The room smelled faintly of burnt coffee and old steel. It was a sterile, temporary command center located in a nondescript financial district in Milan—a neutral territory that felt far from the ruins of Paros and even farther from the relative peace of my Russian home. The windows were opaque, sealing us off from the noise and light of the Italian city below. It was exactly the kind of environment designed to enforce focus, yet I found my mind wandering constantly, pulled back to the one ...