2. The end and the beginning

The recruiting station unpleasantly surprised me with its gloom. The building was built before the war, shabby on the outside, with dirty-rusty streaks under the rusty window sills. The front porch rose above the asphalt parade ground by three concrete steps, on the top step stood a gloomy captain, arguing about something with an elderly, but once clearly very beautiful and well-groomed woman in a white doctor's coat. A rusty canopy hung over the porch, along which black and white doves walked back and forth, cooing. I walked past the captain and entered the building. I found myself in a long curved corridor, dimly lit by mercury fluorescent lamps located on the ceiling. The ceiling was about four meters high. The walls were covered with posters in a propaganda-militarist style, glorifying various branches of the armed forces. In principle, there was nothing else memorable. I was lucky – the autumn draft had not yet ended. Of the doctors, I only remember a cheerful joker who sat me in a swivel chair and, having told me to close my eyes, spun me. After letting me spin, he stopped me and told me to walk along an imaginary straight line. I walked easily. Having made a note in the card, he sent me on. In the end, he visited the captain from earlier. Having looked at the card, he said:

- Well, son, you are fit. No health problems. We are short of personnel. You can go serve wherever you want, except for tankers - a bit tall, and paratroopers - you are not tall enough.

- Will they take you into the special forces?

"Well-u-um…" He flipped through the card again and answered almost indifferently: "Yes."

* * *

A military, dark green truck is taking me and other recruits to training. We've been on the road for about an hour. The guys are talking to each other. I'm getting sleepy.

I'll tell you this: if someone tells you that the AK-74, PM and, God forbid, TT are the best weapons in the world, spit in that person's face. Because he's never held anything in his hands except these, albeit reliable and simple, domestically produced monstrosities. Do you know the service life of the PM barrel? Twenty to thirty thousand shots. And the service life of the Glock? Forty thousand under warranty and a million if handled with care. I heard with my own ears two colonels arguing that there is no need for rearmament and re-equipment, and that the AK is still the best assault rifle in the world. Bastards. We should have them with us in the Caucasus. And a helmet without a balaclava. And tarpaulin boots without foot wraps. And native body armor, weighing twenty kilograms, that doesn't protect against anything. And in line at the field kitchen for pearl barley. Oh yeah, they should be rolled in mud, so that only their eyes were visible on their black snouts. And for the entourage - so that an Arab sniper with a newfangled European sniper rifle, with an effective range of one and a half kilometers, would shoot at them, not letting them eat normally. Then they would howl differently. As we sometimes quietly howled, praying that our artillery would cover another pillbox, and not us...

I barely met the PM shooting standard. But I was the first in the company with the AK and SVD.

Sometimes it seems to me that my entire previous life was a series of nightmarish, unrealistic dreams.

- Pregnant hippos!!! Is that how you pull your toes? Step more clearly! One-two, one-two! - this was our ensign Spitsyn, an unusually dumb fragment of the Soviet Union. Apparently, he could do nothing but march and curse into a loudspeaker. Our other commanders and consultants were smarter than him and had a higher rank. However, Spitsyn had enough intelligence to realize this injustice, and the ensign took out his anger on us. Frankly speaking, the drill was the only thing we didn't need - if not more seriously. Perhaps the ensign sometimes remembered this and became even more brutal than before. It was he who insisted that during forced marches we either sang a song or put on gas masks. By the way, if the forced marches were for individual credit, I was always the first to run.

Probably because of this, the training remained in my memory only in small fragments. Time flew by very quickly - here I was being promoted to junior sergeant for excellence in drill training, and here we were already being put on a train going to Chechnya.

Dirty, stinking, but such a familiar station. My parents came to see me off. They took my little brother Seryozhka with them. It's a pity that I never got to hold him in my arms. The ensign, a miserable bastard, never let me out onto the platform – he was probably afraid that I would desert in front of everyone. It's good that he didn't stay with us, but went back. I can tell you for sure that during the first shootout I would have drilled a bullet into his stomach (so that he would suffer longer), and no one would have given me up. My feelings were shared by the entire detachment – ​​I wasn't the only one being seen off…

I think all of this (the hatred of junior command staff, the disgusting food, the grueling training, the internal unhealthy atmosphere in the units) was part of the preparation for us crossing the line before the first kill.

For me, it happened somehow routinely.

Mountains. We were dropped from a helicopter to block the retreat of some, as they say now, "bandit formations". What idiocy! The saddest thing was that the Arab mercenaries were better equipped and armed. Maybe the AK was ahead of its time half a century ago, but now its leadership in the field has long been disputed. You can talk as much as you like about reliability and simplicity, but these are decisive factors only when the AK is held in the hands of twelve-year-old boys who are going to be cannon fodder the next day...

Some gorge and faceless distant figures of the enemy in camouflage. We are in ambush. We even breathe every other time. We were taught not to constantly look at the enemy, but to cast short fleeting glances at him. Whatever you say, a man is a beast. And in war, all feelings and instincts are sharpened to the limit. People can feel a threat and a hostile look. This has been proven long ago...

Three reconnaissance men and ten main detachments. We let the reconnaissance pass – there are no important people in it. They will be killed by snipers, and if they are not killed – it does not matter… Here the main detachment approaches the conventional point where we will open fire. Very slowly I catch a powerful bearded figure in my sights. Warriors, indeed. Relaxed. The border is just a stone's throw away. Forgotten? The campaign ends only when the soldiers undress at the base…

The last figure passes the conventional rock, and we start shooting single and short bursts. I catch the mercenary trying to run away in a dash in my sights and gently press the trigger. The man runs a couple of steps and falls... That's it...

Nothing complicated – we are not fighting in the times of Ancient Rome, to kill with gladiuses face to face, and then wipe splashes of someone else's blood from our foreheads…

I have never been afraid of blood since childhood. It is not for nothing that my family is all military. Even my great-grandfather was one of the first communists and served in the Red Army. Perhaps that is why my grandfather, and later my father, got away with some freethinking. However, my grandfather and father had an animal-like sense of trouble and were very good at judging people: in front of some they could boldly joke about the party, and in front of others they stupidly toed the communist and, in particular, the party line.

My hands were frozen. I threw the last branches on the small fire, realizing that this was only delaying the inevitable. The damned FSB guy... Someone else's bullet ricocheted at an angle into his leg and, having torn a vein, exited from his back. My squad and I were supposed to cover the FSB guy during the negotiations with the bearded guys, but something went wrong from the very beginning. I sensed a catch in my rear end back at the base, when they introduced a strange guy with oily, rat-like eyes into our squad. It was a trap. Upon arrival at the meeting, the FSB guy and the bearded guy quickly ran away, and we were treated to RPGs and machine guns. Only I survived, and I have a feeling that it won't be for long. Maybe the FSB guy was a defector? And we, having delivered his carcass to the border with Georgia, became "undesirable witnesses"? Or did we become them long before that? After all, we saw (and participated in) a lot. There was arms trafficking to that side, drug trafficking to this side, slave trade (women) to that side again, illegals to this side...

How stupidly life has turned out...

The cold began to creep up my back again. Trying to move, I discovered that my right hand wouldn't obey. That was probably it. Glancing down, I realized that I was sitting in a pool of my own blood. I started digging through my memories again. How much I wanted to achieve… It's a pity I didn't shoot the FSB officer, I only hit him in the leg… I hate the PM. With its fucking "finishing off"… Having licked the air for the last time, the fire died out, leaving only bright coals. It seemed that darkness had fallen immediately. But my eyes, having adjusted, began to distinguish my equipment items scattered around the semi-basement: shell casings, a few rounds of ammunition, a disassembled first aid kit, dry rations, and a half-empty duffel bag, riddled with bullets and covered in my blood and dirt. Suddenly, straight from the bright coals, like thick oil smoke, a column of darkness rose and, splashing around the room for a couple of seconds, gathered into a beautiful, stately young woman. To my shame, at first I didn't even look at her face, because her clothes consisted of jewelry and ribbons of dark fabric, wrapping around her perfect body. With difficulty tearing my gaze away from her chest, I looked at her face and froze, realizing that in front of me was not a person. Well, a person cannot have such a perfect face with mesmerizing, absolutely black eyes, in which darkness swirled and flowed out, like fog. In addition, she had long (about a third of a meter) ears, slightly spread apart. Her white hair was gathered into a tight ponytail, fixed with a dark belt.

I heard stories about the last hallucinations before death. Some saw relatives (alive and dead), some demons or some creatures standing next to them or talking to them. But even knowing that I was on the edge , I did not want to admit to myself that the end was coming soon. I could have stayed in that wasteland and quickly died from blood loss. No - I crawled, tried to bandage or stitch up the wound. Then I lit a fire and turned on the emergency beacon ... But, obviously, all in vain ...

While I was busy with my introspection, a strange woman leaned over and said:

- My name is Ehayalin. I am the daughter of the goddess, the dark goddess Elos.

Well, it's all just as they said. However, I decided to talk - I'm dying anyway, and it's more fun this way.

"My name is Yuri Shev..." I coughed, and when I took a breath, I discovered that I could no longer speak.

"Yuri Shev... um, interesting name," she said. "Shev... in our country the sign "shev" means "death in the dark." She looked around. "How symbolic..."

I gathered the last of my strength and touched her cheek with my left hand. As I thought, her skin was elastic and silky. Unexpectedly, Ehayalin rubbed her cheek against my hand like a cat and, as it seemed to me, purred. Tearing herself away from my hand, she looked into my eyes and said:

- How interesting... Well, it's decided! - She poked me with her thin long finger with an unnaturally long (about fifteen to sixteen centimeters) claw and said: - Do you want to get another chance? My people need such... - she looked around expressively - stubborn people. So that you understand - I will transfer your soul and memory into a newborn representative of the Great House of my people. Questions? - She looked at me expectantly. Under her gaze, I felt my strength returning to me.

- What happened to the previous tenant?

"He was recalled." Her answer was too short. It seemed that not everything was so smooth here.

– Any specific tasks, responsibilities?

- As usual - live, develop for the glory of your home and people.

- And no missions? Maybe to find something or create something?

- Not yet. What kind of tasks can there be for a baby? And in thirty years, either, as you say, the donkey will die, or I will die, or everyone will forget about you. So do you agree or what?

- Yes, I agree. I just don't believe in your charity... Life has taught me...

- I'll just say that you have a special energy and... I liked you. Don't be afraid - it will even be fun! - Ehayalin suddenly laughed and clapped her hands loudly.

The next moment, the world around me was swallowed by darkness.