“The main thing is that the great mother-censorship lets it through,” Andrew said after a moment. “But the material you want to gather will be difficult to publish, even with our boss's connections. With all the connections, Steph. You’ll need one hell of a trump card up your sleeve. So far, almost all the information on this topic has been successfully cleaned up.”
“Let’s emphasize the word ‘almost’,” I smiled slyly. “Is Sam asleep?” Andrew nodded, and after giving him a pat on the shoulder, I headed inside the trailer.
The car swayed slightly.
Pulling off my jacket, I sank heavily onto the small couch. On the fold-out table in front of me were a battered notebook, headphones, Sam's badge-holder, with "Samwise Dort" written in round, handwritten letters, and a large folder filled with papers, notes, crude sketches, and newspaper clippings – "The Three's speech postponed again – monarchs preparing to make several important announcements?", "Power outages in the capital!", "Eastbound highways closed", "Main underground tunnel through the 'Halls' to the West is closed until autumn" – none of which I wanted to go through.
My head felt heavy, my eyes were closing. The sleepless nights of anxiety during the border crossings were catching up with me. But I knew, if I lay down on the bed now, I wouldn't be able to sleep. I was completely unaccustomed to sleeping in a moving car.
I shifted my gaze to the monotonous landscape sliding past the window: white two-story houses with dark roofs flashed in a repetitive rhythm, and rare arrow-shaped trees pierced the gloomy sky. We passed an expressive bridge with wrought-iron railings; the water in the river appeared dirty, graphite-brown, and its turbulent streams seemed out of place next to the neat, private homes.
In the background of my thoughts, the fleeting realization hit me that the river was rushing toward the Bloody Bay, and I almost regretted that we wouldn't see its fjords. I'd heard they were insanely beautiful.
But the very sight of the stormy waters amidst the trembling calm of the dormant town seemed, for a moment, eerie and terrifying. However, lately, my tendency toward suspicion, emotionality – sometimes crossing all boundaries – feelings of dread and awe, arising out of nothing, had become particularly sharp: they made me spin, twitch, and never gave me peace for a moment—something was approaching, and one didn’t need to be a seer to understand that. The only question was, in which area of our lives would it first strike.