It starts low, in my stomach—a deep, twisting burn—and climbs until it feels like my insides are being ripped apart. I try to move, but my body won’t listen.
Then the noise hits. Muffled. Fragmented. Boots on concrete. Russian curses thrown like gunfire.
Something heavy slams. A door. An engine roars and cuts.
“Keep pressure! She’s losing too much!” a voice shouts.
Another voice answers, sharper, older. “Anton Malikov—critical. Move faster!”
Anton.
The name drags me back like a hook through skin. My heart claws against my ribs. I try to open my eyes, to find him, but everything’s dark.
I smell antiseptic. Metal. Burned rubber. The world feels like it’s spinning, like I’m underwater and gravity forgot me.
Cold air hits my skin. Then fingers—fast, impersonal—cutting fabric, pushing, pressing. Someone’s trying to keep pressure on my side; another’s shouting for more gauze.
“Pulse weak,” the man says, voice close and clipped. “She’s losing too much. Get her to Doc now.”
“She’s crashing,” another answers. “Heart rate’s erratic; something’s off.”
The first voice swears under his breath. “Then move. Malikov’s critical.”
I try to speak, to ask if he’s alive, but my mouth won’t work.
“Keep her awake!” someone shouts. A hand slaps my cheek. “You hear me? Stay with us,sestra.”
I try. God, I try. But my body’s slipping out from under me. My heartbeat stutters, and everything whirls.
The pain shifts, lower this time, deep and hot. My breath catches, and I flinch, but no sound comes out.
“Pressure’s dropping again!” “She’s hemorrhaging. Get Doc ready!”
I think I hear Dima’s voice, somewhere in the chaos. “She better not die on me, you hear?”
The cold creeps deeper.
Someone’s hand squeezes mine, rough and quick. “She’s still with us.”
Anton’s name drags through my thoughts, heavy and desperate.
Then the world fades again—engines roaring, voices blurring, all of it swallowed by the dark.
38
Mary
Something’s wrong with my body. Too heavy. Too still. Like it’s not mine.
My heartbeat sounds wrong too; slow, dragging, uneven. Every thud echoes in my skull until I realize there’s another rhythm underneath it, faster, lighter. Not mine.
The thought barely forms before something else crashes through—memory or dream, I can’t tell. A flash of light. The kick of the gun. The taste of metal on my tongue.
I killed someone.
The words don’t sound real, even inside my head.
Did I?
