Before there was the blue light of a laptop, there was the flickering of a projector in a basement in Virginia.
Delaney sat on a hard wooden bench, her spine a straight line of terror and devotion. The air always smelled of damp earth and the "Prophet's" expensive, clove-scented tobacco. On the screen, there were no cartoons, no news, no movies from the "outside world." Sometimes, they would watch the "Heavenly Visions"; grainy, home-movie style reels of the Prophet himself, smiling with teeth that were too white, his eyes always finding the camera, always finding her.
She didn't know what a mall was. She didn't know what Abba or the Doors sounded like. Her world was a closed loop of "Law of Love" pamphlets and the rhythmic, hypnotic chanting of the Elders.
It was a very early memory of hers but she still remembered the "Special Lessons."
The Prophet; Father David, they called him, though he wasn't anyone's father; had a private study lined with books that no one else was allowed to touch. He told the others that Delaney had a "discerning spirit." He said she was his "little recording angel."
He would lean down, his face inches from hers, and the scent of cloves would become suffocating.
She was eight years old when she learned that information was the only currency that bought safety. If she gave him a name, the cold hand on her neck would soften. If she found a secret, he would give her a "star"—a small, gold sticker he placed right on her forehead, a brand of his favor.
She remembered the way he would look at her during the "Flirty Fishing" drills—the way the older girls were taught to use "God's beauty" to reel in outsiders. He would watch her from the shadows of the porch, his eyes tracing the line of her developing collarbone with a clinical, predatory focus.
She hadn't understood then why the older girls cried in the communal showers. She hadn't understood why her mother looked at the floor whenever Father David called Delaney into his study for a "private prayer." She only understood the weight of being the chosen one.
Now, fifty-four years old and sitting in a Chicago penthouse, Delaney looked at her reflection in the dark window.
She wasn't wearing a "star" anymore, but the ghost of it felt like a burn on her forehead. She realized with a sickening jolt that she was still sitting on that velvet stool. She was still Father David's "recording angel" even if she denied that. The only difference was that the Prophet was dead, and she had replaced him with a keyboard.
She looked at the photo of the Fighter. He had the same look in his eyes that the "outsiders" had back in Virginia; the ones who didn't know the world was a cage. He looked free. And Father David had taught her that nothing was more dangerous than a person who thought they were free.
She reached for the scotch, her hand mimicking the exact, steady grip she'd seen the Prophet use on his crystal decanter. The maternal ache she'd felt for Viktor was gone, crushed under the weight of a fifty-year-old "lesson." She wasn't a mother. She was a witness. And a witness's only duty was to testify until the world was as hollow as she was.