Chapter 19
October 1986-March 1987
Kamchatka, Soviet Union
Every part of Alexei's head hurt, including the hair follicles. How much had he had to drink? He sat up and touched the cold floor, then looked around. This wasn't his room. Everything was cement. He groaned as he remembered where he was and buried his aching head in his hands. He didn't look up even as he heard the door grating open.
"Are we awake?" The female agent sounded vaguely amused.
"What happened? What did I say?"
"A lot of gibberish about dead people. Remember that?" He had a vague sense of having had a nightmare, but it felt far off. He shook his head. "Would you like me to refresh your memory?"
"Not necessary."
"So we agree." She crossed her arms. "This isn't complicated, doctor. You build what we need and you get out of here. Refuse, and we keep going until you break down. And you broke faster than anyone expected. Do you really want to go through that again?"
"I can't do it."
She smiled. "We have faith in you."
"No, I can't put them in danger again."
"Who?" He shook his head. "Your little girlfriend and her kids?"
"I don't have a girlfriend."
"Somehow, I'm not surprised." She sighed. "Think it over. Next time, it won't be me coming to talk to you, and I can guarantee Mikhail's not such good company."
"I understand." He was shaking, and not just from the cold, but he tried to keep his voice steady. "Thank you."
"Idiot." She shook her head and left him alone.
Alexei curled up into a ball to try to keep himself warm. What would they do to him next? No, he couldn't think of that. They'd want him to start torturing himself in his mind, to make their job easier. Something else. The periodic table. He closed his eyes. Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium-
Someone was yelling. Not screaming, like he was being tortured. Yelling, indignant at the nerve of these people. He listened. The voice sounded familiar. "You think you're so tough now, Smirnoff-"
Alexei startled. That wasn't possible. But apparently there was a monster that kidnapped children on the other side of a door between worlds, so what did impossible mean anymore? He waited until he heard the door slam and the guards' heavy footsteps fade away. The man was still yelling. It was coming from his left. He put his ear to the wall. The American was in the next cell. Could it be? He debated how to communicate. He knew Morse code for the Cyrillic alphabet, but not for the English letters, and there was no guarantee the American knew the code even if he had. There were 26 letters in the English alphabet. It would be a lot of knocking, but the man might get it. He would save speaking for a last resort. He didn't want to bring the guards back. He counted the letters while the man exhausted himself yelling. W-23. H-8. O-15.
When the man finally quieted down, he started tapping on the wall, with a space between letters. "Who are you?" No response. He tried again, with longer pauses between words. "Who are you?" Nothing. He gave it another try.
"God, would you knock it off?" the man finally exploded.
Alexei sighed. Of course he couldn't be bothered to break even a simple code. "Hopper?"
"What?"
"Keep your voice down. You vant de guards to hear?"
"What's it matter?"
"Dey vill beat us both and put us in different cells." Didn't Hopper understand anything? "Are you okay?"
"What's it to you? Who are you?"
"Alexei. Remember?"
"Nice try, Smirnoff."
"Try?"
"What's this, good cop-bad cop?"
"I do not know vat dat means." Then it clicked. "Vere you yelling at my brudder earlier?"
"Your brudder?"
"Andrei. Like me, but vid different glasses."
"So what, I'm supposed to believe you've got an identical twin?"
"Vat, no tvins in America?" He waited. "Do you dink dat man vould have let you drow him around over a Slurpee?"
Hopper took a moment before answering. "So what do you want, Smirnoff?"
"Vat do dey vant from you?"
"Damned if I know. They keep asking how I got here. I don't even know."
"Did dey hurt you?"
"I'll live, Smirnoff." Hopper paused. "What do they want from you?"
"Anudder key."
"You can't do that."
"I know."
"So what are you going to do?"
"Nudding I can do. Hold out until dey kill me."
"No brilliant plan to get us out of here?"
"Dis is Siberia, Hopper. Even if ve get out, ve die of cold. And ve can't get out."
"Keep thinking."
Alexei did turn it over in his mind, every day, looking for a way out, but it never added up to anything. Still, it gave him something to hold off despair, something to think about other than what fresh pain they had in store with him. When the guards would step out, sometimes he would ask Hopper questions about American culture, and about his daughter and Joyce. Usually Hopper would answer, though he bristled when Alexei asked about how he dissolved and came back together.
"What, you want to know how you blew me up?"
"I vant to know if I accidentally created a vay to beam people across the vorld."
"Don't flatter yourself, Smirnoff."
Hopper was gentler, though, after they would drag Alexei back from a session. It was clear that each of the agents had a specialty. Mikhail would beat him until he couldn't stand. Andrei used subtler tactics. Once, he forced Alexei to climb up and down the stairs, over and over, for hours. It might have gone on for hours more, if something at the back of Alexei's leg hadn't popped and brought him to the ground. Even then, Andrei made him crawl up the stairs to get back to his cell. And then the woman, who he'd learned was called Tanya, would come and try to persuade him of how silly he was, choosing so much pain over the simple solution. She made good points, and he might have given in, if he hadn't seen the end of his suffering coming soon.
They'd been feeding him nothing but enough bread and water to keep him alive since he'd been brought there, and it was taking its toll. His gums were bleeding from lack of vitamins, and the wounds Mikhail left were taking longer and longer to heal. His legs were swelling as his body digested his muscles to keep itself alive for another day, and his skin was losing what little color it had, turning a pale gray. He couldn't endure this much longer – it was physically impossible. Sometimes, he vaguely wondered about whether there might be some sort of afterlife, or if he would simply cease to exist, like a flame someone had snuffed out. It didn't matter. Either way, there would be peace.