The Mist and the Lightning. Part VII. Ви Корс

know,” the doctor smiled, “but it's more interesting, isn't it?”

       Nikto bent, holding his hands to his forehead, then folded his hands in a boat, covering his eyes.

      “Yes, and look at what is with his eyes,” Kors recalled, his face was somehow distorted, “he told me that he didn’t see us.”

      The doctor pressed on Nikto’s forehead, throwing his head back, removed his palms from his eyes:

      “Look at me, a young man from the very, most “Lower”, below than nowhere.”

      “Just don’t shine in my eyes!” Nikto literally shied away from the old man.

      “What?! Stop twitching like that!”

      “Don't shine in my eyes,” Nikto prayed.

      “Don't,” said Vitor Kors, “don't shine.”

      “Well,” the doctor shrugged a little offended, “I just wanted to look at the fundus, but we can do without it, as you say. Although, the case is interesting.”

      “What do you have in mind?” asked Kors.

      “Eyes are definitely redone as unclean. Reconstructed competently, he sees well in the dark, I think, and even sees a little now in the light.”

      “You see a little now?”

      “Yes,” Nikto nodded.

      “Here it is twilight, thanks to the fact that you have closed the curtains, and now stimulants that we introduced to him are acting.”

      “Thanks for the clarification, does that mean he needs darkness?”

      “Yes.”

      “That is, in the afternoon in the light, he doesn’t see anything?”

      “Yes, unfortunately. And for a long time, as I understand it. When was this done with you?”

      “When were you captured by the unclean?” Specified Kors.

       Nikto shook his head.

      “No. A long time ago, I did it myself.”

      “Yourself?!” The doctor was surprised. “It is commendable, it requires remarkable skills.”

      “Yes, he said here that he would like to be a doctor,” Kors said skeptically.

      “Really?!” Balthazar Nate was delighted. “How interesting! He wanted to become a doctor, but became a patient!” He laughed at his joke.

      No one else supported him.

      “Okay, and look again, what is with his throat, he wheezes, you hear? Do you have a cold? Or an infection? Isn’t it all enough?”

       “Yes, I hear that he wheezes. Open the mouth, young man, I’ll shine in your mouth, okay?”

      “It’s nothing to do with a cold,” he said after a while, moving away, “the vocal cords were cut,”

      “What?!”

      “I confess that for the first time I see a person with such vocal chords generally talking. By all laws, he should not speak. He can't talk!”

      Nikto looked up and for the first time in all this time looked at Kors, and he realized that he had finally seen him!

      Their eyes met.

      And Nikto looked down. His shoulders slouched again, he froze, cringing in his chair.

      “Who are you?”

      Nikto flinched at this simple question, as if Kors had hit him. He squeezed his in leather gloves fingers into the lock.

      “Get out,” Kors ordered quietly, but in such a voice that the convoy and the doctor literally flew out the door.

      They two stayed in a room together.

      * * *

      “You're not a human!”

      “So be it,” Nikto agreed, somehow doomed, “so it’s easier. And you don’t have to blame yourself for the mistakes.”

      “Bravo!” Kors clapped his hands several times. “And you almost threw dust in my eyes!”

      “What does it mean?”

      “That I really believed…” Kors suddenly grabbed a portrait lying face down from the table:

      “Who is it?! See?! Or should I put your head in a bag and let you look from there?”

      “I see now.”

      “Well? So who is it, do you know?”

      “I know.”

      “Who?!”

      “Your wife, Iness, Karina’s mother,” answered Nikto.

      “Correctly! My wife and mother of Karina. Mother of only Karina!”

      Nikto stupidly looked at his hands in expensive gloves lying on his knees, one arm remained unfastened and not closed. Bracelets were lying in a heap on the desk of Kors.

      “After everything you did to him… to appear in the corpse of my…” Kors hesitated. “In a so cynically mutilated corpse.”

      Nikto was silent and still looked at his hands.

      “What do you really look like? What are you? This?” Kors pointed a finger at the spoiled drawing on Nikto’s hand, forcing him to recoil.

      “Will you answer me something?!”

      Nikto raised his face, looked at Kors, and it seemed to him that his eyes were laughing:

      “I can’t,” said Nikto. “After all, my vocal chords are cut.”

       And Kors hit him. With all his power, with a fist to the temple. Nikto fell from a chair, crouched on the floor.

      “You think I'm afraid of you?! I will rot you in a stone bag,” Kors whispered, “it will be a tombstone for him. A beautiful gravestone, and you will lie there and you will not be able to move, and you will not be able to control this body anymore. What do you think about my idea?”

      “No…,” Nikto said.

      “Are you afraid of me?!”

      Nikto covered his face with his hands.

      “Nolan!” Cried Kors.

      The soldiers readily returned to the room, and the doctor with them, seeing Nikto lying on the floor, none of them seemed surprised.

      “Do you still need me?” Balthazar Nate asked carefully.

      “No. Thanks for the help. And I think you will have to arrange injections for him at least for a while, because I will still need him…” Kors hesitated. “Alive.”

      “I understand,” the doctor nodded, “I will organize everything. We will support him as long as needed. And we can even treat him, I think there is a running infection in the blood and liver…”

      “Don’t treat. Just give it a minimum so that he moves and that's it.”

      “Yes. Can I go?”

      “Go, and… thanks for the help.”

      “I’m always at your service.”

      The doctor left, and the soldiers, on the contrary, habitually approached the victim. They knew that all interrogations end in such a way, and this will not be an exception.

      “Undress him,” Kors waved his hand wearily.

      He sat at the table and covered his face with his hands, as if gathering his thoughts.

      A few thuds were heard, he knew that the guard, undressing Nikto, had already begun to act.

      “Wow! What does he have there? Some kind of piece of iron… Sir Kors?”

      He took his hands from his face:

      “Well, what's the problem…” And fell silent, staring at Nikto as well. Probably, it was a very stupid sight, Nikto in Arel’s belt of fidelity.

      “That's