His head falls onto my shoulder. He doesn’t have the strength to hold it upright. His hand moves, fingers fumbling like a blindman's until they find the fabric of my sweater. He grips it, fisting the wool so hard his knuckles turn white. He is clinging to the man who dismantled him because I am the only reality he has left.
He needs warmth. He needs glucose. He needs the safety I have just signed away for both of us.
The warehouse is a derelict shell I identified three years ago. I never included it in the official safe house registry. I never explained to the organization why I spent three nights installing a private biometric lock and a satellite uplink.
Somewhere, deep beneath the conditioning, the weapon was already preparing to turn on its owner.
The interior is a landscape of industrial decay. Exposed brick, concrete pillars, scattered furniture left behind by a failed textile business. The air is thick with dust and the smell of stagnant time. It is cold—a biting, persistent freeze that leeches the heat from the floor and into my boots.
I carry him to the far corner where a mattress sits on a raised wooden pallet. I set him down as gently as the situation allows, but he still winces as his bruised hips hit the fabric.
He curls into a fetal position immediately, his body trying to collapse into a smaller surface area to preserve heat. His teeth chatter with a sound like dry bones clicking together.
"Where—" His voice is a ghost, a rasp of air over ruined vocal cords. "Where are we, Alexei?"
"A temporary transition point," I say, already moving toward the duffel bag I stashed here eighteen months ago. "We have tostabilize your core temperature before we can move to the next coordinate."
He nods, but the movement is a jerk of his entire torso. His lips are a pale, cyanotic blue.
I unzip the bag. It is a time capsule of my own paranoia: heavy wool clothing, high-calorie field rations, a medical trauma kit, untraceable cash, and three weapons with serial numbers erased.
I retrieve a black wool sweater—oversized and dense—and tactical trousers. I return to the mattress and kneel beside him. He flinches at the sudden proximity, an ingrained response to the amber light and the metal chair.
"I am going to change your attire," I state. "The smock is facilitating heat loss."
He doesn't resist. He doesn't have the metabolic reserves to argue.
I work methodically. I peel the thin gray fabric from his body, exposing the skin I spent weeks studying through a camera lens. It is colder than the air in the room—the temperature of a corpse, not a man. I see the marks I left: the red welts from the electrodes, the raw patches where the leather restraints bit into his wrists and ankles.
I pull the black sweater over his head. The wool is coarse, meant for durability, but compared to the smock, it must feel like silk. It swallows him. The sleeves hang three inches past his fingertips, and the hem covers his thighs.
He looks like something I have claimed.
The sight of him in my clothes produces a chemical surge in my brain that I cannot categorize as a mission objective. It is a possessive satisfaction. He is wrapped in my scent. He is wearing the armor I chose. When he moves, he will carry the weight of my history.
The tactical pants are harder. His legs are seizing with intermittent cramps, the muscles jumping beneath the skin like trapped animals. I have to support his weight, maneuvering his limbs into the fabric with a care that would have been a disciplinary offense in the Kennel.
When he is finally dressed, the transformation is visceral. He is no longer an asset in processing. He is a man wearing a soldier’s skin.
"Better?" I ask.
"Warmer," he whispers. He rubs the sleeve of the sweater between his thumb and forefinger. "It smells like... ozone. And you."
I ignore the observation and focus on the medical assessment. His feet are abraded from the wet pavement of the alley. I retrieve the kit, opening the sterile packs of antiseptic. I don't put on gloves. The barrier feels like a betrayal I can no longer justify.
I clean the raw patches on his soles. He watches me with those gray eyes—translucent, wide, focused on my hands with a reverence that makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle. The shivering has shifted from a violent convulsion to a low, constant vibration.
"Alexei," he says, his voice gaining a fraction of stability. "How long before Ivan finds us?"
"If the checkpoint guard followed his rotation, he will report the discrepancy at the next shift change. Nine hours. Less if Ivan’s personal monitoring flagged the disposal delay."
"Can we hide?"
I continue bandaging his feet. I do not lie to him. "Ivan knows my psychological profile. He knows my tactical preferences. He will anticipate my route. There is no such thing as a hidden place from a man who knows how your brain works."
"Then why did you do it?"
I stop. I look at the bandage in my hand, then up at his face. The question is a direct assault on my programming.
