“No.” The honest answer.
“Then we move fast and pray.” He pulls me forward, his arm shifting from my waist to my elbow, steering me like cargo.
We emerge onto a side street I don’t recognize. Parked cars line both sides—normal cars, civilian cars. Alexei leads me to a dark sedan near the end of the block—nothing distinctive, nothing that would draw attention.
He opens the passenger door and guides me inside.
I collapse into the seat. The leather is cold against my bare legs, and I hiss at the contact. My muscles are screaming. My lungs are burning. But I’m in a car. I’m off the street.
The car has a smell—old air freshener, coffee, something chemical. After the sterile nothingness of the Processing Room, it’s almost overwhelming.
Alexei circles to the driver’s side. He slides in, starts the engine, and pulls away from the curb without looking back. The heater kicks on, blasting air that starts cold and gradually warms. I angle myself toward the vents, desperate for relief from the shivering that hasn’t stopped.
I look back.
The Tower rises behind us, its glass facade reflecting the gray clouds. From this angle, it looks like any other office building. Forty-seven floors down. That's where I spent the last three weeks. That's where I was unmade.
I watch it shrink in the side mirror, and I feel something I wasn’t expecting.
Loss.
The Tower was a prison. The Processing Room was a torture chamber. But it was also the place where Alexei knelt at my feet and wiped my face with cool water. It was the place where he removed his gloves and touched me with bare hands. It was the place where he said my name like it meant something more than a data point.
I don’t know if what I feel for him is love or addiction. I only know it’s real.
The penthouse apartment my father bought me never felt like home. Even my childhood bedroom at the estate was just a room where I slept between lessons in how to be a Petrenko.
But the Processing Room, with its gray walls and amber light and the sound of his footsteps—that felt like home. Because home isn’t about comfort. Home is about being seen. And Alexei saw every ugly, broken, desperate part of me and didn’t look away.
I hate myself for missing it.
I turn away from the mirror. Alexei’s profile is sharp against the gray light through the windshield. He drives with the same focused precision he brings to everything.
“Where are we going?” My voice comes out rough, damaged by cold and exhaustion.
“Away.” He doesn’t look at me. “First priority is distance. Details will follow.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.” A pause. His jaw tightens. “I did not plan this. I did not prepare contingencies. I am operating without protocols.”
The admission should frighten me. The most dangerous man I’ve ever met, flying blind.
Instead, I feel something closer to relief. He’s not following a script. He’s making this up as he goes, the same way I am.
“So we’re both lost,” I say.
“Yes.”
I watch the city slide past the window. Streets I don’t recognize. Buildings I’ve never seen.
“Alexei.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for not killing me.”
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. For a long moment, he doesn’t respond. When he does, his voice is quieter than I’ve ever heard it.
