Necromancer: Undead Lives Matter

CHAPTER 3

After my parents died, that story bothered me for years. Eventually, I took the thing to the regional museum.

The experts took one look at it and told me it was worthless junk. Not an artifact. Not historically significant. And, most importantly, not worth wasting their time on.

So I had it turned into a pendant instead. I've worn it ever since for my father's memory.

I caught myself getting sentimental.

Enough. Time to go.

I had two hundred rubles left in my pocket. I needed to remember to buy a pack of biscuits and some bread for dinner.

The dorm courtyard was already busy. A few guys were sitting on a bench, smoking. One of them looked familiar.

Oh.

Slavyan.

Third year.

“Slavyan!” I waved.

The guy immediately jumped to his feet.

“Oh, hey!”

Then he turned to the others.

“Guys, this is Tolya Dushny. He's a senior.”

I hated all that senior-junior crap. The hierarchy, the titles, the artificial respect.

But sometimes it was useful. Especially when you needed something. Like right now.

“Give me a cigarette,” I said to Slavyan.

He pulled out a soft pack of Salvoro. Absolute garbage.

But I hadn't smoked since last night, and at that moment I wasn't exactly in a position to demand premium tobacco.

I pulled one out.

Slavyan had already produced his lighter, like a good little subordinate.

I lit up and took a deep drag.

Ah. Much better.

“So,” I said, mostly for formality, “nobody giving you trouble?”

Slavyan shook his head.

“If anything happens, let me know,” I continued. “I'll talk to the guys. We'll sort it out.”

After six years of medical school, you inevitably collect a few useful connections. I knew a couple of guys who were more than willing to step in whenever someone decided the younger students needed to be “taught a lesson.”

Was it a little shady? Sure. But that was dorm life.

Besides, if you couldn't handle yourself, nobody was going to do it for you.

I knew that better than most.

Back in my first year, I'd been regularly used as a human hockey puck until I finally started fighting back. Things escalated quickly after that. It nearly turned into a knife fight before a few sixth-years stepped in and shut the whole thing down.

Those same guys had been working in hospitals and clinics around Vladivostok for years now. Experienced doctors. Respected specialists. But back then? They'd just been students too.

Part of the unofficial task force.

Maybe that's why I still felt a certain responsibility toward the younger students. I couldn't help checking on Slavyan.

“So nobody's bothering you?”

“No. Everything's fine.”

He waved a hand dismissively.

“Good.”

I decided not to hang around.

“I'm heading out. Take care.”

“Bye, Tolya.”

Slavyan nodded.

As usual, the younger guys felt obligated to shake my hand before I left. I was starting to feel like some kind of minor cult leader.

Heh.

I didn't bother checking the map on my phone. I'd been going to Fix Price for years. I knew the route by heart.

And off I went.

Vladivostok Port — Three Days Earlier

The shipping container stank of rust, urine, and something worse. Broken pieces of colored glass littered the floor alongside scraps of clothing, bloody rags, and assorted garbage.

At first glance, you might have assumed a group of homeless people had taken up residence inside.

You'd be wrong. The mess had a much more specific purpose.

“Fuck!”

Yuri Strelnikov exhaled sharply.

At the sports school where he'd received practically all of his formal education, one lesson had been drilled into him until it became instinct: Punch on the exhale.

A man hanging from a chain probably wasn't going to appreciate the finer points of boxing technique. He didn't have the time.

The man whimpered with every blow, making small, pathetic noises as Strelnikov's fists hammered into his back.

Kidneys were easy targets. You didn't need to be clever to hit them.

And clever had never exactly been Yuri Sergeyevich Strelnikov's defining quality.

“Pl… please…”

The Boss's debtor could barely force the words out.

“What?”

Strelnikov stopped. He genuinely hadn't understood him. His hand wraps were soaked with blood. A waste, really.

Good boxing wraps shouldn't have to be thrown away after every conversation.

Strelnikov had asked the Boss several times for gloves. Even simple protective gear would have helped. The answer was always no.

For some reason, Aristarkh Vladimirovich preferred Yuri to work with practically bare hands.

“I'm going to tell you everything…”

The debtor coughed.

“Everything…”

“You'll talk when I tell you to.”

Strelnikov resumed the beating.

Kidneys. Then thighs. Again.

The debtor was suspended in such an awkward position that practically every vulnerable part of his body was exposed. Yuri could reach him from almost any angle. There was an art to beating someone without accidentally killing them. It took experience.

Too much force in the wrong place could rupture an organ, cause internal bleeding, or simply end the conversation permanently.

Strelnikov had plenty of experience. Plenty of skill.

So the debtor would die only when the Boss decided he should.

Yuri respected the Boss. Aristarkh Vladimirovich was old school.

He'd entered the criminal world in the late eighties, back when organized crime had become something approaching an officially tolerated profession.

In 1992, immediately after completing his military service in the special forces, he'd joined what everyone simply called the System. The police never managed to establish exactly what his role had been in the organization.

He got away with a suspended sentence. Then Chechnya interrupted his career. When Aristarkh Vladimirovich came back to Vladivostok, people said he'd returned a different man.

Around 1996, his criminal career really took off.

Protection rackets. Contract killings. Wars with rival groups.

The only thing he hadn't touched was privatization.

Apparently, the collapse of the System had taught him to be cautious about that particular business. Everything else was fair game.

The operation grew.

The Boss eliminated the smaller players one by one, while the bigger ones—strangely enough—left him alone. Eventually, racketeering and contract killings expanded into drug trafficking.

Then human trafficking.

Mostly North Koreans.

For a while, Chinese as well. And somewhere along the way, Strelnikov joined the ranks of the organization everyone in the city simply called the Business.

That was in 2009. A very good year for the Boss.

By then, Aristarkh Vladimirovich had developed friendly relationships with several very “decisive” people in the regional administration. And once a criminal organization has friends in the right offices, business tends to become considerably easier.

At first, Yuri was just a regular torpedo—a guy you sent when something needed handling. He was put in charge of a few “points,” and eventually he was promoted to dealing with people the Boss wanted gone.

Around 2012, Yuri came up with what he considered a brilliant new way to make people disappear.

The idea came from television.

At the time, he'd been seeing a woman who was obsessed with dark American TV shows. Yuri wasn't particularly interested in them himself, but he watched along with her often enough.

One series caught his attention.

Sinister.

It was about a serial killer who specialized in killing other serial killers. The guy had an interesting routine. He'd cover an entire room in plastic, kill the target, cut up the body, seal the pieces into separate weighted bags, and dump them in the bay.

Yuri thought it was a damn good system.

The Boss agreed. Then told him to improve it.

At the time, Aristarkh Vladimirovich was going through a phase.

Personal development courses. Team-building seminars. Leadership training.

All that motivational garbage.

Years later, he would admit he'd been wasting his time. But back then, he'd apparently decided that even murder needed a little corporate optimization.

So he told Yuri to “refine the concept.”

Yuri didn't understand what needed refining. The method already worked. But the Boss gave orders. Yuri obeyed.

After a couple of weeks of unusually intense thinking—an activity he generally avoided—he came up with a revised system.

They would use a van with darkened windows. Or no windows at all. The entire interior would be lined with plastic sheeting.

When someone landed on the Boss's list, they'd be grabbed off the street and taken somewhere isolated. The rest was straightforward.

Once the job was done, the remains were packed into inconspicuous containers and transported to the port. From there, they went out by boat into Amur Bay. And the evidence disappeared.

The first few jobs proved the system worked. After that, they never bothered changing it.

Nobody went diving in Amur Bay. The bodies stayed down there.

From 2012 through 2021, Yuri's record remained perfect.

People disappeared.The police opened missing-person cases.

They searched. They asked questions. Yuri wished them luck.

There was another profitable side to the operation, too.

Whenever a target presented an opportunity, the Boss sometimes sent a doctor along with the necessary equipment. Useful organs were removed before the remains were disposed of.

The organs went into specialized refrigeration units, then across the border into China.

Demand was always high. And the money was even higher.

Livers. Kidneys. Hearts. Those were the most popular.

Once, a Chinese buyer had even placed a special order for a pair of eyes.

The Boss considered the entire arrangement excellent business.

The debtors, in a sense, always paid their debts in full.

“That's enough.”

The Boss finally raised a hand.

Yuri stopped.

Aristarkh Vladimirovich sat in a leather chair in the corner of the container, smoking a Cuban cigar as though he were sitting in some expensive private club instead of a rusting steel box that smelled like blood and piss. He wore a brown checked Bucci suit.

Gold cufflinks decorated the sleeves of his beige shirt, each engraved with some strange symbol.

His carefully trimmed beard had been divided into two neat braids. Dark glasses covered his eyes. And in one hand he held a cane topped with a skull whose tiny fangs were shaped like a vampire's.

The whole ensemble should have looked ridiculous. Instead, it inspired something close to awe in Yuri.

If you were going to be a crime boss, you might as well do it properly.

Aristarkh Vladimirovich was a legend.

People feared him. People respected him. Mostly, they feared him.

“Speak,” the Boss said, taking another drag from his cigar.

“I've scraped together twelve thousand over all this time, Boss,” the debtor whined. “That's everything. I don't have anything else.”

“Who else?”

The debtor hesitated.

“Nikitos.”

The Boss waited.

“Nikita Evgenievich Ivashkin. Okeansky Prospekt, Building 17. Only one entrance. Apartment eighty. Fifteenth floor…”

“Finish him.”

Yuri moved.

The debtor's eyes widened.

“But—”

Yuri struck him once. The edge of his hand crushed the man's throat.

The debtor convulsed. Tried to breathe. Couldn't.

The sounds that came out were wet and broken. It was pointless. He was already dead. His body simply hadn't accepted the news yet.

“Find this Nikita,” the Boss said.

Yuri looked toward him.

“That rotten bastard. I've known for a long time that he's hooked on hard drugs. But Nikita needs to be checked.”

The Boss took another slow pull from his cigar.

“Take Lepila with you. Remove anything useful and bring it to the lab. Have them run the tests.”

He paused.

“If there's anything worth keeping, send it to Vanya.”

Vanya. Liu Wan. The Boss's intermediary with the Triad.

The Chinese market had an insatiable appetite for organs, and the money involved was astronomical.

Yuri couldn't even imagine having that kind of money. Aristarkh Vladimirovich could.

“Understood, Boss.”

Yuri nodded.

“It'll be done.”

“Just be careful,” the Boss warned. “And have Lepila keep a close eye on him. Last time turned into a bit of a mess.”

Last time.

That had been the heart they'd sent to China with a defect that somehow hadn't been caught beforehand. The Chinese doctors spotted the problem, canceled the transplant, and, to make matters worse, the recipient had been some highly influential party official.

It had been, as the Boss put it, awkward.

Fortunately, Aristarkh Vladimirovich had fixed the situation.

He always did.

“We'll handle it properly this time,” Yuri assured him. “Shall I get started?”

“Go.”

Yuri pulled out his phone and sent a message through Telegram to one of his trusted contacts in the police.

Soon enough, he'd know exactly what kind of man Nikita Evgenievich Ivashkin was.