Page 43 of Vasily the Hammer

Fuck me if he’s not into drawing.

Wait no, it’s fine. She wouldn’t know.

She nods like this sounds good. “I want to talk to him.”

“He’s sleeping. It’s the middle of the night.”

She jabs me with the heel of her palm, and if anything, that’s a relief. She’s calmed down. Cool. Then I can start calming myself down, too. “Not now! But tomorrow? Or maybe when you talk to him, I can just be in the room but off-screen so I can hear him? I don’t know if it’ll trigger any memories. This is seriously just a blip, and oh my God, it’s crazy how much he looks like you!”

“He does?” I marvel, wishing she’d been rescued with a phone or a wallet so I could have actually seen a picture of him. Only after she gives me a funny look do I realize this was the wrong thing to say. “I just mean, I don’t really see it. I guess... he just reminds me of my brother so much.”

Ouch.

Ouuuuuuuuuuch.

And she must see my pain because she reaches up and strokes my cheek. “I bet he does. I’m sorry I scared you so much. What a terrible way for a memory to come back!”

“No, it’s okay. It’s great. I’m so happy they’re coming back.”

“Me, too . . . Vasya.”

That feels great, too. I’m glad that the first memories that come back are of me or adjacent to me. She remembers what my family calls me, and that’s a lot. That probably triggered this flash of Artom.

My chest aches as it rises and falls, and I kiss her with all the composure I have despite the way everything is reeling around me. “Rest now,zvyozdochka.We have a busy day tomorrow.”

She nods and shimmies back into her spot on my bed, but now it’s our bed. Our home. Our family.

“I can’t believe you kept this from me, you dufus,” Ana laughs as she snuggles into the duvet, everything right in her world. “I’m so excited to meet him.”

I smile and give her one last kiss good night, fluffing my pillow and sinking into my bed.

Closing my eyes and sighing.

Evening out my breath.

Waiting.

Listening.

Counting to one hundred once Ana’s breaths drop a couple gears and start to rumble lightly on the inhales.

I open my eyes and watch her, making sure she really is sound asleep. Only when I’m confident that she is do I get out of bed, grab my phone, and slip all the way out to the elevator bay.

My heart starts to pound as I finally let everything flood in. My son is five years old. He looks like me. That’s all I know about him. What I don’t know fills whole nightmarish volumes of my mind, and even thinking about just the topmost level,where is he,has me sliding down to my ass and clenching my fists to keep from screaming and punching everything around me. I just need to contain the panic for a few minutes. I need to make calls, I need to fill in blanks.

I need to find my son.

“You alright?” Ana asks as we make our way up the stairs to the roof.

I nod, doing my best to correct my grim expression. “Just don’t like you out is all.”

Ana takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “Well, I appreciate you doing this for me.”

“Seemed like a good starting point.” I’ve probably said that a dozen times today since I came up with the pitch for meeting Camilla. I told her this is her best friend of probably forever. We can see how this meeting goes and then decide what to do about Artom.

He’s still missing. The youngest person rescued from the sex traffickers was an eleven-year-old girl, according to Sasha. I gave him a line about Ana having been visiting her cousin and how her cousin’s son is missing too, and Sasha assures me that everything happened too quickly for a young boy to have been separated from her. They’d been in the middle of abducting her when Consummate attacked, and no one got away.

I believe him. The Consummate boys are meticulous. A shame they use their powers for good.

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