"Dorian, wake up," said the Major's voice, calm and commanding.
In the thief's happy dreams, just now, that same beloved voice had been whispering into his ears, while the two men admired the rose garden at North Downs.
"Please wake up." Not so calm. Even asleep, the thief heard the worry. And pain. His dream-Major seemed uninjured, when Dorian looked. The whole scene wavered, blurring as dreams did, into something else.
Dorian thought at first it was a nightmare, from the harsh lighting and the slaughterhouse reek.
"Will. You. Fucking. Answer. Me?" the Major growled, and Dorian realized he was already awake. Hard, cold floor under his cheek. Hair sticky. Oh. He'd been hit on the head. That was where the blood came from.
Fighting nausea, Dorian sat up.
Long-honed instincts catalogued the little room first: an empty cold-storage vault at an industrial complex in western Germany. A bank of pitiless lights flooded the room with a white glare. From the stillness, Dorian realized there was no air circulation. He and Klaus might suffocate, before they froze to death. The door -- he was beside it, without being aware of crossing the distance. Stripped of every obvious weapon, his enemies had made one mistake: his clothes. He worked a fine titanium wire out of a collar-seam, and tickled the key-slot in the door. Dorian heard the proper click, concentrated his efforts.
Nothing happened.
"I think they welded it," whispered Klaus, behind him. "What a reputation we have, eh?"
Dorian stared back at Klaus, appalled. Not all of the blood pooling on that icy floor was Dorian's. The Major sat braced against a wall, pressing both hands over his abdomen. Below the waist, his khaki shirt and pants were dark red and glossy-wet. Above his head, a spattered pink mist stained the steel wall. Two massive dents distorted the metal. Dorian saw skid-marks, indicating something heavy and bloody, that had slid down from a standing position.
Again, the thief wasn't aware of moving. Only of kneeling beside his beloved German maniac, and lifting one cold hand away from the wounds.
He didn't want to believe what he saw, then. That the Major still lived, was a miracle. Dorian could believe in more miracles --
"Two shots, point blank," said Klaus, through clenched teeth. "Felt them ricochet back into me."
"No. Not now, this way. I won't let --"
"Yes," Klaus grated, his eyes dilated black from shock and pain. "Make it faster?"
Dorian pulled away in involuntary horror.
"What we know -- the mission -- important,"Klaus said, marshaling his incredible endurance. "Too cold. Not enough air. One of us – stay alive."
"Or neither of us is going to make it?" Dorian confirmed.
Klaus' body shuddered, and a new wave of coppery blood-stench filled the room. Klaus ignored it. "Z and A will find us. You might not be alive. So you must write. All we know, on the walls and floor. The enemy may still be caught. They won't know. Welded in. No window. They won't look at us again."
"I have no pens."
Klaus raised that slick red hand. "Ink. When it freezes -- use yours. But you need air. Help me."
"God, no," Dorian moaned.
"Hurts," Klaus said carefully. "Too slow. Scream -- use too much air."
Dorian remembered some Eastern-bloc bullies, who'd boasted about how long it sometimes took for a man to die from a gut-shot. Hours, if the involuntary writhing didn't hasten blood loss. They'd said there would be screams, too --
No. Not from Iron Klaus. Not unless Dorian himself elicited them, in the depths of passion. This way was obscene. Intolerable.
"How?" he asked.
That earned him a strained smile. "Strong for your looks. Break my neck."
Dorian didn't have the same faith in himself. "And if I fail?"
"Try again."
Dorian leaned forward, carefully embracing Klaus' shoulders. "I'll do it," he whispered. (I'm probably dying an hour or so after him,) he finally realized. (Nothing will change that -- we have nothing left to prove. We each have something the other wants.) "But on one condition."
Klaus answered him in a wordless snarl.
Dorian wasn't buying it. He rocked back on his heels, searching that white, strained face. The Major's lips were blue-grey around their edges, his eyes glittering. From tears? "I have to know, Klaus. Did you ever love me?"
"Idiot," Klaus whispered, face softening in a way Dorian had only fantasized before. "Always. Always. I wish -- "
Then his body tensed in another convulsion. Neck tendons snapped into high relief, as Klaus fought for control. Only a low, mindless whimper escaped. The dark eyes didn't seem to see Dorian anymore.
A third time, Dorian moved without thinking. This was Klaus, his darling Major. There was only one chance to do it right. Dorian slid his hands up to cradle Klaus' face, thumbs caressing then digging into the join between neck and skull. Klaus helped, tilting his head back even more.
The sideways twist was over before Dorian really understood its finality: a grating sensation, that ended in a soft crack! under his hands. The Major's slight shudder. The emptiness that suddenly wiped Klaus' face clean of both agony and love.
No time to mourn. To split hairs between 'murder' and 'mercy'. To hope, in a last show of vanity, that the Alphabets found them frozen but intact. If the power was shut off --
Dorian blinked away that thought, and started writing.