Accessing Secure Trinity Files: // >Query>Subject: VALENKO, Constantine >History__[We're Stronger Together]__
It happened on one of the rare occasions the Valenko brothers were “disciplined” at the same time. The family bunker was mostly used for interrogating prisoners. Sometimes for times of danger to house the children. Then, it was always scrubbed clean, even before the most urgent of emergencies.
They didn’t bother cleaning it for two angry boys. The walls still stank of blood and old bleach. Viscous innards and gasoline. Charred black spots on the floor where molars could be dug out of the concrete if one so fancied.
Leonid sometimes fancied. After all, he said, they’d each put so many men into piles of ash in these very rooms—why not embrace it?
Constantine thought differently. In these times of incarceration, he tried not to focus on the location at all. Instead he sat, or slept, or stared at clean spots on the walls. He didn’t want to speak. He was usually too angry to scream and yell and rage at the walls. It was a still sort of anger. It kept him statuesque. Burning only internally.
This particular time, the punishment was longer. They’d gone far out of bounds. Orders were to torch a single building. To send a message. But they'd destroyed an entire city block, plus a church. Nine people dead. Well, nine in addition to the several dozen targets who were expected to be killed. It had started well enough. The best burn they’d ever done. It had felt so good. And Constantine had looked up, seen his brother’s grin, felt the glee throb between them—the feeling no one else in the world could understand.
They’d gotten out of control. The lesson being taught was restraint.
By the third day, even Constantine had started to pace. It kept his mind off the gnawing hunger in his gut. He couldn’t see his brother from his windowless room. Two feet of solid concrete and rebar webbing separated them, their cells side by side. But they could hear each other’s voices through ventilation.
They mostly yelled insults and threats.
By the fourth day, they’d shut up.
By the fifth, they blasted at the reinforced steel and concrete around the doors to their cells. Leonid always got further. His flames had always burned hotter. But he always faltered and gave out sooner, while Constantine kept up a steady stream of heat for full hours later. They burned until their hands were pink and raw, until their legs gave out.
By the sixth day, they lay on the floors of their cells, curled around the drains at the center, gasping for any fresh air, having used up so much of the oxygen in the sealed basement to burn their way out. And only minor charred divots in the doors to show for it.
It was the seventh day that Leonid called a soft apology, so quiet Constantine barely heard it. He whispered one of his own back, too nauseous with hunger to be angry anymore. They crawled to their shared wall, discussed the possibility they’d been forgotten, or that something was wrong up above. They talked about the progress they’d made in escape. Constantine’s melted area was wide enough to walk through, but shallow, barely a dent in the wall. Leonid's was deep, almost all the way through the front of his cell, but too focused, too narrow.
“It’s too bad they separated us, little brother,” Leonid muttered with a chuckle. “We’re stronger together.”
“That’s why we’re here in the first place,” Constantine retorted, unable to keep his own smile at bay.
He touched the wall between them. It might have been the delirium that came from starvation, but he thought he could almost feel his brother’s heat on the other side.
It took them only an hour to burn through the wall between them. Constantine made sure they were positioned away from support beams and wiring, to avoid the whole bunker coming down on their heads. Or worse. With heat from both sides, their separate intensities mattered little. The fire doubled, fed on itself, ate up the oxygen between them as the boys panted and wavered on their feet. Leonid's heated blue flame mixed with Constantine’s steady red-orange and burned almost white. The wall popped, cracked, whined, melted away.
They crumpled along with it, passed out. When they woke, the hole between them had cooled enough that Leonid could reach through and grasp Constantine’s forearm, helping him slide through. His brother’s cell was identical, but felt different. The walls were blackened, none of the original grey showing. He'd destroyed bed, toilet, and sink in a fit. Constantine wondered how long he'd been without water. The progress Leonid had made at the front of the cell looked like a black hole, streaks of stress and heat directed toward the point of breaking like a dying star devouring light.
“We can do it,” Leonid said. “Together. We could break through.”
“We don’t have…enough oxygen…” Constantine shook his head. He could barely breathe as it was. “One more burn, it will all be gone.”
Leonid grasped the back of his neck, pulling their foreheads together. His own breaths were hard and harsh, rasping horribly. “Then we die faster rather than slower.” His other hand gripped Constantine’s neck. It was mostly to keep him upright. “Are you with me, little brother?”
Constantine closed his eyes, licked his lips, and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’m with you.”
Half an hour later, two exhausted young men stumbled into the hall, gasping at the barest hints of extra oxygen outside. Constantine lay on his back. Leonid knelt beside him.
“I can’t—” Constantine arched his back to somehow pull more air into his lungs but there simply wasn’t any.
“There’s no…no guard, Constantine. Just one more door. One more, little brother.”
Leonid had to take a fistful of Constantine’s shirt and haul him up off the ground. They half-carried one another, stumbling like two men melted into one. Up the steps. To the final door. Simple wood. Heavy wood, but simple. On the other side, unfamiliar voices. A fight. And precious oxygen. They just needed to get through to it.
Their hands slapped to cool wood in unison. Grimy and burned and raw. They drew air into their lungs. They exhaled. The air around their fingers heated.
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