It’s always time for a smoke when you’re out on the battlefield.

If anyone had asked me about my years serving as a test subject inside a top-secret lab, I would have had to tell them that it wasn’t all that bad. Sometime before I forced my way out of the lab, an assistant gave me a medium-sized brass box. It contained a few items—a newspaper clipping from the Moskva Daily with the front article about Vasiliy himself. It showed him planting the flag of the Republic atop St Petersburg’s Hermitage, marking the Republic’s crushing victory against the State of Leningrad. The box also held a copy of Vasiliy’s ennobling promotion to Major General of the Great Republic army, and a Mrubska tobacco pipe with a little note attached to it, a bear’s head carved on one end. I never particularly cared for the shiny titles and heroics Vasiliy was so fond of, but I had always shared his exquisite taste in smokes.

I don’t remember much about my time at the lab, but I remember specifically the pipe with the dog’s head. Finding tobacco was already an extraordinary feat, not to mention having it chucked inside a pipe. Vasiliy wasn’t even allowed to see me—His Excellency was fussy about his officers spending their precious time with some dispensable test subject. But he gave me all of those little souvenirs, which the lab assistant told me were some of Vasiliy’s most prized possessions. That is the precious heart of a comrade.

If only Vasiliy’s misguided ideology didn’t lead him to his horrendous death.

I no longer have the note, but I’ve stored away its message in the back of my brain. It went something like this.

“Light a cigarette, smoke it halfway and throw it away, and the affair lasts for a minute. It’s unseemly and blasphemous. You would rather use a pipe. Such a thing is like a loyal dog. You come home, and it will already be there, quietly waiting for you. You will light up a pipe, look at the bisque smoke. So you will remember me.”

He was probably mocking me at the time for churning away cheap cigs like they were water. As grateful as I was for his gift, I smoked half a pack a day anyway. What did he expect? That’s all I know about joy. Give me a good book and a pipe of Vishneskyi. I’ll quit cigarettes immediately.

I set the pipe aside, pull out my pack of smokes, and reach for the gas lighter buried under piles of unfinished cigarettes. I light the cigarette and take a slow breath first. Another cigarette, another day closer to death, another day closer to lung cancer. But how else will I entertain myself? If I don’t crank out a puff now, I could still die tomorrow morning.

I put the cigarette in my mouth and draw a breath.

The first inhale is always the most enchanting moment. Sucking a long breath to fill the mouth with smoke, then parting your lips and drawing in the chemicals before any flavor can crawl its way out. Letting the smoke overflow the brain so the fog can shroud my fatigue away.

It feels less good with every smoke, but it still feels good.

Before long, the dappled smoke fills the air. I pause my pleasure, drop the half-cigarette and stomp on it until the flame is extinguished. The fumes should dissipate before the girl wakes up. She doesn’t like the smoke.

I exhale. Finally, I’m in a good mental state. Good enough to reassess the whole shitshow that is today.

I told Dzyuba enough to make me sound truthful. By enough, I mean I had to tell them the woman is, in fact, in my room. They chided me for my personal intrigues and didn’t report my “indiscretion” to my superiors. Dzyuba wanted to see her immediately, but I told them that this “woman” was extraordinary—she would panic in the presence of strangers and needed to be seduced by faith. “A woman’s panic is like an implosion,” I’d told them. “She can very easily die of stress, and if she dies, we die.” I bargained my way out of the mess, and they gave me a night to negotiate with her. Under any other circumstances, I don’t think they would’ve let me be alone with her for an hour, much less a night, but I guess my words hold a little more weight now that I’m the only option they have for survival.

But Smolov and his men are out there, probing my every move. We have to get out of the room early this morning. And that means a couple hours from now.

Alice is the crucial piece to this puzzle. Yet I’ve mentioned nothing to her.

As the cigarette smoke clears, the words General Volodymyr Kuznetsov of the Republic said to me before the start of this mission finally, finally return to my mind.

“You have been taught everything you can to communicate with that woman. When the vault drops, track her down, tell her to follow you. We want her in a stable mental condition. Do not tell her anything. Make her believe you. When she believes you, please escort her here. Leave us to worry about the rest. After that, you no longer have to care about that woman’s existence. We will take you to Petrozavodsk, on the banks of the Onega, and you will be a free man as soon as you cross the river. Your safety will be guaranteed. We will grant you a new identity, a whole new name, and you will gain the right to do any office work in administrative agencies in any states under our Union. Your life will be preserved.”

I had asked the General about Smolnikov, to which he replied, “He will be safe. That’s everything you need to know. You will not know anything else, but you have my honorary promise that he will be left alone.”

Technically, I didn’t lie to Dzyuba and Smolov. I simply didn’t tell the whole truth, and I certainly did not speak my words in good faith, but they weren’t lies.

Here’s the truer truth. I’m not sent by Pavlyuchenko. In fact, the only time I ever met the guy was during a hasty five-minute tea, where he left shortly after dropping three sugar cubes into his drink.

The thing is, there is this one man that I’m dealing with, a person who will look down on both Smolnikov and Pavlyuchenko as if they’re nothing but pathetic insects. Armies of thousands of men? Nothing but mere dirt under the bed in his eyes. He is a person whose real name isn’t known, whose hideout location isn’t disclosed, and whether he’s a real person or just a fictional entity is a matter of debate.

He can crush every single one of these puny self-imposed institutions within the blink of an eye. They call him His Excellency.

I’ve never met him. All of my dealings were with his right-hand man, General Kuznetsov; and the directives I’ve followed all came from him. I’ve worked with him no fewer than on fifty missions now, so we’ve built up some mutual trust. But I couldn’t believe the words the man was telling me as he was describing my present task.

None of the details made sense.

How could they have known she would be at the exact coordinates where she was picked up? And if they knew her location, why couldn’t they determine when she would report there— the specific date?

And finally, why me? Why didn’t they just charge inside this fort and take care of this matter themselves? They would be more than capable of doing that. Why choose the person with almost no knowledge of what the fuck’s going on?

I told myself it was because I was special—I was the only war machine they had at their disposal. I told myself that if one person could do this job, there was no need for them to sacrifice an army. I scoured for every plausible reason to make myself feel good for doing something that I had wanted no part of.

The prize on the other end was freedom, after all.

Apparently, the fact that I couldn’t even remember until the realization that day, right in front of Petrov, wasn’t a big enough red flag.

They told me to just do my part, and I did. I waited until the sky turned from a dead man’s gray to a snowy white. And here she is, sleeping soundly on my sofa like a baby inside a glass cage.

I take a small rock and make the seventh notch in the wall. I have ten hours left. I could’ve caught her right when she was still inside the box. I could’ve finished this mission seven days ago. I could’ve told her I would shield her from the gunmen and guide her to safety. But instead, I sheltered her for the entire week, and now all I have left is ten hours.

And what will happen after ten hours?

“We’ll kill you both,” Kuznetsov had told me.

I learned of the consequences days ago, even if I didn’t remember the whole mission. And still I did nothing. NOTHING. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I stare at the woman warmly clad in my coat. She covers her entire body, exposing only her face. Her curling eyelashes twitch and tremble a few times as she exhales, and that makes her look even more vulnerable. Her hair hangs from the chair to the ground. I don’t know if I’m feeling the side effect from the smokes, but in this dim space, it’s still rippling as if there’s a mini flashlight under the curls. I want to touch her hair again. I want to caress it in my wounded palms again, so I can delude myself that my calloused skin can still feel something.

She possesses that distinctly feminine charm I have read about in Tolstoy’s book.

I thought I was trained to prepare for anything, but it turned out that I am not prepared at all. Her smile. Her warm gestures. The way she always looks forward to my returning. The way she always cares whether I’ve eaten or not, whether I’ve slept or not, even if her own stomach was growling and her own eyes were bleary from lack of sleep.

I leave my smokes and lighter on the table and move closer to the sofa, peering at Alice’s sleeping face. I can’t even look at her. I always thought she was a coward, so why can’t I look straight into the face of a coward?

I force myself to study her face for the longest time—her softly closed eyes and her lightly puckered lips. Anna Karenina hides itself under her hands and against her chest. She does look like a slumbering dragon guarding her treasure.

I have never felt interested in seeing such a person. I swear to God, if he exists, that I have never felt so satisfied when looking at another human being.

I lift my hand to touch the girl’s cheek but hesitate. I am afraid of her waking up.

What do you fear, Vronsky? I just want to touch her cheek. Are you a coward? I’m not a coward. I’m not a coward. I’m not a coward. I’m not a coward. I’m not a coward.

My hand touches her cheek.

The warmth spills over my fingertips, racing through my arm to my shoulder blades. I jolt up and pull my hand away.

I know I should just retreat to my corner before I wake her up, but I can’t stop whatever the hell I’m doing. Taking my fingertips off of the girl’s cheek, I turn to look at her long blonde hair flowing on the floor. The strands keep on glimmering, glinting like fireflies under the Northern sky. They keep calling and calling. “Touch me,” they hum. “Caress me,” they whisper.

I give in.

I touch her hair, slowly intertwining my fingers through her locks. They are a tad greasier and frizzier than the first day I saw them, but they still feel soothing to touch.

I remind myself to only focus on stroking her hair, but all the memories overflow. I think of the days before we had to get ourselves to the frontline. The days I would enjoy a relaxing walk and play with the army’s Rottweilers. The days I could just lean my back against the wall and roll a smoke before passing it to Roman. The days Vasiliy and I could spend on our weekly fishing trips catching the biggest taimen the icy rivers had to offer.

And I keep stroking to sail upstream, against the tide of time.

Peace.

Have I ever been at peace since stepping out of the glass cage and leaving the camps to join the army? Have I ever been at peace working under my commanders?

His Excellency’s henchmen trampled me when I first arrived, beating me like a dog. They injected chemicals into my arms. They squeezed their huge machines on top of my head, peeled off my scalp as if to rip out my skull. They threw me onto the battlefield, forced me to bear pieces of landmines against my feet, bullets through my abdomen. They used me as their human shield. My body sank in blisters and scars.

What have I received after all these years of loyalty? Nothing. Nothing, apart from a promise of freedom.

So, what do I do? Do I keep holding on to that fragile trust and praying that they will fulfill their part?

“Your life will be preserved,” they said. But that’s a lie. A flat-out lie.

I already know they won’t follow through on their promise. I will die. They will kill me themselves. Smolnikov won’t be there to save me. Vasiliy won’t be there to save me. Heck, I can choose to stay loyal until the very end and perish anyway like Vasiliy, or patiently work my way towards my own apartment, medals hung all over the walls, only to take a bullet in the back of my skull like Roman.

There’s nothing to be gained from loyalty. Loyalty, the only embodiment of affection in a fibrous world, turns out to be just an illusion. What can I believe in?

“Alexei?” A tender, drowsy voice resounds. I open my eyes and lock them with Alice’s, my fingers still in her hair.

“Ah, shit. Sorry. Backing off now.” I pull my hand back.

“What are you doing? Why are you not sleeping?”

“Well—”

“Are you cold? My apologies. You can have your shirt back . . .” She tries to get up. I put my left hand on her forehead.

“Just stay where you are,” I say. “I’m not cold.”

“So why are you awake?” She looks at me, waiting for an answer.

“I . . .” My thoughts run wild, searching for an excuse as to my sleeplessness. I need to let Dzyuba and Smolov subdue her, escort her into a troop carrier, raise their white flag to surrender, and hand her over to His Excellency’s army. I need to throw her out of her pinkish world, kick her from this warm sofa, rob the book from her hands, and remind her she is just intellectual property, that she belongs to someone other than herself. I need to betray her.

“I want you to . . . read the story to me,” I tell her.

“Read the story?” She knits her brows.

“Yup. How are you catching up with Anna Karenina? Read it to me.”