Gérard raised his hand.
His fingers slowly sank into her hair, as though into dark water.
They slid down her neck, along her collarbone, and over the line of her shoulder with the same unhurried, almost tender cruelty.
"See," he said quietly.
Corvin remained silent.
His face stayed impassive, like a marble mask.
Gérard took Maria by the chin with two fingers,gently, almost tenderly,and turned her face toward the light of the desk lamp.
Now Ethan could see her fully.
Her skin had become noticeably paler. Her lips were cracked from obvious dehydration.
Her eyes… calm,too calm for a place like this.
Not empty, no.
But as though she were under some kind of drug. Cooled, withdrawn behind glass.
Gérard leaned in; she didn't even show a flicker of emotion.
And then he kissed her.
Slowly, as though it were his right of ownership.
Everything darkened in Ethan's vision.
His fists clenched so hard his nails tore through the skin of his palms.
He waited.
Waited for any sign.
The slightest resistance, a tremble, eyelids closing for even a moment.
But she responded mechanically and yielded.
As though her lips already belonged to Gérard.
When Gérard pulled back, he traced his finger along her cheek again, almost affectionately.
"See?" he said, and now his voice carried slightly louder, as though he truly were addressing whoever was hiding behind the glass.
"She already understands her place."
He turned her so her back was to him.
His palm settled openly, demonstratively on the lower curve of her belly,like claiming property.
"The next generation," he said calmly, without a trace of mockery.
Maria lowered her gaze.
Her lashes cast long shadows across her cheeks.
And in that moment,just for a fraction of a second,her fingers clenched harder.
That same old, barely noticeable gesture Ethan remembered a thousand times: the one she always made when everything inside was screaming, but outside she had to stay silent.
"She's in there.
She's still in there."
His heart slammed so violently that white flashes exploded in his temples.
Gérard suddenly jerked his head up.
And looked straight at the window.
No tension.
Just looked,calmly, confidently,like a man who knew for certain someone was behind the glass.
Then he smiled,very slowly.
He turned to Corvin.
"After the election," he said casually, as though discussing a delivery schedule.
"We begin."
He touched Maria's cheek once more.
"Take her away."
Maria turned.
And for one short, unbearably short instant, her gaze slid toward the window.
She blinked.
And left.
The door closed with a soft, almost tender click.
Ethan lowered the binoculars.
His hands shook uncontrollably.
Tears streamed down his cheeks. He didn't even try to wipe them away.
His jaw locked in a spasm.
His chest felt like it was tearing apart.
He pressed his forehead to the cold glass and whispered with his lips alone, voiceless:
"I'll get you out.
I swear."
Ethan established the connection almost mechanically,as though his body still remembered what to do in moments when the mind could no longer hold everything inside.
Fingers, still trembling from what he had just witnessed, from the sight of her face, from the kiss, from Gérard's gaze,slid across the phone screen.
The screen lit up with cold blue light in the pre-dawn gloom, reflecting in his dilated pupils.
A single short beep sounded in his earpiece,like a heartbeat in an empty room.
The click of connection,and Gideon's voice burst into his ear, quiet, tense, carrying that familiar weary vigilance that had always been his shield:
"…Ethan? Where are you?"
Ethan swallowed.
His throat tightened as though an invisible hand had gripped his Adam's apple and squeezed,not hard, but enough to make the air feel thick as syrup.
His voice came out hoarse.
"They… they're holding her."
"She's alive. Or… something like it."
"Pregnant. She's carrying something inside her. They have everything."
The silence on the line was thick, viscous,like the pre-dawn fog already beginning to coil over the city below.
Gideon didn't interrupt.
Only breathing, steady, but too careful,as though he were afraid to startle the words about to spill from Ethan.
Ethan felt it: that pause, that silence full of unspoken horror.
He stood at the window of the abandoned building, forehead pressed to the cold glass, watching the dawn slowly, almost reluctantly, begin to paint the sky in gray, colorless tones.
The city below,gray with lights going out one by one,seemed to him like a huge, indifferent beast that had just swallowed everything he had.
He kept going; the words came out in short, chopped bursts,as though he feared that if he stopped, they would never come out, would lodge in his throat like a lump that would strangle him.
"The elder… de Milieu… he knows everything."
"Maybe about me too."
"Apparently they're planning to start trials after the election."
"Those… capsules,I don't know what's in them, but I think we need that thing."
Only Gideon's breathing came through the line,slow, heavy,as though he himself were trying to digest what he'd heard.
Then, in a calm, collected tone threaded with steel, the same steel that had always kept them all afloat:
"I'm patching Flash and Bruno in."
"Stay on the line."
A click of switching.
Background noise flooded his ear: rustle of equipment, distant muffled cursing from Bruno, quick footsteps on concrete, echoing voices.
"I'm here," Flash said.
"Talk."
Ethan closed his eyes and pressed his forehead harder against the cold glass until it fogged slightly from his breath.
The cold seeped under his skin but didn't cool him.