“Perhaps. Or perhaps identity is what we build after the demolition is complete.”
I think about that. We are both ghosts. Both defectors. Both building a new language out of the rubble of our old lives.
“Finished,” he says.
He tilts my chin up, checking the symmetry. I reach up and touch my head. The hair is short—bristling and rough under my palm. Barely an inch remains. The man in the tabloids, the one with the styled waves and the arrogant smirk, is gone.
“How do I look?”
“Different. The jawline is more pronounced without the frame of the hair. It changes the facial geometry enough to bypass mid-level algorithms.” He pauses. “You look like someone who has been through a war.”
“I have.”
A sudden sound from the garage door freezes us both.
It’s a scraping sound. Metal on concrete. The rattle of a chain being disturbed.
Alexei is off the mattress before I can blink. He doesn't stand—he flows into a crouch, weapon up, muzzle pointed at the gap in the metal door. The exhaustion vanishes instantly, replaced by the lethal, cold-blooded focus of the weapon I first met.
I stop breathing. My heart is a frantic bird in a cage of ribs. I watch his back, the way his muscles coil under the sweater, and I realize how much I rely on him. If a team comes through that door, we are dead. He can't take them all on no sleep.
The scraping comes again. Rhythmic. Deliberate. Something is trying to find a way in.
My mind flashes to Ivan. To my father’s contractors. To the disposal team that was supposed to kill me at dawn.
Alexei’s finger takes up the slack on the trigger. His breathing is non-existent.
Then, a yowl.
A cat’s frustrated cry echoes through the garage. A rattle of claws against the metal, and then the sound of padding paws moving away into the alley.
Alexei doesn't move. He counts. I can see his lips moving slightly. Ten seconds. Twenty. He’s listening for the footsteps that might be hiding behind the cat’s noise.
Full minute.
He finally lowers the weapon. When he turns to me, I see it. His hand is shaking—a violent, uncontrollable tremor. Theadrenaline spike has pushed his depleted nervous system over the edge.
“We need to move,” he says. His voice is a ghost of itself. “Now.”
“Alexei, wait.”
“The window is closing, Nikolai. We are exposed.”
“Look at your hands.” I stand up, my legs trembling but holding. I cross the distance between us, my bare feet cold on the concrete. I reach out and take the weapon from his hand. He lets me take it—that alone tells me how far gone he is. I set it on a crate.
“You almost shot a stray cat. You haven't slept in two days. We’re about to drive into a city full of people who want to kill us, and you can’t even hold a gun straight.”
“I am functional.”
“You’re a machine with a broken gear.” I reach out, placing my palms flat against his chest. His heart is racing, a frantic, irregular thud under the dark fabric. “And I am a man who was just unmade. We are about to walk into the end of our lives.”
“All the more reason to find a more secure location.”
“No. All the more reason to remember why we’re doing this.” I grip the front of his sweater, pulling him toward me. “I need five minutes. I need to feel something that isn't the cold or the fear. I need you to feel something that isn't a mission parameter.”
His eyes search mine. I see the war in him—the Kennel's voice telling him to move, to be efficient, to survive, clashing with the newer, hungrier voice that I put there.
The new voice wins.
