Prefect

The dream lasted a long time. Actually, it was not even a dream, but some other world, where everything around existed in a different way than one was used to seeing it. A world in which Raphael was alive, and his wife and their child were beside him. Already grown up and looking with such lively and full of something new eyes. Something new that his grandfather could give him. A grandfather who is still a prefect.

So many times these thoughts have gone round and round in circles, and they only stopped at the word "prefect". Yes. It is. And no one else can be. No one else is capable of even thinking about being in this place. It was created by him, for him, and for no one else. All others are just parts, cogs in the mechanism in which he is the brain. No organism can live without a brain, and the business of the whole organism is, first of all, the preservation of the brain. If the brain dies, the whole organism will die.

Somewhere outside, Gora felt a light. A slightly different one, not the one that had been there before for this long time before. A simpler light, not capable of opening his eyes, but only to keep his eyes from getting in the way of scrutiny… His eyes began to open. And along with his eyes came his essence. The essence that wouldn't let him lose.

Around him, he immediately recognized the bedroom walls of one of his offices. It was impossible not to recognize those walls – the Deese sector. His cradle. Where he had risen from the ashes to give people freedom and safety. Yes, that was exactly what he'd been thinking when he'd started all this. No one should die by accident. Or at the hands of the plagues. No one.

Then he made the rules. And no one got killed at all. At no one's hands. He remembered it very well… The mortality that had gone before had ceased to exist as a given. People became different very quickly, no longer seeing death.      Sometimes they even started fighting each other.

The very people who just yesterday could have been killed for nothing, suddenly suddenly forgot to value their own lives and the lives of those around them. Simply because they stopped seeing death.      Gora, in making these new rules, forgot something very important. Something he had

realized while he was in the other world, raising the dead.

He turned his head and saw two men from his guard. One of them, seeing the waking prefect, immediately ran out of the room, and then slowly approached him. It was Kolya Lesin, who had once been in his own 381st soma of workers. Gora's personal guards were selected exclusively from there.

– Mr. Prefect… – he said timidly. His eyes showed that he trembled at the mere sight of the living leader of an entire faction.

– Who did your partner run to report to? – The Mountain asked immediately.

– To the doctor. – A little lost, Kolya answered. – To Dr. Kupavsky.

At least as long as things are set up properly. Once upon a time, Hora had ordered their best doctor to be kept as a practitioner for the entire sector, not a personal one for himself. His qualifications were too high for him to treat just one person, rather than several thousand. But times were obviously changing, and he would definitely need his own personal doctor. One who, for obvious reasons, would not be allowed to have contact with other patients.

– Give me your gun.

Kolya looked back at him at first – the TT-33 holstered in his holster was an addition to the main weapon of the security units – the AK-74SU. Even when the units were being formed, there was a choice between what to give them as a supplement. That is, the weapon that, in fact, they would not use, but rather for status. The choice was Makarov (PM), Tokarev (TT) or Stechkin (APS) pistols. And, although by all accounts the APS was indisputably better than all the others, then personally Gora chose the TT – this gun was legendary, of the times of the Great War, and of the power he considered exemplary for himself. Especially now. When he had survived another assassination attempt.

Retrieving the gun, Gora pulled out the clip, checked the cartridges, then inserted it back in, carefully twisted the bolt, and placed it under his pillow. This was a time when one should especially think about the fact that a gun for his position was far from being a weapon for his position.

Then he pulled his legs out from under the blanket and placed them on the floor. There wasn't much strength in them, but there was some. And he didn't need more than that. Next to it was a drop cloth with a needle stuck in it, which he carefully pulled out and stuck into the mattress.

Getting up, Hora went to the closet that contained his clothes, opened it, selected his tunic with almost no insignia, except for the Self-Government chefron, consisting of a large fang in the middle and crossed working picks. To the tunic the same dark brown pants and black boots.

By the time he had time to put on his boots the second guard and Dr. Kupavsky had returned. Both of them looked dumbfounded, though the doctor tried not to show it:

– Mr. Prefect, you can't move so much at once, we've had several blood transfusions, blood pressure is very unstable after something like this.

– Thank you, Doctor. – The prefect put a boot on his other foot and, whimpering, threw on his tunic. – Now you'll have to study and analyze my health the whole time you're here. Without being distracted by anything or anyone. Consider this your constant and only duty from this moment on.

Gora walked over to his bed, pulled his pistol out from under his pillow, and looked at it – yes, I should get a holster first, it wasn't very respectable to go everywhere with it in my hand:

– Kolya, give me your holster for now. You'll get a new one during the day.

The prefect left the bedroom and found himself in his office: a desk and chair, a closet full of weapons, a nightstand full of documents, and a large canvas with the image of autonomy. It's his. It belongs to him. And no one else will be able to use it.

– How many guards are present outside the door now? – Gora asked Lesin, who was the last of the trio to leave the bedroom.

– Your entire security company. One hundred and twenty men.

– All right, then. Don't let anyone in without my knowledge. And find me Tikhomirov.

***

Sitting at his desk, Gora realized the reality that was right for him at the moment. The power he had gained not so long ago was pressing down on him with its weight. And not at all from the outside, as he had expected – all those awkward outside efforts, like trying to break the Inquisitors into the Korsa sector from the surface, or firing on the repair team near the Deese sector. It was child's play compared to what was happening in the reality that enveloped him.

This reality of controlling your environment. Near and far. And now, if the inner circle was relatively controlled by the pressure of his well-deserved authority, the outer circle, the people, were very loose. The people knew the Mountain, understood his nature of action and his rigidity in making decisions and enforcing them. But all the advantages ended there. After all, he was not feared, as once the plagues were feared.

Yes, he was the sole owner of the power of several production facilities and even a certain portion of the surface over them. Yes, his orders were unquestionable and the only thing to be obeyed was execution. Yes, everyone was confident in his strategic thinking and firmness of will. Yes, everyone was afraid to interfere or even pretend that they did not like something      But no one