— Your girlfriend has nothing to do with vampires… and you will forget everything… you were just a random passerby… nothing happened that night…
Right now the guys were listening to the entire recording.
Ethan clenched his teeth so hard that a crunch rang out through the room, sharp as a gunshot in the silence.
Bruno pressed pause.
The screen froze on the green line.
— Wait… — he said slowly.
— What did he say before that? About Maria?
Gideon, without a word, rewound the recording. Several seconds of silence, only the rustle of the fast-forwarding file.
Everyone froze.
Roy's voice returned, now even clearer, even more venomous:
— The death of your woman… consequences… She knew more than she should have…
The words hung in the air like smoke from a gunshot.
Ethan stood motionless.
His breathing became heavy, uneven. The bullet on his shoulder quietly purred, low and soothing, but there was anger in that sound too.
Gideon slowly exhaled.
— So it wasn't an accident, — he said quietly. — He admitted it himself on the recording.
Flash nodded, staring at the screen.
— This isn't just words anymore. This is proof. And a thread leading somewhere.
— Very thin, but it leads upward.
Bruno leaned back in his chair. The metal creaked under his weight.
Flash smiled,that very smile that usually made people's stomachs turn cold.
— I was surprised at first too, — Ethan exhaled quietly, his voice hoarse, as if the words had to be forced past a lump in his throat.
He stood in the middle of the warehouse, lit only by a dim lamp above the table, and shadows from cables and old equipment stretched across the floor like fingers.
Gideon looked at Flash for a long time, appraisingly. Flash, in turn, shifted his gaze to Ethan.
A heavy silence hung in the air, broken only by the quiet hum of the terminal fan.
— Looks like… your Maria wasn't as simple as you thought, — Flash said slowly, each word falling like a stone into still water.
Ethan flinched as if he'd been struck.
— Don't you dare, — he forced out, his voice cracking into a rasp.
— She was ordinary! She worked… she…
He broke off.
His lips kept moving, but no sound came out.
In his head, the same phrase spun over and over:
«It can't be».
In a whisper, almost soundless, he repeated it to himself, staring at the floor.
Flash took a step forward. Placed a hand on Ethan's shoulder and tried to calm him.
— Son, — he said quietly, almost fatherly.
— Tell me honestly, did you really know everything about her life?
Ethan was silent.
His eyes glazed over, not from tears, but from something inside slowly collapsing, like an old wall giving way under rushing water.
The bullet sitting on his shoulder let out a quiet, plaintive squeak, high and trembling, as if trying to comfort him.
Its tiny body pressed closer, a warm spot against cooling skin.
Flash exhaled sharply and removed his hand.
— Alright, — he said, turning to the table. His voice became businesslike, hard.
— There's only one way to check this.
Bruno lifted his heavy gaze from the screen.
— Which is?
Flash snapped his fingers — short, sharp — and pointed at Ethan.
— We need to retrace her steps. For real.
He paused, looking straight into Ethan's eyes.
— And you… need to go back to work.
— WHAT?! — Ethan exhaled so loudly the echo bounced off the metal walls.
Flash raised a calming palm.
— Easy! No one will touch you anymore.
— The vampires completely wiped the memories of everyone who saw those bodies. And Derek's death too… he no longer exists.
Gideon nodded without looking away from the terminal.
— They don't like loose ends, — he added dryly.
— Especially human ones. Anything that could lead back to them gets scrubbed clean.
— You're a blank slate to them now.
A clean sheet.
Ethan slowly sank into the old chair against the wall. The spring inside groaned pitifully, bending under his weight.
He sat staring into nothing, fingers gripping the armrests so hard the metal squeaked.
— Why would I go back there? — He asked at last, his voice quiet, almost lifeless.
Flash smirked.
— Because now you're their perfect, clean human. And they think you're under Roy's hypnosis. — He clapped his hands once, sharp like a gunshot.
— Which means… you can walk right into the house and find anything they might have missed when they cleaned the place and searched for you.
Ethan slowly stood up.
He looked each of them in the eyes in turn. Gideon, Bruno, Flash.
— You want me to go… home.
— Yes, — Flash confirmed without hesitation.
— But…
Flash smiled.
— No buts.
He turned, took his old coat from the back of the chair, worn, with faded lining and threw it over his shoulders in one motion.
— We're not asking you to kick down doors or rummage through things like in the movies.
— Just… go back. Sit there. Be in the places she used to be. Look at her things not with the eyes of a lover, but with the eyes of someone looking for a crack in the wall.
— If there's something there, you'll feel it. And if not… — He shrugged.
— Then at least we'll know for sure.
Ethan was silent for a few more seconds.
Then he nodded.
— Okay.
The bullet gave a short, affirmative, almost joyful, squeak and climbed higher, to his neck, as if wanting to be closer to his ear.
Flash nodded back.
— Then get ready. You've got the night to pull yourself together.
— In the morning back to work like nothing happened.
He headed for the door but paused on the threshold.
— And Ethan…
Ethan looked up.
— If you find anything… don't touch it. Just take a photo.
The night district breathed cold and silence, broken only by the distant, low hum of patrol drones drifting somewhere above the rooftops like slow, indifferent stars.
Streetlights here burned every other one, their light dull, dirty-orange, barely pushing through fogged glass.
The dark windows of the high-rises stared down like empty sockets.
Flash walked first, raising his hand palm-backward a wordless gesture: quiet.
They moved single file, stepping softly, almost soundlessly. Ethan's breath came out in short clouds of steam.
— Patrols every four minutes, — Flash whispered without turning.
— Move fast, no stops.
Ethan looked only at one building. His. The very one where light used to burn in the kitchen in the evenings, where it smelled of coffee and her shampoo.
Now the windows were black as charred paper.
«I'm not ready… but I have to» — he thought, and the thought passed through him like a cold draft.
The entrance door was slightly ajar. Fresh, deep, rough scratches ringed the lock, someone had pried at it with a screwdriver, not particularly caring about stealth.
— They were here, — Bruno said quietly, leaning closer.
— And they searched everything.
— Vampire cleanup, — Flash added, running a finger along the metal.
— They don't stand on ceremony. No time to be neat when things get hot.
Click.
The apartment door opened almost silently; the old lock gave way without resistance.
The darkness inside seemed to swallow them, cold and thick, laced with the smell of someone else's presence metal, antiseptic, and the faintest sweet rot.
Everything was too clean.
The floor gleamed as if it had just been licked. The living-room table was laid perfectly even, not a crumb, not a speck. The curtains were tucked with military precision.
But…
On the wall, just above the baseboard, remained a small dark mark as if someone had braced a gloved hand wet with something.
On the floor a barely visible stripe from shifted furniture, already almost erased, but not completely.
On the kitchen table a cup turned with the handle at an asymmetrical angle, against the way Maria always placed dishes.
— See? — Gideon whispered, pointing at the cup.
— Vampires hate disorder. They don't leave traces, but haste makes monsters of even them.
— Search thoroughly, — Flash said shortly.
— Every crack, every board. Every item they might have considered insignificant.
Bruno walked first, his heavy but surprisingly quiet steps. Maria's shelf was empty, the dresser drawer empty.
The closet empty. Only the faint smell of dust and old fabric.
But one floorboard in the bedroom was different.
It was slightly lighter or slightly darker; in the half-light it was almost impossible to tell.
Just… different.
— See? — Gideon said quietly.
Bruno dropped to his knees.
He pulled out a thin knife, pried up the edge of the board.
CRACK!
The board gave easily, as if it had long been waiting.
Under the floor lay a small fabric pouch, dark gray, worn, without a single label. A thin layer of dust lay on top, but not the kind that accumulates over years.
Ethan froze.
His throat tightened.
— That's… hers, — he whispered, his voice breaking on the last word.
Flash carefully lifted the contents with two fingers.
A black flash drive, unmarked, smooth, matte, without a single scratch. A notebook in a battered leather cover.
A sheet of paper folded in quarters, dense, almost cardstock.
— Whoa… — Flash muttered, unfolding the sheet.
— The girl was definitely playing the wrong kind of games.
Gideon took the flash drive. His face grew even paler, if that was even possible.
— Old military-grade model. Access requires dual biometrics, fingerprint + retina. Or fingerprint + voice phrase.
— Meaning? — Ethan asked, his voice barely audible.
— Either she worked for humans… or for vampires, — Gideon answered quietly.
Ethan turned to Flash. His gaze was cold, almost a stranger's.
— She really was one of you?
Flash slowly shook his head.
— Unlikely. Never saw her with us. Not at a single meeting, not on any list.
— If she was connected to any of ours — it was buried very deep under cover. Or…
He didn't finish.
Bruno opened the notebook.
The pages were covered in small, neat handwriting, formulas, tunnel diagrams, network maps, node designations, timestamps, coordinates.
It all looked like the work of someone who had been assembling a puzzle for years.