I wrapped my fingers around the leather.
Held on.
"Katya."
Sophie's voice was shattered glass. The name came out broken into syllables, each one a wound. "They took me away from Katya."
She wasn't looking at us. Her grey-blue eyes were fixed on something only she could see—some internal landscape where her baby still existed within arm's reach, where the world still made sense. The rocking hadn't stopped. If anything, it had intensified.
"She'll wake up and I won't be there." The words came faster now, tumbling over each other. "She'll cry for me. She'll reach for me and I won't—she doesn't understand. She's too little to understand why Mama isn't—"
She couldn't finish.
The sentence dissolved into something that wasn't quite a sob, wasn't quite a scream. Something worse than either. The particular sound of a mother's heart breaking in real-time.
Maya pulled her closer.
"Breathe with me." Her voice was steady, that doctor-calm I'd come to recognize. But her hands were shaking. I could see the tremor where she gripped Sophie's arm, the small betrayal of composure that she was fighting to maintain. "Steady. Deep. You can do this."
Sophie tried.
I watched her chest expand, watched her attempt to follow the rhythm Maya was counting. But the breathing exercises that worked for panic attacks weren't designed for this kind of terror. Weren't designed for a mother separated from her infant by unknown men with unknown intentions.
I wanted to help. Wanted to crawl across the floor and wrap my arms around both of them, to add my body to the protective huddle Maya had created. But the chain held me three feet from the pipe, and they were too far away.
All I could do was watch.
The helplessness was suffocating.
"Nikolai will keep her safe."
Maya's voice cut through the darkness, firm and absolute. The doctor-voice had shifted into something else—a commander's tone, the particular authority of someone who needed Sophie to believe.
"He'd die before letting anyone touch her. You know that. You've always known that."
Sophie's rocking slowed. Just slightly. Just enough to suggest the words were landing somewhere.
"She’s with Dedushka."
I remembered.
Sophie had mentioned it at breakfast, casual, the easy logistics of a family that trusted each other with their most precious cargo. The baby would be with Nikolai's grandfather while Sophie painted in the nursery with me and Maya. A normal day. A safe day.
Until it wasn't.
"She's with her father now." Maya's voice softened, but the certainty remained. "Nikolai found out within minutes. He's probably holding her right now, Sophie. Probably hasn't put her down since. You know how he gets."
A sound escaped Sophie. Half laugh, half sob.
"He's terrible at diaper changes," she whispered. "He approaches them like military operations. Charts. Checklists."
"Then he's probably made seventeen checklists by now." Maya stroked her hair. "And he's probably killed anyone who looked at her wrong. You know him. You know what he's capable of, when it comes to her."
Sophie nodded.
But her eyes were still empty. The logic was landing, the words were being processed, but the mother in her was somewhere else entirely. Back at the compound. In the nursery. Holding a baby who wasn't there.
My throat tightened.
