The end of the road came without a bang, but with a sad, sputtering cough.
The stolen Volvo's engine gave a final, rattling gasp and died, coasting to a silent stop on the outskirts of a desolate Swedish border town. Snowflakes drifted down, blanketing the dead car in a pristine shroud.
They were out of fuel. Out of time. On foot.
"This is it," Murat whispered from the back seat, his voice hollow. "They've got us." He looked out at the empty, snow-covered fields as if expecting Nicolai's killers to rise from the very earth.
But Kato was calm. Her mind, honed by years of navigating traps, was already working. She wasn't seeing a dead end. She was seeing a chessboard.
"Get out of the car," she commanded, her voice a low, steady anchor in the panicked silence. "Slowly. Act like we belong here."
They slipped into the treeline, moving like ghosts until they had a clear, hidden vantage point over the town's single train station. It was a small, lonely building, a few lights glowing weakly in the pre-dawn gloom.
Murat saw only a hopeless objective. Kato saw the enemy's deployment.
Two men in heavy coats, trying too hard to look casual, were watching the ticket counter from inside the waiting room. Another man, his posture too rigid for a local, patrolled the open-air platform.
They weren't soldiers. They were watchers. Hunters waiting for the prey to walk into the snare. Nicolai wasn't sending a blunt instrument anymore. He had sent a net.
"They expect us to be desperate," she whispered, her breath fogging in the frigid air. "They expect us to make a run for the ticket window. To be scared, sloppy animals."
She turned to Murat, her eyes so intense he flinched. "We're not going to do that."
A plan, a classic piece of espionage tradecraft, bloomed fully formed in her mind. A shell game.
"Murat," she said, her voice dropping lower. "You are going to be the rabbit."
She pushed most of their remaining cash, the blood money taken from the dead Germans, into his hand. "Go to that ticket window. Buy three tickets for Haparanda, the northernmost crossing into Finland. Be loud about it."
She grabbed the front of his coat, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Argue about the price. Complain about the schedule. Drop your change. Be a clumsy, panicked man in a hurry. Be memorable. I need you to draw every single eye in that station."
Murat's face went pale. "They'll grab me, Kato. They'll kill me."
"No, they won't," she said, her voice like steel. "Not right away. They want all of us. You're just the bait. You draw them in, and you give us our window."
She released him and turned to Pavel. He was a silent statue beside her, his hand resting on the submachine gun hidden under his long coat. He had listened to the entire plan without a single flicker of expression on his face.
His blank stare was a question. Not of loyalty. Of tactics. Is this the best plan? Is the asset worth the risk?
She gave him a single, sharp nod. It was enough. His trust in her tactical mind was absolute, a silent, chilling bond forged in the crucible of their shared monstrosity.
Murat stumbled out of the woods, a perfect picture of a man at the end of his rope. He half-ran, half-stumbled towards the station entrance, just as Kato had instructed.
From their hiding place, Kato watched the watchers. The moment Murat burst into the waiting room, their posture changed. They went from bored observers to coiled springs. Their heads turned. Their focus narrowed.
Murat's voice, loud and panicked, echoed from the station. "What do you mean the next train isn't for two hours?! I need to get to Haparanda now!"
The two men inside exchanged a look. One of them subtly touched his ear, likely speaking into a hidden microphone. The man on the platform began to move towards the waiting room entrance.
They were converging. Taking the bait.
"Now," Kato breathed.
She and Pavel slipped from the trees, moving in the opposite direction, their feet making no sound on the snow. They kept to the shadows, their goal not the passenger platform, but the dark, silent expanse of the cargo depot.
They moved like wraiths between the hulking, silent shapes of the freight cars. A long train was being assembled, the shriek of metal on metal echoing through the yard.
Kato saw their chance. An open-topped car, filled to the brim with black, dusty iron ore. It was a cold, miserable, suffocating hell.
It was their only chance.
"In," she commanded.
Pavel gave her a boost, his hands strong and steady. She scrambled over the rough metal side, landing in the coarse, freezing black dust. It was like falling into a grave of tiny, sharp rocks. Pavel followed a moment later, as silent as a cat.
They buried themselves in the ore, the icy dust filling their mouths and noses, the sheer weight of it pressing down on them. It was a cold, claustrophobic misery.
Minutes later, which felt like hours, the train gave a violent lurch, the couplings groaning in protest. They were moving.
Through a small gap, Kato could see the passenger platform. She saw the watchers dragging a struggling, shouting Murat from the station.
The diversion had worked. The rabbit had been caught. The ghosts had escaped.
Hours later, the train rattled and swayed through the endless, frozen darkness. Kato and Pavel huddled together for warmth in their open-air tomb, their faces and clothes caked in a thick layer of black dust. They were wraiths haunting a ghost train.
Kato knew Murat was gone. Captured. Or dead. Another piece she had sacrificed from the board. It was a cold, hard fact, and she felt nothing. Not guilt. Not sadness. Just the quiet, clean hum of survival.
Pavel had been silent the entire time. Now, he shifted in the rattling darkness, turning his head towards her. The faint moonlight caught the black dust on his face, making his eyes seem like hollow sockets.
He spoke for the first time since leaving the car, his voice a low, rough whisper that was almost lost in the noise of the train.
"Was he a liability?"
The question hung between them, cold and sharp as a shard of ice. He wasn't asking if the sacrifice was necessary. He was asking about her motive. Had she made a cold, logical, tactical decision? The same kind of decision he would make?
He was asking if she had finally become like him.
Kato stared out at the passing, ghostly trees, their branches skeletal against the grey sky. She saw her own reflection in the grimy side of the car, a distorted, fleeting mask of a stranger.
She didn't answer his question. There was no answer to give.
Instead, she gave a new command. Her voice was devoid of all emotion, a flat, dead thing. The voice of a queen who had left her humanity behind at a cold, forgotten station.
"Check your ammunition," she said, her black-stained lips barely moving. "When we cross the border into Finland, we're not running anymore."
"We're hunting."