The Mountain Beyond the Hill

The corridor outside Alexei Ruslan’s hospital possessed the kind of cleanliness that made Ivan Stanislav uneasy. Too bright, too polished, and too free of memory. Somewhere above him, the ventilation system breathed indifferently. For a building meant to preserve life, it lacked any kind of pulse.

Ivan had changed, showered, and then left America immediately after retiring Bryan Dawkins. He’d not eaten nor spoken since the news.

Alexei had opened his eyes. Nothing more. Just that.

For Ivan, who had spent months staring at a silent body, it was enough to tear through every other obligation in the world. But when he arrived, the door was closed and a young soldier stood in front of it.

He wasn’t young enough to be forgiven for stupidity. Regulation uniform. Clean boots. Pale face. To his credit, he did not step aside.

Ivan knew the posture.

It was the stance of a man given an order by someone else, now hoping with all the private cowardice of youth that said order would protect him. Ivan stopped several paces away and stared through the youth at the door.

“Move.”

The soldier swallowed. “Starshy Praporshchik Stanislav,” he said, saluting The Bear. “Access is restricted at this time.”

Ivan’s gaze lowered from the door to the boy’s face.

“Move,” Ivan said, quieter this time.

Gema Caballero emerged down the hallway with red, swollen eyes and dark hair loose around her face. Fear had sharpened her fury to an edge.

“They won’t let us in,” she said, voice tinged with exhaustion. “They say he opened his eyes. My Alejandro. But they say wait. Always wait. No one tells me what he saw. If he knew me. If he knew any of us.”

Her voice broke and hardened in the same breath.

“He looked at me, Ivan. I know he looked at me.”

Speedy Riggs stood beside her in a tropical shirt with palm fronds, red stars, and yellow hammers and sickles. For once, none of it was funny. With a face drawn and serious, his eyes moved between Ivan, Gema, the soldier, and the door.

“Ivan,” Speedy said carefully, “they’ve given us the same answer for hours. Which is nothing.”

The soldier stiffened. Ivan noticed. He noticed how the youth avoided looking at Gema. How his hand tightened when Speedy spoke. The boy wasn’t there because someone asked politely.

Behind him, the door opened a few inches.

Gema inhaled sharply. Ivan took one step forward before he heard the clipped voice of a physician from inside the room and the scuff of hurried shoes. For a fraction of a second, Ivan smelled the air inside the room.

Ivan moved again, but the soldier placed his body between him and the opening. The door closed.

Stanislav stared down at the boy and the corridor grew still. Nurses slowed, then found urgent reasons to be elsewhere. Ivan leaned toward the youth.

“Do you know,” he asked, “what I can do to you?”

The soldier’s lips parted. “Yes, Starshy Praporshchik.”

“And you remain?”

“Yes, Starshy Praporshchik.”

Ivan considered more direct solutions than restraint. Doors torn from hinges. Men lifted from the floor. Furniture reduced to splinters. He had taught the world, again and again, that enough strength applied to the right place could make most problems go away.

But Alexei was behind that door.

The man who had been under siege for months. The man whose return to consciousness, if that was what this was, might be fragile enough to shatter beneath one careless act of love. Ivan’s rage reached the door and stopped. Not defeated, but contained.

The soldier produced a small envelope, as if remembering he had a larger role beyond a potential sacrificial lamb. “I was ordered to give this to you,” he whispered.

Ivan took it between his fingers. He didn’t bother with his glasses.

“Pittsburgh,” Ivan said.

Speedy blinked. “Pittsburgh?”

The directive ordered Stanislav to proceed immediately to Pennsylvania, where he would establish full-time presence at the designated Team Avalon residence until ReVival 90.

The final paragraph shook him.

“Due to the present medical uncertainty surrounding Agent Ruslan, visitation is restricted until cleared by appropriate medical and political authorities.”

Authorities.

Ivan read the word again.

Speedy couldn’t read Cyrillic, but he knew it wasn’t good. “What does it mean, Ivan?”

Ivan folded the paper once, then again. “It means no one can go in. And I go to Pittsburgh.”

Gema shook her head, panic and anger rising together. “No. No, Ivan. You cannot allow this. He opened his eyes. He needs you.”

Ivan turned his back to the door. For a moment, he imagined Alexei on the other side as he had been half a year ago. Sharp eyed. Smirking. Mocking. Then the image dissolved into machines, doctors, and a body trying to return from death.

He could refuse. They were the words Ivan wanted to say. The words Gema needed to hear. The words Speedy knew he could say. The words the soldier feared would leave his lips.

Instead, Ivan turned to Speedy.

“You stay.”

Speedy’s mouth tightened. “Ivan…”

“You stay,” Ivan repeated, “and watch out for who might have done this.”

Speedy Riggs wasn’t Alexei. He couldn’t read Ivan’s mind the same way, but he knew what and who Ivan meant and nodded.

“I understand, Ivan.”

Ivan turned to Gema, but couldn’t find the words. She covered her mouth, more in collapse than agreement.

Then, Ivan turned from the door and walked down the corridor.

Every step away felt like betrayal.

Every step away followed orders.

—

The plane waited beneath a low Russian sky, its white fuselage gleaming with the cleanliness of oligarchic wealth. Ivan climbed the stairs anyway.

The cabin was quiet, tasteful, and useless. The engines stirred and the plane began to move. Something old and humiliating rose in him. Not fear, necessarily. Something worse.

He suddenly unbuckled.

The attendant down the aisle stiffened. “Starshy Praporshchik?”

Ivan’s phone buzzed. Speedy.

“No change. Still watching.”

Ivan stared at the message. Then, slowly, he locked himself back into the seat while Moscow blurred beneath the clouds. He didn’t bother to look out the window for long.

Ivan had seen enough things disappear to know that watching never preserved them.

—

Marty Kaczmarek had warned them in the message. Not suggested. Not hinted.

Warned.

The house was on the South Side Slopes, not some nice flat stretch out in Robinson where someone could swing a moving truck around like they owned the place. The street was narrow, the hill was hilly, and the turn off the next block was worse. Parking had been a neighborhood bloodsport well before the Immaculate Reception.

Nobody planned accordingly.

By 9:17 in the morning, a moving truck the size of a Giant Eagle had wedged itself halfway up the street and stopped in front of the house with its flashers blinking and ass end angled in a way that made Marty’s eye twitch. Behind it sat a black SUV. Behind that was another box truck, because whoever arranged this shitshow had looked at one oversized vehicle and thought, no, better bring two.

Marty stood on the sidewalk in a faded Steelers hoodie, sweatpants, and old work shoes. He held a travel mug in one hand and his phone in the other.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Marty muttered. “Yinz jagoffs brought a whole Penske and a half up here?”

The driver either didn’t hear him or didn’t speak English. Marty had no idea how right he was about the latter. Two burly pale movers climbed out of the cab and looked around with confusion. One glanced down the hill toward the South Side Flats, where Carson Street waited below with its bars, brunch places, and bad decisions. The other looked at the retaining wall beside the house and muttered something in Russian.

Marty pointed with his coffee mug. “Yeah, it’s a hill. We got them here.”

Then, Ivan Stanislav slowly emerged from the black SUV.

Marty had season tickets at Steelers games. He’d seen some big boys in his time. But this fella was bigger than Big Ben, the Bus, and Deebo combined.

Ivan ignored the yinzer and stared at the house.

It was a narrow brick place squeezed into the slope of the hill. Three floors if a person counted the Pittsburgh basement. A little porch. A steep run of concrete steps that desperately needed a railing that wasn’t rusted, and a view of the South Side that was beautiful if you ignored the power lines.

He looked down at Marty. “You are owner?”

“Marty Kaczmarek,” he said, tucking his phone into his hoodie. “I manage the place. My aunt’s house. Before we get any further, I’m gonna need you to move that truck before old Mrs. Gmiter comes out and starts bitchin’. She’s eighty-one and you’ll be in Allegheny General if yinz screw up her bingo night.”

Ivan lifted a brow. “Kaczmarek.”

Marty lifted his chin with a flicker of Pittsburgh pride. “Yeah. Polish, on my dad’s side. You know the name?”

“I know Poland,” Ivan said. His expression didn’t soften, but something moved behind his eyes. “Hard people.”

“Yeah?” Marty replied, “Well this hard person is telling you that truck’s gotta move.”

Ivan glanced back at the two trucks. “Is just few things. Desk and some personal items.”

Marty rubbed the back of his neck and huffed. “Fine. Just don’t damage anything… and get that truck out of here ASAP.”

Ivan looked at the two movers, who didn’t look nearly as big and burly next to him, and barked at them in Russian. They got to work immediately.

“Listen, Mr. Stanislav,” Marty continued, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you picked the most American week in the history of America to get stuck in Pittsburgh.”

Ivan’s eyes narrowed.

“Country’s turning two hundred and fifty. There’s gonna be flags everywhere. Fireworks every night from now until everyone’s dog needs medication. Anthrocon’s downtown,” Marty continued, somehow making the word sound like it had three extra rivers in it, “so if you see a raccoon with a lanyard, it’s fine.”

He thumbed over his shoulder, “My cousin’s doing Rocky Horror as well, he lives down the street, so there’s gonna be people in fishnets acting like it's normal."

As if to prove the nightmare Ivan had walked into, a person in a fox head and a Pirates jersey dragged a suitcase up the sidewalk, stopped when he saw Ivan, and crossed the street.

Ivan stared. “The hell is that?”

Marty shrugged. “Anthrocon. Hey, let people have their fun, right? Doesn’t hurt me. Won’t hurt you.”

Ivan narrowed his eyes. “Nothing hurts me.”

He watched the anthro walk further up the street and stared baffled. “No central planning whatsoever…”

Marty shrugged. “Yeah, but we got good pierogies.”

—

By late afternoon, the house had ceased being a house in any useful American sense.

The floral couch remained, but it was covered in a red wool blanket. The coffee table had been moved and covered with papers, a Pittsburgh street map, and two grease pencils. A filing cabinet stood in the corner. Upon it rested a bust of Lenin, facing the front door with a look of grave disappointment.

But the desk dominated the room. Ivan sat behind it with his hands folded. Behind him, a Soviet flag had been hung over the window, blotting most of the view. On the wall where Marty’s aunt had once hung a painting of ducks in a pond, there was now a war board.

TEAM AVALON occupied the center.

TEAM SNOW and TEAM TROY were placed on either flank. Names were printed in block letters and connected by red strings. There were arrows. Notations. Some in English. More in Cyrillic lettering.

“Ahem.”

Nathan Lake had arrived just a few minutes prior, and he stood in awe at the spectacle of the AirBnB-turned-command center. He wore his newly-designed, blue-shaded “Lighthouse” vest over a faded “Are You Afraid of the Dark” t-shirt. He was pulling what looked to be VHS tapes and DVDs out of his luggage.

Ivan didn’t understand or care for why Nathan was no longer Blaze Claymore, and did not care. He remembered the boy from the Ascension tournament, when they had last crossed paths. “Comrade Blaze,” he rumbled, noting the new blue outfit. “You looked better in red.”

“Actually, it's…”

Nathan shook his head.

“You know what, nevermind that for now. Is that a… Soviet version of RISK? And are you uh… playing by yourself?”

Ivan’s eyes moved from Nathan down to the war board, then back again.

“First thing is first,” he said, spreading one massive hand across the paperwork as he rose. “Do not hold grudge for my defeating you last year. You join fraternity of capable men who have stood in The Bear’s shadow and fallen. There is no shame in this.”

Nathan opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it.

Ivan continued. “I have studied teams. Troy. Snow. Avalon. I have prepared strategy. We consolidate first. Break Snow and Troy. Then we concern ourselves with fighting one another.”

Nathan looked at the war board again, then at Ivan, then back at the board.

“Wait,” he said. “You think we’re all supposed to team up, beat the other two teams, and then fight each other in the end? For a shot at the Universal Title?”

Ivan frowned. “Naturally.”

Nathan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he said slowly. “You don’t get a lot of reality television in Russia, do you?”

Ivan’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Nathan sighed and walked over to the table where Ivan was sitting and set his stack of media on top of Ivan’s meticulously drawn battle plans.

Ivan watched as one DVD case covered the arrow connecting members of Team Snow. Another crossed the phrase “Universal Title.” His jaw tightened.

“What is all of this?” He growled.

The Lighthouse held up one of the DVDs, “Survivor: Season One - The Greatest and Most Outrageous Moments”, and pointed at it.

“It’s a game show, Ivan. We’re competing on PRIME’s version of a reality television show that came out when I was seven and, somehow, is still on the air.”

The Bear stared at the DVD case carefully.

“Game show?”

“Look… all you need to know is the reason we’re split into these groups – Troy, Snow, Avalon… they aren’t platoons, they’re tribes. And you don’t lose by pinning someone, or making them submit… the loser is voted out. By his or her tribe.”

The word seemed to reach Ivan slowly. “A vote?”

“Yeah, a vote.”

Ivan looked past Nathan to the war board.

Nathan continued, “If our tribe loses, we vote somebody out. If another tribe loses, they vote somebody out. Individual immunity protects one person. Tribe immunity protects the whole team.”

It took a moment before it dawned on Ivan, completely.

“So collective victory protects individual from removal?”

Nathan hesitated. He might have been an expert with reality game shows, but now he was talking communist ideology with The Russian Bear. “Uh. Sure. Yeah. Basically..”

Ivan stared past him.

“No pinfall?”

“No.”

“No submission?”

“No.”

“No referee stoppage?”

“No.”

The silence that followed was longer than it should have been. Ivan looked back at Nathan.

“Democracy,” he said, as if diagnosing a disease in the walls, “in wrestling match?”

“Sure,” Nathan said, rubbing the back of his neck. “… and that’s before we even get to talking about the Aggro Crag. Don’t worry though, I brought these so we could prepare.”

Nathan pointed down at the table.

Ivan stared at the tapes, the DVDs, the board, then finally Nathan Lake. The boy had every reason to let Ivan misunderstand the shape of the battlefield until it swallowed him. Instead, he brought teaching materials.

“Tell me about this ‘Aggro Crag…’”

For once, The Russian Bear listened.

—

The porch was barely wide enough for a normal man. For Ivan, it was a ledge.

He sat on a steel chair that barely fit him and stared down the slope of the street toward the river. The city didn’t care that he was here. It didn’t rearrange itself for his arrival and wasn’t about to start. Somewhere down the hill a string of firecrackers went off, then another, then a sustained crackling.

A flag hung from the porch across the street. Another one beside it. Red, white, and blue draped from gutters and mailboxes and the antenna of a truck. Someone had hung a banner between two posts that read 250 YEARS OF FREEDOM.

Ivan stared at it.

He had been raised on the argument that American freedom was a performance, and nothing he had seen in the decades since had given him reason to revise it. Two hundred and fifty years. The arithmetic required a certain generosity about which people the clock had started for and when.

What irritated him, looking at the banner, wasn’t the celebration. People were allowed their celebrations, regardless of their ignorance. What irritated him was the specific American confidence that a vote made something true. That if enough people agreed, the agreement made it justice. That popularity and merit were the same word, just written differently.

Now PRIME had handed him the same mechanism and called it competition. In his ignorance, he had seen “Universal Title” and signed his name. Now he was trapped inside the machinery.

Nathan had been patient with him. That was the word for it, and Ivan didn’t use it lightly. It required nerve. The boy had lost to him and still stood across from him in a room and explained the Aggro Crag without a trace of resentment. He told Ivan where he was wrong, and somehow, he had done it with grace.

The Anglo Luchador would undoubtedly vote him out the first week he had the chance. The history between them was long and one-sided, and TAL knew exactly what side he was on. Lemieux was something closer to bafflement. The man wandered into professional wrestling and somehow remained.

Ivan was too large for the game in every sense. Too obvious a threat. Too decorated. Too serious. He had made himself impossible to ignore, and now the field had changed.

No, they couldn’t pin him. They couldn’t make him submit. They couldn’t defeat him.

But they could remove him with enough votes.

His phone buzzed. Speedy.

“No change, Ivan. I’m sorry.”

Down the street, a figure in a full red panda costume was carrying balloons that appeared to have glitter in them. Pittsburgh, and Ivan, absorbed this without comment.

His eyes returned to the phone. No change.

The phrase should have trapped him in helplessness. Instead, because Nathan had explained the game, it opened a door.

Ivan realized he could leave. Not by disobeying orders. Not by tearing up a directive. He could leave by being exactly what they feared he was. Intolerable. Immovable. The kind of presence that would make his tribe look at their ballots and reach the same conclusion. He knew how to do it. He had been doing it accidentally for his entire life.

Doing it on purpose would require no effort. Be himself and they would throw him back to Russia, where every cell in his body yearned to be.

But Alexei, if he truly awoke, would know. Even half-buried beneath machines and silence, Alexei would know the difference between retreat and defeat. He would know when Ivan had chosen the soft path and dressed it in devotion and love. And if Alexei was awake?

He would never forgive him.

That was an unfair reality to wake up to.

Then came the crueler truth.

If Team Avalon won, there would be no vote. No ballot. No cowardly paper guillotine waiting for his neck. If he fought hard enough, climbed hard enough, swallowed his pride like Nathan did and fought hard alongside his teammates?

Victory would protect him.

Not intimidation. Not fear. Not the size of his shadow.

Victory.

Ivan rose from the chair and the porch complained beneath him. He turned and stared up the South Side Slopes.

There was a mountain bigger than that hill. He had no choice but to learn how to climb it.

Democracy, for all its flaws, had offered him a way home.

Ivan rejected the motion.