“Watch out!”
Valya shoves me to the wall right before a chunk of concrete goes whizzing past where I just stood. “We have to shake her off.”
“Up here.” Larissa charges past us along the wall of the massive factory. “Valya, distract her.”
“Masha?” Valya shouts, stepping out into the street. A crooked piece of piping crashes into his knee. “Masha, you really should know better by now. You’re nothing to Rostov—just a means to an end!”
I’m so much more. Her words rattle through my skin as she pushes her thoughts through the alleyway. Imagine how I’ll be rewarded for catching you traitors.
I follow Larissa into a ridge in the concrete factory wall. She points to a basement window peeking above the street surface. “Think we can fit in there?” she asks.
I jam my boot through the window with all my force, snapping the metal bar apart as the glass pane shatters. “We’ll try.” I glance over my shoulder. Did I see shadows flickering through the abandoned scaffolding across the street?
“Khruschev will have Rostov killed for what he tried to pull!” Valentin shouts. “He’ll see our whole program as a threat. Don’t you know what happens to threats?”
Never. I’ll never be useless like you!
“Your loss,” Valya says. Light flares through the alley in a supersonic screech. I grit my teeth, my nails digging into the concrete wall.
“What did you do?” Larissa asks as Valya jogs up to us.
He grins devilishly. “The psychic equivalent of jamming my thumbs in her eyes.”
I make a mental note to kiss him later for that, and tug my sweater sleeves down over my hands. I dive through the broken window feetfirst and slam into cold concrete. The landing reverberates through my bones. Hot, tangy blood dribbles down my chin. The basement is dark, with only vague shapes of discarded machinery looming out of the blackness like ancient rubble. It reeks of mold and motor oil. In the distance, I hear the rumbling factory floor.
“Is it safe?” Larissa asks from the street.
“Come on down.” I step away from the window; the streetlight illuminates a fresh cut along my calf from the broken window. “Watch the glass.” I step forward into the darkness, kicking aside a pile of rubber tubing. There have to be stairs somewhere, some path Masha can’t track …
I see you.
Sergei’s voice. I stop cold. The only sounds now are my short, panicked gasps of breath.
“Sergei?” I whisper. Dirt skitters underfoot as I turn in a circle. “Please don’t lead them to us…”
Metal thumps overhead in an irregular beat. My ears ring with painful silence. I creep toward the far end of the basement with only the faintest blue glow from outside to guide me. The sound of my breath chases me in circles.
Footsteps rush toward me. “Yul?” Larissa’s voice. “We’re over here.”
I press against a metal door, reach for its lever and give it a yank. A thread of Papa’s melody warms my hand against the metal and pours out of me in a contented sigh. “This is the way.”
CHAPTER 42
THE PISTONS AND ARMS HAMMER away in the main factory at the top of the stairs. Like in Moscow, the machines are manned by women, their eyes hollow like jewels lost from their settings as they feed cotton strips into the machines. We move like wisps along the back wall until we find an exit door on the far side of the factory and slip through.
“Wait.” Valya holds us at the alley’s mouth, and we take cover behind a trash bin. Dozens of boots crunch through the snow, growing louder and louder. They move through the swirl of a fresh snowfall: two columns of soldiers down the main street. I wonder if they’re taking orders—mentally or otherwise—from Rostov.
A scarlet drop flecks the bank of snow beneath me. My nose smells like metal and warmth.
Larissa stares at me with icy eyes. “Rostov is getting closer. He’s starting to see the right path to us.”
“Just give me a moment.” I peel back one more layer on Papa’s memories. Come on, Papa. Three notes envelop me. Show me the way home.
I shove off the bin and step out of the alley. Valya grabs me by the shoulder to tug me back, but I’m locked onto my target: a demolished building halfway down the block, with one western wall still standing, though it’s scarred from mortar shells. It looks like a sternum with all the ribs snapped off where the floors have collapsed. “There. There’s a way out in there.”
Larissa and Valya exchange looks. “Looks like a death trap to me,” Valya says.
Larissa winces and falls backward. “Rostov. He’s getting inside my head through Masha, and I—”