“Once I light this, we’ve got three seconds.”
At least, I think we do. I’ve never blown up the fuel tank on a military-style personnel truck before.
This plan is insane, but it’s all I’ve got.
Desperation makes you do crazy things — and after ten years in this place, desperation is all I have left.
Arkady looks at me, gulping in a nervous breath. I see my own nerves reflected back to me in his face.
Maybe the kid does have it in him to make it back to New York.Maybe I do, too.
We’re caged animals not sure that we can survive in the wild anymore.
We’re about to find out, or die trying.
I light the fabric and run like hell.
Burning fuel.
The splutter of the SUV engine.
The slam of a door.
Then one inescapable explosion of flame.
Boom.
We’re pulling away in a haze of smoky air, Arkady in the passenger seat beside me. The car jerks forward as a fireball rises skyward behind us.
I take one last look as the building vanishes rapidly in the rearview mirror. Arkady lets out a yell of relief. I can’t, not yet.
The flames lick at the walls that confined me. The fire won’t make a dent in the thick stone of these walls, but it will consume everything it can.
Including the evil inside.
I don’t know if anyone other than Arkady will make it out.
Many of the patients are beyond saving. Some were in there for good reason. Others, like Arkady, were living on the brink of death anyway.
The Ivanov Center.
The bland name concealed what it really was. A specialized torture chamber.
It was a dumping ground for the Bratva and its problems, like me. The foot soldier who flew too close to the sun.
The orange flames race across the dry grass towards the forest on the outskirts.
I round a bend and it slips out of sight, only a pillar of smoke on the horizon. Soon that will fade into the mountains.
It’s only when I suck in air, gasping and winded, that I realize I’d stopped breathing. My lungs burn with relief but guilt lodges in my stomach like a stone.
Saving Arkady doesn’t stop my pain at the other person I’m leaving behind… We pass the house in the mountains and I want to go in, to explain, to apologize. Instead, I tighten my fists on the steering wheel and force myself to keep driving.
He doesn’t need me. He’ll be okay. There are people here to look after him. I can’t put his life in danger by taking him with me.
The only good option is to survive. And the only way to survive is to escape Siberia.
I push my foot harder on the gas pedal until we’re going so fast I can almost forget about the past ten years.
