One-Armed and One-Eyed, part 1

Geryon's Code Cycle | The Orphaned Earth | Chapter 4

Ivan Vassilevsky, September 6, 2192 

I arrived by dog sled at dawn — late, of course — but not because of the dogs. I’d stopped up on the cliff, letting them catch their breath while I lost mine staring down at the Seven Winds.

Back home in Heliopolis, we built underground — steam, heat, darkness, safety. Here? The Seven Winds clawed their way out of the coastline like some ancient beast dragging itself up from the sea. The locals say the city flows down the mountainside like lava. Maybe it once did. Now it just looked sharp enough to cut the sky open.

From a distance, it’s beautiful — stepped layers of stone and steel, half-buried in the bones of the mountain. Back before the Blackout, rich architects thought blending buildings into nature made them gods. Give it a hundred years — the next generation will forget men ever built it. They'll stare up at these dead towers and swear some higher power shaped them. They'll almost be right. Mortals dream small. This... this was madness pretending to be art.

In the so-called Golden Age (and we’ve got plenty of people who were of age back then), tourists came here from all over the world. Two passenger liners could dock at Seven Winds, or even a small floating city, to top off their fresh water and food supplies if they ran low. This was the place for everything that wasn’t allowed in the scientist settlements: casinos, brothels, bars with narcotic cocktails, dream theaters where every marmoset could feel like a hero, and every Cinderella—no matter if she was a hundred and fifteen years old—was bound to find her prince. Even the best employees of Winged Sun were given permission to visit Seven Winds several times a year, but only once they turned twenty-five.

Not every road in this world is open to random visitors — especially here. Seven Winds is split in two: one part for the chosen, the other for everyone else.

Getting into the city at all is a privilege. Holding a yearlong pass is something people brag about — a sign that you’ve made it. But the glitter and spectacle? That’s just cover.

The real purpose of Seven Winds is hidden — not in a remote military base or mountain vault, but here, where the music blares, the roulette spins, and dancers flash their limbs under flickering lights.

That’s why I’m here.

Since the Blackout, Seven Winds has changed — like everywhere else. The shoreline’s dotted with poor folk’s stone shacks, whale skeletons, abandoned yachts turned into homes. Lost people clustering near the illusion of safety.

The Pine Island, once a luxury ocean liner, looks as shabby as everything else here. Laundry flaps on its railings. Vegetable plots cover the helipads. Its decks creak under new lives.

Some buildings still show the scars of explosions — echoes of the civil war that ended two and a half years ago with one man’s victory.

Heldrich - the man I need to win over.

At the gates, my sled and I were checked for explosives. Guns, blades, and crossbows are common here — but anything that goes boom is off-limits.

I paid a dozen rounds of ammo to house the dogs at the kennel and stepped into the city proper, along Ayn Rand Passage. The name hasn’t aged well. It took a minute to adjust to the stench. Can’t speak for the sewer system, but the ventilation is shot.

Up close, the glamour cracks.

The glass dome over Liberty Square — now just a gaping skylight — is shattered, open to rain and slush. But somehow, the wisteria tree at the center still stands. No one's chopped it down for firewood. That means there are still some rules here.

The market around the tree is chaos. People sell anything they can grow, kill, or steal.

I barely dodged a fish cart. Slipped on a squid that had flown from the same load. But no one tried to lift my wallet, and that’s rare.

Then I noticed the Sighted — men with spiked clubs standing around the square, eyeing everyone. The local law reporting to Heldrich himself. Their presence explained the order.

The Velvet Night Hotel is in the Keel — the fancy part of town, built over the sea. My room with a glass ceiling and retractable shades faces the sky instead of the water.

I kicked off my boots, hung up my traveler’s dog coat to change it later for a more fancy one, and collapsed onto the bed. With my only eye open, watching clouds slide past overhead — something I miss, even with all the safety and comfort back home.

The moment was ruined by a black speck on the wall: a bedbug.

But the worst part isn’t the bugs but the doors.

Used to be: palm-scan, one touch, and the room was yours. Now? If you’re inside, you deadbolt yourself. If you leave, the owner or doorman locks it and keeps the key. Which means they can rifle through your gear whenever they feel curious. Need a bath? You have to ask. They’ll heat water and pump it into your room — if you pay. I’m lucky, though: in other cities, you get a basin for hand-washing — and that’s considered luxury.

After about an hour and a half of rest, I sat up and started planning. Time to gather intel.

Heldrich has all the info. But first, I need to figure out what he wants — and what I have that might tempt him. That means talking to locals. Listening. Drinking.

God help me, I hate drinking. But a scout’s got to do the ugly work too. And this is not even the ugliest one.

I have several objectives here. The most important: locate any functioning Golden Age artifacts. Archival hints suggest Nautilus had a presence here — a lab, an office, maybe a warehouse. Even Reed cannot say what exactly it was. That’s what bothers me: how someone could be so careless about their own legacy.

If the place is powered by a reactor with a compatible fuel rod, it could keep HQ alive. Maybe more than that.If it’s abandoned, I need to know who has access. If someone runs it, I need to talk to them — or get past them.

And then there’s the other mission - to find the lost man. If he’s alive — bring him back to safety. If he’s not, I need to know why.

Jack March, September 6, 2192 

Caravanner Jack, still weak from a concussion and blood loss, stood in one of the luxurious offices aboard the oceanic nuclear-powered liner Pine Island, now permanently docked in the semi-closed passenger terminal. Already feeling miserable—both mentally and physically—he silently cursed this place for the old wound it brought to mind. The third source of his irritation and unease, beyond disgrace and his pounding headache, was the city’s ruler seated before him: Heldrich. He had seized control of the Seven Winds after a bloody civil war between the Bao, Vartanian, and Mizrahi families over the right to trade the drug known as "Spark." 

The three-month bloodbath between old rivals ended not with peace, but with exhaustion. Bao forces retreated. Mizrahi reconciled with the Vartanians. A dynastic marriage sealed the truce. But during the wedding feast—an event so massive, by local standards, that two hundred people crowded the top level of the city—a blast tore through the upper tier, collapsing a fifth of the platform in seconds.

Among the dead: Uncle Abe, patriarch of the Vartanians; his son Abraham Jr., his young wife Debra, and nearly the entire Mizrahi family. All crushed beneath twisted steel and broken stone. No one claimed responsibility. But the whispers were loud.
Bao remnants, they said. And soon, they feared, Bao would return—with hired guns.

And then, the city met Heldrich; no fanfare. No flag. He was first just an assistant to the local doctor—later, Uncle Abe’s bonesetter. He didn’t panic after the blast. While others screamed, he organized. While others mourned, he dug.

Two days. No sleep. Covered in ash and blood up to his elbows—and at times, his waist. When he finally collapsed from exhaustion, people wept.

He was no more than thirty-five. Taciturn. Unshakable. Something about his presence—quiet, grounded, relentless—brought a fragile calm to a city on the edge of breaking again. People listened to him before they realized they were obeying. Even the old enemies—the ones who, days before, were ready to kill each other—followed his voice like sled dogs to a master.

It wasn’t until later that they began to fear him.It happened in the market square. A thief—a scrawny teen—grabbed a fish from a vendor and ran. No big deal: petty theft happened all the time.

Heldrich didn’t shout. Didn’t chase. He just drew a gun and fired once, dead-center. The kid dropped mid-stride. No one screamed, no one ran.

Only silence. And then approval: “Finally, someone with spine.”

No one could recall Heldrich’s first name. No one remembered him as a child. There were no families by that name in Seven Winds. But no one cared: there was rubble to clearand oder to restore.

Children aged ten and up were assigned to rebuilding crews—three days a week, every week. Laying stones. Filling holes. Fixing what war had torn apart. But rebuilding required more than labor. It needed money.

And for that, Heldrich turned to an old devil: Spark.

Before the Blackout, Spark was the most powerful stimulant in Antarctica. A high that lasted six to eight hours, delivering clarity, drive, and euphoria without hallucinations—just the godlike sensation of control.

The “atomic mushroom”, its raw source, had once been cultivated in vast underground labs. During the war, those labs were destroyed, and the recipe for Spark was lost.

The Chinese in New Beijing still grew the mushrooms—but sold them dried, sterile, impossible to propagate. They had forgotten how to refine it. Instead, they ground it up, smoked it like opium. It gave a weak, brief high, followed by a skull-cracking headache. Still, demand was sky-high.

Somehow Heldrich rebuilt the lab, recreated the equipment and refined the drug. Spark returned to the market, and Heldrich got the power.

The drug, however, came at a cost. Regular users suffered over time: vivid nightmares or unnatural sleep marathons, memory lapses, hand tremors, and creeping exhaustion. After two years of steady use, addiction almost always led to dementia.

“Sparkheads” stopped bathing. Forgot left from right. Got lost on their own streets—running from centipedes that weren’t there.

To avoid burning through his entire clientele, Heldrich used his medical training to tweak the formula—less deadly, just as addictive. The new version still kept users sharp, energized, compliant—but didn’t devour them as quickly.

Even tired sled dogs could be revived with a hit of Spark—provided, of course, you were willing to part with bullets and sugar for the privilege. But Heldrich never liked wasting bullets.

Especially today.

Jack had just told him—voice catching in his throat—that the atomic mushroom shipment from New Beijing was gone. Stolen. He and his crew had been hit by the Lost Kids - a fearsome gang that moved like ghosts, hitting hard and vanishing fast. Always taking just enough: supplies, weapons, healthy men. They never leveled a place entirely—just left it hollow, wounded, barely alive.

They roamed the Railroad, raiding lonely stations. The settlements were too far apart to organize any real defense. Everyone feared and hated them, but few could resist.

Heldrich sat on a gaudy, gold-trimmed sofa, his boots propped on a low table, a cigarette burning between his teeth. The absurd luxury of the room made his presence all the more jarring.
He wore a long, buttoned trench coat in ash-gray, paired with high black boots—each with polished metal buckles. His pants were clean, pressed, not a speck of grit or blood in sight. Hair buzzed short, old-military style. Skin pale, like he hadn’t seen the sun in years.

Around his wrist was a mechanical watch, dark metal-ceramic, smooth as obsidian. The hands moved—slow, deliberate, alive.

The locals scavenged layers to stay warm, their belts cluttered with gear and desperation. Heldrich looked like someone from another world. Someone untouched by the cold.

His voice cut the silence.

“How did it happen,” he said slowly, every word measured like a round from a pistol, “that you—with your experience, with guns and ammo—couldn’t stop that scum?”

Jack thought it would have been better if Heldrich had screamed his head off in rage: in some cases, fire is better than ice.

“Four of them,” Jack said. “Riding snow dogs.”

Heldrich arched a brow.

“A snow dog? Alive?”

“Oh, more alive than me,” Jack muttered. “You ever seen one up close?”

“Until today,” Heldrich replied, flicking ash into the tray, “I assumed they were extinct. Are you telling me bullets don’t work?”

“Not the problem. These things are just fast. Hit one in the dark? Good luck. Even with a fire going.”

Jack’s hand made a slow motion, tracing their speed through the air.

“We did drop one. Took a pack effort — my dogs cornered it, and Hugh pumped five rounds into its side. Still took too long to fall. Damn thing must’ve weighed three hundred pounds, easy.”

“And yet I won’t be seeing it, of course…” Heldrich shook his head with a sigh.

“I’ve brought you the skin. Wanna see?”

Heldrich tapped the last ash from his cigarette and said, without looking:

“Tell it from the top. All of it.”

Jack exhaled.

“Fine. We were on fire watch—Hugh, Ramon, and me. Hugh noticed the movement first. Something was slipping between the trees in the grove, down the slope of Dreary Hill.”

“We had flashlights. So Hugh and I went in to check—didn’t go deep. Just enough to get eyes on.”

He paused.

“Then a flare went up, so bright it hurt our eyes.” Jack’s hands mimed the burst, involuntary. “I figured out what was coming and bolted back!”

Jack grimaced, rubbing his cheek, as dark as a coffee bean. The bandits, as it turned out, had pincered his small camp. They had distracted the two caravaners armed with guns and ambushed the sleeping men, taking out Ramon before they even reached it. Jack noticed that some of them could see perfectly in the dark thanks to night-vision goggles. 

"That’s when all hell broke loose. Poor Ramon let out a scream before he was dead, our guys grabbed their guns, but it was too late... The bastards had two assault rifles, and we only had one." 

"How’d you get hurt?"

“I ducked behind the wagon and managed to take down one of those things. The guy riding it rolled off, but he was fine. I didn’t get a chance to shoot—my gun jammed. We fought hand-to-hand for a while, until another bastard showed up, also on a snow dog. Hit me with the butt of his rifle—still mounted.”

Jack rubbed his temple, wincing.

“When I came to, it was already morning. Hugh filled me in…”

Heldrich raised a hand.

And Jack froze. He didn’t mean to—but it happened anyway.
Damn. Had this guy really managed to train him, too?

“I’ll hear Hugh myself,” Heldrich said, voice calm and flat.

“So. You’re telling me they took the entire shipment?”

Jack snorted.

“No, genius. I hid it in Grandma’s closet.”

Pain flared in his skull, sudden and bright. He grit his teeth.

“As I understand it,” Heldrich continued evenly, “you handed over the supplies, the weapons, and three of my best dogs to a band of ragged scum. Without much of a fight.”

“That ragged scum had automatics. And monsters. And snow crusted in their noses.”
Jack’s eyes flared. “They didn’t ask for a fight—they brought one.”

There was no fear in his voice. Only raw anger. Bitterness. Years of doing the dirty work for people who gave orders from warm rooms.

“How many bodies?” Heldrich asked.

“Seven out of fifteen.Peter, Fenriz, Ramon, Barry—shot. Sam and Eric—stabbed. Curly got flattened by one of those monster dogs. Thing just leapt on him.”

“Strange they didn’t finish the job. Didn’t take prisoners.” Heldrich’s tone didn’t shift. “You got knocked out. But not killed. Not crippled. Interesting.”

He stood and walked slowly toward Jack, boots thudding softly against the floor.

Jack didn’t move.

The leader of Seven Winds reached out, fingers deft.
Unwrapped the blood-stiffened bandage from Jack’s tangled hair.
Examined the wound.

He tilted his head slightly. Whatever he was thinking, he kept to himself.

Rage pounded in Jack’s chest. Behind his ribs. Behind his eyes.

“You don’t actually think I made a deal with those bastards,” he said hoarsely.
“That I sacrificed my men for your damned mushrooms?”

"Let’s just say, given the precision handiwork of the nameless Lost Kid, I can’t rule it out." Heldrich disdainfully nudged a filthy scrap of fabric with his boot. Then, unclipping a small pouch from his belt, he pulled out a white spray bottle and applied ethanol on Jack's wound.

"You know as well as I do how much those mushrooms are worth."

Jack felt utterly drained—by this conversation, by the endless string of misfortunes that seemed to sap his strength year after year. Lately, fate seemed to have no other purpose than to grind him into the dirt.

"If I were in on it, they’d have just slit my throat to avoid sharing," Jack said, feeling the sharp sting of his wound fade into a soothing coolness.

"Maybe so," Heldrich replied indifferently, reaching into his pocket for a clean roller bandage. "Or maybe there’s something I don’t know."

"If you think I deserve a bullet, then do it; after all, I’m the one responsible for the men who died!" Jack drove the words home, his tone edged with defiance. He could only pay with his life for other people, not for raw materials to make some kind of poison.

"The thing is, your death won’t recover my lost profits," Heldrich said, his tone almost contemplative. "You’re not much use for anything else—with just one arm. And you’ve got no gold to your name. Which means your dogs... are mine now."

For a few seconds, Jack forgot to breathe. Four gorgeous malamutes—smoky gray with white chests—were his family. On his way back, he’d already thanked fate for sparing them during the raid. 

Once, Jack had been saving up for a wedding, but it never happened. While he was away on a long journey, his beloved, Amé, had run off with a wealthy merchant from Dumont-Durville. Returning with gifts from his travels, the caravaner found a new tenant in Amé’s room; the happy couple had fled about five days before his return.

But trouble, as they say, never comes alone. Three days later, a hurricane tore through the greenhouses of Fred, Jack’s brother, who lived with his large family in the village of Outland, not far from Seven Winds. To help the poor man rebuild, Jack gave him half of his wedding savings—ammo, coal, and gold—on the promise of future profits from the harvest. The other half he spent on buying and raising four purebred puppies.

The thought of losing those dogs now truly terrified Jack.

"If you're not part of their scheme, hunt them down," Heldrich continued, carefully redressing Jack's wound. "They must have a hideout, and you’re going to find it."

"Of course. There’s nothing I want more than to send them straight to hell," the caravaner rasped. But the fury in his voice clashed with the state of his battered body.

"Naturally, you’ll be watched," Heldrich went on. "And if you don’t find their base within two months—or if it turns out to be empty—the whole town will hear that it was you who led the Lost Kids to ambush the caravan. Then I won’t even have to kill you. Your own men and the families of the dead will take care of that for me. And as for your debt, I’ll collect it from your brother and his brood. I hear they’ve come into some wealth again. And if not... we’ll take the farm."

"Stop, stop!" Jack raised his only hand. "You’re telling me I have to hunt down those bastards all by myself?"

"You’re free to take someone along—if you can find anyone willing to go with you after what happened. I can supply provisions for three people max. The fewer people you drag along, the less chance there is of scaring off the prey. You’re not going to do all the work by yourself. Just figure out where their hideout is, and we’ll handle the rest."

For the first time since losing his arm, Jack felt utterly helpless and pathetic. Panic clanged in his head like a hundred bells, drowning out any coherent thought. All he could do was curse himself for not taking up his brother’s offer to work on the farm after Kat disappeared. Jack didn’t feel much pity for himself—just an old fool with nothing to his name. But Fred? Fred had three kids to raise, and now their lives and freedom were hanging by a thread.

"As you wish," Jack muttered, his voice heavy with resignation. He trudged off on unsteady legs, but his eyes stayed fixed on the grim man in glasses, as if expecting him to hurl an axe into the back of his skull.

The moment Jack stepped outside, the wind hit so hard it nearly slammed him back into the wall. The roof of the passenger terminal only covered about two-thirds of the huge vessel, leaving its stern open. At this moment, Jack probably wouldn’t have minded being swept overboard in the first place. 

And soon, the man found himself sitting in the once-luxurious White Mermaid Bar, endlessly replaying the tense conversation in his head. How could he protect Fred now? How was he supposed to track down, alone—or even with help—a gang that had the fastest transport in all of Antarctica (barring the steam-powered railcars)? The bottom of the bottle didn’t hold any answers, but it offered a brief escape from the rising tide of panic. 

“Sea Maiden,” the caravan driver rasped to the red-haired barmaid everyone called Squirrel. Behind the romantic name was a harsh brew made from fermented sweet algae, a relic of Golden Age biotech. It reeked of machine oil but packed a punch where it counted. Imported wine, the kind a handful of daring souls hauled from South America, was far too pricey these days.

“What’s wrong?” Squirrel asked, her brow furrowing. “You look like you’ve been chewed up and spat out.”

“Not far off,” the caravanner muttered, unwilling to elaborate.

“I wanna see your stuff,” said the girl.

The caravan driver pulled out a few sugar packets he’d managed to save from the raiders and laid them on the counter. His clothes, patched with countless inside and outside pockets, always carried a stash for emergencies—and more often than not, it proved invaluable. Besides, the Lost Kids had made too big a haul this time to bother stripping their victims down to the skin.

“Could’ve saved it for later,” Squirrel said with a shake of her head, realizing that her guest’s troubles were far worse than a “broken heart” or a bad run at dice.

“Triple, straight up!” Jack was dead set on getting properly drunk tonight, and even the staunchest teetotaler would have understood. The barmaid shrugged and slid a glass under the tap of the keg.

A moment later, the bell above the bar’s entrance jingled, announcing another visitor—a tall blond man, around thirty. His impressive build was enough to make many envious, and he walked in with an unhurried dignity, as if flaunting his posture and broad shoulders. His hair, light and so lustrous it seemed forged from the flames of the sun, was tied back with a leather cord into a heavy knot that hung to the middle of his back.

His face was humorless, all sharp angles and edges; his prominent, narrow nose looked sharp enough to cut. His left eye was missing, the empty socket concealed by a neat black patch. There was no strap, the patch seemed to adhere directly to his eye socket: might be some trendy Golden Age accessory.

His dark blue overcoat with a faint metallic sheen would have seemed too light for September—the start of Antarctic spring—if it hadn’t been a relic of the Golden Age, when even the thinnest fabrics were engineered to provide warmth.

“Know this dandy?” Jack raised an eyebrow. Not even misfortune could snuff out his natural curiosity.

“Seems new,” Squirrel whispered before greeting the newcomer.

The man's voice was unexpectedly warm. He ordered the same drink as Jack. Sitting half a meter away from the caravanner, he removed his gloves, revealing large hands with long fingers—hands that had never known the hard labor of a fisherman, craftsman, or farmer.

But Jack’s sharp eye didn’t miss the thick, hardened knuckles—marks of someone who had spent years practicing martial arts. Nor did he overlook the callus on one finger, the kind you only saw on seasoned marksmen. A mercenary?

Missing an eye—no need to squint when aiming, Jack thought and then asked:"Where are you from?"

"New Bergen," the newcomer replied. Coal shipments to the Seven Winds often came from there, though Jack had rarely been to the place himself. "I hear the Lost Kids are causing trouble again?"

"Who says so?"

"The innkeeper mentioned it. Sorry for your loss!"

Hah… news spreads like fire on an oil slick, Jack sighed.

"And Lady Death said: "Not today"?"

Jack silently pointed to the bandages wrapped around his head. The newcomer’s curiosity started to grate on his nerves. Without waiting for a response, the stranger ordered another round of drinks.

"I’d be very grateful if you told me everything in detail," the one-eyed man said, shifting closer. "My name is Ivan Vassilevsky."

"Jack March," the caravanner muttered reluctantly, pushing his empty glass aside. The one-eyed man gave a brief smirk.

"You don’t believe in someone’s desire to help without a catch, do you?"

"I’m more likely to believe in Santa Claus."

"Revenge?" Ivan asked it like he was offering a drink.

Jack snorted into his Sea Maiden — the stuff burned on the way down, algae and machine oil and bad memories.

"That's personal," he said. "And you'd be smart to keep it that way."

But the one-eyed man didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

"Maybe I’ve got my own bones to pick with the Lost Kids," Ivan said, voice smooth as fresh ice. "I’ve got trade routes to protect and people to feed. Their chaos is bad for business."

Jack turned — slow — not because he was being dramatic, but because every damn muscle in his body ached like old rusted hinges. He looked Ivan up and down. Calm. Comfortable. Friendly enough to make a man nervous. The worst kind of polite.

Jack knew the type. Men who smiled like that weren’t harmless. They were waiting. Measuring.

And hell — maybe Jack did want to talk. Maybe he did want someone else to carry the weight of all this rot, even if just for a few minutes. Ivan felt like one of those clean stones you could yell your secrets into before throwing them into the sea. Gone. No strings. No judgment.

Too good to be true. Which meant it probably was.

"Help comes precisely when you need it most. What have you got to lose? I suspect the worst has already happened to you,"

"True enough," Jack admitted.

Art: Sergiu Radu Pop