Page 43 of White Wolf

But then he thought of the people waiting for bread downstairs, and his wonder dimmed.

Ivan walked over to the makeshift gym and dropped his bag on the floor; it landed with a heavy thump, a muted jangle of metal.

“Your offices?” Sasha asked.

Kolya had walked to the desks to set their lunch down, and shrugged out of his coat and hat. “We’ve been working on the major general’sspecialprojectfor over a year.” His inflection told Sasha what he thought ofthat. “We got this in the bargain.” He waved a hand to indicate the loft.

“What do you do here?”

“Sleep, sometimes. Eat. Train.” He twitched a bare scrap of a grin. “And now, trainyou.”

~*~

Sasha did not, in fact, know how to fight. Sure, he’d tussled with the other boys on his street when he was younger, had rolled on the floor when he was three and four, and his favorite game was the one where his father pretended to be a bear and snarled and fake-batted at him until Sasha was laughing so hard tears streamed from his eyes. But he’d never had occasion to throw a real punch, and as he stood opposite Feliks, his sleeves folded back and his knuckles wrapped in dirty, once-white linen bandages, his inexperience settled across his shoulders like a physical weight.

“Um,” he said, and Ivan chuckled.

“I thought you knew how to fight?”

“Well. About that.”

The chuckle turned into a hearty laugh. “Don’t worry. I knew you were lying.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Sasha huffed, and Kolya lifted his brows. “Alright, alright, I was lying.”

“Why?” Kolya asked.

“Because–”

Feliks ducked in and punched him right in the arm.

“Ow!”

The three Chekists laughed, and Sasha clapped a hand over his mouth.Shit. It hadn’t hurt terribly, but it had hurt nonetheless, and he hadn’t been at all prepared for the attack.

He felt his cheeks heat with shame. He waited for the insults.

But none came. As their laughter died, he saw that they were smiling – but not unkindly. Not like he was a joke.

“Rule one,” Kolya said, “is to always pay attention. Never let your guard down. Not around anyone.”

“Not even around you?” Sasha shot back.

“Especially not us,” Ivan said, stepping up beside him. “Alright, here, let me show you. Hold your hands like this…”

~*~

Nikita tried to pass it off like he forgot to eat sometimes. That he got distracted and skipped meals by accident. But the truth was he didn’t like to eat. He rose every morning, and went to bed every night with a low-grade nausea stirring in the pit of his belly. Eating did help with his constant light-headedness, but it wasn’t a surefire fix.

He knew the moment they left the apartment that it had been a mistake to skip breakfast, but there was no helping that now. He drew his shoulders back, swallowed down the lump in his throat, and pressed on with deliberate strides. Most days if he ignored the sensations, they went away on their own for a little while.

Monsieur Philippe proved a beneficial distraction.

“I’ve been assured that everything we’ll need for the procedure is already waiting for us at the lab in Stalingrad,” he said as they walked. “But of course you can bring anything else you think is necessary.”

“Of course,” Nikita echoed. Not knowing what this “procedure” was all about was becoming an itch beneath his skin, one that was slowly driving him up the wall. Every time Sasha looked at him for permission or approval, every time he twitched a little smile because of something Ivan said, the rash spread a little farther, a little deeper. It was a true worry now, edging toward regret. He’d always told himself that when the chance to strike a blow against the Soviets arose, he would take it, no questions asked. But after Dmitri...

“Nik,” Pyotr breathed beside him, leaning in close, breath ghosting warm across his ear. “It’shim.”

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