I don’t wait for his reply as I run through the snow. My boots get stuck and I fall to my knees, but I lift myself up and rush to Kirill. I expect Uncle Albert to try to clutch my hand or forbid me from getting on with my mission, but neither happens.
I run the fastest I ever have and that includes training, military missions, and high-speed exercising. A foreign energy grips hold of me until all I can focus on is reaching Kirill.
It takes me more time than I have to finally get within touching distance. His large body is sprawled out on the snow facedown. Splashes of blood surround him and leave trails of red in the snow. Nausea rises in my throat and my heart shreds to pieces.
This feeling is no different than when I realized my cousins were dead on top of me four years ago. For a moment, I’m frozen in place, unable to move. My nostrils fill with the metallic tang of blood, and my heart all but spills out and crawls up beside Kirill’s inert body.
Falling to my knees beside him, I grasp his shoulder, then turn him over. A small gasp leaves my lips when I see the huge hole in the middle of his chest and his white coat that’s soaked with red. The stubble covering his cheeks looks too black and harsh against his paling skin. My trembling fingers gently touch the blood that’s gushed out of his mouth.
Did he…vomit blood?
Oh, God. Oh, no.
Please no.
I reach my shaky hand beneath his nose and my breath catches as I wait for a sign of life from him.
In the grand scheme of things, the amount of time I wait is insignificant, but it feels like years. The longer I don’t feel any breaths, the harder my heart beats.
I taste salt, and it’s then I realize I’m bawling my eyes out. My hand is a trembling mess, and the sight of blood makes me want to throw my guts up. It’s not because I’m squeamish, but it’s the fact that it’s Kirill’s blood.
He’s lost so much blood.
Faintly, almost as if it’s not there, I feel a fraction of a breath. It’s not much, but it’s all I need. I rip a piece of my shirt and put pressure on the wound in a hopeless attempt to stop the bleeding. Then I contemplate lifting him and carrying him to the snowmobile that’s stuck on the middle of the hill, but I’m scared about aggravating his injuries.
So I sit him up and crouch behind him so that his back is against mine. Then I hook my arms through his and start to lift up.
I fall right back down.
It’s impossible.
Not only is he way bigger than me, but he’s also unconscious, so he feels much heavier.
If I do it this way, I’ll never be able to get him help in time.
I abandon the idea of lifting him and lay him on his back. Then I grab his feet and start to drag him across the snow. This way, I won’t aggravate his injuries. It’s still hard, though. Not only is he literally made of muscles, but the hill is so steep, my legs burn and shake, nearly giving out from beneath me.
But I don’t stop or pause—except to ensure that I’m not hitting his head on any bumps. The moment I reach the snowmobile, I release him and gently lay his feet on the snow. Then I use whatever inhuman strength I have to flip the vehicle and drag it to where he is.
My heart squeezes and shatters at the sight of the huge wound on his chest, but I don’t allow myself to get stuck in that loop.
I’m the only one who can get him help.
I have to save him.
Those thoughts fill me with renewed energy that allows me to pull him onto the snowmobile.
I try to keep him upright as I sit down in front of him, draping his body around mine for more security, and then strap him to me with my jacket tied around our middles. I’m going to go as fast as possible, and I can’t have him falling in the middle of the trip.
Once I make sure he’s secured, I search the GPS for the closest hospital, then drive the snowmobile at supersonic speed. I ignore the sound of other snowmobiles following me. Probably Uncle Albert and the mysterious men he brought with him.
I don’t give a fuck, because I meant it. If he so much as tries to stop me from getting Kirill help, this situation will get really ugly really fast.
It takes me thirty minutes to reach the hospital, and that’s only because I actually drove at the snowmobile's highest speed, while leaning forward so that Kirill had good support and wouldn’t fall.
I’m ready to drive the thing through the hospital door, but a few nurses come out of the building with their equipment. I try to help them lift Kirill onto the stretcher, but I step back when they push me away since they know how to do it properly.
A doctor straps an oxygen mask to his face, and then all of us are running down the depressing white hall.
“He has two gunshot wounds to the chest,” I tell them in a clear voice I don’t recognize. “He also fell down a hill and lost a lot of blood.”
The doctor shouts some instructions at the nurses, then jumps onto the stretcher, straddling him, and cuts Kirill’s coat open.
My throat closes at the view of the two bullet holes gushing with blood. One is higher than the other. One has more blood around it than the other and causes red to stain his abs and tattoos.
Oh, God.
Is that…where his heart is?
I try to go with them all the way, but the nurses forbid it and ask me to wait outside. The moment the emergency room door closes, I slide to the floor, tears and blood dripping onto the white tiles.
I lift my red hands and stare at their harsh contrast against the fluorescent lights. They look blurry through my tears, and this state—the fact that I’m losing my grip on reality—feels so final, it’s crippling.
While staring at my bloodied hands, I see the last time I talked to Kirill. In the car. When he dropped me off at the airport.
I can still taste his lips on mine when he kissed me like he never had before. When he set my world ablaze and nearly had me confessing every twisted feeling I have for him.
If I could go back in time, to that moment when he asked me not to go, I’d stay.
I’d do things differently.
But I can’t, and the damning fact remains…Kirill is fighting death because of me. He has a hole in his heart because I stupidly thought I was here for Babushka and that I could actually avoid being tracked by him.
I’m the reason he’s in there, and that breaks the heart that, before him, I thought was long dead.
A heart that was overlooked in my conquest for revenge, ignored and considered irrelevant in my current life. Kirill is the one who brought it back to life and nurtured it to its current state.
And the fact that I indirectly put two bullets in his chest as repayment makes me want to claw my skin off and scream until my lungs give out.
“Care to explain what you think you’re doing, Sasha?”
My uncle’s clipped question wrenches me out of my gloomy state. I wipe my tears with the back of my hand, stand up, then whirl around to face him.
He’s still in his combat clothes, but there’s no weapon—none that’s visible, at least—and he removed the balaclava. “Why don’t you explain what you were doing, Uncle? How could you use me to get Kirill here?”
“Would you have come if I’d told you the plan?”
“No!”
“That’s your reason, then. You’re getting close to Morozov, and while that’s good, not protecting your own feelings isn’t. Anyone who goes undercover should be extra careful not to allow the subject they’re spying on to affect them. Needless to say, you failed, Sasha.”