“You’re the driver, right? So just drive the car,” I responded more harshly than I intended, but Andrew didn’t seem to notice the sharpness in my voice. I tried to exhale more calmly, as if that could silence the doubts and fears, and continued in a conciliatory tone. “Listen, I don’t want us to go all this way for nothing either. But I’m sure we’ll gather something useful here. It may be a small town, but it's one of the few open ones on the main connecting highways. Local newspapers are full of news about the chaos in hospitals and quarantined neighborhoods, and that's a good sign – the government’s censorship hasn’t tightened the noose yet. Besides, as you rightly pointed out, it’s one of many border towns to the North. I don’t think the eyes and ears of the political police here are sharp enough to notice any leaks of information.”

“The main thing is that the great mother-censorship lets it through,” Andrew said after a moment. “But the material you want to gather will be difficult to publish, even with our boss's connections. With all the connections, Steph. You’ll need one hell of a trump card up your sleeve. So far, almost all the information on this topic has been successfully cleaned up.”

“Let’s emphasize the word ‘almost’,” I smiled slyly. “Is Sam asleep?” Andrew nodded, and after giving him a pat on the shoulder, I headed inside the trailer.

The car swayed slightly.

Pulling off my jacket, I sank heavily onto the small couch. On the fold-out table in front of me were a battered notebook, headphones, Sam's badge-holder, with "Samwise Dort" written in round, handwritten letters, and a large folder filled with papers, notes, crude sketches, and newspaper clippings – "The Three's speech postponed again – monarchs preparing to make several important announcements?", "Power outages in the capital!", "Eastbound highways closed", "Main underground tunnel through the 'Halls' to the West is closed until autumn" – none of which I wanted to go through.

My head felt heavy, my eyes were closing. The sleepless nights of anxiety during the border crossings were catching up with me. But I knew, if I lay down on the bed now, I wouldn't be able to sleep. I was completely unaccustomed to sleeping in a moving car.

I shifted my gaze to the monotonous landscape sliding past the window: white two-story houses with dark roofs flashed in a repetitive rhythm, and rare arrow-shaped trees pierced the gloomy sky. We passed an expressive bridge with wrought-iron railings; the water in the river appeared dirty, graphite-brown, and its turbulent streams seemed out of place next to the neat, private homes.

In the background of my thoughts, the fleeting realization hit me that the river was rushing toward the Bloody Bay, and I almost regretted that we wouldn't see its fjords. I'd heard they were insanely beautiful.

But the very sight of the stormy waters amidst the trembling calm of the dormant town seemed, for a moment, eerie and terrifying. However, lately, my tendency toward suspicion, emotionality – sometimes crossing all boundaries – feelings of dread and awe, arising out of nothing, had become particularly sharp: they made me spin, twitch, and never gave me peace for a moment—something was approaching, and one didn’t need to be a seer to understand that. The only question was, in which area of our lives would it first strike.

I attributed my own moral exhaustion to general fatigue and the tense atmosphere. Although, without a doubt (and I couldn’t lie to myself), the reason ran much deeper – it was too obvious and too painful. There was no escaping or hiding from the past. You couldn’t drown it out with work, drown it out with risky decisions, or dull it; it always came back in sudden memories during moments of silence, nightmarish dreams, creeping tears, and the lump in my throat… Starting over was hard. Sometimes it seemed like it was only possible if I set fire to the previous chapters of my life, but to do that, I’d have to be either incredibly brave or desperately foolish – and so I sought healing elsewhere. Having completely lost myself, with an absolute emptiness within my ribs, I gave myself over to work. Completely. Without fear or doubt. Maybe that’s why, looking at the houses passing by the window, at the travel papers arranged before me, I didn’t question how I had the courage to do all of this.