Page 17 of Vasily the Hammer

This is how I die.

What will happen to Ana? Will Kostya see to her safety?

He grabs me by the shoulders and forces me to meet his eyes. “Vasily,” he says with a rough shake. “Get out of your head and get out of the building. Go!”

Get out of your head.

Fuck, this is the other reason I don’t leave the building anymore. My shrink says it’s an unhealthy coping mechanism and there’s no shame in PTSD; it’s just got to be addressed before it consumes me. But I am consumed.

Another shove has me moving. I go past the door, though, to the first available fire extinguisher. “We gotta get this out!” I yell at Kostya, finally processing everything for what it is. A drive-by. Shots were fired, but they’re long past, and thankfully, there was only the handful of us in the back. If anyone was hit, they’re not showing it.

Molotov cocktails are causing the most damage. Offensive, really. It’s like taking a gun out of my hand just to turn it on me. And nothing about the 3D printers is flammable, but that’s not the only shit here. Fabric, paper, an entire wall of caustic chemicals. This is bad.

Slug swears and pivots his fire extinguisher when a new fire catches closer to us. “The files are there!” he yells, gesturing to a laptop on the other side of the stream of fire slithering across the concrete floor. “The XQ19 files!”

It’s still a prototype. It’s too valuable to leak. For now, the file should only exist on that laptop and on the removable drive currently docked in it, mid-update.

Before I can grab another extinguisher, there’s a whoosh, something else igniting, sending Slug flying back toward us. He’s singed and coughing, but I think he’ll be okay.

Flaming chunks of ceiling rain down on us.

This is bad.

Kostya has a rag to his face to breathe through the smoke rushing toward the open door. “It’s too late,” he shouts.

Instincts have me fighting that, as much out of principle as out of fear. If I let this shop go, it’s going to be a major financial blow. But what’s really in my head is how it’s another road block pushing me back to Flagstaff.

I hoist Slug over my shoulder and hustle out of the shop.

Chapter 7

Ana

Ifeel likeI’ve been duped by Vasily.

I am three days old with a lifetime of knowledge. Not a lifetime, not quite, but when I asked Vasily how old I was yesterday, he just yawned and said, “Why the twenty questions? We’ll talk about everything tomorrow.”

How was that a ‘twenty question,’ even? Is he one of those husbands who can’t remember basic facts about their wives and just expect their wives to remind them when it’s time to do husbandly things? That’s a thing. I got confirmation from the show we watched last night. I had the vague sense from what I saw that an apocalypse was happening, but that was all background story to the main plot of the couple trying to figure out theirrelationship.

So I guess life could be worse. This could also be an apocalypse. I have this strong sense that, despite my kitchen skills, I would not do well in an apocalypse.

When I wake up, it’s morning again, and I’m back in my bed. The neurologist warned me that I’d be a lot more fatigued than usual, and despite not knowing what ‘usual’ is, I have to agree. The moment I heard the shift in Vasily’s breathing and took the chance to curl up next to him on the couch and just sort of fantasize about this being a normal night between normal people, I was sound asleep yesterday.

I dig through every box in my closet, every cabinet in my bathroom, every drawer in my vanity. I conclude that I’m a crazy person. Like the pots and pans, like the toiletries, like the clothes, I have an entire collection of make-up that’s gone unused. I can’t tell if it’s brand new or if I just bought it all on a whim and never used it. I sit at the vanity and play around with it, decide I’m not nearly as skilled at make-up— or matching skin tone when buying make-up— as I am at cooking, but I’ve got the basics down.

I must want everything to be new all the time. It’s entirely possible I married the CEO of a 3D printing company because I needed a man who could afford my spending habits. Coordinator at a local theater sounds fun but not particularly lucrative. Or my husband skyrocketed up a corporate ladder because I was spending more than he was making.

I have a tattoo of Vasily’s insignia just above my vulva, so I’m leaning toward the latter. I don’t think a CEO would want his wife to have that, but a guy who was a bit of a thug— I don’t want to say my husband was a thug, but all evidence points that way— who climbed the corporate ladder after getting married? That makes sense.

Because I’m frustrated with him, I raid his bedroom again. He didn’t tell me not to, and he had to have noticed I was in there. How else would I have gotten his hoodie? Again, I get the impression of a much more lived-in space, but it’s the only space in the apartment that feels that way.

I find a scrapbook, but I’m not in it. No wedding stuff or candids. No vacations or parties. Mostly childhood stuff. Someone took the time to embellish it and write out descriptions, but they’re in Russian. Cyrillic, so I can’t even guess at their meanings.

I find a ridiculous stash of pill bottles, but they’re all prescriptions, most of them current. I don’t know what any of them are. Maybe I’m a germaphobe, which is why I need all my stuff to be brand new, but he’s either immuno-compromised or a major hypochondriac, so it works out.

I find a bottle of lube in his nightstand.

I find over twenty thousand dollars in cash at the bottom of a duffel bag that’s packed with clothes, a toiletry bag, a handgun with a designer-looking navy-blue grip, and a passport with a slightly changed name— still Baranov, but Artyom. The photo looks like him. It’s the sort of thing I’d expect a criminal to have, or a militia man. Someone who thought, whether rationally or not, that he might have to run at a moment’s notice and needed to be prepared if that moment came.

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