Nights in Viktor’s house were always dead, sterile—like an operating room. But tonight the silence was cut by a new, ominous undertone.
In her nightgown, Anya stepped out of her room, dragging her feet, still heavy with sleep. The hallway felt like an endless tunnel drowned in viscous blackness. Only at the very far end did the dim glow of a streetlamp seep in through the single narrow window, barely pulling the outlines of the walls out of the dark.
She froze when she saw a tall dark figure ahead.
“Viktor? Is that you?” She rubbed her eyes, trying to bring him into focus.
The figure jerked. Viktor stood in the middle of the hallway; his face was pale in the weak light. He was looking in her direction, but it wasn’t the Architect’s gaze. Even in the darkness you could feel he wasn’t looking at her—he was looking through her. His posture was unnaturally broken, tense, and a wave of heavy, sticky madness seemed to emanate from him, mixed with unbearable, helpless longing.
Before she could step back, he lunged forward—sharp, impulsive—and pulled her into a crushing embrace. His embrace was suffocating, desperate. He pressed her to him so tightly she could feel the feverish rhythm of his heart through the fabric of her nightgown.
“It’s you…” he rasped, burying his face in her hair, breathing in her scent. “My little girl… Anya… You came back… I waited…”
Anya broke out in a cold sweat. Shock paralyzed her.
“My little girl? Anya?”
The name matched. But the meaning… He wasn’t saying it to her. He was saying it to a ghost. A thought flashed through her mind: the girl in the basement and the crab hair clip she had found. The way his jaw had twitched at the table when she’d called herself a “daughter.”
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“Stay there—no, you couldn’t… couldn’t… disappeared…” he babbled, his voice breaking into a sob. “You left me, and I… in emptiness…”
Viktor was in a deep trance, or something like sleepwalking. His iron psyche had cracked, letting out what he had walled up so carefully.
Anya understood: one wrong word, one sharp scream—and he could either kill her in a fit, or finally go mad. Slowly, very carefully, she raised her arms and hugged him back, trying to breathe evenly.
“Mhm… mm…” she murmured softly as if she recognized him and accepted him, the way you soothe a delirious child.
“A dream—terrible,” he whispered, shuddering all over. “You left… it was horrible…”
Anya felt something click inside her. Fear turned into a tool. She pulled back just enough to see his face and spoke in the gentlest voice she could manage:
“It’s just a dream. I’m here. It’s okay.”
Viktor went still. The words hit him like a powerful sedative. He almost burst into tears; his shoulders sagged, the tension drained away. He was no longer the Architect. He was a broken, pathetic man who had lost what he loved most.
“Can I go to the bathroom? And then we’ll be together again.”
“Yes… yes,” he nodded. His breathing began to even out, but he was still “there.” “Go, go…”
He turned and, shuffling like an old man, went toward his bedroom, dissolving into the darkness of the hallway.
She reached the bathroom and splashed her face with icy water, trying to calm the tremor in her hands. On the way back she saw that the door to his bedroom was slightly ajar. Warmth and danger breathed from the dark opening.
Gears started turning in her head:
• Option A: Go in. Pretend to be the daughter all the way. Wake up beside him. If he woke in rapture—she would have boundless power.
• Option B: Risk. If in the morning he remembered this episode, he would hate her for having seen his weakness. He would review the footage. If he saw how deliberately she had played along with his madness—he would destroy her.
“No. Too dangerous. His cameras record every movement. If I go in now, I’ll sign my own sentence. He won’t forgive me for this when he comes back to himself. Trust takes months to build and one night to destroy.”
Anya passed his door, returned to her room, and quietly lay down in bed. She pulled the blanket up to her chin, staring at the dark ceiling.
There was only one monster in this house. But today she saw that this monster had a gaping, festering wound where a heart should be. And now she knew where to strike.