Page 154 of Stars

“Ethan and his team attacked Yamantau. They flushed him out and followed him to Lazarus. He’s dead—Zeytsev and Lazarus both. Wiped from the planet.”

Ilya snorted. “I’ll work that out with Ethan later.”

“How are you here?”

“Zeytsev was a poor fucking student, that’s how. He didn't put a bullet in my spine before setting my car on fire. His sloppiness let me live—I came to when the fire began to burn my skin. Crawled out of the wreckage and made my way south.” He shrugged. “The rest you know.”

He clung to Ilya, found his bandaged hand and cradled it between his palms.

“I saw the news. Interim President General Valery Yaluyevsky?”

What would Ilya think of his decision to abandon their country, to give up on their life's dream? “I couldn’t do it anymore. Not after—”

“Good fucking riddance,” Ilya snapped. “We have givenenoughto that fucking country. How many times are we going to sacrifice for her only to have her throw us away a moment later? No, no more. I beg you. We have earned our retirement. We are done,da?”

Sergey smiled, finally, for the first time since Sasha had strapped himself to the top ofFreedomand begun his countdown to launch. “We are done.”

Ilya squeezed his hand until it shook. “How is Pretty Boy?”

He held Ilya’s gaze. Said nothing.

“Then we wait,” Ilya said. He brought Sergey’s hand to his lips and kissed his fingers. “We will wait for him to come back.”

* * *

One weekafter Sasha was brought down from the stars, Sergey cracked.

“I cannot sit out here any longer!” he roared, flinging his stool down the empty corridor. Other than the guard who brought him his rice and mystery meat, no one approached him and no one spoke to him. The doctors working on Sasha and the lab techs who took Sasha’s blood like vampires treated Sergey like a ghost, like a shadow.

He banged on the glass with his fists, shaking the frame. “Let me in!” he bellowed. “Let me in there with him!”

If Sasha was going to die, then, damn it, he was going to hold his hand one last time. Or die alongside him if his nightmares came true. Or just die beside the love of his life.

They dressed him in one of the biological isolation suits, crinkly white plastic with a rigid helmet and face shield. Beneath the suit, he wore an oxygen tank like a scuba diver’s, except instead of having a mouthpiece, it pumped air into his helmet and inflated his suit until he looked like a caricature of himself.

After checking his suit, the lab techs whispered away, leaving him at the double-sealed airlock to Sasha and Mark’s room. He passed through the first heavy door and waited. UV light washed over him. He waited for the chime, then spun the heavy lock on the inner door and pushed into the isolation room.

Kilaqqi met him inside. He held out one hand to Sergey and smiled, his other hand over his heart. “Aja bishindi,” he said. “We finally meet in this world.”

Sergey took Kilaqqi’s bare hand in his gloved one.

He still didn’t understand Kilaqqi. Didn’t understand the way he spoke or the things he said. Didn’t understand his connection to Sasha, the bond they’d forged, the memories they shared. He didn’t understand Sasha’s flight to Tura two years ago or the tattoo he’d come home with. He didn’t know why Sasha wrote to Kilaqqi every week when he was in Houston, sent him photos and souvenirs and trinkets of his training. How did an astronaut and a shaman become friends, become like father and son?

Even now, Kilaqqi wore a NASA sweatshirt. If Sergey had been a jealous man, he would have questioned their relationship, perhaps feared it. Instead, he was befuddled. Bewildered.

Kilaqqi guided him to Sasha’s bedside and gave Sergey his chair. He stood beside Sergey, out of his way.

Sergey almost fled the room, nearly vomited in his suit.

Blood soaked Sasha’s face, dripped from his eyes and his ears and the corners of his mouth. It seeped from beneath his fingernails, leaving half moons on the white sheets he lay on.

How could Sasha recover from this? What was happening inside him that had turned his body so violently against itself? He reached for Sasha’s hand and stroked his limp fingers.

“He is bleeding less every day,” Kilaqqi said softly. “Today less than yesterday, and the day before that.”

“How is that possible?” Sergey whispered. “How can a person lose this much blood and live?”

“It is the bad blood that is coming out now. The poison. This is good for him.”