Author's note: The second half of this gets intense. I tried to capture the horror of sleep-deprivation torture, but to not go over the top. If you're a bit squeamish, skip over it.
Chapter 18
July 4, 1985
Research facility, Kamchatka, Soviet Union
Stepanov was never a man to bet it all on one hand of cards. Medvedev and Fyodorov didn't know it, but while they were trying to break through the barrier in Hawkins, he had another team still working closer to home. They had said they were ready for another test, this time with more power than Medvedev had been willing to muster. The previous accident had wrecked the doctor's nerves, and while he might still prove useful, Stepanov suspected he would end up needing to get rid of Medvedev before this was over.
The team assembled and the physicists – he couldn't remember their names – turned their keys. The machine roared to life and directed a beam of blue light at the wall. It was bigger, stronger than whatever Medvedev and the other one had produced. Instead of just slowly cracking apart, the wall blew open as if they'd shot a cannon at it. But it snapped back almost as quickly, shooting energy all over the room. Screams echoed as the technicians burned. Stepanov wished for a moment that he had Grigori with him, to strangle the two fools who called themselves scientists, but they would meet their end soon enough. He went down to check the barrier.
He was going to step over the soldier at his feet, until the man groaned and moved. One of the scientists helped him up. "Where the hell am I?" the man asked. The scientists stared at each other, and then back at the man, and then again at each other.
"Find out who this is," Stepanov ordered, and turned to see a gray shape rising before him. "And what the hell is that?"
October 1986
Kamchatka, Soviet Union
For most of the first two days, Alexei could remember a few things that kept him grounded. He was in a prison in Siberia. He was being tortured. He mustn't give them what they wanted. But gradually, the third thing became less certain, and the first two no longer seemed to be useful information. He couldn't see clearly, and the light on the wall seemed to come from everywhere, but also nowhere. He heard someone screaming – a prisoner. But then it wasn't a prisoner anymore. It was a child, a very small child. Where? He felt along the floor of his cell. And there it was, right at the edge of his fingertips, swaddled like a tiny mummy, with just the head peeping out. He reached to pick it up, then pulled back.
It was terribly deformed, with no nose, one eye almost in its cheek and the other in its forehead, and a gaping black mouth with no lips. Such a thing couldn't be alive. He scuttled back like a crab. Then he saw the woman. She was wrapped in white – a shroud. She was dead too.
"Is it yours?" he asked.
"It is yours, doctor," she said. "See your good work?"
His? He crawled over to it again. It was still crying. He put it on his chest, like a real baby. He looked at it and saw his hand turning gray and withering, like a dead man's. He threw the child to the floor and screamed. Then a man in green came in and yelled something he couldn't understand, and beat him.
Two dead men came and dragged him away. He could see burned, blackened hands reaching out from the cells to grab him. He tried to fight the men holding him, but his arms and legs wouldn't obey. "I'm still alive!" he screamed, but the men wouldn't listen. They threw him into a room. He curled up in the corner and whimpered.
And then the other him came in. The other man in his skin said something. He didn't understand. Why couldn't he go home? The other man looked at the dead woman. She pulled out a needle. He screamed and tried to wriggle away, but she plunged it into his neck. Then everything went black.