Chapter 19
The "chrysalis" opened (and literally, like a mollusk shell placed upright) only after five hours. Max got out of it with difficulty (with difficulty and my help. After all, I didn't leave the "chrysalis" until the very moment of "opening". For some reason, it seemed right to me).
He was swaying. He was physically weak and, personally in my perception, resembled Accelerator from the anime about espers that I watched back in "that" life. Maybe because of the striped robe, which he still hadn't changed into anything else. Maybe because of the completely gray hair. Or maybe because of the overall fragility of his physique. Maybe the slightly crazy look in his eyes. I don't know. That's just the impression he gave me.
He didn't say anything, just silently leaned on my shoulder. At first. Then I simply picked him up in my arms and carried him to the house he had chosen for himself. The kid practically weighed nothing. Just skin and bones and the barest minimum of muscles. It was clear the serum had used all the possible resources of his body. And there was almost no body left.
I carried him. Brought several cans of stew and crackers from the last captured and hijacked food convoy. Fed him. Put him to bed.
And another nine hours later, which I again spent without leaving Max's bed, he woke up. And his gaze acquired a meaningful expression...
* * *
I was flying, sitting right on the floor in front of a viewing hole in it, next to a spread-out map. A useless compass lay somewhere to the side (its needle was spinning at the speed of a good fan, which is not surprising near magnetic fields of SUCH power).
What was I flying on?
On a flying... let's call it a sphere. The awakened Eisenhardt amazed even my imagination. He ate a hearty meal again, and then silently got up and walked.
Far away from people. To where there was open space. And I, like a total fool, trudged after him as if tied. And as soon as he stopped, something began that blew my mind with its scale.
Max closed his eyes and relaxedly spread his arms to the sides, tilting his head back slightly. And the air around seemed to hum. But not in a normal range. I perceived this "humming" with something in the area of my chest. Or stomach. I never quite figured it out.
Then metal began to fly in from all sides. In the most diverse forms and shapes: from pipes and floor beams, tanks, artillery guns, cars, to barbed wire, wires, various cables, even individual bullets that had abundantly sown the surrounding earth after two weeks of fighting.
All this flew into one huge pile. Flew and flew. I don't even know from what distance. But the pile was enormous.
When, in his opinion, there was enough metal, the pile began to flow. It became a homogeneous drop, which flattened into a "pancake."
A "pancake" on which, over the next twenty-four hours, a hundred thousand people accommodated themselves! Imagine the scale! And be impressed. I was impressed. I just sat on my ass right where I stood, with a dropped jaw and glassy eyes.
It's one thing to read a comic book or watch on TV how this man (and is he a man) raises oil platforms from the earth and tears out missile silos; it's another to see it in person.
In short, in less than twenty-four hours, Auschwitz was gone. In its place remained only a freshly plowed field, sprinkled with fine stone and brick rubble, in which not a single small particle of metal remained.
And after loading, Max and I stepped onto the "pancake." And the pancake began to grow at the edges. Grow and curl upwards until it closed over our heads in an impenetrable dome.
I saw that we were taking off. But I saw this only through the hole in the floor that Max had created next to me and himself specifically for the purpose of navigating.
I already mentioned the compass. But Max sensed the Earth's magnetic pole better than any compass. But the map came in handy.
We flew for five hours.
Holding a hundred thousand people and a Zen-load of metal in the air for five hours. A monster.
I created a monster. Another one. Is that my destiny or something?
* * *
I don't even want to imagine what it cost Nicole to negotiate with the Union so that we wouldn't be met with salvos of guns and tanks. Especially considering that we didn't have communication during the flight for the exact same reasons the compass was useless. We dragged the radio transmitter with batteries onto the "pancake" for nothing.
Although... Even if they had started shooting, it wouldn't have caused any inconvenience to Accel, as I called Max to myself while he was working. Why do I think so?
Because we certainly weren't seen off with flowers. And we weren't flying over a land of ponies pooping rainbows either. Planes, anti-aircraft guns, artillery... All of that was there. And all of it only supplied our "sphere," or rather "hemisphere," with metal.
But we couldn't sit under the dome forever, could we? So the fact that they didn't welcome us with gunfire is already a good sign.
But there were still plenty of soldiers, tanks, and guns around the place where our aircraft landed.
We landed. The walls slowly lowered and melted away. And a crowd of exhausted people was revealed to the armed soldiers, who were ready for battle and had taken their positions. Children, women... There were almost no elderly people—the fascists put them, as well as the sick or weak, to the knife first. We had no weapons with us. They, like all the metal, had flown into the construction of the "pancake," literally tearing and twisting out of hands. Let me remind you—Max-Accel collected all the metal. Some even died from this when bullets and shrapnel lodged in their bodies and not removed by doctors were suddenly torn from these bodies. And how many people lost their dentures...
So, the soldiers saw WHO had arrived in such an unusual aircraft, and the weapons in their hands began to lower by themselves. Soviet soldiers were just not used to fighting children and women (no, I don't argue—there were also individual units that carried out punitive actions from the end of the revolution to the beginning of the war, here and there. Like Kotovsky or Tukhachevsky, who famously "had fun" in the Tambov region during the Antonov rebellion. But there were few of them. There are rarely many scoundrels. Otherwise, a society consisting of them does not survive. Mostly, honest and kind, ordinary men in their thirties and fifties fought for the Motherland (the youth were wiped out back in '41-'42), who had their own families back home. And for many, these homes also remained in the occupied territories). So the barrels in the hands of stern, weathered men lowered.
Then the stronger people stepped out from the crowd of former camp inmates: Fury (and she's over one hundred eighty centimeters tall and by no means has an anorexic physique), Cap, Carter, the stocky shorty Logan, the hulking Dum Dum Dugan...
Me? No, I didn't step out. I stayed sitting where I was sitting. A tired but happy Max Eisenhardt leaned against my side.
I didn't look closely at who met Nicole and her comrades from the host side. I wasn't interested. This is politics now. The business was there. The business ended here. And the rest is politics.
And, unfortunately, Max is now a trump card in the politicians' game. And of a rank no lower than the Joker. A Trump Joker. Hardcore. What kind of bullshit creeps into the head at such a moment. I'd like a smoke, but there's nothing to smoke. Well, thank the Universal Intelligent Principle. A stupid habit. I shouldn't hook myself on it, or I'll be like the exhaust pipe Logan, who doesn't part with his cigar. You can track him by that smell, which is already ingrained even in his skin, like following a red dotted line, even a week after he passed by.
Everyone wonders how the canon Sabretooth managed to find the canon Wolverine every birthday. It's elementary—he smelled him. And roughly knew the habitat of this restless subject (because he just can't sit quietly—he'll definitely get into something. Something murderous. Something that leaves characteristic triple cuts on the corpses behind him).
Even though I didn't go to them, it didn't mean I dodged successfully. They came to me.
I don't know their names—I didn't bother to ask. Rather imposing uncles in leather coats. Some in NKVD uniforms.
"Mr. Creed?" one addressed me.
"I am Creed," I turned my head to them. Thought for a moment and stood up to my full height, unconsciously shielding Max, who remained sitting in his place.
"You have good Russian," noted the same man who had started the conversation.
"Because I am Victor Ivanovich Creed. The son of a White emigre. I am Russian," I decided to stick to this line of behavior and history.
"Victor Ivanovich Creed?" he was surprised. "It was reported to us that in the spring of '42 a man with that name was operating in the fascist rear near Moscow."
"Recon group?" I smirked. "Are they still alive?"
"The group commander, Senior Lieutenant Voronov, was awarded the Star of the Hero... posthumously," the man in the leather coat darkened somewhat. And my smile instantly disappeared too.
We were silent for a moment.
"How did you end up in Auschwitz?" asked a stupid question the man in the NKVD uniform. Stupid, but professional.
"Like everyone else—I was taken prisoner," I didn't obfuscate.
"Judging by what was reported about you, I can't imagine how that is possible," he continued.
"The Krauts have some really strong fighters too. For every tricky nut, there is a bolt with a left-hand thread."
"And what are your further plans, Comrade Creed?"
"I am a citizen of France. I plan to walk to it. Liberate it from the fascist. For now, that's it," I answered them. Somehow, looking at this company, the pull to the Motherland abruptly dies down. And a completely opposite one appears.
"And Comrade Eisenhardt?" he shifted his attention to Max sitting behind me. Well, naturally! They approached for his sake. I am a bird of a different flight. Maybe interesting in my own right, but not as much as WMD Eisenhardt, the Trump Joker of this marked deck.
Actually, I only just now thought that his very presence with one of the warring parties is the end of the war. At the very least, a reason for negotiations.
"He is an adult, independent person. He'll say for himself," I decided not to speak for Max. Let him really decide for himself.
The man in the leather coat repeated the question to Max in German. Max tensed up and got to his feet. But he was still weak and leaned on my shoulder.
"I am with Victor," the kid stated firmly in the same language. Even though he's German, I know that he understands Russian.
"As you say, Comrade Eisenhardt," the man in the leather coat extended his hand for a handshake. "As you say."
* * *