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They take him to a graveyard today.
For Adamska, these trips are part of a long-standing routine. Through graveyards, across vacant fields, into old, gaunt buildings. Quiet places. He goes for a walk, accompanied by the General, and he is asked the usual questions.
“Do you see anything?”
“Do you hear anything?”
A spy must tune their perception of surroundings the way a butcher must sharpen their blade. How he answers will prove his mettle, once he finally understands what precisely he has failed to identify after all this time.
Today, he tells him of the sound of birds, what trees they are in, their species, based on their song. The wind is high and howling, for barriers to its sound and strength are few here.
It is overcast, a grey day thick with clouds that house the sun’s warmth behind them. Flowers have been laid out two graves down, encased with frost, unusual for this time of year. He can barely make out the footprints, drowning in snow, but by their size it was a man, an adult, that-
“That’s enough.”
The walk resumes.
Today, a camp.
Deep in the farthest reaches of the Soviet Union, isolated by miles upon miles of little more than nothing, Adamska is brought to see, and to hear. Frozen men eye him with curiosity, confusion, and some unmentionable feeling that Adamska cannot place.
One watches him longer than the others, points, and begins to march through thick snow, shouting furiously to a guard of injustice, of cruelty. His final words before he is pushed, kicked, and beaten.
“Adamska, tell me what you see.”
A second guard joining, clobbering the man. His cries are wordless.
“Not him. Look around you. What else?”
He answers, but as always, the General scowls, curses, and drags him off to try again elsewhere. There is little warmth to be found in the walls of the camp, but at the very least, the wind and snow cannot make it inside.
He is taken to a dark room.
“Anything?”
Adamska looks around. Dark, windowless, but he can make out brown stains on the floor, blood, of course, he’s seen it countless times. An interrogation room, or a holding cell, perhaps. Yet another in a line of quiet places.
“I know full well what kind of room it is, boy. Is there anything else?”
Adamska walks in. Some stains are fresh, cold, recently used, that morning maybe-
“Waste of my goddamn time.” the General mumbles, before dragging him on to the next room, where regardless of how well Adamska interprets, he fails to impress, over and over.
The time comes to leave, and in doing so, they retrace their steps, through the front doors, out into the yard where men with vacant eyes looked on.
The guards are gone, but the man from before is not.
He pauses, and the General with him, as he looks over to the lump of snow that the corpse is becoming. It’s the middle of winter, anyone who had not been there an hour before wouldn’t know, but Adamska recognizes the shape at once.
“Boy.”
“That man.”
“Yes?” The General’s demeanor has changed as he realizes where Adamska has focused, and he bends down, an eagerness in his expectancy that is unfamiliar and emboldening.
“He shouted at the guards before, about me. They beat him to death for it.”
“They did,” the General confirms.
“I stand out. I’m the only child here. This is a place for criminals, and they perceived me to be one as well.”
“Most likely,” that look is fading from the General’s face, resolute once again. “But do you hear anything unusual? Do you see anything that you shouldn’t?”
“Do you, sir?”
The General glares, but even knowing the consequences, Adamska has limits. There are only so many times a child will follow orders before they begin to question.
“Do you see anything? Do you hear anything?”
The General’s hand finds his face, fingers digging into the hollow of his jaw.
“Don’t talk back again, understand? Bad enough I have to drag you around without you making a big joke of things-“
“-as the others do of you?”
Adamska doesn’t mind being thrown to the ground. It’s not the first time it has happened.
If he lay still here, he could watch the last of the dead man become entombed in the snow. If he stayed beyond that, they’d even share the fate.
But the world has other plans for Adamska.
Decades pass, but not all memories fade.
When Ocelot is invited to a hospital in Cyprus, it is to share in the observation of a “revolutionary” discovery.
“Pyrokinesis?”
“Yes, and it razed his entire village. Hundreds of lives, buildings, all gone overnight.”
“And that’s not all, sir. He appears to possess other psychic powers as well, mind reading, levitation.”
“Sounds like a load of hogwash to me.”
The researchers are not discouraged. “We’ve already documented countless performances of his abilities. Video evidence, but for you, so you can see for yourself it isn’t simply movie magic, a live demonstration.”
They arrive, and are squeezed into a small room where yet another researcher, a man much older than the others, watches the one-sided glass separating them from the “discovery.” In the white-paneled room is a small boy, strapped to a chair to be wheeled about without resistance. He is so utterly hideous that not even Ocelot can resist grimacing at the mangle of scars and stitches along his face, at healing burns that corroborate the story he’s been fed.
One of the researchers bends forward to the panel under the glass, pressing a button and speaking into a microphone.
“Begin the demonstration.”
“And pray it’s a good one.”
Ocelot turns to the older man, balding, cross, but with the upright posture of someone who has known a military career. His eyes are expectant.
But they are also eager.
Ocelot’s attention flickers back to the boy in the room, unprepared for the locking of eyes between them. At once he is hit with the sensation of the wind being knocked out of him, of an axe splitting his head open, of toes dipping into the icy top-layer of water before discovering the warmth below, and plunging down.
To that morning. To last week. To four years ago to 1970 1968 19644444 1950.
“Do you hear anything?”
A voice heard only seconds ago, now young, fresh, and familiar.
“What do you see? A serious answer, boy.”
The same man who sits at his side, younger by decades.
Adamska is only six years old-
The world plunges deeper. Ocelot’s vision blurs-
The boy is only six years old. He sees a violent fist before he feels it crunching, caving in his nose. He smells foul breath, bitter with alcohol, blowing hotly against his face before-
He hears shouting, whispering. Insults and threats.
“-murdered her, and now I’m stuck with you.”
Lunatic.
Bastard.
Hell child.
“Sir!”
Adamska is not six years old. And he never had a father to beat him.
The researchers crowd him even as they try to make space – damn the size of these observation rooms – each standing over him and watching with a mix of concern, fear, interest. Only one has not gotten out of his chair, yet he towers over Ocelot as he questions him.
“Did he do something to you?”
Ocelot pushes an offered hand out of his way and stands himself up, trying to regain dignity as the boy appears in his sight again, boring into him through glass he shouldn’t be able to see through.
“Did you see anything? Did he communicate with you?”
I didn’t know there were others like me
Ocelot refuses to entertain the men in the room, ignores all of their voices and panic, even as they apologize and bark orders. He straightens himself up, never breaking eye contact with the boy.
Do you know a way out
I want to burn it down
“What is this? Some kind of mumbo-jumbo?” The researchers finally cease their yammering, falling in line as Ocelot speaks. He glares them down, making sure each has an opportunity to be cowed by his presence so he can focus. “Did you really bring me all the way out here just for some smoke and mirrors show?”
“It- it’s no trick, sir. How else could you explain-“
He turns his attention back to the boy.
There is a universal code for the locks in this building
“I’ve seen enough. Don’t waste any more of my time with this hogwash.”
Finally, he finds the man in the corner. He is so familiar now, the barely their creases in his forehead when he was young have grown into thick wrinkles. Ocelot hopes he has no plains of leaving the hospital any time soon.
There is much to be said, but there is little reason to stay behind and say it. He takes one last look at their “discovery” before making his exit.
12-1-5-21-9-15
Don’t trap yourself in your own fire
I won't