Another Cog in the Machine

Another Cog in the Machine

Lately, Niko felt like he was being watched. It wasn’t omnipresent or anything, he hadn’t lost it entirely. At least, not yet. Though he had to admit sometimes he wondered if certain other individuals might have had the right idea on that front. It was hard to be sane, especially in his business.

It had been a couple of months since Niko had returned from Discord, and sometimes he wondered whether it hadn’t been some sort of really fucked-up dream. Everything had been so… normal since then that it felt simply unreal. But it had been. He had to remind himself, because he had to remember. For all the people who were dead. If he didn’t, who would?

He also had to remember, because his life wasn’t his own anymore. Niko had no idea when it was going to end, or how, but he’d promised he’d make the most of it until then. He wasn’t one to break promises.

He hadn’t told his father. He hadn’t told anyone. He wasn’t sure he even could.

But beyond that, his life had changed a lot, again, and yet somehow it was exactly the same. He’d returned to the city, and the Borozovs, but he was no longer a child. Mikhail and the other members of the family had welcomed him with open arms, especially after his success of running his own racket. Even now, when occult acquisitions were concerned, they mostly differed to him.

Mikhail had never really known how to be a father, but Niko hadn’t really known how to be a son, either. With some small encouragement from Carol, they were muddling through it together.

All in all, things were looking to be alright. Well, except that feeling. At first he’d chalked it up to paranoia. It was easy to fall into when sometimes the walls did in fact have eyes. But no, here he was, in broad daylight, walking downtown, minding his own business. And someone was definitely following him.

She was a woman, at least he presumed with the tall, slender figure and long, pale blonde hair. Though he couldn’t see her face under her large hat. Besides that, he couldn’t tell much else about her. She was wearing a long, black coat that concealed most of her figure, and she was keeping a good distance from him.

But she was always there. He’d walked a good half-an-hour, made three consecutive left turns, and she was still there. Was she working for the Mirellis? Maybe, but if they’d wanted something out of Niko they’d already be shooting at him.

So he figured he’d lead her to a quiet alley and introduce her to Thought and Memory. It was all going according to plan; she followed him willingly even after the crowds thinned. But suddenly, just before he turned the final corner, she smirked at him, and walked purposefully off in another direction.

“What the hell?” Niko muttered to himself. Where was she going after tailing him for an entire forty-five minutes? But then it dawned on him: maybe she hadn’t been tailing him at all, but trying to get his attention.

It was a terribly dramatic, convoluted way of doing it. Though at this point Niko knew way too many dramatic, convoluted people to really question it. So, with a chest-filling sigh, Niko rested a hand on one of the guns under his coat, and followed her.

She didn’t look back at him once, yet she must have known he was there, for she kept her pace slow and turns deliberate. Niko also wasn’t doing much to hide his presence, not that he really could in these nearly empty back streets. For a while, the only sound was the wind rustling through old garbage and her heels clicking against the asphalt. They almost sounded like the ticking of a clock.

Finally, after what seemed like too long, she approached a rusty, metal door that led into an old warehouse. She gave a single look back over her shoulder, wrenched the very sticky door open, and left it ajar behind her.

Niko sighed. He really didn’t like this set-up. Felt like she was leading him into something. There could be any number of goons armed with machine guns waiting in there. But it seemed odd that anyone would rely on him following a random, strange woman so far out of his way.

Well, he supposed there was only one way to find out. The deep puff of air he let out hung thick and white in front of him, but still, he grabbed the handle of the heavy door, and opened it.

On the other side was, of course, just as he’d suspected: an abandoned warehouse. Various crates and shipment containers were strewn about the space, most of which had clearly been gone through. The only source of light was the dim, afternoon sun shining through the holes in the walls.

The one thing that wasn’t there was the woman he’d followed to get here.

“Hello?” he asked the gloom, getting antsy.

There was a second of silence, before a response came, far too large and echoey to be natural. “My apologies. I fear I will not be welcome in this reality much longer in my current form.”

Ahh, he understood. She wasn’t a person. This wasn’t an Ede Valley sort of rendezvous, but an Other one.

Still, Niko frowned. Because it was strange. For having nothing to do with the mob, she was very Russian. Not Russian like Niko was Russian, but like his father was, or Aunt Katya. Maybe she was speaking that way because she thought it would make him more comfortable, or it was just a really weird coincidence. Whatever, it didn’t really matter.

“So did the Morrigan send you? Or Valki maybe?” he asked, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about.

She chuckled under her breath. “Heavens, no,” she said, and as Niko blinked, there she was, suddenly next to a shipping container just a few feet away. “I was ‘sent’ by no one. I simply decided that now was the proper time to make your acquaintance.”

Niko didn’t like how stiffly she stood. There was something off about her. Well, besides the obvious, anyway. “So are you another one of… them?” he asked. “An… ‘anomaly?’”

“You are more clever than I imagined,” she took a step towards him, and he heard a strange sort of creaking sound that he hadn’t noticed before. The woman moved very stiffly. Instead of tilting her head to the side in amusement, it almost jerked into that position. “Why yes, I am. These days, I am known as the Vol.”

“Niko Borozov,” he offered hesitantly.

But she simply laughed again. “I know who you are. Though I despise that detestable name your father passed onto you.”

“Wait,” he frowned. “You know my father?”

He didn’t even blink this time—he was trying to avoid it at the moment—but still she was now immediately in front of him. “Unfortunately, yes. We are, you could say, old friends.” Without warning, she grabbed his chin and forced him to look up at her. Despite her closeness, he still couldn’t make out most of her face under her wide hat and the shadows in the warehouse. Only her rouge-red lips, which seemed stuck in a perpetual smirk. Her fingers were surprisingly hard and cold against his skin. The nails seemed sharper than they should.

“I wouldn’t have imagined you were Borozov’s son, at first glance, or even Marie’s…” he stiffened as she mentioned his mother’s name. “You look… much more like Vanya than either of them, just like when he was young. Except your eyes.” Even if her expression didn’t change, he could feel the slight contempt that lurked there. “Those are your father’s.”

“How… how do you know all of this?” Niko finally pulled away. “Who are you?”

The Vol clicked her tongue. “Your father has not told you of your mother’s family at all, has he?”

“No, not really. I don’t even know her maiden name.”

“Volkov,” the Vol seemed to shake, just a bit, possibly in anger. “Maria Volkova was her name. Of course Katyusha abandoned the name as soon as she could as well…”

Niko frowned. “Then you must be…”

“There were four Volkov siblings,” she interrupted. “Maria, Katya, Natalya… and Ivan. I was once Natalya Volkova. I believe this makes you my nephew.”

“So that’s why you wanted to meet me,” Niko concluded. “But you said you ‘were.’ You must have been human once, right? And now you’re not. I didn’t know it worked like that.”

“Usually it does not,” she admitted. “I killed an anomaly. I did it with my own two hands. And so I became one myself. To keep the balance and such.”

Perhaps she hadn’t been expecting it, for she straightened as Niko started to laugh. “Oh, sorry,” he tried to explain. “I just realized that this fucking family is even weirder than I thought it was. The rot goes deep, huh?”

She stared at him, her gaze hard. “That is my fault, most likely. Anomalies are born from the Other. I am an exception. I committed a forbidden art and challenged the laws of the cosmos. As I said, balance is everything. Most likely, causality is using my descendants to maintain it.”

“Descendants? Like me, you mean.” A thought occurred to him then. “Me… and Sonia.”

“Both of you were destined from birth to serve as vessels for other beings. Just as I was supposed to be.”

It must have been in his head, but Niko felt as if the air grew colder then. Niko himself had never met an anomaly, not a true one, at least. He’d only ever heard about them. And now that he was face to face with one, he realized just how… not human they were. And this one, once upon a time, used to be his aunt. He didn’t quite know how he was supposed to feel about that.

“You’ve been watching us for a long time, haven’t you?” he asked.

She was shaking again, just in small tremors up and down her frame. He was starting to think it wasn’t due to emotion. “Of course. We are family, after all. I have watched you since the day you took your first breath, and I will continue to do so until you meet your fate. Originally, I assumed we would never meet face to face. But the fact that you have somehow defied your fate, if only for a while, made me curious. It reminds me of myself. I wanted to speak with you just once.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” he admitted. “Being compared to you.”

“It is not something you have to come to a conclusion to,” she chuckled. The shaking was getting very bad. “Now, I do apologize, but I’m afraid this vessel of mine is only temporary, and I must take my leave. I will continue to watch you, Niko Borozov.”

“It seems like everyone is.”

“I wish you luck in your fight against fate.”

The Vol shook so violently that it seemed as if she might simply fall apart. And then she did. Her body collapsed to the floor in a pile. And he was alone.

Niko approached it cautiously, and nudged his foot against the heap. It rattled softly. Confused, he lifted the hem of the coat and frowned. The body lying in front of him wasn’t human at all. It was an articulate mannequin, like the type you might see in the windows of a fancy clothing store. Although this one looked like someone had taken a stick to it. The limbs were splayed in various directions, and some of the ball-joints were firmly out of their sockets.

Cautiously, he lifted the hat, only to see an entirely blank face. Which was strange, because even the mouth was gone. One side of it was cracked open, and the void left there where an eye should be seemed to stare back at him. Just a broken doll that the god had left behind.