"On animals." I pack up my supplies, snapping the bag closed. "You're going to be fine. Don't do anything stupid for atleast a week. And if you start coughing up blood, go to a hospital. I don't care what your boss says."
"He's not my boss."
"Aleksander?"
Dmitri's eyes flicker. Something in them changes—guarded, suddenly, careful. "He's not my boss."
"Then who is?"
He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. I already know. I've known since the first night, since the suit and the blood and the stack of hundreds. Aleksander is the center of this. The eye of the storm. Everything in this warehouse—the men, the cages, the women—exists because he exists.
I should be afraid. I am afraid. But fear is a familiar thing, an old coat I've worn before, and I know how to move inside it.
"Stay still for ten minutes," I say. "Then you can get up."
I walk out of the back room and into the warehouse.
The cages are impossible to ignore now.
I don't know why I look this time. Maybe because Dmitri's face reminded me that he's just a kid, and if he's just a kid, then the people in those cages are someone's children too. Maybe because I've been lying to myself for weeks, telling myself that Aleksander is different, that his business is something else, that the blood on his hands isn't the kind that leaves stains.
Maybe I just wanted to see.
There are three of them. Women. Young—younger than me, some of them. They're sitting on the floors of their cages, backs against the walls, knees drawn up to their chests. Their clothes are dirty. Their faces are blank. The kind of blank that comes from being looked at too many times, from having nothing left to hide.
One of them looks at me. Just a glance, a flicker of her eyes, and then she looks away. She's seen people like me before.People who come in, see what's here, and leave. People who don't do anything.
I want to do something. I want to open the cages, take them by the hand, walk them out of this place. I want to call the police, the FBI, someone with a badge and a gun and the authority to burn this warehouse to the ground.
But I don't.
Because if I do, I die. And if I die, I can't help anyone.
That's what I tell myself. That's what I'll keep telling myself, for years, until I can't anymore.
I walk toward the exit. My legs feel strange—heavy, like they're moving through water. The men watch me pass, their flat eyes tracking my movements, and I wonder if they can see what's happening inside me. The screaming. The breaking. The part of me that knew better, that knew this was a bad idea from the beginning, that knew Aleksander Mire was not a man who could be trusted.
But I trusted him anyway. Or I wanted to. Or I wanted something from him—safety, purpose, the chance to use my hands for something other than pouring coffee.
And now I've seen the cages. And I can't unsee them.
I push open the door and step into the alley.
The cold hits me first—a sharp, bracing slap that makes me gasp. Then the smell of the river, rotting and sweet. Then the sound of my own body, betraying me.
I lean against the brick wall and vomit.
It comes in waves—first the coffee from earlier, then the bile, then nothing but dry heaves that leave me shaking and weak. I press my forehead against the cold brick and breathe, in and out, in and out, trying to find the steady rhythm I learned in the barn.
You lean in, my mother said.
I lean in. I lean into the wall, into the cold, into the sickness that's crawling through my veins like something alive. I lean into the knowledge of what I've just seen, what I've just become a part of, what I've just agreed to help.
"You're still here."
His voice comes from behind me. I don't turn around. I can't. My body is still heaving, still shaking, still trying to expel something that isn't in my stomach anymore.
"I was throwing up," I say. "In case you couldn't tell."
