Everything after that means nothing to me. Another officer tries a different angle. “No one is questioning your judgment.” That one nearly gets me to react. They’re always questioning someone’s judgment. That’s half the reason rooms like this exist.
“What exactly are you asking me for?” I ask, and my own voice surprises me with how steady it is.
The first man speaks again, more cautiously now. “We need your cooperation in understanding the sequence of events.”
Cooperation.
I lean back in the chair and look at him properly for the first time. “Fuck you,” I say.
He blinks. “Sergeant Zakirov—”
“I said, Fuck. You.” Everyone in the room goes still, and I can feel their recalculation happening in real time. I stand before any of them can decide how to reply to me. The chair legs scrape against the floor, hard from the force. One of the officers rises too — more out of reflex than courage— but I’m already at the door by then.
“Arseny,” someone says behind me, using my first name as if that is meant to stop me. But I don’t turn around. If I look back, I will say something that will force all of us intoa different kind of ending, and despite what they think of me, I’m not interested in giving them a scene they can use to call me unstable.
I walk out, and nobody stops me. That part tells me everything I need to know.
By the time I get back to my quarters, the anger is no longer just level. It’s gone deeper than that. It sits under everything now, the kind that doesn’t need feeding because it’s already become its own fuel.
I shut the door behind me and stand in the middle of the room, the bag open on the bed, and feel... nothing.
No nostalgia, no reluctance, no last-minute sentimentality about the years spent here, or the uniform hanging in the locker, or even the life I once thought I could have outside of this.
Fuck this room.
Fuck this base.
Fuck every corridor, every office, every neat little system that keeps taking people and then asks for statements afterwards so it can feel organised about the damage.
Fuck the officers who looked at me like I might break in a useful way if they pressed carefully enough.
Fuck the ones who couldn’t meet my eyes at all.
Fuck the ones who use words like unfortunate, regrettable, and expect those words to do anything helpful.
Cassie died quietly in a flat full of warning signs and Niko did everything he was supposed to do after that. He got up, he went back to work, he kept going. He made himself useful because that’s what this place teaches men to do when they’re falling apart.
And then it killed him for trying.
I move to the bed and start packing again because if I stop moving, my head goes straight back to the hospital, to the snow, to Niko under that sheet, and I’ve already seen enough of that.
The bag is full when I finish. It has the clothes, papers, and cash. I leave the uniforms; they can keep their fucking costumes.
My hands pause on the zip, and that’s when I think about Vladimir. Not because I’m changing my mind. I’m not. I already did the worst thing I could think of, and it was deliberate on my part.
I gave him to Caiden. Not to save him from me. Well, not only that. But also to punish Caiden. I want him to wake up, see my brother’s son every day, and know exactly why that child is in his arms, not Niko’s. I wanted him to feed him, carry him half-asleep through the dark, and feel the absence in every single practical thing he does.
And yes, I know I can’t take Vladimir myself. I’m not stupid enough to mistake rage for a parenting plan. I’m leaving. I’m disappearing. Whatever comes next for me is not a life a child should be dragged through, and I knowthat with enough certainty to hate myself for every second I even wish the truth were different.
But the punishment is real too, that part I’m not dressing up.
Caiden gets Vladimir because he can keep him alive, and I can’t. But Caiden also gets Vladimir because I want him haunted. I want his pain, his grief, and his guilt.
I hate him for putting Niko onto that mission after hearing that there were concerns and deciding his judgment mattered more. He decided that he knew better. This is what he always does; he didn’t think. He trusted his instinct harder than caution, trusted his own certainty harder than systems, and somehow still thinks that means he’s the safer man to follow.
It wasn’t safe, and Niko is dead.
That should be enough to kill every kind thought I’ve ever had about him, and it almost is.
