No Man's Game

The fog came in from the tributaries just before dawn, rolling through the ruins of Novohrodivka with the smell of burnt plastic and something underneath it that nobody wanted to name. Aleksandr Sokolov stood at the entrance to the residential high block, smoking his third cigarette of the morning, and watched the gray mass swallow the skeletal buildings across the street. Visibility maybe twenty meters. His left ear rang constantly now, tinnitus from a near-miss back in the summer, a high-pitched whine that never quite went away. He’d stopped mentioning it months ago.

Behind him, in the stairwell that stank of piss and cordite, his squad was waking up. Thirteen men, more or less. A composite unit assembled from three different formations that had been chewed up and spat out during the August assault. He’d inherited them six weeks ago when the previous sergeant caught shrapnel in the throat. They weren’t his men in any real sense—they were just the soldiers he happened to be responsible for keeping alive, which was a different thing entirely.

“Staryy, get them moving,” he said without turning around. “Patrol in ten.”

Grigory Marchenko emerged from the darkness of the stairwell, a shambling figure in a dirty uniform that had fit him better two years ago. At forty-one, he was the oldest after the child molester, and he moved like someone whose body had stopped cooperating with basic requests. His hands shook slightly as he lit his own cigarette.

“They’re up,” Grigory said. His voice came out rough, used. “More or less.”

Sokolov took a final drag and crushed the cigarette against the concrete wall, adding one more burn mark to the hundreds already there. The wall was decorated with graffiti in Russian and Ukrainian, competing territorial markings, as if language could claim what artillery could not. A child’s drawing remained visible near the stairwell entrance—stick figures holding hands, sun in the corner, the kind of thing that children drew everywhere before they learned the world didn’t match those images.

“Route’s the same as yesterday,” Sokolov said. “Residential blocks seven through twelve, check the basements, document anything that looks military. Watch the upper floors—saw movement there two days back.”

“Yeah.” Grigory studied the fog as if it might reveal something useful. “You want the boy with us, or should I leave him on watch?”

“Bring him. He needs to stop being useless, and that only happens if he actually does something.”

“He’s not going to stop being useless, Aleksandr. Kid’s fucking hopeless.”

“Then he’ll die eventually. But until then, he’s part of the patrol.”

Grigory nodded and disappeared back into the stairwell. Sokolov heard him barking orders, heard the muted sounds of men preparing themselves for another day of going through the motions. They’d done this patrol route a dozen times. Every time they found the same nothing—empty apartments, occasional evidence of recent occupation by people who’d fled before they arrived, the slow accumulation of urban decay. But the orders came down from somewhere up the chain, and the orders said clear and secure, so they cleared and secured, and nobody seemed to notice or care that they were just moving through the same ruins over and over.

The squad assembled in the street outside the building, materializing from the fog like ghosts achieving temporary solidity. Sokolov counted them automatically. Thirteen. Same number as yesterday, same faces worn down by the same exhaustion.

Dmitri Volkov stood near the front, his rifle held with casual competence that made Sokolov’s stomach tighten. The man was from a penal colony, recruited with promises of pardon that might or might not be real. He’d killed three people, probably more. He moved through the ruins like a rat that had learned all the best routes, always finding the angles, always aware of exits. His eyes, pale gray, rarely showed anything that resembled human emotion. This morning they were tracking the street, cataloging, assessing. Sokolov had seen men like Dmitri before—natural predators who’d found in war a place where their nature was asset rather than liability.

Next to him, deliberately maintaining distance, stood Yevgeny Petrov. At forty-seven, he was the oldest, and he looked older than that—bent, diminished, his movements characterized by a constant flinching anticipation of violence. Everyone knew what he’d done. Child molester. Schoolteacher who’d spent nearly twenty years systematically abusing students. Three years in a penal colony’s protective custody before the war’s hunger for bodies got so intense that even he became usable. He occupied the lowest position in every hierarchy, tolerated but barely, kept alive because disposing of him would require paperwork and create questions nobody wanted to answer. His eyes, watery behind broken glasses held together with wire, never met anyone else’s directly.

Viktor Morozov stood apart from the others, checking his rifle with the methodical attention of someone for whom weapons were tools requiring maintenance. Former Wagner contractor, now integrated into regular forces after Prigozhin’s death and the company’s dissolution. Thirty-four years old, built like someone who maintained conditioning as professional requirement. He’d made it clear from day one that his motivation was transactional—he fought for money, did his job competently, and expected to survive long enough to return to private military contracting where the pay was better. Sokolov respected the honesty, in a way. At least Viktor didn’t pretend his participation meant anything beyond a paycheck.

Ilya Kuznetsov stood with his head bowed slightly, lips moving in what might have been prayer. Twenty-four years old, former seminary student, true believer in the New Russia dream. His uniform was cleaner than most, maintained with a care that suggested military bearing still mattered to him. He wore a small icon of Saint George on a chain around his neck, visible when his jacket fell open. He’d volunteered, which made him unusual. Most of them had been conscripted, coerced, or purchased with promises of pardons. Ilya had walked into a recruiting office because he believed. Sokolov found this both admirable and deeply pathetic.

The career soldiers clustered together with the unconscious affinity of professionals recognizing other professionals. Grigory had positioned himself near them—twenty-two years of service written into his weathered face and exhausted posture. Maksim Lebedev stood perfectly still, as he always did, his silence so complete it created its own kind of presence. Twenty-eight years old, eight years of service, and Sokolov couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the man speak more than three words consecutively. His eyes tracked the street with the detachment of someone who’d learned to observe without engaging.

Andrei Volkov—no relation to Dmitri despite the shared surname—fidgeted with his gear, adjusting straps that didn’t need adjusting. Thirty-one years old, small and nervous, he’d survived through a combination of luck and an ability to make himself useful through scavenging and equipment maintenance. His eyes darted constantly, prey animal awareness that never quite relaxed.

Bishal Gurung stood slightly apart, marking his status as perpetual outsider. Twenty-six years old, Nepalese, tricked into military service by a recruitment agency promising security work in Russia. Language barriers had isolated him from the easy camaraderie that might have formed with the others. His Russian was functional but limited, his accent heavy enough that some of the soldiers simply didn’t bother trying to understand him. He’d tried to refuse service, to explain the deception, and been threatened with prosecution for contract violation. Now he was here, fighting in someone else’s war for reasons that had nothing to do with him. Sokolov felt a particular guilt about Bishal’s situation that he couldn’t quite articulate.

Anton Orlov stood near the back, trying and failing to look competent. Eighteen years old, though he’d lied about his age to enlist—probably actually seventeen when he signed up. Fat and awkward, marked by acne that had worsened in field conditions, he’d come to war carrying delusions built from video games and online forums. He’d wanted to prove himself, to demonstrate courage, to become someone who mattered. Instead he’d discovered that combat was nothing like games, that determination couldn’t substitute for capability, that the older soldiers saw him as a liability at best. He caught Sokolov looking and straightened his posture, trying for military bearing and achieving only a parody of it.

Sergei Baranov adjusted the eyepatch covering his missing left eye, a gesture so habitual he probably didn’t realize he was doing it. Thirty-nine years old, nineteen years of service, he’d lost the eye in Bakhmut and should have been invalided out. But the military was so desperate for experienced personnel that they’d declared him fit for duty and sent him back to combat, where his compromised vision put him and everyone around him at risk. He compensated as best he could, positioning himself carefully, turning his head more than normal to cover his blind side. But compensation only went so far.

Timur Petrov stood solid and patient, a man who’d learned to endure through decades of Siberian farming. Thirty-two years old, mobilized in 2023, he wanted nothing except to survive and return to his land and his family. Three children, a wife, a farm that required constant attention. He thought about them constantly, mentioned them rarely. His accent marked him as Siberian, his manner marked him as someone fundamentally unsuited to military service but too competent at basic tasks to fail completely.

Ivan Koslov occupied the last position in the informal formation, and even that positioning was telling. Twenty-seven years old, deserter who’d been caught and forced back into service at gunpoint. Everyone knew he’d tried to run, which meant everyone watched him, wondering if he’d try again. He existed in permanent conditional status—alive only because killing him was more wasteful than using him, fighting only because refusing meant immediate execution. His face, narrow and pale, showed the constant calculation of someone trying to find angles that didn’t exist.

“Standard formation,” Sokolov said. “Grigory, you’ve got point with Dmitri. Viktor, you’re rear security. Everyone else, spacing. We’re checking buildings, not hunting contacts. Questions?”

Nobody spoke. They’d done this before. They’d do it again tomorrow.

The squad moved into the fog, becoming shadows of shadows. Sokolov fell into step behind Grigory and Dmitri, letting his body follow routes it had memorized. The residential high blocks rose around them like dead trees, concrete and brick scarred by months of fighting. Windows gaped, walls showed ragged holes, and entire sections of buildings had collapsed inward. The street itself was more crater than pavement, forcing them to navigate between shell holes and rubble piles that had once been storefronts or cars or things nobody wanted to think about.

The fog muffled sound in strange ways. Their footsteps seemed too loud, but the city’s ambient noise—the distant artillery exchanges, the occasional crack of small arms fire, the settling of damaged buildings—came through muted and distorted. Sokolov’s damaged ear created its own soundtrack, the constant high-pitched whine mixing with real sounds until he sometimes couldn’t distinguish what was external and what was his own nervous system malfunctioning.

They reached the first building on the patrol route, and Grigory raised a fist. Everyone stopped. Standard procedure, performed automatically. Dmitri and Viktor moved to cover the entrance while Grigory checked for tripwires, booby traps, any indication that someone had been here recently. Clear. They filed inside, weapons ready, moving through the ground floor with the practiced caution of men who’d survived by being careful more often than they’d survived by being brave.

The interior smelled of mold and burnt things. Water damage had caused ceiling tiles to collapse, and they crunched through debris that might have been insulation or might have been something else. The walls still showed evidence of life—pictures in frames, though the glass was mostly broken now. A calendar hung near what had been a reception desk, still showing March 2024, the month when this building’s inhabitants must have fled or died or simply stopped caring about marking time.

They cleared the ground floor efficiently, finding nothing. Sokolov assigned Maksim, Sergei, and Andrei to check the basements while the rest of them moved upward. The stairs were concrete, Soviet-era construction, solid enough to support their weight but showing cracks that suggested the building’s structural integrity was questionable. Each floor they cleared revealed the same story—apartments once inhabited, now abandoned, containing all the small remnants that people leave behind when they flee in a hurry.

On the fourth floor, Sokolov pushed open a door that had been forced previously and found himself in someone’s living room. The furniture was overturned, the television screen shattered, but the walls still held the marks of family life. Children’s drawings taped up near what had been a dining area. The drawings showed the usual subjects—houses, families, animals, the bright incoherent joy of childhood imagination rendered in crayon and marker.

Timur stopped in the doorway behind him, and Sokolov heard the man’s breathing change. He glanced back and saw Timur staring at the drawings, his face doing something complicated. The Siberian farmer had three children. Sokolov remembered that from the one conversation they’d had about personal matters. A boy aged seven, two girls aged five and three. He wondered what Timur was seeing in those drawings—his own children’s artwork, memories of a life that existed somewhere beyond this destroyed city, a future he might never return to.

“Keep moving,” Sokolov said quietly. Not unkind, but not leaving room for delay.

Timur nodded and turned away. They continued checking rooms. A bedroom with clothes still hanging in a closet, child-sized jackets and shirts that nobody had bothered to pack. A bathroom where family photos were scattered across the floor, trampled by boots, faces looking up at them from underneath dirt and broken glass. Sergei, with his one eye, knelt carefully to examine them, his depth perception making the movement awkward.

“Family of four,” Sergei said. His voice came out flat. “Mother, father, two kids. Teenagers, maybe.”

“Leave it,” Sokolov said.

They found Anton in what had been a teenager’s room, standing in front of a desk that held a gaming setup—computer monitor cracked but still on the desk, keyboard, a chair positioned as if the user might return at any moment. Posters on the walls showed video game characters, movies, the cultural markers of a teenager who’d lived online as much as in physical space.

“Kid had a better rig than I did,” Anton said. His voice held something like wonder. “That’s a... fuck, that’s a good graphics card. Or was.”

“Move on, Geimer.” Ilya’s voice carried disgust. “We’re not here to window-shop at a corpse’s belongings.”

“I’m just saying—”

“You’re always just saying. Say less.”

Anton’s face reddened, but he followed Ilya out of the room. Sokolov lingered for a moment, looking at the setup, trying to imagine the kid who’d sat here. Same age as Anton, probably. Maybe they’d played the same games, inhabited the same online spaces, constructed the same fantasies about proving themselves. One of them had fled or died when the war arrived. The other had volunteered to participate in the war’s arrival in someone else’s city. The universe saw no meaningful difference between them.

They completed the floor and descended to regroup with the basement team. Maksim emerged first, silent as always, his face showing nothing. Sergei came after him, moving carefully on the uneven floor. Andrei brought up the rear, fidgeting.

“Anything?” Sokolov asked.

Maksim shook his head once.

“Bodies,” Andrei added. “Old ones. Couple months at least. Civilians, I think. We documented it.”

“Good. Move to the next building.”

They continued the patrol through buildings eight, nine, ten. The morning stretched into afternoon, the fog refusing to burn off, visibility remaining constricted. Each building told variations on the same story—life interrupted, possessions abandoned, the slow reclamation of human spaces by decay and neglect. They found more bodies, marked locations, took photographs that would be filed in reports nobody would read. They found evidence that other soldiers had been here before them—Russian markings, spent ammunition, the scars of fighting that had already moved on to other streets.

Around noon, while checking building eleven, they encountered civilians.

Three people emerged from a basement entrance as the squad moved past—two elderly men and a woman maybe forty years old, all of them carrying bags that probably held whatever they’d managed to scavenge. They froze when they saw the soldiers, and the soldiers froze in turn, weapons coming up in that instant of recognition that anyone moving in the ruins was potentially hostile.

“Don’t move,” Sokolov called out in Russian. Then, because he wasn’t certain they understood: “Ne ruxaytesya.”

The civilians remained motionless. The woman’s hands were visible, empty. One of the elderly men held a bag that bulged with cans or jars, something heavy. The other man’s face showed the kind of resignation that comes from encountering armed men when you have no weapons of your own.

“Lower your bags,” Sokolov said. “Slowly. We need to check what you’re carrying.”

They complied. Dmitri and Viktor moved forward to search the bags while the rest of the squad maintained overwatch. Sokolov approached the civilians, studying their faces, trying to determine if they were hostile or just desperate. Probably both. Everyone here was desperate. Hostility was a rational response to occupation.

“You live here?” Sokolov asked the woman. She seemed most likely to speak.

She nodded. “In the basement. Of this building.”

“How many of you?”

“Just us three.”

“You’ve seen Ukrainian military? Soldiers, resistance fighters, anyone armed?”

“No. Nobody comes here. Just ruins. Just...” She gestured at the buildings around them, the encompassing destruction. “Just this.”

Dmitri finished searching the bags, his hands moving efficiently through their contents. Food, mostly. Canned goods, some dried pasta, a few bottles of water. Nothing military, nothing that justified confiscation under any rational definition, but rations were scarce enough that some of the soldiers would argue for taking it anyway.

“They’re clean,” Dmitri said. His voice carried neither compassion nor hostility, just assessment.

Sokolov looked at the three civilians and saw the fear in their faces mixing with a kind of weary acceptance. They knew they were at the mercy of these soldiers, knew that mercy was not guaranteed. He could order their bags taken. He could order them detained, questioned more thoroughly, made to account for every decision that led them to still be here when the occupation arrived. He could do nothing and let them return to their basement to continue surviving in whatever way they’d managed so far.

“Go,” he said. “Stay in your basement. Don’t come out when you hear soldiers moving through. It’s not safe.”

The woman nodded rapidly. The two elderly men remained silent, watching the soldiers with the wariness of people who’d learned not to trust temporary mercy. They gathered their bags and retreated into the basement entrance, disappearing into shadows.

“Soft,” someone muttered. Sokolov didn’t turn to see who.

“Anyone want to carry three more mouths’ worth of canned food on patrol?” he asked. “Anyone want to process the paperwork for detained civilians? No? Then we move on.”

They moved on. But the encounter had shifted something in the atmosphere, made explicit what usually remained implicit. They were here as occupiers. The civilians were occupied. The transaction between them could never be simple or fair because the fundamental relationship was coercion. Some of the soldiers, like Dmitri, understood this without moral qualm. Others, like Ilya, wrapped it in justifications about protecting Russian speakers or resisting NATO expansion. Most just didn’t think about it directly, keeping their awareness at a level where they could function without confronting what their function actually meant.

Bishal had remained silent during the encounter, his face showing visible discomfort. Sokolov caught his eye and saw something in it—recognition, maybe, that the Nepalese soldier was also occupied, also coerced into participating in violence that had nothing to do with him. The recognition made Sokolov look away.

They completed the patrol route by mid-afternoon, having found nothing that qualified as intelligence and having added to the extensive documentation of a city slowly decaying in the absence of functional infrastructure. They returned to their defensive position in the high block, climbing stairs that creaked under their weight, filing into apartments that had been converted into military billeting.

The space they occupied wasn’t home and wasn’t purely military—an uncomfortable hybrid that satisfied neither category. They slept in beds that had belonged to families who fled or died. They ate at tables that still held children’s drawings pushed aside to make room for ration containers. They sat in living rooms where family photographs watched them from walls, faces of people whose lives they’d interrupted by their presence.

Sokolov conducted a brief meeting, assigning watch rotations, checking equipment status, making sure the patrol findings were properly documented. The career soldiers responded professionally but without enthusiasm. They knew the routines, performed them adequately, understood that maintaining discipline helped survival even if discipline’s purpose had become obscure. Grigory served as his de facto second, handling the small logistics that kept the squad functional, but even Grigory showed the exhaustion of someone operating on momentum rather than genuine investment.

The convicts—Dmitri and Yevgeny—followed orders because disobedience seemed more dangerous than compliance. Dmitri did so with cold efficiency, treating every task as tactical problem to solve. Yevgeny did so with the desperate fear of someone who knew he occupied the bottom of every hierarchy and might be eliminated at any moment. Ivan the deserter watched Sokolov throughout the meeting, his eyes calculating, always calculating, assessing how far the sergeant’s authority extended and where it might be safely challenged.

“Andrei, Sergei, you’ve got first watch,” Sokolov said. “0200, wake Grigory and Maksim. Everyone else, try to rest. We’re doing the same route tomorrow unless orders change.”

The meeting dissolved. Soldiers dispersed to their claimed spaces within the apartments, some lying down immediately, others sitting with the exhausted wakefulness of men too tired to sleep. Sokolov found a corner near a window that offered a view of the street below, lit a cigarette, and let his mind drift into the half-present state that passed for rest.

The afternoon light, filtered through fog, turned everything gray. The ruins across the street disappeared into obscurity. Somewhere distant, artillery fired—outgoing, from the sound of it, Russian guns targeting Ukrainian positions kilometers away. The sound rolled through the city like distant thunder, a reminder that the war continued even when individual soldiers were resting.

Sokolov thought about his son. Mikhail would be seven now. He’d missed the boy’s birthday, missed most of the last two years of his life, missed everything that mattered in ways that missions completed and enemies killed could never compensate for. He wondered if Mikhail still recognized him from the occasional phone calls they managed. He wondered if Natasha was explaining his absence in ways that made him seem heroic rather than simply absent. He wondered if there was any explanation that could bridge the gap between the father Mikhail needed and the soldier Aleksandr had become.

The cigarette burned down. He lit another. The high-pitched whine in his left ear provided constant accompaniment to his thoughts, a reminder that his body was accumulating damage that wouldn’t fully manifest until after—if there was an after. His shoulder ached where shrapnel had caught him last year, a pain that intensified in cold weather. His sleep was shallow and fragmentary, haunted by dreams he couldn’t quite remember but which left him waking with a sense of having witnessed something terrible.

He heard voices from the room behind him and turned slightly to listen. Dmitri and Yevgeny, an interaction that made his stomach tighten with anticipation of violence.

“Stay away from me,” Yevgeny’s voice, thin and frightened.

“I’m not doing anything, dedushka.” Dmitri’s voice carried amusement. “Just sitting here. It’s not my fault you’re nervous.”

“You’re staring.”

“Am I? Hard to tell where I’m looking in this light.”

“Please. Just... leave me alone.”

“You’re in a room I’m also in. That’s not my choice. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

Silence. Then footsteps, Yevgeny retreating to another space, anywhere else. Sokolov considered intervening but didn’t. Dmitri hadn’t actually done anything actionable. He’d just made Yevgeny uncomfortable, which was Dmitri’s constant low-level hobby. Intervening would require energy Sokolov didn’t have and would probably make the situation worse by marking Yevgeny as protected, which would just paint a bigger target on him.

He heard different voices now, quieter. Ilya and someone else—sounded like Anton.

“...why we’re here,” Ilya was saying. “The historical context. Ukraine isn’t really a separate nation, it’s—”

“I know, dude. You’ve explained before.”

“But do you understand? Do you see why this matters?”

“I mean... sure? I guess?”

“You guess. That’s the problem with your generation. Everything’s ironic, nothing actually matters. You came here to play soldier, to prove something to yourself, but you don’t even understand what you’re participating in.”

“I wanted to serve,” Anton said, and his voice held defensive anger. “I wanted to be part of something important.”

“Then learn what that something is. Read what I gave you. Think about the larger purposes we’re serving. This isn’t just about—”

“I’ll read it,” Anton interrupted. “Can I go now?”

Footsteps, Anton leaving. Ilya alone, probably frustrated that his evangelism wasn’t taking. Sokolov felt something like pity for the young ideologue. Ilya needed his beliefs to be true, needed the war to mean something, because without that meaning his presence here was just participation in violence for violence’s sake. But Anton wasn’t going to provide validation. Anton was too busy failing at basic soldiering to engage with ideological frameworks.

Evening approached. The fog, if anything, grew thicker. Sokolov stubbed out his cigarette and moved to find Viktor, who he’d noticed cleaning his rifle with the meticulous care that characterized the former Wagner contractor.

Viktor sat on a bed that had probably belonged to a couple—double mattress, wedding photos still on the nightstand showing people who weren’t here anymore. His rifle lay partially disassembled on a towel spread across the bed, components arranged in the precise order they’d need to be reassembled. His hands moved with practiced efficiency, cleaning tool moving through the barrel, checking for any sign of malfunction or wear.

“Kapital,” Sokolov said.

Viktor glanced up. “Sergeant.”

“Everything functional?”

“Always is.” Viktor examined the bolt carrier, checking for carbon buildup. “I don’t let equipment fail. Costs too much.”

“You thinking of moving on? When the opportunity comes?”

“When the contract’s up, yeah. This...” He gestured vaguely at the room, the building, the city. “This isn’t what I signed up for. Wagner paid better, operated smarter. This is just grinding meat through military bureaucracy, and I’m the meat.”

“Most of us are.”

“Most of you didn’t have a choice.” Viktor’s tone wasn’t judgmental, just observational. “I did. I made bad calculations about which way the war was going. Now I’m stuck until the contract runs out or I catch something that kills me.”

“You could refuse. Try for discharge.”

“Could. Won’t. Refusing means prison, probably. I’ve seen Russian military prisons. Rather stay here, maintain my weapons, try to survive long enough to get back to private contracts where people who can shoot straight get paid what they’re worth.”

Sokolov watched him reassemble the rifle, each component sliding into place with mechanical precision. Viktor treated his weapon like a tool that generated income, nothing more or less than that. The rifle wasn’t invested with symbolism or identity. It was equipment requiring maintenance because malfunction meant death meant no more paychecks. The cold rationality of it was almost refreshing.

“You think we’re winning?” Viktor asked, not looking up from his work.

“No.”

“Yeah. Me neither. But we’re not losing fast enough to force political changes, and we’re not winning fast enough to declare victory. So we’re just... here. Grinding. Day after day, same shit.” He finished reassembly and worked the action, checking for smooth operation. “You know what makes this worse than Syria, Libya, all those other places?”

“Tell me.”

“In those places, we knew we were mercenaries. Nobody pretended otherwise. We fought for money, did the job, collected payment, went home. Here, there’s all this fucking...” He struggled for the word. “Pretense. We’re supposed to pretend this means something, that we’re liberators or defenders or whatever narrative they’re selling this week. Makes it harder to just do the work and survive.”

“You still do the work.”

“Because refusing means dying. But I don’t pretend it’s more than what it is—violence for someone else’s purposes, conducted by men who are disposable the moment we’re no longer useful.”

He stood and slung the rifle, the movement automatic. “That it, sergeant?”

“That’s it.”

Viktor nodded and left. Sokolov remained in the room, looking at the wedding photos on the nightstand. Young couple, maybe late twenties. Happy, or at least performing happiness for the camera. Probably dead now, or refugees, or living in some basement like those three civilians they’d encountered. Their bed was now Viktor’s workbench, their bedroom now a bivouac for a man who fought for money and acknowledged no higher purpose. The universe saw no meaningful difference between those uses of the space.

Darkness fell, and with it came the temperature drop. The fog held the cold close to the ground, and the buildings—their heating systems long dead—provided no insulation against it. Soldiers wrapped themselves in whatever they could find, military-issue sleeping bags supplemented with civilian blankets looted from apartments. Sokolov made his rounds, checking the watch positions, making sure everyone had what they needed to get through the night.

He found Ilya sitting alone near a window, his lips moving in what was clearly prayer. The icon of Saint George gleamed dully in the low light. Sokolov stood in the doorway, uncertain whether to interrupt, but Ilya noticed him and stopped.

“Sergeant,” Ilya said. “Something you need?”

“Just checking positions. You good for the night?”

“Fine. Better than fine.” Ilya touched the icon with one finger. “I’ve been thinking about what we discussed. About purpose.”

“I didn’t think we discussed purpose.”

“Not directly. But the question’s always there, isn’t it? What are we doing? Why does it matter?” Ilya’s eyes held the intensity that made other soldiers uncomfortable. “I know what we’re doing. We’re reclaiming what was stolen, protecting what’s ours, resisting the forces that want to destroy Russian civilization. This city—these people fled or fought us because they were deceived, propagandized, turned against their own heritage. What we’re doing gives them the chance to reconnect with truth.”

Sokolov said nothing. He’d learned that arguing with Ilya was pointless. The young man’s belief system was self-reinforcing, interpreting any contrary evidence as proof of how comprehensive the deception was. If civilians fled from Russian forces, that was Western propaganda. If soldiers committed atrocities, that was either justified by military necessity or fabricated by Ukrainian information warfare. Every contradiction was resolved through the framework itself, making the framework unfalsifiable and therefore useless.

“You don’t agree,” Ilya said. Not quite a question.

“I think you believe it, and that’s enough for you. I don’t need to agree or disagree.”

“But you must think something. You must have some understanding of why we’re here.”

“I’m here because I’m a soldier and these are my orders. That’s as much understanding as I need.”

Ilya’s expression showed disappointment. “That’s not enough, though. It can’t be enough. If we’re just following orders without understanding their purpose, we’re just—”

“Soldiers,” Sokolov interrupted. “That’s what we are. That’s what I am. You want to find higher meaning in it, go ahead. But don’t assume everyone else needs what you need.”

He left before Ilya could respond. Behind him, he heard the young man return to his prayers, voice too quiet to make out individual words but the rhythm clearly supplicatory. Asking for what? Validation? Protection? Forgiveness? Sokolov didn’t know and didn’t want to speculate.

He found Anton on watch, though “watch” was generous. The boy sat on a chair positioned near a window, his rifle propped against the wall, his head nodding forward as he fought sleep. Sokolov watched for thirty seconds, counting the number of times Anton’s chin dropped toward his chest. Five times. He was maybe sixty seconds away from falling completely asleep.

“Geimer.”

Anton jerked awake, reaching instinctively for his rifle and nearly knocking it over. He scrambled to his feet, trying for military bearing and achieving only confusion. “Sergeant! I was just—I wasn’t—”

“You were falling asleep.”

“No! I mean, I was resting my eyes, but I was still aware, I was—”

“If I was Ukrainian reconnaissance, you’d be dead and everyone here would be compromised.” Sokolov kept his voice level, not angry but not accepting excuses. “You have one job on watch. Stay awake. Look at the approaches. Report anything unusual. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sergeant. I’m sorry, I just—”

“I don’t care why. Just do better.”

“I will. I promise, I’ll—”

“Stop talking. Start watching.”

Anton shut up and turned toward the window, his posture so rigid it looked painful. Sokolov considered relieving him but didn’t. The boy needed to learn that failure had consequences, and being watched by a disappointed sergeant was minor compared to what failure could mean in combat. Besides, Sokolov didn’t have enough bodies to replace everyone who was inadequate. He’d have no one left.

He continued his rounds, finding Grigory, Sergei, and Maksim sitting together in what had been a family’s kitchen. A single candle burned on the counter, providing minimal light. The three career soldiers sat in silence, their faces showing the thousand-yard stare that came from too much sustained service.

Grigory’s hands shook slightly as he lit a cigarette. His body had started betraying him in small ways—the tremor, the chronic pain in his back that made movement difficult, the way he had to concentrate on basic tasks that should be automatic. He was forty-one, which wasn’t old, but he’d spent twenty-two years in military service, much of it in combat zones, and his body had been used until it was barely functional.

Sergei sat with his good side toward the room, compensating for his missing eye by positioning himself where his blind side was protected. The eyepatch itself was military issue, basic black elastic, and the skin around it showed scarring from the shrapnel wound that had destroyed the eye. He moved with the careful economy of someone who couldn’t trust depth perception, checking and double-checking before committing to physical actions.

Maksim sat perfectly still, his silence creating its own kind of presence. He watched the candle flame with the detachment that characterized everything he did. Sokolov had served with him for six weeks and still couldn’t read him, couldn’t determine what the man thought or felt about anything. The silence might be trauma response, might be personality, might be calculated choice. Maksim functioned adequately, followed orders, performed his duties. Beyond that, he was opaque.

“How long you think we’re here?” Grigory asked. His voice came out gravelly, tired.

“As long as they need bodies in Novohrodivka,” Sokolov said. “Could be weeks, could be months. Could be until we’re relieved because something worse happened somewhere else.”

“Or until we’re all dead,” Sergei added. His tone wasn’t bitter, just factual. “That’s the other option. They forget about us, leave us here until attrition solves the problem of what to do with us.”

“Cheerful,” Grigory muttered.

“Realistic.” Sergei’s good eye fixed on Sokolov. “You think otherwise?”

“I think dwelling on it doesn’t help anything. We’re here. We do what we’re told. We try to survive. That’s all we can control.”

“Very zen,” Grigory said. But he didn’t argue. None of them did. They were too tired for philosophical debates about their circumstances. They’d save their energy for tomorrow’s patrol, for the day after that, for the accumulation of days that might eventually add up to enough that they’d be rotated out or the war would end or something would change. Hope was expensive. They couldn’t afford it.

Sokolov left them and returned to his position near the window overlooking the street. Full night now, fog so thick that visibility dropped to maybe ten meters. The ruins disappeared into absolute darkness beyond the reach of the few portable lights the squad maintained. The city made sounds—buildings settling, wind moving through damaged structures, the occasional crack that might be weapons fire kilometers away or might be stressed metal finally giving up. Each sound felt amplified by the fog, given weight and presence that made threat assessment difficult.

He thought about the patrol, the civilians, the domesticity they’d moved through in the abandoned apartments. The children’s drawings. The family photos. The teenager’s gaming setup. All evidence of lives that had been interrupted by the war’s arrival, by the presence of soldiers like him who occupied the ruins those lives left behind. He couldn’t undo any of it. He couldn’t restore those families to their homes. He could only continue, patrol by patrol, day by day, trying to keep his own men alive while participating in a system that destroyed life as its fundamental operation.

His cigarette burned down. He lit another. The high-pitched whine in his ear continued its accompaniment. His shoulder ached. He was thirty-six years old, felt fifty, and faced the prospect of more years of this if he survived. The alternative to more years of this was dying, which would at least be resolution, but which would mean never seeing Mikhail again, never returning to Natasha, never experiencing anything beyond this fog-shrouded ruin of a city.

Footsteps behind him. He turned to find Timur approaching, moving with the careful economy of a man who’d learned to navigate in darkness.

“Sibiryak,” Sokolov said.

“Couldn’t sleep.” Timur stopped at a respectful distance. “Mind if I stand here?”

“It’s fine.”

They stood together, looking out at nothing. Timur didn’t smoke, which marked him as unusual. Most of the soldiers smoked constantly, using nicotine as one of the few reliable pleasures available. But Timur just stood, his face thoughtful in the dim light.

“Those drawings,” Timur said finally. “In the apartment.”

“Yeah.”

“My daughter—the older one—she draws like that. Same style. Same... joy in it, you know? That unselfconscious thing where they just put whatever they’re thinking right on paper, no filtering.”

“Yeah.”

“Makes me think I should be there. I should be home, watching her draw, helping with homework, fixing things around the farm. Instead I’m here, looking at someone else’s daughter’s drawings in a destroyed building.”

Sokolov didn’t respond. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t be either false comfort or confirmation that Timur was right to feel what he felt.

“You have family?” Timur asked.

“Son. Seven years old. Wife.”

“You think about them?”

“All the time.”

“You think they’re thinking about you?”

“I hope so. Or I hope not. I’m not sure which would be better.”

Timur nodded as if this made sense. Maybe it did. The question of whether being remembered or forgotten was preferable had no easy answer. Being remembered meant your absence caused pain. Being forgotten meant your presence had never mattered enough to create absence. Both options were terrible in different ways.

They stood in silence for another few minutes, then Timur moved away, returning to wherever he’d been trying to sleep. Sokolov remained at his post, smoking, thinking, waiting for morning to come so the cycle could repeat.

Toward midnight, strange sounds emerged from elsewhere in the building. Not the sounds of his squad—he knew those, could identify each soldier by their movement patterns, their breathing, their small habits. These were different. Footsteps, but lighter. Wrong. Like children running, like play instead of threat.

Sokolov tensed and moved toward the sound, weapon ready. Other soldiers were waking, also responding to the anomaly. Dmitri appeared from one doorway, rifle already raised. Viktor came from another angle, professional and alert. Grigory emerged looking confused and exhausted but functional.

The sounds led them to the upper floor, to a section of the building they’d cleared earlier but hadn’t examined closely. As they approached, Sokolov felt something shift in the atmosphere—a pressure change, maybe, or just psychological response to the strangeness. The footsteps continued, seeming to lead them toward a specific doorway at the end of a corridor.

When they reached it and pushed the door open, they found an apartment that was... different. Wrong. The damage that characterized every other apartment in the building seemed absent here. This space looked lived in, maintained, as if whoever occupied it had simply stepped out briefly and would return momentarily.

“The fuck is this?” Dmitri’s voice held curiosity rather than fear.

“Don’t know.” Sokolov entered cautiously, checking corners. The others followed, spreading out, maintaining tactical awareness even as they tried to understand what they were seeing.

Children’s toys on a shelf, too clean. A table with papers on it, too organized. Family photos on a wall, too straight. Everything just slightly too preserved, too maintained, as if someone had carefully arranged this space to appear normal in a building where nothing else was normal.

“Staged?” Viktor suggested. “Bait for looters?”

“Maybe. Everyone out. We’re not staying here.”

They withdrew, returning to their own positions. The sounds had stopped. Whatever had drawn them up here was gone or quiet now. Sokolov assigned extra watch, made sure everyone was alert, tried to determine if this had been threat or just strangeness. The city was full of acoustic anomalies, places where sound carried in unexpected ways, where damaged buildings created echoes and reverberations that mimicked human presence.

But something about the preserved apartment bothered him. The specificity of it, the deliberateness with which it seemed maintained. Like someone or something wanted them to see it, wanted them to know that not everything in the ruins followed the same rules of decay and abandonment.

“Probably nothing,” Grigory said, voicing what Sokolov was thinking. “Wind through damaged structures, our minds filling in patterns. We’re all exhausted, stressed. Easy to hear things that aren’t there.”

“Probably,” Sokolov agreed.

But he didn’t quite believe it, and he could tell from Grigory’s face that the older soldier didn’t quite believe it either. They’d both been in combat long enough to develop instincts about when something was wrong, when threat existed beyond visible markers. This felt wrong. Not immediately dangerous, but wrong in a way that suggested danger might be approaching.

He returned to his post, settled in for the rest of the night. The fog remained thick, the temperature continued dropping, and the city made its sounds—familiar now, or familiar enough to serve as background rather than constant source of alarm. The squad settled into whatever rest they could manage, some actually sleeping, others just lying still with eyes closed, conserving energy for tomorrow’s inevitable continuation of today’s routine.

Sokolov sat by his window, smoking, thinking about the preserved apartment. About the children’s drawings in the destroyed apartment earlier. About the civilians they’d encountered, about Viktor’s cold rationality, about Ilya’s desperate need for meaning. About Timur’s children, about his own son, about all the children who existed somewhere beyond this city, whose drawings and toys and games represented futures that might never arrive.

The night stretched. His cigarette burned down. He lit another. The high-pitched whine in his damaged ear provided its constant accompaniment. His thoughts drifted without focus, touching on memories and anxieties and the simple fact of being here, alive, responsible for keeping twelve other men alive through conditions that made survival seem like it might not be worth the effort.

Dawn approached, gray light beginning to penetrate the fog. Another day. Another patrol, probably. Another repetition of the cycle that defined their existence here. He wondered how long he could continue this. He wondered what breaking would feel like, whether it would be sudden collapse or slow erosion until nothing recognizable remained. He wondered if the difference mattered.

The squad began to wake, soldiers emerging from their claimed spaces, going through the rituals of preparing for another day. Checking weapons, distributing rations, the small conversations that served as social bonding or at least as acknowledgment of continued mutual existence. Sokolov conducted a brief morning briefing—same patrol route, same objectives, same reminder to stay alert and maintain spacing.

They filed out into the fog, becoming shadows again, moving through ruins that looked identical to yesterday’s ruins, that would look identical to tomorrow’s ruins. The city absorbed them, thirteen soldiers lost in the vastness of its destruction, performing tasks that might matter or might be meaningless, trying to survive until survival became something other than just continuing to exist in circumstances designed to destroy them.

Somewhere in the distance, artillery fired. The sound rolled through the fog like distant thunder, reminder that the war continued, that their small struggles and small sufferings were taking place within a larger context of violence and destruction that dwarfed individual experience. They were participants in something vast and terrible, but from their perspective they saw only the immediate—the next building to clear, the next patrol to complete, the next night to survive.

Sokolov led his squad forward, moving by habit more than by conscious decision, and wondered how much longer this could continue before something fundamental broke. He wondered if he would recognize the breaking when it came, or if it would happen so gradually that he’d only realize afterward that he was no longer the person he’d been when this started.

The fog swallowed them, and the city accepted their presence without comment or judgment, indifferent to their struggles, their fears, their desperate attempts to maintain some sense of purpose or dignity in circumstances that offered neither. They were here because they were here, doing what they did because refusing seemed impossible, and the days accumulated toward some ending that none of them could foresee but all of them suspected would not resemble anything like resolution or peace.

Behind them, in the high block they’d occupied, the preserved apartment waited in its impossible maintenance, and the children’s drawings watched from walls with the bright optimism of childhood imagination, and the city continued its slow transformation from evidence of civilization into monument to civilization’s absence, and time moved forward with the mechanical precision that made no distinction between human suffering and any other phenomenon, equally indifferent to all outcomes, caring nothing for meaning or purpose or any of the small consolations that humans constructed to make existence bearable.

Sokolov smoked his cigarette and led his squad through the fog and carried the weight of command and compromise and the accumulated moral damage of two years of participating in something he no longer believed in—if he ever had—and tomorrow would come, and they would do this again, and the day after that, and the day after that, until something changed or something broke or something ended, and he had no way of knowing which would arrive first or whether he would recognize it when it came.

#

By evening, the temperature had dropped enough that breath misted in the apartments. Sokolov watched his squad settle into their routines, each man finding his place in the temporary hierarchy of claimed spaces and established positions. The fog outside had thickened into something almost solid, pressing against the broken windows like it wanted inside.

He found Viktor in what had been a child’s bedroom, the walls still showing faded stickers of cartoon characters. The mercenary had stripped his rifle again, laying out components with that same meticulous care. A candle burned on a small desk, providing just enough light to work by.

“Third time today,” Sokolov observed from the doorway.

Viktor didn’t look up. “Keeps me busy. Keeps the weapon functional. Both matter.”

“You ever think about anything besides equipment maintenance?”

“Money. Sex. Food that doesn’t come from a ration pack.” Viktor’s hands moved through the cleaning routine without needing to look at what they were doing. “Sleep without dreams. The normal shit everyone thinks about when they’re not thinking about staying alive.”

Sokolov leaned against the doorframe. The cartoon characters on the wall—some kind of bears or dogs, he couldn’t tell in the dim light—watched them with permanent smiles. “You scared?”

“Of what?”

“Any of this. The war, dying, whatever comes next.”

Viktor considered the question while examining the bolt carrier group. “Not scared. Concerned, maybe. I made calculations about risk versus reward, and the calculations are turning out wrong. But scared?” He shook his head. “Fear’s expensive. Can’t afford it.”

“That’s not how fear works.”

“It is if you train yourself right.” Viktor reassembled the rifle with smooth efficiency. “I spent five years in Wagner doing exactly this—going into shit situations, maintaining equipment, collecting payment. The difference was, in Wagner we knew what we were. Mercenaries. Nobody pretended otherwise. Here, there’s all this...” He gestured vaguely at the walls, the city beyond. “Performance. Like we’re supposed to believe in something. Makes the job harder when you can’t just focus on the work.”

“Some people need the belief.”

“Some people need lots of things that aren’t real. Doesn’t make them less needy.” Viktor stood and slung the rifle. “We done here?”

“You ever think about what you’ll do? After?”

“Private security. Close protection work, probably. Middle East or Africa, somewhere that pays well and doesn’t ask too many questions. Build up enough capital, eventually retire somewhere warm.” Viktor’s expression didn’t change. “That’s the plan, anyway. Whether I live long enough to execute it is the variable I can’t control.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“Sounds like surviving.” Viktor moved toward the door, and Sokolov stepped aside to let him pass. “You want company, get a dog. You want to make it through this, focus on the things you can control and don’t waste energy on the rest.”

He left, and Sokolov remained in the child’s room, looking at the cartoon animals with their unchanging smiles. He wondered what the child had thought about while falling asleep here, what dreams had played out in this space before the war arrived and transformed the room into a temporary bivouac for a man who treated killing as a professional service.

Voices from the main room drew him back. Several soldiers had gathered there, sitting on furniture that had been moved into a rough circle. Anton was talking, his voice carrying that manic energy that came when he was trying to prove something.

“...and the thing about the older games, the ones you probably played, they were actually harder than what we have now,” Anton was saying. “Like, genuinely more difficult. Modern games hold your hand too much, give you too many assists, but back then—”

“Nobody cares, Geimer.” This was Andrei, his voice tired.

“I’m just saying, the games you grew up with, those were real challenges. Not like—”

“We didn’t grow up with games,” Grigory interrupted. “We grew up in the Soviet Union, then in the wreckage afterward. We had better things to do than stare at screens.”

“Yeah, but when you did play games—”

“We played outside,” Timur said. His Siberian accent made the words sound heavier somehow. “Real games. Physical games.”

Anton’s face showed confusion. “Like what?”

There was a pause, and then Grigory made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Little Towns. You know that one?”

“Gorodki,” Timur said, nodding. “We played that. Had a whole setup in the courtyard, spent hours trying to knock down the configurations.”

“I was shit at throwing,” Sergei added. His good eye focused on something in memory. “Could never get the distance right. Andrei, though—little bastard was good at it.”

“Had to be good at something,” Andrei muttered.

“What’s Little Towns?” Anton asked.

“Throwing game,” Grigory explained. “You set up wooden pins in specific patterns—the ‘towns’—and you throw bats at them to knock them down. Different configurations have different names. Cannon, star, arrow, others I’m forgetting. You had to clear all the pins with as few throws as possible.”

“We played that in my village,” Timur said. “Still do, probably. The old men, sitting around the square, arguing about whose turn it is, who cheated, who’s throwing wrong. Good way to pass time.”

“We had Elastic Jump,” Andrei said. “That was more the girls’ game, but we played it too when we were young. Jump over elastic stretched between two people’s legs, gets higher each round. Had to do this whole sequence of movements, over and under, landing just right.”

“Rezinochka,” Sergei confirmed. “My sister played that constantly. Drove my mother crazy, all the girls in the courtyard, hours of jumping and chanting.”

“What about Blind Man’s Bluff?” someone else suggested. Maksim, breaking his usual silence. The sound of his voice made several soldiers turn to look at him, surprised he was contributing.

“Yeah, we played that,” Grigory said. “One kid blindfolded, everyone else trying not to get caught. Simple but it worked.”

“Cossacks and Robbers,” Timur said, warming to the topic. “That was a good one. Divided into two teams, Cossacks tried to catch the Robbers, Robbers tried to reach home base. Whole neighborhood playing, running through yards and buildings.”

Anton leaned forward, interested despite himself. “These all sound like stuff we still play. I mean, variations of them.”

“They’re old games,” Grigory said. “Been played for generations. Your digital shit is new. This stuff—this is what Soviet kids did. What Russian kids did before that, probably.”

“What about hopscotch?” Sergei asked. “That’s universal, right? Every culture has a version.”

“Klassiki,” Andrei confirmed. “We played that. Drew the pattern with chalk, used rocks or glass pieces as markers. Same basic rules everywhere.”

“The Little Bear game,” Timur said quietly. “That was for younger kids. Circle game with singing. One kid in the middle playing the bear, everyone else holding hands around them, singing that song about the bear coming to pick flowers.”

“God, I haven’t thought about that in years,” Grigory said. “Vyshel mishka na luzhok. My daughter played that in kindergarten.”

“You have a daughter?” Anton asked.

“Nineteen years old now. Haven’t seen her in three years.”

The conversation died for a moment, the reminder of family bringing back the reality of where they were and why. Sokolov watched from the doorway, seeing how the nostalgia had briefly connected them, these men who had nothing in common except shared childhood experiences and current shared misery.

Ilya had been sitting quietly during the exchange, and now he spoke up. “These games—they’re part of our culture. Part of what makes us Russian. The things we pass down, generation to generation.”

“They’re just games,” Viktor said. He’d returned and was standing near the back of the room. “Every culture has playground games. Doesn’t make them sacred.”

“But they are,” Ilya insisted. His intensity was back, that need to make everything mean something. “They’re part of our shared experience, our collective memory. When we played these games as children, we were connecting with centuries of Russian children who played the same games. That matters.”

“What matters is we’re not children anymore,” Viktor said. “And nostalgia doesn’t change anything about our current situation.”

“It reminds us what we’re fighting for,” Ilya said. “What we’re trying to preserve. Our culture, our traditions, our way of life. That’s what this war is about—protecting these things from forces that want to erase them.”

“This war is about oil and political control,” Viktor said flatly. “Don’t dress it up in cultural preservation. That’s propaganda, and we all know it.”

Ilya’s face reddened. “You don’t understand because you don’t believe in anything. You’re a mercenary. You sell yourself to whoever pays. Of course you can’t see the higher purposes—”

“I see reality,” Viktor interrupted. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

“That’s enough,” Sokolov said from the doorway. Both men looked at him. “Kapital, go check the perimeter. Vera, take a walk. Cool off.”

Viktor left without comment. Ilya remained seated, his jaw tight with suppressed anger. The other soldiers shifted uncomfortably, the brief moment of connection broken by ideology and opposing worldviews.

“The games were nice to remember,” Timur said finally. “That’s all. Just... nice to remember when things were simpler.”

Everyone nodded at that, finding common ground in the simple desire to remember childhood without having to make it mean more than it meant. Sokolov moved away, leaving them to their conversation, and went to find where Dmitri and Yevgeny had ended up.

He found them in separate rooms, which was probably for the best. Yevgeny sat alone in what had been a bathroom, his small frame hunched on the closed toilet, staring at the cracked tiles on the floor. His hands shook as he tried to light a cigarette, the match going out twice before he managed it.

“Dedushka,” Sokolov said from the doorway.

Yevgeny flinched, the cigarette nearly falling from his mouth. “Sergeant. I wasn’t—I’m not—”

“Relax. Just checking on everyone.” Sokolov studied the older man, seeing the fear that never quite left his face. “You managing okay?”

“Fine. Yes. Managing fine.”

“Dmitri giving you trouble?”

“No more than usual.” Yevgeny’s voice came out thin. “He just... likes to watch. Stares. Makes comments. But he hasn’t done anything.”

“If he does, you tell me.”

“Yes, sergeant.” But Yevgeny’s tone suggested he didn’t believe reporting would change anything, that Dmitri could do whatever he wanted and consequences would be minimal. He was probably right. Sokolov could only intervene when actual rules were broken, and Dmitri was too smart to break rules in obvious ways.

“You were a teacher,” Sokolov said. “Before.”

Yevgeny’s hands tightened on the cigarette. “Yes.”

“You hear that conversation? About the childhood games?”

“Some of it.”

“You teach any of those? As part of physical education or whatever?”

“I taught mathematics. Not physical education.” Yevgeny took a shaky drag on his cigarette. “But yes, the students played those games. During breaks, in the courtyards. Same games we played at their age.”

“Ever play them yourself? As an adult, I mean. With students.”

“No.” Yevgeny’s voice dropped to barely audible. “I didn’t... I wasn’t supposed to participate in the children’s games. That wasn’t... appropriate.”

The irony of him invoking appropriateness made Sokolov’s stomach turn. This man, who’d systematically abused students for years, suddenly concerned about appropriate boundaries. But pressing that point would accomplish nothing except making Yevgeny more miserable, and he was already maximally miserable.

“Get some rest,” Sokolov said. “You’re on watch at 0400.”

He left Yevgeny to his cigarette and his fear, and went to find Dmitri. The sociopath was in another room, sitting on a bed with his back against the wall, cleaning his fingernails with a knife. Not doing anything threatening, just existing in that way that made other people nervous.

“Krysa,” Sokolov said.

Dmitri looked up, his gray eyes showing mild interest. “Sergeant.”

“Leave the old man alone.”

“I haven’t touched him.”

“I didn’t say you touched him. I said leave him alone. Stop staring at him, stop making comments, stop making his life harder than it already is.”

“Why?” Dmitri’s tone was genuinely curious. “He’s a child rapist. Nobody would care if I did touch him. Probably thank me for it.”

“I’d care. Because it would disrupt unit cohesion and create problems I’d have to deal with.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“That’s the reason that matters to you.”

Dmitri smiled, a expression that didn’t reach his eyes. “Fair enough. I’ll leave him alone. But if something happens to him that isn’t my doing, don’t assume it was.”

“Something going to happen to him?”

“How would I know? We’re in a war. Lots of things happen.” Dmitri returned to cleaning his nails. “Accidents. Friendly fire. People just disappearing. Nobody investigates too hard when someone like Dedushka stops being a problem.”

“I’ll investigate,” Sokolov said. “And if I find you involved, you’ll regret it.”

“Will I?” Dmitri looked up again, his smile widening slightly. “That’s interesting. What would you do to me that’s worse than what I’m already facing? Send me to the front? I’m at the front. Send me to prison? Been there. Kill me? That’s just ending the game early.”

“I’d make your life difficult in ways you haven’t experienced yet.”

“Looking forward to it,” Dmitri said, and returned to his knife work.

Sokolov left, unsatisfied. Threats didn’t work on someone like Dmitri because the man genuinely didn’t fear normal consequences. He’d already been in prison, already faced execution, already experienced the worst the system could do. Threatening more of the same had no leverage. And the worst part was, Dmitri was right—if something happened to Yevgeny, investigation would be minimal. Nobody would mourn the child molester. Nobody would push for justice. He’d just disappear from the records, another casualty in a war full of casualties.

He found Ivan the deserter sitting alone near a window, watching the street below. The man had his rifle across his lap but wasn’t maintaining it, wasn’t doing anything except watching and thinking. His face, narrow and sharp in the candlelight, showed the constant calculation that defined him.

“Beglets,” Sokolov said.

Ivan’s eyes flicked toward him, then back to the window. “Sergeant.”

“You settling in okay?”

“As okay as I can be, given I’m here under threat of execution.”

“Everyone’s here under some kind of threat.”

“Not the same.” Ivan’s voice held bitterness. “The others, they can pretend they chose this, or that circumstances forced them but they’re making the best of it. Me? I’m held at gunpoint. Literally. If I step wrong, if I hesitate, if I do anything that looks like I might run again, I’m dead. That’s not the same as what they’re dealing with.”

“You did try to desert.”

“Yeah, I did. Because this war is bullshit, and I shouldn’t be here. None of us should, but at least the others had reasons—money, ideology, legal compulsion. I got conscripted, tried to leave, got caught. Now I’m fighting in a war I don’t believe in, for a country that will execute me if I’m not enthusiastic enough about dying for it.”

Sokolov didn’t argue. Ivan was right, basically. The deserter occupied a uniquely precarious position—too useful to execute immediately, too untrustworthy to integrate fully, existing in limbo where he might be killed at any moment for reasons that would be invented to justify the decision.

“You thinking about trying again?” Sokolov asked.

“Every minute of every day,” Ivan said. “But I’m not stupid. I know what happened last time. I know the odds. So I don’t try. I just... calculate. Figure out angles. Look for possibilities that don’t exist.”

“That must be exhausting.”

“It is.” Ivan’s fingers tapped against his rifle. “But what else am I going to do? Accept my situation? Embrace the brotherhood of soldiers fighting for something I know is wrong? I can’t do that. So I calculate. I watch. I wait. Maybe something changes. Maybe it doesn’t. Either way, I’m not going to stop being what I am.”

“Which is?”

“A coward who was smart enough to see what this was from the beginning.” Ivan finally looked directly at Sokolov. “You know what the worst part is? I was right. About everything. This war is exactly what I thought it was—pointless violence, dressed up in propaganda, consuming people for nothing. But being right doesn’t matter. I’m still here. Still trapped. Still facing death every day. My clarity about the situation doesn’t protect me from it.”

“No,” Sokolov agreed. “It doesn’t.”

“You understand, though. I can see it in your face. You know this is all bullshit too.”

“What I know or don’t know isn’t relevant. I’m here, same as you. The difference is I’m not spending my energy on calculations that lead nowhere.”

“What are you spending it on?”

“Keeping twelve men alive one more day.”

“Thirteen,” Ivan corrected.

“Thirteen,” Sokolov acknowledged. “Including you.”

Ivan turned back to the window. “Thanks for that, I guess. Though I’m not sure being kept alive is doing me any favors.”

Sokolov left him to his calculations and moved on, checking the other positions. He found Anton struggling with his equipment, trying to adjust straps on his vest that didn’t need adjusting. The boy’s hands fumbled with buckles, his fingers thick and clumsy.

“Geimer, what are you doing?”

“Just... making sure everything’s right. For tomorrow. Don’t want anything coming loose during patrol.”

“Your gear is fine. Leave it alone.”

“I just want to be ready. Want to make sure I can keep up, that I’m not slowing everyone down—”

“You are slowing everyone down,” Sokolov said bluntly. “But fiddling with your gear isn’t going to change that. What would change it is if you focused on improving your basic skills instead of obsessing over equipment.”

Anton’s face fell. “I’m trying. I am. I know I’m not as good as the others, but I’m working on it—”

“Trying isn’t enough. You need results. And right now, the result is that you’re a liability. You can’t shoot straight, you can’t stay awake on watch, you can’t move quietly. These are basic things, and you’re failing at all of them.”

“I’ll do better. Tomorrow, I’ll—”

“Tomorrow you’ll probably make the same mistakes you made today. Because you’re eighteen years old and you lied about your age to join a war you had no business joining.” Sokolov’s tone wasn’t cruel, just factual. “You wanted to prove something. To who? Your classmates? The internet? Yourself?”

“I wanted to serve,” Anton said quietly. “I wanted to be part of something important.”

“And now you are. And it’s nothing like you imagined. And you’re discovering that wanting to be good at something doesn’t make you good at it.” Sokolov paused. “I’m not trying to crush you, Geimer. I’m trying to make you understand what you’re facing. The others—they tolerate you because you’re here and we need bodies. But tolerance isn’t respect. And if you want to survive this, you need to stop thinking about proving yourself and start thinking about basic competence.”

Anton nodded, his eyes red. “Yes, sergeant.”

Sokolov left him and continued his rounds, feeling like shit for having to speak that harshly to a kid who was, ultimately, just a kid in over his head. But false comfort would get Anton killed faster than harsh truth. The boy needed to understand that his fantasy of military glory was exactly that—fantasy. Reality was cold and hunger and exhaustion and the constant low-level terror of knowing you might die for reasons that had nothing to do with courage or skill.

He found the three damaged veterans—Grigory, Sergei, and Maksim—still sitting together in the kitchen area. The candle had burned lower, creating shadows that made them look older than they were.

“You three look like you’re holding a wake,” Sokolov observed.

“Aren’t we?” Grigory’s voice came out rough. “Just a very slow one.”

“Dark.”

“Realistic.” Sergei shifted position, turning to keep Sokolov in his field of view. “We’re all dying here. Just taking our time about it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sokolov said. “I’m planning to survive.”

“Plans don’t mean much,” Grigory said. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a shaking hand. “I’ve served twenty-two years. Know how many plans I’ve seen fail? How many men had plans that didn’t survive contact with reality?”

“All of them,” Sergei said. “Every single one.”

Maksim sat silent, but his eyes moved between the speakers, following the conversation without contributing to it.

“You’re cheerful tonight,” Sokolov said.

“We’re tired,” Grigory said. “Forget tired. We’re beyond tired. We’re into territory where the body’s just... done. Every day, everything hurts more. Everything takes more effort. Sleep doesn’t help because we don’t actually sleep, we just lie down and wait for morning.”

“Getting old,” Sergei added. “Except we’re not old. I’m thirty-nine. Grigory’s forty-one. We shouldn’t feel like this. But the service—it uses you up. Grinds you down. By the time you hit year twenty, you’re not a soldier anymore. You’re a collection of injuries and exhaustion held together by habit.”

“And they still send us out,” Grigory said. “Still expect us to perform like we’re twenty-five, fresh, capable. But we’re not. We’re falling apart.”

Sokolov looked at them—two men who should have been in their prime, who instead looked fifty, who moved like their bodies hurt in ways that would never heal. He saw himself in a few years if he survived, saw the accumulation of damage that military service inflicted, saw the endpoint of a career that consumed people and discarded them when they’d been used up.

“You could request medical discharge,” Sokolov suggested.

“Could,” Grigory agreed. “Won’t approve it. They need bodies too badly. Even broken bodies are better than no bodies.”

“Look at Sergei,” Grigory continued. “Missing an eye. One fucking eye. Should be grounds for automatic discharge. Instead, they sent him back to combat. Because his body’s still mostly functional, he can still hold a rifle, so why waste him?”

Sergei touched his eyepatch unconsciously. “Can’t see depth. Can’t judge distances. Can’t cover my left side properly. But I can stand in a line and point a gun in the general direction of the enemy, so here I am.”

“What about Maksim?” Sokolov asked. “He’s younger. Less time in service.”

The three of them looked at Maksim, who remained perfectly still, his expression showing nothing.

“Tikhiy’s different,” Grigory said. “Not physically broken. But something’s... not right. He doesn’t talk. Doesn’t connect. Just goes through the motions, performs his duties, exists without really being present.”

“I’m present,” Maksim said quietly. His voice was so unexpected that Sokolov actually flinched.

“Yeah?” Grigory said. “Then tell us what you’re thinking. Right now. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

Maksim considered the question for several seconds. “I’m thinking this conversation is pointless. We’re all damaged. Acknowledging it doesn’t change it. Better to just accept and continue.”

“See?” Grigory said to Sokolov. “He’s here. But he’s not here. Everything’s just... flat for him. No emotion, no connection, just function.”

“Function works,” Maksim said. “Emotion doesn’t.”

“That’s not healthy,” Sokolov said.

“Neither is this.” Maksim gestured at the room, the building, the city beyond. “But we’re doing it anyway.”

The four of them sat in silence for a while, the candle burning down, the shadows deepening. Sokolov felt the weight of their collective exhaustion, their accumulated damage, their recognition that they were all moving toward endpoints that would not be kind or fair or meaningful.

“You heard anything?” Sergei asked finally. “About rotation, relief, anything?”

“No. Same as always. We’re here until we’re not.”

“Wonderful.”

Sokolov left them and moved through the building, checking on the others. He found Timur sitting alone, looking at photographs he’d pulled from his pocket—family pictures, creased from being handled, showing a woman and three children. The Siberian farmer’s face in the candlelight showed a pain that had nothing to do with physical injury.

“Sibiryak,” Sokolov said gently.

Timur looked up, quickly putting the photos away. “Sergeant. Sorry, I was just—”

“Taking a break. It’s fine.” Sokolov sat down near him, not too close. “Your family okay? Last you heard?”

“They’re managing. My wife—she’s strong. Has to be, running a farm. But it’s hard. Too much work for one person, even with the girls helping. My son’s only seven. Can’t do much yet.” Timur’s accent made the words heavy. “I should be there. Helping. Teaching him things. Being a father instead of a name on a phone call.”

“When’s the last time you talked to them?”

“Three weeks ago. Phones don’t work reliably out here. When I do get through, I don’t know what to say. They ask when I’m coming home. I don’t have an answer. They tell me about the farm, about school, about their lives. I listen. But I’m not part of it. I’m just a voice from somewhere else.”

“They know you’re trying to get back to them.”

“Do they? Or do they think I chose this, that I’m staying away because I want to be a soldier instead of a father?” Timur shook his head. “My daughter—the oldest one—she asked me last time why I left if I miss them so much. I tried to explain about conscription, about duty, about not having a choice. But she’s nine. She doesn’t understand why her father is gone. She just knows he is.”

“Kids are resilient,” Sokolov offered.

“Kids shouldn’t have to be resilient about absent fathers. They should just have fathers who are present.” Timur pulled the photos back out, looking at them in the dim light. “Look at them. Look at their faces. That’s what matters. Not this city, not this war, not any of the bullshit we’re told matters. Just them. Just getting back to them.”

“You will.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” Sokolov admitted. “I don’t.”

They sat together for a few minutes, two fathers far from their children, carrying guilt and longing that had no outlet except these quiet moments of acknowledgment.

“I heard you talking about the games,” Timur said eventually. “The childhood games. My kids play those same games. In the courtyard, in the village square. Same games we played, that our parents played. Something about that...” He trailed off.

“Something about what?”

“Makes it worse, somehow. That we’re here, destroying cities where children played these same games. That we’re turning playgrounds into battlefields. That we’re making it so other children can’t play the games we remember fondly.” Timur put the photos away again. “What kind of men does that make us?”

Sokolov didn’t have an answer. They sat in silence until Timur stood, nodded, and left to find somewhere to try sleeping. Sokolov remained, thinking about children and games and the perversion of turning places of play into zones of violence.

He found Bishal cleaning his rifle in another room, the Nepalese soldier working with careful attention. When Bishal noticed Sokolov, he tensed slightly—that automatic wariness that came from being perpetually other, perpetually watched.

“Nepal,” Sokolov said. “Everything okay?”

Bishal nodded. His Russian was functional but limited, and he seemed to default to minimal verbal communication. “Yes. Okay.”

“You need anything? Questions?”

“No questions.” Bishal paused, then added: “Thank you for asking.”

The formal politeness of it, the sense that Bishal expected nothing and was grateful for any small consideration, made Sokolov feel like shit. This man shouldn’t be here. Had no stake in this war. Had been deceived and trapped into fighting in someone else’s conflict, and now he cleaned his rifle in a destroyed city thousands of kilometers from home.

“Your family,” Sokolov said. “In Nepal. They know where you are?”

“They know Russia. Not know Ukraine, not know fighting.” Bishal’s hands continued working. “I tell them security work. Safe. They believe. Send money home. That is what matters.”

“You ever tell them the truth?”

“What truth?” Bishal looked up, his eyes showing something complex. “Truth is I am trapped. Truth is I am forced to fight. Truth is I may die here. They cannot help. So why tell them? Better they think I am safe, doing good work, sending money. Better they have hope.”

“That’s hard. Carrying that alone.”

“Everything here is hard.” Bishal returned to his work. “But I am alive. Tomorrow maybe alive. That is enough.”

Sokolov nodded and left him, feeling the weight of all these small interactions, these glimpses into the damaged and complex lives of men he was responsible for keeping alive. Each one carried their own burdens, their own fears, their own reasons for being here and their own desperate hopes for leaving. And he was supposed to somehow manage them all, keep them functional, maintain discipline and cohesion in a context that made cohesion nearly impossible.

The evening stretched toward night. Sokolov made his final rounds, checking watch positions, making sure everyone was settled as much as they could be. The building made sounds—settling, creaking, the wind moving through damaged structures. Outside, the fog remained thick, and somewhere distant, artillery exchanged fire.

He returned to his position near the window overlooking the street, lit another cigarette, and let himself finally sit with his own thoughts. The city below disappeared into fog and darkness. The ruins were invisible beyond a few meters. He could be anywhere, looking at anything. The specificity of Novohrodivka became abstraction, just another destroyed place among many destroyed places.

He thought about the conversations he’d had, the soldiers he’d checked on, the fragile ecosystem of his unit that somehow continued functioning despite all the reasons it should collapse. Viktor’s cold professionalism. Ilya’s desperate ideological need. Dmitri’s predatory watching. Yevgeny’s terror. Ivan’s calculations. Anton’s inadequacy. The veterans’ exhaustion. Timur’s longing. Bishal’s trapped politeness. Each one a person, complex and damaged, trying to survive in circumstances that made survival its own form of torture.

And he was responsible for them. That was the joke, really—that someone had looked at this collection of criminals, conscripts, broken veterans, and desperate men and decided that Aleksandr Sokolov, himself barely holding together, should be in charge. Should make the decisions. Should somehow keep them alive and functional and pointed in whatever direction command wanted them pointed.

He pulled out his phone, checked for signal. Nothing. Hadn’t been signal for days. He couldn’t call Natasha, couldn’t hear Mikhail’s voice, couldn’t connect to the life that existed somewhere beyond this city, that life he was supposedly fighting to return to even though the fighting itself made return seem increasingly impossible.

The cigarette burned down. He lit another. The motion was automatic now, like breathing. His damaged ear created its constant background whine. His shoulder ached. His thoughts moved through the same circles they always moved through—guilt about his son, awareness of his compromises, recognition that he was participating in something terrible, fear that survival would cost more than he could pay and still remain himself.

A sound in the distance made him tense—not artillery, something closer. Footsteps maybe, or buildings settling, or the acoustic tricks that the fog played. He watched the street below, seeing nothing, hearing the sound continue without identifying its source.

It reminded him of earlier, the strange sounds that had led them to the preserved apartment. That wrongness, that sense of something operating according to rules that didn’t match the rules he understood. He’d dismissed it as exhaustion, as stress creating patterns where none existed. But the memory lingered, uncomfortable, suggesting that not everything in this city followed the same logic he’d learned to navigate.

He pushed the thought away. Couldn’t afford to start believing in strangeness, in supernatural explanations, in anything beyond the material horrors that were sufficient to explain everything terrible about their situation. The city was full of acoustic anomalies, optical tricks, spaces where architecture created uncanny effects. Nothing more than that. Just buildings and fog and exhausted men interpreting ambiguity as threat because threat was what they’d been trained to see.

The night deepened. His cigarette burned down. He lit another. The fog pressed against the window like it wanted inside, like it had consciousness and intention. He watched it, seeing faces in it that weren’t there, seeing movement that was just the fog shifting in air currents, seeing everything through the filter of exhaustion and damage and the knowledge that tomorrow he’d wake up and do this all again.

Tomorrow there would be another patrol. Another circuit through the same ruins, seeing the same evidence of destruction, encountering the same nothing that had defined every patrol before. The routine was crushing in its repetition, each day identical to the last, without progress or change or any sense that they were accomplishing anything beyond not dying today.

He thought about Anton’s question, about the childhood games. About how they’d all played those same games, about the shared experiences that briefly connected them despite everything else that divided them. About how those games were supposed to be innocent, meaningless, just ways to pass time and develop social skills and burn childhood energy. About how odd it was that grown men, in a war zone, far from childhood, found themselves reminiscing about those games with something approaching nostalgia.

About how those playgrounds where they’d played were now battlegrounds. About how the next generation’s children wouldn’t play those games in this city, or would play them in the ruins, or wouldn’t exist at all because the families had fled or died. About how war didn’t just destroy the present but infected the past, making innocent memories taste wrong, making childhood seem like a dream that had never really existed.

His thoughts spiraled without destination, touching on memories and fears and the simple exhausted awareness that he was still here, still alive, still responsible for twelve other lives, still moving through days that seemed designed to wear down anything resembling hope or purpose or meaning until only the animal desire to continue breathing remained.

The cigarette burned down to his fingers. He stubbed it out and immediately lit another. The motion was compulsive now, not even providing pleasure, just something to do with his hands, a ritual that marked time passing. He’d gone through almost a whole pack today. At this rate, he’d run out tomorrow. He’d need to scrounge more, or accept the edge that came from nicotine withdrawal, or—

A sound again, clearer this time. Definitely footsteps, light and rapid, like someone running. Like children running, though that was impossible because there were no children in this sector, hadn’t been children here in months.

Sokolov stood, suddenly alert, weapon coming up automatically. The sound came from inside the building, somewhere on the upper floors. Other soldiers were responding—he heard movement, whispered questions, the sounds of weapons being readied.

He moved through the darkness, joining the others. Dmitri appeared from one doorway, already armed. Viktor came from another direction. Grigory emerged looking confused but functional. More soldiers gathering, moving toward the stairs that led upward, following the sounds that shouldn’t exist.

They climbed to the floor above, moving tactically, covering angles. The sounds continued, leading them toward the same section they’d been to earlier, toward that preserved apartment that had felt wrong. The footsteps seemed to be coming from that direction, playful and rapid, nothing like the careful movements of soldiers or the desperate movements of civilians.

They reached the corridor. The sounds stopped. Perfect silence except for their own breathing, the slight rustling of equipment, the ambient noises of a building slowly decaying. They stood in the darkness, waiting, listening, trying to understand what they’d heard and why it had stopped.

“The fuck was that?” someone whispered. Andrei, his voice tight with fear.

“Don’t know,” Sokolov said quietly. “Everyone stay alert. Could be acoustics, could be—”

The door to the preserved apartment swung open slowly. No wind, no obvious cause, just the door moving with mechanical smoothness until it stood fully open, revealing darkness inside.

“Nobody’s in there,” Viktor said. His voice held certainty. “We cleared it earlier. It was empty.”

“Empty but wrong,” Grigory said. “Everything too neat. Too preserved.”

“Check it again,” Sokolov ordered. “Dmitri, Viktor, with me. Everyone else, hold position, cover the corridor.”

The three of them advanced on the open door, weapons ready, moving with the tactical precision that came from training and experience. They reached the doorway, paused, checked corners, then entered the preserved apartment.

Inside, nothing had changed. The space remained impossibly maintained—furniture clean, toys on shelves, table organized, everything suggesting occupancy that hadn’t actually existed for months. But now, in addition to that wrongness, there was something else. Something that made all three soldiers stop and stare.

On the table, where there had been papers before, now sat a teacher’s register. An old-style Soviet school register, the kind used for tracking student attendance and grades. It lay open, pages showing neat handwriting, names listed in alphabetical order with columns for grades and attendance.

“That wasn’t there before,” Dmitri said. His voice held interest rather than fear, the sociopath’s curiosity about novel phenomena. “I remember this table. It had papers, newspapers. Not this.”

“Where did it come from?” Viktor asked. He moved closer, examining the register without touching it. “This isn’t military. This is a school record book.”

Sokolov approached the table, his skin crawling with something he couldn’t name. The register was real—solid, physical, detailed. He could see the entries, could read some of the names, could see grades marked next to subjects. It looked decades old, the pages yellowed, the binding worn, the whole object carrying the weight of genuine history.

“We’re leaving,” Sokolov said. “Back to our positions. Nobody touches anything.”

They withdrew, backing out of the apartment, keeping the space in sight until they reached the corridor. The door swung shut behind them with the same mechanical smoothness it had opened with, and they heard a sound like a lock engaging even though there was no visible lock mechanism.

“Explain that,” someone said. “Someone explain what the fuck that was.”

“Can’t,” Sokolov said. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re not going back in there. That apartment is off-limits. Everyone understand?”

Nods all around. Nobody wanted to argue. Whatever had just happened had violated their understanding of what was possible, had introduced wrongness that couldn’t be explained through normal means. They descended to their positions, moved to their claimed spaces, tried to settle back into routines that suddenly felt less secure.

Sokolov returned to his window, but he didn’t light a cigarette. His hands were shaking slightly, and he didn’t trust them to hold the match steady. He looked out at the fog, at the darkness, at the city that suddenly felt less like a battlefield and more like something else. Something that had its own rules, its own logic, its own purposes that had nothing to do with military operations or occupation or any of the frameworks he understood.

He told himself it was exhaustion. Stress. The accumulated psychological damage of sustained combat making them see meaning where there was just random occurrence. The register had been there all along, they’d just missed it in their initial check. The door had opened because of wind or structural settling. The footsteps had been acoustic tricks, buildings creaking in ways that sounded like running feet.

But he didn’t quite believe it, and the part of him that didn’t believe it was terrified in a way that combat had never made him terrified. Because combat he understood. Bullets and artillery and death—these followed rules, operated according to physics, could be navigated through tactics and luck. But this—whatever this was—didn’t follow those rules. Operated according to logic he couldn’t perceive. And that made it more frightening than any enemy he’d faced.

The night stretched on. He sat by his window, not smoking, just watching, listening, waiting for morning to come and prove that everything was still normal, that yesterday’s strangeness had been singular, that tomorrow would be just another day of patrols and survival and the grinding accumulation of hours that made up military life.

But he knew, somewhere deep in the part of himself he tried not to listen to, that something had changed. That the city had revealed itself as more than just ruins and rubble. That the rules he’d been operating under might not be the only rules in play.

And tomorrow, when the sun rose and the fog thinned and they went out on patrol again, he would see what that meant. What it cost. What it demanded from soldiers who thought they understood what they were facing, who thought survival was just a matter of tactics and luck and sustained endurance.

Tomorrow would tell them if they were right. Or if they’d missed something fundamental about where they were and what was waiting for them in the ruins of Novohrodivka.Cha