I pull up to the barrier. An officer taps on my window with a gloved fist. He looks like he hasn't slept in forty-eight hours. His eyes are hollow, his movements jagged with the stress of the city's collapse.
“Documents,” he snaps.
I hand him the papers Katya provided. My heart is a frantic pulse in the hollow of my throat, but I keep my face a mask of bored, upper-middle-class irritation.
He shines a high-intensity flashlight into the cabin. The beam sweeps over my face, then lingers on Alexei. I see the officer’s eyes narrow as he takes in the sweat, the pallor, and the way Alexei’s breathing has become a shallow, wet rattle.
“Your passenger,” the officer says, his hand drifting toward the holster at his hip.
“My brother,” I say, the lie coming out with a smooth, oily conviction. “He has the flu. Maybe worse. I’m trying to get him to our dacha in Zelenograd. The city hospitals are full of people with gunshot wounds and smoke inhalation. I’m not letting him die in a hallway.”
The officer looks at the documents, then back at Alexei. The dog—a massive German Shepherd—approaches the side of the Lada, its ears pricked. It whines, its nose twitching as it catches the scent of the infection.
“He looks like a corpse,” the officer mutters.
“He’ll be one if you keep us here in the cold,” I snap. I lean out the window, putting myself in the officer’s space, using the Petrenko arrogance like a shield. “Do you want to explain to your captain why you spent twenty minutes processing a sickcivilian while the city is burning down behind you? Or do you want to do your job and find the people actually throwing the bombs?”
The officer bristles, but the logic holds. He doesn't want the paperwork of a dead civilian, and he certainly doesn't want whatever sickness is causing that smell in my car.
He shoves the papers back at me. “Move. Stay off the main roads. The M10 is closed.”
“Thank you.”
I drive through the barrier, my hands fused to the steering wheel. I don't breathe until the blue lights are a dim glow in the rearview mirror.
My hands aren't shaking.
I look down at them, expecting the tremor that defined my life in the Processing Room. Nothing. They are steady. They are the hands of a man who just lied to a state official and won.
I am not the victim anymore. I am the predator in the tall grass.
The staging area is a decommissioned textile factory on the eastern edge of the city. It’s a sprawl of red brick and broken glass, surrounded by a high chain-link fence that has been cut and mended a thousand times. It’s a place that was built for labor and ended in rot—the perfect location for what comes next.
I pull the Niva into a loading bay, hidden from the street by a stack of rusted shipping containers. I kill the engine.
The silence is absolute.
Alexei’s breathing has worsened. It’s a rale now, the sound of fluid in the lungs. I have four hours until the meeting.
I reach into the back seat and pull out the SVD Dragunov. The rifle is a heavy, cold weight, the wood of the stock smelling of linseed oil and old wars. I check the scope. I clear the chamber. I load the four rounds of match-grade ammunition I found in the cache.
I’ve never killed a man from a distance. I’ve never been the one to pull the trigger.
I look at Alexei. He is the reason I’m here. He is the reason the city is on fire.
I crouch beside the passenger seat, taking his hand. It’s a dry, papery heat.
“Alexei,” I whisper.
He doesn't wake.
“I’m going into the structure,” I say, though I know he can’t hear me. “I’m going to find a perch. I’m going to watch them walk into the trap.”
I lean in, pressing my forehead against his.
“You broke me,” I say, my voice cracking for the first time. “You took everything I was and you ground it into the dirt. And then you gave me something better. You gave me a choice.”
I kiss his forehead, the heat of his fever stinging my lips.
