Полная версия
“Commissioner… Kuno… he attacked me… my gun…”
* * *
On top of the deafening roar of the rotor blades, a new sound cut in — screeching brakes. Several civilian cars rolled right up to the warehouse and parked wherever they pleased, clogging the access lane meant for emergency vehicles. Reporters spilled out of the brightly colored cars like a swarm.
“Just what we needed,” Engel snapped. “Who the hell let them through? We’ve got everything sealed off!”
A red sedan slid in beside my car and parked sloppy, too close — nearly kissing my rear bumper. The door flew open, and a petite young woman hopped out: brown eyes, dark-blond hair to her shoulders. Short skirt, white blouse — like the weather was just a rumor. Round glasses sat on her nose, more fashion than function. She swept her gaze over the chaos, locked onto me, and came straight over.
“Belinda Shafer. Gestalt,” she said before she even reached me, offering her hand.
Her face — and her name — clicked somewhere in my memory. Where had I seen her before…?
“Detective Klos Heinemann,” I nodded, taking her cold fingers. “Do you have authorization to — ”
“I do. Can we step aside? Just a couple questions.”
I gave her a brief, clipped rundown — only what I could say without putting the operation at risk. Belinda listened, but her attention kept drifting past my shoulder, into the thick of it. Her eyes flicked around like she was hunting something more important than my words.
From time to time, the commissioner glanced our way, dragging nervously on his cigarette. He knew someone was feeding the press far too much, and he didn’t like it.
The whole exchange took less than a minute. Belinda lost interest just as quickly and darted off toward her next target.
The sky, meanwhile, seemed to thicken — as if someone had shut off the lights. Thunder rolled, and a downpour came hard and sudden, tapping Morse code on the car roofs. The storm hit like the sky had decided to step in.
And then it happened: I felt an icy fear spread through my body.
Something was wrong. Something was going off-script.
* * *
Each step up the stairs drove a red-hot nail through Kuno’s shot leg. He dragged himself along, blood-smeared hand clamped on the shaky railing. The bomb techs were so absorbed in their work they never noticed the shadow slipping past.
One flight. That was all that separated him from payback — from the last thing Reinhold had left him in this life. The last thing keeping the void from swallowing him whole.
He stopped to suck in air, and the world snapped into a frightening clarity. Thick black “vines” of cable hung from the ceiling, crawled along the walls, dove into holes in the floor. On the landing sat a barrel — those same wires ran straight to it.
“What the hell is that bastard up to?” Kuno hissed through clenched teeth, his fingers biting into the railing.
The staircase felt endless. His head rang, dark spots swam in his vision, but vengeance kept him upright.
Finally, an ajar door. Through the crack — Reinhold’s rough, all-too-familiar voice.
Down below, on the first floor, something clattered — then, from outside, came shouting and applause, like this was some goddamn show.
Kuno snarled. Tightened his grip on the pistol. Yanked the door wide.
Right by the entrance stood police officers; a few steps beyond them — Reinhold, shielding himself behind a pregnant hostage.
The image wavered. Barely standing, Kuno raised the weapon. His hand shook, his head swayed slowly from side to side.
“Scu-u-um…” he rasped — and tears spilled down his blood-smeared face. The second time that night. Hot, uncontrollable, helpless.
The officers spun.
“No!” Their shouts fused into one horrible chord.
Reinhold’s face twisted into a grin, baring a row of yellow teeth.
A shot cracked.
The bullet missed him, only grazing his arm. And in that instant Kuno saw it: a thick black wire, like a snake, disappearing into Reinhold’s sleeve. Reinhold shouted something unintelligible and slammed his fist into his own chest with all his strength.
For a heartbeat, their eyes met.
Then the room went white.
And the lives of everyone inside turned to dust.
* * *
I threw my elbow up on instinct, shielding my face as bricks, glass, and a wall of dust blew out in every direction. The blast rolled for miles. The ground convulsed, and the shockwave slammed me onto the asphalt.
I got lucky: my conversation with Belinda Shafer had kept me farther from the epicenter. Chunks of the building rained down from the sky, along with burning pieces of the helicopter. One of them — a huge, jagged section of a rotor blade — came down on a camera operator, and he vanished under it in a blink.
People scattered, screaming. Someone wailed in pain. The downpour lashed with savage force, hissing on the hot wreckage and wrapping everything in thick steam that stank of burning and death.
Fire crews screamed in from the intersection, sirens wailing. Somewhere in that hell, a few figures in heat-resistant suits — pushing through the fear of a secondary detonation — charged into the smoldering ruins, dumping foam and water that instantly turned into filthy, boiling runoff.
Behind me, someone vomited hard.
The commissioner ran past me. His face was almost black with ash, his voice blown raw into a rasp:
“Klos… go home. Now. That’s an order!”
My ears were still ringing. And I would’ve given anything to be a thousand miles away from that place. But, as it turned out, not everyone shared that desire.
The most relentless reporters — like vultures, drunk on the scent of disaster — were already trying to swarm the police, me included. Shoving microphones at us like I was on a red carpet and they were immortal. Well — some people just don’t have a self-preservation instinct.
I didn’t say a word. I shoved him aside and pushed through to my car. It had survived, but it was coated in a thick layer of gray dust and fine glass grit.
Belinda Shafer still hadn’t left. In the corner of my eye, I saw her hurrying to her own car. We exchanged a brief look — empty, scorched.
I squeezed into the driver’s seat, threw it into reverse with a squeal of tires, barely missing her bumper by sheer luck, and drove home.
* * *
Hans was standing near one of the intersections, where the command post had been set up from the start of the hostage-rescue operation. His radio crackled to life and, through the static, the message came: “Werner’s daughter… condition stable.” Hans couldn’t stop himself — he smiled. He pulled his phone from his pocket and called. He wanted to be the one to tell his friend the news: the worst nightmare of the night hadn’t come true. His little princess had made it.
The guilt that had been sitting on his chest like a stone eased for a heartbeat, replaced by something fragile — hope. He stood in the pouring rain by the intersection and looked into the distance, toward where they’d taken Kuno only minutes before. He stood there with that kind, sad smile, like he was barely holding back tears.
And then an explosion went off behind him.
The dial tone kept sounding in his ear — steady, endless, indifferent to the fact that somewhere out there, at the epicenter, there was no one left to pick up.
II
Insomnia
Saturday, October 1A deep crisis reshaped the whole world. Technological progress — once boiling over with ideas — froze at roughly the level of the early 2020s. Wars that tore through Africa and the Middle East, the COVID-19 pandemic, a string of conflicts in Europe and Asia, a brazen assassination in the White House, and, finally, the fiery mushroom of a nuclear blast — all of it split humanity into three hostile blocs, each fighting for global dominance.
By 2047, under the pressure of insoluble geopolitical contradictions and blood-soaked conflicts, many countries of the former united Europe — as well as Canada, Mexico, Australia, and a number of others — sacrificed their independence, dissolving into a federal state under U.S. rule and declaring the New Law across their territories. The young formation began calling itself the Transatlantic Union of Nations (TAUN), emphasizing that it had expanded beyond the Western Hemisphere.
On the other side of that chessboard, the Eurasian Union was gaining strength — a powerful counterweight that included Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and North Korea, with support from India, Iran, China, and several other countries of the Global South.
A third force was forming at speed as well — the Arab Union, led by Saudi Arabia. Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan had already joined; another dozen were waiting in line.
There were also those who chose to remain independent. Some national leaders deliberately avoided backing either side, maintaining neutrality, but most were happy to sell their loyalty to whoever paid more.
For citizens of the TAUN, the world beyond its borders became a blind spot. The internet fell under harsh censorship, the borders were sealed tight, and high walls went up — topped with barbed wire, watched by military patrols. Relations between the poles of the world, as had happened more than once in history, slid into a cold war, occasionally spilling into a “hot phase.”
All the institutions of power in the former Europe were taken over by bureaucrats — a caste of officials appointed by the leaders of the Transatlantic Union of Nations. They proclaimed themselves “Oracles” — bearers of absolute truth. That truth, apparently, consisted of the rapid and merciless Americanization of European society.
For decades we’d been frightened with the specter of World War III — a nuclear apocalypse that felt inevitable. Tension rose day by day, yet the years kept passing, and the war came only to our streets: a battle between escalating crime and society itself.
The showy rhetoric of “Unification” — standardizing laws, institutions, cultural norms — required enormous funding. New names for agencies and titles, signage, forms, stamps… all of it demanded colossal cash injections. Year after year budget priorities were arranged so that the police got almost nothing. The result: mass layoffs in law enforcement, which triggered a criminal surge unlike anything we’d seen. That picture became typical across all the European — “states,” as they were now called. And yet whenever people mentioned it, they always added with bitter irony: “Well, not in Old America.”
The idea of “Unification,” once announced as a path toward prosperity, strength, and democracy, turned into a grim dystopia. Under the guise of a transition period, all power concentrated in the hands of the American elite, while the masses — divided and crushed — lost hope a little more every day.
Once, Mother Europe gave birth to America. Now the child had grown up, returned home, and fucked its stupid mother.
For several years now, a secret organization called the Justice Front had been trying to resist Europe’s criminal collapse. Some saw it as the last hope; to others it was just a myth invented by the desperate. No one knew where their headquarters were, how to join, or whether they existed at all. But the rumors kept smoldering like sparks in the dark, promising that someone, somewhere, was still fighting for justice.
Rosenberg became a vivid example of what the New Law did to Europe. Everything in the city accelerated to a near-unthinkable pace. What used to decay slowly now began coming apart in a hurry, while anything that had been limping along suddenly surged forward at an insane rate. Rosenberg even swallowed an entire new residential district with state-of-the-art infrastructure in the space of a couple of decades. And yet, at the same time, the city that had once been calm, safe, and breathtakingly beautiful was turning faceless — shedding its history, losing the architectural character that made it unique. It sold its soul to the neon devil.
The place we’re in now is called Rock-Port — also known as Old Rosenberg. Sounds like somewhere for a romantic stroll, right? Don’t kid yourself. In reality, it’s a dump. The largest district by area, it sits in a hollow on the right bank of the Elbe. Right now I’m in the industrial zone: grim factories, a forest of blackened stacks, warehouses, and the rusted frames of workshops — caked in old dust and webbing.
Closer to the bridge that would carry us out of this dead end to the left bank lay the residential strip. Slums. These overcrowded quarters, like anthills, were packed with aging apartment blocks affordable only to the poorest layers of society. A weak light burned in some windows, and behind faded curtains human silhouettes flickered. But even this place could pass for a little patch of paradise compared to the bleak refugee camp farther down the road. No one in their right mind would show their face there — by day, and certainly not at night.
Horrifying poverty, predictably, meant the highest crime rate in the city. Chaos and violence became routine. Narrow alleys, damp basements, abandoned buildings, rusted cars, leaky roofs… nowhere felt safe. Mountains of cases piled up at the precinct: murders, disappearances, assaults, rapes, robberies… The river took bodies every day, as if it were some deranged sacrificial rite.
Dirty air, dirty streets, dirty souls. It all pooled here. And yet this is also where the city began. It was founded in 1856 as a small workers’ settlement called Stein, spread out at the foot of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. Among the descendants of the locals, a sinister story still makes the rounds: one of the mines suddenly caved in, burying dozens of miners under the rubble. But the worst of it fell to the ones who lived… They lost their minds, unable to forget what they’d seen in that pitch-black dark.
Germany’s industrial peak changed everything. In the years leading up to the First World War, an industrial district began to take shape around Stein, and it was christened Rock-Port. First came a steel mill, then an arms factory. Progress couldn’t be stopped. The thud of hammers and the shriek of steam engines carried across the whole region. Soon a repair shipyard appeared on the Elbe; then came electrification. Chemical plants multiplied along the right bank, racing the spread of new housing. A key hub of military industry, the settlement kept expanding even during the war years — development pushed onto the left bank. And so, in 1917, with official approval, the magistrate decreed the founding of the city of Rosenberg — named for its distinctive bright-red sunsets, like the glow of factory furnaces.
I pressed the gas, eager to leave behind the ugly fence topped with rusted barbed wire — and the grim bulk of Eisengitter Prison crouched behind it. The road carried me toward the nearest bridge to the left bank, into West Rosenberg.
Through a veil of fog ahead, the ghostly outline of Horbindrow emerged — the thirty-story casino complex that had once passed for luxury. Even before the New Law, Siegfried Muller, the former burgomaster, had ordered it built on the riverfront: a desperate bid to revive the city through tax revenue and make Rock-Port look a little less like a dead end. It didn’t work. The casino changed hands more than once, then shut down for good, turning into a massive tombstone.
There was the bridge. It wasn’t long, but the view still caught in my throat: a majestic red arch crowned with a giant “R,” and a multi-level interchange spreading a spiderweb of roads toward every district of the left bank, glittering with millions of lights. Streetlamps poured a soft, yellowish glow over the wet asphalt. In the rearview mirror, the dangerous district fell away. Ahead — only the illusion of safety.
Off to the right, about thirty miles from Rosenberg, the stacks of a power plant belched smoke into the night. Nearby, hidden deep in the forest, lay one of the strangest places in our region: the small ghost town of Amurscheid, abandoned in 1943 for reasons no one has ever explained.
I crossed the bridge and rolled into Downtown — the most compact district in the city, the center of business life. Tall office towers stabbed into the clouds like syringes filled with poison. Branches of American corporations stood here alongside the stock exchange, the biggest banks, City Hall, police headquarters, the courthouse… You could almost believe order lived here. Almost. Downtown was safe in the same way it’s safe to keep cash in a safe with a glass door: visible, protected — still tempting. Cameras and patrols didn’t erase risk; they just forced criminals to get smarter. The city center owed its calm mostly to the contrast with places like Rock-Port. Everything’s relative.
I don’t know if it was always like this, but now a person’s worth is measured in money. We live in a society ruled not by people, but by cursed pieces of paper — soaked in the stink of sweat and greedy hands.
All subway lines converged in Downtown like blood vessels feeding a single heart. One glance at the map was enough to see how far the city had stretched along the river, especially on the left bank. Traffic jams were routine; the underground was a genuine lifeline. But it had picked up another reputation along the way: by day it was hunting ground for pickpockets, and by night it became a habitat for prostitutes and junkies.
Downtown bordered the three remaining left-bank districts: Karbon, Rainer Heights, and Donnertal. All of them were relatively small — and even together they covered less ground than Rock-Port.
My route cut through gray, unremarkable Rainer — the fastest way out to the suburbs.
Nearby, only a few blocks away, lay Karbon — Rock-Port’s little brother. Same wear in the brickwork, but without the smoking factories and industrial zones. Mostly old residential buildings here, largely apartment blocks inherited from the GDR.
And then Donnertal — or just Donner: a world of upscale high-rise apartments, modern townhouses, green parks, and wide, multi-lane roads. The kind of place where neon signs never really go dark — famous boutiques, giant shopping-and-entertainment centers, clubs, bars, restaurants. The district for the city’s richest. My girlfriend lived there — Alice Klein. Lis, to those who knew her.
Twenty-four. Slim, petite, with eyes the color of spring leaves and a voice you remembered from the first word. An architect by training and an artist by instinct — I used to joke she’d been born with a pencil in her hand, because she’d been drawing for as long as she could remember. She lived with her mother, who, like me, worked in the police. Alice’s parents split up before she was even one: her father had wanted a son, and he couldn’t live with the fact that a girl had been born instead.
We’d celebrated our second anniversary not long ago, and I loved her just as fiercely as I had at the beginning. She was smart, caring, kind — and beautiful. With her, I felt genuinely happy. I was grateful to fate for putting us on the same road.
Ahead, a tributary of the Elbe appeared, with an old stone bridge over it. Beyond the bridge, the road wound through thick forest and climbed a high hill. There, in the shade of the trees, sat the suburban settlement of Stern — where I lived. Alone.
My parents — Till Heinemann and Rebecca Heinemann — were murdered.
Till was taller than me, almost six-foot-three. You could feel his strength even in a handshake. He served in the police, and his partner — his best friend, too — was Engel Becker. Inseparable, like brothers.
Mom… Mom was my father’s opposite — fragile, elegant, a head shorter than him. Rebecca held a high position at an insurance company, but for some reason I never picture her in a business suit. I always see her in the light dresses she loved.
Ten years ago, when I was seventeen, life still felt carefree — full of hope. Then one Sunday changed everything. It was Unification Day. I was at the movies with my closest friends — Johan, Melanie, and Friedrich. I still remember it in detail: after the film we went bowling — Fritz threw strike after strike, and Johan managed to drop the ball on his own foot. Then, tired but happy, we split up after midnight and went home. The evening had been perfect.
At home, a different reality was waiting.
When I opened the door and stepped inside, Engel was standing in the entryway. Even now, it’s hard to think about without feeling something snag.
My parents had been heading to a restaurant that night. They’d already left, but my father got an urgent call — into Donner. He followed the order… and he didn’t come back.
You know what the worst part is? I didn’t know then — on the worst day of my life, walking out to meet my friends at the movies — that I was seeing my parents for the last time. I still try to remember their last words to me… and mine to them. I can’t. There’s a blank in my memory, as if someone tore a page clean out of the book.
Engel told me everything he knew — he’d been thrown into that meat grinder too. My father died a hero, stopping a monstrous terrorist attack aimed at supporters of the New Law.
After that nightmare, the only family I had left were my grandparents. In a hurry, they moved into the house. Cancer took my grandfather soon enough — fast and merciless. My grandmother held on by sheer will, slowly dissolving into dementia; she died on the eve of my eighteenth birthday. I inherited our house in Stern and large sums from my father’s accounts, but none of it could drown out the scream inside me: Why?
That’s how I ended up alone. From then on, every holiday that could have been filled with family warmth turned into a bleak reminder of loss. No one could truly understand me, share my joy, or stand with me when it mattered. No one loved me anymore simply for existing. And I never fooled myself into thinking anyone would be moved by my story — most people still had at least one parent.
In the end, I learned to rely on myself.
From the first days after they were gone, loneliness began erasing me from the world. And to feel alive, I had to flirt with death. That’s how I ended up at the police academy, though I’d never dreamed of that life. Engel kept an eye on me — he’d promised my father.
Years passed, but neither he, nor my friends, nor the women I dated — no one could pull me out of the black abyss I was falling into. That feeling — grief mixed with rage and emptiness — became my constant companion, and each year it only grew stronger.
And there was Stern: my home settlement, spread across high hills and wrapped in dense forest. I liked everything about it, but most of all the fresh pine air — nothing like Rosenberg’s choking smog. Stern was huge for a settlement — much bigger than, say, Karbon. Its history went back centuries; the first houses were built here long before Rosenberg was founded. Mostly two- and three-story cottages, but also imposing mansions, and in recent years tidy townhouses appeared more and more often. No surprise the locals were mostly well-off, working in City Hall, banks, insurance companies, private clinics, the police, and the power plant. Nearly all the local elite were old-stock Germans whose families had lived here for generations, not newly arrived Americans who preferred Donner.
The car came to a silent stop by the garage. I stepped out and froze for a moment, taking in my home. It stood alone at the forest’s edge. A vast lot, ringed by a five-foot hedge, drowned in greenery. The three-story house occupied only a quarter of the property. Behind it lay a small rose garden and an elegant gazebo — Mom’s pride and favorite place to rest. There was also a guesthouse, a utility shed, and an open-air pool.