By the time Yulia’s third article dropped, the city was a live wire.
This one was the sharpest yet.
SHADOW CLINICS, MISSING PATIENTS: WHO PROFITS? the headline read. It didn’t name Kalugin directly in the title. It didn’t have to. His companies’ logos appeared four times in the first two paragraphs.
She’d spoken with former nurses, janitors, security guards—some on the record, some not. She’d described “research” happening at odd hours, patients signed in and never signed out, deliveries of specialized equipment that didn’t match any declared treatment.
She still hadn’t mentioned vampires.
She didn’t need to.
“This is going to get shut down,” Dima said grimly, scanning the article on his monitor. “They’ll pull her accreditation. Block her site. Sue her. Maybe worse.”
“Then we use the window while it’s open,” Mira said. “Push the commission. Show up outside city hall. Make noise.”
She’d already drafted a call to action: a peaceful demonstration at the Morozov estate gate. Candles. Photos of the disappeared. Slogans that linked past to present: NO MORE HIDDEN GRAVES. THE CITY REMEMBERS.
“Protest,” Aleksandr said dryly. “Always… your… solution.”
“It’s what I’ve got,” she said. “I can’t throw people across basements.”
“You could… learn,” he said.
She snorted. “Later,” she said. “Right now, we march.”
Dima rubbed his face. “I’ll talk to permits,” he said. “Make sure they don’t ‘forget’ to file the paperwork and then fine us for illegal assembly.”
“How many people do you expect?” Aleksandr asked.
“Hard to say,” she said. “Depends how much people care about… old stories and new scandals.”
“More than you think,” he said quietly.
He was right.
On the night of the protest, the street leading up to the estate was crowded.
Students with hand-lettered signs. Elderly women in fur hats clutching candles in jam jars. Middle-aged office workers in puffy jackets. Teenagers with dyed hair and piercings. A few Black and brown faces sprinkled among the predominantly pale crowd, eyes wary and determined.
Snow crunched under boots. Breath puffed white. The air buzzed with that particular electricity people created when they decided, collectively, not to stay home.
Mira stood on a small makeshift platform—a couple of wooden pallets pushed together—microphone in hand, heart pounding.
She hated microphones.
She loved what they could do.
Aleksandr stood at the edge of the crowd, near the gate, hood up, scarf high. He blended in as much as he could, which wasn’t much. He watched her with a look that was part pride, part terror.
“You’re staring,” she said in his ear through the comm.
“Yes,” he said. “I am… allowed.”
She took a breath, stepped up.
“Thank you,” she said, voice amplified and strange in her own ears. “For coming.”
The murmur quieted.
“We are here,” she said, “because this hill holds more than stones. It holds stories. Of power. Of disappearance. Of people taken in the night and never returned. A century ago, that happened under a different flag. Now, it happens under ours.”
She spoke about the estate. The crypt. The old confiscation files. The new clinics. The cannery, without naming its more inhuman occupants.
She deliberately didn’t mention vampires.
Truth came in layers. Tonight was for the layer mortals could handle.
“We stand here,” she said, voice steadying as she found the rhythm, “to say: no more. No more secret graves. No more experiments in basements without oversight. No more bulldozers over evidence. This city belongs to the living and the dead. Not to the men who think their money lets them rewrite history.”
Applause. Shouts. A chant starting somewhere: “Net! Net! Net!”—No. No.
She saw Kostya near the front, face set. Lyudmila Petrovna, of all people, stood stiff and proud near the back, candle burning in a jar.
She saw Yulia, camera slung around her neck, jotting notes.
She saw Lebedev, at the edge of the police line, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable.
She saw, in the shadows beyond the gate, Kira and Sergei and Oleg, watching with predator stillness.
She felt Aleksandr’s gaze like a hand on her back.
When she finished, others spoke: a sister of a man who’d gone missing while working night shift at a clinic. A former nurse from a psychiatric ward, her voice trembling as she described being told to “not ask questions.”
The chant grew. Candles flickered. The police shifted, restless, but did not move in.
It felt, for a flickering, fragile moment, like pressure building in the right direction.
Then a stone flew.
Mira didn’t see who threw it. One second, she was squinting against the glare of a TV camera. The next, there was a sharp crack and a shout.
The stone hit the gate, not anyone’s head, but it was enough.
The line of riot police tensed.
“Here we go,” Dima muttered under his breath beside her.
“Hold the line,” she said into the mic, heart racing. “No violence. No provocation. That’s what *they* want. We’re not giving it to them.”
Someone shoveled snow at the line of cops. A laugh. A shout. A hand on someone’s shoulder, pushing.
The police moved.
It wasn’t a full-on charge. It was the kind of coordinated shove that looks like a scuffle on camera but feels, on the ground, like a tidal wave.
Mira saw a young woman in front of her stumble as a shield pushed her. Her candle fell, flame snuffing in the snow.
Mira’s instinct was to move toward it. Toward the trouble. Toward the falling.
A hand closed around the back of her coat.
“Back,” Aleksandr’s voice snapped in her ear and behind her simultaneously. “Now.”
He had moved through the crowd like water, appearing at her side without her seeing how.
“I can’t just—” she began.
“You can,” he said, bodily lifting her off the pallet as if she weighed nothing. “You must.”
Her feet left the wood. The crowd surged.
A heavy projectile—tear gas canister—arced overhead, trailing smoke.
“Shit,” she hissed.
“Language,” he murmured automatically, then laughed once, humorless.
Smoke burst. People coughed, eyes streaming.
“Get them away!” someone shouted. “There are kids!”
Mira wrenched out of Aleksandr’s grip enough to drop down at the edge of the platform, grabbing for the arm of the woman who’d fallen.
“In here!” she called hoarsely, dragging her behind the pallets, out of the direct line of the gas. “Cover your face!”
The woman gasped, tears streaking her mascara. “I—can’t—see—”
Mira shoved her scarf into the woman’s hands. “Wet it, breathe through it,” she said. “Stay low.”
A second canister clanged against the gate, bouncing. Someone kicked it back toward the police line. Shouts. A baton swung.
For a few terrifying seconds, it was chaos: bodies pressing, voices yelling, the acrid bite of gas in her nose and throat.
“Back door,” Dima coughed in her earpiece. “Alley to the left. We need to get the most vulnerable out.”
“I’ve got one,” she rasped. “Move.”
Aleksandr appeared out of the haze, eyes narrowed, a scarf tied over his lower face more to hide his lack of coughing than to protect from gas.
“Take her,” Mira said, pushing the woman toward him. “She can’t see.”
He caught the woman under the shoulders, moving with a speed that was just barely human-possible in the confusion.
“Follow my voice,” he told the woman, pitching it low and soothing. “Left. There’s a wall. Hand on it. Good. Keep going.”
Mira grabbed another hand, smaller this time—a teenager, maybe, coughing and swearing creatively.
“Move,” she said. “This way.”
They funneled people toward the side street, away from the main clash.
It wasn’t a battle. It wasn’t a massacre. It was the kind of awkward, ugly bust-up protests had too often: some people roughed up, some arrested, more just scared off.
When the gas cleared and the chanting dwindled, the street in front of the estate was a mess of trampled snow, abandoned candles, and lingering smoke.
Mira stood with her back against a wall in the side alley, chest heaving, eyes burning.
“Everyone… okay?” she croaked into her mic.
“Define… okay,” Dima wheezed. “No one dead. Some bruises. Yulia got it on camera. She’s… giddy. She scares me.”
“Good,” Mira said. “About… the camera. Not… the fear.”
Aleksandr leaned against the wall beside her, scarf pulled down. His eyes were clear; he’d avoided the worst of the gas.
“You breathe… loudly,” he said.
She laughed, then coughed. “Shut up,” she said.
He wiped a damp track from her cheek with his thumb.
“You did… well,” he said solemnly.
“I incited a near-riot,” she said.
“You… tried… to keep it… from… becoming one,” he countered. “The rest… is… humans… and… their… lovely… chaos.”
She let her head thump back against the brick.
Lebedev appeared at the mouth of the alley, tie askew, eyes sharp. He took in the scene with a quick sweep: Mira against the wall, Aleksandr beside her, a few protesters crouched against the opposite side catching their breath.
“You really don’t do… things… halfway,” he said.
“Tell that… to your… boss,” Mira rasped. “He… sent the cops.”
“They were… going to show up… anyway,” Lebedev said. “You know that. You play with public gatherings, you get… public order responses.”
“Spare me your… civics lesson,” she said. “What do you want?”
He hesitated, then stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“Kalugin is… angry,” he said. “Not… at this.” He gestured at the street. “At… you. At… her.” He nodded at Yulia, visible at the edge of the main road, interviewing someone with fierce focus. “At… the… nuisance. He is… making… noise. That… makes… some of us… nervous.”
“Some of… you?” Aleksandr asked pointedly.
Lebedev grimaced. “Some… of… my… employer’s… other… friends,” he said. “The… ones… who prefer… things… quiet. They are… not… happy… that… he… brought… you… into… this.”
“Then maybe… they should… take him… out,” Mira said.
Lebedev’s lips thinned. “You say that… like it’s easy,” he said. “It’s not… chess. It’s… Jenga. You pull… the wrong… block… the whole… tower… falls. On… everyone.”
“Maybe the tower… needs… to fall,” she shot back.
“And what… gets… crushed… under it?” he asked.
She didn’t have a good answer.
“You didn’t come here… to… philosophize,” Aleksandr said. “What… do you want.”
Lebedev sighed.
“I want… to… not… die… in a… crossfire,” he said bluntly. “And I don’t… hate… the idea… of… Kalugin… getting… taken down… a peg. But if you… keep… pushing… like this… in… public… he’s going to… do… something… stupid. Soon. And when he does… he won’t… go… after… *us*… first. He’ll… go… after… your… journalist. Your… boy. Your… babushka. He’ll… make an… example.”
Mira’s stomach clenched. “You know this… how,” she said. “Because you’d… advise it?”
He flinched. “Because I’ve seen it,” he said. “Different boss. Different… city. Same… playbook.”
She stared at him.
“Why… tell us,” she asked. “Why not… let… him… overreach… and… fall.”
“Because if he… kills… a pretty… young… journalist… on TV… no one… wins,” Lebedev said. “Except… the… men… above… him… who will… use… the… chaos… to… tighten… everything.”
He looked… tired.
“Slow down,” he said. “Just… for a minute. Let the… dust… settle. Give… the… others… time… to… move. Or at least… don’t… stand… in the… front row… every… time… there’s… a… camera.”
“So your… bosses… stop… being… embarrassed,” she said.
He didn’t deny it.
“Consider… this,” he said. “Free… advice… from someone… who would… like… to continue… existing… with… all… his… limbs.”
He turned to go, then paused.
“Nice speech,” he said over his shoulder. “Too… honest… for… politics. Just… honest… enough… for… a… riot.”
He disappeared into the thinning crowd.
Mira slumped.
“He’s… not… wrong,” Dima said in her ear. “Yulia just texted. She thinks… they’ll… try… something… more… direct… soon.”
“On who?” Mira asked numbly.
“On you,” Dima said. “On her. On… anyone… they think… makes… good… TV.”
She opened her eyes.
Aleksandr watched her.
“Slow,” he said quietly.
She laughed, harsh. “You too,” she said. “We can’t… outrun… this… if we both… sprint… into… the… bullets.”
He nodded.
“We… choose… our… ground,” he said. “Not… theirs.”
She looked back at the estate.
Candles still flickered by the gate, little points of stubborn light in the trampled snow.
“We… still… fight,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
He took her hand, there in the alley, where cameras couldn’t see, where only the snow and a few bored crows bore witness.
“We just… stop… making it… so easy… for them… to shoot… us,” he added.
She squeezed his fingers.
“Deal,” she said.
Above them, in a high window of the estate, a camera lens glinted briefly, then shifted away.
Kalugin was watching.
So were his enemies.
So were the ghosts of the Morozovs, restless under the snow.
The line had been drawn long ago, in stone and ink and blood.
Tonight, in the fumes of tear gas and candle smoke, Mira stepped over it more fully than she ever had before.
And Aleksandr, cool and furious and impossibly old, stepped with her.
The slow burn had become a fuse.
They just had to make sure they were the ones who decided what it would blow up.