Blitzed(158)

I could see he was fading, and knew he was right — it was inevitable. With all my mental strength I clamped down on my tears, not letting them fall in front of him. “Thank me for what?”

“For showing me what love really is. I’d never known it until I met you.”

“I love you, Francois,” I whispered. His eyes fluttered, and I leaned down, kissing him on his bloody lips. He sagged back, his eyes losing the last of their focus as his hand fell from my cheek to collapse on the pine needles. I knelt next to him, and let the tears flow until our friend came and touched my shoulder.

“I am sorry. We go. Danger.”

I nodded, and stood up, lifting Francois's upper body. When our guide looked at me in confusion, I stared at him. “Help me! He may have made mistakes, but he deserves better than this pauper's grave.”

Our ally shrugged, not understanding me, but Felix knelt down, lifting his brother’s body and putting it across his shoulders. “I'll carry him,” he said, holding his wrist to steady his fireman's carry. “Is he my brother? He looks so much like me.”

“He is,” I said, getting my rifle ready. “You don't remember?”

“Everything is so hazy, like looking through a dimmed frosted window,” Felix said. “You said you love him, but you love me too?”

“We have a lot to talk about. I promise you, no lies, no holding back.”

He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s go.”





Chapter 39





Felix





It took us four days to get out of the Ukraine, during which I was in a state of total confusion. I kept being greeted by people who seemed overjoyed to see me, but I had no idea who they were. I was hugged, clapped on the back, and greeted like a family member by people who I swore I had never seen before, only to have them laugh it off and clap me on the shoulder again. “It’ll come back to you,” they kept saying. “You are Romani, stronger than any drugs.”

After getting out of the country and getting into Romania, where we were greeted by members of my supposed tribe, I couldn't take it any longer. We were in a meeting room, in the basement of a restaurant, when I held up my hands. “Stop, all of you,” I said. “I . . . I need a moment.”

I left the room to walk out into the hallway, looking left and right. Up the stairs was the restaurant itself, which seemingly doubled as a nightclub based off of the thudding industrial techno filtering down from above. There was no peace, no consolation there for me. Instead, I went the other direction, toward the meat locker that had a yellow tag on the door. It was unlocked, and I opened it to find the body bag that held the body of Francois, my brother, lying on the metal table in the middle of the room.

I unzipped the bag, looking down at the frosted face that looked back at me, so like mine but slightly different. I’d been shown photos of our past, the two of us with our arms slung around each other's shoulders, with the woman Jordan between us, all of us looking happy on some beach.

But I didn't remember it. The names Jordan and Francois stirred something in the soup that was my past, but it still didn't have the same emotional connection as my thoughts of my Svetlana, who had loved me and used me at the same time. My sleep had been disturbed constantly by images of her in my mind, waking up not at the foot of her bed like I'd expected, but in a place with people I didn’t know.

Four days after my rescue I found myself in the basement of a techno club restaurant, staring at the body of the man who was apparently my brother.

“What the hell happened, anyway?” I asked his dead body, knowing I wasn't going to get the answers I needed. “Why the hell was I kidnapped?”

“I knew I'd find you here,” Jordan said behind me quietly. I turned and saw her leaning against the door of the freezer, her arms crossed over her chest and a kind look on her face. She was just as confusing as everything else. I could see she was amazingly beautiful, with a voluptuousness to her features, but I just couldn’t quite recall anything despite getting a feeling every time I laid eyes on her. “It's quiet.”

“It is,” I agreed, turning back around to look back down at Francois. “After four days of chaos and noise, I find myself needing more of it.”

“I'm sorry that we haven't given it to you,” Jordan said, crossing the room to stand on the other side of the table. “I've spoken with some of the doctors and psychologists that are helping us — they said you would need it, but until you’re safe, we can't seem to find any.”

“I just want answers,” I said, sighing again. “Why was I there? Why was I brainwashed? What am I supposed to do about these feelings that I have? What the hell is going to happen to me?”

My fingers trembled as I gripped the edge of the table, wanting to scream at Francois's body, demanding that he give answers.

Finally, Jordan's voice cut through my confusion. “Felix, what's on your back?” she asked quietly, her voice still tender. “I'm sure you've wondered how you got that X-shaped scar.”

“I have,” I said. “It is a strange scar.”

Jordan reached down and unbuttoned Francois's shirt, stripping it off of him. She reached across and pulled him onto his side, showing me the similar scars on his back. “There are other reasons, but I think in the end, this is the main reason why.”