The cell is three steps wide. Two if you’re afraid.

I’m lying on the slab when the corridor light snaps on. Through the vent above my head comes the first sound: a chair dragging on concrete, slow, like someone thinking about it.

Then the voice. Russian accent, unhurried.

“Where… is… he?”

I’m here for stealing a motorbike, nothing clever about it. I don’t mix with anyone. But the wall feels thin as skin, and the voice arrives whole, like it’s meant for both of us.

A muffled answer from next door. Then a wet crack—cable, belt, something meant for nerve and bone. The air in my cell shifts with the sound.

“Where is… he?”

The man next door sobs out words I can’t catch. A crank whines, the kind you wind by hand. Then the scream, sharp enough to find my spine.

I press my palms over my ears. It makes no difference. The question keeps returning, calm as weather.

“Where… is he?”

Boots scrape past my door, stop just long enough for me to see the shadow—broad shoulders, something heavy in one hand that clinks when it moves. They don’t look in. They want me to wonder.

A thud, a gasp, the smell of wet cloth pushed over a mouth. The other man’s chair tips, legs scrabbling against the floor.

The voice again, closer now, like it’s leaning through the vent.

“Where is he?”

I stare at the cracks in the plaster above me, counting the beats between each cry, knowing the count will end. I know nothing about the man they want, but the name is already in my head, as if it might one day be mine.

The light clicks off.