I drop the phone and sprint back, the duffel hitting my legs. I fall to my knees beside him. The pool has reached his shoulder. I grab the medical kit, my fingers slick and shaking, the zipper resisting me. I tear it open, throwing rolls of gauze and rolls of tape into the dirt.
I find the hemostatic packet. It’s a silver foil pouch. I tear it open with my teeth, the metallic taste of the foil mixing with the copper of the air. Inside is a granular powder, Celite or something similar.
I lift my hands from the wound. The belt is soaked. I peel back the fabric of his sweater.
The hole is a jagged, angry mouth. I can see the shredded edges of muscle, the dark pulse of a severed vein. It’s a topography of ruin.
I stuff the gauze in first, my fingers disappearing into the heat of his body. He makes a sound—a low, broken vibration in his chest—and his hand twitches in the dirt.
“I know,” I sob. “I know, Alexei. I’m sorry.”
I pour the powder into the wound. It reacts with the blood, generating a localized heat that I can feel through my palms. It’s supposed to cauterize, to force a clot where the body has failed. I clamp my hands over the packing, leaning my entire weight into his side.
I start to count. Not seconds. Heartbeats.
One. Two. Ten. Fifty.
The wind picks up, whistling through the gaps in the collapsed barn. It carries the smell of the dead men—the void and the cordite. I don't look at them. I only look at Alexei’s face.
His features are slack. The Accountant is gone. The Monster is gone. Without the armor of his clinical detachment, he looks like the boy he must have been before the Kennel took the past away. He looks like a person who deserved a favorite color. He looks like someone who shouldn't have to die in a ditch for a Petrenko.
“Stay with me,” I command. My hands are cramping, the muscles in my forearms burning, but I don’t let up. “You said you chose me. You said you weren't leaving. You don't get to lie. You don't get to follow a protocol that ends with you dead.”
Three hundred heartbeats.
I check the gauze. It’s dark, saturated, but the flow has slowed to a sluggish ooze. The powder worked.
I secure it with the remaining tape, wrapping the roll around his waist, over his shoulder, back again. I move his legs, propping them up on the duffel bag as K-7 instructed.
I sit back on my heels. My breath is coming in ragged gasps. The silence returns, but now it’s punctuated by the distant, rhythmic thrum of an engine.
High-performance. Growing louder.
A dark SUV appears at the end of the dirt track, kicking up a plume of dust that catches the low morning sun. It doesn't slow for the ruts; it bounces, the suspension absorbing the impact with a heavy, professional thud.
It skids to a halt ten meters away.
The door opens, and the woman steps out.
She is exactly what the voice suggested. Gray-streaked hair pulled back so tight it makes her eyes look like slits. A black tactical jacket. Heavy boots. She doesn't look at the dead bodies. She doesn't look at me. She walks straight to Alexei and drops a massive medical trauma bag in the dirt.
“K-7,” I say, my voice failing.
“I see him,” she says. She’s already on her knees. Her hands move with the same economy I saw in the Processing Room—every motion calculated, every second accounted for. She rips my tape away with a single, brutal tug.
“You used the powder,” she notes. “Good. You packed it deep. That saved him three minutes. He needed four.”
She doesn't waste time with words. She produces a needle—larger than the ones Alexei used—and plunges it into his chest. Decompression. A hiss of air escapes, and Alexei’s breathing hitches, then deepens.
“He has a tension pneumothorax,” she says to the air. “Lung was collapsing. Help me move him. Now.”
She doesn't wait for my consent. She grabs him under the armpits. I take his legs. We haul him into the back of the SUV, which has been converted into a mobile surgical suite. Plastic sheeting covers every surface. Monitors are already humming, their screens glowing blue and green.
She hooks him up to an IV, the fluid clear and cold. She attaches a pulse oximeter to his finger. The beeping starts—a fast, erratic staccato that makes my skin crawl.
“He needs a hospital,” I say, standing in the open back of the vehicle.
“He needs me,” she corrects. “A hospital is a database. A hospital is a paper trail. Do you want Ivan to find his body, or do you want him to wake up?”
