Chapter 13
Viktor's True Flight
Anya uncovers new details about her father's last flight, suggesting his actions may have been more complex than she ever imagined, challenging her perception of him.
The silence in the archive was a different kind of quiet than Anya had ever known. It wasn't the hushed reverence of a performance hall before the music begins, nor the expectant hush of a crowd witnessing an impossible feat. This was a dense, papery silence, thick with the dust of forgotten days and the weight of unread stories. Anya traced the spine of a worn ledger, the embossed gold lettering of the Soviet insignia cool beneath her fingertips. She was searching for a ghost, a whisper of a man who was both her father and a stranger, and the archive, with its labyrinthine rows of files, felt like the last place on earth he might hide.
Elena had suggested it, a gentle nudge in the right direction. “Sometimes,” she’d said, her eyes kind but knowing, “the answers we seek are not in the performances, but in the pauses. In the history we try to outrun.” Anya had been hesitant. Her mother, Mrs. Petrova, had always discouraged any mention of Viktor, her silence a formidable wall that had always seemed insurmountable. But the phantom airplane, the recurring fragments of memory that clawed at her during her most daring routines, had become too insistent to ignore. They were no longer just whispers; they were a roar, demanding to be heard.
She’d found the initial records easily enough. Viktor Petrova, pilot, Aeroflot. A few commendations, a clean flight log. But the details of his final mission, the one that had stolen him from her, were frustratingly sparse. A brief notation: “Flight deviated from planned route. Weather conditions deteriorated rapidly. Aircraft lost contact.” It was the same vague, official language that had always surrounded his death, a clinical dismissal of a life irrevocably altered.
Keep reading "Viktor's True Flight"
Open the same story in AIBookCraft. Later chapters may require an active subscription.
Free on iOS & Android · No signup to read