“I think I am the last woman on Earth.” Placing her hands above the rusty mini diesel heater, she breaks the silence. She’s been holding the machine as tightly as she could until now, so I assume she understands how valuable it is. Dudes living in proper rooms have to set fire with their bare hands.

“The last woman on Earth?” I squeeze my forehead.

She nods. “Yes. That is what I am told.”

“Please explain.”

“I do not know more. I do not even understand myself that much, you see.”

“Tell me the truth. I won’t yell. Promise.” Yelling is so two hours ago. I’m too tired and anxious. I want to figure out what the hell is going on. A woman jumped out of nowhere and conveniently showed up inside this fort? That’s not normal.

“I am telling the truth.”

“Don’t you have X-ray vision?”

“No. . .” she replies reluctantly; the face she’s making makes me feel as though my question was a solid ten on the idiotic scale.

“What about metallic skin?”

She shakes her head.

“You don’t?” I’m shocked. Roman would’ve hated to hear this. “How can you be so sure? Have you checked . . . like double-checked?”

“I know my body . . .”

I have no reason to doubt her. I’ve done a body check, looking through her dress pockets and the inside of her shoes, making covert skin contact to have a feel. Unless she can turn her skin into silver at will, she’s not a humanoid.

My fist pounds my thigh. “Damn! You should’ve had those! Without them, you’re just a mutated Russian specimen. I’m telling you, I don’t buy it. Suppose you really are a woman, then you must have some idea where you came from. Where were you before you got here?”

“. . . I do not know.”

She has clouded—or at least avoided—every bit of information possible since we started talking. Her eyes wander around the room as she mumbles, hands clutching the chest area of her dress like it’s a deployment map and she’s a clueless rookie way out of her rockers.

I don’t know her name, her origin, her motive. Nothing. But if I try to push her for answers, she’ll cry again. And that’s not something I’ve been trained to deal with.

“So how can you expect me to believe you?”

“You are not obliged to believe me!” She wrinkles her nose. “I have told you all I can. Trust me or not, it is your choice.”

“Fine.” I lean back against the shelf and fold my hands across my chest. “I’ll take your word at face value for now. But don’t think that means I’m letting you off the hook.”

“I understand.”

“Listen. I’m just gonna ask you one thing. I won’t ask anything anymore after you answer this one question.”

The woman ducks her head low and doesn’t respond, but she’s listening. I ponder, trying to think of something she might actually answer.

“Are you associated with government experiments of any sort?” What a lame question, I think.

“I do not know.”

I mouth a silent fuck. About what I expected. But her startled expression—from the aimless darting of her eyes to the hand touching her throat—has already declared her guilty.

So this poor person is rubbish, what’s left over after those state politicians finish doing whatever it is they do when they’re not busy asserting their sovereignty over disputed lands. That must be why she’s such a wimp.

I’m obviously not a threat, but I don’t think she feels the same way. She might even suspect me of being some government official who’s trying to abduct her, which is just plain absurd. What are the chances a nameless pawn like me turns out to be some hot shit?

Even if I had the power, I’m not gonna fuck around with those butchers who call themselves scientists.

I’ve heard stories about the war machines the supreme leaders of every single state have been attempting to produce. From the supposedly credible tales about disfigured corpses, including vivid detail that would make even the toughest cracker wince a little, it’s easy to see how so many of us came to believe them. The commandant officers grab the most elite young men and pack them off to concentration camps. Nobody really knows what happens inside, because obviously nobody has ever come back from them, but the stories describe horrifying experiments on their bodies. On. Their. Fucking. Bodies. Their skin, their bones, their brains. Right down to the individual cells. I’ve heard about scientists who peeled off people’s faces, corroding their raw flesh with acid then plugging fucktons of electrical wires straight through their skull, all in the name of science. And the stories probably aren’t even wrong.

I’ve been in one of those labs, after all.

They treat those specimens like lab rats. No, worse. At least they feed lab rats.

This woman must be more than a test subject. She’s the ‘last woman on Earth,’ right? If what she claims is true, this must be some sort of bullshit those brainless clowns at the lab are up to. If women still exist, the higher-ups wouldn’t just let them hang around as if nothing happened. Whoever she is, she must be crucial to whatever the authorities are doing, whoever they are. Smolnikov might be interested in her; Pavlyuchenko might be interested in her; the Republic of Moskva might be interested in her. And did they just let her go? I reckon they didn’t.

Thousands of possibilities run through my head—What they did to this woman, and worse, what they will do when they eventually catch her again? Ah, fuck. I’m being too gullible. I can’t even prove she’s a woman yet. I can’t keep thinking as if she is one. I plop to the ground, then take out a cigarette from my pocket. I ask her if she wants one. She shakes her head and moves an inch away from me.

I light up the smoke. “Hey. It wasn’t cool of me to yell at you earlier. Not like what I say now matters, but it wasn’t my intention to freak you out.” I take a puff.

“I-it is okay. . .”

“I don’t know what usually calms you down, but I like to read stories. You know, fiction. Trolls, gnolls, water nymphs, the spirit of the sky . . . that kind of crap. And women, too.” I take another puff. “The writers didn’t think women would be real, so those guys grouped them . . . I mean you, into the same bunch. The worlds in those stories are so wacky and ludicrous, it’s kinda funny. I think I’m kinda into that sorta stuff, heh. Make-believe creatures from another world.”

She rests her hand on her chin, looking like she’s relaxing a little, but says nothing.

I continue. “I read whenever I have any time at all; it’s a cute habit. I think I know why. The world in those books is so different. It can be rosy and bubbly, but at the same time dreadful and bleak. But it’s different, and different is good, you see? When you’ve lived in this kinda environment for some time, you’re gonna get sick of it.” Droplets of water trickle down my head. I look up and realize they’re dripping from the pipe above me. The smoke from my cig clouds the air enough that it would trigger the smoke alarm, if there was one. “Yeah, pretty shitty.”

“Yes,” she says. A one-word reply is what I get for my inspiring speech. She doesn’t even bother to look me in the eyes, how rude.

“Don’t be so tense. I’m not eating you alive,” I say.

“I suppose not. However, the Vodianoys do.”

“Ah, the malevolent water spirit. I suppose you’ve read about them too?”

“Yes. So too do the rushalka, and the Cerberus, and the Mares of Diomedes. They all eat humans. . .”

“You know a lot about this stuff!” I raise my voice against my intention. “Now I don’t look like a Cerberus to you, do I?”

No reply. I sigh. “Now that’s not very nice. And I’ll have you know, rushalkas don’t eat people.”

“They do . . . Iakov penned a story about it.”

“Iakov’s a fraud. His craft is sloppy and uninspiring. He doesn’t count.” To be honest, I don’t even remember what his stories are about anymore. I only remember that they’re crap.

“But I like Iakov . . .” her voice trails off.

“Nonsense. You probably liked him because you were thirteen years old when you read his work.”

She shows the slightest disapproval in the form of a frown that fades away as abruptly as it appeared.

I wave my hand. “Hand that thing over to me.”

“Pardon?”

She looks up, wide-eyed, face doubtful. I walk over to her, sit down and place my hands on the heater.

“Look closely,” I say. “This is how we adjust the temperature.” I work at it for a while, pressing buttons and flicking handles. “We’re lucky.” I snort. “Most other people have to make do with onion-looking furnaces, burning firewood like in the 30s.”

She seems to listen attentively, and it doesn’t take long for her to become an expert on turning the heater on and off.

“Well done.” I clap once as the warm air threads through our fingers. She looks up and gives me a faint smile. At that point, I realize a woman’s smile is nothing like most Russians’. It’s bright, warm, and full of affection, even if it only lasts for a second. Our superiors only smile when they have conquered another land, and I wouldn’t call any man’s smile bright or warm.

“What are you smiling for?” I ask.

“I just wanted to thank you . . .”

“For what?”

“For saving my life. I know I might have overreacted a bit . . . but I really appreciate it. I thought . . . you were a bad person who was trying to harm me. For that, I am sorry.”

Overreacted a bit? You shed tears because someone happened to be two centimeters too close!

“Do I look like such a bad person?”

“N-no. That is not what I meant.”

“Okay, stop mentioning it. It kinda bugs me thinking back about it. Tsk, no good deed goes unpunished, they say. Now I kinda don’t want to share a room with someone who would throw stuff at me as soon as she opens her eyes.”

“I apologize. I feel very guilty.”

“And what are you going to do about it? Leave?”

I say that as a joke, but she seems to take it seriously. She stares at me for a long while, before lowering her head and awkwardly adjusting her tangled hair. It wasn’t even tangled before she started fiddling with the heater buttons, but she keeps on playing with it and it fluffs up. Her lips tremble as if she wants to say something, but is having great trouble doing so.

“I am sorry . . .”

“Stop saying ‘sorry’! Is ‘sorry’ the only word you know? Now, you are here, what do you want to do? You aren’t going to leave, are you? Here, I feed you; here, I give you shelter. You’re a dumbass if—”

“I will.” She interrupts me.

“What?”

“I do not want to cause you any trouble. If you are kind enough to give me directions, I will go first thing in the morning . . .”

Her eyes are watery yet again, but she tries to hide them behind her elbow. I don’t get it. I’m not threatening her. Was it something I said?

“Stay.”

She doesn’t seem to comprehend the word. Her face tightens, like she’s perplexed, and her eyes blink in confusion.

“It’s too cold out there. There’s nothing to eat. There’s nothing to drink. Stay.”

“I. . .”

“Stay.”

“I will make you most troubled. I do not wish for you to hate me.”

“Stay.”

“But you hate me.”

Since when did I say I hate her? I saved her ass. To be fair, all I did was dragging her back here, but she would’ve died from the cold if not under Dzyuba’s hands. Surely saving someone’s life isn’t an act of hatred. I’m so not saving her just for her to throw herself away. I’m trying to be nice, but obviously, she’s thinking I’m an ass. I guess I’ll try matching her definition of nice, for now.

“I’ll be preparing you a place to sleep.” I stand. “Are you gonna stand or not?”

As I turn away, I hear repressed coughs from her, like she’s been holding them in. Despite her best effort, they start to grow in both volume and frequency.

“You don’t have to hold it in.” I turn to her, realizing she’s once again burying her face into her dress. That’s why the coughs sound muffled. “I don’t know if it’s from the dust, or from the cold. But you do realize that if you get sick right now . . . you have zero chance of survival, right?”

She doesn’t reply. Okay, Vronsky. You can be nice if you try. Let’s play nice and don’t fuck this up.

I lower my voice, trying my best to not sound like I’m pressuring her. “Will you listen to me?”

After a long and taxing silence, she finally replies. “Okay.”