“Down! Everyone down!”
Women who weren’t already on the floor dropped. Harper threw her arm over Polina’s back and pressed her cheek against grainy wood, breathing in dust and damp wood.
The gunfire outside intensified. Shouting in Russian. Someone screaming. The generator’s hum cut out, and the overhead bulb died, plunging them into darkness.
Harper twisted her head to look.
The orange flicker of flames from outside lit the windows. One guard moved to the shattered doorway, looked out?—
His head snapped back too far, like someone had yanked a wire. He dropped, rifle clattering from his hands.
Harper tasted bile.
The second guard fired through the doorway. Automatic fire that made Harper’s ears ring, a high, thin whine drowning out everything else. She squeezed her eyes shut, her arm tightening over Polina. The stink of gunpowder scorched her throat.
Please make it stop. Please?—
The gunfire ceased.
A heavy thud. Harper blinked, focussing on the doorway. The second guard was down, blood black in the flicker of firelight. Harper slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Tears blurred her vision, hot against her frozen cheeks.
Boots on wood. An armed figure filled the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, backlit by flames, dressed in white tacticalwinter gear streaked with soot, his face covered by a white balaclava.
The stranger scanned the room. His head turned in small increments, taking in every corner, every body, as if he was counting inventory.
He didn’t move like the guards with swagger or wasted noise. Just purpose. His attention fixed on Harper.
Her breath stuttered. He was across the room in a second.
Harper pushed up onto her hands and knees. She scrambled backward, bare skin scraping against splinters. She hit the bunk frame, and metal dug into her spine. There was nowhere to go.
He stopped two feet away, looming over her. “Harper Fox?”
She couldn’t place the accent, but it was emotionless. She nodded, her throat closed.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes, but?—”
His hand closed around her wrist. “Move.”
He pulled her up fast, but not carelessly, one hand catching her elbow when her knees threatened to buckle.
Polina screamed, reaching for her, but the man ignored her and dragged Harper toward the door.
Harper tripped, caught herself, and dug her heels in, clawing at the hand holding her wrist. “Stop?—”
But his grip was unbreakable and he kept moving. Harper twisted, tried to yank free, digging her fingernails into the small gap where his gloves met sleeve. His skin was hot and real.
He spun fast, and his free hand came up, not touching her but close enough to make her freeze. “Stop.”
Cold green eyes locked on hers, reminding her of the taiga forest in deep winter, ice forming over still water.
“Let me go?—”
He turned and pulled her past the dead guards sprawled in spreading pools of thick, viscous blood.
He halted in the doorway. Ahead, smoke curled through the night air in filthy ribbons. Harper gasped as the cold grabbed her like an icy glove, well below freezing and honed by the wind.
