Fourth: Temporal analysis. Unknown duration of unconsciousness. The light filtering through my eyelids is bright, but filtered. Daylight. Which day is a variable I cannot yet solve.
I do not open my eyes. The Kennel’s first lesson was the preservation of the illusion of death. You assess the room before you reveal you are in it. I have been out for a long period. There may be a Baranov team waiting for the first flicker of my pupils. There may be restraints.
I test my right hand. I flex the fingers, a microscopic movement.
The warmth around my hand shifts. It isn't a restraint. It is skin. Five fingers interlaced with mine, a grip that is firm even in sleep.
I know the heat of that palm. I know the way those fingers fit between mine, a symmetry that has no place in a mission report.
Nikolai.
I open my eyes, forcing the lids to work against the crust of salt and sleep.
He is there, slumped in a folding metal chair beside the cot. He looks like a man who has been dismantled and reconstructed with the wrong parts. His body is angled sideways, his chin resting against his chest, his free arm hanging toward the floor.
His hair is short.
The visual creates a momentary lapse in my processing. I remember the Petrenko heir in the Processing Room—the arrogance, the meticulously styled waves, the way he moved as if he owned the very air he breathed. Now, his hair is a rough, bristly crop, barely an inch long. It is uneven, a jagged silhouette against the dim amber light of the room. It was my work. My last act of protection in that warehouse before the world turned to fire.
He looks older. The softness of Moscow nights and silk sheets has been bled out of him, replaced by a gaunt, skeletal beauty. He is wearing my clothes—the black wool sweater, the tactical trousers. Seeing him wrapped in my gear produces a surge of possessive heat that my medication cannot dull.
The asset has been replaced by a survivor.
I study the dark, bruised semicircles under his eyes. I study the way his jaw is set, even in sleep, a habit he learned from me. He is no longer the Petrenko prince. He is something I made. Something I defected for.
A door at the edge of my vision hinges open. I do not move. I lock my respiratory rate into a steady, sleeping rhythm, but my focus narrows to the sound of the footsteps.
They are precise. Metronomic. They don't have the heavy, aggressive weight of a Baranov enforcer. They are lighter, faster.
"I know you're awake, Alexei." The voice is a rasp of Russian iron. "Your heart rate on the monitor spiked twelve beats per minute when you looked at him. You were always a poor liar when it came to your own biology."
I let my eyes drift to the foot of the bed.
Katya Volokova stands there, her arms crossed over a black tactical jacket. She has aged since Helsinki. The silver in her dark hair is more pronounced, and the lines around her eyes are deeper, but the essential hardness remains. She is a ghost of the Kennel, a senior operative who disappeared into the static three years before I was supposed to be liquidated.
I was the one who cleared her path. I was the one who erased the surveillance logs that would have led the hunters to her. It was the first time I had ever disobeyed a directive.
"Katya," I say. My voice is a wreck, a dry scrape of sound.
"Eighteen hours," she says, moving to the monitor. She checks the readout with the same clinical detachment I used to pride myself on. "The round was a 9mm hollow point. It expanded on entry, tore through the obliques, and nicked the iliac artery. You lost 1.4 liters. Another thirty minutes and you would have been a waste of my time."
"The pursuit team?"
"Four dead. One with a chunk of a thresher blade through his carotid." She glances at Nikolai. "The Petrenko boy has a decent arm. I wouldn't have expected it."
"Ivan’s response?"
"Total. He’s declared you a rogue asset. Terminal sanction authorized. He’s mobilized every team in the Great Lakes region. They’re checking dental records at the local morgues, but they’re starting to realize you didn't die in that barn." She pauses, her eyes narrowing. "The Petrenko organization has also put a bounty on both of you. Viktor wants his heir back. Orhe wants the person who stole him to suffer. Either way, this location is a countdown."
"How long?"
"Twenty-four hours. Forty-eight if you stay lucky. I’ve scrubbed the beacon on the phone you used to call me, but the Baranov algorithms are relentless. They’ll find the signal origin eventually."
"I can walk," I say, and I try to shift.
The pain is a white-hot blade, a physical rejection of the idea. My vision grays, a dark vignette closing in on the room. My breath hitches, a sharp, involuntary sound.
"You can barely breathe," a new voice says.
