Chapter 17 - Damian
The fire has thinned to embers when Harper leaves the bed, but the warmth lingering on my skin isn’t from the flames.
The room still smells faintly of her. She comes out, casts me a small smile as she munches away on an apple. She finds her seat at the workbench with her knees drawn up under her, eyes narrowed at the receiver as if she can force it to speak more clearly.
“Repeat that,” she says into the crackling static, her voice steady but sharpened.
Kiro’s answer breaks through like strained breath.
“Courier… caught in St. Petersburg… access key built from your code… someone inside the mainframe still looping your signature.”
The words hit like cold air against bare skin.
Harper stiffens, and I feel the shift in her before she even looks at me. The fragile peace we carved in the dark hours cracks. I cross the room, stand behind her, rest a hand on the back of her chair. Her fingers tremble once before she steadies them.
“Damian… someone is still using me.”
“No,” I correct quietly. “They’re using what they stole from you.”
A subtle difference, but she hears it. Her shoulders fall.
The wooden beams groan like old bones, snow pressing against the windows in pale waves. It feels as if the world outside is trying to erase us or bury us under silence and frost and the convenience of disappearance.
But Harper is a flame that refuses to gutter.
“We’re going back,” I say.
I move to gather gear in minutes, and so does she. Maps, forged IDs, cold-weather packs, the encrypted tablet where Harper keeps the last pieces of our lifeline, all of it shoved inside a torn duffel bag.
She moves with a precision I’ve only ever seen in combat surgeons, every motion small, efficient, contained. When she reaches for her coat, our eyes meet. I can read her much easier now than I have ever before. The knowledge spreads a glow through me that I try to conceal.
I open the door and the cold crashes in, a blade of winter that steals my breath. She steps out beside me anyway.
“We can’t clear our names until we expose the mole,” she murmurs as the small off-road vehicle we stole two villages ago coughs awake.
Trees blur past in long, skeletal rows. She sits beside me with her hood down, forehead resting against the glass, watching the night slide by. My knuckles go white around the wheel.
“We will.”
Her reflection in the window twists into something soft—hope or exhaustion, I can’t tell.
“Who do you trust enough to contact?” she asks.
Only one name forms without hesitation.
“Iosif.”
She lifts her head. I expect resistance but instead she asks, “How far?”
“Halfway to Lake Ladoga. He won’t risk coming closer.”
“And if his line is compromised?”
“Then Anton will know exactly where we are.”
The silence that follows feels like acceptance.
She’s certainly adapting to my world faster than I adapted to hers.
Harper breaks the quiet as the forest thins before dawn, replaced by frozen fields.
“Damian?” Her breath clouds the inside of the windshield, turning the world into a moving blur.
“Yes?”
“When Kiro said the key was built from my code… was that what you expected? Or did you hope the threat was over?”
“I hoped you’d have space to breathe,” I admit. “That’s all.”
Her lips part in quiet surprise maybe at the fact that I said the words aloud.
“Space,” she repeats, almost to herself. “It feels like we only get space when the world tries to kill us.”
I breathe out a laugh.
“Then we’re consistent, at least.”
Her lips lift in a small, genuine smile. We pass a deserted military checkpoint two hours later. Barricades are frozen into place, bullet casings half swallowed by snow. Smoke residue smudges an otherwise untouched landscape.
I pull the car to a stop.
Harper is out before I kill the engine, boots crunching in the snow, breath fogging in the cold. I join her, scanning the area.
Fresh tracks of scuffed footprints, drag marks, the imprint of a body shoved against a wall lead from the barricade to a concrete outpost.
Inside, on the crumbling plaster, someone has scrawled a message in black marker:
THE GHOST IN THE SYSTEM brEATHES.
Harper steps forward slowly, her breathing slowing as well.
“That’s him,” she whispers. “Anton.”
I trace the words with my eyes, not my hand. The letters slightly jagged, as if written in a hurry or with satisfaction.
“He knows we’re moving,” I say.
She turns toward me, hood falling back, wind tossing strands of hair into her face.
“Then he wants us to see this.”
“Yes.”
Her throat works once. “Why taunt us?”
“Because Anton doesn’t hunt blind.” I glance at the message again. “He hunts with theater.”
Her expression hardens.
“Then let’s not give him an encore.”
She’s brave in ways I never expected. We get back into the car and drive.
Around sunset, we reach the meeting point. It’s a frozen pier jutting into black water, ice fracturing around the posts like broken mirrors. A single cabin sits at the edge of the tree line, lantern light flickering in the window.
Harper tenses.
“Are you sure he’s alone?”
“Yes.”
She exhales slowly. “Then I’m ready.”
Iosif emerges from the cabin, wrapped in a heavy coat, beard rimed with frost. His eyes, as distant as ever, scan the tree line before settling on us.
“You’re both alive,” he says.
“Disappointed?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Only surprised. Anton’s narrative was convincing.”
Harper stiffens beside me. I place a grounding hand at the small of her back, and she breathes again. Warmth hits like a wall as we step inside the cabin. Iosif locks the door behind us, tosses another log onto the stove.
He doesn’t waste time.
“There’s someone inside your house,” he says. “Someone with access to the mainframe, someone who’s been feeding Anton small packets for years. And after the leak, after the attack, they’ve begun sending files to the federal agency as well.”
Harper freezes.
“Both sides?”
Iosif nods.
“He’s playing whoever pays most.”
My jaw tightens. “Name.”
Iosif lifts a folder from the table and hands it to me. The pages inside smell of ink and metal and ruin.
Vladislav Orlov. A man I trained. A man who installed the defenses of my estate with hands I trusted.
Harper steps closer, reading the name over my shoulder. Her breath skims my cheek, unsteady.
“He used my code to trigger the assault,” she whispers.
“He used you to destroy our life,” I correct quietly.
She leans closer to the file, studying it with a focus that borders on lethal. The firelight turns her chocolate eyes to molten amber.
Iosif watches us both, something almost melancholic in his gaze.
“Whatever you plan to do next… it won’t be simple.”
I close the folder. “It never is.”
As night settles like ink over water, the lake behind the cabin freezes in slow pulses, cracking softly as if exhaling. Harper sits beside me on the old sofa, knees pulled to her chest. Iosif sleeps in the other room, though I doubt he’s truly asleep.
She speaks without looking at me.
“We’re going back to the city.” It isn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Under what identities?”
“Ones that can move unseen.”
Her fingers curl against the fabric of her pants.
“Damian… exposing Orlov won’t undo what Anton did.”
“No,” I agree. “But if we don’t root him out, he’ll destroy more than we’ve already lost.”
She nods slowly. Snow shadows drift across her face as the wind shifts outside.
“And if we fail?” she murmurs.
“Then we fail together.”
Her eyes are sharp, vulnerable, luminous in the dim light. The silence between us isn’t cold anymore. It’s a promise without the arrogance of certainty.
I extend my hand. She hesitates barely, then places her hand in mine. Her fingers are cold as I close my grip around them.
“We go at dawn,” I say.
She holds my gaze. “Then dawn will have to keep up.”