Quaranteam: Ruins United

Quaranteam: Ruins United

by Cy Borisson

Chapter 10

Ruins United

is a part of the

Quaranteam

universe created by

CorruptingPower

, written with his expressed permission.

Shout-out to the ever-growing QT universe and its writers, and my eternal gratitude to the QT writing group and especially

The_Licentious_Laureate

and

Alsith

for their immeasurable help with proofreading and editing.

xoxo,

Cy~

============

Dec 15th, 2020.

8:04am

The elliptical machine beeped, notifying Dan of the end of his cooldown, and he stepped off, reaching for his gym towel to wipe his forehead, dripping with sweat. Rina had finished her run a minute before, and now was hungrily draining her water bottle. The Plaza's gym was empty this early in the day - both due to the tower being still mostly empty and only the two of them favoring the morning hours. They had fallen into this routine almost a week ago and had yet to miss a single day.

He observed his reflection in the mirror, deep in thought, until she noisily wiped her mouth with her elbow.

"Why don't you hit on me?" She asked and playfully pushed her hip out. "I mean, this is a perfect opportunity - a sexy girl in the gym..."

Her voice broke him out of his reverie. His eyes slid across the surface of the mirror, and he made a show of creepily devouring her body, clad in tight leggings and equally tight sports top, accentuating every curve, with his eyes, then turned, mocking a salacious smile.

"Hey, beautiful, how about we go upstairs and have sweaty sex in the shower?" He said in an overconfident gym jock manner.

"Is that your idea of hitting on a girl?" She groaned, rolling her eyes, causing him to break out in laughter. "I know you can do better! But the answer is yes."

They were making out the entire elevator ride upstairs, and Dan groped her ass the entire time while they climbed the stairs up from the maintenance floor. Then they, snickering and shushing each other, crept through the entire penthouse to the big bathroom, avoiding Tash and Lara, and burst out laughing when Tash's annoyed

heeey

reached them as the bathroom door slammed shut.

They wasted no time, shedding their clothes while watching each other with hungry eyes, then Rina pushed him into the walk-in shower, turned the water on and wrapped her slender fingers around his rapidly growing girth. He covered her perfect handfuls with his hands and trapped her nipples, tweaking them. She arched her back pressing her breasts into his hands, covered his lips with hers and moaned into his mouth.

"Good thing we're the same height but my legs are longer," she smacked her lips, pulling from the kiss. "I can do this..."

She trapped his cock between her thighs, clamped them together and began rolling her hips, sliding her wet lips all over his length. He groaned, throwing his head back, and nearly bumped into the wall behind him.

"Want to see a magic trick?" She asked, gasping, her eyes wide. "I'm going to make this cock disappear... without using my hands."

She pulled back, and with another finicky roll of her hips, trapped the tip of his cock, then slightly bent her knees, sliding him inside.

"Whoa, magic pussy!" He laughed, his length twitching inside of her. "I'm impressed!"

His hands slid down to her hips, holding her tight, and he pushed forward, burying himself to the hilt. Rina moaned, clutching his shoulders, fingernails digging into his skin, as he sped up. Wet slaps of their bodies meeting echoed through the spacious bathroom, drowned by the sound of falling water. She let out a long, drawn-out moan as he unloaded into her with a series of grunts and gasps of his own, but before they could come down, the bathroom door opened.

"Breakfast in ten!" Tash shouted and slammed the door back again.

"Way to ruin the moment, suchka!" Rina hollered over her shoulder, then turned back to him and planted a long wet kiss on his lips. "Thank you, love..."

She slid off his shaft, reached for the shower gel and began washing both of their bodies at the same time.

"I don't get it, is she jealous?" Dan asked, enjoying the attention of her hands. "You think she doesn't get enough attention from me?"

"The attention is carefully divided," Rina frowned. "I keep track."

"You do?" His eyebrows flew up.

"Of course. You are going to have two more women. It's going to be chaos and a lot of hurt feelings unless we don't hog the

hog

."

"It's not just about the hog, you know."

"So take her on a date, buy her flowers, be romantic. I know you can."

"Date in a city of closed restaurants, flowers in December," he pursed his lips. "Hmmm."

"You'll think of something," she gently kissed his lips. "You're not a hopeless romantic, you're a confident one. You have your ways of making a woman feel loved, especially her. Maybe, fulfill one of her fantasies? That always works."

Sufficiently clean and with a towel wrapped around his hips, he stood over the sink, watching his reflection in the huge bathroom mirror.

"You spend an awful lot of time inspecting yourself in the mirrors lately," she murmured, hugging him from behind and putting her chin on his shoulder. "Developing narcissistic tendencies, hmm?"

"Thinking I should grow a beard," he lied.

"Beard? Eww," she laughed. "But see for yourself, maybe it'll... grow on you."

She narrowly avoided a slap on her ass and ran off out of the bathroom, laughing. Dan turned to the mirror again.

Where are you?

Getting no response, he sighed and reached for the razor.

-//-

A hushed but tense conversation could barely been heard from the kitchen as he headed there for breakfast, dressed for a day in the office.

"You should tell him!" He heard Tash's voice before he stepped through the door.

"Tell me what?"

They went silent, looking at him like three kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Then Lara sighed.

"I finally decrypted the bitch's phone. Wasn't easy, they installed military-grade encryption, but I did it."

"And?" Dan crossed the kitchen, grabbed a coffee mug and turned to the coffee maker.

"And the shit I found... Dan, she was behind

everything

! All that happened to you... to us - the feds, the cops, the little sabotages all over the place!"

"We knew as much," he shrugged, putting the machine to work. The coffee began to slowly drip into his mug, and he turned to Lara. "Tell me something new."

"I found her chats with her curator - full-blown BDSM shit, sadomaso, femdom, the whole shebang. Doesn't look like she was brainwashed. She did all this willingly. The number on the other side is unlisted, but I did some cross-referencing and... it's probably Karina."

He shrugged again, took his mug and joined them at the kitchen island. Tash immediately put a plate with kefir pancakes and a saucer with raspberry jam in front of him.

"Thank you, love, this looks delicious," he smiled.

"You're taking this rather calmly," Rina frowned.

"What kind of reaction do you expect?" His eyebrows rose. "Want me to rage? Curse? Honestly, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest anymore - every day is like a new, even more fucked up episode of Black Mirror. The bitch was smart enough to come up with all this on her own, the fact she did this because somebody told her to changes nothing. More importantly, why are you three making such a big deal of it?"

The women exchanged glances.

"You need to talk to someone about what you feel," Rina cocked her head. "If not us, maybe try therapy?"

"How do you expect it to work?" He laughed. "Hey doc, I killed some people, they were totally bad guys, but now I feel sad?"

"We... want you to stop feeling guilty," Tash said quietly, looking him in the eye.

"But I don't, what gave you that idea?" He smiled.

"Dan, five days," Rina changed her location to sit closer to him. "Five days you are not here - you are deep inside yourself. Yes, we talk, you work, the sex is amazing, but as soon as you're left alone for a second, you dive back into yourself. I saw you stare into the mirror for like half an hour yesterday!"

"Ah, that..." He dipped a piece of pancake into the saucer, then sent it into his mouth, chewing slowly. "It's not guilt. It's doubt."

"You're

doubting

yourself?" Tash's eyes became big.

"Why shouldn't I?" He turned to her briefly, then fixed his gaze on his plate. "As a self-appointed... I don't know, Sheriff? of this Wild South, I can't help but wonder - aren't the shoes too big for me? Were the sentences I delivered justified? I am looking for answers inside of me as well as outside, even forced myself to read Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics again... But I can't find them."

"Dan..." Rina tried to interject.

"Separation of power exists for a reason," he wasn't finished. "Concentrated in one place - one man, in this instance, is a slippery slope to corruption and abuse of power like never before."

"Is this abuse of power here in this room with us now?" Lara looked at him incredulously. "So far, I've only seen you risk your ass to save people."

"Okay, yes, but what I do is still vigilantism," he threw his hands up. "Where's the line that separates criminals from the champions of the people?"

"Oh, I'll tell you where," Tash fumed. "Right around trying to sabotage the vaccination initiative! That's plain terrorism - you said it yourself!"

"And the thousand doses of vaccine that fucker wanted?" Lara joined the verbal onslaught. "It makes me nauseous just thinking of what he planned to do with those - for all I know it meant a thousand women in sexual slavery if you didn't stop him!"

"There," Dan lifted a finger. "That's exactly why I can't discuss my doubts with you."

"Uh... what?" Tash deflated in surprise.

"I get it," Rina suddenly said. "We're biased."

"Exactly," he nodded. "We share a very deep bond and we love each other, and you three are inclined to take my side no matter what kind of horrible shit I do."

"You still need to talk to someone," Tash muttered.

"And I even know who," he sighed. "About time I did that, been delaying this visit for far too long..."

-//-

"Do you realize this box is too small for six people?" Rina asked him as the four of them stepped out of the service elevator.

"There are two elevators, and you can ride the main one too," he rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm working on it, okay?"

"Just saying."

The Valkyries were already waiting in the lobby, dressed in winter uniforms and carrying guns. Seeing the team, they stood at attention and saluted Dan.

"At ease," he grimaced. "Don't do that, it attracts unwanted attention. Besides, I don't even have a rank."

"But you do," Yana argued. "Unofficially, but you're still our commander-in-chief, and you've been assigned a codename for our internal comms."

"I don't want to know," Dan huffed, shaking his head. "As long as you don't make me wear a uniform."

"Alright, love," Rina turned to him and planted a soft kiss on his lips. "See you later, be good."

"I'll try, but no promises."

The three of them watched Rina and her bodyguards load into the Dodge and drive away. He leaned down to give both Lara and Tash kisses.

"If anybody asks, I'll be in the office around lunchtime."

They were off, strolling across the now-clean city square towards the City Hall, and he turned in the direction of the staircase in the back of the lobby, the one leading into the underground parking. The reception desk was unmanned -

unwomaned? It's Zhanna's desk after all

- with a single visitor, a sharply dressed woman in her fifties, with curly brown mane showing signs of graying, waiting for someone to attend. The woman turned, noticed Dan and squinted, and that piercing scanning gaze was enough to recognize her even though most of her face was hidden by a large mask - Vera Vetlitskaya, the chair of the City Court, wasn't a friend, considering their backgrounds, but one of the people he could call an ally these days.

"Koval! Long time no see!" She greeted him in a powerful voice that wouldn't be out of place in a large auditorium.

"Morning, Your Honor," Dan chuckled. "Looking to check in to Plaza?"

"Nah, just waiting for my niece."

"Your niece lives here?"

"And runs this place too," Vera smirked.

"Zhanna's your niece?" His eyebrows crawled up.

"Yep, the smartest girl in the family - helped design and build this place, but never brags and refuses to be called chief engineer," Vera explained and, seeing the incredulous look on Dan's face, laughed. "Looks can be deceiving, right?"

She looked around, then looked at Dan.

"Say, Danila, you have a minute to talk? Not in a hurry?"

"Sure," he nodded to the visitor's area of the lobby. "Let's sit down."

They sat on the couches away from the foot traffic of the lobby, far enough from the curious eyes and ears.

"What do you know about Spiridonov?" Vera began without any preamble.

"He's a piece of shit," Dan snorted.

"Correction - he

was

a piece of shit," he feigned surprise at her words. "And I don't mean in a way he suddenly became a saint, no - somebody double-kneecapped him and left him to the dogs. It took the coroner a while to ID him."

Not good.

Dan made an undetermined motion with his head, something between a nod and a shake, but didn't utter a word, watching her face.

"I've seen a lot of shit during my time in homicide in the nineties, but nothing like this - not your usual standoff-shootout, this was an execution, very angry and personal," she sighed. "Three bodies, three different weapons, including a Makarov, a sniper rifle with a silencer and subsonic ammo, and a twelve-gauge. If it were still my job, I wouldn't even try to investigate something like that, not to mention the list of suspects would be a mile long..."

"And you're telling me this why?" He asked, cautiously raising a brow.

"While I'm sure it's a vendetta, there's still a possibility of a new turf war breaking out as a result. I don't know what he's been up to lately, but nothing legal, I would assume. Might've stepped into something he shouldn't have."

"We haven't had turf wars since the nineties," Dan frowned, hoping his theatrics would be enough to dismiss any suspicions.

"Because the cops and the feds filled the niche, yes," she nodded. "Now that they're gone, and most of bratva died in prisons... You know what they say - a holy place is never empty. This is why we at the Court are very grateful to the administration for maintaining some semblance of order in this city and are willing to ignore the obvious violations of the processual code and the involvement of your... volunteers."

"Just doing what I can," he tried to play it off lightly.

"I would suggest you form an investigation unit next," she offered. "We're getting reports of young women disappearing all around the city, but as you can guess, we have no manpower for that. Just... make sure the people you hire for the job are in no way connected with the old law enforcement."

"Why would you say something like that?" He looked at the judge incredulously and completely not faking it this time.

"Because... You see, Dan, this job makes you lose humanity. Several years in, you start treating everyone you meet as a potential criminal, even push people into doing illegal shit so you can book them."

"That's why you quit?"

"That's why I quit," she nodded.

"Aunt Vera!" They heard - Zhanna was jogging in their direction across the lobby, shaking her brown curls and stumbling every now and then.

"There's my girl," Vera smiled, stood up and lowered her voice, addressing Dan. "Don't ask me where she gets her coordination gene from - I have no idea, it doesn't run in the family."

-//-

The snowfall stopped on Friday, and the city even got some sun over the weekend, but the temperature never rose above zero Celsius, letting the snow-cleaning crews earn their hours. The roads and pathways of the city, clean and dry now, became narrower because of the huge snowbanks on both sides - not a problem for the nearly nonexistent traffic. On the lawns, under the trees, the snow lay mostly untouched, but Dan still saw snowmen here and there, driving by.

Wonder if we'll still have snow when our kids grow up enough to build those. Kids...

He sighed.

Insanity and cruelty - bringing kids into this fucked up world. I can barely protect what I have...

The drive took him to a squat building with tall windows, still bearing the signs of architectural redundancies of the late Empire. Built by the Soviets back in the seventies, the Spartak sports school was a place for kids to learn Greco-Roman wrestling, sambo and judo, and without state support it all but died by the time Boris Smirnov, recently returned from his journey to the East, took it over.

Dan parked the car out in the street - the Soviet planning didn't account for people attending sports schools ever having cars - and walked the recently cleaned pathway up to the front porch. The door was slightly ajar, the building looked abandoned, but he knew that wasn't the case. His footsteps echoed in the long, dimly lit hallway as he headed to the part farthest from the entrance. He kicked his boots off in the small entryway and put his coat on the rack before stepping into the dojo.

Nothing has changed in here in the months since he'd been here last - the same smell of sweat permeating the very walls of this place, the same heavily worn tatami, creaky old window frames that leaked most of the heat in winter and never kept cold inside in summer. Dan bowed to the portrait of Ueshiba hanging on the wall, front and center, then walked the tatami to the man in blue hakama over a white kimono, sitting in seiza.

He stopped several meters away, descended into the same sitting pose, then gave the man a slow deep bow, touching his hands with his forehead.

"Sensei."

Boris was sixty, but other than being completely white, he showed no other signs of aging. Dan, with his dark circles under his eyes from all the chaos of the last few weeks, could swear Sensei would look the same age as him, if he ever decided to shave. The man was also tall, sinewy, and didn't have an ounce of fat on him as a result of decades of Eastern diet and unending exercise.

"Took you long enough," he said in a pleasant baritone. "Watching you in the news is fun, but it lacks context."

The hand that was lying in the man's lap rose and stroked his short white beard over his mask.

"You've been vaccinated for weeks, could've paid this old man a visit sooner."

"Been fighting some stuff."

"So I've heard. Massive ripples on this pond's surface, Danila, almost waves. And now you paused your crusade and came here with that massive look of doubt on your face even your mask couldn't hide."

Boris' bright blue eyes bored into him, and Dan sighed. The art of asking a question without asking, the art of seeing right through him - Sensei was a master of many arts.

"I think... I took it too far, Boris."

"Did you, now?" The man cocked his head to the side. "Try to see it from a different perspective - if you dropped on your back like a good puppy and put your hands up, would they spare you? Or anyone, if you took a step back and decided not to get involved in the city politics?"

"Well, no, but..." Dan began.

"No buts," Boris lifted a finger. "You're good at extrapolating, I remember. You have sufficient data to calculate the possible outcomes of your non-involvement. What would this city look like by the end of December, if you haven't gotten in the way of the feds?"