"Do you hear that?"— Agnia nudges me. I open my eyes.
"What?"
"There's some kind of noise…"— she whispers.
Indeed, a sound is coming from the corridor. It doesn't sound like footsteps. A strange, quiet creaking. And also a rustling crunch, as if someone were slowly rolling a bicycle wheel over crumbs. Agnia hears it too. We both fall silent, waiting for someone to appear in the doorway. Well, there you have it… There's your squeaking and rubber wheels. A boy cautiously rolls into the room in a wheelchair. He looks around curiously at the scattered food scraps, then glances questioningly at us. You can tell he wants to ask something but hesitates.
"What are you doing here?"— I ask first.
"I live here."
"You're alone?"
The kid nods. He looks at us and the corpses again, warily.
"So… you killed them? Right?"
"I mostly did," Agnia replies, immediately adding, "But don't worry. We won't hurt you."
"I'm not afraid. I've seen you online…"
As if confirming his words, the boy pushes his wheelchair forward again and rolls closer. A pitiful sight. He's all dirty, with scraped knees and thin, gaunt features.
"And where is everyone? How did it happen that you're the only one left here?"— the girl asks with concern.
The boy sighs.
"Some of my friends from the orphanage were taken away. Others ran away on their own. And I… well, here I am."
"Alright… I pull a duffel bag out from under the dead soldier, pry the lid off a can of canned meat with the handle, and hand it to the boy along with a spoon.— Here. Eat something while you can… You probably haven't eaten anything here."
He starts digging in and tearing pieces of meat apart.
"I actually had some supplies… But everything ran out recently. About three days ago…"
"Come on, tell us what happened here…" Agnia persists, her curiosity unquenchable. I notice how she turns on her smartphone's recording function. Even now, she wants to capture content. She really has fully absorbed the "corporate culture." A media-sapient…
"What is there to tell? First, separatists marched into the city in a column…— The boy awkwardly pauses, looking attentively, suspiciously.— Your people, basically."
"Well, go ahead and say what you wanted to say," I urge him sternly, though these human names never bothered me.
"Being a separatist isn't shameful when you're breaking away from something bad… They might have told you all sorts of things, but we aren't doing anything wrong," Agnia gently explains. The boy nods understandingly again, stuffing his mouth with stew, continuing to eat even with his cheeks full.
"They turned out to be good people. They didn't touch anyone. They handed out humanitarian aid. I took two cans…"
"Well, you're a resourceful little bug," the girl laughs.
"Then they said we needed to leave because it would soon become dangerous… We started gathering our things. They loaded the youngest kids onto a bus. And another vehicle… The military provided it. They wanted to take me too. But I was slow to pack up… And besides, what difference does it make? Am I small or something? I'm with the older ones. And then they were supposed to come back for us. Nadezhda Nikolaevna stayed with us… Soon after, the shelling began, and we all went down to the basement… And the bus never came back. It was probably blown up… And other soldiers arrived…"
"These ones?" Agnia nods toward the helmet lying on the gnawed skull.
"Yeah… They started dragging us out of the basement by force. Nadezhda Nikolaevna tried to object, calling them fascists. They shot her. Two older boys tried to run away, and they shot them too… I didn't see right away whether they were dead or not. They grabbed the older girls and pulled them out too…"
"And what about you?"
"I got scared… I chickened out," the boy says shyly, looking down at the floor. "I crawled under a pipe. I'm skinny… I squeezed through the crack. They didn't even notice me in the dark… Those older boys dragged me into the basement by the hands. And I… like a rat…"
"You did the right thing… You did exactly the right thing," Agnia tries to encourage the boy, but he continues staring down, his lips trembling and tears glistening in his eyes.
"And then they threw everyone back into the basement… The dead ones. And the older boys… They shot them. In the back. And all the girls… Their clothes were torn… And they were all covered in blood…"
"Damn it, those bastards…"
Agnia puts down her smartphone, crawls closer to the child on her giant snake-like tail, and tightly hugs him with her human arms.
"Hey, it's okay… Everything's fine…"
"When everything above stopped, I decided to crawl out… I had to crawl right over their bodies… And then up the stairs… Where my wheelchair was left… I'd rather have crawled five more floors than over the dead ones… Then I heard voices… And a woman's voice… And I thought that was it…"
"Well, of course… Now everything… Everything will be alright," she continues soothingly, ruffling the boy's hair, which seems gray from cement dust. Of course, she's lying. What kind of "alright" could there possibly be? He's already unlucky enough in life, and now even more so… And how many others are like him here? Some, like his classmates, are already buried in basements and pits. Others are buried in forest belts, so deeply that they'll never be found again. Those who survived, as they say, might envy the dead. You can't save everyone… And you can't do anything anymore.
I take the mobile phone left by Agnia. I save the geolocation with the note "Orphanage basement." Let her send it to Kiryusha later—or whatever his name is. Our troops will enter, extract the bodies, and document the fact of a war crime. The holding company will be the first to report this in its broadcasts. Then journalists will arrive. Human rights commissioners will express concern. Politicians will make a series of loud statements. Social media will buzz. The spreading wave of information will bring monetization for both primary and secondary content. Well... That's all.
"Will you come with us?"—the girl suddenly suggests.—"We'll take you to a safe place."
"But where would I go? I'm disabled..."
"What does it matter! Look, I don't even have legs... And yet..."—Agnia pauses for a moment.—"Let me help you! Just don't be afraid."
I don't immediately understand what she has in mind. Climbing under my shirt, her hand slides along the boy's back. A barely noticeable shiver runs through his snake-like skin. Thin strands of rhizome begin to stir within him. Dropping like black droplets through the pores of the girl's palm, the biomass rushes toward the new, unknown organism. It screws itself into the skin with thin needles, squeezing through the tissues.
The boy screams in pain, but Agnia holds him in a death grip. Now they are practically one organism.
"Endure it. Endure it!"
The biomass extends along the spine. It penetrates the spinal cord. Finding the problem area, it initiates stem cell division. It forms new nerve tissue. It fuses axons together. A delicate operation. But still, it's faster than regenerating severed legs.
The girl releases the boy.
"That's it. Now get up and walk."
He looks surprised, still not understanding what has been done to him.
"Well! Try!"—Agnia insists.
Holding onto the armrests, the boy tries to lower his leg to the floor. It obeys. Of course it does... Placing his foot on the floor, he leans on it, lifts himself up, then transfers his second leg after the first... He stands.
Again, he clearly wants to say something, but only smiles. He can't believe his happiness. He looks at us as if we were some kind of magicians.
The girl also smiles. She is pleased with her work. Moving away a couple of meters, she gestures for the boy to approach her. He staggers. Takes several cautious steps. For the first time in many years.
And suddenly he falls. But it's not from lack of practice. His face contorts in pain. The boy clutches his stomach, literally folding in half, shaking violently. Seeing that the boy is gasping and choking, Agnia tries to lift him into her arms. But he is already vomiting black fluid. Blood-filled blisters swell on his thin arms and gaunt face. Dissolving skin bursts open and peels off in patches.
Clearly, the rhizome did not accept the new host. A reverse tissue transformation occurred. Then uncontrolled division and fermentation began. The tumor started eating first the boy, and then itself. The boy no longer moves or cries. Simply because he has nothing left to do. Literally within seconds, he is completely digested from the inside. All that remains of the little person are softened fragments of the skeleton and rags in a spreading dirty-blood puddle.
The girl stares in stunned silence at the gruesome scene. Her rhizome has already released the necessary hormones into the bloodstream, making it easier to accept what has happened. Nevertheless, her consciousness will still remember this forever. Even better than our cinematic "seraphim." What would he do if he were here now? A static wide shot. Dramatic silence. Then an artistic upward pan.