2. Baptism by Ice

Sleep did not come. Ilyana lay awake in the dark, listening to Nadya breathe. The rhythm was uneven, punctuated by small sounds that might have been words in a dream. Outside, the campus had gone silent, but it was not the silence of Velensk. Back home, the night was full of stray dogs and distant factory noise, the world still churning even in darkness. Here, the silence was manufactured, enforced by thick walls and double-glazed windows and the unspoken agreement that nothing unpleasant should disturb the peace.

She checked her phone again. The message still glowed on the screen: a photograph of her grandmother, Baba Zoya, standing at the kitchen window of their apartment in Velensk. The image was grainy, taken from across the street, but unmistakable. Baba Zoya was holding a teacup, her silver hair pinned back, her face turned slightly toward the light. She looked peaceful. She looked unaware.

Two days ago. The timestamp was from two days ago.

Ilyana had called immediately, her fingers trembling as she dialed the international code. Baba Zoya had answered on the third ring, her voice groggy with sleep but warm, unharmed, entirely herself. They had spoken for ten minutes about the weather, about the food in the dining hall, about nothing at all. Ilyana had not mentioned the photograph. She could not find the words. How did you tell someone they were being watched by strangers an ocean away?

Now, in the dark, she replayed the conversation. Her grandmother had sounded normal. But what if normal was a performance? What if the watchers had warned her, threatened her, instructed her to act as if nothing was wrong? The knot in Ilyana’s chest tightened.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood. The floor was cold against her bare feet. Across the room, Nadya stirred, her eyes opening in the thin moonlight.

“You are still awake,” Nadya whispered in Krovian.

“I cannot stop thinking.”

“About the photograph.” It was not a question.

Ilyana nodded. Nadya sat up, wrapping her blanket around her shoulders. Her hair was mussed, her face soft with sleep, but her eyes were sharp. “I told you this place is not what it seems. Now you believe me.”

“I believed you before. I just…” Ilyana trailed off. “I thought I could navigate it. I thought I was smarter than them.”

“Everyone thinks that.” Nadya’s voice was not unkind. “The girl from Mirovsk, her name is Anya. She thought the same thing. She told me the Eos Society operates like a spiderweb. The center is hidden. You only feel the strands after you are already stuck.”

Ilyana sat on the edge of Nadya’s bed. “They want me to come tomorrow evening. The Eos Society house. Eight o’clock. Alone.”

“And if you do not go?”

“They have someone watching my grandmother. They made that clear.”

Nadya was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached under her pillow and pulled out a small object wrapped in cloth. She unfolded it carefully, revealing a pocketknife with a bone handle, its blade worn thin from years of sharpening.

“This belonged to my father,” she said. “He carried it through the border crossing when we fled the eastern province. He said a blade does not make you safe, but it reminds you that you have teeth.” She pressed it into Ilyana’s palm. “Take it.”

“I cannot—”

“You can and you will. Tomorrow, when you go to that house, you will not be alone. I will be outside. If you do not come out in one hour, I will call the city police.”

Ilyana closed her fingers around the knife handle. The bone was warm, as if it had absorbed something of the hands that had held it before. “They will not care. The police. The university. They are all connected.”

“Then we will find someone who does care.” Nadya’s jaw tightened. “There are others. Scholarship students from the borderlands, from the occupied territories. We are not the only ones who have noticed things. Anya told me about a professor—Professor Hartley, in the law faculty. She helped a student last year who tried to leave the Society. The student disappeared before the case went anywhere, but Hartley tried.”

The name lodged in Ilyana’s memory like a splinter. Professor Hartley. A potential ally, or another strand of the web disguised as a lifeline. She had learned, in the span of a single day, that trust was a currency she could no longer spend freely.

Morning arrived gray and damp. The fog had returned, thicker than before, wrapping the campus in a wet shroud. Ilyana dressed in the same black cocktail dress from the night before, its fabric wrinkled from lying on the floor. She pinned her hair back tightly, the way Baba Zoya had taught her, and practiced a neutral expression in the mirror. She would need it. In Velensk, she had learned to hide fear behind a mask of compliance. The secret police who patrolled the factory district did not appreciate defiance.

Her first class was Introduction to Global Health Policy, held in a lecture hall with tiered seats and a ceiling painted with constellations. She arrived early, choosing a seat near the back where she could watch the door. Students trickled in slowly, their voices low and careless. She recognized none of them from the Eos Society coffee hour, but that meant nothing. The Society’s members were everywhere, invisible until they chose to reveal themselves.

The professor was a thin woman with sharp glasses and a voice that carried without effort. Dr. Elara Webb. She spoke about health systems in post-conflict regions with a clinical precision that Ilyana found both admirable and unnerving. When she mentioned Krovia as a case study, her eyes flicked toward Ilyana for a fraction of a second. Recognition, or something else.

After the lecture, Ilyana lingered by the door, pretending to review her notes. Dr. Webb approached, her heels clicking the same rhythm that Margot’s had.

“Miss Volkov, correct? From Krovia.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“I read your admissions essay. It was thoughtful, if idealistic. The reality of rebuilding a healthcare system is considerably less romantic than the theory.” She paused, adjusting her glasses. “I understand you have been in contact with the Eos Society.”

The statement landed like a stone in still water. Ilyana kept her face motionless. “They invited me to a coffee hour. They offered me a job.”

“And you accepted?”

“I am considering it.”

Dr. Webb’s expression did not change, but something shifted behind her eyes. “A piece of advice, Miss Volkov. Blackwood is an institution built on networks. Some networks are visible. Others are not. The skill is in distinguishing between a ladder and a noose.” She handed Ilyana a business card. “My office hours are Thursdays. If you ever wish to discuss your career path in more detail.”

Then she was gone, swallowed by the stream of students exiting the hall. Ilyana looked down at the card. It was simple cream stock, no embossed seals or elaborate fonts. Just a name, a department, and a phone number. She slipped it into her coat pocket, next to the knife and the folded contract.

The afternoon dragged. She attended two more classes, consumed a sandwich she did not taste, and returned to Prescott Hall to find Nadya pacing the room like a caged animal.

“I found Anya,” Nadya said, her voice tight with urgency. “She agreed to meet us. But not here. She is afraid to be seen on campus. There is a coffeehouse in the old quarter, the Brass Lantern. She will be there at five.”

The old quarter was a twenty-minute bus ride from the campus gates. Ilyana had read about it in a guidebook: cobblestone streets, historic architecture, a thriving arts scene. The guidebook had not mentioned the way the shadows gathered in the narrow alleys, or the way the street vendors watched strangers with eyes that had seen too much.

They found the Brass Lantern wedged between a boarded-up bookstore and a pawnshop whose window displayed gold watches and wedding rings, the detritus of broken lives. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of burnt coffee and old newspapers. A few customers hunched over laptops, their faces illuminated by blue light.

Anya sat in the farthest corner, her back to the wall. She was older than Ilyana had imagined, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, with dark circles under her eyes and hair that had been dyed black but was growing out at the roots. She wore a long-sleeved shirt despite the warmth of the room. When she lifted her hand to wave them over, Ilyana caught a glimpse of something on the inside of her wrist: a small tattoo, the twelve-rayed sun.

“You must be Ilyana,” Anya said. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had been screaming or singing too loudly. “Nadya told me about the photograph. About the invitation.”

“She told me about your passport,” Ilyana said, sliding into the seat across from her. “And the contract.”

Anya laughed, a dry sound with no humor in it. “My passport is still locked in a safe at the Eos Society house. They told me it was for my protection. In case I lost it. In case someone stole it. They are very good at making imprisonment sound like kindness.”

“Why do you stay? Why do you not go to the police?”

“The police.” Anya shook her head. “Two years ago, a girl named Katya tried to go to the police. She had evidence. Photographs. Financial records. She disappeared for three weeks. When she came back, she would not speak. She would not even look at anyone. She dropped out of the university and flew back to Mirovsk. A month later, her family’s apartment burned down. Accidental fire, the report said. Faulty wiring.”

Ilyana felt the air leave her lungs. “Her family?”

“Her mother. Her younger brother. Gone.” Anya’s eyes were dry, but her hands trembled around her coffee cup. “That is what happens when you go to the police. That is what happens when you try to leave.”

The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating. Nadya reached across the table and touched Anya’s wrist, gently, just above the tattoo. Anya flinched, then relaxed.

“What do they want from us?” Ilyana asked finally. “If it is not just free labor, if it is not just control, what is the endgame?”

Anya looked at her for a long moment. Then she pulled back her sleeve.

The tattoo was not just a sun. Beneath the twelve rays, in smaller script, was a string of numbers. A code. And below that, a word in a language Ilyana did not recognize.

“They call it the Arborist’s Ledger,” Anya said quietly. “Every scholarship student who joins the Society gets one. A unique identifier. We are not members. We are inventory.”

“Inventory for what?”

Anya’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I do not know the full picture. But I know they move people. Across borders. Across oceans. The university exchange program is a cover. The internships are cover. They traffic in bodies, Ilyana. And the Eos Society is the recruitment arm.”

The world tilted. Ilyana gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white. She thought of the freight trucks that rumbled past the campus at night, their containers stamped with the logo of a logistics company she had seen on billboards throughout the city. Atlas Prime Logistics. She thought of the contract’s language about interstate commerce, about binding arbitration, about the jurisdictional carve-outs that Nadya had pointed out.

She thought of her grandmother, photographed through a window in Velensk, and understood with sickening clarity that the threat was not just a threat. It was a demonstration of reach.

“I am supposed to go to the Eos Society house tonight,” she said. “Eight o’clock. If I do not go, they will hurt my grandmother. If I do go…” She did not finish the sentence.

Anya leaned forward. “If you go, you will sign the contract. And once you sign, you will belong to them. Legally. Irrevocably. They will own your passport, your labor, your body. And if you try to fight, the arbitration clause will swallow every legal claim you make. You will have no voice.”

“Then what do I do?”

Anya was silent for a long moment. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a small, battered notebook. She flipped to a page covered in cramped handwriting and tore it out.

“This is the address of a man named Viktor Laskin. He is a journalist. He has been investigating Atlas Prime for three years. He knows about the trafficking, but he has never been able to prove the connection to the university. If you go to him, if you tell him what you know, he might be able to help.”

Ilyana took the paper. The address was in the industrial district, near the port. “Why have you not gone to him yourself?”

“Because I am already marked.” Anya touched her wrist. “If I go anywhere near a journalist, the Society will know. They monitor us. Our phones, our emails, our movements. You are still clean. You have not signed anything. You still have a chance.”

The clock on the wall read five forty-five. Ilyana had two hours and fifteen minutes until the meeting at the Eos Society house.

“I will go to the journalist tomorrow,” she said. “But tonight, I have to go to the house. If I do not show up, they will know something is wrong. They will call whoever is watching my grandmother. I need to buy time.”

Nadya grabbed her arm. “That is insane. You walk into that house, you might never walk out.”

“I will not sign anything. I will listen, I will smile, I will tell them I need more time to think. And then I will leave. One hour. That is all.”

“And if they do not let you leave?”

Ilyana pulled the pocketknife from her coat and held it up, the blade catching the dim light of the coffeehouse. “Then I will remind them that I have teeth.”

The walk back to campus was silent. The fog had thickened into a drizzle, cold and persistent. The streetlamps cast pale circles of light that did little to dispel the gloom. Ilyana’s mind churned with everything Anya had told her: the tattoo, the ledger, the girl named Katya whose family had burned. She had come to Blackwood believing she had escaped the violence of her homeland. Now she understood that violence was not a place. It was a system, and it had followed her across the ocean.

Back in the dormitory, she changed out of the cocktail dress and into dark jeans and a fitted sweater. Practical clothing. Clothing she could run in. She braided her hair tightly and tucked the pocketknife into her boot, the handle pressing against her ankle. Nadya watched from the bed, her face pale and drawn.

“One hour,” Nadya said. “If you are not back by nine-fifteen, I call the police. And if the police do nothing, I call the journalist myself.”

“Nine-fifteen,” Ilyana agreed.

She checked her phone one last time. The message was still there, the photograph of Baba Zoya still glowing on the screen. She stared at her grandmother’s face, memorizing the lines around her eyes, the gentle curve of her mouth. Then she deleted the message and walked out the door.

The Eos Society house stood at the edge of campus, where the manicured lawns gave way to a grove of old oak trees. It was a Victorian mansion, three stories tall, with a wraparound porch and windows that glowed with warm yellow light. It looked like a postcard. It looked like a dream. Ilyana walked up the stone steps and rang the bell, and the door swung open before the chime had finished echoing.

Caspian Vane stood in the doorway, his amber eyes catching the light. He was smiling, but the smile did not reach his eyes. Behind him, the house stretched out in a long hallway lined with portraits. The faces in the portraits were all young, all beautiful, all wearing the same twelve-rayed sun pin on their lapels.

“Ilyana,” Caspian said, stepping aside to let her pass. “We are so glad you came.”

She stepped over the threshold. The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.

And somewhere in Velensk, in a kitchen window framed by cheap curtains, Baba Zoya turned off the light and went to bed, unaware that her granddaughter had just walked into the belly of the beast.