Big Trouble

Giers' concern about Gleb, and the solutions he proposed, eventually made Akademik start suspecting Valery of something far worse.

Akademik was very close to Valery. He saw him as the son he never had. He had even told his family on the outside to take care of Valery once he got out of prison, to help him claim his inheritance, give him a place to live, and support him however they could. He often said that Valery was like a son to him.
But Akademik was a drug addict.

The drugs slowly destroyed his mind, making him more and more paranoid. Eventually, he started thinking: if Valery was willing to betray and get rid of the friend he'd known since childhood, the only person he'd ever truly been close to, then what kind of person was Valery? How quickly would he betray Akademik himself when the time came? What kind of creature had no morals or principles if he could do something like that so easily?

Then one day, not the same day as in the first picture; conversations like this happened often, and Akademik kept quietly feeding his own paranoia, he finally snapped.

High on drugs and consumed by paranoia and rage, he convinced himself that Valery had to die. Right then, or as soon as possible. Otherwise, Valery would eventually kill Akademik first, and then come after his family. After all, Akademik himself had brought Valery into that family and trusted him so completely. Now he regretted it.

Back when they had first started working together, Akademik had taught Valery to always be prepared. Steal razor blades whenever he had the chance, sharpen them into makeshift knives, and keep one hidden up his sleeve. Akademik himself used to do the same, but he'd stopped once he became confident in his position inside the prison.

Valery, however, had listened.

When Akademik started choking him, Valery had no other choice. Faced with a choice between himself and Akademik, he chose himself.
While trying to break free, he slashed Akademik across the neck with the blade.
The wound was fatal. Akademik lost a massive amount of blood and died not long afterward.
That day, Valery had come to receive his medication. Akademik had been holding the only available dose of his pills, and with Akademik now dead, Valery had no idea when he'd be able to get another.
As Akademik collapsed, he dropped the pills. They fell into a pool of his blood and slowly began to dissolve.
Valery had no choice but to take his medication straight from the floor.
It was one of the hardest days of his life.
For the first time, he wondered if he really was the monster everyone believed him to be.
But he also realized something else.
The only person he truly had was himself.
And if it came down to his own survival, he was willing to do anything.

One of the reasons Akademik decided Valery had to be killed right then and there was because the timing was perfect.

A massive storm had hit that day, knocking out the prison's power. The backup generators were old and no longer worked because the money that had been allocated to replace them had been stolen by the prison administration. (That was what Gleb had actually been involved in. Kira's father was the prison warden, and he had put "his own man" in charge of the finances to cover up the embezzlement of the prison's budget.)

The blackout turned into a disaster. Many cells and security doors unlocked, prisoners flooded into the prison yard, and the staff were ordered to stay where they were until the situation was brought under control.

The prison descended into chaos.

That day, a lot of inmates were murdered in acts of revenge, and many of those killings were never solved.

Valery's murder was supposed to become just another "tragic accident" lost in the chaos of the prison-wide disaster.

Instead, the opposite happened.

After everything was over, Valery left Akademik's cell and stepped into the shower fully clothed to wash the blood off himself.

Gleb was terrified for Valery's safety, so he searched the prison corridors looking for him, hoping he could protect him from the chaos somehow.

Eventually, he found him.

Gleb had been convinced Valery had gone outside. With the hurricane and the torrential rain, he assumed that was why Valery was completely soaked.