Chapter 11

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The stairs were neither short nor long. It was just enough to exhaust an already quite exhausted and battered man with heavy luggage behind the shoulders. Along the way, Olga noted apathetically that the stone steps were worn, smoothed to the point where they looked as if they had been walked up and down for generations. This created additional difficulties - she had to be careful not to slip. At the top, there was another sculptural group, three circles on an intricate pedestal.

Twice Olga rested briefly, sitting down on a moderately cool rock. She even wanted to lie down and mindlessly relax, but the wide-open space made her nervous. Some shit might sneak up on her. The light came directly from the high white ceiling, semi-circular, which looked like a corrugated pipe cut lengthwise. In the smooth glow, everything seemed equally sterile, lifeless, and doll-medical.

Climbing the stairs, Olga once again thought about what is categorically incomprehensible. Where had the people gone? Judging by its size, the Station must have been well populated. Yes, and the Machine spoke of mass deaths and other horrors. Okay, let's say the corpses were removed somewhere ( by whom and where?). But the panic must have left traces anyway - garbage abandoned things, broken utensils. For an area that had suffered a disaster of this magnitude - to the point of near-desertion - the Station looked too well-kept. And at the same time too abandoned, as if people had left here more or less disciplined months, or rather years ago.

It's weird.

And there was no more water.

Olga climbed up, shifting her legs with difficulty, and she shamed herself for her stupidity. She should have asked Machine to give her a normal flask, some chocolates, maybe some overalls. All this must be in the engine room, the local workers had something to eat, didn't they?

I'm getting dumber with fatigue, she decided to herself, breathing heavily. Well, at least the triple ears of Mickey Mouse, as she called the landmark above, were getting closer.

As Olga stood up, she realized that these were not ears. The composition looked more like another steampunk sculpture about two meters high. Three dials and a large valve underneath them. All based on a structure of intricately intertwined pipes. The structure looked both very practical and unbearably pompous. It seemed that just turn the valve and the black pointers would swing beneath the perfectly transparent glass. It looked like just another monument, like the recent mechanical hand with a comb in front of the Machine's hideaway.

She took off her backpack and, with a sigh of relief, threw it onto the stone floor. A gigantic passageway opened before her like a trunk stretched out in length. It had the same walls, made of monumental panels with monstrous rivets, and a concave ceiling, though not corrugated like the stairs, but made of transparent panels with frequent grating. Outside, the view was of the same space. The star shone dazzlingly bright, but the glass seemed to punctuate the yellow rays in some clever way. The light seemed painful, but it was not blinding. Olga thought that she would still have to make a blindfold to protect her eyes, but she figured it would be better to go further in the shadows from the bars.

Far ahead, the huge passage changed shape and transitioned into something incomprehensible, geometrically correct, but intricately twisted. As if a single corridor began to branch out, and at once in several planes, at different levels.

Olga checked the diagram of the Machine. It took some effort, the sheets were crumpled in her pocket as she fled from the terminator. But the strict lines and symbols of the printer differed favorably from Fidus's doodles, so the girl quickly got her bearings. Yeah, that seemed about right. Fortunately, there was no need to get into the tangle of branches. The route turned a little earlier and led to a staircase or an elevator.

One thing was confusing: the tower was clearly visible from the glass tunnel in front, which means that there should not be a "trunk lid" above my head. Could it be a hologram? Or some illusion of architecture?

My teeth ached, softly but piercingly uncomfortable. Her skin itched as if tiny bristles were sliding across her body. Olga shook her head and decided to take another break. The sculpture seemed secure enough to sit, leaning against it. As she approached closer, the girl realized that there was something wrong with the dials. The whole composition seemed faintly floating. Slightly deformed, as if it were made entirely of wax that had been blown around with hot air from a hairdryer. Olga took out an old knife and tapped softly on the glass, then on the pipes and cylinders of the dials. The sounds were right, that is, the sculpture seemed to be made of appropriate materials. But if the metal had heated to that degree, why hadn't the glass melted at all and the plastic burned the hell out? And here, the paint didn't even peel off.

The sounds in the dull silence resounded far and loudly. Olga looked around and decided not to experiment anymore, to be on the safe side. And she didn't want to lean into the steampunk either. It was necessary to go further. The toothache, meanwhile, intensified. Olga felt the roots of her hair itching, her mouth was dry and generally very hot. The itching crawled under her fingernails so that touching anything seemed unpleasant to the point of being painful.

And the hum ... there was a monotonous hum in the ears, as if the bones of the skull resonated, transmitting the vibration to the auditory nerve. Olga shook her head, trying to shake out the sounds, like water after a bath, but it only got worse. The monotonous humming stratified into a chorus of muffled voices. They whispered something, spoke, tried to shout, and died helplessly, dissolving into nothingness. The hallucination seemed surprisingly real. The sound grew, and now a myriad of voices was pleading with the girl, warning, trying to stop her. More was to come, the world seemed to vibrate with the silent scream, like glass with an electric razor against it.

Olga cursed tiredly, without fire or emotion, thinking that since her appearance here swearing was the basis of her speech. She wanted to bend over for her bag but decided first to at least symbolically comb her hair and generally assess the damage done to her appearance. The wood seemed warm, and somehow cozily warm in a special way. The glass, on the other hand, was cool, again pleasantly, very peaceful, like a breeze blowing on a hot, hot day. Just holding the homemade glass in the hand felt good, just right. If only it weren't so dizzy...

Olga did not feel dizzy, it was more like a sudden stop of a merry-go-round. The world around her was in motion, spinning and yet unshakeable. Or vice versa. The cry of invisible voices grew stronger, merging into a gloomy surf that rolled over her consciousness, announcing something unspeakably sinister. It seemed that somewhere in the depths of the Station a real dark chorus had awakened, announcing the arrival of unspeakable horrors to gothic accompaniment.

Olga took the mirror more firmly, feeling the hard edges crashing into the skin of her palm, not painful, but palpable. She raised it to eye level and looked into the murky glass...

Hit.

It was like a blow that struck at once through Olga's entire being, shook every cell, echoed the electrical signals that ran through the nerve wires. Trying to keep her balance, the girl staggered, flailing her arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blue-violet wave of gas fire rushing down the "trunk" corridor. Then the traveler was enveloped in a glow and blacked out as if a switch had been flicked.

... and also abruptly turned it back on. Everything around me remained the same, but at the same time, it changed amazingly. It was as if the "Ballistic" had been completely abandoned not for years, but decades. Rust corroded the metal in deep, wet sores. Gray, some impure-looking stone, helpless against the cracks. Olga thought that the station she had seen before bore the mark of abandonment, but the real decay was revealed to her only now.

The ceiling, high as a nine-story building, was gone, hidden by a veil that looked more like a spider's web than anything else. Only a spider's web, incredibly thick and woven from threads the thickness of a shoelace. The solid grayish weft descended low, so low that Olga could reach it by standing on tiptoe and extending her arm. The mere sight of that fringe sent a chill down her spine. The strings looked too much like thin leather laces, and she didn't want to think how the Station got so much leather. And now and then there was a shiver through the curtain as if it had been blown by the wind. Only there was no wind. The air hung, musty and stale, filled with the smell of mold. Imagination readily conjured up the image of something beyond creepy, something lodged in the center of the web, swaying it with its heavy breath.

There were probably still windows somewhere up there. But not a single starlight shone through the cobwebs. The lights came from dim greenish-blue gas lamps that must have been some kind of emergency lighting. In contrast to the harsh, contrasting shadows provided by the light of the local sun, the shadows from the lamps seemed alive, flowing. They seemed to shimmer in the corners as a mass of ink, frozen under direct sight and moving as soon as my eyes were averted.

The shred of gloom silently emerged from the gloom, tall - over two meters tall, to be exact - and skinny, like a man on stilts. The figure was broadly human, except that it was wrapped in either folded wings or a saggy mantle that dragged across the dirt floor. No, seemed it was the cloak.

The whisper of unseen voices comes back. This time, however, quietly, as if accompanying the unfolding action with a background of hopeless despair. In general, everything that was happening seemed like a horror movie skilfully choreographed and incredibly realistic. This was the only thing that kept Olga from bursting into hysterics. A general state of detached grotesque. Here was the action, here was the panorama captured by the digital camera, and here was the musical accompaniment.

Only they don't give you popcorn. And it's terrifying.

The figure moved in the direction of the dial, silently, as if floating above the floor, but somehow strange, zigzagging, like a ghost with a motor. Suddenly it stopped as suddenly as it had appeared. It froze motionless, like a statue, even the fabric froze, falling in heavy folds, like on a monument. Now, as she came closer, about ten meters away, Olga was convinced that it seemed to be actually a man, without wings, but in a hooded cloak. And she also thought that the infernal alien seemed to be blind. At any rate, there was nothing in the creepy "monk's" behavior that showed he could see a visitor from the past.

Blind Batman. Or something from the tales of the black hand and the coffin on wheels.

And just as she thought about it more or less clearly, the figure twitched. The way a person with a loud clap of the hands over their ear flinched. The unknowing shit moved its head, and the girl saw that the figure had no face. In the opening of the hood, a blind, perfectly smooth surface, like frosted glass, gleaming in the reflected glare.

Vidocq!

Spoiler: Picture

That's right, that was the name of that movie about the weirdo who took souls in a glass mask. The invisible face was hidden under something similar, only without a single protrusion. And as if in time with her memory, the cobwebs above her head quivered, and the grim alien moved again as if listening. The grave chorus fell silent, all at once, as if it feared to draw even the shadow of another's attention to itself.

"Who are you, my guest?"

In the first seconds, Olga did not realize that she heard a real live voice, and was quite intelligible. And when she did, she shuddered, quietly dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around her skinny shoulders under the jacket that had never completely dried. She bit her lip until it bled, the salty taste on her parched tongue. She wanted to scream and howl, to drive away a creeping madness. Because the voice wasn't in her ears, it was coming out of her heartbeat, out of the echo of panicked thoughts in her head, out of the sound of blood running through her veins.

"I know you're here."

From behind him stretched out, unfolding, something mechanical, resembling both a scorpion's tail and a robot arm. The artificial arm moved in a circle over his master's head, its joints snapping. The iron fingers moved very purposefully and unpleasantly fast as if attracting invisible threads in the musty air. It was as if ... searching for something.

"Oh, now I see. A poor, suffering child. With a soul that is full of pain."

It was not a voice at all, and it was not in Russian or any other language. Rather, it was the knowledge of what the unknown person wanted to express. The knowledge was complete, imbued with infinite shades of emotion, surprisingly sincere and kind. The knowledge was born in the silence of the iron and in the sound of the water droplets that ran down the walls. It was whispered by the stone, suggested by the cold breeze that blew in from the void.

It was too much. Too much for one day and one person.

Olga felt she'd had enough and closed her eyes.

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