The arena was a nightmare of vibrating air and jagged light. For Viktor, the "Bloodless" match wasn't a story or a headline; it was a physical assault.
He sat in the press pit, the heavy professional camera acting as a shield between him and the twenty thousand screaming fans. Underneath his oversized hoodie, his skin felt like it was being scraped by steel wool. The bass from the 90s Britpop remix didn't just play in the air; it thrummed in his teeth, a rhythmic pounding that made his stomach turn. The stadium lights weren't just bright; they were strobe-pulses of white heat that felt like they were peeling back his skin. Every time the crowd roared, the vibration hit his chest like a physical blow, rattling his ribs.
He didn't speak. He hadn't spoken since Amore had handed him over to Delaney like a piece of untraceable hardware. He didn't need words; he had the Glow.
Viktor stared at the small monitor on his lap. While the world saw a boxing ring, Viktor saw the data streams. He saw the stadium's Wi-Fi mesh, the unencrypted broadcast frequencies, and the vulnerabilities in the production booth's local network. He was stimming with his left hand ; a repetitive, rhythmic tapping against his thigh while his right hand moved with surgical precision across a tablet. His fingers tapped a four-beat sequence against the side of his thigh. 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4.
A sharp, high-pitched feedback squeal cut through the arena speakers. The crowd groaned, but to Viktor, it was a lightning bolt. He flinched, his entire body jerking, his eyes squeezing shut as he hummed a low, constant note to drown out the frequency.
His phone buzzed against his chest.
Viktor took a shaky breath. He reached into his pocket and squeezed a small, smooth blue bead , one he'd stolen from the necklace he'd dropped at the salon. The texture grounded him. He forced his eyes back to the screen.
He bypassed the stadium firewall not because he was a "genius," but because he could see the patterns in the code that others ignored. To him, the security software looked like a broken fence. He slipped through the gaps.
Click.
He was in. He held the uplink open : a clean, stable channel from Delaney's penthouse directly into Leo Vance's ear. Whatever came through it wasn't his voice. He was just the bridge.
He watched the jumbotron. He saw his own "Gravel" files ; the Detroit records , begin to scroll. He saw the Fighter's face go pale. Viktor's breath hitched. He wasn't supposed to feel for the "Subjects," but the Fighter's distress was broadcasting on a frequency Viktor understood all too well. It was the look of someone losing their sense of where they ended and the world began.
Delaney was in his ear, her voice a cold, sharp needle piercing through the static.
Viktor didn't answer. He couldn't. His throat felt like it was full of dry sand; the non-verbal wall was up, thick and unyielding. But his eyes, trained by years of looking for patterns in the "Glass House," were scanning the VIP section.
He wasn't looking for a "celebrity." He was looking for the specific shade of the same shirt she wore in the files ; a texture that looked soft in a room full of sharp edges. He was looking for the way she tilted her head when she was worried, a movement he had memorized from a screen. He had never seen her in person before. He had only ever seen her through Delaney's feeds and a television screen. But he would know her anywhere.
Then, he saw her.
Elena was three rows back from the Phantom. She looked small, her face pale under the clinical wash of the jumbotron's blue light. She was staring at the screen, watching the "Gravel" files of her own childhood burn in front of twenty thousand people. Her hands were pressed to her mouth, and even from twenty yards away, Viktor could see the way her shoulders were shaking.
She looked exactly how Viktor felt: like a secret that had been caught in a spotlight.
Suddenly, a camera flash went off right next to Viktor's head. A rival photographer was trying to get a shot of The Fighter.
The white light was too much. It shattered Viktor's concentration. The roar of the crowd suddenly tripled in volume, becoming a wall of white noise that felt like it was crushing his skull. He dropped the tablet. He huddled into a ball in the corner of the press pit, his hands clamped over his ears, his forehead pressed against the cold metal of the barrier.
Viktor couldn't pick it up. He was looping — a memory of the cold back of Amore's SUV, the smell of leather and fear, the realization that he was a boy with no papers and no voice, trapped in a glass house built on secrets.
He looked up through the gaps in the barrier. He saw the Fighter standing in the ring, paralyzed by the voice coming through Leo's earpiece. They were both in cages. One was made of glass and steel; the other was made of light and sound.
Viktor's hand hovered over the camera controls. He looked at the Fighter, who was being destroyed by Leo's hijacked voice. Then he looked back at Elena. She had noticed the Phantom sitting just feet away from her ; the man who looked like a waxy, distorted version of her brother. She looked terrified, looking around for an exit that didn't exist.
Viktor's breathing became shallow and fast. The loop was starting again. He saw the way the crowd was beginning to turn, their faces twisted into masks of judgment as they read the leaked hospital logs.
He realized then that Elena was the only "real" thing in the building. She wasn't a recording. She wasn't a file. She was just a girl trying to hold onto a brother who was being erased in real-time.
With a trembling hand, Viktor didn't aim the camera at the Fighter's face. He bypassed Delaney's forced "Sociopath" angle and zoomed in on the gap between the seats — a small, dark path that led to the service exit behind the VIP section.
He didn't have a voice to tell her to run. So he did the only thing he could. He hacked the local display on the VIP barrier — the small screens that usually showed betting odds ; and flashed a single, steady blue light. It was the same color as the bead in his pocket. A signal. A "safe" color.
Elena blinked, her eyes catching the blue glow amidst the chaotic red and white of the arena. She looked down at the screen, then scanned the press pit until her eyes landed on the boy in the oversized hoodie.
Viktor didn't move. He just stared at her, his hands clamped over his ears, his face a map of pure, unadulterated distress.
Elena stared back. For a second, something passed between them — recognition, maybe, or the shared language of people who had learned to read rooms before they could read people.
Then her eyes dropped to the camera around his neck. To the press credentials on his lanyard. To the body cam clipped to his hoodie that she couldn't have known was Delaney's eyes.
She took a step back.
She turned away from him and pushed deeper into the crowd, moving instinctively toward the one face she recognized, even if it was wrong. Even if it was this stupid wannabe streamer ; her brother's ghost in a tailored suit, leaning over the railing with that wide, plastic smile. What the fuck was he smiling for, anyways?
Viktor watched her go. He didn't reach out. He didn't flash the light again. He just sat there in the corner of the press pit, the blue bead still warm in his fist, and said nothing.
He had never had a voice to begin with.