The difference
between you and me – Part 4
By:
Ian Clements
My name is Lukin Petrenko.
Yesterday was my eighteenth birthday, but
I didn’t tell anyone, I’m not sure if it matters anymore. I never built up the
courage to ask how old the man that saved my life was, or why he even did it, because I didn’t know if those
questions mattered either.
My body was exhausted, muscles twitched from
shotgun recoil and my legs dragged like lead weights, but I couldn’t settle. I
kept examining the battle in my mind, picking it apart, feeling the guilt, the
fear, and the shame over and over again.
We used to play as Stalkers
when I was a boy, building squirrel places in the woods out of branches and
scrap-metal, looking back that felt more real, more right, than anything
else we had been promised.
They say that you cannot lie to children, they
sense it too easily, and we saw the lies that they tried to feed
us.
‘The Stalkers are people who have failed, Lukin. They are thieves, murderers, destroying with their
hands because they never learned how to use their minds. If you go that way, if
you follow them, then you turn your back on your true potential, you deny what
you are’.
Even our parents knew it was a lie, you could tell by how
forcefully they supported it, repeated it, throwing up a constant shield of
words, of warnings, to hide the hopelessness they knew existed.
We became
aware of many things, but these were not taught in the classroom, or listed in
the pages of a book; drunken rants from bitter fathers, of how this ‘new age’ of
Russia promised us everything but delivered us nothing, of how the only thing we
had to offer was an evil, unearthly blight on the world, all of our past
achievements in science, engineering, art and literature forgotten in the face
of The Zone.
It was a world history passed to us through cigarette
smoke, diluted by Stolichnaya, but we learned it well.
Two weeks with a
Stalker was published a year before I left Rivne; as
exciting and forbidden as the most explicit pornography, the most potent and
dangerous drug. A single copy, passed between the group of us, destroyed any
ambitions we might have had left to secure a low paid, respectable job.
We were going to be Stalkers, nothing else mattered.
Along with
four others I set out for the city, we had little money so the next two weeks
were spent walking, hitch-hiking when we could, to
Several tried to reason with us, just as our parents had, their
arguments giving way to hushed tales of The Zone which were almost ghost-story
in nature, of how it was a place that was never meant for this earth. Others
regarded us with a lazy contempt, spitting how they wouldn’t cry over our young
bones when the flesh was torn from them, then grunted loudly to finish the
conversation.
Only one, an old man with many lines on his face and tufts
of gray hair poking from his ears, seemed to understand us. He simply nodded,
drawing constantly on a lit Papirossy, great gouts of
smoke filling the tiny rooms of his home.
Swallowed up by this haze of
tobacco, we would pause, allowing him a chance to talk, but he merely waved away
the opportunity and gestured for us to continue. Only the next morning, when we
were setting off to leave, did he speak, as though a night’s sleep was needed to
digest all the information we had given him; ‘you will have no problems as long
as you stay together, you are stronger that way’.
I would come to
realize, all too late, that he was right.
***
‘Just the five of
you, is it? Sixty-eight roubles a
head then’.
Sheltering my eyes from the sun, I passed the wad of
money across with my free hand, almost instantly regretting my need to see the
Stalker’s face. He was standing away from the light, and without its help to
lend his looks a kind of artificial life the man was all at once hideous and
pitiful.
His skin was deathly pale, the only colour in his features coming from the bulbous nose which
was flushed dark red from hard drinking. Greasy stubble sprinkled his jaw like
iron filings, a patchy mess which, although left unshaven, would probably never
grow into anything resembling a beard.
I remember reading Kuzmin, the author of Two weeks with a Stalker, describe
the eyes of these men as the ‘gateways to their souls. All at once wounded and
determined, threadbare plasters laid over a gaping wound’.
Obviously
Kuzmin had never met this Stalker; his eyes were as
empty and expressionless to me as two slices of painted glass, if there was a
soul behind there it seemed that one would have to dig deep to find it.
As he counted the money I turned to check on the other four behind me,
it was difficult to believe that we were finally going to enter the zone. Sudden
anxiety had grown in me and was now catapulting itself around my body, doubts
which I had never even considered before made themselves known, I squeezed one hand into a fist and pushed down on it all.
The Stalker led us down a steep incline which eventually leveled out at
the remains of a concrete wall, vines and plantlife
poking out of the numerous cracks. About fifteen feet to our right was a huge,
rusted opening, a drainage pipe which was still trickling a foul smelling trail
out into the bottom of this ravine.
Silently, we followed our guide to
the opening of the pipe, pulling at the straps of our rucksacks to check they
were secure.
‘It’s straight through’ the man announced flatly, clicking
on a flashlight and shining it into the depths of the pipe, ‘just follow behind
me and don't slip in the water’.
He gripped the side of the opening and
was about to heave himself up into it when a voice came from behind me,
‘wait!’.
We all turned, seeing Sergei staring at us with an expression of astonishment, ‘I
can’t believe it’ he said slowly, ‘you are actually going to go in there, into
the zone?’.
An awkward silence filled the air,
our friend’s sudden reluctance threatening to split the group apart. ‘This is
what we always planned, Sergei’ I replied, eventually,
‘you knew that’.
‘When we were eleven!’ he shot back, anger seeping into
his tone, ‘this is real, Lukin. Not words on a
page or games played in the woods! We have no training, no equipment, one gun between the four of us! It is suicide!’.
My stomach turned over, I snapped my head round to
look at the Stalker, terrified that Sergei’s
admittance of our lack of skill and supplies would cause him to response with
outrage. Worse than that, our guide looked merely irritated, as though he had
just discovered a hole in his boot ‘if you’re staying, stay. If you are going,
then go!’.
‘It was always just a game’
Sergei pleaded, ignoring him, ‘do you not see? We are
not Stalkers, we never were, none of you will survive’.
Even in the poor light filtering down in this ravine his eyes shone,
unspilled tears drowning them. Alexey and Viktor regarded their long-time friend
suspiciously, as though all this time he had been a spy planted among us. I
looked to the Stalker again and saw him glaring at Sergei, one finger tapping out a rhythm on the butt of his
holstered pistol.
I cleared my throat, putting myself between Sergei and the others, ‘I……I am truly sorry, my friend.
This is what I was meant to do, I feel it, but….you do not, I can see that now. Even if I die in some stinking
pit in the zone, it will mean far more to me than scrimping for kopecks in Kiev,
I hope you understand’.
Sergei gave me a
curious look, as if seeing me for the first time. He choked out a small laugh,
the motion causing tears to spill down his cheeks, ‘you are really going to do
it, after all’.
Another silence followed as he absorbed my words,
nodding, ‘very well then. I suppose there is little else to say. Good luck’.
He held out his hand but I didn’t take it, that
would have been too final, he seemed to understand when I shook my head.
‘Fine, you go!’ the Stalker spoke up, wafting our friend away like an
insect, ‘but I keep money, for….inconvenience’.
The man pulled back the
hammer on his pistol with an audible click, and Sergei’s protests died on his lips. He nodded to me, not
once looking at Alexey and Viktor, and began to climb
out of the ravine.
I was watching him all the way, trying to keep hold
of a perfect image I suppose, but the zone isn’t a place that rewards romantic
gestures like that.
I would have my memory of Sergei but it would be stamped into my brain like a flaming
iron.
He had just mounted the brow of the hill when unseen weapons
powered into action, tearing the air in half with their rapid chattering. Sergei threw his arms up as though in surrender, twisting as
bullets slammed into him, then fell limp and tumbled
back down to us like a sack of refuse. I remember running across to him,
flipping his body over, and those glassy eyes, staring but seeing nothing,
burning a hole right through me.
I knew he was dead, but….it just didn’t
seem possible, my mind couldn’t connect the Sergei I
had seen climbing the ravine ten seconds ago to the one covered in blood beneath
me. I had never known so much to occur in so short a time, it paralyzed me, and
if someone hadn’t wrestled me to a stand, bundled me into the drainage canal, I
probably would have been killed too.
***
‘Are you insane? We have
to keep moving!’.
The Stalker leant up against
a cracked, concrete wall, taking a long swig from his canteen, he capped it and returned the container to his belt
before paying any attention to Alexey. ‘Be
silent, boy! I need to rest a moment’.
Our friend marched
forward, I thought for one terrible moment he was going to try and physically
shake the man into action, ‘They killed Sergei!
We’re next unless we keep moving!’.
Sniffing,
our guide wiped his nose with the back of his hand, ‘they won’t follow us, they made their point’.
I quietly moved Alexey aside before he snapped, fortunately his anger had
now burnt away and exposed the numbness, he didn’t
resist me.
I listened carefully, no clanging of combat boots or echoed
voices rang out from the pipe, it appeared he was right after all. Viktor had
drawn the Makarov we bought from a street dealer and
was now cradling it nervously, his eyes darting from left to right, I hoped he wouldn’t become a problem.
‘How did
you know they would not follow us?’ I asked the Stalker in an even tone, careful
not to rile this miserable man.
We were facing the sun now, he snarled
up at it as though the almost blinding light was a constant and hated enemy.
‘You think everything here is as simple as wrong and right, good and evil?’ he
sneered, ‘you have much to learn if you ever hope to survive’.
I stood
patiently, biting down on my curses.
The Stalker stood and shuffled over
to a patch of shade, sitting himself down, ‘You want me to spell it out? Fine. The Military needs Stalkers, stupid young blood like
you three, because you are disposable, and there are countless many of you. Why
risk trained men, expensive equipment, when all they need to do is make a few
holes in the net and let some eager rats scurry in?’.
It felt as though my heart had lodged in my throat, a huge, swollen mass
that prevented me from swallowing, ‘but they killed Sergei!’.
‘Of course!’ he
spat back, as though it should be obvious, ‘the official line is that the
Government opposes Stalkers, that the Military is here to stop them getting in,
all this would soon be exposed as a lie if they failed to kill anyone’.
‘What?’ Alexey snapped, he had been pacing up
and down erratically but clearly listening, ‘so they will display Sergei for the cameras? Hang his corpse from the
gates?!’.
‘Oh, no’ the Stalker answered,
‘nothing so blatant, he is more use to them as a statistic, something that the
public can easily digest’.
‘He was no statistic’ I said firmly, closing
the distance between me and our guide, ‘I will not permit you
to…..cheapen his memory’.
‘This is the way it is, boy’ he
replied, voice hardening, ‘if you cannot accept that then I suggest you go back
the way you came, because from here on in it does not get much better’.
I
retreated to the middle of the drainage canal, folding my arms and sighing as I
looked it up and down. There were no birds circling overhead, we were too close
to the plant itself for that, even from this low position I could see the
structure looming over us silently.
Not that it needed to speak, the nuclear plant had already told its
story.
Waist-high grass, brittle and stalk-thin, walled us in where the
concrete ended.
What had I expected to feel?
Perhaps Sergei had been the most realistic of all of us, but he was
dead, and I couldn’t think about that right now, it was still too close, too
real.
‘How far is it to Haven?’ I asked finally.
The Stalker
looked up in dull interest, ‘about thirteen miles south-west, do you have a
compass?’.
I dug inside my jacket pocket and
pulled out the worn compass I had bought from an Army surplus store, flicking
open the top and placing our position. ‘Alexey,
Viktor, we have a fair amount of ground to cover before dark, we should go’.
They nodded, Viktor not even acknowledging me as he passed, I had barely
set a foot on the drainage canal wall when the Stalker’s voice rang out; ‘you
don't even have an anomaly detector, do you?’.
I looked back, feeling briefly ashamed at this huge oversight, it must have shown in my face as his bitterness
receded just a little. Shaking his head, the Stalker opened a pouch on his suit
and tossed a small, black plastic case over to me, ‘you may have to hit it a few
times to get it to work, but rather that than nothing at all. I have enough on
my mind without the thought of you three blundering into a meat mincer’.
I nodded my thanks.
‘Bullets for
the pistol?’ he asked reluctantly, as though loathe to
believe we’d be stupid enough to carry an unloaded one.
‘Two full
clips’ Viktor announced with a strange pride, smiling at the Makarov.
The Stalker nodded, pulling a crumpled
packet of cigarettes from another pouch, he stuck one in his mouth without
lighting it ‘be sure to save three rounds, then’.
Alexey frowned, ‘what for?’.
‘For yourselves. What else?’.
***
‘Maybe we should check those houses?’.
I ran a hand through my hair, pushing it away from
the sweat covering my forehead, ‘there’s no time. Besides, they were all but
cleared out during the evac’.
We had been
walking for over an hour and it had gotten hotter with every step we took, my
mouth was dry and I longed for the water in my canteen but knew it had to last.
None of us had really spoken since the drainage canal, I suppose there were only
two possible subjects, neither good; Sergei, and what
lay ahead of us in the weeks to come.
I didn’t like this place, the
abandoned village held too many dark and concealed places, what I had told Alexey was only half-true; I did think searching the houses
was a waste of time, but I also feared what we might find. Every home was
surrounded by trees, bare of their leaves they twisted and gripped like giant,
skeletal hands, some stretching and pushing through broken window panes as
though seeking out life within.
Fences around the properties tipped and
lolled drunkenly, much of the wood eaten through by rot and damp. Corrugated
iron roofs had faired slightly better than the others, but even these were
choked by mold, long furry green tracks of it spread lazily across the rusted
metal.
All of the broken wood, patches of dry and brittle grass giving
way to swells of concrete, and the numerous branches reaching out from every
angle gave me the feeling of walking into a giant carcass. Nature was taking
back the village, just as worms consume a body laid to the grave, soon the
buildings would become too weak to stand against the push of these trees and be
forced to give themselves back to the earth.
I admired and despised this
slow but steady transformation, sometimes I wished for that kind of
single-minded purpose, not a thousand different thoughts which I had to pick
through like mold nestling in the grooves.
‘Khrenoten!’ Viktor cursed loudly, ‘I should have shot
that Govinuk, for all the good his toy has done
us!’.
I turned to see him smack the anomaly
detector with the palm of his hand, shaking it violently, ‘Chyort! I cannot……no, wait….there is…something’.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He shook his head, grimacing at the
device, ‘could be a false rea-..’.
The detector began to beep rhythmically, at first
slow, lingering pulses, but quickly building to the speed of a heart-beat. We
all frantically scanned the area, heads whipping from left to right, but there
was nothing, not even wind. Viktor tugged the Makarov
from his waist-band and cocked it, eyes moving quickly from the detector to the
landscape.
‘Inside the house!’ Alexey said to us in a harsh whisper, as though this anomaly
could not only be hurt by bullets but also overhear our plans, ‘we need to find
shelter!’.
‘No, wait!’ Viktor cut him off,
shaking the detector again, ‘false alarm, there is no need to-…’.
There was a sound.
It was not one I heard
as much as felt, a dull rasping, rolling over every exposed patch of skin on my
body and snapping tight like rubber. Pin-pricks of agony lanced from every
direction, all the tension was sucked out of my muscles until I feared I would
splatter to the ground in a liquid pool, then replaced a second later with steel
bars in every limb, every nerve, locking me as a human statue.
Alexey doubled over, trembling so violently he could have
broken bones, then was hurled through the air as if he weighed nothing. The
ramshackle fencing smashed to splinters as he ploughed through it, slamming
against the side of the derelict house and remaining pinned there like an insect
to a display.
The rasping was louder now, grotesque, it sounded like
flesh and bone being shredded by a cheese-grater, drowning out my thoughts. I
couldn’t even twist my neck to look over at Viktor, so I rolled my eyes to the
edge of their sockets until pain flared through my skull.
He was on his
hands and knees, muscles shaking as though an electric current was surging
through them. Veins bulged to the surface of his skin, as fat and writhing as
worms, his jugular standing out like the root of a tree. Teeth gritted, his
spine arched further down with every passing second, I watched in horror as
blood began to spread from his palms, his knees, these two points trying
hopelessly to match the force that was driving Viktor down into the concrete.
His eyes opened suddenly and fixed on the Makarov, regarding it with a desperate hunger, and I realised that my friend knew all too well what was about to
happen to him. Face contorted in effort, he forced his left hand toward the
pistol, leaving a crimson streak on the road beneath.
Viktor’s fingers
had almost brushed the butt of it when his arm snapped,
sounding every bit like the crack of a dry branch, and the anomaly used this
brief moment to smash down his weaker side. Mouth open in a silent scream, he
pushed twice as hard with his good arm, even using the slack weight of his
broken limb as a support, but it was already over.
I watched for as long
as I could, the same way that a crowd may gather around a wounded man but none
of them are willing or able to lift a finger to help, they just think it makes
some difference to be there, to watch. I could close my eyes, block out the
terrible sight of it, but I couldn’t cover my ears; for a sickeningly long time
the air was filled with the splintering and snapping of bones, the moist pulp of
crushed organs, and all I could feel was a dizzying gratitude that it was not
me.
***
‘The first thing we did when we reached Haven was buy two
shots of vodka. Neither of us drank them, just sat there staring at the glasses
in silence, it was then that everything had started to feel…..very real’.
I lifted another piece of Kilka out of the tin
and shook the excess sauce from it, chewing quietly. Half a mugful of Rye Kvas washed the food
down, but nothing wanted to digest, it all just sat there in my stomach as a
dull weight.
‘So..that
was when you decided to join the revolution?’ Abram asked, his voice was cracked
and fractured, it was obviously painful for him to
speak.
I shook my head, realising a second
later he wouldn’t be able to see the gesture, ‘no, not right away. We……heh….we tried to find a sponsor, someone who would give us
equipment in exchange for rewards when we completed the mission. The Dealer
laughed in our faces, offered us an old, rusted kitchen knife to kill some
Dwarves for him. Even the Makarov we brought no longer
worked, the gravity anomaly had warped it into a useless hunk of metal, we had
entered the zone with few options and now we had none’.
I leant back,
inhaling some of the freezing night air which was running through this house
like water through a sieve, ‘Alexey managed to
persuade the Duty faction to let him prove his worth, they gave him a Tockarev and some Rosary beads, he was grateful for the gun
at least. He came to see me before he left, I remember being so angry with him,
he was abandoning the plan that all four of us had agreed on from the start’.
‘The plan?’ Abram rasped, coughing violently,
he guided the canteen to his mouth with juddering hands and took a long
swig.
I watched him for a moment, ready to run over and assist, but the
hacking subsided and he leant back on the bed with a sigh.
All things
considered, he was lucky to be alive.
His charred red face shone like a
jewel in the small circle of light the fluorescent lamp was giving out, the
antibiotic cream covering his flesh like a second, oily skin. Medical
gel-patches were taped over both his eyes, the eyes themselves had been washed
out with a saline solution, I didn’t know enough about
such injuries to guess how serious they were.
The medical kit could only
do so much, it had diagnosed and helped repair the damaged cilia in his lungs
and anesthetize his throat, but it couldn’t work miracles which better belonged
in the bible.
‘We were going to start our own faction’ I replied, ‘me,
Alexey, Viktor and Sergei. I
knew it was no longer possible, of course, but somehow I thought that me and
Alexey would at least remain together, become
partners, I don't know’.
Abram nodded, ‘I was once part of a faction;
Sovereign’.
‘Sovereign?’ I wondered aloud, ‘the
name is…..not familiar to me’.
‘Before the book, before Kuzmin’ he said irritably, ‘factions come and go, some no
longer exist. Sovereign is one of them’.
The wind picked up outside,
howling through the rafters and rattling glass panes in a mad chattering. I
stood and walked slowly over to the window, holding the shotgun by my side, and
hitched a hole in the pair of dusty and moth-eaten curtains.
Even the
moon was obscured by cloud tonight, my own reflection stared faintly back at me
like a tired ghost, beyond that was nothing but solid darkness, as though we
were drifting on an ocean of oblivion.
‘We will return to Haven tomorrow,
if you are able’ I said, turning away from the window to face Abram, ‘I will
retrieve the items from that crashed Moskvich, it
should earn us enough to pay for your treatment’.
He pulled himself up
on the bed, swinging his legs over the side of it, ‘we must complete our
mission’.
I blinked, unable to believe, ‘Abram, you’re in no condition.
I cannot do this without you, nor you without me. There
will be other chances’.
He was silent for what seemed like a long time,
‘do you have my supplies?’.
‘Of course. I brought them out with you’.
Abram
nodded, ‘I want you to open the right side pocket, take out what you find in
there’.
Puzzled, I fetched his pack from the corner of the room and
unzipped the right pocket, feeling my hand touch on cold plastic. I lifted out a
small case, and moved over to the lamp so I could see it in more
detail.
Inside were five empty vials, a syringe, and one remaining vial
filled with a clear fluid.
Sudden, strange embarrassment overcame me,
the same way I used to feel when I couldn’t answer a question in class. Abram
was a drug addict, I had read about it in Two Weeks with a Stalker, Kuzmin described how some of the Stalkers were hooked on
heroine, coke, crack, and that even those who disapproved of such usage carried
amphetamines, speed, or P.C.P if they needed the edge in a combat
situation.
‘Insulin’ he announced, ‘I am a Diabetic, D.N.R’.
D.N.R.
The phrase hit me like a punch to the chest, suddenly the
information Abram had told me a minute ago took on a huge significance. The
D.N.Rs were those who entered
the zone with a disability; anything from partial deafness to terminal diseases.
Bloch charged for a medical examination, upon which he would give his official
approval that the Stalker was free of such disabilities, many factions would not
even consider you for membership without such an endorsement.
D.N.Rs were dangerous, they polluted the factions with
uncertainty in a place that already had too much of it, so if it was discovered
that somehow a D.N.R had tricked his way into their group the duty fell to them
to execute that man.
You did not partner with a D.N.R, you did not rely
on a D.N.R, and you absolutely did not deal with them unless the rewards were
solid and immediate.
I sat staring down at the vial, words failing me, so
Abram took my silence as an indication to continue.
‘I bribed Bloch. He
wouldn’t have agreed to that for something like cancer, of course, but Diabetes
seemed….like a lesser evil. I paid him to keep the secret, to give me his
approval, and I paid well’.
Wavering slightly, Abram stood, one hand
placed firmly on the wall to balance himself. I suppose
he wanted to regain whatever dignity he may have had left, or perhaps he was trying to prepare in case I went at
him with my knife.
‘It was not difficult, at first’ he said, ‘I could
afford medication and still have enough roubles for
new equipment, food. When I left Sovereign things became desperate, no other
factions would take me on. I started to make sacrifices to stay afloat. I spaced
the insulin, taking only what I absolutely needed, but after a while I could
barely even afford that’.
‘What are you saying?’ I demanded, but it
didn’t sound like my voice.
‘That the container of Insulin you see there
is my last. I am hyperglycemic, constantly tired, weak.
That this mission is my last hope, that I have run out
of time’.
‘That I lied’ he muttered, barely above a
whisper.
Anger drove me to my feet, I paced back and forth just as Alexey had in the drainage canal, ‘but…….but, but the
equipment! The supplies! You bought me a decontamination suit, weapons, how
could you afford them?’.
He waved a hand
weakly, as though wafting away such things, ‘Cashed in favors from everywhere I
could, arranged deals with people that I should never have approached. Bought yet more borrowed time’.
‘I should kill you!’
I spluttered.
‘You would be entitled’ he agreed, ‘not that it matters to
me now. I can feel myself dying, ever so slowly, it never occurred to me to ask
what right I have left to live’.
‘Why did you not just leave? Go to the
city? Get help, damn you!’.
‘No, no’ he said quietly,
shaking his head, ‘I swore I would never go back to that life, not on my knees
begging for kopecks. It all comes down to this, this mission that can make both
of us rich, that can get you out of here before you end up like your friends’.
‘Fuck you! Zacroy svoy peesavati rot!’ I yelled,
‘you will not make this about me, it is you who has endangered us both with your
ridiculous plans, I will not listen!’.
‘Alexey is dead’.
I charged over, grabbing a handful
of Abram’s suit and slamming him up against the wall, causing him to shriek in
pain. ‘One more word and I will cut out your tongue, one more fucking
word!’.
Agony crushing his expression, he
gasped out the words; ‘they…found his body in…..agh….a factory basement. Dwarves……ahhh…. tore him…pieces’.
Crying out in rage,
I threw Abram to the floor, slamming my boot into his ribs. He tried to curl
himself into a ball as I rained down punches, punishing his already damaged body
in a blind fury, and only when it had all drained out of me; the fear, the
desperation, despair, betrayal, did I stop hitting.
Exhausted, I
retreated to the bed and slumped down on it, adrenaline chattering my teeth and
smashing my heart against my ribs.
Abram writhed on the floor, his
breath coming in short, hitched wheezing, I slowly popped the catch on my
holster and drew the revolver. He heard the snap of the hammer drawing back and
froze, I centered it on his head and held it there for
long moments, unable to keep my aim from trembling.
‘You really believe I
can do it’ I said flatly, it was a statement not a question, ‘I can resist the
Controllers’.
Groaning, he turned over, ‘what I believe….does it matter?
Even the possibility is….enough, augh….enough,
in a…place like this’.
‘You placed a bet on me, bet what was left of
your life’ I replied, ‘you better believe you’re going to follow it through.
Even if it kills you’.