My broken fingers find his wrist and twist, grinding bone against bone with a strength born of pure desperation. Aleksei screams—a sound I’ve never heard him make, not once in all our years of blood and violence. The gun skitters away into the spreading flames.
We scramble across the floor, punching, clawing, biting. The freezer door looms behind us, that black steel mouth waiting to guzzle one or both of us.
We grapple like two dogs in a pit. I sink my teeth into his forearm when he tries to choke me. I drive my elbow into his ribs, his gut, his fucking kidneys. When his fist connects with my jaw and sends stars exploding across my vision, I don’t go down. I headbutt him instead, feeling his nose crunch beneath my forehead. The pain in my scalp is nothing compared to the satisfaction of his blood spraying across my face.
He’s stronger. Fresher. Less broken.
But I’mmeaner.
I’m a wounded animal backed into the last corner of the last room of the last house on earth, and I will chew through my own leg before I let him win.
We crash against the freezer door. The impact reverberates through my spine. Aleksei’s hands find my throat, but I jam my thumbs into his eye sockets until he releases me with a howl. I slam his head against the steel once, twice, three times, until his legs buckle.
“You should have let me go,” I intone, pinning him there with my body weight. “You should have let us all go.”
A meat cleaver glints on the floor, knocked loose during our chaos. I snatch it up with my good hand.
Aleksei’s eyes go wide. “Semyon, wait?—”
I bring it down on his dominant hand.
The blade severs through bone and tendon. Aleksei’s scream tears through the smoke-choked air. His severed hand lies on the concrete, fingers still curled like they’re grasping for something that’s already gone.
I hook my arms under his and drag him backward. He’s heavy, heavier than I remember, dead weight now that shock has stolen the battle from his limbs. Blood trails behind us in a dark smear across the floor.
The freezer door groans when I wrench it open. Cold air billows out, a mercy after the growing inferno at our backs. I haul him inside and dump him against the far wall, watching him sag pitifully beneath the shelves.
Then I step back out and seal the door.
The poetic justice isn’t lost on me. Aleksei, trapped in the same cold dark he once condemned me to. Bleeding and alone while the world burns outside.
His good hand pounds against the steel. “You can’t do this!” The scream is muffled but desperate. “I’m yourbrother!”
I press my palm flat against the cold metal. It vibrates with each futile impact. “No,” I say. “You’re not.”
I let my hand fall and turn to survey the damage. It’s spreading fast. Fire licks up the walls, crawling across the ceiling beams, devouring everything I built. The heat and smoke claw atmy lungs, but I take both like penance as I stand there in the sweltering kitchen, watching Project Olympus begin its transformation from monument to pyre.
Behind me, muffled by steel and the growing din, Aleksei keeps screaming.
“I’m leaving you now,bratishka,” I tell him softly. I don’t know if he can hear me or if he cares, but I keep talking anyway. “Whoever finds you first—the cops or the flames or the devil himself—I hope they have more mercy on you than you ever had for anyone else in this life. Goodbye, Aleksei.”
I turn away and walk toward the exit. The building groans around me. Smoke billows thick and black, stinging my eyes, filling my mouth with ash.
But through it all, I seeherface. Eliana’s face. The curve of her smile.
I see my daughter’s hands cupping a tiny green frog.
I see a family waiting for me.
I stumble out through a side door just as the roof begins to buckle. The cold air hits my face like a kiss from God. Behind me, Project Olympus roars its death song—timber cracking, glass exploding, the whole beautiful structure collapsing into itself with a sound like the world ending.
I make it maybe twenty feet before my legs give out.
The dirt comes up to meet me. I land hard on my back, staring up at a sky that’s turned orange from the flames. Smoke billows in thick black columns and blots out the stars. From not too far away, sirens begin their approach. It’s too late to save the building. Maybe just in time to save me.
Or maybe not.
I don’t know if I care anymore.
