Stellan stopped in front of one with no door at all, glanced behind us, then tiptoed inside, his gun drawn.
The room was nothing more than a blackened box. The wall between it and the next apartment over was partially intact, but the outside wall was gone, and the top branches of a tree outside had woven their way in, its leaves snapping in the breeze.
Stellan stood frozen in the doorway. It was eerily quiet, but Lydia’s voice echoed in my head. Always one step ahead. And to do that, she preyed on our weaknesses. She knew Stellan wouldn’t risk Anya. Apparently she knew before I did that I wouldn’t let him come alone.
She didn’t know that she had a weakness, too, even now that Cole was dead. She didn’t know we’d exploit it. We just had to get through this.
I rested my hand on Stellan’s forearm. “She brought you here because she knew it would bother you,” I murmured.
He nodded hard and kept going. The next room was slightly less burned. In the corner I could make out what looked like an armchair, facing a huge box of a TV on a dresser. Closer, a charred baby’s crib, covered in bright green moss, half the wall between the rooms collapsed over it. The far half of the room was gone. It was like time had stopped the night of the fire, leaving everything in this building untouched.
Stellan whispered something in Russian that could have been a curse or a prayer. We picked our way over burned debris into a bathroom where inches of brackish water sat in an unburned claw-foot tub, and exposed electrical wires rained from the ceiling.
“She’s not here,” he said under his breath. “She has to be here.” Then, “Lydia!” he shouted.
So much for trying to sneak up on her. I grabbed him, his face in my hands. He tried to push past me, and I shook him, like he’d done to me at the border crossing. “Stop,” I ordered in a whisper. “She’s doing this on purpose to make you panic so you’ll make a mistake.”
His eyes flicked from me, to the door, to me. “Okay, yes. I’m—”
Finally, there was a sound. But it wasn’t my sister. It was his.
Stellan’s whole body tensed. He shook my hands off. “Anya!” he yelled.
The scream came again, its echo bouncing against Stellan’s voice.
Stellan took off running. “Lydia!” he bellowed.
I chased him until he came to a sudden halt in a dim vestibule. Another set of stairs led down in one direction and up in the other, where otherworldly light filtered inside. I could see Stellan shaking with the effort to hold himself back, but he waited for me and gestured: up or down? Anya screamed again, and both our heads shot up.
Halfway up the stairs, everything went to hell.
There was a bang, and the wall next to me exploded. Stellan ducked, yanking me with him. I hit the filthy stairs on my hands and knees, looking up to see four shadows on the landing above us. We knew Lydia likely wouldn’t have a huge security force with her.
Stellan plowed forward into them. He grabbed one, throwing him over the banister. He hit the ground two stories below with a thud, and didn’t move. Stellan grappled with the second one, holding his body between himself and the third, who looked frantically for a clear shot, and a fourth, in a black baseball cap, who hung back. I hoped Stellan remembered the plan in his current state.
Anya’s voice rang out again in frantic Russian.
“Lydia!” Stellan bellowed. “Let her go!”
I hunkered against the wall, waiting for an opening where I might be able to help, but Stellan didn’t need it. He snapped the neck of the guy he was holding with a quick twist. As he yelled a string of something in Russian—calling to Anya or cursing at the men, I wasn’t sure—he shoved the body into the third guy and, grabbing the barrel of his gun, wrenched it from his hands and smacked him in the head with the butt of it, felling him immediately.
I jumped up and grabbed the back of his shirt before he could attack the fourth guy. He was wearing a black baseball cap with a bandana under it, just like Rocco had said he would be.
While we were in the air, Rocco had been communicating with the one member of Lydia’s team he trusted. We couldn’t be certain of his loyalty, but it was the best chance we had. Now he dropped his gun to his side and raised his folded hands to his forehead in the Circle’s gesture of respect. “Omar?” I mouthed. He nodded. “Are there any more with you?” I whispered. He shook his head.
“Lydia!” I yelled. “All your guys are dead. Give us Anya and we’ll let you live.”
She didn’t answer. I pushed on with the plan, still holding on to Stellan. He was barely holding back from charging up the stairs right now. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and flipped on the recorder. “What is this even about, Lydia?” I called. She didn’t answer. We crept slowly up the stairs. “You kidnapped Stellan’s sister to get us here for our blood. That I understand. But I still don’t understand why you’re doing any of it.” Still nothing. I went on, “Why attack the Circle, first with all those assassinations, then with the virus? Why blame it on us? Is it all really just for power?”
“If you say it in that way—just power—you still don’t get it,” she finally called back. I could tell by her voice that she was still a couple of flights above us.
I gestured to Omar, pointing him to the end of the hall, where we’d seen another stairwell.
“Why, then? Why do you think you deserve to be the ones to rule the Circle?”
“God, Avery. You’ve never even tried to understand,” she spat. “We’re the only ones who aren’t afraid to do what we have to to keep our family, our country, the Circle safe. We’re going to make the Circle great again, like we used to be, with our family at its head. It’s not about power at all. It’s about family. Our family. Your family, too, if you’d actually ever cared about your family.”
We were getting closer to her. I held up the phone, wanting to capture everything she said. “It turns out I don’t believe in sacrificing other people’s families for my own family’s gain,” I yelled.