Page 126 of A Taste Of Darkness

“Let’s fuck her up,” Matteo said, nodding his head at me.

68

IN THE DARK

Milo Marucci

Everyone except Kai and me were working on getting people out of here, while simultaneously having an eye out for Adriana and anyone else who might’ve been out to harm rather than escape.

Kai just wanted to get to Flora, which was understandable. I, too, wanted to get to one of the Adamses.

Most of the halls were empty; not a single sound echoed from anywhere. Every now and then we’d come across a dead body, blood splatters on the wall and floor, or medical equipment that was spread all over the ground when someone must’ve rushed to get stuff to wrap a wound or two.

“We should try the basement,” I suggested. We were taught to always choose the basement to hold someone hostage because there was no way anyone could storm in through the window. There was only one way inside.

Thinking about it, it was kind of dumb. We had no way to escape, either, in case of an emergency—at least if we hadn’t prepared the room beforehand.

“You sure?”

My phone rang before I got the chance to reply. As I looked at the screen, I read my sister’s name.

“Looking for me?” she said in Italian as I picked up. “You two are looking quite dumb walking around like two ghosts, trying so desperately to find your blonde toy on two legs and her sister.”

I wanted to look around myself, but I knew better than to show any sort of reaction. If she could see us, that meant she was either close by or in the security control room.

“Why are you doing this, Adriana?” I continued to walk, nodding for Kai to follow me.

There was no way Adriana was walking through the hospital. She had to have been hiding somewhere, and I happened to know that the security control room was in the basement.

Kai held up his hand, pulling out a device from his pocket that looked like a signal jammer.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Adriana laughed, but I was sure she’d stop being so obnoxiously confident once she couldn’t watch our every move any longer.

“Not quite.” I had an idea, but I couldn’t be sure unless she confirmed it.

“What—” She sounded panicked now, so I supposed the signal jammer worked. “Did you seriously turn off the cameras?!”

Kai gave me a smug smile, probably calling me stupid in his head for not thinking about bringing one. Well, unlike Kai, I wasn’t walking around with tons of usually useless equipment on me.

I wondered what other kinds of gadgets he was hiding in his millions of pockets. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had RDX, C-4, and hand grenades in his jacket.

“I swear, if you don’t put them back on”—a loud thud came through the phone, and I suppose Adriana hit the dashboard of the displays to get a picture—“you’ll never see that girl of yours ever again, Luca.”

“If you hurt Sterlie or Flora, you’ll regret that more than being responsible for this boring little action here.”

We rounded the corner to the stairwell, passing by a window and seeing how my family was successfully rescuing people. There were tons of ambulances outside, probably to transfer those patients who needed medical attention that they couldn’t get here right now. And to take care of those who got hurt.

Yet despite my family clearly running in and out of the building without anything happening, the police did nothing. They were standing on the sidelines, watching, and talking to the news reporters. They were probably making my brothers and cousins out to be part of the police’s team—undercover cops or something. Those cowards.

As we made our way down, I stayed on the phone with Adriana but she wasn’t talking anymore. I could hear heavy breathing, some frustrated thuds, and something that sounded like she was dragging the barrel of a gun over a wooden surface.

When Kai and I reached the basement, we learned that it was larger than we expected. There was unused medical equipment standing in the way, halls that appeared longer than the top floor ones, and door after door. It didn’t smell nearly as hygienic down here as it did upstairs, but it wasn’t bad, either, except for the slight hint of something metallic in the air.

It could’ve been the rusty hospital beds, any of the other equipment, or blood. Perhaps all of them.

I hung up the phone just to minimize the direction Adriana’s noises came from.

The rooms didn’t have any displays like the ones upstairs, no indication as to which one was the security control room. Even if they did, Adriana could’ve snuck into a different room while Kai and I made our way down here. It would’ve taken too long to check every single room, so we had to trust our intuition and the few noises we could hear.

---