Getaway: Parts 4 & 5
_ **Part 4** _ My first night in Polcia culminated in the weirdest bout of sleep I'd ever had. I lost count of how many times I woke to varying degrees of darkness, wondering what strange room I'd found myself in, and why I could hear Sasha snoring...
Getaway: Part 3
_ **Part 3** _ In the days and weeks that followed those initial discussions, I managed to get somewhere approaching comfortable with the idea of travelling all the way to Polcia. I'd also got used to fact that I'd be heading there with Sasha in...
Getaway: Parts 1 & 2 (AaO Side Story)
**_Getaway_** **_Part 1_** Everything jerked at once. My monitor and fan rocked back and forth. Pens skittered and tumbled off of the desk. Hell, even the fully-loaded filing were thumping. The shaking affected everything, all the way through...
Getaway: Part 12 - Final
_ **Part 12** _ It had taken forever and a day to get ourselves to the airport. At seven that morning, I figured peeling myself off my hostel bed would be the toughest part of my day, especially after the less than sensible night we'd enjoyed before....
Getaway: Part 10
_ **Part 10** _ We followed her out of the cold and into the light. A kitchen sat in darkness at the opposite end of the narrow hallway, past the bare wooden staircase. The smell of boiled vegetables struck my nose. Below, my shoes met resistance from...
Slim
_ **Slim** _ These makroudhs were tiny. Like, mind-blowingly. Six diamond-shaped pastries sat arranged on a square plate; the centrepiece of the hand-sized tray I was carrying across the restaurant. I wondered, how in the world Dad managed to bake...
Hurdles
_ **Hurdles** _ Early shifts at the gym were _no_ fun for several reasons. Firstly, it meant dealing with all the nine-to-fivers coming in for their pre-work workouts, building up sweat, then rushing off without wiping down our equipment properly....
Courier
_ **Courier** _ I had a problem. A big one. So carried away, so firmly in the thrall of tourist mode, I'd managed to lose my bearings completely. Certainly, I was no stranger to wandering off and going astray during holiday expeditions, but this was...
Connections
_ **Connections** _ A heavy barge sent me staggering forward down the entrance slope. The will of my shoe rubber alone stopped me tumbling completely. I missed the culprit; too busy preventing myself from ploughing through the crowd and onto the...
Special Delivery
_ **Special Delivery** _ Morozovo. Fuckin' Morozovo. Of all the places to get transferred over to. They couldn't have moved me any further north without pushing me out of Zelengorod entirely. I'd been driving flatout for almost an hour already, and...
Gameface: Part 4 (Final)
_ **Part 4** _ I decided to skip our usual post-match ritual long before the final whistle. Usually, I'd have been only too happy to help celebrate a win at the pub with my teammates, especially against a team flying high in the league. Not that day....
Gameface: Part 3
_ **Part 3** _ We broke. Everything that needed to be said, had been. Fifteen of us went our own ways, jogging into our starting positions. The five waiting in reserve joined Coach and Tomas on the bench, Damian included. Our referee for the day, a...