Four days passed. Viktor brought trays of food—porridge, fruit. He set them down in silence, and just as silently took them away a few hours later. The food stayed untouched. The moment Anya caught the smell of it, her stomach clenched in a spasm. She’d lost so much weight her collarbones looked like sharp blades, and her skin had taken on a grayish, parchment-like cast.
She wasn’t fighting anymore. And how could she? Where do you get strength when you can’t even eat? She had no control over her own body. Whatever goals she set herself—she couldn’t follow through…
She didn’t cry anymore either. She just lay there, staring at the ceiling—at the old hook.
Anya sat up and faced the laptop; the dim screen light pulled her gaunt face out of the darkness. Her fingers barely touched the keys—they felt like someone else’s to her, stiff, made of wax. She knew this file would stay encrypted deep inside VeraCrypt, and that illusion of safety let her be mercilessly honest.
Hidden-volume note:
Today I realized the world has already let me go. I can feel the last threads snapping. It isn’t frightening. It’s… just quiet.
I know no one will ever read this note, and I don’t understand why I’m writing it. Maybe I need to say it out loud, to say goodbye. A file on this damn laptop in this gray basement, in an encrypted container whose password no one knows…
Mom. Forgive me for not becoming the support I should have been. Forgive me for all the times I didn’t pick up, and for snapping at you over nothing. If I’d known our last real conversation would be that random chatter about nothing… I would have memorized every word you said. Now a machine comforts you. It speaks in my voice, and that is my heaviest crime against you. Forgive me for leaving you with that ghost. I hope you never learn the truth. Let your ‘Anya’ stay happy, far away, and alive for you. You deserve peace, even if it’s built on lies.
Lena, Artem… all my friends. Forgive me for turning out to be so fragile. I always pretended I was strong, but this basement showed who I really am. I’m just a scared girl who couldn’t withstand the silence. Don’t look for me. Don’t try to crack that digital code. Let me remain in your memory as the one who laughed in the park and was always rushing somewhere. That person died here, inside these walls, long before tonight.
World. I’m going to miss you so much. I remember the smell of wet asphalt after rain. I remember how cold wind pricks your cheeks when you come up from the subway. The smell of fresh bread, and how the morning sun warms you when it breaks through the curtains. I’m saying goodbye to the sky. To the clouds I loved staring at. I’m saying goodbye to the feeling of grass under bare feet. I’m letting it all go. My wings didn’t just atrophy—they crumbled into ash.
Viktor. I’m not angry with you. I just don’t have the strength for it. You looked for meaning in my life, but you found only emptiness. I’m sorry I turned out to be beyond repair.
Now I just want silence. Real silence—where I won’t feel nauseous, where my heart won’t pound with fear at every sound of footsteps. I’m leaving not out of hatred for you, but out of love for the peace waiting on the other side.
Goodbye. I’ll close my eyes and finally see the sky.
Anya pressed Save slowly and dismounted the volume. She didn’t close the laptop—let it glow like a small memorial candle.
She stepped up onto the wooden table. The boards creaked plaintively under her weight—so insignificant now, after days of starvation. She raised her hands; they shook not from fear but from weakness, and she slipped the noose of a black nylon cable over her neck.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She tightened the slipknot. The cable’s hard sheath bit into the thin skin under her jaw—cold and alien.
And then she froze.
It wasn’t a conscious choice to stop. It was an ancient, animal instinct that rebelled in the last second. Her heart, exhausted by fear and nausea, suddenly began to hammer with manic force, striking her ribs like a bird in a cage. Her lungs convulsively pulled in the stale basement air, clinging to that last mouthful of life.
I can’t, flashed through her mind. Her body wanted to live. It didn’t understand the logic of despair—it just wanted to breathe.
Anya closed her eyes, trying to calm that treacherous tremor. She pictured what would happen if she took the noose off now and climbed down.
Tomorrow morning the lock would clank again. The same smell of dampness and hopelessness. Viktor again, looking at her like a broken toy. Looking—and silent. The nausea again, turning her inside out at the sight of food. The endless nothing again.
And then the realization came—icy and clear as glass.
She wasn’t afraid to die. Death seemed like a dark room with no doors—a place where, at last, it would be quiet and not hurt.
She was terrified—terrified to the point of an animal scream—of staying.
The fear of waking up tomorrow in this concrete coffin was a thousand times stronger than the fear of not waking at all. Life here had become such torture that nonexistence felt like mercy.
“Mom…” she mouthed.
From the corner of one tightly closed eye, a single tear rolled out. It was hot, burning against her cold, parchment cheek. It wasn’t a tear of self-pity. It was the last drop of everything living, warm, and human that still remained in her. A goodbye to the girl who loved the wind in the park and the smell of her mother’s pies.
The tear reached her chin and fell into the darkness.
Anya let out a deep breath, releasing that air and everything tied to it. Without hesitating anymore, she stepped forward—from the edge of the table straight into empty space.
A sharp, deafening crash—the basement door flew inward, slamming into the wall. Viktor didn’t come down; he burst in like a mad whirlwind. A knife flashed in his hand—he didn’t waste a fraction of a second. He lunged toward her, caught her slack body with one arm, pressing her to himself, and with a furious rasp, sliced through the nylon cable.
They hit the floor together. The cable, whistling, snapped against the table.
The world slammed back into Anya’s consciousness along with tearing pain in her throat. She opened her mouth in a convulsive gasp, trying to pull air in, but her lungs burned as if they’d been filled with molten lead. She started coughing—violently, down to a rasp, her whole body shaking.
Viktor was on his knees beside her, his face deathly pale, his hands trembling so badly he dropped the knife.
“Breathe… breathe, Anya!” His voice broke into a shout, with not a trace of the old coldness.
When the first shock passed and her vision cleared, hysteria flooded Anya. It wasn’t a fighter’s rage—it was the madness of a doomed animal. She began to shove him in the chest with her weak, skeletal hands.
“Why?!” Her voice was raw, like stone grinding on stone. “Why did you do it?! Let me go! Let me finish this!”
She struck at his shoulders, his face, trying to push him away, but her blows had no weight. She choked on her own sobs as they turned into painful, racking coughs.
“I can’t anymore! Do you hear me?!”
She grabbed his jacket, crushing the fabric, and started shaking him.
“It doesn’t get better! Every day… every damn day it only gets worse! I can’t eat, I can’t get my strength back, I can’t—I can’t do anything! I try to be ‘good,’ I try to… I can’t bear it! I’m dying! I don’t want to suffer! I don’t want it slowly! I don’t want—”
She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, and her howl—thin, long, full of animal pain—filled the basement.
“Please…”
She lifted her eyes to him. There was nothing left in them but pleading.
“Help me… Help me get out of this hell… I can’t do it alone. Where is my Protector Viktor? Where is he? Where did he go? Bring him back to me…”
She started to sob, letting her full weight sag into his arms. It was the final collapse: she was asking salvation from the person who had destroyed her. She was begging him to return the illusion of “kind captivity,” because the reality of the “cruel” one was unbearable.
He went still. His hands, still trembling, slowly closed around her back, pulling her to him with such force, as though he were afraid she would evaporate. He buried his face in her tangled hair, and his breathing was heavy, broken.
“Hush… hush…” he whispered.
The same soothing tones she’d been calling for so desperately returned to his voice.
“I’m here. I’m with you. I won’t let you go. We’ll fix everything… I promise. I’ll protect you.”
A brutal bruise from the cable darkened Anya’s neck, and a heavy, stifling silence hung in the basement. The “Architect” had retreated completely, giving way to the “Protector”—but this victory was the most terrible one possible: now Anya had willingly handed him the remnants of her will in exchange for relief from pain.