The inhabitants of the "city" were dressed stylishly, according to fashion, and behaved like ordinary visitors to such centers. Nothing was different, except that instead of the ceiling there was a huge screen with a real-time image of the sky, clouds, and sun, and on the walls – sometimes a park, sometimes a street with sidewalks and flowerbeds.

– Where is the reception center? – He asked Isa.

– Go up to the third floor, go to the administrative section, there is an arrow, to the left of the escalator.

Ruthra did so, and soon found himself in front of large doors labeled "Reception Center." He was getting used to the dungeon, so he knew that the Reception Center was not a reception center, not a delegation center in the usual sense.

The doors were locked, Ruthra rang the bell, and a voice said, "Identify yourself. A beacon lit up where the scanner was located, Ruthra moved his eye closer to the scanner. "You may enter," the system replied, the door clicked, he entered.

To his surprise, it was indeed a reception hall, or rather a conference room. There were a lot of people, Yarovitovich was presiding; he greeted Rutra with a nod and continued the discussion. The discussion centered on the latest incident, and it boiled down to two fundamental positions. Some argued that it was impossible to simulate a battle alarm, while others argued that it was possible to go to greater lengths to achieve a goal. The former did not stop and explained that this actually leads to a decrease in combat readiness, because in the future such an alarm will be considered as less important. Yarovitovich argued that they had a system of deterrence and additional control, that the Central Control Directorate was aware of it and had developed the plan itself, that it was an emergency situation.

At first Rutra could not reliably assess why it was given such great importance, even in this center, then, realizing that he had missed a lot, he began to form a general picture from the fragments of dialogues. The point of it all was that the risks involved in making a decision for the Kremlin-2 facility could be fateful for all of humanity. Ruthra processed the information coming into him and rediscovered the role of these people in the life of the planet. He had begun to understand a lot of things here lately – the strange scrutinizing gaze of these people, the manner of speech (as with a "passenger"), the expression on their faces when questioned, saying "you won't understand a thing".

They were unusual people, debating that even if a special plan required a simulated alert, it was too dangerous because hundreds of millions could die. Their opponents calmly reasoned that the likelihood of this happening was not really that high since there was a chain of interconnected control systems. Ruthra listened to their discussions and felt increasingly alien to them. He even became afraid to tell them that he was not one of them, because they were extremely calm about the possibility of people dying up there. To those gathered, those people did not have such a high importance. Some would die, some would stay, the main thing was that life could be revived, civilization would continue, that was what their discussion boiled down to. The discussion ended with a decision not to repeat such a situation. Such an object and such a dispute? At first it surprised Rutru, but upon reflection he realized that the main staff of the center were men of science, they would not be productive if their opinions were not considered.

Everyone dispersed, Ruthra remained seated in his seat.

– What shall we say? – Yarovitovich asked, bringing additional meaning to the question.

– After conducting a preliminary investigation, I concluded that Alikhanov wanted to use the brain signal chain through his installation to the transmitter of the Pioneer command missile to guarantee a signal in the nuclear bombardment mode. In order to have full control of the situation after this fuss. I believe he was transmitting it to one of the secret control centers.

– There aren't many of them – yours, ours, Yamantau's. All the others will not be able to fully control, only locally.

Ruthra, after going over the options in his head, still decided to ask, otherwise there were still unknowns in solving such a grand equation.

– Please tell me, what is this secret organization of the ZKR?

Yarovitovich shook his head and widened his eyes. In this way he expressed his concern and dissatisfaction with something that had apparently unnerved him for a long time.

– I'm sick of these demagogues. Did it get to you? – Ruthra's head responded to the question with sudden abruptness. – They think they're true patriots, champions of blood purity and other such nonsense. If they weren't former Aquarium secret agents, I'd have had them arrested long ago. And so, they are leading by the nose, they are nowhere to be found, most likely, for diversion of eyes periodically discount information, and in reality behind it hides something else. No one can find them anywhere, only rumors.

– Did you mean the "aquarium" that's in the GRU?

– Yes, that's the one. And then there's the KGB's 13th Division.

– Serious company. Don't they keep them on permanent record until they die?

– In the 90s, the maps got a little confused, and many people just disappeared, went missing, as it were. And how it really was – it took a long time to sort out, but since there were no leaks, no one showed any sign of themselves, it was put aside in the archives, until the Ukrainian events. After them began to come the agent information, that on rumors somewhere, someone, something spoke about a certain secret order of Russian Rodnovers – ZKR. It is not so important, it is important to find out whether a duplicate of the reader of neural signals has been developed. And if yes, then where it is, how it got there; if Alikhanov tried to transmit, then somewhere it is and in an active state. Take care of this question, and at the same time the old one, decryption. Both require the presence of huge computing centers, centers for processing a colossal array of data.