Streetlamps bled into the wet pavement, turning cobblestone into a ribbon of amber and black. The canal ran beside them, dark and patient, carrying reflections away as if erasing evidence. Somewhere behind them, sirens still cried, but they were farther now, dulled by distance and rain.

  Kazou walked with his hands buried deep in his coat pockets, shoulders hunched, gaze lowered. His breath was steady, controlled, the way it always became when panic threatened. He focused on small things: the rhythm of his steps, the sound of water lapping against stone, the faint ache in his chest that reminded him he was still alive.

  Beside him, Zawisza hummed.

  Softly. Almost absentmindedly.

  It was an old tune. Kazou didn’t recognize it, but there was something childlike in it—gentle, almost cheerful, horribly out of place after what they had just left behind.

  Kazou glanced at him.

  Zawisza’s face was calm now. Too calm. The rain had plastered his hair to his forehead, but his expression was relaxed, eyes half-lidded like a man walking home from work.

  As if he hadn’t just stood in a room full of blood.

  “You shouldn’t hum,” Kazou said quietly. "You don't want to bring attraction to yourself."

  Zawisza blinked, as if surprised to be heard. The humming stopped.

  “Sorry,” he replied after a beat. “Habit.”

  They walked another block in silence.

  Kazou broke it again, unable to help himself.

  “You didn’t hesitate.”

  Zawisza tilted his head.

  “About what?”

  “About protecting him,” Kazou said. “About fighting back.”

  Zawisza smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “That’s the problem,” he said. “I never do.”

  They turned down a narrower street, one lined with bicycles chained like skeletons to iron rails. Rain dripped steadily from balconies above. A cat darted across their path and vanished into a doorway.

  Kazou stopped under the cover of an awning. Zawisza stopped too, automatically, like he’d been trained to halt when the man beside him halted.

  Kazou turned to face him fully now.

  “What happened back there,” Kazou said, voice low, careful, “was not normal. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

  Zawisza leaned back against the brick wall, crossing his arms loosely. He stared out at the rain instead of at Kazou.

  “No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t.”

  A pause.

  Then, lightly: “But it was effective.” Zawisza murmured.

  Kazou flinched.

  “That’s not—” Kazou stuttered.

  “I know,” Zawisza cut in gently. He finally looked at Kazou then, eyes sharp but not unkind. “You’re thinking in terms of right and wrong. I don’t blame you. You’re very good at that.

  "N-no-"

  Kazou shook his head.

  “I became a scientist to help humanity with my research! Even now, I—” His voice faltered. “I don’t want anyone hurt because of me. I don’t want blood on my hands.”

  Zawisza studied him for a long moment. Really studied him. The rain traced lines down Kazou’s coat, his lashes, his knuckles clenched tight at his sides.

  “Because if the blood were on your hands, it'd be your fault?” Zawisza said softly. "...You already have blood on your hands,"

  Kazou stiffened.

  "Mr. Zawisza-"

  “No. Not because you killed anyone,” Zawisza added quickly. “But because you chose to stay alive when others didn’t get the chance. That’s enough to haunt most men.”

  Kazou looked away.

  Zawisza pushed himself off the wall and stepped closer, lowering his voice.

  “The difference between you and me,” he said, “is that you carry it like a wound. I carry it like a tool.”

  “That’s not healthy,” Kazou said.

  Zawisza laughed quietly.

  “Neither is being hunted across half of Europe for murders you didn’t commit.”

  Another silence stretched between them.

  Then Kazou asked, carefully,

  “Who is Sergeant Valor?”

  Zawisza’s smile froze.

  For just a fraction of a second, something flickered behind his eyes: confusion, then recognition, then a shutter slamming down.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Someone I used to be,” he said.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No,” Zawisza agreed. “It’s a boundary.”

  Kazou hesitated, then nodded. He respected boundaries even when they terrified him.

  They resumed walking.

  The rain began to ease, thinning to a mist. The city felt closer now, warmer—cafés closing, curtains drawn, lives continuing just beyond reach.

  Kazou spoke again, more quietly.

  “Janssen is innocent.”

  Zawisza nodded. “So are you.”

  “And yet,” Kazou said, “people keep dying around us.”

  Zawisza stopped at a bridge overlooking the canal. He rested his hands on the railing and looked down at the black water below.

  “People die,” he said. “Sometimes because of monsters. Sometimes, because of systems. Sometimes, because they trusted the wrong smile.” He glanced back at Kazou.

  “Nobody should die. We shouldn't get to decide who lives or dies...”

  “I think,” Zawisza said gently, “that you’re still hoping there’s a version of this story where no one has to get their hands dirty.”

  Kazou didn’t answer.

  Zawisza straightened, rolling his shoulders as if shrugging off an invisible weight.

  “Listen,” he said, tone lighter again, almost playful. “I don’t enjoy this. I don’t like what I become when things go bad. But when the choice is between letting someone innocent die and becoming the thing that scares monsters away…”

  He smiled, thin and sad.

  “I choose to be scary.”

  Kazou looked at him then—really looked—and understood something that made his stomach sink.

  Zawisza wasn’t fearless.

  He was resigned.

  “We’ll clear your name,” Kazou said suddenly. “And Janssen’s. We’ll find who’s doing this.”

  Zawisza chuckled.

  “That’s the spirit, scientist.”

  “But,” Kazou continued, voice firm now, “we don’t become murderers in the process.”

  Zawisza considered him for a long moment. Then he nodded, smiling.

  “Deal,” he said. “You keep me human.”

  “And you?” Kazou asked.

  Zawisza’s eyes glinted.

  “I’ll keep you alive.”

  They crossed the bridge together, their reflections stretching and breaking in the canal below.

  

  Zawisza didn’t slow down.

  If anything, he walked faster—cutting left, then right, through streets that stopped appearing on maps decades ago. Alleys narrowed into passageways. Passageways folded into courtyards, hidden behind iron gates left conveniently unlocked. The city seemed to rearrange itself around him, as if it recognized the shape of his memory.

  Kazou stopped trying to memorize the route.

  Instead, he watched Zawisza.

  The man moved with an ease that unsettled him, not the sharp alertness of a criminal on the run, but the practiced calm of someone who had done this before, long ago, and hoped never to do it again.

  Zawisza led Kazou past a shuttered abandoned bakery, on the edges of the city, its windows papered over with yellowing posters from a decade ago. The street smelled of old yeast, damp stone, and rain that never quite left the city.

  At the corner, beneath a flickering streetlamp, Zawisza stopped and pretended to light a cigarette he didn’t have.

  Kazou watched him, confused.

  Then Zawisza crouched, fingers slipping between two uneven cobblestones. He pressed down, twisted slightly, and the ground shifted.

  A narrow seam opened in the pavement, metal groaning softly as a hatch unlocked itself. Warm air rose from below, stale but dry, carrying the scent of dust, oil, and something faintly medicinal.

  Kazou stared.

  “This was here the whole time?” he whispered.

  Zawisza shrugged.

  “The city has a lot of scars. Most people just learn to step over them.”

  He descended first, disappearing into the darkness. Kazou hesitated only a moment before following, pulling the hatch shut above them. The sounds of the rain vanished instantly, replaced by a deep, insulated quiet that pressed against the ears.

  The stairwell spiraled down farther than Kazou expected. Bare bulbs lined the walls at irregular intervals, their light weak but steady. The walls themselves were concrete, old and cracked, patched in places with newer cement—repairs done carefully, lovingly, over the years.

  “How long have you had this?” Kazou asked as they descended.

  Zawisza didn’t look back.

  “Longer than I’ve had a name.”

  At the bottom, the stairs opened into a corridor reinforced with steel beams. Pipes ran along the ceiling, some sweating faintly, others long and dry. The air was cooler here, cleaner somehow.

  Zawisza unlocked a heavy door and pushed it open.

  The safehouse wasn’t large, but it was enough.

  A single room divided by furniture rather than walls. A narrow bed with military-precise sheets. A couch salvaged from somewhere else, its fabric worn thin but clean. A wooden set of table and chairs. Shelves lined one wall, stacked with canned food, bottled water, first-aid supplies, old files, maps, and newspapers carefully dated and labeled. A radio sat on a metal table beside a small kettle and a portable gas burner.

  On another table: a typewriter.

  Not decorative. Used.

  Kazou felt something loosen in his chest.

  “This isn’t a hideout,” he murmured. “It’s a refuge.”

  Zawisza closed the door behind them, sliding two heavy bolts into place. The sound echoed softly.

  “Words matter,” He agreed. “I don’t hide from myself.”

  Zawisza set his coat aside and rolled his shoulders, finally allowing the exhaustion to show. In the harsh overhead light, Kazou could see the tension carved into him—faint tremors in his hands, the stiffness in his neck, the old injuries that never healed quite right.

  Kazou moved instinctively, helper before fugitive. He reached for the first-aid kit on the table.

  “Sit,” he said.

  Zawisza raised an eyebrow but obeyed, lowering himself onto the couch with a tired exhale.

  “You didn’t even argue,” Kazou noted.

  Zawisza smiled faintly.

  “You have that tone. It’s very persuasive.”

  Kazou knelt, checking Zawisza’s hands, his wrists, the shallow cuts he’d ignored earlier. None were life-threatening—but all of them told a story of someone who kept moving long after he should have stopped.

  “Ambulances will reach Janssen soon,” Kazou said quietly as he worked. “He’ll be safe.”

  Zawisza’s gaze drifted to the ceiling.

  “Safe is temporary,” he replied. “But alive is a start.”

  Kazou hesitated. “We didn’t go back for him.”

  “I know.”

  “I could have.”

  “I know.”

  Zawisza met his eyes then, expression serious.

  “If we had stayed,” he said, “the police would have followed. Then the questions. Then the pressure. Janssen would have become a bargaining chip.”

  Kazou closed his eyes briefly.

  “You made the right call,” Zawisza added. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

  Kazou finished bandaging his hand and sat back on his heels.

  “You planned this,” he said. “The escape. The timing. This place.”

  Zawisza leaned back, staring at nothing.

  “I plan for endings,” he said. “Hope is… optional.”

  Kazou looked around again, at the careful order, the quiet humanity of the space.

  “This place proves that’s a lie,” he said.

  Zawisza laughed softly.

  “You’re very annoying when you’re perceptive.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, the kind that didn’t demand to be filled.

  Then, faintly, through layers of earth and concrete, a sound reached them.

  Sirens.

  Multiple.

  Distant—but unmistakable.

  Kazou’s breath caught.

  “They’re at your apartment now,” he whispered.

  Zawisza nodded. “Good.”

  “They’ll find blood.”

  “Also good.”

  “They’ll ask questions.”

  Zawisza’s smile returned, thin and knowing.

  “And they won’t like the answers.”

  Kazou stood slowly.

  “This detective, she's been investigating me since I was in Japan, she's going to find me soon. She will come to Amsterdam,” he said. “She won’t stop.”

  Zawisza looked up at him, eyes sharp again, alive with something dangerous.

  “We'll find a way to get her off your ass.”

  The radio crackled softly, coming to life as Zawisza turned it on. Static filled the room, then voices, police frequencies bleeding through, fragmented and tense.

  “…possible suspect fled scene… male, tall… apartment compromised…”

  Kazou swallowed.

  “We’re underground,” he said. “Hidden. For now.”

  Zawisza rose, standing beside him.

  “For now,” he agreed.

  He extended a hand.

  “Welcome,” he said quietly, “to the part of the city that doesn’t pretend to be innocent.”

  Kazou took his hand.