Chapter 10: "Be Back Before 8"
Elena's face changed as her eyes caught the reflection of her silver watch…
The hands were unforgiving, cruel needles pointing to a terrifying reality: 7:45 PM. A visceral jolt of pure adrenaline seized her chest, cold and paralyzing. She had precisely fifteen minutes! The condition set was clear…
"Be back before eight."
The voice of authority that had delivered that ultimatum possessed the kind of gravity that did not forgive transgressions. It reverberated in her ears, a spectral drumbeat accelerating her pulse until she could feel the thrumming in her very teeth.
"Oh my God!" Elena gasped, her voice trembling as she thrust her wrist toward Kira and Dasha. Her eyes were wide, dilated with a sudden, suffocating panic. "It's a quarter to eight! Move!"
Without waiting for their reply, she bolted down the grand staircase. Kira and Dasha exchanged a fleeting, inscrutable glance before falling in step, their movements far more fluid, lacking the frantic desperation that consumed Elena.
They rushed towards the car, gasping and panting in pure horror, the words replaying louder now… 'Be back before 8.'
Dasha slid into the driver's seat. Her frame was nearly swallowed by the expanse of the leather interior, her feet barely stretching to meet the pedals, yet her hands grasped the steering wheel with her trembling fingers.
From all the rules she broke today, this wasn't something she could ever think of breaching. It wasn't a rule, by the way, or an order, it was a warning wrapped in permission, the one which he granted.
Elena threw herself into the backseat, the leather cold against her trembling skin. "Go! Just go, Dasha, please!" she shrieked, her voice pitching into a hysterical octave.
The engine roared to life with a guttural, mechanical snarl. Dasha slammed the gearshift into drive, and the heavy vehicle lunged forward with the brutal force of an unleashed beast.
"We are thirty minutes away!" Elena wailed, her fingers digging frantically into the upholstery as the g-force pinned her back against the seat. "Thirty minutes, Dasha! And we have fifteen! If I'm not in my room, changed, with this paint off my face—" she stammered.
"Breathe, Elena." Kira reassuringly cut her off. "You're becoming hysterical," she murmured from the passenger seat. Her tone was unnervingly placid, a silken thread weaving through the chaotic interior of the speeding car. She turned around, gracefully extending a silver flask of micellar solvent and a handful of cotton pads. "Fix your face. Let Dasha handle the road."
Dasha's foot slammed the floorboard. The car transformed into a sleek missile, tearing through the nocturnal arteries of the city.
Outside the tinted windows, the grand, brutalist architecture of the Russian metropolis blurred into indistinct ribbons of concrete and gold.
"Hurry up! Faster!" Elena sobbed, snatching the makeup remover from Kira's outstretched hand.
She uncapped the bottle with violently trembling fingers, splashing the cold, astringent liquid onto the cotton pad. The car was a volatile vessel, surging forward, weaving violently between slower, unsuspecting motorists.
Elena brought the soaked pad to her eyelids, attempting to scrub away the heavy, mature layers of mascara and shadow. But the chaotic kinetic energy of the vehicle made the simple task a brutal endeavor.
Dasha tore through an intersection just as the traffic light bled, commanding red. But Dasha's eyes didn't even see a traffic signal ahead of her. Her mind was racing between reaching on time and reaching in a way that no one doubts, especially not him.
In the backseat, the sudden lateral violence of the swerve threw Elena against the door panel. The makeup remover slipped, the chemical astringent searing painfully into her left eye.
"Ah!" Elena cried out, dropping the cotton pad as stinging tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Watch the road!"
"I am watching it," Dasha replied, her voice a flat, deadpan drone devoid of any inflection or fear. Her eyes were locked onto the asphalt, dark and unyielding.
Elena blinked through the burning in her eye, frantically scrubbing at her face with a dry tissue, trying to strip away the adult facade and revert to the child she was supposed to be.
Suddenly, the headlights, slicing through the gloom like twin broadswords, illuminated a tragic variable.
A stray dog, paralyzed by the sudden onslaught of blinding light, stood frozen in the dead center of their lane.
Dasha did not scream. She did not brace. With a terrifying lack of hesitation, she wrenched the steering wheel violently to the left.
The tires shrieked—a piercing, agonizing sound of rubber being immolated. The car tilted precariously, the suspension groaning as the massive chassis leaned dangerously on two wheels. Inside, gravity became a chaotic tyrant. Elena was thrown across the backseat like a ragdoll, her shoulder slamming against the opposite door with a sickening thud.
The vehicle missed the animal by a breath, skidding wildly into the oncoming lane before Dasha, her arms locked, muscled the steering wheel back, correcting the catastrophic drift. The car stabilized, hurtling forward once more, but the violent maneuver had not gone unnoticed.
Standing beneath the harsh, tungsten glare of a streetlamp on the corner—an officer of the DPS, the Russian State Inspectorate for Road Traffic Safety. Clad in his heavy, dark uniform, the neon-green reflective vest glowing ominously in the dark, he stood beside his patrol cruiser, a cigarette suspended halfway to his lips.
He had watched the black car scream through the red light. He had watched the horrific, tire-smoking swerve.
With practiced, mechanical efficiency, he dropped the cigarette, crushing it beneath his heavy black boot. He did not run; he simply reached for the heavy radio affixed to his shoulder, depressing the button, his voice a low, grave warning.
"Attention. Intercept. Black car, speeding, dangerous driving."
He rattled off the license plate before sliding into the driver's seat of his cruiser.
Inside the fleeing car, Elena pulled herself upright, gasping for breath, her heart threatening to shatter her ribs. She looked out the rear window, her breath fogging the cold glass.
Her blood turned to glacial ice.
It took less than five seconds. From the mouth of an intersecting alleyway ahead, the predatory form of a police interceptor lunged onto the boulevard, perfectly cutting off their trajectory.
Simultaneously, from the rear, the officer they had just passed accelerated with terrifying speed, boxing them in.
The night was instantly shattered by the blinding bursts of red and blue light, painting the interior of their car in a nightmarish disco of law enforcement… with the wail of the Russian police siren tearing through the air, demanding absolute submission.
"No... no, no, no," Elena whispered, her voice dissolving into a whimper. Her trembling hands flew to her face, as she dropped the cotton pad off her hands.
She looked at her watch. 7:51 PM. "We are dead. We are absolutely dead."
Dasha sighed—a soft, almost bored sound—and eased her foot off the accelerator.
"Kill the engine," Kira instructed softly, calmly adjusting a stray lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead.
Dasha turned the key. The guttural hum of the engine died, replaced by the suffocating, heavy silence of the cabin.
Outside, the heavy doors of the patrol cars opened. The rhythmic, deliberate crunch of heavy boots on asphalt approached them. It was a sound designed to instill terror, the slow, inevitable march of state authority.
Elena was paralyzed. The reality of their situation—three twelve-year-old girls, dressed in haute couture, commandeering a luxury vehicle through the streets of Russia, utterly destroying every legal boundary in existence—was crashing down upon her.
She was bracing for the wrath of the officer, bracing for the inevitable phone calls, bracing for the apocalyptic fury of missing her curfew.
A heavy knuckle rapped sharply against Dasha's tinted window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Dasha pressed the button, and the glass glided downward, letting in the freezing night air and the overwhelming scent of exhaust and cheap tobacco.
The officer leaned down, his imposing frame blocking out the streetlights. His face was a mask of weathered leather, his eyes cold, calculating slits beneath the rigid brim of his peaked cap. He peered into the cabin, his gaze sweeping over the driver's seat, expecting to find a drunk oligarch or a reckless joyrider.
Instead, he found Dasha.
He blinked, a flicker of genuine bewilderment breaking his stoic facade as his eyes registered the petite, delicate features of the child behind the wheel, then darted to Kira.
Elena was quick to hide herself as she bent down, completely avoiding the officer's gaze.
The sheer absurdity of their youth clashed violently with the reality of the speeding, two-ton machine.
"Both of you!" the officer demanded, his deep voice carrying a razor-sharp edge of suspicion. He leaned closer, his eyes narrowing as he tried to reconcile the visual impossibility before him. "Step out of the vehicle. Now."
Elena let out a choked sob, her hands visibly shaking… she was both scared and surprised by the fact that the policeman hadn't seen her.
She looked desperately toward the front seats, seeking camaraderie in their shared doom.
But what she saw made the breath completely die in her throat.
Dasha did not reach for the door handle.
Kira did not tremble.
Instead, the two girls slowly, almost languidly, turned their heads to face the imposing officer.
The red and blue lights washed over their porcelain features. There was no fear in their eyes. There was no panic. In fact there was nothing!
Slowly, deliberately, a chilling, perfectly synchronized smirk curled onto the lips of both Kira and Dasha. It was an expression of such dark, profound arrogance—a look that possessed a sinister, knowing weight far beyond their twelve years.