I open the door and the cold crashes in, a blade of winter that steals my breath. She steps out beside me anyway.
“We can’t clear our names until we expose the mole,” she murmurs as the small off-road vehicle we stole two villages ago coughs awake.
Trees blur past in long, skeletal rows. She sits beside me with her hood down, forehead resting against the glass, watching the night slide by. My knuckles go white around the wheel.
“We will.”
Her reflection in the window twists into something soft—hope or exhaustion, I can’t tell.
“Who do you trust enough to contact?” she asks.
Only one name forms without hesitation.
“Iosif.”
She lifts her head. I expect resistance but instead she asks, “How far?”
“Halfway to Lake Ladoga. He won’t risk coming closer.”
“And if his line is compromised?”
“Then Anton will know exactly where we are.”
The silence that follows feels like acceptance.
She’s certainly adapting to my world faster than I adapted to hers.
Harper breaks the quiet as the forest thins before dawn, replaced by frozen fields.
“Damian?” Her breath clouds the inside of the windshield, turning the world into a moving blur.
“Yes?”
“When Kiro said the key was built from my code… was that what you expected? Or did you hope the threat was over?”
“I hoped you’d have space to breathe,” I admit. “That’s all.”
Her lips part in quiet surprise maybe at the fact that I said the words aloud.
“Space,” she repeats, almost to herself. “It feels like we only get space when the world tries to kill us.”
I breathe out a laugh.
“Then we’re consistent, at least.”
Her lips lift in a small, genuine smile. We pass a deserted military checkpoint two hours later. Barricades are frozen into place, bullet casings half swallowed by snow. Smoke residue smudges an otherwise untouched landscape.
I pull the car to a stop.
Harper is out before I kill the engine, boots crunching in the snow, breath fogging in the cold. I join her, scanning the area.
Fresh tracks of scuffed footprints, drag marks, the imprint of a body shoved against a wall lead from the barricade to a concrete outpost.
Inside, on the crumbling plaster, someone has scrawled a message in black marker:
THE GHOST IN THE SYSTEM BREATHES.
Harper steps forward slowly, her breathing slowing as well.
