And it was whispering her name, offering knowledge, offering understanding, offering power, at a price she couldn't yet comprehend but instinctively knew would be her soul.
***
The silence in Lena Petrova’s foundation-assigned apartment was a living entity. It pressed in on her from the craftily neutral walls – a shade of grey so devoid of character it felt like an insult to the very concept of color – and from the bland, corporate-approved abstract painting above the minimalist sofa, a swirl of muted greys and blues that now seemed to writhe with unseen, fractal implications in her peripheral vision, its shapes subtly, impossibly shifting when she wasn’t looking directly at it. It was a silence thick and watchful, pressing against her eardrums, amplifying the frantic, irregular thumping
