Death is Patient

The Wrong Sky

I'm sleeping. In my dreams, it's Fedya I'm maiming. I swing at him with crowbars, with baseball bats, with fire. I'm him, swinging at me. I lose all my teeth to the flood of blood and puke coming out of my mouth, Fedya begs me to kill him. The girl I've killed kills me.

The girl I killed and I sit quietly in a peaceful meadow, talking of the mountains we can see in the horizon and what might lay beyond them.

I wake up to a loud sound and a scream. I jerk awake and fall out of the couch. The girl is gone. The world spins around me as I get up and I fall over trying to get away from whoever is attacking me. Bile rises in my throat as I stumble. Another scream, now a groan, followed by what sounds eerily like my name.

I whip around. The world spins and my sight is blurry, but the orange head by the window is familiar. For a second I think it's a hallucination, until he speaks again.

"Freya", Fedya wheezes, as the rope of my trap pulls his head down. I kick into gear, the adrenaline enough to get me to him in time. The girl's knife is still there. I take it and cut the rope. The armchair falls and Fedya lifts his head, gasping for air as I pull him into the apartment through the window.

"Sorry, sorry - Sorry", my voice sounds hoarse, breaks as I speak. We scramble in for a hug, Fedya not minding that my trap almost killed me, me not minding that he's covered in blood. I sob and squeeze him for dear life, to convince myself he's real and alive, that i'm not dead, that he's with me. My murder was worth it. She can't kill him. No one will be allowed to kill him.

"How did you-" I find myself out of breath suddenly, having to take a deep one, swallowing on the bile in my throat. My temples are pulsating. My ear hurts. "-find me?" I finish.

Fedya looks out of the window like he's looking for something. Someone. "A sponsor told me where you are. I didn't know they could do that, I just - I just came here, to get you, I was..."

His speaking fades out as he sees me properly. He looks me over, paling a little. I can't look good, then. I look down. I'm covered in more blood than he is.

A cold hand touches my forehead. "You're burning", he says, worry lacing his voice. There's irony in his tenderness to me, our embrace when our clothes are red with other's lives.

I catch his hand and remove it. "I'm fine", I tell him, but I'm not sure what compelled me to lie. I'm not fine. My heart beats hard in my chest and my arms feel weak and shaky. There's a churning nausea in me, a heaviness in my breathing. Fedya's fingers brush my ear and I jerk back, the pain travelling down my neck and across my face. I grit my teeth. I'm going to die in here anyway, who cares?

"You're not fit to run, Yeya", he mumbles.

"Run? Why would we have to run? I've spent basically the entire game in here, I..." I hold back a wave of nausea.

"Someone's hunting me. One of the careers. Like a shadow. He never attacks, just slowly comes for me. We have to leave. He's going to figure out where we are. " I don't ask him why someone's hunting him. To be prey has become second nature, though I've been predator too.

We don't have time to figure out what to do next. A deep rumble is heard in the distance, followed by a shaking beneath our feet. It quickly rises in power, the doors swinging on their hinges, the walls creaking with it. A crack forms on the ceiling, dust raining down on us. Fedya pushes me toward the door without a word, and I get what he's saying. Run . I leave my bags behind.

I almost fall over on my way to the door. The ceiling collapses where we'd stood only seconds ago and I book it down the stairs. I slip and fall on the way down, trying to catch myself on the railing. Instead I make a somersault and hit my shoulder on the wall once I reach the bottom, the telltale sound of it popping out of its socket travelling up my neck to my inner ear. The pain makes me see white. I might scream or might not. I'm not listening. Fedya doesn't stop to ask me if I'm okay, simply grabs me by my other arm and pulls me out the door.