Genesis. Volume 2

October 9, 1986. New York. Queens. Day. Max didn't like being driven somewhere he didn't know. He sat in the back of an unmarked old van, shoulder pressed against the cold metal wall, counting the turns. Every tilt of the chassis, every click of the turn signal echoed somewhere at the base of his skull. Sasha sat up front, next to the driver—a silent man in a dark jacket who hadn't introduced himself and hadn't even glanced at them in the rearview mirror. Arthur and Lisa sat in the middle row. Jenny by the window, watching the warehouses and rusted overpasses slide past. "How much farther?" Max asked. His voice came out louder than he'd intended. "Almost there," Sasha replied without turning. "You could have told us where we're going." "I could have. But I didn't." Max gripped the knife handle in his pocket. The cold metal under his fingers brought calm—he wasn't going to draw it, just checking it was there. A habit he couldn't shake even if he wanted to. His fingers traced the notches on the handle. After the archive, they'd left the library in silence, each digesting what they'd seen. Sasha had said, "Now—the base. You need to see what you're dealing with." Then the van pulled up, and now they were bouncing through Brooklyn's interchanges, past rusty bridges and endless industrial zones where concrete walls were covered in faded tags. Queens greeted them with gray skies and the smell of diesel. The van turned into an alley, drove along a blank brick wall, and stopped in front of rolling steel shutters with no sign, no number. The driver honked three times, short. The shutters rolled up with a metallic screech. "Get out," Sasha said. Max was first out. He always went first—to scan the area, assess the perimeter, notice what others wouldn't. That paranoia had saved his life twice, and he wasn't about to give it up. Inside looked like a warehouse. Concrete floor, metal shelves, dim ceiling lamps dotted with dead flies. It smelled of dust, gun oil, and sweat—the same smell Max remembered from childhood, when his father took him to the police gym. People clearly trained here. A lot. The air was stale, heavy, but with an undercurrent of cold—the smell of old workshops where windows hadn't been opened for decades. "This is the Circle's headquarters?" Lisa asked, looking around. She'd already pulled out her sketchbook. "One of them," Sasha said. "The New York cell. We train operatives here, store equipment, analyze data. Living quarters are further down the hall." "It looks like..." Max hesitated. "Like a paranoid's lair?" Sasha offered, the corner of her mouth twitching. "I was going to say 'like a barracks.'" "It's the same thing." She led them through the warehouse to a heavy metal door, beyond which stretched a long corridor lit by fluorescent lights. The walls here were covered in maps, photographs, diagrams. Max noticed familiar symbols—the same circles Lisa drew. Only here they were carved into metal plates and mounted above doorways. Protection. Or maybe a warning for anyone who entered uninvited. "This way," Sasha pushed open another door. The training hall was enormous. The high ceiling disappeared into semi-darkness, the concrete floor worn smooth as stone by thousands of footsteps. Along the walls stood mannequins—not ordinary ones, but made of something like wax, with faces that were blurred, as if melted. Max shuddered. "Targets," Sasha explained, catching his look. "They simulate incorporeal entities. They teach you not to aim for the face, because they don't have faces." "Who?" Jenny asked. "The ones you'll be fighting." In the center of the hall stood a man. About forty, stocky, with a short hedge of graying hair and a face that looked like it had been beaten repeatedly and then forgotten to be fixed. A crooked nose, broken and badly healed, a scar through his eyebrow. He wore army pants and a gray t-shirt with sweat stains under the arms. Arms crossed over his chest. His gaze—like two drills. "Sergeant Tucker," Sasha introduced. "Our combat instructor." "Children," Tucker said. His voice was raspy, like an unoiled door. "Sasha said you did well at the circus. I want to test that." "We didn't sign up for testing," Max said. "And I didn't sign up to babysit. But here you are." He walked around the group in a circle—slowly, hands clasped behind his back, his boots marking time on the concrete. Max felt like an exhibit in a museum. Or a recruit facing a sergeant who hadn't yet decided whether to break him or make him a soldier. "Walker," Tucker said, stopping in front of Arthur. "The leader. Good stance. Bad breathing. When you're nervous, you hold your breath. It gives you away." Arthur said nothing. He just exhaled—long, with a whistle. "Robinson." Tucker turned to Max. "Knife in your right pocket. Don't draw it until I say so. Good reflexes, but you don't control them. You twitch before you think. That'll kill you faster than any creature." Max clenched his teeth until they cracked. He wanted to argue but stayed silent. Because the old man was right. "Brooks." Tucker looked at Jenny, his gaze lingering on her bandaged palm. "Sasha said you gave blood at the circus. Stupid. But brave. Stupidity and bravery often go together. Learn to separate them." Jenny met his gaze without looking away. "I do separate them." "Not yet. But you will." Tucker stopped in front of Lisa. She stood clutching her sketchbook to her chest like a shield, looking up at him—small, thin, with chalk sticking out of her pocket. "The artist," Tucker said. His voice softened slightly—barely perceptibly, by a fraction. "Your circles work. That's more than I can say for half my operatives. Don't lose that." "I won't," Lisa said. "They all say that." He walked to the center of the hall and clapped his hands. The sound echoed off the concrete walls. "Warm-up. Ten laps around the hall. Then I'll show you how to move against something without form." "We just came from the archive," Arthur said. "We haven't eaten." "Good. On a full stomach, you'd throw up." Max wanted to argue, but Tucker had already blown his whistle—sharp, piercing. They ran. The first three laps, Max kept pace easily. He was in good shape—he ran in the mornings when he couldn't sleep, which was often. On the fourth lap, Arthur started to fall behind, his breathing breaking into a ragged rhythm. On the fifth, Lisa stumbled, and Tucker barked: "Don't fall!" She didn't. On the seventh, Jenny's cut reopened—the old one from the circus—and blood began to drip onto the concrete, leaving dark blotches. Tucker noticed but didn't stop them. By the tenth, Max couldn't feel his legs. "Stop," Tucker commanded. "Breathe." They stood gasping for air, each breath scratching their throats. Max doubled over, hands on his knees. Circles swam before his eyes—this time not chalk, but red, from exhaustion. "Pathetic," Tucker said. "Very pathetic. You run like a herd of sheep. No formation, no situational awareness, no perimeter control. If there were a creature here, you'd already be dead." "There's no creature here," Arthur panted. "There's always a creature. You just don't see it." He gave them a minute to rest. Then he demonstrated a stance—low, knees bent, center of gravity shifted forward. "Incorporeal entities don't attack the body. They attack the mind. But they have a weakness: they're tied to their entry point. The place where they manifested. If you hold position near that point, you control the fight. If you retreat—you surrender the initiative." "And if the entry point is unknown?" Max asked. "Then you die." Tucker looked at him without a hint of a smile. "So your job is to find it before the fight begins. Study the place. Feel it. Think. Don't wave your knife around like a butcher." He made them repeat the stance again and again. Then move in it—forward, backward, sideways. Max sweated, swore under his breath, but did it. Lisa repeated the movements with unnatural precision—as if she were drawing them with her body, her muscles memorizing every line. Jenny moved slower but steadier. Arthur worked with an expression that gave nothing away—Max knew that look. It was how Arthur looked when he was making a decision he didn't like but believed was right. After half an hour, Tucker nodded. "That's enough for today. Sasha, take them to Patel. Let her look them over before they collapse." "And you?" Sasha asked. "I'm going to write a report about how we've got five idiots who can't hold formation but somehow survived where experienced operatives died." He turned and left without saying goodbye. Max watched him go. He didn't know if he liked Tucker. But he knew Tucker didn't lie. And that mattered more than like. The medical bay was at the other end of the corridor. Small, sterile, filled with equipment Max couldn't identify half of. It smelled of alcohol and something chemical with a metallic tang that stung his nose. On the walls hung diagrams of the human body covered in red marker notes, and Feaster activity maps overlaid on city maps. Dr. Patel was a woman in her mid-thirties, with sleek black hair, in a white coat over an Indian dress with embroidered hems. She wore thin gold-rimmed glasses and moved quickly, precisely, like a surgeon before an operation. She smelled of antiseptic and sandalwood. "Sit," she said to Jenny, indicating the exam table. "The rest—on the chairs along the wall. Don't get in the way." Jenny sat. Patel rolled up her sleeve—neatly but firmly—swabbed the vein with alcohol, and the sharp smell made Max's eyes sting. The needle went in without pain. Blood flowed into the vial—dark, almost black in the dim light. "Interesting," Patel murmured, holding the vial to the light. "What's interesting?" Jenny asked. "Your blood. It's... thicker than it should be. And the color isn't quite normal." She placed the vial in a centrifuge and switched it on; the machine hummed low, guttural. "I take samples from all potential Keepers who pass through this base. Ten years—twenty-three people. Nineteen had normal blood. Three had markers, but weak. One had strong markers—but that person is dead. And you..." "What about her?" Arthur leaned forward. Patel removed her glasses, wiped them on the edge of her coat, and the lenses glinted in the light. "Your markers aren't strong. They're unique. I've only seen this once before—on old samples. Samples over fifty years old." "Martha Brooks," Jenny said. "You know?" "She was my great-grandmother." Patel was silent for a moment. Then she nodded—slowly, like someone who had just found a missing puzzle piece and was now afraid it wouldn't fit. "That explains a lot. Keeper blood is hereditary, but usually dilutes with each generation. Yours hasn't diluted. On the contrary—it's concentrated. You're not just a descendant. You're the essence. If I believed in fate, I'd say someone prepared for this." "My mother died," Jenny said, her voice hollow. "She didn't prepare anything." "Maybe not her. Maybe someone before." Patel turned off the centrifuge, removed the vial. The blood had separated into layers—and one of them, the bottom one, glowed faintly, as if a tiny spark floated in it. "See? That shouldn't exist. But it does." Jenny stared at the vial for a long time. Max saw her fingers grip the edge of the table—not in fear, but in something else. In the weight of understanding that had crashed down all at once. "Can I use this?" she asked. "You already are." Patel placed the vial in a rack. "Your blood attracts Feasters because it's like a drug to them. But it can also seal them. You're a living dagger, Jenny Brooks. And that means they'll hunt you." "They already are." "Then learn not to be prey." Patel turned to the others, her glasses catching the light. "And you—protect her. Because if any Feaster gets hold of that blood, it will become stronger than anything you've seen before." Max wrote it down in his notebook. "Jenny—living dagger. Don't let Feasters get her blood." The letters jumped; his hands still shook from the training, but he finished. Then he looked up—and froze. On the wall, among the photos of Circle graduating classes, hung a picture. Ten people in black uniforms, weapons in hand. Faces—focused, stern. And among them—a man Max recognized. Not because he'd seen him before. Because his name had been shown to him. Kane. He was younger than in the descriptions Elias had given. Thirty—thirty-five, dark hair, sharp cheekbones, eyes that looked at the camera with a slight, barely perceptible smirk. He stood at the center of the group, as if he were their leader. And in his hand, he held a dagger—exactly like the one now in Arthur's backpack. "Is that him?" Max asked, pointing at the photo. Sasha came over and looked. Her face didn't change, but her shoulders tensed, and her hand twitched toward her cuff, beneath which the ouroboros stood black. "Yes. Kane. Ten years ago. A year before he disappeared." "He was in the Circle?" "He was one of the best. London's Keeper. Trained recruits. Knew all our protocols. All our weak points. All our people." Sasha paused. "And then he betrayed us." The door opened, and Tucker entered the bay. He'd changed into a clean t-shirt, but his expression was the same—hard, assessing. He caught Max's gaze on the photo and darkened. "You saw," he said. "Bad." "Why bad?" Arthur asked. "Because now you know what he looks like. Which means you might meet him one day." Tucker walked to the photo, tapped the glass covering Kane's face with his finger—the sound was dull, like knocking on a locked door. "If you see him—don't listen. Not a single word. He plays with words like a cardsharp. He'll convince you that darkness is light, that sacrifice is reward. He'll convince you you're fighting on the wrong side. And you'll believe him—because he'll say exactly what you want to hear." "We won't believe him," Max said. Tucker turned to him. His eyes—pale gray, faded like old denim—looked without malice, but without hope either. "They all say that." Max looked at the photo again. Kane smiled at him from the ten-year-old picture—easily, almost friendly. And that smile made Max's insides go cold, because it was real. Not fake. Not evil. Just the smile of someone who knows something you don't. "We're going to Chicago," Arthur said. "The Maestro is our target. Kane will come later." "Kane is always 'later,'" Tucker said. "That's why he's still alive." He turned away from the photo, the floorboards creaking under his boots. "Patel, are you done?" "Samples taken. Results will be ready tomorrow." "Then take them. They need to eat and sleep. Tomorrow we continue." Max didn't argue. He was so hungry his head was spinning and his stomach was in knots. But as they walked out of the medical bay, he paused for a second, looking at the photo. Lisa stood beside him, her shoulder brushing his elbow. "Did you memorize his face?" she asked. "Yes." "I'll draw it. So we don't forget." "We won't forget." Lisa opened her sketchbook, and the pencil scratched across the paper. Max watched as a face emerged from the lines and shadows—sharp, smirking, with eyes that seemed to follow him from the page. He shuddered. He didn't like that face. He didn't like that it existed somewhere out there, in London, waiting. But now at least he knew his enemy by sight. It wasn't much. But it was more than nothing. "Let's go," Arthur called from the door. Max nodded and stepped out. The warehouse greeted him with the smell of oil and sweat. Somewhere in the distance, Tucker was already training someone else—whistles and the dull thuds of soles on concrete could be heard. The Circle lived its own life—hidden, disciplined, armed to the teeth. And they were now part of it. Max shoved his hand into his pocket where the knife lay. Checked it was there. It was. Cold, reliable, with notches on the handle from long use. He didn't know when he'd need it. But he knew it would happen. Kane looked at him from Lisa's drawing—with a faint smirk, like an old acquaintance. And Max stared back.