Cold Cell: Chapter One

 You guys get to see it first! I'm quite nervous sharing my drafts, tbh... but hopefully you enjoy it in all its gory wonder.It rained blood the day that I enacted the first stage of my revenge, and not in the romantic, metaphorical sense.

Three weeks had passed since Sergei robbed Vassily’s grave: Three weeks to heal, to regain my fitness, to test the limits of my magic, and to get my very first tattoo. I had it done at a small, no-name shop just off Times Square, the same place where Vassily had gotten most of his ink. As I’d hoped, they still had his designs on file. I learned that his python tattoo, which began on his right shoulder and looped its way down around his arm to weave through the sockets and mouth of an empty skull on the back of his hand, was called a ‘sleeve’. So that was what I got, a sleeve that was the mirror image of Vassily’s, winding down the full length of my left arm in coils of shaded navy-blue ink. The only change I made to the design was to the color of the snake’s eyes. Vassily’s had been red. I had mine done in blue.

Getting the tattoo finished was a part time job. In between gym and learning to ride a motorcycle, I spent a good five hours a week in the parlor with my artist, Jose, straddling the seat with my shirt off and my eyes closed. There, I could lose myself in the purr of the tattoo machine and the aura of focused energy that played along my magical senses, listening to the soft background of rock music and thinking of very little. In that emptiness I found under the needle, dark inspiration germinated and blossomed into plans.

The 22nd of October found me in the Financial District, on my way to visit one Yegor Gavrilyuk, CPA, who worked out of an office in 44 Wall Street. It was an old and stately building, standing solidly under a low, gunmetal-gray sky. In a good suit and tie and a good-quality wig of fashionably blond, slicked-back hair, I looked like any other yuppie bustling between his office and the New York Stock Exchange, one of many pushing through the canopy of black umbrellas that were out in expectation of rain. No one gave me or my carry-on bag so much as a second glance as I entered the atrium of Yegor’s building, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the button for the 28th floor. Surrounded by a forest of suits, I read the front page of the Wall Street Journal and listened to the awkward throat clearing, clicking rustle of too many people crammed into a too-small metal box.

By the time I reached my floor, my healing tattoo was itching and I felt hot under the collar, queasy from the press of bodies around me. Pulling my carry-on behind me, I gratefully emerged into a marble foyer and clacked my way down the echoing hallway to the glass-fronted reception of Weiss & Co Financial Services. The lady at the desk - financial executive receptionists were always female, weren’t they? - was a pencil-thin redhead with dark eyebrows and brown eyes. She wore an artfully fitted gray dress that was probably worth more than my entire suit. Both of them.

“Good morning, sir,” she chirped. “How can I help you?”

I didn’t bother smiling, and I let my usual Trans-Atlantic accent drop so that she could hear the Russian accent I typically worked to conceal. “I am here for an appointment with Mr. Gavrilyuk.”

The woman’s pale brow creased slightly. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Gavrilyuk doesn’t have any appointments until eleven.”

“I know. He forwards his calendar to my boss in case we need to speak with him urgently,” I replied. “Please call his extension, and tell him that Nicolai Chiernenko would like to discuss one of our accounts.”

The receptionist blinked at me, deer-like and mildly indignant, but she slowly picked up the receiver and began to dial. I was a better liar than I thought.

While she hung on the line, I nosed around the office, marking the fire escape, the location of cameras, and the patterns of energy in the room. Practically every building in the Financial District had wards - good wards, wards that I, a single spook working alone, could not hope to overcome in an emergency. These were enchantments laid down by the Adepts of the Inner School and other Masonic orders. They were beautiful, though, and playing my senses out along the elegantly formed strings of magic woven through the stone and metal was a satisfying distraction from the meeting I was sure to have.

“Hello, Mr. Gavrilyuk? Yes, this is Lisa… I have a Mr. Chiernenko here who would like to see you regarding one of his accounts, if you have time? He says it’s urgent. No, he’s alone. Alright, thank you. I’ll let him know.”

I turned as she hung up, and she smiled with double rows of laser-white teeth. “Someone will be out to see you in in just a moment, Mr. Chiernenko. Take a seat.”

“Thank you, but I would rather stand.”

She smiled again, a little woodenly this time, and then turned back to her monitor and keyboard.

Perhaps five minutes later, another woman strode around the corner from the same direction I’d first arrived, and pushed through the glass door separating the reception from the lobby outside. She was also well-dressed, her blond hair pulled into a tight bun. When she saw me, her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Mister Chiernenko?” She asked.

“Yes?” I cocked my head.

“Oh… I’m sorry. Excuse me for saying so, but I remember someone who was taller and… less well-built.” There was an uncertain lilt in her voice, green-yellow.

“That would be Nicolai. I am Roman Chiernenko. Nic is taller and I am wider,” I said, forcing a small, stiff smile and trying to make the most of my temporarily blue eyes.

Her face suffused with hidden laughter for a moment, and then she gestured with hand and head towards the door. “Yes, well, please come this way, Mister Chiernenko.”

The P.A - I assumed she was the P.A - led me back to the elevators. Yegor Gavrilyuk was a wealthy man and the Accounts Director of AEROMOR Shipping and Freight, and he didn’t work in the boiler room with lesser accountants and analysts; he had his own private suite. A well-insulated suite, in a building as old and solid as this one.

I was led to a solid oaken door in a gold-and-cream corridor. The P.A swiped her card, knocked, and then opened it a crack, but before she got too far, I gently touched her wrist with one gloved hand.

“Excuse us, please,” I said, meeting her eyes. “This is a sensitive matter.”

“Oh… of course.” The lady blinked and withdrew from the momentary contact.

After she was a good ways down the hall, I opened the door myself and then closed it behind me with a sharp click as Yegor stood up in alarm. The blood drained out of his face. His eyes widened.

“YOU! What are YOU doing here?” He pushed back from the edge of the desk, putting distance between himself and his chair. “I’ll call security, I’ll-”

“Tzain.” I spoke the word calmly, forcefully.

Energy thrummed through my gut and hands with a thrill of pleasure. The lights flickered; the door behind me made a grinding sound as the lock failed, short-circuiting, and every other electronic device in the room simply died. We were left in the confines of a strange, humming silence.

Yegor stared at me in desperate shock. He was a soft, paunchy man with a fleshy face, small eyes, and a fluff of brown hair. He had turned the same color as his yellow linen shirt.

“Please, Yegor Vladimiovich. Take a seat.” I motioned to his chair. “And put your hands on the desk where I can see them, or I will speak another word of power and boil your brains in your skull.”

Shaking, sweating, Yegor dropped back into his chair. He thumped his soft hands on the desk pad. “Can I at least have a cigarette before you kill me, Molotchik?”

“If all goes well, I won’t need to kill you.” I set my carry-on down, then reached back for the small cousin of my namesake, the claw hammer that had made the drive to Wall Street entirely less comfortable than normal. He went from yellow to green as I tapped the head against my other palm. “Will smoking help you talk?”

“Just get on with it,” he replied bitterly.

“Vanya is in jail,” I said. “Do you know why?”

“No. And I don’t care.”

I blinked once, slowly, and glanced at the far wall of his office. Photos of Yegor, trimmer and with slightly longer hair, standing with a fair woman and two small children, both boys. “He was arrested for fucking children, you waste of space.”

My proclamation was met with resounding silence.

“He was trafficking them,” I continued, walking a serpentine trail to the desk. “Boys and girls, eight to fourteen years old. Filming them getting fucked by Sergei’s soldiers. Selling them for their organs on the black market.”

“That’s…” His expression flickered. “I just do the money for him, Molotchik, I… does Sergei think that I s-shared my records?”

“Sergei didn’t send me here.” I grasped the hammer around its rubber haft and leaned across the desk until there was only a foot of space between our noses. I could smell him now, the acrid pungency of terror in his sweat. “I don’t work for him any more.”

Yegor was breathing quickly. I saw him hit his panic button with his knee, but it was as dead as everything else in the room.

“I want two things. Firstly, where did the money come from, and where did it go?”

“W-what money?”

“The money generated by the skin flicks and photos. The money that was made from selling kid’s kidneys. Vanya paid it in to you. Where did it did come from?”

Yegor’s tongue flickered over his dry lips. “I don’t know. The clients… they were all LLCs. Corporations, or pseudonyms. V-Vanya knows more than I do.”

“And where did it go?” I watched him through hooded eyes.

His jaw trembled, then tensed as he gathered his willpower and his resolve. I slammed the hammer down on his desktop, and he jumped in his own skin.

“Trust fund,” he blurted. “Think tank.”

“Which think tank?”

Yegor shuddered, eyes fixed on the round dent in the top of his mahogany desk. “The… Future of American Liberties Foundation. Now, please just-”

“No. That was question one.” I leaned down stared at him. I could see the blue reflection of my eyes in his glasses. “Where does Vanya keeps his cash, Yegor? Physical cash. I don’t care about the accounts.”

He blanched again. “Molotchik, I-I can’t. He… They’ll… they’ll kill me and-”

“I will kill you,” I said. “Right here in front of GOD and everyone.”

His eyes welled up with tears. “Alexi, please-”

This time, I slammed the hammer down onto the back of his hand with a spasm of motion. The wet crunch I felt through the handle was drowned out by his piercing scream of agony. Yegor screamed, clutching his shattered hand and pushing himself up to stand, but he knocked his chair so hard that it tumbled over and spilled him to the floor instead. I stalked around the desk, and put my hard-soled shoe down on his broken hand, hauling him up by the hair as he sobbed.

“Help!” He shouted, voice raw with pain. “Help me! Anya! Security!”

I glanced back at the door, then down to Yegor. “Where is the stash, Yegor?”

“I won’t tell you fucking anything! Suka!” He spat at me, and then squealed as I hauled up on his hair and put downward pressure on his wrist. “ARRRGH! I’ll tell Sergei about this-”

I hooked the hammer over the shell of his ear and pulled down and out, earning another raw cry of pain, and then backhanded him with the flat side of the head. He went to the floor, shielding his face as I beat him over his face, arms and head. He couldn’t hold his guard up forever. When his arms faltered, I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him back up to his knees.

“Go ahead and tell him. I want Sergei to know that I was here.” I pressed the ball of the hammer against his temple. “Let us reason together, Yegor. Do you really want to die like this?”

His nostrils flared, sweat from his nose and blood from his ear dripping from his face to the floor. He said nothing, but he sagged in my hands.

“Where does Vanya keep his cash?” I repeated, calmly.

Yegor squeezed his eyes closed, pushing out a wave of fresh tears. I saw and felt him break, watched the armor shrink and fold away as he went limp.

“Kozlowski and Sons,” he said, his voice thick with mucus and pain. “The scrapyard. T-There’s a locked yard where they keep all these old schoolbuses. It’s all in the buses… in the floors of the buses.”

“And what kind of security do they keep around these buses?” I knew K&S well enough. It was one of the scrapyards where we took our stolen cars.

“B-barbed wire. Dogs. V-Vanya might have men there, I don’t know. Let me go, Molotchik, you got-”

Before he could continue - before he had time to become more afraid - I smashed the hammer into the side of his head several times. When I felt it catch and had to tug it free of his skull, I pushed him away from me, stepping back as he collapsed like jelly on the floor. For several long minutes, I watched him gasp and convulse his way through death, a process not nearly as sudden and final as movies were wont to portray.

“Of course you don’t care. As long as it wasn’t your friends he destroyed, or your kids he screwed.” I said, pulling my bloodied gloves off my hands and throwing them down, one at a time. Like him, my tone was bitter. “May your sons grow up to be better men than you and I, Yegor.”

I went back around to the suitcase, set it on the desk, and opened it up. I’d brought a roll of plastic bags, a grooming kit, a squirt bottle of bleach and one of water - the kind you use to hold ketchup - and a complete change of clothes. Black leather gloves, shoes, socks, an identical blue tie, trousers, shirt and jacket, all rolled. The suit was of a different material than the linen I’d worn in, a heavier wool suit in a similar, but not identical color. I wrapped up the messiest things, the hammer and my jacket and tie, and then stepped around to squirt Yegor’s exposed skin with the bleach. Face, hands, neck. The odor of chlorine burned my nostrils, a clinging, lurid pink smell.

After that, I checked myself for blood, swabbing my face and gloves with dilute bleach, then with alcohol-soaked cotton to get rid of the smell. When I was sure I was clean, I changed everything, packed the dirty clothes into the suitcase along with everything else, and left the way I’d come. The P.A was nowhere to be seen, operating at a paygrade which encouraged her discretion. For Yegor, privacy came with a price. No one had heard a thing.

When I was back outside, I dropped the telescoping handle of the carry-on and pulled it behind me on my way up Wall Street, merging into a thick crowd of suits, teased hair, blue jeans and pork pie hats. The sky was heavily overcast, almost like hurricane clouds by the time I reached the Charging Bull statue on Broadway. As I was walking by, I heard a thick wet splat to my left, and turned to see a dark stain, the size of a bird’s droppings, had spattered across the bull’s head. By the time I reached my ride, it was nearly dark. The streetlights had turned on. I was leery of the sky as I loaded up and got behind the wheel, but as soon as I was in the relative privacy of the car, I relaxed with pleasure so profound that it was practically erotic. I had done magic of the kind I’d only dreamed back in there. I’d pulled energy from somewhere other and channeled it with nothing but a word and my will. There was no ward to rely on, no other magus flinging energy at me that I could turn on its head. I’d called to the Art, and the Art had responded.

“My GOD,” I said aloud. “That felt good.”

There was no one else in the car, but someone replied all the same. The voice was in my own head, hissing in my ears like a chorus of hissing leaves sliding down dry pavement. If I hadn’t been a mage, I’d have checked myself in to the asylum.

“Yegor Gavrilyuk is dead.” Kutkha, my Neshamah, projected an image of himself preening under one shadowy wing. Head cocked, he fixed me with one solid white eye. It burned and spat like the core of a star. “A sore blow to the Organizatsiya. Are you satisfied?”

“I won’t be satisfied until they’re all suffering or dead.” I pulled my wig off and stuffed it into the suitcase, took out my blue contacts, and pulled my shoes. I’d worn two-inch insoles in them, boosting my height to the princely total of five foot seven. “We’ll get rid of all of this and go to K&S. I’ll take what money we can transport, and burn the rest.”

“Indeed. Though you must beware the corruption that so much money brings. The desire for revenge is eating you alive, my Ruach.You have never been a creature of the light, and the Void will tempt you,”

He didn’t need to tell me more than once. It had been just on four weeks since my brush with death, and I had been feeling… strange. Not terrible, despite the usual trials and tribulations of healing a life-threatening injury, but definitely different. Something had shifted in my mind and body like an iceberg sliding into a slowly moving floe of water. When I looked out across a crowd of people, I felt lean and hungry, wolfish, calculating. I’d been eating a lot. I’d been thinking about money and the ins and outs of power. I’d picked up a copy of The Prince and had left it next to my bed at Strange Kitty, reading Machiavelli in an attempt to understand Sergei better. Kutkha had said not a word about it, until now.

“I’m doing best to stay on top of these impulses, Kutkha.” I got out a packet of wet wipes, and cleaned off the remainder of the subtle makeup I’d used to conceal the true shape of my face. Nothing extravagant: just enough to flesh out my cheeks, add crows feet, and give my skin a rosy look that it typically lacked. It made all the difference on camera. “Are you worried about the Yen?”

“Perhaps. Yen infection is subtle in HuMans.” Kutkha shivered, ruffling his feathers. “I worry because you keep yourself in a state of perpetual, voluntary poverty. After a lifetime spent telling yourself that you do not need anything and anyone, you face desire. Desire needles you to make choices. It is not something that you have trained for.”

“Nonsense. I decide on things every day.”

Kutkha laughed, the soft chortling laughter of crows. “Not decisions, Alexi. Choices. Decisions are passive things made in response to a stimulus, a need. Choices create the stimuli that forces others to decide. You have had very little room for choice in your life.”

I frowned, turning the engine, and paused as a thick spang of liquid bounced off the roof. Then another… and then a scattering of blows on the windshield, multiple dark, clotted red masses oozing down the glass. “What the Hell…?”

Screams of confusion and disgust pealed up from the street around me. I was about to open the door and go outside to look when Kutkha seized control of my body and pulled me back into my seat, an awkward exertion of his will on mine that caused me to lift up and then flop back down on an awkward angle. “No! Don’t go out there!”

Dumbstruck, I watched on in stupefied awe as the rain thundered down and my view of people running and ducking for cover disappeared under a greasy layer of shredded flesh. The air was suddenly bone-chillingly cold, saturated with the smell of raw meat.

Satisfaction faded to shock. I slumped back, rubbing my hand over mouth and jaw. “I’ve heard of this sort of thing happening as signs or auguries, but, I mean… this seems even beyond the capability of the TVS. Kutkha, do you…”

I trailed off. Kutkha’s response was the tense silence of an ellipsis.

“It is a harbinger,” Kutkha finally said. His voice was firmer, clearer, less ethereal.

The rain of blood was beginning to let up. It had turned to pinkish water, which was sweeping the dark red mess from my windshield. I turned the wipers on and started the car, idling until I could see in my mirrors. The street looked like a slaughterhouse. “A harbinger of… what?”

“Events like this occur when a Cell is under attack,” Kutkha replied. “Your world, and all the worlds in this region are protected by a Parama, the ‘skin’ that surrounds your local neighborhood. Paramae separate layers of reality from one another, like cell walls. They are permeable, allowing Phi to sweep in and out of a galactic region. This spiraling wave of GOD’s plasma gives your Cell dynamism. For reality to bend in such a fashion as this, the Parama must be under stress.”

“Or a tornado swept up a warehouse full of chickens and deposited the remains over New York,” I said. “Things like this aren’t necessarily supernatural.”

“When was the last time you heard of such a thing happening?”

I thought for a moment. “The Black Plague was supposedly presaged by a rain of blood over Germany. So was World War One, in rural England. Arguably, the blood rain actually foretold the Influenza Epidemic of 1918, which killed even more people than the war did. A hundred million, if I remember correctly.”

“One fifth of all HuManity in the world perished in that year alone, killed by a virus which brewed in the trenches of the Great War,” Kutkha said. “So, for all the good it will do us, shall we go and fetch our money, my Ruach?”

I tried to push it down, but the disquieting wrongness that pressed in on me could not be ignored. Power rippled in a wave that passed over me from the moaning sky, discordant and unnatural. It was followed by a boom of thunder so strong that the car vibrated.

“Yes,” I said, quietly. “I suppose that’s all we can do. But we need to get to the bottom of it.”

“We?” My Neshamah chortled. “Do you think yourself so great?”

“What I think is that I can't kill Sergei if I'm dead.” I turned the engine, and watched another glob of indeterminable meat slide down my windshield. “The only thing I am is pissed off. There's a wooden stake with Sergei's name on it, and damned if I'm going to let the flu stop me.”