ANYA - Moskva Riverbank, 2337 #2
The thought keeps looping through my skull with every heartbeat. Roman’s dying. I pulled him from the river and beat his heart back to life, and he’s still dying because there’s a bullet in his gut and blood loss is a numbers game, and the numbers are not in our favor.
“Anya.” Luka’s voice. “Stay with me. You’re hypothermic. Keep talking.”
I can’t answer. My jaw is locked from shivering.
“Two minutes,” Chernov says from the driver’s seat.
Two minutes. One hundred twenty seconds. And then what? I’m not a surgeon. I know chemistry and molecular structures, and how to stabilize volatile solutions. I don’t know how to cut a man open without killing him.
And I can’t feel my hands.
The factory looms out of the darkness, all broken windows and rust and the kind of abandonment that says nobody’s been here in years. Chernov kills the headlights, and we roll through a bay door into black.
Then we’re carrying Roman inside—Luka and Chernov carrying, I’m stumbling behind them with my arms wrapped around myself, trying to generate any warmth at all.
They lay him on a metal desk that’s covered in dust and old paperwork.
Luka finds a generator somewhere, and the lights flicker on in sodium-yellow, and Roman looks—
He looks dead.
Skin the color of ash. Lips still blue despite the heat, I’ve been pressing against his core.
Blood everywhere, soaked through his clothes, smeared across the desk, pooling on the concrete floor beneath us.
The shoulder wound is a ragged hole, through and through, and I can see the entrance and the exit, and that one’s manageable.
The gut wound is worse. Swollen edges. No exit. The bullet’s still inside him.
I need to get it out.
I need to cut into the man I love and dig through his organs and find a piece of metal without nicking his liver or his spine. I’ve watched field extractions in Afghanistan and assisted when MSF surgeons were overwhelmed, but I’ve never been the one holding the scalpel.
“Anya.” Luka’s standing at my shoulder. “What do you need?”
A hospital. A real surgeon. A time machine.
“Boiling water.” My voice comes out slurred and chattering. “Alcohol. Clean cloth. Did anyone grab my field kit from the dacha?”
“Got it.” Chernov holds up the bag, and I reach for it—
My hand spasms. I knock the bag sideways instead of grabbing it. My fingers won’t close.
I look at my hands. They’re blue-white, the color of marble, trembling so violently I can’t even make a fist. I couldn’t hold a pen right now, let alone a scalpel. I couldn’t cut a piece of paper, let alone cut into a man’s abdomen.
“Water,” I rasp. “Hot water. As hot as you can get it. Now.”
Luka finds a pot somewhere, fills it from a rusted tap, and sets it on the generator to heat. The seconds stretch into forever while I stand there shaking, watching Roman’s chest rise and fall in shallow breaths that are getting weaker.
“It’s ready,” Luka says.
The water is steaming. Too hot. I don’t care.
I plunge my hands and forearms into the scalding water.
The pain is blinding.
It burns. God, it burns. I hold them under until the water turns pink with my own blood. I pull them out. Blistered. Steady. But when I make a fist, my fingers close. When I flex, the tendons respond.
“Everyone out except Luka.” My voice is steadier now, the shivering finally starting to subside. “Now.”
Chernov hesitates. “He’s my Pakhan—”
“And he’ll be your dead Pakhan if you’re standing over my shoulder asking stupid questions while I’m trying to keep him alive.” I meet his eyes, and I don’t know what he sees in my face, but it makes him step back. “Out.”
They go.
I unzip the field kit with hands that are finally, finally working. Scalpel. Forceps. Suture kit. Gauze. Local anesthetic that expired six months ago. Not enough. Not nearly fucking enough.
But it has to be enough.
I turn to Roman.
His eyes are open. Barely. Grey slits tracking my movements across the room. He’s trying to focus, trying to stay conscious through the pain and the blood loss and the hypothermia still working through his system.
“How bad?” The words come out slurred, barely intelligible.
I should lie. Give him comfort.
“Bad.” The truth scrapes my throat raw. “The bullet’s in your abdomen. Could have hit your liver. It could be lodged against your spine. I won’t know until I open you up.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“No.” I pick up the scalpel. My hand is still trembling, but it’s a human tremor now, nerves and fear, not hypothermia. “I’ve watched. I’ve assisted. I’ve never cut into anyone by myself.”
“Anya.” His hand finds my wrist. Weak. Bloody. But his grip is there, and something in his expression looks like peace. “I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Too late.” His mouth moves in something that might be a smile. “Already decided. You don’t get to doubt yourself now.”
I want to scream at him. Want to tell him that trust isn’t enough, that faith doesn’t substitute for surgical training.
“I need you conscious. I need you to tell me if I hit something wrong.”
“Da.”
“It’s going to hurt.”
“I know.” His grip tightens. “Do it anyway.”
I pour ethanol over the wound.
His whole body seizes, back arching off the table, tendons standing out in his neck, and the sound he makes isn’t a scream because he’s biting it back, swallowing it, choking on it. Luka shoves a leather belt between his teeth, and Roman bites down so hard his jaw creaks.
I cut.
The scalpel parts skin, and the sound he makes through the belt isn’t human—it’s animal, pure nerve-ending agony that echoes off the concrete walls. His eyes roll back. His body goes limp.
“Roman?” I grab his jaw with my free hand. “Roman!”
“He’s out,” Luka says grimly, checking his pulse. “Pain took him under. Probably better this way.”
Better. Yes. He won’t feel what comes next.
But I’m alone now.
Just me and the wet red landscape of muscle and organ and the dark shape of the bullet lodged against something vital.
I keep cutting.
“Forceps.” My voice is steady, and I don’t know how. “Luka, hold the incision open.”
He does, and I can see inside Roman now, can see the bullet pressed against his liver. If I pull wrong, if I nick the tissue, he bleeds out on this table and never wakes up.
I reach in with the forceps.
The metal scrapes against something—rib, maybe, or the bullet casing—and Roman’s body jerks.
The lizard brain is fighting the knife. I talk to keep my hands steady.
“Stay with me. Stay. You’re not allowed to die.
” My hand is steady, even though my voice is breaking.
“You hear me? You don’t get to die on this table. ”
The bullet shifts under my forceps.
“I didn’t jump into that river for you to die.” I grip the metal, feel it move. “I didn’t beat your heart for you to die.”
The bullet slides free.
“I didn’t fall in love with you for you to fucking die.”
Nine millimeter. Deformed. Covered in his blood.
I drop it because Roman’s still bleeding and I need to close the wound before the blood loss kills what the river didn’t.
“Needle. Thread. Now.”
Luka hands them over, and I stitch.
Messy. Just trying to close tissue that keeps slipping while blood pools faster than I can work. His body is limp and grey, and I can’t tell if he’s still alive until I check his pulse between stitches—weak, thready, but there.
“Almost done.” I’m talking to myself now, to no one. “Hold on—”
Final stitch.
I tie it off and slap a pressure bandage over the wound, and his blood is everywhere, my hands and my arms and my face.
“Roman.” I grab his jaw. His eyes are still closed, his face grey, his lips colorless. “Come back. You have to come back.”
Nothing.
I check his pulse. Still there. Weak but there.
His eyes don’t open.
“Come on.” I’m crying again, tears dripping onto his chest. “You trusted me. You can’t—you can’t just—”
I lean down and press my mouth to his.
Desperation, my lips against his like I’m trying to breathe more life into him, like I can pull him back from wherever he’s gone through sheer fucking will.
He tastes like blood and river water and ethanol, and I don’t care.
I kiss him like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do, like my mouth on his can keep his heart beating.
His lips are cold. Unresponsive. He doesn’t kiss me back.
I pull away, pressing my forehead to his, and I’m sobbing now, ugly broken sounds that don’t care who hears them.
“Please.” The word is barely a whisper. “Please don’t leave me.”
His hand twitches.
I jerk back, staring at his face, and his eyelids flutter—once, twice—and then his eyes are open, grey and unfocused and barely conscious but open, and his cracked lips move.
“Anya.”
“I’m here.” I grab his hand and squeeze so hard it must hurt, but I don’t care. “I’m here, you’re okay, you’re going to be okay—”
“Told you.” The words are barely audible, his voice wrecked from screaming. “Trust you.”
His hand comes up, trembling violently, and touches my cheek. His thumb brushes tears I didn’t know were still falling.
His eyes roll back.
“ROMAN.”
But he’s gone—not dead, I can see his chest moving, but unconscious. I check his pulse. Weak. Thready. Too fast. But there.
He needs blood. Fluids. Antibiotics. Real medical care.
He has me. A table. Ethanol and gauze.
I do what I can. Elevate his legs. Pack heat sources against his core. Clean the shoulder wound. Check his pupils every thirty seconds.
Luka watches me work.
When I finally sit back, he says quietly, “You saved him.”
“I opened him up on a metal desk with no anesthesia and stitched him closed while he screamed.” I look at my hands. His blood has dried in the creases, over the scalding blisters from the hot water. “That’s not saving. That’s butchery and prayer.”
“He’s breathing.”
“For now.”
I take Roman’s hand and hold it. His fingers are warming, circulation returning, and his grip tightens around mine even in unconsciousness. I think about Mishka in Rotterdam, waiting. I think about the clinic, the antidote, the empire Roman promised to burn.
I think about the fact that yesterday I was poisoning this man, and now I’ve got his blood under my fingernails and his taste on my lips, and I would burn the entire world to keep him breathing.
The bay door grinds open.
I’m on my feet with the Glock in my hand before I register moving. Luka’s weapon is up too, both of us covering the entrance, and I’m still covered in Roman’s blood, my hair stiff with river water, my clothes frozen and gore-soaked.
“It’s us.” Chernov’s voice. “I brought men.”
They file in. Thirty of them, maybe more. Bratva soldiers in tactical gear, and they stop when they see Roman unconscious on the table, when they see the blood everywhere, when they see me—small, blood-soaked, Roman’s Glock pointed at Chernov’s chest.
Someone mutters in Russian. I catch the word slabiy. Weak.
They’re looking at Roman, pale and still on that table, the way wolves look at wounded prey.
Chernov steps forward. “Is he—”
“Stop.”
The word comes out flat. Something in it makes him freeze.
“He’s stabilizing.” I keep the Glock level. “Core temperature rising. Pulse is stronger than an hour ago. He’ll be conscious within six hours.” I pause. “Able to command within eight.”
“We don’t have eight hours.” Chernov’s eyes move to Roman, back to me. “Vadim knows we’re compromised—”
“Then we move in six.”
“You can’t make that decision. You’re not—”
“I’m not what?” I take a step toward him. “I’m not Bratva? Am I not a soldier? I’m not anyone who matters?”
Another step.
“I spent the last hour with my hands inside his abdomen.” My voice is cold, and I don’t recognize it.
“I jumped into a frozen river and dragged him out of the dark. I beat his heart until it remembered how to work. I cut a bullet out of his gut while he screamed and stitched him closed with hands I had to scald just to make them work again.”
Another step. Close enough that if he reaches for me, I’ll put a round through his throat.
“I didn’t pull him from hell just to let you bury him.”
Chernov doesn’t move.
Behind me, Roman’s breathing changes. Steadier. Deeper.
“The Pakhan is alive because of me.” I lower the gun slowly.
Making every man watch me choose to stop threatening them.
“He’ll stay alive because of me. And when he wakes up, he’s going to finish what he started.
” I meet Chernov’s eyes. “The only question is whether you’re standing beside him when he does it, or underneath the rubble. ”
Silence.
Then Chernov does something I don’t expect.
He drops to one knee.
“Tsaritsa.” The word carries weight I don’t fully understand. “We’re yours.”
One by one, the men behind him kneel. Not all at once—some hesitating, some quick—but they kneel. To me. To the blood-soaked chemist who just threatened to kill them for looking at her husband wrong.
I feel exhausted. The only thing keeping me upright is Roman’s hand still warm in mine.
“Get me clean water. More bandages. Whatever antibiotics you can find.” I turn back to Roman. “And someone bring me vodka. I need to clean his wounds. And to drink.”
I sink onto the floor beside the table and take his hand again.
“It’s going to be a long night.”