Chapter 4
The Safe House
The protagonist walks to the safe house near Erzvilkas, enters the abandoned building, and discovers a hidden cache of files detailing the kanjbsls' operations, the fate of the children, and the real Audir audit. While reading, a sound alerts them to an intruder, ending with a tense cliffhanger.
I walked for nearly an hour along a road that had once been paved but was now broken into gravel and mud. The birches gave way to pines, and the pines to a flat, open stretch of land where the wind moved without resistance. The address on the paper led me past a collapsed barn and a rusted tractor, then down a lane so narrow it was more of a suggestion than a path. The safe house stood at the end of it: a two-story building with a sagging roof and boarded windows. Gray paint peeled from the wooden walls in long strips, like old skin. I stopped at the gate, which hung open on one hinge, and listened. Nothing moved. No birds, no insects, no distant traffic. The silence felt deliberate, as if the place had been holding its breath for years.
I pushed the gate aside and crossed the yard. The grass was knee-high, brown and brittle. My boots crushed it with a sound like paper tearing. The front door was locked, but the wood around the lock was rotted. I pressed my shoulder against it once, twice, and the frame splintered. The door swung inward with a groan.
Inside, the air was thick with dust and the smell of mildew. Light filtered through cracks in the boards, falling in stripes across a floor littered with broken furniture and empty bottles. A staircase led up, its steps warped but intact. To the left, a doorway opened into what must have been a living room. To the right, a narrow hallway led to the back of the house. I stood in the entryway, letting my eyes adjust, and tried to remember what the gray-eyed woman had said. 'The real audit. The one that names names.'
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