Chapter Five - Karmia #2
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.