The scent of her mother's expensive, suffocating perfume still hung in the air like a poisonous fog. Delaney stood in the center of the living room, her breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches. The elevator's descent light flickered off, signaling that Evelyn was gone, but the echoes of her laughter—that sharp, European derision—remained.
Delaney turned toward the hallway. The door to Viktor's room was closed, a slab of dark wood that felt like a barrier between the lie she told the world and the truth she lived. She walked toward it, her footsteps heavy on the hardwood.
She didn't knock. She didn't have the energy for the performance of politeness. She pushed the door open.
The room was bathed in the flickering, cool blue of a single tablet screen. Viktor was huddled in the far corner of his bed, his knees pulled tight against his chest, his oversized hoodie pulled up like a shell. He didn't look at her. He was stimming with a piece of copper wire he'd found in the technical kit, twisting it into a tight, frantic spiral.
Viktor's fingers didn't stop. The wire made a tiny, scraping sound against his thumbnail. He had heard everything. The walls of the penthouse were soundproofed against the city, but they weren't soundproofed against the venom of a mother's voice. He knew he was the "anomaly." He knew he was the "broken thing."
Delaney sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress shifted, and Viktor flinched, pulling further into the corner. It was a physical rejection that stung more than her mother's insults.
Viktor finally looked up. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown out from the blue light. He didn't have words, but his expression was a raw, unfiltered broadcast of fear. He reached out with his left hand and tapped a sequence on the tablet.
The screen flickered. He hadn't been playing a game. He had the "Rehoming" file open—the one from the Detroit facility.
Viktor didn't move. He just stared at the snapped wire. To him, Delaney wasn't a savior; she was just the person who owned the cage he was currently in. He looked from the tablet to the window.
He had seen the Fighter leave through a window. He had seen Raul's loyalty. He looked at Delaney and saw only the "Recording Angel"—a woman who collected secrets but didn't know how to keep a person.
Viktor picked up the tablet. He typed three words, the mechanical voice of the text-to-speech engine sounding flat and ghostly in the small room:
Delaney froze. "Gravel" was her word for the dirt, the secrets, the things people bury to forget who they are. To hear it thrown back at her by the boy she thought she had "saved" was a physical blow.
Viktor didn't buy it. He went back to his wire, the spiral tighter now, sharp enough to draw blood.