Chapter 6

You won’t find the answer in the sky; seek it in your own heart.

Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

Kirill couldn’t sleep. He lay alone on the double bed, arms and legs sprawled in all directions. The moment he closed his eyes, nightmares came, so he tried not to sleep at all and took sleeping pills instead.

In that half-conscious state, he often slipped into something like nirvana, and his soul would try to untangle all those riddles he’d wrestled with for so long in real life, together with his partners and friends.

It all began right after he started investigating the activities of several companies working in bioengineering, especially those linked to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was financing research in that particular field of science.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was established only recently, in 2000. Yet in a short time, its capital reached just over fifty billion dollars, an enormous sum. Officially, the foundation proclaimed lofty goals: improving global healthcare, reducing poverty, and expanding educational opportunities in medicine and bioengineering. In reality, however, it pursued a single aim: to develop a global concept for reducing the planet’s population.

For some reason, all these people believed the Earth’s main problem came down to one thing: explosive population growth. The planet’s resources were finite and, in their view, would be exhausted by the end of the twenty-first century.

If Kirill had possessed the kind of money these people, the planet’s so-called “golden billion”, kept hidden in countless banks, foundations, and securities, he would have invested it in exploring the Solar System and building colonies on its planets. But they thought differently, and that frightened him. Their sights were set on bioterrorism.

He discovered that the foundation’s board of directors included the heads of major banks, transnational corporations, and world-renowned scientists from a wide range of disciplines, even former officials with all the right connections.

But the work of all these people served not humanity’s good, quite the opposite. They sought to make ordinary lives harder, even to wipe people out, by developing new diseases and viruses.

The goal was singular: the global extermination of millions. They even welcomed such unnatural practices, condemned by every major world religion, as euthanasia , breaking fundamental moral and ethical norms. Their open support for various sexual deviations was just as bewildering.

Kirill conducted his own investigation. It turned out that all these people belonged to a secret Masonic society with an extensive hierarchy. Its influence extended far beyond the United States.

Branches of the order operated in every major country of the European Union and even in the former Soviet states, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia. In each, regional Masonic lodges were established, all governed from a single center.

The populations of these countries had no idea what danger loomed over them. The development of deadly pathogens, viruses, and bacteria could easily spark a true epidemic, drastically reducing the world’s population if those viruses were ever released into the environment.

The Masonic society’s tentacles had penetrated deep into the government apparatus of several European states. Even in the United States, both among Democrats and Republicans , powerful lobbyists were already at work, pushing for greater funding of government programs in bioengineering and medicine aimed at creating biological or other weapons of mass destruction. Those viruses could be introduced into society in many ways, including through mass vaccination campaigns against some infectious disease.

The only real weapon against this evil was freedom of speech. That was why Kirill had created his website, a platform for publishing exposés about the secret organizations engaged in developing biological weapons and running covert biolabs.

The site had both open and restricted sections, which made it possible to earn money. The income wasn’t for personal gain but to fund further growth, and it worked. The project expanded quickly, its audience soon numbering in the millions.

Access to the restricted section was paid for. To enter, users had to register, and registration was no simple task. Zimmerman had designed a clever questionnaire that practically forced visitors to provide truthful information about themselves and their accounts.

The materials posted there were exclusive and often sparked loud political scandals , drawing even more attention from the press and public organizations.

After Julian Assange’s arrest, the Masons tried to silence the truth everywhere in the Western world. They launched an all-out hunt for his platform, and for anyone who dared to speak, or worse, to write the truth.

Registration helped Kirill weed out unwanted accounts. He could ban overly aggressive users at any time, anyone who might threaten his work.

That way, Kirill always knew who was interested in his site and why. Unfortunately, many users turned out to be active members of intelligence or law enforcement agencies trying to identify the real owners of the site and arrest them. But there were also ordinary people, people who simply wanted to know the truth. For their sake, he kept going.

The “cream of society” had no use for the truth. The scandals stirred up by his site provoked only anger and rage. And if it hadn’t been for the mobile PSY device they’d smuggled out of Russia a few years earlier, they never would have escaped the chase.

Around the perimeter of his house, Kirill had also installed special miniature sensors and cameras that alerted him whenever someone tried to enter the secured property.

Chapter 7

Your suffering is caused by resistance to what is.

Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

Without realizing it, Kirill had fallen asleep. His thoughts drifted far, far away, and he never noticed when it happened. Along with sleep came the nightmares. His subconscious pulled him downward, deep into its own depths, to that place where memories of forbidden Greek mythology lay stored, the stories he’d loved to read as a child, the ones that had shaped his worldview and sense of self.

Kirill looked around. The world he found himself in was strikingly real. Some instinct whispered that it was only a dream, yet everything around him felt tangible, almost lifelike. His mind rendered the smallest details with such precision that it took his breath away and stirred his imagination.

Everywhere he looked, stretched swamps. A narrow path wound between them, leading somewhere into the distance. He was standing in a small clearing surrounded by wild rose thickets. Luckily, the ground here was firm enough that he felt steady, almost as if everything happening was real. In his hands, he held an ancient Greek weapon. And he himself was dressed exactly like a warrior of ancient Greece.

A solid silver breastplate covered his chest, and on his head gleamed a massive helmet crested with a plume that made him appear taller, more imposing. Beneath the armor, thrown directly over his bare skin, hung a spotless white tunic. Every piece fit his body perfectly. He felt the fabric against his skin as vividly as if he had put it on that very morning.

In the distance, horses neighed. Kirill turned; he was sure a chariot stood there, the one that had brought him to this place. He dimly remembered being here before, searching for something, some ancient mythical creature. The beast had long terrorized the locals, killing livestock and any stranger unlucky enough to wander into this mysterious land. In places, he could even see bones, remnants of travelers who had vanished in these stinking swamps long before Kirill arrived.

He had to act. Instinct urged him forward, toward danger. Kirill was a brave man in real life, too, and sometimes that courage bordered on recklessness.

He began to walk carefully along the narrow path. He didn’t want to slip into the foul sludge surrounding him, turning the whole region into a mire of death. In the distance, mountains rose, the swamps ended there, and that was where he was heading, stepping cautiously over the trembling ground that seemed to draw him toward the heart of this bog-ridden land.

Now and then, from the center of the swamp, noxious vapors rose, forcing Kirill to cover his face with his left hand, the one not holding a weapon. Over that arm was slung a bow and a quiver full of arrows, both sturdy and finely crafted.

Long ago, in his childhood, Kirill had loved archery, though back then his bow had been a harmless sporting one, incapable of hurting anyone. The weapon on his shoulder now was very different, made for war, its arrows tipped with sharp metal points.

The quiver itself was a masterpiece of craftsmanship, adorned with silver inlays sewn into the leather. One design showed the Greek god Apollo aiming his bow; others depicted trees with animals hidden beneath their branches. The quiver was so beautiful that Kirill would gladly have paid a small fortune to own one like it in real life.

The path ran on and on toward the mountains. Kirill realized he was on an island at the very center of the swamp, surrounded on all sides by the black, stinking sludge. Only here was there solid ground. The path grew narrower and narrower, and now he had to move with great care, making sure not to fall into the bog that stretched for miles around.

At last, Kirill crossed the final stretch and reached firm land. He sighed with relief. Standing on solid ground felt far better than balancing on the shaky path that wound through the fetid swamp, trembling with every step. The mire could easily have swallowed a man whole, and clearly had, many times before.

He looked around. The landscape was strange, almost exotic. Ahead rose a high mountain surrounded by stunted shrubs and twisted trees. The sight reminded him of a place he’d once seen in the north, when his mother had taken him to visit her elder sister in Yakutsk. The trees there had been just as small and bent low to the earth, nothing like the tall, full-grown ones back home in central Russia.

Not far from where he stood gaped a cave leading deep into the mountain. From that vast opening came a sense of danger. The black maw seemed to watch him, both drawing him in and repelling him with its empty, ominous depth. It felt as if some invisible, dreadful being was observing him, unseen but close.

All around lay an unnatural silence, the stillness that sometimes precedes a heavy rain or snowstorm. Then, suddenly, from the cave came a furious roar, so immense and terrible that it jolted him awake.

Kirill opened his eyes, disoriented, struggling to remember where he was. The nightmare that had haunted him for days began to fade. Someone was ringing the doorbell, over and over, interrupting his dream at its most intense moment. He got up, went to the door, and looked through the peephole.

Outside stood his friend Zimmerman, along with the rest of the old crew he’d left Russia with a couple of years ago. Kirill reached for the keys lying on the bar counter and went to let them in.

A new workday was beginning.