeded, he decided. Whatever the Americans decided to do with him, he'd done right by the people he cared about most. That was something.