Ahead, Marek signals: German checkpoint blocking the direct route.
We divert through a collapsed building, picking through rubble, emerging two blocks north.
Another checkpoint.
Divert again.
We're being funneled. Herded toward specific kill zones or capture points.
The Germans aren't just taking Warsaw—they're processing the survivors.
"There!"
Kasia points to a gap in the German perimeter.
"Narrow, but passable. If we move fast."
"Do it," Marek orders.
We run.
---
The gap is tighter than it looked.
We go single file, pressed against rubble walls, German positions visible to the left and right.
If they look this direction, we're dead. No cover. No escape.
But they're focused elsewhere—rounding up surrendering Polish soldiers, processing civilians, securing the sector.
We slip through like ghosts.
Five blocks past German lines, Marek calls a halt.
"Count off."
We count. Fifteen left. Everyone made it through the gap.
"Where now?" Jakub asks.
"East. Stay off main roads. Move at night. Reach the forest before dawn."
Marek checks his map.
"If we're separated, rendezvous point is here—"
He marks a location.
"Small village, forty kilometers east. Resistance safe house. Ask for Piotr."
"And if there's no safe house?"
"Then we keep moving until we reach Romania or die trying."
We move out.
---
The journey becomes fragments:
Moving through suburban ruins, past bodies and abandoned equipment.
Hiding in a ditch while German convoy passes, close enough to hear soldiers talking.
Crossing a river that's ice-cold and waist-deep, current trying to drag us downstream.
One of our group—a Polish soldier named Stefan—stepping on a mine.
The explosion.
The screaming that cuts off too quickly.
Fourteen now.
German patrol spots us near midnight.
Firefight in darkness, muzzle flashes and chaos.
Two more of our group die. Kasia kills three Germans before we break contact and run.
Twelve now.
We reach the forest at dawn, exhausted and bleeding and reduced by attrition.
Marek calls another halt.
"Rest two hours. Then we keep moving."
I collapse against a tree, rifle across my lap, and close my eyes for the first time in twenty-four hours.
---
Kasia settles next to me.
Her face is streaked with dirt and blood—some hers, most not.
Her hands shake from exhaustion or adrenaline crash, hard to tell which.
"We made it," she says.
"Out of Warsaw. Not out of Poland."
"One step at a time."
She leans against me, her weight warm and solid and real.
"Rio?"
"Yeah?"
"That night in the ruined building. It wasn't just adrenaline or fear or desperation."
"I know."
"I meant what I said. Find me in Kraków. When this is over."
"What if it's never over?"
"Then find me anyway."
She looks up at me.
"Promise."
The fragments pulse.
All the promises I've made across lifetimes. All the people I've lost. All the connections severed by war and death and forgetting.
"I promise," I say. "Kraków. When Poland is free."
"Good."
She closes her eyes.
"Now let me pretend to sleep while I'm still too scared to actually manage it."
I put my arm around her.
She doesn't pull away.
For two hours, we sit like that—two people who survived Warsaw's fall, holding onto something human in a world determined to make us monsters.
---
We wake to Marek's voice: "Movement. Soldiers approaching."
Everyone up, weapons ready, exhaustion forgotten.
Through the trees: German patrol.
Maybe twenty soldiers, sweeping the forest systematically. Looking for evacuees like us.
"We can't fight that many," Jakub whispers.
"We split up," Marek decides.
"Three groups. Better chance someone makes it through."
He divides us quickly: Four people per group.
"Rendezvous point is still the village. Move fast. Stay silent. Good luck."
My group: Jakub, Kasia, and a Polish fighter named Tomek.
Marek's group heads north.
The third group heads south.
We go east, pushing deeper into the forest, away from the German sweep.
---
We move for three hours.
The forest is dense, old-growth, good cover but difficult terrain.
Roots try to trip us. Branches catch our equipment. Every sound might be Germans or might be nothing.
Kasia leads. She knows forests—grew up near Kraków, spent summers hiking these woods before war made hiking deadly.
We're maybe ten kilometers from the rendezvous when Tomek steps wrong.
His ankle turns on a root.
He goes down hard, stifling a scream. Compound fracture visible through his boot.
"Kurwa," he gasps. "Kurwa, kurwa, kurwa..."
Jakub checks the injury. Shakes his head.
"Can't walk. Can barely stand. We'd have to carry him."
"Then we carry him," Kasia says.
"Carrying him slows us down. Germans are still sweeping. They'll catch us."
"So we leave him?"
Her voice hardens.
"Just abandon him?"
"We leave him with supplies and come back with help."
Jakub's voice is gentle but firm.
"It's the only way."
Tomek makes the decision for us.
"Go. Leave me rifle, some ammunition. I'll slow them down if they come this way."
"Tomek—"
"I'm dead either way. Ankle like this, I'm not walking forty kilometers."
He accepts the reality with surprising calm.
"Better I die useful than die slow."
We don't have time to argue.
We give him supplies. Extra ammunition. Water. Morphine for the pain.
"Thank you," Kasia says quietly.
"Thank me by surviving."
He checks his rifle.
"Now go. Before I change my mind and shoot you for leaving me."
We go.
Behind us, Tomek settles against a tree, rifle ready, waiting for Germans or death—whichever finds him first.