21. LEO #5
"Thanks, buddy," he says, patting my shoulder. "Shit, I need to find those headphones before they seal the floor."
He walks away, starting to rummage through his own boxes, convinced that Nicole, of all people, stole his crappy headphones.
I don't give him the satisfaction of a second answer. For me, this conversation is over. This place is over.
I turn to my cubicle. There's not much I want to take. The pens, the notepads, the technical manuals... they're just remnants of a life that is no longer mine. I look at the dark computer screen, at the Volkov surveillance camera that is, no doubt, recording this exact moment.
I grab an old laptop I kept in the bottom drawer. The key is always in the soil of my fern, which is the only other thing that belongs to me here.
With the fern secure in one arm and the laptop in the other, I walk toward the exit.
I ignore Chad. I pass Nicole, who gives me one last sad look.
"Take care, Leo."
I give her a nod. "You too, Nicole."
I leave behind the cardboard boxes and Chad's voice still complaining about his headphones. As the elevator descends, I stare at the fern's leaves. Her kindness. His stupid concern. Their fragility.
As I pass through the turnstiles for the last time, I don't look back.
Luca waits for me at the door. He looks like a security guard. He looks at my belongings—an old, beat-up laptop and a fern—and says, "Is that all you're taking?"
"It's the only thing that belongs to me."
He seems to want to ask about the plant. He refrains. "The car is waiting."
He leads me to a black armored SUV with raised suspension and immense wheels. The dark leather seats are cold and soft. Even the air conditioning seems to blow more expensive air, with a faint smell of wood and pepper. Luca and another large man in a suit sit in the front seats.
I watch the city rush by the window. The generic office buildings, the streets full of ordinary people with ordinary problems. Through the armored glass, everything looks like a silent film. A world I no longer belong to.
The car drives for a few minutes in silence, but instead of taking the expressway out of the city, the driver turns toward a familiar neighborhood. My neighborhood. The car slows and stops in front of my house. The same grey, depressing building I left behind.
"Mr. Volkov's orders were for you to collect any valuable personal items you wish to keep," Luca says. "The rest will be discarded."
Discarded. The word is so final. So... Dante.
I can't resist a smile.
"He's telling me to pack?"
He wants me to collect the fragments of my pathetic existence and take them to his castle. It's an act of annexation.
Luca opens the door for me. He escorts me into the house without saying anything.
Everything is exactly as I left it. Impersonal, with cheap, lifeless furniture.
I don't have much. I grab a backpack. I throw in some clothes, an external hard drive with old projects, and the cryptography book that was on my nightstand.
Of course, my personal laptop, which isn't the trash I left at the office.
I like to have two—one is for malware. And that's it. The rest are just things.
Luca observes the almost empty backpack. "Just that?"
I look around. The grey house. The grey life.
"Just that."
We return to the car in silence. I throw the backpack on the seat. Now I have a home backpack, an old laptop, and a fern. The mortal remains of Leo Hays.
Luca gets in the car and signals the driver. This time, we take the expressway north.
The journey is silent. Luca and the other guard don't speak. I don't speak. I just watch the landscape transform into trees and, eventually, tall stone walls.
We stop in front of a wrought iron gate, with no identification.
A small, discreet camera turns toward us.
The gate opens without anyone needing to say a word.
We enter a vast, isolated property, surrounded by dense forest. At the end of a gravel path, a modern house, almost a fortress of glass, concrete, and steel, projects from the landscape like a monument to wealth and isolation.
Definitely not the hotel where they kept me until now.
The car stops under a porte-cochere. Luca gets out and opens my door. "We've arrived."
I step out, still holding my things. The air here is clean, cold. I don't see any guards.
"This is your new residence. And your new workplace," Luca says, guiding me inside.
It's a mausoleum with Wi-Fi. The interior is spacious and cold. Black marble on the floor, polished concrete on the walls. The furniture looks like modern art.
Luca guides me down a long corridor and stops in front of a door that looks like a bank vault. It opens with a fingerprint scanner.
"Mr. Volkov has provided everything you might need."
Of course it was Dante.
It's a fucking bunker. An isolated, hermetic suite.
King-size bed in one corner, a metallic kitchen with a stainless steel refrigerator, a five-star hotel bathroom.
The windows are floor-to-ceiling armored glass.
View of the forest. Beautiful. Silent. No exit.
Every detail is exactly where he wanted it.
It's suffocating. But he's the one who brought me here. And it's impossible to hate what he touches.
At the other end of the room is the real reason I'm here: a monstrous workstation. Three curved 49-inch monitors, a custom mechanical keyboard with chrome keys, and a server rack with glass panels and blinking lights.
"Mr. Volkov presumed you'd prefer to set up your own system. But this one is already operational," Luca says, pointing to a state-of-the-art laptop, resting between the monitors like a war jewel. "Dedicated fiber. Triple firewall. Nothing goes in or out without the boss's approval."
The boss's.
I walk to the desk. I don't touch any of it.
I leave my beat-up laptop next to the titanium monster Dante thought I deserved.
The contrast is pathetic. This is what he wanted.
I leave the fern at the edge of the desk, facing the window.
The only two objects that survived my previous life. Tiny. Ridiculous. But still alive.
Perfectly placed in the center of the desk, next to the keyboard, is a single black envelope, on heavy cardstock. Written on it in elegant, precise silver calligraphy: Nyx .
Luca watches me open the envelope. Inside, a single sheet.
A memo: Malakov Asset Neutralization . I can hear Svetlana's voice in my head dictating all the guidelines and rules listed in mechanical black ink.
Intelligence extraction, psychological warfare, leaking, disposal. It's my first work order.
I lower the paper. I face Luca, who is still standing near the door, tense, waiting to see if any instructions will come. I give him one.
"I need Sal," I say. "Have new hands grown on him yet?"
Luca ignores my wisecrack. "I don't have authorization to move the prisoner. I need to confirm with the boss."
"Then confirm."
My insubordination clearly annoys him, but the order came from me, the new whatever-I-am. He pulls his phone from his suit pocket and types a message, no doubt to Dante.
"Mr. Dmitry also instructed me to collect your service contract," he says, peeking at me before returning to his phone.
I look at the envelope, then at him. Contract. The paper with numbers. I left it exactly where I found it in that hotel room.
"I didn't sign."
Luca stops typing. "Pardon?"
"It would be fiscally irresponsible of me. Svetlana would be horrified by the inefficiency of allocating such a resource to an asset that doesn't use it. It's bad business."
Luca stares at me for a long time. He's trying to understand the logic of it. My only expenses were rent, frozen food, and internet. Dante is giving me an entire life now.
His phone screen flashes. He stares at it. He frowns, clears his throat, and says, "I'll bring the prisoner."
I smile and watch him go.
I'm alone.
Or almost.
His presence lingers. It clings to the walls. To the scent of leather. To the weight of the furniture.
I wanted him to be the one to bring me here, introducing me to every space in this suite, giving me his orders to eat and sleep properly.
I allow myself to drown in the scent.
I miss him.
Dmitry is the Volkov who talks in my ear the most. Funny, because I thought it would be his brother. Or I wanted it to be.
Since I've been locked in here, Dante hasn't shown up.
Not even to scold me for talking to Nicole.
I've already asked Luca. He tells me nothing.
The most I get from the Volkovs is in daily meetings with Svetlana and Dmitry through a secure channel.
Svetlana stays for a short time, gives information, and leaves.
She's efficient, doesn't like to waste time.
Dmitry is a bit more cordial, and he's the one who discusses the best paths with me.
He's a perfectionist, pragmatic, doesn't mind me calling him by his first name, and sometimes laughs at the jokes I make about Sal's hands, who is the ghost in the basement.
By Dante's orders, Luca doesn't leave me alone with our prisoner.
I find it funny, because Sal has been reduced to a man who doesn't even have tears or autonomy—a prisoner in every sense of the word.
He is thin, weak, always tied to some chair, and definitely doesn't find my jokes funny.
Where his hands once were are now bandaged stumps that need changing a few times a day.
He doesn't see me as a guardian angel, doesn't thank me for saving his life. He wishes Dante had killed him.