The ink was black, the paper heavy, but the words were spikes driven through the air. Prepare the father.Demetri didn't move. He stood, frozen over the sleeping child, the letter held loosely in his hand. His face, already stripped bare by grief and exhaustion, now seemed carved from gray granite. The haunted fear was gone, replaced by something far colder—a terrible, silent certainty.“Demetri,” Nora whispered, her voice rough, her eyes darting between him, the lethal script, and the small girl nestled in the sheets. “Get out of here.”He blinked slowly, turning to Ivan, who still stood by the door, pale and rigid.“Ivan. Get the samples.” Demetri’s voice was the first sound in the new, terrifying silence, and it was flat, metallic, devoid of human warmth.Ivan hesitated. “Sir, with respect,
