Page 153 of Stars

Nightmares plagued him whenever he closed his eyes. Visions of darkness turned the white-bright isolation room to shadows and emptiness backlit by medical equipment that shifted to stars and meteors, comets with green and orange and blue tails swirling in parabolic arcs and stuttering peaks and falls.

He tried to find Sasha in his dreams, screaming his name until he lost his voice. Sometimes he was inside the isolation room and sometimes he was behind the glass until it shattered, but every night, it happened just the same.

Out of the darkness, a creature crawled toward him on all fours, his arms and legs bowed out like a spider’s. It had Sasha's face, but broken, as if Sasha’s jaw had come unhinged. It flew at him, its blood-soaked fangs sinking into his neck, his chest, his arms, biting and biting him as Sergey screamed Sasha’s name and tried to push it away. The thing rose up over him, gliding on its hands and legs, Sergey’s blood dripping from its teeth. It smiled down at him.

“There is no more Sasha,” it said in Sasha’s voice. Then its jaws opened again, a cold shriek scratching down Sergey’s bones, and the last thing he saw was the creature wearing Sasha's face bite down and crush his throat, tear his skin, rip his arteries out until his lungs filled with blood and he drowned, choking, staring up at the love of his life who had turned into a monster, a horror, something he’d brought back to Earth—

He’d wake and peer into Sasha’s room, trembling as he watched Sasha’s chest rise and fall beneath the bright lights, crying until his eyes were raw and aching and if he cried one more tear it would be of blood falling from his broken eyes.

Hours later, he’d succumb to sleep again, and the nightmare would return.

He ate what was brought to him, rice and some kind of meat. He never left, never showered or changed or shaved. His beard grew in gray and wild.

He counted: the rise and fall of Sasha’s blood pressure, the steady beat of his heart. His inhales and exhales. The shush and hiss of oxygen passing through his intubation. He counted the bags of antibodies infused through Sasha. The number of times Kilaqqi brushed Sasha’s hair off his brow, or sponged his face and cleaned away the blood dripping from his eyes and nose and the corners of his mouth. Kilaqqi cleaned Mark as well, and Sergey kept a separate count for that.

Five days after Sasha was brought down from the stars, Song returned and paid Sergey a visit. It was the ninety-eighth time Kilaqqi had smoothed Sasha’s hair and kissed his forehead and the twelfth infusion of antibodies.

“President Puchkov.”

“I am not the president anymore.”

“I understand the title is used as an honorific even after the office is vacated.”

Sergey grunted. He never took his eyes off Sasha.

He felt Song’s gaze travel over his unkempt hair, his scraggly beard growth. His button-down, loose and wrinkled and misshapen, stained with sweat, collar mashed to oblivion. He’d rolled up the sleeves days ago, but one kept unrolling, falling to his wrist. He pushed it up, not caring. He probably looked homeless.

Well, he was.

“When we first spoke, I told you I was given your number by a Mr. Borya Golubev.”

Finally, Sergey turned to Song.

“Borya was the one who first told us the truth of what had been on the Soviet satellite and was devastating the ISS. At the time, all we knew were the leaks from the American media. Some kind of illness, or an accident, that had taken the life of an American. And then Borya called us.”

“Borya calledyou?” Sergey rose unsteadily from his perch on the stool he’d camped on for 120 hours. Borya Golubev, an undercover name he’d known for over thirty years. “Where did he call you from? Where was he? Did he—” His voice died in his throat.

Was it a deathbed call? Was he, even in his final moments, trying to help Sergey?

“He called from Tashanta.”

“The border crossing to Mongolia?”

Song nodded. “Our people picked him up after he made the crossing. He was… not well.”

“Did he—”

Smiling, Song stepped aside.

Rolling down the corridor in a wheelchair pushed by one of the guards was Ilya. His entire right side was bandaged, one arm and one leg in casts, and he looked like one giant bruise, but he smiled when he spotted Sergey. “Seryozha,” he growled. “Song passed you my message.”

Sergey collapsed at Ilya’s feet, both hands gripping the blanket covering Ilya’s lap as he cried. His best friend, his brother, the man he’d shared the length of his life with. The man who knew him better than anyone else alive, perhaps even better than Sasha. Ilya, whom he had ordered to Yamantau—to his death—and who had come back from the brink to fight for Sergey once more.

Not for Sergey’s presidency this time, but for something even more important: he’d given Sasha a chance at life, and in doing so, he’d saved Sergey’s soul.

“How—” Sergey started. “Zeytsev said he killed you.”

Ilya spat when Sergey said Zeytsev’s name. “That rat,” he growled. “How fucking dare he imagine he could best me. Is he dead? I will relish ending his life if not. Give me six weeks and I’ll be slitting his throat as he sleeps.”