Page 35 of Enemy Within

“I am, for you.”

“I remember praying with you, before.” Adam squeezed his eyes shut and leaned into Faisal’s stomach, inhaling as his nose found the divot of Faisal’s belly button through his shirt. “I—”

“Shhh.” Faisal stroked his fingers through Adam’s hair again. “Rest. I am here. I will watch over you.”

Nuzzling his cheek against the cotton of Faisal’s shirt, Adam nodded, exhaling shakily. His eyes stayed closed, and within minutes, he was softly snoring, his open mouth pressed against Faisal’s shirt-covered belly.

Faisal glanced to his side, where Doc lay. Doc was grinning, but he hadn’t taken off his shades, and he still appeared to be sleeping. Knowing him, he’d probably eavesdropped on the whole conversation.

He chanced a look to the waiting area, to the rest of the team sitting at the gate.

Park and Kobayashi were staring, their eyes bugging out of their skulls. Ruiz had his fist to his mouth, covering a wide grin, his eyebrows arched high. Wright looked away, peering at the Burger King sign down the concourse. Coleman glared at the ground, his jaw clenching and unclenching, muscles bulging as the vein in his temple throbbed.

Breathing in, Faisal leaned back against the wall again and closed his eyes. He kept one hand sliding through Adam’s hair, his fingers massaging his scalp and slipping through his smooth, dark strands.Allah, he prayed silently.I place everything into your hands. Only you know the path before us. Keep our souls in your care for every beat of our hearts.

15

Southern Siberia

“JACK!” SERGEY STUMBLED AS Jack went limp in his arms, no longer able to keep his feet beneath him. “Jack, damn you, keep going!”

Jack had stopped speaking an hour ago, instead mixing groans and whimpers and an endless, soft keen that fell from his frigid, blue lips. His shivers, once nearly violent enough to tumble Sergey to the ground, had stilled.

Sergey slid, his boots slipping on the slick snow as he tried to climb. He’d dragged Jack down the creek and out of the ravine, and they’d managed to stumble across a frozen beaver dam at a turn in the Angara. On the east side of the river, they’d kept going, climbing the ridgeline that stood between them and Ust’Ilga—and the others.

Since crossing the Angara, Sergey hadn’t seen Milos’s shadow stalking them. He looked over his shoulder and held his breath, but the man seemed to have vanished. He still flinched at every crack of ice, every branch snapping, every sound of the wilderness around them, imagining a bullet slicing through the air, or slamming into his back. Or Jack’s back.

Falling to his knees, he turned to Jack, his friend already slumping into the snow. Seemingly automatically, Jack rolled into a ball, trying to burrow.

“No, no, no,” Sergey hissed. “No, damn it.” Burrowing was one of the last acts of a dying creature, nature’s instinctual drive to curl up and expire. He pulled Jack close, rubbing his hands over Jack’s arms, his cheeks. His skin was as cold as the snow beneath them.

Jack moaned and tried to chase his hands, pressing into the warmth of his skin.

“We are close, Jack. Just up this ridge. A little bit longer, and then, I promise, we will warm you up. A bit farther. Please. Please.”

Whimpering, Jack tried to curl up again.

Sergey pushed to his feet, dragging Jack with him. Jack no longer tried to stand. He hung limply against Sergey’s chest, his eyes closed. Frost crusted on his eyelashes, over his eyelids. Could he even open his eyes anymore, or were they frozen shut?

Only one thing left to do. Gritting his teeth, Sergey hefted Jack over his shoulders, holding on with both hands, and started to climb.

He stumbled more than once, falling to the snow. Jack’s weight was like a cross he carried, and with every step, the weight seemed to double, then triple. The ridge seemed to extend to the horizon, a never-ending climb, a Sisyphean endeavor. His thighs burned. His legs quaked.

He closed his eyes and focused on putting one foot down in front of the other and dragging in breath after breath.

Somehow, unbelievably, they made it to the top. The ground leveled out beneath him, and he almost sobbed in relief. “Jack,” he cried, squeezing Jack’s thigh and shoulder where they lay across his back. “We made it!”

Silence.

“Jack?” Nothing, save the sound of his own breath, the rush of air over his cracked, dry lips. Was he carrying a corpse? Was it already too late? “Hang on, Jack, damn you, hang on!”

By his reckoning, and by his memory of the map, what he was looking for was close. Due north, along the ridge, on the east side. He set off, counting his steps to keep his mind quiet, to stop the screaming in his head that it was too late, that Jack was already gone.

Finally, he spotted it, buried in snow, the fence posts like small mountains rising from the powder. At the corners of the derelictChernaya Noch'prison, empty guard shacks balanced precariously on rotten wooden poles, their roofs sagging from years of snowfall that had buckled the tin. Closed and abandoned decades ago, and with no one to care for the place, the decrepit prison had nearly been swallowed whole by Siberia.

Sergey stumbled down to the main fence. Long-rusted, the gate opened when he shoved his shoulder into it, pushing the chain links through the snow. Within the fence, the old prison yard, the ground where prisoners had stood in rows, calling out their names, crimes, and numbers every morning, was buried in snow. He trudged through the yard, toward the administration building.

He had to kick the door in, splintering the old wood down the center when the lock held. He kicked aside the shards and the rotted wood and slid into the old prison. Years and years ago, he’d transferred prisoners from Moscow to this place, political prisoners, enemies of the state, people who had angered the old regime. He and Ilya had first crafted their plan during the long train rides from Moscow to Irkutsk, and then the drives overland to the prison and back. A crazy plan, born of the desperate, dead eyes and broken souls of the people they transported. An ostentatious belief that they could make a different world. How young they’d been, and what dreams they’d spun. How had it all come together?