We crossed into Russia the way wolves cross borders: quietly, illegally, and with blood already on our teeth.
The jeep died somewhere south of Ouarzazate, radiator cooked by Djinn’s unconscious wind bursts. We abandoned it in a wadi and walked the last hundred kilometers to the coast, four shadows moving through moonlit dunes. A fishing trawler out of Essaouira—captained by a man who owed Rei more than money—took us north along the Atlantic, past Gibraltar under fog so thick even the Spanish radar couldn’t see us.
From Lisbon we flew commercial, scattered across three different flights, fake passports printed on polymer that wouldn’t trigger alarms. Djinn traveled as a mute Moroccan kickboxer with bandaged hands. Oni as a sumo wrestler on a cultural exchange. Rei and I as boring European
