THIRTY-FOUR
ARSENY
They pull me into a room too warm for the weather outside.
That’s the first thing I notice. Heat from a vent somewhere, stale and dry, pressing against the back of my neck while one of the officers in front of me shuffles papers he has no real reason to touch.
There’s a table, chairs, and a map pinned to the wall with coloured markers stuck into it.
I stay standing. Sitting would invite the kind of concern I don’t want from men like this. Concern leads to eyes staying on you too long. Eyes staying on you too long leads to questions, and I already know enough to hate whatever answers they think they are about to give me.
The officer started speaking before I was fully through the door, as if getting the words out quickly will lessen the damage.
British-led operation. Comms failure. Unexpected presence.
One K. I. A.
The language they use is clean and efficient. It’s made for reports, not people. I take it in the way I take most things in: piece by piece, slotting each part where it belongs, keeping my face empty while my head starts moving ahead of the speaker. A British-led operation. Comms. One dead.
Then he says the name.
Zakirov. Nikorin.
For a second, my vision swims. The officers in front of me lose detail, and the map on the wall becomes a smudge of colour and paper. The only thing left with any clarity is my brother’s name sitting in the air between us.
The officer keeps talking, because of course he does. Timings are outlined, and coordinates are mentioned. The recovery protocol is referred to in the same tone he might use for a vehicle delivery.
Then, almost as if he regrets forgetting to mention it sooner, he says, “There had been concerns raised about Senior Sergeant Zakirov remaining on active duty so soon after his bereavement.”
He glances down at the paper in front of him before looking back up.
“His CO advised against assigning him to the detail. The recommendation was that he be kept off the mission. The British liaison argued otherwise.” My body goes stiff, then cold all over as he continues.
“Lance Corporal Varrik insisted Sergeant Zakirov knew the route, knew the terrain, and was fit to continue. He pushed for him to remain attached to the operation. The call was made from their side.”
Caiden.
He pushed for him to remain and ignored the advice against it.
He made the call.
The officer keeps talking in that thin, careful tone of his, trying to sound neutral.
Operational need, familiarity with the area, misjudged risk and incomplete intel.
All the little phrases men like this use when they want a death to sound like bad weather rather than the result of several stupid fucking decisions.
I don’t speak. Not because I have nothing to say, but because if I allow myself to react now, I will kill every single person in this room. “We’re sending a retrieval detail. It wouldn’t be appropriate for you to attend,” the other one says.
Appropriate?
My brother is dead in the snow and they are still using words like appropriate.
“I’m going,” I say, keeping my face neutral enough to prove it’s not a problem. The officer looks me over once, twice, then nods, and that’s the end of the argument.
The ride out is quiet, and the quiet, for me, is never a good thing. I sit opposite the doors with my hands clasped loosely and my eyes on the sky beyond the window. Caiden’s name keeps coming back to me. “There had been concerns. The call was made from their side.”
I don’t let myself think about it properly yet.
If I do, I will lose the use of my hands before I need them most. So, I think about Niko as he was the last time I saw him at the flat.
Tired. Thinner. Trying. Still trying, which now feels like the cruellest part of it.
Cassie dies, and he gets up anyway. He puts Vladimir first, goes back to work, keeps himself straight, and the world answers that effort by shooting him in the snow.
I hold my teeth together hard enough that my jaw aches and my teeth crack.
No one dares to speak to me.
When we reach the site, the cold is worse than back at the base.
Trees stand in rows under the darkening sky, their branches heavy with snow that drops in soft clumps whenever the wind moves through.
At first glance, there’s nothing to see.
Just woods, white ground, and tracks where men have already passed through.
Then my eyes start scanning for what belongs and what doesn’t. Snow pressed down in the wrong places, earth scuffed up where it should be smooth, and a branch broken halfway through, hanging low.
Then my eyes lock onto the one dark patch ahead, half-covered already, not hidden so much as left behind.
Someone says my name behind me, and I ignore him.
My eyes stop on him first, then my brain catches up a few seconds later. Niko is lying on his side near the edge of a shallow ditch, gear still on, weapon not far from his hand, as if he simply stopped moving in the middle of doing something ordinary.
Snow has gathered in the folds of his uniform, and I stop a few feet away because the mind is a stupid thing and still insists, for one second longer, that walking the final distance might change what I am looking at.
My brain gives me the report version one last time.
KIA. Confirmed. Recovery follows.
I take one more step and that version falls apart completely.
The sound that leaves me is... wrong, dragged out of somewhere from the core of me. My knees hit the snow hard, then I’m moving, crawling on my hands and knees fast, then I’m holding him before anyone can stop me.
My hands grip the front of his jacket, my fingers bunching fabric hard enough to tear it.
He’s cold.
Of course, he’s fucking cold.
I press my forehead to his shoulder and for a second my head rejects it with the same vicious certainty it uses for everything else.
This is wrong.
This isn’t how this ends.
Niko doesn’t die.
Niko keeps people alive.
Niko gets hit and gets back up.
Niko survives because he refuses not to.
I pull back and look at his face. My hand goes to his throat without thinking, fingers pressing for a pulse I already know I won’t find. The lack of it rocks me so hard my vision blurs.
Someone touches my shoulder, and I twist fast and hard, knocking the hand away before I even see who it belongs to. “Ne trogay menya, chyort voz’mi!” Don’t touch me, damn it! I practically growl at him.
The sound of my own voice makes every single man behind me freeze on the spot. I feel it. The whole little formation of them stop without knowing what else to do. They’re used to me giving orders. They’re not used to seeing me on my knees in the snow with my hands on my dead brother.
I drag him closer, my grip viciously tight around him now, because some primitive part of me still thinks enough force might change something.
And then the next thought hits.
Vladimir.
Vladimir will grow up without him.
The system will write a line, update a file and shift duties around. Men will go back to work, Vladimir will wake, cry, eat, learn to walk properly, and one day know there was meant to be a man there who would have taught him—
I lift my head and look around for anything with a face I can blame, something, anything I can put my hands on, but there’s nothing.
This place did this.
This system did this.
All the patience, all the caution, all the careful little fucking compromises. None of it saved Cassie. None of it saved Niko. It doesn’t save anyone. It just teaches you how to watch the losses one at a time and call that survival.
The medic says my name again, quieter now. I bare my teeth at him to keep him back, then I look down at Niko again because if I don’t, I’m going to stand up and break the first thing within reach.
I reach into his jacket and find his tags. They’re warmer than the rest of him. That nearly kills me on the spot. I close my fist around them until the edges cut into my palm.
“I’ve got you,” I say. The words sound useless the second they leave my mouth.
I’m too late. Hours too late.
The men move once I give the order, and I don’t give it until my breathing has slowed enough for my voice to sound like mine. Even then it feels wrong taking my hands off him. A stretcher appears, and I move back just far enough to let them work and watch every second of it.
Their hands are careful. Gentle, even. They lift him. They secure him. They check twice. None of it matters. It’s just a body now. The man I know is already gone somewhere none of us can reach.
Snow keeps falling while they work, softening everything it touches. I force myself not to look away because looking away would feel too much like leaving him there.
When they lift him fully and the place where he lay becomes just a dark red stain already fading into the snow, everything in me turns numb.
By the time we get back to base, whatever shock might have softened this, even slighty, has burned off, leaving something colder behind.
The transfer is handled quietly and efficiently, routed through all the channels designed to keep things from becoming anyone else’s problem. I sign what needs signing. I answer what needs answering. I don’t raise my voice and I don’t lose control.
The men around me relax when they realise that I won’t.
And I fucking despise them for it.
Niko’s flat is dark when I finally get there, hours later, after everything that had to be done has been done. The silence inside is worse than the site itself.
I unlock the door and step in carefully, closing it behind me without a sound. The room is exactly as it was the last time I was here. At the site, there was snow and blood. Here, there’s just the fact that he should be in this room and isn’t.
I move through the flat without touching more than I have to. The nursery door is open. The cot is empty because Vladimir is elsewhere right now.
That thought doesn’t comfort me in the slightest.
I sink into the chair by the cot and let my hands rest on my thighs. This should be the point where grief looks recognisable. Tears, maybe, or even collapse.
Instead, there’s nothing.
Niko trusted this place enough to keep going. Not me, that trust dies with him.
Niko tried to get himself back together after Cassie died and then tried not to become another burden in a world already full of them.
Then the thoughts about Caiden hit me.
Caiden, who knew Niko should have been nowhere near that mission, but put him on it anyway. Caiden, who ignored the advice from the CO and pushed back. Caiden, who looked at my brother and decided that fuck it, effort was enough.
I hate him for that.
I hate the system too, its forms, the way it eats people, and then congratulates itself for doing it efficiently. The men who will sleep tonight, telling themselves this was regrettable and unavoidable in the same breath.
Systems don’t bleed. But Caiden will.
By the time I stand up, my hands no longer shake and control comes back in the narrow, dangerous way it always does when rage starts making things simpler.
I’ll identify the body and sign whatever they put in front of me. I’ll collect Vladimir and do everything necessary because I’m still capable.
And then... I will find Caiden.