 
A man of light.

OCTOBER

The heart, liver and brain lay next to the corpse on the parquet floor of a one-room apartment. There were no signs of violence on the dead body, and one would have thought that these organs did not belong to it... That someone had cut them out of another person and placed them near the corpse. But it was the third time this week the investigator had seen such a murder. A lifeless body and next to it its organs, carefully extracted from the body, without any damage to the skin. It could not be called anything other than mysticism, but the investigator did not believe in such devilry. There must be a logical explanation for everything, even for this phenomenon. The detective walked round the room, oblivious to his colleagues. The people of his group gathered evidence, talking in low voices. Snatches of neighbours' speech came from behind the front door of the flat; they were also curious to know what had happened and, lacking any reliable information, they made up various theories. The investigator sometimes glimpsed at the heart, lying in a pool of blood that had flowed from its valves, then at the brain, extracted from a completely intact skull. The liver was just a few meters away from the body.

It has already been established that the victim was wanted for rape. Two other poor things, who were skinned in the same mysterious way a few days earlier, also used to be criminals. They committed a series of robberies against retirees. They killed an old man and maimed two old women. The robbers were found dead on the street, their organs lay next to their bodies. The clothing of the dead was not torn or cut. It was as if someone had teleported their heart, liver, stomach, or brain \- each time it was a different combination - out of their bodies. The autopsy showed that the organs were removed carelessly. They were grabbed and ripped out from torsos. It seemed that a ghost had passed through people's bodies, taking away their most vital organs.

Chapter one

SEPTEMBER

"See that trunk over there? The fattest one," Alex asked into the microphone.

"I see, I see," Danya muttered.

"Go a little to the left of this trunk."

"To the left?"

"Yes, to the left."

Alex took a cigarette from the pack and lit it.

"Alex, the window," said one of the coordinators sitting next to him.

He got up from the computer desk and, passing several people hunching over their monitors, went to the window.

"To the left?" he heard Danya's voice in the headphones.

"Yes, yes, to the left."

Alex stood by the window smoking. He glanced at his monitor that received broadcasting from the camera on the forehead of his Wayfarer, Danya. Flashing in the light of the headlamp he saw curved intertwining vines and crooked trunks of the Thicket. They were like a huge litter of snakes... no, even more like tentacles of thousands of octopuses, this extraterrestrial forest enveloped a group of people walking through the darkness, to the very centre of it.

"To the left, yes?" Danya asked again.

At the age of twenty-five, coordinator Alex had a wealth of experience working with people with Down syndrome. He knew perfectly well how to respond to them, knew that he could not take it out on them, be rude or vent. If you were asked the same thing twenty times, you must answer the same thing twenty times. The Wayfarer's calmness is above everything else. "Don't yell at the Wayfarer. Control yourself," - the instructor used to repeat. But sometimes Alex couldn't help wanting to yell on hearing another: "to the left, yeah?" Or even not to yell, but to give a good slap to his Wayfarer, so that the skin of his palm flushed and the Wayfarer's ears rang... Slap him right in the ear, him and somebody else just for fun!

"Yes, to the left," Alex said calmly, throwing the cigarette butt out the window and returning to his desk.

"Now let's go around it now," Danya said.

A web of green vines continued to flash on the monitor screen. In the beam of the headlamp Alex could see ground, then Danya's hands pushed the branches aside, then again those damned vines. The Wayfarers pushed their way through a dense tangle of alien plants that grew thousands of square kilometres so thickly that even sunlight could not pierce the Thicket.

"There's something..." said Danya, staring at the red bud hanging from the trunk. The bud resembled an unopened rose, a meter and a half in diametre.

Through Danya's camera, Alex saw one of the Wayfarers touching a bud, which made the plant flinch a little.

"Kolya, what is your boy doing?!" Alex shouted and took off one headphones.

"Don't touch it!" Kolya shouted into the microphone.

The other coordinators told their wayfarers not to go near the strange flower.

"They don't understand," Kolya said to Alex, "it seems instructing them is useless."

Nicholas's wayfarer moved a little away from the bud. The plant slowly opened its petals, and a human hand poked out. Reddish slime hung from the tips of the petals. The flower was shaking slightly, as if someone was turning in it. The hand clenched into a fist, then smoothly stretched the fingers and clenched again.

"Move South," Alex said loudly to the coordinators. They told their wayfarers to follow Danya.

"Danya," Alex began, "look at the compass."

"I look," an image of a hand with a compass on it appeared in the monitor.

"Now be fast, but don't fuss, you need to go South," Alex continued. "It's were "S" letter.

"Aha, so that the arrow looks there? Or to the letter "N"? I forgot something," Danya asked and looked at the bud. It began to open and two more hands poked out and gripped the edges of the petals. Slime from the plant dripped on the ground.

"Forget the compass! Turn your back on the flower and run fast!" Alex shouted. "Go!"

"I see, I see, got it," Danya muttered.

Danya's hands flashed on the monitor, hastily pushing the vines aside in the light of the trembling headlamp beam. Alex could hear Danya's rapid breathing, the rustle of plants and the horrible whining of a wayfarer behind him.

"Are your boys running?!" Alex asked the coordinators, not taking his eyes off his monitor.

"Yes."

"Yes."

"They do."

"Yes."

The door to the coordinators' room swung open.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Semyon Petrovich shouted. "Have you never done that before?! Get everyone out of there!"

The head of the Department glared at the coordinators. They sat staring at the monitors. Some of them were talking with their wayfarers.

"We're working on this, Semyon Petrovich" Alex said.

"Go to point "D"! As soon as you're done with that, Kolya, to my office!" Semyon Petrovich shouted and went to Alex's screen. He stood behind him, watching the scene carefully.

"Where to flee?" Kolya asked.

"Let's first get 'em as far from here as possible, and then sort it out," Alex said.

"Alex, how long do we have to run?" Danya asked excitedly.

"Just a little more."

"Stop them," said Semyon Petrovich after half a minute, "we must check the compass, or they'll run the hell away."

"Slow down for a sec," Alex said into the microphone.

They stopped. Danya breathed heavily into the microphone, sniffed and mumbled something. The image of the vines on the monitor moved smoothly up and down.

"Could you stop breathing like that into the microphone! Quiet! Turn off the headlamp," Alex shouted, then said addressing to the coordinators. "Have them turn off all the lights. Silence!"

"The fucking wayfarers managed lose their night vision devices," Semyon Petrovich swore.

The screens were completely dark. The coordinators listened to the faint rustle of the Thicket. The tension was nearly tangible. Alex froze, holding the headphones to his ears.

"Stay quiet," he said to Danya.

After about ten seconds, he took one earpiece away from his ear.

"No one seems to be following," Alex said.

"Shall we turn on the lights or wait?" Kolya asked.

"Wait... Let's keep quiet here for a while," said Semyon Petrovich. "Let me have it."

The head of the Department took the headphones off Alex's head and put them on his, leaving one ear open.

"Danya, turn on the torch, can you?" said Semyon Petrovich.

An image of the ground and the edge of the wayfarer's boot appeared on the screen.

"Show me the compass."

Danya raised his hand to the camera.

"Right, now turn a little to the left... and... well done... more to the left..."

The beam slid to the side, illuminating the other members of the expedition – four people with headlamps and cameras shuffled, nervously looking around. They were all in their twenties.

"Danya, turn off the headlamp and don't move."

The monitor went dark again.

"They ran about a hundred meters, didn't they?" Semyon Petrovich asked.

"I think so," Alex said.

"Give me the map."

Alex opened a drawer and took out a paper map. The head grabbed and unfolded it and peered at the map markings.

"So, we were going from East to West," reasoned Semyon Petrovich, "then ran into... Then you had them turn their back and... So-o-o-o... A hundred meters let it be... All right, now we will go a little back parallel to the route, and then turn left and get back on the original route.

Semyon Petrovich put the map on Alex's desk and jointly placed the headphones on his head.

"Come on, Alex, lead your comrades!" He patted Alex's shoulder. "I'm going to my room. I'll be there if you need me."

"Yeah."

Alex adjusted his headphones.

"Danya," he said.

"What again?"

"It's all right. Turn on the headlamp."

Danya lit up an octopus of overhanging tentacles.

"Show me the compass."

"There, there it is."

"Nice. Go straight. You go forward directly where you are looking. The others will follow you. Okay?

"I see, I see, got it."

"Go."

"I go."

They continued to wade through the space weed that had infected Earth a few years ago. No one could have thought that the infection could affect not only individual organisms, but also the entire celestial body, which was "lucky enough" to pick up a parasite. A galactic-scale parasite!

Danya pushed aside the thicket of this cosmic infection with his hands, leading four more people, who were also directed by their coordinators. Five people with Down syndrome were prowling in the most dangerous place on the planet in total darkness. The only thing they could rely on was the professionalism of their coordinators, sitting in the cosy, warm room of the Institute of Space Infections, a hundred kilometres away from the Thicket. Although, given the speed of growth of this lichen, in six months the building of the Institute (as well as the entire town) will be absorbed by the weed, and people will have to move.

"It looks like a wall," said Danya, coming up to the log wall of a house. The building, wrapped in vines, was barely visible in the monitor. Through the empty window frames the intertwined Thicket vines got into the house.

Alex stared at the map, trying to figure out what village they might be near. But there were no settlements nearby.

He thought to himself:

"Maybe it's just a separate house? They couldn't have gotten lost... They've ran no big distance..."

"What is it?" Kolya asked.

"We... nothing, go as you did."

"Which side of the house should we go around?" Danya asked.

"Any," Alex said.

"A-a-a, I see, I see, got it."

As they walked round the house, they came across a chain-link fence. Moving along it, Danya noticed a reinforced concrete pillar that went up into the intertwined vines. The top of the pillar was not visible. Twenty meters later, the fence ran again, this time it was wooden. Behind it was another house.

Alex thought:

"It looks like a village. We managed to get lost. Well, or is it all simply not mapped."

From the headphones came a scream, which Alex felt to be fifty meters away from the group.

"Alex! There are people shouting somewhere!" gabbled Danya. "I'm scared, scared. I don't want to walk around here anymore!"

Once again Alex thought:

"If only they were people."

"Danya." He said clearly and loudly. "Calm down, don't be nervous,"

Daniel was turning his head, and Alex could not make out what was happening there.

"Stop fidgeting, I can't help you if you don't calm down."

Danya sobbed with fear when the cry again came from the depths of the Thicket. Other coordinators also tried to reassure their wayfarers. Semyon Petrovich flew into the office.

"Alex!"

"Wait a sec," Alex waved his hand to the Department head.

"Danya," he continued, "you are going home now. It's going to be all right, get it?

"Yes, I get it."

"Can you show me where the scream came from?"

Danya pointed a finger in front of him.

"Like the last time, turn your back on the scream source and leave. Don't fuss, don't be nervous, everything is fine."

Danya turned and started walking. The other wayfarers, following the instructions of their coordinators, kept close to Danya.

"I'm going home," he said.

"Yes, Danya, go home."

"To my parents. But if they give me porridge for breakfast again, I won't share my money with them."

"They won't, cuz you'll order pizza."

"With pineapple."

"Once you get the money, you can order pizza every day."

"And I'll get a pet."

"A dog?"

"A dinosaur or a tiger."

"Danya, a dog is better; the tiger will eat you."

The wayfarers continued to move in an unknown direction. There was no doubt now that they were lost.

"I'm going to train it," said Danya.

"I'll help you."

"Thank you. By the way; I forgot my Rubik's cube, it's in my room at the Institute, I need to pick it up."

"You'll pick it up when you return."

Suddenly there was a thud and the image on Alex's screen went blank.

"It hurts, it hurts!" He heard a voice in his earphones. "Leg! Let go!"

Alex jumped up from his chair, removing one earpiece.

"Danya!"

The coordinators were talking into their microphones. Semyon Petrovich raced up to Kolya's screen and shouted something. Alex couldn't figure out what. He heard only Danya's screams, but they were no longer legible. The sounds in the headphones merged into a cacophony. Alex felt dizzy and his hands were shaking. There was another loud cry... not human, it came close to Danya, and then there was silence.

Two of the five monitors showed the ground illuminated by headlamps. The other three screens broadcasted darkness.

For a while Alex stood with both hands on the table, staring at the black screen, until he heard Semyon Petrovich's voice behind.

"You will tell his relatives 'bout it yourself... I don't have the nerves for it anymore," he said softly.

The head of the coordinator department left the room.

"The relatives know where they send them," Alex thought, "just a way to get rid of the dead weight and make money."

Chapter two

Kostya sat on the toilet and pushed with all his might. He startled by a knock on the door.

"How much longer?" Zakhar said with displeasure.

"Soon, soon," Kostya replied, and again pushed.

He thought to himself:

"What is it? Why is that?"

"You are not alone in the flat! Just get out, I suppose there's already shit all over!" Zakhar shouted from behind the toilet door.

"Soon, soon, it won't take long."

Kostya began leafing through a book of paintings by famous artists of the past. He always went to the toilet with this book; it helped him relax. The mountain landscape caught his eye. The snow peak looked so natural to him, as if it had been filmed instead of painted. Kostya imagined that he was climbing this mountain, looking down and seeing the bottomless abyss below. His lower back is tied with a rope to the other end of which tied a huge stone. Kostya climbs from ledge to ledge, pulling himself up, one leg, then the other, higher and higher. The stone becomes heavier and it's pulling Kostya down into the abyss, but he still struggled to climb up. Sweat breaks out on his forehead. Kostya doesn't give up. The peak top is very close. He looks down and sees that the rock is getting bigger and bigger, and the rope is starting to break. Kostya makes the last push and throws his leg onto a small platform located on the very top of the mountain. The stone continues to grow in size, becoming heavier and heavier, and Kostya begins to slide down... He is about to fall down, but at the last moment, his hand clings to the platform edge. With a cry, he makes the last pull; the rope breaks, and the rock falls into the abyss, with a gurgling sound. Kostya climbs to the top and falls on the back with relief. He lies there, looking up at the blue sky.

"I wish I could climb mountains," he thinks to himself. "The biggest and the most dangerous. I will become... what's his name... mountain climber!"

Kostya got up from the toilet, dried himself, and flushed.

"Ugh," he said. "My book is magical."

Coming out of the toilet, Kostya came across Zakhar, Kostya's foster father. He was leaning his shoulder against the wall, looking at the boy with displeasure.

"You are going to piss or to shit?" Kostya muttered illegibly.

"Do you care?" replied Zakhar.

"Not really, but are you going to piss or to shit?" Kostya mumbled again, and then added: "Well... I'm just asking..."

The foster father went into the toilet, having had pushed Kostya with his shoulder, and slammed the door.

"Yeah, I see, that means 'to shit'," Kostya said quietly, under his breath.

"It's not just one extra chromosome you've got, but a dozen of them." Zakhar's voice came from behind the door.

"I'm not a moron," Kostya muttered.

He stood at the door for a few seconds, remembering what he was going to do. Having had remembered, Kostya went into the kitchen and put the kettle on the gas ring and turned on the gas. He picked up a matchbox from the table, pulled out a match and tried to light it by striking it on the box. The match broke.

"Too strong," he thought. "Now again."

He got a new one, slowly pressed the match against the box. It didn't light. Then he stroke it a little faster. Nothing. He tried to strike even more faster, but missed.

"How can it be..."

He put the match aside on the table and took out another.

"It's some kind of malfunction," he thought. "This one looks better."

He slowly put the head of the new match to the box, concentrated, pursed his lips, and jerked his hand sharply. The match broke again.

Kostya put the boxes on the table and sat down on his cot, which occupied half a room. The other half of the kitchen was usually occupied by Zakhar's cot, but now it was now made and stood in the hallway.

"Naughty matches," in his thoughts Kostya scolded the matchbox in front of him. "Bad"

Kostya stared at it, and his head was full of memories: first, take the box, then take out one match, put it to the black side and jerk it sharply with the hand.

"What am I doing wrong?"

For several minutes Kostya scratched the back of his head and sighed over the unfortunate matches, until Zakhar came into the kitchen. He immediately rushed to the stove and turned off the gas. Then he turned to Kostya and slapped him on the head with all his strength.

"Are you an idiot? Think what you're doing!" he shouted. "If you don't know how to use it, then don't touch the stove at all!"

Kostya jumped up from the cot and grabbed his head.

"You're bad! Asshole!" He shouted and ran out of the kitchen straight to his sister's room. Anya was preparing for admission to Medical University, sitting at a desk and reading a compendium.

"Kostya, something wrong?" she put the notebook aside when saw her brother crying.

"Zakhar, asshole!" he shouted.

"Thank you, I know," she said.

He sat down on the bed, still grabbing his head.

"Did he hit you?"

"Yes, indeed! Zakhar is shit!"

"Stop it," said Anya. "That's too much."

She got up and went to the kitchen, Kostya followed. Zakhar was pouring water into the kettle.

"Who gave you the right to put hands on him?" Anya asked.

"What do you mean?" the foster father asked and put the kettle on the gas ring.

"He said you hit him."

"He lied."

"It's you lying!" Kostya shouted from the hall.

"I didn't hit him, I just scolded him for leaving the gas on, do you have an idea of how dangerous it is? Suppose he turns on the gas at night and leaves. We all then won't wake up in the morning. It's dangerous to keep retards in the house. You have to watch."

"I wanted to drink some tea," said Kostya, "but the matches were faulty."

"Your head is faulty!" snapped the foster father. "Your head doesn't seem to differ much from your ass. How clever one should be to boil an empty kettle?"

"If you hit him one more time," began Anya, pointing a finger at Zakhar, "I'll go to the police or... or the guardianship department!"

"What department?" Zakhar asked sarcastically.

"Don't pretend not to know!" Anya muttered, realising that she had made a mistake with the service name.

"Guardianship," Zakhar chuckled. "What will you tell them?"

"I'll tell them you're assaulted us."

"And the evidence?"

"I'll find it!"

"And what will you do if I am recalled from you?"

"What?"

"Yes, what?"

"What are we going to do?"

"Yeah, what will you do? Think of it."

Anya wanted to say something, but Zakhar interrupted her.

"If I am recalled, you will go to an orphanage until you are of age, and your brother will be assigned a new foster parent, and it is not clear whether he will be better than me. So be thankful that I have issued custody of you too. I can refuse, if I want, and you will move to an orphanage for two years, and I can guarantee your Kostya will spend these two years in the middle of nowhere. Maybe you'll see each other sometimes... You get it?"

"Just you dare hitting him again, get it?" Anya said viciously.

"I didn't even touch him," said Zakhar.

"No, you touched," Kostya couldn't calm down.

"Just calm down, don't whine like a girl," shouted Zakhar, looking at him from behind Anya's shoulder. "You're twenty already!"

Their conflict was interrupted by a doorbell. Zakhar squeezed through the kitchen doorway, deliberately pressing Anya against the wall, and sort of accidentally ran his hand over her breasts, developed beyond her years. The girl looked at him with distaste. The foster parent winked at her and went to the front door.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Bailiff service," said a woman's voice.

"What do you want?" Zakhar looked through the peephole and saw three silhouettes on the staircase.

"We'll have to seize your property."

"What's that for?"

"For debts. Open the door, please."

"What property, what are you talking about?"

"You have been receiving notifications for several months."

"I didn't receive anything."

"Zakhar Sergeevich, you haven't paid child support for more than a year. You were sent notices of debt. You've been ignoring them."

"Shit," he said in a whisper. Kostya and Anya watched their foster parent in silence.

"Zakhar Sergeevich, open the door," the woman said demandingly.

"No one's home," said Zakhar.

"You'll still have to pay off your debts."

"No one's home."

"Let's not joke."

Zakhar turned to his roommates and put a finger to his mouth.

"Hush," he said.

"Zakhar Sergeevich, if you show any resistance, we will call the police."

"What are you waiting for, open the door," said Anya.

Zakhar shook his head.

"No, no, wait. The filth will take our TV," he whispered.

"I can open it," Kostya interjected. "I know how to do it, it's not like matches".

"They'll take it anyway," said Anya.

"Keep your voice down. Let's just ignore these bloodsuckers," Zakhar said.

Anya twisted a finger at her temple.

"They'll knock out our door, " she said.

"Wait, let them go, I'll give the TV to Mishka, so they don't take it away. Next time I'll open them, let them in and let them do what they want."

"Zakhar Sergeevich, we hear everything you say, tomorrow we will return with the police. All the best!" the bailiff said.

A few seconds later, Zakhar looked through the peephole again, but there was no one there.

"Child support, then," said Anya. "Interesting."

Zakhar sighed heavily and went into the kitchen, looking down at his feet.

"You want tea?" he asked.

Anya and Kostya followed. The girl sat down on a stool at a small table near the window, and Kostya remained standing in the doorway.

"I'd like to know the story about the debts. I'm curious to know it," the girl said.

"The wife filed for divorce, took the children. That's the whole story," said Zakhar, pouring tea into cups. "I don't want to tell you the details."

"How many children do you have?" Anya asked.

"Two," the man said.

The girl noticed that his eyes glittered.

"Do you see them?"

"No. I'd rather not think about it."

Zakhar poured boiling water into mugs and put two spoonfuls of sugar into each.

"I thought we just didn't have any money, but in fact we're in the red. Wonderful," said Anya.

"The service pays me something for you, and we have enough to live on."

"I'm eighteen in two years, and we'll move out from your house, and I'll get custody of Kostya."

"I understand."

"By the way, can you find a job?"

"So far, I'm fine," said Zakhar, and set three cups on the table. "Kostya, come, sit down."

"I don't want to," the guy said.

"Why did your wife leave you?" Anya asked.

"I drank sometimes," the foster parent said apologetically and took a sip of hot tea.

"That's it?"

"Sometimes I behaved badly."

"Did you hit her?"

"No, my friend, I told you I don't want to tell you the details. Don't rub in it."

"Well, I'm sorry," said Anya.

"You say you'll leave me in two years. What will you live on? On Kostya's disability allowance?"

"We still have time to think," said Anya.

"Yes," said Kostya, "I may become mountain climber. Why not? Just think... Or I'll have an exhibition of my paintings and sell them all."

"No one needs your daub," said Zakhar.

"That's not daub at all."

"You can't move out yet, so don't worry about it. To be realistic, it is more profitable for us to live here. Kostya is paid his pension and allowance, I am paid for custody, plus there is a flat, though one-room only. Do you already know where to move? Nah, you can't move out that easy."

"Fortunately, your opinion doesn't mean much to me," said Anya.

"And to me," her brother added.

"Yes, and this weed, they say, will reach us in a maximum of a year. One way or another, we'll have to move. You're only holding on to us to get allowance, aren't you?" Anya said reproachfully.

"Yes, so what? It's my job to keep an eye on you. Everyone has their own profession. Someone is a turner; someone is a cook, and I'm..."

"Blah, blah, blah," Anya muttered. "You're a deadbeat and a parasite."

"Could you hold your tongue, girl? If the Thicket reaches us, we will have a flat allocated. But if I were you I wouldn't hope for a large area. They'll move us to another one-room flat."

"You know, when I look at you I understand why your wife left you."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at yourself in the mirror. Unshaved, in a t-shirt stained with sauce, you have holes in your socks, unemployed, no hobbies apart from sitting home and doing nothing."

"You are stupid yet, let's talk when you are forty. Life is complicated, and you can't understand it at sixteen."

"All losers complain about life."

Zakhar did not answer the girl. He picked up the handset from a telephone on the windowsill and began rotating the dial with his finger dialing his friend's number.

"Hi, Mishka, here's the deal. Well, yes. The bailiffs came in here. Help me out; I need to give you my TV for..."

Anya got up from the table, put the mug in the sink, and together with her brother they went to her room.

"We'll make some money," Kostya said, sitting down in an armchair. "I can do it."

The guy pulled out a canvas with an urban landscape from behind Anya's desk.

"We'll sell this painting first."

His sister was standing with her back to him and was looking out of the window.

"I'll study during daytime and work at night," she mused aloud. "It's okay, many people live like this. We'll rent a flat away from here, and everything will be fine."

Kostya put down the landscape painting and took out the next canvas. In it he depicted his sister in a red summer dress and a white hat. A plump girl with shoulder-length curly brown hair held a hockey stick in her hands. Back then Kostya imagined her to be a hockey player. Kostya himself was standing next to his sister in the picture, as usual - with a kind smile and straight bangs that nearly reached his eyebrows. He drew himself a little shorter than Anya, although in reality they were the same height. Kostya used to think that everyone round him, except children, was taller, so he always drew himself shorter.

"Why can't beautiful girls in dresses play hockey?" Kostya thought . "They can. I just have to draw her a pair of skates, that is all..."

"Anya, why does Zakhar always call me a retard?" the brother asked.

The sister moved away from the window and sat down at the desk. She picked up her notebook with the notes and started flipping through it.

"Pathetic people always try to make themselves look better than others," she said.

"Anya."

"What?"

"Is he better than me?"

"No."

"Then I don't understand...Why do that?"

"I don't understand it myself. Just don't listen to him."

"Are you sure he's not better than me?"

"I am."

"I'm glad."

"If you're being teased, don't pay attention."

"I try, but it hurts to be thought a stupid."

"You're not stupid, you're just different."

"Thank you."

"At school they tease me about being fat, and I've learned to ignore it."

"You're not fat. You're just a little fat. But not fat."

"Come on, I know I'm fat, but I don't care. Looks aren't that important."

"I love you," Kostya smiled, looking at his sister.

"And I love you. But I really don't care if I'm being teased. Besides, in a year, after the graduation, I won't see any of classmates again. And I advise you not to pay attention to him."

"But we'll have to live with Zakhar two more years, you said it yourself."

"We'll make it through."

Kostya took out the next picture of his parents. The father was standing in a field near a tripod that held an optical instrument for measuring angles – a theodolite. Kostya remembered this word easily. To his father's right stood his mother and held a huge ruler that was higher than her. Above the parents was an inscription with misspellings "Mom and Dda in ixpidition".

"I won't sell this picture even for millions," Kostya thought.

"If this Thicket covers the entire planet, we won't have anywhere to move," Anya said.

"It won't," Kostya said and reached for the next canvas. He put the painting on his lap. The parents here were painted lying at the foot of the mountain. The tripod with the theodolite was lying next to them. An avalanche was coming down from the mountain top. One more second and it would crush down on the people... But all that was just a play of paints on the canvas, created by Kostya's imagination.

The room door opened a crack.

"May I come in?" asked Zakhar.

"What do you want?" Anya replied.

The foster parent entered the room, unfolded the newspaper, and placed it on the table in front of the girl.

"Here," Zakhar smiled with joy.

"What's here?" Anya did not understand.

"I found a way to get rich."

The girl looked at the newspaper. Zakhar highlighted the ad in pencil:

"The Institute of Space Infections is looking for wayfarers to go to the Thicket. Requirements: Down Syndrome". The phone number and address of the institution The followed.

"Are you kidding me?!" Anya said viciously. "Have you lost your mind?!"

Kostya put down the painting and went to the table.

"Why so rude?" Zakhar asked.

"Yes, there they are dying like flies in the Thicket!"

"What? That's nonsense?"

"Why do they need new wayfarers? Where did the old ones go?" Anya asked.

"I don't know, maybe they quit."

"Don't tell me they quit. Do you know how long people live there on average?"

"How did you get so smart, miss I-know-everything?"

"I have a friend whose mother is a friend of one of the employees of the Institute. He told her that wayfarers live there six months on an average."

"Well, he will work for a couple of months and that's it."

"Go and work there yourself!"

"I'd love to, but..."

"You mean I'm a wayfarer to become?" Kostya interrupted.

"Yes, a wayfarer to become," replied Zakhar, "and you'll earn for your own separate room."

"Don't listen to him, you won't earn anything," said Anya.

"But this is a real chance to use Kostya's illness! He'll spend some time there, get the money and you'll have a chance to move out of my house."

"What's in it for you?" Anya asked. "You didn't want us to move out. What do you get out of it?"

"I won't get anything."

"Oh, don't tell me you're just looking out for our well-being."

"Well, why not take care of you? Kostya keep repeating that I am, as he says, shit-shit, so I decided to stop being shit."

"No," said Anya firmly. "We can do without hiking in the Thicket."

"Wait," Kostya said.

"I won't wait!" the sister replied.

"I am a man, and I have words!" the brother said.

"My man! This is true. Girl, be quiet, let him speak. Why are you always shutting him up?" Zakhar supported Kostya.

Anya got up from the table.

"Out of my room immediately!" she shouted at her foster parent.

"This is my flat," said Zakhar.

"Do they pay a lot?" Kostya asked Zakhar.

"An awful lot! You can buy a flat in a year," said the foster parent.

"Anya, let's sign up?" the brother said.

"Kostya. listen to me carefully." Anya took his hand. "People, who go into the Thicket, die there. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah."

"You will die if you go into the Thicket. You understand?"

"Yeah."

"We will earn money in another way."

"Are we going to sell my paintings?"

"Yes, you're going to draw, and I'm going to sell."

"Yeah... well... all right, that'll do, too. Probably."

The girl took the newspaper and gave it to Zakhar. He smiled and nodded to Anya.

"Well, whatever you say, I don't insist," he said. "But think about it," he added as he left the room.

"You're making it up," said Anya. "Of course, they pay a lot, but we still need to live up to the salary.

Kostya leaned back in his chair and stared at the white ceiling. He imagined waking up in his own room. A separate room. How he would go to the kitchen and turn on the electric stove. In new houses you don't have to worry about damned matches. He pours water and puts the kettle on the stove. Everything is so simple and convenient."

"He thinks you're a tool," Anya continued. "How could he even say that!"

"I will give the second room to Anya, and my workshop will be in the third. I'll draw there. Or I will make an exhibition there," Kostya continued to dream.

"I should find an evening job right now," Anya decided. "I will work and save money. We will be saving for two years, and maybe we'll afford to rent a flat, and then we will adapt to the situation."

"Oh, it's a pity I can't go to be a wayfarer and become rich," thought Kostya, "and I won't buy a flat. And I won't buy a separate room. And I won't buy anything..."

"I will soon go sleep, tomorrow morning I have some business to do at the University, if you want, you can quietly stay here."

"No, maybe I'll go to bed, too."

"You can bring your cot here if you want."

"No, you're a girl; you're grown-up, it' uncomfortable."

"You won't disturb me."

"I know I will. I sleep well in the kitchen."

"As you wish."

"Sweet dreams," Kostya said, getting up from his chair and walking over to his sister. They hugged, and she kissed him on the forehead. The brother left the room. In the kitchen the light was already off. Zakhar was sitting on a cot in his underwear and t-shirt, pulling off a sock. World news was on TV. The presenter said about the death of a hundred people in a missile bombing in the East, about the act of terrorism in a train, about the fortieth victim of a serial killer who couldn't be caught for seven years, and about poachers who annually reduce the population of elephants by half."

"It's not a planet, it's a circus," said Zakhar. "Everything gone wrong... What kind of world are our children going to live in..."

"I would like to see justice on Earth," Kostya said.

"Everyone would like it."

"Not everyone. Those who do evil do not want to."

"They do, but they can't help it."

"Why?"

"I don't know.

"And if we remove all those who do evil from the Earth?"

"Well..." Zakhar thought for a few seconds, "perhaps the evil will be less."

"Then why not do it?"

"How do you remove all evil?"

"The police should remove it?

"They can't handle everything, and how do you tell what's good and what's bad? One person is evil to you and good to me, and who is right?"

"No one's right. Evil is what kills animals and people. Evil is what wars with others. Evil is what steals from the honest."

"It's not that simple."

"Why not?"

"You won't understand."

"You don't understand, but I do."

"Okay, it's time to hit the hay," said Zakhar, and turned off the TV.

"To sleep?" Kostya asked.

"Yes, sweet dreams," said the foster father, and lay down with his back to Kostya.

"You too."

He put his cot near Zakhar's one. He pulled a pillow and a crumpled blanket from under the table. He took off his t-shirt, pulled off his pants, and hung his clothes on the back of a chair. Usually, Kostya fell asleep as soon as he lie on the cot, but today his mind was excited by the hope of changing his and Anya's lives. The only person, who truly loved him and who he loved. To change everything by making money was a great possibility, he thought. Also Kostya couldn't understand what was it, that he didn't understand about justice. After all, it seemed to him that he clearly separated the good from the evil.

"I live in a world of madmen," Kostya thought, remembering the news he had just seen. A few minutes later, he fell asleep.

Chapter three

NOVEMBER

The cameraman pointed the camera at the television host. A man in a formal suit sat in a chair and held a clipboard with sheets of paper attached to it. He skimmed through the prepared questions he was going to ask his unusual guest in the next hour.

Semyon Petrovich went into the TV Studio, greeted the audience and sat down in the chair opposite the TV host.

"Is everyone ready?" the cameraman asked.

"Yes, we can start," the TV host waved his hand to the people at the console. "Sanya, let's start."

"The broadcast will be with a small delay, if anything, we have time enough to cut out the excess," said the host to Semyon Petrovich.

"All right," he said.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

"On the count of five we begin," said the cameraman.

1

2

3

4

5

A red light flashed on the camera.

"Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen," the host began, "today live on the central chAnyal you will see the person who you all have been waiting for a long time. The man who led the wayfarers into the Thicket. And right now he is ready to unveil everything, absolutely everything that happened there. Meet Bunin Semyon Petrovich, head of the coordinator Department of the Institute of Space Infections.

"Hello," said the guest.

The camera took a close-up of Semyon Petrovich.

"Good evening!" the host said. "Well, let's get straight to the point. You were in charge of the coordinator Department for three years."

"Correct."

"What was the main task of the Department?"

"Bring the device to the main root of the Thicket."

"What kind of device?"

"We call 'device' a special mechanism with a chemical that our colleagues synthesized."

"So all these people, the wayfarers, were supposed to deliver this device to the centre of... the Thicket?"

"Precisely."

"These wayfarers, they were unusual people, weren't they."

"Yes, all people who went there had Down syndrome."

"Why this particular category of people?"

"We still don't understand how the Thicket could do this, but it somehow affected people's minds. An ordinary person, as soon as he found himself close to the weed growth, immediately went mad, and in a few hours died in delirium. As it turned out, the conscious of people with Down syndrome are not susceptible to its influence."

"How did you know that?"

"Know what? What people with certain development characteristics can resist the Thicket's influence?"

"Yes."

"As many discoveries were made in the world this was also made quite by accident. We found a boy who could freely go into the Thicket, though not deep. We noticed that and... well, you know. A week later, the first group of wayfarers with Down syndrome was formed."

"Where is this group now?"

"They all died on the first day."

"There are rumours that the creatures that lived in the Thicket killed everyone who went there. So the rumours are true?"

"People are always the first to know everything; government officials are usually late with their statements." Said Semyon Petrovich with a grin.

"Indeed, word of mouth is faster than the speed of light. What are these creatures? Are they really that dangerous?"

"Excessively dangerous. But the creatures that lived in the Thicket are, in fact, not separate organisms. Imagine that the vines of the Thicket shape a kind of network, perhaps it even generates a field that we are unable to capture, but it definitely exists."

"What field? Electromagnetic?"

"In general it can be any: magnetic, electric, gluon," Semyon Petrovich paused, and then continued. "It can be even Higgs field..."

"Does the Thicket generate this field?"

"Higgs's?.. No, this is still a theory, but I hope there will be a breakthrough soon, I think, by the year two thousand. But it's clear now that the Thicket generates a field of its own. In general, the organic matter processed by the Thicket, how to put this, comes to life again and is controlled by the Thicket itself by means of this field and some new particles. I hope that we will also be able to understand and study the field of the Thicket in the future."

"What do you mean, 'organic matter comes to life and is controlled'?"

"Let's suppose you went into the Thicket and died there. You will be processed into a new organism."

"I don't understand, so I'm going to be a living dead man?"

"No, it won't even be you. The Thicket does not reproduce organisms exactly as they were in life, but rather uses your material, um... your body, the matter, the cells to create something of its own. For example, it can cross a man with a dog, or with another man, with a bird or a spider, and mold it into something in between. And these creatures are active only within the Thicket, thanks to the invisible field. If the creature is pulled out of the weed, it will immediately die. Not even die, but rather it will turn off, since it wasn't alive in the first place."

"So the creatures in the Thicket were sewn together, glued or, I don't even know what's the right word to use, made up of living organisms?"

"Yes, of those who were devoured up by the Thicket."

"Do they remember their past?"

"Oh, no, not a chance... Although some individuals repeat phrases that were obviously strongly etched into their memory during their lifetime."

"Are they talking?"

"Yes, but it's just a set of meaningless phrases. They are like parrots, they can say something, but there is no sense in it."

"I don't quite understand something."

"What?"

"The Thicket is immune to fire and cold."

"Yes."

"Why couldn't we just drop an atomic bomb on it? Nothing can resist its blast wave."

"The Thicket was discovered when it has already grown enormous, it spread for many kilometres. When we realised that the weed was a terrible threat, it was too late. You may not have seen the Thicket in the aerial photo. Imagine a circle with a radius of three hundred kilometres. Atomic bombs won't help."

"Can't you spray this chemical of yours from hight?"

"No, firstly, it is not so easy to create, and secondly, the chemical must be injected into the roots, the plant itself will not absorb it. We still don't understand what it feeds on. We have conducted experiments, injected the chemical in a vine and after some time it withered and died. But the plant didn't care, when we sprayed it."

"How did you know that the Thicket had a central root?"

"We checked aerial photos of the area near the Ileevo village, which is located just near the epicentre of the origin of the weed. In the photos we found a still young Thicket, in the centre of which we could see a wide, long outline, like a thick snake."

"Well, why couldn't you land from a helicopter in its epicentre, to immediately be in the core of it?"

"There was such an attempt at the very beginning, when the forest has not yet grown for many kilometres in all directions. The group died."

"What happened to them?"

"Some crashed on landing, some were lost on the way up to the core, as you call it."

"Those creatures?"

"Yes."

"Did you manage to capture any of these creatures?"

"Unfortunately, no, we could only observe them through the wayfarers' cameras. Almost all encounters with the creatures of the Thicket resulted in the death of the group."

"Oh... that's sad."

"Yes, but thanks to their feats, we learned more about the creatures."

"I have prepared a list of questions, but the more we talk the more new questions appear."

"Feel free to ask it, I'll answer everything."

"Semyon Petrovich, when you realised the Thicket is not an alien organism, what was your reaction?"

"To put it mildly, we were shocked. Understanding the origin of the Thicket changed our understanding of the origin of the Universe, of space and time, of ourselves and our consciousness, and for some even of God."

"Well, dear spectators." The TV host turned to face the camera. "Now we will take a short break for our sponsors. Stay tuned."

Chapter four

SEPTEMBER

Because of the Thicket spread the city was deserted. Many people moved in advance, before the mass evacuation, which was scheduled to begin in a few months.

Rarely passing cars broke the silence of the night city. Alex and his friend, both drunk, were walking along the pavement. His forty-year-old fellow alias "Old", who was recently released from prison, suddenly stopped.

"Hey, Alex, I want to sit a spell," he said, and flopped down on the asphalt. "To smoke... I need to smoke."

Old took cigarettes from the inside pocket of his windbreaker, put one in his teeth and handed the pack to Alex.

"Help yourself," he said.

Alex took a cigarette out of the pack, helped Old to light his and then lit his own.

"They say another wayfarer died there?" Old asked.

"Yeah, more than one. Whole group. Now I'm on vacation 'till the new group is formed," Alex said.

"Group of dead men."

"Yeah... dead men."

"These cross-eyed idiots go round hoping to make money."

"Who if not they?"

"I don't know..."

"Are you sane? Don't sit on the road. You'll freeze your ass," Alex said with a grin, deciding to change the subject.

"Me? Freeze? No, dude, I seen some shit. You, the young, don't even know what 'cold' is."

"Oh, not again," Alex said.

"When they interrogated me, do you even know how long I was handcuffed to a cold radiator?"

"Twenty–four hours," Alex said listlessly, because he had heard this story many times before.

"It was five above zero and me in a t-shirt and long johns! And I caught not a goddamn cold after that, except that my throat was lousy."

"The shop will close, let's go."

"Don't fuss."

"Your Katya was a little down recently," recalled Alex.

"At least she didn't belch today," Old man laughed.

"Is she really? Does she belch?"

"Not just that! I remember once we went to Pasha's hut, well, I plAnyad like a fun night, we were with Katya, I was groping her already, and then she vomited on me." Old burst out laughing. "It nearly hit my mouth... Firstly I couldn't decide whether I should bang her face and then go wash myself or go wash first, then bang her face and wash again..." Old laughed so hard that he dropped his cigarette.

"She's weak stomach," Alex said. "Those like her, they just waste the booze."

"Yes, women are all just one big mishap. Help me out..." Old held out his hand.

Alex helped him up. He looked at his watch.

"Just in time. Of we are late, I know where to get some moonshine."

"To get food poisoning?.. No, I prefer the classics."

"Do you think you won't get intoxication with vodka?"

"Possible. Still I once had alcohol poisoning after vodka, but it was understandable, not alike your moonshine... You never know what trash they mixed in that shit. I don' want to go blind."

"I took it there many times, and I'm still here and not blind."

Suddenly a car stopped in front of them. The back door swung open, and a girl fell out. She was wearing a leopard-print miniskirt and a pink boob tube. The car immediately disappeared round a corner. The barefoot girl lay on her back, arms outstretched. For some reason, the first thing Alex noticed was her muddy heels.

"Oops," said Old.

Alex went to the girl and squatted down next to her. He shook her lightly by the shoulder.

"Hey, are you alive there?"

"Just a prostitute," Old said.

"Well... judging by the clothes, yes."

Her messed up blond hair were covering half of her face. The lipstick was all smeared on her cheek was partly mixed with dirt. Alex felt disgust and pity for the girl.

"What are we going to do?" he asked.

"I've no idea, dude."

"We can't leave her like this, can we?" He looked at Old.

"Why not?.. You want take her with us?"

"Do you have a coin to call the pigs?"

"I've none."

Alex leaned his hand against the girl's neck, trying to feel for a pulse, but felt nothing.

"Maybe we can get her to the benches, and then we'll figure it out," he said. "To leave a man on the road like that... well, it's not dude stuff."

"She's a whore!.. Why worry?.."

"You never know what may happen. I think she's alive; her chest is rising."

Old stared at her boob tube.

"Yeah, she seems to breath. Or... Or not to breath."

"We'll take her to the benches, and then we'll call the filth and let them sort it out," Alex said.

"But they'll detain us till they clarify the circumstances."

"Before we go home, we'll call 'em from pay phone, give the address, and that's it. Meantime, the girl will lie on the bench, maybe she'll even wake up."

"We'd better call an ambulance," Old suggested. "I won't give a goddamn coin to call the filth."

"Come on, help me get here there. Grab her feet."

"But the liquor store will close soon," Old muttered, scratching his head.

"Then we'll get some moonshine..."

It was awkward to carry the girl by the arms and legs, so Old shouldered her. They walked along the roadway. A few passers-by looked back at the threesome astonished. About five hundred meters later they decided to get to their destination through courtyards and alleys, so as not to run into a random police patrol. Passing another courtyard they and entered an arch of a block of flats. People were chattering nearby.

"Their jaws will drop," Old said.

"We went for vodka and came back with a dead chick," Alex said.

Approaching the noisy group, Old put the girl on the ground.

"Whoa, whoa," Pasha said. "What kind of gift is this?"

"I got you a hooker," Old said with a straight face, "but there is a small inconvenience, she's dead."

"But cheap," Alex added.

"Seryoga, will you take her?" suggested Old, unable to help laughing.

The "bench" company surrounded the sprawled body on the grass.

"Is she really dead?" asked Seryoga.

"No. We're joking," Alex said.

"Let us drink to her health," Katya said, barely moving her lips, and poking the girl in the side with her shoe.

"Alex, I'll go get the booze, you tell them what happened."

"Okay."

"Give me some money."

Alex pulled several banknotes out of his pocket and handed them over to Old. Grabbing the money, he hurried off in the direction of a neighbouring house.

"What's here to tell?" Alex began. "The chick was thrown out of the car. We picked her up and brought here. That's all."

"So you didn't make it to the store, did you?" Katya asked, barely able to stand. The drunk girlfriend of Old put her hand on Alex's shoulder, so as not to fall down next to the unconscious girl.

"I think you've drunk enough for today," Alex said.

"Me? Na-ah, I'm not drunk."

"Of course you're not," Seryoga noticed with a chuckle.

"It's just the high he... hee... heels," Katya said.

"Yeah, yeah," Alex answered.

"To go drinking in a courtyard on high heels!" laughed Seryoga.

"That's 'cause she's showing off in front of Old," Pasha said.

Katya nearly fell on her side, but Seryoga immediately took her by the arms and sat her down on the bench.

"Why was Old carrying this bitch?" Katya asked, resting her elbows on her knees.

"I don't know, he just helped," Alex said.

"Do you expect me to believe she was thrown out of the car?!" Katya raised her voice.

"I don't care if you believe it or not," Alex said.

"He's again using hookers," said Katya and coughed.

"She'll vomit!" Seryoga nudge Pasha and he giggled.

"Get this slut out of here, or I'll kill her," Katya said, already delirious. Her elbow slid off her knee and she almost fell to the ground.

"Two dead bodies is too much," Alex said, looking at the drunk Katya. "It's like woman's day..."

Pasha bent over the girl lying on the ground and began to feel the pockets of her upturned mini-skirt.

"Wow-wow, dude!" Alex said. "You are a petty thief or what?"

"Calm down," said Pasha.

"Why calm down? This is low, stop it."

"What?" Pasha straightened up. He was disappointed. Her pockets were empty.

"Just don't steal," Alex said.

"Did you just call me a thief?" Pasha asked, staring at Alex.

"I'll kill the bitch," Katya mumbled, not looking up. "He's again using hookers, knobhead."

"I didn't call you a thief," Alex said. "I said it was low to go through her pockets."

"And you are like a stickler for the rules?"

"Pasha, you're drunk, stop dicking around," intervened Seryoga.

"Who's dicking around? I'm not. I don't like being taught life by brats. I used to crush thousands like him back in the army!"

"Watch your words," Alex snapped. "You're just a couple of years older than me."

Pasha walked up to Alex on rubbery shaking legs.

"I ask you, when is my wedding, huh?" Katya wouldn't stop, it seemed she were already talking in sleep. "The whores ruined my wedding. Skinny trash with brain AIDS."

"Who did you crush in the army of yours? No one believes your stories, clown," Alex said.

"My boobs are already saggy, and I still can't find a man," raved Katya. "Old was... a fool... but he uses skanks."

"Did you just call me clown?!" Pasha asked, pushing Alex in the shoulder.

"Look in the mirror if you don't believe," Alex said, pushing him back.

"Guys, cut it out!" Seryoga said, coming up to Alex from behind and pulling him slightly by the shoulders. At this time Pasha tried to hit Alex with all his might, but missed and hit Seryoga in the chin. The man fell flat on the grass and wheezed, his arms at his sides. Alex didn't hesitate to kick Pasha in the groin.

"Bitch, who does that!" Pasha groaned, writhing in pain. He rolled on the grass, cursing through his teeth.

At this moment Katya jumped up from the bench and zigzagged up to the girl lying on the grass. He kicked her in the head, hitting in the eye with her heel. Losing balance, Katya fell to the ground.

"Bitch, I'll cut you," groaned Pasha, grabbing his balls.

Alex walked over to the girl and looked at her. The left side of her face was covered in blood. Her eye was out. Alex shivered. The girl never regained consciousness. Katya was sitting on the grass near the accidentally knocked out Seryoga, and was vomiting on her thighs. Not far from her Pasha mumbled the pain.

Alex looked at the scene, and only one thought crossed his mind: "I hate all of you."

"What have you done, bigots?!" Old's voice came from behind Alex.

OCTOBER

The soldiers of the rescue team opened the lock of the flat door, whose neighbours suspected something was wrong and called them. The tenant was a single man who hadn't shown up at work for several days and hadn't picked up the phone. The investigator opened the front door and the smell of rotting flesh hit his nostrils. From a room came the sound of a television. The rescue team looked curiously into the flat, holding their noses. The investigator went into the living room and saw a man lying on the floor. His guts were wound round his neck. The table was overturned, and there were traces of blood on the floor, as if the man had tried to crawl. The corpse lay on its back, its hands clasped across its stomach. The investigator carefully lifted the t-shirt. Again, no signs of surgery. And if it weren't for the regularity of such deaths, he would have thought that the guts could have been pulled out through the anus and he might even have tested this hypothesis right now, but he knew there was no point in it. Further examination showed that the man by all indicators fitted the description of a serial killer, who had dozens of victims on his account, and who could not be caught for many years.

Chapter five

SEPTEMBER

The sizzling of fried eggs in a red-hot frying pan woke Kostya up. The guy sat on the cot and stretched. Zakhar was preparing breakfast, standing by the stove.

"Good morning," said the foster parent.

"Morning."

"Want some fried eggs? I can add a couple more eggs for you."

"No, I'm going to eat with Anya."

"She left an hour ago."

Getting out of bed, Kostya dressed, rolled up the blanket and pillow and threw them under the table. After washing and brushing his teeth, he went to Anya's room, opened the curtains, and the room was flooded with sunlight. The guy put the easel in front of the window and began to squeeze paint into the palette. Green and black.

"Kostya," Zakhar said, peering into the room.

"Yes?"

"I want to talk."

"About what?"

Zakhar came in with a plate of in which heaved liquid egg yolks, and a cup of tea. He sat down at Anya's desk.

"You're twenty years old..."

"Yes, soon twenty-three."

"Huh... well," Zakhar hesitated a little. "Perhaps in three years you'll be twenty three, I can't argue with that," he said.

"You can't argue," Kostya agreed.

"Ana is sixteen."

"Yes, I'm the elder brother," Kostya said proudly and set a blank canvas on the easel.

"Do you like her guiding you?"

"I don't know."

"You're a man," said Zakhar, and put a fried egg in his mouth. "By the way, I shouldn't have refused breakfast."

"Yes, I'm a man."

"Do you have balls?"

"What?" Kostya looked at Zakhar. "Do you mean football?"

"No, I mean balls. All men have balls. We are, first of all, men of character. Do you have balls?"

Kostya lowered his trousers and underpants.

"Yes, there they are," the guy said. "Two."

"A man shouldn't let a woman run him."

"Shouldn't," Kostya didn't argue, going to the wall shelf and taking a glass of water and brushes from above.

"You have the opportunity to make a lot of money," Zakhar continued, chomping.

"Yeah."

"Why do you keep agreeing with me? Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

"Yeah. I mean, ugh... no."

"You wanted to be a wayfarer yesterday and to go into the Thicket."

"Yes, I'd be able to buy a flat and I to have a separate room."

"Why did you change your mind?"

"I don't know, Anya said it was dangerous."

"Do you know why wayfarers go into the Thicket?"

"To stop it."

"Yes, they are heroes. They're trying to save the world. If the Thicket is not stopped, it will eventually consume the entire Earth."

"I see," Kostya muttered, drawing a few strokes on the canvas.

"Do you want to be a hero?"

"I do."

"Do you want a separate room?

"Yeah."

"If you are a man, you must make your own decision and not listen to anyone."

"Yes, I'm a man," Kostya said, continuing to apply strokes, deftly running the brush over the canvas.

"Then you must sign up for the wayfarers. You can become a hero; you can save humanity in the future and you will be paid a lot of money for it."

"I don't even know, I don't want to upset Anya."

"When you earn to buy a flat, you will be able to move and live separately; she will be the happiest girl ever. Do you want her to be happy? Or you want her to study in the morning and work in the evening?"

"Of course I don't."

"Then take your passport and go to the Institute; we will register you as a wayfarer. Right now!"

Kostya dipped the brush into the glass and reflected for a moment. Again he imagined waking up in his own room, going to the kitchen, turning on the electric stove, and putting on the kettle. At this time, his sister is getting ready for the school. After breakfast Kostya will start organising an exhibition of his paintings in the third spare room."

"Are you here?" Zakhar asked, snapping his fingers.

"Yes, where else am I?"

"Let's go to the Institute, and this year you will become rich. Anya will be the happiest girl in the world."

"Let's go," Kostya said.

Zakhar went to the easel.

"What is it, the Thicket?" he asked, looking at the tangle of green and black lines on the canvas.

"Yes, I'm going to draw the wayfarers right here," Kostya pointed to the center of the canvas, "and then we'll go."

"Great, you're a real man. Then I'm getting dressed," said Zakhar.

***

Alex was awakened by a phone call. Without opening his eyes or lifting his head from the pillow, he picked up the phone and put it to his ear.

"Where have you been? I tried calling you all night yesterday," he heard Semyon Petrovich's voice.

"Yeah," Alex said.

"Are you asleep?"

"Yes, but..."

Alex rolled onto his back and rubbed his face with his free hand. His temples throbbed and head ached.

"Get ready and go to the office. A new wayfarer is coming today. You get acquainted today, tomorrow they already go into the Thicket."

"Into the Thicket so soon?"

"He'll get to 'B' point, it's not so dangerous, he'll get used to it and come back."

"He alone?" Alex opened his eyes and tried to focus his eyesight on the chandelier, but the image drifted away.

"No, we gathered a group of three. They will go together."

"It's high time; there will be fewer deaths."

"Did you drink yesterday?"

"No, I didn't just drink. I nearly drank myself to death yesterday..."

"Oh, Alex... Come on, I'm waiting for you."

"On my way."

"In what time will you be here?"

"In about two hours."

"Very well, your wayfarer will arrive about the same time."

"Aha."

"I'm waiting, Alex."

"Good bye."

Alex lay there for another ten minutes and, summoning all his courage, overcame the hangover and lifted his heavy body. After taking a shower and drinking tea with cake, he put on torn blue jeans that a friend of his had managed to bring from abroad, a red checkered shirt and trainers with scuffed white toes that were blood stained. But Alex couldn't remember if he had recently punched someone in the nose. Or maybe it was not blood at all? Having dressed he left the house.

"It's good that this whore was thrown off yesterday," he thought, standing at the trolleybus stop, "someone must have already found her near the house entrance this morning."

Several old women with trolley bags sat on the bus stop bench. Alex stepped aside and lit a cigarette. Last year, he lost his driving license for drunk driving.

"How stupid one must be to have picked her up," he though. "What if we were caught with her? Then we'd have hard times proving to them that we found her. And that dumb girl... Katya. I need to give up on their company. Fucking scumbags. But there's no one else to communicate. All more or less decent people left this hellhole. All who stayed are these rednecks and we, valiant employees of the Institute."

Alex took the last drag on his cigarette and dropped it on the ground. A trolleybus came round the corner.

"Anyway, this woman was dead," he thought, getting into the transport. " I would have been surprised if she woke up after having her eye out. Ugh... how disgusting."

Alex took the ticket out of his pocket and crumpled it. The almost empty trolleybus started, bouncing on the dilapidated asphalt road. In the back row a guy sprawled near the window and dozed off.

"Last stop," he heard a voice say.

Alex jumped out of his seat and started looking around, trying to figure out where he was and what was going on. He regained consciousness quickly.

"Yes, thank you," he said to the man who had woken him up.

When he reached the Institute building, he stopped at the entrance and lit another cigarette. Acquaintances passed by and greeted him. Alex nodded silently in return.

"And if the police get me because of this bitch?" he thought. "No, it's just hangover paranoia. Every time I get drunk I have panic attack in the morning. It's clear I didn't do anything wrong. Except that I kicked Pasha in the nuts. But he's a jerk, he deserved it. Their company will not do me any good. I must cut off with them. Marginals. They are always drinking at my expense, and none of them wants to work. Always 'Alex, give us money for beer, Alex, give us for vodka. Go and work! That whore was the last straw. This is it. No more. Though that was also my fault... I was the one who suggested taking her, but I meant well... And why are people looking at me like that? As if they suspect something..."

A minute later, Alex threw the cigarette butt in a bin and went into the Institute. He took lift to the fourth floor and met Semyon Petrovich in the hallway.

"You're quick," the chief hurriedly shook hands with Alex.

"Yeah."

"At least you've shaved, cause usually you look like a thug with that stubble of yours."

"Perhaps I am a thug," Alex said with a grin.

"Why did you go out last night?" Semyon Petrovich asked, looking closely at the red eyes of his subordinate.

"I just... Went on a spree... I thought we had the weekend until the squad was formed."

"It was the weekend, but it's over."

"Have the other two wayfarers been accepted?"

"Yeah. Now we will talk with this one, if it is adequate and manageable, then we will take him to the Thicket tomorrow."

"In the Thicket for training?"

"He'll learn everything in the process. I remember no whatsoever difficulties on the way to the point "B", so he'll get used to it on the move."

"Well, theoretically, it is possible. Have they read the general terms yet?"

"Yes, they've been studying it for half an hour."

"Once they find out what they're signing up for, they'll get scared and run away," Alex said, smiling.

"They won't run away... Let's go already."

"Did you talk to him at all? Does he speak normally?"

"Yes, he speaks very well and distinctly."

They went into Semyon Petrovich's office. Two men were waiting for them on the couch.

"Hello, my name is Alex," he said, shaking hands with both of them.

"I'm Zakhar, and this is Kostya."

"Nice to meet you," Alex said.

Semyon Petrovich walked round his desk and sat down in a chair.

"Well, you already know me," the chief smiled.

"We would like to sign up for the wayfarers," Zakhar began conversation and put aside the contract. "I've read everything; we are satisfied."

Alex looked at Kostya, who was sitting modestly on the couch and looking at the floor, his hands were on his knees. To Alex's surprise, the boy was watching with his mouth closed, unlike most other people with his syndrome, and his eyes were focused.

"That's good," said Semyon Petrovich. "We need to ask Kostya a few questions."

"Yes, yes, of course, my Kostya is a very shy boy, he can be a little embarrassed," said Zakhar and put his arm on the boy's shoulders.

"Is this your son?" Alex asked.

"No, I'm his father's cousin and foster parent at the same time. Kostya's parents died."

"Kostya," Semyon Petrovich turned to him, "have you read the General terms about the Thicket?"

"Yes," the guy said, not looking up.

"So you are aware that this job involves danger?" the chief asked.

"Up to date."

"Do you know how to read?" Alex asked.

"I know. How would I read it if I didn't know?" muttered Kostya. "I can read and write. But I write a little wrong, but I'm still learning. Sometimes I miss vowels. Anya understands it."

"Who's Anya?" Alex asked.

"Sister," said Zakhar.

"Kostya, how old are you?" Alex asked.

"Twenty, but soon I'm twenty-three, and you?"

"Me? I'm twenty-five."

"Aha... You're older. Never mind, I'll be twenty-five some day, after twenty-three. At twenty-five, I'll be an artist."

"Do you like drawing?"

"Yes, I will even have an exhibition."

"That's great. It's good to have hobbies."

Semyon Petrovich listened to their conversation in silence. Alex needed to make friends with the new wayfarer and understand his level of development. And this all must be done as soon as possible. Right now."

"Kostya, now I will ask you to do a few simple actions. They may seem strange, but you have to do it."

"Great."

"Right now. Ready?"

"Ready."

"Stand up."

The guy got up from the couch.

"Turn left and go out the door."

Kostya obeyed the order without hesitation.

"Come into the room!" Alex shouted.

"Easily," said Kostya and went back into the office room.

"Go around Semyon Petrovich's desk and get under it."

"Under the desk?" Kostya was surprised.

"Yes, faster."

Kostya obeyed the order again. Semyon Petrovich, sitting in an office chair, slid back from the table.

"Funny man," said the chief to Alex.

"Get out of there and stand in front of me, but with your back to me," Alex said.

Kostya quickly did what he was asked.

"All right, sit down on the coach," said Alex, and looked at the head: "Well, he reacts just perfect. The speech is also distinct, everything is fine."

"Did I pass the exam?" Kostya asked.

"Yes, but I have a lot to tell you and show you today."

"Then," Semyon Petrovich interjected, "Zakhar, shell we go finish the red tape and let Alex explain Kostya what is needed."

"Well, what are our next steps?" asked Zakhar.

"Here is the contract, before you sign it, I advise you to read it. You will need both passports and details of the receiving bank."

"What about Kostya?"

"Kostya will be shown his room."

"What room? Will he live here?"

"No, but if necessary, he can stay here for the night, for example, if he has to start for the Thicket tomorrow morning."

"Great."

Semyon Petrovich handed the contract to Zakhar, who began studying it.

"Kostya, let's go, they'll work it out for themselves."

Alex and Kostya left the room of the head of the coordinators Department.

"We don't have much time," Alex said, calling the lift. "So let's start your training right now."

"Training? Is it difficult?"

"No, in fact, you just have to follow all my commands. That's all. But there are subtleties."

"What are subtleties?"

They entered the lift, and Alex pressed button with number two.

"The main thing is not to touch anything."

"I can do that," Kostya said with a smile.

"People from the last group also said that."

"Where are they?"

"The first rule is to follow all my commands. If I say, go left, you go left. They stepped out of the lift into the corridor. "If I tell you to lie down and turn off the light, you lie down and turn off the light. We will try all this at our training ground. The second rule is not to touch anything. I'll show you the photos of the most dangerous objects that you mustn't approach."

"Do monsters live there?"

"Yes, there are monsters in the Thicket, but if you listen to me, you may not even see them."

They walked about twenty meters down the corridor and stopped at the door with number nine. Alex pulled a key from his pocket and opened it."

"Welcome," he said. "It will always be open. You won't need the keys. You can spend the night here. If anything, I'm next door, my room is opposite."

Kostya went into a modest room, which was sparsely furnished with a bed, a nightstand, a wardrobe, a table, and a stool. There was a Rubik's cube on the table. Kostya took it and tried to twist it.

"At our school, the teacher solved it quickly," said Kostya.

"You can have it," Alex said.

"Yeah, thanks, I'll take it," Kostya said. "I-I need an institution."

"What?" What institution?" Alex was surprised.

"Well... an institution where they piss and shit."

"What?" Alex laughed. "The toilet?"

"Yes," Kostya said, embarrassed.

"An institution," Alex said bursting out laughing. "You're so cool. Let me show you."

They went to the end of the corridor and stopped near the last door.

"Here, the letter "M" is yours."

"Thank you. Do you live here?"

"Where? In the toilet?" Alex laughed again. "Or should I say in an institution?"

"Well... no, I mean the room," Kostya asked absolutely seriously.

"No, I sleep here sometimes if I have urgent business," Alex continued to chuckle.

"What are you laughing at?" Kostya asked.

"Sorry," Alex wiped his forehead. "You made me laugh."

"I see. I'll be right back," Kostya said and went to the toilet.

Alex thought:

"A funny guy."

Zakhar signed a contract for three months. Against the contract the prepayment was immediately transferred to his account. The happy foster parent forgot about everything and ran to the bank to withdraw the money.

Alex and Kostya went to the training ground to prepare for tomorrow's trial expedition. The training ground was located in the inner courtyard of the Institute. It was a small area built up with one-story models of village houses, on a scale of one to one, surrounded by trees, with rubber vines hanging down from the branches.

Kostya was standing with a backpack that during the expedition would be full with the chemical containing device, camping equipment, drinking water, dry rations, and a first-aid kit. At the moment instead of all this it was filled with ballast that was comparable in weight to camping equipment. A night-vision device and a camera with a built-in torch were put on Kostya's forehead. A small earpiece stuck out of his ear and was wired to a microphone that was near the guy's mouth. The earpiece was fixed behind the ear so that even if the wayfarer had to get through a thick forest, he would not lose it.

Alex told Kostya that planes with repeaters would be circling over the weed for the duration of the expedition to keep in touch.

In addition to the battery for communication devices, the wayfarer's backpack has everything that may come in useful these couple of days. At points "A", "B", "C" and "D" there are food supplies, that were delivered there by a special squad of wayfarers responsible for food. Since trips to the Thicket could take many days, you can't do without food. The points themselves were abandoned houses in abandoned villages. In some settlements there still were wells with drinking water. Almost all power lines in the Thicket radius were cut off under the weight of vines, and power plants stopped working.

The goal of the trip was to use the map and compass to find a safe route through the forest to the next village, find a more or less suitable house for the night and go on to the next point.

For three years of expeditions, wayfarers were able to lay more than a hundred kilometres of the route through the Thicket, but the problem was that the weed grew in leaps and bounds. According to aerial photography, to get to the central trunk of the Thicket and its root, you need to overcome about three hundred kilometres.

Kostya fully equipped, along with two other wayfarers, entered the improvised Thicket. For several hours, the cadets performed various commands of their coordinators, studying every square metre of the training ground. They were taught to use cameras, headsets, night vision devices, compasses, and torches. They worked out critical situations. Employees of the Institute acted as the Thicket creatures, and wayfarers had to correctly run away from them, while not losing each other and being able to return to the specified route. The way to fight the inhabitants of the Thicket was not found, so the most effective way of saving lives was to flee. Kostya turned out to be the only participant of tomorrow's expedition who took these classes for the first time. The other two wayfarers had been living here for several days. One was named Sasha, the other Misha.

After training, the wayfarers and the coordinators went to the dining room for dinner.

"Anya!" Kostya remembered, sitting at the dinner table. "I need to call home, she doesn't know I am here!"

"I think Zakhar told her," Alex said and took a bite of the cutlet.

"No, I need to make a call."

"All right, we'll finish the meal and call her."

"No, right now, I'm afraid she's crying!"

"Okay, we'll call now," Alex said. "Let's go."

Alex looked into the kitchen, greeted the cook, and asked if he could use the telephone that had been hanging on the wall since time immemorial. The cook didn't mind. Kostya grabbed the handset and stood still for a few seconds, trying to remember the number. Then he began to hurriedly rotate the dial. Alex watched from a distance as his new mentee spoke into the phone. It was obvious that Kostya was nervous: he shuffled his feet, rubbed the back of his head and for some reason, pulled back his earlobe when his sister spoke to him. Five minutes later, Kostya hung up.

"Oh," he said, walking over to Alex. "Oh, Oh, Oh..."

"What happened?"

"She... she said she will kill Zakhar and then me."

"It happens."

"She was crying, I knew it, I felt it."

"We must finish the meal and go to bed. You set off early tomorrow, so get some sleep."

"Oh... what's waiting for me at home," Kostya lamented. "She will so-o-o sco-olded me..."

Chapter six

Kostya quickly fell asleep in the new place. Alex woke him up at six in the morning. After breakfast, they packed their backpacks and boarded the bus. There were three wayfarers, one security officer, and a driver. Two hours later the group was a kilometre from the Thicket. The bus driver didn't dare come any closer. There were various rumours about the effect of the Thicket on healthy people.

Kostya was standing near the highway that ran into a giant dark green wall that blocked the sun. In the distance, on the horizon, it merged with the clouds, resembling a huge mountain range.

"All right, boys," the security officer said to the wayfarers, "turn on the cameras and microphones. I can't go with you there."

Kostya, Sasha, and Misha, with their backpacks tightly packed behind shoulders, got in touch with their coordinators. The security officer shook hands with each of them and got on the bus.

The group went along the highway. Ten minutes later they were at the edge of a Thicket that covered all visible space like a green octopus.

"I feel something," Kostya said into the microphone. "Unpleasantly."

"Yes, it's buzzing, my brain is buzzing," Misha said.

"It's all right," Alex said. "It's the effect of the Thicket. It's not dangerous. Keep going. Stay on the road."

"You mean?" Kostya was surprised. "Right there?

"Yes, push the vines and crawl, as yesterday, at the training ground."

Kostya touched a branch of a vine that looked like a tentacle. Almost imperceptibly, it reached for him. Kostya recoiled.

"Crawling like an ant," he thought disgustedly, "even more slowly... For a long time it will so entangle the earth..."

Sasha was the first to enter the Thicket, pushing the branches. Then moved Kostya. Misha, after short hesitation, followed them. The Thicket was visible through for twenty or thirty meters, but it was not so difficult for get through the road.

"Do you see what I see?" Kostya asked.

"Yeah."

"How long do we have to go?"

"Kostya, you already know everything. Long."

"It's dark down there."

"Turn on the night vision," Alex ordered.

Kostya pulled the huge glasses over his eyes and pressed the button, as he had been taught. He saw everything in black and white. It was not possible to create absolute darkness on the training ground so the effect of the device was not so impressive back then. Kostya looked around then looked at his hands.

"Wow," he muttered. "What a... wow."

For several hours they walked along the roadway, a couple of times coming across bloated buds hanging from the thick trunks of weeds. They had seen these buds in photographs and knew perfectly well that there was a deadly danger lurking inside them. None of the wayfarers had any desire to examine the unopened flowers closer and bypassed them. After bringing the group to the village, the coordinators gave the command to move South. Then there were no landmarks, but after five kilometres of weedy fields and liana covered real forests the group came back to the road. Roads were the only way not to get lost in the Thicket. Once the group made it to the next highway they moved along it until they reached the nearest village. Or rather the signboard with the name of the locality. Then the coordinators were able to determine the exact location of the group. Alex decided to make a halt so that the guys could eat. They were about four hours of walking from the point "A", so the group needed to regain their strength.

They entered an abandoned one-story wooden house. Kostya plopped down on the bed, and Sasha with Misha sat on the floor opposite him.

"Set the lamp on and turn off the night vision," Alex said.

The wayfarer took a small rectangular lantern from his backpack, turned it on, and set it on the table. The room became light. Kostya looked around. The vine-covered walls looked ominous.

"Drink some water and eat one ration," Alex said.

Participants of the expedition took food from their backpacks and began eating.

"Come and visit me," Misha said.

"When?" Kostya asked.

"On the twenty-fourth."

"Wednesday?" Kostya asked.

"Let's have a pajama party," Sasha said.

"On Thursday, the twenty-fourth."

"Well... I'll come with Anya."

"I'm with granny Nata," said Sasha.

"We have Sharik. He's a dog," Misha said.

"How old are you?" Kostya asked.

"The dog is old already. A grandmother."

"And my Cheesecake died. The hamster was also old. Only he was not a grandmother he was a grandfather already," said Sasha.

"I'm still twenty," Kostya said.

"After you eat, lie down for half an hour," Alex told Kostya.

"Sweet."

"What 'great'?" Sasha asked.

"I'll lie down," Kostya replied.

"I thought it was sweet that the hamster died," Sasha said.

"No, it's sad."

"I'm going to football after work," Misha began, "I dream of becoming a football player. My aunt says I should follow my dream, and I'm following."

"And I'm an artist, I have a lot of beautiful paintings, I've even painted the Thicket," boasted Kostya. "I'll have an exhibition. I also want to rid the evil from this world, but I don't know how. I also want justice everywhere."

"And I'll make an animal shelter," said Sasha, "and I also played in a play. This is my dream, to become an actor and to collect animals."

"Well... there are lots of dogs on the street," Kostya said.

"And lots of crows," said Sasha.

"A crows shelter?"

"Yes, crows can live in a shelter and dogs, and..." Kostya thought about it.

"Catch hedgehogs in the woods," Misha suggested.

"Only they should be caught with pliers," said Sasha, "we need to make pliers because we may cut ourselves on hedgehogs. Hedgehogs are sharp."

Outside the window, the lianas rustled, and someone banged on the wall of the house, and then began to scratch at it as if with a hacksaw. Kostya startled. Sasha and Misha turned in the direction of the noise.

"Kostya," Alex began speaking clearly and calmly, "I saw a door here. Open it."

Kostya looked round the room fussily, ran to the door and opened it. He turned on the headlamp and lit up the toilet room.

"Go in there," Alex ordered.

They ran into the toilet.

"Close the door and close the latch, if there is one."

Kostya stared at the doorknob. There was no latch, but there was a hook. The guy heard Semyon Petrovich swearing through his earphones."

"Don't bother me," Alex shouted.

"We don't'," Kostya replied.

"I wasn't talking to you... Hook the door."

When Kostya had completed the order, he looked back at Sasha and Misha.

"Kolya told me to sit here quietly," Misha whispered.

"Yeah. Stay quiet," Alex said.

There was a crashing sound coming from the room where the wayfarers had just eaten. It was like someone was throwing furniture around. Soon the noise died down. The door to their hideout began to shake.

"Hush," Alex said.

Kostya closed his eyes.

A cry that sounded like a bear's roar came from the other side of the door, but then it stopped.

"Nowhere to go," someone said in a human voice outside the door, "nowhere to go."

"There's a man in there," Kostya whispered.

"Shut up!" Alex shouted.

"Mother bought new shoes," someone was saying from behind the door, "mother bought red shoes."

After that, there was another heart-rending roar.

"My father is going to bed," the voice said, and again let out a roar. The creature uttered incoherent phrases, then screamed or roared. This continued for about a minute, and then all sounds ceased.

"Is he gone?" Kostya asked.

"I think so, but stay quiet," Alex said.

"He spoke like a man," Misha said softly.

"Are they monsters of the Thicket?" Kostya asked.

"Yeah. You mustn't face them; you have to run away from them."

"It was not like in the yesterday training," Kostya whispered.

"Listen for the sounds outside the door." Alex said.

Kostya went to the door and put his ear to the small gap between the door and the doorjamb.

"I don't hear anything," he whispered.

"All right, turn off the headlamps."

The room was pitch dark.

"Open the door and open it a little, and see what's there."

Kostya felt for the hook with his hand, opened it and pushed the door slightly so that a beam of light from their lamp crossed diagonally the toilet. The lamp was on the floor. The overturned bed lay in the opposite corner of the room, and the table was broken in half. Kostya opened the door a little more and stuck out his head.

"Put on the night vision and turn off the lamp," Alex said.

The wayfarers did as the coordinators ordered. They gathered up the remnants of their belongings scattered round the room and made their way out into the street. When Kostya left the village, he felt that someone was following them. He thought he heard strange noises and creaks on the sides. And in his head were strange phrases that came from the mouth of the terrible Thicket creature.

Chapter seven

Anya had a big fight with Zakhar when he returned from the Institute of Space Infections. The foster parent claimed that Kostya himself wanted to become a wayfarer and suggested that Zakhar go with him to sign up, and Zakhar, for his part, tried to dissuade the boy from the dangerous escapade. The girl could not believe this story, looking at the drunk foster parent standing in front of her and playing the innocent. She tried to find out the address of the Institute in order to go there for her brother, but Zakhar said that he did not remember it, and he threw out the newspaper with the advertisement. Also the contract had already been signed, and his part of the advance had been spent on debts to the state and booze.

Half the night the girl cried in tears, the second half she somehow could fall sleep. In the morning, feeling exhausted, she went to the neighbours to ask for the day before yesterday's newspaper. She was told that the day before yesterday the newspapers were not delivered. When she asked where the Institute of Space Infections was located, people shrugged their shoulders. Someone said it was somewhere in the city outskirts, but where exactly was unclear. Having had lost hope to go there and take Kostya back, the girl went to school. When she returned home from school, she found a pair of women's shoes in the hall. From her room came music sound. Without taking off her shoes, the girl popped into her room and saw Zakhar lying on her bed with a woman. There was a glass of wine and an empty bottle of vodka on the desk, and sliced pickles lay in a bowl on the bedside table.

"Hello," the woman said, covering her breasts with the blanket.

"What's that!" Anya shouted at her foster parent.

"What? I'm a grown up man, a very lonely one." Zakhar made considerable effort to pronounce the words clearly. "My wife left me, you know, no one needs me."

'You sent Kostya to the Thicket so that you can to drink his money away with prostitutes?!" Anya picked up a bra from the floor and tossed it to the woman. "Get dressed and get out of my room!"

Zakhar's friend looked at him questioningly.

"Calm down, calm down," muttered Zakhar sitting up on the bed. "Why are you shouting?"

"Why am I shouting?! You sent my brother to his death without my knowledge! You got money for it, and you drink it away!.. Why am I shouting?! Are you fucking crazy?!" Anya yelled so loud that the entire block of flats could hear.

"Maybe I should leave?" the woman asked.

"No, you don't just 'maybe leave'. Maybe you get the hell out of here!" Kostya's sister kicked up a row, completely losing control of herself.

"Wait! Well... let's talk... give me a second," Zakhar somehow put on his underpants under the blanket and stood up. "Let's go to the kitchen."

"I'm not going anywhere! Get out of here, both of you!"

Zakhar pushed Anya out of the room, meantime getting a slap in his face.

"This is my flat, you drama queen!" Zakhar was also shouting now. "If you don't calm down, I'll throw you out!"

"I'm going to call the police!

"One moment! Listen carefully. I'm going to call the social service and tell them that I'm drunk with a prostitute and can't be a foster parent of a teenager and ask them to take you to an orphanage, because, according to the law, sixteen year old," he hesitated before her finished the phrase, "orphans are sent there!"

Zakhar went to the kitchen to get the telephone. He picked up the handset and started dialling.

"Stop! Anya shouted, calming down a little.

"Fuck you!" Zakhar mumbled, not turning to the girl. "Hello, yes, here's the thing, цудд, I..."

Zakhar removed the handset from his ear in disbelief.

"What is it?" he fiddled with the handset wire. "Black out..."

Anya unplugged the telephone, went into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

"Don't," she said. "Please."

"Why? Are you scared? Well, that makes difference, 'cause I don't want you freaking out here... I'll show all of you; I'll teach you a lesson..." mumbled Zakhar.

The foster parent stared at the girl.

"You know," he said, barely moving his tongue, "you have very beautiful breasts. What cup size is it?"

Anya cross her arms on her chest and crossed her legs. The man was standing beside and stroking her hair. She looked down at his nasty, skinny legs, understanding his intentions, and a shiver ran down her spine.

"I'm so lonely without my Marina," he complained.

"Go to your friend, I will not misbehave like this anymore," Anya said softly and removed Zakhar's hand from her head.

"I may not invite any tarts into the house, but I need someone to do the work instead."

"Who are you calling a tart?" a woman's voice came from the corridor.

"Someone who is you. Aren't you a tart?" Zakhar turned to his guest, who was pulling on her shoes.

"So that's what you say now? Am I a tart now? Fuck you, garbage!" she tried to open the door, but couldn't get the lock.

"Damn you," the woman swore, twisting the lock handle in different directions.

"Pull the door slightly and turn the handle to the right, stupid," Zakhar shouted to her.

The third time she managed to open it. The woman left the flat and slammed the door.

"How about a drink? There's some wine left," Zakhar suggested.

"I have lessons to do," said Anya. "Please get your things out of my room."

"Whatever you say." Zakhar looked into the girl's eyes. "Don't be afraid of me, I won't hurt you. Understand?"

"Yes."

"You think I'm a pervert?"

"No."

Zakhar went into Anya's room, and a couple of minutes later came out dressed, with two empty bottles of alcohol.

"Go and mind your own business," he said, "and I need to sleep it off."

Anya went back to her room, closed the door on the hook, lay down on the bed and sobbed.

Chapter eight

The journey to the point "A" was relatively quiet. Once the group heard a roar in the distance, but it was so distant that Alex did not take any action, but told the wayfarers to move on listening carefully. They walked right along the road, passing several villages. The coordinators knew the exact location of the group, and in the entire history of expeditions to the Thicket no one had died on this part of the route. This gave wayfarers a sense of security, despite the recent encounter with a local resident. Within three hours, they had almost reached their destination. Misha chafed his foot and they were now bleeding. So the last few kilometres he could not walk on his own. Kostya and Sasha held him by the arms. It was almost impossible to go like this through the thick wood. Alex decided to take the group out of the Thicket after spending the night on "A". According to the plan, they were supposed to go to the next point, but force majeure interfered with the situation.

The station itself was a one-story stone building with no windows, and the door could be bolted from the inside. Apparently, this structure once served as a warehouse. An ideal place for a safe rest.

They locked the iron door and settled down on the wooden floor with their sleeping bags spread out. Kostya put the lamp in the corner and took off his night-vision. In the room, near the wall opposite the entrance, was a wardrobe. Alex said that there was water and food in it, but since the group was to return to the Institute after spending the night, these supplies should not be touched.

"It stings," Misha said, looking at the callus on his heel. "I don't think I'll survive."

According to Alex's instructions, Kostya treated the wound with iodine, which made Misha start yell, and then they somehow bandaged his leg. After dinner, the wayfarers went to bed, but one of them always remained on duty. An hour on duty, two hours of sleep, and so on for eight hours. The coordinators also took turns sleeping. The night passed quietly.

The next morning they left point "A" and went back the same route. To get there took several hours longer than was plAnyad because of what he called himself "a mortally wounded". By nightfall, the group of three wayfarers emerged from the Thicket. After passing a kilometre, they met the security officer and the bus driver. They got on the transport and drove to the Institute. When Kostya got to his bed, in the room that had been assigned to him, he collapsed on the mattress and immediately passed out, forgetting to call his sister and tell her that everything went fine.

***

"Get up, sleepyhead," Alex said, and shook Kostya's shoulder.

"Is it morning?" the wayfarer asked in a sleepy voice.

"Yes, it's time to go home for a couple of days."

Kostya sat up on the bed.

"Will there be breakfast?"

"No, but I can buy treat you."

"I can't get home myself; I don't know the way."

"Petrovich called your home, but no one answered the phone, in general, you were supposed to be in the woods for two more days, but due to Misha... you know..."

"Is he alive?"

"Of course," Alex laughed. "What can happen to him?"

"He said he had a mortal wound, that it went dark before his eyes."

"Yeah, yeah, no doubt... He's all right, don't listen to him."

"All right."

"What neighbourhood do you live in, by the way?"

"Near the railway station."

"Come on? And where exactly?"

"Dorozhnaya street, building three, apartment twenty–seven, Kostya Ivanov, twenty years old," Kostya chattered.

"Nice, I also live in that neighbourhood, but on another street, it's near the crossroad close to the hockey rink."

"Yes, I know this rink."

"Shell we go home then?"

"I need to wash and brush my teeth. You can't go out on the street unwashed."

"Oh, you don't want it."

"It's you who don't, but I need to do it. I don't want my breath to smell like fish."

"As if you were going to be kissing someone."

"Maybe kissing."

"Really?" Alex was surprised. "Don't tell me you have a girlfriend."

"I have. Why can't I have a girlfriend?"

Alex didn't know how to put it correctly, so he said it directly. "Because you're slow."

"So what, I'm just as human as you are. There is nothing in you that I don't have. Whatever you want, I want too.

Alex sat down on the bed next Kostya.

"Good, good. So who is the girl?

"It's secret."

"Come on, I am your coordinator, from now on you may say your life depends on me, So just tell me."

"There is a girl, and I, when think about her, feel my stomach become hot," quietly said Kostya.

"And you're making out with her?"

"No, not yet."

"Just walking, socialising?"

"Well... not yet, either."

"What then?"

"Well... this girl doesn't know she's my girlfriend."

Alex laughed.

"What's so funny?" Kostya said irritably.

"Nothing, nothing, sorry. So this... should you tell her first?"

"Say what?"

"What's going on in your stomach..."

"No! No! Not a chance? I can't, it's a shame."

"Shamed? Do you feel ashamed because you like the girl?"

"Certainly."

"Would you like to spend the night with her?"

"Stop it."

"Would you like to sleep with her?"

"Enough."

"Come on, imagine her naked! "

"You're talking dirty! I have to go brush my teeth," Kostya jumped out of bed and quickly left the room. A second later, he returned, grabbed his toothbrush, and went back again. Alex sat with a big smile.

Kostya cleaned himself up, and they left the Institute together with Alex.

"Wait, I'll smoke."

The coordinator took a cigarette pack from his pocket and handed it to Kostya.

"Will you?"

"No, I don't."

"What are you afraid of?" Alex said and lit a cigarette.

"It's just stupid."

"Why?"

"Because it's bad for you."

"So what?"

"What, what. Think about it."

Kostya stood in front of Alex and watched as he greedily inhaled tobacco smoke.

"I was born in a world of madmen," thought Kostya.

Twenty minutes later, they took an empty bus and sat in the back row. Kostya sat by the window, because, as he put it, it was more fun. Alex took a can of beer from his pocket, opened it, and drank half of it in one gulp.

"You don't drink beer either?" he asked Kostya.

"No. I drink tea."

"I hope you know that tea is awfully bad for you?" Alex said with a smile.

"No! It cannot be bad."

"I had a friend who was very fond of tea, and he had an accident."

Kostya looked at Alex curiously.

"Yes, his name was... also Kostya, just like you. Coincidence, yes. He drank a lot of tea, like really strong tea, and eventually died of a heart attack."

"Is this when heart dies?"

"Yes, we went with him on the bus, also from the Institute. I drank beer and was happy about this fact, and that guy kept drinking his stinky tea from the thermos flask he carried, he loved tea madly. And just like we're sitting with you now, we were sitting with him. And he fell on my shoulder. I thought he wanted to sleep. I shook him, but he was dead. Heart attack and that's it."

"I don't believe you," Kostya said.

"I'm not trying to convince you," Alex said, finishing what was left of his beer, then crushed the can and put it on the floor. From another pocket, he pulled out the next can.

Kostya turned to the window, imperceptibly put his hand to his heart and tried to feel its beats. For a moment, his heart didn't seem to be beating.

"I'm kidding," Alex said cheerfully. "What are you trying to feel?"

"Nothing, just scratched my chest," Kostya said.

"Look, I've seen a lot of people with Down syndrome, and I want to tell you, you're doing great. I mean, seriously."

"Thank you, but I don't feel any different."

"Different? Slow?"

"Yeah."

"Huh... believe me, my friend, you're the most real retard, but you're handsome, I like you. I'm glad we're working together."

"Alex?"

"Yeah."

"Do you have any friends?" Kostya asked.

"Friends? Well... I don't know how to tell you."

"How can you not know?"

"It's complicated."

"It's always difficult when it comes to you."

"Comes to whom?"

"To crazy people."

"That's what I hear from a retard," Alex laughed.

"Will you stop calling me that!"

"Okay, I'm sorry... But life is not easy, you know, it's also true about friends, so it's difficult. But if think it over, probably I don't have any."

"And never had?"

"They were, but I recently decided I didn't want to talk to them anymore."

"If you're sad, I can become your friend," Kostya said, and smiled.

"Good idea. I agree."

"Finished."

"What finished?"

"I've become."

"And... so... what's changed?"

"What do you mean? We are friends."

"Ah... Yes, that's right."

"I like to draw, read books and solve riddles."

"I like beer and women." Alex finished his beer, crushed the can, and put it on the floor next to the first one. He reached into his backpack, pulled out a notebook with pencil, and a third can of beer. He said under his breath, "Great Breakfast, by the way... Here's a riddle for you, since you love them," he continued. "You'll never solve this." So, look, here are the numbers.

He began writing rapidly in a notebook.

1

11

21

1211

111221

312211

13112221

"You need to write the next line. Think about it at your leisure. None of my friends... or former friends, to be exact, solved it... However, they were all drunks and jerks."

Alex tore out the page and handed it to Kostya. He also took the home phone number of his new colleague and left him his own, also on a sheet of notebook.

"Well, I'll think about it," Kostya muttered, staring at the paper.

"Look, what's it like to see the world the way you do?" Alex asked.

"I do?" Kostya replied in surprise.

"Yes, I mean like a retard."

"I don't know, I just see it."

"Well, don't you think you're different?"

"No, but I think I'm being treated strangely."

"So-o-o. So you see something strange."

"I see their strangeness."

"And your own?"

'What's wrong with me?"

"For example, you speak differently."

"Nothing is different, I say it normally."

"So you don't notice anything unusual about yourself at all?"

"I notice that I always get bad matches. I can't light them."

"Don't you feel unsocial?"

"How's that?"

"This is when you don't really like spending time with other people and prefer to sit at home alone."

"No, I love my sister. I'm sitting with her. Not alone."

"And the girl who makes my stomach feel warm,"

"Stop it, I won't tell you anything more about her."

"Just take it easy, don't be that shy."

"Do you know what else I feel? I remembered."

"What?"

"I'm often called a retard. Especially by Zakhar. I'm very sad, I understand everything, and I'm not stupid and Anya says that I'm not stupid."

"Of course you're not stupid. The people round you are mostly stupid themselves. The majority is interested in nothing and does not know anything."

"Yes?"

"Yeah. If you send someone from our time to the past do you think he'll make a breakthrough in science? Teach people how to make telephones? Cars? Will he learn to use electricity? Raise the medicine to a new level? He won't even explain how an ordinary light bulb works. No one really knows anything. Everyone pretends to. The one who is better at pretending is considered more clever. But in fact, almost everyone is stupid."

"Are you smart?"

"Me? No, but I'm not pretending."

"If everyone is stupid, then we should be stupid, too?"

"No, we're not stupid. We're... er... we're average," Alex said and took a sip of beer.

Alex decided to accompany Kostya to the flat. And then walk to your house. Of course, they took the route that runs through the liquor store, as there was an urgent need to replenish the supply of alcohol. As they got off at the bus stop and headed for Kostya's house, Alex heard a familiar voice behind him.

"Hey, lads!" Old a called them in hoarse voice, and for some reason clapped his hands.

Alex and Kostya turned.

In addition to the former convict, Seryoga and Pasha were heading for them.

"Hey..." Old said.

They shook hands. Everybody except Pasha. He didn't say hello. Alex realised that Pasha was holding a grudge, and this was not surprising! After that kick in the nuts! Seryoga's cheek was swollen up after that punch and resembled a gumboil. The three of them reeked of fumes, as if they had been drinking nonstop since their Alex last saw them a few days ago.

"You don't look like much," Alex said sarcastically.

"We drank too much yesterday," Seryoga admitted. "And this jerk crushed a security yesterday..."

"Cut the crap, he turned on me first," Old snapped at Seryoga.

"You shouldn't have took frozen chicken from the fridge."

"It would have stopped being frozen after I fried it."

"Why didn't pay?"

"Pay what?"

"Pay money."

"For what?"

"For the chicken.

"I didn't eat it."

"Yes, but how accurately you threw it... Can you imagine, Alex, he smashed the security's head with a frozen chicken! From about five meters of distance! Right in the face!"

Old with glassy eyes stared at Seryoga, not seeming to understand what he was saying.

"It's usual for you," Alex said. "Okay, we should go..."

"Hold on... The old man managed to focus his gaze on Alex. "Bro, help us out, we're dying... give us for beer, huh?"

"I've been giving you for six months."

"Come on," Seryoga whined. "Do me a favour, dude..."

"Let's go, Kostya," said Alex, and took Kostya by arm, intending to lead him away from this company, but Old grabbed his "friend" by the strap of the backpack.

"Wait, give me money, I'm serious, I'm going to die."

"Old, that's enough... I'm tired of all this, I'm serious too."

"So you're not with us anymore?" asked Seryoga.

"You didn't hesitate to kick," muttered Pasha, "but when it came to money you can't give us diddly squat?"

"How many times have I helped you out?"

"I haven't paid you back for that kick yet," Pasha said. "That's your reason to help us. Help us, and I'll forgive you."

"I've had enough of helping... Get off me!" Alex shouted, and tried to push Old away slightly, but Old was holding on to his backpack.

"Bro, be a man," Old said patiently, releasing the strap.

"Have you ever thought of finding a job?" Alex asked all three of them. "Parasites."

"Hey, don't overdo it," Old said threateningly, pushing Alex in the shoulder. "Are you the smartest or what?"

"What did you just say," Seryoga said mockingly.

"So you're going to be friends with that jerk now, aren't you?" Pasha asked happily.

"I'm not jerk," Kostya muttered.

Seryoga and Pasha laughed out loud.

"I want to leave," Kostya told his coordinator.

"You're the only jerks here," Alex said.

Pasha's face changed abruptly.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Apologise to Kostya," Alex demanded angrily.

Pasha pulled out a pocket knife from his jeans.

"See the blade?" he said. "If I want to, I'll cut your tongue short, okay?"

"You will cut nobody, 'cause everyone knows you're pussy!" Alex said scornfully.

"Pasha, what are you doing?" Old man said. "Put that shit away!"

Pasha put the knife back.

"Apologise to him before I take you out!" Alex insisted.

"Who are you going to take out, huh?" Old was even more angry because of the hangover.

"Your buddies asked you for a hundred rubles 'cause they need to take the edge off, but you keep being greedy, that's not cool?!" He grabbed Alex's backpack again.

"Hands off."

"I'll take you out!"

Alex hit Old in the nose, which made him stagger and trudged somewhere to the side, clutching his face with one hand and trying to keep the balance with the other. Pasha and Seryoga immediately attacked Alex with fists.

Kostya tried to pull them apart, but found himself on the ground, closed his eyes and curled up, covering his face with his hands, trying to block the kicks. When it was over, he opened his eyes and saw Alex squatting next to him. He was wiping his bloody nose with a handkerchief. Old and Seryoga were dragging the passed out Pasha, whom Alex had managed to knock out.

"I wasn't even scared," Kostya said and rubbed his bruised eye.

"That's right, there's nothing to be afraid of... The main thing is to hit first, otherwise you may not have time to do it at all... Alex threw away the bloody handkerchief and held his head up, trying to stop the nosebleed.

"No, I was always so scared if I got hit."

"Now you know it's not a big deal."

Kostya looked back and saw his coordinator's friends disappear round the house corner.

"It will hurt, but later, and during the fight it doesn't hurts and it's not scary," Alex said and stood up.

"But it hurts already," Kostya pointed a finger under his eye.

"Don't be scared when you see yourself in the mirror tomorrow morning," Alex said and lit a cigarette.

"Why?"

"Shiner."

"Shiner?"

"Yes, black eye. The eye will turn blue. It's not a big deal."

"Well, then I won't be scared."

"Do you have keys to the house?"

"No."

"Who's home now?"

"I don't know.

"Of course..."

Alex accompanied Kostya to the flat, listening to his impressions of the fight all the way long. He rang the doorbell and hid on the stairs so as not to frighten his relatives with his bloodied face. When he heard the door open, he went straight down the steps.

The sister embraced her brother with tears in her eyes.

"What's happened to you?" Kostya was surprised.

"To me?" she sobbed, pressing her cheek against his. "Do you realise I have no one else but you?!"

"I realise. Don't push, it hurts my face."

Anya looked at Kostya and tried to touch his black eye.

"Did you get it in the Thicket?"

"No," Kostya waved his hand. "It's here at the bus stop."

"Where? At the bus stop! How it happened?"

Kostya told his sister how they fought with hooligans, how unafraid he was and how he helped Alex beat the villains. How he was kicked, but didn't even scream or cry.

Anya was shocked by what she heard. Her disabled brother, who was declared incapacitated, did not only go in the most dangerous place – in the sinister forest filled with creepy creatures, but he also got into a fight on the street. They had had so much stress in the past few days.

At breakfast, Kostya told his sister about the Thicket, about new friends – Sasha and Misha, and Alex's, the most important friend. But he preferred not to upset her and didn't tell her about the meeting with the creature in the house and about them taking refuge in the toilet. Kostya lied, saying that the expedition went calm and peaceful. Though the greatest danger was that Misha grazed his foot, Anya was not going to put up with the dangerous work of her brother and said that she would not let him go into the Thicket again. Kostya did not argue, because he knew that she was not the one who decided this, and if he wanted to, he would go. And he definitely wanted to, because it was necessary to finalise the contract and get the money, otherwise, what was the point of all this? Also Kostya didn't want to let down Alex, his new friend.

After the breakfast, Anya brought iodine from the toilet to treat her brother's black eye.

"I grabbed him and yelled 'let go of Alex'!" Kostya said proudly.

"Sit still." Anya wrapped cotton wool round a match and started applying iodine mesh under Kostya's eye.

"And when I was hit, it didn't even hurt."

"Nearly finished..."

"During the fight it doesn't hurts and it's not scary," Kostya continued. "The main thing is to hit first, otherwise you may not have time."

Anya looked at her brother in surprise.

"Is that really you? Too heroic" she said.

"Thank you," Kostya replied. "I am, yes."

Chapter nine

Zakhar returned in the evening, drunk, without shoes, and with a split lip. Anya and Kostya were just having dinner in the kitchen. The foster parent went to the table and put the money in front of the girl.

"I took a little for myself, but it's still enough. It's all yours," the man said.

Anya put the wad of money in her pocket.

Zakhar took out several bottles of beer.

"Will you?" he mumbled.

"Thank you, we don't drink," said Anya.

"I've got something else," said Zakhar, pulling a packet of saltine crackers from the pocket of his sweatpants. He wanted to put it next to the beer, but dropped on the floor. Then he picked up a stool and began unscrewing its legs.

"I've no happiness in my life," he mumbled.

Anya and Kostya anxiously watched the incomprehensible actions of the foster parent.

"It looks like a club," he said, and gave Kostya a stool leg. The guy put it on the table.

"I didn't fight, I fell off a chair," said Zakhar, pointing at his split lip. "The chairs in pubs are so high. Why are they this way?.. And the floors are solid..."

Having had unscrewed the other three legs, Zakhar threw the stool seat on the floor and plopped down on top of it.

"I won't fall this time," he said and reached for the crackers that lay beside him.

"I won't sit on the floor. I'm not supposed to. Not on the floor. And this is the world's first stool without legs. Low and reliable." Zakhar continued to reason.

"Let's go to the room," Anya said to her brother.

"Have a seat!" Zakhar squinted, trying to focus on the girl. "Would you like me to make you some of these stools?"

Anya and Kostya went out, taking the cot with them, and closed the door, leaving Zakhar alone with his delirium.

"Girls always give me a runaround," the foster parent said after they left.

Anya latched the door when going into her room. Kostya immediately laid out his sleeping place.

"I forgot my underwear," my brother said.

"Are you ready for bed?"

"No."

"Wait, don't go there yet, maybe he'll fall asleep."

Kostya sat down on the cot. There was a shout from the kitchen – Zakhar was singing a song.

"Look what Alex gave me," her brother said and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. – Here you need to add the next row of numbers."

"Is Alex your new friend?"

"Yes, he's my coordinator."

"Former."

"Former?"

"Yes, because I won't let you into the Thicket again."

"I need to."

"What will I do if you're gone?" Anya sat down near Kostya and took his hand.

"Cry?"

"Zakhar is drinking your money away right now."

"He gave us a lot."

"Are you sure he'll give you the full amount at the end?"

"We have to tell him to."

"Don't be ridiculous... What will you tell him?"

"That I won't work if he doesn't give it to me."

"Just forget about it and let's live on as we used to. Let him drink away the rest, and everything will return to normal. Two years before my majority will quickly pass."

"You didn't look at Alex's riddle," Kostya said, handing his sister a page torn from his notebook.

Anya looked at all the rows of numbers.

1

11

21

1211

111221

312211

13112221

"We need to find a pattern," the girl said. Kostya was also looking at the numbers.

"I've solved," Kostya said after a minute.

"Really?" Anya looked at her brother in disbelief.

"Yes," said Kostya.

Anya, without getting up, reached for the desk drawer and pulled out a pen. Kostya wrote the next row of numbers, and the following sequence was formed on the sheet:

1

11

21

1211

111221

312211

13112221

1113213211

"What's the pattern? How did you figure that?"

"You don't have to count anything here," her brother said.

Kostya told his sister the solution to this simple riddle. Anya was surprised that there really was no need to use mathematics, no need to look for patterns and calculate complex relationships between sets of numbers. There was no need for anything at all, and, theoretically, a child of five years could have solved this.

"Relatives!" Zakhar suddenly called out to them, knocking on the door.

"Don't say anything. He'll think we're asleep and leave," whispered Anya. Kostya nodded.

"I want a company!" the foster parent shouted from the corridor.

"Relatives!" he wouldn't come down. "Hey! Since this is my flat the latch you used to locked yourself in is also mine, I have the right to remove it. Now, let's remove do it.

The door swung open with a kick, and Zakhar barged in the room. And if it hadn't been for the opposite wall, which he hit by inertia, he probably would have fallen to the floor. Anya gave a start, but said nothing to her foster parent. Kostya jumped up from the cot.

"Watch your behaving?!" he shouted.

"I do watch," said Zakhar.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?!" Kostya shouted again.

"Aren't you too brave? You got a big mouth all of a sudden?" Zakhar said and looked closely at Kostya's bruised eye. "Oh! What a nice shiner you have!"

"It's indecent to break into a room!" the boy persisted.

"Let's go to the kitchen," said Zakhar.

"We're going to sleep," said Anya.

Zakhar winked at her.

"Do you happen to be sleeping in the same bed here?"

"No."

"Let's go, sit and chat, you have plenty of time to get some sleep."

'Anya said we don't want to!" Kostya came close to the foster parent and looked into his eyes.

Zakhar grabbed the boy by the hair and bent his head to his knees.

"Not that brave now?!" the foster parent said sharply.

"Let go! It hurts! By hair not fair!" Kostya took hold of the foster parent's forearm and tried to free himself. Anya jumped up and ran to Zakhar, but he backed away and went out into the hall. Kostya was in the doorway now, and Anya could not get round her brother. The girl tried to reach the foster parent's face to bunch it up, but he dodged. Then he grabbed Kostya by the ear and began to twist it. Kostya screamed in pain.

"Stand back, or I'll rip his ear off!" the foster parent said fiercely and pulled Kostya's earlobe so hard, that blood dripped on the floor. Kostya screamed, trying to break out of the tight grip.

"All right, all right, we'll do it, let him go!" Anya shouted hysterically.

"Was it that difficult to do what I asked for? Why provoking me to be so rude?!" Zakhar said, finally letting go of the boy.

Kostya fell to his knees, pressing his hands to his ear. Anya ran to him.

"Let me see," she said. "We need to anoint and bandage it. Give me a minute."

The girl tried to go to the toilet, but the foster parent blocked the way.

"Are you stupid?! I told you we were going to the kitchen!"

"Can I at least bandage his ear?"

"I will rip that ear off right now!"

Kostya got up, wiped his nose on his sleeve and went into the kitchen. Anna and the Zakhar followed.

"What should we do?" the girl asked softly.

"Pretend to be a happy family, like we're sitting here together and drinking beer. Like I didn't have to force you, and you understood everything right away, without forcing me being rude. I don't like being rude, but it's your fault... Zakhar sat down on the stool seat that was lying on the floor.

The girl was trembling with fear, looking at the pleased face of her foster parent, who was looking at her expectantly. She wiped the tears from her reddened, slightly swollen face and took a deep breath.

"How was your day?" Anya asked.

"Sit down," said Zakhar.

The sister sat down at the table opposite her brother. Kostya held his hand to his ear and looked at his feet. His cheek and hands were streaked with blood.

"Why did my wife cheat on me?" asked Zakhar.

Anya was afraid to answer. The foster parent had just calmed down a little, and with the wrong phrases she could cause another fit of his anger.

"Why did she want another man?" Zakhar leaned forward and reached for the beer under the table. One by one, opening three bottles with his teeth, he placed two on the table and one between his legs.

"Drink."

Anya obediently took the bottle and put top of it to her lips. She pretended to take a sip.

"You didn't drink," said Zakhar. "Do it!"

After a few sips, the girl winced at the bitter taste of the alcohol drink.

"Now you," Zakhar told Kostya.

The guy took a sip from the bottle.

"Well," said Zakhar, "could you have done it earlier."

He opened a packet of crackers.

"You still haven't answered my question. Why did my wife want other men?" Zakhar asked, crunching a cracker.

"I don't know," Anya said quietly.

"How do you like my appearance?"

"It's okay."

"Lie. I know you don't like me." Zakhar stood up. "I went bald when I was forty years. You probably like guys with thick hair."

"No," said Anya.

She could feel him looking at her. She tried not to meet his eyes.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" asked Zakhar.

"No."

"Have you ever had?"

"No."

"Sixteen years and never had a man?" Zakhar was surprised.

"Never."

"I was my wife's first," Zakhar said, and went to the kitchen cabinet and pulled out two forks.

"When I found out that she had several lovers during our relationship, I decided to kill the prodigal bitch."

Zakhar stood in front of Anya, holding a fork in both hands.

"But I couldn't. I'm not a murderer. I beat her. And then I approached her, just like I approach you now." He touched the girl's temples with the forks' tines. Anya started, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

"And I said that I would pluck out her eyes," Zakhar slightly tilted his head to better see Anya's face.

"Stop it!" Kostya jumped up from his chair.

Zakhar put the forks on the table.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "I was playing cards in a pub today. I lost to a man, and had to buy him a drink."

Zakhar took a deck of cards from his pants pocket.

"Want to play?"

Anya nodded.

"We'll play strip durak."

"I'm not going to undress in front of you," said the girl.

"Maybe you win, and I will."

"I don't want to play strip durak."

"You're doing it again," Zakhar angrily said, throwing the bottle into the wall. Shards of glass clattered all over the kitchen.

"Good!" the girl screamed and burst into tears. "Come on! Deal the cards!"

Zakhar dealt out the cards for two. Anya looked at her cards with disdain. Was she doing it? She didn't care, as long as these evening ends quickly. During their first game, the foster parent managed to empty another bottle of beer, which made him even more drunk, but he still managed to win.

"Whoa!" Zakhar clapped his hands. "Take off your shirt."

Left in her bra and sleep shorts," Anya shuffled the cards, looking at her hands.

Zakhar stared at the girl for a moment. Then he opened a new bottle, pulled a cracker out of the pack, threw it up into the air and tried to catch it with his mouth. Missed. He picked the cracker up from the floor and repeated the throw. Success. Zakhar wheezed and clutched at his throat. He stared at Anya with wide open eyes. He tried to breathe in the air, but couldn't because the cracker stuck n the throat. The girl put down the deck and stood over the foster parent.

"What are you doing?!" she didn't know what happened right away, because she didn't see him toss the cracker.

"He got a cracker!" Kostya exclaimed. "He got it in his mouth!"

Zakhar twitched, sitting on the stool, and pointed a finger at his mouth. His face turned purple.

"Did you choke on it?!" Anya walked round the foster parent and began to tap him on the back.

Zakhar turned and grabbed the girl by the shoulders. She saw the horror in his eyes.

"You are fucking boozer!" Escaping his grip she wrapped her arms round his ribs and shook him several times.

"What should I do?! What should I do?!" muttered Kostya.

"Don't try to die! You bitch!" the girl cursed the foster parent and kneeled behind him, continuing to press on his chest. "Not now! Not now! In two years, die a thousand times, I don't care, but not now!"

Zakhar ceased to make sounds. His body went limp, and Anya unclasped her hands. The man collapsed on his back. His bulging red eyes were froze on the purple face. The girl ran to her room, picked up a ballpoint pen, and returned to the kitchen.

"You're a future doctor, Anya," she said to herself. "Doctors should do such procedures with their eyes closed. You read about it. I can..."

Anna unscrewed the cap of the pen and pulled out the rod. Then she found the gap between the thyroid and cricoid cartilages with her fingers and stuck a pen there. She recoiled. The pen began to emit a low, rhythmic whistle.

"Breathe, you bastard," Anya said. "Breathe. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and sat down on a chair. All this time Kostya just stood there and looked at Zakhar. Anya picked up a bottle of beer from the table and gulped half of it then put it back on the table.

"Damn life," she said. "It was all so good, before this filthy Thicket of yours."

Zakhar stirred, his face began to brighten. He groped for the handle protruding from his throat and grunted, trying to say something.

"Stay down! Lie down, bastard!" Anya yelled at him. "I'll call the doctors!"

The girl called an ambulance. While waiting for it, she managed to sweep up the shards and throw away the remnants of alcohol. All this time Zakhar was lying on his back and watching Anya. Ten minutes later, the doctor appeared in their flat.

The girl explained that they were having dinner, and Zakhar choked. Finally, he was carried out of the flat on a stretcher. Anya watched from the window as people in white coats loaded the foster parent into the ambulance.

"Why do people get so drunk?" Kostya asked.

"I have no idea," said his sister, still looking out of the window.

"Why is it allowed to make vodka?"

"Corporations make a lot of money from alcoholics."

"There are crazy people around," Kostya said.

"Let's go to the bath, need to seal your ear, Anya looked at the face of her brother. Blood dried on his cheek, neck, and hands.

***

Zakhar was admitted to the hospital. Anya did everything wrong: the puncture was in the wrong place; she did not disinfect the pen and the puncture site itself. The wound was infected, so the doctors didn't risk letting him go home. Left in the flat alone, Kostya and Anya felt peace of mind for the first time in several weeks.

The girl went to school, while her brother was preparing dinner. The sister bought a electric lighter to light the hobs. Kostya was able to cook borscht, macaroni, make mashed potatoes and fried eggs. He wanted to learn how to cook pilaf.

One day, while working in the kitchen, he came across a TV show about animal protection. The boy was shocked by what he saw – a young elephant still alive with its tusks cut off was lying in a pool of its own blood. It was so weak that it could only open its mouth, seeming to beg for help, or perhaps for death, and move his trunk slightly. A voice-over said that the poachers, after shooting the entire herd, cut off the ivory. The teenager (as the presenter called the elephant) had no chance, because he was shot in the stomach, and tissue necrosis went down the muzzle due to dirt that got into the places where the tusks were cut off. The elephant had to be finished off so that it would not suffer. The speaker urged not to buy ivory products and not to encourage the extermination of these intelligent animals.

Kostya turned off the TV, unable to watch this atrocity. The picture of an elephant dying near its fellows cut deep into boy's mind. He felt a fierce hatred for people who knowingly do evil. He wanted to do to them what they did to poor, innocent animals. Kostya told Anya about this when she returned from school, but the girl shrugged, saying that the world is cruel and unfair. There have always been poachers and, unfortunately, nothing can be done about them.

On the third day of their peaceful stay at home, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, the phone rang. Alex said that he would pick Kostya up tomorrow in the morning. He must go into the Thicket. Kostya did not say anything to his sister, especially since he promised her not to take part in other expeditions.

An hour after the girl left for school, Alex came to Kostya and they went to the Institute. When asked by the coordinator what happened to Kostya's ear, the guy proudly replied that he had a fight with the foster parent. Alex tried to find out the details, but Kostya didn't tell them.

At the Institute, Semyon Petrovich instructed the wayfarers. This time their task was to get into the Thicket, as deep as possible.

Chapter ten

Three hundred kilometres to the central root of the Thicket.

At the beginning of his second trip to the Thicket, Kostya did not pay attention to the strange buzz in his head caused by the Thicket influence. The wayfarers took the same route as they had taken a few days ago. In the house where they had last encountered an unknown creature, they decided not to stop and made their way without intermediate stops. They reached point "A" late in the evening, almost at night. After they had covered twenty kilometres on the first day, which Alex said was not enough, they settled in the warehouse where their first trip had ended. Kostya bolted the entrance gate and put the lamp on the floor. They switched off their night-vision devices. Kostya rubbed his tired eyes, leaned against the gate and slid down, ending up on sitting on the floor.

"Have dinner and go to bed," Alex said. "Sasha looks the least tired, he will be on duty first."

"Why watch if the gates are closed?" Kostya asked and yawned.

"Because," Alex said. "It's protocol."

The three wayfarers ate two cans of stew with hardtacks and washed it down with apple juice, then took turns going "to make yellow" in the bucket, specially left there. Kostya and Misha spread out their sleeping bags and lay down. Sasha sat in the corner and quietly chatted with his coordinator.

***

Two hundred and eighty kilometres to the central root of the Thicket.

The night passed quietly and quietly. The wayfarers alternately kept watch until morning, though it was only possible to tell it was morning by following the clock and the coordinator's commands, since the sunlight couldn't reach here, lost somewhere in the tangles of green vines high above the ground.

In the morning Alex reminded them to take some water bottles from the cabinet that had been brought here by the supply team. There should be no problems with water till the point "C", but then they'd have to look for working water pumps in settlements. They gathered their belongings, put on their night-vision devices, and stood up ready to leave on the command.

"Be careful," Alex said. "As usual, before opening any door, first listen."

Kostya went to the gate and listened, trying to make sure that the street was safe. When he realised there was no one there, he pulled back the bolt and opened the door a crack. He stuck his head out and looked around. No one was to be seen.

The wayfarers continued along the highway to the next settlement, making their way through a web of tentacled vines. This day Alex planned to cover the distance between the villages, a length of thirty kilometres. There would be no intermediate points for sleeping, so anyway there was no choice for wayfarers, they needed to go these thirty kilometres in one fell swoop, stopping but for a snack.

It was easier to move than yesterday, thanks to the fact they just had to move down the road. They walked without even checking the compass, and the coordinators knew exactly where their team was. This brought them certain comfort.

At about five in the evening, the group made its first break. They sat down on the asphalt. Alex allowed them to take off the night-vision devices and turn on one of the torches so that their eyes would rest a little. The charge of the walkie-talkies, cameras, and night-vision devices would last for a few more days. At the point "C" there was a house with a working generator, so wayfarers could charge electronic devices there. The next opportunity to recharge the devices would only appear on "D", where, last year, a group accidentally came across a garage that had another generator. The previous team, which managed to reach the point "D", carried several litres of petrol to refuel the generator.

At the halt, the wayfarers ate a can of food and washed it down with water. Misha said he wanted to go to the toilet and walked twenty meters away from the place of halt. Kostya lay on his back, pulled out his earpiece, and listened to the silence. The Thicket made a strange hissing sound, apparently due to the slow growth, the vines rubbing against each other, created a barely perceptible sound. He hadn't noticed it before.

"Tired?" Sasha asked.

"Yes," Kostya said and put the earpiece back in, "but we have to kill the Thicket."

"Yes, we can."

"Aren't you afraid?" Kostya asked.

"Afraid. It's so dark and quiet. I'm very scared, but I'm a man. My grandfather says I'm a hero."

"What's taking Misha so long," Kostya said, raising himself on one elbow and shouting. "Misha!"

"Quiet, you!" Alex grumbled. "Misha is on our monitor, everything is fine, don't yell!"

"Ah... well, all right," said Kostya, and lay down again.

A few minutes later Misha returned, and the party set off. Soon the wayfarers and coordinators were seised with real horror. After walking several kilometres, they came across a myriad of open red buds, which the wayfarers saw in black and white. Flowers bloomed on those vines that were thicker than others. Every few meters, as far as the eye could reach, there were open buds hanging on these vines, and under each bud was a pool of slime was spreading, which had not yet been absorbed into the ground.

"Wait," Alex said. "I'll turn off the microphone for a while. I will hear and see you, but you will not hear me."

"Are these monsters around?" Kostya asked.

"Yes, they're somewhere nearby, so stay where you are, don't make any noise, and don't turn on the torches."

"Alex, I'm scared."

"Everything will be fine, okay, stay here, I'm disconnecting."

The last thing Kostya heard was Alex calling Semyon Petrovich.

They looked at each other. Misha said that his coordinator Kolya turned off the sound. Sasha squatted down and pushed his night-vision goggles over his forehead.

"You can't turn on the light," Kostya told him quietly.

"I don't turn it on, but my eyes are tired."

A minute later, Alex got in touch.

"We're going down the road," the coordinator said.

"Why?" Kostya pointed to a inflorescence of buds.

"The safest way is to stick to the road. Those, who got out of the buds, are obviously gone to the sides, if you go around, there is a chance to stumble on them."

"All right, whatever you say," Kostya replied.

The group continued on its previously planned rout. They walked more slowly to make as little noise as possible, constantly looking around and flinching at their own voices. The coordinators ordered them to spread out and walk, keeping a good distance from each other, so that they could barely see each other. Misha was first, Sasha was the last, and Kostya was in the middle.

Everywhere they looked they saw blooming buds, one and a half to two meters in diametre, with six huge petals each. As they passed another flower, Kostya touched a petal. To the touch, it was like rubber – tight and rigid, a few centimetres thick. Alex didn't notice his wayfarer touching the plant; otherwise he would have scolded the boy.

The flowers were left behind, and again there was a monotonous landscape: a tangle of vines and curving trunks that went up so high that the eye could reach it.

Four hours later, the group reached the point "B". A brick water tower, wrapped in vines, stood almost beside the road. They climbed a spiral staircase, climbed three hundred and twenty-seven steps: Kostya was counting them all, and found themselves on a small platform. The plank floor was rotten, but Alex assured that no one had fallen off yet. On the plank platform there was another stairs of ten steps only. The wayfarers climbed it and squeezing through a hatch with a rubber gasket. They found themselves in a tank where people used to stored water previously. A cold, rusty iron barrel with no air openings, except for a hatch. It was not the most comfortable place, but the safest one. The room was already set up for sleeping – the stacked mattresses immediately attracted Kostya's attention. After such a long walk and climbing up the stairs the only thing he wanted was to fall asleep. In addition to mattresses, the tank had a shelf with a supply of canned food and drinking water.

"Eat and sleep," Alex said. "You're on duty at the hatch for two hours."

"Hatch?" Kostya asked, taking off the night-vision device.

Kostya's voice echoed off the iron walls.

"Yes, but you shouldn't close it with no reason to; you don't want to suffocate without oxygen. Usually guys just replace each other on duty near the hatch."

"What if someone comes to us at night?" the Wayfarer held up the lamp, illuminating the rusty walls of the tank.

"If something comes, you can close the hatch."

"And we'll suffocate?"

"Kostya, enough questions, you will not suffocate, and in all the time, this has never happened.

"And those flowers?"

"What about them? They are far from here."

"Well... I see, well... whatever you say."

"Also dim the lamp so that the light can't be seen from below."

"Great."

Kostya made the light so dim that he could barely make out the silhouettes of his companions.

Sasha and Misha were already eating their rations, sitting on a mattress. Kostya joined his companions, wishing them a good appetite.

"Alex!" Kostya suddenly cried out.

"Yes! What happened?!" Alex asked anxiously.

"There's nowhere to pee! The bucket! There's no bucket!"

"Phew... you scared me! I thought you saw something... Pee directly in the hatch."

"Right in the hatch?" he was surprised.

"Yeah, right in the hatch."

"Great."

"Right in the hatch?" Misha asked.

"Yes, in the hatch," Kostya told him.

"High," Sasha said.

"It's even more interesting to pee this way," Kostya said with a smile. "I've never peed from this high."

After dinner, Sasha and Misha fell asleep where they were sitting with their backs against the iron wall. Kostya, exhausted after the day, hobbled to the hatch in the floor.

"I'm dying of fatigue," he said.

"Just be patient."

"You see everything in the camera; I'll sleep, and you watch."

"I don't see everything, and I don't know if I can wake you up in case of danger. No, this is a bad idea."

Kostya dragged the mattress to the exit.

"All right, all right, I'll guard here."

Time had never passed so slowly. Kostya held on with all his strength, so as not to fall into unconsciousness, sitting on a soft mattress that beckoned him to have a quick nap. But the coordinator didn't stop talking. He kept telling Kostya something to make it easier for him to be on duty.

The wayfarer from time to time closed his eyes, and these moments it seemed to him that he fell asleep at and eternity passed, but the imaginary drowsiness lasted no more than ten seconds. At the second hour of duty, Kostya heard something. The sound came from below. He got down on all fours and peered through the hatch. There was a grating sound in the darkness, mingled with rustling and hissing.

"What is it?" Alex asked.

"I don't know."

"You can't see anything, turn on the night vision."

Kostya put on his night-vision goggles and peered through the hatch again.

From the height of fifteen meters, the guy – together with Alex watching through the camera – peered down.

"The floor is moving," Kostya said quietly.

"That's bad," Alex said.

"What is it?"

The black-and-white picture that appeared before Kostya shocked even the experienced coordinator.

At the foot of the tower was swarming some kind of incomprehensible mass of humans or animals.

"It's very hard to see," Kostya said. "Let's throw light over there."

"No way. They haven't noticed us yet, so maybe they'll leave. We sit quietly and watch."

"I don't know who it is." Kostya said.

"They are creatures of the Thicket. They do not have a specific form. They are all different."

"Are they made of people who died here?" the guy asked.

"Of people, animals, insects..."

"Are they scary?"

"They are."

"Why are they silent?"

"I don't know."

"That last one was saying some."

"These creatures are all unique. You will not meet two similar ones."

"If they come up, will we close the hatch?"

"Yeah."

"Are they very scary?"

"Yes, they are. Stop asking the same questions."

"I'm just a little scared. More precisely, I'm scared. What eyes do they have?"

"I don't know about their eyes."

"Black?"

"Kostya!

"What?"

"Shut up, please."

"Well... okay."

Chapter eleven

When she got home, Anya found a note from Kostya on her desk.

"Don't be angry. I went into the Thicket. I'll make us money. I'll be there for many days. I love you."

Round the inscription, her brother drew hearts with a red pen. Anya crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor. She had a lump in her throat, but restrained herself from crying. Terrible thoughts of loneliness swirled in her head. Anya was filled with the certainty that this time her brother would not return.

Two days later, Zakhar returned. Anya was sitting in the kitchen and watching TV when the front door opened and a quiet "Hello" came from the hallway. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon.

Anya said nothing to her foster parent. She got up and went to her room. As she passed Zakhar, she looked at his bandaged neck. The man put the bag on the floor. Glass clinked.

"I was discharged quickly..." he muttered. Anya slammed the door. The broken latch was still lying in the corner, and she could no longer lock herself in, although it was of little use.

Zakhar immediately went to her room.

"Look, we need to talk," he said, almost in a whisper.

"About what?"

"May I come in?" he opened the door wider.

"May I refuse? If I say 'no', will you leave?"

"I'd like to apologise. I didn't behave well, I don't know what came over me. I sometimes have this uncontrollable aggression... because of it, I..."

"Okay."

"What's okay? Do you forgive me?"

"I have no choice!"

"What do you mean by 'no choice'?"

"I'm afraid of you. What difference does it make whether I forgive or not?"

"Let's go to the kitchen, standing in the doorway is not very convenient to talk."

Fearing that Zakhar would be enraged again, the girl did not contradict him.

The foster parent took out a bottle of vodka and some cans that looked like baby food.

"You saved my life," said Zakhar "I don't remember what happened then, and I don't want to remember it. Just, thank you. Seriously, I'm grateful."

"Can you drink with a wound in your throat?" Anya asked.

"Who said I was going to drink?"

Zakhar opened the top drawer that hung on the wall near the window and took out a rubber enema bag.

"Let's celebrate my new birthday?" the foster parent asked, examining the enema.

"What do you need it for?" Anya didn't know what he was going to do.

Zakhar poured vodka into a mug and poured alcohol into the enema.

"Because of the wound in my throat I will have to use the drink in a very peculiar way," he said, smiling.

Anya made a face of disgust. She wrinkled up so much that she looked like a bad actress trying to feign genuine dislike.

"Oh, please," Zakhar laughed. "You are no refined princess yourself... Yes, I will consume alcohol through the anus and the baby food through the mouth."

"Can I leave?" Anya asked.

"Wait, I have to tell you something," Zakhar said. "I'll be right back."

He went to the toilet with an enema in his hand. She knew that this evening would not end well, but there was a glimmer of hope in her heart that her foster parent would be reasonable. Zakhar returned to the kitchen a few minutes later. Swaying, he went to the table and leaned on it with his hands. He stood in silence, bent at the waist, breathing heavily.

"Are you all right?" the girl moved a little away from him, along with her chair.

"Yeah, it stings."

"Throat?"

"Ass... Ass... it's burning," he said slowly, with effort.

Anya said nothing.

"Phew... It let go a little... a little..."

Zakhar sat down on a stool opposite the girl.

"Here," the foster parent placed a piece of paper with a phone number on the table. "You can call the Institute, the Department of Wayfarers."

Anya immediately picked up the phone and dialled the given number. Semyon Petrovich answered her. He reassured the girl, saying that the group was all right. She wanted to come, but he explained that she would not be allowed to see the coordinators and especially, the monitors. The only thing allowed was to call the Institute once a day to find out about the progress expedition and whether everything was good. Anya was glad of that, too. When she hung up, she let out a sigh of relief.

"Is our wayfarer all right?" asked Zakhar.

"Yeah. You wanted to tell me something."

The foster parent took a deep breath.

"I wanted... Yes... well... I..." It Seemed that Zakhar didn't know where to start. "In general... when I was twenty-five, we had our first child with Marina, a girl, I called her Varya. My wife did not mind this name, although she wanted to call her Katya. I decided that there were too many Katya's running around in the yard, and Varya was a rare name. Varya turned out to be a very naughty girl. She climbed everywhere, once you look away she is already hanging upside down on the tree. Like a monkey, by God. When daughter turned five years old, Marina got pregnant again, this time they were waiting for the boy.

Zakhar opened the window a crack.

"Do you have a cig?" he asked.

"Have you ever seen me smoke?"

"Well, well... I wanted to cig suddenly. I haven't smoked in five years. And haven't drunk the same amount of time... So this guy had to be born. I was a healthy back then, good-looking young man, although I was already in my thirties." Zakhar grinned. "Worked at a factory as a deputy head of production. This was quite a serious position. Marina was sitting at home with the child, and her old school friend offered her a job. She did not know that Marina was pregnant; her belly was not yet visible. We viewed it as an opportunity to get her a job, before going on maternity leave, so that the money will keep being billed, and after the leave Marina will go back to work. We did so. We asked Marina's aunt to look after our daughter, not for free of course, we paid her a little... don't remember, but not much. And one day, when my wife and I were at work, a terrible accident happened."

Zakhar paused and rubbed his face with his hands.

"Varya fell from the fifth floor window," he said.

"God, what a nightmare," said Anya.

"Yes, the bitch had missed it."

"Varya survived?"

"Varya survived, yes. But since then, our lives have changed dramatically. Varya broke six vertebrae, tore both lungs, apparently, when she hit the ground, there was air in the lungs. Her pelvic bone was broken into many pieces. The girl remained conscious when her aunt ran out into the street, grabbed her and carried home in her arms. Then she called an ambulance. As the doctors said, it was prohibited to touch Varya, but the aunt did it. The fractured vertebrae were badly dislocated. Because of the severe damage, Varya was completely paralysed. She could only blink, swallow, and breathe."

Zakhar's eyes filled with tears. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"I'm sorry," said Anya.

"When Marina found out about what happened, she had a miscarriage."

Anya's face changed and now she was looking at Zakhar not with fear and disgust, but with pity. The girl was able to feel his pain, despite the past actions of the foster parent.

"I'm really, really, really sorry, I don't even know what to say," said Anya.

"After that, my wife started drinking. Sometimes she even forgot to feed Varya or clean up after her. I came back from work and saw dirty diapers, hungry Varya and Marina lying unconscious. I tried to put up with this for a while. I even thought of quitting the job, but what would we live on? In the end, I started drinking myself; I don't know how it happened, maybe I just got weak. I ended up getting fired from my job, and my wife and I were drinking in the kitchen together. Several times I took her away from a doubtful company of lost and worthless people, just like us. She started cheating on me. I think she did it unconsciously, when drunk. But... Who the hell knows whether it was so or not. Our quarrels ended with us fighting. I used to beat her after cheating. As a result, she moved out from me to her eighty year old grandmother and took Varya. I don't know how they got on... but if the bailiffs came for the child support, they're probably still alive. We divorced without the police and courts; everything was quiet.

"It's... it's just awful, I have no words," Anya said.

"So I lied about having two children. One dead child and one cripple. Well, and a wife, who is a whore and an alcoholic who left me alone."

"Why did you tell me that?"

"I want you to know that I could live happily. I could be a different person. If not..."

"If you and your wife hadn't squandered your everything on drink? And if you hadn't beat your wife in a fit of alcoholic psychosis, and she hadn't slept with randos for the same reason, then yes, it probably would have been different."

"You understood nothing. It's not the alcohol; it's the circumstances of my life. The wounds... and death..."

"You had a problem in your family and you instead of solving it took up drinking together with your wife? Great move, bravo."

"I feel so bad," said Zakhar, and then added, after a pause. "Will you?"

He handed the girl an enema, then hurriedly took his hand away, realising that he had been stupid, and pushed the glass at her.

"No, I won't. I don't use anything at all. Especially through enema."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've gone a little gruff."

"Can I leave now?" Anya asked.

"Yes, and close the door for me," Zakhar replied and filled the enema with vodka.

Chapter twelve

Two hundred and fifty kilometres to the central root of the Thicket.

The wayfarers kept watch in shifts for most of the night. End of the night, the creatures left the ground floor of the water tower. What attracted them here, no one ever understood.

For the next few days, the expedition did not encounter any buds or creatures. They passed points "C" and "D", replenishing their water supplies and charging their batteries. They walked thirty kilometres through forests, roads, villages, and urban settlements that were entangled in a death-bearing network of plants. Point "D" was the last place where water supplies were stored.

The easy part of the journey went quite smooth. By "easy part" they meant the route, which has already been explored by other groups. The next task was to find a new place to stay for the night. The small rural town marked on Alex's map was ten kilometres from the current position of the wayfarers. It fitted for this purpose.

Anya called every day. Alex told his wayfarer everything about these calls. Kostya was very happy that everything was fine at home. This gave him the strength to move forward.

By the evening of the sixth day of the campaign, the party had crossed the town line. Exhausted, barely able to move their feet, making their way through hanging vines, stepping over roots sticking out of the ground, the wayfarers found themselves at the entrance of a two-storied building on the outskirts of the city. Near the door were two benches opposite each other. Kostya lay down on the ground, cursing this expedition and swearing at Alex, saying that he was not told it would be so difficult. Sasha and Misha plopped down on the benches and put their heads back. The boys sat gasping and looking up through the web of tentacles above them.

"Get up, boys," Alex said. "We need to find a place to rest, we almost did it."

"Yeah, yeah, just a second," Kostya muttered.

"There should be a working water supply system, in this town you will have a rest for a day."

"A day? So we're not going anywhere tomorrow?

"No, tomorrow you'll be having a rest, and also there are some simple things to do."

"Like what?"

"Find water."

"How do I find it?"

"In standpipes."

"There's water in them?"

"Yeah, why not."

"Then we must search for it."

"The standpipes are easy to find, but the well is difficult," said Sasha.

Gathering his strength, Kostya stood up and looked round the area as far as possible. Asphalt road faded away in the fallen trees and the shoots of the weed. To the left and right of the road, one-storied houses could be distinguished, but these were no log houses, but stone ones.

"The building you're near is a school," Alex said.

"I went to school," Kostya said. "I finished the twelfth "A" grade. Only the most promising studied in class "A"."

"Attaboy. Go in the school, but be careful."

"Why is there no electricity in the town?" Kostya asked.

"Because the local power plant doesn't work," Alex said.

"But water works?"

"It's easier with water."

Kostya pulled the handle of the high door. The door opened slightly and rested against a thick root, about twenty centimetres in diametre, that stuck out of the ground and twisted upward. The wayfarer poked his head through the gap and checked the school corridor. To the left, a security counter, several overturned benches, and apparently artificial flowers that had been knocked to the floor. Kostya gave a start, suddenly seeing himself in the mirror from a distance of twenty meters. It took the guy a moment to realise that it was just his reflection.

"What is it?" Sasha asked from behind Kostya's shoulder.

"School."

"What school?" Misha asked.

"Children's school," Kostya said.

"Try to get through, but don't make any noise and don't turn on the lights," Alex said.

Kostya tried to open the door wider, Sasha and Misha also leaned on it to help their friend, but the root would not allow them to do so.

"We can't," said Kostya. "Let's go in as it is."

The group had to take off their backpacks to get through the narrow door crack. Once in the corridor, Alex directed the group to the second floor. As they made their way to the stairs, Kostya stared through the night-vision device at the vague silhouettes of drawings on the walls. He saw it not so much with his eyes as with his memory, he saw happy children picking flowers in a glade, fairy-tale animals with big eyes smiled from the corridor walls. Exactly the same drawings were in the school where he studied. There were fewer vines than in the street. The weed entered through the broken windows, passed along the wall and came out through other window, thus, entwining the entire building round the perimeter, but not growing too much inside.

The wayfarers went up to the second floor and found themselves in another corridor with similar drawings on the walls. The only difference: there were thing no scattered on the floor. On the left side were the windows broken by vines, and on the right – doors.

"Go to the nearest classroom," Alex said.

Kostya yanked at the first doorknob. Closed. He crept along the creaking wooden floor and tried to open the next door. It gave way. Looking inside, he realised that this was an ordinary classroom. There was a blackboard on the wall and three rows of desks in front of it. Crawly weeds came in and out of broken windows.

"Stop here?" Kostya asked.

"For now yes, but we'll have to check other variants," Alex said. "Ideally, we would a room without windows... Though it is the second floor... Okay, stay here, have a snack, but do not sleep."

"Great."

"We need to confer," Alex said. "Now we will disconnect, but, as always, we will both hear and see you."

"Understood," Kostya replied. He went to the window and saw the playground in the school yard, half hidden by the vines.

"I want to sleep," Misha said and sat down on a desk.

"When are we going home?" Kostya said and moved away from the window.

Sasha sat down at the teacher's table and shouted:

"Silence in the classroom!"

They laughed together.

A couple of minutes later, Alex got in touch.

"We'll spend the night here," the coordinator said, "Barricade the doors now and tomorrow we'll look for a better place."

They fell a closet and propped it against the door. On the closet they put desks and propped up the whole structure with a heavy wooden teacher's table.

Kostya and Alex counted the remaining cans. The supply would be enough for another four days of hiking, if they lower their food intake. There was food and water supplies left at the point "D", so they would be able to replenish their supplies when they return. The water situation was worse, they had the last one litre bottle left. But in the town it was not that difficult to get water, unlike food.

They dined on stew and crackers, and two of them went to bed, as usual. This time Sasha and Kostya, while Misha remained on duty near the door. The coordinators were sleeping when their wayfarers were.

Kostya was awakened by Misha's scream and an incomprehensible roar. When he opened his eyes, someone was banging on the door. With the tremendous pressure from the corridor, the blockage of school furniture was pushed further away with each push. Misha tried to push against the door, but a hand squeezed through the door crack and grabbed the wayfarer by face. His fingers went into Misha's mouth, and he jumped back with a cry. The gap got bigger.

"Jump out the window!" Alex screamed. "Rucksacks first, then you!"

The door swung open completely, and an ugly creature stumbled into the classroom. All its limbs were made of human hands, and it was difficult to count their number. It looked like a giant spider. The creature had risen, and a huge pig's head protruded where its belly should have been. The creature's mouth gaped unnaturally wide, revealing long, thin, needle-like teeth. With a shriek, it rushed towards the wayfarers, moving its hands like a scolopendra, but for a moment it was stuck in a mountain of scattered desks and chairs. Another creature appeared in the doorway, this one was standing on two legs. In the dim light it looked like a humanlike, but it was more than two and a half meters tall.

"Out the window!" Alex shouted. "Out of the window, bitch!"

The wayfarers threw out their backpacks and, driven by terror, rushed from the second floor without hesitation. Kostya hit his chest, caught on a vine, rolled over on it and fell flat on his back, hitting his tailbone badly. Gritting his teeth, he stretched his spine, rolled over on his side, groaning in pain. Sasha was lying next to his, screaming like a madman and holding his leg with his hand. Kostya, rubbing the bruised tailbone, raised himself slightly and saw that Sasha's leg was twisted down from the knee. Misha landed safe and sound. He tried to lift Sasha by the armpits, but he wouldn't let them be helped.

"We must go, quickly!" Alex commanded.

Screams came from nearby in the darkness. Kostya and Misha somehow picked up Sasha, who was moaning with pain about his dislocated leg, but at this moment the huge, resembling a naked man creature, with its limbs randomly arranged all over its body, jumped out from somewhere and grabbed Sasha by both legs. The guy screamed. Kostya glimpsed at the creature's face. It was undoubtedly a human face, the most ordinary-looking. The creature yanked Sasha and dragged him into the darkness.

Kostya ran along the road, pushing the vines with hands, tripping over roots, falling, rising and falling again, not listening to what Alex was yelling into the microphone. The only thing he wanted was to get away from the horrible place where his friend had just died.

"Wait for me!" there was Misha's cry. "Kostya, you forgot your backpack!"

Kostya stopped and turned around. The vine's rustle was heard somewhere in the dark, out of sight.

"Is that you?!" his breathlessness made it difficult for him to utter the sentence.

"Yes! Wait!" Misha said.

"Wait for Misha and then move on, it's dangerous to stay here," Alex said.

"Sasha is dead," Kostya said. "They killed him."

Alex didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry for Sasha," Kostya continued. "He was kind."

Misha appeared ahead, struggling through the thicket, with two backpacks on his shoulders – one strap on each.

"Sasha is dead," Misha said.

"Yes," said Kostya and took his rucksack from his friend.

"Get off the road onto the pavement and go deep into the city," Alex ordered.

The wayfarers were practically running along the broken shop windows along the overgrown street. Five minutes later, Alex told them to go into a building. Kostya and Misha stopped at the store. The "Products" signboard, just above the front door, was missing the letter "r". They climbed into the store through the window and found themselves in the sales area. A sharp, rotten smell hit their nostrils. The store shelves and fridges that lined along the room walls were littered with products, most of which had expired long before.

"Sasha is dead," Misha said again.

"Yes," said Kostya. "I am very sorry for him."

"Very scary," Misha said, "so many hands and teeth."

"Kostya," Alex said, "look, there's a doorway behind the counter."

Kostya walked round the cold-storage case and came to a narrow corridor that ended with a door. On the left side, he saw two more doors.

"Misha, this way."

They checked all the doors sequentially. The first led to a small room with a table and a chair, perhaps once here sat the head manager or an accountant. Behind the second door was a toilet that could be locked if necessary, but the flimsy latch was not trustworthy. When Kostya opened the third door, Alex said that this was the perfect place for a new "E" point. Another storage area, with shelves arranged in rows and littered with products that have long expired, perhaps with the exception of some canned goods. Kostya bolted the door.

"You need a break," Alex said.

"I feel very sorry for Sasha," Kostya said.

"Yes, we feel the same," the coordinator said dryly.

"We could have died, too," Misha said.

"We ran away."

"And if we hadn't?"

"Well... we would have died."

"Kostya, you're on duty," Alex said, "because Misha was on duty before."

"Great."

Misha went to bed, and Kostya walked along the shelves, looking at the spoiled products. Much of what was there, as the wayfarer noticed, could be eaten. Alex said not to touch anything yet, they'll be checking it in the morning.

Chapter thirteen

However scary it was to live under the same roof with Zakhar who could at any moment go insane, it was even scarier to have neighbours who might call the police and then the foster parent would lose the right to custody, and Anya will have to go to an orphanage.

The girl called Semyon Petrovich twice a day, although he allowed only one call a day, he still politely answered all her questions, understanding her concern for her brother. He even explained to Anya why she couldn't come and talk to her brother. At the Institute, there have already been cases when parents in tears begged their child to return, undermining the morale of the squad performing such an important mission.

One night, in a state of detachment, Zakhar fell into Anya's room and fell on the bed next to her. She tried to shake the foster parent, but he, calling her "Marina", only asked to take a walk with Varya. Anya had to go to sleep in the kitchen, on Kostya's cot. The next day, she bought five latches from a hardware store and installed them on the door with screws. Anya tried to spend as little time at home as possible. She had enough money to eat in a canteen. She came home only in the evening and went straight to bed.

***

One hundred and fifty kilometres to the Central root of the Thicket.

The next morning, Kostya and Misha, under the guidance of the coordinators, started checking the products. They selected canned goods that had not yet expired and put them on a separate shelf. Altogether was two hundred cans of various fruits, vegetables, canned fish and canned meat. But the bottled water, judging by the expiration date indicated on the labels, should already be expired, but Kostya unscrewed the lid and sniffed it. Then he took a sip.

"Plain water, nothing special," he said.

They filled their backpacks with canned food and plastic water bottles. Water took up more free space, and weighed a lot, but the wayfarers did not complain, because one can go on without food for some time, but without water – no way. It was also unclear where to replenish the water supply later. Alex didn't have any cities marked on the map until the route destination, only villages. Kostya and Sasha spent the whole day at the warehouse, gaining power. They ate, drank, and slept. The whole night they also slept. And ate. And drank. After six days of wandering through the thickets, this place seemed to them a resort, a stronghold of security. But the night was drawing to a close, and the hour of entering the world of the Thicket bloodthirsty creatures was coming.

Misha left the warehouse first, followed by Kostya. At the moment when Misha was passing the toilet, a creature made up of two people, fuzed back to back, fell out of its door. The creature toppled the wayfarer and fell from above.

"Help!" Misha shouted.

Kostya did not know how to approach the monster, because the second one, fused to the back of the first one, was stretching out its hands to Kostya. The creature was baring its teeth, and its gaze was abstracted. It did not look at its prey. Rather, it had no vision at all, but somehow sensed the presence of a human being. The guy stood there senselessly, not knowing what to do. He tried to get closer, but the creature's hands immediately reached for him, and he had to jump back.

"Save me!" Misha shouted.

"Lock yourself in the warehouse!" Alex said into the microphone.

Kostya rushed to the warehouse, grabbed a few heavy cans, and returned to the corridor. With all his strength, he hurled the can at the head of the creature that was holding out its arms. The jar hit it directly in the forehead and split the skin. There was no blood.

Misha, buried under the weight of the two-bodied creature, fell silent. Kostya saw only his legs twitching in convulsions.

"I said lock yourself in the warehouse! What are you doing?!" Alex yelled in panic.

The creature pushed off from the floor and abruptly crushed with all its weight on Kostya. The wayfarer looked into the face of death. The creature grabbed him by the throat and began to strangle him, but Kostya managed to slip his fingers between his throat and the monster's palms.

"And I'll get a pet," the creature hissed, almost without opening its lips. "A dog?.. No, a dinosaur or a tiger." Tilting back its head, the creature let out a wild cry, then again switched to a whisper: "Danya, a dog is better; the tiger will eat you."

"Danya?" Alex asked in a trembling voice, recognising the face of his former wayfarer.

Kostya could feel the monster squeezing his throat along with his fingers. It was getting harder to breathe.

"I'm soling my Rubik's cube," hissed Danya. "Where is it?.. I forgot my Rubik's cube."

"Try to get your knees on its chest!" Alex shouted.

"And elbow!" Semyon Petrovich's voice rang out. "Get your elbow in its face and get out!"

"Don't yell in my ear!" Alex shouted irritably.

"Alex, give me your headphones!"

"Wait a minute!

The monster strangled Kostya harder. With his free hand, the wayfarer reached into the side pocket of the backpack that was under him and pulled out the Rubik's cube that Alex had allowed him to take from the rest room. Kostya held the cube up to Danya's face and felt the grip loosen. The creature grabbed the cube and began to turn it in its hand. Kostya took the opportunity to push off the monster with his knees and crawl out from under it. He leaped to his feet and stormed out of the corridor.

He went over the shop window into the street and ran headlong down the road, falling and tumbling, running as fast as he could. Panting from running and shock, he stopped only when he realised that he couldn't see anything. He removed the night-vision device and turned on the headlamp. The device was broken. Apparently, when he fell, its glasses took all the impact.

"Kostya!" Alex shouted. "You need somewhere to hide, and we need to adjust the plan and decide what to do next."

"Yes, yes, take somewhere to hide," Kostya said breathlessly, "somewhere to hide."

He turned his head, looking at the walls of houses along the roadway lighted with his headlamp.

"Where, here, where," he thought, "to hide here, to hide there."

He ducked into a narrow gap between the houses and jumped down into an areaway. The door to the basement was locked, but at least he couldn't be seen from here. Kostya sat down, leaning his back against the cold concrete wall, took off the headlamp and put it on the ground, lamp down, so as not to give away his location.

"Kostya, you're a good fellow," said Alex, "everything will be fine, understand?"

"Yes, and I'm not panicking, not panicking."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure. Misha died. It killed him. His legs were shaking. But I'm fine and am not panicking."

"All right, sit where you are, better turn off the torch."

"Great."

"I'll be right back in a few seconds just as usual..."

"...but you will see and hear me," Kostya finished the sentence for the coordinator.

"Yeah. I'm switching off the mic."

"Great."

Kostya sat in absolute darkness. By touch he took a bottle from his backpack and took a couple of sips. What had happened was replaying before his eyes, as if in slow motion. The moments the monster was strangling him and Misha, already dead, was shaking in convulsions seemed to Kostya an eternity. A few minutes later, Alex's voice rang out.

"Kostya."

"Yeah."

"You walked one hundred and fifty-five kilometres. This is about half the way to the centre, even a little more."

"And about one hundred and fifty-five kilometres still to go?"

"Yeah, something like this. We don't know what to do. Go further or return. We left the choice up to you."

"I'll go further," Kostya said without hesitation.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Does it make difference now which way to go?" Kostya asked.

"Don't forget, you'll need to go back," Alex said.

"I will inject the chemical; the Thicket will die, and I will return safely."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple."

"Not simple?"

"Theoretically, yes, you'll inject it and it'll die, but not so fast. We believe that the Thicket will be dying for a long time. For a very long time. If will be.

"I'll do it," Kostya said confidently. "For all the people it killed, I'll kill it, too! I want to destroy this evil. There is so much evil in the world! I have to stop at least this!"

"All right, all right, Kostya, just keep your voice down."

"Yes, yes, keep it down," Kostya whispered.

"Then we'll destroy the Thicket."

"Yes, we will."

"Why did you take off your glasses?"

"Broke them."

"Damn it!"

"Should I go back for Misha's?"

"No, you can't go back."

"Shall we go with the torch?"

"We'll probably have to use the torch."

"Can they see?"

"The devil knows," came the voice of Semyon Petrovich, who had been at Alex's side all this time. "This is just our assumption that they are guided by their visual organs."

"Yes," said Alex, "our last group was carrying torches, and they managed to walk fifty kilometres this way."

"Where did their glasses go?"

"It's a long story, in short, they left them, running in different directions."

"From monsters?"

"Yeah. Then we struggled to collect them together, but the equipment was lost."

"Don't tell Anya anything," Kostya said.

"Of course."

"She'll cry a lot if she finds out that everyone's dead and I'm alone."

"As you wish. We won't tell her anything."

"I'm ready to go. I want to get out of the town faster."

"Yes, go straight, you are in the town center, you've got a kilometre to go to the outskirts."

Kostya got up from the ground, lowered the torch brightness and attached it to the belt on his forehead. He got out of the areaway and went to the house corner. The guy leaned his back against the wall and looked out at the road. When he made sure there was no one there, he went out on the pavement of the main street and walked along the roadway in the gloom.

Chapter fourteen

OCTOBER

The tram started abruptly. The investigator took a couple of steps back to regain his balance and took hold of the handrail. Although the city was gradually dying out, and almost all the seats in the tram were free, the investigator, out of habit, was standing. On the front page of today's newspaper, which was given out for free near the bus stop, he saw the headline:

"Four groups of poachers in different parts of South and Central Africa were found brutally murdered." He quickly read the article that described the method of murder, or rather, as the investigator thought, not a murder, but an execution, and stared out the window.

"It began here," he thought, "now it's there. The phenomenon is spreading all over the world..."

SEPTEMBER

One hundred and forty-eight kilometres left to the central root of the Thicket.

"I've solved your riddle," Kostya said, stepping over a thick root that rose out of the ground and went hid in the window of block of flats.

"What was the sequence of numbers?" Alex asked.

"I can't remember, but I solved it when I just looked at the numbers and pronounced them. The first line was just number one. I said 'one number one' and wrote the second line 'one, one'. This means 'one number one'. So I got a line with two number ones. I pronounced it 'two ones' and wrote down the numbers below – two and one. Then I pronounced it one number two and one number one and wrote one, two, one, one. Then I..."

"That's enough, I get it, attaboy," Alex interrupted.

"And if I had count there, I wouldn't be able to solve it."

"Therefore I asked you this riddle, I understand that guys like you are not great at math."

"What do you mean 'guys like me'? Retards?"

"Yeah."

"It's not true; we had a boy at school. He didn't talk to anyone. I was friends with Kirill. Kirill made me laugh, but that boy was always frowning. He was the fastest at doing sums."

"Okay I see, it's good he did sums."

"Alex."

"Yeah."

"Danya was your friend?"

"Yes. He was a very good friend."

"Was he like me?"

"Well, of course he was."

"Am I a good friend?"

"Absolutely. You, Kostya, are my very best friend right now."

"I thought retards can be only best friends."

"You said you didn't feel like being it, didn't you?"

"I did say. And I don't feel being a retard. It's people around who tell me I am this, but I just live."

"You speak well."

"Yes, I like to talk. "

"I noticed."

"Alex."

"Kostya, tell me what you want right away, you don't need to call me by name first, and then ask something."

"Great. When we destroy the Thicket, will we continue to be friends?"

"Of course, I'll even teach you how to smoke."

"No, I won't do that."

"I'm kidding. Let's better go to art school together."

"Will you teach me how to punch in the face?"

"In the face?"

"Yes, you're good at this. I fell in that fight and somehow didn't hit anyone. I had no time. I would like to hit Zakhar in the face."

"What's there to teach? Heels on the ground, if you feel the skirmish is beginning, push off, twisting the pelvis, and bang in the face with your fist! That's all! And if there are two of them, bang and bang!"

"We'll have to practice."

"And if there are a lot of them or if they threaten your life, then you can pick up a stone and bang in their head."

"And if he dies?"

"And if you die? This is a last resort. Imagine you or your loved one was attacked with a weapon, what to do?"

"Run?"

"If you are alone, then run, and if you have your family or someone else with you?"

"Save them?"

"Yes, in that case, you need to pick up a stone or a stick, or what is under your feet. You can even throw earth in their eyes, I don't care, and then kick."

"Wow. Did you do that?"

"It happened once."

"Alex."

"Don't call me by the name first. What?"

"Do you have a family?"

"Yeah. Mother and father. They're divorced. They live in another city."

"I was just curious."

"Father's a soldier; mother's a cook.

"I see. Alex. Ouch. I mean... ugh... to say right away. Alex, do you believe in me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you believe I can beat the Thicket?"

"Certainly. You've come the farthest of all. No one has been here in the past few years. I'm proud of you. And I won't leave you. We'll do it."

"For Misha and Sasha, and for your Danya. And for others."

"I would look more global."

"How's that?"

"If the Thicket is not destroyed, it will cover the entire planet."

"Ah... I know that."

***

One hundred and twenty kilometres to the central root of the Thicket.

When night fell, Kostya was already thirty kilometres from the city. Several times he came across the red buds mostly unopened but for one opened. Fortunately, he did not meet the creatures of the Thicket. During the previous two nights, he regained all his strength and was now moving at double speed. He was driven by the determination to destroy the Thicket. He had to spend the night on the street. Kostya had to sleep on the ground, because the sleeping bags were left in the school classroom when they had to hurriedly jump out of the window. He put his backpack under his head. Alex sat at the monitor all night, listening to the silence. The coordinator had to wake the wayfarer at the slightest incomprehensible rustle (although in most cases any Thicket rustle can be considered incomprehensible), and even more so, at any scream or howl. The night passed without surprises. Kostya woke up four hours later and said that he was ready to go, since he had slept well.

"Kostya, the camera charge is left for a day only."

"Can we charge it somewhere?"

"Probably not. Just in case, I'll repeat it. When you get to the central root, you need to..."

"...get the device, put the red spot against the surface of the root, rest my entire weight on it and pull the trigger. The needle will shoot, the chemical will flow through it.

"Yeah. That's not all. After that, you will have to return to the village, where there will be a suitable shelter house and a standpipe or a well."

"Yeah. And live there until the Thicket dies."

"Without a connection."

"At least with light. There are batteries for the torch."

"Please. No matter what happens, no matter how much time passes, don't try to come back on your own."

"All right, I promise."

"If the chemical doesn't work, we'll send a rescue team after you. The main thing is to sit there and keep your head down, just for water and no more."

"Yes, I understand."

"The closest village to the root is five kilometres away. Village is called Ileevo. We'll go there first. We'll find you a house and a water source. Then we go to the root."

"All right, I'm clear now."

"But there's a problem."

"What is it?"

"It will be difficult for you to find the root without me."

"Why?"

"Because there are no landmarks right next to it. But our advantage is that the root is very long."

"And the compass?"

"We'll try the compass. But time is running out."

"Camera?"

"Yes, you must hurry."

"How long do we have to go?"

"One hundred and twenty kilometres."

"How many more days?"

"Four days."

"With the camera enough for just one day?"

"Yes, maybe less."

"I have to go faster."

"When you get on the road, turn off the connection completely. Make contact once an hour for a few minutes."

"Got it."

"When you sleep, the connection will work. We'll listen and wake you up if anything happens."

"Great."

"We'll sleep like today, four hours. If the rest of the time you'll be walking, then it's possible to be there in three days."

"I can do it."

"There will be a road in eight kilometres. You'll follow that road almost to the end of the route."

"To the village where I will be living?"

"Yeah."

"So now I'm going to the village Ileevo, and then to the root?"

"Yeah. Come on, Kostya, we should be able to cover the distance in three days."

"Of course we can."

Closer to the centre of the Thicket, there were more thick trunks emerging from the ground. Kostya managed to cover eight kilometres to the road in two hours. When he reached the highway, he paused for ten minutes, drank water, and took a deep breath.

Now, all alone, he went on. There was no time to delay; time was playing against him. The wayfarer got used to climbing quickly through the vines. In addition, when traveling alone, you do not have to wait for laggards, this added significantly to his speed. Kostya went forward through the windfall, with his hands pushing aside the thin weed tentacles, and bypassing the thick trunks. He almost didn't trip over the roots anymore. Since he did not communicate with Alex during the passage from halt to halt, he did not lose his breath.

By twelve o'clock in the morning, Kostya had covered forty-six kilometres, making stops every hour for ten minutes, and getting in touch, just for a minute, to report that he was all right. At halts, he drank water and dozed, recuperating. He ate a little three times a day, stretching his small ratios of canned food. He learned the time by a mechanical watch, which, by the way, he learned to use as a child.

When the arrows showed twelve, Kostya stopped and turned on the camera.

"I'm done. I'm dying," he said and sat down on the ground.

"Is everything all right?" Alex asked excitedly.

Kostya drank some water and fell on his side. A second later, the guy was snoring, lying on the cracked asphalt.

"Kostya," Alex called.

"Yeah," he said.

"I need to sleep, too." Kolya will replace me. In four hours, the rise."

"Yeah..."

***

Seventy-four kilometres to the central root of the Thicket.

When Alex's voice sounded like a scream in his headphones for the third time, Kostya managed to regain consciousness. It took the wayfarer a moment to realise that he had opened his eyes, for he lay in utter darkness. His legs hurt, and body was trembling in exhaustion. He felt for the button on his head and turned on the torch. The beam lit up the branches that were knotted above Kostya lying on his back. The boy closed his eyes and dozed off.

"Are you asleep again?" Alex asked.

"No. I'll get up. In a minute."

"Come on, come on, it's time, Kostya, time..."

The wayfarer sat up with difficulty. He yawned and stretched his arms.

"Grab a bite to eat," Alex said.

"I'm not hungry."

"Great, then it's time to move."

The next thirty-eight kilometres, which was exactly the distance he was able to cover before he fell unconscious, were not entirely smooth. Several times he heard the creatures of the Thicket crying, once about thirty meters away he saw a glade of unopened buds, which he had to hurriedly run around, leaving the road.

After completing another day's passage, Kostya fell asleep, forgetting to turn on the camera. When, after twelve hours of sleep, he made contact, Alex, Semyon Petrovich and other coordinators first properly swore at him, and then almost with tears in their eyes, they praised and thanked God, fate, Kostya himself, and the devil knows who else, for the fact that the last wayfarer was still alive. He was very lucky no one had stumbled upon or killed him during the night. Thanks to this, they gained a little time, because the camera did not work at night, which means that the battery charge was untouched. In addition, Kostya managed to get enough sleep and gain strength for the final march to the village, located almost in the centre of the Thicket.

The water ran out when the end of the road was about twenty kilometres away. All that was left to do was find a working well to take on some drinking water.

By evening, Kostya was really thirsty. His mouth was dry. Panic-stricken thoughts came to his mind – what if there was no water source? Why didn't he take as much of it as he needed when he was in the shop's warehouse? Where would he put it then? The backpack is already heavy because of the equipment. Or would he carry it in his hands? That would be troublesome. The backpack somehow fit three litres. Alex wanted to look for wells in the intermediate villages, but they decided to save time. Kostya ran through the village as fast as he could and did not stop. He didn't stumble across any wells on the way. He didn't go deep into the Thicket in his search. He didn't save water while walking. But he should have. Because water was just a bit not enough. And if there were no well at all? A village without water. Does this happen?

During the next halt, Kostya heard a scream and a rustle almost near him. He had to run away. He walked the rest of the way without interruption. On the third night after the death of Sasha and Misha Kostya reached the signboard "Vill. Ileevo".

"I got there," he said, getting in touch with Alex.

"Perfect. Well Done, Kostya! We're almost there!" he was jubilant.

"I'm thirsty, I'm going to die."

"The plan is," Alex began, "first of all, go down the main street and look at the roadsides, maybe there will be standpipes. Turn off the connection. As soon as you find water, fill the bottles and get in touch. If after going through the entire village, you do not find water, then also get in touch, we will look for a well in cottages."

"And if there isn't a well?"

"There's never been a village without water," Alex said.

"Okay, I'm switching off."

"Good luck."

"Ah! Wait."

"What?"

"When will the camera die?"

"It shows something about two hours of work."

"Great."

"Switch it already."

"Wait. The road is strange here, the coast has turned the camera on the asphalt. The roadbed was covered with a green coating, like moss.

"Yes, there must be something else on the road. I don't think it worth our attention right now."

"Great. That's all, see you."

Kostya turned off the camera and went searching for the standpipe. Pacing in the centre of the roadway, he looked left, then right, afraid to miss the source of life-giving water, without which he did not last long. Ten minutes later, he came across a cluster of unopened buds. The road went through these deadly flowers. Kostya immediately contacted Alex.

"Look," he said softly and pointed the camera at the flowers.

"Damn it! Don't make any noise. Go quietly through them, try not to touch them."

"Great."

"Did you find any water?"

"No."

"As soon as you pass it, disconnect."

"Great."

Fifty meters later, Kostya passed the dangerous area and turned off the camera.

"I wonder how many creatures will come out of these buds," he thought, looking around.

In about two hundred meters, he found the long-awaited standpipe. Immediately, he pulled the lever, and the water hit the ground in a powerful stream. Kostya got down on his knees and began to drink, greedily taking large sips. After getting drunk, he sat for some time, trying to regain his breath, and then poured water in three plastic one litre bottles, then got in touch with the coordinator.

"I found it," he said.

"Good job. Got it in bottles?"

"Yeah."

"Now the shelter. We must choose a shelter."

"Maybe this one?" Kostya pointed the camera at a wooden house right next to the standpipe.

"Yes, we don't want you going far away far for water."

"What if they hatch out of flowers?"

"Let's hope they hatch and leave. Check the house and don't switch off yet.

The wayfarer passed through an open gate. When he reached the house door, he pulled the handle, but it was locked. Kostya examined the walls of the house and realised that they were covered with the same green moss.

"Get in through the window," Alex said, "but don't cut yourself."

"Here, it's all green too... it is not clear what it is..." said Kostya.

"I see, yes, it's strange."

"Can you take a piece of this moss with the glass?" Semyon Petrovich asked.

"Yes, I'll try."

"Take it, we need to study it. I feel it has something to do with the Thicket," said Semyon Petrovich.

Kostya carefully pulled out a shard covered with a strange green coating that was sticking out of the frame and put it in the backpack. He got into the house and found himself in the kitchen, judging by the sink and the overturned dining table. The floor was littered with broken dishes and piles of garbage. Creepers stitched through the house, entering through one window and leaving through the opposite. Moss covered the interior walls and floor.

"It's all in this green," Kostya said, looking at the walls.

"Look for the toilet, if there is one," Alex said.

Kostya went out of the kitchen into the corridor, where he found two doors. One led to the toilet, the other to the storage room.

"Where will you be living?" Alex asked.

"I'm thinking of the toilet. There's more space. And there is a toilet."

"Check if there's a mattress in the bedroom, throw it in the bath."

"To sleep there?"

"Yeah, I think it will be convenient."

"No, I'd rather just throw it on the floor."

"As you wish."

Kostya walked down the corridor to a room with a large stone stove. The unknown green moss covered everything in the room in thin layer, as if a can of paint was blown up there. There was a cot next to the stove. Kostya pulled the mattress off it and carried it to the toilet. He turned it over on the clean side, where there was no moss and threw it on the floor.

"Of course he lock here is weak," Alex said, "but if you don't give yourself away, they won't break the door."

"I'll fall asleep, just standing up here," Kostya said.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll have a nap, too."

"Turn off the camera?"

"I have to."

"Get in touch when you wake up,."

"Sure."

"Good night," Alex said.

"Sweet dreams."

Chapter fifteen

Anya returned home about ten o'clock in the evening. After school, she went to the canteen, as usual, and then to the cinema just to relax. For two days she had not seen Zakhar. Sometimes he slept when she was at home, and sometimes she slept when he was drinking alone in the kitchen.

Anya took off her shoes and went into the toilet. She washed her hands and face. When Zakhar suddenly appeared in the doorway, she shuddered.

"What are you scared of?" he asked.

"You showed up so unexpectedly," she said.

"Did I?" Zakhar was very drunk. Anya smelled the foul smell of fumes. In these few days she had nearly forgotten the smell of stench that accompanies alcoholism.

"Let me pass."

"Where to?" he asked, hardly articulating.

"I want to go to my room."

"Where have you been, bitch?" he put his hands on the doorway and with a glassy, dazed look, unable to focus, looked right through the girl.

"What?" the girl took a step back.

Zakhar went into the toilet.

"You think I don't know where you're hanging around?" the foster parent said angrily and grabbed her by the forearm.

"You're hurting me!"

She tried to pull her hand free, but the strong male grip would not loosen.

"Why are you so nervous? Are you feeling guilty?"

"What guilt are you talking about?! What do you need!?"

Zakhar reached for her hair with the other hand, but Anya managed to push him with all her strength. That caused him to stumble and fall into the bath. Anya flew into her room and closed all the latches.

A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door.

"Marina!" the foster parent shouted. "Open the door or it will be worse!"

"Where's no Marina, don't you see?! I'm Anya!" the girl tried to explain.

Instead of answering, there was a kick in the door, which made all the latches clink all together. Realising that the makeshift locks would not last long, Anya moved the sofa to the door and sat down on the floor in the far corner of the room.

***

During the nights, Kostya did not dream anything. Because of the unbearable fatigue that came over him at the end of the day, the nights flew by in moments. So it happened now. The guy sat with the headlamp on and looked at his watch, trying to figure out what time it was. He couldn't believe the night was over. He literally just lay down on the mattress and closed his eyes, and now, ten hours passed like one second. After eating the last can of canned veal, the guy got in touch with the coordinator.

"Good morning," he said.

"Hi," Alex said. "You've been sleeping for a long time, and we were restless."

"Well... yes... but I..."

"The main root is five kilometres away. You'll have to go through the woods. Through our usual forest. I'll try to guide you by the compass."

"I'm getting good at using the compass."

"I will direct you not to the root itself, but to a glade a kilometre away. The glade, judging by the pictures and the map, is large, and it is easier to get to it than immediately to the root.

"Why do I need the glade?"

"It's five kilometres from the village to the root, and you are highly likely to bypass the destination, but from the glade it's only a kilometer away. Once on the place I'll tell you where to go and you'll go in a straight line. Ideally, you'll hit the root, or, after walking a kilometre, you will be scouring the area till you, well, finally hit the root."

"I see, but I understood nothing."

"It doesn't matter. First we go to the glade, then I'll tell you everything."

"Great."

"Go!"

Kostya opened the door and went out into the corridor. Through the kitchen window he saw that the entire road in front of the house and near the standpipe was filled with vile-looking creatures with innumerable limbs. Some moved on two legs, others wriggled on their bellies, and others moved their legs like centipedes. The wayfarer did not have time to examine these creatures in detail, but the general picture of the swarming freaks was forever etched in his memory. Automatically turning off the torch, Kostya squatted down.

"Alex," he whispered.

"Quiet, I saw it."

"I told you they would hatch."

"In the living room there was a window," Alex said, "get out there and get into the yard."

Kostya, feeling the wall with his hands, moved down the corridor. When the wall ended, he sat down, pointed the torch at the floor, and crawled across the living room to the stove.

"Light up the street?" he asked, sitting under the window.

"Do you hear anything there?"

Suddenly Kostya heard screams behind him, and someone stomped in the kitchen.

"They're in the house!" Alex said. "Get in the window!"

Kostya tumbled over the windowsill and fell to the ground. Then he pulled up his legs and sat with his back against the wall. He looked round the courtyard. No one. Something fell in the house, and then there was a howl. Kostya's temples throbbed with fear and nervous tension.

"What should I do?" he whispered.

"We need to go through the section to the fence at the edge of the forest," Alex said.

Kostya turned off the light and crawled away from the house on all fours, constantly bumping into roots, vines and trunks that were sticking out of the ground.

"There's no fence," he whispered.

In the distance, behind him, someone continued to scream.

"There must be. The plot is long, crawl."

A minute later, Kostya ran into a wooden fence. He stood up and felt the edge of it and realised that the fence was not high. He climbed over to the other side and turned on the torch. A ray of light ran through the earth's trees, entangled with vines.

"To get our bearings, you need to get to the last house," Alex said, "and then I'll tell you the direction to the glade. Now turn left and go along the fences, you should go about five hundred meters, if I am not mistaken."

"Go?"

"Yes, go already."

Kostya took the torch off his head and pointed it at his feet so as not to attract attention. The wayfarer tried to circumvent the village's perimeter. Sometimes the fences ended, and then Kostya thought he was in the settlement outskirts, but after going a little further, he again came across a fences. It happened several times. Instead of five hundred meters, Kostya, as he felt, walked two kilometres.

"I think this is the last section, " he said.

"All right, stand at the corner of the fence, facing the woods."

"Ready."

"Now show me the compass."

"Here it is."

"Great. Turn the red line slowly a little to the left... yes... more. Stop. Well done. And put the wheel to the North, so that the arrow match... that's it... great."

"Later on the North must always match?"

"Yes, you go and make sure that the arrow and the North look in the same direction."

"Do I follow the red line?"

"Yeah."

"Walk five kilometres?"

"Approximately."

"Will the glade be big?"

"It will. But you know it won't be just a clear glade. There'll be no trees, but it'll still be covered in these filthy weeds. Pay attention to the trees."

"Understood. From the glade I should go to the left or the right?

"From the glade to the right."

"Is this all? Turn off the camera?"

"Show me the compass again."

"Here."

"Well, that's all right."

"Of course that's all right, go already," said Semyon Petrovich's voice.

"Come on, Kostya, as soon as the forest ends, get in touch."

"Our normal forest?"

"Are there many options apart from the normal forest?"

"Well, no... how long more will the camera last?"

"Nary. It says the camera is completely dead."

"But it's not, isn't it?"

"Kostya, switch off."

" How long will it last without charging?"

"Switch off and go!" Alex snapped at him.

"I do, I do."

The wayfarer walked slowly through the forest, almost without taking his eyes off the compass. He shuddered when he heard distant shouts from the village, which, as he knew, he would not be able to return to. Kostya did not think of how he would leave the Thicket. Now he was focused on just one goal – to reach the end of his dangerous expedition and complete the task.

"These five kilometres seem endless?" he thought. "I go, but the forest does not end."

An hour later, Kostya tried to get in touch, but the camera did not turn on. The wayfarer stood bewildered in the middle of the forest and scratched the back of his head, not knowing what to do next. Several times he pressed the "on" button on the camera, but the device completely used up the battery.

"I can't even imagine how they will scold me there if I don't get in touch," thought Kostya, "they will scold me again."

He sat down on the ground and opened his backpack. He wanted to get a bottle of water, but his attention was drawn to the shard of glass with that strange green moss. Kostya pulled out the glass, examined it, and touched the moss on it. By touch it felt like plain glass, nothing unusual.

"Yeah! It's just a paint," he thought and put the glass back.

Sitting in the middle of the forest, three hundred kilometres away from the exit from this cursed labyrinth of unexplored substance, which was inhabited by bloodthirsty creatures, Kostya suddenly relaxed for the first time. He felt that no one was controlling him now, no one was telling him where to go or when to go. All was quiet. Before the battery ran out, Kostya felt connected to the outside world and he was not as lonely as he was now. To his surprise, he was not afraid. While living with his sister, he never walked alone in the city, and did not use public transport alone. He was so used to it that there was always someone watching him and directing him. Even here, in the Thicket, he had Alex. His only friend, of course if he did not lie about it, as other people did more than once, so as not to offend the unhealthy young man. But now Kostya remained in complete isolation. Unusual feelings took hold of him. Such dead silence. No insects, no birds, just a faint rustle. Or is it just a work of his mind? A buzz in his ears? The one he had felt when he first entered the Thicket.

"I'll keep going," thought Kostya, "if there's no glade, I'll just go ahead. I'll go, go and go. Then I'll sleep, and then I'll walk again."

He stood up and turned so that the compass needle matched with the North, and continued along the red line. After about twenty minutes, Kostya realized that the trees had ended. He tried to contact Alex again. Unsuccessfully.

"From the clearing to the right," he said," to the right is... to the right. Let's go to the right, then."

Kostya turned and, after ten steps, the beam of the torch came across a red closed bud. Turning his head, he realised that everything round him was once again strewn with those deadly flowers, spitting out terrible creatures. The buds were hanging down from the trunks and lianas, like the lights on a huge Christmas garland. His calmness abruptly disappeared. Instead of peace from loneliness, Kostya felt a surge of fear at the sight of dozens, or maybe hundreds of buds with those creatures inside.

He walked very carefully, trying not to touch not just the Bud itself, but even the liana to which it was attached, perhaps feeding the creature that was maturing in it. Kostya carefully stepped over all the roots and, if possible, avoided the Thicket vines sticking out of the ground or hanging from somewhere above. Those parts of the weed that could not bypass, he slowly pushed aside with his hands and went through.

"If I get out," he thought, "I'll buy a car. And a dog. But first the apartment. No. A house. And I will grow cucumbers in the garden. And I'll have bees. A lot of bees will make honey for Anya and me. Why apartment if I can have a house? A house with a dog, bees and cucumbers."

Kostya stepped on a root and nearly tripped over it. He didn't fall because his leg got stuck in the root. He screamed at the sharp pain in his ankle and immediately clapped his hands over his mouth, slapping his palm on his lips.

"Oh, I'm a fool," she thought.

He began to rub his hand over bridge of his foot, which he had obviously pulled. This moment a nearby bud shook at the side. Then another. And another. As if a chain reaction triggered by Kostya's cry had passed through the glade, bringing the previously lifeless cocoon flowers to life.

The closest to Kostya bud opened a crack, and red slime spilled out, splattering the wayfarer and getting a little on his face and mouth. As soon as the flower opened a little more, a human head popped out. For a few moments, Kostya's heart stopped in horror. A dozen eyes stared back at him, randomly positioned on the creature's white face. No mouth, no nose, just eyes that blinked and stared at the wayfarer in return. Kostya, stunned by the hideous face, instinctively tried to crawl back, but bumped into something soft. He looked back and saw that another bud behind him was shaking, just about to spit out its contents. Kostya looked ahead again. The head, rested on an incredibly long neck, popped out of the bud by a meter. Eyes fluttered as they studied the wayfarer. Its black hair hung to the ground. Kostya jumped to his feet and looked at the compass, trying to figure out which way to run.

"That way," he thought, and peeled out, forgetting about the pain in the leg. He raced round the shaking buds, sometimes bumping into them with his hands, almost falling, but regaining his balance. As the boy raced across the glade, he could hear the screams round him, various words that had been recreated by the remnants of the memory of once-living people, but now reworked into ugly, carelessly molded beasts.

When the buds disappeared, Kostya, after running a few more minutes, stopped to catch his breath. He put his hands on his knees and stood slightly bent, looking at the ground. The hum behind him grew louder. He realised that the Thicket creatures were following him. Kostya peeled out as fast as he could, no longer checking the compass.

It seemed to him that the roar from behind did not cease, no matter how far away from the glade Kostya ran. So it was – the creatures were chasing him through the forest, moving on two, three, or ten limbs, though some were crawling, writhing like a snake, deftly circling vines, roots and trunks.

Kostya lost track of time and orientation in space. Not knowing how long he had been running or where he was going, he suddenly stopped. The torch beam, which had been jimping all the way here, lit up a wall about five meters high, rounded at the top and blocking the further path. The screams behind him grew louder. When Kostya got close to the wall, he realised that this was the central root. The one they had told him about at the Institute.

The root lay on the ground and stretched to the left and right for an unknown distance, going into the depths of the vines. Kostya immediately threw off his backpack and pulled out the device with the chemical. He touched the root. It was hard as a rock. Then the wayfarer put the device against the root and leaned on it pressing the capsule with chemical and the needle against the plant and prepared to fire. As soon as he pulled the trigger, a loud bang rang in his ears, so that Kostya could no longer hear the hum of approaching creatures. The root was so strong that the device broke into pieces, spilling the chemical on the ground. In the place where the needle had to poke the root, there was not the slightest trace of damage. Kostya froze in perplexity: "What to do now? Everything failed?"

Suddenly something knocked him off his feet. The ground spun, and he realised that he was lying on his back. Spreading its long arms, the creature howled like a wolf, and then jumped on Kostya, but got tangled in the vines, not reaching him just a meter. The boy jumped up and ran along the root. To his left rustled the creepers. The wayfarer could hear the tramp of many feet and those nasty, shrill voices repeating meaningless phrases. This was the end of his life. Now, some of them would catch him by the leg and starts tearing him apart, strangling and chew on him. He ran along the root, but it wouldn't end. The wayfarer's strength was failing, and the creatures were not far behind. He was on the verge of death.

And suddenly before Kostya opened an unprecedented sight. The root ended abruptly, disappearing into the void. Literally into the void. The root, the earth beneath it, and the vines, and even the torch beam faded and disappeared as it touched the sphere made "of nothing". For a second Kostya froze in front of this sphere, then turned around and saw a creature flying at him with its mouth open and its arms reaching out for him. Without thinking, the guy threw himself into the orb of void.

Chapter sixteen

"Marina! Zakhar's cry woke Anya, who had fallen asleep on the floor opposite the door.

The girl looked at her watch. It was five o'clock in the morning.

"Open it! You bitch!" he was shouting from the corridor.

The girl's head ached from nervous shock and lack of sleep. Judging by the fact that she managed to sleep for almost four hours, Zakhar did not try to break in all this time.

"Perhaps he was asleep, too," thought Anya, "or drinking in the kitchen. When will he run out of money?.."

"What do you want?"! she said.

"You must answer for everything!"

"For what? What the fuck are you talking about?! Leave me alone! Anya's voice was a mixture of fear, anger, and hatred, and she didn't know if she was afraid of her foster parent or she would fight with all her might if necessary.

"Marina, you..." Zakhar's voice stopped abruptly.

Anya heard footsteps, a knock on the door, Kostya's voice, and some bustle. The girl jumped up from the floor, unlatched the door and saw Kostya on the floor, sitting on Zakhar and beating him. The foster parent lay on his back and covered his head with hands, while her brother beat him as hard as he could.

"I don't have time to negotiate with you right now!" Kostya shouted. He left the foster parent and turned to his sister: "I need a phone number to the Institute! It's urgent!" he shouted, and then kicked Zakhar again on the head as he tried to get up.

The foster parent howled, clutching at his broken nose, which spurted blood in two streams.

Shocked by what she saw, Anya did not immediately understand what Kostya wanted from her.

"You called us there. Give me the phone number to the Institute," her brother said calmly.

"How did you get here? Will you tell me what's going on? Why is there blood on your face?"

"It's not blood. It's from a flower... water... snot... but... ugh, it doesn't matter... you give me the phone!"

"Let's go, I remember the number by heart," said Anya, continuing to look suspiciously at her brother, who was standing in front of her in torn, dirty clothes with a backpack behind his back.

The girl dialled the number and gave the handset to Kostya. No one answered the phone for a minute.

'There's probably no one there, it's five in the morning," said Anya.

"Yes! Hello!" Kostya shouted.

...

"Yes! I'm alive!"

...

"Home, I'm home!"

...

"I'll tell you later or won't tell you, 'cause I don't understand it myself, but I'll tell you something!"

...

"Wait for me at the Institute."

...

"Don't, I'll get there myself, I'm not a child. Stay there!"

Kostya hung up.

"Are you leaving?"

"Yes, it is very important."

"What about me?" Anya asked.

"Come with me."

"Of course, let's go, I'm not staying here." Anya looked down the hall. Zakhar somehow got up, went into the toilet and closed the door.

Ten minutes later, Anya and Kostya were driving in a taxi to the Institute of Space Infections. Kostya did not tell his sister anything, but only asked her not to be nervous and to give him time to think it over. What exactly he was going to think over, Anya did not understand, but she clearly felt something was wrong, seeing her brother in such a state. On the other hand, she was happy he was alive, and the rest was not so important.

Twenty minutes later they reached the Institute. Alex, Semyon Petrovich and several other coordinators met them in the lobby on the first floor. Alex grabbed his wayfarer, hugging him. Semyon Petrovich asked way too many questions. No one was even noticing Anya.

"What happened?! How did this happen?!" the head of the department asked excitedly.

"They were running after me, and I was running along the root, and then the root went into the void, and I jumped there too..."

"I suggest we sit down at the table," said coordinator Nikolai.

"Yeah, let's go," Semyon Petrovich agreed.

They crossed the hall of the Institute and sat down at a round table near a huge window that faced the courtyard. Alex remained standing because there was not enough chair for him.

"Did you find the root?" Semyon Petrovich asked.

"Yes, the huge one was on the ground, and part of it was underground. And it's very long."

"Did you inject the chemical?" Alex asked.

"I couldn't, I did everything as I did here when training, but this root was like stone. I stood like this," Kostya got up from his chair and showed them how he was standing on an imaginary root. "I push down and pulled the trigger, and then the device busted. It made me deaf for time!"

"Busted?" Alex asked.

"Yes, the needle did not go into the root, because it is like stone, like granite! Like iron! You can even hit it! But I didn't have time for it, because they were running after me."

"So you couldn't shoot through the shell," said Semyon Petrovich, "well... it broke through the iron sheets during the tests."

"Then what should we do with it?" Alex asked.

"I wish I knew what it was made of..."

"Kostya, you said that you ran along the root, and then jumped into some void? Could you explain?" Alex asked.

"Yes! They were already behind me; I thought I was going to die and then this orb! A black orb and the root went right there, and there was no earth, the earth went there too. I also shone on it, but it didn't glow, I mead it was dark, so... ugh... black... no, I mean... well, it was black... and then everything disappeared. When the flying thing was behind me and wanted to kill me, I jumped into the orb."

"And then you showed up at your apartment?" Semyon Petrovich asked.

"No! I was in the orb! There's a lot of space; it was like the root in size, like the second floor of this house, but it's outside; and inside the orb I was flying, there were no walls!"

"Did you fly in the orb?"

"Yes, but inside it was no longer an orb, but just... just a lot of space and you can see everything in the world."

"Did you see the world from there?"

"I saw... Yes, but it was different, I saw both the earth and the root and I could look under the earth and the root, there was the root! It was in the orb, that is, ugh... not in the orb anymore, but inside... Oh, it doesn't matter... the root was also inside the ball, and it went through it, I flew a little along it, but it was so long that I did not go further. Also I could look inside the root and the earth, and when I flew out of the Thicket, I could see houses and I could see what was inside the houses and I could go through houses."

"It sounds like you were out of your body," Anya said.

"No, I didn't come out of no body, I was there, in my body, with the backpack and in these pants. And I could fly fast, I circled the Earth and I wanted to fly to the moon, but when I got high, it got very cold and I couldn't breathe, so..." he took a breath and let it out, "I went back down."

"You say you saw through the walls?"

"Yes, but I saw the walls, too."

"Saw the walls and at the same time through the walls?"

"Yes! The walls and what was outside the walls and what's inside the walls. There was a mouse in the wall, and I saw the mouse! And saw the mouse inside! I saw the blood flow through its body! And its muscles, bones, everything!"

"I don't understand," Alex said.

"If I hadn't seen Kostya with my own eyes," said Semyon Petrovich, "who somehow miraculously teleported from the centre of the Thicket to his flat, I would have considered all this nonsense, but the fact of inexplicable teleportation is obvious."

"There's no way he could have gotten home from the centre of the forest in a couple of hours."

"I saw Zakhar breaking down the door of Anya's room, and saw Anya sitting on the floor in the room and I saw how scared she was, and then I flew home and came out of the orb, right in that place, I could leave there, and I could touch anything I wanted from there. I left the orb and beat Zakhar! Alex, I stood up for my loved ones and was not afraid!"

"Yes, I really was sitting on the floor at the time," the girl confirmed, "I don't know how he could have seen me through the door."

"Well done, Kostya, I mean for standing up for your loved ones," Alex said, "but we'll probably discuss that later. Now tell me, did you also see Anya and Zakhar through the walls?"

"Yes, and I've seen them naked. Anya I'm sorry, I didn't look at you for a long time, it was accidentally, but I saw you under your clothes."

"Kostya, and when you came out of the orb, as you put it, your normal vision returned, and you immediately began to see everyone as usual?" Semyon Petrovich asked.

"Yes, when I came out, I was a little in the air, I mean, I was flying in the corridor in a balloon, then I came out and I fell on the floor. And immediately hit Zakhar on the head. And again! But the most important thing! I saw what was inside the root! Inside its shell! There was something flowing, liquid, there were some kind of tubes or veins, and something was pounding like a heart, but a huge one."

"So... we need to think about what we heard," said Semyon Petrovich, "such a flow of information combined with the miracle of teleportation of a wayfarer is... is... I just need to go to my office. You suppose you may want to have a rest in the lounge; I'll have more questions later. I'll come down to you."

"All right," Alex said.

"Here's another thing," said Kostya, pulling the moss covered piece of glass out of his rucksack and handing it over to Semyon Petrovich. "You asked me to take it."

"Yes, thank you."

"Petrovich, do you have any thoughts about what you heard?" Alex asked.

"Yes, I think I know what we're up against, but... well, I have to think it over."

***

Alex, Kostya, Anya, and two other coordinators, whose wayfarers Sasha and Misha had died during the expedition, were sitting on a sofa near Kostya's room in the corridor. Semyon Petrovich had been gone for about forty minutes. During this time, the wayfarer told the details of his journey through the glade with flowers and once again described his feelings after jumping into the black orb of unknown nature, where the main root and, as a result, the Thicket itself sprouted."

The Institute's employees were still just waking up in their beds at home, so it was unnaturally quiet in the large Institute building. The silence was occasionally interrupted by questions addressed to Kostya and his answers, mostly confusing and sometimes incoherent. Soon Semyon Petrovich got out of an elevator, went to the sofa where the company was sitting and handed Alex a piece of glass with moss on it.

"It's two dimensional," he said.

"What?" Alex turned the glass over in his hands, examining it from different angles.

"The moss. It is two dimensional," Semyon Petrovich said again.

"How do you know?"

"Look at it from the side."

Alex turned the glass face up.

"See the moss on the side?"

"Well... at this perspective no, but at that yes, we have to watch at from a certain angle... Though, so I don't see it again." Alex holding the glass in his hand slightly moved his head left, then right. "When I look at it at the right angle and it disappears, but... maybe the layer is very thin."

"No, it's a two dimensional object," Semyon Petrovich said confidently.

"You should check it with a microscope, you can't draw conclusions just by looking at it" Alex said.

"You think I haven't done it? Or I've been playing solitaire in the office for an hour? Of course, I have already looked through a microscope" Semyon Petrovich grumbled. "This moss does not have thickness. It has only length and width. It is two-dimensional."

"What do you mean, it doesn't have thickness?" Anya asked.

"We have three spatial dimensions in our world: length, width and height, so we are all three-dimensional here. But this moss has two space properties: length and width. That's all."

"Is that possible?" Alex asked.

"As you can see," Semyon Petrovich said, "we are observing a two dimensional object."

Alex scratched his head:

"And what does this have to do with what Kostya told us?" he asked.

"Directly related! Now I know how to destroy the Thicket," Semyon Petrovich said and smiled.

Everyone looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

"The Thicket has sprouted from our three dimensional space into two dimensional one. And what we have here is a part of it," he pointed to the moss on the glass "But!" he paused, "The Thicket sprouted into our three dimensional space from the four dimensional space where Kostya happened to be. All that he described just fits into the theory of four dimensional space."

"So it's not an alien parasite?" Alex asked.

"No, this weed grows through spatial dimensions, and it may go much deeper than four-dimensional space, it may go down to..."

"Five-dimensional?" Anya asked.

"Yes, why not?" Semyon Petrovich replied.

"How does that help us destroy the weed?" Alex asked.

"Well, it probably won't be possible to completely destroy it, but we will eliminate its manifestation in our three dimensional space. I'll explain how."

He took out a piece of paper and drew a square on it.

"See the square?" he began. "Let's suppose it as a safe. The safe is locked and cannot be opened. One of the square sides, no matter which one, is a door, and it is well and completely welded and there is no way to get into this square. There's an apple in the safe."

He drew an apple in the centre of the square.

"How do I get an apple out?"

He paused. The audience looked at each other.

"Take a welding machine and open the safe door," Alex suggested.

"No."

"Drop the safe from the tenth floor," Kostya said.

"No."

"Blow it up?" Anya suggested.

"No."

"Drill a hole the size of this apple with a diamond drill," Nikolai said.

"No."

"I don't get why not?" Alex resented. "Call safecrackers and have them open it... There are literally thousands of ways to open a safe, if time and resources are not limited. You can blow up or drill the door, the options are countless..."

"Do you see the apple?" Semyon Petrovich asked.

"I see it."

"Why would you want to blow something up or saw it when you can just take it?"

"What do you mean, take it? It's closed."

"But you can see the apple, can't you? Does it matter if the door is closed or not? Here it is before your eyes."

"I see, yes, but only because your safe is flat, two dimensional, and I can see the apple inside it and take it," Alex said.

"You're looking at a two dimensional safe from your three dimensional world," Semyon Petrovich explained.

"Ah," Alex drawled, "so your riddle was a trick, so it's not fair."

"In the same way, you can put anything in the safe. In our three dimensional world, there are no barriers for you in the two dimensional world."

"Well, that's understandable."

"Kostya was in four-dimensional space, and just as we are now looking at this safe, he was looking at our three-dimensional world. There were no barriers for him. So he could see the walls, and inside them, and through the clothes and even the inside of that rat."

"Mouse," Kostya corrected him.

"And inside the root," Alex added.

"Yeah, Kostya will go back into four-dimensional space and from there put the chemical inside the impenetrable root. That's it."

"Yes!" Kostya said, "I could go through its shell there, just like I could go into your safe on the piece of paper, but in real life!"

"But to do that, we need to get back to the central root," Semyon Petrovich said, "and that's the biggest problem."

"I can get there again," said the wayfarer, "but I need to rest for a day."

"There is another problem," said Semyon Petrovich, "the top management reported that this was the last expedition."

"Why? Why would they?!" Alex exclaimed.

"For three years, our department has not shown almost any results. Seventy-five wayfarers died in all time. This expedition was the last. They're going to increase the funding for other departments, mostly for the study of the Thicket and the development of new types of chemicals, and we're closing down."

"What? Why is this the first time I'm hearing of it? Alex asked.

"Okhotnikov told me that this group of wayfarers is the last. But it's not that bad. We have Kostya with his history, a two dimensional moss, and a plan of destroying the root. We will provide all this data to the top management."

"I still don't understand why you didn't tell me about this being the last expedition."

"I was supposed not to. You could get nervous, start taking risks, and make wrong decisions. I'm not allowed to tell the coordinators about this."

"Oh, yes... it's like I wasn't nervous without it... Ah... we have reached the central root, by the way; he can't stop the expedition."

"I hope he won't do it. Let's move to his office; he usually arrives round eight o'clock. We'll wait there."

***

A tall man with short-cropped hair and glasses came to his office sharp at eight o'clock in the morning. He was surprised to see Semyon Petrovich with the coordinators in the corridor."

"Good morning," said the president of the Institute.

"Hello," said Semyon Petrovich. The others just nodded.

Okhotnikov opened the door with a key.

"Semyon Petrovich, I believe something has happened," said the president. "Since you come to see me at such an early hour and brought a delegation with you? Come on in, don't be shy."

"It happened, it happened, Mikhail Viktorovich."

Okhotnikov sat down at his desk, hidden under piles of papers, in the far corner of the huge office and leaned back in his chair.

"Sit down, gentlemen, why are you so glum?" Okhotnikov asked. "Did you lose the whole group again?"

Kostya, Anya, and Alex sprawled on a black leather sofa. Semyon Petrovich sat down opposite the president at his desk, and the coordinators remained standing near the door, looking at the picture on the wall.

"Wow, this office is huge," Kostya admired innocently.

Alex kicked him in the leg without being noticed, leaned over and whispered to him to keep quiet.

"I'll get right to the point," said Semyon Petrovich. "We need to organise another expedition to the Thicket."

"And what about the last campaign, there seemed to be one person left... what was his name... Kostya? I was told that the wayfarer was still there the day before yesterday. Is he already... how to put it... gone? No one left?"

"One left. Here he is," Semyon Petrovich pointed at Kostya.

"Um... are you serious?"

Okhotnikov looked at the wayfarer with disbelief.

"Mikhail Viktorovich, I know that you are sceptical about the project "Wayfarer", but..." Semyon Petrovich began

"Not only me, but the government, too," Okhotnikov interrupted Semyon Petrovich's speech. "One moment..."

The president reached into his desk, pulled out a pile of papers, and tossed it in front of him.

"These are contracts... All these people are already dead. Many were eighteen years old. I am not just sceptical about the "Wayfarer" project; I believe it should've been closed long ago until a more detailed study of the alien parasite was conducted. We started sending groups there too early. And all these deaths, whose fault is this? My? No, your, Semyon Petrovich, it's your fault," he glanced at the coordinators. "and the fault of the others who participated in the development of the project and its implementation. And what are the results of three years of these senseless deaths? No results. Are you asking me to organise another expedition? Well, why on earth should I?"

"You didn't let me finish," Semyon Petrovich continued. "The guy went to the central root and came back."

"Back?" Okhotnikov asked.

"Yes, I told you, here he is in front of you."

"How could he have come back so quickly?"

"Do you accept the fact that you are now looking at Kostya, the same wayfarer who yesterday was in the heart of the Thicket?"

"There's no catch? Wait, I need his contract brought, I'll have somebody do it..."

"No need, here it is." Semyon Petrovich gave Okhotnikov several stapled sheets and a photo card of Kostya. "We also have video recordings showing that the wayfarer was in the Thicket that night, but we will need to go to our department."

The president picked up the wayfarer's card and stared at the photograph, then glanced at Kostya's face, still smeared with the flower's slime, then back at the card.

"So... the wayfarer is indeed that one. Please explain how this can be?"

"In general, Mikhail Viktorovich, our parasite was not cosmic..."

Semyon Petrovich told Okhotnikov about the passage to four dimensional space, supporting the words with two dimensional moss, and explained how it all works. Kostya constantly interrupted Semyon Petrovich, adding new details to his story that surfaced in his memory. At the end of the story, they explained to the president the idea of moving the chemical inside the root using the example of a drawing with the safe and the apple. It didn't take long before Okhotnikov understood the principle of four dimensional space and its possibilities in relation to three-dimensional space, since he was interested in popular scientific theories and, in general, was already aware of the principles of spatial dimensions.

"I've no words?" said Okhotnikov, when Semyon Petrovich had finished speaking.

"Yes... things happen."

"What can I say..." the president rubbed his chin with his fingers, looking round the room intently. "We should try... we should try..."

" Mikhail Viktorovich, we will one thing from you - planes with repeaters," said Semyon Petrovich. "We don't need a group. Kostya will go alone."

"Alone?"

"Yeah. And consider it all to be the same expedition. It is not finished as long as the wayfarer is alive."

"Hmm... I agree," said Okhotnikov. "When are you setting out?"

"I can do it tomorrow," Kostya said. "Today I need to rest, although I managed to sleep in the toilet on a mattress, but..."

Alex kicked him again.

"Great!" the president said decisively, and banged his hand on the table.

***

Anya was allowed to stay at the Institute while Kostya was on the expedition. The siblings went home to get toothbrushes, underwear, and some other personal items. Zakhar, fortunately, was not in the flat at that moment.

In Kostya's modest, cosy room, Anya felt calmer than at home, not so much because of the absence of a violent alcoholic in the next room, but because Semyon Petrovich allowed the girl to watch her brother's expedition with Alex from the coordinator's office.

After dinner, Kostya and Alex went for a walk in the Institute courtyard. Anya was already asleep. She barely made it to eight o'clock after the terrible sleepless night yesterday, and besides, she still had to go to school, and it took her half an hour longer to get there from the Institute than from home.

"Ah... it's going to get cold soon," Alex said and lit a cigarette.

He stood opposite Kostya, who was sitting on a bench and looked up at the sky, where the first stars were already appearing.

"Why did you start smoking?" Kostya asked.

"I don't know. For no reason, I guess. During school breaks everyone went out to smoke, and I did it too."

"And drinking?"

"I don't know, during school breaks everyone went out to drink, and I did it too."

Kostya laughed.

"Seriously," Alex said, "I can't explain it. It's an unhealthy habit. It is a habit. I've tried to give up drinking and smoking so many times, and all to no avail. I remember how energetic and upbeat I used to be before all this, and now I feel like I'm fifty years old and I can't help it."

"If you drink, you can turn from a good person into a bad one," Kostya said. "Evil will take you."

"No, it's not about me. I'm kind when I'm drunk. I'm sure evil won't take me."

"And you can die of a disease early."

"That's more frightening, I agree, but I don't know what to do. As soon as I decide to give it all up, there is always an excuse to drink or smoke, and there are ads for this shit everywhere. It all won't let me give it up."

"They do it on purpose."

"Who?"

"Salespeople."

"Ah... it's a no brainer. Do you have an idea of how much money they earn?"

"But people get sick and die."

"I agree."

Alex finished his cigarette and tossed it into the trash.

"Give up smoking right now," Kostya said.

"No, bro, it's not that simple. I tried."

"Just don't smoke."

"You don't understand what addiction is. You can't just stop smoking."

"A lot of people said they did."

"Well... I can't... I can't."

"Would you like to?"

"You ask! I'd give anything to stop inhaling it."

"I'm sorry for you."

"You shouldn't."

"And the fact that you drink, I feel sorry for you."

"Look how pitiful you are," Alex said with displeasure.

"I'm sorry you're so stupid."

"Yes? Then I feel sorry for you."

"Why do you feel sorry for me?"

"And the fact that you're retard, and I'm not, that's why I feel sorry for poor little you."

"Why am I poor? I am not poor at all. Or maybe I like being a retard!"

"I can hardly believe that."

"Yeah. I like it. I feel great when I'm not being bullied! When somebody needs me, just like now. And when I have a friend."

"Friend? Is that me?"

"Yes. We decided to become friends in the trolleybus, do you remember?"

"Yeah, I do. Nice to hear. You know, it turns out that you're my only friend, too. In fact, you are the only person who considers me a friend."

"I don't consider anything; I just know you are my friend."

Alex smiled.

"Let's go home already, tomorrow is a hard day," he said.

"Yes, tomorrow all over again..."

Chapter seventeen

Six days after leaving the Thicket, Kostya stopped communicating. He sent the last message when he was fifty kilometres from the Ileevo village, which is close to the central root. No one understood what had happened, because the battery charge was enough for many more days of travel.

Anya had to go home. Zakhar met her, and, surprisingly, was in an adequate state, though drunk, as it seemed to her. He tried to find out what had happened and where she had been. The girl locked herself in the room without explaining anything. Anya stopped going to school and didn't eat anything for several days. The world had disappeared for her, along with her brother. Zakhar made unsuccessful attempts to open communication with the girl in those brief moments when she left her room to go to the toilet or drink water, but Anya ignored him. She tried to convince herself that Kostya's camera had just broken, and he would come back. She calculated how many kilometres remained to the centre of the Thicket and how long it would take Kostya to pass them, so that she would know when to expect her brother. The days passed so slowly that it was physically painful for her to exist in this cruel uncertainty.

"The camera just broke," she told herself. "Kostya is not dead, Kostya has temporarily disappeared," she repeated. "He still has many days to go, and it is too early to talk about death..." She was trying to set herself up positively, in order to somehow overcome the depression that had completely engulfed her. Every day Anya continued to count the kilometres that Kostya had to go for that day, and waited for the moment when he would return, as it was the last time. Time passed, but her brother still hadn't returned.

"Without communication with the coordinators he's walking slowly," the sister thought.

After a week, the hope for Kostya's return began to fade. On the eighth day, Semyon Petrovich called and said that they wanted to arrange a funeral for Kostya. The girl dropped the handset in tears and slid down the wall to the floor, knowing that this was the end.

When Anya heard a long, hoarse "I know you're a succubus", she raised her tear-stained face and saw Zakhar standing in the doorway. The man held a knife in his hands and gazed at the girl's eyes. She had never seen such an expression on her foster parent's face. It seemed to her that something had taken possession of him.

"I saw you walking on the walls," said Zakhar, "I saw you talking to the devil. I saw the devils dancing round you." He pronounced each word with stress and hatred in his voice. Anya shrank back into the corner of the kitchen.

"The succubus tried to tempt me," the foster parent raved in a fit of delirium tremens. "I tried to tolerate, but... The succubus walked round me in skimpy cloths, trying to seduce me. But I endured it. The succubus hinted to me about possessing... a young body. I endured it as best as I could. But my strength is running out."

He went to Anya and held the knife to her face.

"I know there is scale under that skin. Rotten scale!" he yelled, and the girl screamed with fright, closing her eyes. And when she opened her eyes a moment later, she saw evil.

Evil grabbed her t-shirt and tore it open. It pulled her by the legs, so that Anya was on her back. She tried with all her might to push him off her, until the knife touched her face. Then the girl froze. Evil whispered something to her, kissed her neck and bit her ear. The girl felt her shorts being removed. Anya tried to resist, to cross her legs and not to let evil penetrate her. The blade drew a red line across her cheek, and pain spread across her face along with the blood. Anya screamed, but a hand was immediately put over her mouth. In this hopeless situation, she suddenly remembered her brother. She remembered how they had walked together in a park, and how he told her about his paintings.

Anya closed her eyes and imagined a clear image of Kostya in front of her. His kind, sunny, smiling face. And then a miracle happened. Anya saw the light spreading all over the kitchen. The light grabbed heart of the evil and tore out the black, rotten organ of the man who had lost everything in his life. Zakhar raised himself on the knees and with bulging eyes stared at Anya, and then at his heart, which lay on the floor near his knee. He dropped the knife and clutched at his chest, which was completely intact. He took a few shuddering breaths, then collapsed on his side and lay still.

Chapter eighteen

OCTOBER

The investigator sat in a chair and watched the news. The presenter reported on the death of the leader of a terrorist group and the end of the war in the East, which was the result of the death of all the commanders of the opposing sides. There was chaos on the front line. Ordinary soldiers had thrown away their weapons and they were going home.

All the officers up from majors had their internal organs removed, again without any incisions.

Without taking anybody's side, the ghost simply stopped bloody war that lasted for years, killing the entire command of the opposing armies. What's it? An alien invasion? Divine intervention? Or a hint from a higher power?

"Even though it is illegal," the investigator thought, "I am glad it's happening the way it is. It's the only way..."

NOVEMBER

Two hours in the TV Studio for Semyon Petrovich went in a blink of an eye. The interview was coming to an end. The head of the coordinator's department reached for a glass of water and took a sip just to help his dry throat.

"Aren't you tired of me asking questions?" the host asked.

"Yes, just a little tired," said Semyon Petrovich. "It wasn't easy, but it was interesting."

"After the weather forecast ends, there will be questions from the audience, and then we are finished."

"Good."

"So. We go on the air," the operator said.

1

2

3

4

5

"Dear viewers," the host said, "it's time for questions from the audience. If someone has something to ask, raise your hand."

A hundred hands raised in the hall.

"Wow," Semyon Petrovich said with a smile.

"We don't have much time left," the host said, "so we'll try to answer as much questions as we can. Yes, you, a man in the red shirt."

The host pointed to a young man sitting in the third row. The guy stood up and picked up the microphone that the assistant had given him.

"Hello, my name is Stepan, I would like to ask, when Kostya poisoned the central root, the passage to four dimensional space closed? Thank you for the answer."

Stepan gave the microphone to the assistant and sat down.

"Yes, it closed. The root created a passage between dimensions. In our dimension, the root was poisoned and the Thicket withered in a few weeks. But there is no guarantee that it will not return to us in some other place."

"So, the next... you, please," the host pointed to the girl in the first row.

"My name is Katerina, and I was wondering if the discovery of other spatial dimensions is a breakthrough in science. And whether any research will be conducted on... on this... I mean..." the girl began to falter, obviously from excitement, "on these dimensions...."

"You mean, are we going to study four dimensional space?"

"Yeah."

"We definitely will. The question is about funding and... creating a methodology. We can't get in there now because the passageway is closed. But there is an opinion that if the parasite sprouted to us once, it can do it again. And then, without allowing it to grow, like previously, we will try to detect the Thicket on Earth at an early stage, before it has grown to an incredible size, and start sending people into four dimensional space for the purpose of studying it."

"And you, please," the host pointed to an elderly man in the last row. "Yes, to that man in blue, pass him the microphone... no, the next one, yes, to him..."

"Hello," the old man said in a hoarse voice. "My question is, is the presence of other more complex spatial dimensions somehow connected with God and the afterlife? And can more advanced beings live there?"

"Ahem," Semyon Petrovich chuckled, "an interesting question. You know, I'm a physicist by education, and I've never really thought about religion, but I don't deny the existence of God, and I believe that if he created everything around us, then he also created dimensions higher than our third. If you are referring to whether a person after death get to some higher worlds, to five dimensional or six dimensional space, then I see no reason to believe that this is possible. As for whether someone lives there, I'm sure they do. At least, there is a Thicket, which is a kind of life form. Obviously, it exists in higher dimensions, and if there is one form of life there, then there must be others. I think the higher spatial dimensions are densely populated by various living organisms, including intelligent ones. Perhaps there is something that does not fit into our categories of intelligence, something much higher in understanding and perception of reality, some other level of consciousness."

"Pass the microphone to your neighbour," said the host, "otherwise he won't stop raising his hand."

"Thank you, my name is Vasily. Our consciousness generates a three dimensional model of reality in our head. Right?"

"Right."

"And we can't imagine what a four dimensional space is because our perception organs can only work with length, width and height. But as it turns out, there are still spatial directions that well... I personally can't comprehend."

"Neither do I. And all of us," Semyon Petrovich interrupted.

"If we had other perception organs, would we have a different reality, and could we perceive other spatial dimensions?"

"I don't think so. However, we are in a three dimensional world, and it is impossible to perceive the four dimensional world from here."

"But our three dimensional world is embedded in a four dimensional world, and the four dimensional world consists partly of a three dimensional world."

"Yes, as well as three dimensional partially consists of two dimensional, but in order to perceive the four dimensional world, it is not enough for us to acquire new organs of perception, we still need to go out of our world in the four dimensional world to perceive it."

"I see, thank you."

"Give the microphone to that red-haired woman," the host said.

"Hello," she said. "My name is Svetlana, do you think Kostya will return to our dimension or stay there forever? And the second question is, as I know, he lived with his sister, how's she doing now? Thanks."

"Oh... it's hard to say. I don't know... I can't answer your question. Now, obviously, he has very important things to do there. Well, then we'll wait and see. His sister is fine, I have custody of her, and she will live in our family until she comes of age."

"Time is running out," said the host, "and the last question for toady... let it be... you, please, yes, you, the man in the checked jacket."

"Hello, I have a question... do you justify the fact that Kostya took law in his own hands? You are not afraid that the life of any person, and the fate of the whole world depends on a boy with... peculiar features. Sometimes he acts like a madman."

Semyon Petrovich paused for a few seconds, thinking about the answer, and then said:

"You know... looking back at our world, at what was before, I have just one question in my head: who is in their right mind now? Every year five hundred thousand people die from alcoholism, three hundred thousand from drug addiction, and four hundred thousand from smoking. And this is only in our country. After several top managers of tobacco factories and distilleries were killed, how many alcohol and tobacco companies do you think have closed?"

"I don't know, how many?"

"All. Retail stores are also closing gradually. I don't have statistics on drug sales, but I can conclude that the world has also won over drug addiction. Knowing that, do you still think that it is he who has some kind of psychological deviation? He was able to end the war that lasted four years in just an hour. Yes, he had to kill people, but by killing thirty high command men he saved tens of thousands of ordinary soldiers. It was also a war over resources. Over money. Because of greed. He stopped it. So who of us is crazy? I'm not talking about ecology and animal protection, which he also thought of. Is it okay to kill elephants and rhinos for trinkets made from their bones? Who's crazy now? There hasn't been a single murder in our city this month. A good man has nothing to fear, and every potential criminal now feels his eyes on them. I have been asked about God, and yes, I can't call myself a believer. But if God exists I can say with confidence that after creation of the world he let things slide. But as it turns out, we are not ready for this. We are like small children, and we need someone to look after us. And Kostya took on this burden. And now if someone wants to commit something terrible, one must know he is watching all of you and he will rip out your heart like the apple from the safe, if needs be." Semyon Petrovich paused, then looked in the camera and said. "Because he is... a man of light."
