Gregory smirked to himself as he climbed the dark staircase. The power outage in this shabby district wasn't a problem but a gift from fate. That very Fate which was always on his side. The cameras were down, the intercoms dead, the elevators frozen. A perfect night for a little, almost relaxing job.

He was headed to the fifth floor, apartment 54. Word was, an old lady kept her savings in a sideboard, under a stack of yellowed napkins. Pathetic. He, Gregory, a thief without a single bungled job, was stooping to such a trifle. But luck, even in small things, needed to be fed.

The staircase was drowning in darkness, with only the weak moonlight filtering through the dirty windows on the landings. His fingers, without needing sight, found the lockpick in his pocket with a habitual movement. He was a professional, an artist of his craft. Self-confidence washed over him in a warm wave, drowning out the quiet voice of caution. He didn't need caution. He was lucky.

Here was the fifth floor. He clicked on his phone's flashlight, illuminating a green door with the number "54" from the darkness. Exactly right. He pressed his ear to the wood—silence. Deep, sleepy silence.

The lockpick slid into the keyhole with a barely audible rustle. The lock, old and simple, gave in almost instantly. Gregory put the tool away, listening with pleasure to the quiet click. Easy, like in childhood when he used to steal candy from the kiosk.

He silently pushed the door open and stepped into the apartment. It didn't smell of dust and medicine as he had expected, but of fresh coffee and leather. Strange. But the thought was fleeting, swept away by his habit of action. He closed the door behind him, plunging the hallway into utter blackness.

And at that very moment, a door at the end of the corridor, to the right, creaked open. A narrow beam of light from a powerful battery-powered flashlight shot through the crack, blinding him. Gregory froze, not out of fear, but out of irritation. Was the old woman really still awake?

It wasn't an old woman who emerged from the room. It was a female figure, a silhouette against the stream of light. Gregory couldn't see her face, only her dark outline.

"Who's there?" came a voice that wasn't sleepy or frightened, but collected and hard.

Gregory didn't answer. His turbulent temper, always demanding dominance, burst out. "Stay quiet,and nothing will happen," he threw back, taking a step forward, counting on the element of surprise and his own pressure.

But the effect didn't follow. The silhouette didn't flinch or scream. It, or rather she, instead took a sharp step towards him. In her hand, something heavy and shiny caught the glint of the flashlight for a split second.

The thought "frying pan"—absurd, ridiculous—flashed through Gregory's mind too late. He had never seen failure, never acknowledged its possibility. His luck was his shield. But the shield turned out to be made of glass.

A short, dull thud sounded. Not loud, but incredibly solid. A white light exploded in his eyes and just as instantly went out, replaced by thick, black cotton wool. He felt no pain, only a growing roar in his ears and a sensation of falling into an abyss.

His legs buckled, and he collapsed onto the floor in the hallway that smelled of coffee and leather. His last vague thought, before his consciousness finally switched off, wasn't an understanding of his mistake, nor a realization of failure, but pure, childlike bewilderment.

He was always lucky. Always. And this time—a frying pan.

He never understood that, because of the blackout, he had mixed up the floors and entered not apartment 54 on the fifth floor, but apartment 51 on the fourth. His luck, which he had relied on as a dogma, that night turned out to be merely a statistical anomaly.