Silently he opened the door that Adelaide had just shut. He knew that she would not hear him. He stood barefoot outside her bedroom. It was so quiet that on the other side he could hear her breathing, long and shaky.
Minutes passed. He stood there, motionless. He took out the knife. He turned it over, noticing the network of scars on his hands and forearms, old and recent, in places overlapping.
Adelaide, and people like her, had given him those scars. Whether she knew it or not, she was guilty.
He sensed the west behind him, urging him to revenge. It was a simple emotion. He could not deny that he wanted it. Gently, he closed his fingers around the door handle.
There was a tiny tremor in the metal, as though, sitting against the door, she was shivering.
He hesitated. It was the briefest flicker of concentration, but within that second he felt his resolution slip away.
Putting the knife back, he padded back through the apartment to the futon. He lay down and pulled the rug up to his neck. The soft fleece gathered at his throat like a noose.
He let out a long, muted sigh. His heart was beating wildly. He was covered in sweat. The relief that flooded his body only mirrored the horror at what he had almost done. The footsteps made to Adelaide’s door and back felt like those of a stranger.
“It was me who found you in the unremembered quarters, Vik. Nils dared you, remember? It was a stupid dare.”
Mikkeli was waiting for him, hunched over, her feet skimming the piano keys.
I’m sorry, he thought. I forgot.
It was true; Mikkeli had found him. She’d shone a torch on his face. Or maybe that was a different occasion. There were so many other times, anyway; lying on the edge of starvation, his body sabotaged by hypothermia. Time losing all logic whilst he waited for warmth.
Mikkeli climbed off the piano and stalked out of the window-wall, back to wherever she had come from. He remembered hugging her to him, trying to press some warmth to that lifeless body, but he’d had none to give, or she had taken it already.
Lying on Adelaide Mystik’s futon, staring at her ceiling mural, Vikram promised himself he was never going to be that cold again.