The house felt different with two sets of footsteps in it.
Mira had been moving through its rooms alone for the past hour, her own presence a flicker in its long, cold quiet. Now, as she led Aleksandr along the servant corridor toward the back stair, the reverberation of his boots on the boards layered under hers, heavier, more assured with each step.
He had shed the worst of his initial clumsiness surprisingly fast. By the time they left the crypt behind, he already carried himself with a grace that set her teeth a little on edge. Predatory, her mind supplied, unhelpfully.
“I would prefer,” he said, low enough that the words didn’t echo too far, “if you told me when there are… cameras.”
She glanced back at him. “You know about cameras?”
He gave her a flat look. “We were not… painting on cave walls when I went to sleep. There were cameras then. Bulky. Loud. They only betrayed you when you posed for them.”
“The new ones are smaller,” she said. “Sneakier.”
“Like rats,” he said. “Or bureaucrats.”
She snorted. “You’ll get along just fine.”
They reached the bottom of the back stairs. She shone the flashlight upward, checking for sagging, for cracks. The wooden treads creaked but looked intact.
“Careful,” she murmured. “Some of these are—”
Her warning was cut off by the sound of something small skittering in the darkness above. She tensed automatically, flashlight snapping up. Two glowing points reflected back.
“Cat,” Aleksandr said, almost fondly.
The animal—a scruffy, grey thing with one torn ear—blinking in surprise at the sudden light, flicked its tail, and bolted up the stairs, claws clicking.
Mira exhaled. “You sure it’s not a demon in disguise?”
He arched an eyebrow. “If it is, it has very low ambitions.”
They climbed.
On the ground floor, the air warmed a fraction. Faint light seeped in through gaps in boarded windows, giving her flashlight some help. Dust lay thick on every surface. The footprints she had left earlier that afternoon looked stark, fresh.
Aleksandr paused at the threshold of the kitchen, nostrils flaring.
“So much… gone,” he murmured.
“You remember it?” she asked.
“Pieces.” His gaze drifted over the rusted stove, the toppled table. “The smell. Bread. Soup. Potato peels. Men arguing in low voices after hours, cards slapped on wood. The girl who used to steal sugar lumps…” He stopped himself abruptly, jaw tightening. “It is like… walking through a painting I know but cannot quite recognize. Someone has smeared the colors.”
She watched his face as he took it in. Hurt. Anger. A strange, raw nostalgia.
“This way,” she said gently, gesturing toward the narrow hallway that led, eventually, to the servants’ sitting room she’d noticed earlier—a space with no exterior windows, only a small transom that looked onto an interior corridor.
“Why here?” he asked, following.
“No outside view,” she said. “Less chance of someone with a drone or a long lens catching you on camera. Fewer sightlines from neighboring buildings. Thick walls. It’s the best I can do until dark.”
He frowned. “Drones.”
“Flying cameras,” she said. “Little machines. Controlled remotely. People like to send them where they’re not allowed to go.”
“Spies,” he said. “But cheaper.”
“Exactly.”
They reached the small sitting room—four walls, low ceiling, peeling wallpaper in a pattern of faded green leaves. A battered sofa slumped against one wall, its stuffing poking out in grey tufts. A cracked mirror hung crooked over a tiny, soot-blackened fireplace.
“This is… cozy,” Aleksandr said dryly.
“Five-star,” she agreed. She swept her flashlight around once, checking corners for mold, vermin, structural weaknesses. Satisfied enough, she clicked it off to save the battery. Enough dim, grey light seeped in from the hall to make out shapes.
She set her backpack down on the least-dirty section of the floor and shrugged off her coat, folding it carefully before laying it over the arm of the sofa. The air was cold, but the exertion of hauling stone and vampire had warmed her.
Behind her, she heard Aleksandr inhale sharply.
She turned, startled.
He was staring at her.
More precisely, he was staring at her exposed forearms where her sweater sleeves had ridden up as she took off her coat.
She realized, with a jolt, that she had just presented a frankly indecent amount of skin to someone who had very recently admitted her pulse was a problem.
She tugged the sleeves down hastily. “Okay,” she said, a little too brightly. “Ground rules. No biting.”
His gaze snapped up, meeting hers. For a fraction of a second, shame flashed there. Then it was gone, replaced by iron control.
“I am… not an animal,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Because I didn’t bring a muzzle.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “Do you… always talk like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like… you’re trying to make a joke at the gallows.”
She considered. “Occupational hazard.”
He studied her another beat, then gave a small, grudging nod, as if accepting this as one of the many new, strange rules the century had invented.
He took off his own coat.
The movement was unhurried, almost ceremonial. He slid one arm out of the sleeve, then the other, folding the garment with an absent care that spoke of years of servants doing the same. Underneath, he wore a waistcoat and shirt, both surprisingly intact and relatively clean given their long nap.
The motion pulled the fabric snug across his shoulders. Mira looked away before she could catalogue more than the general impression that the man had been built to fill portraits and uniforms.
“Here,” she said briskly, digging into her backpack. “Food. For you. Well. Sort of.”
She pulled out a thermos and a small bundle wrapped in wax paper. She hadn’t expected to be sharing. The packed bread and cheese looked suddenly very meager.
His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Food,” he repeated, as if it were a concept he’d heard of once in a story.
“You said you were thirsty,” she said. “There’s soup. It’s not—” She searched for an honest adjective. “—great. But it’s warm.”
She unscrewed the thermos, the faint steam immediately scenting the chilly room with the aroma of lentils, garlic, and overboiled stock. His nostrils flared.
“It smells… complicated,” he said.
“It’s from the canteen near my office,” she said. “They do what they can.”
She poured some into the thermos lid and held it out. He took it cautiously, as if half-expecting the liquid to leap out and attack him.
“Do you…” He frowned. “Do I still… eat?”
“You tell me,” she said. “What did you… before?”
“After the change?” He stared into the shallow pool of soup. “At first, no. It was… repellent. My body had other priorities. Then, slowly… sometimes. For… appearances. To sit at a table and laugh and make toasts with men who did not know what we were. My maker said it was… good practice. For… restraint.” His mouth curled slightly. “Lev embraced it too enthusiastically. He once ate an entire pig’s head at a banquet to prove a point.”
Mira made a face. “And people say my generation is strange.”
He lifted the cup to his lips and took a tentative sip.
His expression—a mix of surprise, mild horror, and grudging intrigue—would have been funny under different circumstances.
“It’s… warm,” he acknowledged.
“That’s usually the goal with soup,” she said. “Do you… taste it? Properly?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It is… different. Not like blood. Obviously. Thinner. But not… unpleasant. I suppose I can… fuel… some things with this.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I didn’t exactly stock up on bagged blood at the supermarket.”
He set the cup down carefully on the floor. “Bagged… blood.”
She realized, with a small internal wince, that yes, that was probably something he should know existed.
“Medical transfusions,” she said. “We… store blood now. In bags. For emergencies. Surgeries. Accidents. People who lose too much.”
He stared at her, horror and something like hope clashing in his eyes. “You… bottle blood.”
“Well,” she said, “not *we* personally. But… yes.”
He rubbed a hand slowly over his face. “The world has become… very strange.”
“You have no idea,” she said.
He dropped his hand and looked at her. Really looked. “Show me.”
She blinked. “Show you… what?”
“Your world,” he said simply. “Not the… numbers. You already gave me the… summary.” He waved a hand vaguely, as if dismissing a particularly gruesome chapter of a history book. “Show me… what it looks like. Sounds like. How people… live. Or… do not.”
The request reached a part of her that had been thrumming in the background since he’d asked, *What year is it?* Her historian’s instinct, her teacher’s itch.
“You sure?” she asked. “It might be… overwhelming.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I have already woken to find my family possibly dead, my city changed, and my carefully chosen oblivion interrupted by a woman who speaks of bagged blood and flying cameras. Overwhelming and I are already acquainted.”
“Fair,” she said.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and unlocked it with a swipe, her thumb moving automatically. The screen’s cold light lit her face from below.
Aleksandr’s eyes widened.
“What is *that*?” he demanded.
She blinked, then grinned. “Oh. Right. Step zero. Welcome to the smartphone.”
“Smart… phone?” he repeated, dubious.
“Little machine that does everything,” she said. “Pictures. Messages. News. Music. Games. GPS.”
He frowned. “What is GPS?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“Later,” she said, laughing softly. “One miracle at a time.”
She scooted closer on the floor, until her shoulder almost brushed his. He tensed, then forced himself to relax, visible as a small shift in his posture. His smell—stone, old wool, faint metallic edge—wrapped around her for a moment.
She tilted the screen so he could see.
“Pictures first,” she said. “Look.”
She flicked through her photo roll: images of the house she’d taken earlier, then further back, a hodgepodge of cityscapes, protest rallies, snapshots of archives, a blurry shot of Dima scowling over a pile of files, the local stray dogs sunning themselves on a patch of pavement.
“These are…” Aleksandr’s voice was almost reverent. “Photographs. But… so small. So clear.”
“Digital,” she said. “No film. No plates. Just… data.”
He stared as she zoomed in on a particular image—a protest last year against the demolition of a historic block. Banners. Faces. Police lines. The detail under his gaze expanded: the lettering on a sign, the tension in someone’s jaw.
“Everyone walks around… with this,” he said slowly.
“More or less,” she said. “Not everyone. But most. In this city, at least.”
“And they… read the news. Listen to music. Talk. All… here.” He pointed, very carefully, at the screen.
“Yes,” she said.
He sucked in a breath. “So much… connection. So easy. And yet…” He looked up, eyes distant. “People in your… files… still lose their homes. Their… history. How can they… allow it, with so much power to… show? To… shout?”
She thought of petitions ignored. Viral posts that fizzled. Hashtags that never became movements. “Power is not the same as attention,” she said. “People with money often have both. The rest of us… borrow what we can.”
He watched her face a moment, expression unreadable.
She swiped again, feeling slightly exposed by the window into her life. A selfie she’d taken last summer at the river—hair wild, sun painting her skin gold. A screenshot of a document. A close-up of an old woman’s hands holding a tea cup.
She flipped to the camera app, turned the phone so the screen faced him, and snapped a quick shot.
He jerked slightly at the click. His own face appeared on the screen: pale, angular, dark eyes black in the dim light, hair mussed. He looked… more human there, somehow. Less mythical. More like a man who had missed his train.
He stared. “That is… me.”
“Welcome to 2026,” she said. “Where even the dead have selfies.”
He made a face. “I do not like that word.”
“Selfie?”
“It sounds… frivolous.”
“It is,” she said. “Mostly. Which is why people love it.”
He handed the phone back with something like delicacy. “Show me… outside,” he said quietly.
She hesitated.
The idea of showing him the city—*his* city—now felt… intimate. Like letting him read the last page of a book before he’d caught up.
But he’d asked.
She flipped to a folder of photos she kept labeled CITY. Night shots of the river, bridges strung with lights. The skyline, old domes huddled among new towers of glass and steel. Graffiti on the side of a Soviet-era apartment block: a giant stag with neon antlers, someone’s half-ironic nod to the old noble crests. A billboard for a luxury real estate development, smiling models posed in sterile, white kitchens.
He took the phone again, slower now, swiping with more confidence.
“The river is still there,” he murmured. “The bridges. But… taller buildings.”
“Skyscrapers,” she said. “Offices. Condos. Hotels.”
“The air looks… clearer,” he observed, squinting at a twilight shot. “Less… smoke.”
“Most of the coal plants are gone,” she said. “We have… different poisons now.”
He glanced at her. “You are… very cheerful.”
“Realistic,” she corrected. “I like the city. I just… don’t like the people who think it’s theirs to carve up.”
He looked back at the photos.
“The clothes,” he said. “So… little cloth.” He zoomed in on a snapshot of teenagers at a summer festival, all bare legs and tank tops. “And yet… so much… coverage. You… women… wear trousers.”
“Shocking, I know,” she said dryly.
“I do not… disapprove,” he said. “Just… surprised. The women I knew who wore trousers were… revolutionaries. Or… in costume.” He tilted his head. “You move… differently. Like… you belong in your own clothes.”
She blinked. The comment, unexpected, slotted into some shelved-away part of her that had grown up in two cultures, never quite fitting either.
“Do you miss corsets?” she asked, to break the moment.
“I miss some things they did for posture,” he admitted. “But not for breathing. Or… undressing.”
Her cheeks heated before she could stop them.
He noticed.
An eyebrow arched, very slightly.
“Lingerie,” he said, pronouncing the French word precisely. “Did that… progress as well?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Focus, vampire.”
“I am focusing,” he said. “Just perhaps… not on the same part of the century as you.”
She laughed then, unexpectedly bright, surprising herself. The sound startled dust from the ceiling.
He watched her with something like wonder.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just… you laugh. Here.”
“In this mausoleum?”
“In this… new century,” he said. “After everything you have told me. You still… laugh.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “The alternative is… not great.”
He sobered. “No. It is not.”
Silence settled again, more companionable this time.
Mira’s phone buzzed in her hand, jolting her.
She checked the screen.
Dima: 1 hour. Alive?
She sighed, thumbs moving.
Mira: Alive. And not alone.
Dima: Elaborate.
She hesitated, glancing at Aleksandr.
“How do you feel about my colleague knowing… some of this?” she asked.
He tilted his head. “This Dima. Do you trust him?”
“As much as I trust anyone who files my grant paperwork on time and buys me coffee when I forget to eat,” she said. “He’s stubborn. He’ll… fight. He’s also a lawyer, so his ethics are… creative. But he won’t sell you. Or me.”
“High praise,” Aleksandr said dryly.
“Do you want to be a secret?” she pressed. “Because if we’re going to get you out of here without getting arrested or shot or kidnapped by whoever is sniffing around this estate, I might need help.”
He weighed that, eyes half-lidded.
“I am already a secret,” he said. “For now. Fewer people who know, the better. But… one man? If he can… move papers. Distract… authorities. It may be… wise.” His mouth twisted. “I do not like the idea of… papers controlling whether I can leave my own house.”
“Welcome to bureaucracy,” she said.
“Burn it,” he muttered.
“Tempting,” she said. “But then they’d just build it again. Thicker.”
He sighed. “Very well. Tell your lawyer that you found… someone. But not… what I am. Not yet. Let him think I am… a relative. A… hidden heir.”
She stared. “You want to pretend to be human.”
“Is that so… absurd?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said bluntly. “You… don’t breathe. Or eat properly. Or go out in the sun. You talk like a nineteenth-century novel. People are going to notice.”
“Then perhaps,” he said slowly, “you could… teach me.”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, good. In addition to saving the estate and fighting mysterious developers-slash-maybe-vampires, I’ll also be running an intensive course in ‘How Not to Out Yourself as a Mythological Creature 101.’”
“You are… very dramatic,” he observed.
“Takes one to know one,” she shot back.
He smiled, small but real.
“Tell him,” he said. “Enough that he can help. Not enough that he panics.”
She made a face. “He’s going to panic anyway.”
“Then perhaps,” Aleksandr said, “he should have gone into a… calmer profession.”
She snorted, turned back to her phone, and typed.
Mira: Alive. Found… something big. Not safe to text details. Need you to dig into any off-books references to Morozov “special operations” in 90s. And any mention of “Lebedev” tied to security or real estate. Also: consider how to discreetly get a person without identity documents out of a condemned building after dark.
There was a longer pause this time. Then:
Dima: Oh good. A normal Monday. Leaving office. Will be at my car in 10. Call.
She chewed her lip. “He wants me to call.”
“Then call,” Aleksandr said. “But be… careful.”
“I’m always careful,” she lied.
He raised an eyebrow.
She stood, moving toward the doorway for better reception. Her phone screen glowed in the dim as she hit the call button. It rang twice.
“You’re alive,” Dima said by way of greeting.
“For the moment,” she said.
“Define ‘for the moment.’”
“I found a… person,” she said. “In the crypt.”
Silence. Then, very flatly: “A *person*.”
“Yes,” she said. “Male. Early thirties. Dressed… old. He was in some kind of sealed chamber under the floor. No air. No food. No water. Yet… he’s… not dead.”
“You’re calling me from inside a horror movie,” Dima said. “Put down the demon and walk away from the circle of salt.”
“It’s not a demon,” she said. “He’s… he says he’s… Aleksandr Morozov. The Aleksandr Morozov. Son of… well. One of the sons.”
“The vampire one or the regular one?” Dima asked.
She blinked. “You… knew the stories?”
“I grew up here, Mira,” he said. “We dare each other to pee on the Morozov gate when we’re twelve. We tell each other there are monsters under the estate. You’re the one who thinks all myths are coping mechanisms.”
She swallowed. “This… one might not be.”
Another small silence. She could almost hear him pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Play it out for me. He was sealed. He’s… breathing now?”
“Barely,” she said. “But… yes.”
“You’ve checked for… what. Tubes. Wires. Pumps. Cryogenics. Some idiot rich person bought a freezer in 1930 and hoped for the best.”
She thought of the stone, the runes, the old draught.
“He’s not… cryo,” she said. “He’s… something else.”
“You believe him,” Dima said, and there was no question in it.
She glanced back over her shoulder.
Aleksandr sat where she’d left him, watching her. His posture was still and contained, but his eyes tracked every small movement.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Dima sighed. “Of course you do. Okay. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that he’s… what he says. An old noble. Out of time. Possibly dangerous. Certainly illegal in a dozen ways I can think of. You want to… get him out?”
“Yes,” she said, surprising herself a little with the speed of the answer.
“Why?”
“Because if I leave him here, someone else will find him,” she said. “Someone who isn’t me. Developers. Criminals. The people who made that call. Or… other things. If the rumors are right. And if he’s… what he is, and if he… helped hide what your ‘special operation’ files hint at… then he knows where the money is. And they’ll do more than ask nicely.”
“And you think you can… protect him.”
She looked at Aleksandr again.
“I think we can… use each other,” she said. “He needs context. I need information. The estate needs… a living, or at least moving, Morozov to complicate any attempt to sell it off. Right now, he’s an asset. And a problem. Like everything else I touch.”
Dima swore softly in her ear, in a language that was not Russian.
“I’m not asking you to like it,” she said. “I’m asking if you’ll help.”
He was quiet longer this time. When he spoke again, his voice had that resigned, doomed quality she’d heard when he’d agreed to take on the nonprofit’s battles in the first place.
“If I say no,” he said, “you will do it anyway.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Then my options are ‘help you make it marginally less suicidal’ or ‘watch you get arrested or eaten,’” he said.
“Pretty much.”
“Fine,” he groaned. “I will see what I can dig up about Lebedev, and about any… unusual investigations at the Morozov estate. I will also call my cousin in traffic police and ask him, hypothetically, how one might drive a car near a condemned property without being stopped. Hypothetically, he will ask for hypothetical money.”
“I’ll bake him a hypothetical cake,” she said.
“He is more motivated by cash than cake,” Dima said. “I will… handle it. For the rest…” He paused. “Mira. Be careful. If he is what you say, he is… older than all of us. He has seen… worse than we can imagine. He has learned to survive it. Men like that… do not always see us as real.”
She glanced down at Aleksandr’s hands—resting now on his knees, fingers long, knuckles scarred with faint, white marks that looked older than any war she knew.
“I know,” she said softly.
“Do you?” Dima pressed. “You like… lost causes. Broken houses. Old stories. This is… all three. Do not let him become a… project. Or a… romance.”
She flushed. “He’s a vampire in a basement, not a dating app profile.”
“I have seen the novels you read,” Dima said darkly. “I know what your brain does with tall dangerous men with tragic backstories.”
“Shut up,” she hissed.
Aleksandr’s head tilted slightly, as if he’d caught the change in her tone. Of course he had.
“Call me when you have a plan,” Dima said. “And Mira?”
“Yeah?”
“If you die in that house,” he said, “I will be very annoyed.”
She smiled, despite everything. “I’ll do my best to avoid annoying you.”
She hung up and pocketed the phone, aware of Aleksandr’s gaze on her.
“You are… blushing,” he observed.
“Mind your business,” she muttered, dragging her sleeves down again.
“Was that your… lover?” he asked, tone light but eyes sharp.
She choked. “My *what*?”
“Lover,” he repeated, slower, as if testing whether the word had changed in meaning.
“No,” she said. “Dima is… my colleague. My friend. My occasionally nagging conscience. Not my lover.”
“Ah,” he said. “You have others for that.”
“Also none of your business,” she snapped.
He inclined his head, the ghost of a smile playing at his lips. “Noted.”
She exhaled, forcing herself to let the irritation drain. It was too useful a word—*lover*—to give up just because he used it so casually.
“Dima is going to help,” she said, shifting back to practicalities. “He’ll see what he can find about Lebedev. And he’s going to try to… create a window for us. We have to wait for dark anyway.”
“How long?” Aleksandr asked.
She checked her watch. “Three hours, maybe.”
Three hours. In a house with a hungry vampire, unknown enemies, and a history thick enough to drown in.
“Do you need to… sleep?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I slept enough.”
“Fair,” she said. She sank down onto the sagging sofa, testing its springs. It held. Barely.
Aleksandr stayed where he was on the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up a fraction. The position would have looked vulnerable on anyone else. On him, it looked… deliberate. Resting while ready to pounce.
“Tell me,” he said.
“About what?”
“You,” he said simply. “You have told me of revolutions. Of… bagged blood and machines that hold the world. But not… of yourself.”
She blinked. “I’m… not that interesting.”
“I slept for a century,” he said. “A woman from… somewhere else… broke my stone. She walks through my house as if she belongs. She knows my name from… files. And she did not run when I woke. That is… interesting.”
She stared at him, tempted to deflect with humor. Then, slowly, she decided that if she was going to demand honesty from him, she should offer at least a little of her own.
“I was born in Lagos,” she said. “Big city. Hot. Loud. I had… two little brothers. A mother who worked too much and a father who liked… stories. He was the one who dragged us to old forts and told us what had happened there. Not just the… official plaques. The other things. The things people whispered.”
“Forts,” he repeated. “For war?”
“For… trade,” she said. “And war. And slavery. They built them on the coast. Europeans. They shipped people like… cattle. My ancestors. Others. My father… thought it was important we knew.”
“It is,” Aleksandr said quietly.
She shot him a quick, surprised glance. There was no condescension in his tone. Just… something old.
“I came here for school,” she went on. “History. Archives. I thought… if I could understand how power wrote itself on paper, I could… see the cracks. Maybe push them wider.”
“And instead,” he said, “you are here. In a broken house. With me.”
She smiled, small. “Life is weird.”
“Indeed,” he murmured.
“Your turn,” she said. “You told me you died in the war. Which one?”
“The first,” he said. “Although we did not know then it would be… the first.” He leaned his head back, eyes drifting toward the cracked ceiling. “Galicia. Mud. Lice. Men screaming for their mothers in languages I did not speak. I was… twenty-two. Very proud. Very stupid. I thought dying for the tsar would make… meaning.” He snorted softly. “It did not.”
“And your maker found you,” she guessed.
“Yes.” His voice softened. “He liked… lost boys on fields. Said we were ripe. He brought me here. To this house. To this… crypt. He said, ‘You do not have to belong to their stupid games anymore. You will belong to mine.’” A small, bitter smile crossed his lips. “I believed him.”
“Was he… cruel?” she asked.
“Kinder than the generals,” he said. “And more honest. He did not pretend killing was noble. He said it was… hunger. And… art. He taught me… control. Elizaveta taught me how to move through salons without… eating anyone important.” His eyes crinkled faintly at the memory. “Lev taught me… how to cheat at cards.”
“You loved them,” she said, not quite a question.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“And now…” She hesitated. “Now they’re… gone.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Or… not. You have read files. Files lie. People… survive in ways bureaucracy does not understand.”
“You think they might still be out there,” she said softly. “Somewhere.”
“I do not know what I think,” he said. “It hurts… to hope. It hurts… not to.”
She understood that too well.
She picked at a loose thread on her cuff. “We can… look,” she said. “Once you’re… settled. For mentions. Sightings. Court cases. Anything. I can… dig.”
He watched her with an intensity that made her want to squirm.
“You would do that,” he said. “For me.”
“I’m a historian,” she said. “Finding people in paper is… what I do.”
“Not for everyone,” he pointed out.
“Maybe not,” she conceded. “But for you, it’s… selfish too. If your maker… survived, he’s… part of this story. So are Elizaveta, Lev. Maybe they hid things. Money. Documents. Secrets. All of that… matters.”
He nodded slowly. “Practical and sentimental,” he said. “Dangerous combination.”
“You’re one to talk,” she shot back.
He smiled again, that slow, old thing that did something complicated to her stomach.
The light outside dimmed by imperceptible degrees. Shadows in the room lengthened. The air grew colder.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, faint through the boarded windows. Life in the city went on, oblivious.
Mira’s phone buzzed once more.
Dima: Sunset in 1.5. I have… a contact. Don’t make me use it without you.
She typed back quickly.
Mira: We’ll be ready.
She looked up.
“Time to move,” she said.
Aleksandr rose in a smooth motion that would have been impossible an hour ago. The hunger in his eyes burned clearer now, less masked by disorientation.
“Where?” he asked.
“Out,” she said. “Carefully.”
She shrugged back into her coat, tugged on her gloves, slung her backpack. The familiar weight grounded her.
He put his coat on again as well, buttoning it with quick, precise motions. In that moment, he looked like he could have stepped out of a sepia photograph. A ghost wearing his own skin.
As they left the small room, moving back into the dim corridor, neither of them noticed the faint, almost imperceptible click far above them.
On a rooftop across the narrow street from the estate, a small camera rotated a few degrees, its motor voicing a soft whirr. Its lens focused on the cracked third-floor window where, briefly, a shadow had moved.
In a warm car parked two blocks away, a man in his forties in an expensive, forgettable coat glanced at the tablet in his lap. The image streaming from the camera sharpened: the outline of two figures moving through the dim interior of the house.
One taller. One shorter. The taller one’s gait… wrong. Too smooth for someone picking their way through a ruin.
The man’s lips twitched.
“Welcome back, Morozov,” he murmured, in Russian as crisp and modern as skyscraper glass. He tapped a quick message into his phone.
Lebedev: Target awake. Accompanied. Proceeding to intercept?
The three dots appeared almost immediately.
Unknown: Negative. Observe only. Confirm extraction route. The old man will want to know when and how he leaves.
Lebedev’s mouth curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Yes,” he said softly, watching Mira and Aleksandr move through the frozen, pixelated ruin. “We all want to know that.”
Inside the house, unaware of electronic eyes, Mira and Aleksandr reached the top of the servant stairs.
The sky outside the tiny landing window had darkened to a deep, bruised blue. The first streetlights flickered on, halos of sodium orange in the growing night.
“Ready?” Mira asked.
Aleksandr inhaled, nostrils flaring as if tasting the evening.
“As I will ever be,” he said.
They stepped together toward a door that would open not just onto the grounds of a crumbling estate, but into a century neither of them yet understood.
The night waited.