ANYA - Moskva Riverbank, 2337
The river swallows him, and I’m already moving.
“ANYA, NO—”
Luka’s voice cuts through the gunfire somewhere behind me, but I don’t stop, I can’t stop.
I’m scrambling across the fractured ice toward the hole where Roman disappeared, and the surface is cracking under my knees, and I don’t care, I because he’s under there, he’s drowning, he pushed himself away from me to save my life, and now he’s dying in black water, and I won’t let him, I won’t—
I hit the edge of the hole, and the cold air rising off the water smells like death. Somewhere in that darkness is the man I love.
I jump.
The cold is violence.
It hits my body and every nerve fires at once, and my lungs seize, and I’m gasping underwater, sucking in frozen river instead of air.
For one terrible second, I think I’m going to die right here, going to sink into the black and never come up.
But then my arms are moving, and my legs are kicking, and I’m swimming down into water so cold it burns.
I can already feel my fingers going numb, the fine motor control leaving my hands because that’s what happens in cold shock, that’s what the MSF trainers warned us about, you have maybe two minutes before your body stops cooperating.
I can’t see anything.
The darkness is complete and absolute, and I’m reaching blindly, grabbing at water that feels thick and wrong.
The current is pulling me sideways, and I’m already running out of air because I didn’t take a proper breath before I jumped.
I just went, I just fucking went because he was drowning and I couldn’t stand there and watch.
My fingers close on nothing.
I kick deeper.
My lungs are screaming, and my chest is crushing, and my eyes are open but useless in the black. I’m going to die down here, I’m going to drown three feet from him because I can’t find him in the dark, and he’s going to die alone and cold and thinking I let him go—
My hand touches fabric.
Wet wool. Heavy. His coat.
I grab it with both fists, and I don’t let go.
The current fights me, and I fight back, kicking toward where I think the surface is, but Roman is dead weight in my grip, ninety kilos of muscle and waterlogged wool.
He’s dragging me down instead of coming up with me.
I kick harder, my vision going grey at the edges.
I can get his head toward the surface, but I can’t lift him; I physically cannot lift him; he’s too heavy, and I’m too small, and the cold has stolen half my strength already.
Light.
I can see someone with flashlights, and I kick with everything I have left, dragging Roman’s face toward the air.
My head breaks the surface, and I gasp, choking on air that feels like knives in my throat.
I’m trying to hold him up, but my arms are shaking, and I’m losing my grip on the ice edge, and we’re both going to slip back down into the black—
“LUKA!” The scream tears my throat raw. “HELP ME!”
My fingers slide on the ice. I can’t hold on. I can’t hold him. I’m going under again—
Hands grab my jacket. Luka’s.
He’s flat on his stomach on the ice, reaching into the hole with both arms, and his face is right there, grim and desperate, and I’ve never been so grateful to see anyone in my entire life.
“Take him!” I shove Roman’s collar toward Luka with fingers that have gone numb and clumsy. “Pull him out, I can’t—I can’t hold him—”
Luka grabs Roman’s belt and collar and heaves with a grunt of effort that tells me exactly how heavy my husband is. I’m shoving from below, using the last of my strength to push Roman’s body upward, and he slides onto the ice, grey and limp and not moving.
Luka reaches back into the hole and drags me out next.
I collapse the second my body hits the ice. My legs don’t work. I try to stand, and my knees buckle, and I go down hard, palms slapping against frozen surface. I can’t feel my feet anymore.
Roman’s not breathing.
Luka dragged him to the riverbank. His chest is completely still, his lips blue and his face grey, and his eyes closed. I’m crawling toward him on hands and knees because I can’t stand, can’t walk, can’t do anything except drag myself across the ice toward the man I love.
“No.” The word comes out slurred, my mouth not working right. “No, no, no—”
I shove myself up onto my knees beside him, and I put my hands on his chest, and I push.
My arms are shaking so badly that I can barely maintain compression. My fingers won’t close properly. I’m doing CPR with frozen useless hands, and it’s not enough, it’s not fucking enough, but I keep pushing anyway.
“Come on.” Push. “Come on, you bastard.” Push. “You don’t get to die.” Push. The words are slurring together, my jaw chattering so hard I can barely speak. “You hear me?” Push. “You took bullets for me, and now you owe me.” Push. “You owe me a fucking lifetime.” Push. “You don’t get to leave.”
His chest doesn’t move.
I tilt his head back with fingers that feel like blocks of wood, pinch his nose, seal my mouth over his blue lips, and breathe.
His chest rises with my breath. Falls when I pull back.
I push again, counting, trying to remember the rhythm from the MSF training, but my brain is sluggish and slow, and the cold is eating my thoughts.
“Breathe.” Push. “Fucking breathe.” Push. “I didn’t drag you out of that river to watch you die on the ice.” Push. “I didn’t survive you, survive this, survive everything just to lose you now.” Push.
Nothing.
The pulse point in his neck is still and silent under my frozen fingers.
“ROMAN.”
I hit his chest with my fist, not CPR anymore, just rage, just desperate, furious grief. I hit him again and again, and I’m screaming his name, and Luka is saying something behind me, but I can’t hear him over the sound of my own voice breaking—
Roman coughs.
Water pours out of his mouth in a rush, and I roll him onto his side with hands that won’t stop shaking.
He’s choking, vomiting river water onto the ice, his whole body seizing with the effort of expelling what almost killed him.
His hand grabs my wrist and squeezes hard, and I’ve never felt anything so beautiful in my entire life.
“Anya.” His voice is barely there, a rasp that sounds like death, but it’s his voice, and he’s alive, and he’s saying my name.
“I’m here.” I’m crying, hot tears freezing on my cheeks as soon as they fall. I can’t stop shaking, my whole body wracked with shivers. “I’m here, I’ve got you, you’re okay—”
“Told you.” He’s shaking as violently as I am, both of us freezing to death on this ice, but his eyes find mine and hold. “Told you to run.”
“And I told you I don’t fucking listen.”
Something moves across his face that might be a smile if he weren’t dying. His hand comes up, trembling, and touches my cheek with fingers that feel like ice against skin that’s already frozen.
“Solnyshko.”
“Don’t talk.” I try to pull his arm over my shoulder, try to get him upright, but my legs won’t cooperate, and I stumble sideways and nearly take us both down. “We need to move. Can you—”
“Can’t feel anything below my waist.” His voice is getting weaker. The gut wound is still bleeding, dark red soaking through his coat, and his shoulder is useless. “Can’t walk.”
“Then we carry you.” I look at Luka, who’s already moving. “Where’s the vehicle?”
“Two hundred meters north. Chernov!”
Chernov appears out of the darkness, tactical vest splattered with someone else’s blood, and he takes one look at Roman on the ice and goes pale.
“Grab his legs,” Luka orders. “I’ve got his shoulders. Move.”
They lift Roman between them and start running toward the treeline, and I try to follow, but my first step sends me sprawling face-first into the snow.
I get up. Fall again.
Get up.
My vision is tunneling around the edges, and I can’t feel my nose, and I’m running on a frozen engine that’s about to give out completely. But Roman is ahead of me, and I have to be there, I have to be there when we get to wherever we’re going because I’m the only one who can keep him alive.
I stumble through the snow, falling twice more before the SUV appears through the trees, and Chernov is yanking open the back door, and they’re shoving Roman inside.
I climb in after him on hands and knees because I can’t stand upright anymore.
“Drive,” Luka says, and we’re moving before the door is fully closed.
Then Luka is pulling off his tactical jacket, his sweater, and shoving them at me. “Change. Now. You stay in those wet clothes, you die of hypothermia before we get there.”
I’m shaking too hard to argue. My fingers won’t work on the buttons of Roman’s frozen shirt—the one I’ve been wearing since the bonfire—, so Luka reaches over and rips it open, and I’m too cold to care about nudity.
I strip out of the ice-stiff fabric and pull his dry sweater over my head, and it’s warm.
I’m crying again because I can feel something besides cold for the first time since the river.
Luka wraps his tactical jacket around my shoulders like a blanket, tucking it tight.
“Press here.” He guides my hands back to Roman’s gut wound. “Maintain pressure. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Luka—”
“You saved him.” His voice is rough, something cracking underneath the soldier’s discipline. “You jumped into that river, and you saved him. I will protect you until I die for that. You understand? Until I fucking die.”
I can’t answer. My jaw is locked from shivering. But I nod, and his hand squeezes my shoulder once before he turns back to monitoring Roman’s pulse.
* * *
In the car, I stop shaking. Then I start screaming.
One moment, I’m pressing Roman’s shirt against the gut wound, counting his breaths, trying to track his pulse. Next, my whole body is shaking so violently that I can’t maintain pressure, and Luka has to take over while I curl into the corner of the backseat and try not to vomit.
Roman’s dying.