They talk for another hour.
Marcus tells Damian about the cut tie ritual. Not every detail. Enough. The scissors. The room. The way everyone cut their own tie because Delaney needed the surrender to look voluntary. The rules afterward. No partners who could question a source. No friends who could make someone hesitate. No family unless family was useful to the story.
"She called it choosing the work," Marcus says.
"What did you call it?" Damian asks.
Marcus reaches into his coat pocket and takes out the strip of striped fabric.
It has been there for years. The cut end is frayed now. It does not look sacred. It looks like what it is. A piece of cloth he was unable to throw away because throwing it away would have required admitting it meant something.
He sets it on the table.
"Being chosen," he says.
Viktor looks at the tie.
Marcus looks at him.
"She made being useful feel like being important. I thought that if I still felt uncomfortable, I was different from the people who believed all of it. Turns out I was still the same kind of variable to her as everyone else. I was just slower to admit it."
"And now?" Damian asks.
Marcus looks at the piece of fabric.
"Now I think you can feel bad about a room and still help keep the door closed."
Damian does not write it down.
For once, Marcus is grateful for the absence of the pen.
✻ ✻ ✻
At four fourteen, Damian closes the file.
"This is enough for tonight."
Marcus looks up.
"It is?"
"No," Damian says. "But it is enough for tonight."
The answer surprises Marcus into silence.
Damian turns to Viktor.
"You can leave without giving me anything else. You can come back if you decide you want to. You can ask for a different detective. You can decide you never want to see this office again."
Viktor looks at Marcus.
Marcus nods once.
"All of that is true," he says.
Viktor takes a moment.
"I do not want to give you the notebook tonight."
Damian nods.
"Okay."
"But I might later."
"Okay."
Nothing bad happens.
Viktor looks down at the striped tie on the table.
"Can you take that back?" he asks Marcus.
Marcus blinks.
"The tie."
Marcus closes his hand around it.
"Yeah," he says. "I can."
He puts it back in his pocket.
✻ ✻ ✻
The lift takes them down slowly.
Viktor leans against the wall. Marcus stands beside him, tired enough that tired has become a separate object in the space around him.
"He knew your name before you gave it to him," Viktor says.
Marcus looks at the floor numbers.
"Yeah. I did not know that until tonight either."
"Does that scare you?"
Marcus thinks about it honestly, the way he's trying to think about most things now.
"A little. Mostly it just means I was never as hidden as I thought I was being. I do not know yet if that is worse or better than being invisible."
Viktor considers this.
"I was invisible," he says. "To all of them. Even the ones looking."
"Yeah."
"But not to you."
Marcus feels the words arrive somewhere deeper than he is ready for.
"No," he says. "Not to me."
The doors open onto the lobby.
Outside, morning is beginning to take the city back a little at a time. A delivery truck moves down the street. The sky is pale at the edge of the buildings. The world has not become better while they were upstairs. It has only kept going.
Marcus unlocks the car.
Viktor gets in, coat still on, the way he'd been sitting when this all started.
"You called," Marcus says, before he starts the engine. "That was the right thing to do. Whatever anyone in there thinks about the rest of it. Now you get to rest."
Viktor doesn't answer right away. He just leans his head against the window and closes his eyes, and something in his shoulders finally, slightly, lets go.
Marcus starts the car.
Being chosen.
You can feel bad about a room and still help keep the door closed.
Nothing bad happens.
I was invisible to all of them. But not to you.
Something in his shoulders finally, slightly, lets go.