The first memory Russ could never forget wasn't a face or a voice, it was the smell. A mix of sour milk, piss-soaked carpet, and burnt spoon metal. That was home.
It clung to everything. The peeling walls, the crusted floor, even the silence. The room stayed dark even in the middle of the day. Black-out sheets were stapled to the window, sagging under their own weight like they were trying to give up. The air was damp, stale, and heavy, the kind that sat on your chest and refused to let go. Mold grew like veins, crawling upward from the floor to the ceiling in crooked patterns.
Somewhere in that rotting cube of Detroit's forgotten slums, a baby cried. It wasn't because he was hungry, not really. It wasn't about needing warmth or comfort either. It was just noise, the echo of a human who already knew, somehow, that the world didn't want him.
His mother was there, of course. Slumped sideways on a stained couch that looked like it had been dragged in from a landfill. Her eyes didn't open, not when he wailed, not when the sound bounced off the bare walls. Her thin arms were covered in bruises and scars, and the vein in her neck pulsed weakly with whatever mix of pills and powder she had scored that week.
She rocked slowly, rhythmically. Not out of concern. There was no concern left in her. It was a desperate motion, chasing a high that had already slipped from her grasp. Chasing a feeling she couldn't name anymore.
"Shut the fuck up, Russ," she slurred without opening her eyes.
He didn't have words back then, but somehow, even as a toddler, he understood what she meant. So he stopped crying.
Most days were the same. The TV always sat on static, gray and crackling. The sink was full of crusted bowls and half-rotting leftovers. Maggots wriggled in old spaghetti. Frozen dinners were half-cooked and half-eaten. Roaches skittered across the floor like they paid rent. Russ learned early not to crawl too far. The needles were under the couch. The shattered glass by the bathroom sink. The dangers didn't shout, they waited quietly.
By the time he turned three, the idea of a birthday was foreign. No candles. No cake. Not even a hug. Just a knock on the door.
That was the day Uncle Derrick showed up.
A tall man with a grin like broken glass. He wore a gold chain around his neck, thick and heavy. His boots were polished, too shiny for that part of town. And tucked into the side of one of those boots was a knife. Not the foldable kind. A real one. Its handle was bone-white, worn down smooth.
He didn't smell like piss or smoke. He smelled like cologne, sweet and thick, trying too hard to cover something darker. Russ didn't like him.
"Lil man gettin' big," Derrick said, crouching down with that grin. He eyed Russ like a butcher looking over meat.
His mother didn't lift her head. Didn't even blink. "Ain't mine much longer. Social gonna come soon," she muttered, barely awake.
Russ wasn't listening to their words. He was focused on the boots. How shiny they were. How they reflected the little light that came in from the hallway. And that knife. It fascinated him.
That night, Derrick came back.
Alone.
Said they were going for a ride. Just a little ride. His mother didn't look up from her mattress. Didn't say goodbye. Didn't ask questions. She just waved her hand vaguely in their direction.
Russ didn't ask where they were going either. He couldn't form the question yet. But his body tensed the moment they got into the car.
It smelled different from the house. Better. Like actual soap and leather seats. The windows worked. They rolled down all the way.
"Gonna get you someplace nice," Derrick said, trying to make his voice sound soft. It came out too slick. Too rehearsed.
Russ didn't reply. He just stared ahead, tiny hands clutched in his lap. Quiet. Still. His stomach twisted with something cold and sick. Something instinctive.
They drove for a while. Past cracked sidewalks and burned-down storefronts. Past alleys that smelled like piss and bleach. Until finally they pulled off near an old overpass, half-buried in snow and silence. No lights. No witnesses. Just empty roads.
Another car was already there, waiting. Black. No license plates.
Derrick got out and opened the back door. "Come on, little prince," he muttered, tugging Russ gently by the wrist.
Russ followed. He didn't cry. He didn't ask where they were. He just walked.
And that's when it happened.
A woman's scream, sharp and panicked, pierced the night air.
It came from the bushes nearby. Someone was being mugged. The voice was ragged, desperate. A second voice shouted something back, angry and slurred.
Derrick turned sharply, annoyed. "What the fu—"
A gunshot cut through the night.
Sharp. Sudden. Final.
Derrick's head jerked. Then he dropped, like a puppet whose strings were cut. One second he was there, alive, smirking. The next, he was on the pavement, blood pooling under him.
Russ didn't scream. He just stared at the hole in the man's head. The blood spreading out like ink in water. It didn't scare him. Not really. It confused him. Like it was a puzzle he didn't understand yet.
The traffickers in the second car peeled away. Tires screeched. The headlights vanished into the darkness. No one stuck around.
The mugging victim's husband turned out to be an off-duty cop. He rushed toward the sound of the gunfire, found the body, and found Russ.
There he was, standing over the corpse, untouched. A child no older than three, in a tattered hoodie and torn socks, eyes wide but dry.
A miracle. A mystery. A headline waiting to happen.
"THE CHILD LEFT BEHIND."
That was what the newspapers called him.
The media showed his picture for a week. That blank stare. Those hollow cheeks. People sent in money. Toys. Letters. No one came to claim him.
No family. No relatives. No birth certificate. Just a name mumbled by a dead woman and passed along on an old hospital file.
Russ Wayne.
And just like that, he was put into the system.
Foster homes. Group shelters. Case workers with tired eyes and fake smiles. He went through them all. Some tried to care. Some didn't bother. Russ never got attached. Never made trouble either. He was quiet, polite. Easy to forget.
But he remembered everything. The smell of home. The sound of the gunshot. The look in Derrick's eyes just before they went glassy.
And that was his first escape.
The system didn't save him. It just moved him. Gave him new walls to sleep under. New smells. New rules. But it was all the same, really. Just different shades of rot.
Russ didn't cry anymore. He didn't laugh either. He watched. He learned. He adapted.
Because that was what survivors did.
They didn't pray.
They prepared.