"I… I don't know."
"Don't worry about the husband. She's a pretty thing, let's have her entertain us until Pavlo brings him." The thin man suggests, leering at me.
"Good idea," Pockmark approves. Then to me, "Strip."
The night is illuminatedby fire, the air filled with explosions, screams, and gunshots, audible even over the rotors that stir up the dust on the rooftop; more explosions thud in the distance, our people lighting the south fence and motor pool so that every eye points the wrong way. My rope hisses through the descender. Ten meters. Eight. Oksana’s voice cuts clean through the noise in my ear, "Sniper, six o’clock. Take him."
A muzzle flashes below, at the ground level; some asshole was taking aim at me. Our sniper took him out. And Oksana… I grin like an idiot. I shouldn’t have room for a smile, but I do. That woman. Most amazing person I’ve ever met. I might have to marry her for real—God help us both.
Crack. Another man on the ground folds before he can find my chest. A man named Edgar hits the roof first, soft feet, hard focus. I drop the last few feet and roll into acrouch. The tar smells like burned sugar and sun ghosts; hot grit grinds into my palms. Edgar is already at the charge, holding a brick of putty, timer already inserted, wires tucked.
"Set," he breathes.
"Light it," I answer.
We give it five, four—breath held—three, two—open mouth.
The roof jumps. A circle of tin and wood becomes a screaming hole. Heat and dust surge up like a shout from the building’s throat. I drop through, knowing Edgar and the other man have my back.
I land hard on the ground, aiming my gun in a quick circle, taking in my surroundings. The room looks like what you’d find in a typical hospital: stark white, monitors beeping, a bed. Cabinets on the wall, long counterspace. The sharp tang of antiseptic stings my eyes and nose, and a sour, acrid stench makes my stomach roil. A nurse screams. I shoulder her aside, not hard enough to cause her any harm, just hard enough to move the world where I need it. There is nobody else in the room besides her and whoever is lying on the bed.
"Clear," I shout up, and Edgar and the other guy slide down after me, boots kissing tile.
Two quick steps, and I’m at the bedside, while the men secure the nurse with the efficient, clinical motions of men who have done this a hundred times. The roomnarrows to the bed and the bright, unforgiving lights. Everything else—rotors, shouting, the base—slides away to a hum at the edge of the world.
He is a ghost wrapped in hospital linen. Tubes hook into him like the fingers of a stranger; tape crusts a sick, pale brown where it shouldn’t; gauze bulges, fresh and tidy, over the wound on his abdomen. For a beat, I don’t even breathe. Then I do, and the sound is too loud.
It’s him. Older. Scarred by time in ways photos don’t show. His cheeks are thinner, his skin is pulled a fraction tighter, but the face, the angle of that jaw, the way the mouth holds a memory of mischief… I would recognize Nico anywhere. I’ve been carrying that smile in the hollows of my ribs for three years.
He’s unconscious—drugs or shock, I can’t tell yet—but alive. His chest rises and falls, steady like a metronome. The stomach bandage is clean and wrapped tight; whoever dressed it did so with hands that knew how not to make a mess. Dark hair clings to his forehead in wet ropes.
For a second, I see us as kids again, fighting over nothing, laughing like we were invincible. He had that grin that said we’d live forever. I reach out before my head consults my heart. My hand hovers, then settles on his shoulder. The skin is warmer than I expected. My fingers find the tension in his back and rest there as if I could will him whole by touch. Memories slide under my palm: stolen beers on a rooftop, the scrape of knuckles, the time I pushed him into a fight he was too young for and savedhis face afterward. That grin. That wrongness that felt like home.
"Nico." My voice is a thing I don’t recognize. It’s smaller than it should be. It comes out more like an apology than a greeting.
He doesn’t answer. The monitor keeps up its thin, steady beeping, a heartbeat made into sound, a promise spelled out in electricity. Relief hits me so hard it steals my breath. My knees go loose, light, like the floor tilts under me.
He’s here.
He’s breathing.
He’s not a ghost or a rumor or a fucking photograph anymore.
For a moment, all I can do is stare. Three years of fear and anger and hope collapse into one violent rush behind my ribs, and I have to put a hand on the bed to steady myself.
Nico.
My brother.
A laugh tries to break in my chest—ugly, shaky—and I crush it down before it escapes. I don’t get to break. Not here. Not now. Then the guilt comes, sliding in under the relief, cold as a blade. Years between us, stacked like unpaid debts. Years I wasn’t there. Years where he was pain and silence, and I was alive. I’ve thought of him infragments, rumors, grainy photos, lines in a ledger that didn’t make sense.
Now he’s right in front of me.
A man. A body. A breath.
Alive, but too still. Fragile in a way Nico never was.
My throat burns. I press my palm to the side of the mattress so I don’t reach for him, don’t shake him, don’t demand he wake up and tell me where the hell he’s been.
