without a trace

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**Translation (word-for-word, uncensored, no omissions):**Glorious, fucking, are our times! A majestic epoch of high technologies, artificial intelligence, and cyberpunk... Yeah, right, fuck off, catch me if you can, seven of you! It's the twenty-first century outside, and I'm sitting in Zhytomyr — a city where even the asphalt under your feet has its own special depressive charm, and the air smells of beer, exhaust fumes, and hopelessness. My name is Yeva. I'm fourteen, and nature for some reason decided to reward me with a height of one meter seventy and a weight of nearly seventy kilograms of pure, brutal energy. Green eyes burning with the eternal fire of analysis, a chestnut mane sticking out in all directions as if I'd just been electrocuted, and on my face there's always a wandering smile of a clown-sociopath. Everyday life? Comfort? Money? I don't give a shit about all that from the highest Zhytomyr tower. The main thing is that the brain doesn't dry out and that some kind of destructive drive is constantly boiling in the blood. Anyway, I'm sitting in my room, littered with dirty socks, pizza boxes, and empty cans. On the TV screen a PlayStation is roaring — I spent all my meager savings on buying it. I'm streaming some nameless garbage. My channel has a whole three viewers: some bot, a random pervert passing by, and who the fuck knows who else. And suddenly — bang! The world sank to the bottom. The screen goes black, and in the middle of it a bright red blob crawls out: "ACCESS BLOCKED. YOU ARE NOT 18 YEARS OLD. CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY." "What the fuck, in the ass, fuck?!" I yell through the whole apartment, nearly knocking the gamepad off the table. I grab my phone. There's already a system notification hanging there. To unlock the gadget, they suggest I... read to the front camera without stuttering 1000 words of some legal bullshit and show my passport with registration. Have they gone completely insane there? I jump up from the chair, step on someone's forgotten sock, and fly out into the corridor. I click on the TV, which in our home works once a decade as furniture. On the screen — a fat, glossy mug of some people's deputy. This scum is glowing with such happiness as if he'd just won a free subscription to a sauna with an escort. "Dear citizens! — this bastard jabbers, sweetly squinting. — From today we have protected our children from the rotten influence of the worldwide web! No internet, no degrading social networks! Our younger generation will return to the sources! They will read the great Panteleimon Kulish, memorize Taras Shevchenko by heart! And if some unreasonable parents try to bypass the blocking with the help of all kinds of spyware — we will take the children to orphanages for their own good! Glory to the nation!" Behind the scenes, ovations explode. The crowd in the studio is thrashing in ecstasy, clapping their hands, someone's even drooling from the rush. Inside me, magma is simply boiling. My emotions are generally a separate amusement ride "roller coaster" without brakes, but right now I'm trying to pull on a mask of sarcastic calm, though my fingers are trembling from a wild desire to smash someone's cabin. "Ah you bald bitch!" I hiss through my teeth. "And where am I supposed to watch TikToks about trololo-trololo tricks on motorcycles now? Where's my favorite science-pop about the reproduction of deep-sea squids under acid?! They want to stuff Kulish up my ass?!" I need to decide something. Urgently. Logic turns on at full power, calculating thousands of options per second. I turn around and head to the semi-dark closet at the end of the corridor. My grandpa sits there. My grandpa is a separate meme. He tells everyone and anyone that he's a veteran of some secret war. But the details constantly change: on Mondays he took part in the storming of Amin's palace, on Wednesdays he mowed down gooks in the jungles of Vietnam, and on Fridays he defended Somali pirates from peacekeepers. No one believes him, of course, not even me, but there's one nuance: he always, fuck, drags around a real, though worn-out, M16 rifle. Where he got it in Zhytomyr is the mystery of the century. The door creaks. Grandpa sits on an old crate from under shells and cleans the bolt of his rifle, whistling some insurgent song. "Listen, grandpa," I lean my shoulder against the doorframe. "What did you even do at school without the internet, when your asses hadn't yet grown over with gray hair?" Grandpa slowly raises his faded but still dashing peepers at me, spits some gum on the floor, and grins with his toothless mouth: "Kid, we didn't sit in these your computers! We fought! District against district, wall against wall, iron rebars in our hands — and forward, until someone's head cracks like a ripe watermelon! That was life! That was romance! And in Africa we generally..." "Yeah, got it, bye," I drop and close the door. Grandpa's method with rebar works, but it's too energy-consuming for my intellectual level. Stop. The brain produces a lightning-fast association. Tor! Tor browser! Once long ago, when I was just starting my path as a young anarchist, I downloaded this fucking onion browser onto my old, half-dead home PC. I run to my room, dust flying in all directions, I turn on this hardware junk. Yes, it works! Through wires, through some left-wing network, I transfer the installer to my blocked phone. A few seconds of manipulation, my genius hacker brain on my knee bypasses the stupid security system — and voila! The darknet opens its tender, flea-ridden embrace. A forum starts flickering on the phone screen. Eyes run wild from the assortment. Sale of fake passports, counterfeit hryvnias, drugs for every taste, contract killings of deputies (hmm, tempting, but expensive), some weapons... "Boring, fuck," I mutter, scrolling through the pages. "All this is too banal." I need money. A lot of money. If I want to play games without these bastard age checks, I need either some prehistoric first-generation console, where the only software is cartridges and no internet, or professionally hacked modern hardware with a chip. And for all that I need cash, of which I have, naturally, zero point fuck-all. I'm background-scrolling forums, fingers automatically scroll the thread with prices for narcotic substances. I look at the price tags per gram of cocaine, per kilogram of weed, per speed powders... My lips spread on their own into a wide, predatory smile. The logical chains in my head instantly fold into an ideal, though absolutely doubtful scheme. "Oh yes..." I whisper, and my green eyes light up with a wild, triumphant fire. "Now I know exactly where we'll get the dough, Zhytomyr. Hold on, fuck, daddy's coming for the loot." In short, the business plan drew itself in my head faster than a new video on YouTube gathers views. The scheme is simple as a door: to raise money for a normal, chipped console without any damn subscriptions and stupid adult checks, I need to hustle. The darknet keeps whispering: "Yeva, baby, push the stuff, rake in the cash with a shovel." But there's one small technical snag — I don't have product. I'm not going to sell chalk as cocaine to the local Zhytomyr gopniks, they'll then draw circles on the asphalt with that same chalk around me. So, I need a chemist. A real, fuck, Walter White of the local brew, who'll cook me first-class shit out of shit and sticks. And here my brain produces a flash: Alinka! This nerd lives in the building right across from mine. She and I barely cross paths, because she only goes outside for great shame. She's a classic botany-student straight-A girl from the chemistry classroom. Skinny as a bicycle frame, tall, in glasses the size of half a fucker, and on her head — curly bright-brown hair all the way down to her very ass. Really looks like some rabid alpaca after rain. I fly into her entrance, go up to her floor. The door to her apartment, of course, isn't even locked — probably her forgetful parents have gone off to work. I enter without knocking, like a true sigma-woman, look around. Quiet, only somewhere water is dripping. I go into her room. At first glance — empty. But I look closer... Under the corner desk, curled up in a ball, sits this long-legged curly wonder. Without any extra words I fall to my knees and crawl under the desk to her. I squeeze my sixty-plus kilograms into this tight space, prop my chin on my hand, and look at her. "Yo. And what are we sitting here for? Looking for a new quest in Roblox or just catching vibes?" Alina flinches, her glasses slide sideways. She looks at me with round eyes full of horror, convulsively clutching some plastic blister pack with pills in her hands. "S-sun..." she whispers in a trembling voice. "It's too bright today. Its rays... they'll burn out my retina and provoke skin cancer in three seconds. The sun will kill me!" She instantly opens the jar, shakes out a white round tablet, and swallows it without even drinking. "Powerful start," I nod. "And under the desk the sun won't get you, because majestic Zhytomyr shadow reigns here?" "No, you don't understand!" Alina starts shaking even harder. She pulls her white wireless earbuds out of her ears and looks at them like at a grenade with the pin pulled. "These AirPods... they emit frequencies that slowly roast my brain. They want to liquidate me! I'll die!" She grabs the jar again, pours two more tablets into her mouth, convulsively chews and swallows them, staring wildly at the wall. A second later a new flash of existential horror appears on her face. "Oh no... Oh nooo! I took too many sedatives! Now my liver will fail, and I'll die from the pills already!" "Nice, the situation is a complete surreal," I calmly summarize. I slowly extend my hand and very gently, almost tenderly stroke her cheek. Alina goes quiet for a moment, like a hypnotized meerkat. "Don't be afraid, sunshine," I whisper with maximum care in my voice. "I'll cure you right now." And in that same second I grab her by her thin bony ankles and with a wild yank pull this curly mop out from under the desk into the middle of the room. Alina screeches as if she's being dragged into hell personally by Lucifer. I instantly snatch the jar of pills from her tenacious fingers, jump to my feet, open the window, and with a light hand motion send this chem-shit flying somewhere into the bushes under the building. "My meds!!!" Alina howls, scratching the parquet with her nails and trying to crawl to the window. "I have generalized anxiety disorder! The sun! Radiation! Death!" "Listen, shut your cabin," I cut her off, sitting down on the edge of the chair. "It's unlikely you just have anxiety. There's probably something much worse going on, some kind of delusional schizophrenia. Your shrink just decided not to tell you, so you wouldn't hang yourself right in his office on your sneaker laces. And anyway, quit eating this crap. How will they help you? You'll end up like my mommy, sitting on antidepressants, smiling at every wall and catching zen from how beautifully water flows in the toilet during a flush? We need pure, sober intellect. This is not life, this is a complete delulu-style." Alina goes quiet, sniffs, and adjusts her gigantic glasses, looking at me from bottom to top with a mixture of horror and curiosity. I sit down on the edge of her bed, cross my legs, and get to business. "In short, curly, I have the business idea of the century. You're our Queen of flasks and test tubes, right? So here's the deal: you cook first-class substances, and I take on management and logistics. I'll find who to push this stuff to and how to raise a pile of cash on it. True, I haven't fully figured out yet how exactly we'll sell it, but my brain will come up with something, don't worry about that at all." Alina looks at me like I'm insane (though who's talking). "But... but that's criminal!" she squeaks. "And anyway, it's very hard! Where will I get chemical reagents? Precursors are under strict control! I need red phosphorus, lithium, ephedrine... where do I get all that?! I'll end up behind bars! They'll kill me there!" While she's accelerating her next panic attack, her fingers start convulsively clicking something on her phone. I look closer — in her hands is a brand-new, shiny little iPhone. I deftly, like a professional pickpocket, snatch the phone out of her hands. I look at the screen. This genius fool is already typing a huge sheet of text in the chat with the contact "Mom": *"Mommy, I'm very scared, the sun is shining too aggressively, I'm dying under the desk from radiation..."* I grab Alina by the shoulders and start shaking her so that her curls fly in different directions like tree branches during a hurricane. "Are you completely insane?! Don't write such nonsense to people! Even to your own mother! Do you want orderlies to come here and pack you into the madhouse for five years in the company of those who think they're Napoleons?!" "But... but my psychiatrist said..." Alina sniffles, trying to take back the phone. "He said you can't lie! You need to always share your feelings and tell only the truth!" I lean toward her face so close that she sees the wild, unhealthy gleam in my green eyes. "Listen to me here, kid," I stamp each word with the iron intonation of a master of life. "Remember this once and for all. Lie. Lie always and to everyone. Lie to yourself when it seems everything is bad. Lie to me if stress has accumulated. Lie to your mom so she sleeps peacefully. And especially — hear me, ESPECIALLY! — lie to your shrink. As soon as you tell the psychiatrist the truth, your ass will instantly end up on soft therapy with limbs tied to the bed. Understood me?" Alina slowly nods, bewitched by my titanic pressure. "Well, that's lovely then," I return her phone and pat her on the shoulder. "And now let's get back to our chemistry. Where to get the ingredients, you say? Hm... It seems to me it's time to visit the school laboratory. Our chemistry teacher is drunk more often than sober anyway, she won't give a shit." Saturday. May. The sun shines as if it's been bribed by a Zhytomyr deputy to create the illusion of a happy life. My newly-made chemical partner and I are trudging to school. On a fucking weekend. To break into the chemistry classroom. Well, isn't that a plot for a crime drama with Zhytomyr flavor? So we're walking, in short. I buy a two-liter bottle of cola at the kiosk, take a huge gulp, and background-listen to Alina. Alina, apparently, against the backdrop of tablet deficiency, has melted into talkativeness. She strides with her long heron legs and starts pouring out her soulful biography to me. "You know, Yeva..." her curls bounce comically in time with her steps, and her gigantic glasses constantly slide down to the tip of her nose, "I like a guy. He's just a genius. A real genius of science! He works at a biostation near Zhytomyr, a scientific inventor. He developed a formula for ecological superglue based on an extract from swamp aphid... do you understand? From ordinary swamp aphid!" I nearly snort cola out my nose from this stream of cringe. "Yeah, from aphid," I giggle, wiping my sticky lips with the sleeve of my hoodie. "A true sigma-science. A majestic ecological startup of the Zhytomyr region." "No, listen!" Alina waves her arms like a windmill. "He's so smart! He could be a Hollywood actor if he hadn't dedicated his life to swamp aphid. So... Recently I decided to take the bull by the horns. I completely ignored my fears, went up to him, and offered sex without obligations. Purely for nervous system relief. And he... imagine, he for some reason refused! I take another gulp, but Alina's words reach my brain, and in the next second a fountain of brown soda bursts out of my mouth right onto the nearest lilac bush. "Kha-kha!" I cough, nearly choking. "What did you do?! Sex without obligations to a thirty-year-old inventor of superglue from aphid?! Kid, you'd glue your ass to AIDS faster than from your aggressive sun! That's complete cringe! He refused because he thought juvenile police would come for him right now!" "Well why immediately cringe..." she puffs. We just approach our temple of degradation — general education school No. X. We slither inside. Around smells of bleach and dried cutlets from the cafeteria. And then — bam! From around the corner floats out a lady of about forty in such a creepy floral skirt that it hurts to look at it without sunglasses. She's some kind of our vice-principal or teacher, I see her face every day, but her name has been erased from my memory, because my brain blocks unnecessary info like spam. "Oh!" the vice-principal stops, pressing some folders to her chest. "Girls? And what are you doing at school on Saturday?" My brain instantly turns on the mode of tactical disinformation. We must look maximally innocent. I need to lie about some olympiad. But if I say we came to write an olympiad in math, physics, or chemistry — she'll fucking think I'm an idiot, she knows my grades! Here I need something maximally dumb... ideal... "We're preparing for the regional olympiad in physical education!" I fire off with a maximally serious expression on my face. "We run short distances through the corridors to develop aerobic endurance in conditions of limited space. Full preparation in the style of sigma-athletes." The teacher hangs for three seconds. Her processor tries to process the concept of "physical education olympiad in the corridors," but apparently her cognitive resource is exhausted. "Ah... well... okay, girls." she nods and marches on with her authoritative step. "Genius," Alina whispers when we go up to the chemistry classroom. "What did I tell you? Logic and a confident flex solve any problem." The chemistry classroom turned out to be unlocked — our chemistry teacher after yesterday's drinking clearly forgot to lock the back room when she was boozing with the geography teacher. We quickly go inside. I pull my huge backpack off my shoulder, and Alina starts throwing in everything she sees: test tubes, some flasks, hydrochloric acid, copper sulfate, a spirit lamp, and other junk, which she comments on with strange terms. The backpack becomes heavy as a reinforced concrete slab. We run out into the street with a feeling of complete impunity. Pure thrill, like in an old crime movie where everyone smokes and shoots every two minutes. "Okay, suppose," Alina stops in the middle of the street, adjusting the heavy bag that pulls her thin body toward the ground. "We stole all this. But where, in your opinion, will I cook the product? My mom flies into my room ten times a day to check if I've died from a panic attack! If she sees a chemical laboratory with boiling flasks at home, she'll hand me over to a psychiatrist!" I think. Really, where? In my room there's not even room to turn around, and if something goes boom, my mom will just decide the neighbors below turned on the TV too loud again, and continue smiling at the walls under her little pills. And then a genius idea, like a new GTA release, flies into my head. "Exactly!" I slap myself on the forehead, nearly knocking the unfinished cola out of my hands. "My grandpa's garage! He hasn't looked in there for about ten years. Dust knee-deep, a pile of junk, spiders the size of a fist, and not a soul for a kilometer around. An ideal drug lab in the style of the Zhytomyr underground. Gather your little worms, Alinka, we're going to build our first empire!" I ran home, grabbed a huge bunch of rusty keys to grandpa's garage from the hook, and flew out into the street as if bitten in the ass. On the way we passed a familiar basement — I've dropped in there more than once. It's a local vape shop, where the seller would sell his own mother for a couple hundred. I fly inside and without unnecessary market preludes buy six disposables of maximum power at once — 30,000 puffs each, with frozen strawberry flavor. Couple par, as they say, resting. We come out into the light, I pull out one juicy pink thing and without ceremony thrust it into Alina's hands. "Take a drag," I order. Alina stares at the vape with such horror as if I tossed her a burning grenade. "But... but it's harmful!" she squeaks, recoiling. "There's nicotine! Chemicals! I'll have a stroke of the brain vessels from this!" "Turn on your brains, fool!" I cut her off. "Think that this is not a pacifier with chemicals, but a medical inhalation for your panic attacks. Take a drag — and bam, anxiety flew out together with strawberry smoke." Alina blinks, thinks for a second (in her botany head the process of justifying nonsense clearly went through) and takes a careful but deep drag. "A-ah..." she exhales a whole cloud of fragrant vapor. "Wow. It seems to me my vessels have dilated..." And then this hen again takes out her iPhone and starts convulsively scribbling something. I deftly snatch the phone from her right from under her fingers, but she already managed to press "send." The text of the message to mom got messed up right during my yank. Instead of the planned: *"Mom, I'll die of lung cancer,"* the screen displayed a short and laconic: *"Mom, I'll die of cancer."* "Are you completely insane?!" I quickly add in the chat: *"...mom, I meant Dota 2, I remembered how we got wrecked on mid"* and send it. I turn back to Alina and poke my finger at her pale nose: "Well you're a fool, really! Get yourself a chatbot, artificial intelligence, or find at least some NPC friends in real life! Enough already writing all kinds of crap to mom, she'll have a heart attack from your curly noggin soon anyway!" We turn. On the way — a typical Zhytomyr picture. In the bushes by the road lies some drug addict of about twenty. A blonde in a worn-out tracksuit with three stripes. She lies on the ground and with incredible tenderness and passion embraces a rotten stump, whispering something into its cracks. "Hm, interesting," I mutter, stopping for a second. "Now these are vibes. Now this is content, and you say TikTok got blocked. Life is boiling without the internet!" We approach grandpa's garage. And suddenly — BANG! From the roof of the garage, right in front of our feet, some small kid lands. He looks about twelve or thirteen, purebred Asian, slanted eyes, black forelock. "So this is what life without online has brought people to," my brain thinks. "Kids are already jumping off roofs from boredom, because they can't raise their rank in the game." I take a step forward, turn on my most crooked accent, and address him in English: "Hey, no suicide here! Understood? No suicide!" The kid raises his gaze at me, full of deep contempt, puts his hands on his hips, and delivers in pure, sincere Ukrainian: "What the fuck suicide?! I'm O Se Hun! I'm a purebred Ukrainian Cossack! I was born in Zhytomyr, near maternity hospital No. 2! And I just jump off the roof because it's parkour, understand?!" I hang for a second, looking over this one-and-a-half-meter "Cossack." "Who are you bullshitting, dog-eater?" I snort. But then a lightning-fast analytical calculation flashes in my brain. "Although... stop. You people over there in Asia are all born right away with a black belt in karate or taekwondo? I need muscle protection for my business. Want to be an enforcer in my gang?" O Se Hun, who is two heads shorter than my one-seventy, straightens his back, places his hand on his heart, and stamps with pride: "It's a great honor for me, hetman!" "Well, that's settled then," I insert the keys into the rusty lock, turn it with a wild creak, and open the heavy metal doors. Inside it smells of machine oil, dust, and old rags. In the middle of the garage stands some crappy car. What brand it is — I absolutely don't give a shit, for me it's just a metal tin can on wheels. Grandpa hasn't driven it for about ten years, it's already overgrown with moss. Alina, having caught the strawberry high from the vape, immediately starts bustling. She lays out on the hood of this piece of iron our stolen flasks, test tubes, some tubes, and jars of chemicals, building her laboratory. Suddenly Alina turns to our new guard and asks with interest: "O Se Hun... listen, can you dance like the guys from BTS? Well, those k-pop moves?" My brain instantly explodes from inside. "Not BTS! — How I hate these snotty sweet boys in lipstick! It's complete cringe and degradation!" I turn back to the kid. O Se Hun at this time absolutely calmly takes out of his pocket a pack of thermonuclear unfiltered cigarettes, pulls one out, lights it with a match, and takes such an adult, long drag that even a mustache would envy if he had one. "I see you're a fucking grown smoker," I say to him with sarcasm. "But don't dance for Alina. No k-pop dances. It's dangerous for her melted psyche, dog-eater. She's already on the edge of collapse." O Se Hun exhales thick tobacco smoke right into the garage ceiling, adjusts his black forelock, and calmly answers: "Okay. I won't dance. But remember, Yeva: I'm a Cossack!" --- While Alina was building her chemical crematorium, my eye caught on the corner of the garage. There under a layer of ten-year dust lay two rusty dumbbells. On each clearly stamped: 15 kg. "Hm, let's test my physical potential," my brain thinks. I go over, take these two pieces of iron, and start stupidly swinging them for biceps. One, two, ten, twenty, thirty... forty! Without stopping! Muscles burn, but the iron flies in my hands as if it's not fifteen kilograms but two packs of macaroni! "Holy fuck, I'm a machine!" I blurt out in amazement, throwing the dumbbells on the floor with a loud crash, from which Alina jumps together with the flasks. "Now that's a base! Pure sigma-flex!" Then I remember something important. I take out my phone, turn on Tor, and set to download new episodes of "Rick and Morty." Of adequate quality, of course. But this fucking onion browser works at such speed as if data is being transmitted by carrier pigeons through the Himalayas. The download percentages crawl with a snotty snail's pace. "In short, people," I turn to Alina and O Se Hun. "The episode will be downloading for another eternity. I've gone home. Curly, by tomorrow the product must be ready, pack it in some airtight baggies. Cossack, hold the perimeter, if anyone approaches — knock them out without warning." I go out of the garage and trudge home. On the way, a new destructive thought matures in my analytical center. If I'm so brutally strong that I swing 30 kilograms like feathers, then I need a tool to enhance kinetic impact. I need a weapon. A baseball bat! I fly into the apartment. In the living room on the sofa sits my mother. She, as always after her wonder-pills, looks at the empty screen of the turned-off TV with an absolutely happy, blissful smile. I go up to her, straighten up to my full one-seventy, and say with maximum seriousness: "Mom, I urgently need cash for a baseball bat. I've decided to take up baseball professionally." The absurdity of the situation is simply off the charts. We live in Zhytomyr! Here people know only two sports: football by the beer kiosk and basketball with a broken ball on the asphalt. About baseball in this city they've heard maybe only from American movies. But mother slowly turns her smiling noggin toward me. In her eyes — complete zen and zero thought processes. "Oh, daughter... " she whispers in a tender, melted voice. "Sport is so wonderful... Take the money..." She reaches into her bag, takes out a handful of bills, and holds them out to me. "Nice, sponsorship accepted," I hide the cash in my pocket and head down the corridor. I enter grandpa's closet. He's still sitting there with his scrap metal. "Listen, grandpa," I lean on the doorframe. "What else did you do in the times when there was no internet? Well, besides going wall to wall?" Grandpa suddenly bulges his eyes, makes a wild lunge, and TEARS HIMSELF OFF THE GROUND! He does a full backflip right over his table, trips over a crate, snatches the M16, and FIRES A BURST INTO THE WALL! TRA-TA-TA-TA! Plaster flies in all directions, dust stands in a column! "VIETCONG CLOSE! FUCK, THEY'RE IN THE TREES!" grandpa bellows furiously, staring at the hole in the wall. Then he suddenly calms down, blows smoke off the barrel, adjusts his T-shirt, and answers in a completely mundane tone: "What did we do... We ran rackets on markets, knocked interest out of local gangsters for protection. Normal business it was." "Yeah, whatever," I drop. And then the phone buzzes in my pocket! Notification: *"Download complete."* "Oh-oh-oh, fuck! The episode downloaded!" I yell through the apartment, completely forgetting about grandpa, the wall in holes, and baseball. I fly into my room, fall on the bed right in my shoes, and turn on the long-awaited cartoon. The world will wait while Yeva consumes quality content! The next day I picked up from the post office my new tool of persuasion — a heavy metal baseball bat, which I'd found on OLX for some pennies. The piece of iron looked simply monumental. On the side in black paint was a pretentious inscription: *"ROUTE 66 CRUSHER – EST. 1953."* I immediately turn on Tor and through three-layer anonymity google what this crap is. The search engine gives me an old American wrestler of the 60s nicknamed "Crusher." "Oh-oh-oh, fuck," I whisper with respect, weighing the piece of iron in my hand. "Now that's a base! I got the bat of a real legendary wrestler! Now I understand, sigma-inventory, a pure legendary-quality item!" We're trudging with this bat through Zhytomyr like a queen. And I see — on that same stump sits yesterday's blonde in a worn-out Adidas. Eyes empty, on her face longing for chemical happiness. Living in the moment, but the moment right now isn't the best. I go up, lean on the bat, and stamp: "Need a dose, beauty?" The blonde slowly raises her dilated pupils: "I want... but I have no money. Complete zero, girl." "Excellent!" I tear out of myself a Cheshire cat smile. "Offer of the year: you come with me. You get your ration plus one percent of sales. Your job — delivering stash drops. But remember..." I slowly turn around and with a screech drag the metal bat along the ground. "...if you ditch us or snitch, I'll make mincemeat out of you. Understood?" The blonde suddenly comes alive, her eyes flash with wild delight: "I won't ditch! I'll work! Honest-honest! Give me a dose and tell me where to run!" We deploy in the garage. Grandpa's piece of iron has turned into a real underground lair. Alina has already packaged the first batch of some powder into tiny airtight baggies. I sit down at my junk phone, open the darknet forum, and create a thread for selling under the nickname **"Glitch."** The text is laconic: *"The best stuff in Zhytomyr. No middlemen. Quality — blows your cabin apart."* While I wait for the first orders, I lie down right on the dusty floor and take the two 15-kilogram dumbbells in my hands. I start pressing them from my chest. One, two, ten, thirty, forty... fifty! FIFTY, FUCK, TIMES! Muscles are simply iron, I'll soon be able to break cars in half with this bat! At this time our Korean Cossack O Se Hun showed the highest level of Zhytomyr craft. He found somewhere an old sack, filled it with sand from a construction site, hung it from the garage ceiling, and organized training. The kid spins wild roundhouse kicks, hits this sack with such fury that the garage trembles, and on each hit yells at the top of his lungs in pure Ukrainian: "FOR FREEDOM! TRAAH! FOR THE KHORTYTSIA! BABAKH! FOR THE HETMAN!" "Fuck, a real Cossack," my brain thinks. "Dog-eater, but ours, native." I turn over on my belly and start doing push-ups on my fists. One, two, three... Alina, twirling a flask in her hands, suddenly remembers another story from her failed personal life: "Oh, by the way, Yeva... You know, I once found that scientist from the biostation on Instagram. And I ordered a huge portrait of him on canvas! Well, from his photo where he's holding swamp aphid. I came to him at the biostation, wanted to give the painting as a sign of my love... And he looked at me and says so calmly: 'Girl, leave the premises or I'll call security.' Imagine that?! So offensive! I was from the bottom of my heart!" From such nonsense I just fall belly-first onto the concrete. "Kha!" I squeeze air out of myself. "What did you say?! What the fuck security at a biostation near Zhytomyr?! Are you just a fool or what? Where's the security there?!" Alina adjusts her glasses and sincerely wonders at my reaction: "Well there is security there! A cop... about twenty years old, puny, in a uniform that doesn't fit." "Holy shit..." I mutter, getting up. "We already have biostations with swamp aphid being guarded." I click the phone screen. Opa! On the forum there are already **FIVE ORDERS** hanging! Our business launched faster than inflation! "So, put away the snot!" I yell. "The product is ready. I pack the blonde with baggies of powder, write her exact coordinates of five stash drops around the city, and give a light kick to accelerate. Then I turn to O Se Hun, who has just finished a series of hits "For the Zaporizhian Sich": "Cossack! Your task — follow her at a distance. If local gopniks or cops bother her — knock everyone out. You work like a combat shadow drone." O Se Hun lights his harsh unfiltered cigarette, releases smoke through his teeth, and nods briefly: "It will be done, hetman. Not a single bastard will interfere with our counterculture."