Chapter 0: The day that stole the peace
Ekaterinburg, 7:15. Gray dawn.
Dmitry Sokolov had not yet suspected that this day would be the point of no return, the last chord in the symphony of his usual life.
The sharp ringing of the alarm clock, insolent and unappealing, snapped him out of his slumber. With an automatic movement of his hand he fumbled for his smartphone, cutting off the annoying trill. Autumn rain drizzled lazily outside the window, turning the gloomy morning into a monochrome sketch.
- "Dima, get up! You'll be late!" - Anna's voice came from the kitchen.
Her voice, warm and a little nagging, was as familiar and unchanging as the creak of the third step in their old Khrushchev apartment. Dmitri yawned sweetly, stretched, feeling the aching pain pierce his lower back, and reluctantly slid off the warm bed.
7:45. The kitchen is in semi-darkness.
- "You forgot to buy bread again, Dim," Anna said with a slight reproach, pouring the flavored coffee into cups.
- "Sorry, I got caught up," Dimitri mumbled guiltily, breaking off a stale piece of yesterday's baguette.
Their eight-year-old daughter, Katya, was already nibbling on a frosted cheese without taking her eyes off the flickering screen of the tablet.
- "Dad, when are you gonna buy me a new cell phone?"
- "When you become an engineer like Dad, then we'll talk," Dmitri smiled, fixing his glasses that had slipped down to the tip of his nose.
An ordinary mechanical engineer, one of hundreds of others in the city. A job in a design bureau, a family, occasional weekend trips to the countryside - a life that is minute by minute, predictable and... safe.
He didn't yet know that in just a few hours his world would shatter into shards.
9:00. The gray routine of the office.
Dmitriy went headlong into the drawings of a new part for an industrial machine. The monotonous hum of computers, the subdued light of lamps, the smell of paper and cheap coffee - all this created a familiar background to his working day.
- "Sokolov, the chief wants to see you!" - shouted a colleague from a neighboring office, taking him away from contemplating the monitor.
The boss's office, as always, smelled of expensive coffee and stress.
- "Dmitry Sergeyevich, the project must be delivered by Friday. The client is on edge."
- "I'll try to make it in time, Viktor Petrovich," Dmitri nodded, though he was already mentally preparing himself for sleepless nights and endless revisions.
He had no idea that he would never need those blueprints again.
18:30. The drive home. Under the rain umbrella.
The rain had turned into a real downpour. Dmitry was walking from the subway, wrapped in an old raincoat and hiding under an umbrella, when he noticed something strange with his peripheral vision.
Opposite, in a dark alleyway, the figure of an old man in a shabby cloak, drenched to the skin, floated out like a ghost.
- "Looking for a change, son?" - shrieked the stranger in a hoarse voice, like an echo from another world.
Dmitri wanted to pass by, but the old man suddenly stepped forward - and the world around him swam, lost its clarity.
The sidewalk melted beneath my feet, the asphalt turning into a rippling haze.
The last thing he heard was his wife's worried voice from the phone speaker:
- "Dim? Where are you? Dinner's getting cold!"
And then there is the impenetrable darkness, cold and all-consuming.