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All I can do is follow along.

“Fine,” I say. “Show me.”

71

RAE

NYPD 20th PRECINCT — AV SURVEILLANCE

Interview Room 3 | Camera Feed: IR-03-B

Date: 20 December 2025 | 23:48 — 00:09

Subject: Lazarev, Lukas A. (counsel waived)

Visitor: Lazarev, Kirill L.

Delete this footage?

YES | NO

Gideon promises me he’ll be okay staying here. We leave him in the apartment and return to the car downstairs. Kir helps me into the vehicle, then steers us out.

We emerge from the underground parking garage and flow through the city. It seems like every other car pulls aside and every light goes green, as if the world is urging us on our way toward wherever we’re going.

Which, as it turns out, is the 20th Precinct.

He takes us down a back alley. It’s blocked by a tall gate topped with barbed wire, but a masked patrol officer is waiting out in the cold to open it for us. We’re expected, it seems. We pull through and the gate locks behind us.

I climb out of the car and look around. A bitterly cold wind rips down the throat of the alleyway. I’m wearing only jeans and a t-shirt with a light jacket, so it freezes me to the bone. Kir notices and raises an arm like he wants to drape it around me for warmth, then thinks better of it and tucks it away.

“C’mon.”

I trudge after him down the alley. Halfway down, we stop a nondescript metal door. Kir knocks once, pauses, then knocks again. He steps back just in time for the door to crack open.

Another cop looks out at us. This one is a detective, judging by the crinkled polyester suit and the bags under his eyes. He peers up and down the alley, then holds the door open wider. “In you go,” he grunts.

Kir nods as we pass and hands the man a thick envelope with new dollar bills peeking out of the flap, which he quickly tucks inside his jacket pocket.

We slip inside. The door clangs shut behind us, sealing out the cold and the night.

The precinct’s back corridors are a maze of flickering fluorescents and scuffed linoleum. We pass a break room where a couple of uniforms nurse coffee cups. They look up at us curiously—until they see Kir, at which point they avert their eyes back down in a hurry.

Nobody stops us. Whatever Kir slipped the detective, it was enough to buy us free passage through the belly of the NYPD.

The detective leads us down a narrow hallway and stops at a door markedInterview Observation #7.He unlocks it with a key from a crowded ring, then steps aside.

“You’ve got twenty minutes,” he says to Kir. “After that, I can’t guarantee anything.”

“That’s all we need.”

The detective nods once, then disappears back down the corridor, leaving us alone.

Kir opens the door and shows me inside. It’s a cramped little office, not much bigger than a closet, really. On the metal desk shoved into one corner is an outdated computer monitor, and on that monitor…

…is Lukas.

It’s the same feed that Kir showed me in the safe house apartment where he was hiding Gideon. Lukas still hasn’t moved. He’s seated on that bench, spine erect and proud, like a king in exile.