Binary code: Mystery number one. Artur Zadikyan

the fighting, with destruction and other paraphernalia. Ruthra realized that his opponents had already taken up positions somewhere and were waiting for him. Suddenly, the voice of the doppelganger appeared in his helmet:

      – Courage! They don't have ammunition like you, they only have small arms and knives.

      – What else is needed? – Ruthra asked.

      There was no response.

      He pondered, "What do I have that they don't? A gas mask?" But if the fighters only have what the doppelganger said, why the gas mask? Ruthra looked at the grenades, there were no chemical grenades, but he decided not to throw the proverbial gas mask after all, even though it was in the way. "Grenades? Yeah. They don't seem to have any," he concluded and brought the stun grenade into action.

      Ruthra turned on his helmet shield and threw a grenade into the center of the makeshift street. Then, calmly ducking down, he peered inside, looked around the range, and ran behind the wall of the nearest building. After assessing where they could theoretically be waiting for him, he decided it was most appropriate for real fighters to wait for Rutru in front of the entrance.

      "Since I have such an advantage in weapons, why not take advantage of it," Ruthra decided. He readied his Groza grenade launcher, jumped out from behind the wall, and fired through the window opposite the entrance.

      At the same second, a sharp blow threw Ruth back. His chest ached, and he struggled to regain consciousness, realizing that he had been shot in the chest. It had been fired from the side, from the far corner. They were waiting for him to come out, Rutra wasn't the only one who could think logically.

      There was an explosion on the second floor. The echo sobered him, made him smell death. He was overcome by fear of the reality of death. He had to pull himself together, above all for the sake of the children. Ruthra cursed everything he could; he decided he had to get out of here at any cost and end his hated service. But how to get out? One must win! You have to think!

      The shot came from the side, so the bullet didn't go straight through. That fact made Ruthra wake up quickly, hearing rustling noises. There was no time to delay. He reloaded his grenade launcher and prepared a conventional fragmentation grenade. He listened – the danger could come from anywhere. "What if they attack from both sides of the structure at once?" – Ruthra pondered.

      To avoid guessing and giving them the initiative, he decided to act on his own. Abruptly throwing the grenade around the corner, Ruthra quickly ran in the opposite direction, nestled against the wall, and peered out. He was not mistaken. The fighters had tactically calculated that he would leap forward after the explosion and had decided to outflank him. Two of them were already running toward him. Time was running out in fractions of a second, firing a grenade launcher so close was deadly to himself. There was no time to switch to the ARX-160.

      The Groza's variant of the machine-grenade launcher system had the added inconvenience of combining the firing functions of a machine gun and a grenade launcher in one trigger, which required additional time to switch the trigger mechanism. Rutra decided to do what his comrades had marveled at when he used the trick in a combat situation. He calculated that the attackers must be quite close, extended his arm with the Thunderbolt, threw it momentarily behind the wall, and fired it downward at the feet of the attackers. The next moment there was a deafening rumble that mingled with the screaming and shrieking of the attackers. Ruthra had forgotten to turn on the noise reduction on his helmet, and he was a bit stunned as well.

      He crouched against the main wall, swapped the Thunderbolt for an ARX-160, and waited for an attack from the other side. Moans and screams could be heard on the left side for a while, but they soon stopped. It was quiet. He waited. About 10 minutes passed. Nothing happened. He decided to wait a little longer, but everything stayed the same. Then he wanted to see if he was wrong about the number of attackers. If there were three of them, then no one should be alive anymore. The one upstairs might still be alive, though. He got up, walked quietly to the wall, crept to the very edge of the structure, and peered in the direction from which he had been shot. There was a dilapidated village house. It was quiet, nothing was happening. Rutra decided to provoke the enemy. He shot towards the house and ran back, looking out from behind the wall where he had fired the grenade launcher. A gruesome sight was revealed – two men lay with their stomachs ripped open. A foul odor made it hard to breathe. Ruthra decided to check what had become of the one on the second floor. It was important.

      He stepped carefully over the dead and peered around the next corner. As he stuck his head out, a bullet whizzed by. Ruthra jumped back against the wall and waited. There was no attack, though he expected it from both sides. Everything was quiet again.

      Ruthra stuck his machine gun around the corner and fired a line in the direction of the shooter. There was no response, so he waited again. There was silence for about five minutes. Rutra reloaded the grenade launcher. This was the last grenade. In addition, he prepared hand grenades. There were two of them – one fragmentation and one noise grenade. I threw the noise grenade first around the corner. There was an explosion. Despite the buzzing in my ears, I ran over to the building I had first shot at and threw the fragmentation one on the second floor. There was another explosion. As soon as it subsided, I listened. Everything seemed to be quiet.

      He crouched down and began to climb. When he reached the second floor, Ruthra found no one, only a trail of blood that led to another room.

      The buildings were unfinished – concrete and brick – so it left a footprint, as if on sand. Ruthra peered sideways into the room. It was a dead end – no windows or doors; though Ruthra couldn't look through it completely – there might be someone around the corner. He didn't take any chances; there were few supplies left, but Ruthra fired his grenade launcher into the room where the blood trail went. There was an explosion. The noise soon died down, and moans were heard. Ruthra quietly began to make his way into the room. He squatted down near the entrance, prepared his assault rifle, turned on his thermal imager, extended his rifle arm into the room and waved it around. The thermal imager showed that someone was there. Ruthra realized that from the moans, but he needed to know where. The thermal imager showed the outline of a body lying on the floor around the corner.

      Ruthra stood up, calmly checked his weapons, and prepared for the assault. He decided to check the rear and surroundings beforehand. To do so, he cautiously approached the window opening, keeping a close eye on the exit from the adjoining room. All was quiet outside. "Where could the fourth or the fourth be?" – Ruthra pondered. He looked out onto the landing, looked down to the first floor. There was no one there. So he crept to the window again, stuck out his rifle with the thermal imager on, pointed it in the direction of the cabin from which he was being fired upon. The thermal imager showed nothing.

      Ruthra decided to tackle the gunman in the room, carefully approached the entrance, quickly extended his rifle arm inside the room, in the direction where the wounded man lay, and fired a burst. There was a distinctive sound of bullets hitting the body. Ruthra covered his face completely with his helmet mask, turned on his night vision and night scope, and, keeping his weapon cocked, rushed into the room.

      On the right side of the wall, a man was lying on the floor. Ruthra shot him in the head for good measure. There was a muffled wheeze. There was silence again. Ruthra approached slowly, kicked the body with force. It turned on its side, and there was an unintelligible sound of something rolling. Ruthra looked carefully in the direction of the sound, it was hard to distinguish in the night vision. The next second he was pierced by a clue: it was a grenade! The dead man had slipped it under him, clutched it with his body, and waited, knowing he would not survive.

      Ruthra jumped out of the room. There was an explosion as he flew through the doorway. Shrapnel struck him, one in the leg. He fell, hitting his head; he was slightly stunned and confused, trying to get over the pain and turn off the night vision. Rutra couldn't recover from the surprise, for the doppelganger had said they had no grenades! So it was a hoax. Then what else could have happened unexpectedly? Although, in principle, the doppelganger hadn't specifically talked about grenades.

      His thoughts were racing through his head, and Ruthra turned off his night vision, unable to realize what was in front of him. After a moment, he realized that a fourth was running up the stairs, firing at him at the same time. Ruthra rolled