Hero Page 8

  I worked through my weightlifting schedule mechanically, thinking about what should go into the first chapter. Where should I start? Should I begin by telling the mundane story of him starting school? Or by describing his parents meeting at a metal working plant where both had worked at the time? Or should I really list all of his titles and achievements, then flash back to his childhood?

  Task status: Weightlifting Practice

  Task completed!

  XP received: 30pt.

  +5% to Satisfaction

  Current level: 13. XP points gained: 9760/14000.

  Deep in thought, I finished training and headed for the locker room packed with strangers. I brushed against someone’s gym bag on the bench. It dropped to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” I picked up the bag and set it back on the bench.

  “Whoa, dumbass! Are you completely blind?” the bag’s owner — a squat stocky Dagestani refused to accept my apology.

  “Cool it, Mohammed,” a small sinewy guy next to him said.

  “What’s that to you?” another Dagestani guy butted in. His name was Zaurbek, according to his name tag. “Do you know him or something?”

  “You should watch what you’re saying, Kostya,” Mohammed added threateningly through clenched teeth.

  My interface identified the two Dagestanis as the Kichiev brothers. At 24, Mohammed was the elder of the two, Zaurbek a year his junior. Both were boxers, as was the guy who’d just taken my side. His name was Konstantin “Kostya” Bekhterev, 21 years old.

  Having received no answer from him, Mohammed returned his attention to me, towering over me and staring me out.

  I rose, locking my eyes with his. “I already said I was sorry.”

  “So what?” he said challengingly.

  “That’s all.”

  “What’s all?”

  “Right, Kichiev, give it a break,” the coach commanded, entering the locker room. “Phil, meet your group. You’re starting Tuesday, aren’t you? Boys, this is Phil. He'll be joining you.”

  “Who, him?’ Zaurbek couldn’t conceal his surprise. “He’s too old!”

  “Are you serious, coach?” Mohammed asked.

  Matov shrugged. “Let him try. I already told him he won’t make it. There you see,” he turned to me, “even the boys are doubtful.”

  “I can do it,” I answered, even though by then I wasn’t really too sure. The guys’ Boxing skills were at level 6 and 7, all of them. With my meager 4 points I might find it heavy going.

  ‘It’s up to you,” Matov summed up, then gave a sharp hand clap. “Right! Focus! What are you waiting for? Get training! Bekhterev, why are you hanging around?”

  In a few seconds, I found myself alone in the room. Finally I could strip off to take a shower for the third time today.

  Languishing under the jets of hot water lashing my back and shoulders, I checked my Strength. I’d almost managed to bring it to 10 during this last session. I only had a couple percent left which meant I might be able to make a new level today.

  I gulped down a large serving of a carb and protein shake in the gym bar which must have had the desired effect.

  Back home, as I was sitting by my laptop, laboring over the biography of Mr. Koutzel, our distinguished local luminary, I finally received the system message:

  Your Strength has improved!

  +1 to Strength

  Current Strength: 10

  You’ve received 1000 pt. XP for successfully leveling up a main characteristic!

  Current level: 13. XP points gained: 10760/14000.

  Congratulations! You’ve unblocked one of the requirements for the Stealth and Vanish heroic ability: Strength (level 10+)

  Still, the long-awaited improvement to my Strength didn’t make me happy. Something wasn’t quite right. Words didn’t flow. I still couldn’t quite place the premonition that had kept following me ever since I’d pressed Send on the Khaqqani message. Something elusive which had something to do with missing people.

  Trying to put my finger on it, I opened Google search and entered the keywords “search”, “rescue” and “missing person”. Immediately I came across a public group on VK[10] which belonged to some rescue team in Izhevsk[11]. They were looking for a missing old lady suffering from amnesia. She was so old she might have seen Comrade Stalin in his diapers but still they were actively involved in her search. Dozens of volunteers continued to comb the local woods 24/7 under the pouring rain but by now, nobody believed anymore in a positive outcome. Considering the search had been on for three days already, she could have frozen to death because the summer was quite chilly over there this year.

  I had plenty of data — which allowed me to locate the granny almost straight away twenty miles to the north of the search area. Even though I didn’t see her behind the trees, she was alive judging by the fact that the marker was moving.

  I created a fake account via TOR and sent her coordinates to the group’s admins, then used one of the cell phones I’d bought in the underground crossing to dial the search team’s leader’s number.

  “Yes?” a voice snapped.

  “I want you to write down the coordinates of the missing old lady.”

  “One moment. Go on, then.”

  “Latitude: five, seven, dot, zero, one, four, six, nine. Longitude: five, two, dot, nine, two, six, one, eight. The old lady’s still alive but won’t be for much longer.”

  “Accepted. What’s the source of your information?”

  “I’m Phil Panfilov. I can’t explain it to you. You wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”

  “Who are you, a psychic? It doesn’t matter, anyway. Thanks.”

  I could hear him barking orders even before he’d hung up.

  A wave of relief flooded over me. That’s what had been bugging me!

  When I’d decided to help foreign secret services, I hadn’t done so anonymously. I hadn’t used any anonymizers and all that proxy shit, I’d just entered my personal information into the form. My name, my email address and even my phone number. And was I too much of a coward to do the same to help my fellow countrymen?

  Enough lurking in the shadows. There were people to be saved who would otherwise die if I kept my head down. They were still someone’s family.

  So what if I made myself known? Catch me if you can!

  I closed the Word document with the first page of the biography of Mr. Koutzel, that yet-unsung functionary hero, and started leafing through the many social-media groups and sites of rescue teams all over the country.

  The city of Minsk: Angel Search and Rescue

  The Don area: The Night Watch Rescue Group

  The city of Tver: The Owl Volunteer Rescue Team

  The cities of Novosibirsk... Voronezh... Tambov... Kazan.... Vladivostok... Orenburg... Dnepropetrovsk... Almaty... the list went on and on.

  A missing child. A missing man... Missing people...

  I’d find them all. I would help them all.

  Chapter Five. Me, Me Again and Martha

  People are always asking me if know Tyler Durden.

  Fight Club

  THOSE WERE the most difficult hours of my life, steeped in other people’s pain, desperation, exhaustion and disbelief.

  I’d finished my search well after midnight when my Spirit was finally completely depleted. I’d located over forty missing people, seventeen of whom were already dead, then passed on the coordinates of all the others. Some of the postings had long since expired and judging by the lack of any messages reporting either their successful completion or the abandonment of the search, there was no point in persevering. But still, I’d looked into those cases too — and even found quite a few... most of whom were already dead.

  Apart from impassively showing me the missing people’s markers on the map, the program hadn’t shown any other signs of life. I’d received no rewards or quest completion messages, neither anything informing me of having performed “a socially meaningful action”.

  I’d mad
e and returned dozens of phone calls to anonymous search coordinators and rescue group volunteers whose voices betrayed the exasperation and disbelief of people who’d seen everything in this world. Then I went to bed completely drained and slightly uneasy about the potential repercussions of what I’d just done.

  Still, I fell asleep almost instantly — most likely, because of last night’s lack of sleep, but especially due to my Spirit being at zero. The only thing I’d thought of doing was switching off my potentially dangerous clandestine telephone.

  I had another illogical dream full of strange details but couldn’t remember any of it when I’d finally awoke, desperately trying to nail down the elusive images, one of them a girl whose face I couldn’t recognize.

  When I woke up, I didn’t check either the computer or the clandestine phone, too wary of having to bog myself down in more endless dialogues and uncomfortable questions.

  Instead, I phoned Kira right after breakfast, just to feel I wasn’t alone.

  “Hi there,” she replied. “How are you? How’s Vicky?”

  I was so happy to hear her warm voice. “Hi. Vicky... she’s okay, I suppose. We’ve had an argument.”

  “What’s all that about? You had it so good, you two.”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. How are you? How’s Cyril?”

  “Fine, thanks. Just business as usual. We went to the movies yesterday and you know what he told me?”

  As she kept on about how they’d spent their weekend, I listened to the smooth flow of her voice, plucking up some spirit — which, by the way, had completely restored in the course of the night.

  “Listen, Kira,” I finally said, “How about we go see the old folks?”

  “Eh... let’s have a think,” Kira paused. “Okay, but let’s make it closer to lunchtime. I’ve got a whole heap of things to do at home. I have washing and ironing to do, then I have to clean the house... Will lunchtime do? I’ll come and pick you up.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  That was it. I’d done everything I’d planned for this morning. Now I could go for a run but I was curious about how the search was going. Had they already found anyone?

  I gave the clandestine phone a long look, took a deep breath and switched it on.

  The few minutes after its activation seemed to last forever, then I was inundated by text messages. The majority of them were about missing calls but some were from rescue workers. Apparently, not being able to call me, they’d texted me instead.

  We found the girls exactly where you said they’d be! Thanks!

  The missing woman was located at the coordinates provided by you. Thank you for your cooperation!

  We couldn’t get hold of you. We’re very happy to tell you that the boy was found near the place that you’d indicated. He’s in a bad way but he’s gonna make it.

  Unfortunately, we only received your message today. We haven’t located the missing person at the coordinates you provided but we’ve been searching through the surrounding area. Do you have any updates for us?

  Good morning,

  We’ve just been speaking to our colleagues in Siberia and you know what they told us?

  I did. By the end of the day, every rescue team in the country would know that they all had one and the same mysterious informer.

  Or could I just be paranoid? Last night’s bout of euphoria had already faded, especially in the light of the search results.

  In total, fourteen people reported back to me. Not everyone had chosen to listen; some had simply ignored my messages. A few started asking questions; but at least seven people had been saved thanks to me and the rescue groups, including the old lady who’d lost her way in the woods near Irkutsk, a nine-year-old boy not far from Moscow, a couple of teenagers, a man and two girls.

  Five of which hadn’t even been really lost: the man had been on a drinking binge in some seedy underground joint; the two girls were friends who’d gone off hitchhiking without telling anyone and had already made it as far as St. Petersburg. The teenagers had simply run away from home: one to escape a tyrannical stepfather and the other just being rebellious. So in fact I’d only saved the old granny, the boy near Moscow and at a stretch possibly also the alcoholic.

  My PM box at the VK site was packed with very much of the same: more thank-you notes, unheeded messages and questions. Lots of unpleasant questions and accusations. As far as I could gather, quite a few of them had been turned off by the fact that I had no proper profile — no picture of myself, no bio, nothing.

  In hindsight, I congratulated myself for not having used my own profile for contacting them. In the meantime, I’d glimpsed my Spirit bar dropping about 10%, followed by another system message announcing the verdict. I’d been rewarded wholesale.

  You’ve received 5,000 pt. XP for performing a socially meaningful action!

  Congratulations! You’ve received a new level!

  Your current social status level: 14

  Characteristic points available: 1

  Skill points available: 1

  XP points left until the next social status level: 1760/15000.

  This particular increase gave me an especially strong high — but by now, I’d already learned to control myself and was able to stay on my feet.

  Still, every time this wave of positive emotions amazed me just like the first time. It was a combined effect of a multitude of things: the relief you experience after escaping a red-hot sauna into the snow; the drink of icy-cold spring water; the quiet joy of reading an interesting book in bed on a rainy day; the shot of viscous frozen vodka warming your stomach; the first draw on a cigarette in the morning that takes your legs away; the smell of fresh baking; the taste of mandarins at Christmas; the gentle touch of briny ocean waves rocking you to sleep; the walk in autumnal woods; the smell of rotting leaves by the river where you and your father are heading for some fishing at sunrise.... plus, naturally, the sensation of multiple orgasms but without their due consequences.

  I knew the reason for all this. In any MMO game, each level up message was accompanied by a flurry of colorful animations enveloping your character in a glowing aura as its mana and Health numbers updated. Similarly, the creators of this program were trying to motivate the user not to rest on their laurels but to constantly strive for yet another level in order to experience these sensations again.

  The realization of this stirred a protest within me. You could become addicted to this very easily. And the last thing I needed was to become a virtual junkie who only exists from one fix to the next, or a gambler whose only raison d’etre was the adrenaline rush forcing him to stake everything he had on the rare chance of winning. Or an alcoholic who could only see the world in Technicolor when under the influence.

  Once again I wondered who might have conceived this program and how it had ended up in my possession. Now that I had no hope of picking old Panikoff’s brains — because every time we met these days, he’d just start his rambling diatribe about the English soccer Premier League — my only lead to the bottom of this quandary was Valiadis but I couldn’t get hold of him in the town. The stinking-rich oligarch was constantly on the move around the world. As he was now.

  Okay. It’s probably better to leave this matter until some other time. Let’s check the task list.

  Tasks available:

  - find the rent money, sign the rental agreement and pay the Chekhov Business Center for the first three month.

  Deadline: July 1.

  - check up on my parents and see Kira

  - decide on my future company’s status and have it registered

  - find enough money to rent an office and launch my agency

  - write the first chapter of the biography of Mr. Vladimir Koutzel and enter it into the competition.

  - shop for office furniture and equipment

  - prepare promotional materials

  - running practice

  - weightlifting practice

  - work out how to level
up Insight

  - decide how to invest the system characteristic point

  - meet up with Nicholas Valiadis and try to find out what he knows about the interface

  Okay. Let’s start with the end.

  Valiadis would have to wait until he got back to town.

  As for the system point, I could invest it in...

  I switched to my profile and looked through the characteristics. All of my stats were now at 10 or slightly above, barring Agility which was still stuck at 7.

  I opened my Heroic skills and cussed. Holy shit. I could already activate a Heroic skill: I now met all the requirements. How come I hadn’t noticed it earlier? My mind must have been somewhere else. All because of Vicky...

  My Agility was too low, so I still had no access to the Stealth and Vanish skill which allowed me to stealth up for the duration of fifteen seconds. But Lie Detection was now flashing its availability.

  I focused on it.

  New unblocked heroic skill available: Lie Detection

  Considerably increases the user's ability to detect a person’s insincerity

  Unblocking requirements:

  - Heroism: level 1+

  - Social status: level 10+

  - Empathy: level 5+

  - Communication Skills: level 5+

  - Perception: level 10+

  - Charisma: level 10+

  - Luck: level 10+

  - Intellect: level 20+

  Skill points available: 6

  Activate/Decline

  I wondered if I should really leave it till later and wait until I could finally activate Stealth and Vanish. I spent some time pondering over it, hesitant and doubtful. Knowing whether you were being lied to could make or break a situation.

  I pressed Accept.

  You’ve activated a new Heroic skill: Lie Detection!