This one, too, he fell asleep. There was no strength for anything, and even the shouts from the cell opposite eventually merged into such a background that it ceased to disturb him. He dreamt this time of his drill of unspoken resource and of Rambanhr, who is at the head of it. They had beaten Guzokh to a pulp to begin with, then they had taken out some chums from the BSS and shot them, then they had brought in Ananhr herself and started mocking her, calling her an upstart and a whore working her sweet spot. It was impossible to see her reaction or even her face properly in the dream. At those screams the dream ended, Samoh woke up and heard that they were screams from the cell across the hall. And it was so easy to feel the presence of the Church's combat unit near him
A day later, the punishment days in the SHIZO were over, and Samokh was taken back to his regular cell, where there was a broken toilet bowl with shit in it and, of course, a swarm of flies over it. This day he was not supposed to leave the cell except for the evening formation and rotation, and if it were not for the constant companion from the cell opposite, who had also been released from the isolation cell and brought back. Apparently, he was treated the same way as the holy bucket in the SHIZO he could not be touched, changed, paid attention to by the warders, and in general the only thing that could be done with him was to move him from one place to another, and in strict accordance with the location of the Metropolitan. And if the bucket was ordinary for obvious reasons, this unicum was undoubtedly dug out of some other prison and placed in this one, so that a famous person would not be bored.
At the evening inspection, where Samokh, believing that it was not necessary to arouse another hatred of him by unbuttoned buttons, decided to be a little patient and put everything in visible order before the cameras were opened. Of course, he looked like a clown in clothes several sizes smaller than his own. And in spite of the fact that there were no remarks to him during the inspection, fifteen minutes after the inspection, several prison officers broke into the cell in an urgent order, who recorded another malicious systematic violation in the uniform, which entailed, of course, a new transfer to the SHIZO. The second in a row.
Nothing had even had time to change, including, of course, the bucket of slop, which stood in the same place as before. There was no doubt about who would be brought to the chambers opposite in a few minutes. And moreover, if it had not happened, Samoh would have thought that something even more terrible was being prepared. So when the cutthroat appeared, it already calmed him down in a way.
This night I didn't even sleep that badly, though I didn't dream about anything. There was no strength at all, as before, so the process of sleeping was equal in an instant I closed my eyes and opened them almost immediately. The warden tapped on the bars with his key, a traditional way of getting up in the morning for the isolation ward.
And it was somewhat surprising that Samokh had not been taken to any interrogation or other investigative measures. He was being held here simply to bring him to a certain condition, and, assuming that it had not yet been reached, was waiting for his time.
The second visit to the SHIZO was not so long only one day. And the Metropolitan was taken back. But this time not to his cell, but to a double cell, where at first there was no one. In addition, the cell had a heavy steel door with a window that opened to serve food. The toilet worked, too, and it seemed that these conditions were much better than before. Samoh even thought that they had simply had enough of bullying him, and finally gave him a break, so that he could redouble his strength in the new stage. But he was wrong.
Half an hour later, a prisoner was placed with him, who was not only sick, but was radiating bacilli and germs. He went straight to his bunk, even in front of the warder, who did not prevent him from doing so, even though he was only allowed to sit during the day. In a room of two by three meters it was unreal not to be infected by such a neighbor, and already by evening Samokh felt how from inside he began to feel fever, and darkness appeared in his eyes, and everything dimmed.
Close to bedtime, the patient was taken from his cell with a loud notification that he needed hospitalization due to a corona virus the same one that periodically appeared in one corner of the
Empire or another. In general, the story of the disease seemed to be over, but periodically new outbreaks appeared, which were quickly localized, preventing the spread. And there was no doubt that this patient had been brought by the S.S.C. from a fresh region, where a new strain of the virus had formed.
Samoh began to vomit, and considering that he had eaten practically nothing, nothing came out. Even before lights out, he collapsed on his bunk and fell asleep half-lying. Then in the morning, the inspection burst in on him after his official rise. They had decided to arrange it not at six-thirty in the morning, but an hour and a half earlier, and the guard went around banging on the cell doors with a key, waking up the prisoners. All the doors except Samoh's cell, who didn't wake up. The inspection recorded a new and vicious demonstrative violation of the order of the pre-trial detention center it was necessary to continue pretending to sleep after the official wake-up, when the warden woke up everyone personally, and when it made no sense, because anyway they would wake up by force not immediately, but in five minutes. It was impossible to think of anything else but the SHIZO, and the Metropolitan went there again. This time he was already sick.
Of course, no one was going to send him to any hospital as the one who had infected him. They said that he would only infect the recovering plagues there. He would only violate all their loyal and understandably written norms, and here he would also cause physical harm to the people around him. Later Samokh learns that the sick man who spent a few hours in the cell with him, lying on his bunk, was convicted of murdering his sister and her friend at their home during a week- long binge he broke into his sister's house demanding an explanation, and then stuck a knife to her throat and then strangled her friend. For him, the wardens considered it more necessary to take care of his health by hospitalization.
The third visit to the SHIZO differed from the previous two except for the presence of fever in his body and constantly cloudy consciousness. Samokh regularly puked his nose while sitting on his bunk, and his surroundings in the form of his eternal companion yelling and the warden occasionally banging his key on the bars had merged into a single entity that was purposefully trying to tear his mind away from him. Eventually, sometime toward evening, someone tapped him with a baton first on the shoulder, then on the ribs. Then in the ribs again.
It made him even more nauseous, and the pain played through his temples like a needle, but he got up. He got to his feet and collapsed. He vomited some kind of sludge, probably bile juice.
After that he felt a little better, though not for long. The warder kept demanding to get up, and it was unclear to the metropolitan himself how, but he succeeded. After shouting something directly at him, the SS officer went out and locked the bars behind him.
Samokh fell back into his bunk and, without even trying to make himself comfortable, fell into sleep. He dreamed of Nevrokh. Finally, someone who had given him the right advice, from whom he had learned to defeat his enemies and to weigh his strength before he acted.
There is a man who is very dangerous to us. the patriarch told him. A man, not a plague.
Who is more dangerous to us than anyone else. Don't be a fool like others, don't think that people are weaker than us just because we once defeated them. Don't underestimate your enemy there is a very high price to pay for that Don't underestimate your enemy. Don't underestimate your
enemy....
The last catches swirled in a merry-go-round around Samoh's consciousness. In the middle of the night he woke up remembering that dream. And then he remembered another one, where Bazankhr with general's epaulettes tells him about self-confidence, vanity and bluster. It all comes from misconceptions about his enemy. An enemy who now seeks to break him and make him beg for leniency.
There will be no leniency. The Metropolitan whispered aloud. There will be nothing but one. The fires of the Holy Inquisition, which will make everyone tremble at the mere mention of it.
He felt a fever inside him even greater than the one he'd felt when he'd contracted this virus.
A heat that burned away all the sickness, all the weakness, all the indecision. His eyes seemed to come back to life, and he began to see clearly. At the same time, his hearing began to return to him. And then the screams from the cell across the hall.
Samoh winced. Pain shot through his temples from one to the other, a little nausea and it seemed harder to breathe. His eyes darkened momentarily, but he kept moving anyway. And the sensations of reality took hold stronger than the pain.
It was dark, for at night only a single light bulb at the beginning of the corridor illuminated the passage, but the prisoner in the cell opposite was clearly visible.
The Metropolitan stood up and walked to the door grate, still staring at the screaming madman. Raising one hand and pointing it palm up at him, Samokh said:
Blessings on your healing, my son..... Only Jah's faith will heal you.....
Bolotnikov
That inane inability of people to become better than they can be. And the anger with which they meet any attempt at change. They see you as the enemy. An even bigger enemy than the person who actually made them live worse and make themselves worse. And weaker. What a hard line those two words have.
Weaker and stronger. If we allow ourselves to change, is it strength to change things, or weakness to allow change? Or conversely, is it strength that leaves us the same, or weakness that prevents us from changing error to truth?
Colonel Bolotnikov had no answers to these questions now. He was simply leading the very ten percent of people who had accepted the new changes, and agreed to be free against the will of the majority. About seven hundred people in all. And how they were still being looked at when they left. They even tried to shout phrases like "weaklings", "broken", and even "damned", the latter even caught on amongst themselves. When Bolotnikov gave them the opportunity to choose a name for the new Maquis unit they were now, they all eventually agreed on the word, and it was now the Cursed Battalion.
And the timing was perfect. They really were the cursed ones who stayed. Who didn't want to leave. Who didn't want to give themselves a chance to be free. And take responsibility for it. This word for Bolotnikov became something like a red rag for a bull. He always took responsibility for himself, as if it were a gift, not a burden to be carried on his back.
It was that word that brought him so close to his entire new squad. And everyone could see that their commander was someone who was just as damned as they were. And who has nowhere to retreat to, who, like them, also has all the bridges burned behind him. Want to even go back, and they'll tear you apart on arrival just for not dying when you were without them. That's the kind of hatred you can't confuse with anything.
When people who have let someone go start wishing hard for the suffering, pain and death of the one they let go. While outwardly saying that this is a pattern a natural position of the wrong decision that was made about them. And internally realizing that if this person succeeds, it will mean that they themselves are wrong.
And they cannot allow themselves to be wrong, first of all, for themselves. Therefore, any return will be interpreted by them as a victory of their opinion and their way of life, which means that it is necessary to punish those who denied it, resisting it. And this will also mean the complete abolition of any framework of punishment for this, because the punished will be a priori infinitely guilty.
The "Damned" battalion was moving from the "Archa" sector towards Poltava, to then reach Kharkov. There was to be a small base of Detachment-14 there, and Bolotnikov expected to meet some of his own, to at least find out the latest news, and what status he himself was now in: deserter, traitor, or whatever. Frankly speaking, he was not much concerned about what word they could call him, but more about the fate of "Detachment-14" itself, which in his understanding had gone down with Khmelnitsky's overthrow. And now it remained only to find out where this bottom was, and how his former comrades-in-arms would behave on it.
And how Misha and Natasha were doing was also important. Still, there were almost no close friends left. And the fewer of them there were, the more precious became those who still existed. After all, you can't lose friends indefinitely. You can only keep their memory endlessly....
And especially now he was curious to ask if they were having the same dream as he was. After all, no one among the "damned" had ever had such a dream. He had asked several of them, and then somehow he had asked them at the general meeting in the evening. He had nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of being misunderstood or thought he was crazy. He had long ago passed those boundaries, and the only criterion for him was the practicality of something, not how it looked from the outside.
No one laughed or looked askew it was just that no one had ever dreamed anything like this. He stood at the edge of a grove and saw that in the middle of the grove, where everything was illuminated by light, stood a girl and a boy in smart white clothes. "Only together with Mary can you discover the secret of the Black Stone," he only heard from their side.
Raven
"He has a man in there who will blow himself up along with everyone else if ordered to do so," those words loomed in Raven's mind as he stood in the corridors outside the main hall in the Diza Sector administration building. Of course, Cobra's men had let him and his escort of 120 fighters through, pointed out the right roads, led him past the mine barriers where necessary, and now all he had to do was press the button for the elevator to take him downstairs.
But he remembered those words of Cobra's at the meeting. Where he'd said that the prefect's authority was different from the authority within the Kiwi units. The miners followed the prefect's orders as if the sword of Damocles hung over every one of them and would cut them in half for the slightest offense.
"Will blow himself up if so ordered," Raven heard within himself again. He couldn't believe that anyone around him had been able to control his subordinates to such a degree. He had worked so hard to keep discipline among his own people. He had been executed for almost nothing, and kept in pits for weeks, and socialized the families of the dead. But to get that kind of discipline
No. It seems impossible. And yet there's a man alive who organized it right here. A hundred meters underground. If he's still alive, as they say.