And Simurgh, the Bird King, the benevolent soul,

felt pity for the gray-haired child…

Ferdowsi, Shaknameh

We’re going to save the world today. By “we” I mean Lenka, Zhorik, Vas-Vas (his real name is Alpamys, but “Vas-Vas” suits him better), and me, Dum-Dum. My real name is Sergey. Dum-Dum is my nickname. I like guns. I don’t like to kill, I just like guns. There are these kinds of bullets—they are called dum-dums. That’s where my nickname comes from.

We are going to break into a top-secret Institute. We need to get this one disk. They’ve already erased all the information on the hard drive. They’re afraid someone could steal it. This makes it easier for us. The disk contains something very dangerous. We’re lucky there is only one disk, and the guy who came up with the dangerous thing died from old age last night, or that’s what we’ve been told. We’ve been watching the Institute for a week now. We could’ve used a couple more days, but tomorrow the disk will be transported to another facility, far away. So now we have to hurry. That’s not good; rushing is never good. If you are in a hurry, something is bound to go sideways. I watch Vas-Vas munch on his hotdog. When he swallows the last bite, his Adam’s apple twitches like a frog. It looks very funny.

“Let’s go,” Vas-Vas says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

The Institute is located in a perfectly ordinary six-floor building. It looks like a hostel, but the sign is weird. The weird part is that when I look at this sign, I understand every word written on it. And when I look away, I don’t remember anything. I only remember the number.

Number 23.

The Institute is so secret that there is no security at the entrance. Just one guy at the reception desk. It’s lunchtime, tons of people going in and out, and we blend into the crowd. Walking by the reception guy, Vas-Vas nods to him solemnly, as if they have known each other for ages. Vas-Vas glances at his watch, pretending to be in a rush. Vas-Vas is smart; he’s got an approach. You look at your watch and frown, and the receptionist thinks you belong. That you are late for a directors’ meeting, or something like that. Vas-Vas is the oldest, he is thirty-seven. That’s why he takes the lead, although we don’t really have a leader. Everyone knows their task. Everyone has expertise. And together we’re a team, like the fingers of one hand—each one is on its own, but squeeze them together, and you get a fist. You can do a lot of damage with a fist, you know.

We are to go up the stairs and take a right. Vas-Vas had explained everything earlier. None of us have ever been here, and neither has Vas-Vas, but he’s The Seer. He can see through the walls. Not always, though. He can’t do it on Sundays. And Wednesdays from ten to twelve are no good either.

Staircase. A long corridor with several doors. We have to walk fast, but not run. We must avoid attracting attention. There will be a steel door at the end of the corridor. It’s locked. Zhorik will break it open. He can break anything: a door or a password—it doesn’t matter what it is. Because Zhorik is The Hacker. He owns a small shiny lockpick. One click, and the door opens. We enter a building crew locker room. Why they would need a locker room for a building crew in a classified Institute, I have no idea. That’s probably why it’s locked, and there are no people, only lockers. We’re going to wait here. I don’t like waiting, but there is no choice. You can only get into the Institute at lunchtime. And you can only get to the underground floors in the evening, when the security shift changes. The underground floors have a lot of security staff. There is only one receptionist at the entrance—that’s supposed to trick everyone. I suspect not everyone who works at the Institute actually knows what they do here. We wouldn’t have known either. Simurgh told us; Simurgh gives us assignments. I can see him inside my head and can talk to him.

I am The Messenger.

I listen to Simurgh and explain the assignment to everyone else. We are off to save the world. We like saving the world. Because we are Rescue Rangers. “Chip and Dale to the rescue,” Lenka says, laughing. There are four of us. Vas-Vas is obviously Monty. He’s big and fat, and is constantly munching on sandwiches. Lenka is Gadget, that’s a no-brainer. And Zhorik and I are Chip and Dale. I just don’t know which one is which. I get the cartoon characters confused, too.

Lenka is the youngest of us. She’s twenty-three. She likes to specify that she is “twenty-three-and-a-half.” She looks eighteen, though. Or even fifteen if she wants to. Zhorik is a quarter of a century old. I look down on him a little, because I am thirty-one. Zhorik is engaged to Lenka. They have been engaged for a while, a couple years at least. I don’t know why they wouldn’t just get married already. I like Lenka, too. I kissed her before. Three times. I thought I’d feel guilty, but I didn’t. Not at all. I liked it. Zhorik knows, but he’s not angry. He likes other girls, too. Sometimes.

We have to wait for a long time. I sit on a bench, lean against a steel locker, and doze off.

The dragon is stuck. The cave is narrow, and he cannot get through. One head on a long neck sticks out of the passage. Smoke pours out of its maw, and its eyes glow crimson in the light of the lantern. It is so beautiful. ‘Hurry up!’ Lenka yells. ‘We need to make the passage bigger!” She’s right: only the dragon can kill the Black Oscillator. I hear his steps downstairs; he is getting closer. There should be a closet with old mining equipment somewhere here. Simurgh told us when he gave us the assignment. Here it is! Vas-Vas and Zhorik were following the dragon, and now they can’t reach us. Lenka and I find two pickaxes and slam them into the wall. Lenka only looks delicate. If she wants to, she can be as strong as any guy. The stone is soft, and its layers break off easily. The passage widens before our eyes. ‘Hurry up!’ the dragon says, snorting smoke. Sweat pours off our bodies, stone dust sets in our throats, and our eyes water. “Ah!” I feel as if a thousand fish hooks dig into my ass. I scream and drop the pickaxe. It’s a cave rat, this one just a pup. A huge piece of a wall collapses. As I kick the cave rat pup aside, the dragon rushes forward into the heart of a gigantic hall that resembles a monster’s maw with stalactites for fangs. The rat pup is shrieking in the corner. It sounds offended. Vas-Vas and Zhorik run out of the passage. Their flashlights point at a large black figure appearing from the dark. I knock Lenka off her feet, collapse on top of her, and close my…

“It’s time.”

I always wake up in an instant. Zhorik is still rubbing his eyes, and I am already checking our equipment. Clothes first. Peel the sticker and insignia off the T-shirt. Pull a blue jacket from my bag and put it on. The jacket looks like an electrician’s uniform. Vas-Vas saw their uniforms. Weapons are next. Our guns are special. Even if the police stop us, nothing will happen to us. First of all, Vas-Vas can make it so that no one sees the guns. It’s hypnosis. I can do it, too, but it doesn’t always work. Plus, our guns look like children’s toys. They are plastic. If you pull the trigger, a stream of water shoots out. It’s like something you buy as a gift for a child. But if you know where the clamp is… and if you remove the upper plate with the water canister…

It’s a cool weapon. I like it.

“One minute to go.”

Vas-Vas stares at his watch. His lips move soundlessly. He must be counting.

“Let’s go.”

We take a different staircase down. One flight of stairs, two, three. There is an electric panel on the wall. Zhorik takes off its cover and pulls out a few wires. The lights go off. A couple of minutes go by. A metal door opens with a clinging sound, we hear some voices. “The fuse has blown again, I’ll go get the electrician…” As it moves further away, the voice swears. It’s a really bad word. I know what it means, but I can’t even repeat it.

“Turn on your flashlights,” Vas-Vas whispers in the dark. Three rays of light tear at the darkness, and the darkness runs away, down the stairs… that’s where we need to be. Lenka’s flashlight is still off. She is walking behind me, breathing heavily. Lenka always breathes through her mouth when she’s angry or tense.

Someone’s heavy steps approach quickly.

“Here you are! That didn’t take long.”

“Not the first time, is it?” Vas-Vas says, shrugging.

The guard nods, leading us down the stairs. Vas-Vas addresses his question to the guard’s back:

“Where is the fuse?”

We find the fuse around the corner, in a switch-box. The room where the disk is kept is down the hall and to the left. The guard returns to his post by the entrance to the underground floor. The rest of the guards are handing off their shift a floor above. The lights are still on there, and they have no idea what’s going on. They are changing their clothes, putting their weapons into a special closet, and their boss signs in the journal. There are three people posted. Maybe four; Vas-Vas is not totally sure. If only we’d had a couple more days…

The emergency lights come on under the ceiling. They are crimson, like the eyes of a dragon. We have to hurry. It’s a good thing the switch-box is around the corner, and that the guard cannot see us from his post.

“Zhorik, you stay here. Pretend you’re fixing the fuse. Watch the hallway. If anyone asks, we left to change the blown light bulbs. Follow me.”

Vas-Vas is just saying this to look important. He likes to pretend he’s in charge. We know what to do without him.

We take out our guns and follow him.

The ceilings are low. Thick pipes snake along the perimeter. One feels hot to the touch. Is the heat on? Why would anyone need the heat in the summer? Over there, the water drips, just like in a regular basement. It looks nothing like a classified Institute. I imagined it totally differently. I thought there would be shelves full of lab equipment, different kinds of jars and vials, something bubbling, indicators blinking, people in white lab coats…

A turn. The door we are looking for is ajar. It has an electric lock, and we had turned off the electricity.

“Hey, where are you going? Stop!”

A guard pops up from the side door. Ugh, we shouldn’t have pulled out our guns. We didn’t think it through. We could have passed for electricians… I don’t like shooting. Well, I don’t like to kill. Shooting, I like. Turns out there is no need for shooting. Vas-Vas points his gun at the guard. The guard steps back to wherever he came from, locks the door, and shakes in fear. He is too scared to shoot or call for help. That’s good.

“Let’s go!” Vas-Vas commands.

Like we wouldn’t know what to do without him.

The safe is open. A fat bald guy in a business suit is leaning over the safe, with his back to us. His suit jacket is hiked up, and his round butt in tight pants is staring at us, asking to be kicked. I control my urge, but Lenka doesn’t. She kicks him. She’s quite a hooligan, our Lenka.

“Disk! Now!”

The guy turns white. Even the blinking emergency lights can’t hide the shiny drops of sweat on his forehead.

“I… I can’t!”

“You can. Just tell them you were held at gunpoint.”

‘“Help! Terrorists!” the guy shrieks, backing into the corner of the room. He looks a lot like a cave rat.

Lenka points her gun at him.

“Shut up! No one is going to hear you anyway. We locked the door. Give me the disk, or…”

“There! In the safe! Second shelf from the top…”

The bald guy is shaking. He’s afraid for his life. He has nothing to worry about, we are not murderers. But he doesn’t need to know that.

“Got it. Let’s go.”

“Hold on. We should tie him up and gag him. Just so he doesn’t activate the alarm before it’s too late.”

Ugh, I jinxed it.

The alarm howls, drowning us in noise. I take a quick look around, searching for an alarm unit I could smash, like in a computer game. There is no unit to be found, and it’s too late to tie and gag the bald guy.

“Let’s go, now!”

As soon as we step into the corridor, the lights come on. Shouting comes from the speakers: “Security! Break-in at the second underground level! Four armed terrorists in tech personnel uniforms! Orders to detain!”

“Follow me!”

I really hope Vas-Vas knows where he’s going. A turn. Then another. It’s a real labyrinth.

“Lenka, do you have the disk?”

“Yep.”

Vas-Vas growls in approval.

Sharp turns, metal doors, pipes, stacks of tin barrels and wooden crates marked “Classified.” A staircase! Looks like an emergency exit. The stairs are wet and slippery. I hope I don’t trip. First underground level. A deserted hall: layers of dust, piles of trash. Another staircase, a regular one, made of cement. Its rails are smooth, polished by many hands. The kind you can slide down. Except we need to go up, not down. Up there, toward the light, the sun, freedom! We are now running as fast as we can. I like adventures. But I don’t like being chased by a bunch of huge security guards. All armed and dressed in bullet-proof vests.

“Let’s go through the second floor windows. The first floor windows are barred.”

The most important thing is to get to the closest office or lab. Zhorik can break any door, it’s a piece of cake for him. Screams and sounds of running feet come from around the corner. We’re too late. Lenka makes the decision for all of us. Her on-the-spot striptease makes me blush — I fail to look away in time. Pieces of clothing flash in front of our eyes and then — a strict librarian is standing in front of us, dressed in a white blouse with a lace collar, an old-fashioned skirt, and glasses, her hair in a topknot. It’s a real blue stocking. I never imagined Lenka could look so old. Like a forty-year-old! Forty-and-a-half.

“Security! Over here! I saw them!”

She is so good at screaming. I feel like I am about to go deaf. She even makes her voice shake appropriately.

“They ran that way! Over there!”

We flatten our backs against the wall and stop breathing.

“Thanks!” the lead security officer barks at Lenka, stomping by. His team follows.

Nice work, Lenka. Her expertise is deflecting.  She’s The Deflector, and a really good one.

We hear the howling of police sirens outside.

“Nix the windows. Police just surrounded the building.”

“The sewers?”

“Good thinking, Dum-Dum. Let’s go.”

It’s nice to be praised by Vas-Vas. It’s not so much fun to use the sewage system. We’ve done it once before.

Even if you’re the one who made it up, traveling through the sewers is still not fun.

They caught up to us when Zhorik and Vas-Vas were breaking the drain grate. Lenka hesitated, so I had to shoot. Luckily, the guard had a bullet-proof vest. He simply fell down. They will take him to the hospital and make him well again.

“Let’s go!”

Dirty water splashes underfoot. It stinks in here.

“Take off your shoes. And your pants. We will need to get out.”

Our bare feet slosh in the dirty water. We hold our shoes and pants in our hands. Lenka took off her skirt; her white panties glow in the dark. I fight the urge to point my flashlight at her. The pipe widens. It’s no longer just a pipe: we see a brick wall, with signs of very old masonry. The corridor splits into three directions. Water reaches our knees. Vas-Vas shuts his eyes and stands still for a few seconds. We try not to interfere.

“Over there,” he says, waving to the right.

We walk for a long time. Cracked concrete replaces the bricks, rusty metal replaces the concrete, translucent plastic replaces the metal. It gets lighter. Chrome shut-off valves gleam in the light of our lanterns. There is no more rust, no more water stains on the walls. It doesn’t even smell that bad anymore. I see plastic lids, barrels full of bubbling multi-colored liquid. I’m sure that’s how it’s supposed to be. If we’re getting closer to salvation, things should be getting cleaner and lighter. That’s normal.

The last staircase.

We climb up. Vas-Vas positions himself against the manhole cover and pushes up. The cover shifts.

We’re lucky to find an empty public bathroom. That’s where we cleaned ourselves up. Washed off the makeup. I peeled off a fake beard, Vas-Vas — a fake mustache. Lenka tossed her wig into the trash. We are now unrecognizable. We even sprayed ourselves with cologne to mask the stink. We took the trolley and bought tickets like honest passengers, because the last thing we needed was to be fined. The trolley rode past the classified Institute. Sirens, flashing lights. Once again, I can’t read the name on the building. Only the number: 23. Police surround the area. None of them care about the slowly passing trolley and its gaping passengers. They’re too busy chasing invisible terrorists. Fool me once… fool me eight times!

“Dum-Dum, establish communication.”

“Hold on.”

I close my eyes. The answer arrives quickly. As usual, Simurgh is dressed in a suit and tie, his cheeks are smoothly shaven. His cheekbones are sharp enough to cut you. Sometimes I think it’s a mask, not his real face. I’ve never seen Simurgh in real life. Inside my head he can show himself any way he chooses. I wonder who he is. And what planet he’s from.

“Thank you,” Simurgh says.

“You saved the world once again,” Simurgh says.

“Come home, they are waiting for you,” Simurgh says,smiling.

I smile back.

Simurgh ended the session and got up from the sofa. He stepped to the window and crouched, bending his knees and spreading his arms in a slightly ridiculous pose. He closed his eyes. Allegedly, he learned this idiotic ritual from some Tibetan lama, a drunk and a saint. It was probably a lie. Anna Nikolayevna watched him, ashamed of her childish crush. It was by pure luck that she landed a residency with Simurgh, it was a gift of fate, something that the young “lady doctor” had yet to earn. This man was the stuff of legends and the butt of many jokes. He worked without a helmet. Novice psychopomps signed up for blitz-tests, hoping that the committee would allow them to establish contact without adapters, but very unlike Simurgh’s, they paid for the lack of helmets with excruciating headaches, and the committee signed one denial after another. And another thing about Simurgh—he had been Grandpa Mazay’s disciple.

His favorite pupil.

That very same Grandpa Mazay whose monument stood sentinel by the entrance to the orphanage. So named after the character from a beloved children’s poem, who had rescued a bunch of wild hares from drowning during a flood.

Anna Nikolayevna approached Simurgh from behind and lightly touched his temples. She did her best to keep the gesture professional, within the limits of a standard retrieval. As usual, she failed. And as usual, Simurgh remained benevolently indifferent, assisting her with locating the path.

“I am so tired, Anna dear,” he said happily. “So very tired.”

“You should take some time off, Dmitry Ilhanovich.”

She fought back the urge to gasp. The retrieval went smoothly enough, but the results! Base correction for six weeks?

“Absolutely, I will. I will, my dear. As soon as I get these hooligans to the finish line, I will leave for Crimea. I won’t make any arrangements. I’ll just show up there in the middle of the tourist season, rent a hut in Sudak and will do all sorts of stupid things. I will get a terrible sunburn and smear yogurt all over my body to cool off my skin. I will climb the Genoese Fortress, visit Alchak Mountain…”

“You are lying. You will never go anywhere.”

“Anna, dear, be nice to me! Place the tips of your fingers right here, in the indentations, it’ll make it more comfortable. And please feel free to breathe at the back of my neck. At my ripe old age, that is one of the very few little joys still available to an old misanthrope such as myself.”

At his age… Anna Nikolayevna took a step back, struggling to believe the results. Not a single murder at month two of correction. Not a single one. And no one wounded, either.

“You noticed it, didn’t you? Ah, these hooligans, these absolute beauties… Do you remember the first three sessions?”

Did she remember those…? She remembered the retrieval making her sick. She knew how they saved the world, these wretched, angry children; she knew all about it from textbooks, from lectures, from lab projects. And yet, when the patients are chasing each other and laughing underneath your window and later, during the session, it’s all blood, blood and death… Avenging evil is a damning, unconditional reflex. Anna Nikolayevna hated the full description of the place: “Boarding school for underage victims of violence.” She liked Grandpa Mazay’s  description better: “A slice of heaven for our little martyrs.”

She liked Simurgh.

“You should take some time off,” she said again. “You are tired. I will get your hooligans to the finish line if you allow me. We are very close. I still don’t understand how you manage all this. This intensity of contact of yours… Did you learn it from Mazay himself? I mean, from Academic Rechitsky?”

Simurgh straightened up and stretched, cracking a couple of joints.

“Learned it? Anna dear, I was treated by Grandpa Mazay. For about a year. Back then I was… umm, I was young. Very young. Dimka Simurgh, a lost cause. My world was saved by so much blood, by such devastating revenge for everyone and everything… Compared to me, these hooligans are pure angels. Except maybe Lenka. I had to push a bit harder with her. I find it difficult to deal with women. To this day it’s difficult for me, my dear.”

Anna Nikolayevna had no idea what he meant.

A furry nocturnal butterfly flew in from the window and began spinning beneath the lamp.

“Time to get up!”

I don’t want to wake up yet. My eyes refuse to open. Why is that there I wake up immediately, and here—not so much? How come there I am an adult, and here… But it’s all right, I will grow up here, too. And then…

A month ago I knew exactly what would happen then. I knew it so well that hatred bound my guts together into a knot. And now I know it differently.

“Get up, Sergey. You’re going to miss breakfast.”

I make my way to the bathroom. As usual, the water is too cold and too wet. Oh well. It’s not that bad here. I’m just sleepy. If only they didn’t make me get up so early. And if only they didn’t make me eat oatmeal for breakfast! And let me use the computer more often. I don’t care about the shots. Shots don’t bother me. Especially since they canceled the shots last week. Lenka is the only one still getting shots and pills. One yellow pill, once every three days, before bedtime.

We don’t have school right now because it’s summer. After breakfast we’re going to build a fortress. And after lunch we’ll storm it. We have books here, at the library. Turns out reading books can be more fun than playing computer games. With computers, everything is drawn for you. And with books, you can read and then you draw your own stuff. You can make things up. But not like the stuff that Lenka makes up. Lenka can’t make good stuff up. She doesn’t read enough books.

But saving the world is the best thing ever!

We’re a good team. We work well together. Plus, we’re lucky; Simurgh said so. He said, “You guys are so very lucky!” I remember all our assignments. There you forget nearly everything, and here you remember all of it. The most important thing is not to tell any adults about Simurgh and his assignments. Not even Anna, even though I always want to tell her everything. She’s nice. But she’s stupid, like all the other adults. She’ll think we’re crazy. To be honest, I thought so myself in the beginning. I got scared. But then I talked to Zhorik about it, and Vas-Vas, and Lenka. Tell me—is it possible for four people to lose their marbles in the exact same way? That means we’re not crazy. But Simurgh transports us somewhere while we sleep, and there we save the world for real. You may think it’s nuts, but it’s for real. And we’re not simply seeing things. It’s because we’re a good team. We are not psychos. We are rescue rangers.

When I was coming out of the bathroom—the boys’ one, obviously—Lenka came out of the girls’ bathroom. She winked at me, and I winked at her. She and I kissed again yesterday. We crawled into the bushes and sat there, looking at each other. Both of us smiling ear to ear. Zhorik knows, but he’s not mad. He kissed Nadya and Vika. And Lenka is not a jealous type. I should teach her to read more books.

After breakfast we’ll build the fortress. Right, I already told you about it. Do you want to come with us? After lunch I will storm the fortress for a bit, and after dinner I will read my book. And after that it’ll be bedtime. We are going to sleep, and then Simurgh will come. He’ll give us a new assignment. And we will save the world once again. But not the same one as the last time. A different world. We saved the one from before, and everything will be good there. Sometimes I want to go back to the world I’ve already been to. Forever? No, I don’t want to go there forever. I like it better here. Simurgh promised that every now and then we’d have a break, “a vacation.” Then we can go anywhere we want. That cave dragon promised to give me a ride, by the way. As soon as Simurgh gives us a break, I am going to visit the dragon. He promised, so he’ll have to give me a ride. The dragon is nice. Kind. Simurgh is kind, too. If he was mean, would he send us to save the world? Yeah, I don’t think so either. And also he tells us not to worry. He says, you didn’t kill anyone. Even when you shot at people and hit them. Even the wounded ones got better. That’s what he used to say. And now he doesn’t say anything. There is no need to say it. Just think, could a human being like that be mean? That’s what I am saying: no way he could. Even if he’s not really human.

It’s time for breakfast. I think I’ll eat my oatmeal after all. It’s much harder to save the world on an empty stomach.