But whatever grew out of it has teeth. It has blood. It has a name that makes my chest tighten when I say it.
And if Boris comes for him?—
I don't finish the thought.
I just start locking doors, checking windows, testing the generator, and setting the perimeter sensors that aren't tied to my father's vendor network. I move through the house like a man trying to outrun a fear that isn't irrational anymore.
Because I finally admitted it.
Not to Maksim.
To myself.
I can burn down Boris. I can break the Italians. I can survive my father's disappointment if I have to.
But I do not know what I will become if someone takes Maksim from me.
And that is the only truth that matters out here, where there are no portraits on walls, no witnesses, and no protocols to hide behind.
Just the man upstairs.
And me, finally honest enough to know I'm already ruined.
14
MAKSIM
The Kennel findsme in my sleep.
I am fourteen again, standing in the training yard with snow falling around me and blood freezing on my knuckles. Instructor Voronin is speaking, but his words come from far away, muffled by the ringing in my ears and the cold that has seeped into the marrow of my bones. There is a body at my feet—a boy whose number I cannot remember, whose face has already blurred into the dozens of others who did not survive the culling.
The yard smells of copper and frost. The other boys watch from the edges, their breath forming gray clouds in the frozen air, their eyes empty because they have learned that caring gets you killed. I am one of them. I am all of them. I am the boy on the ground, the boy standing over him, and the instructors making notes on clipboards as if we are livestock being evaluated for slaughter.
I did not want to kill him. I never want to kill any of them. But the instructors do not care about want; they care about function. And my function is to survive.
The snow turns to rain. The yard dissolves into darkness. Somewhere in the distance, a voice is calling my name.
"Maksim."
I wake gasping.
The room is unfamiliar for a moment; the shadows are wrong, the sounds foreign. Then the storm registers—rain hammering against the windows in sheets, wind howling through the pine trees outside—and I remember where I am: the cabin, the lake house, Ivan's secret sanctuary, three hours from the city and a thousand miles from everything that has been trying to kill us.
My shirt is soaked with sweat. My hands are shaking, tremors running from my wrists to my fingertips. The nightmare is fading, but its echo remains, the weight of all those bodies pressing against my chest like something I will never be able to set down.
"Maksim."
Ivan is in the doorway.
I did not hear him come in. I heard nothing over the storm and the pounding of my own heart. But he is there now, silhouetted against the dim light from the hallway. I can see the tension in his shoulders as he registers my state. He is wearing sleep pants and nothing else, his chest bare and pale in the gloom.
"I heard you," he says. His voice is quiet, careful. "From my room."
I should tell him I am fine. I should reassure him that the nightmare was nothing, that I have had worse, that a few hours of bad sleep do not compromise my ability to perform myfunction. That is what Subject 43 would do. That is what the conditioning requires.
But I am so tired of being Subject 43.
"The Kennel," I manage. My voice comes out rough, broken like glass. "I was back there."
