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Through sheer will, he opens his eyes again. His expression is complicated. “You did,” he concedes. “You were amazing.”

“I’m still amazing,” I insist. I’m so aware of his blood staining my hands. “I trusted you to guide me. Trust me enough to get you there. Do you think you can do that?”

Stiffly, he nods.

I throw the car back into drive.

Leonid directs me out of the lot with a voice that wavers, pauses, giving me instructions littered with winced and clenched-teeth groans. Twice, I have to say his name, and nudge him harder than I want to in this state, to drag his eyes back open.

Finally, he slurs, “Building… right…”

It isn’t enough information, but I park swiftly in front of the nondescript building that looks innocuous enough to be a front for something. Either the universe is on my side, or he’s uniquely unlucky, because a garage door grinds upward as we approach. As if someone inside is expecting us, alerted somehow, though I never saw Leonid make a call to anyone else. Unless this is the Malakhov who was supposed to go left, which doesn’t seem likely.

My instincts scream at me to pull in.

And then, there are people swarming the car, though not a single one wields a weapon. I note a series of figures clad in scrubs before the passenger side door is wrenched open and Leonid is lifted out of the car before I have a chance to get a single word out.

Chapter 11 - Leonid

Pain has a geography of its own, when it boils down to it. I learned that a long time ago, in a container that’s nothing more than an unpleasant memory to me now, at the hands of some motherfucker I burned to ashes while he screamed for the flames to be snuffed out.

You have to map out the pain to localize it. Give it borders, and you can contain it. Enough, at least, to hold onto the reins of sanity when it threatens to run out on you. You’ve got to tell yourself: Here is where it is, and here is where it’s fucking not, and as long as there’s a single inch of me that hasn’t been colonized by it, I am still in command of the territory as a whole. Mind over matter.

Right now, I must admit, the territory feels mostly forsaken.

The worst of the agony is centered high on the left side of my chest. A white star detonates outward in searing, spastic pulses that I realize, distantly, fight to keep time with my heartbeat. Every beat is a fresh argument for unconsciousness. I keep losing the thread of where I am and then catching it again. Everything is splintered. Especially me.

Ceiling. White. Moving. No—I’m moving, and the ceiling is staying still, and the discrepancy is the thing my eyes are tracking. Recessed lights slide past overhead at intervals. Someone’s propelling me forward. Another weight splays atop my sternum, and I groan, but no words come to me.

Yet I must’ve said something. Someone answers, “You’re at the clinic, Leo. You’re going to be fine.”

The clinic. Yulia’s clinic.

The corridor is longer than I remembered.

***

“—pressure’s dropping, get me two units of—” Yulia is barking orders beside me. I’d recognize my sister-in-law’s voice anywhere. She’s been family for years, and this isn’t our first rodeo. The woman has stitched me up twice before this. If there’s anyone who deserves the vote of confidence, it’s Yulia. It’s why Trifon married her, I think; she’s his perfect match, his equal, his sounding board and his champion. Her hands are steady. You’d never know, to look at her, how tender her heart really is.

I try to tell her I’m fine. What comes out is a pathetic groan.

“Don’t try to talk,” she tuts, without looking at me. I can tell she’s not, mostly since her hands haven’t stopped moving somewhere below my field of vision, rummaging in the country of pain I’ve ceded to her. Like I had a choice. “You’ve been shot, Leo, you’ve lost a significant amount of blood. I’m going to put you under now, okay? Because this is going to hurt a lot worse before you’re all patched up.”

Worse? That doesn’t feel like a possibility.

The light above me is too bright. I let my eyes drift sideways, away from it, because even half-dead I can’t stop doing my job, which is to know where everything is.

My gaze clocks the familiar stainless-steel counter to my right. It parses through the tray of sanitized instruments another pair of gloved hands pluck from. A second figure, clad in scrubs just like Yulia’s, lingers by the door: it’s Marina, the nurse, hovering at the threshold the way she does. It bodes well for the status of my health that I can remember it without a hitch. It means blood is circulating to my brain just fine, despite the significant blood loss.

Out of masochistically comforting habit, I count the exits, too: one behind Marina, one to my left I have to crane my head to see.

And there, against the far wall, where the lavender smell is strongest because Yulia keeps a diffuser going at all hours like the scent of a French grandmother’s linen closet can civilize the things that happen in here—

Meera.

Yulia let her stay in here, though she’s covered up in protective, sterile gear the same as the others. She stands with her back against the wall like it’s holding her up. Instead of the latex gloves Yulia and Marina wear, Meera’s bare hands wear my blood, dark and drying on her hands, her forearms, and in a smear of it across the deep navy of the blouse I took from her closet last night.

Her face is vaguely green. Her eyes are saucers.