Ksenia awoke with a start, frightened and confused. She always awoke this way, ever since that terrible night years before. There had been only one exception, one night of undisturbed rest, and it had occurred early on. But that was now more than five years in the past. It had been that long since she had awakened in the arms of Reuben Stone, only to say goodbye to him later that day. Five years of waking up terrified, convinced that she was still in that room, facing down the monsters with their guns, watching her brother die.

One night in all those years.

Even those nights some years earlier when Ivor’s crying had awakened her, her dreaming mind had confused the sound with Pasha’s screaming in his final moments. It had been such a wonderful relief to come fully awake and realize that the crying was her son. That whatever was distressing him, Ksenia could make it right.

But Ivor was bigger now; he had been sleeping through the night for years.

Ksenia’s heart was racing. There was someone there in the room with her. All she had to do was roll over and there he would be. She had often dreamed that this would happen, and that it would be Reuben standing at the foot of the bed. But that dream always dissolved in horror. The man would be Reuben while her eyes were closed. But when she opened them, it would be the man with the gun, or the man who commanded the game. They had come for her. What Reuben had accomplished that night was not a rescue, only a reprieve. Her life was theirs for the taking; it had always been so. And now they had come to claim that which was theirs.