The scent of cedarwood and gun oil clung to Olesia as the armoured vehicle sliced through the rain-slicked arteries of Voskgrad. Its windows, thick and tinted, blurred the glittering neon into smeared streaks of sapphire and vermillion. Yurek, small and silent beside her, clutched a plush toy, his head resting against her shoulder. His eyes, usually bright with questions, were shadowed, still wide from the sight of the dead man in the alley and the chilling blue of his own blood. Olesia pulled Kazimir’s coat tighter around them both, a flimsy shield against a world that had just swallowed them whole. “Welcome to the Glass Bastion,” Dmitri Volkov’s voice cut through the hum of the engine from the front seat. He didn’t turn, his gaze fixed on the road. “A sanctuary, and a prison. Depends on your perspective, Mrs. Ozerova.” The title felt like a brand. Olesia said nothing, just pressed a kiss to the crown of Yurek’s damp hair. They were trapped, but at least they were together. For now. The Glass Bastion was less a mansion and more a fortress carved from obsidian and steel, its angles severe against the bruised night sky. Inside, the sterile air hummed with unseen currents of power. Every corridor was a pristine expanse of polished granite, every door a slab of reinforced alloy. Cameras, small and unblinking, were embedded high in the corners of every ceiling. Olesia felt their scrutiny, a constant, chilling hum beneath her skin. Their designated quarters were lavish: a two-story master suite, ridiculously large, with a full-sized grand piano gleaming under recessed lights. A separate room, connected by a discreet soundproof door, was prepared for Yurek, complete with an antique telescope pointed at the perpetual twilight of Voskgrad. “Consider it a soft cage,” Dmitri had said, gesturing to the suite. “Soundproofed, of course, for your husband’s… sensibilities. And yours. No one will hear what happens in here.” For the first three days, Olesia did exactly what she intended: the bare minimum. Kazimir was mostly absent, a phantom presence whose occasional appearances were marked by his heavy, deliberate footsteps in the corridor or the faint scent of cedarwood in the empty suite. Dmitri, however, was a constant, irritating shadow. He assigned her transcription tasks on a custom-built workstation in the corner of the master suite—endless streams of gibberish, clearly designed to test her patience, not her intellect. She’d input a few lines, then wander over to watch Yurek sketch in his room, or trace patterns on the cool, black keys of the piano. She avoided playing it. The thought of Kazimir hearing her, truly hearing her, felt like a dangerous vulnerability. On the fourth morning, Dmitri strode into the suite, a thin, encrypted data slate held loosely in his hand. He tossed it onto the piano lid. It landed with a dull thud. “Your latest assignment, Mrs. Ozerova. High-level encryption. The client requires a full decryption by evening.” His eyes, the colour of cold steel, were fixed on her. “Or perhaps you’d prefer to continue your… minimalist approach to work?” Olesia picked up the slate. The file glowed, a scrambled mess of alphanumeric characters and obscure symbols. It wasn’t a data entry task; it was a corrupted, intentionally mangled cipher. A test, meant to expose her, to make her stumble. She knew it, felt it in the deliberate glint in Dmitri’s gaze. He wanted to see her fail, to confirm his suspicion that she was a fraud. “An entire day for this?” Olesia raised an eyebrow, a flicker of irritation. “It’s sloppy work.” Dmitri’s lips thinned. “Sloppy, or beyond your capabilities? Try not to disappoint your husband.” She took the slate to the workstation. The gibberish on the screen was a familiar, frustrating puzzle. The kind that made her fingers itch, not with excitement, but with the annoyance of a task poorly presented. A child’s toy, dressed up as a challenge. She hated busywork, hated pretentiousness. Her fingers flew across the holographic keyboard, pulling up various decryption protocols, sifting through algorithms. She wasn't guessing; she was seeing the hidden patterns, the deliberate misdirection. It was like reading a language she’d been fluent in, then forgotten, and now remembered with sudden, sharp clarity. Dmitri, who had remained to observe, leaned against the doorframe, a smirk playing on his lips. “Trouble, Mrs. Ozerova? Perhaps you’d like to confess your limitations?” Three minutes. That’s all it took. The final line of code shifted, the scramble dissolving into a clean, legible text. Olesia leaned back, a faint satisfaction curling in her gut. She’d done it out of sheer spite, out of the irritation of being underestimated. “Done,” she stated, her voice flat. Dmitri pushed off the doorframe, a ripple of disbelief crossing his face before he smoothed it away. He strode to the terminal, his eyes scanning the now-decrypted text. His posture went rigid. He pulled up the file details. A single word, stark against the terminal’s blue glow, arrested Olesia’s attention: `Project Icarus` Beneath it, in smaller script, two names: `Varga, Elias` `Varga, Lyudmila` Her parents. Her breath caught against her ribs. They were here, in Kazimir’s archives. What was Project Icarus? What connection did it have to her family? That night, the suite was dark, save for the sliver of Voskgrad’s perpetual twilight filtering through the high windows. Yurek was asleep in his room. Olesia lay on the vast, unfamiliar bed, unable to truly rest. The names on the screen, her parents’ names, spun in her mind. Kazimir had a connection, a deeper one than she’d known. The door to the suite burst open, slamming against the wall with a hollow thud. Olesia sat bolt upright, the sheets bunched in her fists. Kazimir stood framed in the doorway, not the composed, cold broker she knew, but a man unravelled. His charcoal shirt was rumpled, his dark hair dishevelled. His eyes, usually sharp and calculating, were wide, vacant, staring at something Olesia couldn’t see. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his breathing ragged. He stumbled inside, his movements jerky, agitated. “The fire… it’s spreading,” he mumbled, his voice a raw whisper, barely audible over his gasping breaths. He clawed at his chest, as if trying to tear away an invisible shroud. “Can’t breathe… the heat…” It wasn't a hallucination of the present. It was a memory, a terror from his past, playing out in his mind. Insomnia, Dmitri had called it. Trauma, Olesia realised. An unwelcome pang of pity edged into her thoughts. He was trapped in a cage of his own making, haunted by phantoms. Her gaze fell on the grand piano, a dark silhouette in the dim light. Without thinking, she swung her legs off the bed. The cool wood of the keys felt strangely comforting beneath her fingertips. She began to play, a soft, melancholic melody. A piece she had composed herself, years ago, in a time when music was her only solace. The notes drifted into the vast silence of the suite, a gentle cascade of sound, each chord a feather-light touch against the oppressive atmosphere. Kazimir froze. His gasps slowly subsided, replaced by the shallow intake of breath. He turned, his vacant eyes slowly focusing on her, then on the piano. The frantic energy began to drain from him, replaced by a profound exhaustion. He took a hesitant step, then another, drawn by the music. He moved like a puppet whose strings had been cut, collapsing onto the velvet bench beside her. His head fell forward, resting in her lap, his dark hair brushing her thigh. His body was heavy, boneless, completely surrendered to the music. His breathing evened out, deep and slow. Olesia continued to play, her fingers moving almost autonomously, a silent witness to this accidental intimacy, this shattering of the cold broker’s carefully constructed façade. He smelled of smoke now, not cedarwood. The scent of a long-ago fire. Minutes stretched into an eternity. He was asleep, utterly lost to the deep, dreamless slumber he so rarely found. His lips moved, a faint, almost imperceptible murmur. Olesia leaned closer, straining to hear. “They burned it all… the Varga files.”

The Soundproof Cage