The next day. After the digital nightmare with the AI double, Anya had hoped the week’s quota of horror was already over. She was wrong.
That evening, as usual, Viktor came down. But instead of food he brought the same smartphone. There was a new, tangible threat in his silence—heavy and absolute.
He sat down on the chair opposite Anya and began scrolling through his gallery slowly.
“Yesterday you saw what I can do online,” he said. “Today I want to show you what I can do in real life. So you don’t think I’m just some housebound hacker.”
He turned the phone toward her.
On the screen was her mother. She was standing at the checkout in their local supermarket, squinting under the harsh lights as she checked the receipt. And right behind her, in line, stood Viktor. Close enough that he could have reached out and touched her neck. He looked straight into the camera—calm, unrecognizable in an ordinary baseball cap, but it was him. His eyes held a cold promise.
“No… Mom…” Anya’s voice turned into a cracked whisper.
“And this is the park,” he said, swiping to the next video. “Your friend Lena is walking her dog.”
On the screen, Lena threw a ball for her retriever. The footage was shot from the bushes, just a couple of meters away. You could hear Viktor’s heavy breathing.
Anya stared at the screen, and it felt as if the basement walls were starting to close in, sucking the air out. In every video Viktor was a shadow—a predator that could strike at any second. He wasn’t just watching. He was showing her that their lives hung by a thread.
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“Why?” She looked up at him, eyes full of terror. “Why are you showing me this?”
Viktor slipped the phone into his pocket. His voice became frighteningly gentle.
“That depends only on you, Anya. While you’re here, as long as you behave, they live their normal, happy lives. They drink coffee, go to work, talk to your digital ghost. But if you decide to ‘pull a stunt’…”
He paused, and his eyes turned to stone.
“If you try to run, or scream loud enough for someone to hear… remember: I’ll reach them faster than the police will reach this house. So don’t be a ‘bad girl,’ Anya. Don’t make me hurt your mother.”
In Anya’s eyes, terror gave way to a deep, numb disappointment—and a helpless inability to understand the rules of the game she’d been dragged into.
“Is that what I am now?” Her voice was cracked and very quiet, almost colorless. “Am I behaving badly? I sit here quietly. I eat with you. I watch those shows… I… I… What am I doing wrong?”
Viktor didn’t answer. He loomed over her like a cold statue. He gave her a long, unreadable look—there was no anger, no triumph, only a dry, almost technical assessment of her condition. As if he were checking how deep the needle had sunk in.
Silently, he turned and headed for the stairs.
“Viktor… please,” she called after him, still quietly, with tears frozen in the corners of her eyes. “Just tell me.”
The clank of the lock sounded like a period at the end of a sentence. He left without saying a word.
Anya remained sitting on the couch. Her hands hung limp at her sides. It was complete, absolute defeat. She didn’t understand what she’d “done wrong,” and Viktor’s silence frightened her more than his blows. She felt like a broken mechanism the maker had set aside because it no longer entertained him.
Hidden-volume note:
This is the end.
Now I understand: even if I break out, even if I run to the police—it changes nothing. He’ll kill them before they put handcuffs on him. He showed me. He stood behind my mother. I know it wasn’t an AI video. It wasn’t, it couldn’t be. God—he could’ve just reached out…
Frankl wrote that freedom is the last thing that can be taken from a person. He was wrong. I can consciously try to be strong, but my subconscious is in shackles now. It’s more afraid for Mom than it is for me.
I don’t know anymore… I don’t know where I end and where that ‘proper Anya’ he wants to see begins…