Hack:Moscow Read Online Free Page B

it all to me, how he’d bought a map from a contact in the municipal office. That’s how he picked this warehouse. Beneath Moscow, the new cables traced the pathways of the old sewer pipes. Luka had went down the sewer access in the warehouse and hacked the communications terminal. When he told me that, I’d imagined him inside the tunnels: a flashlight in his mouth, a sack of tools, and wires lassoed around a shoulder. Now, not even the service providers can trace us when we log in. This ‘gulag’ is safer than anywhere else. Anton’s biased. “I’m not going to argue with you, Anton.”
    “Oh? Who do you want to argue with?” He walked over and began scratching the flaking paint on my pillar. “Why were you late this morning?”
    I thought of Anna and blushed. “The bus.”
    “That’s why you’re still a boy. That’s why you are Andrei 1.0. Grown ups, real men, take responsibility for all their actions, good or bad,” he said. Flecks of pastel blue paint drifted down as he scratched.
    Andrei 1.0—it’s a running joke between us. I hate it, but it’s the one joke that both Anton and Luka will laugh over. “That has nothing to do with it. The bus was late,” I protested.
    “The bus, the bus—why don’t you ever take the Metro? It’s faster. And prettier.”
    Ever since Luka made me read the Underground Man , my chest hurts whenever I think of the escalators leading to the trains, sinking, sinking. The bowels of each station are full of statues and everyone looks lifelike, as if molten bronze had been poured over real people. Each time I’m on those escalators, I can’t stop counting, converting speed and time into depth, trying not to think of people buried underground or drowned.
    “Say what you will about Stalin, he had some right ideas. The Metro, the Seven Sisters, the pogroms. Would have been a better if he killed more. Just kill all the Russians and be done with, right?” His laugh had a brutal edge and unnerved me.
    “Aren’t you part-Russian too?”
    “You know nothing.” He pulled out a switchblade to work the paint. “Have you ever been to a foreign country?”
    Some day, I want to travel—but his question didn’t sound like a question.
    He pulled the strap of his gaming goggles, and they made a loud, angry snap against his skin. “I live in one. Every day. People here look down on my kind. On the streets, the cops stop and shake me down. In bars, people mock me. They think we’re inferior because of our skin, we’re half the man they are. They call us bums, then they say we’re terrorists, or homosexuals, or rapists. We’re everything they hate. So be it.”
    I’d heard rumors about the hate groups before, but... “Surely not everyone is like that. How do you know they’re talking about you?” I wonder what he sees when he wears his goggles. More enemies probably.
    “You’re right, Andrei. They must be discussing their grandma’s jam recipe. My mistake.” He made a contemptuous sound. “That’s why I dyed my hair. If they want to stare, I’ll give them a reason.” My skin prickled as his blade scored a teasing, jagged line. “A while back, two of my people, us half-breeds, were attacked after a Spartak Moscow match. The skinheads thought it’d be fun to make his older one watch as they did a free kick with his brother’s head. No newspaper or website ever reported that incident. Nobody dared. This is the kind of city we live in, Andrei, make no mistake. There is no kindness or fairness or mercy here.”
    “What happened after that?”
    “What happens when a boot connects with a young boy’s head?” His lips puckered into white ridges like scars as he flayed a long strip of paint free.
    “I’m not sure I like this story.”
    “Oh? Here’s another one then. Once, God, for shits and giggles, went to a man who’d been beaten up by his neighbor. He healed the man and told him He’d grant a wish for all the wrong he’d suffered. Whatever he wished for,