Leshy. Echo of Worlds

Chapter 13. Tracks

They saw the camp from a knoll — or rather, what was left of it.

Borland stopped about two hundred meters short. He stood and looked — for a long time, calmly, without hurry. Lika stopped beside him. She looked in the same direction, trying to see what he saw. Trampled grass along the perimeter — not evenly, but in patches, in several places. Traces of a fire in the center, but small, neat. Several little pillars of earth where the tent posts had stood.

"Do we wait?" she asked quietly.

"No." He moved forward — in a wide arc, approaching from the downwind side. "Two days at least. Maybe three."

She went after him and tried to see what he saw. The traces of the fire — not stalker ones. Heat tablets: a small ring of soot without charcoal, without ash, without smell. The tent pegs were driven in evenly, level, at equal intervals — not hastily, methodically. Someone had worked here for more than a day.

In the middle — a dark patch on the ground. A large one.

Borland crouched. Touched the earth with his fingertips, raised his eyes.

"There was a fight here." His voice quiet, businesslike. "And someone lay here for a long time."

"Apex?"

"The gear is theirs." A nod toward the bushes at the edge of the clearing — in the grass there lay a scrap of tactical belt with a Fastex buckle. Good, brand-name, not cheap goods. "But they left in a hurry. The camp wasn't cleaned up. So they had no time for that."

* * *

Lika walked the perimeter herself — slowly, looking at her feet. Borland didn't stop her, only watched from the corner of his eye. She felt it — not a look, but attention. A different thing.

She found the notebook at the far edge of the clearing, under an overturned plastic ammunition crate. A dark green oilcloth cover, soaked at the edges. The pages inside were intact, small pencil handwriting, hurried but legible.

The call sign on the first page: Skvorets.

Lika leafed through carefully — the pages were swollen with damp, brittle. Entries by date, not all of them — routes, bearings, technical observations, short notes on anomalies. Then her eye caught on a word.

"Bely said the way out is only through the northern node. I don't believe it — the pressure there is such that you can't get through without preparation. But he got through. Which means he knows something we don't."

She stopped. Reread it.

"Leshy."

Borland came over. She held out the notebook, jabbed a finger at the line. He read it. Turned the page. Another. Silently.

"Skvorets," he said at last. "I've heard of him. Experienced, been in the Zone a long time." He handed the notebook back. "Is he one of those Vint was trying to find?"

"The second of the three," said Lika. "Went missing over a week ago." She looked at the notebook. "This is his camp. His things."

Borland was silent.

"There was a fight here," she said. "Skvorets went missing. And most likely Apex had a hand in it. The camp was theirs, most likely Skvorets was killed, and they carried his personal things with them."

"This deep, only the Darks could have attacked well-prepared mercenaries."

She held the notebook in her hands and thought that whoever had written this would never get in touch again. Who are the Darks? She didn't ask herself that question, she was too excited by the find.

"Read on the way," said Borland. "We shouldn't linger here."

* * *

She tucked the notebook inside her jacket, against her body. They went.

Lika read as she walked — in short pieces, when the Zone allowed her to look down at the pages. Skvorets's entries went chaotically, sometimes with dates, sometimes without. Coordinates, names of anomalies, notes on routes. Technical language, dry. But between the lines something else sometimes appeared.

There were four mentions of Bely.

The first — in passing, in a list of people at a meeting in a bar. A name among other names. The second — that line about the northern node that she had already read. The third — short, without explanation: "Bely didn't return to the meeting point. Waited two hours. Left alone." The date stood a few days from the one that the institute's documents recorded as the last note about her father.

The fourth mention was at the end of the notebook. The handwriting there was different — larger, the pressure harder, as if written in the dark or on the move.

"Thinking about Bely. If he made it — then there is a road. If not — then there is no road, and all of this is for nothing."

Lika closed the notebook.

She walked. Looked at Borland's back.

He didn't turn around. But a few minutes later he slowed his step — just slightly, so that she drew level with him. Said nothing. Just walked beside her.

That was enough.

Lika thought about how the Zone is built: it grinds people up and sometimes — very rarely — something of them is left. Entries in a soaked notebook. Notches on a tree that no one reads anymore. Tracks that few know how to read, and one of them was walking beside her now.

She thought about Skvorets, whom she hadn't known. About how he had been looking for a way out of somewhere. About how he believed: if Bely made it — then there is a road.

A road to where. That question she hadn't yet asked aloud.

Chapter 14. The Witness

He lay behind a fallen tree and didn't move.

Borland noticed him first — stopped, raised a hand. Lika halted. Silence. Then in the silence — breathing, quick, ragged, with a wheeze on the exhale.

Alive.

Borland went around the tree from the side — slowly, hands in plain view, not touching his weapon. Lowered himself into a crouch beside him.

A man of about thirty-five. Tactical gear — the patches cut off, but by the cut, by the material, by the system of attachments it was clear at once: Apex. His left leg was bound above the knee with a makeshift tourniquet made from a piece of belt. His face gray, wet. He looked at Borland and didn't move — either he couldn't or he didn't want to, until he understood who this was.

"Water," said Borland. To Lika, not to him.

She handed over a flask. Borland brought it to the wounded man's lips. He drank greedily, choked, coughed, drank again.

"Who are you."

"Not Apex," said Borland. "That's all you need to know for now."

The man looked at him. Then at Lika. Then at Borland again. Something in him let go — not relaxation, just a decision — his last fight was already behind him.

* * *

Borland drew the information out methodically. Not with pressure, not with threats — simply with questions. Short, specific, without the pauses that give time to think and to filter.

Apex had sent out a group three days ago. The task — to find the Object and take it under control. The Object — a man who had come out of a spatial anomaly alive. Apex had been watching this anomaly, and, of course, by the time everything was passed up to the leadership, he had already managed to get away from them.

The group of mercenaries had finally caught up with the guy, he didn't know his way around the Zone and kept doubling back, and that was how they took him. Then they were attacked.

"The Darks," Borland repeated quietly.

"There were about twenty of them, maybe more." The wounded man spoke with effort, in short pieces, saving his breath. "I'd never seen the likes of them. The hands on some of them... different. Some had their faces covered with masks, but under the masks too, something was off. They came out of the deep as if they knew where we were. As if they'd been waiting."

"They have the Object."

"They took him. Alive." A pause, a long one. "He went on his own. Didn't resist. As if he knew them."

Borland was silent.

"Description," he said.

"Young. Twenty-five, maybe less. Light brown hair." The wounded man closed his eyes, remembering. "Dressed not like us, the gear foreign, not from here. Speaks strangely — the words are Russian, but a manner of speech or an accent I couldn't place. And when he came out of the fracture, they reported he had an artifact in his hand. It glowed — evenly, faintly."

Borland nodded. Once, briefly.

Interesting. Whether this artifact is the same as the one Khimik and Prigorshnya once had, before it was reforged into the Cutter, or something else entirely. How does it work?

He set those questions aside in his head.

Lika looked at him. Something in his face had changed — barely noticeably, at the level of what she had already learned to read in him.

* * *

"Can you walk?" Borland asked.

"No."

Borland adjusted the tourniquet on the wounded man's leg — quickly, professionally, without needless explanations. Checked that it was tight enough, loosened it a little where it was pinching.

"Apex will come back for its own. Lie quiet. You'll hold out."

"And you?"

"We're leaving. You know how you people work."

"I do. They'll write me off."

Leshy took his handheld, held it in his hand. Put it back.

Andr's voice sounded in his head. Downloaded the data, many files are encoded, need to work with them.

They left. The wounded man didn't call after them.

* * *

Lika walked and waited. Borland was silent for a long time — longer than usual. It wasn't the silence of having nothing to say. This was something else, he was thinking something over.

"Do you know who that was?" she asked.

"I don't think I know him personally."

He didn't stop. He answered on the move, without turning around.

"From the Zones, people sometimes leave through fractures. It happens in different ways. Sometimes by accident." A pause. "And there are some like me, who can open fractures and pass through them."

Lika digested that. Walked and digested.

"He's from your world."

"Hard to say, I can barely call any of the worlds I've been in my own."

"He came here through a fracture and, judging by what that man said, he was disoriented, does that mean he got here by accident? And the Darks took him, and who are they, anyway?"

"You have too many questions. The Darks — those who will never leave the Zone again. Its permanent residents."

They walked. The Zone pressed evenly, in the background. Lika thought about the man with the accent and the artifact in his hand, and about the Darks. Thought about her father, who was also somewhere here. Thought about whether these stories had much in common — and whether she wanted to know.

"Where are we heading now?" she asked. "To the city of the Darks?"

Borland looked ahead.

"Could be." Leshy answered shortly. "But things between me and them aren't great."

"This man," she said. "Is he important to you?"

Borland didn't answer right away. Walked.

"I don't know him personally. But I'm interested in how he got here." A pause. "His appearance, and the fact that Apex has an interest in fractures, all this leads me to some not very good thoughts."

Lika nodded. For her, her father was important because he was her father. For him, this man was important because they were somehow alike, and he wanted to learn his story.

* * *

At the rest stop Borland took out the map. He looked at it for a long time, tracing something with his finger above the sheet, not touching.

"Skvorets mentioned the northern node," said Lika.

"Yes. I saw."

"Have you been there?"

"Near it." He didn't look up from the map. "Didn't go close. The pressure there is such that without preparation you lose your bearings fast. Your father, judging by Skvorets's notebook, went through there. Either he had preparation, or he knew something others didn't."

"And do the Darks go there?"

"They live nearby, in essence, apart from them you won't meet anyone there." He folded the map. "We'll have to pay them a visit after all."

Lika digested that.

"So, you know their leader?" Lika kept on with her questions.

"I did, yes. Their leader may have changed. Some half a year ago, three of the Darks decided to get cheeky and help themselves in my house. After that, a parcel with three heads of the Darks was found on the outskirts of the city."

Borland fell silent.

"Will they let us in?"

Borland put the map away. Stood up.

"I don't know. But we'll try. Nobody has repealed the law of the Zone, they only have themselves to blame."

Chapter 15. Apex

There were six of them.

Borland saw them before they saw him — stopped, raised a hand. Lika halted beside him and looked where he was looking, until she saw it herself: movement in the tall grass, even, professional. The point man walked fifty meters ahead of the main group. Two on the flanks, at a small distance that allowed them to see the center and at the same time not bunch up, blocking each other's line of fire. The rest between them one after another — tight, but leaving room to maneuver. The intervals were measured.

"Down," quietly. Lika sank into the grass at the same time as he did.

Borland lay on his side, took out a monocular. Watched.

Lika lay next to him and breathed evenly — slowly, from the belly, not the chest. The grass above her was tall. She didn't move.

Apex was a hundred and fifty meters away. They looked in the right direction — but not at the right place. They were looking for tracks on the trail, and Borland hadn't walked on trails for a long time. The point man stopped, crouched, read something on the ground. Raised his eyes and swept them along the horizon — slowly, methodically, with pauses.

At one moment he was looking straight in Lika's direction.

She didn't stir. Counted seconds. One. Two. Three.

He turned away. Gave the group a signal with his hand. They went on.

* * *

They lay there another five minutes — Borland saw them off through the monocular. Then he was the first to raise his head, assess the situation, nod.

They got up. Went in another direction — fast, low, along the edge of the shrubs.

"Were those people from Apex?" Lika asked.

"Looks like it."

"And still — who are they? Military?"

"Former. Or acting under cover." Borland didn't look back. "That level of training doesn't appear in half a year in the Zone. That's years of work in the field — before the Zone."

"How do you know?"

"I watched how they move. How they hold intervals. How the point man read the ground — fast, without fuss." A pause. "And because I saw similar ones here a year ago. I didn't know then what they were called."

Lika digested that.

"Apex was here earlier than the institute said."

"Much earlier. Half a year is when they stopped hiding."

They walked fast. The Zone pressed evenly — without jumps, without warnings. Lika kept the pace and thought that six people with such bearing and such gear — that wasn't a reconnaissance group. That was a search party. With resources. With a task.

* * *

"They're looking for the Object," said Borland after a few minutes. "The one the Darks took from them."

Lika walked and thought about it. About what it means to be part of someone else's story that you didn't choose. About how four years ago her father had gone out on an assignment called "Resonance" and ended up at the center of something incomparably bigger than one man with one assignment.

"What is the northern node? This name is mentioned in Skvorets's diary too," she asked.

Borland was silent for a moment.

"A place where there are more fractures than anywhere else in this Zone. A natural cluster. Unstable." He veered right, without explaining why — she no longer asked in such cases. "If someone wants to control the transitions between worlds, the northern node is the most obvious place for it."

"'Resonance' — apparently, it's a project to control spatial anomalies," said Lika.

"Yes. Looks like it."

They walked a few more minutes in silence. Then Borland stopped at a small ravine, went down, raised a hand — wait. Examined the bottom. Climbed back up, nodded — clear.

They crossed.

"When we get to the Darks," said Lika, when they had climbed out on the other side, "what awaits us?"

"Me, possibly a bullet in the forehead." His voice level. "Maybe we'll be lucky and it'll all go peacefully."

"You're not afraid?"

"Matters of blood don't worry them much, I hope we'll sort it out. I'm not planning to linger there longer than necessary."

Lika nodded. To go quickly in and out of a city of people who carry mutations as a sign of belonging and have held their territory in the Zone for God knows how many years. It sounded simple. It was, of course, entirely different.

* * *

They spent the night in a small building — either a former substation or a pumping station, thick walls, small windows, high up. Borland inspected the perimeter, set a couple of tripwires — habitually, without words. Then he got down to the map, marking something with a pencil.

Lika sat by the wall and looked at him.

"How did you end up here?" she asked. "From the very beginning, how it all was."

Borland didn't look up from the map.

"It's a long story. In my world I lost my parents and was supposed to become an outcast. I wouldn't have survived, then Khimik and Prigorshnya came to us through a fracture." The pencil stopped. "They took me with them. Before they left, the elder of our village made them this knife," Borland pointed to the Cutter on his hip, "with it it became easier to cut the boundaries of space."

"And then?"

"Then we wandered through worlds, settled, I grew up and decided to look for my own path. Met Vikki in one of the worlds and lost..."

Lika looked at him.

He went back to the map. Lika sat and thought that Leshy, evidently, had had no simple fate.

Lika lay down. Closed her eyes. The ceiling in the dark, thick walls, the quiet Zone outside.

Tomorrow — the city of the Darks.

Chapter 16. Deeper

They went deeper into the Zone, and the Zone felt it.

It didn't threaten — it simply thickened. The air grew heavier with every kilometer, not physically, but in some other way: a pressure on the temples that began in the morning as a background and by evening became something that took effort to ignore. Lika's detector beeped more often now — the anomalies stood thicker here, the gaps between them smaller. Borland skirted them as confidently as before, only the pauses on open stretches had grown longer.

"The Darks," said Lika. "Tell me."

Borland walked. He was silent for a while — gathering himself; she already knew this silence.

"They're people who spent too long in the Zone. Or who deliberately chose to live in it — not next to it, but inside." His voice was even. "Mutations build up in everyone who spends a lot of time deep. In most it's slow, almost unnoticeable. Not with the Darks. They sped the process up."

"Why?"

"They say it's how the Zone accepts them fully. Lets them in further than it lets ordinary people. Psi-pressure works on them differently — less. They can live where another man would lose consciousness in an hour. They go places I wouldn't go without preparation. But everything has its price — they can no longer leave the Zone. Two hours at most, and then their bodies start to decay."

Lika looked at his back. At the places where he wouldn't go without preparation. It was something she hadn't expected to hear from him.

So even you aren't all-powerful. You're still different from the Darks.

* * *

"You have a conflict with them," she said. "Haven't you thought about resolving it somehow?"

"There was a conflict." Curtly. "They started it themselves. Got what they had coming."

"And now they're angry at you."

"Very. They have their own system of values about their place in the Zone. I broke it. And you could say I threw down a challenge to them." Borland veered left, going around something invisible. "They'll let us through. But the conversation will be unpleasant."

"You warned me about that."

"Yes." A pause. "Keep quiet there. Whatever happens. If I tell you to leave without me — you leave at once, that's not up for discussion. They'll let you go. Understood?"

Lika didn't answer right away.

"Understood."

They walked on. The Zone pressed down. Borland had given her another portion of loofah half an hour ago — and she was thinking that the conversation ahead would be unpleasant. By his standards. And his standards and hers were different things.

* * *

At the rest stop she took out Skvorets's notebook.

She had already read almost all the entries — on the way, in pieces. Now she reread more slowly, went back, looked for details. Skvorets wrote about the Zone the way people write who live in it: in a habitual way, without extra words, with the brevity that comes when you no longer need to explain to yourself what the Zone is.

About her father — four mentions, she knew them. But now she was reading what lay between them.

Skvorets was looking for something. Not a specific artifact, not a specific place. Something he called the "exit" — and that word appeared in his entries often, always in lowercase, as if it were not about geography but about something else. An exit from what? From the Zone? From a situation? From whatever he had been dragged into together with her father? An exit from the Resonance project?

She didn't understand. But she put every line away somewhere inside, in the place where things were piling up whose meaning would surface later.

"Found something?" asked Borland.

"Don't know yet."

He nodded. Didn't press.

She looked at Skvorets's last entry — the one in a different handwriting. "If he made it — then there's a road." A road to where. Skvorets hadn't written. Either he knew it was obvious anyway. Or he was afraid to write it — in case strangers found the notebook.

Lika put the notebook away. Stood up. Pack onto her shoulders.

"Let's go," said Borland. He was already standing. Waiting.

They went deeper.

* * *

Toward evening the Zone around them changed once more.

The forest thinned — not because the trees ended, but because those that remained stood differently. Some of the trunks were twisted, as if something had been pulling them in different directions for long years. The branches grew not up but sideways and down. The leaves — or what had been leaves — were dark green, almost black at the edges.

"The psi-field is getting stronger," said Borland.

She already had the artifact ready. But Leshy laid his hand over hers.

"Don't overdo it."

"All right. Are we close?"

"Tomorrow morning we'll reach the edge of the city."

He chose a place for the night — a small hollow under a rock, with an overhang. The Zone smelled different here: to the usual ozone and metal something organic was added, something alive, that she couldn't identify. Not unpleasant — just unfamiliar.

Lika sat by the stone and leafed through the notebook one last time before sleep.

Skvorets wrote about the northern node in three places. Carefully — no coordinates, no names, only "the place where there are many of them." Fractures, he meant, most likely. Or anomalies. Or both.

He was looking for the road there. Bely knew the road. Bely had made it through.

Four years ago.

Lika closed the notebook. Looked at Borland: he lay with his eyes closed, breathing evenly. Whether he was asleep or not — she couldn't guess.

Chapter 17. The City of the Darks

The pressure began abruptly.