"Down the staircase, through inscriptions on the walls — forgotten for ever".
клетка, by Молчат Дома.
It's a cold, lightful snowy morning, and even when it's already hitting 9 in the morning, death climbs on them as delicate snowflakes.
Death has no hour, as you can see.
The leaking (and instantly) freezing water hit the concrete ground. As depressing as it looks, the grey ground has great quality — it's reassuring. Easy to step in, hard enough to break your skull if you need to run. If Oksana Sokolova has learned anything in the cold, harsh Soviet Union, is that you do not run to hide your secrets, you die for no one to take them. It's a reality, here and in every great nepreklonnaya (непреклонная кровь), you either survive by joining them or you're thrown out at the hungry wolfs. For Oksana, it's easy, it's no one but her, but families face much harder choices. Parents often join these Machiavellian societies to not let them throw their kids at the blood-hungry animals. It's in reality, just a delay, they've already hand-over their kids to much sadic monsters. Families face much harder choices.
Her blood runs cold (a good Russian would have loved that joke, used to say her dad), but it's nothing other than her will to free herself and many others from what Regulus couldn't, and her Russian heritage, of course. Cold people, cold faces, cold souls, and cold mornings. It's all printed all over Oksana's traitorous features, anyways. As much as people would loathe it, she's as Russian as they are purists, and that's something it hurts the Soviets. Spies are no welcome, no expected and no forgiven in the cold and antique once czarsists lands. Deep down, everyone is molded from the same wood, for our souls not to be other than particles of magic tightly sewn into our bones and right between our minds and hearts. She's Russian, he's Russian, she's English, he was English and I'm death, but everyone has their little grain of salt that life once gave us.
"Can you hear me, Oksana?" The woman steadily increases her voice tone, making her sound angry.
"Rebenok, we are talking to you." He calls her a child, but kids nowadays are everything but those dainty and well-behaved beings. It's natural, anyways, as in death and war takes a deep toll on everyone.
Her blood is growing colder. Impossible, isn't it? But Oksana's cold demeanor is getting her closer to becoming a cold, dead body. Does it matter anymoree? They are gonna kill her anyways, and as much as she would like to reunite with her friends down there (up there, if all their murders ever made them better persons than those who they murdered), she still doesn't wanna die. She might be defeated, but never too desperate to wish to die. If Oksana has a good trait, it is her unwillingness to die. She won't go away without deeply embracing life herself.
It's a man and a woman. Same time. "Answer us".
He's Russian, a good and strictly created Soviet, and she has a clear strong English accent, although a shy French one climbs on it, as in trying to hide. It might daylight the one dancing over her, but them? She doesn't know them, for the sun not hitting their faces. Pure darkness and a sunken abyss of death into her eyes. Today, they are no less pozhiratol (Пожиратёль) than her.
"Oksana Vyacheslavovna Sokolova, you're guilty of maximum betrayal to the Soviets, the great nepreklonnaya, and a candidate for public execution".
It's Oksana's first laugh in months.
"They want me dead, for the price of my head," she answers.
The man, likely to have the same acid soviet humor, laughed.
"Akh, my nakonets ponimayem drug druga".
Ах, мы наконец понимаем друг друга.
Yes, they were finally understanding each other.