"Tell My Ellie"
I
It started with a war, but also with a song.
Pawel Cardel had never met Elisaveta "Ellie" Coralowa properly. She was just another face in the neighborhood before the uprising—working as a flight attendant, always seen in the early mornings dragging a wheeled suitcase, hair tied up, eyes half-awake but professional. He saw her once at the bakery and again at the metro station, but they’d never spoken. Not until the world began to unravel.
Before the first shots were fired, there was a constitutional crisis.
The ruling government had refused to honor a court ruling that challenged a sweeping executive decree. When the courts tried to intervene, their authority was dismissed by loyalist security forces. The news spread like fire through an already fraying society. Universities shut down in protest. Workers walked out of factories. A mass demonstration in the capital turned into an occupation. Parliament was stormed by citizens wrapped in national flags and holding signs that read “No Kings, No Dictators.”
In the chaos that followed, the state broadcast network fell silent. Ministers disappeared from public view. Cities were split between loyalist enclaves and zones of resistance. The streets turned from debate to defiance. And out of that defiance emerged the National Salvation Front.
It wasn’t one group but many—a loose, volatile coalition of ex-military officers, dismissed civil servants, disillusioned intellectuals, artists, students, and veterans of past movements. They believed the country needed more than reform. They wanted a break from the cycle: corruption, repression, collapse. What they called for was rebirth—through resistance, if necessary.
But for Pawel, the decision didn’t come in a single moment. It came in quiet waves—first anger, then grief, then a kind of solemn resolve.
He remembered the day the café where his band used to play was shuttered by plainclothes officers. No explanation, just black tape over the windows. Then there was the night his friend, Marek—the drummer who taught him to play with swing and not fear—was taken after performing a song with the word “truth” in its chorus. No charges. Just silence. The authorities said he left the country. Everyone knew that was a lie.
Pawel stayed silent at first. He kept his head down, wrote songs in secret, played only in whispers. But the truth was becoming impossible to ignore. The streets outside his apartment echoed with slogans and boots. Neighbors began to vanish. Checkpoints sprouted at intersections. Journalists he admired were branded foreign agents. A protester was shot in broad daylight—and no one came to collect his body for hours.
One evening, on a walk back from a curfew-shortened gig, he stood at a closed tram station and watched the city lights flicker, and he thought: If I don’t do something, then all I have are songs nobody hears.
So he showed up at a quiet address scrawled on the back of a flyer, just a door with a cracked lamp and a bell that didn’t work. No fanfare. No recruitment ceremony. Just a password, a nod, and a chair in the back of a candlelit room full of strangers who looked like ghosts from the old republic—tired, serious, and still hoping.
He didn’t come to shout. He came to listen, to learn, to carry weight without glory. That’s why Pawel joined quietly.
II
Pawel joined them quietly. No one knew. He didn’t tell his bandmates. Didn’t tell his neighbors. He simply disappeared from the local scene, resurfacing only now and then with a changed look, a new tension in his shoulders. To the outside world, he was a musician gone underground. In truth, he was training, writing dispatches, moving in the shadows with others who believed in something bigger.
“Are you sure about this?” one of the coordinators had asked him during their first meeting in a candle-lit basement beneath an abandoned theater.
Pawel had nodded. “I’ve seen too much rot to keep playing songs for empty rooms. I want to matter.”
“Then you’re in the right place,” the coordinator said, passing him a document and a map. “No fanfare. No glory. Just the work.”
By winter, Pawel had already disappeared from the city’s music circles. People asked about him. Some assumed he had fled abroad like many artists had. Others believed he’d been arrested. Only a few guessed the truth: that he was still there, somewhere beneath the surface, waiting.
He had become a courier for the National Salvation Front—delivering messages between districts, smuggling encrypted USB sticks between stacks of poetry books, using old tram lines and crumbling tunnels to navigate the fractured capital. Nights were spent in safehouses that used to be theaters, bookstores, or jazz bars. The city was rotting and blooming all at once.
One night, just past curfew, Pawel was posted to a former photo studio in District IV. The windows were blacked out. A lone bulb flickered over a desk littered with maps and hand-rolled cigarettes. He was there to relay any incoming updates and safeguard a batch of documents marked “K-archive.”
He sat at the desk, twiddling the edge of his pencil. A cold draft slipped through the wall cracks. The silence was complete—no trams, no footfalls, not even the distant hum of state radio. Just the creak of old wood and the occasional drip from the ceiling.
That’s when Luka arrived. Seventeen, maybe eighteen, with a buzz cut and a scarf that still smelled of fuel. He nodded a greeting, tossed his coat onto a broken mannequin, and pulled up a chair near the old shortwave radio they used to monitor broadcasts from the resistance zones.
"Mind if I try for music tonight?" Luka asked, already fiddling with the knobs.
Pawel barely looked up. “If you can find a signal.”
Crackling. Static. Faint voices in Slavic dialects and guitar strumming. Silence again. Then—
A low, trembling guitar chord. A pause. And then a voice—fragile, weathered, singing in Russian:
“Привет сестрёнка…”
Pawel froze. The lyrics were unfamiliar, but the feeling behind them wasn’t. There was something cracked open in the voice, something raw and unfiltered. It was a soldier, singing from somewhere distant. A message to his sister, or maybe to the world. A moment of heartbreak caught on tape and hurled into the ether.
Luka leaned back, surprised. “Sounds like some old Soviet thing. Field recording maybe?”
But Pawel was elsewhere.
The guitar seemed to echo through his ribs. And in his mind—suddenly and vividly—he saw Ellie. Not even clearly. Just a memory: her face half-lit by airport lights, hair tied back, headphones on. She had passed him once outside a cafe, wheeling her bag behind her. They never even spoke. But in that moment, her image felt like the last stable thing in a world collapsing.
“That voice,” Pawel murmured. “It’s like he’s singing into the void.”
Luka gave a cautious nod. “Kinda spooky, right?”
“No,” Pawel said quietly. “It’s honest.”
He stood slowly, as though waking from a long dream. In the corner of the room, leaning against a dusty file cabinet, was his guitar. The same one he hadn’t touched in weeks.
He picked it up and sat cross-legged on the floor. His fingers were stiff, but the muscle memory returned—soft chords, steady strumming.
Luka sat up. “Wait, are you…?”
But Pawel didn’t answer. He reached for a pad of ration paper, grabbed a pencil, and started writing.
"Just tell my Ellie, that I’m in the uprising,
Fighting for tomorrow, though the cost is frightening…"
The words flowed like breath—painful, necessary.
“Who's Ellie?” Luka asked, watching.
Pawel didn’t look up. “No one. Not really. I mean… I never knew her. Just someone I used to see before this all started. But tonight… I don’t know. It’s like she’s the only one I can sing to.”
He kept writing, the lines coming in rhythm with the guitar:
"She’s flying above the clouds, where the world’s so wide,
She's serving coffee and smiles while I’m here, far aside…"
The room grew smaller. The war fell away. For the first time in weeks, the ache in his chest had somewhere to go.
When he finally looked up, the sky outside the boarded windows had turned pale with dawn. Luka was fast asleep on a stack of newspapers. The shortwave was silent again.
Pawel folded the lyrics gently, like a letter never meant to be sent.
That night, Tell My Ellie was born.
And with it, something changed in him. Not the anger. That was still there. But now, threaded through the fire, there was also longing. Memory. A reason.
He wasn’t fighting for the abstract anymore. He was fighting for a world where songs still meant something. For someone who might one day hear them.
III
The air was thick with smoke, the acrid scent of burning oil filling his lungs as Pawel crouched low behind a battered concrete wall, rifle in hand. The front line was a tangle of abandoned vehicles and ruins, former residential areas now riddled with craters. The radio station was just ahead, a tall, angular building that used to be a beacon of information and culture before the war turned it into a fortress.
He could hear the gunfire now, distant but growing louder. The Salvation Front had been advancing steadily for days, pushing back the forces loyal to the collapsing regime. Every step was hard-won, every inch of ground earned with blood and sweat. But the radio station—the heart of the city’s last bastion of state-controlled propaganda—was crucial. They needed to silence it, seize the airwaves, and broadcast their own message.
Pawel exhaled, steadying himself. The night was crawling with shadows, men in fatigues moving like ghosts. He had done this countless times: slip in, take control, broadcast, and slip out. But this time was different. This was more than just a military operation. This was personal. The song was personal.
“On my mark,” a voice crackled through his earpiece. It was Luka, his young comrade from the safehouse. He sounded calm, but Pawel knew the weight of the situation was pressing on all of them. This was no longer just about survival. It was about sending a message.
The signal to advance came.
The front door to the station burst open with a heavy crash. Pawel was the first inside, moving with the trained precision of someone who had spent too many nights under the threat of fire. Inside, the building was a maze of corridors and empty rooms, the smell of dust and wires hanging in the air. The station’s engineers had long since fled, leaving only the skeleton crew of loyalists behind.
“Clear!” Pawel shouted, his voice bouncing off the walls.
They stormed the broadcast room. It was a small, sterile space filled with the hum of old equipment and the flickering light of monitors. Behind a rusted control panel, a single technician—his face pale, eyes wide with fear—stood frozen.
“Get on the mic!” Pawel barked, his rifle aimed at the technician’s chest.
The technician, shaking, complied. His fingers trembled as he turned the dials, adjusting the transmission frequency.
“What do we broadcast?” the technician asked, barely audible.
Pawel felt a strange calm settle over him. His thoughts shifted to the song. It had been days since he’d written it, and the words still haunted him. The urgency of the uprising, the memory of Ellie, all woven into the lyrics. It felt like a lifetime ago, and yet, it was still as fresh as the first moment.
"Tell them we're taking over. But first… play this."
The battle was still raging outside, but inside the radio station, the air was thick with a different kind of tension. The hum of equipment, the sharp crackle of radios, and the occasional bursts of static all blended into a strange rhythm as Pawel moved through the dimly lit hallways.
The mission had been accomplished—the station had been seized, the airwaves were theirs. But as Pawel passed by an abandoned room, something caught his eye. A guitar. It sat in the corner, leaning against a forgotten desk, its strings slightly out of tune. The instrument’s presence was like a breath of familiarity in a place that had become everything but familiar.
He stopped in his tracks.
His hands instinctively reached for the guitar, his fingers brushing against the worn wood. It had been months since he had played for pleasure, months since he had sung without a cause. All the songs he had written had been for the fight, for the cause. But Tell My Ellie… that one had been different. It had started as a personal cry, a whisper to someone he hadn’t even truly known. And now, here, in this moment of fragile victory, he could feel its weight again.
He plopped down onto a chair in front of the guitar, adjusting his grip, and let his fingers strum a tentative chord. The sound filled the silence of the room, resonating against the walls. It was a simple chord, but the sound felt like a bridge—connecting him to something far away, something outside of the walls of war.
He tuned the strings absent-mindedly, his eyes lost in thought. His heart still beat with the rhythm of the song he had written in a safehouse, and somehow, despite the chaos, the guitar felt like a way back to that place. Back to when the words had come to him in the dead of night, when he had realized what it was he was truly fighting for.
He closed his eyes for a moment. The hum of the city outside the station, the distant gunfire, the tension of revolution… all faded away. It was just him and the guitar. And Ellie.
He began to play.
"Just tell my Ellie, that I’m in the uprising,
Fighting for tomorrow, though the cost is frightening…"
His voice cracked at the first note, raw from the days of tension, from the long marches and the sleepless nights. But it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about perfection. It was about truth. The truth of what he was doing here. The truth of why he had taken up arms, of why he had joined the National Salvation Front.
He strummed the chords harder now, letting the rhythm build.
"Tell her I’m not scared, though I’m far from home,
We’re battling together, but I feel so alone…"
The song poured out of him, slow and aching, each note a prayer, each lyric a vow. He couldn’t stop himself. The lyrics were an anchor in the midst of a storm, a connection to something human, to something real.
His eyes drifted to the control panel across the room. The technician, the one who had been shaking in fear earlier, was watching him now, his wide eyes fixed on Pawel.
“Is that…” the technician’s voice trailed off in disbelief. “Is that live?”
Pawel didn’t answer. He just kept playing, lost in the song, the sound of the guitar, and the words that felt more like a whisper in the dark than a rallying cry.
"While she’s out on the runways, where the planes always fly,
I’m stuck in the trenches, trying not to cry…"
The technician stepped closer, unsure of what was happening. Pawel didn’t care. This was the moment, a brief sliver of stillness in the chaos. It was just him, the guitar, and the song.
"Tell her the thought of her keeps me alive,
Her voice in my dreams helps me survive."
The air around him seemed to hum with an energy he hadn’t expected. His voice was getting stronger now, more confident. The words didn’t just fill the room—they filled the very air, as if the song had taken on a life of its own.
He opened his eyes and saw the technician nodding, his face filled with something akin to awe. Pawel didn’t care about being admired or praised. This wasn’t for anyone else. This was for Ellie, for the world they’d once known, and for the world they were fighting to build.
The song continued to spill out of him. It was no longer just a message to Ellie. It had become something more—something for everyone who had ever been caught in the crossfire, something for every soul who had ever longed for peace amid the madness.
"Just tell my Ellie, I’m fighting with pride,
That I’m doing this for us, for the world we’ll guide…"
He strummed the final chord, letting it echo into the silence.
The room was still. The song had ended, but its echoes remained.
Pawel looked up at the technician, who was now slowly wiping his eyes, his face pale. “You… you just played that live,” the technician said, his voice shaking.
Pawel didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted anyone to hear it. But here, in this moment, the song had slipped out of him, like a secret that had been waiting to be told. The radio waves, the world beyond the walls, had absorbed it. And that was enough.
Without a word, Pawel stood up, placing the guitar back in its corner. He walked toward the door, ready to move on, ready to face whatever came next.
But as he reached for the handle, he glanced back over his shoulder.
“Keep it on the air,” he said quietly to the technician. “Let them hear it. Let them hear everything.”
And with that, he stepped back into the chaos of the world outside, his song still echoing across the frequencies, a quiet cry in the storm. The song flooded through the station, raw and unrefined. The crackling sound of the shortwave radio was now amplified through the studio’s speakers, but the message remained the same—urgent, personal, and filled with a sorrow that only war could breed.
As the song played over the airwaves, Pawel could feel the gravity of the moment. The words echoed through the empty streets, reaching the hearts of those who still clung to the idea of normalcy in the face of chaos. The sound of his voice, tinged with desperation and hope, became a new call to arms. It wasn’t just a message to Ellie anymore—it was a message to everyone who was still listening, still waiting for change.
Outside, the sound of gunfire from outside rang in their ears, but it didn’t matter anymore. The station was theirs. The airwaves were theirs.
“Keep playing it,” Pawel ordered, his voice steady. The airwaves would be filled with revolution now—his song, their song, a collective cry for something greater than survival.
He stepped into the hallway, his boots echoing through the empty corridors of the station. The sounds of distant artillery were now part of the soundtrack of their world. But the war wasn’t just about bullets and blood anymore. It was about what was carried on the wind, on the frequencies that could reach further than any army could march.
As he exited the station, the last fading notes of Tell My Ellie were still playing in his ears, and for a moment, he could almost hear her voice in the distance, somewhere far beyond the reach of the gunfire.
IV
The hotel room was beige and still—eerily sterile, like a memory that hadn’t finished forming. The hum of the air conditioning buzzed faintly in the background, too cold for comfort but not worth getting up to fix. Ellie let the door swing shut behind her, dropped her shoulder bag to the floor with a thud, and tossed her ID lanyard onto the nightstand like it weighed ten kilos.
Still in uniform, she collapsed onto the bed, one leg bent awkwardly over the other, her heels kicked off and left somewhere between the minibar and the door. The ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, doing little to move the air. She didn't even glance out the window. It didn’t matter where she was. Another layover, another silent room in a nameless city. Somewhere in the Balkans? Or was it the Caucasus? She’d stopped keeping track weeks ago—on purpose.
The job kept her moving. And that was the point.
She reached for the remote and clicked on the television, not expecting much. Just noise. Something to fill the space. The screen blinked on, then buzzed with gray-and-black static. The hotel satellite was patchy again—standard. It flickered, jumped between half-loaded channels, and froze on a frame from a soap opera in a language she didn’t recognize before cutting back to fuzz.
“Figures,” she mumbled, tossing the remote aside.
Still in her blouse and skirt, she rolled onto her side, the sheets too crisp to be comforting. She let her gaze settle on the wooden desk built into the corner of the room. A battered shortwave radio console was embedded in it—an older model, probably from the early 2000s, a relic left behind by a different kind of traveler.
She hadn’t touched one since she was a kid, but since the crisis back home, she’d started turning them on again. It became a ritual, especially during layovers: search the frequencies. Somewhere between the static and distant voices, there was always something—news, old love songs, pirate transmissions. It made her feel less alone. More human.
She sat up, crossed to the desk, and turned the dial with two fingers. The knobs were stiff. At first: crackles, hisses, broken transmissions. Snatches of news in Turkish. A Serbian call-in show. A bit of Hungarian opera. Then silence again.
Then—
“…восстание… но я всё ещё жив…”
A low male voice, speaking Russian—“the uprising… but I’m still alive…”
Her hand hesitated.
Then came the music.
The melody cut through the noise like a knife—minor key, gentle strumming, the rasp of a tired voice singing not in Russian this time, but her own language. Her hand froze on the dial.
Not the polished sweep of a studio mix, but the kind of music you’d hear in a room with too many ghosts. A lone acoustic guitar, slightly out of tune, strummed in a minor key. The voice that followed was tired—tired in the way only someone who hadn’t slept in weeks could be. Rough. Vulnerable. Still, it cut clean through the noise.
"Just tell my Ellie, that I’m in the uprising,
Fighting for tomorrow, though the cost is frightening…"
Her breath caught. Her fingers tightened on the dial.
Just tell my Ellie…
Her name.
It had to be a coincidence. A trick of the brain, a misheard lyric. But then came the second verse:
She’s flying above the clouds, where the world’s so wide…
She sat up straighter, almost knocking over the glass of water by the bedside.
Flight attendant. The clouds. That image. That metaphor.
It was too specific. Too close.
The words weren't perfect, and the voice wasn’t trained, but there was an ache to it—like someone singing not to an audience, but in spite of one. It felt like an accidental broadcast, like someone cracking open a letter never meant to be read aloud.
Her heartbeat quickened.
She didn’t move. Just listened.
The voice faltered slightly on that line. Not from mistake—but from emotion. Like whoever was singing had to will himself to keep going.
She stared at the speaker, as if the radio itself could somehow reveal his face. But there was nothing. No station ID. No name. No context. Just the music. And her name, echoing like a ghost through the static.
The final lines came softer.
Then silence.
Not a fade-out. Not applause. Just—gone.
She sat frozen. The static returned, but it felt louder now. Like the world had snapped back into place and she wasn’t ready for it.
For a moment, she didn’t know what to do. Her hands trembled slightly. Her throat tightened.
She stood slowly and crossed to the full-length mirror near the closet. Looked at herself.
Same uniform. Same tired eyes. Same girl who left home without looking back.
But something inside her had changed.
She touched her name badge absently, as if verifying that the name on the radio had truly been hers. “Ellie,” it read. Just Ellie.
She met her own reflection and whispered, “Who the hell are you?”
The mirror didn’t answer.
The song was already fading into myth—untraceable, unshazamable, anonymous. A flare in the dark.
But Ellie knew. Somewhere out there, someone had sung to her. Or at least, for a version of her. And that knowledge, terrifying and beautiful, refused to let her go.
The next morning, the hotel lobby smelled faintly of burnt coffee and cigarette smoke. Ellie sat in the corner near the breakfast buffet, picking at a stale croissant and nursing a watery espresso. Her layover crew chatted nearby—talking about shopping streets, cheap beer, or their next destination—but she wasn’t really there. Not anymore.
The song haunted her like a half-remembered dream.
She had slept only a few hours, the rest spent in a loop—playing the lyrics over and over in her mind, trying to place the voice. It wasn’t just the words. It was the way he sang them. As if he had known her, somehow. As if he’d seen her in passing once and held onto the image through everything.
Tell my Ellie…
She turned her phone over in her palm, opened the voice memo app, and quietly hummed a few lines of the melody to preserve it. Then, almost without thinking, she typed into her browser: shortwave broadcast song ellie uprising.
Nothing useful.
Next, she searched in her language: song with name Ellie resistance shortwave guitar.
Still nothing.
She narrowed it further. Acoustic song about a flight attendant uprising radio.
The results were a mess of forums, conspiracy threads, wartime folk songs from a dozen countries. Nothing even close.
She sighed, glancing around to make sure no one was watching her too closely. The pilots were deep in a conversation about runways in Central Asia. The others were on their phones or gossiping.
Ellie slipped her phone back into her coat pocket, took her coffee to go, and walked outside.
The city was gray and rain-slicked, the air sharp with diesel and wet pavement. She didn’t even know the name of the district they were in, only that the hotel backed onto an alley with a dozen kiosks and old tech repair shops. She wandered down the side street, following a hunch more than any real logic.
At the third shop, an elderly man sat behind a counter surrounded by radios—vintage sets, shortwaves, parts in bins and boxes, coils of copper wire. She stepped inside.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Do you… know much about shortwave broadcasts?”
He looked up, bushy eyebrows twitching. “Shortwave? You asking about range or reception?”
“Neither, really. I—I heard something last night. A song. No station ID. No name. Just this voice. It sounded like… like someone singing from the front.”
He gave her a tired look. “People say that kind of thing all the time. There’s always someone broadcasting something. Rebel songs, pirate poetry, prayers. Most of it’s ghosts.”
“This one wasn’t,” she said firmly. “It mentioned my name. Ellie. Said I was flying above the clouds.”
The man’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if trying to remember something. “You sure it wasn’t Russian?”
“No. It started with Russian. Then switched. It was in my language. Plain. Raw.”
He scratched at his beard. “There’s been talk of liberated zones. Some of them took back old radio towers. If it was real… it might’ve come from the occupied border.”
Ellie’s heart stirred. “Can I find out? Can someone trace it?”
He shook his head. “Shortwave doesn’t work like that. You catch it, or you don’t. No digital footprint. No archive. You hear a song like that once—it’s a message in a bottle.”
She bit her lip, hesitating. “Has anyone else… asked about it?”
“Not directly. But there’s been talk of a guy,” he said, leaning in now, voice low. “Young. Maybe from the cities. Former musician. Word is, he joined the National Salvation Front—started broadcasting songs from inside the zones. Not anthems. Personal ones. Like letters.”
Ellie’s throat tightened. “Do you know his name?”
The man shrugged. “No. No one does. But they say he sang once at the capture of a radio station. Guitar and all. Real underground kind of moment. Just once. Like a flare.”
She stepped back slowly, her mind racing. A flare.
That’s what it felt like.
As she walked out into the chill air again, something shifted in her chest. She didn’t know where he was, or even who he was. But she knew this much:
Someone out there remembered her.
And if he could reach her with a song… maybe, just maybe, she could reach back.
V
The guitar strings still hummed faintly as Pawel set it down on the table, fingertips raw from the sudden performance. The station’s studio was nothing but a stripped-down shell—just wires, a salvaged mic, and a shortwave transmitter humming like a heartbeat in the dark.
He wasn’t even sure if anyone had heard it.
“D’you think it went out?” Luka asked from the other side of the glass, fidgeting with the transmitter’s dials. His face was still flushed with adrenaline from the firefight that led to the capture of the old station. There were bullet holes in the ceiling tiles and ash on the floor from a burnt-out fuse box.
Pawel didn’t answer right away. He looked out through the cracked window at the city block they now held—still smoking, still tense, but momentarily quiet. Somewhere out there, he hoped, someone had caught the signal.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But it felt like something broke open.”
“What was that song?” Luka asked. “You wrote that for someone?”
Pawel exhaled through his nose and gave a lopsided smile. “For someone I never really met.”
Luka raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know,” Pawel admitted. “Just a girl I used to see in the neighborhood. Never spoke more than a few words. I don’t even know if she knows my name. But she… she stuck with me.”
Luka leaned against the wall, nodding slowly. “The kind of person you remember when the world falls apart.”
“Yeah.” Pawel replied.
The radio crackled faintly. A return transmission? A reply? No—just noise. There were no guarantees in shortwave. Just the silence, and the maybe.
That night, around a barrel fire in the back alley of the station, the squad of fighters and volunteers passed around a dented thermos of canned coffee and replayed the moment in their heads. Word had already begun to spread—someone in the uprising had sung a love song from a captured radio tower.
Not a battle hymn. Not propaganda. Just a man and a guitar and a name.
Someone said it reminded them of Tsoi. Another said Letov. Someone else muttered about the old Soviet vet who sang over Radio Herat back in ‘84. But no one knew it was Pawel.
And he didn’t offer it.
Because it wasn’t for the others.
It was for Ellie.
The next morning, the command post was abuzz with news from the northern districts. A skirmish here, a sabotage there. Pawel sat at the edge of a briefing room as maps were unrolled and field radios barked codes. His guitar was strapped to his back now, almost like a second weapon.
A senior coordinator approached him between briefings. “You're the one who played last night, aren’t you?”
Pawel looked up, startled. “…Who told you?”
The man smiled. “No one. But I heard the voice. I’ve known your music since before the war. You’ve got a ghost in your throat.”
Pawel nodded silently.
“We’re going to be moving into a broadcast-capable zone soon,” the man continued. “An old TV station. Word is people are tuning in again, searching for voices that sound like their own. I want you to be ready.”
“Ready for what?” Pawel asked, cautious.
“To sing again. This time, not just to one person.”
Pawel looked down at his hands.
He hadn’t expected to be heard.
He hadn’t expected anything.
But now, the quiet song scrawled on ration paper had grown legs. It was traveling without him. And maybe—just maybe—she had heard it.
He didn’t know if she’d recognize the voice. He didn’t know if she’d even remember him.
But he knew this much:
The airwaves were open now.
And he had more to say.
It had only been a day since the broadcast.
The base was quiet, tucked in the ruins of what used to be a technical college, somewhere on the edge of the liberated zone. The old classrooms had been converted into dormitories and ops centers; chemistry labs now stored radios and rifles. Pawel was hunched over a desk in the former music room, restringing his guitar—his only real ritual, now. He found comfort in the tightening of nylon against wood, the scent of dust and metal, the quiet that came when a string sang perfectly.
Outside, the sun burned pale behind a haze of smoke. The walls still bore graffiti from student protests that came long before the uprising. He paused for a moment, catching the last few lines of his own song playing back from a bootleg tape someone had recorded from the air.
Just tell my Ellie…
The words felt like echoes now, as if someone else had sung them.
He reached for his canteen when the first rumble came.
Not thunder.
A deep crack, followed by a distant whump—the unmistakable percussion of a missile strike.
Then another.
Then closer.
The base jolted, and dust fell from the ceiling like powdered chalk. Somewhere outside, a siren wailed. People began shouting. Boots hit pavement.
Pawel froze for a second before instinct took over.
“Move!” someone yelled from the hallway. “East courtyard just got hit—possible follow-up strike incoming!”
He grabbed his guitar case and rifle in one motion and ducked into the corridor. Figures passed him in a blur—medics, runners, guards yelling into radios. He wasn’t frontline, not anymore, not that day—but something told him this wasn’t random. Someone had triangulated their signal. Someone had heard the song... and didn’t like it.
As he rounded the corner toward the stairwell, a blast wave knocked him sideways. The wall behind him cracked open as part of the ceiling caved in.
He coughed, ears ringing, vision spotted with dust and ash.
When he blinked again, Luka was there, pulling him up.
“You okay?” Luka shouted, dragging him toward a safer corridor.
“I’m fine—I’m fine—where did it hit?” Pawel said.
“The west barracks. We think they tracked the transmitter.” Luka replied.
Pawel’s heart sank.
The song.
He thought of Ellie, alone somewhere out there. He didn’t know if she’d heard it. He didn’t even know if she was listening. But the world had, apparently. And now it was answering.
With fire.
The west barracks were still smoking when Pawel was called in.
He hadn’t even had time to change. Dust caked his collar, and dried blood from a shallow graze marked his temple, though he hadn’t noticed. The corridors echoed with barked orders and the groan of stretchers. Field medics moved like ghosts through the haze. And yet, amid the chaos, an urgency thicker than smoke clung to the air.
A runner approached him. “Comms station. Now. HQ wants you there.”
Pawel blinked. “Why me?”
“They heard the song, Pawel. They know your voice. You’re not just a soldier now. You’re a signal.” the runner replied.
That word again.
Signal.
The comms station was hidden beneath the remains of a collapsed auditorium, behind reinforced doors and layers of concrete and lead. It wasn’t much to look at—two working terminals, a manual type cipher, and a shortwave transceiver patched together with scavenged parts and prayer.
Inside, a wiry man named Ionescu manned the desk, headset looped around his neck.
“You’re late,” he said flatly, without looking up.
“I was nearly dead.” Pawel replied.
“Weren’t we all,” Ionescu muttered. “Here. Encrypted key from HQ. Broadcast window in nine minutes. You’re reading the coded message.”
Pawel took the folded paper handed to him. His eyes scanned the lines: commands, coordinates, fallback procedures. Nothing poetic. Just the bare language of resistance.
He stepped to the mic. Ionescu leaned in. “You’ve got twenty seconds after the message if you want to add anything.”
Pawel stared at him. “Add what?”
“You know damn well.” Ionescu replied.
The red transmission light blinked.
He read the message first—flat, clear, careful to hit every syllable. The encryption cycled on Ionescu’s end. Somewhere out there, cells in the mountains and cities would be decoding it with pocket books and memorized charts.
He finished.
The red light stayed on.
Twenty seconds.
He didn’t plan to speak. But something in the silence cracked open.
“This is… one of us,” he said. “To those still holding the line—we’re not dead. The song got out. So did the strike. They fear the truth more than bullets.”
He paused.
“If you’re listening, Ellie… just know, I’m still here.” Pawel said.
He leaned back.
The light clicked off.
Ionescu exhaled, slow and steady. “You sure you wanted to say that last part?”
“No.” Pawel replied.
“Then why say it?” Ionescu asked.
Pawel looked down at the mic, fingers resting where the guitar would’ve been. “Because if they’re tracking us, they’ll find me anyway. Might as well give her something true before they do.”
Outside, the war hummed on. But in that room, for just a breath, it was quiet again.
VI
The morning light slanted into the hotel room like a judgment. Ellie hadn't slept much. The song from the night before was still echoing in her mind, looping in the background of everything she did—brushing her hair, folding her uniform, pouring the weak instant coffee by the desk kettle.
She turned on the radio again.
She didn’t expect to hear it twice. Lightning never struck the same place.
But something inside her—itched.
The frequencies shifted. She flipped through them, now almost obsessively. Static. National news in languages she didn’t understand. Weather updates. A strange burst of trumpet jazz. She was about to give up when a voice cut through.
Not singing this time. Speaking.
“…to those still holding the line—we’re not dead. The song got out. So did the strike. They fear the truth more than bullets…”
Her heart stopped.
The signal was weak, brittle like an old cassette tape left out in the sun. She turned the knob slightly. The voice warped, then cleared for a second:
“…If you’re listening, Ellie… just know, I’m still here.”
She gasped.
The voice vanished into static again, swallowed by distance and interference. But it had been there. Her name. Clear as day. Her name on the radio.
She stood up so quickly the chair scraped loudly against the floor.
“No way,” she whispered. “No… way.”
It couldn’t be coincidence. Her name wasn’t common. Not in this part of the world. Not said like that—with weight, with memory.
She grabbed the radio, holding it like a relic, shaking slightly.
“Who are you?” she asked, not expecting an answer. “Why do you know me?”
The mirror didn’t reply. The city beyond the window didn’t care.
But Ellie did.
And something told her—whoever he was, he meant it.
And he was alive.
Ellie had never been much of a tech person, but now she found herself hunched over the hotel’s outdated desktop in the crew lounge, coffee gone cold beside her, browser tabs open in frantic succession.
She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for.
Shortwave broadcast logs. Frequencies. Underground transmissions. Pirate radio forums. She clicked through links with half-translated descriptions, keywords like resistance, rebel airwaves, and independent frequencies. A few blogs mentioned “ghost broadcasts” coming from the interior—somewhere near the old city, where the fighting had once been worst.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
“If you’re listening, Ellie…”
The voice repeated in her head, like a memory planted by someone else.
Who would say her name like that? Not as a code, not randomly. With weight. Like they knew her.
She found a forum thread—half-deleted—about a song broadcast on a rebel station the night before. No one seemed to know who the singer was. Just grainy audio rips, cut up and passed around like contraband.
A username from Serbia claimed: “The song made it all the way to Novi Sad. Guy sounded like a soldier-poet. Weirdly personal. Real.”
She opened the attached clip. It was the same voice.
Same song.
She closed her eyes, hand trembling slightly on the mouse. It wasn’t a dream. Someone meant for her to hear it. She was sure now.
Just then, a knock came at the crew lounge door. It was the captain—stern, already in his blazer.
“Ellie. Dispatch just called. Emergency reroute. We’re lifting in twenty. You’re needed on standby.”She blinked. “Now?”
“Now,” he said. “We’re short. Manila via Dubai.”
Ellie looked at the screen. At the blurry forum thread. At the paused audio wave still glowing.
The captain paused. “Everything alright?”
She nodded, too quickly. “Yeah. Just… distracted.”
She closed the laptop. The voice vanished into digital nothingness.
As she stood and grabbed her bag, she took one last glance at the screen.
She didn’t know who he was yet.
But she would find him.
Even if the sky kept pulling her away.
VII
The communication post was quiet—eerily so. The transmission had gone out only minutes ago, but Pawel could already feel the tremor ripple through the air, like the stillness before a mortar shell hits.
He stood from the terminal slowly, his fingertips still buzzing from the coded keypresses. The guitar he'd found was resting against the wall behind him, strings humming faintly from the draft blowing through the cracked window.
Then the blast hit.
Not close. Not yet. But close enough to shake the dust from the ceiling beams.
Pawel ducked instinctively, years of instinct from the field kicking in. He grabbed the guitar by the neck—absurdly—and slung it over his shoulder like a rifle before bolting to the next room.
Luka burst in a second later, panting. “Northern checkpoints just went dark. Two squads missing.”“Strike?” Pawel asked, already reaching for the comms headset.
“No confirmation yet." Luka said. "But if they’re jamming us, we’ll lose this station next.”
Pawel swore under his breath. He turned the dial again, checking the encryption lines. Some of the codes were glitching—delays, maybe. Or interference.
“Orders from Central Command,” Luka said, handing him a slip of paper. “Backup all logs. Send one final burst transmission. Then we torch the node and fall back to Zone Nine.”
Pawel nodded grimly. He sat down, quickly loading the message into the last stable frequency.
[TO: NODE ZN-07 / URGENT BROADCAST / KEY ECHO-4] “Base compromised. Backup routes burned. Extraction delay. Code: Iron Shadow. Units scattered. Last message timestamped. Hold the line.”
He hit send.
The screen blinked green. Confirmed.
And then the feed went dead.
A long silence filled the room.
He looked up at Luka. “How long do we have?”
Luka checked his watch. “Maybe fifteen minutes. We’re already on borrowed time.”
Pawel stood and grabbed his coat, slinging his bag—guitar included—over his back.
Outside, the sky was just beginning to bleed orange. Fires in the north lit up the hills. The city was waking up, but not to peace.
He paused at the doorway, casting one last glance back at the terminal.
Did Ellie hear it?
He wanted to believe she did.
And if not now, then someday.
As the wind picked up, he turned and vanished into the haze with Luka at his side—heading not toward safety, but toward the next node, the next outpost, the next fight.
The song had gone out.
Now the war marched on.
By the time Pawel reached the forward line, the horizon was fire and smoke. The city’s northern blocks had become a maze of barricades and shattered tramlines. Fighters darted between half-standing buildings, their rifles slung low and boots worn thin.
Pawel arrived with dust on his coat and a glaze of sweat over his face, rifle jostling against his back, the neck of the guitar still peeking from his bag like some half-forgotten relic of a calmer life.
He ducked behind a burned-out trolleybus where Captain Marek was briefing a group of soaked, ash-covered volunteers.
“Pawel,” Marek said without looking up. “You’re late.”
“I had to finish the broadcast,” Pawel replied, catching his breath.
Marek turned to him then, his eyes sharp beneath a helmet that looked like it hadn’t been off in days. He nodded once. “I heard. You got it out?”
Pawel nodded. “Final burst. Encrypted. But they’re jamming everything north of the river now. We might lose contact with Central by nightfall.”
Marek wiped his hands on his jacket. “Then you’ll need to stay mobile. Forget the front.”
Pawel blinked. “What?”
“You’re being reassigned.” Marek replied.
The words felt cold. “I thought I was holding the line here with Second Platoon.” Pawel said.
Marek leaned in. “You’re being moved to Liaison Group Echo-Four. Orders from upstairs. Something about morale—comms, field reporting, musical propaganda.” His voice dropped, a smirk in the corner of his mouth. “Apparently someone up the chain liked your little shortwave serenade.”
Pawel felt the heat rise in his face. “That wasn’t—”
Marek clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t argue. They want your voice, Pawel. They think it can hold people together in places where guns can't. You're not just a fighter now. You're a symbol.”
“I didn’t ask to be a symbol,” Pawel muttered.
“No one does,” Marek said. “But the people remember your song. They’ve been whispering the lyrics in the trenches.”
Pawel looked out over the blackened skyline. Somewhere out there, beyond the smoke and radio towers, someone like Ellie might’ve heard it too. “Where do I report?”
“Transit vehicle’s waiting near the old university." Marek replied. "You’ll meet your handler there—go by ‘Vika.’ Keep your head low, and don’t lose that guitar.”
Pawel turned to leave, hesitated. “What’s the mission?”
Marek’s face turned serious. “You’re not just transmitting songs anymore. You’re going to the border zones. Liberated towns. Civilian shelters. You’re the voice now.”
Pawel swallowed hard.
He’d joined the Front quietly. Now the war was calling him out loud.
He pulled the guitar strap tight against his shoulder and jogged toward the university ruins, boots thudding against broken stones.
Marek called after him, just as Pawel was turning the corner of the collapsed tram stop.
“And by the way…” Marek said, stepping closer, lowering his voice beneath the howl of the distant shelling. “Make a song.”
Pawel frowned. “A song?”
Marek’s gaze flicked left and right—checking for ears that weren’t supposed to hear—before he leaned in and whispered: “Make that song more like a coded message. For this is for the coming offensive.”
The words landed heavy in Pawel’s chest. A code. Hidden in melody. A call to arms in plain sight.
“I don’t write intelligence,” he muttered.
“You don’t have to,” Marek said. “Just write something that passes for poetry. Layer it. Mask it in longing, in memory. Anyone who knows what to look for will hear it loud and clear.”
Pawel blinked. “And if the enemy hears it too?”
Marek gave a half-smile. “Then it’s just another sad rebel ballad. But to our people… it’ll mean: Move.”
A moment of silence passed between them.
Pawel’s fingers twitched, already thinking in rhythm, in metaphor.
“I’ll need a guitar that can travel.” Pawel said.
“You have it.” Marek said, looking at the guitar Pawel's carrying.
“And a transmitter.” Pawel said.
“We’ll arrange one.” Marek replied.
Pawel nodded slowly. “And a name for the song?”
Marek’s eyes darkened. “Call it whatever you want. Just make sure they remember it.”
Pawel turned, walking off with his boots crunching gravel, his mind already spinning.
Not just a song for Ellie now.
A song for the storm that was coming.
The wind howled through the half-blasted comms shelter where Pawel sat hunched over a crate, guitar resting against his knee like a rifle. Outside, the frontline buzzed with scattered gunfire and the distant hum of a drone. The lull between assaults never lasted. You could hear it in the ground—the way the silence got nervous.
Inside, he scribbled on a field notebook, cigarette dangling from his lips, muttering the words to himself.
Marek’s voice from earlier still rang in his ears. “Make that song more like a coded message... This is for the coming offensive.”
He hadn’t said much more. He didn’t need to. Marek was the kind of commander who trusted people to read between lines—musicians more than most.
Now Pawel sat with the weight of something far heavier than a love song.
Earlier that evening, they were walking through the trenches just east of the ruined factory blocks. Marek pulled him aside after a dispatch run. “They’re watching our comms, so we’ll do what we’ve always done: make noise with feeling.”
Pawel raised a brow. “Music?”
“Music, poetry, grief—all the things they think we left behind.” Marek said.
He handed Pawel a folded piece of paper. It was rough, scrawled with phrases:
“October’s not over”
“04.10.93”
“Stairwell three”
“Red star scratched”
“M-9 still listening”
“Encode this. You know what to do.” Marek said.
That night, Pawel retreated to the corner of the bunker where they kept stolen gear—batteries, bootleg wine, guitar strings coiled like veins of resistance.
The melody came first.
Not a fast march, but something that drifted like smoke. He pulled the chords from old records in his head—Yugoslav heartbreak ballads, Soviet veterans’ laments, the bitterness of Egor Letov, the romantic ache of Viktor Tsoi. He needed that texture. Grit and silk.
Then the lyrics.
He thought about Ellie.
That one night before he left, when he’d passed her at the kiosk and she’d smiled at him—not the usual flight attendant pleasantry, but something tired, real. He’d almost said something. Almost.
Now, he wrote the song like a letter she might never get. Verse by verse, he folded the codes into poetry.
“Smoke curled down from the White House wall…”
It wasn’t just imagery. The White House—code name for their fallback HQ.
“You turned east at checkpoint three, / I stayed west near Gorky’s tree.”
Those were movement routes.
“Trust M-9. Wait till four.”
The signal for the push—encrypted beneath metaphor and metaphor.
He paused after writing the bridge.
🔒 (“October’s not over. 04.10.93. Push east through stairwell three. Red star scratched. M-9 still listening.”)
He sang it to himself, once, twice. Slower each time. Feeling the edges of the words until they blurred between the real and the coded.
When he finished, he recorded it on a patched-together transmitter rig wired to a directional shortwave line.
“Playing on 7.3,” he whispered, as he leaned into the mic, guitar in hand. “For the one who’s still flying… and for those underground.”
And then, the first note rang out—clear and tired and defiant—as Love in a Time of Coup d’état passed into the ether, where anyone—friend, enemy, or maybe Ellie—might catch its signal.
He strummed through the final chords, knowing this might be the last song he ever wrote.
"Love in a time of Coup D' Etat"
Verse 1
Smoke curled down from the White House wall,
You kissed me as the orders stalled.
Behind Dom 2, the leaflets flew—
One said “freedom,” one said “you.”
Red on your collar, black on my coat,
We walked past tanks, we never spoke.
But our hands made signals in the dark,
And hearts lit up like a rebel spark.
Chorus
Love in a time of Coup D' Etat,
Like flares in October air.
You turned east at checkpoint three,
I stayed west near Gorky’s tree.
We carved the code, we knew the route—
But only one got out.
Love in a time of coup.
Verse 2
I left the file beneath the stair,
At Lubyanka—no one there.
You said “Trust M-9, wait till four,”
But all I heard were closing doors.
Your scarf was red, mine was the map,
Your eyes said “Front,” but then they passed.
Now even Channel 3's gone black—
No comrade call, no coded backtrack.
Chorus
Love in a time of Coup D' Etat,
We spoke in scraps, in fire and frost.
Radio’s gone, the pulse is thin—
But I still loop the tape within.
You sent silence, I sent proof...
Love in a time of coup.
Bridge – [Message embedded]
🔒 (“October’s not over. 04.10.93. Push east through stairwell three. Red star scratched. M-9 still listening.”)
We whispered through old verses once,
Now every rhyme is treason's hunch.
But under ruins, hearts still hum—
Remember me when the drums come.
Final Chorus
Love in a time of Coup D' Etat,
Some loves don’t die—they just go underground.
If you're out there, patched and free,
Play this song on 7.3.
The signal fades... but not for you.
Love in a time of coup.
Verse 1
Smoke curled down from the White House wall,
You kissed me as the orders stalled.
Behind Dom 2, the leaflets flew—
One said “freedom,” one said “you.”
Red on your collar, black on my coat,
We walked past tanks, we never spoke.
But our hands made signals in the dark,
And hearts lit up like a rebel spark.
Chorus
Love in a time of Coup D' Etat,
Like flares in October air.
You turned east at checkpoint three,
I stayed west near Gorky’s tree.
We carved the code, we knew the route—
But only one got out.
Love in a time of coup.
Verse 2
I left the file beneath the stair,
At Lubyanka—no one there.
You said “Trust M-9, wait till four,”
But all I heard were closing doors.
Your scarf was red, mine was the map,
Your eyes said “Front,” but then they passed.
Now even Channel 3's gone black—
No comrade call, no coded backtrack.
Chorus
Love in a time of Coup D' Etat,
We spoke in scraps, in fire and frost.
Radio’s gone, the pulse is thin—
But I still loop the tape within.
You sent silence, I sent proof...
Love in a time of coup.
Bridge – [Message embedded]
🔒 (“October’s not over. 04.10.93. Push east through stairwell three. Red star scratched. M-9 still listening.”)
We whispered through old verses once,
Now every rhyme is treason's hunch.
But under ruins, hearts still hum—
Remember me when the drums come.
Final Chorus
Love in a time of Coup D' Etat,
Some loves don’t die—they just go underground.
If you're out there, patched and free,
Play this song on 7.3.
The signal fades... but not for you.
Love in a time of coup.
But if it reached even one pair of ears… it was worth it.
VII
Ellie sat by the terminal window, a paper cup of lukewarm coffee in her hands and a flight delay flashing red on the screen behind her. Somewhere in between flights again. She no longer asked herself which city. Airports all smelled the same after a while—recycled air, perfume, tired ambition.
She glanced down at her phone. No new messages. No updates from home. Just the same headlines flickering in and out of connectivity.
“National Salvation Front captures comms node near eastern corridor.” “Military denies collapse of inner ring.” “Unverified broadcast reaches underground network.”
It was that last one that caught her eye. She scrolled back to it.
“Unverified broadcast…”
Her thumb hovered over the link, but the airport Wi-Fi died just then. She exhaled. Typical.
Still, the phrase stuck with her. Like a whisper under a door.
She pulled out her notebook—the small one she always kept tucked behind her passport. Inside were pages of jotted names, dates, airports, and suddenly, scribbled down between a schedule to Bucharest and a layover in Ankara, were three lines she didn’t remember writing down:
She’s flying above the clouds… where the world’s so wide...
Her pen hesitated.
That song.
That night in the hotel. The radio static. The voice—hoarse, uncertain. It had disappeared as quickly as it came. No station ID, no back-announce, no confirmation that what she heard was even real. But it haunted her still.
Who was he?
The way he sang her name—Tell my Ellie—as if it were personal. But how could it be?
No one knew her name that way. No one but—
She shook her head. No. That was fantasy. That wasn’t how real life worked.
Still… she had started asking around. Quietly. At hotels, at terminals, even among the older crew. “Have you heard a broadcast from the rebellion side? A song… with a woman’s name in it?”
Most just blinked. A few nodded, vaguely. One ground staffer at a regional airport near Sofia had said, “There are pirate stations playing rebel songs. Poetry too. Smuggled music, maybe from soldiers. It’s all very raw.”
She had leaned in. “Do any of them mention someone named Ellie?”
“Ellie?” he had repeated. “No, not that I’ve heard. But it changes fast. They don’t replay. Always live, always moving.”
Now, at the gate, she slipped her headphones on and tuned into the shortwave app she’d downloaded—an analog relic built by some war correspondent for tracking underground signals. She spun through static, chatter, an old folk song from Georgia, then news in a clipped accent.
“...as rebel groups push forward, anonymous transmissions continue to stir interest across the region. Intelligence units remain on alert for embedded messages...”
Still no voice.
Certainly not his voice. Whoever “he” was.
But it felt closer now. Like she was circling something invisible but real.
Her flight was called.
She rose, tucking the notebook away. As she moved through the boarding bridge, she glanced once more at the sky beyond the glass—burnt gold and distant—and thought:
"If you’re still out there… I’m listening."
And somewhere, just across the border, the voice she was waiting for was still tuning his guitar in a shelter deep underground—unknowing, unseen, but soon, ready to speak through frequencies in the dark.
The cabin lights dimmed to a soft blue glow as the aircraft leveled at cruising altitude. Ellie walked the aisle with a practiced grace, checking seat belts, collecting cups, smiling the kind of smile that asked for nothing in return. She was a steward of calm in a world unraveling at the edges.
But her mind was elsewhere.
Somewhere out there, under these same stars, someone was sending music like coded prayers into the void. She still hadn’t heard his voice again—the voice that sang Tell my Ellie. But she felt its shadow trailing her like contrails in the sky.
She settled back into the jump seat, fastening the harness. The pilot had left the cabin speakers softly tuned to a local frequency—some public radio signal faintly coming through, no real announcements, just music. Probably meant to soothe the cabin crew.
And then it played.
A song she hadn’t heard in years—but knew instantly by the guitar.
The vocals were deep, ragged, the language Serbian or maybe Bosnian—but the melody was unmistakable.
Kerber’s “Ratne Igre.” War Games.
A rock anthem born of another war, another front—but just as filled with ghosts. It came through distorted by altitude and static, but unmistakable: that melancholy electric riff, the way the singer cried out not with rage, but with mournful defiance.
Ellie blinked.
It wasn’t his voice—not the one who had sung her name. But something about the spirit of the song—the cracked passion of it, the dirt beneath the fingernails—felt close. It was a war song, but also a love song. For the broken. For the ones still waiting.
She leaned forward and pressed the intercom headset tighter.
A snatch of the lyrics emerged clearly now—
Kad srušimo mostove
i kada spustimo mačeve
poželim da su naše igre
ratne igre, bar malo neznije
Nije važno ko počinje
uvek na kraju šutimo
kad mnogo toga treba reći
a nema reći, reči za istinu
Ref.
Nek' sada ratne igre prestanu
jer više ničeg nema u tebi, u meni
u mome srcu kiše padaju
u duši veju crni snegovi
She felt her stomach turn. She didn’t know the game, not really. But someone out there did. Someone who was already playing it in shadows and signals and chords.
Was it possible this was part of it? A clue? Or just coincidence?
“Who’s the station broadcasting this?” she asked one of the pilots when she dropped off coffee later.
“Local relay,” he replied. “Mostly scavenged channels, automated feeds. They pick up all kinds of junk.”
“Does anyone still broadcast rebel music over open air?” Ellie asked.
He raised a brow. “Sometimes. But they move fast. Don’t want to get triangulated.”
She nodded, thanked him, and went back to her seat.
It wasn’t his song.
But the airwaves were waking up again. The chords were coming. And she was still listening.
Meanwhile, far below, Pawel sat in the dim interior of a reinforced bunker, an old Soviet field radio humming beside him. The last transmission had gone through. The song hadn’t yet.
But it would.
He glanced toward the corner, where an old beat-up cassette player sat, spitting out the remnants of an old bootleg tape.
It was Kerber.
“Ratne Igre.”
He let it play.
It had been Marek’s choice—an old song from another region, another time. But it filled the room like a battle cry from memory.
Pawel took coffee and looked down at his notebook. The chords of Love in a Time of Coup d’etat were already written. He knew what he had to do next.
The first message had reached. The second would be a fire.
Soon… her name would echo again.
The power hummed low through the outpost generator, the bunker walls sweating with condensation and old soot. Pawel sat on a worn stool, head bowed, cigarette balanced between two calloused fingers. Across the room, a cracked cassette deck wheezed as it finished Kerber’s “Ratne Igre.” The tape clicked to a stop. Silence.
He exhaled, a slow breath that felt like the bottom of a trench.
VIII
Marek had left two hours ago with the recon group. Before stepping out, he’d clapped Pawel on the shoulder and said, low and sharp, “Not just the codes. Make it real. If they’re going to die listening, let them die with something beautiful.”
Pawel stared at the guitar in his lap. It wasn’t his—it was an old six-string they found near the radio relay, probably used by some soldier to stave off madness. The fretboard was notched. A couple of the strings buzzed. But it held tune.
He opened his field notebook.
The lyrics were half-smudged by water damage, but legible. He tapped the rhythm into his thigh, then started strumming—softly at first, then with conviction.
Smoke curled down from the White House wall,
You kissed me as the orders stalled…
The first take was a whisper. The second, a howl. By the third, it became something in between—gritty, melodic, soaked in sorrow and strategy. The bridge was the most important. That’s where the real message lived.
He practiced it three more times, until his voice cracked like radio static. Then he recorded.
Cassette to cassette.
No labels. No identifiers.
The file would be passed on encrypted.
No one would know the message—except those who already did.
At 36,000 feet, Ellie moved through the cabin, handing out small cups of tea. Her face was calm, professional. But inside, her thoughts were drifting back to the broadcast—Kerber’s song, and the growing sense that something bigger was building in the background.
Back in the galley, she checked the little radio she kept stashed with her journal. No signal.
She turned it off and stared at her reflection in the metal surface of the overhead compartment.
Her heart was drumming in her chest—and she didn’t know why.
Back at the front, By nightfall, Pawel’s song was on the move. Passed from one encrypted relay to another, edited into static-heavy "folk programs," inserted as filler between disinformation drops, smuggled into frequency windows so narrow they lasted less than ten seconds.
In one command outpost, a soldier paused. Rewound. “Wait… play that again.”
In a warehouse studio hidden beneath a broken train station, a technician caught the melody on a wave scanner. She turned to her comrade and whispered, “It’s him. The coded one.”
They started copying it.
And far above, Ellie’s plane began descent.
Somewhere over the mountains.
She didn’t know yet.
But soon—so very soon—
She would hear her name again.
Meanwhile, In a dim corridor beneath the gutted city library, Pawel sat with a penlight in his mouth, writing on the back of a salvaged ration card. Around him, the communications post buzzed with quiet energy—radios clicked, encrypted codebooks flipped, and the occasional stifled cough echoed off the stone.
The order had been clear: transmit a message to the northern cell by dawn. But don’t use standard codes. Too risky. Too many ears. Instead, Marek had turned to Pawel.
“Another song, poet,” Marek had said, slapping him on the back. “But this one—they must hear it and not hear it. You know what I mean.”
Pawel did. And so, under a city bracing for another raid, he wrote.
"Where the Sky Once Bled"
(A coded ballad)
Verse 1
Where the sky once bled, now silence grows,
Crimson fog on Vostok’s rows.
Three knocks at the glass near Lenin’s gate,
If you hear it, don’t be late.
Chorus
Green light fades in Sector Four,
Count the steps behind the store.
The tunnel breathes, the locks are thin—
The cold is sharp, but slip right in.
They won’t know, they won’t see—
We are ghosts beneath decree.
Verse 2
You wore gray when I wore red,
Met by the tramline, softly said:
“Cranes fly west when the bridge is clear,
The convoy turns if no one hears.”
Bridge
🔒 ("From station 9, follow the old wire path. Under the third rail, marked with chalk. Coordinates inside the refrain.")
Final Chorus
Raise your voice, but not your head,
They think our anthem's long been dead.
But in each verse, a key is pressed—
The message hides inside the rest.
So sing it slow, and sing it true,
And maybe it’ll bring me back to you.
By sunrise, the song had been recorded on a battered cassette deck hooked into the radio transmitter. A technician named Dima adjusted the levels while Pawel stood nearby, watching the dials light up.
“Your stuff always sounds haunted,” Dima said.
“It’s meant to,” Pawel answered. “Makes them think it’s just another folk song.”
“Won’t they catch on eventually?” Dima asked.
“Maybe,” Pawel said. “But by the time they do, the lyrics will already be boots on the ground.”
Meanwhile, Ellie was somewhere over the Atlantic.
The plane cruised quietly in the blue-grey light of early morning. She stood by the galley, sipping weak coffee, when the onboard radio crackled to life. The pilots were surfing civilian shortwave again—something they did to kill the silence.
“…count the steps behind the store…”
Ellie paused. The melody was unfamiliar, but something in the tone—melancholy, coded—pulled at her. The kind of thing you half-remember from a dream.
“What station is that?” she asked, stepping into the cockpit.
The co-pilot shrugged. “Some resistance junk from the continent. The signal comes and goes.”
She lingered, listening.
It wasn’t his voice. Not the man who had once sung her name into a rebel broadcast. But this new one—it felt part of the same constellation. Another star in a dark sky she didn’t understand yet, but wanted to.
Back underground, Pawel turned to Marek, who was already checking a printout from the decoder.
“Well?” Pawel asked.
“It worked,” Marek said, smirking. “They got it. They’ll move at dusk.”
“And the song?” Pawel asked.
Marek clapped his shoulder. “They’re calling it 'The Ghost Anthem.' Not bad for a love letter full of sabotage.”
Pawel smiled, tired but proud.
He didn’t know if Ellie would ever hear this one. But the idea that someone—anyone—might catch the tune, feel something, follow it… that was enough.
For now.
The resistance safehouse in the northern sector was buried beneath what used to be a music conservatory. Now, it was gutted—just broken pianos, water-stained scores, and the metallic scent of mold. But deep underground, in a former storage vault reinforced with sandbags and hope, the signal team had just picked up a broadcast.
An old radio sputtered to life, fed by a battery scavenged from a Soviet jeep. On the desk, antennas and copper coils bristled like the whiskers of an old cat sensing something ancient. Beside it, a resistance decoder named Lina hunched over a notebook, headphones tight over her cropped hair.
She heard it: Pawel’s voice.
Soft. Worn. Measured like the rhythm of boots on cobblestone.
Where the sky once bled, now silence grows...
Crimson fog on Vostok’s rows...
She immediately paused the tape.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she replayed the first line. Something about “Vostok’s rows” had tripped a wire in her brain. She flipped open a black-covered notebook where lyrics were cross-referenced with urban maps.
“Vostok…” she muttered. “Vostok Apartments. That’s Sector Four.”
The second line.
"Three knocks at the glass near Lenin’s gate…"
“That’s the old trolley stop. No glass left now, but the frame is still intact.”
She circled a location on the map.
Then came the chorus:
"Green light fades in Sector Four,
Count the steps behind the store…"
She replayed it again and again.
“That’s the back alley of the collapsed supermarket. Nineteen paces to the ventilation hatch.” She scrawled fast.
Her supervisor, a wiry man named Tomasz, came in mid-analysis. “What’s that? Another weepy love song?”
“No,” Lina said, sliding the headphones down. “It’s an op plan. Encoded in the rhyme scheme. He’s using pairs—each couplet a coordinate, a movement cue.”
Tomasz stepped closer, intrigued. “You sure?”
She nodded, already flipping to a cipher page. “Listen to the bridge.”
She hit play:
"From station 9, follow the old wire path.
Under the third rail, marked with chalk..."
“This isn't poetry,” she said, eyes glowing. “It’s fieldwork in 4/4 time.”
They fell into silence as the final chorus rolled in.
"So sing it slow, and sing it true,
And maybe it’ll bring me back to you…"
Lina looked up from the page, her breath catching for just a second.
“Who is this guy?” she whispered.
Tomasz cracked a grin. “Whoever he is, we need to keep him alive.”
IX
It was a cold morning when the checkpoint guard held up the cassette tape and squinted. Pawel had already been stopped twice that week, but this time felt different. The soldier—young, unsure, probably drafted straight from school—turned the small plastic shell over in his gloved hands.
“What’s this?” the boy asked, narrowing his eyes.
Pawel smiled faintly, masking the tension in his gut. “A song. I write them sometimes. That one’s about a girl.”
The soldier examined the faded label, the handwritten title in a scrawl that meant nothing to him: Love in a Time of Coup.
“Doesn’t sound like much,” the boy said.
“Most love songs don’t,” Pawel answered.
The officer manning the desk barely glanced up from his logbook. “Let him go. No one writes songs anymore,” he muttered. “It’s all war now.”
Pawel took the tape back with a nod, tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat, and walked away—his heart racing not from the lie, but from how close it had come to being true.
Because it wasn’t just a love song. Not really.
Back at the safehouse, deep behind enemy lines, a battered Walkman spun the tape at a gathering of resistance field agents. Among them was Anya, one of the Front’s best interpreters—not of languages, but of signs, whispers, riddles hidden between the lines of state broadcasts and rebel communiqués.
She pressed pause mid-song.
“Rewind. That line again.”
They all leaned in.
Pawel’s voice came through in its quiet rasp:
"You turned east at checkpoint three,
I stayed west near Gorky’s tree…"
Anya nodded slowly. “That’s not just metaphor. That’s mapping.”
She pulled out a hand-drawn sector diagram of the capital. Gorky’s tree was the old nickname for a statue in Sector 6. Checkpoint Three had recently been cleared for an offensive.
“It’s a signal to move,” she whispered.
Someone in the back leaned forward. “He embedded coordinates into a chorus?”
“Not just that,” Anya said. “Listen to the chorus again—play it back from the second verse.”
We spoke in scraps, in fire and frost,
Radio’s gone, the pulse is thin—
But I still loop the tape within…
The rhyme wasn't just poetic—it was functional. The phrase “scraps, fire, frost” referred to safehouse nicknames. “Loop the tape” was an old cipher term: repeat the coded transmission.
Pawel wasn’t just singing a message. He was embedding instructions for an entire maneuver—phrased as longing, layered like emotion, and protected by its own disguise.
“Genius,” someone muttered. “He’s turning music into encryption.”
But it was never safe.
Two days later, another tape was intercepted—one that never made it to Anya’s team. It landed in the hands of a mid-level censorship official who listened briefly, rolled his eyes, and stamped the case “low risk: psychological operations.”
“Just a song,” he said, tossing it into the bin of confiscated contraband—beside porno cassettes and Western soap operas.
No one knew that inside that song were fallback coordinates for an agent extraction, now delayed.
And Pawel? He kept writing.
Another tape. Another coded verse. This one simpler, softer, like a farewell:
If the lights go dim at platform five,
Run when the bell tolls once, not twice.
Leave the scarf, don’t say goodbye—
We only live if we never arrive.
Back in a hotel far from home, Ellie—still unaware of the full story—heard that one late one night, on a shortwave radio. She didn’t understand the message, but she knew the voice.
She turned up the volume.
Somewhere, someone was still singing to her.
And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t just a song.
The hotel light flickered in that half-lit way that always reminded Ellie of a dream, or maybe a memory she hadn’t earned. She sat cross-legged on the carpet now, not even pretending to be professional anymore. The room service tray sat untouched. Her blouse was unbuttoned just enough to feel free, and the shortwave radio crackled with faint signal bleed.
Then it played again.
That voice.
She leaned forward.
“Leave the scarf, don’t say goodbye—
We only live if we never arrive…”
It was him. She didn’t know how, but it was him.
Her heart stammered.
Not because she recognized the voice—no, not really. But the words had the same pulse, the same rhythm of the first song that had said her name without ever saying it. There was longing in it, but also warning. Not the love song of a romantic, but the secret liturgy of a fugitive.
She had heard this voice twice now, months apart. Each time, nothing attached to it. No name. No location. Just fragments carried over dust and silence.
She scrambled for her bag and pulled out the small travel notebook she had started keeping ever since that first broadcast. At first it had been a childish thing—a note that said, “Find out who sang that song.” Then came sketches of lyrics, signal bands, short phrases in languages she didn’t know. Tonight she scribbled again.
“Scarf = drop? Platform Five = trainline or metro? Once, not twice = coded bell system? Smugglers?”
Her mind reeled. She’d known diplomats who spoke in code. She’d known soldiers who refused to talk about what they’d seen. But she’d never known a voice that managed to do both through a love song.
A chill crept down her arms.
It wasn’t just a song. She was sure of it now.
And this man—whoever he was—was speaking to someone. Maybe not her, but someone.
Ellie stood, pulled on her sweater, and stepped out onto the hotel balcony. The city stretched out below her in quiet starlight. Somewhere out there, people were fighting wars that didn’t make the news. Somewhere out there, someone was carving codes into verses.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a set of airline staff comms she wasn’t supposed to use on layovers, and hesitated.
Then she called in a favor. “Leo? Yeah. I need access to the embassy database.”
She heard him exhale. “What kind of favor is this?”
“It’s personal.” Ellie replied.
“Ellie, this could get you grounded.” Leo said.
“I’ll fly again,” she said. “But someone out there might not walk again if I don’t figure out where that voice is coming from.”
Leo sighed. “Send me the details.”
And just like that, Ellie—the professional, the ghost in every hotel—had taken a side.
Meanwhile, A resistance cell two cities away picked up a fragment of another tape. They didn’t know yet that the last verse was a GPS cipher, or that the harmony carried a message meant for an operative still lost behind the demilitarized zone.
But someone had heard the melody. And someone else had whispered, “That sounds like Pawel.”
The net was tightening.
On both sides.
And the voice on the tape?
Still singing.
X
Ellie never planned to become an archivist of rebel broadcasts.
But ever since that night in the beige hotel room—ever since the unnamed voice sang “Just tell my Ellie…”—she had started recording. Not formally. Not with any real purpose. Just a habit. A feeling. A thread.
She told herself it was just for the music.
On long-haul layovers, when her crew fell asleep after their complimentary wine, she stayed up with the shortwave. When the cities blurred together and the skies turned gray with altitude, she marked signal bands in her notebook, drawing invisible maps of places she'd never touch down in.
She wasn’t trying to uncover resistance messages. She didn’t even know they were there.
She told herself: "I’m not looking for secrets. I just like the songs. They feel... honest."
Some were half-warbled folk ballads. Others sounded like indie rock cut from torn vinyl and static. But then there were those strange ones. Haunting. Melancholy. Sometimes disjointed, like they were stitched from memories or dreams. They’d surface at odd hours on rogue frequencies—2:37 AM over a Siberian band, or 3:22 in the Armenian uplands.
And each time, Ellie would freeze.
Because the same voice came back.
Always raw. Always low, like a secret passed between walls.
She never thought to decode anything. Not seriously. She just copied lyrics down out of habit. She found comfort in repetition. In patterns. It gave her something to do in airports and hotel bars where conversations never went deeper than “red or white wine?”
Once, a colleague had found her notebook on a flight back from Prague.
“What’s all this?” they’d asked, flipping through the scribbles and signal logs.
“Just poetry,” Ellie had said. “From the radio.”
The colleague laughed. “Wow. That’s some Cold War girl hobby.”
Ellie smiled, but her stomach tightened. Because deep down, she wondered if it was something more.
Not long after, she was in Ankara, pacing outside her hotel when a public square’s loudspeaker began to play a rock ballad—electric guitar, pounding drums, unmistakably Slavic in tone. She paused mid-step.
It was Kerber’s “Ratne Igre.”
She didn't recognize the words, but the emotion came like a flood. There was something in the chord structure, in the cadence, that pulled her chest tight. She'd heard this language before, this musical DNA.
“This sounds like the same man,” she thought, almost irrationally. “But no... this is different. This is war music.”
Still, she wrote the title in her notebook. Later, cross-checking, she realized this wasn’t him—but the feeling was close. As if the songs were part of the same constellation.
She didn’t know she was tracing coded messages.
She just thought she was tracing a man who had somehow, through music, reached her across collapsing borders.
Back at Resistance HQ… A young analyst named Tomas leaned over a worn desk, headphones crackling with one of Pawel’s older tapes. He paused it mid-verse.
"Did you hear that?" Tomas asked.
Another resistance operative looked up.
Tomas rewound the tape and played it again.
“Third verse. Listen. Every third syllable. Now compare it to the M-9 cipher index.”
The second operative frowned. “It’s... coordinates?”
Tomas nodded slowly. “He’s hiding them in the phrasing.”
And still, thousands of miles away, Ellie had no idea she was one of the few people who had heard every single song Pawel had ever sent.
Because to her, they were just beautiful mysteries.
Until the day they weren’t.
XI
The hideout was smaller than the last—just the back room of an old community radio station long abandoned, its walls yellowed by time and old cigarette smoke. Wires hung like vines. A battered mixing console sat like a half-disassembled beast at the center of the room. The building had no heating, and their breath fogged in the air like ghosts.
Pawel sat on a stool, tuning the guitar he'd salvaged three outposts ago. His fingers were cracked, and his nails chipped—calloused not from shows but from sandbags, crates, trenches. Across the room, a young tech named Jozef was rigging up the antenna with copper wire and prayer.
“We don’t have long,” Jozef muttered, glancing at his watch. “Fifteen minutes before sweep starts again. You got lyrics?”
Pawel nodded, then unfolded the thin paper tucked in his breast pocket. It had been written in the latrine earlier that morning, during a lull in artillery fire. The ink had bled slightly from sweat.
“Same code frame?” Jozef asked.
“No. Too predictable." Pawel said. "I'm switching pattern. Embedded hex to decimal offset, layered beneath vowel stress.”
Jozef gave a low whistle. “You want people to decode that in real time?”
“I don’t need everyone to decode it,” Pawel said. “Just the ones who know how to listen.”
He started strumming. Softly at first, to warm the strings. The chords were gentle, mournful. But there was a tension beneath it, like the held breath before a detonation.
“New message?” Jozef asked.
“Yeah. For the cell east of checkpoint D4." Pawel replied. "Tell them to move supplies across the river. Night of the 21st. If they don't, the next convoy gets clipped.”
“And... the rest of the song?” Jozef said.
Pawel didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said quietly, “The rest is for her. If she’s still listening.”
Jozef gave him a look—half pity, half disbelief. “You really think she’s out there?”
“I don’t know,” Pawel said. “But someone’s keeping the tapes.”
The old ON-AIR light flickered as the system came to life. Jozef gave a thumbs-up. They were live on shortwave, beaming into the void.
Pawel leaned into the mic, fingers settling on the guitar strings.
Then he began:
Verse 1
You left a red ribbon at the western gate,
By the statue with no face and no name.
I traced the knot in the candlelight,
Three pulls tight—and I knew the time.
Bridge (coded)
—Whiskey bridge. Two steps south. Light one flare, wait three breaths. Move when the fourth bell rings. East cell, confirm with line seven of the prayerbook.
Chorus
Tell the stars I lit the fuse,
Tell the clouds I wore her shoes.
And when they ask if I still sing—
Tell them only when it means a thing.
Verse 2
We drew the map on a ration slip,
She said "north is where they bury ships."
I said “then let’s build one that floats in fire,”
And we wrote down dreams in barbed wire.
Jozef, listening through the headset, tapped his fingers nervously. He knew the verse sounded like poetry. He also knew that it contained an order, a map, and a rendezvous time—if you could follow the syntax shift buried in the rhyme.
As the last chord rang out, Pawel sat back, eyes closed.
“Transmission clear,” Jozef whispered. “Now we pray they hear it.”
Outside, a distant explosion rocked the air.
They didn’t flinch.
The city burned in pockets. Not all at once—but in waves, like a fever breaking and returning, again and again. Rooftops collapsed into themselves. Shells cratered boulevards. Smoke bled from the cracks of half-buried metro entrances.
Still, the songs played.
In the smoldering neighborhoods once known for their cafés and bookstores, members of the National Salvation Front still held the line—not with tanks, but with stairwells, tunnels, old maps, and sheer resolve. Their numbers had thinned. Their radios were half broken. But someone, always someone, kept the music moving.
Pawel’s broadcasts were now circulating like contraband relics: burnt to CD-Rs, copied to tapes, passed in crumpled jackets and hollowed-out books. Some were just his raw voice over guitar. Others were embedded with more—direction, time, warning, hope.
One young courier named Tomasz, maybe sixteen, carried a disc player duct-taped to his chest. He darted through alleyways, ducked behind dumpsters, diving from safehouse to checkpoint like it was a sport. One earbud always in.
Today, he stopped at a courtyard where six resistance fighters rested—dust in their hair, fingers twitching on triggers.
“You got it?” one of them asked.
Tomasz didn’t answer. He just popped in the disc and let the sound bleed out from a cheap speaker.
Pawel’s voice. Gravel and chord. Still alive.
“We carved a message into a wall,
It sang louder than the firefall…”
No one spoke. Not until it ended.
Then one whispered, “He’s still out there.”
Another said, “That verse—about the prayerbook. That’s our checkpoint, isn’t it?”
Heads nodded slowly. The lyrics weren’t just songs anymore. They were GPS. They were spirit. They were proof.
Elsewhere, Above It All, Ellie sat in the quiet of the galley after a long flight. They had landed somewhere safe—relatively speaking. Somewhere the war hadn't fully reached. She still wore her uniform, neat but weary, her fingers drumming against a battered travel notebook.
She had collected fragments.
Song lyrics jotted down from memory. Radio frequencies scrawled between coffee stains. She hadn’t told anyone. Not her crewmates. Not even herself, really.
She didn't know why she kept tuning in. The man who sang Tell My Ellie—he had vanished again. No names, no proof. Just a voice on the wind, now replaced by something different. War songs. Folk chords. Serbian ballads. And tonight…
She flipped open her small radio again. Adjusted the dial.
Static. Then:
“…they circled the square in threes,
and lit the sky with broken keys…”
It was him.
Not a love song. Not this time. But she knew the voice. The breath between phrases. The haunted phrasing of someone who carried too many ghosts.
She sat there, unmoving. The other flight attendants walked past her, murmuring something about dinner plans. She stayed still.
Below the clouds, a city fought with knives and memory. And someone—someone she had never really known—was still singing.
XII
The command post was hidden beneath what had once been a cultural museum—a granite-laden building now protected by sandbags and blackout curtains, its classical statues shattered but its foundation stubborn. Above ground, fire echoed in the night sky. Below, in the war room lit by red emergency bulbs and fading maps, the leaders of the National Salvation Front stood in silence.
Marek, tall, lean, in his olive parka and weathered boots, watched the flickering display of an old surveillance console. The grainy feed came from resistance-controlled rooftops patched into barely-functioning transmitters. Street fights. Barricades. Drone footage. Plumes of smoke curling upward like funeral veils.
"This is no ordinary fight," Marek muttered.
Commander Irena adjusted her scarf and leaned forward. “They’ve brought in foreign-trained units now. No insignia. They want this over by winter.”
“Then we’ll outlast them through winter,” Marek said. “We’ve done it before.”
The sound of boots echoed from the hallway. A young courier approached, breathless, holding a battered headset.
“Sir, we’ve intercepted an encrypted line near District Seven. It’s one of ours. The voice matches… the broadcast singer.”
Marek turned. “Pawel?”
The courier nodded. “He’s still active. New song just played near the Karlin block—embedded instructions we think relate to civilian evacuation routes.”
“Good,” Marek said. “He’s adapting. And they still think it’s just songs.”
Irena smirked. “Let the culture minister of the regime keep calling it rebel poetry. They don’t know that ‘verse three’ gets you out of a death trap.”
“They will, eventually,” Marek said, turning to the map table. “But not before the next push.”
He pointed to a mark near the university district.
“We move at dawn. We’ll use the tunnel Pawel mentioned in Dust by the Metro. The one lined with blue posters.”
A quiet hum settled over the table. The quiet before fury.
Meanwhile, In a Tiny Hotel Room, Miles Away, Ellie stood at the balcony of a hotel in a border city. The war had not yet touched this place, but everyone could feel the air had changed. Journalists buzzed through lobbies. Volunteers gathered in silent lobbies. Exiles watched television screens that played news loops muted, but always captioned in red.
She had scribbled the lyrics down again. Not just Tell My Ellie, but others now. Checkpoint Three, Dust by the Metro, October’s Not Over—phrases from these had started forming patterns in her mind. Lines repeating across songs. Intervals. Names that meant nothing to most—but something to her.
She tapped her pen against the paper and whispered, “Who the hell are you?”
Suddenly, the radio at her side crackled again—an old resistance frequency she'd kept monitoring.
A grainy voice came through.
Not Pawel.
But someone else, repeating: “Third stairwell. 04:10. Push begins at first toll.”
Ellie stood slowly.
She didn’t know what it meant.
But she was sure now—it wasn’t just music.
XIII
In the glass-paneled nerve center of the Occupation Authority, high above the capital’s administrative sector, monitors buzzed and flickered with feeds of troop movements, drone sweeps, and city quadrant reports. General Arseniy Morav, head of counterinsurgency operations, leaned over a terminal, his gloved hand gripping a lukewarm cup of black coffee.
“They’re still using music,” he said flatly, as another grainy audio sample played on loop.
A junior intelligence officer adjusted his headset and replied, “Same broadcast frequency. No station ID, but it’s being picked up across the central districts. We’re triangulating.”
“What's in the lyrics?” Arseniy asked.
The officer hesitated. “They’re... poetic, sir. That’s part of the issue. Half of the text seems like nonsense. The other half could mean anything. It's all metaphor, memory, emotion. But then there are these recurring references—locations, numbers, street names.”
The general’s brow twitched. “Read me one.”
The officer cleared his throat and read from the transcript:
“You turned east at checkpoint three,
I stayed west near Gorky’s tree.
We carved the code, we knew the route—
But only one got out.”
Arseniy set the coffee down. “We’ve had four breaches near Checkpoint Three in the last week.”“Yes, sir.” the officer said.
He turned to a second officer. “What about the source? The singer?”
“Still unknown." said the second officer. "We intercepted a tape marked 'Love in a Time of Coup d'état' last week. Smuggled out with bread deliveries. The voice analysis is inconclusive, but we believe he’s using multiple aliases.”
Arseniy moved to the center of the room, where a live map showed flickering red dots—each representing an insurgent broadcast. The pattern was growing denser. More frequent. Even with their signal-jamming operations, the songs always returned. Played from rooftops. Burned onto CDs. Passed on flash drives. Even whispered in the streets.
A psychological warfare specialist stepped forward. “Sir, respectfully—this is no longer just communication. It’s mythology. People on the street are naming him. They call him the Voice or the Songman. They think he’s everywhere. Some think he’s already dead, and his songs are prophecies.”|
Arseniy didn’t laugh. “Folk heroes are dangerous,” he said. “Folk heroes with signals are worse.”
He turned to the others.
“I want every known song decoded. Line by line. I want patrols near every reference point—every ‘checkpoint three,’ every ‘Gorky’s tree.’ And if we intercept another tape, don’t just mark it for archive. Bring it to me. Personally.”
The room snapped to motion. Analysts scrambled. Coders began parsing lyrical patterns with AI. Drones were rerouted.
But still, somewhere in the streets below, another battered boombox clicked on. Another guitar strum echoed through a ruined corridor. Another verse began.
And for every battalion they deployed—
—a song played louder.
But all was but different in the rebel's side- deep beneath the shattered metro station where the resistance’s mobile signal post was temporarily set up, Pawel sat cross-legged on a crate. He was scribbling verses into a field notebook lit only by a small red bulb. The pressure was immense—after every broadcast, the enemy grew more desperate, their patrols tighter, their raids closer. And yet the music had to keep coming.
Marek’s orders had been clear: “The song must guide them. But it must also shield them.”
Pawel knew what that meant. Every name in the lyrics—Gorky, Elena, M-9, Checkpoint Three, Lubyanka—none of them were real markers. They were placeholders, aliases layered like matryoshka dolls. For every rebel that knew the real place, another dozen didn’t. This wasn’t just a code—it was disinformation wrapped in poetry.
He tested the newest verse aloud in a half-whisper, guitar balanced on his knee:
“I left the bread at Babushka’s gate,
Beneath the sign of silver slate.
But tell Vanya, not the real one—
The one who runs when dusk is done.”
None of those names existed. Babushka’s gate was a manhole near Sector Delta. Silver slate was a painted rock beside a munitions cache. Vanya? A name shared by three operatives and a ghost courier who hadn’t existed in years.
Every name had become a myth. A way to mislead both the enemy and even some in the resistance, should they be caught and tortured. That was the point. Pawel’s lyrics were woven with just enough truth to keep the network alive—and enough fiction to lead the hunters in circles.
Meanwhile, in the Occupation Command HQ, another intercepted song echoed over the speakers.
“Tell Nadya the water’s high,
The boat must turn where cables lie…”
General Arseniy Morav stared at the whiteboard, now cluttered with printed lyrics, maps, and hand-scribbled arrows connecting names and places.
“We have three Nadya suspects, all unconfirmed. Two dead ends. One civilian. Still no ‘cables’ location found.”
“They’re ghosts,” his aide muttered. “These aren’t real names.”
Arseniy clenched his jaw. “Then find the cipher.”
A tech officer stood up. “Sir—what if there isn’t one cipher? What if every song is built on false keys? Rotating codes? Improvised encryption through emotional language and local idioms?”
Morav’s silence was the heaviest thing in the room.
They weren’t decoding songs.
They were chasing poetry in the fog of war.
Back underground, Pawel closed his notebook and handed it off to a runner—young, barely old enough to remember peacetime. The boy would bring it to the tech crew, who would record the message, compress it, and embed it in a pirate signal timed for just after curfew.
Before the boy left, Pawel added, “Remind them—use the old mic. Let it crackle. Let it sound like it’s coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.”
He paused, fingers hovering above the guitar strings. “Make it sound like truth.”
Because in this war, the real power didn’t lie in bullets or flags.
It lay in names no one could trace—and songs no one could silence.
XIV
Flashback: The Learning Curve
Pawel had never been a man of war. He was a musician, a poet in his own right, a man who lived through the movement of music and the ebb of a crowd’s collective emotion. But when the upheaval began—when the streets filled with voices demanding change—Pawel’s world shifted. His guitar, once a tool of catharsis, became something more dangerous. It became a weapon, and his words, a shield.
But no one had prepared him for this.
The first time he was approached by the National Salvation Front was in the middle of a frigid night, weeks after the protests had turned into armed resistance. The Front wasn’t like the romanticized revolutionaries in songs and books. No, these were hardened people—ex-soldiers, political refugees, underground thinkers. They weren’t looking for glory; they were looking for survival.
Pawel sat in a dim-lit room at a safehouse in the city outskirts. The walls were bare, the windows boarded up, and the only sound was the hum of the generator powering the place. Across from him, Marek, the leader of the Front, was looking at him with cold eyes. He didn’t ask Pawel if he was ready; instead, he simply handed him a map and a pen.
“This is the route for our next supply run,” Marek said, laying out the map. “But we’re not sending it out like this.”
Pawel’s fingers twitched. He was a musician, not a strategist.
“You’re going to write a song,” Marek continued, his voice flat. “A song that can be used in case the enemy intercepts our messages. We need to speak in ways they can’t understand. Lyrics that disguise a map, a location, a plan. We need to speak in layers.”
Pawel’s heart raced. This was not a challenge he had ever faced. Songs weren’t meant to be encrypted. They were meant to be felt, to be understood immediately. But Marek was insistent.
“The beauty of music,” Marek said, his voice lowering, “is that it can be heard, but not always understood. Just like a good cipher, you put it into the world and let it breathe, but no one should ever know what it really means unless they have the key.”
Pawel didn’t respond. He simply took the map and the pen. He looked down at the lines of streets, the locations marked in red. It seemed impossible to do what Marek asked.
“What kind of key?” Pawel asked finally, unsure if he even wanted the answer.
Marek’s lips curled into a smile. “Your own.”
It wasn’t until the second week of his lessons in encoding that Pawel began to understand the depth of what was needed. He wasn’t just writing lyrics; he was writing instruments of deception. Layers upon layers of symbols, signs, and half-truths. The words couldn’t just be words—they had to be living fragments of a hidden world.
He spent sleepless nights with Marek and others in the resistance, learning how to take the simplest of things—a phrase, a name, a number—and turn it into a piece of music that only those with the right knowledge could decipher. The key was never in the obvious, never in the surface. It was in the way a chord was played, the way a word was sung.
One night, Marek had him sit down with a piece of chalk and a board.
“See that?” Marek pointed to the symbols on the board. “These aren’t just random letters. These are part of a structure we call Echoes. They correspond to locations, to people, to moments in time. Every note, every pause, is a signal.”
Marek had drawn lines connecting the letters, forming an intricate web.
“These are called 'Echoes,'” Marek explained. “The letters and numbers refer to common phrases in our language—each of them has been altered slightly. If you’re careful, you can see the map within the music.”
Pawel’s mind swam with confusion. “So I’m writing music that sounds like something else?”
“Exactly,” Marek said. “It has to sound like a song, like something anyone could hum. But embedded within it, you hide the truth.”
The first song Pawel wrote in this fashion was called Echoes in the Dark.
It started like any other love song—a simple, melancholic tune about the loss of a friend—but beneath the surface, it was a route to a hidden bunker. The chorus was about a reunion between lovers, but the verses detailed strategic coordinates, disguised as promises to meet at a hidden place.
“We’ll meet under the faded trees,
Where the night speaks in whispered pleas.
The road behind is lined with stones,
Our hands will meet beneath the stones.”
Each line referred to a specific landmark, but none of it was obvious to anyone who didn’t know what to look for. The fading trees were the old oak outside a munitions factory; the stones were markers of underground tunnels; the hands beneath the stones were the resistance’s way of acknowledging a safe passage.
When Marek heard it, his expression softened just for a moment.
“You’ve got it now,” he said. “That’s how we fight without firing a shot. Music, like a shadow. It tells you what to do, but only if you’re ready to listen.”
By the time Pawel had written several more songs—each layered with even deeper codes—he had become a master of subtlety. His songs, though seemingly about love and loss, became encoded blueprints for resistance movements scattered across the city. Each word, every pause, every silence between verses, was another layer of concealment.
Yet even Pawel wasn’t sure how deep the game went. How many others were playing with him? How many could decode these songs? It didn’t matter.
It wasn’t about who understood. It was about who needed to.
And through this, Pawel had learned that the key wasn’t just in the code. It was in the music itself—the way it could linger, how it could evoke feeling, all while hiding the truth in plain sight.
Now, back in the resistance’s safehouse, Pawel took a deep breath and strummed his guitar. His fingers hovered over the strings for a moment before he began, singing softly:
“Tell them to meet me by the old red gate,
Where the wall is cracked, and the shadows wait…”
He paused, listening to the echo of the song. This was the new one, the latest encrypted message—a song that no one would understand unless they had the key.
But Pawel wasn’t worried.
For now, the music would speak for him.
XV
Meanwhile, Ellie…
The airport lounge buzzed with a low mechanical hum, the kind of sterile white noise that blanketed all emotion. Ellie sat in a corner booth, her half-empty cup of tea going cold, eyes fixed on the screen of her phone. No new messages. No alerts. Just a faint, hollow ache she couldn’t quite name.
She had spent the last few weeks chasing fragments—voices on shortwave, grainy broadcasts, whispers in coded verses. She hadn’t heard his voice again. Not since that first haunting song that spoke her name. Since then, it had been scattered lines, stray chords, and strange lyrics that seemed to mean something… more.
At first, she dismissed it all. Maybe it was just the trauma of returning to a homeland she barely recognized. The crisis had changed everything. But something in her wouldn’t let go.
She remembered a song that aired late one night in Vienna. Another in Tbilisi. And now one in Athens—picked up on the flight deck radio by one of the mechanics. Each of them had the same soft grit, the same aching cadence. No name. No title. Just played and gone, like ghost signals.
They weren’t commercial. They weren’t from any known artist.
Ellie opened a folder in her phone’s notes. It was full of scribbled lyrics she had written down from memory—fragments of songs that had surfaced unexpectedly. All of them strange. Some sounded like love letters. Others like old ballads. But a few lines stood out more than others.
“Checkpoint three, Gorky’s tree…”
“Scarves red, coat black—watch the backtrack…”
“Echoes hum when the drums come…”
It sounded like a story. A memory. Or a code.
Was someone trying to reach her?
Or—was someone using her as a reference point to reach someone else?
She looked out at the runway. The sun was setting, casting a dusky glow over the distant hills. Another flight was being prepped. She’d be off again in an hour. South, maybe east. She didn’t ask anymore.
Her ears caught a sudden ripple of sound. A familiar static crackle. Her airline’s gate speakers briefly glitched before the usual boarding call resumed. But for a second, just a second, there was a sound buried in the interference.
A melody.
Faint, fast, minor key—barely distinguishable—but her heart clenched instantly.
She grabbed her phone and quickly pulled out the audio recorder app, praying she caught a scrap of it. When she played it back, the sound was almost drowned, but the tail end of the phrase rang clear:
“…wait till four—front beneath the stair…”
Her breath caught. That line again.
She pulled up a message she hadn’t dared open for weeks. It was a forwarded memo from a contact in the diaspora—someone who claimed to have been close to the National Salvation Front. In it was a phrase that now leapt out like a flame:
"If you hear songs with times and landmarks—those aren't songs. They're field maps."
Ellie stood slowly, heart racing. Something real was happening. These weren't just poetic echoes. These were instructions. And if the voice she’d once heard singing her name was the same one layering these coded broadcasts, then he was alive. And he was fighting.
But before she could dig deeper, her airline’s handler waved from the gate.
“Miss V., we’re boarding!”
Another flight. Another delay. But now, she had a mission.
As she walked down the jet bridge, Ellie whispered under her breath, a quiet promise to herself:
"I’ll find you. Whoever you are. Whatever your name really is."
And up in the skies, while passengers slept and clouds moved below, she would replay the fragments—those strange songs sung like riddles—and try, piece by piece, to find the man hidden in the music.
The man who might have started a revolution in her name.
Ellie turned at the sound of the voice.
“Sorry, miss, what made you ask about the songs?”
The old man looked ordinary enough—mid-forties, graying at the temples, wearing a charcoal coat and a messenger bag slung across his shoulder. He had the look of someone who’d been waiting in that terminal too long, eyes a little too alert beneath his calm exterior.
She blinked, caught off-guard. “I… didn’t say anything. Not out loud.” Ellie said.
He smiled, almost sheepishly. “You were playing something just now. From your phone. A broadcast.”
Ellie clutched her phone a little tighter. “It’s just a song.”
“Is it?” he said. “You’ve written down lyrics before, haven’t you? In other airports. In hotel lobbies. Vienna. Tblisi. Athens.” His eyes narrowed. “That line you were repeating. ‘Wait till four—front beneath the stair.’ You’ve heard that before.”
Ellie froze. Her heart thudded in her chest. “Who are you?”
The man looked around, subtly. No one nearby seemed to notice them. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out a small metal emblem, barely the size of a coin—engraved with a fractured phoenix crest. He showed it to her only for a second, then slipped it back out of sight.
“You don’t know me. And you don’t need to. But I need you to answer this: where did you first hear that song?”
Ellie hesitated. Something in her told her to run. But the other part—stronger—kept her rooted.
“It came through a shortwave,” she said softly. “Months ago. A man’s voice. I don’t know who he is. But I’ve been hearing… more. Songs that don’t sound like songs.”
The man’s expression didn’t change. But his posture did. He became more alert, more focused.
“You need to board your flight,” he said.
“What?” Ellie asked.
“This conversation didn’t happen." Said the old man. But if you ever hear that voice again—if you hear the phrase Katarina whispers from stairwell three—find a place with an old fax line. Manual. No internet. Use the code in the lyrics and send it to 73.44.”
Ellie’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
But the man had already stepped back, melting into the crowd. Within seconds, he was gone.
She stood there, stunned. Then a voice called over the loudspeakers:
“Final call for Flight 209 to Varna. All remaining passengers, please proceed to Gate C2.”
Heart pounding, Ellie moved toward the gate.
She didn’t know what she’d just stumbled into. But she had the feeling that whatever this was, it was bigger than music. Bigger than her.
And that voice she couldn’t forget—the one that said her name—might be more than a memory.
Meanwhile, The frontlines were a wasteland. Pawel had seen enough of the destruction to numb him, but this time, as artillery exploded in the distance and the sounds of clattering rifles mingled with the screams of wounded soldiers, something had shifted. There was a weight in the air—a new kind of urgency.
He sat at a makeshift desk, his fingers tight around a pen, as his superior, Marek, paced beside him. The battlefield outside raged like a living thing, but inside the shack that served as their temporary command center, the music was just as vital to the resistance as the weapons in their hands.
"We've lost too much ground," Marek muttered, frustration painted across his face. "But we’re still here. And we’re still fighting."
Pawel nodded silently. He knew what needed to be done. The song wasn’t just a message; it was the pulse of their survival.
"You’ve seen the way they react to your songs," Marek continued. "The coded words you send out—they’re working. But we need more. The next broadcast is crucial."
Pawel didn’t look up as he picked up his guitar. His thoughts were already with the people who would hear his next composition—their lives were depending on it.
“The signal's going to be weak,” Marek said, pointing to the communications setup. “But you know what to do.”
Pawel didn’t answer. He had been creating songs like these for weeks now, each one hidden within layers of coded messages. They were songs of rebellion, but the words weren’t always meant to be heard by the enemy. They were designed for those who could decipher them, for those on the frontlines like him, and those in the cities behind enemy lines who were waiting for the signal to act.
His hands began to move across the guitar, the familiar motions grounding him. This song would be different, though. They were coming to the climax of their resistance—he could feel it in his bones. This song had to be urgent. It had to be a call to arms, a final push. He couldn’t afford to be subtle anymore.
The words came slowly at first, as he searched for the right chord progression:
Flares in the night, but we still walk the streets,
Treading the line where the fighters meet.
No retreat, no surrender, no fear of the dark,
Our souls set ablaze by the rebel spark.
Pawel closed his eyes, allowing the notes to carry him forward, even as the sounds of distant explosions reached his ears.
The lyrics took shape as his fingers strummed with growing urgency:
Through shattered glass and bloodied streets,
We march to the rhythm of heartbeats.
Smoke in the air, but we hold our ground,
In the silence of war, the truth is found.
He stopped briefly, letting the weight of the words settle. He knew what he was writing, but the secrecy, the codes—the stakes—always made it feel like a gamble. The battle wasn’t only happening outside; it was happening in every song he wrote. One wrong move, one misplaced word, and it could mean the end for so many.
The resistance, the National Salvation Front, was pinned down. Their positions were becoming more and more vulnerable, but the enemy was not prepared for this: the song. This broadcast.
Pawel leaned over the radio equipment, plugging in the wires. He adjusted the dials, his eyes flicking to the clock. Time was running out. As the signal began to broadcast across the airwaves, he strummed the final chord:
So we rise, rise, rise to the call,
Stand together, one and all.
When the dust settles, we’ll still be here,
The sound of freedom, far and near.
He pressed the button, sending the song out into the world.
The song was a layered message. To the untrained ear, it was simply a song of rebellion—a rallying cry. But to those who knew how to listen, the song was a series of instructions hidden in plain sight. The line about "shattered glass" was the key to the next rendezvous point. "Bloodied streets" was a code for an ambush in the coming days. And the phrase "rise, rise, rise to the call" was an encrypted directive for those still behind enemy lines, telling them to make their move.
Pawel exhaled, his hands trembling slightly from the weight of what he’d just sent. The broadcast crackled with static for a moment, then fell silent.
“Do you think they’ll get it?” Marek asked quietly, watching him from across the room.
“They’ll get it,” Pawel replied, his voice steady, but his eyes clouded with the weight of uncertainty. “But it’s not just the message. It’s the timing. We’re running out of time.”
He stood up, grabbing his rifle. He could hear the distant rumble of incoming artillery. Another wave was coming.
Marek placed a hand on his shoulder. “Good work. Now let’s see if the storm clears before the next one hits.”
Pawel nodded. He didn’t answer. He knew there was no turning back now. The battle was no longer just a physical war—it was a war fought with words, music, and every secret coded message he could send. It was the only way they could win.
And with that, he stepped out into the chaos once again, the sound of his song still echoing in his mind.
Pawel’s fingers trembled as he connected the final wires to the makeshift transmitter. The world outside the small, dimly lit bunker was crumbling, but within these walls, a different kind of weapon was being prepared—one that had already proven to be a silent, invisible force in the ongoing war.
The transmitter hummed with power, the crackle of static filling the air, as Pawel adjusted the frequencies. His mind raced as he rehearsed the message he’d just composed—the song that would be sent across the airwaves, a message embedded within music, disguised as a call to arms but layered with orders, secrets, and coordinates.
"Ready?" Marek’s voice cut through the tension, his eyes scanning the battlefield outside, though his focus never fully left Pawel. He was aware of the weight of this broadcast. If it succeeded, it could change the course of the resistance. If it failed, their position could be compromised.
Pawel nodded without a word. He had no time for doubt. The song was ready, and it had to go out now.
The dim light of the bunker flickered as Pawel flicked a switch, and the transmitter's hum grew louder. The room seemed to hold its breath. His hands moved over the guitar, his fingers stretching for the familiar chords. Each note was deliberate, each strum carried the weight of the lives depending on it.
Marek stood by the door, watching as Pawel began to play. The first few notes filled the space, trembling in the air like the first signs of an approaching storm.
The radio crackled to life, and then came Pawel’s voice, rough and raw but steady, cutting through the static.
Flares in the night, but we still walk the streets,
Treading the line where the fighters meet.
No retreat, no surrender, no fear of the dark,
Our souls set ablaze by the rebel spark.
The song flowed from him, the music carrying the weight of more than just defiance—it carried a message of resistance. To those who knew how to listen, the lyrics held the map of where to strike, which allies to trust, which paths to take.
The broadcast was short—barely three minutes—but every second was packed with meaning. Pawel’s words weren’t just a rallying cry; they were orders hidden in the rhythm, directions encoded into the melody.
Through shattered glass and bloodied streets,
We march to the rhythm of heartbeats.
Smoke in the air, but we hold our ground,
In the silence of war, the truth is found.
As he strummed the final chords, the words slipped from his mouth like a final prayer.
So we rise, rise, rise to the call,
Stand together, one and all.
When the dust settles, we’ll still be here,
The sound of freedom, far and near.
The last note hung in the air like a challenge, a promise, a spark waiting to ignite.
Pawel’s hand hovered over the transmitter as he stared at the receiver, waiting for the static to clear. His mind raced with the implications of what he had just done. The message was out there, somewhere, between the cracks of frequencies and the hum of the radio waves. It would be heard, even if it took time. He had embedded too much in it for it to go unnoticed.
Marek approached, watching the dial on the radio receiver. It blinked, paused, then flickered to life.
“It’s out there,” Marek said, his voice steady but with a hint of relief. “Now we wait.”
Pawel exhaled slowly, his muscles tight from the strain. “Now we wait,” he repeated, but inside, a storm of thoughts churned. The broadcast was only the beginning. The enemy would listen, they would try to decode it, but they wouldn’t understand—not unless they knew exactly how to read it. And those who did would be the ones fighting in the streets, the ones pushing forward, the ones who would hold the line.
The hum of the radio faded into a gentle static, and for a moment, there was only silence.
In the distant city, Ellie sat in the back of the small cabin, the hum of the plane vibrating beneath her. She had caught the faintest hint of something unusual on her radio earlier—a song, something familiar yet foreign. She couldn’t quite place it. But there was something about it, something in the melody that made her heart race.
Her mind was still fixed on the earlier broadcast she had intercepted. She had tried to trace it, to find any clue that would lead her back to the voice that had sung her name, the voice she couldn’t forget.
But now, as she leaned back in her seat, the sounds of the world outside fading, she could almost feel the weight of the message—though she hadn’t yet realized the full meaning of it. She had only picked up fragments, pieces of something far more significant than a simple song.
The radio crackled again, and Ellie’s breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t just static anymore.
And then, there it was—another broadcast. This time, the voice she had been searching for.
The music hit her ears, but it was different this time. It wasn’t the same as the first song, but the tone, the cadence, it was unmistakable. The lyrics, though vague to the casual listener, felt like a directive. The familiarity of the voice caught her completely off guard.
She listened, her hand hovering over the dials.
We rise, rise, rise to the call,
Stand together, one and all.
Her heart beat faster as she processed the lyrics. It was the same voice. The one she had heard before. But this time, it wasn’t just a love song or a cry of rebellion—it was something more. A call. A message.
Ellie’s fingers gripped the armrest, her thoughts spinning. She didn’t know who this man was, but she knew he was somehow tied to the resistance, to the war. And now, she was certain of one thing.
She was closer to understanding the truth. But what would that truth cost her?
As the broadcast ended, the radio fell silent, and Ellie leaned forward, her mind buzzing with the mystery she had only begun to unravel.
The broadcast spread like wildfire through the resistance networks, its encrypted layers slowly unfurling among those who had the skills to decode it. Pawel’s song had not only served as a rallying cry, it had become the heart of a new kind of warfare—one that didn’t rely on guns or tanks, but on subtlety, precision, and the intricate dance of information.
In the dark corners of makeshift safe houses and abandoned buildings, rebels huddled around radios, clinging to every word, every note. A subtle hum filled the rooms as a growing group of trusted individuals gathered the pieces of Pawel’s message, piecing together the encrypted orders.
"Push west by the second moon," one part of the message decoded. "Coordinates confirmed at the factory. Zero hour at midnight."
"Prepare for a heavy push near the southern district," said another rebel, reading the coded lines aloud, the significance of Pawel’s melody heavy in his voice. "We’ll meet at the bridge, east end. Trust no one but the marked."
The instructions were clear but veiled in the fluid rhythms of a love song, making it nearly impossible for the enemy to discern the meaning unless they were intimately familiar with the code. For Pawel, the layers were second nature. But for the resistance, it was the lifeblood of survival—an invisible thread running through every movement, every strike, every retreat.
Meanwhile, in a remote bunker, Eduard Cardel, leader of the National Salvation Front, stood before a radio transmission device, listening intently as the song crackled through the speakers. His face was hard, unmoving, but his mind raced. He had always known the power of information, but this—this was something different.
"Pawel’s done it again," he muttered under his breath, a mix of admiration and wariness in his voice. "The enemy still doesn’t understand. But we do."
Marek, who stood by his side, glanced over at him. "We need to act fast," he said, his eyes scanning the room. "The longer we wait, the harder it will be to maintain the secrecy. The enemy’s scrambling to decrypt these messages."
Eduard nodded. "Then we move. Prepare the fighters. Start the operation at dawn." He paused, tapping his fingers on the table, eyes narrowing as he listened to the song again, allowing the words to settle in his mind. "We’ll strike at the heart. The capital will be ours before the next broadcast."
Back in the rebel’s underground quarters, the message continued to spread like wildfire. As Pawel’s song echoed across the airwaves, Ellie was listening once more, her heart racing. She had been on the edge of her seat when she first heard the familiar voice, but now, after hearing it again, there was an unsettling realization creeping in.
This wasn’t just music. It wasn’t a simple broadcast. The man behind the voice—Pawel—was part of something far larger. Something far more dangerous.
But what was his endgame? She had to know more.
XVI
In her hotel room, Ellie fumbled for her phone, checking the latest updates. There were reports, scattered stories, fragmented news from both sides. The capital was on the verge of collapse. The streets were filling with chaos. And now, Pawel’s song was more than a whisper on the wind—it had become the signal that set everything in motion.
Ellie rubbed her eyes, fatigue seeping through her. The pieces of the puzzle were scattered, but she couldn’t stop herself from trying to put them together. The voice, the message, the strange sense of intimacy she felt when listening—it was clear that Pawel was no mere rebel. He was a figure of great significance, leading from behind the lines with his music as both shield and sword.
"Why me?" she muttered to herself, almost wishing the static would offer an answer. But as usual, there was nothing but silence.
The frontlines grew fiercer as night descended. Rebel fighters moved in the shadows, following the instructions given in Pawel’s song—each step calculated, each move precise. In the safe houses, eyes flickered between coded messages and rifles, fingers gripping radios tightly as they waited for the next song, the next message, the next directive.
It was a strange kind of warfare. Where the enemy sent in their jets and troops, the National Salvation Front sent in their broadcasts. Each song, each broadcast, became more than just a piece of music. It was a weapon. A call to arms. A lifeline.
But the enemy was beginning to notice. Though the songs were still largely ignored by the larger military forces, there were whispers in high places. In the streets, murmurs began to circulate. Who was the man behind the song? Why was his voice so familiar?
The message had spread to the furthest corners of the occupied territories, like a wildfire, impossible to control, impossible to snuff out. For every rebel who sang it under their breath in the dark, there were those who listened and understood it.
And there were those, too, who were still far from ready. Those who had yet to hear it. But soon, they would.
Hours passed. The resistance moved swiftly, each step synchronized with the song’s cryptic instructions. Even in the heart of enemy-controlled territory, rebel fighters infiltrated, prepared for their final stand.
Pawel, still hidden in the heart of the occupied city, stayed focused. His fingers grazed the strings of his guitar once more, composing the next song, the next coded message. He didn’t know when it would be needed, but he knew it would be. The battle was far from over, and the transmission of truth would continue until the day of liberation.
The enemy, unaware of the growing tide, would soon find themselves outflanked—caught not by bombs or bullets, but by a song.
Ellie sat cross-legged on the bed in her hotel room, her fingers drumming nervously on the edge of the nightstand. The shortwave radio was still on, the familiar crackle of static filling the air. But it wasn’t just the noise she was listening for—it was the voice, the one that had haunted her thoughts ever since she first heard it.
She had written down the lyrics, word for word, after each broadcast. At first, it had seemed like an innocuous thing to do, a way to pass the time while waiting for the flight crew’s next orders. But as the songs continued to play, the lyrics seemed to speak to something deeper—something that tethered her to them.
The voice had been oddly familiar, like it was calling out to her, even though she couldn’t place it. And the words—they weren’t just random musings of a war-torn soul. They were too specific, too layered. Each phrase felt like a thread, one that would unravel the mystery of the person behind it.
“Push west by the second moon…” She had written it down so many times that the words had started to feel like a puzzle, something she had to solve. She flipped through the small notebook she kept, its pages filled with meticulous notes, piecing together every song she had heard.
“You kissed me as the orders stalled…”
“One said ‘freedom,’ one said ‘you.’”
Ellie paused and traced the words with her pen, her mind racing. The more she thought about it, the more it felt like someone was speaking directly to her—someone who knew her, but from where? The words weren’t just about love or rebellion. They were about survival, secrecy, and sacrifice.
She leaned back, staring at the ceiling, her mind wandering. Was it possible? Could someone have written a song that meant so much, yet was so difficult to decode unless you knew what to look for? That’s when it hit her: the person behind these lyrics—this voice—had to be involved in something far larger than just a resistance movement. This wasn’t a simple cry for help or a love letter written on the back of a war-torn landscape. No, it was a code.
A code for those who were willing to hear it. A code meant for rebels and resistance fighters who had the patience and the skill to decode the hidden message. Ellie had heard it—the subtle hints woven into the melodies. The references to places she didn’t recognize, the times that felt deliberate, the phrases that were too cryptic to make sense without context.
But there was something else—a feeling she couldn’t shake. As she sat there, staring at the pages, a sinking feeling tugged at her. Was she just another piece in this game? Was she being drawn into something far beyond her understanding?
Her phone buzzed. She glanced down, blinking as the screen lit up. A message from an anonymous number.
“Time’s running out. Listen closely.”
Her pulse quickened. She had no idea who this was from, but the message felt too personal to ignore. Could it be related to the songs? Was someone warning her, or was this just another layer in the ever-growing mystery surrounding the broadcasts?
She pushed the thought aside for now. There was no time for hesitation.
Turning back to the notebook, she began writing again, her pen moving more quickly now. Every song, every note, every lyric felt like a breadcrumb leading her deeper into a dark and dangerous game. She didn’t know what role she was playing yet, but she could feel the weight of it—this strange, unspoken connection to the man whose voice had haunted her.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the heart of the battlefield, Pawel was preparing his next broadcast. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he adjusted the wires of his makeshift radio transmitter. His hands trembled slightly, the weight of the moment pressing down on him. The National Salvation Front was on the brink of a critical battle, and he had no choice but to communicate the next move in the only way he knew how.
He reached for his guitar, fingers brushing the strings before he started strumming softly. The music was more than just a tune—it was a message, one that only a few could decipher. He knew the stakes. The transmission would be intercepted. It always was. But the question was: would they understand it?
“Behind Dom 2, the leaflets flew…”
He began singing softly to himself, the lyrics coming easily as if they had been waiting for him to write them. The melody matched the urgency of the moment, each line a coded message, each word a deliberate choice.
His mind raced, thinking of the resistance, thinking of the rebels who would be listening. They needed these instructions—these carefully laid out plans—so they could continue their fight.
He paused, taking a deep breath, before strumming the first chord again. His fingers worked over the strings in a practiced dance, every note a thread woven into the song. As the words poured out, he knew they would be understood—by the right people, at least.
He didn’t know who would be listening. He didn’t know where his message would land. But he knew it would find its way to the rebels, those who understood what the music truly meant.
Just as the transmission was ready to go, Pawel’s fingers hovered over the microphone. He looked up briefly, his eyes narrowing as he imagined the faces of those who would hear his voice—people like Ellie, perhaps, people whose lives were bound to this conflict in ways they didn’t even realize.
With a final glance toward the small radio transmitter, Pawel spoke into the mic, his voice low but determined:
“Love in a time of coup d'etat… we’ll meet at the bridge. Don’t trust anyone but those with the mark. Midnight, zero hour. Push west.”
Then, he pressed the button, sending the song out into the airwaves, hoping it would reach the right people. He didn’t know if anyone would hear it, but he had to trust that the code would find its mark.
Ellie sat in her hotel room, her heart pounding as the familiar voice came through the static once again. This time, it was clearer, sharper. And the message felt even more urgent. She scribbled down the lyrics quickly, her pen almost racing to keep up.
There was a bridge. Midnight. A push to the west.
The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place, but Ellie was still no closer to understanding who the man behind the voice was. She had heard enough to know that Pawel was more than just a resistance fighter. He was something else—someone who could orchestrate a war through a song.
And somehow, someway, she had to be a part of this.
XVII
The radios had been dead for hours.
Not silent—just static, like the sound of a blizzard rolling endlessly through cables and dust. Down in the concrete shelter beneath what used to be a university printing press, Pawel sat hunched beside a battered field transmitter, its antenna barely peeking through the bomb-damaged ceiling above. The smell of ash and solder clung to the air.
Outside, the city was a warzone.
Inside, it was time.
Marek had spoken with urgency before disappearing back to the front: “One more. Keep it laced. Bridge at zero hour. If they don’t hear it, they won’t know when to move.”
And so Pawel worked quickly, fingers blackened from graphite and grease. He scribbled, then strummed. Erased, then hummed. The guitar’s neck was chipped, its strings worn thin—but its voice still carried. That was all that mattered.
He didn’t write for charts anymore. He wrote like a spy in love, like a man on the run, like a poet disguised as a courier.
At 23:48, he pressed the record switch.
The transmitter clicked. The reel spun.
And his voice—soft, graveled, certain—broke the silence.
"Bridge at Zero Hour"
Verse 1
Smoke rolled down from Saint Florian's gate,
You kissed me once and said, “Too late.”
The map was folded in your hand,
With marks they’d never understand.
Whispers by the checkpoint wall,
"North at midnight" — you said it all.
But lips said love and eyes said run,
So I stayed until the job was done.
Chorus
Love beneath the siren sky,
Red stars falling, reasons why.
We moved in chords, in static dreams,
Through alleys locked in wartime seams.
You carved our route into my mind—
Now it’s yours to find.
Bridge at zero hour, love... don’t fall behind.
Verse 2
I left the tape beneath the stair,
At Dom 2’s east—no one there.
A black scarf tied to signal clear,
October's not done—not this year.
You turned once near Platform Three,
Shadowed by a crooked tree.
No names, no flags, just codes in tune,
Broadcasting truth before it’s too soon.
Chorus
Love beneath the siren sky,
Red stars falling, reasons why.
Pages burn, but not this line—
"Turn east and count to ninety-nine."
You carved our fate in broken rhyme,
Now hold the line—
Bridge at zero hour, love… it's time.
Bridge (encoded)
(“Zero hour. 00:00. Meet by Florian. Cross at the second bell. The route is drawn. Dom 2. East stairwell. M-9 listening.”)
We sang in silence, footfalls tight,
Through cratered streets, into the night.
And if they jam this final sound—
Remember what we found.
Final Chorus
Love beneath the siren sky,
Still we sing though wires lie.
If you’re out there and still free—
Mark the code, repeat to me:
“We cross when clocks and silence rhyme.”
Bridge at zero hour, love... it’s time.
As the last chord echoed into tape and signal, Pawel sat back, winded. Not from the singing—but from the weight of it. From knowing what would come next.
Within minutes, the broadcast began pulsing out through low-frequency bands. Tape decks in bunkers, radios stashed in rubble, handheld receivers hidden in overcoats—all caught the song. Rebels would know. Couriers would understand. The message was buried in metaphor, yet clear enough for those trained to listen.
He didn’t know if Ellie would hear it. He didn’t know if the codes would hold.
But the signal was live.
Somewhere out there, someone would move when the clock struck zero.
And maybe, just maybe, someone would still call it a love song.
Ellie leaned back in her seat, the hum of the plane’s engines rattling the window, the familiar sound of engines cutting through the air. She couldn’t shake the feeling of unease. The strange pull she'd felt toward those broadcast songs hadn’t disappeared; in fact, it only grew stronger with every passing day.
She’d listened to it all: the folk songs, the classical pieces, the ones with strange, cryptic messages buried beneath the surface. There was no clear connection, but there was something familiar in them. Some unexplainable whispering, some pull that tied her to them like an invisible thread.
Today’s flight was different. She had taken the time to write down every lyric from the latest transmission—every strange, broken line. The music had stopped, but the song’s rhythm lingered in her mind. The words were stuck. She couldn’t quite let go of them.
“Love beneath the siren sky,
Red stars falling, reasons why.”
She found herself humming the melody softly, not even realizing it. For the first time, Ellie thought she could almost feel the weight of those words. They weren't just words anymore. They were a map, a cipher, a guide.
The flight had taken her to an airport in the heart of the conflict zone. Her work as a flight attendant made her a stranger in many places, but this? This place felt different. It was too quiet, too tense. She knew the route—knew where to get the best food in the terminal, where to buy a coffee. But there was something else in the air today, like the flickering static of a distant, forgotten station. That feeling that something was on the verge of happening.
Before she left the plane, her phone buzzed. A brief notification flashed across her screen—a new message.
It was from an unknown number. A message with just one line:
"Bridge at zero hour. Your time is coming."
Her pulse quickened. She stared at the message, trying to make sense of it. The words seemed like an echo from the song. Could it be? Had someone made the connection? Had he heard it? The singer, the one with the familiar voice. The one who’d been singing in her mind ever since that first broadcast.
She quickly checked her radio’s shortwave frequency, and there it was—the unmistakable static, the low crackle of transmission. Another broadcast. But this time, it wasn’t just music.
It was a voice, familiar. It sent a chill down her spine.
The same voice she had heard so many times before. The voice that had filled her dreams and fueled her search. The voice that made her feel like a part of something she couldn't understand yet.
“You carved our route into my mind—
Now it’s yours to find.
Bridge at zero hour, love... don’t fall behind.”
She froze, heart thumping in her chest. The song—it was a message. A coded message. And it was meant for someone. For her?
The plane was descending, and Ellie knew there was no time to lose. She had to act.
The message was more than music. It was a call. But what was it saying? What was she supposed to do with it?
The moment Ellie stepped off the plane, she was approached by a woman in a coat, a small phone clipped to her belt.
"Excuse me, Miss Coralowa," the woman said, her voice smooth, without a hint of accent. "You don’t know me, but I think you’ve been listening to the wrong channels."
Ellie froze, unsure of what to say. She had never seen this woman before, but something about her was... unsettlingly familiar.
“Follow me. You’re needed. We’ve been tracking the broadcasts.”
Ellie’s mind raced. This was it. He had left her a trail, and now it was her turn to follow.
Meanwhile, back on the frontlines, Pawel was pacing in a dilapidated building—another safehouse with walls battered from the conflict. The war had dragged on, and every day it seemed like there was less and less left to hold onto. The fighting had intensified, and the stakes were higher than ever.
Marek’s voice crackled through the comms, but the message wasn’t one of triumph—it was one of urgency.
“They’re coming, Pawel. You know what happens next. We have to move.”
Pawel nodded, staring at the cracked radio in front of him. His words had spread like wildfire, but they had also drawn attention. Now, he had to be careful.
He checked his watch. The zero hour was almost upon them.
But there was something else weighing on him—the song. He knew it had reached her. It had to have. Ellie was out there. Somewhere. He could feel it in his bones, like a distant echo from the past.
And with that, the battle moved forward.
Ellie stood on the rooftop of a crumbling building, her breath visible in the cold air. Below her, a tangled mess of ruins stretched across the horizon. The city was still in flames, but there was something else rising—something she didn’t understand yet.
The woman who approached Ellie on the rooftop was someone whose presence was both unexpected and unsettling. As she stood there, her eyes scanning the streets below, Ellie couldn’t help but feel a strange pull. The woman’s demeanor was calm, even in the face of the chaos surrounding them. There was a quiet confidence in her movement, like someone who had seen far too much to be rattled by the sounds of distant artillery and the thick smoke rising from the horizon.
She was dressed in dark clothes, a tactical jacket that seemed out of place for someone who had approached her so casually. Her hair was tucked under a simple beanie, but it was her eyes that struck Ellie the most—piercing, calculating, as though she was reading Ellie with every glance.
"I’m not here to make things complicated," the woman said softly, her voice almost drowned out by the noise of the city. “But I think you need to know what you’re really dealing with.”
Ellie raised an eyebrow. "And what’s that supposed to mean?"
The woman smiled faintly, a hint of something darker in the curve of her lips. "It means you’re involved now. More than just a listener. You’ve been tracking the broadcasts. You’ve been hearing the codes. But you're not just hearing them. You’re part of it."
Ellie shook her head. "I don’t understand. Who are you? What do you want from me?"
The woman’s smile faded, replaced by a somber expression. "You’re asking the right questions. But the answers... they’ll come with consequences."
Ellie was about to push further when the woman suddenly stepped closer, lowering her voice so that only Ellie could hear. “My name is Sonya Kerov. I’m part of the resistance, but not in the way you think. I’m connected to the National Salvation Front. And that song—those broadcasts? They're more than just music. They’re a lifeline. A plan. And you’re the key.”
Ellie froze. The words didn’t fully register at first. The National Salvation Front? The same group that singer whom she heard his song carrying her name had been a part of? The same ones who’d been broadcasting messages, messages that were laced with codes, embedded with plans, with instructions...?
“You’re saying the broadcasts are... for the resistance?” Ellie’s voice came out in a whisper, almost afraid to believe it.
Sonya’s eyes locked onto hers, firm and resolute. “Yes. They’re how we communicate. How we send out orders without being intercepted. Pawel Cardel—you’ve heard his voice, haven’t you? He’s the one who’s been making the broadcasts. The songs you’ve been hearing. They’re not just songs, Ellie. They’re instructions, orders, messages meant to guide us. And now, you’re a part of it too.”
Ellie’s mind was racing. She hadn’t known. She had only listened, piecing together the fragments of lyrics, the disjointed lines that seemed like riddles. But now, it was clear. That person hadn’t been singing for himself. He’d been singing for the people who needed to hear it most: the resistance.
The weight of Sonya’s words sank into Ellie’s chest like a stone.
“We need you to decode the final message,” Sonya said, handing Ellie a small, weathered notebook. "The war’s on the brink of total collapse. But the real battle is about to begin."
Ellie stared at the notebook in her hand, feeling the gravity of the situation settling in. "What is it? What’s the final message?"
Sonya didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she glanced toward the horizon, where the flames flickered against the dark sky. "The song you heard—the last broadcast—is more than just a code. It's a signal. A signal that tells us the enemy is closer than we think. It's time to act."
Ellie nodded, a determined look hardening on her face. She hadn’t asked for any of this. She hadn’t asked to be caught in the web of a war she barely understood. But now, there was no turning back.
She had to find Pawel. She had to understand the message.
Sonya’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You don’t have to do this alone, but you can’t wait. We’re moving out soon. The enemy will be here before we know it.”
Ellie clenched her fists around the notebook. "Where do I go?"
Sonya’s lips curled into something of a smile again, though this one was laced with sorrow. "Follow the song. It’s your map now."
As Ellie disappeared into the shadowed streets, the sound of distant explosions echoing in her ears, she couldn’t shake the feeling that everything had changed. She had been listening to Pawel’s voice, following the music, without ever knowing who he really was. But now, she understood—he wasn’t just a voice on the airwaves. He was a part of something much bigger.
And she was too, whether she liked it or not.
The woman who had approached her handed her a small envelope. "Read it when you're in position. Trust no one, not even me. You’re in deeper than you think."
The message inside was clear:
"Bridge at zero hour. The song is the map. Follow the frequency. Trust the signal."
Ellie couldn’t deny it anymore. The music, the codes, the messages—they weren’t random. Pawel was out there. And he had left her the key.
She knew what she had to do next. It was time to stop listening. And start acting.
XVIII
Flashback: The Quiet Chain
It had started with a conversation—quiet, casual, forgettable to anyone listening. Ellie hadn’t thought much of the old man with the soft-spoken tone and worn diplomat’s jacket, who had sat beside her on the Dereluft flight from Saint Rochelle to Kalinagrad. He looked like a pensioner from another era, someone who read newspapers instead of looking at screens, whose face bore the faint, weathered lines of once-secret lives. There was something about his presence that suggested he had lived through far more than his years suggested—an aura of having been involved in things, seen things, that others only ever read about.
But he had asked one question that struck her oddly:
"Do you ever remember songs you didn’t mean to learn?"
She had blinked, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”
The old man’s lips curved upward in a slight smile, his expression thoughtful but far from friendly. He wasn’t trying to be charming; his tone was matter-of-fact, as if it were a question he had asked a thousand times. "Songs. The ones that stay in your head, even when you don’t know who wrote them. Those little fragments, like whispers that won’t leave you alone."
Ellie, still puzzled, gave a soft chuckle. “I don’t know, maybe… I guess everyone has a tune or two that gets stuck in their head. But I don’t really think about it. Not like that.”
The old man nodded, seemingly satisfied with her answer. His eyes drifted out the window, staring into the passing landscape. The moment stretched longer than it should have, as if he were weighing something in his mind. Finally, he added, “Sometimes, those songs are the ones worth remembering.”
Ellie shrugged it off. She had heard strange things from strangers before. Old-man philosophy, maybe. Loneliness creeping into his words. But that night, as she transcribed yet another half-heard lyric from the shortwave static in her hotel room, she thought of him again. That question. That odd line about songs worth remembering.
The thing was, she did remember certain fragments. She hadn’t thought about it until now, but the songs she had started hearing over the radio, songs that seemed so disjointed, so out of place in the middle of everything else going on in the world, had stuck with her. It wasn’t the usual love ballads or folk tunes one might hear drifting through the airwaves on commercial radio. No, these were different—chaotic, urgent, haunting. They spoke of something deeper, something more dangerous.
At first, she had written down the lyrics with the same curious detachment she had for any music that played on her travels. But over time, she found herself listening more intently, noting more detail. Her hand would hover over the page as she carefully transcribed every word. It wasn’t just the melodies, the way the voices cracked or harmonized—it was the rhythm, the cadence, the quiet sense of defiance in each note that made her keep coming back.
What struck her the most was the one song that had been the most haunting. It wasn’t perfect. It was raw, vulnerable, almost as if the person singing had no idea anyone was listening. Yet, for some reason, it felt personal. The song had slipped through her headphones that first time, and as the words seeped into her consciousness, she realized something unsettling: she had started to remember them. It wasn’t just the melody. She knew the words.
That was when Ellie started wondering if the songs weren’t just songs. Perhaps they were something else.
What she didn’t know was that the old man she’d encountered on the flight hadn’t been just a passenger, either. He was Konstantin Varic, once a professor of structural linguistics at Novi Rzeka University before the brutal purge that saw the closure of his institution and the scattering of its staff. Konstantin had been a part of something far more secretive, far more dangerous, than Ellie could have ever imagined.
He had boarded the flight from Saint Rochelle to Kalinagrad not out of mere coincidence, but to deliver a verbal report encoded in conversation, a quiet test of reflexes. It was a test meant to see if Ellie—of all people—might be useful. If she could be trusted. If she had the instincts to recognize the subtle cues in a conversation, to understand when a question had meaning beyond the obvious. He had been instructed to observe her, to see if she was a willing participant in the rebellion, a silent observer, or something else entirely.
As a liaison for the National Salvation Front, Konstantin had been tasked with making contact with those who could help in the resistance effort. He had seen Ellie’s name, written in cryptic reports from the underground network, connected to certain frequencies, certain transmissions that no one else seemed to notice. In particular, he had heard about her habit of listening to the rebel frequencies, her repeated pattern of transcribing what she heard—lyrics, bits of songs, fragments of coded messages.
At first, Konstantin had dismissed her as just another traveler, another fleeting connection. But during their conversation on the flight, he’d seen something. When she had mentioned the songs, when she had written down the lyrics from the static-filled broadcasts, he’d realized that this was no ordinary flight attendant. There was something about her, something hidden beneath the surface of her unassuming demeanor. Ellie had already made a connection to the struggle, though she didn’t know it yet. Her curiosity had led her here—led her to the songs—and Konstantin recognized it for what it was: an opportunity.
Once he reached Kalinagrad and was safely within the network of underground contacts, he relayed the information to Sonya, his superior in the National Salvation Front. Sonya read his report, silent for a moment before responding, her face impassive as always.
“Flight attendant, Dereluft. Likely an observer. Not a risk yet, but a potential. Watch her. See what she does.”
There was no overt command, no immediate directive. Konstantin had not been sent to recruit her, not yet. He had simply been asked to test the waters.
Weeks passed. Sonya tracked Ellie’s movements. Ellie was unaware of the eyes on her, of the quiet, invisible network observing her every action. They followed her on layovers in cities she had no particular reason to stay in, watched her as she moved through the terminals, listened to her conversations. Nothing overt. She was still just a flight attendant. But something in her continued to draw attention—her instinctive engagement with the radio signals, her quiet curiosity about the songs, the way she listened, transcribed, and remembered.
One day, when Ellie found herself once again in Kalinagrad, Sonya approached her. She asked the question that had been carefully scripted, the question that Konstantin had used as his own test.
"Sorry miss, what made you ask about the songs?"
Ellie had hesitated. Not because she was afraid, but because she couldn’t answer clearly. The songs had simply called to her—like someone down there was whispering in the fog. She shrugged, laughed it off nervously.
Sonya smiled. That was enough.
She didn’t tell Ellie who she was. Not yet. But in the hours that followed, a message went out along an encrypted thread buried in a maintenance terminal.
“Courier possible. Unaware. High instinct. Observes patterns. Preserves lyrics. Avoids attention. Let her move freely. Watch her. If possible—groom for contact.”
And so Ellie, unknowingly, stepped deeper into the quiet current. She became a piece on the board neither side had yet seen move. But Sonya watched with the calm confidence of a woman who knew exactly what she was preparing.
Ellie didn’t know it then, but her answer—or her hesitation—would determine her place in the larger game unfolding. She had no idea how her name was already being passed through encrypted channels, how the seemingly innocuous lyrics she transcribed had made their way into the hands of those who could change everything.
The quiet chain had begun to shift, and Ellie was no longer just an observer. She was about to become something far more important, a piece on a board that was far larger than she could understand.
XVIX
The wheels of the Dereluft plane touched down at Kalinagrad’s airport with a gentle bump. Ellie gathered her belongings, the hum of the engines slowly fading as the cabin door opened. She stepped into the brisk air of the city, the cold biting at her skin as she pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders. It was late in the evening, the sky dark and heavy with the promise of winter.
Ellie had become accustomed to the subtle weight of her new role in recent weeks. What started as an innocent curiosity about the peculiar songs over the radio had turned into something far more intense. She found herself listening more intently, writing every lyric down, committing every disjointed note to memory. In the back of her mind, there was always the question—What was she hearing? But no one could answer. No one could explain why she felt so compelled to keep listening.
She had learned, by now, that her actions had not gone unnoticed. The people in the background, the ones who observed her every movement, were always there, just out of reach. But no one had ever approached her directly—until now.
As she walked toward the terminal’s exit, the cold air of Kalinagrad cutting through the thin fabric of her uniform, she saw a figure waiting for her. The woman stood with an air of quiet confidence, her posture straight and her gaze focused. She was dressed simply, her coat a deep, dark green that blended well with the shadows. The way she stood was unyielding, like she was someone who had seen the darkness of the world up close and had learned to live with it.
"Miss Coralowa?" The voice was soft but firm, and it held a trace of something deeper. Authority, perhaps. But there was something else in the tone that Ellie couldn’t quite place—something far more knowing.
Ellie stopped short, caught off guard. She wasn’t used to being approached like this. “Yes?” she asked cautiously, her hand instinctively reaching for her bag.
The woman’s lips curled into a small, almost imperceptible smile. “I’ve been looking for you. You’ve been listening, haven’t you?”
Ellie’s heart skipped a beat. The woman’s words hit her in a way she couldn’t explain. It was as if she had been found, as if someone had seen through all her carefully constructed facades. She nodded slowly, her voice steady, though her pulse quickened. “Yes. I’ve been... hearing the songs. The ones on the radio.”
Sonya’s expression shifted then, a flicker of something—approval, maybe—crossing her face. “We know. You’ve been transcribing them. You’ve been paying attention. Too much attention for it to be coincidence.”
Ellie felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. Something in the air had shifted. She didn’t know who this woman was, or what she wanted, but there was no mistaking the seriousness in her tone.
Sonya took a step closer, her voice dropping lower, more conspiratorial now. “I’m Sonya. I’m part of the resistance. The National Salvation Front.” She didn’t wait for Ellie’s reaction, already sensing the apprehension that flared in Ellie’s eyes. “You don’t need to be afraid. You’re not alone in this.”
Ellie’s mind raced. The words hung in the air, echoing in her head. The resistance. She had known, in a way, that there was something deeper behind the music, the cryptic lyrics, the radio transmissions that kept playing in the dead of night. But hearing the words spoken aloud, coming from a stranger’s lips, made the reality of it all hit her harder than she had expected.
“But why me?” Ellie finally asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m just a flight attendant. I—I don’t even know what’s really going on.”
Sonya’s eyes softened, just slightly, and for a moment, she almost looked like a different person. The hardened exterior slipped for the briefest instant, revealing someone else beneath—a person who knew the cost of what they were asking. "You’re not ‘just’ anything," she said quietly. "You’re someone who listens. You’re someone who remembers the small details. The songs that others dismiss... you’ve heard them. Transcribed them. Those aren’t just songs, Ellie. They’re messages."
Ellie blinked, her mind whirling. She could barely comprehend what Sonya was saying. Messages? The fragments of songs that had seemed so disjointed and chaotic were actually something more? Something important?
Sonya continued, as if reading Ellie’s thoughts. “The music you’ve been hearing… it’s our way of communicating. Our way of passing along information. It’s coded. Embedded within the lyrics, the melodies. But it’s not easy to crack. Few can understand it. And fewer still would even bother to listen. You’ve already shown you’re capable of hearing what others cannot.”
Ellie’s breath caught in her throat. “But I—I’m just transcribing them. I don’t know what they mean.”
Sonya’s expression hardened again, but there was still a glint of something deeper in her eyes. “That’s exactly why you’re valuable. You hear things no one else does, Ellie. You don’t just write down what’s playing—you listen for the hidden meaning behind it. We need people like you.”
Ellie’s mind raced, trying to process what Sonya was saying. The idea that the songs she had been hearing were messages from the resistance, that they were part of something larger, felt like a whirlwind crashing around her. She had never imagined she could be part of something so... dangerous.
Sonya took a deep breath before speaking again. “You’ll be a courier for us. You’ll carry messages when you can. And when the time comes, you’ll pass them along. You’re already part of this, Ellie. Whether you want it or not.”
Ellie’s heart pounded in her chest, but something else stirred inside her—a feeling she hadn’t been able to place until now. It was an odd mixture of fear and something else—something close to resolve. She had already felt the pull of something greater than herself. And now, here it was. She was already too deep to back out.
She looked at Sonya, her voice steady but uncertain. “What happens now?”
Sonya smiled again, a small, knowing smile. “Now, we begin.”
Sonya's eyes locked onto Ellie’s with that same calm gravity she had carried since their first words at the terminal. The low hum of the airport faded around them, replaced by a strange quiet that came only when someone told you your life was about to change.
“You will still do your work,” Sonya said evenly, her voice barely above the din of arriving passengers and intercom announcements. “Wear the uniform. Smile at customs. Serve coffee at thirty thousand feet. No one must suspect otherwise.”
Ellie nodded slowly, her brows knit in cautious concentration. “And when I’m not in the air?”
Sonya leaned in, lowering her voice. “When you’re on layovers, when your shift ends, when you’re passing through cities where our people wait in shadows—you will serve as courier.”
Ellie looked around instinctively, as if someone might be listening, even here, even now. “Courier?”
Sonya’s face remained still, her tone almost surgical. “Yes. You won’t carry weapons or maps. You’ll carry names, locations, verse fragments, song references. Messages passed on paper, codes embedded in tourist receipts or in the lyrics of a song humming from a café speaker. The kind of things no customs officer or military patrol would ever flag. You’ll meet someone for five seconds and that’ll be enough. A glance. A word. A line from a melody. And that’s all.”
“But… I’m not trained for this,” Ellie said quietly.
Sonya’s eyes softened just slightly, though her voice held firm. “None of us were, at first. But you’re already doing it, whether you realize it or not. You write every word of the broadcasts. You listen when others tune out. And most important—Pawel’s songs reached you. That alone means something.”
At the mention of the name, Ellie’s breath caught. “Pawel,” she echoed, almost involuntarily.
Sonya noticed. “You don’t know him. Not really. None of us do, not beyond the name. But we know the voice. The words. And now, so do you.”
Ellie felt her throat tighten. So many things had led her to this moment—her curiosity, the strange old man, the lyrics she couldn’t stop writing down like a compulsion. A part of her wanted to run. But another part—the one that had always felt out of place in the quiet routine of uniformed civility—was already leaning in.
“What if I get caught?” she asked at last.
Sonya’s answer came without pause. “Then you’re just a flight attendant who likes old songs.”
And for the first time since the conversation began, Ellie smiled—small, nervous, but real. “I suppose I’ve always had a soft spot for music.”
Sonya nodded, as if that was all the confirmation she needed.
“Good,” she said. “Because from now on… every song could be your lifeline.”
XX
The frontlines were a wasteland. Pawel had seen enough of the destruction to numb him, but this time, as artillery exploded in the distance and the sounds of clattering rifles mingled with the screams of wounded soldiers, something had shifted. There was a weight in the air—a new kind of urgency.
He sat at a makeshift desk, his fingers tight around a pen, as his superior, Marek, paced beside him. The battlefield outside raged like a living thing, but inside the shack that served as their temporary command center, the music was just as vital to the resistance as the weapons in their hands.
"We've lost too much ground," Marek muttered, frustration painted across his face. "But we’re still here. And we’re still fighting."
Pawel nodded silently. He knew what needed to be done. The song wasn’t just a message; it was the pulse of their survival.
"You’ve seen the way they react to your songs," Marek continued. "The coded words you send out—they’re working. But we need more. The next broadcast is crucial."
Pawel didn’t look up as he picked up his guitar. His thoughts were already with the people who would hear his next composition—their lives were depending on it.
“The signal's going to be weak,” Marek said, pointing to the communications setup. “But you know what to do.”
Pawel didn’t answer. He had been creating songs like these for weeks now, each one hidden within layers of coded messages. They were songs of rebellion, but the words weren’t always meant to be heard by the enemy. They were designed for those who could decipher them, for those on the frontlines like him, and those in the cities behind enemy lines who were waiting for the signal to act.
His hands began to move across the guitar, the familiar motions grounding him. This song would be different, though. They were coming to the climax of their resistance—he could feel it in his bones. This song had to be urgent. It had to be a call to arms, a final push. He couldn’t afford to be subtle anymore.
The words came slowly at first, as he searched for the right chord progression:
Flares in the night, but we still walk the streets,
Treading the line where the fighters meet.
No retreat, no surrender, no fear of the dark,
Our souls set ablaze by the rebel spark.
Pawel closed his eyes, allowing the notes to carry him forward, even as the sounds of distant explosions reached his ears.
The lyrics took shape as his fingers strummed with growing urgency:
Through shattered glass and bloodied streets,
We march to the rhythm of heartbeats.
Smoke in the air, but we hold our ground,
In the silence of war, the truth is found.
He stopped briefly, letting the weight of the words settle. He knew what he was writing, but the secrecy, the codes—the stakes—always made it feel like a gamble. The battle wasn’t only happening outside; it was happening in every song he wrote. One wrong move, one misplaced word, and it could mean the end for so many.
The resistance, the National Salvation Front, was pinned down. Their positions were becoming more and more vulnerable, but the enemy was not prepared for this: the song. This broadcast.
Pawel leaned over the radio equipment, plugging in the wires. He adjusted the dials, his eyes flicking to the clock. Time was running out. As the signal began to broadcast across the airwaves, he strummed the final chord:
So we rise, rise, rise to the call,
Stand together, one and all.
When the dust settles, we’ll still be here,
The sound of freedom, far and near.
He pressed the button, sending the song out into the world. The song was a layered message. To the untrained ear, it was simply a song of rebellion—a rallying cry. But to those who knew how to listen, the song was a series of instructions hidden in plain sight. The line about "shattered glass" was the key to the next rendezvous point. "Bloodied streets" was a code for an ambush in the coming days. And the phrase "rise, rise, rise to the call" was an encrypted directive for those still behind enemy lines, telling them to make their move.
Pawel exhaled, his hands trembling slightly from the weight of what he’d just sent. The broadcast crackled with static for a moment, then fell silent.
“Do you think they’ll get it?” Marek asked quietly, watching him from across the room.
“They’ll get it,” Pawel replied, his voice steady, but his eyes clouded with the weight of uncertainty. “But it’s not just the message. It’s the timing. We’re running out of time.”
He stood up, grabbing his rifle. He could hear the distant rumble of incoming artillery. Another wave was coming.
Marek placed a hand on his shoulder. “Good work. Now let’s see if the storm clears before the next one hits.”
Pawel nodded. He didn’t answer. He knew there was no turning back now. The battle was no longer just a physical war—it was a war fought with words, music, and every secret coded message he could send. It was the only way they could win.
And with that, he stepped out into the chaos once again, the sound of his song still echoing in his mind.
Pawel’s fingers trembled as he connected the final wires to the makeshift transmitter. The world outside the small, dimly lit bunker was crumbling, but within these walls, a different kind of weapon was being prepared—one that had already proven to be a silent, invisible force in the ongoing war.
The transmitter hummed with power, the crackle of static filling the air, as Pawel adjusted the frequencies. His mind raced as he rehearsed the message he’d just composed—the song that would be sent across the airwaves, a message embedded within music, disguised as a call to arms but layered with orders, secrets, and coordinates.
"Ready?" Marek’s voice cut through the tension, his eyes scanning the battlefield outside, though his focus never fully left Pawel. He was aware of the weight of this broadcast. If it succeeded, it could change the course of the resistance. If it failed, their position could be compromised.
Pawel nodded without a word. He had no time for doubt. The song was ready, and it had to go out now.
The dim light of the bunker flickered as Pawel flicked a switch, and the transmitter's hum grew louder. The room seemed to hold its breath. His hands moved over the guitar, his fingers stretching for the familiar chords. Each note was deliberate, each strum carried the weight of the lives depending on it.
Marek stood by the door, watching as Pawel began to play. The first few notes filled the space, trembling in the air like the first signs of an approaching storm.
The radio crackled to life, and then came Pawel’s voice, rough and raw but steady, cutting through the static.
Flares in the night, but we still walk the streets,
Treading the line where the fighters meet.
No retreat, no surrender, no fear of the dark,
Our souls set ablaze by the rebel spark.
The song flowed from him, the music carrying the weight of more than just defiance—it carried a message of resistance. To those who knew how to listen, the lyrics held the map of where to strike, which allies to trust, which paths to take.
The broadcast was short—barely three minutes—but every second was packed with meaning. Pawel’s words weren’t just a rallying cry; they were orders hidden in the rhythm, directions encoded into the melody.
Through shattered glass and bloodied streets,
We march to the rhythm of heartbeats.
Smoke in the air, but we hold our ground,
In the silence of war, the truth is found.
As he strummed the final chords, the words slipped from his mouth like a final prayer.
So we rise, rise, rise to the call,
Stand together, one and all.
When the dust settles, we’ll still be here,
The sound of freedom, far and near.
The last note hung in the air like a challenge, a promise, a spark waiting to ignite.
Pawel’s hand hovered over the transmitter as he stared at the receiver, waiting for the static to clear. His mind raced with the implications of what he had just done. The message was out there, somewhere, between the cracks of frequencies and the hum of the radio waves. It would be heard, even if it took time. He had embedded too much in it for it to go unnoticed.
Marek approached, watching the dial on the radio receiver. It blinked, paused, then flickered to life.
“It’s out there,” Marek said, his voice steady but with a hint of relief. “Now we wait.”
Pawel exhaled slowly, his muscles tight from the strain. “Now we wait,” he repeated, but inside, a storm of thoughts churned. The broadcast was only the beginning. The enemy would listen, they would try to decode it, but they wouldn’t understand—not unless they knew exactly how to read it. And those who did would be the ones fighting in the streets, the ones pushing forward, the ones who would hold the line.
The hum of the radio faded into a gentle static, and for a moment, there was only silence.
Meanwhile, in the distant city, Ellie sat in the back of the small cabin, the hum of the plane vibrating beneath her. She had caught the faintest hint of something unusual on her radio earlier—a song, something familiar yet foreign. She couldn’t quite place it. But there was something about it, something in the melody that made her heart race.
Her mind was still fixed on the earlier broadcast she had intercepted. She had tried to trace it, to find any clue that would lead her back to the voice that had sung her name, the voice she couldn’t forget.
But now, as she leaned back in her seat, the sounds of the world outside fading, she could almost feel the weight of the message—though she hadn’t yet realized the full meaning of it. She had only picked up fragments, pieces of something far more significant than a simple song.
The radio crackled again, and Ellie’s breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t just static anymore.
And then, there it was—another broadcast. This time, the voice she had been searching for.
The music hit her ears, but it was different this time. It wasn’t the same as the first song, but the tone, the cadence, it was unmistakable. The lyrics, though vague to the casual listener, felt like a directive. The familiarity of the voice caught her completely off guard.
She listened, her hand hovering over the dials.
We rise, rise, rise to the call,
Stand together, one and all.
Her heart beat faster as she processed the lyrics. It was the same voice. The one she had heard before. But this time, it wasn’t just a love song or a cry of rebellion—it was something more. A call. A message.
Ellie’s fingers gripped the armrest, her thoughts spinning. She didn’t know who this man was, but she knew he was somehow tied to the resistance, to the war. And now, she was certain of one thing.
She was closer to understanding the truth. But what would that truth cost her?
As the broadcast ended, the radio fell silent, and Ellie leaned forward, her mind buzzing with the mystery she had only begun to unravel.
The broadcast spread like wildfire through the resistance networks, its encrypted layers slowly unfurling among those who had the skills to decode it. Pawel’s song had not only served as a rallying cry, it had become the heart of a new kind of warfare—one that didn’t rely on guns or tanks, but on subtlety, precision, and the intricate dance of information.
In the dark corners of makeshift safe houses and abandoned buildings, rebels huddled around radios, clinging to every word, every note. A subtle hum filled the rooms as a growing group of trusted individuals gathered the pieces of Pawel’s message, piecing together the encrypted orders.
"Push west by the second moon," one part of the message decoded. "Coordinates confirmed at the factory. Zero hour at midnight."
"Prepare for a heavy push near the southern district," said another rebel, reading the coded lines aloud, the significance of Pawel’s melody heavy in his voice. "We’ll meet at the bridge, east end. Trust no one but the marked."
The instructions were clear but veiled in the fluid rhythms of a love song, making it nearly impossible for the enemy to discern the meaning unless they were intimately familiar with the code. For Pawel, the layers were second nature. But for the resistance, it was the lifeblood of survival—an invisible thread running through every movement, every strike, every retreat.
XXI
The broadcast spread like wildfire through the resistance networks, its encrypted layers slowly unfurling among those who had the skills to decode it. Pawel’s song had not only served as a rallying cry, it had become the heart of a new kind of warfare—one that didn’t rely on guns or tanks, but on subtlety, precision, and the intricate dance of information.
In the dark corners of makeshift safe houses and abandoned buildings, rebels huddled around radios, clinging to every word, every note. A subtle hum filled the rooms as a growing group of trusted individuals gathered the pieces of Pawel’s message, piecing together the encrypted orders.
"Push west by the second moon," one part of the message decoded. "Coordinates confirmed at the factory. Zero hour at midnight."
"Prepare for a heavy push near the southern district," said another rebel, reading the coded lines aloud, the significance of Pawel’s melody heavy in his voice. "We’ll meet at the bridge, east end. Trust no one but the marked."
The instructions were clear but veiled in the fluid rhythms of a love song, making it nearly impossible for the enemy to discern the meaning unless they were intimately familiar with the code. For Pawel, the layers were second nature. But for the resistance, it was the lifeblood of survival—an invisible thread running through every movement, every strike, every retreat.
Meanwhile, in a remote bunker, Eduard Cardel, leader of the National Salvation Front, stood before a radio transmission device, listening intently as the song crackled through the speakers. His face was hard, unmoving, but his mind raced. He had always known the power of information, but this—this was something different.
"Pawel’s done it again," he muttered under his breath, a mix of admiration and wariness in his voice. "The enemy still doesn’t understand. But we do."
Marek, who stood by his side, glanced over at him. "We need to act fast," he said, his eyes scanning the room. "The longer we wait, the harder it will be to maintain the secrecy. The enemy’s scrambling to decrypt these messages."
Eduard nodded. "Then we move. Prepare the fighters. Start the operation at dawn." He paused, tapping his fingers on the table, eyes narrowing as he listened to the song again, allowing the words to settle in his mind. "We’ll strike at the heart. The capital will be ours before the next broadcast."
Back in the rebel’s underground quarters, the message continued to spread like wildfire. As Pawel’s song echoed across the airwaves, Ellie was listening once more, her heart racing. She had been on the edge of her seat when she first heard the familiar voice, but now, after hearing it again, there was an unsettling realization creeping in.
This wasn’t just music. It wasn’t a simple broadcast. The man behind the voice—Pawel—was part of something far larger. Something far more dangerous.
But what was his endgame? She had to know more.
In her hotel room, Ellie fumbled for her phone, checking the latest updates. There were reports, scattered stories, fragmented news from both sides. The capital was on the verge of collapse. The streets were filling with chaos. And now, Pawel’s song was more than a whisper on the wind—it had become the signal that set everything in motion.
Ellie rubbed her eyes, fatigue seeping through her. The pieces of the puzzle were scattered, but she couldn’t stop herself from trying to put them together. The voice, the message, the strange sense of intimacy she felt when listening—it was clear that Pawel was no mere rebel. He was a figure of great significance, leading from behind the lines with his music as both shield and sword.
"Why me?" she muttered to herself, almost wishing the static would offer an answer. But as usual, there was nothing but silence.
The frontlines grew fiercer as night descended. Rebel fighters moved in the shadows, following the instructions given in Pawel’s song—each step calculated, each move precise. In the safe houses, eyes flickered between coded messages and rifles, fingers gripping radios tightly as they waited for the next song, the next message, the next directive.
It was a strange kind of warfare. Where the enemy sent in their jets and troops, the National Salvation Front sent in their broadcasts. Each song, each broadcast, became more than just a piece of music. It was a weapon. A call to arms. A lifeline.
But the enemy was beginning to notice. Though the songs were still largely ignored by the larger military forces, there were whispers in high places. In the streets, murmurs began to circulate. Who was the man behind the song? Why was his voice so familiar?
The message had spread to the furthest corners of the occupied territories, like a wildfire, impossible to control, impossible to snuff out. For every rebel who sang it under their breath in the dark, there were those who listened and understood it.
And there were those, too, who were still far from ready. Those who had yet to hear it. But soon, they would.
Hours passed. The resistance moved swiftly, each step synchronized with the song’s cryptic instructions. Even in the heart of enemy-controlled territory, rebel fighters infiltrated, prepared for their final stand. Pawel, still hidden in the heart of the occupied city, stayed focused. His fingers grazed the strings of his guitar once more, composing the next song, the next coded message. He didn’t know when it would be needed, but he knew it would be. The battle was far from over, and the transmission of truth would continue until the day of liberation.
The enemy, unaware of the growing tide, would soon find themselves outflanked—caught not by bombs or bullets, but by a song.
Ellie sat cross-legged on the bed in her hotel room, her fingers drumming nervously on the edge of the nightstand. The shortwave radio was still on, the familiar crackle of static filling the air. But it wasn’t just the noise she was listening for—it was the voice, the one that had haunted her thoughts ever since she first heard it.
She had written down the lyrics, word for word, after each broadcast. At first, it had seemed like an innocuous thing to do, a way to pass the time while waiting for the flight crew’s next orders. But as the songs continued to play, the lyrics seemed to speak to something deeper—something that tethered her to them.
The voice had been oddly familiar, like it was calling out to her, even though she couldn’t place it. And the words—they weren’t just random musings of a war-torn soul. They were too specific, too layered. Each phrase felt like a thread, one that would unravel the mystery of the person behind it.
“Push west by the second moon…” She had written it down so many times that the words had started to feel like a puzzle, something she had to solve. She flipped through the small notebook she kept, its pages filled with meticulous notes, piecing together every song she had heard.
“You kissed me as the orders stalled…”
“One said ‘freedom,’ one said ‘you.’”
Ellie paused and traced the words with her pen, her mind racing. The more she thought about it, the more it felt like someone was speaking directly to her—someone who knew her, but from where? The words weren’t just about love or rebellion. They were about survival, secrecy, and sacrifice.
She leaned back, staring at the ceiling, her mind wandering. Was it possible? Could someone have written a song that meant so much, yet was so difficult to decode unless you knew what to look for? That’s when it hit her: the person behind these lyrics—this voice—had to be involved in something far larger than just a resistance movement. This wasn’t a simple cry for help or a love letter written on the back of a war-torn landscape. No, it was a code.
A code for those who were willing to hear it. A code meant for rebels and resistance fighters who had the patience and the skill to decode the hidden message. Ellie had heard it—the subtle hints woven into the melodies. The references to places she didn’t recognize, the times that felt deliberate, the phrases that were too cryptic to make sense without context.
But there was something else—a feeling she couldn’t shake. As she sat there, staring at the pages, a sinking feeling tugged at her. Was she just another piece in this game? Was she being drawn into something far beyond her understanding?
Her phone buzzed. She glanced down, blinking as the screen lit up. A message from an anonymous number.
“Time’s running out. Listen closely.”
Her pulse quickened. She had no idea who this was from, but the message felt too personal to ignore. Could it be related to the songs? Was someone warning her, or was this just another layer in the ever-growing mystery surrounding the broadcasts?
She pushed the thought aside for now. There was no time for hesitation.
Turning back to the notebook, she began writing again, her pen moving more quickly now. Every song, every note, every lyric felt like a breadcrumb leading her deeper into a dark and dangerous game. She didn’t know what role she was playing yet, but she could feel the weight of it—this strange, unspoken connection to the man whose voice had haunted her.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the heart of the battlefield, Pawel was preparing his next broadcast. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he adjusted the wires of his makeshift radio transmitter. His hands trembled slightly, the weight of the moment pressing down on him. The National Salvation Front was on the brink of a critical battle, and he had no choice but to communicate the next move in the only way he knew how.
He reached for his guitar, fingers brushing the strings before he started strumming softly. The music was more than just a tune—it was a message, one that only a few could decipher. He knew the stakes. The transmission would be intercepted. It always was. But the question was: would they understand it?
“Behind Dom 2, the leaflets flew…”
He began singing softly to himself, the lyrics coming easily as if they had been waiting for him to write them. The melody matched the urgency of the moment, each line a coded message, each word a deliberate choice.
His mind raced, thinking of the resistance, thinking of the rebels who would be listening. They needed these instructions—these carefully laid out plans—so they could continue their fight.
He paused, taking a deep breath, before strumming the first chord again. His fingers worked over the strings in a practiced dance, every note a thread woven into the song. As the words poured out, he knew they would be understood—by the right people, at least.
He didn’t know who would be listening. He didn’t know where his message would land. But he knew it would find its way to the rebels, those who understood what the music truly meant.
Just as the transmission was ready to go, Pawel’s fingers hovered over the microphone. He looked up briefly, his eyes narrowing as he imagined the faces of those who would hear his voice—people like Ellie, perhaps, people whose lives were bound to this conflict in ways they didn’t even realize.
With a final glance toward the small radio transmitter, Pawel spoke into the mic, his voice low but determined:
“Love in a time of coup d'etat… we’ll meet at the bridge. Don’t trust anyone but those with the mark. Midnight, zero hour. Push west.”
Then, he pressed the button, sending the song out into the airwaves, hoping it would reach the right people. He didn’t know if anyone would hear it, but he had to trust that the code would find its mark.
Ellie sat in her hotel room, her heart pounding as the familiar voice came through the static once again. This time, it was clearer, sharper. And the message felt even more urgent. She scribbled down the lyrics quickly, her pen almost racing to keep up.
There was a bridge. Midnight. A push to the west.
The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place, but Ellie was still no closer to understanding who the man behind the voice was. She had heard enough to know that Pawel was more than just a resistance fighter. He was something else—someone who could orchestrate a war through a song.
And somehow, someway, she had to be a part of this.
The radios had been dead for hours.
Not silent—just static, like the sound of a blizzard rolling endlessly through cables and dust. Down in the concrete shelter beneath what used to be a university printing press, Pawel sat hunched beside a battered field transmitter, its antenna barely peeking through the bomb-damaged ceiling above. The smell of ash and solder clung to the air.
Outside, the city was a warzone.
Inside, it was time.
Marek had spoken with urgency before disappearing back to the front: “One more. Keep it laced. Bridge at zero hour. If they don’t hear it, they won’t know when to move.”
And so Pawel worked quickly, fingers blackened from graphite and grease. He scribbled, then strummed. Erased, then hummed. The guitar’s neck was chipped, its strings worn thin—but its voice still carried. That was all that mattered.
He didn’t write for charts anymore. He wrote like a spy in love, like a man on the run, like a poet disguised as a courier.
At 23:48, he pressed the record switch.
The transmitter clicked. The reel spun.
And his voice—soft, graveled, certain—broke the silence.
"Bridge at Zero Hour"
Verse 1
Smoke rolled down from Saint Florian's gate,
You kissed me once and said, “Too late.”
The map was folded in your hand,
With marks they’d never understand.
Whispers by the checkpoint wall,
"North at midnight" — you said it all.
But lips said love and eyes said run,
So I stayed until the job was done.
Chorus
Love beneath the siren sky,
Red stars falling, reasons why.
We moved in chords, in static dreams,
Through alleys locked in wartime seams.
You carved our route into my mind—
Now it’s yours to find.
Bridge at zero hour, love... don’t fall behind.
Verse 2
I left the tape beneath the stair,
At Dom 2’s east—no one there.
A black scarf tied to signal clear,
October's not done—not this year.
You turned once near Platform Three,
Shadowed by a crooked tree.
No names, no flags, just codes in tune,
Broadcasting truth before it’s too soon.
Chorus
Love beneath the siren sky,
Red stars falling, reasons why.
Pages burn, but not this line—
"Turn east and count to ninety-nine."
You carved our fate in broken rhyme,
Now hold the line—
Bridge at zero hour, love… it's time.
Bridge (encoded)
(“Zero hour. 00:00. Meet by Florian. Cross at the second bell. The route is drawn. Dom 2. East stairwell. M-9 listening.”)
(“Zero hour. 00:00. Meet by Florian. Cross at the second bell. The route is drawn. Dom 2. East stairwell. M-9 listening.”)
We sang in silence, footfalls tight,
Through cratered streets, into the night.
And if they jam this final sound—
Remember what we found.
Final Chorus
Love beneath the siren sky,
Still we sing though wires lie.
If you’re out there and still free—
Mark the code, repeat to me:
“We cross when clocks and silence rhyme.”
Bridge at zero hour, love... it’s time.
As the last chord echoed into tape and signal, Pawel sat back, winded. Not from the singing—but from the weight of it. From knowing what would come next.
Within minutes, the broadcast began pulsing out through low-frequency bands. Tape decks in bunkers, radios stashed in rubble, handheld receivers hidden in overcoats—all caught the song. Rebels would know. Couriers would understand. The message was buried in metaphor, yet clear enough for those trained to listen.
He didn’t know if Ellie would hear it. He didn’t know if the codes would hold.
But the signal was live.
Somewhere out there, someone would move when the clock struck zero.
And maybe, just maybe, someone would still call it a love song.
XXII
The rebel safehouse wasn’t much—just a crumbling tenement nestled between two bombed-out apartment blocks in southern Charmelsberg. Faint light flickered from a kerosene lamp, casting long shadows against maps on the wall and discarded shell casings on the floor. Outside, the muffled sounds of distant shelling echoed through the rain-streaked alleys.
Inside, Pawel sat alone, back against the cold wall, his guitar lying across his lap like an old friend. The room smelled of oil, wet concrete, and something else—memory.
He had just returned from the last field transmission. His throat was hoarse. The tape was safe. But his hands shook—not from fear. From remembering.
Before the first checkpoint, before the crackdowns, before anyone whispered the name Eduard Cardel outside a locked door, there had been a girl on a train platform.
Ellie.
Her name even then had rolled like soft thunder through his mind.
They met years back, when the republic still limped along under its velvet-shaded decay. He’d been a university student, smuggling banned books in his coat. She’d been a junior attendant, still fresh to flying, eyes full of the world, and voice full of questions.
They talked about poetry once—no politics, just verses and wind.
She’d said it offhandedly. “I have a boyfriend, by the way. He’s a diplomat’s son. It’s nothing, really—we’re both always traveling.” She had smiled that sad little smile she wore when she tried to make distance feel like freedom.
Pawel had nodded then, said nothing. But it stayed with him.
Now, in the dark, his fingers plucked a slow chord. Not for transmission. Just to feel.
That conversation had turned to poems, then poems to fragments, and fragments to lyrics. He’d written obsessively after that. Not out of jealousy—no, it was something else. A hunger. A desire to capture that feeling of being seen and unseen all at once.
In the years that followed, when everything turned to smoke and slogans, those old pages became more than memory. They became code.
And now, even as mortar fire crackled like thunder in the north district, he found himself murmuring her name under his breath—like the opening line of an old song.
Behind him, a fellow partisan entered the room quietly. "We’ve got five minutes till the next relay,” the young man said. “You ready?”
Pawel stood, adjusted his coat, and picked up the battered transmitter.
He was always ready, now.
But sometimes, in the silent seconds between broadcast and reception, he still thought of that train platform. Of the girl who liked old verses. Of the boy who began writing them the moment she said she had someone else.
He didn’t write them out of hope. He wrote them because, back then, it was the only way to speak without speaking.
And now? Now he wrote because the revolution depended on it.
But the feelings? They never really left.
Pawel, as he recalled the time he remembers how Ellie said about she having a boyfriend, wrote and spoke through the radio:
The winds of winter have passed,
But the cold still clings to me,
A silent reminder that time doesn’t heal all wounds.
And in my chest,
An ache that never fades,
Like the petals of cherry blossoms,
Falling too soon,
Before they ever fully bloomed.
I stood beneath the tree,
Watching them scatter,
These fleeting things of beauty,
Like our moments together—
So brief,
So fragile,
And yet, I held on to them
With a desperation I never knew I had.
I thought I could catch them,
But they slipped through my fingers,
And I was left with only the memory of their color.
You were always there—
But always just out of reach.
I was a shadow at your side,
A quiet ache that grew louder with each passing day.
You never saw me the way I saw you,
Never saw the love that lingered in my eyes,
A love that bloomed,
But withered in the cold of your indifference.
I was never the one you needed.
Not the one you wanted.
I knew it,
And still, I stayed.
I stayed as the cherry blossoms fell,
Each petal a promise that went unspoken,
A dream I never allowed myself to abandon.
You were always seeking something more,
Someone else to fill the spaces I couldn’t.
I tried to be enough,
Tried to make you see me the way I saw you.
But I was only a shadow,
And the light never reached me.
Now, I stand here,
And I feel the loss of it all,
Of what we could have been,
Of what I thought we could be,
But you never felt the same.
I watched you turn away,
And I learned to let go—
Though the ache remains,
Like the memory of blossoms that never had their season.
The cherry blossoms are soon to gone,
Their pink soon fading into the wind.
And I wonder if you ever felt the same,
If you ever saw me the way I saw you,
Or if I was just another fleeting part of your life—
A footnote,
A passing season that you left behind.
So here I am,
Folding my heart away like a letter never sent.
You’ll never know the weight of these words,
These things I’ve carried in silence,
Because you’ll never see me as I truly am—
Just a man,
Nothing beneath the rose-colored sky,
Wishing for what could have bloomed
If only you had let it.
The voice came through the battered transmitter like a whisper crawling out of the wreckage—weathered, low, and trembling with a pain too personal for the usual rebellion broadcasts. No encryption. No signals. No coordinates. Just a man’s heart, folded open for a world that didn’t know him.
Pawel leaned into the mic, his breath steady but his hands clenched at the paper. Around him, the resistance cell crouched in silence—some polishing rifles, some rewinding cassettes—but they all paused when his voice cracked slightly on the second stanza.
This one wasn’t for orders.
This one, wasn’t a mission.
It was a song that bore no instructions, no maps in metaphor, no trigger phrases or meeting spots. And that’s what made it dangerous—because it was real. Because it was raw.
The poem spilled out like something long restrained, scrawled across a torn field report, verses scribbled in the margins where maps and numbers should have been. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but the memory had crawled up from somewhere deep.
He remembered the spring before the war.
The quiet moment under the train station canopy.
Her laugh when he got the drink order wrong.
Her voice, saying casually: “I have a boyfriend, but I still think you’re funny.”
It wasn’t cruel. Just factual. But it became a wound he wore like a hidden medal. A quiet, private defeat.
And now the war gave him every excuse to forget. But the heart remembers what the mind disarms.
So Pawel didn’t encrypt this one. He didn’t lace it with subtle instructions. Didn’t mask it behind rebellion metaphors or resistance poetry.
This time, he let it breathe.
And in the cold silence of the safehouse, as the static fell away, the rebels listened to their voice—their bard—speaking from a place deeper than strategy.
No one said a word.
Not even Marek, who usually insisted every broadcast pull double duty.
Because even revolutionaries understand heartbreak.
Meanwhile, High above in the air, on a night flight heading toward Saint Rochelle, Ellie sat alone in the crew jump seat, headset quietly tuned to the frequencies she’d learned to check whenever layovers brought her near resistance zones.
She wasn’t expecting much. A weather report. A military bulletin. The usual coded songs that she was slowly learning to transcribe, measure, match.
But this time, it wasn’t that.
This time, it was him.
She didn’t know the voice. Not personally. Not yet. But something in her knew—it was the same voice that had sung her name once in a lyric she didn’t think anyone else noticed.
And this wasn’t a message. This wasn’t about the frontlines or the fallback routes. It wasn’t for the others. This one was… different. Almost too personal to exist on the open air.
She sat up straighter. Transcribed every word. Each line heavy, human, and unfinished.
When it ended, Ellie found herself blinking against something sharp behind her eyes.
Not because she recognized the man behind the voice.
But because somewhere inside, she knew this wasn’t just a song.
It was a letter never sent.
And maybe—just maybe—it was meant for her.
XXIII
The static cracked like old vinyl, a war-weathered hum riding the waves of makeshift antennas—spliced wires, scavenged transceivers, batteries warmed in coat pockets to survive the chill of siege. Across Charmelsberg, from basements in Kalinagrad to the tunnels beneath the shattered tramlines of Volnaya, the rebels paused.
And then came the voice.
Not shouting orders.
Not the rattled rhythm of codes masked as rhyme.
Just him—Pawel. Soft. Bare. Unhidden.
“The winds of winter have passed,
But the cold still clings to me...”
It spread like a fire that didn’t burn—just warmed. In sniper nests, fighters lowered their scopes. In abandoned apartment blocks turned command hubs, scouts leaned closer to shortwave radios. Under heavy coats, resistance couriers closed their eyes for a moment too long, forgetting their fear just long enough to remember why they were still fighting.
Even Marek, who had stormed a dozen barricades and once told Pawel that love songs were “a luxury of a nation not yet free,” stood motionless beside the comms relay in Sector 7-B, jaw clenched. He said nothing. He didn’t have to.
It wasn’t a call to arms.
But it called to something deeper.
In the ruins of Svetlorad, where fire had eaten half the skyline and only rats dared cross open ground in daylight, two rebel medics crouched in a stairwell, listening through a receiver shaped like a child’s toy.
One of them, a girl no older than twenty-one, whispered:
“That’s him. That’s the one who wrote Checkpoint Three.”
The older one nodded. He didn’t need the encryption to understand it. Because for the first time, it wasn’t a battlefield broadcast. It was grief. It was memory. It was every love they didn’t get to keep.
And then, in a half-destroyed market square once bright with protest posters and now lined with body bags, a young man leaned against a wall, blood drying on his sleeve, a cigarette burning to the filter.
He said to no one:
“He loved someone. And she never loved him back.”
On the radio line to the southern units, a grizzled commander barked over the humming channel:
“Is this a diversion? A trick?”
But his second-in-command didn’t answer right away.
He was still listening.
Pawel’s voice—shaky, worn, defiant in its fragility—didn’t tell them where to go.
It told them why they’d never stopped.
Because sometimes you don’t fight just for victory.
You fight to survive the ache.
You fight for all the cherry blossoms that never bloomed.
And somewhere above the clouds, high in a pressurized cabin coasting eastward, Ellie felt the same heaviness press into her chest.
She didn’t know if it was about her.
But she knew what it felt like to be the ghost in someone else’s memory.
And for the first time in her quiet, dangerous double life as a flight attendant-courier, she folded the lyrics differently in her notebook.
Not just as code.
But as something she might want to remember even after the war. The broadcast was meant to be quiet—a whisper in the dark, the sound of a man folding grief into verse. But words, once spoken aloud, don’t stay still. They travel.
And in Sector Delta-5, amidst the soot-stained ruins of a workers’ district known once for its textile mills and now for its makeshift barricades, Unit 17—"The Forge"—heard the poem through a battered field radio.
They listened as Pawel’s voice cracked.
They heard the part about the cherry blossoms.
And when the final line faded into static, no one moved.
For a moment, it wasn’t a war.
It was personal.
But then came Nadia Revic, their unit lead—a former literature student turned guerrilla tactician—who stood up slowly from the oil drum fire, holding a cigarette she’d never lit.
She turned to her fighters—miners, students, defectors from the border guard—and said:
“You hear that? That’s our anthem now.”
Someone blinked. “A love poem?”
She didn’t flinch. “Exactly. You think war is just bullets and maps? No. This is the part they never understand. That it’s feeling that keeps us alive.”
Then she stepped toward the side of a crumbling factory wall, pulled a piece of white chalk from her jacket, and scrawled across the brick:
“You’ll never see me as I truly am.”
– The Cherry Blossom Line
Underneath it, she added the Forge's symbol—a rising anvil flanked by broken chains—and the date.
And just like that, The Cherry Blossom Line became something else.
Within days, others followed suit.
Graffiti appeared in alleys and bunker tunnels:
“Like petals falling too soon.”
“A shadow at your side.”
“Love that bloomed, but withered.”
Others sewed them into armbands.
One unit, the Eastern Kommandos of Svarog, even marched into their next street assault blasting a recorded version of the poem through salvaged PA speakers, their voices crying out over the verse:
"No one fights harder than the heartbroken."
They shouted it in cadence.
Like it was scripture.
Like it had been written for them.
Back at the frontline relay station, Marek—half-amused, half-exasperated—grunted when he heard the reports.
“We give them encrypted logistics, and they make an anthem out of a man’s heartbreak,” he muttered.
But Sonya, seated nearby, replied without looking up:
“And yet… look how they hold the line.”
Marek didn’t argue.
Because sometimes, in the kind of war no one was supposed to win, the most dangerous weapon wasn’t a bomb or bullet.
It was a feeling.
And Pawel—poor Pawel—had given them one they could fight for.
Even if it broke him to do it.
In a dimly lit command post beneath the collapsed shell of a courthouse in Kalinagrad’s Old Quarter, the underground war room of the National Salvation Front pulsed with tension. Maps riddled with pins, coded manifests, surveillance prints—all tacked to walls riddled with shrapnel holes.
A rusted radio speaker sat in the corner, mounted atop an old filing cabinet. It buzzed softly between frequencies until it caught a wave—clear, solemn, unmistakably raw.
Pawel's voice came through—slow, unraveling each verse like he was peeling layers off his own soul. The room hushed.
The poem played.
And it stayed.
Even after it ended, no one reached to turn off the static that followed.
At the head of the long table, flanked by candlelight and field reports, Eduard Cardel—Commander-General of the Front—leaned back in his creaking chair. His expression was hard to read, his sharp features cast in the glow of a kerosene lamp.
He listened without blinking.
When the final line faded into silence, Eduard tapped a finger against the tabletop—just once.
Then he spoke.
“He still writes like a man trying not to bleed.”
Marek, seated beside him, glanced up. “It wasn’t a code. He said that himself.”
“Doesn’t need to be,” Eduard said. “You think men charge through bullets for coordinates?”
He reached across the table and pulled a torn field report—one from Nadia Revic’s unit—already inked with the phrase: You’ll never see me as I truly am.
Eduard read it again, slowly, as if savoring it.
“We gave them manifestos,” he muttered, “and this boy gives them... myth.”
There was a strange, almost sorrowful pride in his voice. Not regret—Eduard had long shed that luxury—but something deeper. Something paternal.
He looked to Sonya, who stood near the comms table, arms crossed.
“Does he know the effect he’s having?”
Sonya shook her head. “I don’t think he writes for them, not really. He writes for her.”
“The flight attendant.” Eduard said.
She nodded. “Ellie Coralowa. She’s in position. Still sending reports. She writes the lyrics down.”
Eduard leaned forward, lacing his fingers.
“Then make sure he knows.”
“Knows what?” Sonya asked.
“That even heartbreak... can become a revolution.”
And as he said it, another low explosion shook the ceiling dust loose, and the radio crackled once more—voices passing codes, names shifting like shadows.
But somewhere in the city—somewhere in the crumbling remains of Saint Rochelle, Kalinagrad, Latvarska—
a verse was being memorized.
A wall was being painted.
And someone who had never met Pawel Cardel now marched memorizing his words like armor.
Because even Eduard Cardel, the iron-willed leader of a dying revolution, understood one thing—
Hearts break louder than bombs.
And in this war, that sound carried.
XXIV
Ellie sat on the narrow bunk in her overnight quarters, tucked into the upper floor of a requisitioned inn in Tarnovas, her flight route grounded for “weather” that everyone quietly understood meant more than fog. The room was modest—exposed beams, a chipped teacup by the window, and her suitcase sitting open on a cedar chair. The only sound, at first, was the low whirr of the portable shortwave tucked under her coat.
Then the poem came through.
She hadn’t expected it. The last few days had been relays of fragments—static-filled updates, half-coded directives embedded in harmless music. Nothing like this.
Not Pawel’s usual quiet cadence masked under metaphor, not a veiled instruction to a waiting cell.
This was raw. Personal.
She knew that voice.
Though he never named her.
Not directly.
Still, every line curled under her skin like a whisper once left unspoken between them—one she now couldn’t shake. It was him. And it was real.
“Like the petals of cherry blossoms,
Falling too soon,
Before they ever fully bloomed…”
Her hand trembled slightly as she gripped her pen. The page before her had already been scribbled full—flight schedules, checkpoint maps, three verses she’d lifted from a disc found in Saint Rochelle. But this one—this poem—she didn’t write it.
She listened.
Each word struck her in slow waves, memories flooding from places she had long closed off. Pawel in the rain with that broken camera. Pawel hiding a notebook when she walked into the coffeehouse. Pawel walking her to the tram and saying nothing as she left with someone else.
“You were always there—
But always just out of reach…”
She hadn’t known.
Or maybe she had—and pretended she didn’t.
And now he was out there, somewhere amid the craters and checkpoints, speaking verses into a radio she couldn’t even track, unsure if anyone would hear—never knowing she did.
She reached for the scarf folded in her bag. Not the airline-issued one, but the red one Pawel once gave her after that March protest they stumbled into by accident, years ago. The one she never wore, but also never threw away.
Ellie wrapped it around her fingers.
Her role had started small. Courier. Notes hidden in pamphlets. A tape passed in the heel of her uniform shoe. Smuggling out evidence of atrocities disguised as “maintenance logs.” But now—
Now something inside her shifted.
She wasn't just ferrying information anymore. She was carrying a person.
His voice.
His heart.
Maybe even his hope.
Ellie closed her eyes, the scarf pressed to her lips. Her breath trembled.
“You’ll never know the weight of these words…”
She whispered to the air, “But I do.”
And somewhere, beyond the checkpoints and ruins, through wind-scattered flyers and rebel graffiti, the last echoes of Pawel’s voice reached her again—not as a signal, not as a code—
But as truth.
The wind howled through the broken streets of Kalinagrad, weaving past gutted apartment blocks and shattered neon signs that once welcomed tourists from the Eastern Corridor. Smoke rose in thin ribbons from the shell-scarred rooftops, mingling with the pale dawn light. There was no mistaking it now—war had settled into the bones of the city, and its echoes reverberated through the walls, the rubble, and the whispered verses that no longer passed as just "music."
But the enemy was listening now.
“Find the voice,” the officer barked.
Colonel Miroslav Denev stood in the center of what had once been the Kalinagrad Broadcast Monitoring Station—now converted into a state-run intelligence nerve. His gloved hands gripped a paper printout of intercepted lyrics. His eyes scanned the lines like scripture etched in poison.
“The cherry blossoms are soon to gone,
Their pink soon fading into the wind…”
“Again,” he snapped.
The technician restarted the tape. The same voice hummed through the static—steady, calm, heartbreak laced into resistance.
They didn’t know his name.
They didn’t know where he broadcast from.
But they knew what he was doing.
The songs weren’t just rousing hearts—they were moving people. Across districts, behind siege lines, entire rebel pockets seemed to rise in sync with the cadence of his words. An abandoned tram tunnel near Sector V lit up in coordinated defiance. A barricade erected in minutes after a "ballad" played. A supply convoy ambushed on cue—as if a melody carried the timing.
“This isn’t a musician,” Denev growled. “It’s an insurgent conductor.”
He motioned to the radio intelligence team. “Sweep the lower bands again. He’s using a micro-transmitter or a rotating array. Narrow the triangulation window.”
Meanwhile, on the rebel side, in the shattered underground of Metro Line 3, Pawel hunched over a battered audio deck. Wires snaked around him like vines, patching together the last functioning rig they could muster. Sweat pooled under his collar despite the chill.
Beside him, a kid no older than sixteen—Jakub, with oil-streaked cheeks and a bandolier half-filled with blank cassette tapes—fed the backup generator with timed cranks.
“Signal check?” Pawel whispered.
“Coming through,” Jakub replied, “but they’re scanning hard now. They’re bouncing jammers off Sector 12 rooftops.”
Pawel nodded grimly. “Then we don’t have long.”
He slipped a fresh tape into the deck.
He didn’t bother labeling it.
Not with words.
Just a drawing—a single blossom, inked red.
Then he leaned into the mic.
“To those listening beyond the cordons— You are not alone. If you can hear this, you’ve survived. They think they can drown us out. But songs, like spring, return.”
And with that, the next coded poem began. Its title was only a whisper:
“The Orchard at Dusk.”
As his voice threaded through the ruins, across battered radios and smuggled tapes, the enemy swept the skies. Steel drones buzzed like hornets over alleyways, scanning rooftops for hidden rigs. But each time they neared, the signal was already gone—relayed, masked, cloaked in silence.
One minute in a basement.
The next, from a moving tram.
Like a ghost made of music.
And somewhere, in a civilian plane coasting high above the embattled East Corridor, Ellie caught a few stray words bleeding from the emergency band—
“…but if the orchard still stands,
meet me beneath the ninth tree.”
She pressed her headphones closer.
Somehow, she knew—
He was still out there.
XXV
In a makeshift radio station, Pawel again spoke a poem he wrote yesterday:
The war drums still echo
in the marrow of the earth—
but today,
the trees wear pink.
Like her kimono,
folded gently at the waist,
sleeves trailing like thoughts
she never spoke aloud.
I remember her most in spring.
Not for her smile,
but the way she stood still
beneath the cherry tree,
as if she could hold the world
together
just by being quiet in it.
Men bled in the alleys,
names were erased from ledgers,
the sky cracked with gunfire—
and she wore that silk
like defiance.
Like grief turned delicate.
Like a flag that meant nothing
but was still worth waving.
I have seen too much death
to write about peace.
But I have seen her too—
and so I write.
She walked through ruin
as if untouched,
and maybe that was her curse—
or mine.
To survive
and carry the scent of her perfume
long after the blood had dried.
There are uniforms in the gutters now.
Statues toppled,
names rewritten,
but still—
the blossoms bloom.
And every time I see one fall,
I see the way she once looked at me,
not with love,
but with knowing.
I was a poet.
She was the poem
the war never deserved.
So let the pink return.
Let it drape across the branches,
across her memory,
like that kimono I never untied.
Let it bloom again,
and again,
even as the world forgets us.
I’ll remember.
Even if it breaks me.
The old tape player clicked to life.
Static sputtered across the airwaves—thick, erratic—but just under the veil of electrical noise, Pawel's voice came through. His tone was slower this time, heavier. Not for encoding. Not for directives or rendezvous. But something that ached even more deeply.
This time, it was for her.
“The war drums still echo
in the marrow of the earth—
but today,
the trees wear pink...”
In a shadowed corner of a collapsed factory turned field outpost, Eduard Cardel, head of the National Salvation Front, paused mid-conference. The generals and commissars leaned in. They’d been debating the enemy’s push toward Sector 6, the bombing of the Marinovka Flats, and the upcoming supply run from Velokhiv.
But they stopped.
The room hushed as Pawel's voice crackled softly from a handheld receiver held by one of the younger fighters. No one ordered silence. They simply fell into it—compelled, like monks listening to scripture that shouldn’t exist but somehow did.
Even Marek, the grizzled tactician of the Front, muttered, “He’s doing it again…”
“She walked through ruin
as if untouched,
and maybe that was her curse—
or mine.”
Outside, in the wrecked avenues of Kalinagrad, fire still raged. Tanks lumbered past scorched tram lines. The enemy circled closer to what they believed to be the location of the rebel broadcast—the elusive signal that eluded them at every turn. But they didn’t know what they were chasing anymore. A transmitter? A person? A myth?
Or a feeling?
“There are uniforms in the gutters now.
Statues toppled,
names rewritten,
but still—
the blossoms bloom.”
Across the resistance lines, in tunnels, bomb shelters, and smoke-stained apartments with broken glass in the window frames, people listened. Some with tears. Others in silence. But all of them understood: this wasn’t just poetry.
It was memory. It was survival.
It was everything that remained when the world tried to forget them.
Meanwhile… miles away, somewhere over Saint Rochelle airspace, Ellie sat in a half-lit breakroom aboard the connecting flight to Velvarska. The hum of the aircraft was constant, the conversation of flight crew and passengers muted behind the thin curtain.
She had borrowed a portable shortwave receiver from an old mechanic on the tarmac—said it “picks up fragments sometimes, poetry mostly, not worth much but keeps the quiet out.”
It was worth everything.
Because in that moment, Pawel's words pierced the cabin’s stillness.
“I was a poet.
She was the poem
the war never deserved.”
Her breath caught.
She didn’t know the name. Not yet. But the rhythm, the aching edge of beauty stitched into grief—it was familiar. Terribly, heartbreakingly familiar.
She reached for her pen.
Every line, she wrote down.
Not just as a courier now—but as someone who sensed the truth behind every verse. This wasn’t just code.
This was him.
And though she hadn’t yet remembered his name… or placed the voice… something inside her whispered it:
“You knew him.”
And maybe he still knew her.
“Let it bloom again,
and again,
even as the world forgets us.
I’ll remember.
Even if it breaks me.”
The pink blossoms of spring meant nothing in war.
And yet, they still bloomed.
So would she.
Ellie looked out the small oval window of the galley door, the endless night above Charmelsberg reflecting faintly in the glass. Her hand still gripped the notepad, now half-filled with carefully copied verses from the radio’s crackling voice.
The plane cruised steadily above a continent at war, but her mind was far below—in streets she’d never walked, beside people she’d never met… and yet somehow felt bound to by fate and sound.
Her breath was quiet, her lips barely parted as the words escaped her, not quite meaning to be spoken:
"Why do I know you? Why does it feel like you wrote this... for me?"
There was no one around. Just the distant thrum of the engines and the faint shuffle of a steward in the rear. Still, the moment felt intimate. Heavy with unspoken memory. Like her voice was not alone.
She looked down at the last lines of the poem again.
I’ll remember.
Even if it breaks me.
Her fingers tightened around the paper.
"Then I’ll remember too." she whispered.
She didn’t yet know his name—not truly—but she knew the way he saw the world. And she had heard enough of war to know when someone was fighting through art, through sorrow, through love unspoken.
And somehow, she knew:
He was still alive.
Still writing.
Still waiting.
The cabin lights dimmed to a soft twilight hue as the passengers on her late-night flight drifted into shallow, airborne sleep. Ellie sat alone in the crew's jump seat near the galley, the silence pressing gently against her chest. Outside, the stars blinked faintly above the cloudline, but she didn’t notice. She was far from the stars. Her mind had retreated inward—toward a memory she tried not to carry.
It wasn’t the rebel poet's voice that haunted her now. It was his. The voice of the man who had said all the right things until they didn’t mean anything at all.
He was a diplomat. Polished. Suave. The kind of man who knew which wine to order and what stories to tell at banquets. They had met during her early international routes—back when she still believed there was a way to live her life as cleanly and simply as the pressed uniform she wore.
He had made her feel seen—at first. Heard. Intelligent. Beautiful. But only when it suited him.
She remembered the way he used to smile when she enjoyed drinking wine during rooftop parties.
He once told her, “Your world is too romantic. It has no place in mine.”
And then, just like that—he was gone.
Gone to another embassy.
Gone to another woman—a political attaché with fluent French and a pedigree.
He never even told Ellie directly.
Just a forwarded invitation to a gala... where the two of them would be publicly introduced as a couple.
She had flown two hours later, holding tears back behind a professional smile as she served tea and watched the clouds pass below like ashes from a quiet funeral.
Now, years later, Ellie exhaled sharply, as if to push him from her mind again. She regretted loving that diplomat, not because he left, but because he had made her doubt herself, shrink herself to fit in his world of diplomacy and deception.
And yet now—here she was again. Listening to words on a radio. Poetry scrawled between static.
But this time, the words didn’t make her feel small.
They made her feel seen.
She didn't know the poet's face, didn’t know where he hid or what name he gave to the night. But whoever he was, wherever he was… he remembered things she had almost forgotten about herself.
And maybe, just maybe—she had started to remember too.
Meanwhile, at the makeshift radio station buried beneath a collapsed school in the outskirts of Novi Rzeka, the room hummed with the quiet urgency of war.
They called it Station Krov—Blood Station—not because of violence, but because it had survived too many close calls, and too many had bled for the cables, the old antenna rig, the salvaged transmitter. The walls were lined with wool blankets to muffle the sound, and the equipment was held together with copper wire, cigarette filters, and hope.
Pawel sat before the microphone, shoulders hunched, eyes tired but burning with something deep—something personal. The lights flickered as a power cell strained, barely able to keep up. Around him, three other rebels worked in silence: splicing wires, marking maps, scribbling down intercepts. But when Pawel leaned toward the mic, all noise ceased.
His fingers trembled slightly as he pressed the broadcast key.
He hadn’t meant to write another one that night. Not after the last. But the words came anyway—born of silence and memory and smoke and a name he hadn’t said in years.
He didn’t even introduce it. He just spoke.
His voice was soft, gravel-edged, but unmistakably clear in the signal:
Let the pink become red—
if that means hope,
if that means the blossoms
can carry the weight
of what we could not save.
Let the petals sway by the wind,
gentle as breath—
but let them fall
onto soil soaked in blood,
and bloom brighter for it.
We were never promised peace.
Only memory.
Only the echo of her sleeves in motion,
the flicker of silk
as she turned from the smoke
without looking back.
They will say we fought for freedom.
They will say we died for ideals.
But I remember why I stayed.
Not for flags,
not for oaths,
but for the way she once touched my hand
as the city crumbled—
as if there was still something worth saving
in me.
There are new uniforms now.
New voices on the loudspeakers.
But beneath it all,
the same dirt,
the same river,
the same tree waiting to bloom.
\If history forgets her,
I will not.
If they write her out,
I will write her back in—
with ink,
with fire,
with whatever is left of me.
And if the petals must fall again
on this city of ghosts,
then let them fall crimson.
Let them rise like a banner
no regime can claim.
Let them whisper her name
on every breeze
that crosses the silence after war.
She was never mine.
But she was the moment
I knew beauty could survive
even here.
So I keep writing.
Not because I believe in peace.
But because I believe in her.
And because the blossoms
always come back—
even if they must drink
from the wounds of the world
to do so.
His voice reached across the old radio lines, leaping between ruined buildings, flickering over rusting transmitters and through sleeping checkpoints. It pierced the air like it didn’t ask permission to exist—it demanded to.
In the corner of the room, a young field medic stopped suturing a wound to listen. Across the city, an old partisan lit a cigarette with a shaking hand and tuned his battered shortwave set. Farther still, a group of young factory workers pressed around a jury-rigged speaker, wide-eyed.
We were never promised peace.
Only memory.
It wasn’t just a poem. It was a battle cry disguised as mourning. A message hidden in grief.
Eduard Cardel, deep within the old metro command center, heard it too. He didn’t speak after. Just stared at the radio for a moment, as if listening for something between the lines—some note that only someone like him, who had lost everything more than once, could hear.
Back in Station Krov, as Pawel finished the last verse, the radio tech across from him, a wiry woman with grease on her cheek, finally exhaled.
“You didn’t encode that one,” she said quietly.
“I wasn’t trying to,” Pawel answered. His hand still hovered near the mic, as if unsure whether to say more. “Some things are meant to be understood by the heart.”
Outside, the city roared again—distant shelling, then silence.
But even so, the message had gone out.
And across the bombed and bleeding land of Velomar, petals kept falling.
And people kept listening.
Ellie had just finished stowing the last of the service trays when the flicker of static brushed across the narrow receiver tucked inside her crew bag. She paused.
It had been silent for a while. A lull. The rebels were careful now. The transmissions came rarely, sometimes days apart, masked within noise, buried in obscure wavebands. But when they came—they came with weight.
She slipped away to the back galley, her hands steady with routine. Externally, she was just another stewardess on another midnight hop from Latvarska to Charmelsberg.
Internally, she was already bracing herself.
The voice crackled, rich with resolve. It wasn’t singing this time. It was something else—something raw.
Let the pink become red—
if that means hope,
if that means the blossoms
can carry the weight
of what we could not save…
She froze.
The words struck not like lightning, but like a tide—slow, powerful, and total.
As if someone had seen the inside of her soul, and wrote it into verses meant to be carried by wind, intercepted by satellites, whispered through iron walls.
Each line was more than poetry. It was history rewritten in real time, through memory and fire and silence.
And it wasn't just about war. It was about her.
She was never mine.
But she was the moment
I knew beauty could survive
even here.
Ellie leaned against the wall, eyes shut. Her breath caught in her throat. The galley light above her flickered, but she didn’t move.
He had said she—not you.
But something in her knew.
Knew that even if he didn’t mean her, he wrote with someone like her in mind.
Someone who walked away from ruins.
Someone who used to touch his hand while the world cracked open around them.
Someone whose memory he carried like a resistance banner stitched from cherry blossoms and regret.
She had no illusions.
Not anymore.
The diplomat she once loved had never said her name like that—not even in private, much less to a city trembling under siege.
But this poet, this stranger, this rebel voice...
He was writing with blood and longing.
And somewhere in those lines, she felt seen. Again.
Not as a mistake.
Not as the woman someone walked away from.
But as the reason someone kept fighting.
She opened her eyes and whispered to herself, almost without meaning to:
“He remembers me.”
The cabin intercom buzzed faintly in the distance. Duty called.
But Ellie didn’t move right away.
The poem still lingered, like smoke.
And somewhere over a sleeping country, she knew—someone was still writing.
And she would keep listening.
But unbeknownst to Pawel, the command also turned his poem into a coded message. Back in the underground metro tunnels, within the heart of the rebel command compound, Marek and Eduard Cardel sat with the others of the General Secretariat around a dusty table covered in radio logs, coded maps, and intercepted communiqués. The power flickered dimly above them, but their minds burned brighter than ever.
They had just listened in silence to Pawel's newest poem broadcast—his raw voice washing over the old speakers with every syllable soaked in longing, memory, and something deeper than grief.
Eduard didn’t look up right away. He tapped his fingers thoughtfully against a battered notebook, his other hand gripping a stub of pencil worn from strategy and secrets. Then he said, without turning his head:
“The pink becomes red. The petals sway. The city of ghosts.”
Marek raised his eyes, catching on. “He’s talking about movement. A shift. Petals as people—rising.”
“Exactly,” Eduard murmured. “He doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”
One of the younger operatives leaned forward, flipping through decoded phrasebooks and grid coordinates. “If we interpret ‘the petals’ as operative cells—he’s broadcasting a mobilization cue.”
The coded logic snapped together.
“Let the pink become red”
—harmless verse to most, but within the movement, it matched a long-standing cipher.
Red = readiness. Mobilization.
“Soil soaked in blood”
—confirmation of previous sabotage in Sector Delta.“Let them rise like a banner”
—coded directive: prepare banners, prepare march. Coordinate rally points.“Whisper her name on every breeze"
—her = code for Saint Rochelle operation, imminent movement through Dereluft.
Eduard gave a quiet chuckle—not of joy, but of understanding. “He thinks he’s mourning. But his grief speaks like a general.”
A moment passed before Marek finally said what they were all thinking:
“The poet became our oracle. Whether he knows it or not.”
They moved quickly. The communications team began retransmitting the poem—with embedded keywords now highlighted, modulated through pre-agreed static pulses and sound signatures. The field agents were listening. Every village with a hidden shortwave would hear it as more than just poetry.
Even as artillery rang out from the hills outside Novi Rzeka, the command began issuing silent instructions based on the poem's verses. Fighters quietly repositioned. Caches were unlocked. Silent operatives, disguised as workers and vendors, began traveling.
A new rally point was selected. They called it “the Cherry Tree.”
And Pawel—tucked in his makeshift broadcast station, unaware of the firestorm his words had set into motion—simply sat back and closed his eyes.
Still thinking about her.
Still thinking it was just a poem.
But across Velomar, the petals had begun to fall.
And the rebels were ready.
At first, Ellie had dismissed it all as atmospheric static—those late-night broadcasts on the fringes of the shortwave dial. She had long grown used to the sounds of far-off frequencies, random chimes, the clipped tones of flight beacons, and even the odd burst of morse. As a flight attendant crossing borders and air corridors, the radio was simply a traveler's lullaby. But then came the voice—quiet, resonant, uncertain at times, but never insincere.
It wasn't always a song. Sometimes it was poetry. Sometimes it sounded like a man remembering something he wasn't supposed to speak aloud. There was longing in it. There was loss. And once—just once—there had been her name.
That stopped her cold.
At first, she thought she had misheard it. A coincidence, maybe. “Ellie” wasn't uncommon. And yet, as she sat in her small hotel room in Kalinagrad, layover-bound and wide awake, she heard it again. Not shouted. Not sung. Just… spoken, like someone talking to a ghost. She told herself it was nothing. That the voice on the radio was some local troubadour, or an underground performer hiding behind signal noise. A leftover romantic with a knack for metaphors. “Pink like her kimono,” he had said. “She stood still beneath the tree.” Things that sounded like dreams, or memories, or heartbreaks stitched into poetry. Beautiful, but not useful.
Still, she wrote them down. Every word.
Ellie told herself it was just curiosity. A habit she picked up somewhere between jet lag and sleepless nights. But the notebook started filling up. Not just with lyrics and poems, but with questions:
Who is he?
Why are the signals faint but regular?
Why does the cadence sometimes follow the same rhythm as old intelligence reports?
And why do the poems reference streets and flowers and statues—as if someone is keeping track?
She didn’t know. But she wanted to.
She thought of that soft-spoken old man from the Dereluft flight to Kalinagrad. The one who had asked her if she remembered songs she didn’t mean to learn. He had looked at her—not like a stranger, but like someone confirming a theory.
And then came Sonya.
The woman in the café had approached Ellie not with suspicion, but with familiarity, as if she had seen her before—not her face, but her behavior. The careful way Ellie jotted notes while pretending to read a magazine. The way she lingered near radios. The way she asked about music, as though it mattered more than gossip or news.
"You will still do your work," Sonya had said, handing her a napkin folded into fourths. “But when you're not working—when you're in the city, or on layover—you'll listen. And you’ll carry what others cannot.”
Ellie had no illusions about what that meant. She wasn’t a soldier. She wasn’t even a proper spy. But somewhere along the way, she had become something else: a courier of memory. Of messages. Of quiet things carried between borders in the pages of her notebook.
And now, with every new broadcast, she listened more closely. Not just for the poetry, not even for the code. But for the person behind it.
The one who kept whispering to the wind.
And in every verse, she could feel it.
He was speaking to someone.
He was remembering.
And somehow, deep down, Ellie began to wonder—
was it her?
XXVI
The television in the airport lounge flickered between breaking headlines and sports reels. Most passengers were half-asleep, their attention stolen by phones or duty-free catalogs. But Ellie—her coat still damp from the Kalinagrad drizzle—stood still, watching the muted screen.
ACTUAL CAMERA (Deutsche Fernsehen World Service Broadcast) April 12 – 22:09 GMT
“Tension in Velomar”
[Clips of burning barricades. Fighter jets streaking across grey skies. Then: black-and-white footage of Eduard Cardel speaking at a ruined factory.]
Reporter (voice-over):
"In the war-torn cities of Velomar, what began as scattered resistance has become an organized movement—calling itself the National Salvation Front. Its leader, Eduard Cardel, once a minor poet and radio dramatist, now commands a growing insurgency against the interim government installed last autumn after the fall of the previous regime."
[Cut to an image of uniformed officers firing tear gas into a crowd.]
"Velomar’s capital remains divided, with key districts under rebel control. There are rumors that encrypted messages and poetry broadcast over shortwave are being used to coordinate guerrilla actions. The government has called these ‘acts of terror cloaked in lyricism.’ Others say they are songs of liberation."
[Footage of a dusty street: schoolchildren passing a wall painted with the words “THE BLOSSOMS RETURN” in crimson spray paint.]
The news cut to the Velomar Interior Ministry’s press secretary, stiff behind the podium, flanked by two silent military officers.
Press Secretary Boris Punyakov:
“We believe the so-called ‘poet-broadcaster’ is part of a disinformation cell, transmitting sedition from within occupied territories. These messages are designed to inflame unrest and sow confusion. But let me be clear—there will be no negotiations with terrorists.”
Then, another transition—
ARTE Europe Weekly – Paris Segment
"…Across Europe, opinion on the Velomarian conflict remains divided. In Prague, thousands marched in support of the National Salvation Front, waving cherry blossom branches and chanting verses allegedly quoted from rebel broadcasts. In contrast, officials in Berlin and Vienna have condemned the NSF’s tactics as ‘irresponsible romanticism masking violence.’"
[Cut to Czech demonstrators holding up signs reading “Poems are not crimes.”]
Back in her seat, Ellie sipped her weak airport coffee. She could feel the tension building—not just in the headlines, but in the very air. The codes, the songs, the whispers across frequencies—they weren’t rumors anymore.
They were being noticed.
She flipped through her worn notebook, eyes scanning verses transcribed during hotel nights, cross-referenced with flight logs and stopovers. The symbols had changed. Some verses mentioned bridges she had crossed. Others described places she now recognized. It was no longer anonymous.
The world was waking up to what Pawel and his comrades had been trying to say.
And somewhere in the static, between velvet syllables and rising revolution, Ellie understood something else too.
The poet wasn’t hiding anymore.
The war had found its voice.
And its echo was everywhere.
Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the contested zones of Velomar, under the remains of a collapsed commuter station-turned-shelter, Pawel hunched beside a shortwave console, headphones slung around his neck.
Static hummed in the background—then a ping, then clarity.
“…crimson petals… west ridge cleared at dawn… await further blossom.”
He let the code finish transmitting before speaking. It was just long enough to sound like poetry, but short enough for those who knew what to listen for.
But the command had gone further than he realized.
Unknown to Pawel, the central rebel command had begun encrypting full movements into his poems. His metaphors became directives. “Blossoms” meant reinforcements. “Pink sky” meant artillery prep. “Sleeves trailing” meant stealth movements. The symbolism had become language, the verse a cipher.
And while the enemy tried to decrypt the literal meanings, those with ears for poetry—couriers, dissidents, guerrillas in exile—already knew what to do.
In Saint Rochelle, in a dimly lit back room of an old cinema, three couriers huddled over a ream of printouts taken from intercepted broadcasts.
“It’s him again,” said one. “The Blossom Poet.”
“No,” said the woman with the scarf wrapped like a veil. “He’s more than that now. They’re using him to move people.”
A tap on the door.
A signal. Then, Sonya stepped in.
“You’ve heard the latest?” she asked. “The one about red petals.”
“That’s not just poetry,” Sonya replied. “It’s mobilization. Kalinagrad underground is waking up.”
Back at the airport hotel, Ellie was cross-referencing another page in her notebook, staring at a single stanza she couldn’t stop repeating to herself:
Let the pink become red—
if that means hope…
She had read it ten times. This time, it struck her differently. Not as heartbreak. Not as longing.
As instruction.
The pattern was becoming clearer. And yet, even more haunting was the idea that she might know the man behind it all—not just the voice or the verse, but the soul beneath it.
She ran her hand along the hotel room window, watching the rain blur the lights of the city. Somewhere, he was writing again.
And somewhere, men and women were listening with weapons at their side.
Ellie whispered to herself, “Who are you, really?”
Then: another transmission.
The signal was faint, buried under static, but the voice—warm, steady, and quietly aching—came through like a candle in the dark:
“This is for those still awake…”
Pawel’s voice.
And Ellie closed her eyes.
Not just to hear him.
But to remember him.
And to finally believe:
It had always been him.
The scene in Velomar was reminiscent of Grozny—terrifyingly so. The thunder of tanks echoed through shattered streets, steel beasts crawling across asphalt fractured by airstrikes and artillery. Apartment blocks, once painted in pastel hues, now stood like burnt-out husks with broken windows gaping like hollow eyes. Curtains flapped like surrender flags in the bitter wind, though no one inside had surrendered.
In the countryside, columns of armored vehicles churned up the thawing earth, moving like slow, inevitable avalanches toward towns that still resisted. Smoke from burned-out barns mingled with the spring air. Fields that once yielded grain now bristled with minefields and charred debris. Fleeing villagers trudged along muddy roads, pushing carts laden with pots, icons, and whatever fragments of their lives they could salvage.
Velomar was bleeding.
And the news knew it.
TeleTibet International broadcast a grim segment from its Lhasa studio:
“The situation in Velomar has reached a critical stage. Government forces, bolstered by foreign-trained mechanized units, have begun their final assault on rebel-held districts in Kalinagrad and Novi Rzeka. The National Salvation Front, however, continues to resist with improvised tactics, using urban terrain to their advantage.”
The screen flicked to grainy footage of a tank rolling over a boulevard. In the distance, a rooftop sniper ducked out of view.
Meanwhile, Actual Camera—a newsreel program known for its artistic, if occasionally surreal, war coverage—aired a black-and-white segment:
“From the east come images that chill the spine and stir memory,” the narrator intoned. “Velomar today is Grozny in 1995. Or Sarajevo in 1993. The sound of shells in Kalinagrad is identical, the terror universal. But this time, it is not a simple siege. It is the death-throes of a divided country trying to redefine itself through fire.”
Footage followed: masked fighters dashing across debris-strewn alleys, a child crying beside a collapsed tram station, rebels painting crude red stars on cracked walls.
“One hears the voice of a poet on the rebel broadcasts,” the voiceover added. “And while the shelling drowns many things, his words carry. They call him the ‘Blossom Poet.’ And his verses, it seems, move more than hearts.”
In Velomar, they moved people.
In every battered district, from bombed monasteries to flooded tenement basements, the rebel frequency played quietly. Not for morale alone, but for meaning. A whispered line here, a sudden metaphor there—each a breadcrumb in the dark.
And above it all, the cherry blossoms had begun to bloom. In some cities, they were crushed beneath treads. In others, they bloomed defiantly from untouched branches, unclaimed by any regime, flying no flag but their own quiet beauty.
Velomar would remember this spring.
Whether as tragedy or turning point—no one yet knew.
The makeshift studio was quiet save for the low hum of the equipment and the occasional crackle from the shortwave receiver. Pawel sat hunched over his notebook, fingers stained with ink, a half-finished poem forming beneath his hand. He had been struggling with the last lines—something about the river, something about forgetting—and the tension in his shoulders told him the words weren’t ready to come yet.
Then the burner phone buzzed.
It was an old, black plastic thing with worn keys and a scratched screen—meant to be disposable, untraceable. No ringtone, just vibration. He stared at it for a moment, then picked it up.
“Marek?” he asked.
A breath on the other end. Then a voice, hushed but direct.
“He wants to talk to you. Now.” Marek replied.
Pawel’s grip tightened. He stood, pacing slightly, looking at the battered walls of the broadcast shack. “Eduard?”
“Yes. Be ready.” Marek said.
There was a click, and then silence, before another voice came through. Calm, measured—weathered like granite.
“Pawel. This is Eduard Cardel.”
Even without introduction, Pawel would have recognized it. The tone had weight, like every word carried the burden of a hundred decisions, some that cost lives.
“The poem. The last one. ‘Let the pink become red.’ You remember?” Eduard asked.
Pawel swallowed. “Yes.”
“The message embedded in it… it worked." Eduard said. "Units in Sector 3 made the move. Government forces didn’t know what hit them.”
A pause.
“But it’s not just code anymore, Pawel." Eduard said. "People believe in your words. They follow your voice more than mine.”
Pawel stayed silent.
“We need another message. Something stronger. More direct. Still poetic—but a call this time. A spark. Can you do that?” Eduard asked.
Pawel looked back at his desk. At the half-finished poem. The battered microphone. The fading map on the wall, marked with lines and red Xs.
“Yes,” he said softly. “But if they’re listening…”
“They already are,” Eduard said. “So make it count.”
The line went dead.
And in the silence that followed, Pawel turned back to the microphone, hands trembling just enough to notice. He drew in a breath, the kind that filled his lungs with fear and memory and cherry blossoms that would never bloom the same again.
Then he began to write.
XXVII
Pawel then wrote this and sung with an electric piano:
Rain Delay, Gate 23
Verse 1
They called the delay at 5:03,
Said the storm won’t pass till after three.
The screens are flickering like old TV,
And I’m stuck here watching memory.
Her flight's been gone a day or two,
She left with sky on her shoes.
And me, I’m grounded, pacing slow,
Drinking coffee that’s long gone cold.
Verse 2
She said, “Don’t wait for me, not this time,”
But she packed the red scarf — that was the sign.
I saw it flash as she turned away,
Right before they called her gate.
No check-in left, no one to ask,
Just a weight behind my flask.
But if the rain holds out till night,
We light the fuse — then take flight.
Chorus
They think I’m waiting on a plane,
But I’m waiting for the signal flame.
One blink from tower, two from sea —
And we move beneath Gate 23.
Tell no one, bring what you can,
Meet me where the rain began.
Our time was lost — or so it seemed,
But war returns in weathered dreams.
Verse 3
An old man hums a marching song,
Baggage carts roll slow along.
They’ve cleared the wing of Flight 09 —
Which means the backline’s holding fine.
A girl with headphones taps her boots,
She’s not just here for transit routes.
She nods once when the loudspeaker hums —
That means tonight, when the baggage drums.
Final Chorus
So if you’re reading this too late,
Know we passed through checkpoint eight.
The clouds broke once, I saw her face —
Then lost her in the static haze.
She left her pin beside the screen —
That means: move quiet, eyes unseen.
And when the morning press won’t say,
You’ll know it started… in the rain.
The piano hummed in soft, haunting chords—minor key, deliberate. Pawel’s fingers drifted over the keys like the rain streaking down the rust-stained windows of the abandoned broadcast tower. His voice was quiet at first, weathered and raw, but it carried weight. He wasn't just singing.
He was telling a story.
A memory disguised as melody.
A plan cloaked in heartbreak.
A code wrapped in poetry.
As the final chorus faded, silence lingered on the airwaves longer than usual. Then came the static hum. Then—
“Broadcast complete,” said the technician, one of Marek’s people, pulling down the fader.
No one in the room spoke for a few moments. They didn’t have to.
The lyrics were more than a lament. The signals were buried in the verse—the scarf, the gate, the baggage drums, the nod. All of it carefully chosen. To those in the know, it meant a coordinated strike was coming. Gate 23 was code for an abandoned rail depot outside of Kalinagrad, used now as a rebel rendezvous. The pin beside the screen? Confirmation from a courier.
Across Velomar, rebels listening on shortwave sets in bombed-out basements and forest hideouts heard the message. Some wept quietly at the verses. Others began to move.
Meanwhile, in a hotel room above a shuttered café, Ellie leaned back in the desk chair, headphones on, her breath caught somewhere between the verse and the final line.
She whispered it aloud.
“You’ll know it started… in the rain.”
And for the first time, she realized—this wasn’t just longing.
This was a map.
A revolution set to melody.
And it began again tonight.
Ellie sat motionless as the last notes faded into static, the glow of the radio dial flickering against her cheek. Outside, the drizzle had returned, painting streaks across the glass like the echo of forgotten tears. Ellie stared, not at the street below, but through time — through memory.
“He knew I’d still be listening,” she said aloud, to no one.
A knock startled her — quick, soft, coded.
Three taps. Pause. Two. Then one.
She opened the door a crack. A woman slipped inside quickly, dripping rain and urgency. It was Sonya, her raincoat open just enough to show the patch of red thread stitched beneath the collar — resistance insignia.
“You heard it,” Sonya said, shaking off her umbrella. Not a question.
Ellie nodded slowly.
“I did. I caught it. All of it.”
She hesitated. “He… he sang about Gate 23.”
Sonya gave a quick glance out the hallway window, then pulled the curtain shut.
“That was the go-signal,” she said, lowering her voice. “They’re mobilizing. We’ve confirmed: units near Kalinagrad, Narodova, and the Seventh Circle outside Belraya are moving. The broadcast synced them all. Tonight, the perimeter shifts.”
Ellie’s chest tightened.
“It was poetry,” she murmured. “But it was war.”
Sonya smiled faintly. “That’s how Pawel works. He gives them beauty and arms them with meaning. He knows which verses hit where.”
Ellie walked to her open notebook — the one filled with half-scrawled lyrics and symbols she hadn’t fully understood. Until now.
She ran her fingers down the pages. So many lines. So many coded movements. How many men and women had acted because of what he’d sung?
“I used to think he was just… hurting,” she said. “Writing out of heartbreak.”
Sonya’s voice softened. “He was. That’s why it works. No one hides a blade better than someone who speaks of love.”
They shared a quiet moment.
“You’re on the move tonight,” Sonya finally said. “There’s a drop point near Terminal 4, under the old customs desk. You’ll carry to the pharmacy warehouse in Krasnova. They’ll know you by your airline badge.”
Ellie nodded. It was routine now — flying by day, passing notes and parts by night. But this felt different. Something had shifted.
“What if he dies out there?” Ellie asked suddenly. “What if I never see him again?”
Sonya paused, then placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Then the world would still remember him. Because you remember. And because every line he leaves behind makes sure they do.”
Ellie looked again at the rain tracing down the window.
And in it, she saw cherry blossoms.
And static.
And a scarf whipping in the wind as a gate closed.
“Then I’ll carry him,” she whispered.
And with that, she packed the pages, tucked her coat, and disappeared into the night — just as the first rebel shots echoed across Kalinagrad’s steel horizon.
Ellie froze just as she slid the last sheet of paper into the false-bottom case. A sound — too precise to be coincidence — echoed from the stairwell: heavy boots, deliberate and paired. She snapped the suitcase shut with a soft click, her pulse loud in her ears.
Outside, rain smeared the lights into long streaks on the wet pavement. But within the stairwell, shadows moved in formation.
Secret State Police.
Their long coats shimmered with faint moisture, black gloves clenched around folded documents and sidearms. One officer paused by the third floor landing. Another ran a hand along the railing, as if it might whisper secrets. They were close — too close.
Ellie looked to Sonya, who had already moved wordlessly into the bathroom. A practiced sweep of the hand pulled open the ventilation grate. She held it just long enough for Ellie to slip the papers in — not the whole case, but the contents that mattered: Pawel’s latest lyrics, her flight manifest with coded drop points, and a small red pin.
“Go out the front,” Sonya whispered. “Look tired. Look bored. You're a stewardess, annoyed about a reschedule. Complain about customs. Do not look back.”
Ellie gave a tight nod, smoothing her uniform, fixing the curl in her hair, checking her watch as if late for a shuttle.
Then — the knock at the door.
She counted a breath.
Opened it.
Two officers stood in the hallway. One older, with a scar under his right eye. The other, young, clipboard in hand. Their coats bore the insignia: the obsidian eagle over a broken laurel — Velomar’s Secret State Police, known only in whispers as the Black Branch.
“Your papers, Miss Coralowa,” the young one said without a smile.
She handed over her ID and airline certification, calmly.
“I’m on a layover,” she said, feigning irritation. “Flight 413 was diverted to Odelgrad. I’ve got six hours until I have to deal with the bureaucracy again. Can I help you?”
The older officer studied her.
“We’ve had reports of suspicious transmissions from this building. Rebel poetry. Code songs.”
Ellie arched a brow.
“Poetry?” she echoed, scoffing gently. “I fly coach in a metal tube with babies and stale peanuts. The only poetry I’ve heard lately is in the safety manual.”
The officers exchanged a glance.
The younger one scribbled something.
“If you notice anything out of place — strangers, voices from vacant rooms — report it immediately.” Said the officer.
“Of course,” she said. “Though if they’re rebels, I hope they’ve got better taste than broadcasting heartbreak over bad static.”
A faint smirk from the older one. He nodded once, and the pair moved on.
Ellie closed the door. Her knees almost buckled.
Sonya emerged from the bathroom, silent.
“That bought us time,” Ellie whispered.
“Not much,” Sonya replied. “But enough.”
The radio buzzed softly from the corner — an old war-era relic patched through wires and tape.
Ellie looked at it once more.
Then turned away.
She grabbed her flight bag, slipped the badge into place, and vanished into the stairwell — her footsteps light, steady, and heading straight into the storm that awaited at Gate 23.
XXVIII
The night was thick with the scent of rain and iron as Ellie stepped into the open, her heels clicking softly on the slick pavement. The chill nipped at her collar, and the neon of the tramway station flickered through a thin mist like a ghost trying to remember its shape.
She kept her head low, her flight bag slung neatly over one shoulder, blending into the stream of tired commuters, students, and shift workers waiting on the platform. A mother hushed a crying child. Somewhere, a vendor packed up newspapers with headlines screaming:
“REBELS ENCIRCLED IN THE WEST — SALVATION FRONT PUSHES INTO CITIES”
“CARDÉL DENOUNCES FOREIGN INTERFERENCE”
But Ellie was not reading. She was watching.
Every reflection in the tramway glass could be a watcher. Every unmarked coat, every man too still, too alert — a potential shadow from the Black Branch.
The digital board above blinked.
Tram 7 – Central Loop – 22:40
That was her tram. The one Pawel had once written about, in a song long before war swallowed the city:
“She left on Seven
with red sleeves and no goodbye,
And I stayed on the platform
learning what silence felt like.”
She didn’t know if he remembered writing that. But she did.
As the tram pulled up with a low mechanical sigh, Ellie stepped aboard, scanning quickly. No sign of tails — just commuters with glazed eyes and the weary hush of wartime routine. She sat by the window, near the back, facing the darkened city.
As the tram hummed to life, something fluttered in the seat next to her — a crumpled leaflet. Not just any leaflet.
She smoothed it open slowly.
On one side: a sketch of a cherry tree, petals drifting onto barbed wire.
On the other: a poem, unsigned.
But Ellie recognized the rhythm. The cadence. The voice.
Pawel.
Let the pink become red—
if that means hope,
if that means the blossoms
can carry the weight
of what we could not save…
Her fingers trembled slightly.
Outside, the tram rolled through old districts — buildings torn from shelling, facades covered in banners of the regime. Somewhere overhead, searchlights danced like ghosts chasing answers.
She wasn’t sure when the tears came — quiet, controlled, barely noticed among the rocking of the tram. But something cracked open inside her.
And she whispered, not for anyone but herself:
“You still write for me, don’t you?”
The tram turned toward the eastern quarter. Her stop was coming.
So was her next delivery.
And she now knew something she hadn’t before: Pawel was alive.
And he still remembered.
The tram hissed to a stop near the terminal loop. Ellie stepped off into the damp air, the glow of the airport rising like a modern temple ahead of her. Lights blinked over arrivals and departures, but she wasn’t checking a flight. She walked briskly, the hum of aircraft engines mixing with the sound of her breath and the distant thunder still haunting the edge of the city.
Her feet led her past the usual hustle: flight crew walking in twos, security guards chatting, tourists clueless to the war tightening outside the perimeter. Past all that, she made her way to the older terminal — the one rarely used now, part nostalgia, part utility. And there it was: faded signage above the frosted glass doors.
Gate 23.
It didn’t look like much. It never did. But here, in this half-abandoned corner of the airport, something pulsed under the surface. Hidden couriers. Quiet nods. The resistance breathed between the cracks, and tonight, Ellie was part of that breath.
She sat on a bench, looking out onto the empty tarmac. The same rain that delayed flights now soaked the edge of her coat, but she didn’t move. Her hand slid inside her bag and felt the package: a cassette, handwritten label, no cover. She didn’t know what was on it yet. Only that someone had passed it to her with a glance and a single word: Velomir.
Somewhere across the city, beneath rubble and wires, Pawel sat in a half-lit room surrounded by equipment that hummed like it knew what sorrow meant. The piano’s cover was still up. Notes from Rain Delay, Gate 23 still lingered in the air.
He leaned back, tired eyes softening as he opened his wallet.
There she was — Ellie, from before the storms, before uniforms and checkpoints. Smiling in the sun somewhere in Bucharest or Tallinn, he couldn’t remember. He never really needed to. The picture did the remembering.
He touched the edge with a finger, worn from guitar strings and ink stains.
“I wonder…” he said aloud to no one but the silence. “What if she heard all the songs and poems?”
His voice barely rose above the hum. But the question stayed there, hanging between memory and static. He knew the broadcast could be intercepted. He knew some lyrics were coded. Some were orders.
But some — some were just for her.
Outside, thunder cracked.
Inside, Ellie reached into her coat pocket and pulled out an old pin — small, rose gold, shaped like a tiny airplane.
She pinned it to her lapel, just beneath her scarf. The red one.
Gate 23.
Rain on the tarmac.
The past not yet finished speaking.
And somewhere in the city’s hidden heartbeat, two lives — long diverged — were starting to circle back.
Ellie sat there, the weight of the package in her hand suddenly feeling more significant. The airport terminal, with its dull fluorescent lights and damp corners, had always felt like a place of transition, a liminal space between places, between lives. But tonight, it felt like a place of reckoning, as though the rain-soaked tarmac and the distant rumble of thunder were waiting for something to happen.
She glanced at the cassette in her hand again. Velomir. The name echoed in her mind like a faint whisper, something she didn’t fully understand but knew carried importance. Something to do with the resistance, the messages they were sending, and the part she was meant to play in all of it. She had never planned on being here — never imagined that her role as a flight attendant would lead to secret meetings in forgotten corners of airports, or to the quiet weight of a cassette that could change everything.
Her fingers traced the edges of the cassette label again, her mind drifting back to the look in the stranger's eyes when they had handed it to her. That single word, that silent plea for trust. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was being drawn deeper into something she couldn’t escape — or if she had always been meant to be part of it.
A slight shiver passed through her as she looked out at the rain, feeling its chill soak into her skin. But there was a warmth, too. The memory of Pawel's songs, the coded love letters hidden in the music, all wrapped in the urgency of a world teetering on the edge of war. She had listened to the broadcasts, caught the faint strains of his voice beneath the noise of the rebellion. The words had always been for her — that much she was certain of.
The sound of footsteps approached, snapping her out of her thoughts. She quickly shoved the cassette back into her bag, smoothing her coat over it instinctively. But it wasn’t a guard or someone from the airport security. It was a courier — the kind who knew the shadows as well as he knew the daylight, moving with purpose, his gaze sharp and quick.
“Velomir,” he muttered under his breath as he passed her, barely glancing her way. She nodded, the small gesture enough to confirm the exchange.
The man didn’t stop, his steps already carrying him away. But Ellie felt her pulse quicken. She had done her part. Now, the real work was ahead.
The cassette. The codes. The messages meant for those who would listen.
Ellie stood slowly, the weight of the moment settling deeper into her chest. She reached for her phone, tapping out a quick message to her contact. "The package is with me. Waiting for the signal."
Her thumb hovered over the screen for a moment before she locked it and tucked it back into her pocket. There was no turning back now. Whether Pawel would ever know that she had heard his words, or if it would be enough, that was still uncertain. But it was clear — the resistance had found its way to her, and now, there was no escaping the song of the revolution.
The storm outside raged on, the sky a bruised canvas of thunder and rain. The airport terminal, empty and quiet, seemed to hold its breath.
In the dim glow of the flickering lights, Ellie made her way to the back exit, her footsteps muffled by the rain-soaked concrete. She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to.
Somewhere, beyond the city, in the broken heart of the world, Pawel sat waiting too. And perhaps — just perhaps — their paths would converge once more.
The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle by the time Ellie reached the small, dimly lit room behind Gate 23. It smelled faintly of damp wood and stale air, the kind of forgotten place that only existed in between flights and duties, tucked away from the usual rush of passengers and the constant hum of announcements. The chairs were scattered, worn, as if waiting for a purpose long forgotten. Ellie took a seat at the far end, where the wall curved and the glass was streaked with the evidence of countless storms.
She glanced at the clock. The minutes crawled by in the silence. Every sound felt louder in the stillness — the soft drip of water from the leaky ceiling, the echo of footsteps in the far distance. The world outside had shifted into shadow, the sky too heavy with rain to reveal much. But Ellie knew better than to look away from the door. She wasn’t here by accident. Not tonight.
Her hand hovered over her bag again, brushing the cassette, feeling its weight. Velomir. The word echoed again, like a distant warning and a promise at once. She wasn’t sure what exactly it meant, but it didn’t matter. It was a sign that she was moving in the right direction. Toward something. Toward him.
A shadow shifted in the corner of the room. The figure was subtle, barely noticeable at first, but Ellie’s instincts kicked in. She didn’t flinch — just let her gaze drift lazily in that direction, as if she hadn’t noticed. A tall man, dressed in the usual inconspicuous garb of the underground — dark jacket, faded jeans, the worn-out boots that made no sound on the wet floor. He was younger than she expected, his face clean-shaven but tired, like someone who hadn’t slept for days. He had the look of a messenger, of someone who had carried too many secrets for too long.
He stopped just inside the doorway and gave her a nod. She returned it.
“Is it here?” he asked, his voice low but firm, as if the world outside was listening. Ellie didn’t respond right away. There was no need for too many words in places like this. The fewer spoken, the better.
Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out the cassette, handing it to him without a second thought. He took it without hesitation, almost as if he had expected this moment to come. His fingers barely brushed hers, but the touch lingered in the air, like a spark of something else.
"Velomir," he repeated, and there was something in his voice that made the word sound both final and inevitable.
He turned to leave, but as he reached for the door, he paused.
“You don’t have to wait,” he said, his words almost a quiet caution. “He’ll hear the message either way.”
Ellie’s heart beat faster, but she didn’t move. She had heard enough — understood enough. She was already a part of this. Already carrying the song in her heart.
But still, she couldn’t help herself.
“I’ll wait,” she said softly.
The man’s gaze lingered on her for a moment longer, and then he was gone. The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Ellie alone once more. But this time, she wasn’t waiting for the world to catch up. She was waiting for the song to find its way back to her, for the man whose name was hidden in codes and melodies to finally speak, even if it was only through the hum of static and the crackle of a broadcast.
Outside, the storm had passed, but the air still felt thick with something unseen. In the far distance, an aircraft took off, its engines roaring into the dark sky, leaving behind a trail of light that seemed to flicker in the rain. Ellie stared at the horizon, feeling the pulse of something alive, something urgent, moving beyond the airport, beyond the city.
She was part of this. Part of the revolution. Part of the song.
And somewhere, far away, Pawel was waiting too.
Somewhere, beyond the city, in the broken heart of the world, Pawel sat waiting too. And perhaps — just perhaps — their paths would converge once more.
That time, he was at Station Krov — the old commuter stop turned resistance outpost, hidden in the industrial veins of the eastern district. The platforms were long abandoned by the state, now humming instead with low-frequency signals and the static language of rebellion. Radio towers disguised as weather-beaten scaffolding blinked into the dark sky, and the control room — once a ticket booth — glowed dim with analog warmth.
Pawel leaned over the console, headphones on, fingers dancing across switches and tape reels. The room smelled of ozone and dust, and the air vibrated with the ghosts of music and memory. He was splicing a new recording together — a blend of piano, static, and whispered verse. The kind that could pass as melancholic night radio… or a coded directive, depending on who was listening.
He had just layered in a sample of a distant thunderclap, perfectly timed with the line “We return, not when the war ends — but when the song does” when the old landline buzzed. Not the encrypted line, but the brass one wired directly to the inner circle. No voice ID, no preamble. Just a call.
He picked it up, cautiously.
“Pawel.”
It was Marek — tight-voiced and brisk, as always.
“You will be at the Terminal soon.”
Pawel blinked. “Terminal?”
“You’ll meet with someone by the way,” Marek added, almost as an afterthought. “Cardel’s orders.”
The line went dead.
Pawel stared at the receiver for a moment longer before setting it down. He hated when they did that — the abruptness, the riddles. But that was how it worked now. Nothing direct. Nothing obvious. Everything was layered like a song — harmonics, rhythms, codes.
He stood and reached for his coat, grabbing the old canvas messenger bag from the chair. Inside: a field recorder, a few spare reels, a harmonica, and the lyrics to Rain Delay, Gate 23, scrawled on hotel stationery. He wasn’t sure why he still carried that one. Maybe it was superstition. Or maybe he knew deep down that it wasn’t finished. Not yet.
As he stepped out of the control room, the faint signal of his last transmission still echoed in the hall. A melody. A whisper. The sound of someone waiting.
He pulled his scarf tight and began the long walk from Station Krov toward the northern line — the back way to the airport, through underpasses and flooded train yards. The city around him pulsed with tension, windows dimmed, checkpoints active. But none of that mattered now. Not really.
Because Marek didn’t just call anyone when Cardel gave an order.
Someone would be waiting.
And Pawel, poet of the airwaves, knew one thing above all else:
Where the song leads, the heart follows.
XXIX
Unbeknownst to Pawel, Eduard Cardel had already set the course.
In the hidden war room beneath the old municipal library — walls damp with time, maps pinned to concrete like arteries — Cardel stood with a cigarette burning low in his hand, its ash curling over blueprints of the city’s underground veins. Across from him stood Marek, arms folded, boots wet from the rain above, waiting for the next command.
“Pawel goes to the Terminal,” Cardel said, the words carrying the weight of more than just strategy.
Marek raised an eyebrow. “The Terminal? What’s waiting for him there?”
Cardel turned slightly, his gaze drifting to the far corner of the room. There, taped to the wall beside a rusted intercom panel, was a photograph. It wasn’t official — not part of any intelligence file or mission dossier. It was a snapshot, creased and worn. A woman in a flight uniform, scarf tugged by the wind, standing beside a grounded plane. The corner of her smile caught in motion, like sunlight filtered through memory.
“Elisaveta Coralowa,” Cardel said. “The Dereluft courier.”
Marek blinked. “The one who smuggled out the signal charts from Orlov's station? She’s already flagged in two sectors.”
“She knows how to move quietly,” Cardel said. “And he… needs to see her.”
Marek hesitated. “Pawel doesn’t know.”
Cardel’s eyes, weary and weathered, stayed fixed on the photo. “Not yet.”
He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled into the stale air.
“He doesn’t know she joined us. That she chose this — the late flights, the red scarf, the back doors of terminals no one watches anymore. That she listens for him. He doesn’t know that the song he wrote in a half-lit room under shellfire… had her name in it. And that she heard it.”
Marek looked away, uncomfortable with the intimacy of it all. “We’re sending him to meet her. Is this about the broadcast or about… him?”
Cardel turned then, finally facing him fully.
“This is about the long game,” he said. “About trust. About the fact that people fight harder when the mission becomes personal. She’s carried more than one reel now — messages, code, names on paper. But this? This is different.”
He flicked the ash from the cigarette. It fell like a grain of something ancient — a memory, a decision.
“She became a courier, Marek. She became the message. And Pawel will know, soon enough, that his someone… became that courier. That she listened to a song with her name in it.”
Silence fell between them, broken only by the low hum of the radio relay in the corner. Static, then a brief pulse of Morse, then silence again.
Marek nodded slowly. “And what happens if they recognize each other? If this becomes more than just delivery and code?”
Cardel allowed himself a faint smile. “Then maybe the song becomes louder. Maybe it cuts through the noise.”
He turned back to the desk, snuffing out the cigarette in a tin ashtray shaped like a compass.
“Tell him to go. Use my name.”
Marek adjusted his collar and stepped toward the stairwell.
And somewhere across the city, in the echoing ruins of the old tram lines, Pawel walked through rain with a cassette in his pocket, a melody on his lips, and a red thread of fate waiting for him at Gate 23.
He didn’t know yet.
But soon — he would.
Pawel didn’t walk the entire way. That would’ve been foolish.
The Black Branch — the State’s secret police — had begun sweeping the city more aggressively now, their agents dressed as rail inspectors, delivery men, even priests. All searching for the “voice” behind the songs and the poems. The one who spun rebellion from sorrow and signals. The one they called a ghost on the wires.
So when the call from Marek ended, Pawel made for the rendezvous point beneath the underpass at Krasna Street. A vehicle was waiting — a rust-eaten maintenance van with false tags, driven by a comrade from the print wing. They didn’t speak during the ride. Words could be heard. Even glances were kept brief.
He wore a dockworker’s jacket, thick gloves, and a cap pulled low — standard camouflage in the labor zones. He even darkened the smudges beneath his eyes to look more like a night loader than a broadcaster. The van rattled through checkpoints and detours, engine coughing in the cold rain.
When they reached the edge of the airport complex, the van took the service road, looping past the old hangars and skirting the eyes of patrols. He stepped out without a word, the package secure in his coat — the same coat lined with lyrics and hope.
Disguised, hunched slightly under the weight of caution, Pawel passed beneath the blinking lights of Terminal C’s outer structure — the forgotten one, the side that time forgot. Concrete peeled here, and signs still hung in the old alphabet. The wet tarmac shone with memory.
And then, just as he neared the benches outside Gate 23, he heard someone hiss:
“Radio boy.”
He froze.
The voice again: louder now, but amused. “You don’t wear that jacket right. It still looks like you quote books in it.”
He turned.
A man in ground crew overalls leaned against a service door, arms crossed — a face from Krov, from the early days of resistance radio, back when their only audience was pigeons and ghosts. Kamil.
Pawel gave the faintest smirk beneath his collar. “You're not supposed to recognize me.”
“And yet,” Kamil said with a shrug, “some ghosts walk funny.”
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “We’re not staying here. Black Branch has sniffed the Gate before. Follow me — there's a makeshift relay room in the west annex. Old customs office. Sealed off since the fire. We re-routed power last week.”
Pawel glanced once toward the bench where someone might have been waiting. Just shadows now. He looked back to Kamil.
“Is she there?”
Kamil’s eyes flicked toward the terminal glass, unreadable. “Come see for yourself.”
And so he followed, slipping into the maze of corridors beneath the structure — concrete halls with fluorescent lights and echoing footsteps, the scent of jet fuel and history. Somewhere in the distance, a plane taxied to nowhere. Somewhere else, a cassette tape waited. A scarf fluttered.
And in the walls, the resistance began to hum again — preparing for one more broadcast.
For the voice had arrived.
And tonight, perhaps, the song would finally be answered.
As Pawel followed Kamil down the back corridor, lit only by old emergency lights and the occasional flicker of a dying bulb, something shifted in his chest. A tension, long worn like a second skin, grew tauter.
Kamil walked ahead, speaking softly. “You should know... ‘Gate 23’ isn’t just the gate anymore.”
Pawel blinked. “I know. That’s where I was supposed to meet—”
“No,” Kamil cut in. “I mean it’s more than a place. It’s a name. A cell. Pilots, techs, ground crew, luggage handlers—hell, even a janitor or two. All of them part of it. They operate right under Black Branch’s nose.”
“An airport cadre,” Pawel murmured, almost to himself.
Kamil nodded. “Started out as a few union men keeping eyes on the comings and goings. Grew fast after the arrest at Hangar 4. Now they smuggle messages in fuel drums and weapons in catering carts. Gate 23 isn’t just where you go.”
“It’s who you become,” Pawel said, catching on.
“Exactly.” Kamil said.
They turned a corner into a narrower passage, where the hum of a power relay hummed like a cello string beneath their feet. Doors lined the hall — most rusted, some reinforced, all forgotten.
“And Ellie?” Pawel asked, quiet now, the question a thread hanging in the air.
“She’s one of them,” Kamil replied. “More than that, actually. Half their ops got through because she flew the wrong routes on purpose. Even got cargo re-flagged under false logs. You think she was just listening to the songs, Pawel?”
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The words stuck like the moment before a chord resolves.
“She moved because of them,” Kamil said. “That red scarf? It became a marker. A signal to other Gate 23 members. Meant the drop’s clean. Meant we were still breathing.”
They stopped in front of an old customs office door, blackened around the edges from a fire long ago. Kamil knocked twice, paused, then twice again.
The door opened.
Inside, the room buzzed with life — a portable transmitter, patched together with wires and copper. A signal map stretched across one wall, marked with codes and dates. In the corner, beside a table full of spliced tape reels and intercept logs, sat a familiar shape:
A scarf. Red. Draped across a chair.
“She was here,” Kamil said, walking in.
Pawel stepped into the room, his eyes sweeping the gear, the boards, the proof of everything they had whispered into the night.
“She left this for you.” Kamil said.
On the table lay a cassette. The label was blank, except for one word scrawled in black ink.
Velomir.
Pawel picked it up, heart pounding. The static seemed to recede, just for a moment.
Gate 23 wasn’t just a rendezvous.
It was a memory. It was a resistance. It was her.
And somewhere in the skies, planes still flew. Some with names, some with messages.
Some just waiting for the next song to land.
Pawel held the cassette in his hand, thumb tracing the edge of the case, the scrawled Velomir catching the low light.
But his eyes weren’t on the tape.
They were on the chair — and the red scarf folded there, its threads still slightly damp from the rain, or maybe just from memory.
He took a step forward, his voice low. “Who owns this red scarf?”
Kamil glanced at it, then looked away, scratching the back of his head.
“I forgot her name,” he said, too quickly.
Pawel looked at him sharply.
“No, really,” Kamil added, still avoiding eye contact. “People don’t use real names in Gate 23. Not anymore. Some of us stopped asking. Safer that way.”
The room felt heavier then, as if the ceiling leaned closer to listen.
“But I remember her boots,” Kamil said after a pause. “Always clean. Even in weather like this. Like she was walking through the war but wouldn’t let it stain her.”
He finally looked at Pawel. “Why? Do you think it’s her?”
Pawel didn’t answer right away.
He picked up the scarf with both hands, holding it like something sacred. The fabric was warm from her. From someone who once sang along to a song she was never meant to hear. Someone who heard her name in a verse and moved.
“She used to pin it with a little rose gold airplane,” he murmured.
Kamil blinked. “She did. Yeah. You know her then.”
“I knew her before.” Pawel’s voice cracked just slightly. “Before the songs, before the codewords, before everything.”
Kamil nodded slowly. “Then you’ll want to listen to that cassette soon.”
Pawel turned back to the transmitter, the scarf now around his wrist.
Outside, a plane took off into the thick sky, its lights disappearing into rainclouds and distance.
And in the dim hum of Gate 23, the past rustled again — a wind through sealed corridors, a name half-remembered, a song waiting to be played.
The cassette disappeared into Pawel’s coat. The scarf stayed looped around his wrist.
Kamil gave a short whistle through his teeth — low, sharp, coded.
Within seconds, a woman in overalls appeared at the far doorway and gave a nod. No words. Just motion. Urgency.
“They’re coming,” Kamil muttered. “Black Branch agents — checkpoint chatter says they’re sweeping the terminal. Looking for a voiceprint match.”
Pawel stiffened. “They think I’m broadcasting from here?”
“They don’t think. They scan and interrogate and disappear people. Doesn’t matter where you actually broadcasted.”
“Right,” Pawel breathed. “We need to go.”
They moved fast.
Down the side corridors of the old terminal, where ceiling panels sagged and old flight signs hung like forgotten flags. They slipped past a baggage conveyor long dead, then down a ramp where aircraft mechanics once walked — long before the war, long before the checkpoints.
“Where are we headed?” Pawel asked between breaths.
“There’s another broadcast room,” Kamil said. “Hidden inside what used to be the crew lounge. Built from scrap and hope. That’s where the next message goes out. You’ll be safe there.”
“Until we’re not.”
Kamil gave a quick grin. “That’s the spirit.”
Just then, the distant sound of boots echoed — the measured, heavy cadence that could only mean one thing.
Black Branch.
“They’re already inside,” Pawel said, heart thudding.
Kamil didn’t answer. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from a wall mount and tossed it behind them. The clang bought them seconds.
They ran.
Around the next corner, a gate sign still hung — the faded numbers visible even through the grime.
Gate 23.
It wasn’t just a name. It wasn’t just a cell.
It was a sanctuary hidden in plain sight.
As they ducked through a maintenance hatch behind a cracked vending machine, the old world fell away — replaced by cables, coils, and the pulse of defiance.
Inside, a room lit by hanging bulbs and battery packs came into view. A map of the city’s transmitter towers covered one wall. A radio rig, small but alive, blinked on a table.
There was no time to think.
Kamil turned to Pawel, out of breath. “You’ll have to go on air again. Tonight. Before they jam the line.”
Pawel nodded, breath shallow, hands trembling — not from fear, but from everything that came rushing back:
Rain. Tarmac. A scarf. A smile from long ago.
A name that once lit the inside of his ribs.
Ellie.
He stepped toward the mic.
Outside, Black Branch hunted a ghost.
Inside Gate 23, a voice — familiar, bruised, defiant — prepared to speak again.
Pawel’s hand hovered over the transmitter, the hum of the equipment vibrating through his fingertips. The cold, sterile metal felt distant, foreign — as if it wasn’t the tool he had once used, but an echo of it. He’d been away from this too long. He had been away from everything too long.
Kamil stood beside him, his expression dark with the weight of the moment.
“We don’t have much time,” Kamil said, his voice steady but laced with urgency. “They’ll be through the door in less than five minutes. The signal needs to get out now, Pawel. Now.”
Pawel exhaled slowly, pushing the tremors out of his hands. His mind flashed back to the rooms full of music, the softly-lit studio, the feeling of pulling notes and words together like some kind of spell. This was the kind of work that saved them — saved everyone. He couldn’t forget that now.
He flicked the switch on the transmitter, then paused, letting the silence hang between them for a heartbeat longer. The air felt thick, suffocating. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear footsteps — the unmistakable approach of more Black Branch agents.
The static hissed softly through the speakers. A low, crackling prelude to the transmission. His throat tightened, the weight of it all pressing on him like a stone. And yet, when he spoke, his voice was sure.
“This is Velomir,” he began, his words laced with a quiet defiance, carrying a message far beyond the walls of this terminal. “A voice you thought you silenced, but I remain. You’ll find us where you least expect it. Gate 23 will always be open.”
The radio crackled again, but Pawel continued, knowing the words were reaching beyond his own fears. “To those listening — remember. The songs, the words, the messages we’ve sent. They aren’t just noise. They are our resistance. And we will not be broken. The future is ours, and it’s coming.”
He let the words settle into the air. His hands gripped the mic tightly now, as if grounding him to the world they were fighting to protect.
Before he could finish, Kamil turned, his face pale as the first signs of Black Branch agents appeared at the far end of the room. They moved with purpose, their boots scraping against the concrete floor, their presence like a shadow spreading.
“We need to move,” Kamil urged, his voice a whisper now, barely audible over the rising tension. “They’ll trace the signal.”
Pawel didn’t hesitate. He yanked the tape from the machine and shoved it into his bag. Then he turned to Kamil, a single nod of acknowledgment.
“Let’s go.”
The two of them moved quickly through the cramped, makeshift radio station, ducking behind crates and maintenance equipment. Every corner seemed to hold a potential trap. Every step felt heavier than the last.
Outside, the storm had intensified. Rain lashed against the windows, the thunder a distant drumbeat echoing through the terminal. The Black Branch was closer now, their voices filtering through the walls as they searched for the source of the transmission.
But Gate 23 wasn’t just a name — it was a lifeline. A place where resistance was kept alive, even when the world outside seemed ready to crush them.
They emerged into the terminal’s lower hallways, the old, forgotten corridors where few would dare venture. Kamil led the way, his steps quick but careful. They passed through a service door, then down a stairwell that led to a deeper level beneath the airport.
Somewhere above them, the Black Branch agents searched the rooms, the halls — their footsteps growing fainter as Kamil and Pawel descended into the underground network of tunnels and passageways that ran beneath the terminal.
Pawel’s heart still raced, but the familiar weight of his bag — now carrying more than just a cassette — steadied him. He had done it. The message was out. They would hear him, wherever they were.
And somewhere in the distance, perhaps across the city, Ellie was listening.
Meanwhile, back at Gate 23, the operatives within the terminal were moving quickly, silently — shadows slipping between the cracks.
It started with a flicker in the overhead lights, an imperceptible pulse through the terminals. The Black Branch agents, still combing the broadcast rooms and hallways above, paused for a split second, confused. The lights flickered again, then went out completely, plunging the space into sudden darkness.
A low hum filled the air as hidden figures sprang into action.
Behind the scenes, the maintenance workers, flight crews, and ground staff had been waiting — ever since the first hint that the Black Branch was closing in. They weren’t just employees of the airport anymore; they were part of the underground that had carved itself into the very bones of this place. A deep, unspoken loyalty ran between them, forged by the shared risk of defying the oppressors who had long forgotten the meaning of freedom.
With a signal from the signalmen, a set of operators worked furiously to disrupt the Black Branch’s communications. They rerouted feeds, jammed transmissions, and threw off the tracking systems that the agents were using to hunt down the source of the transmission. One of them, a young woman in a dirty uniform, slipped into the control room, quickly flipping switches and activating hidden switches in the old equipment. A surge of energy rippled through the system, knocking out the Black Branch’s connection to the mainframe. They could no longer track the broadcast.
In the shadows, other operatives in dark overalls quietly slipped through the hallways, cutting off the Black Branch’s escape routes, forcing them into the corners of the terminal where they would be easy targets. They rigged doors, set false alarms, and activated hidden security measures — all part of the carefully laid plan that kept Gate 23 one step ahead of the enemy.
Back in the main corridor, a tall man in a worn pilot’s uniform stood with his arms crossed, watching as the Black Branch agents ran down the hall toward the next set of rooms. Without a word, he stepped forward, his hand pulling a lever on the wall. Suddenly, the hallway they were in filled with thick, blinding fog — the kind used for fire drills, but now, it became a barrier between them and the intruders.
The agents hesitated, disoriented. One reached for his radio, but it buzzed with static. Another tried to break through the haze, but the footfalls were drowned by the rising sound of the emergency alarm.
“Go. Now!” came a voice from behind them, and the team of underground operatives moved with military precision. They had done this before, and they knew exactly how to handle this moment.
As the agents fumbled in confusion, a small group of resistance fighters emerged from hidden passageways. They were armed, but they didn’t need to fire. They simply moved quickly, creating obstacles for the Black Branch agents — locking doors behind them, setting up barricades in hallways, creating just enough chaos to slow the enemy’s advance.
At the very same time, another operative in the control room tapped a final command into an old computer terminal. The signal that had once been streaming from Pawel’s transmitter blinked out of sight, as though the broadcast had never happened — erased from the Black Branch’s tracking systems.
Outside, the rain continued to pound the windows of the terminal, but within the walls of Gate 23, there was a quiet sense of victory. The Black Branch had been stalled, and they would need time to regroup. That time, just enough, was what Pawel and Kamil needed.
As they descended further into the underground tunnels, the hum of the old equipment faded into the distance, replaced by a thick silence. It was only when Kamil spoke that the moment seemed to solidify.
“They won’t be able to track us now,” Kamil said. “Gate 23 is sealed. For now, the Black Branch is blind.”
Pawel nodded. But even as the weight of their small victory settled on him, his thoughts lingered on what had brought him here — Ellie, the red scarf, the messages, and the songs that still echoed between the cracks of the world they were fighting to save.
Somewhere, in the chaos, she had heard him. The thought made his chest ache. But it also made him feel alive, in a way he hadn’t in years.
The underground network of Gate 23 had bought them the precious time they needed, but the clock was still ticking. As Pawel and Kamil moved deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels, the gravity of their mission pressed closer, like a shadow they could never outrun.
The damp air of the underground space smelled of metal and old machinery, a lingering scent that reminded Pawel of the years spent in hiding, moving between makeshift stations, radio signals, and coded messages. The silence was thick, but not oppressive — a necessary kind of silence that protected them now.
Kamil glanced over at Pawel, his face half-hidden by the dim light, a small smirk crossing his lips despite the tension.
“You’ve been through this before,” Kamil said softly, as though it were a quiet acknowledgment of the many times they’d escaped similar close calls. “Not your first time on the run.”
Pawel let out a dry chuckle, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not even close.”
As they walked, Pawel couldn’t help but wonder about the direction his life had taken. It had been years since he’d been on the move like this, sending out songs and messages, writing hidden meanings into poetry, giving something that was always more than just music to the people who needed it. He could feel the pull of it, even now, the way the music had always been a lifeline. It wasn’t just for him — it was for them, the resistance, the ones who hadn’t given up yet.
But this was different. Ellie was part of it now. The red scarf, the songs with her name embedded within them — they weren’t just some passing connection anymore. They were woven into the fabric of something bigger. The underground movement was real, and now, Ellie was more than a symbol. She was in it, just as much as he was.
"Do you think she heard it?" Pawel asked, his voice distant as he glanced at Kamil, not fully expecting an answer. "The song. The one with her name."
Kamil didn’t reply immediately, his gaze fixed ahead. The rhythmic sound of their boots echoed softly through the passageway, masking the words between them.
“She heard it,” Kamil said finally, his tone firm. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that she heard it. And if she’s the one I think she is…” Kamil let the sentence trail off, a meaningful look passing between them.
Pawel didn’t need to ask him to elaborate. Ellie wasn’t just anyone. She was someone who had always been paying attention, who would know how to read between the lines, even in the thick of confusion.
Just ahead, the faint glow of light from another set of tunnels signaled that they were getting close to the makeshift radio station. It was one of the many secret rooms scattered throughout the terminal, a place where they could work without interference, at least for the time being.
When they entered the cramped, hidden room, the walls were lined with equipment — old radios, tangled wires, and the ever-present hum of static. A lone figure sat at the controls, his face obscured by the flickering light of the monitor in front of him. His hands moved fluidly over the switches and dials, making adjustments Pawel couldn’t follow.
“This is the spot,” Kamil muttered, more to himself than to Pawel. “We’ve got the last transmission out, but we need to be gone before they track us.”
Pawel nodded, setting down the bag that contained the precious tape. He reached for it but paused, looking at Kamil. "Do you think they know about the others? The ones who helped?"
"They know," Kamil said simply, his eyes never leaving the technician at the station. "But they can't touch them yet. Not while we’re still moving, still keeping them hidden. Gate 23 — it’s still under our control, for now."
Pawel sighed and rubbed his eyes. He could feel the weight of the world pressing on him, but there was also something stirring inside him, a deep sense of purpose. He turned his attention back to the technician, who had just finished adjusting the equipment.
"You ready?" Kamil asked.
Pawel nodded again, then looked at the technician. "We're good to go?"
The technician glanced up from his screen, nodding in affirmation. “Transmission’s secure. It’ll loop for a while, then be picked up. But you’ve got to go. Now.”
The urgency in his voice was enough to stir Pawel into motion. He turned and grabbed the tape from the table, his fingers brushing over the edges one last time.
"This is for them," he said quietly, mostly to himself, as he shoved the tape into the bag. "And for her."
Kamil didn’t ask any questions. They didn’t have time for that.
They moved quickly, slipping through the narrow hallways of the underground, ducking into a side passage that would lead them toward an old service exit, one of the few ways out of the terminal without triggering an alarm. Outside, the rain hadn’t stopped, and the night felt endless — as if the storm could wash away everything, including the past.
The last remnants of their escape hung in the air, the resistance pushing on with every step, even as the Black Branch would soon come searching.
But for now, Pawel had done what he could. The message had been sent, and the songs would live on. Perhaps, for the first time in too long, they could all breathe.
And, somewhere between the storm and the silence, Ellie would hear him.
XXX
The cold air hit them as soon as they slipped through the service exit, a gust of rain-drenched wind that tugged at their coats and chilled their bones. Pawel’s heart raced as he glanced over at Kamil, who was already scanning the empty street for any signs of movement. The storm had intensified, turning the world into a blur of headlights and darkened streets.
“Where to now?” Pawel asked, his voice barely audible over the rain, his eyes darting to the shadows that clung to the alleyways.
Kamil didn't answer immediately. He glanced around one more time before pointing down the street toward a narrow side road that veered into the industrial part of the city. “We lay low for a while. Head to the safe house. It’s clear for the moment.”
Pawel nodded, clutching the bag tighter as they started walking briskly. His mind, though, was elsewhere — with the song, with Ellie, and with the feeling that somehow, despite everything, their paths were starting to converge again. He couldn’t shake the thought that the final act had only just begun.
As they walked, the weight of the tape in his bag seemed heavier than ever. It wasn’t just a recording; it was a promise, a connection between him and someone he hadn’t seen in what felt like forever. He thought about the red scarf, the image of Ellie with it pinned to her lapel, and the strange mix of nostalgia and longing that had surged through him when he first saw it.
He couldn’t deny the bond that had grown between them through the music, the coded words. Even now, as they moved deeper into the heart of the city, the memory of her lingered like a pulse beneath his skin.
“Do you think…” Pawel started, his words trailing off as they rounded a corner, his gaze fixed on the wet pavement ahead. He was about to ask Kamil something — but the question wouldn’t come out. Instead, he glanced at the sky, feeling the weight of the storm pressing down.
“Think about what?” Kamil asked, his voice sharp with the awareness that they were still being hunted. His eyes flicked over to Pawel, waiting for the rest of the question.
Pawel hesitated. Then, simply, “What if she’s in this now, too?”
Kamil didn’t respond right away, but when he did, there was a quiet understanding in his voice. “She’s always been in it. Whether you saw it or not. You’re not the only one waiting for something, Pawel.”
The words settled between them as they walked in silence, the heavy rain soaking through their coats. It wasn’t long before they reached the safe house — a small, unassuming building in the middle of the industrial district, hidden from view. Kamil led the way through a side entrance, the sound of their footsteps muffled by the old, worn carpeting inside.
Once they were safely inside, Kamil immediately started to secure the doors, locking them behind them. The weight of the moment settled in Pawel’s chest as he dropped the bag on a small table near the corner.
“We need to get this to Cardel,” Pawel said, his voice low but steady. “But I’ll need to be sure — that I know where the next move is. It can’t be another false start. Not this time.”
Kamil was already moving toward a small radio station tucked in the corner of the room. It was one of the many makeshift setups they used to communicate with other cells. “We’ll send the message. We can’t wait much longer. The Black Branch won’t stay out of the loop for long.”
As Kamil worked on the radio, Pawel felt his pulse quicken again. The storm outside seemed to match the storm inside him. He thought about Ellie. About the red scarf. The song with her name. And about the inevitable collision that was drawing closer with every passing hour. He knew their paths would converge again. But the question was: What would happen when they did?
Pawel picked up the tape from the table, the simple label that read “Velomir” staring back at him. His fingers brushed the surface, a touch that felt like the end of something — or perhaps the beginning.
“Ready to send the signal?” Kamil asked, his voice cutting through the silence.
Pawel nodded, his hand still resting on the tape. “Yes.”
The room filled with the low hum of the radio as Kamil adjusted the dials. Outside, the storm raged on, but inside, there was a quiet sense of urgency. Pawel couldn’t help but wonder: Was this the last transmission? Would the next time he saw Ellie be the moment that everything changed — or would it be another fleeting connection in the chaos?
There was no way to know. But the fight would go on, and this time, he wouldn’t be alone.
The hum of the new station was different — deeper, steadier, like the belly of a sleeping beast. Pawel sat on a metal stool, rain still drying on his coat. The room around him was dim, lit only by a few hanging bulbs and the soft amber glow of the transmitter’s dials. The static pulsed like a heartbeat. Somewhere, faintly, a turntable spun. A melody he knew by feel more than memory crackled under the dust.
This wasn’t Station Krov anymore. It was colder here — not just from the weather, but from the silence of the place. It was one of the fallback locations, codenamed Vesna-3, buried under what used to be a baggage handling zone beneath the old international concourse.
Kamil stood by the wall, listening for encoded bursts on a headset, his jaw tight. Outside, the storm gave the perfect cover — not even drones could track thermal signatures well tonight. But that wouldn’t last long.
Pawel leaned forward toward the microphone. The cassette was already loaded.
“Go ahead,” Kamil said. “Same wavelength. We’re piggybacking off an old airport comms frequency. They'll think it's static bleed from tower logistics.”
Pawel didn’t speak right away. He stared at the mic, the tape spinning. Then, softly — as if it were for one person and one person only — he began to recite:
“Rain delay, Gate 23…
We never did make that final call, did we?
I waited, just past the flickering board,
And the scarf you left — it said enough.”
He paused. His fingers twitched near the edge of the script. He didn’t read the next lines.
Instead, he looked at Kamil and asked, “You ever wonder if they really hear it? Out there?”
Kamil didn’t turn. “Some do. One did. That’s why we’re still here.”
Pawel let out a breath and turned back to the mic.
“You once stood at Gate 23 with the world on your shoulders.
If you’re listening now, if the thunder hasn’t drowned this out—
Know this: your name is still written in the chords.
And the city still hums with what you left behind.”
The tape ended in a slow fade — just a piano, no words, just the skeleton of something beautiful and unfinished.
Kamil spoke again, this time slower. “We got a pulse. Confirmed. Someone’s tuning in from the terminal loop. Could be her.”
Pawel didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
Because at that very moment, on the other side of the city, beneath a canopy of broken security cameras and busted floodlights, Ellie sat in the Gate 23 breakroom — her scarf still pinned, the radio’s speaker faint but unmistakable.
She heard her name in the chords.
And smiled.
For now, they were still apart. But no longer lost.
The voice behind the poems had a face again.
And the courier girl with the red scarf was no longer just a memory in a photograph.
War or not, the signal was clear.
The signal, carried on a hidden frequency and camouflaged within old aviation bands, buzzed faintly through the receiver perched atop a rusted locker in the backroom of a cafe-turned-safehouse.
Marek was already tuning in before the last piano note faded. He didn’t move at first. Just stood still, hands on the edge of the table, eyes locked on the green flicker of the signal light. Then, slowly, he exhaled.
“He did it,” he muttered, almost in disbelief.
From across the room, behind a partially drawn blackout curtain, Eduard Cardel stepped into view. His coat was draped over one shoulder, the collar damp from the rain that never stopped in this city. He glanced toward the receiver, then toward Marek.
“He improvised,” Cardel said, expression unreadable. “That wasn’t the version we agreed on.”
Marek looked down, then gave a half-shrug. “He knew who might be listening.”
Cardel was quiet for a moment, considering the implications. Then he spoke again — softer this time, but with that measured gravity that always meant something more was moving behind the words.
“She heard it, then.”
“Yes,” said Marek. “We’ve confirmed a pulse from the terminal loop. She’s still operating near Gate 23.”
Cardel nodded, the weight of several plans aligning behind his eyes. “Good. Let her stay there for now. Keep her working. But keep her safe. If the Black Branch gets wind of this…”
He trailed off.
Marek turned the receiver off with a click, the silence after the broadcast stretching between them like a decision yet to be made.
“What about Pawel?” he asked.
Cardel looked out the window — not for the view, but to check the shadows for movement.
“He stays on the move. We’ll need him again. The next piece is already in the works.” He paused, then added:
“The voice behind the chords has become more than just a symbol. He’s a thread. And if the people are listening — if she’s listening — then we follow that thread. Carefully. Strategically.”
Marek nodded. “You want me to reach out to the Gate 23 cadre?”
“Not yet. Wait. Observe. When the next song goes out, then we strike.”
Outside, thunder rolled low.
Inside, the air felt like it was holding its breath.
And across the city, three voices — Pawel, Ellie, and Cardel — were now echoing in the same silent rhythm.
Something was beginning. Something more than just the next broadcast.
The cassette clicked off with a soft mechanical sigh. Ellie sat still, her hands folded over her knees, eyes not on the radio but on the soaked tarmac outside. Rain traced lazy lines down the fogged window, each droplet catching the dim amber of the emergency lights that barely kept the old breakroom lit.
She had known. The moment his voice crept through the static — low, cautious, familiar like a note tucked in a coat pocket — she had known.
Pawel.
The poet behind the coded broadcasts. The voice the Black Branch had been hunting for weeks. The one whose lyrics circled through resistance cells like prayers. She had once told herself it couldn’t be him. It was too romantic, too dangerous, too foolish.
And yet here she was. Sitting in Gate 23. A cassette in her hand. A red scarf on her lapel.
She looked down at the label on the tape. It wasn’t much. Faded ink. Just one word: "Rain Delay." But the moment he said her name — not directly, but wrapped in metaphor and music — she felt it like a radio pulse in her chest.
She stood.
Out in the hall, the corridor echoed with muted steps — a mechanic wheeling a toolbox, a janitor humming an old partisan tune, a pilot passing a coded glance. This was Gate 23 — not just a place, but a network. The cadre that kept the real flights moving, under the radar. The ones that could hide a transmission inside landing gear logs or smuggle a courier in a jumpseat.
Ellie pushed the door open and walked into the hallway. She knew who to find.
At the end of the corridor, past the shuttered customs booth, a maintenance panel opened with a creak. A young woman in grease-stained overalls stepped out, wiping her hands.
“You heard it too,” Ellie said.
The woman just nodded. “We traced it. He’s not far. Maybe inside the perimeter by now.”
Ellie hesitated. “Then it’s time.”
“Time for what?” The woman said.
Ellie reached into her coat, pulled out a folded slip of paper, and handed it over.
“To begin moving the chords into the air. Not just recordings. Live. Real.”
The mechanic glanced at the note. Her eyes widened. Then, silently, she nodded.
Behind them, the echo of boots grew louder. A warning. A patrol. But not Black Branch — not yet. Just the airport guards doing their rounds.
Still, the clock was ticking.
Ellie turned back toward the maintenance hatch. “Let’s get him inside. Before the song ends.”
Ellie’s heart was steady now, a rhythmic echo of the tape that still played in her mind. The voices, the melodies, the secret messages were no longer just songs. They were promises. And she had no intention of letting those promises fall to static.
The hallway ahead stretched with the quiet urgency of their cause, every footstep ringing out against the damp, musty air of the terminal’s underbelly. A few more twists and turns, and she would be in the old baggage handling area — the last stop before the real move began.
She had done courier work before. But never like this. Never with a face to the voice, never with the weight of his words pressing down on her chest, as if every step she took brought her closer to something far beyond herself. Pawel's words had always danced in the air between them, but now… now they felt like they were grounding her.
The mechanic — named Sofia, Ellie had learned — glanced back. Her brow furrowed. “You’re sure about this? The Black Branch could be anywhere.”
Ellie nodded. She knew the risks. She knew them all too well. But the song, his song, had already become a lifeline. They were already in too deep. Too many of the resistance were starting to listen. They couldn’t stop now.
“We don’t have a choice,” Ellie said, her voice steady even if her pulse quickened.
They reached a door, simple and inconspicuous. Sofia tapped in the code, and it clicked open. Inside was a small, dimly lit room. Several crates were stacked in one corner. In the other, a rickety radio rig blinked back at them.
Ellie took a deep breath and walked over to the receiver. “We’ll broadcast from here, after we get him. This is the next step — the real signal. No more hiding behind recordings. We need to send it live.”
Sofia moved to the desk, flipping through papers that weren’t really papers, just placeholders for the message they were about to transmit. Her fingers danced over the equipment, setting up the audio channels. “We’ve got only a window. After that, the Black Branch will be onto us. It’s already been too long.”
Ellie leaned in. The hum of the terminal, the distant chatter of the airport workers, even the faint sound of a plane’s engines on the horizon, seemed to fade as she focused on the task ahead. There was something grounding about this small room. Something that felt safer than the chaos outside.
“I’ll make sure the signal is clear. You focus on getting him in.”
Sofia gave her a hard look. “Ellie…” she started, voice wavering slightly. “Do you think... do you think we’ll get to him before the Branch gets there?”
Ellie met her gaze, unflinching. “We have to.”
Back at the hidden station, Pawel’s disguise was nearly complete. He had changed into a new set of clothes — nondescript and neutral. The false documents he’d been given were solid, but the longer he stayed inside the terminal, the more the air seemed to thicken with tension. He was nearing his final destination. He was close, but so much was still uncertain.
Kamil’s voice crackled through his earpiece, pulling him back from his thoughts.
“You’re almost there. Just ahead, there’s a door. Go through it and don’t stop.”
Pawel glanced at the gray corridors around him. He had already been moving under the cover of airport staff, just another anonymous face in the crowd. He turned down the final corridor and reached the door Kamil mentioned. It wasn’t locked. It swung open with a creak. Behind it was a staircase, leading to the sub-levels beneath the terminal — the last safe zone before they made contact.
“Don’t forget the plan,” Kamil’s voice reminded him. “You stay low, get inside. Someone's waiting for you.”
Pawel’s breath hitched. After everything — after the songs, the poems, the coded broadcasts — she was waiting. Not just for the message, but for something more. He wasn’t sure yet if he was ready for it, but the thought of her being on the other side of the transmission brought a strange sense of calm.
XXXI
The stairwell beneath the terminal was narrow and dim, the flicker of overhead lights casting long shadows along the walls. Pawel moved quickly but quietly, his footsteps muted by the thick carpeting that lined the floor of the hallway. He knew this area was rarely used — mostly forgotten storage rooms and outdated maintenance halls. But that made it the perfect place for something like this.
His heart beat in a slow, steady rhythm, like the ticking of a clock counting down. The echo of his breath was the only sound in the tight corridor as he ascended the final few steps. He had to be ready. If Ellie was really waiting for him, he couldn't afford to let the tension break — not yet, not until they were safe.
He reached the final door at the top of the staircase. It was nondescript, almost too simple for what it led to. Yet, as he pushed it open, he saw the familiar glow of a low-lit room ahead. Ellie’s presence, despite the radio silence and the chaos of the world outside, seemed to fill the space in a way that felt like both an anchor and a beacon.
Inside, the small makeshift station buzzed with the soft hum of radio equipment. Several other operatives were scattered around, their faces focused on screens and knobs. But Ellie stood at the center, her red scarf a bright spot in the otherwise subdued atmosphere. Her hands were steady as she adjusted the settings on the equipment.
The moment their eyes met, the world seemed to shrink. Pawel stepped in, his footsteps slow but purposeful. A hundred things rushed through his mind — the missions, the songs, the danger of the Black Branch that loomed so close. But none of it mattered right now. There was something about the way she stood there, calm and resolute, that felt like the breath they both had been holding was finally exhaled.
Ellie’s lips parted, her voice barely above a whisper, but the urgency in it was clear. “It’s time,” she said, her eyes locking with his. "The signal... it’s all set."
He nodded, his gaze not leaving hers. “And you?”
“I’m here,” she said, her voice steady despite the weight of everything that hung between them. “We both are.”
Pawel stepped closer. The room felt smaller now, the distance between them almost nonexistent. There was no more time for words, only actions. Ellie gestured to the equipment.
“We have to do this. Together,” she said, stepping aside to make room at the control board.
Pawel understood. He slid into the chair beside her, their shoulders brushing lightly, the connection electric despite the unspoken tension. He had always known she was a part of this fight, even if they hadn’t shared the same path. But now, this moment, felt like the culmination of everything — the resistance, the songs, the long nights in hidden rooms.
He adjusted the frequency, then paused, his hand hovering over the transmitter.
“Ready?” Ellie’s voice was soft, but the question carried more than the words themselves.
He looked at her, a flicker of a smile crossing his face, before he nodded. “Ready.”
The first transmission crackled to life, the hum of static filling the room. It was almost a living thing, the air pulsing with anticipation as the signal swept out, racing through the wires, finding its way across the city.
But it wasn’t just any broadcast. This was their broadcast. The words, the melodies, the stories — all of it was encoded with more than just resistance. It was a message, a call to action. But it was also a signal, one that could reach more than just the allies on the ground. It was a chance to reach the people who had yet to hear the truth, who still sat in the dark, unaware of the revolution taking shape right beneath their feet.
And then, the song began.
It wasn’t a love song. Not exactly. It was something more — a message wrapped in melody, a whisper of defiance layered beneath soft chords and quiet rhythms. Pawel’s voice, familiar and strained, cut through the airwaves, carrying the weight of everything they had been through.
And Ellie? She was there, standing beside him, the red scarf fluttering as she helped guide the transmission, making sure the message didn’t falter.
The Black Branch was still out there. The world outside was still at war. But for the first time in what felt like forever, Ellie and Pawel were together in this moment — united by the very thing that had kept them apart: the fight, the music, the words.
As the song echoed through the terminal, they both knew the risks. They both knew this wouldn’t be easy, that there were more dangers ahead. But for now, as the transmission spread and the resistance moved one step closer to their goal, they were together. And that was enough.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Ellie watched Pawel closely as he worked, his focus unwavering. The quiet intensity with which he adjusted the dials, his fingers moving with practiced ease over the equipment, made her heart ache in ways she hadn't expected. It was as if he had become a part of this place, this moment — a link in the chain that held the fragile thread of the resistance together.
She hadn’t known this side of him before, not like this. Before, he had been the distant voice, the poet, the musician. But now? Now, there was a hardness in his eyes, a weight that seemed to pull at him with every breath. She saw it in the set of his jaw, the tense line of his shoulders, the way his hand hovered over the transmitter as though it held the power to change everything.
Ellie could feel the shift inside her — this wasn’t the same Pawel she had met in the quiet corners of the world. This was the man who had given everything to the cause, to the music, to the fight that had drawn them both into the darkness. And yet, as she watched him, her thoughts kept drifting back to something simpler, something pure.
She could still remember the first time she’d heard one of his songs. The way it had wrapped around her, pulling her into something more than just the surface of things. She didn’t know then what he had been saying, or even what the words meant. But she felt the weight of them. And now, standing beside him, she could see the message in every song, every note — this was more than just music. This was a language of resistance, a call to arms that wasn’t about bullets or bombs but about something deeper. It was a fight for the soul.
Her gaze softened as she caught his eye. There was a flicker there, something that shifted between them — a brief moment of quiet recognition before he returned his focus to the task at hand. But she felt it, that quiet understanding that passed between them. They were no longer just two people caught in the crossfire of a war that seemed endless. They were allies in something bigger. They were, in some way, fighting for each other, even if they hadn't fully acknowledged it yet.
As Pawel’s voice crackled through the speakers, carrying the message out into the world, Ellie’s fingers brushed lightly against the edge of his sleeve. It was a small gesture, almost unnoticed, but it was her way of connecting with him, of reminding him — and herself — that they weren’t alone in this.
“I’ve always wondered…” she began, her voice barely above a whisper, as though afraid to break the fragile moment they had carved out between the chaos. “When you wrote all of this... did you know I’d hear it? Did you ever think we’d be here?”
Pawel glanced over at her, his expression softening ever so slightly. “I didn’t know,” he said, the truth of the words hanging between them like a suspended note. “But I hoped. In a way, I hoped you would.”
Ellie nodded, the weight of his admission settling around her. She couldn’t explain why, but that small moment felt like a turning point. It was like all the noise and uncertainty that had clouded their paths had suddenly become clearer.
They weren’t just broadcasting a signal into the night. They were speaking to each other, through music, through these moments — through whatever future they had left. And for the first time in a long time, Ellie felt like she could breathe.
The song played on. The resistance would move forward. And, somewhere deep inside, Ellie knew this was only the beginning.
Pawel’s words hung in the air like the static from a broadcast gone too long, stretching across the quiet hum of the equipment around them. His eyes were focused, distant for a moment, as if he was trying to piece together the fragments of the past and the weight of everything that had brought them here.
"I'm sorry if I made all of this," he said, his voice soft but thick with emotion. "I'm sorry if I... inspired you to join in this battle. If not for that, maybe you wouldn't be here, caught up in this. I know you miss those happier times, before everything fell apart. Before all of this. If not the layovers, then... the moments before."
His words weren't just an apology; they were a confession, an admission of guilt he carried with him — a burden that had been following him, unknowingly, since they had first crossed paths. He seemed to be trying to undo something, as if, in his mind, the chaos around them was somehow his fault. The guilt in his voice felt heavier than any of the physical wounds they'd both endured. He didn’t want this for her — for Ellie, someone who had been pulled into the storm without having asked for any of it.
Ellie stood still, letting his words wash over her. She knew it wasn’t easy for him to say. She could hear the weight in his voice, the quiet frustration, the hesitation as though he were trying to piece together the shattered puzzle of their lives. But the truth was, she didn’t blame him for any of it.
She hadn’t asked for any of this, either. But none of it was Pawel’s fault. Not really.
She swallowed hard before speaking, her voice quiet but unwavering. "I didn’t ask for any of this either," she said, her words carrying a weight of their own. "I didn’t ask to be part of a battle, or to... become something else. I didn’t ask to be a courier, to hide in the shadows, to carry these risks. But the truth is, Pawel, this... this is bigger than us. We don’t get to choose what happens to us. Not really. And none of this is because of you."
Pawel turned toward her, his expression softening as he absorbed her words, his guilt lingering in his eyes before it seemed to melt away — if only for a moment. He nodded slowly, but before he could say anything more, Ellie pressed on.
"Yeah, I miss the layovers," she added with a quiet laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes, "I miss the simplicity. The moments where I could just be. I miss those times too. But... I don’t think I would change any of this. Not entirely."
Her eyes flickered to the floor for a moment, remembering the places they’d been before, the airports, the cities, the days that seemed like a lifetime ago. But when she looked back at him, her gaze was steady, grounded.
He nodded again, this time more firmly, as though he understood.
Then, almost as if he couldn’t help himself, he asked the question that had been hanging in the air, lingering like a question neither of them wanted to face. "How about your boyfriend? The last time I heard, you were with him."
The question stung more than she had expected. She hadn’t thought about him in a long time, not like this. She had left so much behind, and somewhere along the way, the connection that once seemed so vital had faded into the background. She didn’t want to lie to Pawel. Not now, not when they were standing here, in this moment of shared vulnerability.
Ellie took a slow breath, the weight of the question heavy on her chest. "That was before," she said softly. "Long before all of this. Before... the war. Before any of us changed." Her voice trailed off for a moment, and she could feel the silence growing between them, thick and undeniable.
She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in a long while. She hadn’t realized until now how much she had come to depend on the sound of his voice, the poetry of his words. And for the briefest of moments, she almost wished she could go back — go back to the version of herself that had stood at the airport, waiting for another flight, thinking that everything would always be the same. But she couldn’t.
Not anymore.
"He’s gone," she finally said, a quiet finality in her voice. "He’s... a part of what I left behind. Things change, Pawel. And I think... I think I’m starting to understand what all of this really means."
The way she said it, her voice holding the barest hint of sorrow, made Pawel look at her with a mixture of understanding and something else, something too complicated to put into words.
The moment hung between them, heavy and unspoken, before he broke the silence again.
“I’m sorry, Ellie,” he said, this time with a gentleness that felt like it could unravel everything. “For dragging you into this. But... I’m not sorry that you’re here with me now. Not anymore.”
She smiled, though it was tinged with a sadness she couldn’t quite shake. “I don’t think we have any choice but to be here now, do we?” she whispered. “None of us. But I wouldn’t change it. Not entirely.”
Pawel nodded, looking down at the equipment in front of him, his fingers lightly brushing over the controls. For a moment, neither of them said anything more. They didn’t need to. The quiet understanding passed between them like an unspoken bond, a connection they had forged in the most unlikely of places.
And somewhere, beneath the flicker of static and the hum of the radio waves, the future — uncertain and full of danger — awaited them both. But for now, they were here. Together. And that was enough.
Pawel’s fingers slid over the guitar strings as the familiar melody filled the air once again. This time, his gaze was fixed not on the room around him but on Ellie — her eyes focused on him, listening intently. She didn’t speak, but her presence felt like an anchor, grounding him as the words poured from his heart.
The song, a mixture of longing and resolve, echoed through the makeshift station. As the guitar hummed through the quiet, Pawel felt an odd sense of peace wash over him, despite the turmoil that surrounded them both.
"Tell My Ellie"
(to the melody of "Привет сестрёнка")
Verse 1
Just tell my Ellie, that I’m in the uprising,
Fighting for tomorrow, though the cost is frightening.
Tell her I’m not scared, though I’m far from home,
We’re battling together, but I feel so alone.
Verse 2
She’s flying above the clouds, where the world’s so wide,
Serving coffee and smiles while I’m here, far aside.
Her face on the screen, as I write in the dark,
She’s the dream in my heart, the light in the spark.
Verse 3
Tell her the nights are cold, and the days are long,
But I keep pushing forward, staying brave, staying strong.
I’m writing these letters, hoping she’ll understand,
That I’m standing here, holding the line for this land.
Verse 4
While she’s out on the runways, where the planes always fly,
I’m stuck in the trenches, trying not to cry.
Tell her the thought of her keeps me alive,
Her voice in my dreams helps me survive.
Verse 5
Just tell my Ellie, that I’m keeping the faith,
Through the smoke and fire, I’ll keep my pace.
Tell her I’m thinking of her every day,
And when this fight is over, I’ll come back her way.
Verse 6
In the skies above, she moves through the air,
But the war keeps pulling me, it’s too much to bear.
She’s a flight attendant, drifting through the night,
I’m on the ground, holding the line, staying in the fight.
Verse 7
Tell her I’m proud of her, the way she keeps going,
Her heart is a compass, always knowing.
While I’m here with the rifles, the sound of the drums,
She’s flying the world, waiting for when I come.
Verse 8
The world’s on fire, but my heart’s still hers,
I’ll send her my love through the chaos and the blur.
I’ll hold her in my dreams, till the day I return,
Until then, she’s in my heart, and I’ll never yearn.
Verse 9
Tell her she’s brave, in her sky-high world,
While I fight for tomorrow, my flag unfurled.
The missions get harder, the end’s out of sight,
But I think of her always, she’s my guiding light.
Verse 10
Just tell my Ellie, I’m fighting with pride,
That I’m doing this for us, for the world we’ll guide.
Tell her I’m brave, and my spirit’s still high,
And one day soon, we’ll see the sun in the sky.
Verse 11
As the world spins on, in a blur of air and land,
Tell her I’ll be waiting with a rose in my hand.
She’s the hope I carry as I stand on this ground,
She’s the love I fight for, she’s the reason I’m found.
Final Verse
Tell my Ellie, when this battle’s done,
We’ll dance in the streets under the setting sun.
Until that day, though the war keeps rising,
Just tell my Ellie, that I’m in the uprising.
The final note lingered in the air as Pawel slowly lowered his guitar. His eyes met Ellie’s, and for a moment, the world outside seemed to fade into the distance. The war, the danger, the uncertainty — it all fell away as their gazes locked. There was something in her expression now, a quiet understanding, a shared recognition of everything they had been through and everything that lay ahead.
Ellie didn’t speak immediately, her eyes glistening as she took in the words, the message buried within the song. She had heard the songs before, but this — this was different. This one was for her, from him, with everything wrapped in it.
“I heard every word,” she said quietly, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “But you know, Pawel, I think the hardest part of this fight is... not knowing when it ends.”
Pawel nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know. But we keep going. For now, that’s enough.”
Her gaze softened as she watched him, the soldier, the poet, the man who had found a way to make this all feel like it mattered. “For now,” she repeated, her voice carrying the weight of everything unspoken between them.
The static buzzed in the background, the remnants of the transmission hanging in the air, but here, in this moment, it felt like their connection was enough to hold the silence at bay.
And as the rain continued to fall outside, both of them knew that no matter the storm, no matter the distance — they would keep fighting.
Ellie stepped closer to Pawel, her eyes softening as she reached out, offering something that wasn’t just a gesture, but a promise — a connection amidst the chaos.
“Here,” she said, her voice steady but full of warmth. “I’ll give you a hug, enough to comfort you out.”
Pawel hesitated for just a moment, as if the weight of everything around them had made the simplest of acts feel almost surreal. But then, without another thought, he stepped forward, closing the gap between them. Ellie’s arms wrapped around him, pulling him into the embrace.
The world around them seemed to pause, the hum of the airport’s terminal fading into the background, leaving only the sound of their breathing. In that moment, there was nothing else. No war, no mission, no betrayal — just the two of them, existing in a fragile pocket of time where the weight of the world was momentarily lifted.
Pawel could feel the warmth of her against him, the steady rhythm of her heartbeat echoing softly through the embrace. For a moment, he let himself believe that it could be enough. That this connection, this brief moment of peace, might be enough to hold him steady through whatever came next.
He pulled away slightly, his eyes searching hers. The questions he had were too many, and yet, in this moment, he didn’t need to ask them. He could see the quiet resolve in her gaze — the same one that mirrored his own.
“I never thought,” Pawel murmured, his voice low, vulnerable in a way he didn’t often allow, “I never thought I’d be here with you like this. In this place, with everything going on…”
Ellie’s hand gently found its way to his back, her touch light but reassuring, grounding him in the present. She tilted her head slightly, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, as if offering him the strength she knew he needed.
“You’re not alone, Pawel,” she said softly, her voice carrying the weight of something far more important than the words themselves. “Not in this. You never will be.”
The world outside — the war, the missions, the pressure — seemed distant now, held back by the connection they shared in that quiet moment. It wasn’t just about surviving anymore. It was about holding onto each other, even when everything else was slipping away.
When they finally pulled apart, there was a lingering silence between them. Ellie’s fingers traced the edge of Pawel’s sleeve, as if reluctant to let go. Her eyes were steady, and there was something resolute in her gaze, a promise she wasn’t about to break.
“I promise,” she whispered, her voice firm, but laced with tenderness. “I’ll be there. I’ll take care of you as this battle continues. No matter what happens.”
Pawel met her gaze, the weight of her words sinking in. For the first time in what felt like forever, there was something to believe in — something beyond the war, beyond the fight. It wasn’t just hope. It was something real, something that could keep them both going when everything else seemed uncertain.
His lips parted slightly, but the words didn’t come. He didn’t need to speak them. His heart knew. And in this moment, that was enough.
“Stay safe,” he finally said, his voice quieter now, as he gave her one last look.
“I will,” Ellie replied, her smile a quiet reassurance. “And you too.”
With one last touch — a brief, shared moment of connection — they parted. Pawel turned, his feet carrying him toward the next phase of his mission, the weight of the battle pressing against his shoulders. But for just a moment, he felt lighter, knowing she would be there, no matter what.
As he disappeared into the shadows of the terminal, Ellie stood still, her gaze following him for a heartbeat longer. She could feel the promise between them, a tether that would hold firm in the storm ahead.
XXXII
As the final notes of Pawel’s song reverberated through the hidden frequencies of the makeshift radio station, a silence fell over the room. Marek leaned back in his chair, a wisp of smoke curling up from the half-burned cigarette in his hand. His eyes were fixed on the receiver, though he was no longer paying attention to the static that now filled the air.
Eduard Cardel, standing at the window with his hands clasped behind his back, stared out into the darkness. His mind was a thousand miles away, even though he stood in the heart of the resistance. The song had reached them, just as he had known it would. It had been the perfect signal, a coded message wrapped in emotion and defiance. But it was also something more — something personal, something that spoke of longing, of connections that could never truly be severed, even in the chaos of war.
Marek glanced at Cardel, who had not moved since the song ended. His expression was unreadable, but the weight of the moment was palpable.
"He's in it now," Marek said, breaking the silence. His voice was steady, but there was an edge to it, as if the song had reminded him of something larger, something inevitable.
Cardel nodded, though his gaze never left the window. "He always has been," he said, his voice low. "He just didn’t know it yet."
The faintest flicker of something — understanding, perhaps, or acceptance — passed over Marek’s face. "And now?" he asked, though he already knew the answer. The question was more for himself than for Cardel.
"Now," Eduard replied, his voice firm and resolute, "now we keep moving forward. The fight is never easy, and the personal becomes tangled in the political, in the revolutionary. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real."
Marek stood up, walking over to the desk where the radio equipment sat. His fingers hovered over the buttons, contemplating the next steps. "And Ellie?" he asked, his voice soft, almost hesitant. He had known for a while that there was more to the connection between her and Pawel than either of them had let on. The song made that clear. But what would it mean for their mission, for their roles in the resistance?
Cardel finally turned from the window, his gaze sharp and calculating. "Ellie knows what she’s doing," he said. "And Pawel… Pawel is more than just a rebel with a guitar. His heart is in this, and that makes him dangerous in ways that no one expects. He’ll do what needs to be done."
There was a long pause, the weight of their conversation settling between them like a heavy fog. The distant hum of the radio was the only sound that filled the silence.
Marek broke the quiet first. "Do you think they’ll be able to keep their heads in the game? With everything happening between them?"
Cardel’s expression softened for a brief moment, a flicker of something almost resembling empathy crossing his features. "I don’t know," he said quietly. "But I do know this: we need them both. And that’s enough."
Another silence followed, this one heavier than the last. Both men stood, each lost in their thoughts. They knew what was coming. Pawel and Ellie, despite their personal connections, would have to make choices that would rip them apart — or pull them closer.
"I’ll send out the next orders," Marek said, breaking the stillness. "We can’t afford to wait."
Eduard nodded, turning back toward the window. "Let’s make sure they have everything they need. And when the time comes… we won’t be far behind."
As the radio hummed to life again, Cardel’s mind wandered briefly back to the song, to Pawel’s voice and the weight of the words he had sung. The rebellion, the fight, the sacrifices — they were all intertwined, each note, each word, a thread pulling them all toward a single, inevitable future.
He didn’t know what would happen next, but he did know one thing: the resistance was no longer just a political movement. It was a force of people, of passion, of love — and that made it all the more dangerous. Cardel turned his gaze back to Marek, his expression unreadable, but there was a flicker of something deeper behind his eyes, something that had been building for weeks.
"Perhaps they've already met," Eduard mused softly, almost to himself. "And maybe... maybe that’s why he ended up singing that song. For her. It's not just about the revolution for him anymore. Not with her in the picture."
Marek leaned against the table, his fingers tracing the edge of the map that lay there, untouched for now. He knew what Cardel was saying. It was always more complicated when emotions got involved. But this — this was different. "Do you think it will make him more focused, or pull him apart?" Marek asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Cardel didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he gazed out the window again, as if seeking the answer in the distant skyline, the lights flickering like ghosts in the night. Finally, he spoke.
"I think… I think they’ll find a way. It’s the only thing that matters in this fight. You have to believe that the personal, the love, it can fuel something more powerful than anything we could ever plan. But soon, there will be more duties for the two of them." He paused, his tone hardening as he turned back to Marek, his eyes sharp. "And when that time comes, they'll have to decide if they can leave all this behind. For the greater good."
Marek nodded slowly, taking in Cardel's words. He had seen this before, in the eyes of others who had fallen for the cause, or for each other. The balance was fragile, like a thin wire strung between their hearts, and the fall could be inevitable.
"The mission will come first," Marek said quietly, though his voice lacked the conviction he usually carried. "But for now... we give them space. Let them feel the weight of it. They're strong enough to carry it."
Cardel studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Let them have this, for now. But when the time comes, we won’t wait. The revolution moves forward, no matter what."
As the silence settled again, both men knew that Pawel and Ellie’s connection was now a part of something much larger than themselves. The future was uncertain, but one thing was clear: duty would call, and when it did, there would be no turning back. The weight of their roles in the resistance would be enough to test them, to tear them apart or bring them closer, but it was a test they would all face together.
Cardel glanced once more at the radio, then at Marek. "Prepare the next orders. I want everything ready. They’ll need to be prepared for what's coming next. They all will."
Marek saluted, though his eyes lingered on the room, on the weight of the situation. "Understood, Commander."
As Cardel turned away, his mind briefly wandered back to the song, to the voice of Pawel singing his heart out over the airwaves. It was strange, but in that moment, he found himself almost wishing that there were another way. A way where love and war could exist separately, where people like Pawel and Ellie could live in peace without the world around them crumbling.
But that wasn’t the world they lived in.
And so, Cardel walked away, his footsteps resolute, ready to face whatever was next for the resistance. The revolution was still unfolding, and for Pawel, Ellie, and everyone else in their world, the battle was just beginning.
Meanwhile, Pawel sat in the makeshift room that had become his sanctuary, his guitar resting against the wall as he stared into the dim light. The echoes of the song still lingered in the air, a haunting reminder of what he had just shared with Ellie. The words were still raw, still pulsing through him, despite the temporary calm that had settled over the terminal after the chaos. But he couldn’t shake the thought that there was more to this than just the battle ahead. Ellie’s promise echoed in his mind, a beacon of light in a world that had been swallowed by shadows.
He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers brushing against his forehead as he tried to steady his breath. The war outside raged on, but for a moment, he allowed himself to remember the days before it all began. Before the noise, before the explosions, before the death.
Before Ellie.
The image of her, sitting there in the terminal, listening to the song he had written for her, was forever etched into his mind. The quiet strength in her eyes, the way she had promised him she would be there, that she would take care of him. He could still feel the weight of her hug, like an anchor in a storm. The touch of her hand, the warmth of her presence, was a reminder that maybe—just maybe—there was something more to fight for. He had always thought that the cause was everything, that it was enough to keep him moving forward. But now, with Ellie in his heart, with her words, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
But one thing he knew for certain: He couldn’t let the battle consume him entirely. Not when there was someone like Ellie waiting on the other side. Someone who believed in him, who trusted him.
His thoughts were interrupted by the low hum of the radio as a transmission came through. He stood up quickly, moving over to the corner of the room where the equipment sat, his fingers brushing over the dials. A voice crackled to life through the static. It was familiar, one he had come to trust through countless messages and clandestine meetings.
"Pawel," the voice said, calm and measured. "We have new orders. The Black Branch has intensified its search. The next move is critical."
Pawel's heart skipped a beat. He had been expecting this. The Black Branch had been a constant shadow in their lives for months now, tightening their grip on every resistance cell, hunting down anyone who could disrupt their control. But this… this was different.
"Understood," Pawel replied, his voice steady despite the surge of adrenaline that rushed through him. "What’s the plan?"
"We have a new target," the voice continued. "And this time, we’re going to hit them where it hurts."
Pawel nodded, his mind already racing ahead, calculating the risks and the rewards. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for the next step, but there was no choice. Not when everything he had fought for was on the line.
The transmission ended, and Pawel stood still for a moment, letting the weight of the situation settle over him. The war had come to this: to a crossroads where duty and desire collided, where his love for Ellie was as much a burden as it was a reason to keep fighting.
He took a deep breath and looked at the guitar again.
"I’ll come back to you," he whispered to himself, his fingers brushing the strings. "I promise."
And with that, Pawel stepped back into the shadows, ready to face the next mission. Ready to continue the fight, with Ellie’s promise still burning in his chest, a guiding light through the darkness.
XXXIII
Meanwhile, on the other side of the war, the enemy — the Black Branch — was tightening its grip, their presence casting a long shadow over the city. Their agents moved through the streets, their eyes always scanning, always searching. They were the invisible hand that stifled the whispers of resistance, the silent enforcers of a regime built on fear and control.
In a stark, sterile room filled with flickering monitors, the head of the Black Branch, Ivan Mikhailovich, sat behind a desk. His sharp eyes flicked from one screen to the next, analyzing the data in front of him. His mind, cold and methodical, was always several steps ahead. He knew the resistance was coming for them, and he was determined to crush it before it could even breathe.
"Find them," Mikhailovich muttered, his voice low but laced with authority. "Find every last one of them. The song was a mistake. It gave them away."
One of his officers, a tall, stoic man with a scar running down his cheek, approached the desk with a report. He handed Mikhailovich a dossier, the papers heavy with information gathered from the last operation. The file contained details on Pawel, the resistance fighter who had been leading a surge of underground operations, and now, the man had become a symbol. His songs, his poems, his broadcasts — they were more than just messages. They were a rallying cry for the oppressed. And the Black Branch couldn’t allow that.
"This," Mikhailovich said, looking at the photograph of Pawel with a hint of disdain, "is the one who thinks he can stand against us. A symbol. But he is nothing more than a man. A man with a guitar, a man with words."
"But the words are powerful, sir," the officer replied cautiously. "They’ve spread through the airwaves, across every channel we couldn’t control. The resistance is listening. They’re inspired."
Mikhailovich’s eyes narrowed, his fingers tapping rhythmically against the desk. "Then we’ll make sure they never hear him again."
He turned to another officer, a woman with sharp features and a calculating gaze. "Prepare the teams. We go in at dawn. I want every broadcast station in the city locked down. We take out the voice behind the songs. And we use Ellie."
The mention of Ellie made the officer pause, her face flickering with recognition. "You want her as leverage, sir?"
"Not just leverage," Mikhailovich said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. "She’s more valuable than that. She’s the key to him. If we can’t get to him through the resistance, we’ll get to him through her."
The officer nodded, understanding the weight of the task at hand. "We’ll move fast. They won’t see us coming."
"Good," Mikhailovich said. "And when the time comes, we’ll make sure that the last thing Pawel hears is the sound of Ellie’s betrayal."
In the heart of the city, as the enemy strategized and prepared to strike, the resistance was already one step ahead. But the threat was real, and the Black Branch was closing in.
For Ellie, Pawel, and the rest of Gate 23, the war was about to escalate in ways they hadn’t yet imagined. The stakes were higher now, and the enemy knew they had one final chance to extinguish the spark that had ignited hope in the hearts of the oppressed.
As the tension built, both sides prepared for a confrontation that would leave the city forever changed. And in the shadows, where danger lurked at every turn, Pawel and Ellie’s paths were about to cross again — but this time, the consequences would be far greater than either could imagine.
Meanwhile, as the Black Branch continued to weave its intricate web of control across the city, a shadow moved in the underworld, unnoticed by their watchful eyes. An agent, deeply embedded within their ranks but loyal to the resistance, had been listening closely, always ready for a chance to turn the tide.
It was in a dimly lit café on the outskirts of the city, where the usual hum of idle chatter masked the whispers of secrets. The agent, whose identity remained concealed even from the resistance, sat at a corner table, a burner phone carefully tucked inside their jacket pocket. Their fingers hovered over the device, ready to send a message that could change everything.
The Black Branch’s plans had been clear: they were going after Ellie. They knew she was crucial to Pawel, and they believed that if they took her, they could crush the resistance’s morale and silence the uprising once and for all. But the agent overheard something even more troubling: Mikhailovich’s final words, words that could alter the entire course of the war. Pawel and Ellie were not just pawns in the Black Branch’s game — they were the very heart of something much larger. The agent, in a split second of clarity, knew what had to be done. The phone buzzed to life in their pocket, and they quickly typed a message, their fingers trembling with urgency.
Message: "Marek. Black Branch plans to use Ellie as leverage against Pawel. They know he's listening. They're planning a strike at dawn. Mikhailovich will make her betray him. You have to act fast. He’s close. Protect them both. — A."
The agent sent the message and slid the phone back into their jacket. Their role was done for now, but they knew this message would change everything. Marek, ever vigilant, would receive the warning in time to take action. The Black Branch’s scheming would not go unnoticed.
A few moments later, the message pinged on Marek’s burner phone, which he had been carrying with him since the operation began. He had been preparing for the next phase, but this new information — this revelation — shifted the urgency of the mission. The Black Branch wasn’t just after Pawel anymore. They were targeting Ellie, the very soul of the movement.
Marek read the message quickly, his mind racing. He didn’t waste a second. He had to act fast, and more importantly, he had to make sure that Pawel, Ellie, and the rest of Gate 23 were prepared for the storm coming their way.
He immediately dialed the secure line to Eduard Cardel.
“Marek,” Cardel answered, his voice calm but always alert. “What’s happening?”
“The Black Branch knows about Ellie,” Marek said, his voice grim. “They’re going to make her betray Pawel. We need to move immediately — the strike is happening at dawn. We can’t let them get to her.”
Cardel was silent for a moment, processing the information. “Understood. I’ll initiate the plan. The others are already in position.”
“Good,” Marek replied, then paused. “We need to send a clear message. If they think they can break her, they’ll have another thing coming.”
Without wasting another word, Marek quickly gathered the operatives. They had only a few hours before the Black Branch would make their move. The clock was ticking. He knew that Pawel and Ellie were now at the center of a storm, and it would take everything they had to shield them from the coming strike.
Marek’s mind raced, plotting the course of action, but deep inside, he knew that the fight was now about much more than just the war. It was about keeping the flame of resistance alive — for Ellie, for Pawel, and for the future they all fought for.
As the night grew darker, the city seemed to hold its breath. The Black Branch was closing in. The resistance was on the move. And soon, every moment, every decision, would shape the fate of them all.
As Marek and Cardel coordinated their response, a crucial part of the resistance's strategy was already unfolding in the shadows. The agent, still cloaked in anonymity, had one last mission before they could disappear into the night.
In the heart of the Black Branch's office complex — an imposing, fortified building that loomed over the city’s skyline like a monolith — the agent was already in place. Their movements were swift and precise, aided by the darkened corridors and the city’s ongoing unrest. They had been waiting for the right moment, knowing full well that this act would buy the resistance invaluable time.
They had infiltrated the Black Branch’s most secure area, where only a handful of high-ranking officers could go, and in the dim glow of a lone desk lamp, the agent carefully planted a device. It was small, inconspicuous at first glance, but the agent knew its power well. It wasn’t designed to destroy — it was designed to disrupt, to create chaos, to make the Black Branch lose control of its operation.
The agent stepped back, checked the device once more, and then quickly left the office, retracing their steps through the labyrinth of the building’s passageways. No one noticed them — not a single person had seen them slip through the cracks.
They made their way out of the building, disappearing into the streets, where they blended seamlessly with the rest of the city’s shadows. The agent had done their part. Now, it was up to the others.
Back in the Black Branch headquarters, chaos erupted suddenly. The device, hidden behind a false panel in the office, activated with a low hum that built into a rapid series of pulses. The building’s lights flickered, then shut down, leaving everything in darkness. Alarm bells screamed through the hallways, echoing across the floors.
Panic set in. Agents scrambled to secure their posts, frantically searching for the cause of the disruption. Communications systems went down, and the Black Branch’s ability to coordinate was shattered in an instant. Security personnel rushed to locked doors, trying to regain control, but the device had already done its work — the element of surprise had been their weapon, and now they were losing precious time.
Mikhailovich, was already in motion, barking orders as he tried to rally his forces. But the command center had been hit hard. The agents who had been monitoring the terminals, the ones who had been tracking Ellie and Pawel’s movements, were now scrambling to restore their systems, desperate to make sense of the chaos.
“Find out what happened!” Mikhailovich’s voice rang out, cold and commanding.
But the agents were too scattered. The strike they had been preparing for was no longer as simple as a matter of routine. They were now forced to deal with the unexpected, the very chaos they had been trying to impose on others.
Meanwhile, the agent who had caused the disruption had already relayed the message to Marek. The Black Branch was in disarray. The moment of opportunity had arrived.
Marek, standing in the makeshift operations center with Cardel, quickly received the message, his eyes scanning it with a sense of urgency.
“The Black Branch is in chaos. The disruption is working. It’s time,” Marek said, his voice sharp. “We move now. We have the upper hand.”
Cardel nodded, his gaze intense. “Prepare everyone. We’ll strike while they’re reeling. This is our chance to keep Ellie safe — and Pawel too. Let’s make sure they know they’re not in control anymore.”
The resistance operatives were already on the move, taking advantage of the opening the agent had created. The next phase of the plan would unfold rapidly, but they needed to stay ahead of the Black Branch, who would surely retaliate with even more force now that they were vulnerable.
Back at the terminal, Pawel and Ellie were still on high alert, but they now had a little more breathing room. They didn’t know what had just happened — they only knew that the war was far from over, and the battles ahead would be just as hard-fought.
But for now, with the device’s disruption, the resistance had gained a critical advantage. The Black Branch, with all its power and resources, had been momentarily destabilized. And in that brief moment, the tides of the war began to shift.
With Marek’s voice over the secure line, the order was clear: the next steps would be crucial.
The resistance was not just fighting to survive. They were fighting to win.
XXXIV
The blast from the device rocked the Black Branch headquarters with a force that sent shockwaves through the building, reverberating through its concrete halls. The lights flickered and then went out completely, plunging the entire complex into darkness. The sudden, violent eruption of sound and the subsequent tremor caught everyone off guard, scattering agents and officers alike.
For a moment, the air was thick with confusion. The shrill wail of alarms cut through the silence, signaling an emergency as the building’s systems failed. Security lights dimmed, emergency generators kicked in, but the damage had already been done.
Panic surged among the Black Branch operatives. The blast had been strategically placed to not just disrupt their equipment but to send their operations into chaos. The communications grid was severed. All coordination had been compromised. The leadership tried to rally, but the suddenness of the strike left them scrambling to regain control.
Mikhailovich, the head of the Black Branch, stood frozen in the midst of his own command center. His face turned white with fury and disbelief. His agents were already rushing to their stations, but the sense of control had evaporated. The Black Branch had prided itself on its grip over the city's power structures, its ability to oversee even the smallest details with cold efficiency. But now, they were reeling, fractured, and disjointed.
“Find the source of this breach!” Mikhailovich barked. His words were sharp, but they seemed almost lost in the chaos, swallowed by the overwhelming noise of malfunctioning equipment and the distant roar of sirens.
The blast had forced everyone to drop everything. The attention was no longer on tracking the resistance or trying to suppress the insurgents. Now, the Black Branch was left to fight a new battle: one to maintain its authority, one to salvage what little control remained.
Meanwhile, the agent who had planted the device silently slipped away from the chaos, melting into the shadows of the city once more. Their job was done.
Marek, standing in a secure operations room, received the message almost immediately after the explosion. His expression hardened as he read the encrypted report, confirming the disruption. A brief, knowing glance passed between him and Cardel. They had been prepared for something like this, but they hadn’t anticipated it would come so suddenly — nor with such a degree of success.
“This is our moment,” Marek said, his voice steady despite the surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins. “The Black Branch is blind right now. The agents are too busy trying to salvage the situation. They won’t be able to focus on us for much longer. We move now.”
Cardel, always calm under pressure, nodded. “We’ll hit hard while they’re still reeling. I’ll get the teams ready.”
In the terminal, the tension was palpable, but for now, it was only the soft hum of airport life that filled the air. The chaos unfolding at the Black Branch headquarters, miles away, was a distant rumble that hadn’t reached them yet — but it was coming. The operatives at the terminal, from pilots to maintenance staff, were already starting to take their places, ready to carry out their part in the battle that was rapidly escalating.
Back at the makeshift radio station, Pawel and Ellie sat close, their quiet conversation interrupted only by the occasional crackle of static from the nearby equipment. They hadn’t yet realized the scale of the disruption that was happening, but their instincts told them things were about to change.
Pawel, his fingers still resting on the guitar strings, looked up at Ellie. He could sense the storm brewing outside — not just in the city, but in the world they had chosen to fight for. “It’s not over, is it?” he asked softly.
Ellie met his gaze, a mixture of resolve and sorrow in her eyes. “No. But it’s a step. We have to keep moving.”
As they sat in that makeshift station, the disruption at the Black Branch only intensified the urgency of their mission. The Black Branch, unable to track them or even communicate effectively, was temporarily neutralized. And the momentary advantage the resistance had gained was theirs to exploit.
The countdown had begun.
Back in the city, as the Black Branch struggled to regain control, the resistance moved swiftly, their plans now in full motion. They were not just fighting for survival; they were fighting to disrupt the enemy’s grip on their world.
For Pawel and Ellie, the stakes were higher than ever — the war had just shifted into a new phase, and their role was becoming ever more pivotal. And as the bomb’s shockwaves still echoed through the streets, the resistance knew: this was the opening they had been waiting for.
The battle was far from over, but the tides had shifted, if only for a moment. And that was all they needed. As the day unfolded with the remnants of chaos from the explosion still lingering, Pawel’s phone buzzed. He took it out carefully, glancing at the message on the encrypted screen. The message was short, but its meaning hit him immediately.
“Sorry if we’ll move you — move you two, to another area. The Black Branch is planning to capture both you and Ellie. Be careful.”
— Marek
Pawel’s heart skipped a beat. The sudden shift in their mission, the escalation, it was all happening faster than he had anticipated. His first instinct was to find Ellie — they couldn’t afford to be caught off-guard. They had to move quickly, stay ahead, and make sure they were ready for whatever came next.
He looked over at Ellie, who was still focused on adjusting some equipment, unaware of the gravity of the message he had just received. His mind raced, trying to think of their next steps, how to keep them both safe. The Black Branch wasn’t just a shadow in the distance anymore; it was a real, tangible threat.
"Ellie," Pawel began, his voice steady despite the underlying anxiety, "we have to move, together. Now."
Ellie looked up from her task, noticing the urgency in his tone. "What’s wrong?"
He showed her the message, his eyes scanning the terminal for any signs of danger. "The Black Branch is planning to capture both of us. They’ve likely been tracking us since the disruption at their headquarters. We need to get out of here before they close in."
Ellie’s expression hardened, her flight attendant instincts kicking in as she swiftly packed up the necessary equipment. "I knew this wouldn’t stay quiet for long. Where do we go?"
Pawel had already started to think ahead. "Marek says they’re moving us to a new area. We’ll meet up with the others when we can, but we need to keep a low profile. No more public spaces. Let’s head to a safe zone — the sooner, the better."
Ellie nodded, her eyes sharp with the understanding that the stakes had risen dramatically. There would be no more time for hesitation. "Let’s go."
Together, they moved swiftly through the terminal, making their way to a hidden exit that would lead them to a secure location. Their plan was simple: remain undetected, avoid the Black Branch’s surveillance, and get to safety. But there was no denying the pressure that weighed heavily on both of them. With the Black Branch closing in, they would have to rely on their training, their instincts, and each other more than ever.
As they walked, Pawel’s thoughts remained with Marek’s warning. The enemy would be relentless. Ellie’s safety was everything to him now, but they both knew the reality of the situation: they couldn’t outrun the Black Branch forever. They would have to face them head-on sooner or later.
But for now, survival came first. And the next steps would determine everything. Pawel and Ellie moved quickly, exiting through a hidden passageway that a trusted colleague had arranged. The usual bustle of the terminal faded behind them as they hurried down narrow, dimly lit hallways. Ellie’s footsteps were nearly silent as she kept pace with Pawel, who led the way with a sense of urgency. Their quiet exchange had turned into swift, decisive action. The message was clear — they couldn’t afford to be seen, not even for a moment longer.
They emerged into an unmarked area near a service entrance, where an inconspicuous black van was parked, engine running. The vehicle was low-key, easily blending into the shadows, and it was exactly what they needed. No markings, no attention. Just a vehicle waiting to carry them far away from the eyes of the Black Branch. Pawel and Ellie approached it cautiously. Inside, the faint hum of a radio was the only sound that greeted them. As they slid into the backseat, a familiar face turned from the front, a colleague who had been part of Gate 23’s network for years.
"Ready?" the driver asked, his voice calm but alert.
Pawel nodded, "Let’s go."
Ellie didn’t waste any time settling into the seat next to him. Her eyes were scanning their surroundings, alert to every shadow, every potential threat. She was sharp, always had been. But tonight, the weight of their mission felt different. The stakes were higher, and the reality of the Black Branch closing in made everything feel more immediate.
The van pulled away from the terminal, weaving through back alleys and lesser-known streets to avoid being tracked. The route was intentionally convoluted, designed to throw off any would-be pursuers. Pawel’s mind raced as they moved through the winding streets. He couldn’t shake the thought of the message from Marek — the Black Branch was coming for them, and this wasn’t just about them anymore. The network they had built, the people they had connected with, all of it was at risk.
As they turned onto a quiet side street, the van suddenly slowed, a signal from the driver that something was ahead. Pawel tensed, but a voice came through the radio: "It’s clear. Keep moving."
They continued on, the cityscape shifting as they left the more populated areas behind. The silence in the van was heavy, but it was the kind of silence that came with preparation, the kind that existed when everyone knew that things could change at any moment.
"I don’t know what happens next," Ellie said quietly, breaking the silence. "But I’m not going to let them catch us."
Pawel looked at her, a soft smile forming on his lips, even in the tension. "Neither am I," he said, though his voice was steady. His thoughts, too, were focused on the mission ahead. "We stick together, we move fast. Marek’s got a plan. We just need to stay alive long enough for it to work."
The van continued to wind through the streets, taking them further from the danger, but closer to a new set of challenges. The Black Branch wouldn’t give up so easily.
The weight of their situation settled in, and as they neared their destination, Pawel’s thoughts were already racing ahead, planning for what came next. This battle was far from over, and the future felt more uncertain than ever.
But one thing was clear: together, they would face whatever came. And no matter how much the world changed around them, they were not about to give up. The Black Branch, relentless in their pursuit, combed the streets and terminals for any trace of Pawel or Ellie. They didn’t know about Gate 23, nor the underground network that had worked in the shadows for years. But they were closing in, their agents sweeping through every area they could access, scouring for any clue that might lead them to the two fugitives.
As the hours passed, the tension in the air grew palpable. The Black Branch’s search was becoming more frantic. They had no direct leads, no clear idea of who or what they were truly up against. Their agents were under pressure, and with each failed attempt to track down Pawel or Ellie, their desperation deepened.
Unbeknownst to them, the hidden network that surrounded Gate 23 was always one step ahead. Even as the Black Branch entered the terminal and expanded their search into the streets, members of the network were already moving swiftly to obscure their movements. Anyone connected to the underground resistance had long since learned how to disappear into the crowd, leaving little trace behind.
Inside the van, Pawel and Ellie were quietly observing the city’s passing skyline, both of them keenly aware that the Black Branch would be searching every inch of the terminal. They couldn’t afford to be complacent. Every move had to be calculated, every decision deliberate.
Ellie turned to Pawel, her eyes meeting his with quiet resolve. “They’ll keep searching,” she said softly, though there was no doubt in her voice. “The Black Branch doesn’t stop until they get what they want.”
Pawel nodded, his jaw tightening. “They won’t find us,” he said firmly, though his mind was already calculating their next steps. “They’re looking in all the wrong places. And they don’t know about Gate 23. Or the others who will protect us.”
The van turned down another winding alley, taking them through neighborhoods that seemed to vanish into the darkness. Their destination was somewhere secure, somewhere they could regroup, plan, and stay hidden for a while. But even then, they couldn’t relax. The Black Branch would likely escalate their efforts, and the pressure would only intensify as the hours wore on.
As the van slowed, the driver gave a subtle glance toward the rearview mirror. “We’re nearly there,” he muttered, just loud enough for Pawel and Ellie to hear. He had been in the business long enough to know that nothing was certain until they were completely out of the Black Branch’s reach. Even now, he kept an eye on the street behind them.
Ellie turned to Pawel again, her expression serious. “What happens when we get to the new safehouse?” she asked. “How long will we stay there?”
Pawel exhaled slowly, glancing out the window. “Long enough to make sure they don’t track us,” he said, his voice steady but his eyes betraying a hint of concern. “Then we’ll move again, keep shifting. There’s a network out there that’ll keep us one step ahead. But we have to stay sharp.”
Just as the van reached its destination, the radio crackled, and a voice filtered through. “It’s a go. Get out of the car, and move quickly.”
The driver didn’t hesitate. He pulled the van into a dark corner, where shadows swallowed them whole. Everyone was on high alert. The Black Branch was still out there, looking for any weakness, any crack in their defenses.
Pawel’s hand went to the small bag he had with him, securing the contents inside. “Let’s go,” he said, opening the door to step out into the night. Ellie followed him, both of them moving swiftly and silently toward the building that would keep them hidden, for now.
As they entered the safehouse, their first instinct was to check the perimeter, making sure there was no immediate danger. Pawel knew that they couldn’t afford to grow complacent. Not with the Black Branch still out there.
Ellie stood by the window, her sharp eyes scanning the streets below. "We can't stay here too long," she muttered. "They'll be on us soon enough."
"Agreed," Pawel replied, his voice calm. He could feel the weight of the situation on his shoulders, but he wasn’t going to let it break him. Not now.
The room was silent, save for the hum of the safehouse’s old ventilation system. They were temporarily safe, but the battle wasn't over. Pawel knew the Black Branch would come looking for them. But for the moment, they had a brief respite. A moment to catch their breath before the next phase of their mission.
XXXV
The explosion that rocked the Black Branch’s office was a devastating blow to their operations. The carefully coordinated search for Pawel and Ellie, which had been so meticulous and ruthless, was now thrown into complete disarray. The loud, deafening blast echoed through the streets, sending agents scrambling in all directions. What had started as a focused, tactical mission now devolved into chaos as the agents who had been hunting their targets suddenly found themselves on the defensive.
The Black Branch's headquarters was in turmoil. Paperwork was scattered, equipment was knocked over, and agents who had been working tirelessly were now looking to secure the scene, trying to figure out who was responsible for the attack. But it wasn’t just about finding the culprits anymore—it was about damage control, preventing further disruptions, and salvaging what was left of their operation.
Inside their command center, the senior agents quickly regrouped. Their faces were grim, the reality of the attack settling over them like a dark cloud. Their plan to catch Pawel and Ellie, to corner the rebels, had been significantly undermined. Now, they were not only trying to track down their targets but also dealing with the aftermath of an attack that had deeply shaken their ranks.
“We need to find out who did this,” one of the senior agents barked, his voice sharp and strained. “This is a major breach. Someone had access to our own intelligence.”
Other agents scurried to gather information, cross-referencing their databases, searching through CCTV footage, and calling in field agents who had been on the streets during the explosion. They quickly realized that the attack wasn’t random. It was a calculated strike, a message sent directly to the Black Branch. And worse, it was clear that the rebels were far more organized than they had initially thought.
The agents who had been tasked with the search for Pawel and Ellie now found themselves with new orders: to track down whoever was responsible for the bombing. Their targets were still on the run, but the hunt for them would have to wait. The focus had shifted entirely, and the Black Branch's agents now had to turn their attention toward internal sabotage.
Meanwhile, in the field, the operatives on the ground were also struggling to adapt to the unexpected turn of events. Those who had been actively searching for Pawel and Ellie were now caught in a frantic race against time to cover up the attack, to find any clues that would lead them to the saboteurs, and to maintain their hold over the terminal.
Inside the safehouse, Pawel and Ellie were unaware of just how close the Black Branch had come to capturing them. They had moved quickly and carefully, staying one step ahead of their pursuers, but now they were waiting, holding their breath, and preparing for the next phase.
As the hours passed, the Black Branch’s investigation into the bombing intensified. Agents on the ground were questioning anyone they could, trying to piece together what had happened and who had masterminded the attack. But no matter how hard they searched, the culprits remained elusive. Pawel and Ellie, along with the rest of the Gate 23 network, had done their part to create confusion, leaving no easy trail to follow.
And so, the Black Branch found itself in a crisis of its own making, caught between the pressure of finding their targets and unraveling the chaos that had been unleashed. Their enemies, though unseen, were always one step ahead, waiting for the perfect moment to strike again.
The game had changed. Now, both sides were playing for keeps, with no room for mistakes. As the Black Branch stumbled through its internal chaos, the coded messages, dispatched with calculated precision, reached the other partisan units. These messages were the lifeblood of the resistance, carrying crucial updates, orders, and calls for action that would push the conflict forward. They spread like wildfire through the network of underground operatives, each message carefully constructed to avoid detection by the ever-vigilant enemy.
From hidden safehouses to underground bunkers, from trusted allies within the military to sympathetic civilians in key areas, the messages arrived in a mix of languages and codes, each adapted to the specific group it was meant for. The recipients knew exactly what to do—respond swiftly and without hesitation.
The first message, sent from an encrypted channel, reached a covert unit in the industrial district. It was brief but direct:
"The Black Branch is in disarray. We have a window of opportunity. Proceed with Operation Blue Sky. Secure the perimeter. Meet at the usual spot."
The message was understood immediately. The unit, long trained to act on such cryptic commands, gathered swiftly, moving through the streets with practiced precision. They knew their task: intercept any remaining Black Branch agents who were still in the area, set up a secondary line of defense, and prepare for the next phase of the revolution. The explosion had created the perfect opening for them to strike, and they would not waste it.
Elsewhere, the call had gone out to the network’s communications hub. The message was passed on to the next layer of operatives:
"Red alert. Black Branch compromised. Targets unknown. Secure the radio towers. Prepare backup transmission."
The radio towers were critical to the resistance’s operations. Control over the airwaves was essential to maintain the flow of information and propaganda, which had already proven to be a significant thorn in the Black Branch's side. These towers had been fortified over time, but now, with the Black Branch scattered and disorganized, the resistance had a chance to push through their last line of defense.
One by one, the partisans took action, securing positions, blocking roads, and cutting off potential escape routes for any remaining Black Branch agents. Simultaneously, a separate cell received another encrypted message:
"Pawel’s song has reached Cardel. The Black Branch is hunting them down. Your new priority: Extract both Pawel and Ellie. Relocate to secondary safe zone. Be prepared for a counterattack."
The importance of these two figures, Pawel and Ellie, was no longer just about their symbolic value to the movement. They had become beacons, rallying points for the resistance. Their songs, their actions, their very presence had become the heartbeat of the revolution. If they were captured, it would be a devastating blow, not just to the resistance’s morale, but to the entire network.
The messages carried more than just orders; they were an affirmation of the revolution’s commitment to its cause, a reminder that no matter how tight the grip of the enemy became, the resistance would continue to push forward, never faltering.
At the same time, in another part of the city, a final message reached a key partisan leader. His eyes scanned the cryptic words, his mind already racing with the implications of what was to come:
"The Black Branch is weakened. We take back the terminal. Rendezvous at dawn. Gate 23. It’s now or never."
He nodded grimly. The time had come. They would reclaim the terminal, a symbol of their struggle. But it wouldn’t be easy. The Black Branch would fight back with everything they had, but they were no longer the uncontested power they once were. The tide was turning, and the resistance could feel it.
The message chain continued, flowing through secure channels, reaching units hidden deep within enemy lines, and setting the stage for the next chapter of the conflict. The disruption caused by the explosion was just the beginning, a catalyst for a series of coordinated moves that would slowly shift the balance in favor of the resistance.
The war was not over, but the Black Branch’s dominance was no longer assured. The resistance was growing stronger, its resolve hardening with each passing day. And somewhere, in the heart of the chaos, two key players—Pawel and Ellie—were about to make their next move, guided by the same hope that had carried them through the darkest times: the fight for a better future.
The airport lights blurred in the rearview mirror like the last twinkles of a fallen star.
As Pawel and Ellie sat low in the back of a repurposed maintenance van, its engine humming a soft dirge as it wound through forgotten service roads and access tunnels beneath the old terminal. The sign for Gate 23—still flickering—faded into the night behind them.
Above ground, sirens began to scatter through the air like wild birds disturbed at dawn. Inside the van, there was silence—only the occasional breath or bump in the road. But in Pawel’s mind, music surged. La Serenissima played not from a speaker, but somewhere between memory and instinct—harpsichords and violins swelling as the van passed a checkpoint, the guard distracted by the chaos from the earlier explosion. Ellie gripped his hand tightly, her red scarf tucked beneath her coat.
The coded message had come through just minutes ago. Marek’s voice, rough and resolute, echoed in Pawel’s ear:
“We’re moving you. Both of you. The Black Branch is onto your names now—this is no longer a safe zone. Follow the colleague. Vehicle’s prepped.”
The van turned left at a rusted gate, nearly camouflaged by ivy and ash. The colleague—Kamil—nodded from the driver’s seat but said nothing. They passed two sleeping guard dogs, and a garrison of troops focused on the fire now tearing through the Black Branch's central office.
Another coded detonation—surgical, precise. Another distraction. Another doorway.
Char’s Counterattack Theme began to rise in Pawel’s memory now. As if the air itself throbbed with urgency. They exited the van near an old hangar wall where paint had long peeled from rusting steel. A hole in the fence. A figure in shadows waved—another contact.
“Come. Now. They’ve locked the southern gates.”
Ellie moved with determination, her breath sharp but steady. Pawel followed her, heart racing—not from fear, but from the sheer reality that they were alive, together, and running toward something. Behind them, the Velomar patrols mobilized. Black Branch agents were frantically redirecting forces. They were chasing phantoms in the fire.
The stars blinked quietly above the tarmac. In that fleeting moment between worlds—between checkpoint and countryside, between secrecy and song—Pawel and Ellie ran.
They did not yet know where the next stop would be. Only that the music in their heads was louder than the shouts behind them.
And that Gate 23 was still open—if only as a memory, a myth, a movement.
They didn’t stop running until they reached a battered sedan hidden beneath a collapsed billboard half a kilometer from the terminal. The contact—an old mechanic named Radek—wordlessly handed Kamil the keys, gave Ellie a firm nod, and melted back into the darkness like a ghost.
Inside the car, Pawel twisted to glance behind them one last time. The distant glow of the airport, the chaos and sirens, seemed a world away already. Kamil turned the ignition; the engine coughed twice, then growled to life.
“We head south,” Kamil muttered, glancing at a coded map folded on the dashboard. “Small roads. Village safehouses. Marek’s orders.”
Ellie tucked her scarf tighter and leaned against Pawel, her hand brushing his. Pawel squeezed it, letting the quiet between them speak what words could not.
Meanwhile, across the city, the ripple had already begun.
Coded messages—simple, seemingly innocuous phrases—passed through burner phones, hidden radio waves, and courier whispers.
“The fog is heavy tonight.”
“Gate 23 remains clear.”
“The red scarf flies.”
Each phrase a spark in the growing blaze. Partisan units stirred. Railway workers delayed freight shipments headed toward Black Branch outposts. Dockhands sabotaged supply manifests. Even in the outer neighborhoods, sympathizers left subtle marks—chalk symbols, misplaced garbage cans—to warn of patrol movements.
The explosion at the Black Branch headquarters had paralyzed much of their communication. Internal purges began overnight as the enemy searched desperately for the saboteur within. Distrust gnawed at the ranks. Every delay, every moment spent hunting phantoms, pulled more troops from the field and bought the resistance precious time.
And somewhere, tucked away in a damp basement deep in the industrial district, Marek and Eduard Cardel stood over a battered radio transmitter. Static filled the air.
Marek smiled grimly.
“They’re chasing ghosts.”
Cardel nodded. “And the song travels faster than their fear.”
He adjusted the mic, then keyed it up to broadcast a simple, solemn line to every unit listening:
“The voice sings on. Protect them. Ready yourselves.”
Back in the sedan, Pawel and Ellie heard the faint message crackle through the small, hidden receiver Kamil carried.
Ellie turned to Pawel, whispering, "It’s begun, hasn’t it?"
Pawel looked out the window at the sleeping countryside speeding past. His hand closed around Ellie’s once more.
“It’s begun.”
And somewhere ahead, the next gate awaited.
XXXVI
The village was nothing more than a cluster of crumbling stone houses clinging to the hillsides. In one of them, hidden behind rows of abandoned farm tools and cracked wooden fences, Pawel, Ellie, and Kamil made their way inside.
The safehouse smelled of dust and old oil. There was a single oil lamp burning on a crooked table, casting long shadows against the walls. A woman in overalls—a former airfield worker, judging by the badge still pinned to her collar—greeted them with a nod. No words, just gestures.
“From scratch,” Kamil muttered, locking the door behind them.
Pawel immediately began checking the windows, reinforcing the shutters with loose boards. Ellie, without needing to be told, helped sort the few supplies: burner phones, maps, coded books, and a battered shortwave radio set in a corner.
This was no longer the world she had known—the comfortable layovers, the hotels, the tidy uniforms. Now she was deep in the movement, side by side with Pawel and the others. And she moved without hesitation.
"Here," she said quietly, handing Pawel a spare revolver wrapped in cloth. "Radek said it's clean."
Pawel smiled faintly, touched by her steadiness. "Thank you," he whispered.
They organized their new life in silence. Shifts were planned: one on watch, one resting, one ready to move at a moment’s notice. Pawel sat by the radio, tuning it carefully, hoping for coded updates. Ellie traced escape routes on the map by lantern light.
They were not soldiers in uniform. They were scattered souls with nothing but resolve, fire, and each other.
Meanwhile, at Black Branch Headquarters, rhe blast had ripped apart not just walls but trust. Inside the dimly lit office, Black Branch officers yelled over one another. Sirens still echoed in the distance. Agents were interrogating agents. Files were being burned. Suspicion clung to the air like smoke.
The head of the Black Branch, Mikhailovich, slammed his fist against the ruined desk. “We are bleeding!” he roared. “While the Voice grows louder!”
Another officer, pale and shaken, stumbled forward: “We believe... we believe the escape from the terminal was orchestrated by inside agents. They slipped through a hidden service route before the sweep teams could arrive.”
“And the targets?” Mikhailovich barked.
The officer swallowed. "Gone."
Mikhailovich's knuckles whitened around the map pinned to the table—a red circle still drawn around the airport.
"They will sing again," he growled. "But next time, we will be listening."
The Black Branch began hastily rerouting resources, pulling men from the countryside to set up roadblocks, ordering checkpoints in the nearby villages.
But the damage had already been done.
Their prey was already slipping further from their grasp, melting into the forests, the hills, the villages.
And the song—the message of rebellion—was already echoing louder than any siren they could sound.
Despite the chaos that followed the explosion, despite the frantic sweeps of the terminal and nearby villages, one thing became clear to the Black Branch: they were missing something—something big.
In the cramped, half-wrecked conference room, Mikhailovich paced furiously, reports clutched in his fists.
“Gate 23…” he muttered aloud. “It keeps coming up.”
A junior officer, nervous and sweating, dared to speak: “Sir, it seems to be just a gate designation at the terminal. A few witnesses said fugitives were seen near it before the disruption, but... it's nothing substantial.”
“Nothing substantial?” Mikhailovich snapped. He threw the crumpled report at the officer’s feet. “You think two key targets slip through our fingers because of nothing substantial?"
Other agents exchanged worried glances. Whispers about "Gate 23" had surfaced multiple times—from intercepted chatter, from the confused testimonies of panicked guards, from the fragments recovered at the blast site.
Yet none of their informants, none of their interrogations, none of their surveillance showed anything that resembled an organized cell at the airport.
Because that was the brilliance of it:
Gate 23 wasn't a location. It was a network. A hidden ring of pilots, ground crew, maintenance staff, and travelers who had banded together under a codename, cloaked in the normal bustle of everyday airport life.
Every flight plan, every maintenance call, every lost suitcase, every coffee stand could be part of the web.
And the Black Branch, for all their surveillance, couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Mikhailovich growled low in his throat. “We find this Gate 23. We rip it out by the roots.”
He issued new orders:
Sweep every record of the terminal staff. Scrutinize the service routes. Find every worker who had access to Gate 23.
But already, they were too late.
Meanwhile, in the Safehouse, Pawel finished boarding up the last window, wiping the dust from his hands. Ellie sat near the radio, listening to the faint static, her mind racing but her face calm.
"They don't know," she said softly. "They don't know about Gate 23."
Pawel smiled tiredly. "That's why we have a chance."
The two exchanged a look—a new kind of understanding passing between them. They were not merely running anymore. They were part of something larger.
And as night blanketed the hills, and the mountains loomed under the stars, the Gate 23 network, battered but unbroken, was already preparing its next move.
The uprising was only beginning.
XXXVII
The night was heavy with the scent of pine and distant rain. Inside the small safehouse, lit only by a single oil lamp, Ellie leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching Pawel quietly work on a battered field radio.
She hesitated for a moment, then finally asked, her voice low but steady:
"After all these... what will you do then?"
Pawel paused, his hand resting on the dials. He didn't answer immediately. The static from the radio crackled softly between them.
At last, he looked up at her — tired, yes, but there was still something bright behind his eyes, something stubborn and alive.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "Maybe find a little house by the river. Preparing coffee instead of fixing radios."
He gave a half-smile, the kind that didn’t quite reach his eyes yet still tried.
"Maybe write songs again... not about wars or battles. About gardens. About sunlight. About someone waiting at home."
Ellie stepped closer, her shadow crossing the floor between them.
"And if the fighting doesn’t end?" she asked, almost a whisper.
Pawel shrugged, a quiet, heavy gesture.
"Then I’ll keep going. Because someone has to. Because if we stop believing there’s something on the other side of this... then we’ve already lost."
Ellie looked down, biting her lip. For the first time in a long while, she let herself imagine it — the end of this nightmare. A life outside the terminals, outside the whisper networks, outside the fear.
"Wherever you go, Pawel..." she said, her voice catching just slightly, "...I hope I can be there too."
Pawel reached out and took her hand — calloused fingers finding hers, gently but firmly.
"Then let's survive this together," he said. "One step at a time."
Outside, the rain began to fall. A soft, steady rhythm against the roof — a reminder that even under the weight of war, life still went on.
And inside the safehouse, for one fragile, stolen moment, hope warmed the air between them.
Meanwhile, at the rebel camp, room smelled faintly of burned coffee and oil-stained paper. Around a rough wooden table in a dimly lit cellar beneath a bookstore, Marek gathered with four operatives—pilots, mechanics, a former broadcast engineer, and a partisan commander—men and women whose day jobs kept planes flying and baggage moving, but whose nights were spent plotting liberation.
Above them, the name Gate 23 was etched in chalk on the cement wall. Still just a whisper to the enemy, but already a legend to the resistance.
Marek unfolded a map, its creases worn, smudged with graphite and grease. He tapped on several marked zones around the city’s southern edge.
“The counteroffensive begins in stages,” he said grimly. “Now that the Black Branch is in disarray after the blast, our window is brief but real. We use the confusion. No more just surviving—we strike.”
An older man, Anton, once a control tower chief, leaned forward. “Do we have confirmation of the supply drop?”
“Yes. Tonight, via Falcon-5. Cardel secured the air corridor. Gate 23’s flight crews will handle offloading,” Marek replied. “But the diversion must be timed. We need noise on the ground—broadcasts, sirens, false alarms. That’s where Pawel comes in.”
One of the pilots raised an eyebrow. “The singer?”
Marek nodded. “He’s more than that now. He and Ellie will broadcast from Station Lyra—mobile setup near the old tram depot. Live. Poetry, music, encoded cues. We want the people stirred. The regime listens too, even when they pretend not to.”
“And Ellie?” another asked. “She’s in?”
“She’s one of us now.” Marek’s voice was low but certain. “And she’s proven more than capable. Her knowledge of flight paths, her reach among crew, passengers, even foreign dignitaries—we’d be fools not to bring her in fully. Cardel agrees.”
A silence fell over the table. Not out of doubt—but reverence. The plan was bold. Risky. But it was also the beginning of something far greater than whispered codes and sabotage.
It was war, yes—but finally on their own terms.
Marek looked at them each in the eye, his voice steady. “We start the broadcast at 0300. By 0500, the city must feel us everywhere. Let them know: the uprising sings again.”
XXXVIII
The morning light spilled through the cracked blinds of the safehouse, casting long slants of gold and dust across the bare walls and makeshift furniture. A tin kettle whistled gently on the small burner, and the scent of boiled coffee and yesterday’s bread hung in the air like a quiet peace offering.
Ellie stood near the window, her silhouette wrapped in the soft grey of borrowed fatigues, the insignia still foreign to her, yet no longer unwelcome. She turned as Pawel entered the room, brushing sleep from his eyes, a jacket slung loosely over his shoulder, guitar case in hand.
For a moment, she saw not the boy she remembered from years ago—the one who used to scribble lyrics at the back of the classroom and blush when she passed by—but a man forged in the quiet defiance of poets turned revolutionaries. He moved with intent now, even in fatigue, eyes carrying weight and wonder both.
“You’re different,” Ellie said, softly, almost to herself.
Pawel glanced at her, confused but curious. “In a good way, or…”
“In the way that makes me question everything I used to think about you,” she answered, stepping closer. Her voice held none of the teasing tone of youth, only clarity.
“Back then,” she continued, “I thought you were sweet, a little lost… maybe a dreamer. But here you are, standing in the middle of a storm and singing like the world depends on it.”
Pawel’s lips parted as if to speak, but no words came. Instead, she reached up and brushed a bit of ash or dust from his cheek.
“You’re not just my classmate anymore,” she said, gently. “You’re my comrade… and something more.”
He stood still, unsure whether to respond with gratitude, apology, or another song.
“You gave your voice to the revolution,” she whispered. “And in that voice… I heard something that reminded me of hope.”
They stood there a while longer, silent, until the radio in the corner crackled to life with a coded tone—three notes, then two. A signal. The next move was near.
But before the call to duty swept them back into action, Ellie reached out once more—no words this time—and took his hand.
The kettle hissed one last sigh as Ellie took it off the burner and poured the hot water into a chipped tin mug. She handed it to Pawel without a word. He accepted it, his fingers brushing hers, his gaze lingering a second longer than politeness would usually permit. But this wasn't about politeness anymore.
They sat opposite each other at the narrow table—a relic of some forgotten office before the war—its surface now cluttered with coded messages, crumpled ration wrappers, and a single half-written song sheet. A small portable radio hummed quietly between them, a background presence, waiting for a signal that would tear through the silence with urgency.
Ellie looked at Pawel—not through him like she might have in the past, but into him. Her voice came gentle but deliberate. "I never expected to see you here again. Not like this. Not… as who you are now."
Pawel gave a faint, rueful smile. "Me neither. I thought I'd be writing songs for cafes or vinyl records, not for coded broadcasts and safehouses." He looked at his mug. "But then again, I didn’t expect you either."
Ellie tilted her head. "What do you mean?"
He set the mug down and leaned forward, his hands clasped. His voice was quiet, weighted with meaning. "You are… here. And I am thankful, if not happy enough. I know I may not be suitable for you—" he paused, eyes searching hers, "having the beauty that makes one promise to give you the sun and the stars as possible, the wealth and grandeur anyone could offer—but I’ll try my best to keep you better."
His throat tightened. "Because what I know of you… is that you’re my classmate. A friend. My crush. My inspiration."
Ellie’s lips trembled slightly, but she didn’t look away. Instead, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled something small and folded—a ribbon, red, familiar. Pawel blinked. It was the one Kamil had found. He realized then whose it had been all along.
“Here,” she whispered, stepping around the table and kneeling beside him.
She kissed him—not rushed, not uncertain, but with quiet assurance. A still point in a world coming undone.
When she pulled back, Pawel’s eyes glistened. He didn't hide it. He took her in his arms and hugged her, tightly, as if anchoring himself to the one thing left in the world that made sense.
Outside, the air hung still. In the distance, faint sirens called to one another like wolves.
Then the radio crackled.
Three tones. Then two.
The signal.
They pulled apart, but the warmth remained between them.
"Time to get moving," Pawel said, adjusting the guitar strap over his shoulder.
"We’ll go together," Ellie replied, her voice steady. "I’m with you now, wherever this leads."
They stepped toward the door, where a new day awaited—a new plan, a new risk. But also, perhaps, a new future.
The door to the safehouse opened with a low creak, letting in the pale morning light filtered through half-drawn curtains and the smoke of a city still stirring from the chaos of the night before. Pawel slung the canvas bag over his shoulder, the guitar case bumping lightly against his back. Ellie wore a repurposed flight jacket, its wings insignia dulled, now symbolizing not service to the regime, but her journey toward something freer—something defiant.
They didn’t speak much as they walked through alleyways, avoiding main streets and surveillance points. Their destination was a deeper underground cell—somewhere Marek had promised would be more secure. It wasn’t just about staying alive anymore. It was about fighting back smartly, building something stronger from the embers of Gate 23.
Meanwhile, at a hidden compound northeast of the capital, Marek spread out a marked map of the central districts on the table before him. Cardel, arms crossed, stood silently nearby as the others—radio men, ex-military, student leaders—gathered around.
Marek pointed to three blinking red lights on the map.
"The Black Branch is disoriented. Last night’s explosion hit more than just their logistics—they’re panicked. Internal purges, false leads, and fear. The operatives searching for Pawel and Ellie are now also chasing shadows."
One of the younger tacticians spoke up: "What about the checkpoints? They're tightening control around the terminal zones."
Cardel nodded. "Which means they’re scared. And when they’re scared, they make mistakes." He looked around the room. "We exploit that."
Marek handed out a set of fresh orders. "This is the counteroffensive. We hit their comms here—" he tapped an area marked Sector 9, "—their transport relay here—Sector 14—and we prepare for an urban echo broadcast through the relay tower near the eastern ring."
"And Pawel?" one asked.
Marek allowed a brief smile.
"He and Ellie are in position. If all goes well, we’ll be broadcasting his next song tonight—on every open frequency from Gate 23 to the capital’s heart."
Cardel stepped forward. "Let the people know we're not ghosts. Let them hear us. Let them feel us again."
Back in the tunnels beneath the old subway lines, Ellie and Pawel made their way into the next chamber—lined with aged monitors and a console jury-rigged to a long-range radio transmitter.
The operator turned to them and said: "You're on at 1900. Codename ‘Evening Bloom.’ Your voice, your chords—will be the sign."
Pawel looked at Ellie.
"Ready?"
She gave a small nod, laced with steel.
"Let’s make them listen."
By 1900 hours, the safehouse's broadcast chamber buzzed with low-level tension and the faint hum of circuitry. Pawel tuned the guitar with care, checking every string twice—not just for pitch, but to calm the nerves dancing behind his fingers. Ellie stood nearby, now fluent in her new role. No longer a stewardess in uniform, she carried herself like someone with purpose—clear, determined.
A red bulb above the console flickered on.
“Evening Bloom—go live in 5.”
The operator gestured to the microphone. Pawel stepped forward, adjusted the mic slightly, and looked across the room—not at the rebels, not at the equipment, but at Ellie.
“This one’s not just a song. It’s a signal.”
He began to play.
The chords spilled across the waves. Not from a central studio or regime station, but from deep underground, carried by a mesh of makeshift repeaters and pirate frequencies. The melody drifted into cafes and street corners, into workshops, safehouses, and even filtered into the earbuds of an officer stationed at a checkpoint—too absorbed to realize what he was hearing.
“Evening Bloom” – the song – carried a message.
It was lyrical, aching, yet pulsing with restrained fire. Words that only made full sense to those who knew the cipher, yet moved everyone who still had a heart:
In twilight’s hush, where silence clings,
The petals bloom with whispered wings.
They carry names the dark forgot,
And fly where fear has drawn the plot.
So light the candle, draw the sign,
Tonight, the winds will cross the line.
For love, for hope, for all we lost—
We bloom at dusk, no matter cost.
Meanwhile, across the city, Marek listened from another command room, flanked by operatives readying new cells to move. The coded message embedded in the second stanza confirmed what many were waiting for: Sector 14’s rail junction was to be sabotaged at 2200.
Cardel leaned in.
“That should stir the embers.”
XXXIX
Inside the Black Branch’s surveillance center, confusion reigned.
“We’re hearing something across unauthorized bands—Gate 23?” one of the analysts stammered. “No, that’s... it’s just a song, sir. But the same signal’s being rebroadcast across six, no, eight locations—”
Mikhailovich turned to him with cold eyes.
“Shut it down. Track it. Trace it. I want the source in chains tonight.”
But it was too late. The signal had already spread.
In the safehouse, Ellie pressed the headphones close and listened to Pawel’s voice on the return feed—broadcasting not just to her, but to a nation holding its breath.
When he finished, silence hung in the air.
Then cheers from the adjoining rooms. A courier arrived breathless with the first reports—stations flaring to life, flags emerging in alleyways, a crowd gathering in the western quarter with candles lit.
Ellie touched Pawel’s hand.
“They’re listening.”
He smiled, just barely.
“Now they know we’re real.”
Across the districts of Velomar, as twilight deepened into night, the city began to tremble—not from an external invasion, but from within. It began subtly: a rail junction signal light refused to turn green. A generator on the south tram line failed. In a steelworks on the eastern fringe of Zelograd, the night shift was mysteriously absent. But by 22:10, subtlety gave way to open defiance.
The partisans had begun the Coordinated Sabotage Phase—the long-prepared second act of the uprising.
At Ravna Luka's Rail Junction, three young operatives posed as late-shift mechanics. With makeshift explosives concealed in oil drums, they disabled the central switching hub—stopping freight transports and military convoys expected to reinforce Black Branch garrisons the next day.
A single flare shot into the sky. That was their signal: move to exfiltration. The first success of the night.
At Velinov's Communications Substation, two figures on a rooftop unfurled a bundled cable and connected it to a jerry-rigged transmitter. Within minutes, the substation’s internal protocols were corrupted, forcing emergency rerouting of all Black Branch communications in Districts 3, 7, and 8.
Encrypted files were extracted and uploaded through a secure uplink to Gate 23 command. Marek himself watched the data stream roll in.
“They won’t see us coming. Not now.”
Cardel nodded, “Let them chase ghosts while the city reawakens.”
At Port Darnov, Welders sympathetic to the cause had spent weeks preparing for sabotage. At exactly 22:20, three patrol boats under government command failed to start—deliberate coolant sabotage meant to appear like mechanical fault. Meanwhile, a decoy fire drew local security away as volunteers torched the customs building where arrest warrants were stored.
Gone in minutes. No paper, no proof.
On the "Radio Gate 23" broadcast at Kalinagrad, the music continued between updates. Short coded verses sent through song told partisans which safehouses were still secure, which roads to avoid, and which officers had defected. Ellie—now fluent in the cadence of subversive radio—read the next coded line from a slip passed to her by Marek’s courier.
“Field grows wild where no fire walks. Look for the foxglove near the hollow.”
To the unknowing, poetry. To the armed cells waiting for guidance: a greenlight for Phase Three.
And Elsewhere, in the Shadows...
The Black Branch scrambled—command posts overwhelmed with conflicting reports, explosions, disappearing assets, and flickering feeds. One agent, disguised as a civilian, stood stunned near the Ravna Luka wreckage, whispering into his comm:
“Sir… it’s not just an attack. It’s an orchestra.”
Back at the Safehouse in Ardona, Pawel paced with nervous energy, scanning the map updated with red pins turning green. Ellie entered, still holding her earpiece.
“They're calling it the Night of Blossoms.”
Pawel turned to her, quietly:
“Then tomorrow… we plant roots.”
XL
Kalinagrad, once the regime’s crown jewel, now simmered under the weight of confusion and pressure. It had been less than twelve hours since the Night of Blossoms, and the Black Branch command, once ironclad, was now a house of mirrors—fractured reflections, no clear line of command.
Inside the Civic Bastion, the brutalist command center where the regime’s intelligence arm had consolidated operations, men in dark coats barked into outdated comms and tapped on terminals that flickered erratically. The walls were plastered with satellite maps, half-obsolete briefings, and lists of names that were no longer responding.
Director Istvan Raka, head of the Black Branch, stared at the screen projecting a mosaic of surveillance feeds—some frozen, some corrupted, others showing abandoned checkpoints or blazing substations. His once-immaculate uniform was now creased with stress.
“Where is Sector Command Z-14?” he demanded.
A junior analyst replied, “Offline. Ravna Luka junction is compromised. They're rerouting through Kralzgrad but comms there are intermittent.”
Raka stepped forward, voice like steel dragged across gravel.
“They’ve triggered a command eclipse. No central relay means no air support. No air support means we’re blind.”
He turned to his aide.
“Pull the field operatives from Zelograd. Abandon surveillance missions. We’re not hunting rebels anymore—we’re hunting a revolution.”
Meanwhile, in the shattered capital, the regime’s President Goras Teren was holding court in an underground council bunker beneath the charred legislative plaza. The so-called Emergency Council of Order—a collection of loyalists, technocrats, and terrified bureaucrats—sat in dim lighting, their faces lit more by panic than electricity.
General Vladek Surnov, Commander of the "Capital Command", slammed his fist on the table.
“We must declare Martial Protocol Omega. Arrests. Curfews. Shut down the ports and the rails. We need to cut the head off this movement before the people think it can win.”
Teren, pale and sweating, didn’t respond immediately. He looked like a man made hostage by history.
“If we issue Omega, that’s a confession… a confession that control is slipping. We promised stability after the April Riots. If this spreads to Velinov and Kalinagrad…”
One advisor interrupted, voice shaking:
“Sir, it already has.”
The room fell into tense silence. A red phone in the corner—a direct line to Port Darnov Command—rang once, then stopped.
Meanwhile, deep in the industrial underbelly of Zelograd, the Black Branch's internal affairs unit convened without Raka's knowledge. Agents whispered of treason. The director had lost the city. Dozens of junior officers were already defecting or going dark.
One operative, known only as “Nikola Red”, spoke calmly as he lit a cigarette over the body of a captured rebel courier.
“They’re not afraid anymore. That’s what scares me. No matter how many teeth we bare, they’re singing in the streets.”
He crushed the cigarette on the steel floor.
“Something new is growing. And it doesn’t need our permission.”
Back to Kalinagrad, Director Raka poured himself a glass of vodka, then stood by the glass overlooking the rain-slick street, where armored vehicles were now moving inward, not outward. For the first time, the Black Branch was retreating.
“Get me Port Darnov,” he ordered.
When no answer came, he understood.
They were on their own now.
In Ardona, light was still gray outside. Rain tapped lightly on the windows, and the radio crackled quietly in the background—Gate 23’s signal now clearer, steadier, after the sabotage lines had been cut in their favor.
Pawel sat at the battered wooden table, a chipped enamel mug in his hand, steam curling from the black coffee inside. His sleeves were rolled up. His eyes, shadowed with sleeplessness, flicked toward Ellie as she entered, her coat still damp, a soft lock of hair falling loose from behind her ear.
She poured herself a cup. The silence between them felt charged, not empty.
Then Pawel asked:
“When you heard my songs… and you were with your boyfriend, or any of your suitors… what did you remember?”
Ellie paused, her fingers tightening ever so slightly around the mug.
“They used to ask me that too,” she said after a long moment. “Who wrote it? What kind of girl it was written for. Some even tried to guess it was about me. I never corrected them.”
She sat opposite him. Her voice was calm, but not distant.
“But I always remembered something different. Not a face, or a night, or a name.”
Pawel didn’t speak. He watched her, listening with a quiet reverence.
“I remembered the way I felt when I first heard it—crammed in the crew bunk of a Dereluft overnight flight. Half-asleep, somewhere over the mountains. The cabin lights dimmed. And that voice…” she met his gaze now, “that voice made me feel like the war hadn’t swallowed everything. Like there was still something beautiful left that no one could shoot down.”
She smiled, but there was pain in it too.
“None of them ever understood that. Not the boys with flowers. Not the men with plans. They could hold my hand, but never that feeling.”
Pawel looked down at his coffee. Then quietly:
“And now?”
Ellie answered without hesitation.
“Now I know who it was for. And I still feel that way. Only now… I’m not 30,000 feet above the world anymore. I’m beside the man who wrote it.”
The rain fell heavier. The radio played a soft, scratchy violin intro.
Pawel reached for her hand, and this time, she didn’t let go.
Ellie held his hand a moment longer, her thumb brushing lightly over his knuckles, before she set the coffee mug down gently on the table. The radio in the background faded to a low instrumental track—a slow melody that felt like memory itself.
She looked at Pawel with a soft, distant gaze, as though rewinding years in her mind.
“It wasn’t the chorus,” she said quietly. “Not even the clever lines. It was just a single part… almost whispered.”
Her voice lowered, barely above the rain.
“If I never make it back, tell her she was the sunrise I never deserved…”
She exhaled, blinking slowly.
“I was mid-flight when I heard it. The sun was just rising over the horizon. Everyone else was asleep. I had to turn away from the window, because for a moment I felt like… I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.”
Pawel swallowed. His fingers trembled just slightly where they rested.
“That line,” she said, “it didn’t feel like a lyric. It felt like someone had left a message in a bottle, floating through static—and somehow it landed in my hands.”
She looked back at him.
“And I wanted to answer.”
Silence held the room—full, warm, but aching.
Pawel whispered, almost broken:
“I wrote that in Zharna. After the third night. I didn’t know if I’d even see another dawn.”
Ellie stood, walked around the table, and leaned her forehead against his. Her voice was firm, but soft.
“You did. And now I’m here. So don’t let this be a last verse.”
Zharna, three months earlier
The city was a wounded lung, wheezing smoke and shrapnel. Snow fell in soft flecks over charred rooftops. The power had died long ago, and the night was lit only by the fires of makeshift stoves, burning crates and pages torn from abandoned offices.
Pawel sat in what used to be a schoolhouse, its roof gone, desks overturned. Children’s murals still clung to the cracked walls behind him. Around him, partisans stitched coats, cleaned rifles, sharpened knives. No one spoke unless necessary.
He cupped a candle between his hands. The last stub. It made shadows dance on the page as he scribbled lyrics into a torn ration ledger. He wasn’t even sure the radio operators back in Muraten would get it. Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe it didn’t matter.
He mouthed the words as he wrote them:
“If I Never Make It Back”
By Pawel Cardel, Zharna Front
If I never make it back,
Tell her she was the sunrise I never deserved.
She walked past me once in a crowd—
And I’ve been trying to finish the sentence ever since.
She didn’t look twice, not really—
But it was enough to give a dying man years.
In a world of grey stone and orders barked at dawn,
She was color, unspoken, clear.
I wrote her name in the frost on a rifle stock.
I traced her face in the smoke from my breath.
While comrades sang songs of vengeance and flags,
I hummed tunes about what we never had left.
Her laughter? I only heard it once—
Bounced off glass in the airport lounge.
But I kept it with me like contraband,
When we crossed into that shelled-out town.
If I fall under fire, or fade in the cold,
Don’t bring medals or speeches or flags.
Just whisper this song into the radio hum—
Let her know I tried to come back.
Tell her—
She was the answer I gave to the world,
When the world only asked for my hate.
She was the only sentence worth speaking,
When silence felt safer than fate.
So if you see her, even once,
In a terminal, a crowd, a dream—
Tell her I loved her without ever asking,
And she saved me, though it never would seem.
If I never make it back,
Let her be the line that outlived the war.
And if she smiles, even once, at the thought of me—
Then I didn’t die for nothing anymore.
He paused, staring at the page, before writing in the margin:
“For Ellie. If you ever hear this, you were my reason.”
Outside, an explosion rocked the street. Everyone jumped, grabbing rifles and ducking instinctively. A window shattered. But it wasn’t a shell—just a nearby transformer collapsing into itself.
He tucked the paper inside his coat. If the radio team got through tomorrow, they’d encode it. Maybe it would reach her. Maybe someone would hum it in a terminal somewhere.
Or maybe the fire would take it, like so much else.
But he wrote it anyway.
Because that was the only kind of defiance left—telling the truth when everything else was falling apart.
Fast forward—
The wind outside Gate 23 hummed low through the antenna wires as the safehouse remained dim, lit only by a soft blue desk lamp and the pulsing green of transmission consoles. The city had quieted after the Night of Blossoms, but the tension hadn’t left.
Ellie sat alone in the corner, clutching the small notebook where she had written down fragments of the old broadcasts. The one Pawel had just reminded her of—the song he sang back in Zharna—was among them. The melody had always haunted her, but now the words struck deeper, sharper, no longer coded or distant. They were meant for her.
She reread the verses by the window. Her fingers trembled.
“She walked past me once in a crowd—
And I’ve been trying to finish the sentence ever since.”
That line.
Her breath caught. It was the day she wore the red scarf. At the Drovnik Aerodrome. He was just a boy with headphones on, sketching lyrics on a boarding pass. She hadn’t thought twice back then.
Now, years later, she realized he’d never stopped trying to finish that moment. And neither had she.
Across the room, Pawel returned from the rooftop lookout with a scarf of steam rising from the tin mug in his hand. He saw her—still, focused, lost in that page.
“You remember now,” he said softly.
Ellie looked up. “I always remembered,” she said, voice a near whisper. “I just didn’t know it was me.”
They stood in silence for a moment before she walked over, slid the notebook into his hands, and added:
“You finished the sentence, Pawel.”
He looked down. The book was open to the last stanza:
“Let her be the line that outlived the war.”
She looked him in the eye, voice steady now.
“Now live long enough to say it to me. Not over the radio. Not in static. But here.”
He smiled—a weary, grateful smile—and took her hand.
Outside, the relay tower blinked. The next broadcast was moments away.
Pawel looked up from the worn notebook, his pen freezing mid-sentence. For a long moment, the only sound was the soft whirr of the fan beside the cracked window and the faint echo of boots in the alley below. Her words had cut through his concentration, not like a blade, but like a memory coming to life.
He smiled faintly, without bitterness.
“I was weird,” he said. “Still am.”
Ellie walked closer, her eyes flickering between his notes and his face.
“You didn’t talk much. You always sat in the back. I thought you were aloof… or maybe arrogant. But now I think—maybe you were just listening too closely.”
Pawel gave a short laugh. “I was afraid I’d say too much. About how you looked when you were tired after a long flight. About how you smiled when you thought no one was watching. How every song I wrote was really… just trying to make sense of that.”
She lowered her gaze, something soft but weighty crossing her expression.
“I didn’t know I mattered that much,” she said.
“You did. You do. But the resistance isn’t just because of you,” Pawel said gently, “You were the first spark. But there are millions now. You’re a star in a sky full of them.”
Ellie reached for his notebook and flipped back a few pages, her finger tracing half-finished lyrics, a verse that rhymed her name with ‘home.’
“I want to help,” she said. “Not because I feel guilty. Not even just because of you. But because I believe now. In this. In all of it.”
Pawel handed her the pen. “Then write with me.”
Ellie took it, hesitating, then began to scribble next to his verse:
“And if I ever doubted him, let these lines be proof—
That I came back not for love alone, but truth.”
The dusty radio set crackled in the corner of the safehouse, its signal faint but stubborn. Somewhere deep in the relay towers of Ardona, someone had queued a track to fill the silence left in Pawel’s absence.
And then it came—Кино's "Группа крови."
Blood Type.
The first chords struck like sirens in the night. Heavy. Inevitable. A hymn not just of defiance, but of resignation. Of young soldiers who knew too well the price of resistance. The room stilled. The partisans, some cleaning weapons, others tending maps, all turned instinctively toward the sound. Ellie paused mid-sentence as the music poured through the static.
“Группа крови… на рукаве…”
Blood type… on the sleeve…
Pawel didn’t speak. He stared out the window, his coffee long gone cold, watching the rooftops of Drovnik shift under moonlight. The song wasn’t his—but it was them. Their generation. Their fate. The names may have changed—Zharna instead of Kabul, Gate 23 instead of cassette recorders—but the feeling remained:
They were expendable. But they chose to burn anyway.
Ellie sat beside him quietly. Not speaking. Not touching. Just… being. In the stillness between verses, her breath caught as she remembered what he once wrote:
“If I never make it back…”
“She was the sunrise I never deserved.”
And now, in the raw spaces between rebellion and reflection, she finally understood what it meant to live a life as a verse left unfinished.
“Pawel,” she whispered. “Let’s finish your song.”
Ellie looked down at the crumpled paper Pawel slid across the table. The draft was raw—written before “Tell Me Ellie”, before he'd found clarity in his feelings. It carried the same weight, but less warmth. Less hope. The melody borrowed from Kino, but the words were all his. Bitter. Strained. Honest.
She ran her fingers lightly over the lyrics.
“You never sent this,” she said quietly.
“No,” Pawel replied. “It wasn’t meant to be a broadcast. I wrote it the night I saw you with someone else. Before the uprising began. Before I knew what you meant to me.”
He poured himself another cup of coffee but didn’t drink it. “I wanted to sound like I didn’t care. Like I was over it. But the truth was... I wasn’t writing a song. I was trying to erase you from it.”
Ellie exhaled, her voice softer now. “I’m glad you didn’t erase me.”
They sat in silence for a while as “Группа крови” reached its final chorus on the radio, fading into static.
Ellie folded the draft carefully, like something fragile. “This... this was your wound.”
“And Tell Me Ellie?” she asked, not meeting his eyes.
He answered, “That was the scar. And the hope.”
A faint knock came at the door—Marek’s signal.
The moment passed, but not forgotten.
XLI
Ellie was still holding the folded draft in her hands when the knock echoed again—twice, then once. Marek’s signal.
Pawel stood, quietly opened the door, and there he was: worn coat dusted with ash, boots damp from the city’s broken streets. Marek stepped in with urgency in his eyes, but paused a second longer than usual when he saw Ellie.
She stood near the table, backlit by the yellow desk lamp, the crumpled song draft in her hand. A wordless exchange passed between them. Marek knew better than to ask.
“We’re moving into Phase Three,” he said briskly, unrolling a slim map with coded pins. “Black Branch is confused, but not broken. They’re regrouping near Kalinagrad and tightening checkpoints in Ardona.”
He tapped a zone marked with a faded red ink.
“But tonight, we push. Radio’s ours for a two-minute window on the main wave. Enough for a burst.”
Pawel looked at him. “Lyrics or coordinates?”
Marek turned to Ellie.
“Coded poem. They want her voice.”
Ellie blinked. “Me?”
“You’re known,” Marek said. “Your cadence. The way you carry lines like they’re meant for lullabies, not orders. That confuses them. We keep them guessing—keep morale rising.”
He handed her a slip of paper. Four short stanzas. The language was soft, floral even—but to the cells waiting across Grunthal and Zelograd, it meant rally points, supply cache drops, and a confirmation of successful sabotage.
Ellie read it silently, then looked up.
“Do you want me to change it?” she asked.
Marek shook his head. “No. Read it the way you read. Like someone waiting for dawn.”
Pawel watched her, a faint smile playing at the edge of his lips. This wasn’t the Ellie who used to wave from airport terminals or scribble notes during safety briefings. This was 'Chloe'. The voice of Gate 23.
“Five minutes,” Marek said. “Then we go live.”
Ellie stepped toward the mic, adjusted the headset. She tucked Pawel’s unsent draft into her coat pocket.
“I’ll read it,” she said, clearing her throat. “But I’ll follow it with something of mine.”
Marek raised an eyebrow. “Yours?”
Pawel didn’t speak. He just nodded once, slow.
Ellie took a breath, the red ON AIR light flickered.
Outside, in Velinov and Ravna Luka, partisans leaned closer to crackling radios, waiting.
Deep inside, Ellie, as she read Pawel's unread draft again—creased from her grip, ink slightly smudged where her thumb lingered—looked up at him. Her voice was quiet, but resolute.
“You always wrote like it was the end of something. Like love was a farewell.”
She folded the page carefully now, with care, not haste.
“But this… this isn’t just about you. Or me. It’s about what survives when the silence ends. You think this was a song you buried—but it reached me. Even if you never meant it to.”
She stepped closer, eyes searching his.
“I’ll read their coded lines. I’ll do my part. But after that… let me read yours. Not for orders. For all the ones listening who forgot what it means to feel something in the middle of a war.”
She held the paper up, a little higher.
“Let this be our noise in their silence.”
Ellie adjusts the mic. The hum of the equipment steadies as the signal locks. Marek watches from behind glass, fingers drumming nervously on a clipboard.
Ellie begins.
“Where crows circle thrice, don’t cross.
The grain grows tallest where no flags fly.
A red stone marks the path near the split pines.
Where you hear the wind whistle—wait for the echo.”
Each line spoken with clarity, her voice smooth, careful, tuned to meaning only certain ears would decode.
Then… she hesitates. Glances down at Pawel’s folded draft, tucked beneath her hand. Her fingers move instinctively, unfolding it once more. She looks at Marek behind the glass.
He gives a faint nod.
She speaks again—this time, not as "Courier Chloe", but as Ellie.
“And if I never make it back,
Tell her she was the sunrise I never deserved.
She walked past me once in a crowd—
And I’ve been trying to finish the sentence ever since.”
A beat of silence. Then Ellie’s voice, quiet but firm:
“For those who still write in the dark—
Know this: not all poems are written for the past.
Some are meant to be read when it’s time to come home.”
The radio falls silent but for the static.
And across Velomar, in bunkers, in stolen vehicles, in trenches, and mountain hideouts, a thousand fighters paused—not just to plan—but to feel.
The red light on the mic dims. Silence lingers like mist. Ellie lowers the page, her breath catching in the quiet. Pawel says nothing—his eyes on the floor, his fingers clutched around his lukewarm coffee.
Marek steps in from the hall, a paper in hand. He grins faintly, trying not to show too much emotion, but it’s clear: her reading hit home.
“Nice delivery, Ellie." Marek said. "Raw, clear. Human. That’s what they need right now.”
She nods, still reeling a bit from reading Pawel’s words out loud.
He holds out another sheet—creased, smudged, but intact.
“How about we follow it up with something from the front? We got this one yesterday." Marek said, softly. "Signed: ‘From the Garden of Courage, Cherry Blossom.’”
Ellie blinks.
She recognizes the codename—it belonged to a reconnaissance unit in the upper valleys. Rumor was they had no radio left… only hand-carried messages when someone made it through the ridgeline.
She clears her throat. Takes the page. Begins:
“To whomever still listens in the city:
We dug in under snowfall, no light, no sound but wind.
But the stars still showed us your flickers.
We buried one yesterday. Quiet. No last words.
Just a humming—someone remembered a tune you played.
The youngest of us drew a foxglove on the wall.
We told her it meant the next phase had begun.
She said she drew it because it reminded her of home.”
Ellie swallows hard.
“If the city still breathes, if the signals still move—
Tell them the Garden still stands.
Tell them Cherry Blossom still blooms.”
She looks up at Marek. He only nods, this time without a word.
Pawel, behind her, doesn’t move. But quietly, without speaking, he begins scribbling something new in the margins of his old draft.
The room smells of dust, coffee grounds, and ozone from overworked equipment. Ellie leans against the wall, her breath finally steady after the reading. The candlelight flickers against the cracked map on the wall—Zharna, Muraten, Velinov—all marked in fading ink.
She watches Pawel scribble a few lines more, his brow furrowed in thought. Then suddenly, he looks up. There’s a hint of fire in his eyes, but it’s gentler now.
Ellie smiles—small, sincere. The kind of smile you can’t fake.
“Promise, I’ll be more than the first impression.” Ellie said.
He looks at her. No reply. Just a nod.
Then Pawel strums the guitar—quiet, muted—but the melody is unmistakably drawn from Группа крови, altered, softened, reshaped to hold tenderness and grief. His voice starts low, the way one sings in a room not built for music but for messages.
[Verse 1]
It was warm once,
But your smile felt like a spark
I believed in your light
But you dimmed it with every word
The coffee tastes bitter
As the hours slip away
I watched your silence grow
Like a shadow I couldn’t chase
And the time left for us
Is a map I never found
[Chorus]
My blood type’s fading in the sleeve
Your touch once sparked but made me grieve
Wish me peace, as I try to unwind
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
I won’t stay lost in your dark
I won’t stay tangled in your spark
Wish me silence, to clear my mind
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
It’s done
Pawel kept himself going as the verses falling like ash in candlelight. Ellie listens without blinking.
[Verse 2]
You gave me the stars
But turned the night too cold
I thought your fire would keep me warm
But I burned myself instead
I could have run, but I stayed too long
Chasing a dream that never felt right
Your voice was a melody
But the lyrics made me drown
And now the coffee’s just a stain on my hand
[Chorus]
My blood type’s fading in the sleeve
Your touch once sparked but made me grieve
Wish me peace, as I try to unwind
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
I won’t stay lost in your dark
I won’t stay tangled in your spark
Wish me silence, to clear my mind
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
It’s done
The second chorus catches in the throat:
’Cause I loved you—there, I said it
Even as the world treats me like I never meant it
Wish me quiet, not a happy end
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
I won’t haunt this dream we made
I won’t beg to let it fade
Wish me silence, not to pretend
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
I love you
Silence. No radio hum, no outside chatter. Just the crackle of the candle, and the unfinished breath between them.
“You should play that… next broadcast.” Ellie said.
“It’s not a song for war.” Pawel replied.
Ellie smiled and said:
“It’s the reason we fight.”
Meanwhile, the music resonate over Velomar.
On a battered receiver in a makeshift trench near Zharna, the resistance fighters huddle beneath tarpaulin and iron sheets. The static clears just enough to let Pawel’s voice drift through.
A young soldier, barely twenty, closes his eyes as the song plays. Another lights a cigarette with trembling fingers. None speak. For a moment, the cold is forgotten. The uncertainty, the loss, the exile of memory—all eclipsed by the warmth in that voice.
“Wish me silence, not to pretend / Sayin’ now, sayin’— / I love you…”
Somewhere in Kralzgrad, a mother stirring soup hears it from a hidden radio in the cellar. Her husband glances up from the maps. They recognize the melody—not Kino’s version—but the warbled echo of something rewritten in exile.
In Velinov, a rebel graffiti artist working under the dim light of a warehouse lamp, freezes mid-stroke. The stencil reads:
"She was the sunrise I never deserved."
They listen. Across cities, across ravaged roads and broken signals, they listen—not for orders this time, not for codes—but for a reason. For the feeling that they still dream, still love, still remember.
Back at Gate 23, Ellie doesn’t move as the last chord fades.
“I think the whole country just held its breath.”
XLII
The room was dim, lit only by the blinking standby light of the transmitter and the pale glow of an old desk lamp. Dust clung to the edges of the mic, and the walls were layered with decades of forgotten announcements, peeling posters, and maps marked with red thread.
Ellie sat down slowly, her heartbeat louder than the static in her headphones. She had rehearsed poetry—Pawel’s verses, her own scribbled fragments, things meant to stir memory and longing. But Marek, leaning against the doorframe with that half-smile of his, handed her a different page.
“Letters,” he said. “They’ll listen to that. They want to know someone out there still hears them.”
Ellie looked at the creased note—faded pencil strokes from someone who likely wouldn’t see the sunrise.
She hesitated. Then gently turned the page over, adjusted the mic, and pressed the button.
A low hum. Silence. Then her voice, softer than she expected, but steady:
“From the Garden of Courage… this is Cherry Blossom speaking.”
A pause, filled with a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“To my brother in Kralzgrad, I want you to know—I stood near the crater this morning. The same spot where we last saw Father before the push into Ravna Luka. The air was cold, but not hopeless. A nurse passed me a message: He made it through the night. So I’ll hold onto that for both of us.”
She turned the page. Another.
“To the boy with the patched uniform near Sector Twelve—I read what you wrote in coal on the wall. ‘Tell her I forgive her.’ I hope she hears you. Maybe she’s listening now.”
There was something sacred in the stillness after each letter. As if the whole of Velomar was leaning in, tuning closer, afraid to miss even one word.
Outside the room, Pawel stood in the shadows, arms crossed. He didn’t interrupt. He just listened.
And at that moment, Cherry Blossom was no longer a codename.
She was a voice for those who still had things to say when the world had gone silent.
As Ellie ended her last letter, her voice trembled slightly—but not from fear. It was the weight of memory, of bearing witness.
She looked up at Marek, who gave her a subtle nod.
Ellie leaned forward again, this time with a softness that belonged only to her:
“And for those still out there… here's something he left behind. A version of a song you might remember. Rewritten in the hours before a raid, recorded when he thought no one would hear.”
She clicked the old reel-to-reel into place.
A low hiss. Then Pawel’s voice—raspy, tired, intimate.
Not a perfect recording. Not polished. But real. His guitar buzzed faintly from worn strings, and his voice carried both defiance and grief.
“It was warm once,
But your smile felt like a spark
I believed in your light
But you dimmed it with every word...”
It was Pawel’s rewrite of Kino’s Группа крови, refracted through his own pain and resistance.
Lines like:
"My blood type’s fading in the sleeve
Your touch once sparked but made me grieve..."
And finally, his added chorus:
“’Cause I loved you—there, I said it
Even as the world treats me like I never meant it...”
As the song faded into the crackle of the transmission, the studio was quiet again.
Marek adjusted the dials. Ellie looked at the now-spinning reel, then whispered, off-mic:
“They heard him tonight.”
Somewhere out there—along the ridges of Muraten, in the shelters beneath Zharna, the bunkers near Kralzgrad—someone heard.
And remembered.
Meanwhile, the message spread like smoke through winter alleys.
In a basement in Velinov, students gathered around an old Soviet-made radio set. When Pawel’s voice came through—singing not in polished verses but in truth—they didn’t speak. One of them, who once played guitar in a campus folk band before the crackdowns, wiped his eyes. He recognized the chords, but more than that—he recognized the silence between them.
In a ravaged blockhouse near Zharna, a rebel medic, bandaging a young fighter’s shoulder, paused. “That’s him,” she whispered. “Pawel. He made it through the last push.” The boy, no older than seventeen, stared at the ceiling, mouthing along to lyrics he’d heard only once before—hummed by a girl on the back of a truck weeks ago.
Up in the hills above Nema Voda, deep inside a cold redoubt, an older partisan who used to dismiss rebel songs as frivolous, listened alone by candlelight. When Ellie’s voice came—steady, fragile, full of veiled grief—he bowed his head. "Cherry Blossom,” he said. “She's real.”
He lit a second candle, not for warmth, but to honor her segment. They now called it simply: “Letters from the Garden.”
Across Velomar, Radio Gate 23 was no longer just a hidden broadcast.
It was a rhythm—threaded into late-night shifts, mess hall echoes, trench-side whispers.
A melody passed from checkpoint to checkpoint, scribbled in margins of field manuals, etched onto ration tins.
A vow in the air:
“We heard you, Cherry Blossom.
We heard you, Pawel.”
XLIII
"From the Garden of Courage, this is Cherry Blossom speaking."
Tonight’s letter comes from a corporal stationed outside Kralzgrad. He signs only with the name “Linden.”
“To whoever finds this on the airwaves—
We held the east ridge for nine nights. There’s no light left in the tunnel beneath the overpass, just the hum of our breath and boots when we change shifts. I haven’t seen the sun since the broadcast about the tramline fire reached us, and still we wait. Not out of fear—no. Out of promise.
I remember my sister’s voice when she read me poems before the world turned. Ellie’s voice reminded me of that. We all stopped what we were doing when she read the one about the foxglove. No one spoke. Even Captain Verochkin, the one who hasn’t smiled since our mechanic died, looked up like he saw spring again.
If this message makes it out, tell her she lit a candle in this frostbitten place. Tell her we’re still here.
For the ones behind us, we hold. For the ones ahead, we clear the way.”
—Linden.
Ellie set the paper down softly.
Then, without cue, she whispered into the microphone:
“We hear you, Linden. We’ll carry your words farther than bullets ever flew.”
Meanwhile, at the outer camp near Nema Voda—
A single bulb hung from the tent’s central pole, swaying with the wind. The canvas walls whispered from the cold, but inside, the air was heavy with heat, sweat, and war maps inked in red and black.
Eduard Cardel stood over the campaign table, one hand gripping a mug of cold tea, the other resting on the corner of the map where District 8 faded into the mountain passes. Red pins marked successful disruptions—Zelograd, Kralzgrad, even Port Darnov now showed signs of internal disobedience. But it was Zharna, the bloodied frontier city, that held his gaze longest.
A young courier stepped in, out of breath, mud on his boots.
“Sir,” he saluted, “latest reports from the offensive.”
Cardel didn’t look up immediately. He let the pause weigh on the boy. Then:
“Read.”
The courier opened the paper, voice steady despite the tremor in his fingers:
“Tram line sabotage confirmed. Black Branch convoys redirected north, delaying their Velinov reinforcements by 36 hours.
Radio Gate 23 has resumed transmission. Civilian resistance in Ardona and Ravna Luka has increased by 300% overnight.
A new coded poem was aired under the callsign ‘Cherry Blossom.’
Morale appears to be rising, sir. One phrase was overheard repeated in four quadrants of Velomar by civilians and partisans alike: ‘We hear you, Linden.’”
That last line hung in the air.
Cardel finally looked up, his eyes not of a politician, but of a man who had once fought in the mud and smoke of an earlier uprising.
“Linden...” he said, more to himself.
He placed the mug down and moved one of the red pins deeper into the map near Velinov.
“We’ve moved from disruption to cohesion. They’re not just fighting now. They’re believing.”
He turned to the courier, voice clear.
“Send word to Gate 23: ‘Phase Four authorized. Full illumination.’”
XLIV
The thunder of rotors echoed through the mountain pass, chopping the pre-dawn stillness as the Black Branch Mi-17 helicopter made its descent over the war-scarred ridges of Zharna. On board: three intelligence officers, a field medic, and crates marked with hastily stenciled insignias—surveillance gear meant to trace insurgent radio bursts near Gate 23’s frequency.
But the peaks weren’t empty.
From the ruins of an abandoned grain silo, a team of Salvation Front fighters watched through infrared binoculars. One of them, nicknamed Kamen—Stone—adjusted the scope of the modified MANPADS launcher slung across his shoulder.
“Bird confirmed. Range 600 meters. Wind steady.”
Beside him, another fighter whispered a coded line over a secure handset:
“Foxglove is blooming. The sky is no longer theirs.”
Permission granted.
The missile streaked through the cold dawn with a scream that shattered the mountain’s hush. A split second later, a flower of flame blossomed midair. The helicopter bucked sideways, tail engulfed, and spiraled downward in a corkscrew of smoke and metal.
It slammed into the valley floor with a groaning impact.
From the cliffs, Kamen muttered: “For Zharna.”
The fighters vanished as swiftly as they came, leaving behind nothing but scorched earth and a burning question in the minds of the regime: How deep has the rot gone?
Later that morning, Smoke still curled from the twisted fuselage of the Mi-17 as a recovery team arrived—Black Branch shock troops in black armor, weapons drawn. But it was too late.
The crates were gone.
Scorch marks and bootprints told the story: the insurgents hadn’t just struck. They had anticipated the flight path, taken the high ground, and vanished with high-value cargo before the Black Branch even knew what hit them.
A technician swept a scanner across a remaining scrap of plastic casing. His face went pale.
“Sir, these weren’t just surveillance kits… One crate held the new signal decryption array. The one slated for the comms offensive next month.”
Meanwhile, at the Black Branch Strategic Command at Drovnik, The room was windowless, cold, and buzzing with encrypted static. High-level operatives stood around a live operations table, the map of Velomar divided by red zones, flashing icons, and intercepted signals.
General Yalov stood at the head, hands clasped behind his back, jaw clenched.
“They’ve captured an SDR-X array. That means two things,” he said, voice flat. “They can listen. And they can impersonate.”
He turned to his chief communications officer.
“We move all critical ops to offline protocol. No open-band relays. No digital encryption. Paper, couriers, handovers only.”
A strategist interjected:
“That slows us down. We’ll be blind for hours.”
Yalov glared.
“We already are blind.”
At the safehouse, Marek paced as a tech team decoded packet after packet from the stolen SDR-X array. What they found wasn’t just surveillance metadata—it was storage.
Logs. Audio. Names. Orders. Even footage.
And then… a discovery: Operation "Solstice."
Ellie, still seated in front of the microphone, looked at Marek.
“Is this real?”
He nodded grimly.
“It’s a purge order. Black Branch planned to disappear hundreds—activists, artists, teachers—by the solstice. Dated, signed, authorized. It wasn’t just suppression. It was preemptive erasure.”
Pawel stared at the printouts. His voice was barely a whisper.
“My uncle was on that list.”
Later that evening, The message from the clandestine radio went out to the world:
“Tonight’s signal carries more than poetry. Tonight, we read names. These names were not meant to be spoken. These lives were not meant to continue. But they will be heard.”
Ellie’s voice was quiet, unwavering, as she began to read the names aloud, one by one. Some listeners wept. Others picked up weapons. The cities were listening.
Black Branch tried to jam the signal. They failed.
By midnight, the regime's secret was public—inside Velomar and beyond.
The Black Branch commander spat out a curse. “They’ll be listening to us before we hear them.”
Meanwhile at the safe house, Ellie leaned over Marek’s shoulder as he examined one of the captured devices, now cracked open and humming faintly on the table. Pawel stood nearby, still strumming a half-tuned guitar, watching with a mix of awe and unease.
“They risked a chopper for this?” Marek muttered. “Then we just leveled the field.”
Ellie whispered, half to herself: “Foxglove bloomed after all.”
And that night, on the radio, her voice returned:
“From the Garden of Courage, this is Cherry Blossom. Tonight’s message is dedicated to those who turn silence into signal... and fire into freedom.”
Behind her, Pawel’s voice faded in—his recording of Группа крови, reworked, wounded, defiant.
The dusk wind howled through the half-collapsed monastery that now served as the Salvation Front’s provisional HQ. Maps were pinned to wooden walls. Radios clicked, buzzed, then crackled to life—Gate 23’s signal rising like a drumbeat in the bones.
A junior officer ran in, breathless, holding a printed transcript.
“Sir—it’s true. They read the list. They read the list.”
Cardel took the pages with both hands, scanned the names. His eyes stopped on one: Anton Veskov. A poet. His friend. Vanished six months ago.
He exhaled, slow, then looked to his command circle.
“Now we know. Now they know. The government just lost the one thing it had left—silence.”
From behind, another aide entered, this one dirt-covered and reeking of smoke.
“A helicopter was brought down over the western ridge, Zharna sector. Recovered cargo confirms: latest-generation tactical drones, crates of NTX-6 rifles. The team that took them said the pilot ejected—then surrendered.”
Cardel glanced up.
“Surrendered?”
“Said he didn’t know who he was bombing. Until now.”
The room stilled.
By dawn, graffiti lined the walls of Kalinagrad:
“Solstice Ends With Fire.”
“We Are The Names You Tried to Bury.”
“Cherry Blossom Speaks for All of Us.”
In Port Darnov, students occupied the broadcast tower. In Ravna Luka, railway workers blockaded supply trains bound for Drovnik.
The array had done more than expose a plan. It had given faces to the war. Stories. Teachers. Daughters. Comrades.
The people responded not as pawns, but as witnesses.
Meanwhile at the safe house, Ellie sat at the mic. Pawel was beside her, holding her hand this time.
“Tonight we don’t need code,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse but sure.
“We speak plainly. For those who won’t come back. For those still waiting. This is Cherry Blossom, from the Garden of Courage. We’re still here.”
And then Pawel’s version of “Группа крови” played again—
—but this time, it wasn’t just a song.
It was the sound of a dying lie and the birth of defiance.
A Letter was recieved to Ellie from a Mechanic in Kralzgrad:
To Cherry Blossom, and whoever plays the songs at night—
I work in an engine yard. We’re told it’s for “infrastructure.” That’s a lie. I fix armored transports that roll through the bones of my own neighborhood. I stay quiet, fix what I must, and hide the rest.
Until I heard you.
I don’t know your real name. Maybe I don’t need to. But when you read that letter about the boy who wanted to learn music before he was conscripted—and then was buried with his fingers broken—I dropped the wrench.
That boy? He used to come to my shop for guitar strings. His name was Lior.
I’m not a poet like you, but I remember what he said once. “You don’t have to fight with fists. Just don’t forget me.”
I haven’t. And now I won’t.
The next convoy you see missing a wheel—just know it wasn’t rust.
—Signed, Turncoat Wrench
Meanwhile at the Black Branch Headquarters, the mood was grim. The stolen array hadn’t just exposed the Purity Charter—the government’s program of "pre-emptive rehabilitation"—it had released full names, dates, and prison logs. Families who were told their children had died in accidents now had recordings of their last known radio messages.
Director Ilianov slammed a report on the table. “This isn’t a broadcast anymore. It’s a cultural weapon. This ‘Gate 23’—it’s not a location. It’s a movement. And we underestimated it.”
His aide whispered, “We traced part of the signal. It’s bouncing off foreign relays. There are sympathetic outposts in Trieste. In Thessaloniki. Even someone in Tunis is rebroadcasting their songs.”
“Songs,” Ilianov scoffed. “They’ve turned songs into subversion.”
He paused. Then gave a quiet order:
“Initiate Black Echo Protocol. I want their frequencies jammed. And if you find the girl—erase her voice.”
But Ellie, still in the clandestine radio, broadcasted her message:
“To the boy who mailed a wrench from Kralzgrad,” she said that night,
“You didn’t just break a convoy. You built a memory.”
Pawel added softly, almost inaudibly behind the mic:
“You gave Lior a second life.”
Then the broadcast continued—not with Kino’s song, but a new one. A rebel’s lullaby. A quiet melody Pawel composed from a broken string, a borrowed radio, and a promise.
The Black Echo Protocol was the government’s most ruthless countermeasure to date—a wide-band jamming initiative, layered with signal hijack tools and drone-deployed radio suppressors. Its aim: sever the limbs of Gate 23 and plunge the rebel movement into silence.
For twelve hours, the air was dead. No broadcasts. No poems. No coded verses from Ellie. The familiar thrum of the resistance's cultural heartbeat had gone flatline.
And yet, in the mountains of Nema Voda, under cover of fog and static, a rebel unit surged forward. The broadcast silence had not paralyzed them—it had signaled them.
The absence of signal was the signal.
As planned, when the clandestine radio went dark, it meant Black Echo was in place—and their window to strike its tower arrays had begun.
Saboteurs from Muraten, known as the Vesna Group, moved swiftly. Using old mining tunnels that ran beneath the abandoned observatory east of Ardona, they surfaced just under the primary Black Echo relay station. With charges wired in radios wrapped in aluminum foil, they didn’t just blow the relay—they broadcasted the detonation as it happened.
"To those who tried to silence the night," said the burst transmission,
“Here’s your answer.”
The tower collapsed in on itself. One down.
Back in Zelograd, another rebel cell, posing as telecom technicians, had infiltrated a broadcast support station. While fake repair requests were lodged by other partisans to bog down real crews, the cell uploaded a looped broadcast, hijacking a portion of the state network.
And what played?
A stripped version of Pawel’s Kino-inspired song—his voice cracked with fatigue, but unmistakable:
"Wish me silence, not to pretend—
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
I love you.”
It was followed by Ellie’s voice—recovered from prior recordings, her tone steady, her signature clear:
“From the Garden of Courage… Cherry Blossom returns.”
Across Velomar, hundreds tuned in from cracked radios and smuggled shortwaves. They wept. They cheered. Some quietly turned the dial toward static just to hear the possibility of more.
Cardel, watching the horizon glow faint with morning, received the report. He barely looked up from his field map.
“So Black Echo collapsed?”
“Yes, sir. The second tower is… ashes.”
Cardel only nodded.
“Good. Now send the signal. It’s time.”
A coded pulse was sent to all resistance clusters:
Phase Four Initiated — "Fire and Bloom."
Under cover of the new moon, the government's most classified blackout operation—Black Echo Protocol—was fully activated. Radio jammers lit up the frequencies from Kalinagrad to Port Darnov, drowning out Gate 23’s last audible signal with a wall of engineered static. Agents began sweeping operations across known relay zones, while sympathizers in the telecom ministry were arrested without warning.
But it was already too late.
XLV
At exactly 01:32, rebel-aligned signal engineers in Ardona activated Array 7—a stolen, reassembled communications platform formerly owned by the regime. It began re-broadcasting Gate 23 under a new, variable frequency pattern. The array was also laced with an explosive secret: decrypted internal memos detailing the existence of Detention Zone K-9, a black site long denied by the regime, where political prisoners and student leaders had been “disappeared.”
Within twenty minutes, the exposé was spreading—transmitted not only across Velomar but reaching sympathetic networks in nearby neutral countries.
Phase Four – Fire and Bloom had begun.
In Kralzgrad, two factory towers simultaneously unfurled the old Velomari flag, banned since the coup. In Zharna, guerrilla fighters took advantage of the disarray to bring down a second patrol helicopter using a scavenged SAM system. Meanwhile, Velinov’s university bell rang at dawn, despite martial law—it rang for nine minutes straight, symbolizing the number of student union members found in the Zone K-9 files.
Cardel, now stationed deep within the forests beyond Muraten, received the latest coded map from Marek via courier drone. He studied the red dots—Black Branch facilities—and the expanding green bloom: liberated zones. His hand hovered over a sealed folder marked “Final Broadcast Contingency.”
He turned to his adjutant and said, “If they try to smother a voice, then we answer with a chorus.”
Coincidentally—or perhaps by design—the rebel offensive began just as Black Echo Protocol reached full deployment.
The regime had banked on silencing the resistance’s voice before dawn. But as their towers hummed with jamming power and command posts scrambled to realign frequencies, a wave of coordinated insurgent attacks swept through key strongholds.
In Zharna, where fighters had already downed a second patrol helicopter, urban cells launched simultaneous raids against fuel depots and communication bunkers. Dozens of local collaborators surrendered without a fight, their morale broken by Gate 23’s rebirth and the Zone K-9 revelations.
In Nema Voda, long thought too remote for a meaningful strike, rebel engineers used the stolen telemetry to disable a Black Branch surveillance drone grid. The mountain city erupted—long-dormant cells emerged from hiding, joined by angry villagers who had lost sons and daughters to forced disappearances. The town’s power plant fell by sunrise.
But the boldest move came in Ravna Luka, a key railway hub vital to Black Branch logistics. As the static of Black Echo droned on, a train loaded with arms and radio arrays exploded just outside the city, lit up by a timed insurgent ambush that used decoy signals to bait the convoy into a kill zone.
Inside the capital Drovnik, panic spread quietly. Civil servants whispered of the leaked black site. Students marched with blindfolds and tape across their mouths—"You cannot silence the dead," read one banner.
From her concealed transmitter post, Ellie—code name: Cherry Blossom—read aloud a second letter from a conscripted rebel, written to his mother. Her voice carried across a thousand radios hastily re-tuned by the people:
“I don’t know if I’ll ever write again, Mama. But we’re no longer shadows. We’ve taken back the light.”
The chorus that followed wasn’t static.
It was Pawel’s version of “Группа крови” again—but now with harmonies, background guitar layers added from another transmitter. The people had begun to remix the revolution.
However, the Black Branch struck back. Not with bombs—not at first—but with disinformation.
However, the Black Branch struck back. Not with bombs—not at first—but with disinformation.
Their operatives, embedded within local councils and neighborhood watch groups, began seeding stories:
“The rebels faked the broadcast.”
“The girl calling herself Cherry Blossom is a foreign agent, a voice actress.”
“The tapes are edited, old. The insurgency is crumbling.”
In Ardona, anonymous flyers littered the streets overnight:
"Gate 23 is a psy-op. You are being manipulated. Trust only the Central Voice."
But the resistance had anticipated this. The Array they’d stolen weeks before wasn’t just a communications tool—it was also a repository. It stored archived audio, timestamped metadata, and footage of operations and former Black Branch atrocities. Within hours, Gate 23 aired a segment titled:
“Verified.”
A collage of voices—Ellie’s included—spliced with coordinates, dated airstrikes, and intercepted memos, some bearing Eduard Cardel’s own seal.
Back in Drovnik, in the fortified Ministry compound, Cardel himself reviewed the footage. His face hardened.
“Activate Warden Units in Ravna Luka,” he said coldly. “And find the technician who leaked the archives. No survivors.”
But his order came too late.
Because just as Cardel signed off on the directive, a coordinated flash-raid by rebel cells in Ardona and Zharna began to play the second part of their plan: the Culture Blitz.
Across public squares, abandoned bus stations, and hacked LED billboards, a signal played. Not just audio—video.
Ellie, against a backdrop of smoke-gray hills and flickering transmitter lights, looking into the camera.
“You tried to erase us. So we recorded everything.”
And then: Pawel’s voice, not singing, but speaking.
“This is not a broadcast. This is a memory.
And memories don’t die.”
That night, the Black Echo Protocol faltered.
Civilian networks rebelled.
Former state artists refused to return to propaganda roles.
And in Velinov, a group of former broadcast engineers reactivated a Cold War-era backup tower—and joined the frequency war.
Gate 23 wasn’t one station anymore.
It was dozens. Hundreds.
An echo chamber that no longer belonged to the state.
XLVI
The room is low-lit, hidden beneath what was once an old metro station control center. Faint remnants of yellow hazard lines mark the floor beneath dust and bootprints. The air smells of copper, old paper, and solder. Wires twist like ivy from junction boxes, converging at the heart of the cell: a salvaged broadcast desk retrofitted with an analog mic, a cobbled-together mixer, and a signal booster wrapped in aluminum mesh.
Ellie sat cross-legged on the bench, coat still on, shoulders hunched as she glanced down at the stack of pages in her lap. Her fingers brushed over the lines Pawel had once folded carefully. Her breath steamed in the cold. Somewhere above her, the ground thudded with distant artillery—but below, it was nearly silent.
A soft knock on the hatch behind her.
“You have five minutes." Marek quietly said. "We’ve got a clean signal window. After that, they might triangulate again.”
Ellie nodded but didn’t turn.
On the desk, someone had left her a small paper cup—lukewarm barley coffee, no sugar. She took a sip anyway.
She stared at the mic. It loomed larger than it was—black, scarred with tape and burn marks from old fires, the kind only sabotage crews caused when pulling out in a hurry. A machine that shouldn’t still work. But it did.
Ellie was murmuring to herself: “From the Garden of Courage... this is Cherry Blossom.”
She tried the words out, the alias given to her weeks ago. Her hands trembled slightly. Not from fear. From knowing this might be the first time she wasn’t just a voice ferrying commands—but something else. Someone else.
On the far end of the desk sat a battered cassette player. Inside: Pawel’s tape. The one with his version of Группа крови recorded under a fleece blanket in the barracks. She had spliced it in herself, keeping the final chorus raw and uncut.
She reached over and gently pressed the tape into place.
Marek, from the doorway, asked: “You sure you want to read it like that? Not as a message? Not with a key?”
Ellie finally turned. Her eyes were calm, reflective. “If they hear it only as a love letter, let them. Ellie said. "If they hear more—then they’re already awake.”
Marek looked at her for a long moment, then gave a rare nod and pulled the hatch shut.
Ellie turned back to the mic. Her finger hovered over the broadcast toggle.
One last glance at the page. Pawel’s handwriting.
Faded. Angled. Edges smudged where she’d held it too long.
The moment stretched.
Outside, the distant hum of night drones passed overhead, scanning the ruins.
Ellie took a breath, deep and grounding.
And pressed the switch.
The red light blinked on.
The Garden of Courage spoke.
“Good evening...
From the Garden of Courage, this is Cherry Blossom.”
A pause. She breathes.
“They’ve asked me to read from the letters again—words from the frontlines, from our fighters, from those whose names the broadcasts will never catch but whose footprints line every street, every pass, every cracked sidewalk the tanks never repaired.
But tonight… I want to share something else.”
“It was left in my hands. Folded between torn maps and coffee-stained scraps of other songs. I found it before the last sirens. I’ve read it twice already to myself.
And now, I’ll read it to all of you.”
“No one asked me to. No one told me what it meant.
But maybe that’s the point.
Maybe the ones we lose leave us not just with silence—but with something to carry.”
“He called it Tell My Ellie. But maybe it’s not just for me.”
Then a taped song was played.
A deep breath. She begins.
“If I never make it back,
Tell her she was the sunrise I never deserved.
She walked past me once in a crowd—
And I’ve been trying to finish the sentence ever since.”
“She was the spark before my first firefight,
The name I stitched under my uniform.
She was never mine to keep,
But in the silence between explosions,
She was the only sound I prayed for.”
“They called us ghosts.
But she—she saw me.
Even when I was too afraid to say it.”
“So if I don’t make it back,
Tell her I didn’t fall because I stopped hoping.
I fell because I started to believe.”
A beat. Her voice lowers, tender now, and unsteady.
“There are no medals for boys who write poems before raids. No parades for those who carry the weight of a name they never dared to say aloud.
But he wrote this.
And if his voice falters now, mine will carry it.”
“He did not leave this behind as a message to crack or a cipher to trace. He left it because someone had to remember.
So I do.”
“Wherever he is—if he’s still walking, still hiding, still singing behind his teeth as the blackout sirens cry—
I want him to know…”
“I heard it.
Every line.
And I am not the only one.”
A slow acoustic version of his song begins to fade in, muffled and grainy as if recorded under blankets, underground. The last verse echoes through her mic, sung by a tired, untrained voice—Pawel’s—half-fractured by distance but still defiant:
“’Cause I loved you—there, I said it
Even as the world treats me like I never meant it
Wish me quiet, not a happy end
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
I won’t haunt this dream we made
I won’t beg to let it fade
Wish me silence, not to pretend
Sayin’ now, sayin’—
I love you.”
Her voice returns. Just above the static.
“From the Garden of Courage...
This is Cherry Blossom.
And if anyone’s listening—
Tell him I kept the page.
Tell him I stayed.”
The signal fades. But somewhere beyond the capital, on a handheld radio buried under tarpaulin in a supply truck, a young fighter nods. Somewhere in Zelograd, an old teacher closes her eyes with the same verse in her heart.
And in a forgotten camp under the peaks of Nema Voda- a partisan hears the transmission.
To be Continued