Chapter Five – Karmia

Cold eats through me. It’s in the stone under my body, in the damp air clawing at my skin. My breath ghosts white in the dimness, curling before vanishing. I pull my knees tighter to my chest, arms wrapped around them so hard my muscles ache. It doesn’t help. The chill is inside now, seeping into bone.

The room smells of wet stone and metal. Rust flakes from the bars of the door, small orange scars that catch under my nails when I touch them. Mold creeps along the walls in dark blooms, bruises spreading where no light reaches.

Every sound echoes—my shallow breaths, the occasional drip of water somewhere unseen. It’s like being buried alive in a cellar meant for ghosts.

Hours drag. Or days. I try to keep track—counting heartbeats, breaths, anything to measure time—but the numbers slip away, shredded by exhaustion. My sense of the outside world has crumbled. I’m a clock without hands.

Regret runs loops through my head, a gnawing animal that won’t let go. Every click of the keyboard last night replays in sharp fragments. The firewalls. The payout. The thrill. I’d felt untouchable, clever. How did I not see the trap coiled underneath?

My brain spirals, trying to force a shape onto chaos. Random gang? No, too precise. Government? Maybe, but they don’t usually storm apartments like that. Mafia? The word flickers through my mind like a neon warning light. Bratva. Russian. The voice in the SUV, curling hard around consonants I couldn’t understand but felt like a verdict.

I bury my face against my knees, but the images still creep in. The SUV’s interior swallowing me whole. The silhouettes of the men who dragged me out.

Behind them, in the doorway at the estate—those cold eyes fixed on me, steady as a scope. He didn’t even have to speak. His presence filled the space. I’d felt it at the edge of my skin: control, threat, inevitability.

I whisper just to hear something human. “What did I get myself into?” The sound is thin, swallowed by the stone. My voice trembles, cracking at the edges. I whisper it again, softer this time, like maybe if I repeat it enough the answer will appear.

Only the mold and the rust listen. Only the cold. The thought of him—of whoever he is—keeps intruding, no matter how hard I shove it out. His eyes. That doorway. The weight of a presence I can’t name.

I clutch my knees tighter, shivering until my teeth click. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know what comes next. All I know is the trap has closed, and I’m inside it.

Hunger twists inside me, sharp and mean, like something clawing through my stomach lining. It comes in waves, clenching until I fold forward, then easing into a dull ache that never leaves. Thirst is worse.

My lips are cracked raw, tongue heavy, every swallow rasping against my throat. When I lick my lips, I taste rust, mold, and the faint sting of iron.

My hoodie clings damp and useless to my body, its cotton no barrier against the cold that breathes from the stone. My fingers have gone stiff from the zip ties, numb at the tips, and when I curl them into fists they barely obey. I hold them close to my chest anyway, as though protecting what little warmth I have left.

The silence presses in until it feels alive. Some moments I sink into numbness, mind floating blank, just drifting. Others, panic rips me awake, every nerve sparking like I’ve been shocked. My ears play tricks on me.

I imagine footsteps approaching, keys jangling faintly, men murmuring in Russian just beyond the door. Sometimes I swear I hear music, soft and far, only to realize it’s my own pulse hammering in my ears. The silence has teeth. It gnaws at what’s left of me.

Worse than hunger, worse than thirst or cold, are the eyes. His eyes. I can’t stop replaying them in the dark—the way they caught me in the SUV, even blurred through the chaos. Icy. Cruel. Unmoving. He hadn’t raised a hand or a voice, but the air shifted when he looked at me. Like a predator stilling the forest without making a sound.

Terror coils in me each time I remember that gaze, but beneath it, something else lingers. A pull I don’t want, a current dragging me closer even as I resist. I tell myself it’s only fear. That’s all it can be. Fear, plain and simple.

I curl tighter in the corner, whispering into my knees. “I’ll never see him again.” The words scrape out hoarse, weak, but I cling to them as truth. He’s a shadow. I’m a mistake. Whatever comes next, it won’t be him.

The thought fractures when the iron door creaks.

The sound is jagged, splitting the silence wide open. My heart slams hard against my ribs, so loud it drowns everything else. Boots strike concrete, measured, heavy.

I shrink into myself, pressing back against the damp wall until mold flakes against my skin. My knees draw tighter to my chest, body folding small, as though size could make me invisible. Every breath cuts shallow.

They’re here. Whoever they are, whatever they’ve decided. The door groans wider, and cold air rushes in around me, carrying the echo of authority in its wake.

I prepare for the worst, because there’s nothing else left to do.

The cell’s damp air shifts before he even appears. It’s subtle at first—a change in pressure, the faintest stir of movement—but then comes the sound. Click. Click. Leather soles on stone, measured and unhurried. No barked orders, no chatter from guards. Just him.

Cold follows him in, colder than the walls, colder than the mold creeping along the seams of the floor. The scent hits next, sharp and clean, expensive cologne cutting through mildew and rust. It’s jarring—out of place here, like silk thrown over a corpse.

I don’t need to look up to know it’s him. My body recognizes his presence before my mind does. My pulse stutters, thuds, then races. He fills the cell without speaking, shadow stretched long across the floor until it touches me where I’m curled.

I press my back harder into the corner, forcing my spine straight. My arms are still wrapped around my knees, but I make myself lift my head. If I cower now, I’ll shatter.

His voice slides into the silence, low and flat, almost bored. “Ready to change your mind?”

It’s not a question. It’s an invitation with teeth.

The hair along my arms rises, gooseflesh prickling under the hoodie. My mouth is dry, tongue heavy, but I drag words out anyway, wrap them in a brittle kind of bravado.

“This isn’t exactly five stars,” I say, my voice thin but trying for a quip. “You might want to work on your hospitality.”

The sound that comes out of me feels alien. Raspy, strained. A stranger’s voice wearing mine.

He doesn’t laugh. His expression doesn’t soften. If anything, something in his face darkens, shadow sliding over bone. The cell feels smaller now, the air heavier, like I’ve said the wrong thing without knowing why.

He moves closer, slow and deliberate. No rush. Each step a warning.

My heartbeat lurches, panic curling low in my stomach. I realize I’ve pushed too far—my sarcasm a paper shield already catching fire, but it’s too late to pull it back, too late to unsay the words.

He’s standing over me now, the scent of him—cologne, smoke, something metallic—coiling into my lungs. The blue-gray of his eyes catches the low light, glacial and unreadable.

I go still. Everything in me screaming to run, but my body can only shrink tighter, pressing against the wall as if it might let me disappear.

His hand moves faster than thought. One second he’s looming, the next his palm is clamped around my throat, iron-tight. My back slams into the wall, stone biting through fabric, shockingly cold. My skull knocks once against it, hard enough to spark stars across my vision, white bursts that explode and fade into black.

Air jerks out of me, ragged. His grip doesn’t just hold, it crushes. The pressure clamps my windpipe, each second narrowing into panic. My hands fly up, clawing at his wrist, nails scraping against skin, but it’s useless. His strength doesn’t waver.

The world narrows to sensation. His thumb pressing against the frantic beat of my pulse, as though he owns it. The scent of his skin and cologne, expensive spice and clean smoke, filling my head until I choke on it. My chest heaves, lungs scraping for breath that won’t come.

My legs kick uselessly against the stone, shoes scuffing the floor, the sound muffled under the roar in my ears.

He leans in close, the sharp planes of his face filling my vision. His eyes are knives, honed and merciless, and they cut deeper than his hand. “Who sent you?”

The words rasp low, weighted. Not an interrogation. A verdict. A death sentence coiled on his tongue, waiting to fall if I say the wrong thing, or nothing at all.

Terror spikes through me, bright and blinding. I try to shake my head, but his grip holds me still. My voice scrapes out, raw, shaking so hard it barely makes sense. “N-no one—”

His grip tightens, a warning.

“I swear!” The words burst out, tumbling over each other in a rush. “I’m just… I’m just a freelancer. No one sent me! It was an account, anonymous, untraceable. I never asked questions, I never—”

The truth splinters in my throat. I fling it at him anyway, desperate, because it’s all I have. My chest burns, air thin, each syllable a gasp between strangled breaths. “One job, that’s all—it was clean, I needed the money, I didn’t—”

The words dissolve into coughing, the grip at my throat stealing the rest. I can feel the weakness in them even as they spill out. The truth sounds like lies, flimsy and broken. My own voice betrays me, trembling with terror, cracking at the edges.

Still I force it out, raw and hoarse. “I’m not anyone’s enemy. Please, I don’t even know who you are.”

His eyes don’t soften. They watch me like a hawk studying prey, patient, merciless. Waiting to decide whether I live another second or end here, against the stone, under his hand.

My nails dig into his wrist, but I can’t shift him an inch. All I feel is the steady thrum of his pulse under my fingertips, maddeningly calm, as if my fight is nothing, as if I am nothing.

My body shakes with the effort of breathing, ribs aching, heart thrashing against his thumb. Every instinct screams to submit, to beg, but my words tumble half broken between sob and snarl. “It was just a job. I didn’t know it was you.”

The stone behind me is cold, his hand hotter than fire, and the world trembles between them, waiting for him to choose whether I live or die.

His grip tightens, thumb pressing harder against my pulse until it feels like he’s crushing the beat itself out of me. The pressure at my throat clamps down, merciless. Air cuts off, my chest convulsing against the wall as my body fights for oxygen that doesn’t come.

The world shrinks to the circle of his hand and the burn in my lungs. My vision begins to tunnel, edges going dark, white flecks bursting across the narrowing frame of his face. Panic overtakes even thought. I claw at him, at the stone, at anything, nails breaking against his skin, against the wall. My legs kick weakly, desperate reflex more than defiance now.

For one heartbeat—longer than any I’ve ever felt—I am certain this is how I die. Pinned here like an insect, my last sight his glacial eyes, cold and steady as the grip that holds me on the edge of nothing.

Then he lets me go.

His hand tears away, leaving behind the phantom imprint of his fingers burning into my skin. My knees buckle, body collapsing forward only to slam back against the wall, sliding down it until I hit the floor.

Air rushes in at last, ragged, too fast, too sharp. I cough violently, each gasp tearing at my raw throat. The sound rattles in the damp stone chamber, ugly and human, humiliating. My vision swims with tears—unwanted, stinging—but I force them back. I will not cry for him.

He doesn’t move.

He stands above me, shadow stretched across the floor, eyes fixed on me with a stillness that’s worse than fury. He takes in everything; the tremble in my limbs I can’t control, the way each breath scrapes, the marks already forming at my throat. His silence weighs heavier than his grip did.

For a flicker of a moment, his eyes shift. Not softening, never that, but something else ripples there—calculation, hesitation, maybe doubt. The same cold mind that broke into me is measuring, deciding. It isn’t mercy. I can feel that. It’s colder than mercy, sharper.

Yet it’s a hesitation all the same.

I lift my gaze through the mess of tears and tangled hair, force myself to meet his eyes even as fear crawls across my skin. My chest still heaves, my throat burns, but somewhere beneath the terror, a thought surfaces.

He doesn’t fully believe me guilty. Not yet.

If he did, I’d be dead already. My body would be cooling on this floor instead of shaking against it. He would have squeezed until silence replaced my breathing, until nothing remained but another corpse in his cellar.

Instead, he’s watching me. Thinking. Deciding.

The realization lodges inside me like a hook. I file it away, the way I’d log a string of code, a weakness in an enemy firewall. It’s not much—barely a sliver of hope—but it’s something. A flicker to return to later, when my mind isn’t drowning in fear.

I tuck it into the back of my brain: he doubts.

I keep my head down after that, breathing through the burn, not daring another quip, not testing his patience again. My whole body shakes, fingers numb, legs too weak to lift me off the floor.

Inside, I cling to that flicker. In a world where everything is stolen from me, doubt might be the only weapon left.

His shadow lingers over me, heavy and inescapable, while the echo of his hand at my throat reminds me how close the line between life and death is here. He could close in any second.

For now, I’ve bought myself a few more hours.

He doesn’t say another word. No threat, no promise. There’s silence as he straightens, eyes still fixed on me for a heartbeat longer than necessary.

Then he turns, coat shifting with the movement, and walks out of the cell. The click of his shoes fades toward the door, each step a count of how much of myself I’ve lost.

The iron door swings shut with a deep metallic groan, the sound echoing like a coffin lid sealing. The lock clicks, crisp and final, like the cock of a gun before the trigger is pulled. The scent of him—expensive cologne threaded with smoke—lingers in the damp long after he’s gone, mingling with mildew and rust until it’s unbearable.

My hands are trembling so violently they feel like they belong to someone else. My throat throbs, every swallow sharp and hot where his fingers pressed.

When I touch the skin lightly, it’s already tender, bruises blooming under my fingertips. My chest still heaves, and every muscle feels wired, weak, like I’ve run miles without moving an inch.

I’m alive. That much is obvious. The question gnaws at the edges of my mind—alive for how long?

I draw my knees up to my chest, arms wrapping around them, forehead resting on the soft fabric of my hoodie. My pulse still slams at my temples, loud enough to drown the trickle of water and the hum of some distant machine. Surviving one more night, does that even count as victory? Or is it just stretching out the inevitable, a slow countdown instead of an execution?

For the first time, the enormity of this hits me fully. There’s no screen to hide behind. No code to slip through. No username, no encryption, no anonymity. Only me, stripped down to bone and fear, sitting in the dark with a predator who can reach out and close his hand around my throat any time he wants.

The image of his eyes rises again, unbidden—icy, cruel, magnetic. I can still feel the weight of his stare like a bruise on my skin. Terror sits heavy in my chest, but under it, something colder grows. Calculation. If I want to survive, defiance won’t be enough.

A sound outside the cell makes me lift my head. A guard shifting his stance, boots scraping against stone. Voices murmur in Russian, low and clipped. I can’t understand the words, but the tone carries finality, command. The sound tightens something invisible around my neck, like a noose drawing closer with each passing minute.

I realize it then: survival won’t come from outlasting them. It won’t come from waiting for a crack to appear. It will require more than defiance, more than hope. I’ll have to think like him—cold, precise, deliberate. If I don’t start mapping his weaknesses the way I map a system, I’ll be dead before I have the chance.

The cell feels smaller now, the air heavier. The damp creeps deeper into my skin, cold worse than before, or maybe it’s just me sinking into it. I pull my knees tighter to my chest, nails biting into my sleeves, trying to hold what little warmth I have left.

I stare at the door, its rust-flaked bars and heavy hinges, waiting for it to open again. Waiting for boots on concrete. Not knowing if the next visit will be the end of me or the chance I’ve been waiting for. The cell seems to breathe with me, dark and patient, like it already knows which way the story ends.