“This morning, when I woke, I went straight to my Mind Log. I felt compelled to record this, because I had experienced an unusual dream during the night.

  She was there—my mother.

  We were alone together. The weather was bright and clear. I was lying on a green meadow, the horizon dissolving into a deep blue sea. Flowers surrounded us, their scent faint yet alive. Birds were chirping, absorbed in their morning rituals. Nature was expressing itself without restraint.

  I was happy—unusually so—and talkative. Then I reached out and took her hand. We remained like that, looking into each other’s eyes. She loved me too.

  After that, we stood and climbed the wooden stairs leading to a treehouse beside us. Inside, there was a red-and-white patterned carpet, flowerpots lining the shelves with real, thriving plants, oil paintings hanging on the walls, and on the balcony a telescope nearly as tall as I was. We leaned forward together and looked through it at the same time.

  In the distance stood a harbor city, bathed in the languid warmth peculiar to tropical climates. When we saw it, we laughed—as if sharing a secret no one else in the world could ever understand.

  What were we laughing at? I do not know exactly. Perhaps because, while all those people were crowded together down there, we were here—just the two of us—experiencing something pure. It felt as though a hidden paradise existed here, known only to us, because that paradise was us. Everything was tinted rose-pink. I felt soft, light, unburdened.

  Then, suddenly, the sky began to change. Clouds gathered thickly, swallowing the light. The wind rose, gaining strength with each passing moment. It felt as though a storm was approaching. Was it going to rain? Probably. But why now?

  When I looked through the telescope again, I saw white glimmers falling densely from the sky into the sea, beginning at its center. The water was freezing wherever the clouds passed. That was when I understood: it was not rain. It was snow.

  Realizing this, I looked at her with despair and a silent plea for protection. What would happen now? The snow continued to fall until it reached the treehouse. The wind grew so violent that I clung to the wooden floor to avoid being swept away. I tried to hold her, but she slipped from my grasp. The wind lifted her into the air, and she caught the balcony railing at the last moment.

  I crawled toward her through the blinding snow, barely able to see ahead. The wind screamed in my ears, and I had to cling to the floor simply to remain upright.

  Time passed like that—the storm consuming everything. Then, suddenly, it stopped. Perhaps only seconds had passed. It felt like the abrupt silence after a machine is switched off.

  When I gathered myself and stood, she was gone. Nature, which had given her to me, had taken her back. More than that—even nature itself seemed to have vanished with her.

  The carpet was torn. The flowerpots were shattered. The paintings lay broken. The wood of the cabin had turned dark and wet. Outside, the meadow was yellowed and dead. No flowers remained. The birds were silent. The sun was trapped behind gray clouds.

  And me? I was still there—existing, though I was no longer certain I could call it living. Life seemed to have slipped away from me, perhaps to hide behind some curtain I did not know how to reach.

  So there it is. A little long, perhaps—but finished at last.

  What did this dream mean? Or did it mean anything at all?

  I believe that it did. The symbols, the motifs—they feel strangely familiar, yet distant. Like encountering again a friend I once knew and had long forgotten.

  Psychologists claim that dreams are mirrors of the subconscious, and this must have been one, because it had nothing to do with my conscious self.

  First, I am not the kind of person who runs freely through meadows or plays like a child. I cannot imagine myself doing that. Perhaps others my age could—but for someone as serious as me, even dressing lightly feels improper.

  Second, I am not someone who expresses affection openly. My love exists best in silence; when revealed, it becomes mechanical, artificial. That is why I love from a distance. Even if I were in love, I would never say it aloud. Why should I? I have no need to.

  So why dream of something that represented the opposite of who I am?

  Reality seemed to return with that final snowstorm—not dull, but painful and inevitable. Nature, which had built a wall between me and the real, became terrifying when it began to collapse. Perhaps it represented the parts of myself I had buried—the tenderness I tried to suppress. Maybe it was a sign that I must face it, feel it, but not allow it to rule me.

  At that moment, my father called my name—’Iliya’—and knocked once on my door.

  My mother was among those killed during the air raids of 1987. At the time of the attack, she had been at the City Library. Eyewitnesses later said she was deeply absorbed in her reading when the sirens began to echo through the streets, warning of an incoming raid. Soldiers nearby rushed to their anti-aircraft stations after reports spread that an American air fleet, launched from bases in Japan, was approaching the city.

  According to what was written afterward—in newspapers, briefings, and official explanations—the defenses failed because the aircraft were new. They carried countermeasures that confused or delayed radar detection, allowing them to pass largely unseen until they were already close enough to strike.

  The bombing began shortly thereafter, targeting key civic and administrative sites. The city library was among them. One of the bombs struck the roof. My mother, who had been on the top floor, was caught directly in the blast and buried beneath the collapsing structure along with many others. She did not die instantly. As anti-aircraft fire intensified and survivors fled the building, several bystanders attempted to reach her where she lay trapped under the wreckage. Three of them gathered around her, but when they saw that her body—impaled from the chest downward by a metal beam—was irreparably crushed, they understood that she could not be saved.

  One of them reportedly said, ‘When the flesh ends and the self returns to cosmic silence, remember that you have sacrificed yourself for us all—for the universe itself. The death of the body is the transcendence of the spirit. You will not die. These moments are the ones before you truly begin to live.’ Afterward, they placed a sedative, taken from a nearby medical station, into her hand and left.

  When my mother’s body was eventually recovered, the autopsy revealed that although the sedative could have suspended her consciousness, she never used it. That may have been consistent with her stoic nature. She formally died from blood loss, likely after enduring several minutes of pain.

  At the time of the bombing, I was at school. I remember thinking of returning home to sit beside her and read together, as we often did. The sirens began to wail there as well, and we were immediately escorted to the shelters. Every street corner had an underground bunker; survival demanded it, because Aldira was not liked abroad. As I descended into those dim, gray, suffocating corridors, I could hear the muffled thunder of explosions above. The walls were thick, but the tremors reached us nonetheless. I felt as though I were already on a battlefield. Inside the shelter, I was safe—but was my family?

  When I returned home and heard the news from my father, I froze. For the rest of the day, I neither ate nor drank. I had always spoken little, but that day I did not speak at all. I locked myself in my room—not crying, simply mourning in silence. I was not overwhelmed by grief; I was melancholic. My father respected this.

  The following day, I watched the news. The American government blamed Aldira directly for the conflict, while Aldira claimed to have shot down numerous enemy aircraft. People were dying, yet all that seemed to matter was political posture.

  I never found an answer to what any of it was for—perhaps I should not even try—but I cannot stop asking. The only certainty I have is that after that day, I gradually developed an obsession with dark themes: death, suicide, the silence beyond all things. Not as horrors, but as philosophical states—almost noble.

  From then on, it was only my father and me. I loved my mother deeply, but nothing could be done. At times, I have seen her in hallucinations, though I never told anyone. She appears in my dreams. Today, I must have seen her again for that reason, though never so vividly before. It was as if the dream were pointing toward something deeper.

  I allowed my father to enter. His expression was serious and heavy—not indifferent, but restrained. There was a faint urgency in his movements, as though he were containing worry. If there was trouble, it was likely related to his writing.

  My father was a member of the Writers’ Union, though no one would have called him obedient. To him, the regime was sacred yet lifeless—a divine corpse—and he often wrote this in his essays. He concealed his meaning behind metaphor to evade censorship. Writing, ‘Life here hides behind curtains,’ was safer than writing, ‘This place is dead.’

  But this time, even metaphors had not saved him. He told me that he had been expelled from the organization, that his works had been formally censored, and that authorities were likely already on their way to detain him.

  His voice was calm—too calm. He had ceased to care about his own safety. The only thing that troubled him was me. I was not yet an adult, not officially Aldiran, and therefore no one was obligated to take responsibility for me. Once he was taken, I would likely be left alone, unnoticed, while the world continued as if nothing had happened.

  He handed me a small map. A single location was marked. I understood without explanation that this was where I was meant to go.

  After that, he kissed my forehead and held me tightly. I returned the embrace. I liked the feel of his beard brushing against my cheeks. We stood like that for several minutes in silence before separating. It was less a farewell than a see you, though I doubted it—and I believe he did as well.

  It may have been the last time I saw him, yet I remained composed. The books I had read on inner supremacy had taught me to desire, not to need, those I loved. That distinction sustained me. Without it, I might have already collapsed into tears.

  In my backpack were a few books—including the Black Book—some rationed food, and a bottle of water. In my pockets, I carried a pen, a notebook containing my Mind Log, and a small pouch of coins. My clothing had been chosen almost carelessly, yet with intention, as though I expected to be received somewhere safe. Then I stepped out into the street.

  I looked back at the old gray building I had called home. Its architecture was severe, almost cruel. Dystopian, perhaps—but that was precisely why I loved it. I loved the darkness, the only true whiteness.

  I felt no longing as I turned away. I did not belong to a single place. My home was nowhere, and therefore everywhere.

  The marked location on the map lay roughly four kilometers away—no more than an hour’s walk. I liked walking alone. I could even walk at night without fear; anyone proven to be attempting harassment or assault was executed almost immediately. Harsh, perhaps—but closer to a purge of disease, like a disinfectant erasing infection.

  So I walked.

  Birds were singing on trees. The wind brushed gently through the leaves. From afar came the faint hum of Eternal Order hymns, drifting from distant rituals. Vehicles moved silently, fitted with mufflers. People moved silently as well, almost floating. I passed among them like another ghost.

  My father called this condition death. I called it peace. I did not need the chaos of roaring engines or loud laughter. Newspapers claimed the outer world was addicted to noise, and I believed them. I would collapse under sensory overload in almost any capitalist city.

  At one point, I considered taking the bus, but dismissed the thought immediately. I did not possess a White Card, and without it I could not board. When my father was with me, I traveled under his authorization. Now, I had no one. Until I came of age and became officially Aldiran, I was excluded. It did not matter—the distance was short.

  I passed markets, schools, barracks, libraries. The markets were stocked but restrained. The schools revealed nothing of their interiors. The barracks radiated order—and perhaps constant pressure. The libraries whispered thought, or screamed silence.

  Eventually, with aching feet, I reached the destination: a quiet street near the edge of the city, trees lining one side. The map indicated only this place, nothing more precise. So I waited. Perhaps that was the intention. At this moment, I took out my Mind Log once more and began to write.

  After a while, three people emerged from the basement of a nearby building—one woman and two men. They were the only people around, and I could tell by their gait that they belonged to some kind of group.

  They had an intellectual air. I could easily imagine them spending their days in seclusion, sitting by a lamp from dawn to dusk, writing. That way of living was not uncommon, but few wore it so visibly. They clearly did.

  When I looked at them, they looked back. Then they began walking toward me, slow and deliberate. It was then that I suspected the mark on the map had been referring to them all along. Later, this would prove true.

  Finally, they reached me. My head was still lowered over my notebook, but I looked up at them. One of the men, in a tone that felt cold and faintly mechanical, asked, ‘Are you waiting here for something specific?’

  I hadn’t come merely to sit there, of course—but every possibility had to be considered. In a calm voice, I replied, ‘Yes. Why?’

  They did not answer. Instead, a quiet interrogation began. Since I did not fully trust them, I kept my usual guard up.

  ‘Did you come here on your own, or were you sent?’

  ‘I was sent.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘A relative.’

  ‘Why did they send you?’

  ‘For what might be a vital reason.’

  ‘What kind of vital reason?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you know where this place is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you think of the current reality?’

  ‘I’m not its supporter, but I’m not its rebel either.’

  ‘If you had to choose?’

  ‘I’d choose a supportive kind of rebellion.’

  ‘You should be clearer.’

  ‘My roots lie in loyalty to my own reality, not the outer one. That doesn’t make the outer one bad—just unreal.’

  At that point, the already clouded sky began to drizzle. It wasn’t heavy yet, but it was clear that more was coming—it always did.

  Then the woman ended the rain-interrupted exchange by saying, ‘Come with us.’

  I didn’t object. Stubbornness only mattered when there was somewhere else to go, and I had nowhere. I pulled my coat tighter and followed them. I didn’t know where we were going. I was simply going.

  I had found them cold, but their coldness felt procedural, like rehearsed politeness. And wasn’t I the same? As I was thinking this, the woman placed her hand gently on my shoulder, kept it there for a few seconds, then withdrew it—as if she had remembered she wasn’t supposed to comfort anyone. Still, something faintly maternal lingered in the gesture.

  After walking in silence for about ten minutes, we reached the rural outskirts. We were on the slopes of Koholnik Mountain, and from where we stood, the port was visible in the distance. Even the People’s Hall could be seen. The city, framed by trees, its sea stretching endlessly before it and its sky heavy with clouds above, possessed a strange majesty—like a ruin that refused to decay.

  At the end of the road, the group stopped. One of the men bent down, lifted what turned out to be an artificial bush, and revealed a narrow dirt path cutting through the trees. We turned onto it. The air grew still. Grass and thorns lined both sides, brushing against my legs as I stepped carefully forward.

  After about a minute along the winding trail, we reached what appeared to be an abandoned building. From its structure, it had once been a small hospital. Half of it was buried beneath soil and roots, the rest swallowed by surrounding trees, making it nearly invisible from the outside.

  We stopped in front of a rusted door and went inside. As expected, a long corridor stretched ahead, and I understood that the place had been converted into a kind of shelter.

  No one spoke until the woman said, ‘We use the rooms now.’ Her voice was calm, as if she were describing the arrangement of chairs at home.

  The others dispersed—unlocking doors, setting down bags. A tall man with gray streaks in his hair looked at me briefly and asked, perhaps because he sensed something familiar in me, ‘You write, don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  ‘We write here too. Mostly to remember. Or to forget.’

  He walked away before I could ask what he meant.

  The woman gestured for me to follow. We passed through a series of rooms still bearing traces of their former life: chalk dust on boards, maps half peeled from the walls, desks stacked like barricades. Everything forbidden outside seemed to have found refuge here. On the walls were painted figures—nude men and women, bottles raised in toasts, faces caught mid-laughter, scenes of ordinary joy now rendered subversive.

  At the end stood a larger room. A low table occupied its center, and around it sat perhaps twenty people. They were of every kind—students, workers, painters. When I entered, most of their eyes turned toward me at once.

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  ‘This is Iliya,’ the woman said. ‘She’s with us.’

  No one replied. A boy with restless hands poured a clear liquid into a metal cup and handed it to me. I drank. It burned all the way down.

  After that initial silence, the conversation resumed—about the regime, purity, censorship, control. I didn’t interrupt. I listened.

  When one of them finally turned to me and asked, ‘You’re quiet. You agree?’ I replied, ‘I don’t disagree.’

  ‘That’s basically the same thing as agreeing,’ someone said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It only means I haven’t decided whether it’s worth disagreeing about.’

  Then the questions shifted.

  ‘Do you remember your childhood?’

  ‘I do. Why?’

  ‘Do you think you actually lived it, or did it merely pass by?’

  ‘It could have not existed.’

  ‘You say that because no one can truly have a childhood under such a tyrannical regime. Sometimes the world becomes too heavy for one person to carry. That’s when an embrace helps.’

  ‘The only embrace that helps is the one a person gives themselves. Others should hold themselves too—that’s the real meaning of embracing.’

  ‘You see? You’re still repeating the thoughts they planted in you.’

  ‘They’re my thoughts, not the Black Book’s.’

  ‘Whoever they belong to, they’re not humane.’

  It seemed to me that they regarded anyone who wasn’t rebellious as indoctrinated. That was as absurd as believing every rebel was enlightened. I didn’t like them. Why had my father sent me here? Was he like them too? No—but he had no time to explain. Perhaps he simply had to send me. I would love him regardless.

  At least there was food. They gave me food and water. I refused at first; they insisted. I ate, mostly to end their persistence.

  Hours later, the older man found me writing by the window.

  ‘You don’t seem afraid,’ he said.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of being here. Of us.’

  ‘I’m not part of you,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps because you think you’re above it.’

  ‘No. Just beside it.’

  He paused, then continued.

  ‘When was the last time you laughed? Doesn’t laughing make you feel better?’

  ‘My laughter might look like a frown. You wouldn’t know. You can’t call a muscle’s twitch a laugh. Some people laugh while crying, and some cry while laughing.’

  After that, he fell silent.

  As evening came, they began drinking more. The records grew louder, the laughter sharper. Someone passed around a hidden tape of women singing in the banned English language. Another recited poems about hunger and oppression. They glowed with defiance, but beneath it something was cracked. I admired their theoretical intellect, but not their practical reality.

  I wrote fragments in my notebook—details only: the sound of glass clinking, the way their words tangled, the smell of cheap wine. Nothing dangerous. But words are never harmless in frightened places.

  Whispers began again, low and soft. I caught fragments: She writes everything, she always watches, she is too reserved.

  That night, the laughter was too loud, the drink too sweet. Someone told a story that made no sense, and everyone laughed anyway. I had never seen such looseness, such empty noise, anywhere. When it ended, the woman who had brought me here stood and told me to walk with her. I complied.

  We stepped into the hallway. The light flickered; the walls breathed dampness. She remained beside me. She was the only one who cared for me—yet beneath that concern I sensed evaluation, as if she were asking whether I could be of use.

  We spoke quietly.

  ‘What do you think of us?’

  ‘I’m not fond of you.’

  ‘I know your father. He’s the one who sent you here. He used to write the kind of texts we write. We’re homeless, but he still had a home, so he came only occasionally—usually when we were in trouble—to bring food, clothes, pens, paper. He knew us, and we knew him. He was like you, except he knew how to act. Even when he didn’t want to laugh, he could pretend. I could sense it. You don’t even do that. You’re here exactly as you are.’

  ‘Why do people here indulge in such animalistic pleasures?’

  ‘It’s humanity, not animality. Or perhaps humans are animals. Have you ever read about humanism? Maybe someone once pressed a leaflet into your hand in the street and walked away.’

  ‘I understand it as placing the human at the center of existence.’

  ‘Yes—something like that. It doesn’t reject humanity; it affirms it, with all its filth and fragility. Those drunk men you see, or the ones painting naked bodies—they take pride in that belief. I don’t like it much either, but since I have nowhere else to go, I share some of their values. You’re human too, Iliya. To see that, you only need a mirror.’

  ‘Placing the human at the center of existence seems less like clarity and more like blind arrogance to me. And I don’t say that with rejection. The universe is vast. When even the world itself is barely a speck, I won’t place humanity where the universe should be. I won’t take part in that. To see that, you only need to look at the sky.’

  ‘Does becoming one with the universe and losing individuality seem like freedom to you?’

  ‘No. But becoming one with the world and losing myself inside it seems like an insult.’

  ‘How long have you thought this way?’

  ‘For years. As I grew older, the thoughts didn’t change; they only deepened.’

  ‘I respect that. But here, such thinking isn’t well received. It’s seen as the mindset of the regime people fled from. So it’s treated with hostility—as the enemy’s language. To them, anything placed above humanity is “inhuman.” Sinful.’

  ‘How do they not see that the human itself is the lowest of things?’

  ‘Because that isn’t reality—it’s perspective. They have theirs. You have yours. They’ll die that way. So will you.’

  ‘The only respect I have for humans is that they carry an organ—the brain—that allows them to surpass themselves. I reject the body, not consciousness.’

  After that, we stepped outside. Alone now, we walked through the night—streets dressed in trees and lamplight. The lights of the port shimmered beautifully in the dark, and the People’s Hall stood out beside them, commanding attention. She pointed at it with her finger.

  ‘What do you think of that?’

  ‘It simply exists.’

  ‘You mean you have no political opinion at all? I doubt that.’

  ‘Of course I do. But only that—they simply exist.’

  ‘Then here’s my opinion: every head in that building is a kind of puppet. They approve whatever the Council imposes. The idea of disapproval doesn’t even exist there.”

  ‘The word puppet is wrong, I think. They act not out of blind obedience but out of conscious devotion. It’s not bodies being ruled there, but minds. And not just there—everywhere.’

  ‘You’re right…’

  ‘You were talking about humanism. Isn’t it the same thing? Those ‘puppets’ you mention—aren’t they just like your friends back in that building? Minds enslaved to their bodies. Why not the reverse?’

  ‘I don’t know, Iliya. I think about these things too, but not as often or as deeply as you do. Because they rarely lead anywhere. People are like this. You can’t change them.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever thought of running away?’

  ‘Of course I have. Many times. But where would I go?’

  ‘Not somewhere—retreat into your own mind. Isn’t that the only place one can escape to? Buildings like this exist everywhere. You can’t escape into them. At most, you can escape into inner worlds. And I don’t sense any ‘inner world’ in that group.’

  ‘You mean the inner world is the source of everything?’

  ‘Yes. The outer world is a mere extension of the inner source.’

  ‘I suppose it is. Then this means they’re ruled not by themselves but by biology, which seems contrary to humanist thought... You have too advanced thoughts, Iliya.”

  At this point, a brief silence entered the conversation. Then we continued:

  ‘Why don’t you try to be Aldiran? You’re old enough for it.’

  ‘Do you think I never tried? In my past I was one. I earned the title. I even wrote poems praising the Council. But then, after seeing a starving child lying in the street, I realized that the way the stateless are treated had become unbearable. So I changed my stance. I began to dislike the regime and wrote against it. After that, I was classified as a rebellious intellectual and stripped of my title, rendered stateless, and began living on the streets. Thus, the life I had once watched in pain became the life I now endure. One night someone nudged me awake and thrust a paper at me. It was some kind of map. Before I could ask what it was, he vanished—my stunned mind couldn’t tell if the action had been real. That address ultimately brought me here, like your father directing you. Now, I live in secrecy. If I ever tried to become Aldiran again, they would catch me because of my past.’

  I listened silently. Later, I realized I still didn’t know her name.

  ‘What was your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Nadya,’ she replied, saying it came from her family’s Russian roots.

  Talking like that, we wandered through the city streets for about an hour. A kind of night walk—and I loved it. Afterwards, we returned to the building.

  The scene was the same: glasses of wine, sex magazines, foreign film cassettes. It wasn’t that all they did was amuse themselves—there were plenty of books too, and they were always writing. But their casualness made it hard for me to take the deep part of their work seriously.

  One of the men with a serious appearance approached Nadya and me.

  ‘Where were you?’ he asked.

  ‘We went for a walk,’ Nadya said.

  ‘Sit down.’

  We did as he said and sat at the table. On Nadya’s face, I sensed a tension she was trying to hide. Under the table, she held my hand, stroking my palm gently, almost as if to comfort me.

  The man spoke in a harsh but not angry voice:

  ‘The girl you brought can’t just stay here doing nothing. She has to take on some kind of work. The options are: courier, cook, writer, raider, or prostitute.’

  The moment I heard the last word, a deep unease ran through me, but I just watched.

  Nadya was still holding my hand, and that calmed me. She had become like a new mother to me. Being a courier didn’t suit me, given how distant I felt from my own body. I didn’t know how to cook or fight either. So I said, ‘Writing could work.’

  ‘From tomorrow, you’ll start writing with our team,’ the man replied.

  I gave no reaction.

  After that, everyone went to their rooms. I stayed in Nadya’s room, of course. It was small—enough for two, maybe three people at most. There was no other bed, so I had to sleep in the same one as her. At first, it unsettled me, but then I realized I trusted her. I remember us talking even as we drifted into sleep, and that she stroked my hair at some point.

  The next morning Nadya woke before me.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  She smiled, brushed my hair back, and kissed my forehead—the kind of gesture that asks nothing and therefore feels heavier than affection.

  ‘I always wanted a child,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Would you like to be mine?’

  I didn’t answer with words. I nodded instead. She held me for a long time, longer than was necessary, as if she were trying to memorize the weight of me.

  We ate from my rations because it was easier than negotiating with the kitchen. Then we went to the large room at the far end of the building, sat among the others, and began to write.

  The task was simple: texts against the Aldiran regime, meant to be copied, rewritten, and passed outward. The words were supposed to bruise. They were supposed to make people angry enough to move.

  Neither of us felt that anger, and it was plainly absurd to expect an already ascetic populace to feel envy toward anything, let alone to imagine such envy could ignite behavioral rebellion.

  We learned quickly what was expected—certain phrases, certain rhythms—and we used them carefully, the way one imitates a language without believing it. We never praised Aldira, but we also did not curse it either. It simply was.

  Our pieces spoke about silence, about exhaustion, about how systems outlive the people who create them. We wrote about the universe swallowing all orders eventually. We wrote about the smallness of the aristocracy.

  At first, no one complained. But no one asked for our texts either.

  When someone did take one, it came back marked. Not censored—’corrected.’ Words circled. Sentences crossed out and replaced with sharper ones. Once, someone added an entire paragraph about rage in the margins.

  Nadya folded the page, smoothed it, and copied the changes cleanly. She always did. But I saw the way her mouth tightened when she wrote words she didn’t mean.

  I had been here only a week. Nadya had been here much longer—weeks. Yet I already felt as though I had been here just as long, displaced among the displaced, alienated among the alienated.

  People remembered her older writing—the rawer things, written when she had first arrived, when fear still burned hot enough to look like conviction. Now they began to compare. Quietly. Without speaking to her.

  ‘She’s changed,’ someone said once.

  Others said nothing, which was worse.

  I kept writing everything in my Mind Log. I hid it carefully, but concealment does not erase gravity. People notice what always stays close to the body. And because the Log itself was a regime-mandated practice, they would have burned it on sight, without asking questions.

  One afternoon, a text we had written together came back untouched. No marks. No comments. It was simply placed on the table between us, as if returned by mistake.

  That was when I understood something was wrong.

  That evening, the room felt thinner. Conversations shortened when we approached.

  Later, alone, Nadya said quietly, ‘They think we don’t hate enough.’

  She said it without bitterness. Almost with relief.

  ‘They think you’re softening me,’ she added. ‘And they think I’m teaching you the wrong things.’

  ‘Are we?’ I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  The rumor arrived in pieces: that our writing sounded like Aldiran Thought inverted, that it replaced struggle with abstraction, that it would pacify people instead of mobilizing them.

  Two days later, a patrol came.

  No alarms sounded. That was how it always began: the authorities searching nearby buildings, widening their circles without announcing it. Had they located the cell’s approximate position? Perhaps. How exactly, no one knew—but it was not difficult to imagine how it had happened.

  It was likely because of the way our texts were dissaminated. Not ours alone—but ours included. Too many copies had moved too slowly. Too many had been intercepted half-circulated, neither properly distributed nor destroyed.

  Our pieces were not the kind that could be shouted, summarized, or turned into slogans. People copied them whole or not at all. Certain sentences survived unchanged, carried from hand to hand, because no one knew how to shorten them without breaking their meaning.

  A phrase had appeared twice in two different districts—altered slightly, but unmistakable. The same metaphor, the same turn of thought, preserved where it should have dissolved.

  That made them linger. Lingering creates patterns. Patterns create maps. At least that’s how my interpretation is.

  The authorities didn’t need names. They only needed a location narrow enough to justify watching.

  Nadya and I had known this would happen. We never spoke of it, but we did nothing to prevent it either. When asked to simplify, we refused. When asked to sharpen the anger, we left it untouched. When asked to rewrite passages to make them safer, Nadya corrected only the margins, rarely the core. You can’t make a fish appear to be flying.

  When a second patrol arrived—closer this time—the room changed. People stood abruptly. Someone kicked a chair aside. Another person grabbed a stack of pages and shoved them into a bag, then hesitated, unsure whether saving or destroying them was worse.

  That was when someone said it aloud—not loudly, not yet—but clearly enough.

  ‘It’s them.’

  The words didn’t point at us immediately. They hovered, searching. Then eyes turned. Slowly. Not with certainty, but with relief—the relief of finally having a shape to place fear into.

  ‘She arrived a week ago,’ someone said.

  ‘And Nadya changed after that,’ someone else added.

  ‘They write like this,’ a third voice said, lifting a page. ‘Like they don’t care whether we live or die. We should have detected and expelled them earlier.’

  I didn’t say anything. I felt a quiet relief instead.

  Nadya stood up before I could. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t argue. She only said, ‘They’re outside.’

  If the authorities were here, then someone must have caused it. And if someone must have caused it, then it had to be the ones who did not belong—those whose writing had slowed the flow, thickened the air, made the cell visible to itself.

  Then the doors of the vehicles opened. Men stepped out one by one, spreading along the building. Someone inside said, ‘They’re sealing,’ and that was enough.

  Someone shouted for everyone to move. Doors opened and slammed. The group fractured into instinct. Most ran toward the main exits, pulled by noise and the promise of speed. Others moved upward—to the second floor, where the offices were, where lists, drafts, and equipment were kept. That floor had always been understood as the place to clean things when there was no time left.

  No one reached for us.

  Nadya took my hand.

  ‘We shouldn’t run with them,’ she said quietly. ‘They’ll make us proof.’

  So we went with the others heading to the second floor, to secure necessary items before slipping out unnoticed. That level was already half-lit, half-chaotic. People moved between rooms with purpose: cabinets were opened, papers fed into bins, drawers emptied onto tables. Someone had already started a fire in one of the metal barrels meant for waste. They were eliminating as much sensitive evidence as possible.

  We passed through without speaking. No one stopped us, because no one was really looking at anyone else.

  At the far end of the corridor were the small rooms for personal use. Ours was one of them. When we reached it, Nadya turned the key.

  For a few seconds there was only the sound of paper tearing elsewhere, drawers slamming, someone coughing from smoke.

  We stepped inside and immediately gathered what we needed, stuffing a few things into our backpacks. But just as we turned back toward the door, a familiar voice came from the corridor—calm on the surface, tightly controlled, and deeply furious beneath it.

  ‘Open it.’

  I recognized him at once. He was the man who had offered me a form of work earlier, while Nadya held my hand.

  Nadya locked the door immediately.

  Another voice, closer now, added almost approvingly, ‘It’s them. I saw them come this way.’

  Not everyone knew us. The entire cell was too large for that—dozens of people, faces blurred, names unnecessary. But the smaller group we worked among did. We had been too close to them, too visible in our quietness, to disappear completely.

  ‘This is because of them,’ someone said. ‘They didn’t help.’

  That was how they knew us. Still, none of this was really about us. It was about fear, and their need to give it a shape.

  ‘Open it,’ the man’s voice said again. ‘Now.’

  We didn’t.

  ‘Traitors. You’re traitors!’ he shouted then, his voice breaking into something I would never have expected from his usual calmness.

  Not informants. Not collaborators. Traitors. That alone explained everything. It was not that our external loyalties clashed, but that our inner worlds refused to align.

  Then the pounding began—not frantic, but deliberate. Someone on the other side was buying time, urging the others to finish clearing the floor.

  I was afraid then. My hands shook so badly that the pen scratched the paper. Yes, I was still writing. I didn’t even need to keep this Log anymore, but I did. I don’t even know why. Perhaps because if I stopped, the moment would become only noise. I wanted to record this life instead of feeling it, like it was my previous life.

  Nadya was shaking too, but differently. Her fear stayed in her body; it never reached her voice. She held my hand tightly, in something unmistakably maternal.

  She pulled me toward the window, just enough to see if escape was possible. But the moment we leaned forward, a bullet struck the glass and shattered it inward. We threw ourselves back instinctively. The Aldirans were raiding the building.

  We could have jumped—the drop wasn’t high. But it still wouldn’t have saved us. Dissidents, whether they truly were dissidents or merely designated as such, weren’t imprisoned; they were executed on the spot. That was why the shot had been so free and casual, because they had the permission to kill.

  Behind the door, the man was still there. I imagined him with a gun, striking the door with the same determination, trying to break it down and reach us. For him too, this was the end of something.

  There was nowhere left to go.

  Nadya pulled me into her arms. She held me the way she had that first morning, only tighter, as if trying to press me back into herself.

  I looked at her deeply, almost reverently, in a way that no longer trusted the physical world.

  ‘I love you, Mom,’ I said suddenly. And then added: ‘Do you love me too?’

  I hadn’t planned to say it. It arrived whole and unguarded, because there was no longer any reason to restrain it.

  She wasn’t my mother. She hadn’t given birth to me. But here, in this room, she had replaced the mother I had lost. She had become something else—my spiritual origin.

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘Always,’ she whispered. ‘My beloved daughter.’

  There was an unusual calmness in her voice, as if she believed—truly believed—that we were not about to die. I felt something like transcendence in that, and a deep, final trust.

  Outside, shouting and gunfire bled together as the authorities and the remaining dissidents clashed. The door began to give way under the man’s blows, and we knew we had less than a minute left in this world. It felt so surreal that I almost liked it.

  At this moment, I finished writing. I placed the Mind Log inside the drawer beneath the desk, pushed it all the way back, closed it carefully, and then held Nadya tightly—waiting for death to merge me with her, my would-be eternal mother.