Bullets rain towards our direction; vodka bottles burst open on their way. Shards of glass glide straight down the pit, pierce through my arms and patter against my clothes. My head could explode from the shrieking noises. I keep my eyes shut, hands covering my head, rolling down the tunnel like a furball.

As I open my eyes, I spot a fragment of a bottleneck less than an inch from my Achilles’ heel. I escaped a tendon rupture by a hair.

I’ve lost track of Alice in all the chaos, but I know she’s ahead of me somewhere. I just have to hope she’s safe and unharmed.

My eyes lose focus, my ears buzz. Gunshots are still rattling our way at a constant speed. I can’t fight back in this state, I know that much. I have no information on the type of pistol he uses, whether he has a second weapon, how many bullets he has fired. I can’t even think straight.

Fuck, Alexei. This isn’t the time to freeze.

Until . . . there’s a ceasefire. I scramble through the tunnel, trying to reach a leftward turn I estimated to be a few meters ahead. The swatting noise over the corner makes me think that she’s waiting for me over there. The smell of damp concrete, mixed with something resembling mud stirred in rotten beef Stroganoff, almost causes me to vomit. At least the tunnel gets more spacious as I move further inside. It feels wide enough for two people to crawl alongside each other and high enough to sit up. As I try to push my way through stones and dirt, I’m met by an inquisitive pair of eyes, ones that light up like those of a cat in the darkness. Hers.

“Why are you sitting there? Go,” I say.

“I wanted to know that you’re safe,” she replies.

“No, I am not! Fucking go!”

“I’m going!”

“Hurry! I beg you!” I clasp my hands together. I should’ve just fucking gone ahead of her. At least that would guarantee one of us would survive. Lucky for me, she listens without pulling me into another moral argument or asking me why I’m yelling.

I can see her hips moving in front of me, but I’m not closing the distance at all. I’m exhausted. But the left turn is just ahead. It’s just ahead, keep crawling. Only an inch from me, only an inch, only an inch. . .

I clasp my hand onto the edge of the wall.

Yes! The turn is there! I can hide behind the edge and ambush him—

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A clanking sound echoes through the tunnel, and I collapse.

Something crashes into the top of my head. It feels as hard as cast iron, but breaks into pieces upon impact. Small and sharp, the bits stick into my forehead, cut into the bridge of my nose bridge. They could’ve shredded my eyeballs if I hadn’t shut them in time.

It’s glass. I just got hit in the head with a bottle.

Then I hear a roar. “Fuck you!”

All of my senses snap awake. A putrid scent has spread across the tunnel like a foul incense, cleansing away the lingering concrete smell. I know that scent. It’s blood, my blood. It drips into my eyes as I open them, and I half-shut them again. I try to crawl to a corner using my knuckles, but that person already shoved me against the tunnel wall, pouncing on me with the ferocity of a chimpanzee. He screams again, and I realize who he is.

Commander Dzyuba.

He sounds different, but different isn’t enough to disguise his fury.

“Alexei!” Alice screams.

I shout, “Fuck outta here! If you don’t, I’ll kill you myself—“

I take a punch on the cheek. Dzyuba presses upon my legs and locks them up. His left hand puts pressure on my collarbone, all the way down to my chest, while his other hand raises what’s left of the bottle up over his shoulder. Uneven serrated edges sprout from it, as sharp, if not sharper, than a knife. My blood drips from the edges, down to my lips, and enters my mouth. Tastes like rust.

Dzyuba pins down my entire lower body. I’m like a squashed cockroach, unable to even struggle. My dominant hand is in a state of temporary disability. My head is still spinning from the blow. My enhanced senses have turned against my own mind, flooding it with static radio white noise, the sound of pistol unloading and reloading, the sound of newspaper pages flipping.

Once the bottle comes down, everything will be over.

Roman. Vasiliy. I can finally see you again.

“Are you really going to die here? What a disgrace.” Vasiliy’s voice rings out from the back of my mind, amidst the newspaper flaps.

Then the cacophony inside my head vanishes.

Dzyuba isn’t that strong. I’m fighting against myself.

“Aaaargghhh!” Growling, the commander slashes down with the bottle. At that exact moment, I realize one thing.

My left hand is still free.

I catch his arm, right below the cuff. But, with the strength of a mad man and a bit of momentum, he manages to pin my hand to the ground.

I try to push him away. He tries to press on harder. In the darkness, I can see the glow from inside his glove, dimly light up in front of my eyes. The ring.

As each second passes, the distance between the bottle’s edges and my face shrinks to the point where fog starts to form on the glass as I gasp for air.

Rage fills Dzyuba’s eyes. His lips are covered in his own foamy saliva.

“You sick bastard! This is my escape route! Mine. Mine. Mine! Only I . . . Only I can leave this hellhole!” he yells.

“Shut up . . . Your drool is all over me . . .” My consciousness is fading. I can’t hold on for much longer.

“How dare you? How dare you abandon your comrades? How dare you cut off your lifeline? Do you know what I’ve been through, you bastard? Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

He’s lost his damn mind! His wrist sways in all directions, trying to pierce through every bit of my skin. He might’ve turned off his brain. Dear Great Russia, this is my ticket to survival!

The commander has made a grave mistake: you don’t ever fight with only your brawn.