Page 30 of The Darkest Half

Niklas and I lay back down to better see the screen.

Nora, Osiris, and Hestia hurry down another hallway, stopping only long enough to stealthily peer around the corner at the end, and then they dart out and start running again. They check all the doors on both sides of the hall, but not one opens, and there are no windows to see inside the rooms.

“She has no idea what floor we’re on,” I say as they enter another stairwell and continue up to the next floor.

“This is too reckless even for Nora,” Niklas points out. “Why would she go into a building of this size not knowing what floor we’re located on?”

“I want to know how she knew what building we were in,” I say. My head falls to the side, and I look at Niklas. “She wouldn’t have been wasting time keeping tabs on either of us, Nik, so that can only mean one thing.” I look back at the screen.

“Yeah,” he says, “Victor sent her here.”

My heart speeds up in record time, and I press my hand to my chest as if to steady it and catch my breath. This means Victor knows where we are! He knows we were captured, and he—wait. Why did he send Nora? And why the hell does he have contact with her and not anybody else—not me?! It’s not jealousy that provokes me suddenly, but outright anger.

“He sends Nora but doesn’t come himself?” I ask out loud.

“It is a little fucked up,” Niklas says. “But maybe it’s just that she’s closer.”

I shake my head against the floor, keeping my eyes trained on Nora running down hallways with the Stone siblings in tow. “No,” I say. “We’ve been here for days, and he’s had more than enough time to come. Maybe I’m not being fair because I don’t know the whole story, but you’re right—it is fucked up that he’s not the one here to rescue us.”

“You know what?” Niklas says thoughtfully. “Now that I think about it, more than anything, it’s…odd.”

“Odd?”

“He doesn’t come himself,” he begins, “but sends Nora, along with Osiris and Hestia—all three expendable in Victor’s eyes. They come, without even knowing where to look for us, into a building owned and operated by The Order—I doubt Nora knows that small detail. I don’t know, Izzy, but it kinda feels like a setup.”

“You think he’s using them as…infantry?”

“I don’t know,” he says, his voice distant and focused. “It just feels off—it’s all I got, Izzy.”

Something is off about this whole thing.

I watch the screen with passionate interest, still with a brutal migraine and ever-weakening body.

13

Nora

By the fifteenth floor, I’m beginning to lose hope in finding Izabel and Niklas before someone finds us. Even though it appears that there’s nobody in this damn building anywhere, except on the lobby floor. How is that even possible? Businesses, offices, apartment units, and even a hotel are all within this building’s walls. The coffee shop is still open downstairs, with two baristas working to fill drink orders behind the counter. When we emerged from the stairwell, an employee still had not left the lobby-floor gift shop and slipped past to find another stairwell. But ever since we left the lobby, there’s been no sign of anyone, not even a janitor.

I’m about to beat a cliché to death but looking for Izabel and Niklas in this forty-something-story building is the epitome of a needle in a fucking haystack.

“I don’t think they’re even here,” I tell Osiris and Hestia. “Everything about this feels wrong.”

I stop in the middle of the brightly lit hallway, as empty as the last fourteen.

“Victor didn’t give me anything else to go on,” I ponder. “How does he know she’s here if he doesn’t know where?” I shake my head and pace, now thinking out loud. “No, no, that’s not impossible. It might be his only information; otherwise, he would’ve given me more.”

Osiris laughs. “You sure about that, doll?”

“No, not really.”

“So, then you ready to get outta this place?” Hestia puts in, probably thinking more about waffles. “You should just let that girl die. Ain’t nothin’ but a nuisance, anyway; you said so yourself.”

“I never said that.”

“Well, you have in so many words,” Hestia says.

“I like Izabel,” I defend.

---