15. Katya

My eyes go wide when I see Tasha pull a huge gun from underneath her jacket and tugs me to follow her to the stairwell. I follow without protesting.

“I don’t have any more information than that,” she volunteers to me. “If I did, I’d let you know. But I follow orders, Yuri told me to bring you safely to the meeting spot and that’s what I intend to do. The more you help—as in do exactly what I say, without argument or fight the better the odds of our success.”

“Success,” I repeat, chewing on the word. Success a few minutes ago meant taking the test without freaking out too much. Now it means live another few hours, escape Petya’s clutches.

“Why the fuck does he want me?” I say to nobody, and Tasha ignores me anyway, too busy leading me down the stairs, sweeping every landing then pulling me ahead when it’s clear.

She’s a natural with that gun, confident. She’s done this before. I feel better but a little of that jealousy bubbles up. She manages the stairs easily in heels while I struggle in my flats. I want to vomit, she’s enjoying this, thriving under pressure.

At the bottom of the stairs Tasha stops and holds me in her eyes again, “Katya, you’re heir to the Kolesova Bratva. Petya wants you for the same reasons Yuri does—a much easier path to control. It’s why I’m protecting you for Yuri. You might think of yourself as unworthy of all this attention, but objectively, you’re very valuable. People will kill to get to you. But forget all that shit for now. You need to stay right here with me, in the present, in reality— not thinking about why this shouldn’t be happening to you. It is happening— that’s our reality,” she says asks with obvious irritation. “I need you here with me so we can deal with this, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, suppressing a whine. She’s right but that’s still annoying. “Can I wash my face now? I think I need that mammalian dive response thing to calm me down.”

“No. We need the fight or flight right now, you should be panicking, you’re in danger of dying, so am I, we need to use that, just don’t fucking hyperventilate or have a panic attack or something— we need to walk out and act normal. Walk normal, eyes up, straight ahead, I’ll look around us because I know what and who to look for. Follow my lead, do exactly as I say, and hopefully we both get through this. Ok?”

“Okay,” I respond. My mind wishes Yuri was here. It’s hard to feel afraid of anything with him around— well, afraid of the world, he’s still scary as fuck.

She puts the gun away, in whatever fold of her jacket it was in before, nary a bulge shows. Then she shoves the door open and let’s go of my arm, mouthing to follow her and act normal.

I do my best to act carefree but don’t pull it off. Good thing everyone’s looking at her, not me.

We’re about to exit the building when Tasha takes a sharp left, downstairs to the underground tunnels that connect the buildings on campus. I haven’t used any of them yet since they’re for the winter, for bad weather and snowstorms and freezing wind days. I follow her, trusting she knows what the hell she’s doing.

“Why not go outside?” I can’t help asking, even though I know it’ll annoy her.

She looks at me side-eyed, and – yup – annoyed, “Not out in the open. They could surround us easily, here … they could block us and trap us but at least we’ll have a fighting chance in a firefight. Plus even if they trap us, Yuri can sneak up behind them easily and clear them out.” She doesn’t look at me, always forward, always walking, scanning left and right as we skid down the tunnel. “Now shut the fuck up, okay? I need to think and remember.”

I do shut the fuck up, like she says, and in the silence, there are muffled voices, rubber soles scraping on concrete, metallic clicks, commands in Russian.

“Fuck, they’re behind us, but hopefully not out front, too.” Tasha whispers in my ear, her hand on my forearm again, pulling me along.

Then I heard a shot, something small and angry shattered into the cement near my foot and I just stared at it.

“STOP!” shouts a voice behind us with a vague Russian accent.

I look to Tasha for guidance and see her face turning stone as she reaches into her jacket. She finally stops and starts to turn around slowly, and whispers to me, “run,” as she pushes me behind her and spins with her gun pointed at the voice.

I feel good for a second as I cringe to hear her gun go off beside me but there’s only one shot, and it’s not from her gun. Tasha falls beside me, claps a hand on her shattered knee and again tells me, “RUN!”

But the voice shouts, “STOP” again and I freeze.

Tasha’s pants bloom red and she has no gun.

The voice is close now, reaches Tasha first, grabs her face and slaps her, hard.

“Bitch should have listened,” he says, and his gun is in her mouth, for a second time stops, then the back of Tasha’s head is gone.

I had thought there was nothing left for me to find out in life. But then I heard the shot and saw what it did, and the thought, “Tasha is dead,” ran through my head. My knees gave out and my body seemed to collapse to the ground, and I just lay there, that single thought ‘Tasha is Dead’ rattling around my brain as I stared up at the sandy concrete ceiling.

I never passed out, but I lost all my strength, lost all my control over my body and emotions— I was comatose and paralyzed with terror and guilt.

I felt this next thought more than thought it, that life was not a game. Nothing in life was a silly little game anymore, not after the bullet went through Tasha’s mouth and exploded the back of her head all over the gray cement — like a grisly Jackson Pollock painting.

Aside from clearing out the back of Tasha’s skull, the bullet wiped the cobwebs from my mind. It was like someone blew a layer of dust off a book and I could finally read the words, the words were life is not a game, stop sleepwalking your way through it you silly girl. Wake the fuck up.

I was on the ground, thinking these things, then one picture swept every thought aside: Dmitry, my brother, broken open like a sausage, smeared across the road in his crumpled car wreckage. Inside, in a quiet corner away from the panic, the guilt, and the chaos, I began for the first time to mourn my brother because death was real now.

Very poor timing since the guy who just murdered Tasha was walking towards me. All I could think was, “Oh well.”

I didn’t close my eyes. I was beyond fear.

Then Yuri came into my line of vision, a gun in his hand, but he was only a black shape between me and the murderer of Tasha, and my impending death. I wasn’t even happy to see him, to be rescued, none of that entered my head. I saw him empty his gun into Tasha’s murderer, but I couldn’t hear them, couldn’t quite process that Yuri had just saved my life, and so had Tasha.

And now Tasha was dead.

No more.

Not present.

Not here in my reality.

Yuri spoke, harsh and quick, and the words might as well have been Chinese. I wanted to say to him, "Help me escape. I didn't know how it was," but I couldn't organize words.

Yuri spoke again and somehow, I could understand his words this time, “On your feet," he said as he pulled me up by the elbow. “Now, Kat if you want to live, on your feet."

Yuri’s voice cut through my thoughts and terror, telling me again to get on my feet, and only the new fear of him made it possible for me to nod my head and move my arms and start to get up. The only actual thought I had; the thought that wouldn’t allow anything else in was ‘Yes. I want to live. That’s all I want. Please let me live.’

I pulled myself up and when I was vertical, he said, "We're getting out of here. Stay with me."

I moved after him, hurrying on shaky legs, my mind still a jumble, and ahead of me Tasha’s body, half her jaw, and the rest of her face and skull a smear across the cement walkway.

I want to live.

I don’t want to be like that.