Last year, on the thirty-first of December, Gavrill Vorobyev was an inmate in Edmonton Institution — Canada’s most infamous maximum security federal prison. He remembers lying on a thin mattress that night, facing away from the twenty-four hour fluorescent light in his solitary confinement cell. He remembers falling asleep to the thought of his children entering the new year, until a sharp rap on his cell door snatched them away. Then in came the dazed guards on their heavy feet, fastening his ankles with chains, choking his wrists with handcuffs, and shoving his stiff body down a cold hallway into the phone room.

And there, he saw the midnight-blue jacket of the woman who ruined his life.

It was a man who wore the jacket that night. Gavrill now knows him as Henri Arquette. Next to him in a blue three-piece suit was Ulysses Fisher, the Ingush translator. Both men sat on one side of bulletproof glass. Gavrill, chained to a table, sat on the other side. And when the guards had lumbered back to their posts by the door, Arquette called Gavrill to serve.

Arquette’s call was that of a siren’s. First came the song of names of those Gavrill had failed and abandoned. Then came the photographs, the beloved faces of the dead and those who have not died yet — Hrodwyn, Merethel, Hygd, the children of his dreams, all so grown up now, all so easily captured. Arquette watched Gavrill’s eyes dart across the photographs, from one broken piece of his life to the next. He savoured the confused fear in Gavrill’s eyes, the growing tension in his shoulders. But that was not enough. He let his call continue to taunt Gavrill’s grief, laugh at his guilt, and wrench his heart with rage. He flashed more photographs before Gavrill. This time, they were of twisted, contorted corpses splattered across the baby section of a Walmart. It was the heinous crime that imprisoned Gavrill here, that shamed him in front of his children — the crime, Gavrill iterated, that was not his.

Arquette knew that. He knew that Gavrill was innocent. He not only believed that Gavrill’s face was stolen to frame him — he knew it to be true.

That was when Arquette hooked Gavrill with a photograph of her: the woman in the midnight-blue jacket, the Lamb of Providence, the sadist who stole his face, who stole everything, who can come after his children and steal them again no matter how hard his cuffed heels CRACKED the phone room’s table into splinters, how many times he threw his chair or the broken table legs or himself at the bulletproof glass like a trapped animal, how loudly he screamed questions in fury and fear of who the men were and how they knew her and where his children were what did they do to his children he will fucking kill anyone who touches them.

The guards did not react. Nor did Arquette and Fisher. Once Gavrill was out of breath, Arquette revealed that the woman was an ex-agent he wanted to track. He didn’t know why she framed him, but if he let out what she had put behind bars, she may return to put Gavrill back in. He offered him a chance of justice for the woman, a future for his children, and freedom for himself. In exchange, Gavrill had to answer Arquette’s call to serve: his skills that placed him in maximum security prison will be lent to Arquette’s family business, forever.

Gavrill quietened. He accepted the call. The clock struck midnight.

Though he was freed that night, Gavrill knew that he had traded one form of imprisonment for another. Still, it was a small price for him to pay to be able to hold his children again. Gavrill doesn’t regret it. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been trying to forget about how he signed his life away. He has stuffed his own midnight-blue uniform deep into his wardrobe, and he has reduced the memory of his job orientation in Rio to the keychains and food he got for his children. In the span of just a month and twelve days, Helvetia had shrunk to background noise in Gavrill’s head. The organisation no longer mattered to him. The grandiose dangers they preached felt so distant, so unreal. But Gavrill’s children are here now, smiling and pouting and laughing at him, and he knows that they are real. That is all that matters to him. And for a moment, he lets himself believe that all can be right with the world — until Helvetia Limited stops at his front door.

In the 8pm winter night, Hygd shakes Gavrill awake from the couch to answer his work phone’s call. Its unfamiliar, piercing ringtone confuses him at first, but Fisher’s voice is a wake-up call. It only takes a few seconds for it to dawn on Gavrill: the dangers were never distant, this new life is very much real, and he has forced it onto his children.

Hrodwyn, Merethel, and Hygd sense the tension in the air. They creep to their father’s room to see him wrapped in midnight-blue once more, but this time with a duffel over his shoulder and a pair of dazed eyes.

His children embrace him. He stays there, taking in their warmth, trying to stretch ten minutes to infinity. But fate arrives on four wheels, and it is impatiently waiting outside.

Gavrill silently goes to the door. His children follow him like ghosts. Hygd looks up at him.

“Don’t die, daa.”

Her father musters up the most reassuring smile he can.

“I won’t. I love you, my sparrows.”

Gavrill walks out of the house. Agent Hrothgar does not look back.

It is Fisher, dressed in that same blue three-piece suit, who drives the Cadillac. It takes an hour to reach the military airport. Hrothgar’s leg shakes the whole ride through. On the runway, Fisher parks half-hazardly a few metres away from Helvetia’s private jet. He tells Hrothgar to leave his things in the car — staff will load it onto the plane for them.

What staff?

Hrothgar looks out the window. He sees their figures emerge from the dark. He keeps his satchel by his side and his flask in his white-knuckled grip.

Fisher leaves the car with its engine still running. The door shuts. The car’s interior lights turn off. Hrothgar, his shaking leg now ready to sprint, slinks down his seat. He watches Fisher toss the car keys to a staff member before striding across the runway, across that dark stretch of black asphalt illuminated with dots of light and stripes of white; that vast, empty plane surrounded by nothing but low buildings to peer over across; that vacuum that hides nothing from Hrothgar but whose darkness hides everything from him—

—until Fisher climbs into the jet.

Hrothgar blinks. He sucks in a breath. Fuck.

Hrothgar opens the car door. The jet’s engine whines into his ears. He can barely hear the staff walking around him. He looks around him to make sure they’re only there for the Cadillac and not him. Then he looks around a second time, ducks, and runs against cold, biting wind into the jet. Once fully inside its interior, his grip around his flask finally relaxes. He takes a sip of the double-shot espresso Hrodwyn made for him. Its heat bites through his tongue. It’s enough to finally make him notice how incredibly spacious the private jet is.

He stands stunned at the entrance, overwhelmed by luxury. Fisher could care less. He has made himself comfortable on a plush couch. The coffee table in front of the couch has two bottles of vodka, two shot glasses, and a tray of fruits and cheeses. Fisher swipes one bottle. He lifts it to his lips, titles his head back until the bottle is empty, and languidly sets it back onto the table. In one practised motion, he slips his oxfords off, kicks his legs onto the couch, and tucks his hands beneath his head.

Hrothgar watches the younger agent close his eyes. Lucky.

Hrothgar’s eyes drift to the second bottle of vodka. He occupies his lips with the scalding coffee instead and forces himself to look away to the rest of the jet. The remaining seats are pairs of cushioned, enclosed chairs that face each other. A mahogany desk sits between them. He decides to sit in one of the chairs. For a second, his grief and guilt sits in the other.

A second is enough time for caffeinated agitation to seize Hrothgar. He slides the blind of the jet’s window close to block the view of the runway. He knows he’ll have to open them before takeoff, but a few minutes of safety is better than none. His right hand has resumed its iron grip around his flask, despite his seat’s secure cup holder. Meanwhile, as his eyes fall to the table, his left hand busies itself. It starts by nervously rubbing his wedding band, before reaching into his satchel and clutching something round, soft, and rigid — something secure and comforting.

He looks down into his satchel. The crocheted sparrow Hrodwyn gave him stares back up at him.

The final call for HV413’s departure is made. Hrothgar fastens his seatbelt and opens the window’s blind as instructed. A flight attendant offers him food. He purses his lips tight, swallows a rising lump in his throat, and declines with a shake of his head. He then watches the attendant approach Fisher, to ask him to sit up for take-off. As Fisher rubs sleep from his eyes, a twinge of envy — or fear, or guilt — snags Hrothgar’s chest. Life would be easier if he could close his eyes and sleep his twisting gut away; if he could let empty dreams keep faces buried away. But he doesn't have that privilege. Instinct forces him to stare at the empty seat ahead of him, and it will make him do it for 11 hours straight or until his body gives in.

The engine revs up. The jet begins to move. Before it takes off into the night, Hrothgar looks down at his crocheted sparrow again. He imagines the worst — imagines his children calling out for a father who’ll never respond — and sends one final message.