💾 Archived View for clemat.is › saccophore › library › shorts › defcon › 25 › DEFCON-25-Kellebrew-Po… captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38.

View Raw

More Information

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Polymorph

By L. Kellebrew




Good morning! It’s pretty cold here in Seattle. Here’s the tech news
you need to know going into your week...  Corogen partnered with the
Department of Homeland Security to develop ClearVoy, a personal device
designed to assist and protect vulnerable citizens.  Production is
underway at several undisclosed facilities, far removed from areas of
recent domestic terror activity.  -TechQ News, 2025


CHAPTER 1 Minsk, Belarus.

If Kiel Dashkevich had known he was going to die today, he would have
stayed in bed. But after a boiled egg and toast, he marched out into
ankle-deep snow, humming snatches of song in the cold pink light of a
January morning.

Ready for another day of translating press releases at the U.S. Embassy,
Kiel pulled his stocking cap over his ears and climbed down concrete
steps into the Metro station. He made it to the subway platform just in
time to see the red taillights of the 7:30 train disappearing down the
tunnel. Missed it again.

The next train wasn’t scheduled for another fifteen minutes, which in
Minsk time translated to forty-five minutes he could spend staring at
dog-eared posters of Russian pop stars, wondering why his paper cup of
coffee never warmed his hands. It was freezing down here, but at least
in the winter he couldn’t smell the urine in the corners or the vomit
in the garbage cans.

A harried man in a beige trenchcoat spoke rapidly into a mobile phone,
rocking on his heels near the edge of the platform. Two elderly women
with matching sapphire earrings and bright red kerchiefs peeking out
from their furry ushankas sat on a bench nearby, eyeing Kiel
suspiciously.

Kiel smiled and waved. They didn’t return the gesture, but he was used
to that by now. He was still an outsider in this austere country,
despite the fact his father had grown up here.

Kiel turned his collar up against the cold. One babushka nodded off to
sleep while the other flipped open a copy of the Minsk Sentinel.
Newsprint smudged her white-gloved fingers.

Civil War in U.S., Kiel translated from the front page. He didn’t know
whether to believe it or not, because the news here could be so skewed.
He should call Mom tonight, see if he could get through this time. Last
time they talked, she said there were a lot of protests going on about
internet privacy. That’s probably all it was.

He wandered over to the timetables posted in the center of the platform
and double-checked the schedule against his watch. Just when he
confirmed the arrival time of Metro Line 5, a woman whispered something
unintelligible right behind him, so close he should have felt her breath
on his neck.

Kiel’s neck prickled as he looked over his shoulder. There was nobody
there, just the man in the trenchcoat and the babushkas on the bench.

Hearing things now? Kiel shook his head. Too much time alone in his
flat, seasonal affective disorder, and the mold he didn’t see until
he’d eaten half his rye toast this morning. No wonder he was going a
little insane.

“Don’t worry. You’re not crazy,” the voice whispered.
“You’re just paying more attention than they are.”

Kiel pinched the bridge of his nose and walked to the edge of the
platform, pretending to peer down the dark tunnel for any sign of his
train. A faded Origa poster from last September’s concert still clung
to the wall of the tunnel, the blonde singer’s eyes glowing with a
dark amber hue like raw honey. Her keyhole-shaped pupils remind Kiel of
a goat he’d woken up to one morning after passing out behind a pub on
the east side of Minsk.

“Listen. We don’t have much time.” Origa lifted one bare arm, her
sleeveless pink gown rippling in the icy breeze blowing down the tunnel.

Great! Now he was hallucinating. Kiel glanced over at the others on the
platform behind him, but no one seemed to notice. He poured some coffee
down his throat to keep it from closing up in panic.

“Pay attention,” Origa continued. Pixelated and glittering, she
wavered up out of the poster and pointed at a corona of light shining
from the north end of the southbound tunnel. “There’s an unscheduled
train coming. You need to get on it.”

The platform rumbled under Kiel’s boots. “That’s not my train,”
he protested.

“Shh! Don’t give me away.” Her orange goat eyes darted back and
forth.

He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. Feeling shaky, Kiel tapped an
absentminded rhythm on the lid of his coffee cup. The unscheduled train
squeaked to a stop between him and the Origa poster, covering all but
her face.

No Metro Line number, and no passengers in the seats. Kiel stepped away
as the doors hissed open.

Origa jumped up and down in a fit of digitized fury. “Get in! Get in
now!”  Both babushkas, wide awake now, furrowed their brows at Kiel.

“Get in now or you’re a goner,” the voice warned him.

Delusions of persecution? Schizophrenia ran in families. Dad suffered
from it up until his suicide. Kiel might need medication. Or maybe just
a vacation, a visit back home to the States, civil war or not.

Who was he kidding? He desperately needed to get laid. He hadn’t been
to the banya in a year, since he went home with that American girl,
Carmine. Carmine had long black hair and shaved legs, the first shaved
legs he’d seen since leaving the States. She’d just accepted an
offer from Corogen, a tech company near Kiel’s alma mater in Seattle.

Kiel wished he’d followed her back there, back to the familiar, to a
place where finding companionship didn’t mean flashing his American
passport at the disco.

The train doors gaped open in front of him as Origa screeched and
gibbered in a dialect of Belarusian Kiel had never heard before. He
tried to stay calm, singing a folk song Dad had taught him in his native
Belarusian: “Kupalinka, kupalinka… Ćomnaja nočka...” An American
by marriage, Dad considered it a duty to pass his culture on to Kiel,
something he’d done up until the day he jumped off the Aurora Bridge
to his death.

Soon the doors would close, the train would leave and everything would
go back to normal. Kiel tried to remember what Carmine looked like
naked. Had it really been a year since he’d had sex?

A long bony claw raked through Kiel’s jacket from behind, scraping to
his skin. Sure that he was still hallucinating, he turned slowly toward
the source of the pain to find a pair of seven-headed hydras hissing in
his face. Apparently, the two babushkas had just grown extra heads and
very sharp teeth, and they had him surrounded.

Kiel took a deep breath and counted fourteen hideous mouths, each with
double-jointed jaws and hundreds of fangs. Clicks and hisses erupted
from their gaping throats like steam radiators with loose valves.

This was turning into a Very Interesting Day.

“Get on the goddamn train! Now!” Origa screeched.

Kiel froze, trapped between the two hydras. The train doors crept toward
each other. Even if he ran for it now, he probably wouldn’t make it
before they closed.

“I can’t hold these doors open for you much longer, asshole!”

Kiel looked up into the angry gray slits of the hydras’ eyes, forcing
himself to keep his gaze from wandering to the train and giving him
away. Then he plunged toward the doors with all his strength.

The hydras’ hissing heightened into a shrill, furious whistle, and
their claws dug into Kiel’s flesh, pulling him back to the platform.
He hadn’t thought to count how many arms they had. The trenchcoat guy
still chattered into his mobile, looking right at Kiel and the hydras
without seeing them.

A loud boom shook the platform and threw the hydras and Kiel down on the
concrete floor. The hydras tore into Kiel’s forearms with their
powerful talons. Desperate, he tossed his hot coffee into the nearest
pair of eyes, kicking at gelatinous gray flesh as flames roared up
around him, racing up his pant legs, coat, and sleeves. Yelling and
thrashing, Kiel broke free of the hydras’ grip just in time to squeeze
through the train doors before they closed with a rubbery thump.



#



U.S. Armed Forces subdued an unprecedented number of domestic terrorists
who converged on forty-two state capitols today.  The terrorists say
they want the National Security Agency to stop collecting Internet and
email data, but they’re forgetting that the NSA’s data protected us
from the terror attacks planned in 2018 and ’22.  The President has
declared martial law in all states involved until the threat of terror
has passed.  -KOLO Channel 10 News


CHAPTER 2

Kiel dropped in the aisle and rolled until he put the fire out. He
crawled up into the nearest seat, sucking air in deep gulps as thin
streams of black smoke rose from his jacket. He heard the hydras scream
as the train car jolted over something lumpy. Hopefully at least one of
them was dead.

Flames faded behind the train as Kiel plunged deeper into the dark
safety of the tunnel. His jacket hung on his body in melted shreds, and
blood leaked from his gashed back and arms onto the vinyl seat. When a
miniature orange-eyed Origa leapt onto the seat next to him, he jumped,
startled. She was no bigger than a doll.

“You really know how to take it out of a daemon,” she harped.
“What’s the point of giving you an entire train to save your ass
when you don’t even have the good sense to get on it?”

“I hope you’re taking me to a hospital,” Kiel muttered.

“No, you’ll be fine,” Origa said, crossing her thin arms over her
chest.

“Are you kidding me?” Kiel yelped. “I’ve got third degree burns.
I could die.”

“Stupid American,” Origa muttered. She smacked Kiel hard on his
bloody forearm, the slap of flesh echoing like a lone handclap through
the empty train car.

“That’s weird,” Kiel rubbed at his numb arm. “I don’t feel
anything.”

“Exactly. Because you’re already dead!”

“Excuse me?”

“Kicked his bucket, breathed his last, kaput. Dead.”

Kiel lost it, laughing until his eyes leaked. “I knew it. I knew I was
going crazy.”

“Think you’re losing your mind now? Check this out.” Origa’s
comely curves disappeared as her pale skin and pink dress molted off,
exposing wet reptilian scales. The doll was gone, and in her place a
bright red bearded dragon stood on hind legs at a full height of twelve
inches. Her orange eyes bulged out in their sockets as she propped tiny,
clawed fists on her hips.

“You look like a sunburned lizard.” Kiel coughed, sobering slightly.
The train shuddered on the rails.

“This is my true form,” Origa said. “It’s a lot of work to keep
that other avatar up.”

“How exactly did I die again?”

“Bomb went off on the platform. Planted by state loyalists, but
they’ll shift the blame to the E.U. somehow.”

Kiel raised his eyebrows.

“Doesn’t matter though,” she continued. “You’re just lucky I
got you on the train before the soul-eaters had their way with you. You
would’ve been screwed for sure.”

“Those hydra things eat souls, huh? Guess it’s a good thing
they’re dead now.”

Origa shrugged. “Next time, don’t be so cocky. Just do what I tell
you.”

“Tell me again who you are?”

“Matilda. Minor daemon of the Belarusian canon. You can stop thinking
of me as that blonde bimbo any minute now.”

“No problem. I’m Kiel.”

“I know. Your dad told me all about you.”

Kiel shivered. “He… what?”

“We met right after he jumped off the bridge,” Matilda said
matter-of-factly. “Once he realized what he did, it was too late to go
back. So he devoted himself to the cause of the faery folk--- my
people.”

Kiel goggled at her.

“We’re your people too, you know,” Matilda said, patting his knee
with a scaly red hand. “Your DNA on your dad’s side traces back to
the days when human beings and faeries still intermarried.”

Kiel gripped the armrest of his seat, feeling sick.

Matilda looked sideways at him. “Come on, it’s not that strange.”

“Is my dad still… here?”

The train braked, and Matilda jumped to the floor. “No. But he gave
himself valiantly to our cause. And now, we found you, just like the
Code said we would.”

The doors whooshed open, but they weren’t in Minsk anymore. They’d
arrived at Westlake Station in Seattle. Completely impossible.

“Not impossible,” Matilda piped up. “We just hacked the space-time
continuum.”

Kiel found himself face to face with the mural in the subway tunnel that
had always given him the creeps. The grinning samurai tracing lines with
a yellow crayon, Alice floating next to a giant crockpot, Wonder Woman
preening in front of a mirror, and two smiling mouths full of teeth
about to kiss. Or devour each other.

He stepped off the train and launched into the first verse of
“Kupalinka”: “Maja dočka u sadočku, Ružu, ružu polić.” His
voice echoed down the empty subway.

“Unholy Mother of Darkness!” Matilda yelped, clamping her talons
over her ears. “That song is a classic. Don’t insult the Goddess
with your screeching.”

“Sorry. Guess I’m a little tone deaf.” Kiel squashed a glob of
faded yellow mustard under his boot. It was a mystery where the
associated corn dog had made off to. “How come no one’s down
here?”

“Do you not watch the news? There’s a war going on.”

“I thought that was another loyalist lie.”

“No, this time it’s true.” Avoiding the defunct escalators,
Matilda hopped up the gray marble stairs leading to the street. “You
Americans are very serious about your privacy. All these kids with their
black flags marching in the streets, all these people with their guns.
What do they call them, domestic terrors?”

“Terrorists. Domestic terrorists.”

“So anyway, it doesn’t look good for the terrorists.”

“They have a right to protest,” Kiel frowned. “First Amendment.”

“Whatever. They’re going to lose because of technology. Corogen
supplies all your government’s technology.”

Kiel’s bus used to stop by the Corogen campus, a cluster of
multi-level brick buildings and sporadic birch trees. “I used to know
a girl who works there.”

“She does more than work there,” Matilda shook her head. “Those
cretins have been wiping out the faery folk for years now.” She led
Kiel through a line of armed security guards with the Corogen logo
embroidered on their sleeves, guards that didn’t even notice them.

Thick drops of rain pelted the sidewalk as Kiel and Matilda emerged at
street level, squinting against the glare of the overcast sky. The rain
bounced off Kiel’s skin. “I can’t even get wet now,” he
remarked, awestruck.

Matilda rolled her eyes as she scrabbled to keep pace with Kiel’s worn
leather boots. “Speak for yourself, dead guy.”

Suddenly, something exploded nearby, knocking Kiel to the pavement for
the second time that day. He covered his head with his arms as chunks of
dislodged concrete rained around him in a rocky avalanche.



#



Nikolai Dashkevich passed away in Seattle, WA on April 7, 2015. He was
born in Minsk, Belarus on November 11, 1979 to Vladimir and Nastya
Dashkevich.  He attended college at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where he
met Stephanie, an American exchange student who later became his wife.
In 1987, the couple moved to Seattle, where Nikolai worked as an
electrical engineer.  Mr. Dashkevich is survived by his parents, his
wife, and a fifteen-year-old son.  -The Seattle Tribune, April 26, 2015


CHAPTER 3

Air raid sirens howled as thick smoke billowed from the blue windows of
the Chase Tower. Matilda huddled next to Kiel’s ribs until the
rumbling stopped. Maybe the Minsk Sentinel was more accurate than he
thought.

“Damn Canadian bombs,” Matilda muttered.

Kiel pushed himself out of the rubble, sending up clouds of dust. “I
thought the war just started. How is it this bad already?” 
Matilda
leveled her slitted eyes on him. “These protests went on for a long
time before they called this a ‘war.’”

Suddenly cold, Kiel rubbed his arms. “If I’m dead, how come I can
still feel cold?”

“Residual memories. You call it the PTSD.” Matilda leapt over a
discarded syringe and continued down the sidewalk.

Kiel stood up, brushing raindrops off his sleeves. “PTSD only happens
with a traumatic experience.”

Matilda smirked at him over her shoulder. “Wasn’t being alive
traumatic enough for you?”

“Good point.” Kiel followed Matilda, careful not to step on her.

“Don’t worry, your PTSD will pass. We faery folk went through the
same thing when we began to evolve our immortality.”

“So when do people start being immortal?”

Matilda scampered around a pile of decaying Dick’s cheeseburger
wrappers. “They’re starting right now. You’ve already learned how
to embed your consciousness online in code. In the language of
machines.”

“That’s not immortality. It’s just technology. Science.”

“So we faery folk have been doing the same thing for thousands of
years, only without the help of machines. And you superstitious monkey
brains call it magic.”

Kiel frowned. “No one believes in faeries anymore.”

“Exactly. We had to create a new world for ourselves. We’ve been
hacking the code of what you humans call ‘reality’ for centuries
now. But you finally caught up with us. You’re starting to invade our
space,” Matilda huffed. “As if you didn’t have enough space of
your own.”

Kiel looked up at the towering apartment complexes of downtown. “This
place used to be full of people. Where’d they go?” he asked,
tripping on a loose brick.

“They’re working for Corogen in secured buildings, or else they’re
hiding from all this mess. And we,” she pointed south, “are going to
a volatile area, so don’t be so clumsy.”

“But I’m already dead, so bombs can’t hurt me. Right?”

“Bombs, drones, all this war technology is smarter than we are. They
can stop ghosts, daemons, even avatars.” Matilda kicked a Rainier beer
can aside. “The most important thing is to be careful.”

Kiel remembered Pike Street smelling like fish guts and hot dogs. Now it
smelled like mold and sewage. They walked by his favorite store, one
that used to sell forty different varieties of popcorn. The tourists and
panhandlers that used to crowd the sidewalks were gone, and bullet holes
marked the store windows. Overturned cars clogged the streets, and any
door that wasn’t nailed down gaped open, emitting a steady barf of
broken glass and rust colored sewage.

A human figure lurched crookedly from a shop window, swinging at the end
of a rope, but closer inspection revealed a mannequin in a gray suit and
striped tie attempting an escape from Macy’s. Everything was gray,
like a black-and-white zombie film.

The pair crested a hill where they could see across the muddy waters of
the Sound all the way to the foggy shore of Bainbridge Island. Kiel’s
skin crawled when he realized what was missing.

“Where’s the Space Needle?”

“The what?” Matilda wiggled her scaly tail and leapt over a broken
chunk of sidewalk. “Oh. You mean that Space Age atrocity. It was the
first thing to go.”

A low buzz hummed in Kiel’s ears, growing louder as they walked
downhill. Here, a handful of skyscrapers loomed, barricaded behind
twenty feet of high voltage walls topped with coils of razor wire and
guarded by armed drones. Corogen’s corporate logo decorated the wall
at intervals, the brains behind the war.

“I don’t mean to alarm you,” Matilda said, nudging Kiel’s ankle.
“But that’s where we’re going.”

“You’re crazy,” Kiel said. “We can’t go in there.”

“You’re right. We can’t. But you can.” Matilda tapped her foot.
“They recognize my form signature and they’ve blocked me out with
their code. But they don’t know you yet.”

“Do we really need to? It seems… suicidal.” Just thinking about it
made him queasy.

A string of curses flew from Matilda’s forked tongue. Not Belarusian,
but something older and darker. “The future of my people is in the
hands of those moneygrubbing brogrammer exploitationists. May the Dark
Lord melt their bones in eternal hellfire,” she spat.

Her saliva sizzled on the sidewalk. Kiel raised his eyebrows.

Matilda wiped her mouth daintily. “Come on. We need to get you to
Elvin.” Kiel followed her down an alley that squeezed itself between
the older, brick buildings of Pioneer Square, leading the pair around
the bleak Corogen skyscrapers.

“Who’s Elvin? Another daemon?” Kiel asked, dodging a puddle of
unidentifiable goo dripping from a rusty green dumpster.

“Human. He used to work for Corogen.”

“I thought they were moneygrubbers.”

“No, Elvin’s on our side. We met at DEFCON 25.”

“You mean that hacker convention that used to meet in Las Vegas years
ago? Didn’t they get shut down during the Trump administration?”

“Shut down?” Matilda snorted. “We just went underground. We’re
bigger than ever.” She hissed suddenly. “Duck!”

Kiel slammed to the pavement just as a drone whizzed over their heads,
wielding rotors so sharp he could hear them slice the air. He lay there
for a minute, his cheek planted against the cool cobblestones, debating
the wisdom of invading the world’s largest supplier of military
technology with a self-proclaimed daemon no bigger than a stick of beef
jerky.

Matilda scampered into Kiel’s line of sight, twitching her scaly red
tail. She tapped Kiel on the nose. “Stay low and follow me.”

The drone circled over them, its razor-blade rotors buzzing and
snapping. Kiel crawled behind Matilda on hands and knees, keeping his
head down.

Matilda snapped her tiny claws. “Pay attention to the doors. We go in
door number three.”

Kiel glanced up. A series of boarded up, arched doorways lined the back
of the building on their left. The doors, like the bricks in the wall,
were painted the same flat black.

“Whatever you do, don’t stand up,” Matilda said. “The Corogen
drones can cut you up, but they can’t fly too low because their blades
will catch on the ground.”

Resisting the urge to look up at the drone, Kiel asked, “What do they
do to dead guys?”

“Usually nothing. But if they hack up the avatar we coded to get you
here, you’ll be booted offline faster than you can say--- what is it
you Americans say?”

The drone followed them as they scuttled down the alley. Kiel crawled
faster.

“Jack Nicholson, faster than you can say Jack Nicholson. Kaput. If the
drone gets you, you will be seeing this world no more.”

Kiel was beginning to think that might be okay. The drone was so close
he could feel the heat from its exhaust rippling down his back. Next to
him, the letters “YOLO” glittered in silver graffiti on crumbling
brick.

“Get down!” Matilda yelped. The drone nearly clipped the top of
Kiel’s head as it ran into a stack of reeking garbage bags, shredding
right through them.

Kiel groaned, trying not to think about how he would look as a pile of
shredded meat.

“You want to keep seeing this world, you have to listen to me,”
Matilda scolded, her breath hot in Kiel’s ear as she scampered
alongside him. “We brought your avatar to life. We can find a way to
help you live forever in the clouds.”

Kiel looked at her sidelong. “I thought you were a daemon, not an
angel.”

“No, I said in the clouds. I mean, in the cloud,” Matilda huffed.

“So what do I give you? My soul? My firstborn?”

“Yes.” Matilda tapped Kiel’s ankle. “Door, on your left.”

Kiel angled toward the boarded up doorway. “Well, I’ve already lost
my soul, and I don’t have a firstborn.” Where the hell was the
doorknob?

Matilda scampered to the knobless door and rapped on it in three sets of
three knocks each. “You do too have a firstborn. Remember Carmine?”

“Carmine? The one night stand?”

“Yes, you idiot. Carmine, the one night stand.”

The black door slid upward, revealing a tunnel aglow with red light.

Kiel’s throat went dry. “I have a kid?”

“Three months old now. A girl. But Carmine’s fiancé thinks it’s
his kid.”

Two train tracks sloped down the tunnel. Kiel couldn’t stand up under
the low ceiling, so he hunched forward almost double. An appropriate
position for throwing up.

“She had my kid and didn’t tell me? And she got engaged?” Kiel
squinted at the red light below. He thought he saw a shadow moving
around down there, and he could hear a foreboding electric hum.

“She was engaged before she met you, you blockhead. To Tom Seine, the
CEO of Corogen.” The door began to close behind the two, but not
quickly enough to keep out the drone.

Kiel turned around just in time to see a whirring mass of metal and
razor blades flying straight at his face. Without thinking, he scooped
up Matilda’s scaly lizard body and cradled her against his ribs, then
rolled sideways down the sloping tracks. Matilda’s piercing daemon
screams threatened to break the sound barrier.

They finally hit bottom, coming to a stop on a pile of loose bricks. The
drone hovered before Kiel’s eyes, lit by an array of orange and red
LEDs. He grabbed the closest brick he could find and hurled it at the
drone, smashing it with a satisfying crunch. In the blinding white flash
that followed, he smelled something like hamburger gone bad, and
everything went black.



#



Our systems routinely hunt and destroy every single code anomaly,
keeping hackers out and your data safe. We’ve perfected a truly secure
online database, one that people from the early Internet Era could only
dream about.  -Tom Seine, CEO, Corogen


CHAPTER 4

When Kiel’s vision returned, he saw pieces of the drone scattered on
the concrete floor. Red and green lights from rows of computer servers
flickered over his hands, and although the stench of spoiled meat grew
stronger, Kiel was still alive. Figuratively speaking.

The source of the stench was an individual with a grimy beard reaching
to his chest and thick-framed eyeglasses held together in the middle
with electrical tape. Powdered orange cheese stained his white t-shirt,
and a set of dog tags twinkled from a bead chain around his neck.

“So you’re Elvin,” Kiel remarked, sitting up.

Elvin grunted. “Where’s Matilda?”

“Right here.” Kiel opened his cupped hand to reveal Matilda’s tiny
limbs and head curled up into her long forked tail. But the daemon
didn’t move.

“Bloody hell. What did you do?” Elvin shouted. “Do you have any
idea who this is? Do you?” He wrenched Matilda’s limp body out of
Kiel’s hand, and glared at him accusingly. “You crushed her,
asshole.”

“I did no such thing!” Kiel protested. “In case you weren’t
paying attention, I just saved us from the drone!”

“You just ruined everything, okay? Everything.” Matilda’s head
flopped over limply in Elvin’s grasp. Sobbing, he stroked her delicate
rib cage with a chocolate-stained finger and stumbled toward a
collection of vintage lunchboxes behind his desk.

Kiel watched in equal parts horror and fascination as Elvin selected a
Wonder Woman lunchbox and nestled Matilda’s limp body inside on a pile
of gum wrappers. “Rest in peace, my friend,” he murmured, rummaging
under a pile of Doritos bags for a battery-powered votive candle. He
switched it on and glared at Kiel over fogged-up glasses. “I hope
you’re happy. Asshole.”

Kiel clenched his fists. “Matilda brought me here to help. I still
want to help.”

“There’s no point now.” Elvin rebooted the servers one by one.
“You won’t know where to find the source code without her to lead
you.”

“Then you can get me into Corogen, and I’ll figure it out. I know
the source code’s important to the faery folk.” Kiel jammed his
hands into his pockets. “I know my dad tried to help you guys.”

Elvin was quiet for a full minute before speaking. “It’s even bigger
than you think. You heard of ClearVoy?”

Kiel shook his head.

“It’ll connect everyone to Corogen’s databases, all the time.
They’re already selling user information to government agencies, and
with ClearVoy the information flow will be constant. But,” Elvin said,
jabbing a finger in Kiel’s direction, “if we have the source code,
we can stop the transfer of information and shut down the whole thing.
No info, no money.”

“No money, no war.” Kiel ran his fingers over the Wonder Woman
lunchbox. “No more killing off Matilda’s people, either.”

Elvin settled into his desk chair, dots of perspiration on his forehead
glistening in the light of Matilda’s candle. “Until we own the
source code, Corogen’s system will keep sniffing out online anomalies
and erasing them. I try to shield the faery folk, but they keep
disappearing from cloud memory. Tom Seine’s pretty hardcore about his
system wipes.”

Seine. That bastard had his kid. “You’ve got to get me in there.”

Elvin tore the wrapper off a package of toaster pastries. “Want
one?”

“No, thanks. I’m dead.”

“Give me a minute. I think I can hack this.” Elvin devoured two
pastries in as many bites and started clacking away on his keyboard.
Then, he grabbed a handheld scanner and shot a red laser into Kiel’s
eyes.

“Whoa! Shouldn’t I be wearing sunglasses?”

Elvin shook his head and ran the scanner down Kiel’s body. “You are
hands down the whiniest dead guy Matilda’s ever brought here.”

“For real. I can’t see anything.”

“Hold on.” Elvin’s voice sounded like he was in a pipe a mile
away.

Kiel blinked. A brilliant shaft of light cut through the darkness,
illuminating a red lump of lizard at his feet.

“Crap,” Elvin muttered from somewhere overhead. The lights flickered
and went out, plunging Kiel into darkness again. Out of habit, he wished
he had something to eat.

A grainy row of black and white vending machines slowly materialized
before Kiel’s eyes, but they were all empty, the glass broken. The
pile of snack wrappers on Elvin’s desk began to make sense.

Kiel looked down the long white corridors suspiciously, expecting
zombies. “Where am I?”

“You’re deep inside Corogen headquarters. But don’t worry.
You’re encrypted.”

Kiel’s hands and feet seemed as solid as ever. “I don’t feel
encrypted.”

“You didn’t feel dead either, did ya?” Elvin chuckled, then
wheezed. Kiel imagined him choking on Doritos crumbs from the bottom of
the bag.

“I’m gonna upload a copy of Matilda’s files from a year ago and
try to restore her avatar.” Elvin belched. “Let me know when you see
her.”

Two seconds later Matilda’s avatar leapt up, jabbing at the air.
“I’ll teach those bastards to mess with…” She trailed off, her
tail drooping in confusion.

“She’s here,” Kiel called out.

“Perfect.” Elvin mumbled something and started clacking on his
keyboard again.

“Why did you bring me here?” Matilda hissed, glaring up at Kiel.

Elvin interjected. “She doesn’t recognize you, dude.”

Kiel held his palms up. “You brought me here, remember?”

Matilda scrunched up her face, rotated her head 360 degrees, and exhaled
a small flicker of flame. “Well. Guess I’m stuck with you. Let’s
go.”

She scuttled down the hallway, her claws clicking like teeth. Kiel had
to run to keep up.

“I can take you as far as the Inner Sanctum, but after that you’re
on your own. I set off too many firewall alarms.” Matilda took a sharp
left through a wall.

Kiel hesitated before trying to slide his hand through. He hit concrete.

“You have to run through it,” Elvin lectured from the unseen space
above. “If you stop to question it, it’ll sense your resistance.”

“But I’m dead. I’m not supposed to be feeling this stuff.”

“This place has its own rules.” From the sound of it, Elvin was
chewing with his mouth open.

“Come on,” Matilda yelled from the other side of the wall.
“Don’t be such a chickenshit.”

Kiel punched the wall, encountering solid resistance yet again. “This
doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course it does,” Matilda roared, leaping back out of the wall at
full force. Kiel jumped. “Equal and opposite reactions,” she
continued, running up the ceiling and back down to the end of the hall
again.

“Little thing we call science,” Elvin said smugly.

Kiel wiped his palms on his pants, ran to the end of the hallway, then
charged back into the wall.



#



For it has been given to fey and faerie alike the gift of second sight,
with which they may build homes for themselves and their offspring in
dimensions invisible to the human eye. This ability, inscribed into
their very blood, has been passed down to their children and their
children’s children from time immemorial.  -The Book of Feydom, 1154
C.E.


CHAPTER 5

On the other side of the wall, Kiel found a vast cavern dripping with
luminous stalactites. Hundreds of blue orbs glowed like clutches of
radioactive dinosaur eggs at the feet of calcified stalagmites.

“Don’t touch the pretty blue things. They’re viruses,” Matilda
said, dashing between the stalagmites at breakneck speed.

Kiel tripped and nearly fell on a cluster of the glowing orbs. Catching
himself, he sang under his breath. “Kupalinka, kupalinka… Ćomnaja
nočka...”

“Stop, for the love of everything Unholy!” Matilda yelped. “Your
singing is shit.”

Kiel rammed his knee on a particularly pointy stalagmite and winced.

“Hurry it up, slowpoke,” Matilda said over her shoulder. “We’ve
got to get to the Inner Sanctum and download the source code into you
before they find out we’re here.”

“Into me?”

“Yes, into you. Don’t worry, you can hack it. You’ve got faery
blood, remember?”

The ground vibrated under Kiel’s feet. He froze. “What’s that?”
He heard something like the thump of marching feet. And it was getting
closer.

“Exterminators. Sniffing out rogue code that doesn’t belong.”

“Us.”

“Congratulations Superman, you’re faster than the speeding
bullets.” Matilda rolled her eyes. “Elvin, can you shield us?”

“I’m trying,” he garbled. “But there’s too many outliers.
There must be millions of them. My encryption won’t hold.”

Matilda nudged Kiel’s ankle. “Hold still. If you get snuffed out
here, we can’t bring you back again. They’ll recognize your code
signature.”

“They’ll notice Matilda’s signature right away,” Elvin said.
“I’m bringing her back.”

Matilda flickered and winked out. Ranks of soldiers in full riot gear
and night goggles emerged from the depths of the cave.

“Do whatever you have to, just get through them,” Elvin instructed.
“The Inner Sanctum’s on the other side.”

“Great.” The glowing green goggles of a thousand burly soldiers
riveted on Kiel.

“Just run and punch as you go,” Elvin advised. “Don’t
hesitate.”

“They can’t actually hurt me here, right?”

No answer. Kiel swallowed. “Right?” He held his fists in front of
his body, ignoring every instinct and diving into the wall of
armor-plated muscle.

The first impact knocked the breath out of him. It felt as real as the
concrete wall, the stalagmite, and that time in high school when he’d
gotten punched in the nose for flirting with Ryan Evanston’s
girlfriend.

Kiel half-fell, half-ducked under the gauntleted forearm of the soldier
who’d thrown the punch, and rolled under the legs of another before
gaining his feet and dealing a swift uppercut to the clean-shaven chin
of yet another mercenary. Every step forward earned him a new wave of
agony as the mercenaries smacked him around with fists of perfect code.

Kiel’s own hacked-together consciousness fritzed off and on under
their blows like an analog TV picture. Each punch and kick delivered
pain to his digitized body with devastating effect. When the sheer
number of soldiers lined up against him made it impossible to move
forward, Kiel leapfrogged onto their shoulders and ran across their
backs. He could see even bigger soldiers near the back of the cavern.
They must be guarding the Inner Sanctum.

“I can’t keep their servers down much longer,” Elvin’s voice
floated by. “Seine’s got all of his engineers online working to get
them back up. You’re gonna be on your own with the big guys, so run
fast.”

“On my own…” Out of breath, Kiel sucked in air. “This whole
time, you’ve been helping me?”

Ten soldiers the size of city buses guarded a vault door barricaded with
blue virus orbs. These soldiers carried even bigger weapons than the
guys Kiel had just fought his way through.

He crouched, breathing heavily, surrounded by a circle fifty guns deep.
So this would be the end.

“You! Foreign body!” The closest soldier bellowed. “If you
surrender, we’ll let you go unharmed.”

The vault door was so close. He only had one chance to get this right.

Kiel mentally measured the distance between himself and the Inner
Sanctum, then plunged between the soldier’s legs, diving into the
virus orbs piled against the door.

Pain like millions of tiny swords crawled into his flesh. His limbs
tried to seize up, but he grabbed a virus orb in each hand and lobbed
them at the soldiers guarding the vault.

The soldiers fell back, but not before the orbs found their marks. Kiel
threw virus orbs until his hands turned blue, and the soldiers lowered
their guns and backed away, ostracizing those of their number who were
now infected.

They’d given up on him. He must have sealed his own doom. Kiel felt a
slow paralysis sink into his bones, his hands cramping into fists. The
source code was right on the other side of the vault door. Did he have
time to download it and get back before the virus killed him? He
scrabbled at the doorknob of the vault with one palsied hand and pushed
it open just enough to let himself in.

The Inner Sanctum overflowed with fragrant trees, both the fruit and
flowering kind. Kiel slammed the door shut behind him. He could see
through his hands now; they’d turned a transparent blue, another side
effect of the virus. He couldn’t even see his feet anymore.

Kiel took a closer look at the trees. In each leaf, he could see a live
stream of someone’s life, like looking through a window into the real
world. Was this how Corogen stored their users’ information?

There must have been billions of leaves in this room alone, rustling on
branches of many colors, some dark as graphite, others clear as glass.
An electric current ran through every branch and trunk down to the roots
that tangled between the trees like tentacles.

The roots of every tree plugged into one golden tree in the middle of
the garden that radiated a strange, breathy music. If he was going to
find the source code anywhere here, that would be it.

Kiel made his way to the center of the garden, careful not to step on
the roots flickering with current. The hum of many voices emanated from
the leaves as he passed under them.

The ethereal music picked up like a wind gathering speed as Kiel
approached the golden tree. He couldn’t see his hands anymore, but he
reached out and touched the tree trunk anyway. A stream of light slipped
up his fingers and into his palm. Electricity poured into his body,
electricity he could feel in his teeth.

Kiel clenched his jaw and pressed his hand hard into the tree, right
into the white-hot pain. Maybe it was too late. Maybe the virus would
block him from downloading the code. But he kept his hand on the tree
trunk as voltage surged through him.

When the current subsided, he could see his hands again. Although the
bluish tinge of the virus still lingered, he saw silver lines of code
rippling through his body, a waterfall of numbers under his skin.
Download complete.

A single golden leaf dangled before his eyes, barely holding on to its
branch.

In that leaf, Kiel saw himself in a hospital bed in Minsk, wrapped in
bandages like Boris Karloff’s mummy. A heart monitor beeped in the
background.

He hadn’t been able to save Dad, although he’d ridden his bike down
to the banks of Lake Union and jumped into the murky waters, trying in
vain to find him before the trawlers did.

He was surprised to realize how much he missed Mom. Even the feel of her
lipsticked kisses on his cheek, but especially the fresh tomatoes she
put in her spaghetti. And Carmine, her slender body fitting so perfectly
into his arms, her mouth like salted peppermint, the warm vanilla smell
of her neck.

If his heart was still beating, that meant he was alive. And if he was
alive, he could go back. In the real world, he could find his daughter
and be the dad she needed. She wouldn’t have to be alone out there,
the way Kiel had been alone after Dad died.

Kiel watched through the leaf as a nurse adjusted his pillow. What if he
was in a permanent coma? What if he returned to his body only to be
trapped in it, voiceless and paralyzed, living off intravenous fluids
until the day they pulled the plug?

The nurse peeled back his bandages, revealing angry blobs of oozing
flesh. His eyes were taped shut and oxygen tubes fed into tiny slits
where his nostrils used to be. He looked more like a bottom-dwelling sea
creature than a human.

Kiel cringed in sympathy with his own damaged flesh and wondered why no
one had put him out of his misery. What kind of life could someone like
that hope to live?

“Kiel, get out of there,” Elvin’s voice cut in, distant and fuzzy.
“They’re sending reinforcements. You don’t have much time.”

Kiel looked down at his hands, at the telltale blue glow of the virus
already coming back. His avatar felt weak and feverish. The vault door
seemed like it was a mile away.

Kiel touched the leaf. It was thin and delicate as parchment, and as he
ran his fingers over its transparent veins, his view of the hospital
room began to expand. The real world tugged at him, widening his
perspective, sucking him in until the golden tree glimmered like a
distant planet at the end of a long telescope.

“What are you waiting for, man?” Elvin yelled from above. “I’ve
got the servers back online. I’ll try to hold the soldiers off, but
you gotta come back now.”

“My kid’s still out there. I’m still out there.” Kiel watched
helplessly as a nurse detached his breathing tubes. His heart monitor
flatlined.

“Don’t go back there,” Elvin warned. “Your body’s effed. But
we’ve got a cure for the virus, so you can live online forever. Just
bring back the code!” His voice hitched.

“Sorry,” Kiel swallowed hard. “I have to go.” He stepped into
the hospital room. The tree winked out behind him and he dropped back
into his body, a rock falling to the bottom of the sea.

He’d forgotten how heavy his body felt. Like a nineteenth-century
diving suit.

Kiel gasped for oxygen. Every breath felt like running uphill. He tried
to scream from his raw throat, but only a whoosh came out. Nurses
blurred in and out of each other at his bedside, reattaching electrodes
and tubes. He half expected to hear Elvin scolding him from somewhere
overhead, but all he heard was the buzz of his heart monitor continuing
to flatline. Maybe he’d die for real after all.

But an oxygen mask breathed cool life into his nose and mouth, and his
lungs filled and his chest rose, and even though everything hurt, he
could breathe. They put an IV in his arm and he floated on a cloud of
sleep.



#



Kupalinka-kupalinka
Dark night, dark night, where is your daughter?
My daughter is in the garden
Pluck the roses, pluck the roses
Pierce
her white hands.  Pluck the flowers, pluck the flowers,
Weave wreaths,
weave wreaths,
Shed her tears.  Kupalinka-kupalinka
Dark night, dark
night, where is your daughter?  -Belarusian Folk Song


CHAPTER 6

Six weeks later, a nurse disconnected Kiel’s IV. “Mr. Dashkevich,
time to wake up,” she said, handing him a pair of slacks and a
button-up shirt.

He dressed in the bathroom, unable to recognize the face staring back at
him from the mirror. A mass of scar tissue, his nose and ear lobes no
longer visible, his lips livid scars. His eyebrows were gone, and the
few greasy hairs on his scalp sprouted from bald pink skin.

Kiel flung open the door. “I can’t go out like this,” he rasped,
then coughed. He’d lost his voice on top of it.

The nurse winced. “I’m sorry. We’ve done the best we can, Mr.
Dashkevich. You’re lucky to be alive.” She handed Kiel a bottle of
painkillers and a referral for a cosmetic surgeon in St. Petersburg.

“Will I get my voice back?” Kiel asked, alarmed to find he still
couldn’t raise his voice above a whisper.

“Maybe.” She gave him a musty-smelling overcoat. “Take this.”

The sleeves of the secondhand coat ended four inches above his wrists.
He popped two painkillers and stepped out onto the streets of Minsk.

The sun was out. Snow still lay on the ground, but purple crocuses
sprouted at the feet of naked maples, and a squirrel scampered up a
gutter spout with a scavenged sunflower seed in its mouth. Pedestrians
swarmed the slush-covered sidewalks, clearing a wide path for Kiel. Kids
stared at him, and adults looked pointedly away. An old babushka crossed
herself as he walked by. His skin crawled at the memory of the hydras.

He ducked into the nearest barbershop, ignoring the raised eyebrows
peering at him over newspapers. Headlines still covered the conflict in
the United States. Corogen made the front page, too.

Kiel grabbed a copy of the Minsk Sentinel and climbed into the nearest
open chair.

“Trim?” the barber asked.

“Shave it all off,” Kiel said hoarsely. His scalp tingled as the
barber worked.

Corogen Unveils ClearVoy in Minsk Today, the front page read. CEO Tom
Seine promises new era of economic collaboration.

Seine would give a demonstration of the ClearVoy at the U.S. Embassy
today. Kiel’s jaw ached from clenching his teeth.

“You, uh, serve in the military?” the barber asked, trying to make
small talk.

“Yeah,” Kiel said, tucking the paper under his arm. “I did.”

He took a taxi home, thankful for the driver’s indifferent silence.
When he unlocked the door to his flat, a wave of foul-smelling air
wafted from the overflowing garbage can under the sink.

A broken crust of toast moldered on the arm of the couch, right where
he’d left it the day he fought the hydras in the subway. The day he
met Matilda.

Today, he had a chance to make things right. Kiel shook the dust out of
his spare stocking cap and wrapped his scarf around his face twice. Last
of all he pulled on a pair of gloves and his own coat, refusing to look
at his reflection in the mirror. He already knew what he’d see.

Kiel trekked to the subway through the snow. His train arrived on time,
no hydras or daemons, just a throng of people on their way to the same
place he was going: the U.S. Embassy.

A couple hundred people gathered on the embassy plaza, where several
outdoor LED screens guaranteed everyone would be able to watch the
ClearVoy demonstration. With growing anxiety, Kiel recognized
Corogen’s razor-bladed drones hovering over the spectators. He’d
never seen them in Minsk before.

A security guard in a standard-issue ushanka and aviator sunglasses
approached him. “You there. Let’s see some ID, please. And uncover
your face.”

Kiel handed over his embassy badge and unwrapped his scarf with
trembling fingers, exposing his ravaged face to the world.

The guard paled. “Sorry, just following policy,” he said, handing
back the badge.

Kiel covered his face again, ignoring the bystanders who suddenly
averted their eyes and grabbed their children’s hands. He marched
through the crowd to the delivery door at the rear of the embassy,
swiped his badge, and let himself in.

The hallway from the back of the building to the auditorium smelled like
floor cleaner and the sweat of hundreds of bodies crowding into the
embassy. Showing his badge to the security guards, Kiel entered the
packed auditorium and pushed his way to the front row.

On stage and projected on the LED screens behind him, Tom Seine looked
just like his mass media photos, all white teeth and tanned skin.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “with the cooperation of
manufacturing facilities here in the beautiful city of Minsk, Corogen is
pleased to announce the launch of ClearVoy, a new safety device that
will improve the quality of life for people all over the world.”

Camera lights flashed, and applause echoed through the auditorium. Kiel
clenched his fists as Seine continued.

“I have such great faith in our new product that I’ve already bought
one for my new baby girl. My pride and joy, Abigail.” Seine smiled for
the cameras, and the audience oohed and aahed as Carmine walked out in a
show-stopping red dress carrying a towheaded infant in her arms.

“Abigail,” Kiel whispered, a dull ache spreading through his gut.
Applause broke out as Carmine helped Abigail wave to the crowd.

“With the unrest in our country, we wanted to protect our daughter and
ensure she would have every advantage in life,” Carmine’s voice rang
out over the loudspeakers. “So we started early, with ClearVoy.”

Carmine kissed Abigail on the crown of her head as the camera captured a
close-up of the ClearVoy device, a shiny blue earring in Abigail’s
left ear. The hairs on Kiel’s arms stood up.

“ClearVoy monitors Abigail’s health and will alert officials when
she needs medical attention,” Carmine began. “ClearVoy will help
Abigail navigate obstacles safely while she learns to walk, and it even
stimulates her cerebral cortex so she can learn her native language
quickly. ClearVoy also supports Abigail’s vision so she will never
need to wear glasses or contacts. It’s everything I could want for my
daughter.” Carmine blushed as the audience applauded, rising to their
feet.

Kiel’s heart caught in his chest. He had to act now. The future
depended on it.

As the standing ovation continued, Kiel shoved his way to the stage and
clambered up over the railing, standing squarely before the podium and
Tom Seine.

Seine’s perfectly tanned forehead creased in a long frown line.
“What’s the meaning of this?”

“Abigail’s my daughter,” Kiel said hoarsely. “And I’m not
going to let you do this to her.”

“We don’t know this man,” Carmine shouted, clutching Abigail to
her chest.

The Corogen security guards lunged for Kiel, but they weren’t fast
enough to stop him from punching Seine right in the jaw. Seine stumbled
back a step, holding his chin as blood dripped down his sleeve. Carmine
gasped. Abigail stared at Kiel with open curiosity.

“You know me, Carmine,” Kiel insisted as the guards twisted his arms
behind his back and handcuffed him. “A year ago. That night at the
banya.”

Carmine froze, fear flashing across her eyes as Seine wrapped his arm
around her shoulders. She gripped Abigail tighter. “This is Tom’s
baby, not yours, you sick freak.”

Abigail hiccupped, wide-eyed. She had faery in her blood, too. “I love
you, Abigail,” he rasped.

“Someone get this creep out of here!” Carmine screamed.

The Corogen guards yanked him away. Kiel staggered between them as they
pushed through the crowd, out the main doors and into the glaring snow
and sunlight of the plaza.  Tears leaked down his face. Someone bumped
into him, knocking off his hat. Sobs welled up from his gut, louder,
keener. He couldn’t stop.

A police car waited for him at the end of the block. Kiel’s voice
hitched as snot and tears chilled on his disfigured face, and he heard
an infant’s shrill weeping coming from the outdoor loudspeakers. Deep
within the walls of the embassy, Abigail was crying too.

Kiel quavered into song. “Kupalinka-kupalinka / Ćomnaja nočka /
Ćomnaja nočka, dzie ž tvaja dočka?” As he sang, Corogen’s LED
screens went dark and their drones crashed, shattering themselves on the
pavement. He kept singing, lost in the melody of the song, until he
couldn’t see anything or anyone. No crowds, no guards, not even
himself.

Kiel sang until his teeth vibrated, until his bones trembled, until a
gentle tug at his pants leg brought him back to himself. He looked down.
It was Matilda.

“Nice singing. For a dead guy, I mean.” She smirked, flashing a
sharp white fang, and snapped her fingers. The security guards let go of
Kiel and sat down in the snow like well-trained dogs, their ClearVoy
devices gone gray. “System’s down,” she explained. “Anyone
wearing the ClearVoy will be… how do you say it? In the dark.”

“How did you do all this?” Kiel asked.

“I didn’t do it, you blockhead. You did. You brought the virus and
the source code back with you. Then you embedded the key in your vocal
waves.”

Kiel stared at Matilda blankly. “I didn’t do any of those things.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Matilda slapped him affectionately on the knee.
“It works through you, not the other way around.”

Carmine emerged from the embassy building with Abigail in her arms. She
looked lost.

“Carmine!” Kiel shouted. “Abigail!”

“Don’t draw attention,” Matilda warned. “You can’t stop the
people who don’t wear the ClearVoy.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kiel ran toward his daughter, his handcuffed
wrists chafing behind his back. “Wait!”

Tom Seine strode up behind Carmine and Abigail, pointing an accusing
finger at Kiel. “That’s him!”

Two Belarusian police officers rushed Kiel with clubs drawn. From the
youngest child to the oldest babushka, every eye in the plaza watched.

“So now I’m a threat?” Kiel demanded. “Because I sang a song?”

“You’re a traitor!” Seine spat, leaning in until Kiel could see
the blood vessels at the corners of his eyes. “You assaulted me and
sabotaged millions of terabytes of data. You’re an international
security risk.”

“You’re under arrest,” the blonde officer said, yanking Kiel back
by his handcuffs. “You have the right to remain silent.”

Kiel shook his head. “I won’t be silent.”

From somewhere in the back of the crowd, one small voice began to sing.
Kiel grinned as, one by one, the citizens on the plaza joined in.

“Kupalinka-kupalinka / Ćomnaja nočka / Ćomnaja nočka, dzie ž
tvaja dočka?” Their voices rose like a tsunami, their feet shaking
the ground like an earthquake, their hearts beating like the drums below
the earth.

Kiel laughed.



#



Our feeling is that while the State may remove any material artifacts
that speak in defiance against incumbent authoritarianism, the acts of
resistance remain in the public consciousness.  And it is in sharing
that act of defiance that hope resides.  -The Illuminator Art
Collective, 2015