“She could help us.”
“Maybe,” I respond carefully.
Lila resumes pacing, though slower now.
“I heard two guards arguing earlier,” she says after a moment. “About Ivan.”
My fingers tighten briefly around the water bottle before I loosen them again. “What about him?”
“They said he hasn’t stayed anywhere long. He keeps rotating between locations. Different cars. Different men. One of them said they’re burning through safe locations too fast.”
I draw a slow breath through my nose.
“Why would he do that?” Lila asks, stopping in front of me.
“Because something changed,” I say quietly. “And he expected it to.”
Lila studies me for a moment. “You think Kiren did something?”
“I thinksomeonedid something,” I reply quietly. “And it’s reaching here now.”
The building feels different today. Boots move faster in the corridor, conversations cut off the moment they begin, and doors close harder than they need to.
An engine roars outside, closer than the trains, the vibration carrying through the floor and into my bones. Car doors slam, heavy footsteps follow, and a voice suddenly cuts down the corridor, raw with fury.
Arkady.
Lila stops mid-stride. Her shoulders pull back, and her fingers curl into her palms.
“That doesn’t sound good,” she whispers.
“No,” I agree.
Whatever Ivan has been preparing for has just arrived.
Arkady’s voice reaches us before his footsteps do, and it fills the corridor with the kind of anger that doesn’t need volume to intimidate.
Lila freezes near the table, one hand braced against the metal edge as if she needs something solid to keep herself upright. At the same time, I remain closer to the cot, my body angled toward the door, listening so intently it feels like my ribs are doing the work my ears can’t.
The noise in the corridor changes suddenly. Heavy footsteps move quickly along the concrete. They close the distance in a rush before stopping just beyond the door. Something scrapes against the wall, and then a door farther down the hall slams open hard enough that the vibration runs through our door and into the floor beneath my feet.
Lila looks at me, her eyes wide and bright with dread, making everything else in the room fall away.
“Do you think he knows about…” Her voice breaks off before she finishes, and her hand drops from the table to her side.
“I don’t know what he knows,” I whisper back. “But he’s here for a reason.”
Her throat moves as she swallows, and she drags a slow breath through her nose, trying to make herself quiet.
Outside the door, Arkady’s voice cuts through the corridor again, closer now, harder than before. Even through the walls, the anger in it feels dangerous.
“You’ve been moving,” he snaps. “Running between sites like you’re afraid of your own shadow.”
A pause follows, long enough that my pulse begins to climb, because the silence isn’t calming.
Then Ivan answers. His voice doesn’t rise to meet Arkady’s anger. It stays calm and level, and that calmness makes its sound worse.
“I’ve been rotating,” Ivan answers, and even through the steel door I hear the faint edge of impatience beneath the calm. “Because staying in one place makes us predictable.”
