“Are you all right?” I force myself to say. “Can you hear me?”
I crouch down and freeze, afraid to move. His eyes. Familiar to the point of pain.
“Alina?” His voice is hoarse and broken, like the ringing of shattered glass.
No. This can’t be…
“It’s you,” his face twists with pain. “It’s… you.” His hand rises—fingers, stained with blood—reach for me, trembling from the cold.
“No!” My desperate scream spills out of me. “Don’t touch me!”
I jump to my feet and take a step back, then another and another.
“Alina,” he calls again, but I’m no longer listening. I turn around and run. I run like back then, years—no, decades—back. Only now I’m not running from a cage. I’m running from the past.