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“It’s not a secure site. It’s a personal burner account from two years ago, but it’s him,” she says, showing me the screen.

It’s a bunch of posts with numbers and emojis. “Great. I’m going back to sleep.” I’m more confused than before.

With a few taps of her fingers, a young woman’s voice sings through the speaker: “The nights were long, but in the morning, the sun never seemed so bright.”

Katya blinks a few times.

“And you know he’s alive because...?”

She frowns. “It’s saying he survived the night. Geez, have you no sense of literary analysis?”

“Not really a focus in my education.”

She replies in her own secret code of numbers. I blink at her. She huffs and taps away again, and the same woman’s voice sings over a high-paced, beat-heavy dance song: “I thought I was alone. Then I found you.”

I don’t need her to decode that one. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

She grumbles. “He’s alive. That’s all that matters.” The screen refreshes, and another reply pops up. It’s a smiling face followed by more numbers.

She furrows her eyebrows. “Hmm. That’s off her third album—not my favorite.”

I can’t tell if she’s being this ridiculous for my sake or if she’s really a super fan. “How dare he choose a song from Amanda Chase’s worst album. He’s truly a monster,” I deadpan.

“Amanda does not have a BAD album! But there are some I’ve memorized and others I skip all the songs except the hits, okay? This was a pre-Grae album.”

I’m kind of amazed by her fandom. She’s pressed against a man who threatened to kill her, who has nothing left to lose, and she’s yelling about her favorite pop star.

How is this my life right now?

But before I can argue, she’s already playing the song: “A fighter returns from war. Our loyalty we swore. Scared and broken from the unknown. I whisper as I pull him close ‘You’re not alone.’”

She gasps. “Oh my god. It’s Uri.”

My brain can’t register all the emotions at once. He’s alive?

“How can you be sure?”

Katya rubs her eyes and glances out the window. “Uri left when the gunfire started. And Markus was Uri’s shadow, like I was yours.” Her lips curl. “Markus has a little tiny crush on Uri. My partner would work just as hard to save Uri as I did to save you.”

My cheeks burn, and I can’t help it. “You had a crush on me.”

The train slows as we approach our stop. She stands and gathers her things, lifting my bag and handing it over to me. With her back turned, facing the door, I almost don’t hear her over the screeching brakes.

“It wasn’t a little crush.”

Chapter

Fifteen

Katya

I’ve never been to Helsinki. I don’t have the streets memorized, nor do I know the best place to get an off-network burner phone, but Dimitri knows where to go. One quick subway ride, and we’re in Kallio. It’s still early in the morning, and the city is asleep, but he finds a place where no one has gone to bed yet. He ducks into a back alley, knocks on a door, and leaves me outside. A few minutes later, he returns with a phone in hand.

I post in the forum using the phone number to call, encoded through album, song, and lyrics references. Now, all we can do is wait.

“How’s your shoulder?”

“I’ll live.”