Tormentor Mine

can make out enough of her features to know it’s not Tamila.
I move on to the next woman’s body, this one with several bullet wounds through her chest. It’s Tamila’s aunt, a shy woman in her fifties who’d spoken less than five words to me in the last three years. To her and the rest of Tamila’s family, I’ve always been a foreigner, a frightening stranger from a different world. They didn’t understand Tamila’s decision to marry me, condemned it even, but Tamila didn’t care.
She’d always been independent like that.
Another female body draws my attention. The woman is lying on her side, but the gentle curve of her shoulder is achingly familiar. My hand shakes as I turn her over, and white-hot pain pierces me as I see her face.
Tamila’s mouth is just as slack as I imagined, but her eyes aren’t vacant. They’re closed, her long eyelashes singed and her eyelids glued together with blood. More blood covers her chest and arms, turning her gray dress nearly black.
My wife, the beautiful young woman who had the courage to choose her own fate, is dead. She died without ever leaving her village, without seeing Moscow like she dreamed. Her life was snuffed out before she had a chance to live, and it’s all my fault. I should’ve been here, should’ve protected her and Pasha. Hell, I should’ve known about this fucking operation; nobody should’ve been here without informing my team.
Rage rises inside me, mixing with agonizing grief and guilt, but I shove it aside and force myself to keep looking. There are only adult bodies laid out in the rows, but there’s still that pile.
Please let him be alive. I’ll do anything as long as he’s alive.
My legs feel like burned matches as I approach the pile. There are detached limbs there, and bodies damaged beyond recognition. These must’ve been the victims of the explosions. I move each body part aside, sorting through them. The smell of stale blood and charred flesh is thick in the air. A normal man would’ve thrown up by now, but I’ve never been normal.
Please let him be alive.
“Peter, wait. There’s a special task force on the way, and they don’t want us touching the bodies.” It’s the pilot, Anton Rezov, approaching from behind the shed. We’ve worked together for years and he’s a close friend, but if he tries to stop me, I will kill him.
Without replying, I continue my gruesome task, methodically looking over each limb and burned torso before laying it aside. Most of the body parts seem to belong to adults, though I come across some child-sized ones too. They’re too big to be Pasha’s, though, and I’m selfish enough to feel relief over that.
Then I see it.
“Peter, did you hear me? You can’t do this yet.” Anton reaches for my arm, but before he can touch me, I spin around, my hand curling automatically. My fist crashes into his jaw, and he reels back from the blow, his eyes rolling back in his head. I don’t watch him fall; I’m already moving, tearing through the remaining pile of bodies to reach the little hand I saw earlier.
A little hand that’s curled around a broken toy car.
Please, please, please. Please let there be a mistake. Please let him be alive. Please let him be alive.
I work like a man possessed, all my being focused on one goal: to get to that hand. Some of the bodies on top of the pile are nearly whole, but I don’t feel their weight as I throw them aside. I don’t feel the burn of exertion in my muscles or smell the sickening stench of violent death. I just bend and lift and throw until body parts are strewn all around me, and I’m drenched in blood.
I don’t stop until the small body is uncovered in its entirety, and there’s no longer any doubt.
Trembling, I sink to my knees, my legs unable to hold me.
By some miracle, the right half of Pasha’s face is undamaged, his smooth baby skin unmarred by so much as a scratch. One of his eyes is closed, his little mouth parted, and if he were lying on his side like Tamila was, he could’ve been mistaken for a sleeping child. But he’s not lying on his side, and I see the gaping hole where the explosion ripped away half of his skull. His left arm is missing too, as is his left leg below the knee. His right arm, however, is unscathed, its fingers curled convulsively around the toy car.
In the distance, I hear a howl, a mad, broken sound of inhuman rage. It’s only when I find myself clutching the little body to my chest that I realize the sound is coming from me. I fall silent then, but I can’t stop rocking back and forth.
I can’t stop hugging him.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, holding my son’s remains, but it’s dark by the time the task force soldiers come. I don’t fight them. There’s no point. My son is gone, his bright light extinguished before it had a chance to shine.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as they drag me away. With each meter of distance between us, the cold inside me grows, the remnants of my humanity bleeding out of my soul. There’s no more pleading, no more bargaining with anyone or anything. I’m empty of hope, devoid of warmth and love. I can’t turn back the clock and hold my son longer, can’t stay behind like he asked me to. Can’t take Tamila to Moscow next year, like I promised her I would.
There’s only one thing I can do for my wife and son, and that’s the reason I’ll keep on living.
I will make their killers pay.
Each and every single one of them.
They will answer for this massacre with their lives.

2United States, Present Day
Sara
“Are you sure you don’t want to come out for drinks with me and