Mind Machines by Dima Zales

Author:Dima Zales [Zales, Dima]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Goodreads: 34401062
Publisher: Mozaika LLC
Published: 2017-02-20T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

I wake up slowly. It takes me a minute to remember I’m on a plane and to realize that the motion I’m feeling doesn’t mean my bed decided to move on its own.

Actually, for a plane, the ride does feel rather bumpy.

I open my eyes to a surprise. Instead of flying in a plane, I’m riding in a car. At least that explains the shaking—Russian roads are infamously bad.

I reach into my pocket to check on Mr. Spock and feel reassured when he gently nibbles on my finger. Satisfied I didn’t lose the rat, I look around.

I’m in the back seat, and there’s a gigantic bald woman sitting next to me—or at least I assume she’s a woman based on her semi-feminine round features and D-size bosom. She’s staring intently at the neck of an unfamiliar black-haired guy sitting in the front passenger seat. The only person I recognize is Joe, who’s sitting behind the wheel.

In the back window, far in the distance, I see the airport I assume we landed at. On either side of the road is a bucolic Russian landscape, with its signature birch trees, oaks, and some pines. I spot a red squirrel climbing a tree—a sight that finally evokes something like nostalgia. I’ve always found the gray squirrels in NYC unsatisfactory compared to their cuter, pointier-eared, and more colorful cousins back in Krasnodar.

As I turn away from the window, I catch the woman looking at me with a stony expression. Now that I’m studying her closer, her lack of an Adam’s apple and the hint of makeup on her face assure me she really is a she, though I can probably be forgiven for having doubts given her shiny shaved head and muscle tone that’s about triple mine. A spiderweb tattoo adorns the rightmost side of her head, evoking stories of spider females feasting on their males during mating.

Without any emotion, in a voice you can only get after at least a decade of smoking unfiltered Russian cigs, she says in Moscow-accented Russian, “Looks like Sleeping Beauty is up.”

“What happened?” I try not to gag as a wave of garlic breath mixed with stale nicotine assaults my nose. “How did I get here?”

“You walked,” Joe says, his blue eyes glinting in the rearview mirror.

“I told you he was sleepwalking,” the woman says.

Though I don’t recall being woken up, I bring up AROS and do a quick search on Ambien side effects to confirm my hunch that my memory loss is due to the drug.

“Where are we going?” I ask, rubbing my eyes.

“Levin texted me the location of Voynskiy,” Joe says, and it takes me a second to understand he means Mitya texted him where to meet Alex.

The front passenger guy turns around and grins at me. Looking at his weather-beaten face, I can right away tell he isn’t Russian. With his hawkish nose and Stalin-inspired mustache, he looks Georgian—which in this context isn’t the US state, but a country in the Caucasus mountains.

“I’m Gogi,” he says in Georgian-accented Russian.

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