Page 12 of The Darkest Half

“Lysandra. But all I heard was the name. A name like that tends to stick out.”

Hmm…he sure is helpful. Though, he does have a gun on him.

We stop in the hall outside the door, and the orderly fumbles with the keys dangling from his belt loop.

“Wait,” Vara says and moves him aside. She pushes up on her toes to peer into the small plexiglass window set within the heavy metal door. I keep my gun trained on the orderly.

This floor is different from floors one and two—this place is more like a prison. It becomes apparent that the residents housed on this floor are more dangerous to themselves and others. It’s to be expected, being a psychiatric ward.

“There’s one man inside,” Vara says. “And either he’s asleep or drugged. Better hope it’s sleep, or we aren’t getting anything out of him.”

I look to the orderly for confirmation.

“I don’t administer drugs,” he says. “Only the nurses do that, and I have no idea when they drug whom. Want me to unlock the door or not?” He stands there with the keys, waiting.

Vara and I exchange a look; we nod at one another, and then I nod to the orderly, giving him the go-ahead.

He finds the right key and works it into the lock. The door clicks open, and we step inside.

“Joseph Bilk?” I say. “We need you to wake up.”

No answer.

Reluctant to get closer to him, seeing as how he might be dangerous, I resist the urge to kick his bed or, at the very least, shake it with my foot.

“Joseph Bilk, I need to speak with you,” I try again. “Get up now.”

Still no answer. He doesn’t even move.

This room smells of bleach and vomit, making my stomach roil. I swallow and try not to take too deep of breaths.

“Mr. Bilk! Hey, I’m talking to you!”

“He can’t hear you,” a voice says from behind.

I turn sharply to see a blond-haired woman standing in the doorway, several men behind her.

Lysandra Hollis. Shit.

Vara fires her gun, the shot deafening me in the small, enclosed space, but Lysandra is quicker. Everything happens too fast for me to keep up. One moment I’m standing in the room; the next, I’m on the floor, slipping in a bright crimson pool of Vara’s blood. The scuffle between Lysandra and me is brief, and between our punches, I hear two more shots in some other part of the building, far off, muffled, but distinct.

Right before I’m knocked out cold, I remember thinking of my now-dead associates, Vara and Rayna, and how I wish I had never brought them to this place with me.

When I wake up hours later, it is dark outside. My head is still dizzied from the blow and some kind of drug I was injected with; it takes a moment to steady my vision. I’m in a familiar room. Small and sterile-white. There is no bed, no furniture of any kind, no toilet or sink; just four too-close walls and a high ceiling above me with a single elongated fluorescent light fixture. But the room is bathed in blue-black darkness; the only light is from the moon shining through the tiny box window covered by thick, unbreakable glass.

Am I still in the mental institution, in my very own third-floor cell?

Slowly, I lift my back from the hard floor, and my vision doubles and triples before leveling out. I feel nauseous, probably the remnants of the drug fading from my veins. I look down at my hands and my ankles, relieved to find them unbound, but that means there’s no other way out of this room besides the heavy metal door locked from the outside.

But I’m still alive, and the only fact I can garner from my predicament is that I’m here for the same reason Niklas had been. To lure Victor Faust.

“I would say it’s good to see you, but you shouldn’t have come here, Izzy.”

I turn so quickly that my head dizzies again from the movement, but I don’t let it stop my train of thought, even for a second. I see a booted foot sticking out from the shadow in the room's darkest corner. I follow the length of the leg, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness to see a face, partially hidden in the shadow. He sits in the corner with the back of his head resting against the wall.

“Niklas…”

5

---