The drive to the city was supposed to be a clinical formality—a routine check-up at a secure, private facility. Yuri insisted on coming, occupying the seat beside me in the back of the armored sedan. His laptop was open, the blue light of complex data reflecting in his eyes, his brow furrowed in a rare display of intense concentration.
"You work too much," I said, my gaze fixed on the heavy, slate-gray clouds rolling over the horizon.
"Power doesn't maintain itself, Jessy. It's an entropic force; it requires constant vigilance to keep it from crumbling."
Then, the world tilted on its axis.
A deafening, bone-shaking boom echoed through the cabin. The car jerked violently to the left, the tires screaming in a high-pitched protest against the asphalt. My head slammed against the window, and for a terrifying heartbeat, the "Stranger in White" void threatened to pull me back into its cold embrace.
"Get down!" Yuri roared.
Before I could react, he lunged across the seat, his massive frame pinning me to the floorboards. He was a living shield, his weight pressing the air from my lungs. A hail of high-caliber bullets struck the "unbreakable" glass. It didn't shatter into shards; it pulverized, raining down on us in a storm of reinforced diamond-dust. I screamed, covering my ears as the rhythmic, metallic clatter of gunfire drowned out the universe.
The car slammed into a concrete barrier with a bone-jarring thud and came to a dead stop.
The silence that followed was even more terrifying than the noise. Then came the sound of the driver's door being wrenched open and the heavy, sickening thud of a body hitting the pavement.
"Jessy, look at me," Yuri commanded. His voice was strained, vibrating with a pitch I'd never heard before.
I forced my eyes open. He was hovering over me, his face deathly pale. A dark, thick crimson was beginning to bloom across the shoulder of his black suit, spreading like a sinister ink stain.
"You're hit," I breathed, my hands trembling as I reached instinctively for the wound.
"Stay under the seat. Do not move until I tell you." He reached into his waistband and pulled out a sleek, black handgun, his movements still precise despite the trauma.
He kicked the door open and rolled out into the chaos. I stayed curled in a ball, my forehead pressed against the floor mats, listening to the rhythmic pop-pop-pop of his return fire. My mind raced. This was it. The passenger door was jammed shut by the barrier, but the driver's side was swinging wide. I could have crawled out. I could have vanished into the thick forest lining the road while they were occupied with the man who had stolen my life.
Instead, I crawled toward the open door.
Yuri was leaning against the rear wheel, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Two men in tactical gear lay motionless on the asphalt a few yards away, but Yuri's left arm was hanging uselessly at his side, the sleeve soaked through with blood. He looked up at me, his sea-gray eyes wide with a mixture of shock and white-hot fury.
"I told you... to stay... down," he choked out, his jaw tight with agony.
I didn't listen. I didn't care about his orders anymore. I tore the silk scarf from my neck, the expensive fabric ripping with a sharp hiss, and moved toward him. "Shut up, Yuri. You're bleeding out and your pride isn't going to stop it."
As I knelt in the glass and grit of the road, pulling the makeshift tourniquet tight around his bicep, our eyes locked. In that moment, the hierarchy of the estate collapsed. The roles shifted. He wasn't the monster, and I wasn't the victim. We were just two broken things bleeding in the middle of a cold, indifferent road.
"Why didn't you run?" he whispered, his head thumping back against the cold metal of the car, his mask of invincibility finally cracked.
"I don't know," I lied, my voice steady despite the blood on my hands.
The truth was far more terrifying: I realized that if he died, I wouldn't be free. I would be alone in a world full of people who lacked his twisted sense of "protection"—people who were much, much worse than him.