Song By Unreality

Chapter 3

"What will you never forgive a loved one?"

"Betrayal."

(from Rina's interview with the portal 'Lady')

A fat fly was beating against the unwashed glass, and it's buzzing irritated to the point of gnashing teeth. Nikolai put down the folder, opened the window and released the insect into the wild. He didn't return to the table, but cast a longing glance at the street, where parked cars were densely crowded in the courtyard. He looked for his own and sighed softly: because of the stuffiness, he wanted to go home early - to a cold shower, icy beer and a fan, but a stack of dusty folders from the archive clearly hinted that the working day would drag on until midnight.

It was still cool in the morning, and it seemed that May would turn into June without the expected warming, but by lunchtime the city was covered with a stuffy blanket of heat. Nikolai pulled back the tight collar of his shirt and unbuttoned another button. All meetings ended in the morning. The tie had long hung like a lifeless snake on the back of the chair, and the jacket was still lying on the visitor's chair, where Nikolai had thrown it at lunch. If not for meetings that often happened unexpectedly, he would have changed his 'uniform' for informal jeans and a polo. However, to hell with conventions... Vika doesn't care about them, having stopped at such an extravagant style of clothing, goes to meetings with him, bribes clients with professionalism.

Speaking of Vika. Nikolai took a step towards the exit with the intention of asking how things were going with her. But Vika beat him to it, opened the door and entered the office. Despite the heat, she was wearing the same tight crimson tights and a black short dress.

"Did you find something?" Nikolai looked away from her long legs and with difficulty suppressed the urge to ask if she was hot. Hot. Just like him. But she doesn't show it, she tolerates it for the sake of beauty and style. So what was he saying about 'to hell with conventions'? By the way, he needs to ask Vika to call a technician to fix a non-working air conditioner.

"I found it," she answered shortly, carefully hung his jacket on the back of a chair and sat down. "I looked at the archives for the period from ninety-seventh to ninety-ninth years and found two more similar cases. Along with the one you told me about, there are already three of them. Two occurred in Russia, the third – a year earlier in some Korean village."

"Let's talk about ours" Nikolai asked, walked around the table and sat down in his chair.

Vika opened the notebook and, without taking her eyes off the sheets covered with small handwriting, said:

"All cases occurred with a difference of several months. Your city was the third. The second was in a village."

"Also a military?" Nikolai asked.

"Um... I need to clarify it."

He nodded, and Vika continued:

"Everything happened according to a similar scenario: natural disasters, reduction of daylight hours, death of animals and birds. By the way, was there a reservoir in your town?"

"The lake is behind the forest. The water in it was clean, but it became muddy. The animals died. Give me the names of all the villages, Vika."

She dictated the coordinates.

"We need to check the other years," Nikolai sighed and nodded at a stack of folders. "Gennadiy Sergeevich doesn't rule out cyclicity. It is necessary to check whether something similar happened in the period from the two thousandth year to the present day, or if those cases are the only ones. Well, except that something similar has started happening now. Before dealing with the current case, we need to study the past. Perhaps Gennadiy Sergeevich is mistaken and this is just a coincidence. It would be nice if so..."