Chapter Text
52°55'53.3"N 36°02'06.2"E
Start: Baltiyskiy Pereulok, 7-9, Oryol, Orlovskaya oblast', Russia
The black-haired man with the big, bushy beard leans on the sink and stares at his reflection in the mirror. There are a few white strands in his beard and by his temples, but they can still be counted on two hands. His eyes are deep-set, placed a bit too close together, so dark brown that they look black unless the sun hits them directly to reveal a deep mahogany color. His nose bears scars from being broken many times, healing up straight but bumpy. His jaw is broad and chiseled like a G.I. Joe doll when he doesn’t hide it with a beard. There are a few laugh lines around his eyes and a deep furrow between his brows from frowning - not a single wrinkle caused by age.
He’s been here too long, people have started to remark on it.
The beard makes him look older but only yesterday his mate had caressed the skin beside his eyes lovingly and said, ‘I swear, you haven’t aged a day since we met.’ Her tone was joking, her smile loving, but it’s the third comment he’s gotten about it this month. From her, from a co-worker down at the factory, and a friend in the band he plays in in his spare time.
It’s time.
He grabs the brush from the counter and brushes through his long, thick mane of black hair, then puts it up in a bun on top of the head and leaves the bathroom.
He knocks on the door to his son’s room.
“Come in!”
He opens the door and steps inside. His son is scurrying around in his room, pulling out drawers, going through the wardrobe, stress oozing out of every fiber. Everyone says Nikita is a carbon copy of him. It’s not true. Nikita looks like the grandfather he’s never met, the grandfather long dead. Not quite as broad-jawed and thick-necked. His eyes are more evenly spaced. Handsome. But he and his son are tall, both 193 cm, often towering over everyone else. “You need help packing?”
“I can’t find my favorite sweater,” Nikita frets without looking at him.
“Only people are worth getting emotionally attached to,” he remarks.
Nikita stops his frantic search to give him a reprimanding look with his black eyes. “That attitude won’t help me find it, Dad,” he says then turns his attention back to rummage through a pile of clothes he most likely won’t see again until his mandatory two years of military service is done. He hadn’t even waited for the draft notice, he’d volunteered like a true, idealistic patriot. He dreams of setting the rest of the world free, yet he’s never known freedom. Hopefully, it’ll be two boring years since there’s a ceasefire. Probably temporary, but the Union has pulled back most troops from the countries they’ve invaded.
He sighs and scratches his beard. He never liked it. The clean-shaven ideals of his youth are still ingrained in him, and if the beard didn’t make him look older he’d never let it grow so long. “You’re wearing it.”
Nikita stops, looks down at his chest, then lets out a sheepish snigger and looks at him. “Fuck, I’m so nervous.”
He smiles. “I know. You’ll do fine. I got assigned a gig in Moscow this weekend and have to leave soon. Anya will pick you up in 30 minutes and take you to the base. Do you need help packing?”
Nikita giggles and shakes his head. “No, I’m done. It was just this shirt that was elusive,” he says and pulls at the sweater he’s wearing.
He spreads his arms for a hug and Nikita comes to him, lets himself be hugged, clinging and pressing his nose against his neck, drawing deep breaths of the father he might never see again. “I love you,” he tells his son. “You’re 18, a man grown, but you’ll always be my little boy. I want you to be safe and happy. If you can’t be safe and happy, I want you to be happy. And remember, when you ship out, leave a baby in every port.”
Nikita sniggers and says, “Dad!” in protest.
“No? Too little? Then leave three babies in every port,” he jokes. “You’d make your great-great grandma proud if you did.”
Nikita laughs. “You’re mad. I don’t get how Mom can love you,” he says, only to hug him a bit tighter, go serious, and add, “I love you.”
“Good luck.”
“You too. Maybe this time the entertainment division will see your potential and make it your primary assignment,” Nikita says, knowing his father’s passion for music. It won’t happen and they both know it. Or maybe Nikita believes it? He’s young and hasn’t figured out how the Divisions work quite yet. There’s no use in dreaming in the Union if the Divisions don’t see eye-to-eye with you.
He says goodbye to his mate, caressing the wrinkles by her eyes, feeling the softness of her skin caused by its gradual loss of elasticity due to age. She’s only 45. She may have peaked already but he’d gladly stay by her side until her hair was gray and lusterless, her eyes blinded by cataracts, and her skin paper-thin and so wrinkled you could count her life-years in their folds. She kisses him and wishes him good luck in Moscow, and then he leaves her, closing the door behind him, glad she can’t smell the lump in his throat.
He takes the shuttle to Moscow and from there, the shuttle to the airport. He heads to the office of the Transport Division outside of the airport and goes to the reception. “Hi. A friend of mine who lives in Iceland is getting mated and asked me to play at his mating party,” he says and holds up his guitar case.
“Can I see your paperwork, please?” the receptionist asks. He pushes it through the hole in the armored glass and she taps away on her computer. “Congratulations. I can see your son got into the Special Forces. You must be very proud,” she says.
“Proud as a bear,” he answers with a smile and withholds an urge to scratch his beard. “He left today, so nervous that he searched for half an hour for his favorite sweater without realizing he was wearing it.”
The receptionist chuckles. “They grow up too fast. Have you got the invite to the party?” she asks. He hands over the papers he’s written. She looks at the names on it and taps on her computer again, checking that the names on the invite are people living in Iceland before she hands it back to him. “You’re in luck. The next flight leaves in two hours. The one after that is on Thursday, so if you’d come later you’d have to wait almost a week. I’ll be right back.”
She leaves the reception and goes to the back room with his ID papers. He waits for ten minutes before she emerges again, this time with his paperwork, a passport, a ticket, and a brown envelope. “Here you go. Here’s your passport, ticket, and room number at the hotel in Reykjavik. Your allowance is in the brown envelope. The flight back is in two weeks. Have a nice trip. Oh, and, in Iceland, there are still shifters that haven’t converted. They’re dangerous,” she leans forward towards the glass and lowers her voice, “and it’s impossible to see if they’re shifters unless they transform. It could be anyone walking around in the midst of us over there, so be careful.”
She has no idea how right she is. “I will. Thank you.”
He leaves the office and heads for the entrance of the airport. There, he stops and looks back for a moment. There are two workers sweeping the pristine streets, everything is clean and well-tended. In the distance, there is a bronze statue of a National Division Leader long dead. There are almost no people moving about yet. The leisure hours haven’t started for either of the work shifts and the only ones on the move are people traveling to their assigned places. He takes a deep breath and enters the airport.
He hasn’t flown in 20 years. The new airplanes are much more comfortable. He’d still prefer to go by boat. He misses the sea and misses living close to the docks. But life took him to the Union and to the loving embrace of Svetlana. He’ll never regret that.
5 hours and 12 minutes later he unboards the airplane and takes the shuttle to Reykjavik. It’s light outside despite being in the middle of the night. There’s a monitor on the shuttle that displays the temperature. It’s 7℃ outside. He longs for warmer weather and misses his time in Cuba and Bulgaria.
He checks into the Divison-assigned hotel and goes to make small talk with the receptionist. After talking about children and the woes of raising teenagers he says, “I’ve heard there are Allied soldiers stationed here. Is that true? How dangerous would it be to take a stroll this time of night? We don’t have midnight sun where I come from.”
“Oh, you should be perfectly safe. We currently have a ceasefire and they’re only here to protect ships coming with cargo. They’re by the harbor. As long as you’re not hostile they won’t do anything to you. You could even talk to them if you dare, as long as you know other languages. Most of them don’t know Russian or even Icelandic. As for strolling, the crime rate is still at the Union level. Even before our troops pulled out the only crimes were what the rebels did to the troops. You’re safe.” The receptionist prattles on, brings a map, and shows him sights he must see, points out the harbor if he wants to go to gawk or simply avoid the scary warships.
Ten minutes later he leaves the hotel, carrying only his guitar case. He goes arrow-straight towards the harbor like a homing bird, until he spots the part of the docks fenced in by a barbed wire fence guarded by stern soldiers with foreign uniforms.
He heads towards the gate where there’s a small booth with a guard inside. Two other guards stand on the inside of the gates. They get more alert as he approaches; they sniff the air suspiciously and hold their rifles ready. But there’s nothing suspicious to smell. The guitar case only holds a guitar, and he isn’t nervous. If they pick up an emotion, it’s melancholy. Some choices are hard.
The guard inside the booth also becomes more alert when he comes close. The skin under her ears and on her throat glistens with secretion and he can smell that she’s in pre-Heat. It was 20 years since he last smelt the scent of freely flowing secretion and pre-Heat. Maybe a decade since he caught a whiff of a gender marker on someone. “Excuse me, Ma’am,” he says in English, slightly perturbed to note he’s got a faint Russian accent after not speaking his mother tongue for two decades.
“Yes?”
“I’m a Union resident,” he says and takes his passport out of his pocket, handing it over. “I’d like for you to help me fake my own death, and then transport me to another country.”
She looks at the passport with hard, skeptical eyes. “And why would we do that, Mr. Artyom Smirnov?”
He scratches his beard and looks at one of the guards, then lets his fangs grow long, exchanges his nails for claws, and lets his eyes start to glow whitish golden. “I don’t know, but the Union has become a hostile place for a struggling musician,” he says jokingly with a small smirk. He looks back at the guard in the booth and adds, “Please. Help me.”
For a fraction of a moment, his heart skips with fear. Someone could’ve seen him aside from the guards. He might’ve signed his own death warrant even here in Iceland. The guards look too shocked, all of them. If he’s miscalculated―
The guard in the booth hits a button and the lock in the gate clicks open. “Step inside, Artyom. I’ll call someone to come get you.”
When he steps inside, one of the gate guards gives him an encouraging smile. His eyes light up to glow yellow with a thick red ring at the edge of his iris. “Welcome, brother. You’re safe now,” he says and closes the gate behind them.
Another man comes running, ushering him away to one of the ships, and leads him down to a hut. He’s offered to take a seat by a little table, given a cup of coffee and a sandwich, and then the man takes a seat opposite him. He smells carefully friendly and introduces himself as Captain Johan Sorensen of the Norweigan Navy. “So you’re seeking asylum?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I can’t offer any military information of value. I’ve been working in a factory for the last 20 years.”
Johan opposite him sniffs the air. “You’re 70? 80?”
“I honestly don’t recall,” he tells the Captain. “If I had to guess, I’m closer to 80 than 70. I ended up in the mainland Union due to a self-defensive move. I was living in Bulgaria when a battle took place in the city I lived. The Allied attacked but were soon driven off. I joined the fray on the Allied side and was wounded. When I realized we’d lost and spotted Union soldiers walking around to make sure the fallen allies were dead, I looted a civilian Union body of a man who looked my age, took his ID papers, tore off the part with his photo, and threw it in a nearby fire, the pocketed it and lay down, pretending to be unconscious. My wounds were superficial but I had a bump on my head so when they checked my ID paper and woke me up, I pretended to have a severe concussion. They don’t siphon so I got away with it, but they transported me away with their wounded. Suddenly, I was Artyom.”
“Were you born in Bulgaria?”
He shakes his head. “No. I was living there temporarily while figuring out where to go next. Before that, I’d been a sailor for about 20 years I think. It’s hard to tell the passing of time sometimes. But then, like now, there were Unionites around starting to wonder why I don’t age.”
“And before you became a sailor?”
He removes his golden mating ring and pockets it. 20 years of loving and living and no scent bond to show for it, only a piece of gold, a beautiful child, and memories. He wishes he could explain to his son that memories are the only thing nobody can take from you, for good and bad. “There was a pack war. I saw all my family slaughtered and was gravely wounded. I was left for dead. When the pyre wagon collected our bodies I was scentless. They brought me anyway and left me near the pyre to wait until my passing to burn me. A cargo captain who owed our pack a favor found me, hauled me onto his ship, and took me to Cuba. He nursed me back to life and gave me a job. I’m American. My name is Antoine Bolton.”