The silence was the worst part.
Nadya stood in the kitchen. The new cook, a broad-shouldered woman from the steppes, was chopping beets. The knife hit the wooden board with a rhythmic thwack, thwack, thwack.
"Please," Nadya whispered. "Just a glass of water."
The woman didn't look up. She didn't pause. She was deaf, or she had been ordered to pretend.
Nadya grabbed a glass and threw it against the wall.
It shattered. Shards of crystal rained down on the floor.
The cook didn't flinch. She kept chopping the beets. Her rhythm didn't skip a beat.
Nadya backed away. Her hands were shaking.
It was like living with ghosts. They fed her, cleaned her clothes, and lit the fires, but they were not there. Jake had erased her humanity by removing her reflection in others' eyes.
She ran out of the kitchen. She needed to scream, but there was no point.
She ran up the stairs, past the nursery where Yuri was laughing. She couldn't go in. The guards stood at that door, arms crossed. She was allowed one hour a day, supervised.
She kept climbing. Past the bedroom. Up the narrow servants' stairs to the attic.
The door was unlocked.
She pushed it open. The air smelled of dry pine and dust.
It was a storage space. Old furniture, crates of books, and rolled-up rugs.
And a window.
A small, circular window that faced south. Toward the Mozhaisk Highway.
Nadya crawled over a stack of newspapers. She wiped the grime off the glass.
In the distance, through the naked winter trees, she could see the faint yellow headlights of trucks moving toward Moscow.
Civilization.
She looked around the attic. In the corner, she found it.
An old cinema projector.
It must have been confiscated from some bourgeois estate. It was heavy, black iron.
She checked the plug. She found an outlet near the floor.
She plugged it in. The bulb hummed. A beam of piercing white light cut through the dusty air.
It was bright. Brighter than a lamp. It was a searchlight.
Nadya's heart began to race.
She grabbed a piece of cardboard from a box. She stood by the window.
She aimed the projector out into the night.
She held the cardboard over the lens. Darkness.
She pulled it away. Light.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Dash. Dash. Dash.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
SOS.
The international signal for distress.
She did it again. And again.
The beam cut through the darkness of the forest. It hit the trees, scattering light like diamond dust. But if she aimed it right, the flashes would reach the road.
Someone would see. A truck driver. A lost traveler. They would see a frantic, rhythmic light coming from the Dictator's secret fortress.
They would talk. Rumors would start. Who is signaling from Stalin's attic?
"See me," Nadya whispered. Her arm ached from holding the cardboard. "Please, someone see me."
She flashed the signal for an hour.
Then she saw it.
On the distant highway, a pair of headlights slowed down. Then stopped.
Then, the car turned. It aimed its own headlights toward the Dacha and flashed back.
Flash. Flash.
Nadya dropped the cardboard. She pressed her hand against the cold glass.
"You saw me," she sobbed.
She wasn't invisible.
She prepared to signal again. To establish a connection.
Then she heard the heavy footsteps on the stairs.
The attic door flew open.
It wasn't Taranov. It was Jake.
He was wearing his military greatcoat, snow melting on the shoulders. He looked like a demon rising from hell.
He didn't yell. He walked over to the projector and kicked the plug out of the wall.
The room plunged into darkness, lit only by the moonlight filtering through the round window.
"You are relentless," Jake said. His voice was flat.
"I am alive," Nadya panted, backing away until she hit a crate. "You can't bury me while I'm breathing."
"You think you are fighting a war," Jake said. "You think you are the hero of a novel."
He walked to the window. He looked out at the distant road.
"Did you see the car stop?" Jake asked.
"Yes," Nadya said defiantly. "They saw the signal. They know something is wrong."
"That wasn't a savior, Nadya. That was a fuel truck."
Jake turned to face her. His face was in shadow.
"The driver was distracted by a strobe light flashing in his eyes from the woods. He thought it was a police checkpoint signal."
Nadya felt a cold knot in her stomach.
"He braked on black ice," Jake continued. "He spun out. The truck flipped into the ditch."
"No," Nadya whispered.
"The tank ruptured," Jake said. "He burned to death in the cabin. The patrols are putting out the fire now."
"You're lying," Nadya said. "You're trying to make me feel guilty."
"Am I?"
Jake grabbed her arm. He dragged her to the window.
"Look."
Nadya looked.
Far away, near the road, there was a faint orange glow. A fire. And the flashing blue lights of emergency vehicles.
"You killed a worker tonight," Jake said. "Because you wanted attention."
Nadya's knees gave out. She slumped against the sill.
"I... I just wanted..."
"You wanted to break the rules," Jake said. "You didn't care who got hurt. Just like Bennett. Just like Lena."
He released her arm. He looked at her with disgust.
"You are becoming dangerous to everyone around you."
"Then let me go!" Nadya screamed. "Deport me! Send me away!"
"And let the Americans parade you around?" Jake shook his head. "Never. You stay where I can see you."
He walked to the attic door.
"Taranov!" he yelled down the stairs.
The bodyguard appeared. He was carrying a hammer and a stack of thick plywood boards.
Nadya realized what was happening.
"No," she whispered. "Koba, please. I need the light."
"You abuse the light," Jake said. "So you lose it."
"It's dark in the winter! It's dark all day!"
"Then turn on a lamp," Jake said. "But the windows? The windows are finished."
He pointed to the round glass.
"Board it up," Jake ordered Taranov. "This one first. Then the bedroom. Then the study."
"All of them?" Taranov asked, hesitating.
"Every window facing the outside world," Jake said. "If she wants to live in a box, let's make it a proper box."
Taranov stepped forward. He placed the first board over the glass.
Bam.
The hammer strike was deafening in the small room.
Nadya watched the moonlight disappear.
Bam.
Another board. The view of the road, the burning truck, the world—it was all sliced away.
"You are burying me alive," Nadya wept.
"I am keeping you from killing more people," Jake said.
He grabbed the projector by its hot metal housing. He hauled it to the door.
"Go to your room, Nadya."
She didn't move. She stared at the plywood.
"GO!" Jake roared.
She scrambled past him, running down the stairs.
She ran into her bedroom. She locked the door.
She curled up on the silk sheets.
Outside, she heard the ladder being moved against the house.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Taranov was sealing the bedroom windows from the outside.
The room grew darker. The streetlights from the perimeter fence were blocked out.
Soon, there was no light at all. Just the absolute, suffocating blackness.
Nadya lay in the dark. She could hear the wind howling, but she couldn't see the snow.
She closed her eyes.
She saw the burning truck. She saw Lena on the train. She saw Bennett's broken arm.
Jake was right. Everything she touched broke.
But as she lay there, a new thought formed in the darkness. A colder, harder thought.
If she couldn't signal the outside... she had to destroy the inside.
She stopped crying.
She listened to the hammer strikes. They sounded like a countdown.
"Board it up, Koba," she whispered into the pillow. "But you're locking yourself in here with me."
She wasn't a victim anymore. She was a saboteur.
And the house was full of flammable things.