The ground is approaching. I don't remember the act of falling, but the frozen dirt is suddenly against my cheek. It is cold. Hard. Oddly comforting.
"Alexei!"
He is moving toward me. I hear the shuffle of his feet, the gasp of his breath. He falls to his knees beside me, his hands fumbling at my side.
"Alexei, you're bleeding. God, you're bleeding so much."
I look down. My black sweater is soaked. It clings to my skin, heavy and hot. The blood is spreading across the dirt, a dark, expanding shadow that marks the end of the mission.
This is problematic. The clinical assessment remains, detached from the man dying on the ground. Blood loss of this volume will lead to hypovolemic shock in approximately twelve minutes. Heart rate will spike, then fail.
"No." Nikolai’s hands are on my face. His palms are warm, the only heat left in the world. "No, no, no. You don't get to die. You don't get to leave me here after everything."
His voice is fading. Or I am. The borders of my consciousness are dissolving.
"Alexei. Stay with me. Tell me what to do. Interrogator! Give me a command!"
A command. Yes. I can do that. I am a process.
"Pressure," I slur. The word feels like it's full of lead. "Apply... direct pressure. Stop the flow."
His hands move. He tears at my sweater, the wool ripping with a sound that seems far away. He presses down on the wound.
The pain is a distant signal, a flickering light at the end of a long tunnel. He’s pressing hard. I can feel the weight of his body leaning into the injury. My nervous system is shutting down non-essential sectors, pulling the power back to the core.
"What else? Alexei, talk to me!"
"Stay... awake..." I try to say it. The letters are falling out of order. "Must... stay..."
"I'm staying! I'm right here!" His face is a blur above mine. Gray eyes. Wet. Tears are tracking through the dust on his cheeks. "Please. Don't leave me in the dark."
The irony is a faint spark in my mind. In the Tower, he begged me not to leave him. Now, the wheel has turned. The Monster is the one in the dark.
"Phone," I manage. The word is a struggle, a final exertion of the will. "Duffel... back seat. Emergency contact."
"I'll get it! Just stay with me!"
"One number," I whisper. "If she... answers... say 'K-7.' Only... 'K-7.'"
"Who is she? Alexei?"
I can't answer. The darkness is a physical weight now, pressing down on my eyelids, filling my throat with the taste of copper. The name is there, buried under seventeen years of silence, but the pathway to speak it has been severed.
The last thing I hear is his voice—frantic, desperate, and yet holding a core of iron I didn't know I'd left him: "I've got you. I'm not letting go. Do you hear me? You're mine now. I'm not letting go."
The machine shuts down.
But somewhere, in the deepening quiet, I know he is still there. Still pressing. Still fighting. The asset has become the operative.The broken thing I made is the only thing keeping the world from going black.
Perhaps this is what I was making him for all along.
To be the one who doesn't follow the manual.
To be the one who stays.
Chapter Twenty-One
NIKOLAI
