“William, I swear to God if you don't respond in the next hour, I'm sending a team.”
Then a gap. Half a day of nothing. Then:
“I'm assuming you can't answer. I'm assuming there's a reason. If you're compromised, stay dark. If you're not, CALL ME.”
More messages. Shorter. Harder.
“Security sweep on all locations came back clean, but I don't trust it.”
“Something's wrong. Intel is leaking. Can't figure out from where.”
Then the last one. Timestamped forty minutes ago.
“In case you're reading this: Viktor knows we're alive. We've been compromised. You have 12 hours to evacuate. Sending coordinates for new safe house. If you can move, move. If you can't, destroy this phone.”
I stare at the screen. Three days of my brother trying to reach me while I was shaking apart on a bedroom floor.
Three days of silence from this end.
He must have been out of his mind.
I look up. Aoife is beside me, holding two mugs. Watching my face.
"You heard the phone," I say. "While I was out. You heard it buzzing."
She doesn't deny it. "You were in no fit state."
"Aoife."
"What was I supposed to do, William? Prop you up and hold the phone to your ear while you were hallucinating your deadfather in the corner?" She sets the mugs down harder than she needs to. "I tried. I couldn't open it. I don't have the code."
She's right. I know she's right. But three days. Three days of Aidan not knowing if we were alive or dead.
"What is it?" she asks. Quieter now.
I hand her the phone.
She reads the messages. I watch the color drain from her. She scrolls through all of them. Aidan's worry, his anger, his desperation. Three days of unanswered texts from a brother who didn't know if we were breathing.
Her hand comes up to her mouth.
"Oh God," she whispers. "William, he thinks we're dead."
"The last message," I say. "Forty minutes ago. He knows we're alive."
She scrolls back to it. Her jaw tightens. Her eyes are wet, but she blinks it back. Sets her mouth in a hard line, like she can hold herself together by force.
"Twelve hours," she says.
"Twelve hours."
She hands the phone back. The tea sits on the counter between us, untouched.
"Then we'd better move." She's already heading down the hallway.
I look down at the phone in my hand. At Aidan's message. At the war that's been waiting patiently outside this house, while I broke apart and put myself back together inside it.
Viktor knows.
