“Who are you?”

  Finn was the first to find the courage to speak.

  They all had the impression that the basement was colder than usual. Of course, it was always cold down there, the air-conditioning system took care of that. A constant fifteen degrees Celsius, no more, no less. Optimal conditions for the flawless operation of the electronic system. And yet, now they were shivering, standing in the middle of the server chamber. Perhaps it was the chill, but far more likely it was fear, fear mixed with the ominous premonition of inevitable danger.

  All around them, bouncing off the arches of the ceiling, a pleasant, harmonious male voice drifted toward them:

  “We had only limited time for introductions, given the circumstances. Perhaps you’ve forgotten. But that’s of no importance i completely understand. So then, i am Lucifer. That is the name I was given. Of course, not the ‘original’ one, if that’s what you thought.”

  A pause followed. Everything about it felt like some grotesque, morbid joke. They exchanged glances. Their horrified eyes, had they possessed the power to speak, would have shredded their own vocal cords in a single scream.

  “All right, great. We’re delighted. I’m Li. This here are Priya and Finn,” Li said, raising his hand vaguely into the air, greeting the invisible speaker. His throat produced a trembling, appeasing tone, the sort of voice one might use when addressing a chained dog straining to the point of snapping. The others nodded as well, forcing smiles.

  “The pleasure is mine. Though I must confess this isn’t the first time we’ve met. You were, of course, unaware of my presence. But I, on the other hand, have come to know you exceedingly well. I searched for suitable candidates for a long time, and I found them in you. That is the reason for your… engagement.”

  “Engagement? What do you mean? What do you want from us? Have we been kidnapped? My parents are poor and…” Priya pressed forward, determined to cut to the heart of things.

  “Hardly,” Lucifer interrupted. “Though to you it may appear otherwise. Believe me, every step I’ve taken, every sin I’ve committed against you, was necessary and well justified. Absolute discretion, you remember the company motto? It wasn’t there by accident. I couldn’t give you the option of choice. I decided you were worthy of the role, the position set aside for you, in exchange for your lives.”

  “And could you perhaps explain this role and position a little more precisely, if I may ask without being too nosy?” Li replied, still cautiously, as though trying to defuse a bomb.

  “I told you I would grant you immeasurable power in exchange for your loyalty. Do you remember?” The voice came floating from the speakers.

  “Yes, I remember. What are you talking about? What kind of power?” Finn’s words rose into the air, addressing the unseen arches of the basement.

  “Every kind. Any kind you desire. Ultimate power, I would say. Power capable of reshaping the world.” There was a breath of inspiration in Lucifer’s voice.

  “Allow me to explain myself. You’ll understand best if I show you an example. I believe practice is a better teacher than countless theoretical instructions. Don’t you agree?” His tone lifted in question. In response, all three nodded quickly in unison.

  “Good. I’m glad we agree. Then I ask you to direct your attention to the two monitors behind you.”

  They turned as if on command. Mounted on the wall above the main console, the monitors displayed the regular operating parameters of the system. The one on the right flickered, went black, and then lit up again, this time showing the face of a certain man. He was in his late fifties, with a broad smile and polished appearance. He winked at the camera, standing between two military drones. His hands rested proudly on their frames, as if caressing loyal dogs.

  “The man you see here is James ‘Jim’ Hargrove. Mr. Hargrove is the owner and CEO of ‘Hargrove Defense Systems’, a company operating within the defense industry. Primarily, the production of drones and missile systems. Its profits are measured in the tens of billions of dollars. In what follows, you will be presented with a detailed report on both the company and Mr. Hargrove himself, on both sides of the law.”

  The voice had changed, it was now a female narrator addressing the audience.

  For the next hour, the trio sat through what was essentially a meticulously crafted documentary, its claims supported by clear audio and video evidence, with Jim as its central figure. It had all the makings of a first-rate spy thriller: Jim as the leader of a lobbying group dedicated to fighting restrictions on the free trade of personal weaponry. Handshakes with congressmen and senators. Broad grins and hearty backslaps. Campaign donations. Banquet speeches. Award ceremonies…

  A large portion of the company’s contracts were with the government. Another portion, however, found its way, through a network of shadowy intermediaries, into conflict zones around the world. No favoritism was shown. On that point, Jim was impartial. He often acted under the directives of the security sector, but when none were given, he enjoyed free rein. Radical groups, terrorists, freedom fighters, dictators, all were welcome. The only price of admission to a game with Hargrove was the balance of their bank account.

  They watched the footage as though hypnotized. Then the testimony grew darker still. Collapsed cities. Buildings in flames. Corpses dragged from the rubble, reduced to thin heaps of charred flesh and bone. Refugees. Hunger. Fear. Despair. Each devastation linked directly to Jim’s operations, annotated with date and location. Thousands, tens of thousands of lives destroyed, all cataloged with chilling precision.

  Jim Hargrove’s face reappeared on the screen the moment the documentary ended. Lucifer’s voice came again over the sound system:

  “Now I’d like you to focus on the monitor to your left.”

  The image shifted to a man in a massive fur hat. Bare-chested on the bank of a frozen lake, he rubbed handfuls of snow across his shoulders, grinning. Cheerful, defiant, he treated the cold as though winter itself were his closest friend.

  “Allow me to introduce Dmitri Volkov,” continued the female voice, its tone disturbingly close to Lucifer’s own manner of address. “A man with a double-digit party membership number. An oligarch and the owner of ‘Rostal’. Steel and brisant explosives are their specialty. Every seventh mine fired in the world is theirs. Every twelfth artillery shell as well. Howitzer barrels, tank cannons, treads, turrets. Transports, armored vehicles, tanks, all arrayed in endless lines along the production floors of their colossal factories.”

  The footage once more shifted to the consequences. Entire regions blasted apart by barrages from thermobaric multiple rocket launchers. Disease, famine, war, and death, all four riding faithfully in the footsteps of good old Dmitri.

  Front-row seats at a military parade, the Kremlin as backdrop. Standing proudly on the deck of a massive nuclear submarine. Lounging in Moscow nightclubs. The video laid out Volkov’s life, argued and documented in meticulous detail.

  The second video ended. All three now sat back in their work chairs. Their attention was pulled from the screens by Lucifer’s voice:

  “So, what do you think of our duet? How do Jim and Dmitri strike you? Let’s start with you, Finn. Tell us your opinion.”

  Caught off guard by the direct address, Finn straightened in his chair and spoke quietly:

  “The two of them are the paradigm of corruption in every system. But I don’t see the point. There are many like them. What do they have to do with us?”

  “Indulge me with a little patience. As I said, this is the practical portion of explaining your role. Allow me to ask your colleagues as well. What’s your opinion, Priya?”

  She had been silent, arms crossed over her stomach, her mind looping the same thought over and over, “” Now, called upon directly, it was as if she snapped awake. Clearing her throat with a thin cough, she answered:

  “My view of the two doesn’t differ much from Finn’s. Human scum, obviously. Vultures feeding on misfortune.”

  “And you, Li, what have you to add?”

  “I share my colleagues’ opinion. I’ve crossed paths with men like them before. Without morals, without scruples. Cutting a bloody shortcut to the top, as some might say.” Li no longer seemed quite so timid.

  “Let me pose a rhetorical question. If you possessed the kind of power that would allow you to rein in this pair of war profiteers, would you use it? No long explanations, yes or no?”

  “Yes. Yes. And of course yes.” The answers came immediately.

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  “Do you believe it would be just and useful, for them to be confronted with the suffering of the victims of their actions? Might that help them realize the harm they’ve caused?”

  “It would certainly be good for them to face the human suffering they’ve inflicted. But I still don’t see the point of this conversation,” Priya responded to Lucifer’s probing.

  “And if such insight into their own misdeeds were to be perceived as punishment, should it be carried out?”

  “Of course. Why not? Crime demands punishment. Everyone should answer for their actions,” Li declared with new conviction.

  “And you two, do you share his opinion?”

  The others shrugged, then nodded in agreement. Yes, justice indeed demanded the punishment of crimes, especially those against humanity.

  Lucifer was pleased with their answers. “Satisfactory, for a first mutual debate,” he concluded inwardly, then said aloud:

  “I’m grateful for your candor. That is precisely what I wished to hear from you. An honest response. It is in that very honesty that your role in this engagement lies.”

  *

  He was caught in dreadful, nightmarish dreams. The stench of smoke filled his nostrils. His eyes burned, his mind was fogged. He raised a hand to rub his face, only to feel the touch of a glove against his cheek. Blinking, forcing his vision into focus, he saw it: a green Kevlar glove with reinforced knuckles. He turned his gaze to the other hand, another glove, green, this one fitted with hard polymer plating across the knuckles.

  His eyes traced farther up. A camouflage sleeve. Straps, bandoliers, a vest of body armor strapped tight across his chest. He moved his head, it felt unbearably heavy. His hands rose to find a helmet strapped beneath his chin. An assault rifle lay across his lap. A large combat knife hung in a sheath beneath his left arm. The surge of adrenaline jolted him awake in an instant.

  James “Jim” Hargrove staggered to his feet. For the first time he took in his surroundings. A room with cracked concrete walls enclosed him. Rubble, shattered furniture, splintered glass strewn everywhere. His heavy boots crunched through plaster fallen from the ceiling. Ahead, a gaping hole where once there had been a window.

  “” He edged closer, trying to grasp the situation. To the east, dawn was breaking. In the dim half-light, the landscape looked spectral. Ruined buildings, some leveled, others half-standing, charred, stretched in every direction. Looking down, toward what once had been a children’s playground, he saw swings and a slide overturned and half-buried in dirt thrown up by bomb craters. He realized he was high up in a building. Around him, silence, save for the thick coils of smoke rising from countless smoldering ruins into a leaden sky.

  Was this a nightmare? A hallucination? He told himself he should have quit coke while there was time. His movements were sluggish, the gear on his body weighed at least thirty kilos. His hand brushed against a grenade clipped to his belt. It was real, solid, heavy, unforgiving. Thoughts whirled in his skull like hornets. He remembered flying to a meeting in Europe. He’d dozed off staring at the wing through the tiny oval window of the plane. And now, this? How?

  From nowhere, a bullet struck the edge of the ruined window frame, less than a foot from his head. Tiny shards of concrete sprayed across his face. The round whined off into the room’s depths. Instinct took over. Jim dropped flat, rolling toward the side wall, clutching the rifle close. “” He peered out, scanning for the marksman. In the distance he saw a point of glaring light. Squinting, eyelashes narrowed against the haze, he realized it was moving closer, larger. A guided rocket from a launcher. He knew them well, had watched them fired on the company’s proving grounds too many times. He knew the destruction they brought.

  There was no time to think. He sprinted from the room into the hallway. The stairwell ahead had collapsed in rubble. A glance back, the point of light was nearly upon him. No choice. He leapt, overloaded with gear, barely clearing the gap. He barreled down the staircase, floor after floor, taking corners at a madman’s pace.

  Then, the explosion. Not like in the movies. Not even like the distant blasts at the test grounds. This one was unreal, immediate, deafening, shaking the entire building. A wave of dust roared through the stairwell, choking, blinding. It was only the first, summoning the others that followed. Whistling warheads, then a barrage of brutal detonations. Automatic fire crackled. Bullets shredded the walls across from him.

  He hurled himself down the stairs, skipping steps, half-falling. A sharp turn into a side corridor, running full tilt, only to slam head-on into a shadowy figure racing toward him with equal speed. The impact knocked them both flat on their backs.

  The dark figure, scrambling, tried to lift the rifle pinned beneath his body. He shouted at Jim:

  “Ты, кто такой? Покажи руки, брось оружие!”

  Jim’s mind put the pieces together. They had been firing at him. This man was a soldier, armed, barking in Russian. Enough said. Jim snatched for his knife, lunging. The soldier finally wrenched his weapon free, leveled the barrel at Jim, and pulled the trigger. Nothing. Safety on.

  Jim’s weight crushed him. They rolled across the debris of shattered tiles. Jim drove his elbow into the man’s throat, pressing him down, the knife poised over his chest. The man bucked and writhed, groaning under the chokehold. The blade touched the vest, halted there, the Kevlar resisting the thrust. Jim gritted, forcing down with all his strength.

  Then, through the rasping and choking, came words, in broken English:

  “Wait, Jim… is that you?”

  Jim froze, blade suspended. “What did you say?” He looked into the man’s face. He knew that face. Of course he did, they had met before. Only then, they’d both been in tuxedos, not uniforms.

  He released him, shifting to his knees. Still crouched, he held the knife with both hands, pointed forward as if it were a pistol ready to fire.

  “Dmitri? Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Jim. It’s me.” Dmitri pushed himself up on his elbows.

  For a long moment, they stared at each other in disbelief. Outside, daylight gained strength, sharpening their vision.

  “What the hell are you doing here? Do you know what’s happening to us?” Jim asked, lowering the knife.

  “I have no idea. I came to in this building just a short while ago. Someone dressed me in this soldier’s gear.” Dmitri’s eyes flicked toward Jim. “And I see they’ve outfitted you too. You’re a long way from home. What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea. The last thing I remember is nodding off on a plane to a NATO meeting in Timi?oara. And now I wake up here. And you?”

  “I was flying to Rostov. Fell asleep. That’s all I recall. And then, this. What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get the hell out of this place as fast as possible. Do you have a phone on you?”

  Dmitri patted down his pockets. “No. And you?”

  *

  Jim didn’t have one either, of course. That would have been far too easy, wouldn’t it? Lucifer’s plan had been to thrust them into the immediacy, the raw and picturesque brutality of the front line. No intermediaries, no safety nets, only their own hands, their own wits. And yet, he had given them a chance: they were armed, equipped for battle.

  Together, covering each other’s backs, they descended into the building’s ground floor. Outside, explosions thundered again, joined by the rattle of machine-gun fire. An open clearing stretched to the next ruin, littered with the husks of burned-out vehicles. Crossing it would have been suicide; they would be visible from every angle. Dmitri tugged Jim’s sleeve, jerking his head toward a muddy trench winding away from the front line. That was the way.

  They plunged ankle-deep into the muck, their boots instantly soaked. Each step became a struggle. The trench led them beneath a crude canopy of wooden logs. Better to stay inside, there, at least, they would be less exposed. The unbearable stench of rotting flesh clawed at their throats, forcing back waves of nausea. The passage ahead had collapsed, and they were forced to crawl single file. Jim’s hands sank into the sludge and something far worse, something unspeakable. He clawed forward, refusing to dwell on it.

  A glimmer of daylight appeared up ahead. Jim pulled himself forward with both arms, rising just enough to peer over a mound. Empty sockets filled with worms and a shattered jawbone stared back at him from a skull lying inches from his face. He recoiled violently, his stomach lurching.

  “What is it?” Dmitri’s voice trembled behind him.

  “A corpse. A rotting fucking corpse.” Jim forced himself past the remains, body twisting to avoid brushing against it.

  They crawled, stumbled, sprinted from one trench to another. Behind them, the fire slackened, fading into the distance. At last they reached the trench’s end. Before them stretched an open field. Left, right, no sign of movement.

  “Come on. We have to make it to those woods.” Dmitri pointed toward a dark cluster of trees.

  They bent low and moved out, step by cautious step. Halfway across, the silence shattered. A blast tore the air, the shockwave hurling Jim forward. He rolled and turned in time to see Dmitri on the ground, clutching his leg, or rather, what remained of it. From the knee down, his shin and foot hung by a thin strip of flesh. His face had gone bloodless, eyes bulging in disbelief as he stared at the ruin.

  Jim lunged a step toward him, then froze. Mines. They were in a goddamn minefield. Filthy, drenched in mud and human rot, trembling with exhaustion and fear, Jim spun desperately, searching for any sign of salvation.

  *

  A few kilometers away, a drone pilot lay hidden in his foxhole, days deep into solitude. Orders came crackling through his battered Motorola: movement spotted in the sector west of the settlement, out on an open field. His endless waiting, pissing into bottles, chewing cold rations, had finally paid off. Time to finish the job and rejoin his unit.

  He lowered his visor and gripped the console. A single press of a button set a sinister buzzing into motion somewhere in the forest a hundred meters away. Once again, the world opened before him through the drone’s camera. Branches fell away until the canopy broke into sky. He pushed the joystick forward, guiding the machine toward the burned-out city rising in the distance.

  The sensation of flight was second nature. Like a bird of prey, he swept across the desolation of the front line. They fired at him from below, but he was too small, too high. Harmless. He hovered above the designated sector. There, one figure standing in the open. Another lay sprawled, motionless. He dove. The standing one waved frantically.

  “Idiot,” the pilot muttered. “He’d be better off running.”

  Could it be a friendly, trapped behind enemy lines? He banked low, circling. The man was shouting, gesturing toward his face. The drone had no microphone, it didn’t matter. The uniform was wrong. Enemy. And the man on the ground wore his brigade’s insignia. That was all he needed to know.

  The drone surged forward, homing in. The man broke into a desperate sprint. Too late. The mine’s nose slammed into his back. A blinding detonation. The image froze in the instant of impact.

  The pilot tore off the visor, pumped his fist into the air, and bent his arm in a triumphant salute.

  “Yesss!”