Work Text:
In Lifesteal, the war had ended a long time ago.
That was what they said on the radio. That was what they wrote on the grey posters hanging on the walls of train stations, hospitals, and prisons. On them were smiling faces, new houses, bread on the table, and children holding red flags in their hands. Under every picture, there was always the same phrase:
“Peace is built on order.”
But no one in Lifesteal believed the posters anymore.
The cities still smelled of smoke. In some districts, people were not allowed to turn on the lights at night — not because they were afraid of bombs, but because there was simply no electricity. People had grown used to speaking quietly, walking quickly, and not looking into the windows of abandoned houses.
The war had ended, but its shadow still lived in every basement, in every broken bridge, in every person who flinched at the loud slam of a door.
The prison on the northern edge of the capital was also part of that shadow.
It had been built before the war, but after the victory, it had almost doubled in size. The old casemates went deep underground, while the new blocks stood above them like soulless concrete boxes. They kept people there whom the country did not want to see on the streets: deserters, spies, traitors, murderers, and people who simply knew too much.
Clownpierce had worked there as a guard for three years.
By now, he practically lived inside that dark, gloomy cage.
Clown was a good guard. For two years in a row, they had put him on the honour board. The prisoners knew that it was better not to argue with him. He did not shout without reason, did not beat people for pleasure, and did not waste words.
And besides, no one would care if some prisoner died here.
If anything, they would encourage it.
That day, it was raining.
Not heavily, but stubbornly. The kind of rain that does not wash away dirt, only smears it across the stones.
Clown stood by the gates of the inner courtyard when they brought in the new prisoner. The car stopped sharply. Two soldiers got out first. The third opened the back door.
A man in a dark coat was led out from inside.
There was no blood on him. No dirt. Even his hair lay almost neatly, as if he had not been arrested in the night, but invited to some boring meeting.
His hands were tied.
His eyes seemed calm.
Branzy, however, was nervous. He simply managed to hide it somehow.
His eyes were dark violet, like lilacs. They were very beautiful.
Clown noticed that immediately, even though he did not want to admit it to himself.
Most people, when they ended up here, tried to hold themselves together. Some joked. Some spat. Some stayed silent, as if that could make them stronger. But fear always gave them away. In their fingers. In their breathing. In the way they looked around too quickly.
This one did not look around.
He looked straight ahead.
At that moment, Branzy did not know what to do with himself. He had made one small mistake, and unfortunately, that mistake had brought him here. And when he arrived, he saw the god of this castle.
Clown had black, curly hair, the colour of raven feathers. His deep eyes seemed to see right through him. Branzy could not look away.
“Name?” Clown asked, although he had already seen the file in the shift supervisor’s hands.
The prisoner tilted his head slightly.
“You already know.”
His voice was soft. Almost polite.
Clown did not answer.
The supervisor opened the file and read:
“Branzy. Full name unknown. Age unknown. Occupation before arrest unknown. Accused of a series of murders of state engineers, two supply officers, one judge, and…” He paused for a second, turned the page, “…and of creating homemade mechanisms used to commit the crimes.”
The rain tapped against the roof over the gate.
Clown slowly took the file from the supervisor’s hands and flipped through several pages.
Photographs. Schemes. Descriptions of crime scenes.
A clock that exploded seven minutes after being wound.
A chair constructed so that one spring released a thin needle into the spine.
A locked room where a man died without a single sign of struggle, because the ventilation grate had been turned into a slow pump for poisonous gas.
On one page, there was a drawing of a child’s music box.
Clown paused on it.
“This one too?”
Branzy looked at the scheme without much interest.
“No.”
“No?”
“They drew it incorrectly. If it had been built like this, the victim would have died twenty minutes later. But she died on time.”
One of the soldiers punched him in the stomach.
Branzy doubled over, but did not make a sound. He only inhaled quietly.
Clown raised his hand.
“Enough.”
The soldier stepped back.
Clown closed the file.
“Solitary cell. No tools. No books. No belt. No spoon.”
Branzy raised his eyes.
“No spoon?”
“You look like someone who could kill with a spoon.”
This time, Branzy smiled a little wider.
“Not just with a spoon. But one could come up with something.”
Clown said nothing.
He simply led him inside.
The prison corridors were narrow and long. The stone underfoot always remained cold, even in summer. Lamps hung sparsely, and their light was yellow and sickly, as if the prison itself did not want to show its face completely.
The prisoners behind the bars fell silent when they saw the newcomer.
News in prison spread faster than rats.
Someone whispered:
“Is that him?”
Another answered:
“The Mechanic.”
Branzy walked calmly.
He did not look at the cells. He did not look at faces. Only once did his gaze linger on the old cracked clock face above the guard post.
The clock was four minutes slow.
Clown noticed.
And he noticed that Branzy noticed.
Cell number seventeen was at the very end of the lower wing. It was colder there than anywhere else, because an old ventilation shaft ran nearby. Inside stood an iron bed, a thin mattress, and a bucket.
Nothing more.
Clown opened the door.
“Welcome home.”
Branzy entered.
He stopped in the middle of the cell.
He looked at the walls, the ceiling, the door, and the small window just below the ceiling.
“Bad home.”
“You don’t deserve another one.”
Branzy turned to him.
“And you?”
Clown slowly raised an eyebrow.
“What about me?”
“Did you deserve to stand on that side of the door?”
Clown stepped closer to the bars.
“I am not someone you should ask riddles.”
“This is not a riddle.”
“Then even more so.”
He slammed the door shut.
Metal struck metal. The sound travelled down the corridor and died somewhere in the darkness.
Branzy remained standing in the middle of the cell.
Still smiling stupidly and hopelessly, like someone in love.
For the first three days, nothing happened.
That alarmed Clown more than if Branzy had tried to escape immediately.
He did not ask for more food than he was given. He did not bang on the door. He did not speak to the other prisoners. He did not try to bribe the guards. He did not ask questions.
He simply observed.
Clown saw it every time he passed by.
Branzy sat on the bed, hands resting on his knees, and watched.
The cracks in the wall.
The drops of water gathering by the pipe.
The shadow of the bars moving across the floor depending on the time of day.
The guards’ footsteps.
The gaps between inspections.
People’s habits.
On the fourth day, a lamp broke in the corridor.
It did not explode. It did not go out immediately. It simply began to flicker.
Once.
Pause.
Twice.
Pause.
Three times.
Clown stopped.
Branzy was sitting by the wall of his cell, looking at his hands.
“Did you do that?”
Branzy did not even lift his head.
“I am in a cell.”
“I did not ask where you are. I asked if you did it.”
The lamp flickered again.
One. Two. Three.
Branzy said quietly:
“It was already weak. The wires are old. The humidity is high. If someone slammed a door too hard, the contact could have loosened.”
“Someone?”
“Everyone here slams doors, Clown.”
Clown froze.
He had never told him his name.
Not in front of him.
“Who told you?”
Branzy finally looked at him.
“A little rat told me.”
Clown opened the cell door so sharply that the hinges creaked.
He stepped inside and grabbed Branzy by the collar.
“Listen carefully. I don’t know what game you have invented, but here, it will end before it even begins.”
Branzy did not resist.
He only looked into Clown’s eyes.
Close.
At that moment, Branzy’s mind was inventing a hundred billion possible outcomes. Especially ones where, somehow, he kissed him so hard that they would die if they ever pulled away from each other.
“The game started a long time ago,” Branzy said. “But I have no idea who is winning…”
Clown slammed him against the wall.
Not hard.
Just enough to warn him.
“You think I don’t know people like you?”
Branzy smiled.
“No. I think you know people like me too well.”
Clown let him go.
He left and shut the door.
The lamp stopped flickering.
After that, Clown ordered the cell to be searched.
They cut open the mattress. Knocked on the floor. Checked the walls. Removed the ventilation grate.
They found nothing.
Except for a tiny piece of rusty wire under the bed.
One guard said it could have been there for years.
Clown took the wire for himself.
It had been bent into the shape of a heart.
That evening, Branzy received his dinner without a spoon, as usual.
Clown brought the tray himself.
“The wire.”
Branzy looked at him with innocent curiosity.
“What wire?”
“Do not play with me.”
“Then do not ask questions you do not want answered.”
Clown placed the tray on the floor by the bars.
“Why did you kill people?”
Branzy was silent for a long time.
For the first time, his face became less alive. The smile disappeared, and without it, he looked younger.
Not weaker.
Just younger.
“They destroyed things.”
“And for that, they died?”
“They built things that killed people, and then called it necessity. Sometimes they created conditions where, for the sake of some benefit, even more people died…”
Clown scoffed.
“So you are better?”
Branzy looked at the tray. At the piece of grey bread. At the bowl of thin soup.
“No.”
The answer was too quick.
And too honest.
Clown had expected excuses. A mad speech. Beautiful words about justice. About revenge. About the world deserving pain.
But Branzy simply said “no.”
And for some reason, that sounded worse than anything else.
“Then why?”
Branzy took the bread.
He broke it in half.
Inside was a small black beetle.
Dead.
Branzy looked at it almost with pity.
“After the war, everyone wanted to find someone guilty. But the guilty ones wore medals. They had offices, guards, good boots, and clean hands. They were difficult to reach. So I had to be smarter.”
“You did not kill all the guilty ones.”
“Of course not.”
“Why?”
Branzy raised his eyes.
“Because I am also human. And humans are always too late.”
Clown did not answer.
Behind the wall, someone was coughing. Long, dry, painfully.
Somewhere above, a laundry cart rolled past. One wheel squeaked every three turns.
Suddenly, Branzy said:
“Your northern gate does not close properly.”
Clown slowly looked at him.
“What?”
“The lower hinge has sagged. When the eastern wind blows, the gate moves. Not much. Two fingers wide. But enough for ice to build up in winter. In a month, the mechanism will jam.”
“You have never seen the northern gate.”
“I heard it.”
Clown felt irritation.
And something else.
Something unpleasant.
Something like interest.
“Do you count everything?”
“Not everything.”
“What do you not count?”
Branzy looked at the dead beetle in the bread.
“…”
On the seventh day, a guard died.
Not during Clown’s shift.
They found him in the storage room, where old uniforms and boots were kept. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against a cabinet, as if he had simply grown tired. There was no fear on his face.
Only surprise.
The doctors said: heart failure.
The superiors said: accident.
The prisoners said: Branzy.
Clown said nothing.
He went to the storage room himself.
He inspected the floor, the shelves, the lock, the windows, and…
Nothing.
Almost nothing.
On the handle of the cabinet, there was a thin streak of oil.
Ordinary machine oil.
Clown ran his finger over the metal, smelled it, and understood that it was fresh.
In the prison, oil was kept in the repair room.
Only mechanics and senior guards had access to it.
Branzy was sitting in his cell.
Calm.
Too calm.
Clown stopped in front of the bars.
“Who helped you?”
“With what?”
“He died.”
Branzy slowly raised his eyes.
“People often die in prisons.”
“Not like that.”
“How are they supposed to die?”
Clown struck the bars with his palm.
“You think this is funny?”
Branzy stood up.
He came closer.
Now only the bars were between them.
“No,” he said quietly. “Humanity itself is the joke. People try to soften death and decorate it with words about heaven, reincarnation, and a happy life as a ghost.”
Clown clenched his jaw.
“Did you kill him?”
Branzy looked straight at him.
“If I say no, you will not believe me.”
“Try.”
“No.”
Clown did not believe him.
And Branzy understood that.
“See?” he said.
The next day, Clown ordered Branzy to be moved to another cell.
Empty. New. Without cracks. Without a ventilation grate at hand level. The walls were checked twice. The floor was checked three times.
Before Branzy was brought in, Clown personally inspected every corner.
Branzy entered, looked around, and said:
“This is worse.”
“For you, this is better.”
“No. For me, it is the same.”
Clown closed the door.
“Then why is it worse?”
Branzy looked at the ceiling.
“It is quieter here.”
“And?”
“In silence, thoughts become louder.”
Clown lingered by the door.
“Are you afraid to hear yourself?”
Branzy smiled.
“Are you not?”
After the transfer, nothing happened for two weeks.
The prison returned to its usual rhythm.
Keys. Footsteps. Screams. Inspections. Soup. Rain. Orders. Lists.
But Clown began to notice strange things.
Not dangerous things.
Small things.
One day, three matches were lying on his desk, even though he did not smoke.
On the wall in the guard room, someone had drawn a heart in chalk, crossed through with a line.
In the shift log, on the page with the dead guard’s name, someone had left a tiny dot of ink.
One dot.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Clown began to sleep worse.
He dreamed of a mechanism.
Huge. Invisible. Hidden inside the walls.
The gears turned slowly.
Without hurry.
As if they knew that time was on their side anyway.
At the centre of the mechanism sat Branzy.
Not bound.
Not free.
His eyes looked straight at Clown.
As if they wanted to devour him, to become one whole with him.
At the end of the third week, the prison warden summoned Clown to his office.
“Prisoner Branzy is being transferred tomorrow,” the warden said.
Clown frowned.
“Where?”
“To Central Administration.”
“Why?”
The warden took off his glasses and tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Because he is needed.”
“By whom?”
“By people who ask fewer questions than you.”
Clown was silent.
The warden looked at him.
“He is intelligent. People like that are useful. Especially now.”
“He is a murderer.”
“After a war, that is not always a disadvantage.”
Clown felt something cold rise inside him.
“You want to use him?”
“I want you to follow orders.”
“He will kill again.”
The warden smirked.
“Possibly. But now he will kill the right people.”
That sentence remained in the room even after the warden stopped speaking.
Clown left without saying goodbye.
That night, he went to Branzy’s cell.
Not according to schedule.
The corridor was almost completely dark. A single duty lamp burned at the end of the wing, and its light did not reach the door.
Clown stopped in front of the small window.
Branzy was not asleep.
“Of course,” Clown thought.
He was sitting on the floor by the wall, his head tilted back.
“His hair catches the moonlight so beautifully…”
“You are being transferred,” Clown said.
“I know.”
Clown was not surprised.
“Are you pleased?”
Branzy turned his head.
“No.”
“You wanted this.”
“Do you really think that?”
Clown opened the door.
He did not know why.
He simply opened it.
Branzy remained sitting.
Around the corner, a guard was lying on the floor.
Alive, but unconscious.
Beside him lay a ring of keys.
Clown picked it up.
Branzy looked at the keys.
Then at Clown.
“Do not do it.”
“What?”
“Do not open the northern passage.”
Clown froze.
“Why?”
Branzy quickly walked to the wall and listened.
“Because they want you to go there.”
“Who are they?”
The answer did not come immediately.
First came another crash.
Then footsteps.
They grew louder and louder.
And they were far too organised for panic.
From around the corner appeared people in black uniforms without any insignia.
Not prisoners.
Not guards.
Clown raised his pistol.
“Stop!”
The people did not even slow down.
One of them fired first.
Clown managed to shove Branzy aside.
The bullet struck the wall where his head had been a second earlier.
The corridor exploded into noise.
Clown fired accurately.
Two people fell.
A third hid around the corner.
Branzy, meanwhile, was not hiding.
He was looking at the pipes on the ceiling.
At the wires.
At the old fire box.
Then he suddenly grabbed a metal hook from the floor, the kind they usually used to pull laundry buckets.
“Give me thirty seconds.”
“What?”
“Or twenty, if you want to die beautifully.”
Clown wanted to say no.
But another bullet shattered the lamp above them.
“Do it.”
Branzy worked quickly.
Too quickly for a man who had spent three weeks without tools.
He removed the cover of the fire box, tore out a piece of thin chain, fastened it to the pipe, wrapped it around the hook, and struck the valve.
Water poured down.
Cold, rusty, dirty.
The men in uniform began to curse.
Branzy pulled the chain.
The metal hook came loose and struck the open electrical panel on the wall.
The sound of sparks and screams filled the corridor.
The bodies in black uniforms collapsed onto the wet floor.
The silence after that was so sharp that Clown could hear his own breathing.
Branzy stood beside him.
There was no joy on his face.
Only the emptiness of someone who knew too well how quickly a body stopped being a person.
“You said it was not you,” Clown said.
“I did not start it.”
“But you finished it.”
Branzy looked at him.
“Is that not what the war taught us?”
Clown did not answer.
They went upstairs through the service staircase.
The prison was in chaos. Part of the western wing was burning. Smoke crawled along the ceiling. The guards were trying to block the passages, but the communication system was down.
Prisoners screamed from their cells, demanding to be released or killed immediately.
A car stood in the courtyard.
The same car that was supposed to take Branzy away in the morning.
Only it had arrived earlier.
At the northern gate, the warden was speaking to a man in a grey coat.
Clown could not hear the words, but he could see their gestures.
The warden was nervous.
The man in the coat was not.
Branzy stopped in the shadow of the arch.
“There is the beast outside.”
Clown looked at him.
“Who is that?”
“One of those who are considered ‘noble’…”
The man in the grey coat turned.
Even from a distance, Clown recognised his face.
From the photograph in the file.
One of the victims.
One of the dead.
Only he was alive.
Clown slowly understood.
Not all of Branzy’s murders had been successful.
Or not all of the victims had been real.
The man in the grey coat smiled, as if he had been waiting for exactly this moment.
The prison warden turned around and saw Clown.
“Lower your weapon!” he shouted. “That is an order!”
Clown did not lower it.
Branzy said quietly:
“Now he will say that I am dangerous.”
“The prisoner is dangerous!” the warden shouted. “Shoot him!”
Branzy continued:
“Then he will say that I killed the guard.”
“He killed our man!”
“Then he will say that you do not understand what you have gotten yourself into.”
“You do not understand what you have gotten yourself into, Clown!”
Clown felt his fingers tighten around the pistol.
Branzy was not looking at the warden.
He was looking at him.
“And then you will have to decide which side of the door you are standing on.”
The rain began again.
Small and stubborn.
It fell on the burning courtyard, on the concrete, on the blood, on the faces of people who had long ago been told that peace had already come.
Clown took a step forward.
The warden went pale.
“Do not dare.”
The man in the grey coat was still smiling.
Clown raised his pistol.
Not at Branzy.
At the warden.
“Open the gate,” he said.
The warden looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“You are making a mistake.”
Clown slowly turned his head toward Branzy.
He stood in the shadows, wet from the rain, with a split lip and those mesmerising violet eyes.
Not free.
Not innocent.
Not good.
Just a person whom the country was trying to turn into a tool again.
Clown looked back at the warden.
“Possibly.”
Then he shot the lock of the northern gate.
The metal cracked.
The gate trembled.
The eastern wind pushed the door open.
The lower hinge, just as Branzy had said, had long since sagged.
The gate opened by itself.
Beyond it were night, a muddy road, and a dark forest.
And also a country that was still pretending the war had ended.
Branzy ran past Clown, but suddenly turned back to him and grabbed his hand.
“You know they will come for you now?”
Clown put away his pistol.
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Clown looked at the red light of the siren reflected in the puddles.
At the poster on the wall.
“Peace is built on order.”
The rain was slowly washing the paint from the letters.
“Because the cage was not where I thought it was.”
Branzy said nothing.
He only smiled weakly.
But then Clown suddenly pulled his hand away from Branzy’s and stepped closer instead.
Their lips met, as if Clown were trying to merge with Branzy into one whole, as if he did not want to let him go, as if he wanted to keep him in that cage forever…
And then Branzy ran far into the depths of the night.
Clown did not know where.
He simply stood and watched, surrounded by smoke, rain, and screams, holding a ring of keys that no longer opened anything.
In the morning, the report would say that prisoner Branzy escaped during the attack.
It would say that guard Clownpierce betrayed his service.
It would say that order would be restored.
In Lifesteal, they had always known how to write lies beautifully.
But on the wall of cell number seventeen, which no one had managed to paint over, there remained a small inscription:
“Who guards the cage when the beast is outside?”
And below it, very thinly, almost invisibly, a second line appeared.
They found it only three days later.
No one understood when Branzy had managed to leave it there.
It said:
“The one who still thinks he has the key to everything, and also thinks he is free.”