Chapter Text
The silence in the apartment was so deep that the ringing in his ears after the shootout no longer felt like a consequence of concussion, but like a part of the interior. Like a refrigerator that had suddenly stopped humming, exposing a ringing emptiness. Lohen sat on the edge of the unmade bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Not at the parquet, but through it — into those tunnels that, just a couple of hours ago, had been spitting lead at him.
Nod-Krai. A warehouse district that even in daylight looked like a set for an end-of-the-world movie, at night turned into the gullet of some chthonic beast. Rusted containers towered over one another, forming a labyrinth with the acoustics of a crypt. Every step echoed off the wet asphalt, giving your position away entirely. They went in four. Came out... four as well. But that was a lie. It was impossible to leave Nod-Krai in the same composition. You always leave a part of yourself there — a fragment of sanity, the ability to breathe evenly.
Lohen ran a palm over his face. His fingers trembled. Not the coarse shivering of cold, but a fine, vibrational tremor, as if adrenaline was still coursing under his skin, finding no outlet. He took out his phone. The screen lit up, slashing his eyes with unnaturally bright light, snatching from the darkness sharp cheekbones and tightly pressed lips. Time — three in the morning. A messenger icon with an unread message from illuga.
"I'll be waiting for the report. And don't even think about playing hero, you hear?"
The message had arrived before the operation began. He had read it then, snorted, shoved it in his pocket, and went to load his gear. He didn't reply. illuga was used to it. He always did that — left his messages unanswered before sorties. Superstition? No. More like a way to preserve concentration. illuga's words had a strange property: they took root in your head, occupied too much space there, pushing out exit routes and firing positions.
Now, six hours after the last shot had faded in the concrete honeycombs of Nod-Krai, Lohen opened the chat. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. Blood thumped dully in his temples, and freeze-frames from tonight still flickered before his eyes. A cartridge jammed in the chamber. A flashlight beam snatching a figure with a rifle out of the darkness. Gunnar's shout "left, left!".
He began to type.
•
First message.
"illuga. It's over. I'm home. Safe. The others too. I'll write a detailed report tomorrow, right now I don't even have the strength to move my fingers. Just know that everything is fine."
Lohen reread the text. Stared at the screen for ten seconds, feeling something inside twist into a tight, prickly lump. What vulgar, sterile lies. Phrasing from a security service manual: "Everything went according to protocol, personnel alive and well." But inside — a mess. Inside — shrapnel. He imagined illuga reading this, sitting in his office, feet propped up on the desk, pressing his lips together in disappointment. No. This wouldn't do.
He pressed "select all" and deleted. The screen went blank again. The darkness of the apartment thickened, became denser. Lohen rose from the bed, walked to the kitchen, trying not to make noise, though there was no one to make noise for — he lived alone. Took a bottle of water from the fridge, but didn't drink, just pressed the cold glass to his forehead. The image flared again before his eyes: a ricochet passing a centimeter from his temple, knocking a chip out of the concrete wall. He hadn't even realized what it was at first. Only later, when Gunnar came over and ran a finger over the scratch on his helmet, did it hit him — death had just licked his temple, breathing an icy breath over him, and moved on, looking for someone slower.
The phone remained in the bedroom. Lohen returned, lay on his back, stared at the ceiling. In the silence, the ringing began to rise again. He picked up the phone. Opened the chat again. Typed again.
•
Second message.
"Do you know what Nod-Krai really is? It's not just a district. It's someone's gullet. We descend into it, like idiots, and with every step it squeezes tighter. It's so dark there you can't see your own hands, even though our flashlights are powerful, military-grade. The light there is just somehow wrong, it doesn't scatter, it drowns in that darkness, like in a swamp. Today I thought we were all going to die. Right there, in that fucking gullet. Not as heroes, but as cornered animals. And you know what's the funniest? I thought not about what I hadn't managed to do in life, not about unfinished business. I thought that you would read in the report: 'Lohen killed in a shootout', stay silent for a minute, and then start looking for my replacement. And that's right. That's how it should be, but it nearly killed me right there, do you understand? Not a bullet. That thought."
His fingers flew across the screen. He was spewing it out of himself like vomit — hurriedly, unable to distinguish words, not caring about commas. He wrote and felt the fear leaving through his fingertips, leaving behind only a cold, scorched emptiness. He finished the last word and froze. Reread it. His face flushed with shame. God, what was this drivel?! What was this hysterics at three in the morning? "It nearly killed me"? "You'd start looking for a replacement"? That was saying it outright: "illuga, I'm afraid you don't give a damn about me. Please, hold me." Ugh. Disgusting.
Lohen clenched his jaw so hard his teeth grated. He imagined illuga's face reading this. First, a surprised raised eyebrow. Then — a slight smirk. And finally, that look he always gave Lohen — slightly condescending, studying, as if at an interesting but defective specimen. illuga would never say: "Oh, you poor thing, come here, I'll comfort you." He would reply something like: "If you're that scared, maybe you should take a vacation? A couple of weeks at the seaside?" And that would be a hundred times worse than any mockery. Because it would mean he didn't understand. That he saw it as weakness that needed to be treated with rest, and not what it really was — an attempt to reach something that Lohen himself couldn't even formulate.
Delete. Yes. Definitely delete.
He deleted it. Hurled the phone towards his feet. It thumped dully against the bunched-up blanket and went dark, plunging the room back into darkness. The silence pressed down like a chokehold. The ringing in his ears shifted to a high, mosquito-like whine. Lohen closed his eyes. His eyelids were hot and dry, as if rubbed with sand. He lay there, trying to force his thoughts to slow down, but they raced on, galloping like frightened horses.
The face of that guy floated before his inner eye. Not from their group. One of those who had holed up in a container at the intersection of the fifth and seventh rows. Lohen had seen him for just a second: the flash of the shot illuminated a young, almost boyish face with a mouth twisted by fear. He was shooting without aiming, just spraying the passageway with lead. They were about thirty meters apart. Lohen had pressed himself against the rusted side of some loader, feeling the bullets drum against the metal, and thought: "Now. Now one will pierce this tin can and enter my gut." He wasn't afraid of death in general. He was afraid of a specific bullet. The one somewhere in the barrel of that scared kid. Already fired. Already flying. Already...
It didn't hit, one of the team killed the shooter. And Lohen sat for another minute, back pressed against the vibrating metal, unable to force himself to stand.
He reached for the phone again. It was becoming an obsession. As if a rift had opened inside him, and to avoid falling into it completely, he needed to scribble, to speak, to shout at someone. illuga was the only one who could hear. And the only one he would never dare to send this to. The perfect addressee.
•
Third message.
"I'm sitting on the bed and I can't take off my goddamn boot. Funny, right? Got the left one off, but the right one — no. The lace tightened into a knot, wet, dirty, won't give. And I stared at it for five minutes, and then I realized I was about to bawl my eyes out. Over a shoelace. Because it was the last line. I came back, I made it, I exhaled, and the fucking boot won't come off. And all that horror I'd kept inside, while I was shooting back, while I was running, while I was pulling out a wounded teammate — it sucker-punched me in the gut because of a stupid knot. I sat down on the floor in the hallway and cut it with a knife. You'd say it's hysterics and unprofessionalism. And I'd probably agree. But that doesn't negate the fact that one more second — and I would have just smashed my head against the wall to drown out that scream inside."
Tears streamed down his cheeks. Fast, hot. Lohen wiped the moisture with the back of his hand, angrily, as if brushing away an insect. He wasn't a crybaby. He wasn't weak. He'd been through so many operations that any other veteran would have grown gray hair by now. But this sortie... Nod-Krai had broken something in him. Not his spine, no. Some internal bridge that separated the professional from the ordinary person. And now the ordinary person was crawling out, naked, trembling, with a cry for help that was impossible to utter aloud. Only to write. And delete.
He didn't reread the third message. Too painful. Just highlighted the text and pressed the delete key. The letters vanished, like tears on hot skin. No trace. Just an empty input line and a blinking cursor, resembling someone's indifferent, winking eye.
The wind rustled outside the window. A poplar branch scratched against the glass, the sound sharp, grating. Lohen flinched, his hand jerking to his waist, where his gun should have been. But the gun wasn't there. He had taken it off and locked it in the safe in the hallway, obeying the instruction he himself had written for the entire department: "Weapons must be stored in a specially equipped place." The irony was that now the instruction seemed stupid to him. He wanted to feel the weight of the Glock in his hand. No, not to shoot himself. Just to know — he was not defenseless. Even here. Even now.
Lohen got up and walked to the window. The street was asleep. Streetlights flooded the asphalt with orange light. His car stood by the entrance, covered in dirty streaks after the trip to the industrial zone. The world behind the glass looked peaceful, almost idyllic. And this didn't soothe; on the contrary, it caused a dissonance that made him nauseous. How could one sleep, when just five kilometers from here lay Nod-Krai, where the shell casings perhaps hadn't even cooled yet? How could one drink tea and watch TV shows, knowing the world was full of such gullets, swallowing people whole?
He turned away from the window. Returned to the bed. Sat down, crossing his legs. The phone back in his hand. The chat with illuga open again. He's probably asleep. Or not. illuga generally slept little — four, five hours, no more. He said sleep was a waste of time. Perhaps now he's sitting over some schematics, drinking coffee, and not even thinking about Lohen.
Jealousy? No. Resentment? Also no. More like a melancholy awareness of his own insignificance. illuga was the center of their little universe, the brain, the strategist, the one who always knew what to do. Lohen was the weapon. The instrument. The best one, yes, but an instrument. And an instrument shouldn't self-reflect. An instrument should work.
•
Fourth message.
"Do you remember that conversation in the car? We were driving to the site, and you were talking about your 'domino principle.' That people are dominoes, and if you push one, the whole chain falls. You asked me then who I saw myself as in that scheme. I said — the domino that no one will ever knock down. You laughed and said I was an idiot. And today I realized I'm not a domino. I'm the part that breaks first when the mechanism goes into overdrive. The fuse. I take the hit so the others can hold. And that's normal. That's my role. But today I felt that I cracked. That I burned out. And that's scary, illuga. Because if the fuse fails, they just replace it. Throw out the old one and put in a new one. And I don't want to be thrown out. I don't want to be a part. I want..."
At this point he faltered. His finger hovered over the screen. What did he actually want? For illuga to see him not just as a combat unit? To hug him? It all sounded so pathetic, so out of place in their world of metal, gunpowder, and cold calculation, that Lohen even smirked. Bitterly, crookedly.
What did he want? He didn't know himself. Maybe just for someone to be there. Not now, in this empty apartment, but there, inside. For the fear not to be only his personal burden. To be able to divide it between two. illuga always said that the team was the main thing. But at the same time, he himself remained at an unreachable height, from which he commanded, but where the shrapnel of others' emotions didn't reach.
Lohen looked at the unfinished sentence. His finger pressed "delete" on its own. Out of sight, out of mind. A principle as old as the world, which didn't work. The fourth message vanished. It should have been followed by a lull, but something entirely different was growing inside. Rage. A dull, dark rage at himself for this weakness, for this stupid, humiliating impulse. At illuga — for his eternal equanimity. At Nod-Krai — for simply existing.
He shoved the phone under the pillow. Closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, steadily, as he had been taught. Inhale — hold — exhale. Inhale — hold — exhale. But between the inhale and the exhale, scraps of memories crept in: a magnesium-bright flash, the sound of breaking glass, Ulrik's wheeze as a shard hit his shoulder. He tried to push them away, but they returned, like the obsessive refrain of a vile song.
He took the phone out again. The clock read 03:47. Dawn was still far off. And silence. A silence that could drive you mad if you didn't fill it with something. Anything. Even with words that no one would ever read.
•
Fifth message.
"illuga, I think I'm losing my mind. That's not a figure of speech. I'm genuinely scared to stay alone in this apartment. Not because someone might come and kill me — that would be even simpler. But because I'm left alone with myself, and today I got to know myself from a side I never wanted to know. I chickened out. I, Lohen, chickened out. Not like a soldier hiding from bullets. Like a person who is terrified, to the point of trembling in the gut, that all of this is meaningless. That we risk our lives for some game where we are just pawns. And you know this, I can see it in your eyes — you know this. But you keep silent. And I keep silent. And we all keep silent, pretending that everything is going according to plan. And today 'according to plan' almost became my mass grave. And you know what I understood, lying there under fire? I don't want to die. I don't want to. I want to live. I want to get out of this shit and go somewhere. With you. Just the two of us. No watchtowers, no snipers, no radios. This is probably the stupidest thing I've ever written. But it's the truth."
He typed this in one breath, almost without blinking. The words flowed in a continuous stream, so fast that autocorrect twisted the endings, but he paid no attention. It wasn't a plea. It was a confession. Absolutely honest, turned inside out to the last nerve.
Having finished, Lohen finally exhaled. All the air left his lungs with a wheezing, almost groaning sound. His eyes burned. He blinked and reread the text. Slowly. Thoughtfully. Each word hit him backhanded. Especially "with you." Especially "just the two of us."
A wave of shame and relief washed over him simultaneously, mixing into an explosive cocktail. Yes, that was the truth. The very one he had been burying for years under a heap of professionalism, cynicism, and dry formality. It turned out he didn't just respect illuga as a commander. Didn't just value him as a friend. It was deeper. And that scared him even more than the bullets in Nod-Krai.
His finger lay on the screen again. The habitual gesture — select all, bring up the trash bin. But this time his hand trembled. Lohen looked at the text and felt a leaden, viscous melancholy spreading inside. This was the most honest moment of his life. Now he would delete it — and again be left alone with the silence, the ringing in his ears, and the hated right boot lying in the hallway.
He took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut, and pressed "delete."
The text vanished.
On the screen, a blank field again. And only somewhere deep inside remained the echo of the phrase "I want to live… with you."
He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Five messages. Five attempts to shout out. Five screams into the void. He felt gutted, like a fish on a cutting board. No emotions, no thoughts, just a cottony, ringing emptiness. Maybe now he could fall asleep? Close his eyes and fall into oblivion without dreams?
No. Sleep wouldn't come. Something remained. Some tiny ember that wouldn't let him rest. Lohen picked up the phone again. This time aimlessly, automatically opening the chat with illuga. Just to look at the avatar. There was his profile — sharp, stern, with that eternal squint of intelligent, cold eyes. Lohen looked at the photo and felt something warm and bitter spread in his chest at the same time.
He began to type again. Just to close the gestalt. To put a final point. One word. Just one word that signified nothing and signified everything.
He typed:
•
Sixth message.
"Scared."
No explanations. No "hello, how are you." Just a bare, stripped-to-the-bone verb. He wrote it and smiled. Now he would delete it, go to sleep, and in the morning buy himself a new phone and throw this one away, as a witness to his nighttime madness.
His thumb moved towards the screen to highlight the word...
And at that moment, the phone vibrated. An incoming message from illuga. Startled, Lohen flinched, his finger slipped off the delete button and hit the send icon.
Whoosh.
A small checkmark. Sent.
The world froze. Lohen stopped breathing. His heart did a somersault in his chest and stuck somewhere near his throat. There, on the screen, in the chat with illuga, his message had appeared. One word. "Scared." Can't fix it. Can't delete it. Time sent: 04:03.
"No," he whispered with dry lips. "No, no, no..."
He frantically pressed on the message, searching for the "undo" button, though he knew this messenger didn't have one. There was no such function. It was over. The end. He had sent it. To illuga.
Panic exploded in his head. What would he think? That Lohen was drunk? That he was having a nervous breakdown? That he was no longer fit for field work? Worse — that he was pathetic. Worst of all — that he was pathetic in his cowardice, in that lonely nighttime howl that had slipped out of control.
The phone vibrated again.
Incoming message.
illuga was online at four in the morning. He wasn't sleeping. He had read it.
Lohen stared at the screen with eyes wide in horror, unable to move. Three dots at the bottom of the screen — illuga was typing a reply. How long was he typing? Seconds stretched into minutes. Lohen felt his legs go weak, even though he was already lying on the bed. The world shrank to this chat window, to these three bouncing dots that were now deciding his fate.
The dots disappeared.
A message fell into the chat. Just two words.
"I know."
And then immediately a second one, right after, without a pause, as if an exhale:
"I'm coming over now. Don't go anywhere."
Lohen dropped the phone onto his chest. A sound escaped his lungs, something between a laugh and a sob. He closed his eyes, feeling the last, the strongest wall inside him — the wall he had been building for years — crack and begin to crumble.
illuga knows. illuga is coming. illuga hadn't abandoned him.
Outside the window, dawn was beginning to grey, dispelling the demons of Nod-Krai lurking in the dark corners. Lohen lay there, clutching the phone to his chest with two messages that were worth more than a hundred successfully conducted operations. He was scared. And for the first time, he wasn't ashamed of his fear. Because the fear was no longer his personal curse. It was shared by two.
All that remained was to wait. And he was ready to wait. He wasn't going anywhere.