It had been raining for a month. The sun came out only during last two days - a gloomy crimson disc in the misty, dully white sky. Like a hypertrophied moon.

But the man who ran sliding in liquid dirt didn't know such long words.

...Water splashed from under the boots. Crushed marble creaked: too late, too late, too... His heart pulsed in the throat painfully; cold sun hung above the quarry, the rock stained with blotches of lichens... Rock. Solid. Thoughts wavered.

At this moment music rose. A woman sang - her voice echoed through the canyons; the hit of the season, a musical from the Earth, famous though the entire Galactic Federation, a strange story in a strange language...

The sweater, rough, clung to his back. His lungs seemed to be bursting in his chest. The man ran, gasping - and knew he would not get in time. When they started the music, it meant there was no time. When they started the music...

...He saw the truck first; deep gauges left by the wheels in the dirt. The men lingered at the truck - checked the rifles. They didn't aim yet - just tested; five men dressed in grey uniform of Special Force, with AC-3 in their hands. AC-3 were short, snubbed, five-chambered guns that could piece armor.

The sixth man was at the wall - with his hands cuffed. Above his head, on the verge of the steep wall, grass bent under the wind soundlessly; behind his back the marble, chipped with bullets, glittered in the sun. His wrists and ankles were chained... his purple sweater ripped open and turned into a jacket. Black elastic of his pants, cut with a knife right down from the zipper, revealed obscenely exactly what should have been covered.

What should have been covered looked shitty - as well as the rest of him.

...It was the sixth man who looked first. THEY hear better. Their reaction is better, too. The man's hair fluttered in the wind - a mass of living gold, with glimmering sparkles of the sun in it. The hair looked more alive than the face - pale, nearly bluish - like someone's dying of blood loss. The lips were cracked and split; a hideous purple-black bruise around the right eye... and through the tangled strands - greenish eyes of a wild cat.

Then the others heard as well. And one of them - elderly, unshaven - even raised his hand saluting.

...There was a thin ringing noise in his ears - louder than the music. Blood pulsed. Marble creaked under his feet. He saw bewildered faces - honest faces of the soldiers of revolution who were going to carry out their duty.

What are you going to do... WHAT?

And another face - the face he didn't want to look at.

"Wait," he choked out. "Citizens. This one is mine. I want to see."

"Yes, citizen," a man with moustaches and a pearl ring - the commander? - nodded.

The wind blew - yanked hair, yanked clothes, knocked at the iron walls of the truck. The truck was called a "corpse carrier"; they took the condemned to death to the place of execution in such trucks. The music thundered; suddenly it seemed the woman was about to cry. About to beg. To plead...

Grass swayed; stains of light and shadow kept dancing. The rifles turned their muzzles, finding the target. The target pushed away from the rock - trying to stand upright. Standing was nearly impossible.

Stop them, the one who stood and watched thought feverishly - trying to swallow with parched mouth. Execution... I'm their boss, motherfuckers, I can stop... Yes, later I'll be in his place but now... take him to the car and go, fuck...

He couldn't. His dream was coming true in front of his eyes. How many times, clenching his teeth, he had repeated to himself, like a prayer: 'THEY must not live. THEY must not...'

Here you are.

Me. You. Us. Them... Riki's hair was dark. And his eyes, shit... they were like... like bitter chocolate. They killed Riki.

He knew he was the one who killed Riki. That's why he was ready to die to prevent it from happening ever again. To anyone.

And for it THEY had to disappear. Fuckin' dolls of the fuckin' computer...

Me. You.

...He leapt when the raised hand of the moustached man was still falling - fractions of second before the shots hit, silenced by the guitar accords. He didn't betray his revolution; AC-3 could pierce concrete - what was a human body to them? A body of someone who suddenly decided to shield another man with himself...

They'll both die. That's okay.

It seemed to him a hand caught his heart - squeezed all the blood from it at once. He didn't know he was falling - thrown back against the wall. His head hit the stone; there was taste of blood in his mouth... his mouth was full of blood, he choked, blood got in his nose... He knew they ran towards him - stunned, shocked, his comrades, his brothers... he didn't look at them.

He turned his head trying to see the one whom he, falling, knocked off his feet - the one who was also dying at this moment, had to be dying.

He didn't have time to see a smile frozen - forever - on the other's bloodied lips.

1. Sentence.

The city was burning. The city was clouded in smoke - and in the mornings, when the smoke drifted down with the mist, you couldn't see your own hand. It rained - and the rain couldn't extinguish the fire. It burned everywhere, the entire continent seemed to be burning, and the smell of smoke became habitual. They advised on the radio: cover open windows with wet sheets, sleep with a wet towel on your face... Asthmatics and heart cases died in numbers; but who counted casualties that autumn?

...On October 1, at thirteen fifteen the temperature reached its record point - thirty-one comma four degrees above zero; at seventeen it suddenly fell to minus twenty-one and seven. People cursed and thrashed shops, barren a long time ago - the ones that had stored warm clothes and the ones that had stored booze. Wrapped in rags, shivering, people who didn't know each other hugged in the street trying to get warm; they danced, hopped, shifted from one foot to the other. Ice broke under the heels. Teeth chattered.

Loud speakers came to life at half past six: wheezed, coughed and then in a well-modulated voice informed that a terrorist attack had occurred at the climate-control station of the Central Plain.

"Blondies and their accomplices, in their hatred to the people's government, blew up a vacuum bomb in the heart of our continent..."

The same night electricity was finally turned off completely in residential neighborhoods - "private sector".

People's government couldn't make its capital warm. Rare paper books and houseplants smoked, burning in tubs and bowls. WHAT could be used for heating in a modern megalopolis, on a planet that didn't have its own forests - and, consequently, cellulose? In the world of plastic and chemical fibers that always tried to be made non-wettable and inflammable - not to mention that they emitted toxic fumes when burning...

The temperature leapt - within minutes fell from heat to frost and rose again; it was recommended to leave home carrying a set of warm clothes. In the streets people suffered heart attacks; in the houses corpses of those frozen to death decayed slowly. Marauders ransacked houses. Sometimes they were caught - and then their way was out of the city, to the famous Pink Caves.

They all met there - politics, criminals and blondies who didn't manage to leave the planet in time. Here, in the abandoned quarries, the walls were poked with bullets - glimmered with freshly broken crystals of pinkish, divinely beautiful marble. Sand for covering the mines full of corpses was brought from a sandpit - but there was not enough sand and another smell mixed with the smell of smoke.

But "a revolution that cannot defend itself is doomed."

They met on the road; in the morning.

The security chief department was going back from a highly important night meeting. The road noiselessly rolled under the wheels of the luxurious car; the driver hummed together with the song that sounded over the city. The hit of the season got under the nerves of the security chief, who suffered with hangover. Fuck them, motherfuckers, he thought sullenly - through nausea and headache. Don't they have another CD or what...

The road ahead ascended steeply - uphill; wet asphalt shone under the sun and seemed to disappear in the sky up there. The road to the sky. There, behind the hill, were the Pink Caves, turned into a place of mass executions by the new government.

* * *

...They met as they could have met a year ago - before the revolution, before everything - only just the other way round.

The condemned to death was in the "corpse carrier", along with two dozens of others. The security chief slid his eyes indifferently against a grey wall of corrugated iron that suddenly appeared on his right; his car was overtaking the truck. The security chief pushed a strand of hair from his eyes; his gaze caught one of the faces in the truck - eyes to eyes. And yet he didn't recall immediately where he had seen this face.

A woman's voice soared over the city - and a man's one answered it; the music broke down in waves, inviting to dance with your eyes closed. This music would fit for a wedding... In the past for this purpose they had left car engines working idle. Since then the engines became soundless but shots continued to sound. At the Pink Caves, on the pillars, there were loud speakers and the volume was loud enough for the whole area. It was not good to frighten local people; they had enough strong impressions as it was...

But the security chief didn't know about car engines. He hadn't attended school.

The wind smelling with smoke blew in his face. The condemned also looked at him - and also recognized, obviously, but his pale face stayed expressionless; a cold mask. A man might die of typhus but would never think a typhus louse equal to himself.

THEY always look like this. Like you're a louse. Even when dying.

The security chief called for the driver - and covered his mouth in a new surge of hangover sickness; the car overtook and u-turned across the road - stopped, blocking the way to the truck.

"That one, citizens," the security chief commanded the guards who saluted him. "The one in the corner... The blo-onde one," he said with hatred. "Bring him here. To my car."

He watched; the elbow of his prosthetic arm lay against the open window. The condemned was dragged down; his wrists and ankles were cuffed - the cuffs ironically named "caress"... that's why you could use open trucks for "corpse carriers" - and escapes were unheard of.

At his time the security chief had got to know how "caress" felt. Unimpressive steel things - two bracelets, just a bit more massive than usual, a chain... Originally they were intended for especially strong and especially wild criminals. Anti-gravitation vice versa - as soon as a guard pushed a button on his remote, the cuffs created a directional gravitation field up to seven g. A man just fell down - and lay, gasping for air, crushed with his own weight.

But the security chief didn't know all those complicated terms. He simply knew that you couldn't run in "caress". Even the late Jupiter hadn't created such organisms.

He had to get out of the car and sit in the front seat; the condemned was in the back, between two guards; one of them held the remote for "caress". "Caress" was working - not full power but enough for the blondie to barely walk. Clenching his teeth, Guy, the chief of security department of Amoi people's government, thought evilly: now you won't have a run, bitch. Won't ever have a run any more...

He didn't know himself why he'd done it. There was nothing he wanted to find out from this... this...

Or did he want?..

...The car started.

2. Criminal.

Sliding glass doors; on one side there was a sheet of paper attached with blue tape. Printed letters in a red marker: "Open, only right door!!! Left door, shut it, yourself, motherfuckers!!!"

Guy wrote the notice personally. The doors had once worked on photo-elements but now they had to be opened by hand - and the right one, when opened, returned to its place but the left one stuck. And the draft was cold.

It was that very hall; where only the highest of the blondies had been allowed. Steel panels on the walls were turned inside out, bent; under the panels - broken microcircuits, torn wires - Jupiter's brain. Almost a year ago - the day was made a national holiday now - a crowd of rebels had broken in here. For Guy, for those like him, that day became a beginning of new life... didn't it?

...Jupiter-hologram had appeared here. Now instead of the pedestal of blue metal there was a coffee machine brought from a diesel station. The slot for the coins was covered with the same blue tape. The machine worked for free. But from a long menu there was only instant coffee - federal humanitarian aid - as well as egg powder, powdered milk and other concentrates.

Coffee was extremely shitty.

...The monitor flashed blue; black letters on white. "Raoul Am, blondie, chief of the Public Health Sector..." This doll? PHS? "Education... biochemical faculty... supervised the programs on so-called 'correction of consciousness'... personally involved..." And below - there: "...personal friend of Iason Mink..."

A fat cockroach crawled across the monitor.

...A palm touched Guy's cheek - moist and cold. He turned back.

The eyes were big and round, widely open as if in perpetual surprise - brownish, translucent, like swamp water on a sunny day. Thread-like thin eye-brows; a narrow pale hand in a wide fur sleeve - chipped white nail polish and divine dark-red fur, exorbitantly priced on the black market. Moving lips - dark, coated with lipstick...

"Guy. Let's go home? Please? You need to sleep. Look at yourself, you look like I don't know what you look like..."

Her name was Leeta. And she wasn't so young - twenty-eight or thirty. She wore stiletto-heeled boots, used bright make-up and couldn't cook. And, despite the color of her eyes and a mop of dark hair, she didn't look like Riki at all.

They had been living together for almost seven months - since March.

Guy didn't know if she was pretty. How could he know what a pretty woman had to look like? A skinny narrow-shouldered figure with breasts and strangely, to his mind, wide hips didn't cause him any desire. Yet - she was a woman. A rarity. Prestigious. He was not a nothing any more, he was - an authority. One of. For fun, Guy thought and even learned to give her a hand helping to get out of the car.

"Leave," he said hoarsely. (Caught a cold, fuck it, or something? It's chilly, fuck...) "I need to work. You... you go."

How could he sleep - the whole day, working, furiously going through papers and files, he had been waiting for this hour. For the hour when he, Guy, a mongrel from Ceres, would order to bring a personal friend of Iason Mink, in chains, to his private office. A creature from the times when blondies had been unreachable, and he, Guy, was nothing - and a motherfucker called Iason had broken his life, just like that.

And now he could do ANYTHING to this fucker. A night before execution. Wasn't it fair?

...His lover left - glancing back in distress. Her heels clattered and the sound echoed. They lived right here, in Eos - two streets away - in former personal apartments of some blondie - Guy didn't know exactly whose. They had been living there for half a year - and at first Leeta, excited, touched and adored everything - furniture, high ceilings, strange geometric ornaments on the walls... Now they both cursed the size - the heaters were not powerful enough to warm it up.

...Below, the huge city was freezing in the darkness. There was no electricity at all.

* * *

"Hello, blondie," Guy said.

He stepped closer, leaned to the interrogation chair. In white electric light Raoul Am's eyes seemed colorless - and glassy-transparent. His face expressed nothing.

The interrogation chair was fixed to the floor with vacuum suckers - one could overturn it only using a hoisting crane. In the past it was a chair for dental patients in a mental hospital. Psychos didn't always understand the necessity to fix their teeth - and on the elbow rests of the chair there were fastenings for hands as well as for feet on the footboard. And on the back of the seat there was a belt for the head. Guy also liked a lamp that you could turn at the face of the interrogated.

"So, blondie," he said, smiling fiercely. "Huh?"

"I don't want to talk to you, mongrel."

Guy choked on a breath. This doll with golden tresses and a pretty face of a pet - straight nose, curved lips, eyelashes... Eyelashes were black. Huge, feathery... Eyebrows were lighter than eyelashes but darker than hair...

He hit in the face with the plastic fist - in the eye. The prosthetic was electronic, it could clench a fist... Grinning, Guy asked again:

"More?"

He looked down. The blondie's sweater was purple, like the circles under his eyes... Around the right eye there was a red stain swelling.

"You're a bastard, mongrel. You hit a tied man."

Guy hit again - deliberately at the same place. The blondie's head dangled. His face stayed expressionless. The voice sounded slightly ironic:

"I would be surprised if you behaved like a noble man." And, after a pause. "You mongrels are all bastards. Your Riki was, too."

...His skin - so fair it seemed blue. Clench hands on this throat. And squeeze, squeeze - until his eyes bulge...

"I'll kill you, you bitch," Guy said hoarsely. "You don't know what I'll do to you."

He was shaking with rage. His hand was shaking. The prosthetic was motionless - it didn't feel...

The blondie's wrists were fastened to the elbow rests. Above the holders there were "caress" cuffs - not taken off, just switched off.

Hands like these had tossed him, Guy, like a rag. And there was pain in the shoulder - blinding, unbearably, an agony, splitting him apart... He felt how his muscles tore. He heard his bones crack.

Iason WANTED to mutilate him.

And - here you are - a prosthetic arm.

And Riki was dead. Iason who had been the friend of this... this... Iason who fucked Riki. Did he fuck this one, too?.. If I were him, I wouldn't miss...

And at that moment he understood WHAT he could do. Ooh my fuckin' little dolly...

He walked to the door. The voice caught him:

"What a pity Iason didn't kill you."

Above the door there was a round electronic clock. Ten p.m., shift change... Guy yanked the door open.

"Guards!"

They came noisily. Thirteen people - both shifts and the supervisor.

"Citizens," Guy started; smirked, unable to keep it - looking at their faces. Full faces, not starved - they got good rations, unlike civil people...

They say blondies liked gang-bang?

"Citizens," he repeated, nearly stammering with anger. "There..." he pointed with his thumb behind his shoulder. And, despaired to find a decent phrase, finished bluntly. "Who wants to fuck a blondie?"

...He watched from the door. What was good about dentist chairs - you could stretch them. And there was a board for the lamp - and another one, for the instruments... Over the crowd, a hand in cuffs turned up - and disappeared, and someone rolled back, kicked in the jaw - flopped on the floor and slid to the wall. They had to open the holders to cuff the blondie's ankles to the boards.

Guy watched; dragged a chair from the table, sat down. The chair was the one where those who talked to Jupiter had sat. Probably Iason Mink, too...

They got onto him all together - the cuffs clicked. A leg in black flashed - someone yelled, cursing... The one who had been kicked first approached with a button.

"Don't cripple him!" Guy shouted.

They froze for a moment, glanced at him; then started again. The guy with a button disappeared in the crowd... someone's voice choked:

"Fuck it!.. Turn on the "caress", take the remote..."

A hand snatched the remote from Guy's table... And that was done. A body was spread in the chair and the others crowded around it.

"Fuckers!" another voice, a thin one, nearly squealed. "Look at this, how you'll take his pants off..."

"Cut them!" Another face - flushed ears, glittering eyes, grinning mouth. "Chief! Can we?"

Guy shrugged.

"Cut."

And they did.

* * *

Guy smoked in the corridor - sat on the container with confiscated possessions prepared for sharing among the authorities. There were dozens of such containers - things of blondies and of others, who got "cleansed".

Spirals of cigarette smoke whirled, melting in the dull light (one cracked lamp for the whole corridor); through the half-transparent plastic of the container Guy could see something glittering. Leeta could come choose something...

Guy liked to make presents. Since the time when, freezing, he walked miles along the brightly lit shop windows - he didn't have money to buy but he liked to look. He liked to choose what he could give Riki. Riki didn't have anything - you could give whatever. A jacket - Riki's jacket was so thin; boots - Riki's boots were worn through... Jeans, lighters, belts, wallets...

And now Riki was dead. And he, Guy, brought packets full of jewelry - one gem enough to buy the whole shop then - to a strange woman. A stranger near to him proudly clattered on her heels, holding the fur at her throat with a hand adorned with rings.

I kissed him and left. And never saw him again. Riki... He bent, clenched his head in his hands. So tired... Head aches...

And what did you eat today?

He pondered; recalled that he ate nothing. But he was not hungry. He wanted a drink...

A sudden wish to take a sip from the bottle hidden in his office was so sharp that Guy got up.

He was afraid to go back or what?

...At first he watched. He even moved the chair closer, in a commanding gesture made others free a place for him.

Cuffed hands jerked, trying to get free from the holders - the "caress" was switched off. (Yeah right, no fun to fuck when he doesn't move...) White legs, spread wide apart, jerked too, trying at least to clench the knees. (Oh fuck... the legs...) The body thrashed under the guards; it seemed chiseled. A film of sweat shimmered on the contours of muscles. Golden hair covered half a chair; someone's hands pawed the naked chest - they cut his sweater open. Pink nipples shriveled under the yanking, twisting fingers... Blood and sperm. Someone's huge, in swollen veins, glistening cock pushed at the bloodied lips - the blondie moaned, clenching his teeth, shaking head. The rapist grabbed his hair - a hairy hand yanking golden strands.

"Suck, you b-bitch!"

The other one, dark-haired, hit the blondie in the groin - then Raoul Am cried out for the first time.

They beat him. All together - with fists, with feet; lashed with the belts on the nipples, on stubbornly rising cock - the blondie's organism reacted and he couldn't do anything about it. They made him open his mouth - the one who sat on the blondie's chest squeezed his throat and the other one grabbed his cock, started twisting. Raoul screamed, thrashing - then they shoved in his mouth what they wanted to shove. He wheezed, gagging. The dark-haired one stuck the nails in his thighs, scratching, slamming in and out... again, again, red lines on the white skin, smeared blood, cock and balls in the hand - the dark-haired yanked and twisted, ripped with fingernails - the blondie choked, his cuffed legs jerked... Guy couldn't see his face - instead of Raoul's face there was a hairy ass moving back and forth.

"Yes... yes... take it bitch! Ooh..."

The one who was after the dark-haired one wiped his softened cock against Raoul's hair. Guy saw briefly how the blondie's buttocks quivered, trying to close his bleeding anus. (Look at this... they fucked him sooo open...)

...And only in the corridor, after a shameful escape - slamming the door behind himself - Guy realized he couldn't breathe, his sweater clung to his back...

His cock ached, pressed against the zipper.

...The wall clock showed three zeroes - new day started.

* * *

He understood at once there were more people - they even crowded in the doorway, sharing advice; someone was already jerking off, unable to wait for his turn. They all turned to Guy - even the one with a clean-shaven head who worked between the blondie's legs - in-out, in-out, hacking on every exhale, lips bitten, eyebrows driven together, forehead sweaty... a big wart on the ass kept moving.

Only Raoul Am's head was turned away.

"Get..." Guy started. His voice was gone - suddenly; he coughed. "Get out!"

... The glass door locked quietly behind the last one. Only then Guy walked up; and stopped, looking.

...Lips swollen, smeared with blood and sperm. And thick runs of sperm on the face, over a clinging strand of hair. Sperm smeared around the eye - even on the eyelashes... Sperm and blood on the chest. The right nipple bled - someone had bitten... And from the ass, on the pink artificial leather - there was sperm and blood leaking.

Eyes. Green like... like... In these eyes Guy suddenly saw a completely childish resentment. Childish amazement... He'd probably never even been struck, in all his life.

Oh fuck... how many were there? With those who came later?

Guy looked away for some reason.

His cock was so hard it hurt.

Golden tresses. A beautiful toy made by someone for who knows what. If Mink fucked THIS... what fuckin' for did he need my Riki?

...On his belly there were golden-curly hairs; pubic hair. There was blood on Raoul's pubis... someone must've yanked in a surge of passion. Blood on his balls. His cock was soft; too red and swollen... No wonder. His dick... oh my God!..

It pulsed hotly in Guy's pants.

"Well, blondie," Guy said putting his palms on the elbow rests - near to Raoul's hands. "Huh?"

...The eyes.

"Riki also hurt," Guy shrieked out and his voice broke, he didn't know why. "You thought only you... only you could..."

Bloodied lips moved - teeth were bloodied as well. The blondie tried not to whisper but there was no voice.

"Iason loved Riki." The corner of the bruised mouth moved up. "You're a bastard, mongrel."

"I?.. Ah sooo..." Guy couldn't cope with the belt - tore it off; with his good arm yanked the fly, leaned, pushed the cockhead against the clenched teeth. "Suck, you... bitch!"

The blondie gagged. Guy knew he was injuring his throat. Grabbing his hair, he shoved this face onto his cock...

"Bitch. Bastard. Bitch."

The cock went soft all of a sudden. Simply... convince yourself you're avenging Riki - and suddenly imagine Riki's face when he sees HOW Guy avenges him... Who knows where they are now - and if Riki SEES...

Guy pressed his hand against Raoul's chest - pushed away to get up. His cock dangled - bloodied, curled, good for nothing... Guy looked... did it seem to him? Or did the blondie smirk?

He shuddered with rage; hit Raoul in the face with the plastic fist and suddenly froze, getting an idea...

He stopped controlling himself. He DID NOT WANT to control himself - like then, in Dana Bahn.

And he forgot about Riki.

On the blondie's thighs the crust of sperm was getting dry. Guy thrust three plastic fingers at once into the bleeding opening - pushed, entering; yanked out, thrust four... Raoul understood - and thrashed. Guy pulled out again - and added the fifth finger.

He didn't try to prepare the blondie - he wanted to hurt him. Really hurt. Turning his wrist he pushed all he could - shoved, slammed the hand inside. Raoul screamed.

Guy didn't feel anything. This way he could've been overcoming resistance of an inanimate object. He thrust his hand in almost to half the forearm - and somewhere there, inside, clasped a fist. The blondie convulsed, choking with screams - Guy thought dully that behind the door others definitely listened... maybe, even watched... An entertainment, huh?

He slammed and slammed; messed the other's insides - yanked out the bloodied hand and shoved it back again. To the point - when he couldn't move any farther - and in the blondie's face, in his screams there was a real terror...

He didn't feel anything. He knew he wouldn't sense it if he tore the rectum - but he didn't care. He turned his hand there, inside, he slammed and shoved, the blondie thrashed - and the blondie's cock softened with pain and then went hard again - prostate gland...

"You like it, bitch! You like it... Where is your prostate, huh?.."

He didn't feel.

Now he was hard - he rubbed his cock with his good hand. And he came on Raoul's face that was covered in tears of pain.

My baby doll.

...Then he sat on the floor, his back turned to the blondie. He looked at the bloodied, smeared, smelly prosthetic. Fuck... they have everything... like real people...

Now Raoul was really leaking - and for some reason Guy wondered if he'd torn him? Hadn't torn? Inner hemorrhage or not yet?

What's the difference, he'll die tomorrow.

...The bottle was there - more than half full. Bitter liquid trickled to the throat - burned, rolled down with heat in the stomach... "You drink too much, honey," Leeta gently reproached him when another lot of plastic bottles was dropped into a utilizer.

Oh did he?

With the bottle in his good hand Guy walked away - not looking back. He pushed the door open - saw faces sweaty with arousal. They met him with adoring eyes. He grinned back; waved with the prosthetic arm, inviting them into the room. They rushed in.

His face went numb with this grin.

* * *

From the mirror window in the corridor his reflection looked at him - swollen, waxen-pale face, pink whites, blood-shot... Green mug with red eyes.

The window glass stuck halfway up - yet Guy leaned out, his elbows on the windowsill. Icy rain fell on the burning face. The night glimmered with the lights of Eos - and there was unremitting darkness in the place of the rest of the city. And this damned music... Of course, they didn't stop even at nights - at nights they also shot...

It smelled with smoke, for some reason especially acidly - something completely unsuitable for burning burned. In the ray of a lone searchlight there were swirls of smoke or mist. Under the window - askance - the roof of the spiral arcade circled around the building. The searchlight reflected in the wet metal. Raindrops - a sparkle in every drop.

How many nights had Guy looked from THERE - HERE? When THERE everything still flashed with neon lights... and it was so cold in his thin jacket. He had looked at the shimmering tracery silhouette against the grey illuminated sky - and choked with hatred. The headquarters of the blondies' Syndicate. The place of Jupiter, the mistress of blondies. Her temple. Her cathedral. And now...

Now the sky was black. And stars looked through.

Jupiter. The woman sang over the dying planet - as if mourning someone. There were rumors in the city that, like the climate-control systems, the regenerators of oxygen would go down as well - and it would be the end. Security arrested those spreading panic rumors. The head of the people's government, citizen Berk, said to Guy in a private conversation: the federal governments won't let the whole planet die. Their morals, human rights... And so many emigrants they couldn't let in. "Fucked on their heads with slave-owning system." So, they will repair our regenerators - and climate-control equipment, don't you worry...

Guy threw the empty bottle down. The bottle fell long, catching light with its sides - rolled at the very entrance, in the circle of light... Guy didn't hear the impact. Security chief, fuck... It's good no one has seen... He clasped his head between the elbows.

I've killed him, right? He'll die now - even without execution... and what if a surgery...

At the entrance of the building someone lay on the ground - not moving. A corpse probably.

His head ached. And his arm hurt - the arm that was gone. Guy put the prosthetic under the rain - blood and the rest trickled down.

...Rain. Dull beating of drops on the metal... "Fucker. You're a fucker, Guy. Why were you born, there's only trouble from you... for everyone."

For everyone. Luke said it to him when Guy came back from the hospital - and found his possessions in the box behind the door. "Take your shit and leave," Luke said. "Go-go." They all stood and watched how he tried to pick up the box with his only hand - and surely he didn't manage, it fell - all his pathetic things scattered in the dirt... They watched. "Would be better if they ripped off both your arms," Norris said. "And legs. And head. Fucker."

He'd never seen them again. Never. He didn't even know if they were alive.

He didn't try to find out.

...Rain. A high, gentle voice - behind the splash of water; Guy knew that in the musical the heroine had to be either burnt or hanged. Something historical. Something from the history of the Earth - that was enough for Guy to lose interest. He despised federal center. There was civil war on the planet, people fought for freedom - and they... paid off with aid containers. For both sides.

Golden hair. Taste of smoke in the mouth. Taste of blood. Jupiter, if only Riki were alive... if only... I would never even look at anyone else!

* * *

In his office they laughed. Guy yanked the door open - and froze on the threshold.

It smelled with piss. The one with shaven head, standing between the blondie's legs, aimed a jet into the wound of the anus. Two more held Raoul's legs - raised the pelvis to make it leak in. The fourth one sat on the blondie's chest - held his throat.

The cuffed legs trembled - pathetically.

"Fuck you!" Guy yelled - crazily. "Did I permit you?! Did I?! You fuckers you fuckin' lost your mind or what... or what, huh?!"

...The door slammed shut behind them.

...His hair was wet. His wet face quivered painfully - with pain or with disgust. He stank. And yet he looked into Guy's eyes.

The heart beat, pulsed in the temples; there was noise in his ears... Somewhere outside someone made the music louder - it rose so that the drums resounded in the lungs. Eyelashes, tresses... In the documents... he's twenty-six... and looks like... not older than me, fuck... or younger?

Eyebrows drawn together in torment. Pale lips. Inner hemorrhage?..

He put his hand on Raoul's belly - pressed. His voice again was gone.

"Hurts?"

"No."

Of course it hurts, you fool! He turned away. His jaws ached with hatred. Bastards. I... I'll... all of you... I'll bury you all!

Right. Then start with yourself.

They'll execute him in the morning all the same - what's the difference?..

The panels on the walls were misted - and broken electronic insides stuck from under them. The thermal isolation of the building didn't work. Getting cold, Guy thought dumbly. He lingered a little, then started unlocking the cuffs on the blondie's legs. Raoul's ankle was in his hand - scabbed. Must've thrashed... He lowered the leg on the footboard. Then the other one. No reaction. Green eyes looked through him. Guy brought his coat from a wall cupboard (former niche for a robot-cleaner) - covered the body. The blondie didn't move - looked up at the ceiling.

He, Guy, would never see a smile on these lips. Never. As citizen Berk said in his recent speech: "I hate the word 'never'; worse than it is only 'too late'."

He swayed; his vision blurred. The music thundered. Some mournful motif: three male voices at once declared their love to the dead heroine. There was sticky blood on the floor; blood ran on the pink leather - dripped... It smelled blood in the room. And piss. And smoke - from the corridor or what?..

I'm twenty-three. My name is Guy. My life is over. My death lies in the chair behind me and looks at my back.

My death has the hair of pure gold. And eyes like... like... Fuckin' funny... Green like peas? No good...

There was no association with anything warm or living. Green like a layer of ice. Like a frame cut from a whole gem - a frame for a holographic photo - for it, on a public share of confiscated possessions, Leeta nearly scratched out the eyes of the new information and propaganda minister's lover. Now the hard-won frame was placed on the nightstand at their bed - Leeta had thrown away the hologram, the pic of an unfamiliar blondie, and inserted a pic with a bike, cut from a chocolate box...

Guy yanked the collar of his sweater - catching the air with open mouth. Fuck, what's with me?

Epilogue. Executioner.

How did I live without you. This year. How did I live without you...

You know, Iason - I'm really stubborn. I vowed I'd revenge.

I'm not a psychologist. But I was taught that. I couldn't do it to you... I would've never risked doing it to you. I'm sorry. Manipulating the other's psychic - it's always dangerous. And should you catch me doing it...

But you were an elite blondie - not a mongrel from Ceres.

It's my fault. I had to do it... for Jupiter's sake, Iason. Before that mongrel... Riki. When we maybe had had a chance. We would've been happy together, wouldn't we?

I'm sorry, Iason. I'm a coward. I shouldn't have let you go then. Should've blocked the doors, called for the guards... Maybe, you'd never talk to me after that. Maybe. Forgive me.

...I DIDN'T DARE to do it to you. But if I can't do it to a mongrel - then I'm nothing.

...Guy. You'll curse the day when you saw me, mongrel. You'll curse the day when you were born.

I'll drink your soul. You'll forget the one you loved. You'll betray everything you believed in. And I don't care what will happen to me but you - you won't survive me.

...Iason. We lost without you. But you, Guy - you'll lie down into my grave.

I never was really talented. But I'll be able to do it. I must do it.

I don't want to die just like that. And Guy, since we met... it must be fate.

* * *

...The woman sang. Her voice floated over the canyons, over the marble crumbled with bullets - between earth and sky, in the veil of smoke. The wind rippled hair, beat against the iron sides of the truck. The woman begged for something. Complained. Pleaded... With his cuffed hands Raoul pushed against the rock. He hurt; all over. He wanted to bend, holding his belly - and below it. He clenched his teeth, making himself walk straight - not to put his feet apart...

He still couldn't believe he hadn't managed. Damn, it had seemed so easy - then, on the road, when Guy's car had turned and Guy himself looked out... an idea had come to Raoul's head then.

Simply make him feel pity. Make this smug, sated with authority bastard feel sorry for the potential victim. Make him fall in love...

Who could've known what side effects the outburst of the mongrel's emotions could have?

You could've guessed, couldn't you? He understood he felt something - but didn't understand what. There was some feeling with obvious sexual subtext - and this feeling he habitually, automatically classified as hatred. You provoked him, you needed strong emotions - so, here you are...

And - most important - everything was in vain. He didn't manage. Didn't cope - with a mongrel, half-human.

I'll die now. And he... he'll stay alive.

...And then - through the music - he heard creaking of pebbles under the feet. He turned - and saw Guy, running; the unbuttoned coat smeared in his, Raoul's, blood; messed up hair, eyes...

And at this moment he understood that he won.

THE END

Literal translation of 'Notre Dame de Paris' is 'Our Lady of Paris'. 'Notre Dame de Amoi' is correspondigly...

(С)Sephiroth
translation (C) Juxian Tang