Christian sat cross-legged on the cold cement floor, his back pressed against a scorched pillar, his weapons spread around him like holy relics. The air smelled of rust and ash, sharp with the bite of old smoke that clung to the ruined factory walls. The city outside moaned with its own grief; distant shellfire, muffled cries, the metallic whine of a tank treading over broken streets.
He shut his eyes. The darkness behind his lids was not emptiness, it was discipline. A place to rehearse death. First, the breathing. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Slow. Measured. Until the pounding of his heart no longer felt like a hammer in his chest but a steady, obedient rhythm. He whispered numbers under his breath, one through ten, then ten back down to one, until each second became a controlled blade.
Then came the mantras. He whispered them in German, then Polish, then Russian, each syllable a steel rod driven into his spine.
You are no one. You are everyone.
You are a wolf. You are a shadow.
He repeated them until they carved grooves in his mind. Until the thought of fear, or hesitation, or mercy could no longer take root.
And then, the ritual of visualization. He saw the corridors of the building where Antonov would meet. The guard at the entrance, bored, his rifle slung carelessly across his chest. The woman sweeping near the stairwell, not looking up as he passed. The creak of the second step, the groan of the floorboards. He mapped each breath, each shadow, each footfall, until the scene became more real than the crumbling factory around him.
He saw Antonov. Short, broad, the sharp-lined face of a man who commanded fear rather than respect. He saw him sit at the table, open his ledger, pour himself vodka. Christian imagined the moment the draw of the pistol, the squeeze of the trigger, the sound of glass shattering as Antonov's hand fell.
But visualization was never clean. He forced himself to imagine failure. A guard stepping through the wrong door. The sound of boots outside the window. The split-second too long it might take to reload. He walked through those deaths, over and over, until his mind became calloused to them. If they came, he would not freeze. If they came, he would already have lived them.
His hands moved on their own, muscle memory layered upon prayer. He blind-assembled the Walther in total darkness, listening for the click of the barrel, the snap of the slide. He holstered it, drew it and holstered it again. Fifty times. Each motion precise, economical, without wasted gesture.
At last he rose. He approached the shard of broken glass propped against the wall, his only mirror. The face that stared back was not his own. Hollow eyes. Cheekbones sharp from hunger. A thin mouth set in a permanent frown. He pulled on the Soviet tunic, adjusted the collar and tested the cap. A factory worker became an officer. An officer became a nobody.
"You are no one," he whispered to the glass. "You are everyone."
He stripped it off again, folding it neatly, and returned to the crate. His fingers lingered on the map one final time. He traced the sewer line, the rope bridge, the cellar. Each escape was rehearsed like the mission itself, until even his retreat became choreography.
His hand drifted to his breast pocket. The ring. He slid it out carefully, as if the mere act of holding it might break the silver. Kristina's smile, Katia's quiet eyes. For a moment, the mantras faltered. For a moment, he was not no one. He was Christian. He was a brother, a lover, a man who still clung to fragments of a world untouched by blood.
But Müller's voice haunted him even here. I know where your heart is.
He kissed the ring once, swiftly, like a guilty act, then pressed it back against his chest. He could not afford to linger on it. To think of them too long was to make them vulnerable.
The lamp had long gone out, leaving him in the glow of distant fires. He gathered his tools, packed them with methodical calm, and sat for one last moment of stillness.
The air was cold, but his blood had steadied into fire.
Tomorrow, he would cease to be a man. Tomorrow, he would become function, precision, inevitability.
Tomorrow, Antonov would meet the wolf in the dark.