The cold was a physical thing, a presence that had crawled inside his coat and settled deep in his bones. They were huddled behind a jagged outcropping of black rock in a ravine that smelled of ice and pine. Above them, the wind was a low moan, carrying faint, horrifying echoes from Kholodny-12. Not sound, but the psychic residue of it. The silent, looping screams of the fifty souls Kestrel had turned into a monument of his madness. The temperature was twenty degrees below zero, but that was a simple number. The cold in the ravine was older, meaner. It was the cold of a world with its heat turned off.
Anja Petrova sat with her back against the rock, her arms wrapped around herself. The case containing the Aegis Conduit, the black-market artifact that was their only insurance policy, rested by her feet. Her face was a pale, bruised mask in the darkness, her breath pluming in small, rhythmic clouds. She was watching him. He offered her nothing to see. Inside, he was hollowed out, scraped clean. The failure at the edge of the town had been absolute. It wasn't a defeat; it was an invalidation. His gift, the one thing that set him apart, the edge he had sharpened over a decade of blood and shadow, had shattered against Kestrel’s masterpiece of cruelty.
He stared into the darkness, letting the psychic static from the town wash over him. It was a constant, grinding noise at the edge of his senses, the sound of fifty histories being overwritten by a single, brutal ideology. He saw the man on the porch, charging a ghost. He saw the woman in the kitchen, burning in a fire that wasn't there. Kestrel hadn’t just killed them. He had subjugated their very identities, turning their pasts, presents, and futures into a weapon aimed at the world. And Sineus, the man who could cut memories, had been able to do nothing but watch. His power was a scalpel in a war that now required a bomb.
— What now? — Petrova’s voice was quiet, stripped of everything but a raw, practical edge.
He didn’t answer. The options were a set of closed doors, each locked from the inside. They had one asset, the Aegis Conduit. They had fourteen rounds of ammunition between them. They were deep in Soviet territory, hunted by a man who could turn a town into a choir of ghosts and by the agencies that wanted to steal his songbook.
— Sineus. We are not dead yet. — Her words were not meant as comfort. They were a statement of fact, a reminder of the board state.
He finally turned to look at her, the motion stiff, his muscles tight with cold.
— No. Not yet.
But the thought was already there, a cold, clean piece of logic in the wreckage of his hope. There was one move left. Not a move to win, but a move to end the game. He shifted his weight, the motion deliberate, and reached inside his coat. His fingers found the cold, checkered grip of his pistol. He drew the weapon, the familiar weight a small, solid anchor in the swirling chaos. He ejected the magazine, the metallic click unnaturally loud in the frozen air. He counted the rounds with his thumb. Seven. He slapped the magazine back into the grip. The sound was final.
His gaze shifted from the pistol to the heavy case at Petrova’s feet. The Aegis Conduit. The final defense. The dealer Haas had said it would absorb the Oblivion blast from the Echo Protocol’s failsafe, but that using it was absolute. It required a living mind to channel the blast, a process that would burn the user’s consciousness to ash. A key that ate the hand that turned it. It was a tool for a martyr, and he had run out of other options.
The path forward was suddenly, horribly clear. It was a simple, brutal equation. He had failed to stop Kestrel with his own unique power. He had failed to protect the people of Kholodny-12. The only thing left was to settle the account. The static from the town seemed to lessen, the screaming voices fading as a single, cold thought took precedence in his mind. The noise outside was irrelevant. The signal was now coming from inside.
— He built this from my failure, — Sineus said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. The words hung in the freezing air, solidifying. — I will unbuild it.
He would walk back to that sanatorium. He would find the Echo Protocol. He would destroy it, and when the failsafe triggered, he would be waiting with the Aegis Conduit. He would be the channel. He would be the price. It was not a choice born of despair, but of cold, hard logic. It was the only move that guaranteed victory. The cost was his own life, a resource he now considered spent. He had been a ghost for years, a man running on borrowed time and stolen memories. It was time to pay the bill. The decision settled over him, not with peace, but with a profound and silent clarity. The subjugation of Kholodny-12 would be answered by the sentinence of his own final act.
He had accepted the cost. He was ready.
But as he reached for the case, Petrova’s hand shot out, her fingers closing over his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong.
