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László

I lay in bed, my mind drifting in the space between waking and sleep. Calculations warred with random images, mostly visions of Eszter in a yellow and blue dress, tromping about our home with a book in her hand. She always carried a book.

An odd creak made Eszter’s vision retreat.

Then the whisper of wood straining under some weight—soft but wrong . It wasn’t the house settling, wasn’t the radiator groaning. It was something else.

Something human.

I blinked into the darkness, my heart suddenly thudding in my chest. My room was pitch black, save for the faintest splash of moonlight from the curtain I could never get to fully close, just enough to sketch faint lines on the floorboards, just enough to glimpse movement if someone—

I didn’t breathe. I didn’t dare move. My ears strained until they ached.

There.

Another creak. Closer this time.

Someone was inside.

A prickling bloom of terror surged up my spine, turning muscle into ice. My hand reached for the lamp out of habit, but I stopped short. Light would bring death.

They’d come.

The Soviets.

They knew.

They must have found out.

Someone had leaked it—that I’d finished my work, that the machine, my machine, was no longer theoretical.

I had crossed the line from thinking to knowing.

They knew and were there to clean up the loose end: the man who had built something that could break every cipher they’d ever trusted—the man they no longer needed.

Had this always been their plan? Keep me docile, keep me working, then put me in a ditch once they had what they needed?

Had Eszter’s safety only ever been a leash?

I imagined two men with dull eyes and angry pistols standing at the end of my bed.

I imagined the click of a safety.

I heard the silence of the shot fired through cloth.

My heart roared in my ears.

I pushed my back against the headboard and opened my mouth to scream—

As a voice sliced through the dark.

Her voice. It was soft, oddly familiar, clearly urgent.

“ Ne bougez pas, Docteur. ”

Don’t move, Doctor.

I did anyway, recoiling against the headboard, my breath rasping and spine locking up as though it expected bullets.

“ C’est nous ,” she said again. “ Nous sommes ici pour vous sortir de là. ”

They were here to get me out? In the middle of the night? With Soviet guards everywhere?

My mouth opened, then closed.

A pulse throbbed in my ears, drowning out the rest of the world. The pair’s silhouettes were darker than the darkness itself.

But they were real.

They were actually there.

“I . . . I do not believe you,” I whispered, my French as broken as my voice. “For all I know, you are Soviets, testing me.”

“Of course, they would test you,” the woman said. “But they would not know the phrase.”

I squinted, heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out. “The phrase?”

“The last word of your message,” she said. “You used it to test us when Lark first approached you. Do you remember? A single letter misplaced in the cipher. You thought we wouldn’t notice, but our people did.”

My throat tightened. My fingers curled into the bedsheet.

“What . . . what was it?”

The woman stepped forward, just enough for the moonlight to catch her cheekbone, her jaw. Recognition landed like a fist to my chest.

She smiled, a small, patient thing, almost sad.

“G,” she said. “The message was signed with a G. You expected it to be from someone else—but G was your last handler’s initial, and Lark thought you might respond better to something familiar.”

I couldn’t breathe.

I nodded once, and the sheet slipped from my fingers.

“You are really here,” I said, the words foreign on my tongue.

“We are,” the woman said. “And it is time to go. Now.”

“But . . . the guard.” I glanced toward the window. “He is still out there.”

The man moved beside me and pulled a jacket from the back of a chair. “We’ve already accounted for him. He’s not a problem. Now move before he becomes one.”

I hesitated.

Years of fear weren’t so easily cast aside. The weight of obedience, of silence, of calculated compliance—they pressed in all at once. I tossed back the covers and made to stand. Then the world collapsed, as I remember why I hadn’t left before that moment.

“Eszter.”

“I’m sorry?” the man asked.

“Where is my daughter? I will not leave without her.”

The woman stepped forward, nudging the man back. “Doctor, we have a team retrieving her at this very moment. We will get you both out. Now, please, we need to go.”

I blinked a few times, letting her words sink in. They were saving Eszter. They were saving my daughter.

It was almost too much to bear. The room tilted. My head swam.

Only the woman gripping my arm kept me upright.

“Change quickly. We need to be out of here in five minutes.” The man’s voice brooked no argument.

I jolted into action, darting to my closet and pulling on trousers, then a shirt, then my heavy woolen coat.

“You will want gloves and a hat,” the woman said, her voice not unkind. “It is quite cold this evening.”

“Yes.” I nodded, grabbing my gloves from where I’d tossed them on the dresser. “Thank you.”

“I will lead us,” the woman said. “My friend will follow behind.”

I nodded, numb and unsure, but somehow hopeful, too.

As promised, the woman led the way, a dark shape in the absence of light, only a faint outline of her hair visible in moonlight bleeding through the windows. The man took up the rear, his steps more fluid, more aggressive. His was the grace of an athlete. His silence screamed preparation for violence.

We reached the base of the staircase. I knew every shadow here, every creak and scuff, every loose floorboard.

We passed the hallway to the kitchen, but my feet didn’t keep going. I veered right, toward the study.

The woman hissed, “Doctor, stop! There’s no time—”

“I have to—”

“No.”

“I have to.” I turned the doorknob.

The woman cursed.

The door creaked.

I slipped in.

My study was as dark and silent as the rest of the house, maybe more so. The moon couldn’t reach this space. I crossed to my desk, dropped to one knee, and pried up a loose floorboard hidden beneath. It took more effort than I liked. My fingers weren’t built for speed anymore, and the edge of the plank bit into my skin. Blood beaded on my forefinger as I retrieved a box.

It was wooden and smooth, about the size of an American football.

When I turned, the man was standing in the doorway, glaring through narrowed eyes.

“You can be furious later,” I whispered.

He nodded once, jaw clenched, then stepped back to allow me to pass.

We moved again, through the kitchen, past a half-empty mug of lukewarm tea, then out the back.

The night clung to everything.

We snuck past the garden, the broken trellis, the cracked flagstones leading to the hedge.

As we stepped through thick shrubs lining the back of the yard, I clutched the box to my chest like a second heart.