Page 154 of Maksym

Something in my vision narrowed.

Not darkness. Focus.

The video kept playing. More angles. More dates. Different properties. Same structures.

When the footage ended, Lucia did not close the laptop.

The final frame remained on the screen.

Lucian’s profile.

A woman being pushed past him.

His head turned away from her as if she were furniture.

No one spoke.

The plane moved through the dark with expensive serenity.

My throat worked once.

I heard it because the rest of me had gone very still.

Maksym’s hand remained where it was. Still. Present. He would have given me any version of himself I asked for in that moment.

I looked at the frozen image until Lucian became pixels again.

Then I looked at Lucia.

“How many are still in the properties?”

Her eyes changed.

Not surprise. Respect, perhaps. Or something adjacent to it.

“We do not know yet,” she said. “We have identified five active sites and two probable holding locations. Doc’s people and Remy’s wards team will move once the hearing begins.”

“Human numbers?”

“Unknown.”

“How many did the logs suggest?”

Doc answered. “Between twenty and sixty moved through the network in the last eighteen months. Could be more. Some entries were coded.”

The air left me slowly.

Twenty to sixty.

Not statistics. People.

People with names, jobs, families, pets, medical allergies, favorite songs, unpaid bills, half-finished books on bedside tables. People who had once been irritated by traffic and bad coffee and spam calls, without knowing how generous ordinary annoyance could be. People who might, if found alive, open their eyes in rooms full of supernatural rescuers and think the nightmare had simply changed costumes.

“Dismantling Lucian is only the first step,” I said.

No one interrupted.

Good. I was not sure I could have tolerated interruption gently.