She followed after him, watching him slowly fade into the blackness of the tunnel where he had appeared from only minutes ago, not able to force herself to run after him, or try to prevent him from going to where he felt he was truly needed. She tried to make peace within herself about her promise, imagining the moment when he would reappear and she would finally leave Avtozavodskaya and go to Polis. Before he had completely vanished, she called softly out to him, hoping he would hear but not expecting him to reply.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Marco.” His voice echoed off the tunnel walls with perfectly clarity and she could have listened to it on repeat for eternity. What she couldn’t see were the tears in his eyes, both of hope and of sorrow. And he was lost to the darkness.
“After that, I didn’t hear anything from him – just the rumors about your situation up there. Valya sends me a report every night of the things going on.” Marco continued rambling, even after the story had ended. “I heard all about Exhibition, even the Partisans came by Avtozavod with news. Everyone was afraid of the Dark Ones, all the way around the Ring and maybe further. And after the news spread about D6 being found, I still waited, I figured he had gone back to Vera immediately and set back out to destroy them with a platoon… he could get really focused like that. But almost a month had passed since that day he said goodbye to me and he never came back even after the Dark Ones were annihilated. I knew something was really wrong, so we set out our net, hoping to find anyone from the Order to get the answers.”
“And then I came along,” Sergio smirked as he filled in the next part for her. “It wasn’t planned out that way, you know, we were fighting off watchmen at the Church outpost. Me and another Hunter, Senya, got separated from the group, and he told me how to get to Venice before he died.”
“I’m sorry, if I wasn’t very hospitable to you then. I was just so afraid, and when you told me that not even anybody in the Order had heard from him…” Marco took in a deep breath to keep herself from sliding down that slippery emotional slope again.
“It’s okay, I’m glad it happened this way.” Sergio tried to straighten his face to express his sincerity but she didn’t look back up at him.
“I didn’t sense anything.” Her gaze was fixed at her own feet and she pressed her hands between her knees. “I think I would have felt something; if he was hurt, if he died, I would have known.”
“You think he’s still alive?” Sergio tried to mask the doubt in his voice, as he had gradually given up hope for Sacco’s return the more people had talked about his disappearance. “Why wouldn’t he have come back then?”
“Maybe he found something else up there besides those Dark Ones, maybe they just wiped his mind and he’s just wandering around aimlessly, maybe he doesn’t know who he is anymore – or how to get back.” Marco finally looked up, her eyes wide, but her body was stock still. She looked as though she were about to jump up and go looking for him in an instant.
“They’ve been looking for him, on every patrol, at every outpost, every station. Standing orders.” Sergio tried to sound reassuring but the words only came out coldly as if from a record being heard for the hundredth time. He switched gears, offering up his own recollections to ensure that the fire of her hope remained lit, as maybe it was only this desperate desire of hers that kept Sacco’s memory alive. “I had a dream about him, I guess, a vision, after he had left for the surface. Everything was white, and he was speaking to me. He told me that it wasn’t a dream and that I had to keep my promise and go to Polis. And he sounded really desperate, like he really needed me to do it. And Khan saw him, too, do you remember Khan from Arbatskaya? Sacco spoke to Khan this way too, and that’s how I was saved by them from the tunnel at Turgenevskaya – all in white and telling Khan what he needed to do and how to find me. This was days after he had left, you know.” Sergio finished his small memory dump, never having spoken of these visions of Sacco to anyone else before, and still not knowing what to make of them. It all seemed so impossible; the crystal clear visions, the way Sacco had so forcefully spoken to him, and the coincidence of Khan telling him the exact same thing.
“Then it’s possible he’s still…” Marco spoke breathlessly, gaining a distant stare that seemed to go through Sergio’s body, the walls, the very earth itself. “But I had no such visions. Only dreams, horrible dreams.”
Sergio remained silent, though not intentionally, as he was trying to reconstruct the image of that impossibly bright clean room, with Sacco standing casually in a long white robe, expressionless, commanding him. Had he been transformed into some kind of God? Did the Dark Ones liquidate his body, and only his consciousness survived and was able to permeate the thickest tunnel walls to reach out with desperate messages? But then why would he not expend one ounce of that consciousness to speak to the one he loved?
“Do you think something like them could make him forget about me?” Marco interrupted, staring into Sergio as if he were some kind of expert about what the Dark Ones were capable of.
“No one could forget about you.” Sergio reached out for her hand and grasped it firmly with both of his own.
A tentative smile spread across Marco’ face, her worriedly arched brows softened.
“Will you tell me about when he was there at your station? What did he say to you?” Marco gripped back at his hands as if she would never get to know his answer if she let go.
“Yes, I’ll tell you, but you should relax more, okay? It’s safe in here, and you should get comfortable. It’s your own room now.” Sergio slowly rose from his seat on the bed, being careful not to loosen his grip on her until she silently agreed to lie down in it. Daring to let one of her hands go, he pulled the wool military blanket up over her and resumed his previous position on the edge of the bed next to her.
“Sacco and I weren’t close at all, really. He was friends with my stepfather, Sukhoi, who is, or was, the security chief at Exhibition. He didn’t visit often, as you heard. Most people were afraid of him, but he also knew Andrey who was on watch with us that day…”
Sergio’s voice droned on into the night as he slowly recounted his watch at the four-hundred and fiftieth metre and how Sacco forced him to explain how he’d run off with two friends when he was small and left the hermetic door open at Botanicheskiy Sad. An exchange of secrets, he’d said. And Sacco’s secret was that he was going to go after the Dark Ones alone, and that Sergio was not even to tell his stepfather Sukhoi the truth about where he had gone to. Marco watched him carefully, soaking in every word as if it were some holy gospel, and she never interrupted until he was finished with the tale – explaining to her every conflict and detour he took on his first journey to Polis under Sacco’s command.
A bell was ringing far away, faintly. There was shuffling outside the door and mumbling. Sergio reluctantly opened his eyes to the sounds but was confused because this room did not have any of his personal affects. He blinked a few times, and shifted slightly, which elicited a gentle moan from Marco who was still tucked under the blanket beside him.
He wasn’t immediately sure how he wound up spending the entire night in Marco’ room, only remembering the gleaming lantern light and the warmth of her hand because she had never let go of it while he told his stories to her. He guessed that she had eventually fallen asleep as he had talked, and he hadn’t wanted to wake her by opening the door. She had asked him to stay with her and he certainly had fulfilled that request. As long as nobody got the wrong idea if they saw him leaving the women’s barracks, he didn’t mind having had someone to sleep next to. He also had no nightmares, no dreams even, just peaceful blackness.