The cold forest surrounding Knox's estate swallowed Youri whole as he wandered forward with no direction at all, his breath shivering out of him in pale bursts and his tears frozen to his cheeks in tiny crystals. Volar was a planet of only two seasons: six months of blistering heat while its orbit carried it close to its star, and six months of merciless cold while that same orbit carried it far away. This was one of the long, lethal winters.
He walked barefoot, each step sinking into the soft bite of the snow. The thin subject uniform he wore barely reached his knees. Its fabric had gone stiff with frost, and he walked with his arms wrapped tight around himself as if he could squeeze some warmth back into his body. With every step, memories came to him uninvited — Emma smiling in the garden, Liam pulling him by the hand across the yard, Lira laughing in the sunlight on the porch — and every one of them rose up painfully against the cold that was eating into his bones.
And among them was one that stood apart from all the rest: Flavio's voice drifting through the dim nights in the institute, telling him about the places he had seen and offering him that quiet comfort whenever the world felt unbearable. But as the wind tore through the trees, even that voice grew softer, muffled by the numbness creeping into his limbs.
Sleep began to press down on him like a heavy fog. He stumbled, his legs shaking, and at last he fell to his knees in the snow with his numb hands hanging uselessly at his sides. With the last of his strength he tipped his head back. The sky stretched endlessly above him, sharp and brilliant, the stars glittering coldly overhead like distant fires. He let his eyes close, and his body slumped forward into the snow.
He had run out of time.
When consciousness came back to him, it came as warmth — soft at first, and then steady and real. Someone was holding him. Someone was carrying him.
Youri's eyes blinked slowly open. He could feel the sway of footsteps beneath him and the firm support of a back. Strands of long dark hair were brushing lightly against his cheek. Recognition went through him like a spark. Thirty-Five.
Panic, confusion and disbelief all collided inside him at once. Thirty-Five was alive, and he had saved him a second time. Youri had been sure he had died in the explosion along with Knox and Flavio, lost in the fire or crushed beneath the collapsing metal, but here he was, walking through the frozen forest with Youri slung across his back.
Youri had only ever seen him twice inside the Institute of Potential. The first time was on that first night, when Thirty-Five had flung himself at the bars of his cell with a hiss so violent that it sent a shiver down Youri's spine. The second time was from his own cell, as Andy led Thirty-Five past him like a caged animal. To the Youri of those days, Thirty-Five had been danger itself, the nightmare the other prisoners whispered about. But now, with his cheek resting against that back, he felt something he hadn't been prepared for. Thirty-Five felt human. Warm. Alive. He could feel the steady thump of his heart through his own cheek.
"Thank you," he heard himself say faintly, before he could stop himself.
Thirty-Five made no reply. He only kept walking through the snow as though he hadn't heard a word.
Eventually the trees thinned, and the two of them came out onto a long stretch of empty road, dead and silent under the early fog. No vehicles passed, and no people appeared. They walked on for hours. The cold slowly lifted with the first hints of dawn, and little by little Youri felt his strength coming back to him, enough at least to raise his head.
"I think I can walk now," he said gently. "You can put me down. You should rest."
Thirty-Five answered with a single low, rough roar, and he did not stop.
Youri blinked. "Are… are you okay?"
Another roar came — quieter this time, slower, almost tired.
"You can't talk, can you?" Youri whispered.
Thirty-Five gave no answer and only kept moving. That silence told Youri everything. Whatever had been done to him in that basement, Thirty-Five had lost the ability to speak.
They went on until the sun finally rose and painted the sky with pale light. Far off in the distance a shape appeared, dark, slanted and uneven. As they drew closer it sharpened into the outline of an old building, abandoned and slowly collapsing in on itself. Its windows were cracked and blackened with soot, its upper floors bowed inward under their own weight, and its roof sagged dangerously, scarred by storms and time, with broken wooden beams jutting out of the wreckage like ribs.
Youri tapped Thirty-Five's shoulder and pointed. "Let's go in there. You need to rest. You've been walking for hours."
Thirty-Five gave a faint, weary roar and turned toward it. At the entrance he crouched low so that Youri could slide down off his back, and they went inside together. The walls were layered with peeling paint over stained, moldy plaster, long cracks ran through the sagging ceiling like veins, and the floor was a chaos of broken bricks, splintered wood and dust that puffed up with every step. Doorways opened onto rooms swallowed by shadow, where thin slivers of light came through the gaps in the walls, and graffiti in violent colors stretched across the concrete — a reminder that people had passed through here long after the building itself had died.
Youri wandered deeper inside, drawn toward a room at the back. Its walls were mottled with exposed brick and a faint green tint of damp, and a tall arched window filled the far wall, its glass long since shattered, with a scrap of cloth caught on the frame and fluttering a little with every draft. Beyond it, the daylight glowed softly, warm against the gloom inside.
"Thirty-Five," Youri called, and his voice echoed faintly.
Thirty-Five came into the room, a heavy, silent shape in the dimness.
"This should work," Youri said, lowering himself onto the cracked tiles. "We can rest here."
The two of them lay down, worn out and battered, their minds frayed to threads, but as their eyes drifted shut, the horrors they had lived through felt suddenly far away, like memories drawing back into the dark. For the first time in days, the world around them was quiet, and they finally slept.