Dima crouched behind the rusted skip, counting each second as he surveyed the television factory's perimeter. The night guard, Stepan, emerged on cue—twelve minutes into his shift. His cigarette's orange ember punctured the darkness against the concrete wall.
Three hundred seconds—Stepan's habitual smoke break. Five minutes to slip through the loading bay door, its lock sabotaged earlier with a stripped screw.
November's wind bit through his jacket, lacing the air with chemical sting from the electroplating plant. He tugged his Zenith Moscow scarf closer, wool scratching beneath his jaw. Overhead, city light bled into low cloud—smudging out the night sky and obliterating any hope of stars.
A distant siren keened from Begovoy district's direction. The neighbouring textile factory's night shift pounded through frozen earth, machinery drumming a relentless rhythm. Noise pulsed through Moscow's industrial arteries, machines cycling even between shifts.
He checked his watch. Two minutes gone. Stiff joints flexed inside his work gloves. The factory sat shrouded in the jaundiced glow; most windows black, except for the security office and green emergency lights painting sickly paths down corridors.
Stepan flicked his cigarette into a puddle and turned for the guardhouse. Dima tensed. Move too early and Stepan might look back; wait too long and he'd lose precious seconds of darkness.
Stepan pivoted. Dima darted through the narrow gap in the fence—two links clipped away with side cutters. His scarf snagged; Dima froze, weighing risk of damage against wasted time. Three seconds of work freed the wool, his hands steady as when soldering fine traces on a PCB.
Crossing the yard, he slipped through the loading bay door—hinges muted by the graphite powder applied on his lunch break. Stillness pressed in hard, like a television set with its audio shorted to ground.
By day, the line howled—fluorescent ballasts jittering, clocks ticking, conveyors squealing against uneven rollers. Now sound peeled back, individual noises emerged. A pressure valve whistled above pipes, water struck aluminium with a regular, ticking drip—countable, almost musical.
Machines crowded the shadow: the wave soldering station that belched toxic fumes during production hours now slumbered, bulk ominous. Cooling vanes sliced razor-sharp shadows across concrete.
Dima tasted the air—ozone and static, rather than the daytime cocktail of flux, acetone, and machine oil. The scent signalled the edge of malfunction, an association hardwired into every engineer.
A faint electronic chirp rippled from the quality control station—standby mode, waiting for morning.
Dima halted, something jarred in the factory's rhythm.
A low hum—steady, wrong. Dima recalibrated his senses, parsing the anomaly.
The Korolev-6 motor. Running. But not merely running. Singing, its bearings spinning at precisely 4200 RPM. Gone, the stutter that maintenance ignored despite his three written reports. No drifting oscillation, no tearing whine. Damn thing sounded new.
“Impossible,” he whispered, but the dark claimed the word.
The motor, once roused only by hammer blows, now purred with eerie composure. Pressing his palm to the wall, he registered shifting vibrations as new systems engaged. The new German CNC mill—the one behind the always-locked door marked “R&D Prototypes Only”—spun up. Its carbide bit screamed against metal with a consistency that the television chassis line could never hope to match.
And lower, steadier: the hydraulic press. Thud, hiss, reset. Clockwork timing, unwavering force. Dima couldn't recall when that relic last ran so true.
These weren't the sounds of television production.
The factory spoke a new dialect—one Dima understood in his bones. Machines that wheezed and stalled by day now synchronised, terrifying in their harmony.
Reaching his station, Dima found the room unrecognizable—assembly stations contorted into militaristic order.
At the heart, the efficiency consultant: posture now military, sleeves rolled, olive drab starch. Rigid authority replaced effected corporate decorum. “Tolerance on the feed tray is still point-two millimetres off spec,” he barked. “Unacceptable. The Bureau won't clear these for field use.”
Dima’s gaze fixed on the part. The sweep of steel, the specific mounting bracket—PKM receiver housings. The Soviet workhorse machine gun, a weapon built to thrive in every muddy war zone.
A half-formed football chant rattled unsummoned in Dima's skull. Dragging his concentration back to the puzzle before him, he strangled the unconscious stress response.
Night shift workers moved with intention: Sergei from quality control checked tolerances with digital callipers. Anna, usually soldering power supply boards, now deburred fresh machining with a pneumatic file—movements refined by unseen training.
The flow traced in Dima’s mind: gas pistons machined from chrome-molybdenum steel, heat-treated receiver covers hardened and blue tinged, feed trays formed and checked to half a tenth. The PKM required tight tolerances. Mechanisms for murder claiming the production line he knew well.
Machines that limped through television quotas shifted in the dark—efficient, synchronised, lethal.
This factory didn't “fail” for lack of money or talent. It failed on purpose. It thrived in obscurity, its best hours reserved for off-the-books armament. The day shift kept up appearances; the night belonged to war.
Stolen inventory. Falsified paperwork. Sudden upgrades while the canteen rationed beetroot. Spilled blood replaced by line items on ledgers.
The consultant scrutinised the CNC mill's output. “Trigger groups need parkerizing. Chechen dust eats uncoated steel in days.”
Chechen dust. Dima's gut iced over—weapons bound for the conflict that swallowed Oksana's brother.
Seeking a better angle, He shifted. His boot nudged a bolt on the steel grating—the scrape rang out, far too loud in the altered quiet.
The consultant's eyes swept the gloom, muscle taut with command.
Dima froze, pulse pounding, knuckles whitening on the cabinet. Fury built with nowhere to go; not the everyday resentment towards management, nor the ritual loathing reserved for oligarchs and their proxies. The factory's slow death covered the real operation: it bled workers and hearts dry, but minted profits in arms.
Weapons from this line would kill conscripts and rebels alike. Without prejudice or loyalty.
A faint, artificial click pricked Dima's ear. Mechanical. Repeated. Camera.
A silhouette shifted by the control panel. Someone crouched, movements pared to essentials.
Dima's lungs seized. He recognised the profile.
Oksana.
Not the line worker who laughed with the machinists. Not the silent crush he'd haunted on smoke breaks. This Oksana moved with professional intent, her hands steady around a ФЭД-5c. Every frame measured, risk assessed; her stance optimised for surveillance.
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She didn't belong to the line, not with that kit. Leather briefcase—scuffed just so—would never pass muster on a television assembler's pay. Her methodical documentation in the dark defined her true profession, whatever that might be.
She braced her lens against a console, wrist steady. No tremour. He clocked her method: inhale, hold, shutter. Half a heartbeat between each frame. Threading through the dark, recording serials, layouts, altered circuitry, never hesitating. Her body always angled—conscious of light, line-of-sight, escape.
Gone, the day's soft accommodation—her movements bore a honed edge. Not a mask, but a tool.
Pressing his palm to the speaker cabinet, seeking vibrations through particleboard: Nothing. The action shifted elsewhere—Dima estimated three minutes to retrieve his designs. His window.
Fingers sought the screws, heads worn glossy by habit. The hiding spot: obsolete hardware nobody bothered to inventory. His cache—for two years and change—remained undisturbed.
The first screw yielded with a quarter-turn, oxide flaking. The second spun uselessly, threads stripped. The third resisted, requiring thumbnail leverage.
The fourth refused to budge.
“Давай, сволочь,” Dima muttered, ramming a cheap screwdriver—pilfered from Quality Control—into the slot. The blade slipped from the metal groove, skidding across his knuckle and tearing skin.
He stifled a curse, eyes sweeping for danger. Only the machines replied, grinding on—night's true enterprise unbroken.
Blood pooled, pain sharp but irrelevant. Bracing with his palm for leverage, he forced the last screw. Finally it yielded.
The door creaked open—cramped, secure. Twenty-three acetate sheets nestled inside, corners sharp.
Dima paused, staring at them. Not now.
He gathered his designs, careful to avoid static, held them close beneath his jacket. Twenty-three ghosts. Three years of hope.
Tonight, each transparency became both shield and liability. Let the dreaming wait—escape came first under these martial halogens.
Sweeping the cabinet's interior: empty. The gutted speaker shell glowered. The door shut, secured by three screws, he pocketed the stripped fourth.
Still processing what he witnessed—This Oksana defied the reality he clung to—her purpose here, an enigma set loose in the dark.
FSB? Journalist? Activist? Ukrainian intelligence? Each possibility recalculated personal risk. Technician, yes—but one who chose vantage like a sniper.
The revelation didn't sting, it steadied him: someone else here refused to drown.
He pressed acetate to chest, focus narrowing to exits. Two exiles, wired for survival in a war they didn't choose.
A zip of breath in the dark. Not his.
Everything distilled to geometry—routes, timing, cover.
Eighteen metres to the bay door, twelve to the stairs.
“Don't move.” Calm, razor-edged. Oksana's voice.
She approached, camera slung at her side, gait spring-loaded. Her speech—Ukrainian inflections surging to the fore—betraying her only to those who listened.
“I thought it might be you. Always watching. Always noticing.”
“What are you—” Dima gestured from camera to weapons. “Those are PKM housings.”
“And you're here at three in the morning, why? To check tolerances?” Her focus flicked to the cabinet, then back.
Dima shielded his pocket. “Circuit designs.”
“Hidden in dead machinery.” She stepped closer, movements poised. “Curious storage for harmless projects.”
“Factory property used on personal projects violates Section 4.7 of the employment contract.” Dima recited the regulation automatically. “Management confiscates unauthorized designs.”
She smiled without humour. “Management running a sideline in munitions production, while paying workers subsistence wages.”
Dima’s eyes dropped to the line—PKM-K, export spec, tailored for the Caucasus theatre. “I know tolerances. I know what these lines should yield. By day, they produce scrap. By night... perfection.”
“Priorities shift. Margin by daylight. Survival after dark.”
“Not ours.”
A pause—something like respect flickered across her face, then control reasserted.
“My brother's draft paper—in the stairwell.”
“Three weeks ago.” Dima's memory supplied the answer.
She nodded, lips compressed. “Mozdok staging area. Then Grozny.”
“Where these will end up.” Dima completed the loop.
“After three shell companies, two proxies.” She adjusted her camera's aperture ring. “Director skims fifteen percent, claims breakdowns to justify losses, starves civilian output.”
“Justification for eventual closure.” Dima nodded. “Military work persists, but in new hands.”
They fell quiet as the hydraulic press sighed in the distance. Thud, hiss, reset. Even breaths.
“Your designs.” Oksana gestured at his jacket.
He didn't hesitate long. “Addressing. Power supplies. Analogue outputs.”
“For?”
“Pentagon 128.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Obsolete.”
“Available. Buildable. Non-military, untraceable. Outside of the state's gaze.”
“You're making something.”
“Designing. Implementation needs more than what I can salvage.”
She considered, a predatory gleam in her eye. “What do you require?”
“Beyond Z80. Proper memory mapping. Decent video out—something for tomorrow, not yesterday.”
She pressed him. “That's a shopping list. Not a vision.”
“An alternative.” Their eyes locked. “To broken systems.”
Five seconds of silence—circuit cold-tested, no faults.
She broke the quiet. “We leave separately. Guard changes at 03:45. Exit at 03:42, camera blind spot against the south wall.”
“You've mapped it all.”
“Wouldn't you?”
On impulse, Dima pulled a transparency free—his latest voltage regulator. Placing it under the green light, he said, “This is me.”
She bent in, eyes sharp, finger tracing paths. “Low-dropout. Feedback loop modified.” Clear, direct.
Dima nodded, surprised that she saw everything at a glance.
Oksana leaned closer, shoulder brushing his. “And this capacitor net?”
“Reduces output ripple under transient loads. Decouples the high-frequency noise.”
She tapped thermal routing. “Smart design. Where did you learn this?”
Dima shrugged. “Soviet manuals. Tinkering. Broken sets as prototype labs.”
“Self-taught,” she murmured. “Wasted on this dump.”
Dima shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise but warmed by it. “The factory pays for materials I repurpose.”
Dima showed her another sheet—audio amplifier, his signature.
“Dual-differential input, complementary output topology.” She skimmed the path, absorbing each bias tweak. “You hone what you touch.”
He took it as validation, not flattery. “It's survival.”
“My father taught at Kyiv Polytechnic.” She returned the sheet. “I grew up reading Радио and building kits.”
“And now you document arms production.”
“Yes.” She didn't elaborate, but her eyes held his. “Your designs—elegant, no waste, no vanity.”
“Engineering should solve problems, not create them,” Dima acknowledged.
Oksana gestured towards the line. “Unlike that. Over-engineered death, for a conflict that solves nothing.”
Sudden noise—the clatter of a dropped tool. His eyes snapped toward the assembly line, where silhouettes shifted in the emergency lighting. Not the night guard—multiple figures. Purposeful. Armed.
“They're coming,” she whispered. “We split. Now.”
Dima nodded. “You take the bay. I'll use the tunnel.”
She checked her watch. “Three minutes, tops.”
As she melted into dark, she paused. “Why the cigarette butts, Sokolov?”
He flushed, caught. The question burnt worse than any reprimand.
“I—” The excuse withered.
“You collect things that don't fit.”
Dima said nothing; humiliation stung sharper than cold.
“We need to go,” she said, not unkind. “Tuesday. Café Bibliophile. Eighteen hundred. Near the Fiztekh Metro station. Bring your designs.”
She vanished, leaving only the ghost of her words, replaced by approaching footsteps.
Dima escaped through the maintenance tunnel, the night biting deeper than before. His jacket zipped, acetate sheets pressed to his chest.
Outside, the floodlamp threw his shadow onto the frost. He scanned the yard like a technician reviewing PCB traces. No sign of Stepan—only the textile factory's distant churn.
Fresh tracks scored the frost—small turning radius, directional winter Michelins—not a Lada, certainly not a UAZ. Oksana. Already gone.
Kneeling, he examined the treads—she'd departed less than twenty minutes ago, edges of the tracks still crisp.
Back on his feet, Dima touched the transparency through his jacket. Twenty-three possible futures, draughted in secrecy. Memory addressing schemes testing the Z80's limits. Regulators that maintained stable voltage despite Russia's erratic electrical grid.
And now—what? Oksana's camera contained images of weapons production. PKM receivers manufactured in a television factory. Military hardware flowing through civilian channels. His circuit designs and her photographs—evidence of two separate worlds occupying the same physical space, just as they had occupied the factory floor without truly seeing each other until tonight.
Beyond the fence stretched Soviet industrial planning gone to seed. Concrete carcasses with peeling paint. Smokestacks belching vapour against the city's reflected glow. Power lines sagging between rusting poles. Infrastructure of a dead empire, repurposed and cannibalized to feed new masters.
Like the factory, like the machines, like the people trapped inside.
He slipped through the gap, the industrial beat rang around him. Distant trains, metal working, pressure valves hissing into humid night.
Tuesday. Café Bibliophile. Eighteen hundred.
The words replayed in his mind—a specification, not a promise. Coordinates for an exchange. The prospect of collaboration.
Pushing onward to the metro, acetate beneath his coat. Future balanced between evidence and hope. The factory receded behind him, windows black except for the security office and the covert production floor.
Moscow spread outward—lines of sodium lights on concrete. Power flowing through the organized mess. Components aligned by invisible hands. Systems operating to plans nobody questioned.
Traces could be rerouted. Circuits reworked.
Clinging to his scarf, boots carving new patterns in the frost, Dima strode into the city's tangled grid.
