Valentin purses his lips. I sink against the window, the frosty glass numbing my forehead. The alcove window is narrower than the rest, and I see a flash of metal bars beyond it—a fire escape. My heart races, and a primitive need deep within me cries for me to go, go, go. I squeeze my eyes closed, hard, until spots dance on my eyelids. I can’t. Not yet.
I open my eyes, heart pounding, and see Valentin staring back at me. He’s not inside my thoughts—I’ve got Shostakovich woven ironclad; surely I’d feel him prying that hull open—but the tight line of his mouth, his widened eyes tells me he knows what I’m thinking all the same.
Yulia … You don’t understand. You can’t run.
I grip the windowsill, cold and clotted with dead gnats. Somehow, it scares me more that he can read me without looking inside my mind. I know, I know. Sergei and Masha are watching.
That’s not all. Yulia—Rostov, he has this … man. His thoughts waver. The Hound. What he can do—it’s not like the others, it’s not something that can be outrun.
My nails bite into the windowsill. Natalya’s memories flood past me—receiving the apartment as a gift for her work on the Sputnik satellite designs, lovers past, endless dinner parties with other Party elite—but I don’t care, I don’t care, I just need a way out.
Valentin moves beside me, carefully, and his hand hovers above mine. I know what you’re going through. Please—let me show you. A sad smile traces his lips. I know you won’t believe me any other way.
I lower my eyes from his. Fine.
His grasp is firm, but not hateful or controlling like Rostov’s. I sink through his music until Natalya’s room is completely washed away.
I’m standing in Valentin’s skin, under the rusted abutment of a bridge, watching the Moskva River flow past. Starlight twinkles in its choppy waters. He is—I am—breathing furiously, made all the more difficult for the desperate need to stay silent. My hands—I feel Valentin’s hands as if they were my own—sting from razor wire’s bite, and blood smears the front of my trousers where I’ve tried to wipe it away. But my trail is clean. Between the psychic eraser in my head and the rushing water that carried me a kilometer downstream before I crossed to the other bank, not even Rostov could trace me.
My heart rate slows. The Moskva River water evaporating off of me leaves raised gooseflesh in its wake. Overhead, the Metro cars chatter as they race across the bridge, and gravel cascades around me.
Safe. I am almost safe. All I need is a soft, simple mind—one of Father’s old friends, perhaps—to draw up the documents I need.
The train fades, but the sound of gravel continues. It crunches under heavy feet. My heart lurches as blood races through my veins. They can’t have found me. Not even Rostov is so clever. But then my thoughts are ripped away, my shield disintegrated. It’s not Rostov—he can split open my skull, sure, but he doesn’t suck me dry this way, soaking up all my energy. And yet my face feels numb despite the late summer swelter. Every silent step takes exponentially more strength.
Ahead of me the gruesome curve of a jaw catches the moonlight. It’s the man, the thing, or whatever it is that’s sapping me away. I am hunted. I am prey who thought myself free, and instead I’ve hidden right in a trap. The man’s massive fist opens, sucking away the last warmth from my bones as everything fades—
Valentin pries his own hand away, like it’s some wicked lure that must be slid carefully from my flesh, and I stagger out of his memory and back into the chaotic room, only a few seconds after the memory began. His eyes are pure black behind his glasses. No, only a trick of the light. But I’m afraid of him, of this darkness he collects like I collect memories. He stares down, haunted like Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov—like he’s just hacked an old woman to bits.
I let go of the windowsill. Tell me what happened, Valentin.
Another time.
Who is this man?
Valentin’s music shifts, like a mental clearing of the throat. You should check the folders on the coffee table. He strides across the bedroom at a steady clip and vanishes back into the living room—as if the horrible thoughts he’s shown me never happened. But even now I see that hand sucking away at my life.
There has to be more. I sweep through the room again, tossing clothing aside without bothering to replace it where we found it. Dull daily routines. Static emptiness. She met with the fedora man in the lobby downstairs without the scrubber around. Surely she’s done it once more. I’m growing heavier and heavier with all the emotions I’m soaking up, Natalya’s frenzy overflowing.
Valentin watches me with infuriating calm. You draw up so many emotions and memories, he thinks. Don’t you ever push them away?
I follow him back to the living room and run my fingers over everything. I try not to linger on the folders with their tabs clipped off; I want it to look like I’m examining each thing in turn, from the wadded tissues to the old issues of Pravda.