Chapter 7
Kuryakin sped into consciousness then bolted to a sitting position. His brain felt as if it were in a wind tunnel performing fiery, complex gymnastics, going from the parallel bars to the pommel horse to the still rings to the horizontal bar, never dismounting between each exercise.
He blinked a few times in an attempt to clear the stark black-and-white of his vision—it didn't occur to him to question why he saw no color—into which disturbing shades of gray had begun to intrude. It momentarily flustered him but he came to accept the change mindlessly.
Without warning, Illya once again was consumed with the desperate urge to harm himself. But something stopped him—a voice he knew so well but couldn't place. There was another voice that sounded bitter and callous and unfamiliar. When he heard that voice, his brain bristled like porcupine quills, and the compulsion to shove skewers into his ears or dig his eyes out of their sockets came on with a vengeance. Then just as he would curl his hands into claw-like shapes, the known voice soothed him, quelled his urgency for self-destruction.
The back-and-forth between the two voices made him feel as if he were riding an acoustic sine wave.
All through this, he kept hearing commands not quite subliminal, almost buried in the background of his auditory cortex: a broken record of End yourself.
Broken record? What is that?
His brain somersaulted at the idea of expanding thought. This is … different. New. I can think of something other than killing myself?
Eventually he became aware that there were three men—two standing, both aiming weapons at the one man reclining on the ground, torso supported by flexed arms and with his legs stretched out before him. He knew that man, knew his black hair, knew that the dark gray eyes hid cunning and menace that he was one of the privileged few to know what lurked behind the façade of affability. How he knew that he couldn't say, nor how he knew the man was his responsibility and seeing him in a compromised situation filled him with a different sense of urgency. The need to defend that man was so intense that it overrode his need to kill or even hurt himself.
Who is he? That question led to a more perplexing one: Who am I?
Then his fidgety brain switched gears again. Protect him.
Illya jumped to his feet soundlessly, but this time the motion caught the men's attention. Within that same second, he hit the nearest man's jaw as he grabbed the rifle from him. With lightning speed, he turned the weapon on him and fired twice into his chest. Before the other man with the hardened voice could swing his weapon around, Illya shot him twice as well, giving the man two new holes in his head.
The threat to the man on the ground gone, Kuryakin's brain reignited with the coldly bitter need to shatter himself.
With all swift deliberateness, Illya swung the rifle around to point it accurately and steadily at himself, despite his sweaty grasp on the triggering mechanism and his trembling. He looked at the nameless man who for some reason he trusted as no other and loved as his "behind the soul" brother, whose dark gray eyes were turning … Brown? He could feel his own eyes involuntarily fill with sorrow and a request for forgiveness, could feel pain throughout his mind and body creeping in like thieves of hope.
oooo
For a split second, Napoleon thought the drug had actually had worn off, but the instant Illya swung the gun around to aim at himself, his heart sank to the middle of the earth.
Frantic but controlled, Solo knew he couldn't get up in time to wrench the weapon away from his friend. Again a clod of fear paralyzed his vocal cords, so even shouting a simple syllable like No or Stop wasn't going to happen. Speaking probably wouldn't do any good anyway; he doubted Illya could even understand any spoken word.
Knocking the rifle from Illya's grip with his feet, as he had planned to do to the THRUSHes, was the only option left to him. If he failed, Napoleon acknowledged his spirit would be crushed. Always the optimist, he had faith that at least trying to stop such a catastrophe might ameliorate that unspeakable agony an infinitesimal amount.
He tried to ignore the plea and the sadness in Illya's glassy blue eyes—eyes that now held a trace of recognition—were sending him, disheartening him. At the same time, he subconsciously noted that his partner hesitated, something he hadn't done in the lab. Any hope he might have felt from that was dashed when Illya's expression became distant.
I need less than a second, Illya. Give me that.
He swung his leg hard and fast, grunting from the pain that galloped through his body. His foot connected with the rifle's barrel a millisecond before Illya squeezed the trigger.