Lissa licked blood off her cheek. A cuckoo called up in the trees. Green light of the late afternoon in a dense wood was fading. She had lost one of her grey pumps. A designer suit and heels were hardly ideal attire for crawling through a wet forest.

At least she had left the state agents behind. Couldn't believe they fell for letting her pee by the roadside. The way she ran, zigzagging like a deranged rabbit, they probably would have missed her even if they were shooting. But of course they didn't shoot. They wouldn't dare. Something to be said for being a foreigner in Russia.

She pulled herself up from the muddy path by the grey trunk of the rowan tree. Red rowan berries burned in dark green of the leaves. Lisa wound up her long wheaten braid, pinned it up with a twig.

From her shirt, Lissa pulled out a locket Andrey had given her two days ago.

"Don't look for me, if I'm gone," he had said. She was lying on his chest at the time, and thinking idly that this was the happiest she had ever been.

"Of course I'd look for you," she rolled over, looked into his blue eyes, smoothed the dark-blond hair off his broad forehead. "What do you expect me to do, pretend you never existed?"

"That would be best." Andrey kissed the tip of her nose. "Seriously. You think that being a CFO of FinEast would protect you? If I'm arrested, you run. Take the first plane out of here and don't look back."

"This is not a Dostoyevsky novel. Don't be dramatic. You aren't doing anything wrong. You are an inventor, a scientist. The Feather is fantastic tech. You exaggerate."

"Figures that you wouldn't listen. Here." Andrey reached under the pillow and held the locket out to her. "At least wear this. If I'm gone. Or, rather, 'when.'"

The locket, a gold heart, pulsated in Lissa's hand now. Its right side glowed red, hot to the touch. The other side, a pale blue, shocked Lissa's palm with the cold of a first November snowfall. Lissa turned away from the rowan tree, and the blue and red sides re-oriented themselves, while the locket emitted a low ear-splitting whine.

"A compass?" Lissa turned the locket over. She had no use for a compass. She did not know where she was supposed to go. She did know a kids' game, though. Andrey's nieces played it, during one of the rowdy family gatherings he had taken her to, at his country house. "Hot, hot, hotter ..." the smallest girl, her head barely visible between two huge pink bows, had shrieked.

"An ideal way of pointing a way to the hidden things," Andrey tightened his arm around Lissa's shoulder. "No directions that could fall into the enemy's hands, nothing incriminating. Should be available only to the rightful owner, of course, DNA-based. Activated remotely ..." he trailed off.

"Paranoia is a terrible disease," Lissa had laughed. Andrey laughed too. And then, a week after that conversation, he talked to her about being arrested and gave her the locket.

Tentatively, Lissa moved in the direction of the red glow. The locket seemed to settle into her palm, the whine becoming an approving hum. Rain-laden grass slipped under Lissa's feet. A brook burbled across her path, limpid water playing over the pebbles, but Lissa resolutely stepped over it. The locket led. Lissa would follow. Too bad she had no idea where she was headed. But this was twenty-second century Russia, after all. What could possibly go wrong?

***

In a clearing, a small wooden house stood, arthritically crooked in the gathering dusk. A path cut through the tall grass, dried by the sun of a departed August. Stinging nettles grew thickly by the gate that pointlessly separated the property from the rest of the forest. Cracked porch steps lolled out of the black mouth of the front door.

The house spotted Lissa. Creaking, it rose over the grass on two stumps, the porch lifting off the ground. Folding the grass underneath, the house slowly spun around. The side that faced Lissa now had a wooden verandah with a torn rocking chair. The red lines of the alarm system criss-crossed, pinning Lissa to her spot.

"Who ... are ... you?" the recording stalled after each word.

"I'm Lissa Bonesprit, CFO of FinEast Russia." Lissa tried to wipe mud off her face, but succeeded only in smearing it more.

"Who ... are ... you?"

"I'm Lissa. I'm in trouble. A friend of mine meant me to find this place. I think. His name's Andrey. Andrey Sokolov?"

"Who ... are ... you?"

"Oh, for God's sake!" A woman, tall and gaunt, grey matted hair down to her waist, a cigarette in her gnarled fingers dropping a trail of ash on her brown overalls, came out of the house and leaned against the moldy balustrade. "What do you want?"

"I don't know," Lissa advanced, grateful that the red lights have gone out. "I've been directed to here. But if you could let me have a bath, and a change of clothes ... I'd be grateful. And I'll pay you."

For the first time, Lissa realised that she didn't have anything on her. She left her purse with her cards, her cash, her cell phone, her passport, for crying out loud, in the car. Those bastard agents who wouldn't even talk to her, would steal her stuff now.

"Pay me?" the woman twisted her thin mouth. "How? You look like you crawled out of a bog. And I doubt very much you'd be able to get back to whatever life you had. Those who end up here are rarely destined for a happy ending." She waved her cigarette in the air, and the sight of the woman's missing pinkie made Lissa gasp.

"I know you! Yadviga Babkina, right? The famous dissident? After the Russian war with North Korea? You organised the protests and you ..." The woman's fierce stare made Lissa close her mouth with a snap.

"You want me to kick you the hell out of here?" Yadviga's lips shook with rage. "Shut up. You don't know who's listening when you shoot off your big mouth. You're no longer the wealthy foreigner. You are on the run. And you'll do as you are told."

"Paranoia is a terrible disease," Lissa thought as Yadviga descended from the verandah and dragged her by the arm to the backyard, where a shed had been converted to a bath house. But when Lissa plunged into a steaming wooden tub, she thought that Yadviga's fears were nothing new. Andrey was just as bad. Had to be a Russian thing.

Cleaned up and dressed in a linen shirt, Lissa sat in Yadviga's hut over a bowl of buttery buckwheat mixed with mushrooms and grilled onions. Tea in a large mug smelled of rosehips and lemon balm.

"It's Sokolov who sent you here, you said?" Yadviga stubbed her cigarette out on the wooden table, adding another burn to its mottled surface.

"Yes, Andrey Sokolov. A friend of mine." Lissa felt herself blush.

"Friend," Yadviga smirked. "And what did he tell you to do when he gets arrested?"

"How do you know he's been arrested?"

"He's on the network. We all are."

Lissa was about to ask what network, but Yadviga pulled out a locket much like Lissa's own. "I'm assuming that's how you found me? Show me."

When she saw Lissa's locket, Yadviga scowled. "He's a fool to trust a foreigner, Andrey. Just because he's sleeping with a pretty girl, he thinks she wouldn't betray him."

"I wouldn't!" Lissa let her spoon clatter to the table. "You are out of your mind, if you think I would."

"Oh, really. So, the Feather," Yadviga lowered her voice, "you never told anybody about it? Nobody at all?"

"Of course I did. We funded Andrey, we have a duty to our shareholders. It's in the annual report. Andrey knew all about it."

"Stupid girl," Yadviga rose and crossed to the window, so Lissa saw only her back. "Never even occurred to you to conceal anything. Why didn't Andrey stop you?"

"Why would he?" Lissa stood up too, outraged. "If he wanted our money, he had to comply with our reporting requirements. All there is to it. It's his project. What he worked on. Nothing wrong with it. If he ever left the country ..." She bit her tongue. Andrey was convinced he could never be allowed to leave. Lissa thought he was being ridiculous. And, yes, paranoid.

"How come your Russian's so good?" Yadviga asked abruptly.

"My mom's Russian. She was a war correspondent, and she ran away." Lissa concentrated on the small spider who busily ran over its web in the corner. The bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling did not give much light.

"I see. And your mother didn't tell you anything when you were coming here? Didn't warn you?"

"Of course she did," Lissa shrugged. "But, look, she left a long time ago. Things changed. I've been living in Russia for the past two years, and I follow the news. Obviously. A great deal had been gained, in terms of human rights. FinEast had the red carpet rolled out for it, since we stand for transparency and attracting foreign investors. I know you've been burned in the past, but the new president is very different."

"Sure he is." Noisily, Yadviga blew her nose on a dirty hankie she pulled out of her pocket. "And your boyfriend's not in prison at all. I haven't got time for this, you know. I'll help you. Because you are on the network, and we've pledged to do it. But if it were up to me," she crossed to the far wall and yanked a large trunk from under a metal bed, "I'd put you on the first plane out of here, and never speak to you again."

***

The boots Yadviga gave to Lissa together with brown leather overalls, ate the kilometers. In the night forest, every sound carried, louder than a gunshot. The trail where the boots pulled up grass they used for fuel blazed and died down, leaving two black tracks. The exhaust from the air cushion that made Lissa skim above ground, barreling swiftly between the trees, branches whipping her face, glowed a faint blue.

Yadviga had synched the boots to Andrey's locket, so Lissa had no idea where she was being taken; the boots and the locket chose the direction on their own. Though, on the whole, the boots' navigation system, supposed to avoid obstacles, left a great deal to be desired. Time and again, Lissa had to swerve to avoid a tree the boots had apparently mistaken for empty air, and, since the boots only checked for what was right in front of them, she constantly had to duck, if she did not want a twig through the eye.

The rising noise of speeding cars heralded an approaching highway.

"Use the Feather," Yadviga had said. "Once you hit the highway, means you are only a couple of hours away. You should last. No Feather - the police will pick you up, and it's not just you who's screwed. It's all of us. The boots are illegal on a private person, by the way. Just so you know."

The bright lights on the roadside flared past the thin fence of trees. Lissa bit her lips in anticipation of the pain, drew a thin blade from the pocket of her overalls and sliced it down her arm.

Wind whipped at Lissa's face as she picked up speed along the smooth shoulder of the highway. A police car wove between the trucks, siren blaring, taking no notice of Lissa. They might have been looking for her. They probably were. Lissa snickered quietly to herself. A foreigner missing in the middle of Moscow. A foreigner who had been given a technology so powerful, she could - maybe - bring down the government with it. She wasn't planning to. But, all the same, it was an interesting thought.

The sign announced an exit to Volokolamsk. The boots flew faster.

***

The morning dripped pink light on the gutted streets of Volokolamsk. In all her time in Moscow, Lissa never managed to travel past the city's gates. The armed perimeter around the high-rises on the outskirts of Moscow did not let foreigners through. She was welcome to Paris and New York, but Volokolamsk and other hamlets - Petelino, Muromtsevo - were closed to outsiders. Until now.

Volokolamsk had nothing of the pastel confectionery of Moscow's reconstructed centre. Here, you could really see the aftermath of the war - the war that nobody had expected Russia to start, let alone win. The wounds in the dark earth, marking where the houses levelled in North Korean air raids once stood, raised the charred bones of wood posts to the pale sky. The rutted pavements collected dirty water and dead leaves by the curbs. A stray cat, thin and grey, hurried past Lissa. It shied away at the presence it could smell and not see, and meowed shrilly.

The boots turned another corner and halted at the brick gates. Lissa raised her head. Past the once gilded domes of the Volokolamsk Kremlin, now stripped down to lead, the white prison house stood, squat and ordinary, its roof crowned with barbed wire. The boots had brought Lissa to where she needed to go.

She leaned on the wall, breathing hard, no longer invisible. The Feather had taken a lot out of her, Yadviga was right. When Andrey had shown her, that first time, she shrieked. He cut himself, and a thick silver cloud enveloped him for an instant. Within seconds, it disappeared, and Andrey disappeared with it. Lissa could see the desk that Andrey had been leaning on, and the unobstructed wall behind it. She stretched out her hand. It ran into Andrey's shoulder, and Lissa stood motionless, listening to the sound of his breathing.

"Nanocrystals?" she had finally asked.

"Yeah. The nanoswarm forms a lattice, and the sizing of the gaps determines how light will be reflected and absorbed." It was eerie, hearing Andrey's disembodied voice. "The surrounding environment is replicated perfectly, effectively creating the illusion of invisibility."

"But it feeds on you. Your body tissue fuels it." Major obstacle for patenting in the US, she thought. "Nanoparticles that eat your flesh in exchange for giving your superpowers." Wouldn't FDA be thrilled.

"It's not that bad. We are working on the regenerative functions. Nothing that a decent meal and plenty of fluids wouldn't fix." Andrey turned off the nanoswarm. When Lissa saw him again, he was balancing a syringe between his index finger and thumb. "How about it, Liss?" The syringe sparkled in the low light of the office. "How about if you give it a shot?"

Lissa ran her tongue over her chapped lips. Where was she going to get a decent meal and plenty of fluids in Volokolamsk? This place didn't seem to have any fast food joints, let alone restaurants. Besides, how would she pay for her meal? Yadviga had neglected to give her any cash, and Lissa had stupidly not asked.

A wilted woman in a faded kerchief hurried past her, a brassy blonde with blue streaks on her eyelids and brick-orange blush on her cheeks following closely. Then a frail girl in ripped jeans and sneakers rounded the corner and ran to catch up to the first two. Like a stream, women were suddenly coming in earnest. All ages, some dragging kids with them, a few shuffling old women relegated to the end of the line, unable to move faster. Lissa stood behind the latest arrival, a buxom girl with peroxided hair feathered green.

"Is that a line-up to get in?" Lissa asked.

"What are you, new?" the peroxided girl spoke over her shoulder.

"Yes. I've never visited anyone in prison before." Lissa wondered how long it would be before the little window opened. The line was already snaking down the street.

"This is not for visiting," the girl rolled her eyes. "This is for care packages, for the guys. Where you hand those in." She swung a large plastic back in her hand in the direction of the window. "You could've checked the forum before you showed up. If you haven't brought anything, you should step out of the line. You'd just be holding everyone up."

"Yeah, you go," a woman standing behind Lissa shoved her suddenly. The sallow face framed by black hair severely pulled back broke into an angry snarl, "don't waste everyone's time. This line's not visitors."

"Wait, wait," Lissa tried to keep her place in the line, but the women closed resolutely, making it impossible for Lissa to work her way back in.

"Miss Lissa Bonesprit?" a male voice startled everyone. The line broke up, as if Lissa had not just been squeezed out. Blank, everyone turned away from her except for the young uniformed policeman who was holding a hand to his cap in an unexpected salute and addressing her in English.

"Yes, I'm Lissa Bonesprit. How do you know me?" Lissa thought she would stick with English. To make these women think that she was important.

"Please follow me," the policeman turned and marched towards the building. Lissa ran after him, to the hissing murmur of the women trapped in the line.

***

Lissa waited in the bare room furnished with nothing but two plastic chairs. Faint from the sleepless night, she tried to keep her fears at bay. Was she getting arrested? Did Yadviga report her? How did these people know she'd be coming? It had to be Yadviga, then. Why did Lissa trust the old woman? Yadviga could have been in the government's employ. Why, why hadn't Lissa even thought about the possibility?

"Paranoid," Lissa said out loud. Her voice echoed strangely. The institutional green of the squalid walls reeked of dirt and disinfectant. "I'm paranoid. Just like the rest of them." She sat on one of the chairs, put her face into her hands. Andrey had told her to run when he was arrested. Perhaps she should have.

The heavy door opened, preceded by the rattling of keys. Lissa looked up. A tall man pushed in Andrey, announced, "Half an hour" in Russian and slammed the door shut. Lissa jumped up so fast, her chair fell over.

Andrey stood awkwardly beside the door, in the same thin brown sweater and jeans he wore on the day they took him. He had dropped Lissa off in front of her office in the morning, kissed her, said, "See you for lunch," and, at 10 am, an American reporter friend called Lissa with "Andrey Sokolov had been taken into custody. Do you know him?" The state agents showed up for Lissa four hours later.

"So," Lissa twisted her fingers, not certain what to say, "do you know why?"

"Yes," Andrey sat on the other chair, facing her, "the Feather. You've used it, I take it?" He nodded at the thin pink line visible below the sleeve of Lissa's stained shirt.

"The invisibility function," Lissa traced the healed scar. "The injury to trigger the nanobots, and then a verbal command to activate the swarm." She stopped herself there. She did not want to gibber.

Andrey stared dully past Lissa. As if he didn't want to see her at all. "You know what else it could do?"

Lissa nodded for him to go on, her throat constricted. She just saw the strangulation line along Andrey's neck. Spotted the bruises on his ankles. The laces had been removed from his shoes.

"If you use it in the field ... an army ... they become invincible. Invisible. Indefatigable. Top-caliber biological weapons. It's World War IV, Liss. Get ready for it."

"No," Lissa backed away from Andrey. "That's absurd. First, the Russian government doesn't have it. Secondly, it could be duplicated in the West."

"How do you think it is that you've been brought to see me?" Andrey's eyes, etched in the shadows of the past two days bore into Lissa's. "I gave it up. The government has it now. All the specs. In exchange for letting you leave. Or else you would have been charged with espionage. You know that Russia broke all the extradition agreements. You'd go to jail, and then to the labour camps. You. I was all set to play the hero." Andrey balled his hands into fists. The knuckles were scuffed bloody. "And then they said you'd be the next to go, and I cracked. But they were really generous, letting us meet one last time." Andrey laughed bitterly. "Minister of Foreign Affairs came down personally to assure me that you'd be escorted, VIP style, to see me, and then flown out of the country. And look at them, keeping their promises."

"The government didn't bring me here," Lissa said. So that explained it. The agents had come to escort her to Andrey's jail. If they had only said something, Lissa would have followed quietly. Probably. "I came by myself." She was being watched for. The young policeman recognised her, when she created the commotion in the line.

"Anyway," Andrey shrugged, as if resigned, "it's a good-bye. You'll be leaving, at least. And I ... well, they'll keep me alive until I've worked out all the functions they want from me."

"No!" Lissa cleared the distance between them and clutched Andrey's arm. "No, you can't stay. Please. It's all my fault, I should've run when you told me to, but please ..."

"Nothing I can do about it, Liss." Andrey smiled a little and pressed his lips to her temple. "Guess I should've listened to you too. It's too late now."

"Wait, wait ..." Lissa dug in the inside pocket of her overalls. "Wait."

Andrey wrapped her in his arms, as if nothing else mattered. But when Lissa held a smooth silver egg out to him, he drew in a hissing breath.

"Where did you get this?"

"Yadviga gave it to me. Thank god I didn't get frisked. Yadviga Babkina. This and the boots," Lissa stuck out a leg covered with the dust of the road. "Said to give it to you any time I managed to see you. What is it?"

"How? How did you make it to Yadviga's?" Colour returned to Andrey's cheek. He clutched Lissa's fingers so tight, it hurt.

"The locket." Lissa pulled the trinket out of her shirt. "Isn't that where you expected me to go?"

"I expected you to return to Canada," Andrey laughed, giddy, the egg raised in his fist. "But in case you didn't ... I thought it might be a bit of a back-up plan. As you say, paranoid."

"Totally," Lissa leaned against Andrey, feeling herself soar on the wings of relief. "So what's the egg do?"

"In the best tradition of Russian revolutionaries," Andrey winked at her and pressed her close, "it's a bomb."

***

Yadviga Babkina sat on her porch in the rocking chair and stared at a small screen. In the rays of the midday sun, she could barely make out the images of orange flame and black smoke issuing from a crater of a building.

"A terrorist attack on the Volokolamsk prison," the TV anchor intoned "resulted in the destruction of the historic building and a massed escape of prisoners, most of whom have been apprehended already. The government is investigating."

"Son of a bitch," Yadviga lit a cigarette and eagerly sucked in the smoke, "whatddayaknow. She did make it to him after all. Shame about the boots though. Where am I getting another pair?"

A sharp screech above made Yadviga raise her head. A bird hovered over the clearing, an enormous falcon, its powerful wings black in the pale sky. A cigarette dropped out of Yadviga's stunned mouth and she cursed at the burn on her hand. Against the sun, Yadviga spotted a figure perched on the falcon's back - a young woman, her light hair beating in the wind like a triumphant banner. The figure let go of something and, before Yadviga's eyes, the woman and the falcon disappeared, as if wrapped in a cloak of invisibility.

The dropped object whistled to the ground, hit the middle of the clearing.

A pair of boots in her hand, Yadviga returned to the porch and found a damp cloth, ran it over the banded leather. A falcon's grey-brown feather was stuck into the top band meant to fix the knees in place.

Yadviga pulled the feather out and held it up. It flew out of her hand, slowly spiralled down to the top of the balustrade and broke into scrolling red letters.

"Thank you, from both of us. The Feather is good for a lot more than I have let on. We'll try to make it over the Atlantic. We'll be in touch."

The red letters turned to thin black dust, and the nanoswarm dispersed in the hot wind of an Indian summer. Yadviga lit another cigarette and sat back in her chair, the boots in her lap.

"He can grow plumage and wings, turn himself into a bird, with this nano-shit of his? An actual friggin' bird?" she stretched out her hand and blew on the stub of her missing finger. "Wonder what else he can grow, the lucky ass," she smirked lewdly, to herself. "Or maybe it's her who's lucky. Assuming, of course, that she sees the possibilities."

She rummaged in the cushions of the rocking chair, pulled out a beer bottle, popped off the cap with her teeth.

"Here's to you, kids," she raised the bottle to the sky.

The chair rocked. A black crow swooped down, to tear at the blazing clump of the rowan berries. Somewhere high up, an enormous bird and a girl on its back would cross the border, invisible and undetectable.

"See you on the other side." Yadviga took a swig from the beer bottle.

The prison burned on-screen.

***

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