TWENTY-TWO
ARSENY
I wake up with Caiden’s arm heavy across my waist, his breath warm against the back of my neck, and for a few quiet seconds I let myself stay there.
The room is still dark. It’s not fully night, but it’s not morning either.
It’s the strange in-between hour when the barracks block goes silent.
The radiator next to the bunk knocks once and then goes quiet again.
Somewhere outside, I hear faint footsteps scraping across the frozen ground, then they fade off into the distance.
Caiden shifts behind me with a soft, tired sound and drags me closer, his face pressing into the back of my shoulder as if nothing is waiting on the other side of the door but another normal day.
I look down at his hand where it rests over my stomach. I put my own hand over his and feel him wake up properly beneath the touch. “You’re up,” he murmurs, his voice rough with sleep.
“Mmhmm,” I reply. He kisses the back of my shoulder lazily, and I hate how quickly my body responds to him. Even here. Even with my nerves wound so tight they ache. I turn in his arms, and he lets me, opening them enough to make space, then closing them again the second I face him.
His hair is flattened on one side, and his eyes barely open. His thumb brushes lightly over my jaw. “You look like you haven’t slept,” he says, smiling down at me.
“You’re so irritating,” I tease. I could tell him to shut up and stop this before my head catches up and starts listing every reason this is stupid. Instead, I kiss him because in dreams there is always that first moment where you’re given exactly what you want before anything starts to rot.
He makes a quiet sound into my mouth and pulls me closer until there is no space left between us at all. My hand slides up into his hair, and he kisses me harder. One hand grips the back of my neck, the other splayed over my spine.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine. “Stay with me,” he whispers.
“I have to get up.”
“In a minute.” His voice is still thick with sleep, but I let my eyes close. I let my hand rest against his ribs. I let the illusion hold.
Then the corridor erupts.
There’s sharp, distant shouting through the door coming from somewhere outside, followed by the hard thunder of boots coming in fast. Caiden’s entire body changes under my hands.
He’s awake in an instant, every soft edge gone.
He is already moving when fists slam into the door hard enough to shake the frame.
We both freeze for one stupid, useless second.
Another hit comes, louder, harder, the wood splintering near the lock.
“Arseny,” He shouts. I’m already out of bed. The room is in chaos in seconds. I snatch for my trousers. He grabs for his shirt, swears under his breath, then drops it because there’s no time. The door crashes inward with a sound that tears straight through me.
Men flood into the room before either of us can do anything useful. Someone catches me across the chest and drives me back, and another goes for Caiden.
“No.” The word tears out of me so hard it hurts.
“Get the fuck off—.” A hand grabs and closes on my arm.
I wrench free and hit the first man I can reach.
My fist connects with bone. Another body slams into me from the side, and I go tumbling into the edge of the desk hard enough to crack my hip bone.
Caiden is fighting too. I see him throw one man into the bedframe.
Another grabs him around the middle, then he drives an elbow back into another man’s ribs.
“Get your hands off him,” I snarl and launch myself at the man holding him.
I nearly reach him, but a baton catches me across the stomach, folding me over double.
Air leaves my lungs so fast it makes my vision blur.
I drop to one knee, and another soldier grabs the back of my neck, trying to force me down to the floor.
I twist and fight my way free of his grip.
I come up swinging blind and connect with a jaw, a throat, something soft enough to make the man gag.
Across the room, I see Caiden. He has blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. One of them has hold of his wrists behind his back, and another is trying to shove him forward to pin his shoulders to the floor.
“Don’t fucking touch him,” I shout, louder now, my voice breaking into something ugly. Something hits me in the face, and white light bursts across my vision.
I taste blood immediately.
I go for him anyway, but it makes no difference.
There are too many of them. Every second I gain is swallowed by another body, another grip, another blow.
Somebody twists my right arm behind my back.
The shock of it vibrates up through my shoulder and down into my spine.
I drive my heel backwards and feel it connect.
But the grip tightens, and my knees hit the floor.
Caiden says my name. Just that. Nothing else.
I get my head up enough to see them forcing him against the wall.
There are red marks already blooming over his skin where hands have gripped too hard.
He’s breathing hard through his nose, and his eyes are bright with fury.
One of the men has his fingers dug into the side of Caiden’s neck, and something inside me turns so violently I think I might black out from it.
“You want someone, you take me,” I say, every word shaking with anger.
Nobody listens.
They drag us into the corridor half-dressed and bleeding, my bare feet slipping on cold concrete and my shoulders wrenching every time I try to pull free.
Doors are open all along the block now, and men are staring.
Some of them are curious, some are pretending not to be, and the others look pleased in that mean, hungry way cowards always do when they think somebody else has finally fallen lower than they have.
I keep trying to get to him.
Every time I twist toward Caiden, they haul me back. Every time I shout at them to leave him alone, a hand shoves my head forward, or a forearm drives into my throat.
None of it matters, but I don’t stop. “Look at me,” I snap at the man who drags Caiden by the arm. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
The man laughs in my face. We’re dragged down the stairs, out through the main doors, and the cold hits me like a blade.
The yard is white with old snow and floodlights that bleach everything raw.
Vehicles stand lined along the far side of the compound.
Men are gathering. I don’t know where they all came from, but it feels like the whole base has spilt out to watch.
No one says what this is. No one needs to.
I start fighting again, harder. A grip on my arm nearly tears the socket when I throw my weight the wrong way, trying to wrench free.
I get one hand loose and drive my elbow back, connecting with someone’s nose.
The man grunts, falling back, while another catches me from the side.
Caiden is hauled beside me, and I lunge toward him.
I only get close enough to brush his arm with my fingers before they rip us apart again.
“Don’t touch him,” I say again, lower now, more dangerous. “I’m telling you for the last time.” One of the officers steps in front of me. I know his face and hate him at once. He looks at me like I’m something he stepped in.
Then he looks at Caiden with open contempt.
That does it. I throw myself at him. But I don’t get far. Three men hit me at once and drive me into the frozen ground so hard the impact rattles my teeth. Snow pushes into my mouth, tasting filthy and bitter. A knee crushes between my shoulder blades, then forces my hands into cuffs behind me.
I can hear Caiden shouting now. English first, then my name, then nothing is clear because blood is rushing in my ears.
When they haul me upright again, I see they’ve done the same to him. He’s on his knees beside me.
For a second, the whole yard goes silent, but it all feels far away. My entire focus zones in on Caiden, looking at the floor in the snow with his hands cuffed behind him and his mouth set in that hard line he gets when pain means nothing and rage means everything.
I stop fighting then.
My breathing turns shallow, and I’m pretty sure my shoulder is dislocated. Blood runs in warm streams from my nose over my mouth and chin, but I keep my eyes on him.
He lifts his head and looks over at me. There’s something terrible in that look. It’s not fear or regret. It’s recognition.
This is happening, there’s no stopping it.
I try to speak, but my throat closes around the words. After a minute, I force them out anyway. “Don’t look at them,” I tell him. “Look at me.”
I hold his gaze and keep mine steady through effort that feels like it is splitting me apart from the inside.
He has snow melting in his hair, blood dripping from his mouth, and someone has even torn the dog tags from his neck.
I want to kill everyone here. I want to tear the whole yard open with my bare hands.
Instead, I say the only thing I can. “It’s alright, detka. ”
It’s a pathetic lie. We both know it, but his eyes stay on mine.
The officer says something, but I’m not focusing on him. I see men move behind us out of my peripheral vision. Then I hear the metal clicks.
“No,” I say, and every bit of control I had left is gone. I wrench against the cuffs holding me, savage enough to tear muscle, skin, whatever gives first. “No. Not him. You take me. You hear me? Not him,” I shout at the officer in front of me.
Someone strikes me across the back of the head, and the yard jolts sideways as I hit the floor. But I don’t feel it. My focus is all on Caiden.
He doesn’t look away.
There’s a strange calm to his face now, and that frightens me more than anything else has. I shake my head at him as he exhales through his nose, slowly. “I love you, Arseny.”
The rifles lift and every part of me goes cold. I scream his name before they fire, loud enough to rip my throat open. The shots crack across the yard, and the sound is so huge it seems to split reality in two.
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 lift all over again.