May 2017, Montana, USA

Volya lost his fear of planes with his flight-virginity, so instead of fretting about falling out of the sky, he slept like a baby on the trans-Atlantic flight. And during the 4-hour layover in New York. And on the domestic flight that took them from the East Coast to some place in Montana he'd never heard of. Montana he did hear about, but so far it amounted to a violet outline of the mountains and a sprinkle of one-story houses caught in the headlights of a minibus.

Their new driver was more intriguing than Montana. The guy wore fatigues over a muscular body. His dark hair bristled in a military buzz cut. At the same time, two-days' worth of stubble hugged his jaw and cheeks. Large nose sat askew, probably a memory of the same blow that left behind a scar, puckering his lip enough for his right canine to peek.

The guy's brown eyes were ordinary, but when they zeroed in on Marina, the unguarded glance between them was something else. However, he extinguished it like a cigarette butt under heel. When the two shook hands, it was all business.

"Damir, how're things?" Marina asked the driver in Russian.

"Not too shabby," he replied in the same tongue without an accent. Without a foreign accent at any rate—there was more than a splash of the Volga-River's vastness in the way Damir spoke. The dialect was particularly noticeable next to Marina's unmistakable I-was-born-to-Petersburg-intelligentsia speak. These regional differences didn't deter Marina. She scooted over to sit next to the driver.

Volya strained his ears to overhear their conversation, because being polite had never netted him anything useful.

"The simulations ran okay," Damir said to Marina, twisting in his seat to make sure everyone onboard had settled in. "But there're some common roots that I can't reverse-engineer."

Volya leaned back with a sigh. Whatever those two were discussing, they could have been doing it in English for all the good it did him.

Naturally, their driver wasn't just a driver, like Marina wasn't just an interpreter, but he would have guessed that on his own. That's how Liam rolled, surrounding himself with strange people. Like, say, Volya... another specimen in his collection. A genetic phenomenon from Slobodinsk or some such nonsense.

Despite their arrival to Montana, Liam hadn't revealed anything yet, because that's how he rolled too. The popstar loved being all mysterious. Mysterious and beautiful, even when he dozed off, with his head lolling. As if Liam sensed Volya's questioning gaze, a smile flickered onto his lips. It was like watching a fluorescent tube in the hall that was at the death's door. One buzz—and it was off. Next flutter—and it was back on.

***

After half-an-hour of traversing Montana, the bus caught a pothole. It jolted Liam awake. He peered out of the window and his smile gave way to a frown.

Volya pressed his forehead against the glass and squinted into the darkness, to see what chased Liam's bliss away.

The bus was rolling to a stop in a paved parking lot in front of a mansion. It brought to mind two giant birdhouses connected by a gallery. Each of them peaked into a steep triangular roof and was decorated by three cross beams and a balcony. The logs and the river-stone borders exuded a sturdy charm. Apparently, this monster of a house was not large enough, because standalone buildings and trailers sprouted all around it.

In short, places like that normally didn't put frowns on people's faces, but Liam was Liam.

Proud of his growing vocabulary, Volya asked Liam in English, "What the heck is wrong?"

"Nothing." Liam stretched his arms till his joints cracked. "I have good news, actually. The lab says there was nothing deadlier than trans-fats and sugar in the chocolates left in your room."

They had to call upon Marina to interpret this. Once she was done, Volya rolled his eyes. "Genius! Chocolate is toxic to me as is."

Marina interpreted on, nodding her head in agreement.

"But if they knew that," Liam said reasonably, "they would have also known you'd never touch it."

Volya rubbed his temples, half-expecting Marina to mimic him.

Liam patted him on the shoulder. "Let's hope we left this one problem behind us, okay?"

Leaving chocolate on his pillow was like leaving a jar labeled with a skull-and-crossbones for a normal human. Sure, nobody would expect a sane person to swallow a spoonful of poison voluntarily, but they would expect them to be wary. There was no need to trouble the popstar with this conjecture though. He already looked way too stressed out.

"Uh-huh," Volya said. But I'll be on my toes, he promised himself for the hundredth time since the principal's office.

By then, Liam leaped out of the bus. Volya hurried after him.

A graceful figure waited for them on the porch. A chiffon scarf draped over the front of the woman's shirt-like ivory dress. The pastels of her outfit and LED light didn't wash her out, just accentuated tragic shadows under her eyes. There were more by her nostrils, and around her mouth, plus along her swan-neck. A ballet-dancer, Volya would have said, if he was asked to guess at her occupation.

"Liam!" The woman exclaimed. Her bracelets jingled on the wrists so slim, they seemed in danger of snapping, but she roped Liam into a tight embrace. "Welcome home, my dear."

"Thanks," Liam said without warmth. Volya was glad that this was within his English limits, for Marina didn't follow them for some reason.

After squeezing Liam to her heart, the hostess passed him on to a man of a drastically contrasting coloring. He had deeply tanned complexion, was hook-nosed, with stark-white streaks in raven-black hair.

The woman's moss-green gaze swiveled to Volya. The scent emanating from her teased Volya's nostrils with spices from far-away. Except he'd traveled so far from home that here they could have been homegrown.

"Ah. Good evening," he said and looked around for Marina again.

He spotted the interpreter by the front of the bus, arms crossed under her chest, arguing with Damir in hushed tones. She must have gone off duty or their conversation was more important than the intros. Unfortunately, even Volya's sensitive ears couldn't catch what was being said from that distance.

The lady of the manor glanced in Marina's direction too and tapped a beauty mark on her narrow chin. Then her other hand produced a phone from some fold in her floaty outfit. She swiped through it for the interpreting app. She was beautiful, Volya decided while waiting on the app to start up, but too old to be Liam's girlfriend, if Liam had lied about having one. She was more like Anna Leonidovna's age, only without the double-chins, wrinkly arms and faint mustache. The hostess was more of a hot aunt type than a popstar's girlfriend material.

"Welcome, Volya. I'm Lydia, Liam's step-mother." The half-moon earrings shimmied for emphasis as she spoke.

Okay, so he was a bit off. She was a hot stepmother type. It remained to be seen if she were wicked.

"Volya," he replied dumbly, hoping that the light was dim enough to cover up the blush of embarrassment. "Volya Wolkov." Should he add 'the singer'? Nah...

Lydia legit glowed with joy, as if meeting him healed some deep rift in her soul.

"And this is Doctor Renato daSilva." She pointed out her tall-dark-handsome companion. The interpreting app could never do justice to the prissy, long O she put in the first syllable of doctor.

"A Doctor of Philosophy," the man clarified before gripping Volya's arm, as if any potential misunderstanding had to be removed for the greeting to take place.

What was he supposed to say to that? Actually, I much prefer medical doctors to scientists?

He wisely kept the snub to himself. "Nice!" was all he said.

DaSilva's handshake was so energetic that it nearly tipped Volya forward. "Welcome to the Whiterock Ranch."

"Thank you."

"Ah, how was your trip? First time outside Russia, I take it?"

"First time outside Slobodinsk, to be honest." The man's question came across earnest and friendly, rather than trite even through the app. So Volya replied just as earnestly, though he didn't expect anyone here to know what the heck Slobodinsk was. Frankly, he was so far away from home, that Slobodinsk and the orphanage started to feel like a dream.

"Of course, of course," daSilva agreed energetically.

Fortunately, Lydia placed her hand on daSilva's shoulder right after the interpretation ended. "The boys must be exhausted, darling. Let's leave the questions for tomorrow."

"Yes, yes, you're right, as always." DaSilva lifted Lidya's wrist to his lips, the gesture that would have been ridiculously old-fashioned for anyone else. But it fit daSilva.

"I beg forgiveness for my inane curiosity." He winked at Volya. "It's ever been a character flaw to contend with."

Volya was starting to get a healthy respect for the ease with which the AI was handling daSilva's florid style.

Liam chuckled under his breath. "Well, he have Lydia to always keeps you in check, Doc."

"Ah, yes, yes."

Impervious to sarcasm, daSilva beamed at Lydia, while Lydia beamed at daSilva.

"What about the genetic stuff?" Volya piped in. "Seeing that I'm here as a genetic prodigy?"

"We'll leave everything for tomorrow," Liam said at the same time as Lydia squeezed daSilva's elbow with her manicured fingers.

"Mmhg—yes. Yes," daSilva conceded after Lydia gave him another pinch. "Tomorrow."

Volya let Lydia usher him inside, but he pouted in response to Liam's crooked grin and a goodnight. Those answers tomorrow better be good! He'd been patient for too long. He'd earned them three times over.