Quaranteam: Ruins United Ch. 05

"Council in 30 on Teamspeak," he sent to the group chat, stashed the phone back into his pocket and raised his eyes to the window again, when the reflection in the glass got his attention. Turning on his heels, Dan stalked to the opposing wall, tore Putin's portrait off and threw it into a garbage bin. Much better. He looked around again. Or is it? Fuck, I can't stand this place, all of this needs to be thrown the fuck out.

He went back to the first floor, leaving the door to now-his office unlocked and wide open.

"Hey, guys," he peeked into the door, not walking in. "If you have time, please, scrape Rodion's workstation for important data and send all the paper files to the archive, alright? Everything else you can scavenge or just throw out. I'll take care of the furniture next week, along with someone who is going to actually run this place."

The beardy looked surprised.

"I- I honestly thought you were the best candidate for the job," he said with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

"I'm not stepping down as a director, but a chief technical officer would be nice to have. Let's be honest, Roman, I might be better at this than Vozhesensky ever was even in his dreams, but this place needs a ninja wizard of technology skills," Dan shook his head. "I happen to know one, let's see if I can make her available."

"Her? May I ask who?"

"Yeah," Dan nodded. "Larisa Ptitsyna."

The blonde turned to face him.

"Tyan, really?" He asked with a trembling voice, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "She's scary."

"No, she's not," Dan chuckled, then shook his head. "Oh blya, who am I kidding, she absolutely is. But I'll make sure she doesn't bully you when I'm not around. Alright, fellas, I'm out! You have my number."

-//-

"You're early! Did something happen?" Tash hugged him the second he was through the door. Rina was trailing not too far behind.

"Yeah," he hastily kissed both of them, simultaneously pulling his jacket off and kicking his boots under the clothes rack, then headed right into the study. "Lots of things. I need to update everyone, so instead of telling the same story twice - let's go."

He plopped into the chair, turning the displays and pulling the mic closer.

"I made borsch, maybe you want to eat first?" Tash perched on the edge of the table beside him.

"Mmm, that's tempting. Not the Moscal recipe, I hope?"

"Of course not, who do you take me for," she scoffed. "Odessa all the way!"

"Good," he nodded. "But later. Hey, everybody here?"

"Sonic here."

"Casa Kubana represent!"

"Who are we raiding today?" Max tried to joke, but his voice was strained.

"Nobody. At least not immediately. Okay, first things first - I guess everybody should know by now who Colonel Grishin is. The fucker has infiltrated the City Hall."

Both women gasped. Rina stood up from the couch and pulled trembling Tash into a hug, looking at him with eyes full of worry. Chat responded with lowly muttered swears.

"Yeah," Dan continued. "He's operating under a fake identity, which is an immediate red flag."

"Smith," Ivan began. "Is this channel secure?"

"Sure, why?"

"Okay. Why don't we just waste that kozel? Stage a good old gop-stop* gone wrong. No cops will look into it in this fucking chaos."

[*Mugging]

"No," Dan growled. "We're not crossing that line."

"Tell me, oh wise leader, what the fuck are you waiting for?" Ivan was starting to boil. "Until they start hunting and killing us?"

"For now, I need you to have eyes on him," he conceded. "Cover all routes from the City Hall to Grey House, pedestrian ones especially. Do not approach until I say so."

Ivan muttered his disagreement, but seemingly obeyed.

"Now would be a right time for some good news, Smith," Sonic chimed.

"Okay, I have those," Dan nodded to the invisible audience. "We got allies - Black Sea Cossack Voisko. Ilya, I think you know their new ataman - Bogdan Groza."

"Fuck yeah, I know the guy!" Partizan guffawed. "We went to the same school. He taught me to fight. Absolute legend that one."

"Good," Dan nodded again. I gotta stop doing that, this is stupid. I'm not in the conference room. "All of you will be happy to know Voisko knows about your patrols and will not interfere, and they are replacing the city police, so it should take some load off your crews. I didn't ask for any specific help yet, but I don't think they'll refuse if we need more people for something. Sonic?"

"Yeah, man."

"Please, set aside two thousand five hundred doses for them. We won't deliver them right now, just reserve them for Voisko, for a one-to-one ratio."

"Will do."

"Wait... you mean they have five thousand people?" Partizan exclaimed. "That's an entire fucking army these days!"

"Well, they are called Voisko after all," Dan chuckled. "Alright, fellas, you got anything to report? How're your vaccinations going?"

The crew reported, one by one. Everything has been relatively quiet, the amount of vaccinated - and protected from DuoHalo - was rising across the board, several minor regenerations have been reported too, no side effects. Closing the meeting, Dan wished everyone a good weekend, listened to their byes, signed off and turned to his women.

"How about that borsch now?" He asked, tiredly kicking back in his chair.

"The what?"

Tash's eyes went wide and her face distorted in an angry grimace. She was about to slap him, but Rina pulled her to a safe distance, holding her across the waist with both arms.

"You drop bombs like that and then just wanna sit down and eat like nothing happened?" The tiny redhead was furious. "The gall! Rin, can you believe this?"

Rina shrugged without a word, but with a conflicted look on her face.

"I'm not about to go to war with the feds on an empty stomach," Dan shrugged too, mimicking Rina.

"Let me go, I will kick his ass!" She tried to break free, but Rina was stronger.

"Okay, enough," he sighed and stood up, towering above her, his face quickly turning from tired to grave. He looked her straight in the eyes, unblinking. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, because I'm not going to repeat this again. There are things happening around us that are beyond my control, and no matter how much you trust me and believe in my abilities, some of those things I just can't prevent. Shit will inevitably get worse before it gets better. To make it through and see the end of it, we have to stand together and not waste our breath on petty bickering."

Dan took another step and locked his hands behind Tash's head, pulling her in for a slow tender kiss. When their lips parted, she was already flushed and panting for breath.

"Do not ever lose sleep or appetite over anything," his voice was barely a whisper now, but his eyes stayed the same amount of grave. "Do not show them your fear. If they see you are afraid, they have won."

She closed her eyes and hid her face in his chest. Rina took a step forward, hugging them both and looking at Dan with a mix of emotions on her face - love, anguish, fear. She hesitated, as if wanting to say anything, then just shook her head and hid her face in Tash's red mane.

"I- I can't, Dan..." Tash sobbed somewhere around his pecs. "I'm not strong like you..."

"No," he whispered. "You're much stronger."

Borsch was amazing, by the way, Tash even baked garlic pampushki* to go with it.

[*Small sourdough bread rolls]

-//-

Nov 30th, 2020.
8:30am-ish

"Thank fuck for a quiet weekend," Dan drawled.

Nothing happened. Nobody called, nobody messaged, nobody knocked on the door. He would begin to worry because of the extremely quiet days following an absolutely hectic week but, with two increasingly horny women around taking his edge off at least twice a day, he didn't really have any time to let the anxiety set in.

On Monday, he woke up at 7:00 on the dot without an alarm, worked out, took a shower, checked all the inboxes and now was devouring his oatmeal, sitting at the dinner table. Rina and Tash had already eaten and were keeping him company, sitting around the table with their laptops.

"I don't know which fuck to thank," Tash muttered. "I won't be sitting straight for a week after last night's romp."

Dan ducked, hugging his bowl, as if expecting things to start flying in his direction. He woke up feeling sore all over, and it took him an hour to properly stretch. I might've gone too hard on her yesterday, but she kept asking for it...

"You kept asking for more, now you complain?" Rina echoed his thoughts with a smirk, not looking up from her screen. "Cute."

That got her a mock glare and a playful punch in the shoulder from Tash, who turned to Dan after that.

"I sent you some analytics I've done recently, but I really need access to more data."

"Thank you, love. I would've given you remote access to the department's databases already, but nothing works yet," Dan grimaced. "I need Lara to kick everything into shape first."

"Lara?" Rina livened up, turning to him. "You plan on hiring her?"

"Yeah," he nodded, pushing the now-empty bowl to the side. "Once we get her case thrown out."

"Hiring a renowned hacker? Imagine the publicity," she shook her head.

"Alleged hacker," he wiggled his eyebrows. "Besides, who's gonna say no to me?"

His phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and smirked. Speak of the devil. He pushed the button, then another one.

"Privet, Lara. You're on speaker," Dan informed her. "Girls are here."

"Um, good morning everyone," her voice wasn't scrambled today.

"Good morning, Lara," Rina and Tash sang together, grinning madly.

"A quick question for Dan," she wasn't hesitating even a bit. Probably rehearsed the speech several times. "Do you happen to know why my Dom was an epitome of love and care during our session yesterday?"

He expected the question, but never expected the intonations. There was zero strain in her voice, she was relaxed and... Playful?

"Um... we had a talk," Dan tensed. "And came to an understanding."

There was a pause, and he inwardly braced himself, preparing for her outburst, but instead...

"Why?" She asked softly. "I never asked you to do anything for me..."

He sighed.

"I think, and the girls will agree with me on this - bruises don't look good on you."

Rina and Tash eagerly nodded.

"I never thought you cared..."

"How could I not?" Damn, did I just shrug again?

"Thank you," she whispered, then disconnected, but not before Dan heard something resembling an excited giggle. He turned to his women, both of them watching him with excited eyes and broad smiles.

"The girl got it baaad for you, Dan," Rina propped her face with her hands, looking at him.

"I bet my ass she's petting the beaver right now thinking of him," Tash loud-whispered, leaning to Rina's ear.

"Is this everything you can think about?" He rolled his eyes in exasperation and stood up. "I swear, this vaccine shit got you both acting like two horny teenagers."

Smiles vanished. Rina stood up, circled the table and came face to face with him.

"Would you rather prefer the cold and calculating type?" She asked dryly, cocking her head to the side slightly and looking him in the eyes. "We can do that. Not a smile in this house, no displays of affection, no nothing. We've been trained to hide our feelings to survive in the hellscape out there. Do you want that, Dan?"

"No," he managed to squeeze out a single word.

"Then give your women freedom to be excited about simple things, because, God knows, there's not much left to be excited about."

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"That's better," she softened and pulled him into a hug, softly kissing his cheek. "Now go, we don't want you to be late."

-//-

"...and concluding this meeting, I want to inform you I posted an analytics report into our Discord. It's done by an experienced analyst who used to work in a big city administration, and you can expect more detailed reports in the future - once we get our databases up and running again. You might also want to put in requests for analytics specific to your fields."

Dan, standing at the head of the table, looked the team over. They were watching him intently, not missing a word. Good thing I keep these short and within their attention span, no one gets tired or bored. Masha's place beside Eldar was empty.

"We're moving to shorter meetings from now on," he sighed. "Most of you don't really need to come in every day, and due to specifics of your fields you might rather need to be somewhere else, so... just be ready to hop in on call at 10am on weekdays."

That was met with smiles and murmurs of approval. Yeah, everybody loves remote work. Suck it up, old world.

"Anybody who needs a one-on-one with me, I'll be around until noon. And where's Masha, by the way?"

He got shrugs from them, even from Eldar, grim and sulking for some reason.

"She had a stomach flu through the weekend. Promised to be here in the afternoon, she called me," Artemi voiced from the other end of the table. The fucker looked smug.

"She called you?" Dan cocked his head. Eldar turned and glared daggers at him, which elicited a smirk from the Muscovite. "Okay, tell her to contact me when she does. Everybody - dismissed."

The team started to disperse. He sat back into his chair, eyeing the pile of printed reports in front of him. The situation was worse than he estimated, though not by much. This pile might have data Tash needs for the next report. He pulled the papers closer to him and began carefully stacking them to take them home. Eldar switched seats, moving closer to him, and Dan turned his face to him, looking the short guy in the eyes from under his eyebrows.

"The fuck, Eldar. Why did your girl call this asshole and not you?" He asked in a low voice.

Eldar shrugged and made a hurt puppy face.

"We chatted for hours. There was nowhere to go, with all bars and cafes closed, so I invited her over and she wasn't against that..." He confided in an equally low voice. "Nothing happened, we just sat there drinking coffee and talking, and it felt like she really was into me. We agreed to meet again and go for a walk in Galich park or something on the weekend... and then she just wouldn't take my calls."

"Have her call me," Dan frowned. "I should really mind my own business and not play the matchmaker here, but I'll make sure to figure out what the fuck is going on and tell you, alright? Now, what have you got for me?"

Eldar nodded and shifted in his seat.

"Um... the word about the tax and social payments standoff got out."

"Expected," Dan nodded.

"Kuban Invest tops requested a meeting with you today, unofficially."

"Me? Why not Knyazeva?" His eyebrows flew up.

"First, because Duchess and Denisova took a chopper north to meet some farmers, they'll be out all day. Second, because everybody knows you're running the show. Even Knyazeva plays a second violin to you."

Dan scoffed, Eldar just shrugged.

"It is what it is, Dan. No one is questioning your appointment because nobody wants to clean this mess, so everybody just silently agreed you're the right man for the job."

"At least you're honest," Dan frowned. "Asshole."

Eldar shrugged again.

"They'll be here in fifteen. Which of your offices should I send them to?"

"What do you mean - which?" Dan felt his eyebrows crawl up.

"You're the vice-mayor, man. The vice-mayor office, just across the mayor's, is yours."

"Huh."

"The secretary's name is Lidia Efimovna, don't forget. Make a good first impression - and you're golden," Eldar smirked.

The Big Boss offices were right in the middle of the second floor. Dan walked the empty hallway, old parquet creaking under his boots, until he reached the big wooden double doors, guarded by two female Cossack cadets. Nodding to the girls, he pushed the door and entered the spacious and richly decorated waiting room. Front and center against the window, to show the visitor who's really the boss around this office, stood a piece of furniture Dan struggled to call a desk. The massive wooden titan straight back from the USSR was greeting visitors with a meticulously detailed wooden bas relief of a typical Kuban scene - a wheat harvest. Probably belonged to one of the local Chairmen. Almost hidden behind the desk, stacks of documents, a huge PC display and several desk phones, sat a woman in her early 60s, with short gray hair, dressed in a strict malachite dress. Noticing him, she stood up and circled the table, coming closer. Her mask, the same malachite as her dress, didn't hide the fact her makeup was immaculate, not overdone like the secretaries of old preferred. Dan noticed the complete lack of jewelry and bijouterie too, then - a pair of hazel eyes, looking at him from below - the woman was a head shorter - studying his face over her glasses with the intensity of an X-ray machine. He suppressed the urge to shiver under her gaze.

"Lidia Efimovna," he smiled under his mask and gave her a slight bow. "A pleasure to meet you."

"I was wondering when you'd show up, Danila Kirillovich," she huffed.

"I'm not an office person. Even my appointment won't change that," he chuckled. Is this a test? I wonder if she's like my gran - softer behind that stone face. "And please, call me Dan."

"Only in person, never in public," she responded, softening immediately. "Call me Lida. Same rules apply."

She turned on the spot and walked to the big double doors on his right, pushing them open.

"It's a good thing you didn't arrive earlier," she said. "Your office was finished just yesterday."

Dan took a step in and stopped, taking in the scene.

"It's a bit Spartan, if you ask me, and lacks a woman's touch, but Olya was very specific in her instructions." It sounds like she's complaining. Basically, 'the evil mom doesn't let the grandma stuff her favorite grandson with meatballs until he bursts' situation.

The spacious office, at least 40 square meters, was empty, save for an executive desk hosting an intercom, an ergonomic chair, two egg chairs for visitors and a small coffee table between them. No bookcases, no icon of a current Russian ruler, no decorations, just Kuban's flag on a flagpole in the corner. Parquet floors were freshly waxed, walls repainted cold white. The faint smell of paint still lingered.

"It's perfect," Dan grinned under his mask.

"You think?" Lida glanced at him with a hint of a doubt. "Well, I guess, she knows you better."

"I'm not going to sit here all day - every day or any day, my work is in the field. Except for private talks without press, the first of which I'm going to have in... ten minutes," he informed the secretary after consulting his phone.

"Good thing I made sure the place is debugged," she nodded solemnly. "Windows are double-framed and have vibroacoustic scramblers installed, so laser mics won't work either."

Dan looked at her incredulously without saying a word.

"What? I've seen everything on this job," she threw her hands up. "Get comfortable, I'll go make coffee for you and your guests."

She took his jacket off his hands and promptly walked out, closing the doors behind her and leaving him alone for a while. Dan walked to the window wall. All the different angles of the same city square were losing their novelty, but he wasn't looking to admire the landmarks. He stood watch there for several minutes, noticing at last the two different patrols on scooters posted in the opposite corners of the square, not drawing attention to themselves. Dan sighed and turned to the desk. A Laporta Executive desk with a Herman Miller chair. And what's this, Arne Jacobsen natural leather chairs? Holy fuck, Duchess, this shit is way too expensive. I hope you stole it all instead of wasting budget money like that. Even after years of being one of the most expensive programmers in the city, he still couldn't afford stuff like that.