The air in the room is stale, smelling of cold coffee and the sharp, medicinal sting of Delaney's hand sanitizer.
Viktor is hunched over the kitchen table. He's been trying to answer her questions for three hours. His face, usually a blank mask of teenage indifference, is beginning to fray. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his hands—the hands that draw such delicate, haunting lines—are trembling so hard he has to tuck them under his thighs.
DELANEY
"Think, Viktor. The social worker... did she say Elena knew about the weapons? Did she say the girl helped him hide them before she was taken?"
VIKTOR
(Voice small, cracking)"I... I don't know. The file did not say. It just say she was there. She was just a girl, Delaney."
DELANEY
"The daughter of a gun runner isn't 'just a girl,' Viktor. She's a witness. If she helped him, her whole 'innocent artist' persona is a lie. We need to know if she was complicit."
She leans in closer, her shadow falling over him.
DELANEY
(CONT'D)"Did your mother ever say Elena was like him? Like the father?"
Viktor flinches. A sharp, audible intake of breath. He looks up at her, and for a second, he doesn't look like a source. He looks like a wounded animal.
VIKTOR
"Why you make it sound so... so black? She was hungry. We were all hungry. Why does the 'truth' have to be so mean?"
Delaney opens her mouth to deliver a sharp retort about "journalistic integrity" and "the necessity of the whole picture," but the words die in her throat.
She looks at his trembling lip. She looks at the way he's shrinking away from her, his shoulders pulled up to his ears—the exact same way she used to shrink when her mother would stand over her, demanding she "confess her sins" to the Elders.
The room seems to tilt.
The blue light of the laptop suddenly feels like the harsh, unforgiving fluorescent lights of the Cult's basement. She sees her mother's face—pious, determined, convinced that her cruelty was actually "love" and "salvation."
I am doing it again, a voice whispers in the back of her mind. I am the adult in the room. And I am breaking him.
DELANEY
(Voice suddenly low, uncertain)"Viktor..."
She reaches out, a reflex to comfort him, but he recoils as if she's holding a hot iron. The movement is a physical blow to her chest.
VIKTOR
"You say you want to help me find sister. But you just want to find... the rot. You are like the journalist, Delaney. You are making the fire."
He stands abruptly, his chair screeching against the hardwood floor. He doesn't look back as he stumbles toward the guest room, the door slamming shut with a finality that echoes through the empty apartment.
Delaney stands alone in the center of the room. She looks at her hands. They are clean—obsessively, chemically clean—but they feel filthy.
She walks to the bathroom, her breath coming in shallow, jagged gasps. She stares at herself in the mirror.
She sees the sharp lines of her face, the coldness in her eyes. She sees a woman who has spent her whole life running away from the monsters of her childhood, only to realize she's been wearing their skin all along.
MEMORY (VICTOR'S VOICE)
"The ash doesn't stick to the journalist. It only sticks to the people in the story."
She looks at the bottle of industrial sanitizer on the counter. She picks it up, her knuckles white. She thinks of the "Fighter," of Elena, of the boy behind the closed door. She thinks of the magnifying glass.
With a sudden, violent motion, she sweeps the bottle off the counter. It shatters against the tile, the smell of lemon-bleach exploding in the small space, stinging her eyes until they water.
She sinks to the floor, her back against the bathtub, breathing in the toxic fumes.
For the first time in years, she doesn't try to wash the feeling away.
She just sits in the ruin of her own making, wondering if it's possible to stop a fire once you've already lit the match.