They pulled Gromov to the edge of the roof, and The Artist injected him with a drug that dulled pain but heightened awareness. He was meant to remain conscious during the fall, fully aware to the last fraction of a second as the pavement rushed up to meet him. Then, without another word, they shoved him over the side.
The next day, newspapers reportedly carried a brief item about the tragic suicide of a well-known boxer who had jumped from a roof during a bout of severe depression. No investigator, the legend says, bothered to ask why both his arms had been professionally broken before the fall. Third on the list was the student intellectual, Alexei Ordyntsev, the one who had wrapped the crime in pseudo-philosophy.
This man feared not physical pain but madness and the loss of control over his treasured mind. The operation against him was said to be especially cruel in its design. The next day at the university, people began looking at him with strange pity. Conversations stopped when he approached. His closest friend quietly suggested he see a specialist, hinting at the onset of schizophrenia.
That evening, worried relatives and a psychiatric transport team from the central clinic were waiting at his home. His influential father—the academician—had already been told by phone that his son was having violent episodes. In effect, he stepped aside. Ordyntsev was restrained and taken by force to a secure hospital, where his private nightmare began among white walls and barred windows.
Every attempt to insist he was sane met only with patient, sympathetic smiles from the staff. He was given powerful medications that quickly turned his sharp mind into something dull and compliant. Under the weight of the drugs, his cynical intellect began to come apart, and reality blurred into fear and confusion.
His theories about superior men proved useless against the machinery of punitive psychiatry. Within a week of relentless treatment, the story says, he had lost himself completely and stared blankly at the ceiling of his room. One night, The Artist entered wearing a white coat and quietly reminded the broken patient of his theories about the right of the strong.
Then he delivered a message from the grieving father and injected a fatal dose of insulin. The resulting coma made for a tidy death, one the hospital administration could easily explain away as a medical error during a violent episode.
Three acts had been played out, and only the finale remained—for the most contemptible participant of all, the driver Sergei Sidorov. This hanger-on was willing to do anything for a brief illusion of belonging in a world of privilege. The Artist decided his punishment should be a cruel joke built around the thing he wanted most.
One evening, a well-dressed man knocked on the door of his modest apartment on the edge of the city and introduced himself as an official from the state lottery. He cheerfully informed the stunned Sidorov that his ticket had won the jackpot: a luxury sedan and a large cash prize. For a moment, the room went silent. Then his mother, who worked as a cleaning woman and had overheard the conversation, began to cry with relief and happiness…
