Caiden jerks.
Red bursts across his chest.
For one impossible second, he is still upright, eyes still on mine. Then he’s falling backwards into the snow, and I make a sound I’ve never heard before. It’s some animalistic, ruined thing, as I tear free enough to lunge once, twice, nowhere near enough, his name breaking apart in my mouth while the yard blurs and the snow turns red and I can’t reach him, I can’t reach him, I can’t—
I wake up bolting upright so fast my vision blacks out.
My hand is on the knife under the pillow before I even know I’ve moved. My other hand is at my throat. The tent is dark and empty, the thin blanket is twisted around my legs.
There’s no Caiden. No blood. No floodlights. No yard. Just my own rough and ragged breathing filling the room.
I stay there for a long time without moving, staring at the door.
My face is wet from tears or sweat — I can’t tell — and my shoulder aches from sleeping on it badly. It was a dream, I know that, but my body is still in panic mode.
I drag a hand over my face and force air into my lungs. Then I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit there in the dark with the knife still in my hand, heart beating too hard, jaw clenched so tight it hurts.
“It’s not real,” I whisper until it almost sounds true.
When I close my eyes, I still see him on his knees in the snow. I still hear the scream tearing from my throat. I can even taste the snow and blood in my mouth.
I sit awake until dawn because every time I start drifting, I see the gun liftall over again.
TWENTY-THREE
CAIDEN
For the last few weeks, my days have split neatly down the middle. I report where I’m meant to report, sit through briefings, nod in the right places, and carry out whatever dull bit of military nonsense is currently required of me. Comms scenarios, equipment checks, and paperwork nobody will remember writing five minutes after it’s done. I do my job well because I always do, and because competence is the best camouflage I’ve got.
People leave you alone if you look competent enough. It’s one of the few genuinely useful things the army ever taught me.
So I keep my head down during the day and my focus narrow. I speak when spoken to, keep my answers sensible, and don’t linger anywhere long enough to invite conversation I don’t want. If anyone notices that I’m always a little too aware of the time, that I take my breaks at weird times, or that I’m never far from the route that leads past the barracks and military housing, nobody says anything.
Or if they do, they haven’t said it to my face yet.
When I can, I slip away. I don’t tell anyone where I’m going or make any announcement of being useful. I take routes that look incidental, cut through the bits of base nobody pays attention to unless they’ve got a reason, andby now my body knows the timing without needing much help from my head.
The flat is usually quiet when I let myself in. Most of the time, Niko’s on the sofa or near enough collapsed on it that the distinction feels academic. Vladimir is usually with him somehow, sprawled over his chest or tucked into the crook of his arm, both of them asleep in the sort of awkward, shallow way that tells me neither of them meant for it to happen. “Hey,” I say when he wakes up, keeping my voice low.
Most of the time, he nods, like that’s all he has the energy for. I don’t ask how he is because there’s no point. I can see it well enough. So, instead, I start with the practical things. Dishes, bottles, formula, washing, and quick checks of what’s running low and what isn’t. It’s easier to take stock of a room than a person, and I’m not stupid enough to think I can fix the second one anyway.
Sometimes Niko watches me as though he’s worried I’ll disappear if he looks away. Sometimes he doesn’t look at me at all, just stares through the wall as if there’s something there he almost understands.
“You need to eat,” I tell him when it’s obvious he hasn’t.
“I will,” he says. Which, translated, means absolutely nothing.
I don’t bother arguing. I just make something later, put it in front of him, and wait until enough guilt kicks in that he takes a bite.
Vladimir cries a little less when I’m here. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just that there’s another pair of hands and one more person moving about with a bit of purpose instead of that slow, wrecked uncertainty grief leaves behind. Maybe toddlers can smell panic. Maybe he’s decided I’m useful enough to keep.
At eleven months, he’s at that age where he’s not really a baby anymore, but not remotely sensible either. He toddles with the determination of a drunk man trying not to be observed. He wants anything that isn’t meant for him and loses interest the second you hand it over. He throws food with real feeling. He’s got enough little words to make demands but not enough to explain himself, which means half his day is spent deeply affronted by the limitations of language.
I like him a lot.
When Niko’s arms start to shake or his patience thins to transparency, I take Vladimir off him and walk slow circuits around the flat until he settles. Sometimes he goes limp against my shoulder after a minute or two, with his thumb jammed in his mouth, his little hand gripping the back of my shirt as if I’ve been issued to him for the evening. Other times, he twists round to inspect the room from a better angle and points at things with solemn importance, expecting me to be as interested as he is in the radiator, or a spoon, or even his own sock.
“There’s the kettle,” I tell him because I’ve reached a point in my life where narrating domestic objects to atoddler feels like a perfectly normal use of an evening. “Thrilling stuff, this.” He pats my cheek and says something that might be“dat”or might just be noise. “Exactly,” I say. “Couldn’t agree more.”
