Red Square (Moscow, Russia)
Five Days After Mission Conclusion
The bright northern sun is something I've missed. It's the same sun, the same yellow star, wherever you go on this planet, I know. But it feels different in some places. I suppose it's mostly psychological, that the sun might feel hot and oppressive in hostile territory but warm and comforting back home, but I still indulge myself in believing that it's somehow critically different.
My uniform still feels stuffy, and my shoes are far too new and shiny - I'd rather be wearing my old boots - but the invigorating Russian sun on my face is enough to keep me pacified.
My spirits aren't the only ones higher than normal. The war is over, and it seems as though the entire northern world is rejoicing.
That may, of course, be just a perception skewed by my being surrounded by comrades - uh, colleagues - in similar outfit, in row upon row of stiffly dressed and stiffly marching servicemen. Behind us somewhere in the parade column is a military band, but their sharp rhythms and patriotic melodies are nearly drowned out by the real music to our ears, the cheers of our countrymen. They stand packed along the sidewalk, pressing against the metal barricades that just barely keep them from pouring into the street.
Here and there in the crowd, parents and grandparents hoist the little ones onto their shoulders so they can get a good view. They yell at the top of their lungs and wave flags, the boldly striped tricolor banner that my brothers- and sisters-at-arms and I serve.
I've never been in military service before this first mission, and while it was always my intention, I feel that somehow the celebration is a bit overblown. I know that it isn't just for me, but for those who have done more than I have and especially for those who didn't survive to take this final march, but I can't help but take every brassy note and every smiling face personally. These are the people we fight for; how can each of us not take their joy as a personal medal of achievement?
My section of the parade column rounds the corner on Nikolskaya Street and emerges into Red Square, where the rest of the parade has condensed into one massive display of power and national pride. The spectators are kept on the perimeter of the courtyard to allow enough space for the entire exhibition - the length of the parade behind us - to fit.
On the far side of the Square, the colorful domes and spires of a cathedral rise into the sky like an otherworldly flame. It is a sanctuary and monument to Vasily the Blessed, known elsewhere simply as Saint Basil. When I see it, my chest swells with pride. My mother chose my name - she was always particularly religious - and I find it fitting that the sight of my namesake's symbolic house should greet me upon my official return home.
My section files into the Square and takes its place. We wait patiently, standing at attention, for the rest of the parade to arrive, but after a few minutes of watching the world move slovenly while myself standing still, I give up on holding rank and slip away at normal speed.
If anyone wants to stop me, I'd like to see them try.
The lines of soldiers face the Kremlin side of the Square in a sort of collective salute, and I sidle along their rows until I make it past the columns just entering the space on the end that borders the State Historical Museum. From experience, I know that my parents prefer to stake out a viewing spot on this end whenever something important happens in the Square, and…
There.
I'm rather surprised at my luck, but I spot my sister right behind one barricade, her fingers curled tightly around the top bar. She's only eleven, and her hair is all tied up in blue and white and red ribbons. She's jumping up and down like a jackrabbit, and I can't help but smile. With everything in slow motion, her hair and the satiny decorations in it seem suspended in midair and catch the sunlight spectacularly.
I find a gap in the barricades near one of the building walls and slip into the crowd.
I move very slowly, knowing that even the slightest contact with a stranger would feel to them like a harsh collision. I push my way through toward the barricade ahead of me and find my parents, little Valda still bouncing on her toes. I slide my cap off my head and touch my father's arm. He turns and first looks shocked, then elated, then grabs me in what's probably the biggest bear hug he's ever given anyone, much less his soldier-son. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mother turn around - slowly, as she can no other way from my perspective - and her face light up.
Valda stops hopping only long enough to whirl around. I can judge her speed by the way her hair whips around her face, its entire length incapable of keeping pace. Her eyes glitter and she squeals in delight. When Papa lets go of me - although he keeps one arm over my shoulders - she leaps into my arms, nearly bowling me over, even at her reduced speed. She drops to her feet, but snatches my cap from my hands and clamps it down over her head, refusing to give it back. Mama embraces me next, and by the time she lets me go my face is warm and red and I feel like well-kneaded dough.
There's something nice about it.
They're talking to me, I know they are, but I'm forced to pretend like I can't hear them over the drums and trumpets and screams.
I haven't been stuck in Chronos-altered time long enough to decipher words very well, and I'd give anything to be able to understand them, but I can't. I'm home - properly home, not at the academy - for the first time since the last summer holiday and I can't make out a single thing my family is saying.
I stand in their midst, trying not to move too quickly as I look between their faces, and try to make do with just physically being with them.
Suvorov Military School
I still haven't told anyone. I tried my best to compensate around my family, and I think they were too blind from joy to notice much of a difference from the norm. But it's draining, almost suffocating, and I'm having a difficult time reconciling myself to living the rest of my life like this.
I'm not suicidal; I don't think I could ever get to that point. But the effort required to appear normal has gotten excruciating. I'd like to be able to walk and move like any normal person, but if I do, the people around me will see as clear as day that I'm not normal, that something's wrong. I can't do that.
I have to wait for everything, whether it's a word of response from a friend or something as elementary, something so easily taken for granted, as a passing breeze. And things that are ordinarily slow - like elevators - take an eternity to act. The elevator down to the basement laboratory is no different. Even as I watch my headmaster press the lower button in the panel alongside the doors, I feel like I'm stuck behind a frosted screen, condemned to stay separate from my world and watch it only in grainy, slowed recordings.
Barely anything feels real.
The light behind the button glows like a candle flame, starting out timidly but slowly flaring to its full intensity. The doors slide shut at the expected sluggish pace, and I struggle to keep myself from looking between them and the man in the elevator with me at the normal speed. He doesn't know; I don't want him to know.
But I know that I can't keep this charade up for much longer; it can only last a matter of minutes, in fact. Minutes in real time. I close my eyes and let the elevator descend into the belly of the building, trying my best to steel myself for the reckoning to come.
I won't be found fault with; that I'm almost certain of. But I still feel guilty, and every moment I'm alive will be a reminder of the reason for that guilt. I've effectively lost my country the single greatest weapon and strategic aid to be added to its arsenal since the advent of combat aircraft or the creation of the nuclear bomb, the one thing that placed it on the same plane of operation as one of its chief potential enemies, which until recently it thought it was equal with.
More than anything, I feel like I've failed. My mission is complete and the war is won, but my carelessness - as I can't help but feel responsible - has rendered our Chronos useless and I've been sentenced to life imprisonment in the consequences.
I manage to grin a little at my own folly. Life imprisonment. Very melodramatic, Vasily. Bordering on poetic.
The Chronos is in a case reminiscent of the kind they use for small firearms, and as I hold it at my side I'm careful not to let it swing, lest the Headmaster see it jittering back and forth from his perspective.
The elevator reaches the bottom of the shaft and even the jolt announcing our arrival feels unnaturally prolonged. The doors ease open and I force myself to match the headmaster's pace as we step out into the hall, feeling like a sloth. He gains access to the lab with his card and his handprint and the first thing I notice beyond the heavy metal door is that the sound of the supercomputer, when slowed, is considerably fainter.
I follow my headmaster back to the familiar boardroom, and when the door opens I'm struck by how everyone moves at once. It takes a moment for me to realize that they're rising to applaud, and another moment to register that they're applauding me.
I stand at the front of the room, my headmaster off to the side and smiling like a proud father, trying to appear stoic and humble. I can still feel myself blushing; is all this really necessary?
I look around the table, and although their faces are blurry, it looks to me like all of the attendants of tonight's meeting are the same members of the tight circle that I encountered the last time I was here. They all appear content, a few of them outright ecstatic, and one of the officers to the right of Chief Sokolov looks ready to clap his hands right off.
The only exception is the scientist who first gave me the Chronos. She's applauding, but politely instead of enthusiastically.
She's watching me closely; I can feel it.
When the spontaneous wordless commendation fades away and the scientists and officials begin returning to their seats, the woman watching me grabs the Chief's sleeve and whispers something to him before he makes his way around the table to the headmaster and me.
She knows.
Sokolov gives me a brief questioning look, but it dissolves into a sentimental smile as he meets my headmaster next to the latter's chair and shakes his hand. He approaches me next, and I slowly transition the Chronos' case to my left hand so as to shake his hand with my right.
I steal a glance at the scientist. She's leaning over the table, watching me intently, likely trying to pinpoint some minor anomaly in my movement she wasn't quite sure she'd caught before but she wants to see again to confirm her suspicion.
I make an effort not to give her the satisfaction.
After a few minutes of recounts of my little escapade from various figures around the table who were following it as per their capabilities and their specialties, Sokolov motions for the female scientist to come forward and retrieve the artifact.
I hold the case in my two hands and present it to her the way she held the artifact out to me that first night. She reaches out for the case, but before pulling it away, she looks into my eyes, and I feel a shiver run down my spine.
"I'm sorry," she mouths and takes the case from me.
I feel cold again; the feeling is similar to the icy sensation that fell over me the first night I met Sokolov, but then it was from awe. Now, it's from dread and a sick feeling I've begun to get in my stomach.
It's over now. Before long, everyone in this room will know.
For the first time I can recall, I am genuinely afraid.
She holds the case against her chest like a wounded child and carries it back toward its safe. By the way she keeps glancing back at me, I imagine that she feels inclined to keep my secret for me.
She sets the case down next to the safe and begins turning the combination lock on the metal box when Sokolov gestures grandly, his arms before him and above his head.
"Let's see it then, one more time before we archive it for the future," I hear him say in droning, stretched tones.
The scientist looks up at me, panic in her eyes. I nod slightly, slowly.
She reluctantly unlatches the case and gingerly lifts the Chronos from its bed. Even with my perception of time slowed, I can hear the room go deathly silent and feel half the people in the room gasp. I feel a sharp heat in my chest when I see the Chronos again.
Its immaculate copper surface is scratched and dented. Its intricate engravings have been dulled away, and appear to have faded even since I put it away. Parts of it are cracked, but the most striking signs of damage are its lights. In some places, they glow more brightly than they ever did ordinarily, while in others the etchings are completely dark. In a couple of spots, they brighten, flicker, then fade to darkness in regular cycles.
The critical part - the track in the middle - is permanently engaged, unable to slide back to its idle configuration.
I know my headmaster's eyes are on me, and Sokolov's, and gradually the eyes of everyone in the room. I don't meet any of them.
They know, they know, they all know.
The hot blade in my chest grows in intensity until I can't hold it back and my breathing becomes ragged. I turn toward the door, then turn back into the room, feeling lost and trapped. It feels as though my entire chest is filling with magma, and I can't think.
There's frantic conversation going on around me in the room now, but I can't manage to focus on it. At some point, one of the scientists leaves his chair near the end of the table I stand next to in order to join the cluster of his colleagues that has formed around the one holding the Chronos - my Chronos.
I stumble over to his chair and collapse into it.
I can't breathe normally, and the world isn't just blurry, but curved and distorted. My eyes burn and my mind buzzes. I close my eyes to it all and double over in the chair, unable to keep back the lava.
For the first time - probably in my entire life since my infancy - I find myself sobbing uncontrollably.