And when the door finally opens, when the light finally returns, I will not remember how to be the man who walked in.
I will only remember how to be his.
The hallucinations come and go. Dmitri’s distorted voice. My father’s belt. My mother’s face that I can no longer see. And behind them all, patient and still, the pale-eyed man who has taken everything from me and somehow made me grateful for the taking.
I don’t know how much time passes. Hours. Days. Forever.
But I know one thing with absolute certainty: when he walks through that door, I will give him whatever he asks.
Not because he broke me.
Because I was already broken. And he’s the only one who seems to know what to do with the pieces.
The darkness hums. Or maybe that’s my blood. I can’t tell the difference anymore.
I try to say his name. The Monster. The Accountant. But those aren’t names. Those are titles. Masks.
“Alexei.”
The word scrapes out of my ruined throat. I heard Ivan say it once, before the hood came off. It’s the first time I’ve used his real name.
The darkness swallows it like everything else.
But somewhere in my shattered mind, I realize I’ve crossed a line I didn’t know existed. He’s not the Monster anymore. He’s not a function or a process.
He’s Alexei. And I want him to come back.
The wanting terrifies me more than the dying. I’ve faced death before. Death is simple. Death is just an ending.
This is something else.
This is the beginning of a dependency I don’t understand. A need that has nothing to do with water or warmth or survival.A pull toward a man who has shown me nothing but clinical detachment, who has touched me only to map my weaknesses.
And still I want him.
Still I wait.
Still I whisper his name into the darkness and listen for an answer that never comes.
In the darkness, I become something new.
Chapter Seven
ALEXEI
The sound is barelyaudible over the hum of the ventilation, a rhythmic, repetitive loop captured by the high-gain audio feed. I zoom the camera, watching his lips part around the syllables.A-lek-sei.
I have been watching this for six hours. I should be writing reports. I should be analyzing the northern logistics restructuring. Instead, I am sitting in the dark, listening to a man I broke call out to me like I am his salvation.
His respiratory rate has dropped to fourteen breaths per minute, down from the baseline of eighteen. Core body temperature has decreased by approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius. Movement has become minimal, limited to occasional involuntary muscle contractions.
The subject is dying—or believes he is.
An IV line runs beneath the cuff of his left restraint. Saline and electrolytes, measured to keep his organs functional while his mouth and throat remain destroyed. The drip doesn't wet his tongue. It doesn't ease the agony of swallowing. It only preventskidney failure, heart arrhythmia, the cascade of organ death that would render him useless before I've extracted what I need.
I inserted it myself during his last sleep cycle. He does not know about the line. He believes he is dying of thirst.
In a sense, he is correct. The man he was is dying. What remains is something I am building.
