The ruined chapel was a skeleton of stone ribs against the grey sky. Snow dusted the shattered altar. The air inside was cold, thick with the smell of damp earth and the faint, sharp tang of ozone from the crate. They had the prize. The price had been two of Yusuf’s guides, men whose names Sineus had barely learned. A commander’s arithmetic. He pushed the thought away. It was a debt to be paid later, or never.
Sokolov worked with a feverish intensity. He unlatched the steel-banded crate and lifted the Chronos Anomaly Detector onto a slab of fallen stone. The device was a complex thing of brass and crystal, its surface cold and indifferent. The physicist connected a series of wires, his hands shaking slightly. Kulagin stood guard by the broken doorway, his submachine gun held at a low ready. He watched the swirling snow outside, his face a mask of weary vigilance. Zoya sat apart, cross-legged on the floor, cleaning her knives with a slow, deliberate rhythm. A predator at rest.
— It needs a moment to calibrate, — Sokolov murmured, his breath fogging in the frigid air. — It has to read the local script.
Sineus watched the physicist. He saw his own reflection in the polished brass casing of the Detector. A fractured, distorted face, broken into pieces by the curve of the metal. Beside his, he saw the wavering images of the others. A team of broken parts.
A low hum started, and a pale green light pulsed from the device’s central dial. A needle, fine as a hair, trembled and then began to creep clockwise. It did not stop. It moved past the markers for safe, for caution, for danger. It entered a solid red band at the far edge of the dial and stayed there, vibrating with a terrible energy.
— There, — Sokolov said, his voice thin. He tapped the glass. — The growth is exponential. The models were correct. The Whispering Plague… it’s accelerating.
The green light from the dial projected a faint map into the air above the device. It was a topographical map of the Caucasus range. A single point of light pulsed on the map, a cancerous red bloom deep within the mountains.
— Kavkaz-4, — Sineus said. It was not a question.
— It is the epicenter, — Sokolov confirmed. — The Oscillator is not just a weapon. It is a beacon. Every pulse feeds the Plague. It is a suicide pact with reality itself.
Sokolov looked away from the terrible light of the map. He looked at his hands.
— I helped build it, — he said. The words were flat. Devoid of emotion. A simple statement of fact. — I saw the beauty in the equations. The power to reshape the past, to build a perfect future. I did not see the cost. Not until it was too late.
Sineus felt the familiar pressure behind his eyes. The memory of the cistern, of the screaming chaos of other people’s lives flooding his mind. The vision of Kulagin falling in the snow.
— I see things, — Sineus said, his own voice a low rasp. — Things that haven’t happened yet. I feel… the pressure of this Plague you talk about. It feels like madness.
It was the first time he had admitted it to anyone but Sokolov. The admission cost him the armor of his command, the illusion of his own simple, physical reality. For a moment, the two men were not commander and asset. They were just two broken pieces of the same catastrophe. One who had built the weapon. One who was becoming one.
Kulagin turned from the doorway. The patience of the veteran soldier had run out.
— This is all very interesting, Professor. But the philosophy can wait. What is the plan? We have their machine. We know where they are. We cannot stay here. The hunters will be on us before morning.
Zoya looked up from her knife. She did not speak, but her eyes were fixed on Sineus. A silent, brutal question. Action, or talk?
Sineus looked from the pulsing red light on the map to the faces of his team. The weary sergeant. The feral partisan. The broken scientist. They were not a Red Army unit. They were not soldiers of the state. They were the only people in the world who knew the full truth. The weight of that truth settled on him. It was not a burden. It was an order. A new one. His own.
He had been a tool of the Directorate. A hunter. A fugitive. Now he had to become something else.
— We don’t run, — Sineus said. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the cold air. — We don’t hide. We are not fugitives anymore. We are the only ones who can stop this.
He pointed to the red bloom on the map.
— We go to Kavkaz-4. We destroy the Oscillator.
Silence. The only sound was the wind howling through the bones of the chapel. Kulagin stared at him for a long moment. Then he gave a single, sharp nod. Zoya slid her knife back into its sheath. Sokolov looked from Sineus to the map, a flicker of something that might have been hope in his tired eyes. The choice was made. It was a suicide mission. It was the only mission they had left.
Later, the others slept. A fitful, exhausted sleep. Sineus stood watch. The snow had lessened, and the moon was a pale smear behind the clouds. He saw a movement in the shadows. It was Zoya. She was not sleeping. She was watching him.
She walked over to him, her movements silent on the stone floor. She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could feel the warmth from her body. She did not speak. Her eyes held his. They were not the eyes of a partisan or a killer. They were the eyes of a woman who had lost everything and had nothing left to fear.
He reached out and touched her face. His fingers were rough against her skin. She did not pull away. She leaned into his touch. It was not a gesture of love. It was an acknowledgment. Of the cold. Of the coming battle. Of the simple, brutal fact that they were alive, here, now.
He pulled her to him. The kiss was hard. It tasted of the cold night air and the metallic tang of blood. It was a confirmation, not a promise. A final, desperate act of life before the end. He felt the lean, hard strength of her body against his. The frantic beat of her heart. Or maybe it was his own.
From across the chapel, Sokolov watched them for a moment. He saw not a commander and a soldier, but two people clinging to a piece of solid ground in a world that was turning to dust. He understood. He turned away, giving them the privacy they had not asked for.
The moment ended. They pulled apart. No words were needed. Zoya gave him a small, grim nod and returned to her post. A shared purpose. A shared fate.
Sineus was alone again. He pulled out his Tokarev pistol. He worked the slide, the metallic click a familiar, comforting sound. He checked the magazine. Three bullets left. He looked at his reflection in the polished steel of the slide. It was dark and distorted. A fractured face in the gloom. But the pieces were aligned. The image was whole. It was the face of a man who knew his purpose.
The snow had stopped. The wind was dying down. The path to the mountains was clear.
