That’s what I’m mourning now.
Not the freedom. Not the dignity. Not even the men who died because of my fever-loosened tongue.
I’m mourning the attention. I’m mourning the connection.
The infection in my IV site pulses with my heartbeat. A steady, burning throb. I should be worried about that. In a normal state of mind, I would be calculating the progression, estimating how long before the sepsis sets in.
Let it spread. Let it take me. At least that would be an ending.
The IV drips. The pipes carry water through the walls. The elevator cable groans again in its shaft.
I catch myself counting—one drip, two—and force myself to stop. Counting is what I do to stay connected to time, and I don’t want to be connected anymore. I want to float. I want to dissolve.
I close my eyes and let myself sink into it. The amber light glows and I stop seeing it. The broth goes cold on the table and I don’t drink it.
What’s the point? What’s the point of maintaining a body that no one is coming to use?
The despair is complete now. Total. It fills every corner of the room and every corner of my mind. I have become what the darkness wanted me to become in those forty-eight hours. Empty. Hollowed out. A shell waiting to be filled or discarded.
I am going to die in this chair.
Not from dehydration or infection or interrogation, but from the simple absence of the only person who made existence bearable.I will stop eating. I will stop drinking. I will stop breathing, eventually, because there is nothing left to breathe for.
And the worst part is that I can’t even blame him.
He did exactly what I asked. I told him to leave. I pushed him away because I was angry about the fever and the safe house and the men who died. And now I’m lying in the grave I dug for myself, wondering why I thought I could survive without him when every cell in my body was already conditioned to need his presence.
I was stronger before he touched me. I was more complete before he started taking me apart. But I was also alone, always alone, even in crowds, even in my father’s house, even in beds with women who meant nothing.
He saw me.
That’s what I can’t forgive myself for craving. He saw the real thing underneath the Petrenko name, and he didn’t look away.
The IV site burns. The infection is getting worse. Somewhere down the corridor, Dima screams again, or maybe that’s my imagination filling the silence with ghosts.
The pipes gurgle. The elevator cable creaks. The IV drips.
I don’t count.
I just wait.
And somewhere, through the cameras, the Monster watches me dissolve into nothing, and I hope—I pray—that watching hurts him even a fraction as much as being watched has hurt me.
Because if it doesn’t, then I have lost everything for nothing.
And if it does, then maybe—maybe—there is still a chance that the door will open, and the footsteps will come, and his pale eyes will find me in the amber light, and I will be something other than alone.
Chapter Thirteen
ALEXEI
Three dayssince I last entered the room. Two since he stopped eating.
I have watched him deteriorate through the feeds.
The monitoring system has captured every stage of his dissolution: the initial attempts at rage-construction, the systematic failure, the slow slide into desperation. I have watched him speak my name into the empty room, over and over, as if repetition could summon me from wherever I was hiding.
I told myself I was conducting an observation study. Extended isolation response patterns. Psychological dependency verification.
