Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

“Did I come at a bad time? Sorry, I didn’t want to bother you. I can come back another day.”

“No, no. Take a seat. Do you want something to drink?”

As soon as he says this, he goes out of the room.

To get water? But there’s a bottle under the desk. It’s not like him to take the effort to offer a guest a separate glass. I don’t have time to make sense of it all before my friend returns.

“Here,” he holds out an unopened bottle of fizzy water.

Well, well, well! Where did that come from? I didn’t see anything like it in the kitchen.

“Could I have a glass, too?”

“I’ll be right back.” Once again he leaves the room.

A few seconds later he returns and hands me a dirty glass. That’s interesting – the glass he gives me is just as dirty as always, but the bottle of water is spotlessly clean and brand new. Somehow these two facts don’t fit together. It makes no sense, but I open the bottle anyway and pour myself a glass. It’s so long since I’ve drunk fizzy water. I’d quite forgotten how the bubbles sputter in the glass, and the pleasant way they tickle your tongue. Shit, it’s like a whole lifetime has passed since the last time. I’ve been a little too quick to get used to this weird existence. When was the last time I had a shower even? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

“So, what do you want?”

I put the glass down.

“As I said, I want to buy some proper clothes, and a gun of some sort. You can see for yourself the shitstorm outside. On the way here I was so scared I almost cacked my pants five times!”

“Very well, we’ll see if I can help. What have you got to trade?”

I dig around in my pockets and place all the junk in front of me. Then I separate the money – eight hundred rubles – and the syringe of morphine.

Mishka looks at it all indifferently.

“You haven’t got much.”

“What do you mean? It was hard enough to get all that.”

He stands up, goes over to the window, and stands there for a while looking down at the street.

“The thing is, you’re lying. You need something else from me.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. But we’ve known each other for quite some time. I’m surely the last person you’d come to in this kind of situation. But here you are, and I don’t believe you.”

“Well, it’s not your problem now!”

I turn around. Standing in the doorway are three strangers. They have dark hoods pulled so far over their heads that their faces are barely visible. Shotgun barrels glint in their hands, and one has an assault rifle on his back.

“Good morning!” I say, getting to my feet.

“Sit back down,” orders one of them without raising his voice, and the shotgun barrel in his hand points me clearly back into my place.

Well, it’s not like I can argue with that, is it? I lower myself back into my seat.

“Thanks, brother,” nods the man at the head of the group to Misha. “You did the right thing.”

He walks over to the desk, takes something out of the pocket, and hands it to my friend.

“Who did he used to be?”

“A system administrator in one of the divisions of the corporation.”

“Which one exactly?”

“Not sure. I do remember what he did, though – inventory management and fixed asset movements. I helped them to write a few programmes.”

“Alright, we’ll take care of him. You keep up the good work, brother.”

They lead me out of the flat, gathering up everything that I’d laid out on Mishka’s table on the way. They pat down my pockets unceremoniously and give me a kick to get moving. We head downstairs, step out of the door, and move off to one side. On the way, they shove some sort of bag over my head, so I’m completely unable to see anything. We don’t walk far. There’s a nasty scrape of metal, and I catch a waft of damp in my face.

“There’s a step in front of you. Don’t fall. Hold on to the wall.”

Following this advice, I stretch out both arms. My left arm comes into contact with cold metal. A pipe? No, a rail. I grip it and shift slightly closer to the wall. We descend the stairs. It’s a short flight, fifteen or twenty steps, and then our feet again hit a hard surface, our steps producing a deep echo. It feels like we’re walking through some type of underground tunnel. We continue some distance further, around a hundred paces. We turn, turn again, and then there’s the scraping sound of another metal door. They pull the bag off my head and shove me in the back.

The room is poorly lit, with a single dim bulb hanging from the ceiling. It’s a smallish space, furnished with a table behind which is sitting another guy in a hood. Is this some kind of uniform?

“Who are you?”

I hurriedly provide all the details I can – my name, address, and last place of employment.

“Are you still living in your flat?”

“Where else would I go? I thought they were going to evacuate us. My neighbour said we wouldn’t have to wait for long.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To see Mishka. He’s an old friend, and I thought he could help me.”

“Why did you think he could help?”

“He always had contacts outside the official legal channels. I thought maybe some of them would still be working. The shops are all shut, aren’t they? I’ve got to get food from somewhere.”

The guy runs his fingers through my things, which are laid out before him on the table. He picks up the syringe of morphine.

“Where did you get this from?”

“Well, some of my friends used to take it now and then. But I’m not a drug addict. I just thought I could sell it.”

“You knew that your friend was an addict. You wanted to get some information from him. Who sent you?”

At this, I break out in a cold sweat. The guy is speaking without any emotion, like a wind-up automaton. He clearly doesn’t believe what I’m saying, and he suspects I’m working for someone else.

“Who could have sent me here? I haven’t left home all this time.”

“What have you been eating?”

“We had a special project at work that went on for several days. When it was all over, we decided to have a party. One of my colleagues had all the food in his car, and was bringing it over to my place. I live on my own, so we normally use my flat for get-togethers. He helped me get the food inside, then went back out to his car. That’s when the shooting started. His car went up in flames, and I ran back inside. We’d bought food for ten people, so there was plenty for me all this time.”

The man thinks for a while. Then he raises his head and stares at me intently.

“They’re already here.”

“Who?”

He nods to the men who brought me in.

“This guy’s an outsider. His former employment might be of interest to us. Go and put him in the basement. I’ll have a think about how we can make use of him.”

“Should we set him to work?”

“Obviously. He’s not one of us, so there’s no reason to spare him.”

He sweeps all my things into a bag that’s standing next to one leg of the table, then dismisses my guards with a nod.

Again a bag is pulled over my head, and again I’m being led along some corridor. I count my steps and try to remember the turns. I did spend quite a long time in logistics, and I now seize on to any information like this as fast as I can. We don’t go far before there’s the scrape and rasp of metal again, the bag’s pulled off and I’m shoved in the back. I take two steps forward and behind me the metal rasps nastily again.

So, here we are. Judging by the number of steps we took, it’s about five hundred metres from here to the exit. What is more, I didn’t notice anyone challenging us on the way, which means that there probably aren’t any guard posts. All I need to do is get past this door.