The mall was a cathedral of consumerismâbright, loud, and filled with a frantic energy that Delaney usually loathed. But today, she was trying.
She walked beside Viktor, keeping a careful two-foot distance. She wasn't wearing her usual sharp blazer; she was in a soft sweater, an attempt to look "safe." Viktor looked overwhelmed. The "quiet kid" from the dim apartment looked even smaller under the aggressive stadium lighting of the food court.
She was babbling. It was a sound she didn't recognize coming from her own throat.
She reached out, her hand hovering near his shoulder. She wanted to pull him into a side-hug, a gesture she'd seen other mothers do. But her fingers cramped into a claw-like shape mid-air, and she pulled back, smoothing her hair instead.
They wandered into a music storeâa relic of a dying era. Delaney stopped in front of a bin of classic rock vinyl. She saw a reissue of The Soft Parade.
She looked at Viktor, her expression softening into something raw and terrifyingly honest.
Viktor stopped looking at the CDs. He looked at her. For the first time, he didn't see the predator or the journalist. He saw a fifty-four-year-old woman who was desperately, pathetically trying to apologize without knowing the words.
The comment was blunt, a "quiet kid" specialty. It cut through Delaney's "maternal" performance like a knife.
She bought him a heavy, expensive sketchbook and a set of professional charcoal pencils. As they walked to the exit, she found herself watching the back of his head, making sure no one bumped into him in the crowd. She felt a sudden, violent urge to shield him from the very "Truth" she spent the last week digging up.
For a fleeting second, she imagined a life where they just stayed in this mall forever. A life where she was just a woman with a nephew, or a son, and they bought pretzels and talked about art. No ash. No magnifying glass. No Jim Morrison whispering about the end.
But as they passed a newsstand, a magazine cover caught her eye:
The "fixation" pulsed behind her eyes like a migraine. The maternal urge to protect Viktor clashed with the obsessive need to be the one who tells the story.
She reached for Viktor's hand, finally catching his sleeve.
She said it with conviction, but as they walked toward the parking garageâthe same kind of garage where Rowan disappearedâshe could feel the pull of the file on her laptop. The "Prophet" in her head was already whispering that a mother's first duty is to the Truth, no matter who it burns.
The parking garage was a concrete throat, swallowing them in shadow after the mall's fluorescent baptism. Delaney's key fob chirped in the quiet, the sound bouncing off the low ceilings.
Viktor climbed into the passenger seat without a word, the new sketchbook balanced on his knees. He didn't look at the magazine stand's echo still hanging in the air between them.
Delaney started the car. The engine was a low, modern purr, nothing like the growl of the music she worshipped. She adjusted the rearview mirror and caught her own reflectionâthe soft sweater suddenly looked like a costume, something a woman playing "normal" might wear.
Viktor's words echoed in the silent cabin. He wasn't wrong. Her whole life had been a series of loud replacementsâthe Prophet's sermons replaced by Morrison's poetry, the cult's rules replaced by journalism's "truth," the need for a God replaced by the need for a story.
She glanced at him. He was looking out the window, his breath fogging the glass. He traced a shape in the condensation with one fingerâa circle, or maybe a zero. Patient zero.
The drive home was quiet. The city passed by in a blur of streetlights and shadows. Delaney's hands were steady on the wheel, but her mind was a battlefield. On one side: the woman who bought sketchbooks and worried about untied laces. On the other: the journalist who knew that the magazine cover was just the beginning, that someone else was already circling Elena's story, that if she didn't publish first, she'd be nothing but a footnote in someone else's investigation.
She pulled into her building's underground garage. The same dim, concrete space. The same pillars that could hide anything.
As they walked to the elevator, Delaney's phone buzzed in her pocket. A notification from her news alert app:
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime. Delaney stepped inside, Viktor beside her. The doors closed, sealing them in a small, mirrored box.
She looked at their reflectionâa woman in a soft sweater, a boy with a sketchbook. A perfect, fragile picture of something that could be.
And in her pocket, her phone continued to vibrate with updates from a world that didn't care about pictures. Only about stories.
The elevator climbed. The choice was waiting for her upstairs, blinking on a screen. Delete, or publish. Mother, or journalist. Silence, or the terrible, beautiful noise of the truth breaking everything in its path.