The train rocked like a coffin in motion. Christian sat alone in the cattle car, the cold gnawing at his bones. The straw beneath him crunched with frost. The slats in the wood breathed pale ribbons of moonlight, striping the floor with ghostly light. His breath rose and froze in the air, turning to mist that seemed to hang long after he exhaled.
The Russians hadn't even bothered to lock him with others. He had been handed over by the captain from the pursuit with only one word: deserter. It was a convenient lie, but one that carried its own death sentence. Desertion meant shame. Desertion meant humiliation before a firing squad. Desertion meant torture before the bullet.
The solitude pressed in. Alone, he had only his thoughts for company; thoughts that twisted like knives. He saw Antonov's blood steaming against his skin. He saw Kristina's face dissolving into snow. He saw Müller, leaning close, whispering: I know where your heart is.
The car shuddered suddenly. A deep groan rippled through the frame. Christian sat upright, sensing something wrong. He pressed his ear to the wall. Ahead, the shriek of brakes pierced the night, followed by the high scream of tearing metal.
Then came a loud explosion.
A deafening roar split the night, followed by fire and splinters. The cattle car leapt off the rails, pitched sideways, and slammed into the frozen ground. Christian was thrown against the boards. His skull cracked against the timber, stars exploding in his vision.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe. The car lay at an angle, battered but not broken, the roof sagging but intact.
Through the splintered cracks, he saw hell.
The lead cars burned, flames clawing skyward, painting the snow with orange light. Smoke rolled heavy and black. Prisoners spilled out of shattered cars, half-dead skeletons in German uniforms. They staggered, crawled, stumbled into the snow.
Some fell to their knees in prayer, others in desperation.
And then the shouting began.
Soviet guards rushed in, rifles raised. Orders cracked in Russian: "Stop them! Shoot!" The prisoners ran. Some toward the forest. Some toward the open steppe. Some with no direction at all, just away.
The gunfire was immediate and merciless.
Christian pressed his face to the slats, eyes wide. He saw a man raise his hands, crying out in German, "Bitte, bitte!" only to be cut down in a hail of bullets. He saw another make it twenty steps before collapsing face-first, his blood streaking the snow like spilled ink. Bayonets flashed in the firelight as guards drove steel into bellies, necks, backs.
One prisoner, his hair white, managed to reach the shadows of a burned-out wagon. Christian's chest lifted with a spark of hope only to see him dragged out moments later by two soldiers. They shot him where he lay.
The night was filled with screams.
Christian gripped the boards of his car until splinters buried in his palms. Every instinct screamed at him to break out, to run, but his body froze. His mind whispered: If they catch you, if they look too closely, you're finished.
He had survived too long, carried too many secrets. Torture could crack anyone. And if they discovered he was German; an infiltrator, an assassin, they wouldn't just kill him. They would break him, parade him and wrap him in chains.
The executions went on for what felt like hours, though it could not have been more than minutes. The crack of rifles echoed into the night, steady as a metronome. The snow was littered with bodies by the time the shouting ebbed, replaced by the low moans of the wounded.
Christian's chest heaved. Sweat ran cold down his spine. He thought of Kristina's face, of Müller's shadow, of Canaris's calculating eyes. If I don't leave now, I'll never leave again.
He heard boots approaching.
Two young soldiers, walked toward his car with rifles slung across their shoulders. Their torches swept the wreckage, beams of light bouncing off the snow. One muttered, "Check this one. They said a deserter is in here."
The word struck Christian like a blade. Deserter. That was the skin he wore now, thin and fragile. But if they dragged him out, if they looked into his face, if they asked the wrong question his mask would shatter.
The door screeched open. Torchlight blazed inside, blinding him. "Out!" one of the boys barked.
Christian moved, but not as they expected. He flung himself toward the far corner of the car, then slipped through the jagged split in the boards. Snow bit into his skin as he landed hard outside, rolling once, twice. He didn't stop. He ran. Shouts erupted behind him. "Stop!" Boots pounded. Rifles clattered.
He dove into the smoke and fire, weaving between the wrecks. Flames scorched his skin, the air thick with the stink of burning wood and flesh. Prisoners' bodies lay everywhere, sprawled like broken dolls. He leapt over them, teeth gritted, lungs screaming.
Then the forest loomed. Black, skeletal, endless. He plunged into it without looking back. Branches whipped his face. Snow dragged at his legs. Behind him, torches darted, voices shouted, dogs barked. But the trees swallowed him, closing ranks like sentries.
He ran until his body rebelled, until each breath felt like knives in his chest. He ran until the voices dimmed, until the barking grew faint, until the fire was only a glow behind him.
Finally, he collapsed against a tree, chest heaving, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead. The silence pressed in, deep and suffocating. He was alive. He had escaped.
But the memory of what he'd seen clung to him. The crack of rifles, the collapse of bodies and the way death came so easily. He knew then, with a clarity sharper than any blade: the Soviets wanted deserters alive, but Germans, they wanted them broken. If he stayed in their hands, he would not last a day.
Alone in the forest, frost clinging to his lashes, Christian pressed his face into the crook of his arm and whispered to the night: Never again. I will not be their prisoner. I will not be their proof. I will vanish before they ever have me.
The snow listened, indifferent.
And Christian, trembling in the dark, rose once more and moved deeper into the trees.