Find a corner to get situated in.

Graeber took the wounded man and guided himself to a place isolated from the other POWs, but even then, the pen did not allow much personal space. He stood above the man and examined his condition with a careful eye. He was no medic, and his knowledge of the human body was rudimental at best, but that's all he needed to know his companion was in rough shape. If he didn’t get proper attention, this man would die here.

Graeber did his best to take care of himself, too. He didn’t seem badly injured but had a sinking feeling that he'd likely get infected with the bullet still inside his shoulder. He paled off and sighed. He tried to think of something else and spoke to the wounded man he’d paired himself with. “Wie heißen Sie?”

He groaned. “Mein Name ist Josef”

“You don’t look very good,” Graeber knelt and patted the man. “How much do you think we could trust these Russians?”

“Not much,” the man managed. “I’ve been here for at least 12 hours, and not even the Germans have noticed me. I’m damned to die here, that much I know.”

Graeber took a closer look and moved some of the blood-soaked bandages. “Are your eyes actually…?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I know my rags are covered in blood, but I’ve been too scared to make this discovery alone.”

“What happened to you?”

“Grenade blew up near my face during an ****,” he paused while he recalled the battle that put him in this state of damage. “I’m fortunate it wasn’t a fragmentation grenade, but my eyes still feel like they got kicked back into my skull. They’re probably mush beside my brain. What will my daughters think of me now?”

“Do you want me to check now, or shall we wait?”

“No need to stall anymore than I have,” the man takes a deep breath. “Remove the bandages, friend.”

Graeber carefully lifted the blood bandage and gasped. As he had predicted, one eye was entirely gone. He saw the inside of the man's head, but it looked clean. There was no visible puss or discoloration that didn’t seem unnatural. The other eye, however, was pale gray, and he leaned in to see if any damage was done to that one. The man blinked with his good eye a few times and focused on him. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Lord Jesus. You’re so ugly!”

Graber frowned. “I have bad news.”

The man frowned in return. “Was?”

“You have certainly gone blind if you think I am ugly.”

They laugh, and suddenly in this corner of the POW pen, the war doesn’t seem so bad. A few hours pass without an event. There are a few soldiers that willingly leave, but more often than not, there are a few that are randomly taken in for questioning. Graeber and his damaged companion somehow remain off the radar.

It isn’t until the later afternoon when the sun starts dipping beneath the horizon that something worth mentioning. A small group of Russians came in. A majority of the Soviets were men, but there was one shorter one among them.

They were all adorned with the same style and color, but there was no mistaking the sniper with the cloth cap and olive cape. Graeber didn’t get a good look at the girl before he was beaten senseless and shot— his arm still throbbed by her bullet, and in some parts of his face, it still felt numb.

His wounded companion was still on the stretcher when they came, but they weren’t here for him; it was Graeber who they were after.

In the small team that went in, it was all the men that grabbed Graeber and dragged him to the center. He received a swift kick to the stomach and an unnecessary punch to his gunshot. Finally, the girl came over and spat on him, making Graeber a spectacle for the others. She flipped him over to his stomach and placed a foot on his back, and she started to say something. Everything around him was muffled, but even if he could hear her clearly, his Russian wasn’t nearly good enough to translate everything she was saying. However, he figured it was about him.

Eventually, she flipped him to his back, and she placed a knee on his chest as she pressed a barrel of a pistol into his head. Graeber found the green eyes staring at him remarkably bright and sharp. The strands of ginger hair sticking out over her forehead gave them a certain kind of complexion that he had once read about. Graeber, in all other accounts, found her very attractive, so what was wrong? Right, the whole shooting, beating, berating, and now threatening at gunpoint were all attributes he found hideous downsides. He hated her and wanted nothing more than to make her pay for forcing him into a position to be captured— something he had been desperately trying to avoid, even at Stalingrad when he was trapped with Emil and his original.

“Du Fotze!” Graeber spat at her in German, so he wasn’t sure if she could understand him. “I’ll fucking kill you when I get the chance.”

She stared, somewhat surprised, like she expected him to be submissive somehow or maybe out of energy to fight after the day’s harsh treatment. She looked at the others and then shooed them away. “You have more energy than I thought, you fascist pig. What are you trying to tell me?”

Graeber listened to her broken English and tried not to laugh at her face. Her accent was terrible, and she stumbled through some words like a child reading Shakespeare. “I said I am, going to kill you when I am given the chance,” his English wasn't as hindered as her's, but she still looked smug.

“And that first part?” She knelt harder and Graeber wheezed. “That’s what I thought.”

She kicked off of him, and Graeber placed a hand on his chest. The pain subsided quickly, but somehow he felt numb. He got to one knee and fell forward. The girl squatted to study Graeber like a caged animal. “What is your name, soldier?”

Graeber wanted to spit on her face but thought otherwise at the last moment. “Graeber.”

She grabbed his hair and yanked it back. “Your full name and rank!”

He grabbed her wrist and squeezed. “Samson Graeber… Oberschütze.”

The girl blinked and then laughed as she let go of him. “If all of Hitler’s low-ranking men had as much fighting spirit as you, I’m sure you would have been in Moscow by now, or at least still in Stalingrad!”

She pushed him back with enough **** that he landed on his butt. She towered over him as though she was taller, more robust, superior in every aspect. “I’m Natasha. But to you, I am the Red ****.”

Graeber buried his eyes into Natasha, or the Red ****, as she just titled herself. And he realized he had heard that name a few times before. In fact, he was sure there was a bounty of some kind on this girl. But the only payment he wanted was her ****.