[ Vasiliy doesn't consider himself squeamish—in fact, his lack of reaction to the indescribable gore that can be inflicted upon the human bodies he and his partners were tasked with saving has drawn attention in the past—but he watches first with amazement as the creature shapeshifts, then open-mouthed horror as it forces itself into the cosmonaut's body, jerking him around like a puppet.

It seems impossibly large to even fit down his throat without esophageal rupture, but to carry that thing in his stomach? He can't imagine. How has the poor man been eating? Is this why he was bleeding and vomiting? Was it trying to get out in the hospital room—was his body trying to get it out?

He'll process this later. Clad in a similar outfit to Veshnyakov's own, he rushes to the one way glass, slapping his palms against it repeatedly. ]

He needs help! He had a seizure and there's some kind of parasite in him and he's still unconscious! He needs to be taken to a hospital now or he will have brain damage! Help him!

[ The doors swing open, but the two guards stride briskly toward him, not Konstantin Sergeyevich. They ignore him. ]

-

[ It's explained to him. It won't be good for Commander Veshnyakov to know what's going on until they can get it out of him, to avoid causing undue stress. The penalty for a dissenting opinion goes unspoken: they know he was in the NKVD. They know he knows better than anyone.

The earliest light of dawn is coming in through the curtains when they return him to the glorified prison cell. Immediately he finds his way to Veshnyakov's bedside, counting his respirations as he approaches. And, with a sense of foreboding at the uncertainty of whether or not there will be any response to the stimuli at all, he touches the man's bulky arm and quietly speaks up. ]

Konstantin Sergeyevich.