Inside, the school smelled of damp concrete, old paper, and people kept too long in rooms without air.
The corridor ahead was narrow, walls painted a dead shade of yellow that had peeled in long curls near the ceiling. Children’s murals faded beneath grime—bright cartoon animals with missing faces, a sun with chipped orange rays, small handprints stamped in paint beside a classroom door.
A place built for children. Turned into this.
Fuck.
He locked it down. Boots silent. Rifle steady. Pain stashed. Breath controlled.
At the first junction, he paused.
Generator hum behind him. Pipes knocking somewhere in the wall. A television murmuring faintly from a room above.Men’s voices somewhere deeper in the building, relaxed, unaware, stupid with routine.
A smell hit him. Leather. Cold rubber. He turned his head, moving into an empty classroom. A pile of shoes sat against the far wall.
Women’s shoes. Dozens of them. Boots with broken zips. Cheap sneakers. Sandals. One high heel snapped at the narrow stem. A pair of hospital clogs stained dark at the toes.
His chest went icy in a way pain had never reached. At the edge of the pile was a child’s shoe. Small. Pink once, maybe but now gray with grime.
Something inside him stopped making heat. He exhaled and moved on, deeper into the school, following the corridor toward the central block. Empty classrooms. Old trophy cabinets filmed with dust. A cracked glass case holding faded certificates and a soccer ball deflated into a leather husk.
Children had once run these corridors. Now women disappeared into them. His grip hardened on his gun.
Easy.
Too tight meant emotion and emotion meant imprecision. The stairwell was empty as he climbed to the next floor but a guard blocked the landing, his weapon slung, radio clipped high on his vest.
Pav picked up a small shard of broken plaster from the floor and flicked it down the corridor. It clicked against tile as it landed.
The guard’s head turned. Pav crossed the distance in three silent strides.
He clamped a hand over the guard’s mouth, driving his knee into the back of the guard’s leg. He yanked him off balance and into the shadow beneath the stairwell, his blade already finding the gap above the collar.
The man jerked in his grip but Pav held him through it. The little pink shoe. He couldn’t stop seeing it. The man slumped.
The guard’s radio crackled. “Danil?”
Pav lifted the handset and pressed transmit. “Da.”
“You freezing to death down there?”
Pav looked at the blood spreading slowly across the tile beneath the dead man’s shoulder. “Da.”
He released the button then dragged the guard out of sight into the nearest classroom. He removed the guard’s radio earpiece, clipped it to his vest, then stepped over the body and eased down the corridor, checking out each room muzzle first, his breathing measured.
Noise behind.
Pav ducked into an open doorway, pressed against the wood.
Footsteps. They stopped. A muttered curse.
Pav risked a glance. A guard’s beam swept the floor illuminating the thin smear of blood across the tile. The man grabbed for his radio.
Pav launched forward.
The guard pivoted, swung his rifle up. Pav hit him before the muzzle cleared his chest. They slammed into the wall rattling the glass in the nearby trophy case. The flashlight spun away, beam skittering across the walls in broken flashes of white and dark.
The guard was stronger than he looked. He drove an elbow into Pav’s ribs. Pain split through Pav’s side and took the corridor with it for half a breath.
