That night, she asked him for his name.
They were sitting on the fire escape, watching the stars struggle through the city's light pollution. Dill was wrapped in a blanket that was too big for her, her bare feet tucked beneath her, her dark hair still damp from the shower he'd taught her how to use.
"Sam," she said. "That's your name."
"It's what people call me."
"But it's not your real name." She looked at him, her dark eyes reflecting the distant stars. "Is it?"
Sam was quiet for a moment. The fire escape creaked beneath them. In the distance, a siren wailed.
"No," he said finally. "It's not."
"What's your real name?"
[Should I just lie to her?]
But something about the way she was looking at him, with that quiet, unsettling intensity made the lies feel cheap.
"I don't have one," he said.
She blinked. "So you're just like me."
"Yea." He leaned back against the railing, his hands resting on his knees. "I was given a number. Like you. Number 58. That's what they called me. That's what I am."
"But that's not even a label." She frowned. "That's just... a number."
"Yes."
She was silent for a moment, processing this. Then she said, very quietly: "Then I'll give you a label."
He looked at her.
"Alexei," she said. "I read it in a book once. In the laboratory. It was about a man who saved people. He wasn't very strong, and he wasn't very smart, but he kept trying anyway. Even when it was hard."
Her dark eyes met his.
"I used to imagine that someone like you would come for me."
He stared at her. His smile wavered and then came back as an act of will rather than instinct. "Alexei?"
"Is that okay?"
He didn't answer immediately. The name was foreign. Uncomfortable. A name meant something. A name meant you were a person, not just a tool. A name meant someone cared enough to give you one.
"I'll try it," he said finally. "See if it fits."
She smiled. It was a small thing, fragile, barely there. But it was real.
"Okay. Alexei."
They sat together on the fire escape, watching the stars, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, Sam felt something that might have been hope.
The days that followed were strange. Disorienting.
Sam had spent his entire adult life maintaining professional distance.
Emotional attachment was a liability that got good agents killed and compromised missions that had taken years to set up.
She was not a target. She was a twelve-year-old girl who'd never seen stars before, who didn't know what butter was, who asked endless questions about everything and listened to his answers with the careful attention of someone who was trying to memorize what it meant to be human.
Sam taught her to cook. Simple things at first, eggs, toast, pasta. She burned the first three attempts at scrambled eggs, but after day by day, she could make them perfectly, the yolks still slightly runny, the way he'd mentioned offhandedly that he liked them.
"That's good," he said, tasting the eggs.
She beamed. It was the first time he'd seen her really smile, something brighter. Something that made her look like the child she was supposed to be.
She taught him things, too. Not skills, she had no skills beyond what the laboratory had programmed into her.
Ways of seeing the world that he'd long ago forgotten. The wonder in a handful of cherry blossoms. The music in the rhythm of rain against the window. The quiet peace of sitting together on the fire escape, watching the city lights flicker on as dusk settled over the rooftops.
"The stars are coming out," she said.
Black scene.
The sky was clearer than usual, the light pollution dimmed by a recent power outage in the neighboring district. The stars were visible, thousands of them, scattered across the darkness like diamonds on black velvet.
"They're beautiful," she whispered. "I never knew they were so beautiful."
"They've always been there. You just couldn't see them before."
"Like a lot of things," she said quietly. "There's so much I couldn't see. So much I didn't know existed." She turned to him. "Alexei?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For showing me."
"Of course."
A day passed.
He woke to the sound of her screaming, a high, thin sound that cut through the quiet of the safehouse like a blade. He was on his feet before he was fully conscious, his hand reaching for the sidearm he kept under his pillow, his mind already cycling through threat assessments and escape routes.
But there was no threat. Just her, curled in a ball on her mattress, her hands pressed over her ears, her body shaking with sobs.
"Hey. Hey." He knelt beside her, his hands hovering over her shoulders. "Dill. What's wrong?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Her breathing was too fast, too shallow, her chest heaving with the effort of drawing air into lungs that wouldn't cooperate.
He'd seen this before. Panic attacks. Flashbacks. The body remembering what the mind tried to forget. He'd experienced them himself, in the early years, before he'd learned to bury everything so deep that even he couldn't find it anymore.
"Breathe," he said. "With me. In—" He took a slow, deliberate breath. "—and out."
She tried. Her first attempt was ragged, broken, but she tried again, and again, and slowly, gradually, her breathing began to steady.
"There you go." He kept his voice calm, even. "You're safe. Whatever it was, it's over now."
"It's not over." Her voice was barely a whisper. "It's never over. It's inside me. I can feel it. Waiting."
The bomb. She was dreaming about the bomb.
"Someday," she continued, her voice trembling, "they're going to say the words. The trigger words. And I won't be able to stop it. I won't be able to—" She broke off, her body convulsing with a sob. "I don't want to die, Alexei. I don't want to be a bomb. I don't want—"
"I know." He pulled her into his arms. "I know."
"If I die, will anyone remember me? Will anyone know I was here?"
The question hung in the air between them.
"Yes," he said. "I'll remember you."
She looked up at him. Her dark eyes were wet with tears. "Promise?"
"Pinky promise."
She stared at him for a moment. Then, very slowly, a smile crept across her face. It was fragile and trembling, but it was there. "You say weird things sometimes, Alexei."
"I learned from the best."
Sam stayed with her until she fell asleep, her small body curled against his side, her breathing finally slow and steady. He didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. His mind was racing, turning over possibilities and plans and the thousand things he'd need to do to make good on his promise.
He'd told her she wasn't going to die.
He intended to keep that promise.
Even if it meant betraying everything he'd ever believed in.
She got sick a day later.