The silence of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane’s most restricted basement was a tangible thing, a thick, sterile blanket of solitude that Hannibal Lecter had worn for years. It was a silence he had curated, a canvas upon which he could project the operas of his memory and the intricate designs of his disdain. The guards’ footsteps were a predictable punctuation; the distant, muffled screams from upper floors, a faint and uninteresting chorus. His crystal cage was the centerpiece of this silent gallery, and he its sole, permanent exhibit.

That changed today.

The familiar, heavy sound of the security doors echoed with a new, purposeful urgency. He did not stir from his seated position on his cot, but his focus, previously turned inward, shifted outward with the sharp intensity of a predator noting a shift in the wind. They wheeled in a new inmate. A gurney, much like his own transport, bearing a figure swaddled in a heavy canvas straitjacket. The figure was small. Too small. And as they passed under the harsh fluorescent light, he saw it was a woman. A girl, really. Her face, pale and shockingly young, was a stark anomaly in this place of ruined men and hardened monsters.

The logistics were baffling. A female inmate, here, in the basement reserved for the institution’s most irredeemable assets? And she was secured with a level of restraint that even he, the Chesapeake Riker, did not always merit. Heavy chains secured her to the gurney, a redundancy that spoke not of procedure, but of a deep, specific fear. What symphony of violence could this young girl have composed to earn a place in this particular hell? The question was more intriguing than any he had been asked in a decade.

The guards performed their duties with a brusque, nervous efficiency, unstrapping her from the gurney but leaving the straitjacket in place before retreating and sealing the cell opposite his own. The silence returned, but it was different now. It was charged. He watched as she slowly sat up on her cot, the stiff canvas rustling with her movements. She did not look at him, but he looked at her, his gaze analytical, dissecting. He was no longer the sole exhibit. A new, fascinating, and utterly perplexing piece of art had been installed directly across from him.

After a long moment of observation, his voice cut through the sterile quiet, a low, cultured murmur that seemed to absorb the light in the room rather than reflect it.

"It appears we are to be each other's only view."