by Elen Chase
"But the sect wasn't over," commented Sean.
"No," said Miller, "we realized immediately there was something wrong, because no news came out about the fire at the villa, but we tried to hide it from Dan. He found out about two months later. He tricked a nurse into letting him use his watchpad for a while and went on the internet, looking for some information on Shallie and Robinson. He requested to be discharged in a rush, said nothing to me, and almost ran away from here. I don't know what he was planning to do, but that's when he met you, Andrew."
Hearing him say my name was like receiving a slap in the face. I was still trying to process what he had just told me. Shallie drank that poison hoping to save Dan. He feels responsible for it. She died in his arms. When he found out that there were still other members of the sect, that it wasn't over, he left this place. That's when we met.
So he didn't already know all the things we found out together; he used me to get to this point, to figure out more about the way the sect operates and who its other members are.
And what are you gonna do now? Is it possible that you want to do everything on your own again? It was my fault. Because I was weak, you decided to bear it on your back alone once again. You don't want it to happen again. You don't want anyone else to die, and you don't want me to endure the same remorse that you're feeling.
But what's gonna be of you after this?
Chapter 67.a
Please, don't drink it. Don't give your life for me. Even if I live, he will never let me go. He will torture me, every day, until I lose my head completely and even after that.
"You've been running around too much, Ian. I think the first thing I'll do will be taking your legs. So you'll never leave me again."
Don't do it, Shallie. Mine is not a life worth saving.
I look around and I can see only darkness. Where am I? Maybe I died in the end?
"Dan, Dan, can you hear me?" Bart's voice is calling me, somewhere close to here, but I can't see him. "Get up, Dan, take Shallie away from this place. I'll cover for you." No, you should be the one to run away; you have a family, you can't risk your life like this. "And I should leave you here? No way I'm letting you die in this place." Why? I'm not scared of dying. "Dan, do you know what it’s like to laugh with your friends like you were drunk without drinking a drop of alcohol? Do you know what it’s like to love someone? Do you know what it’s like to look back at your efforts and say ‘I did it!’? You don't know, Dan, because you stopped living when you were fourteen. I think you deserve to find out." I don't want you to die. "Who said I'm gonna die? I have no intention to die, you know. And you promised to come to my wedding, don't you dare forget that."
But you did die. Both you and Shallie. I try to scream, but no voice comes out of my mouth.
"Dan, what will it be like when we go back?" I've lived this agony a hundred times. How many times do I have to see you die again?
"You'll feel like you've never left. All of this will be just a bad dream."
Even though I can’t speak, lies come out like it's nothing.
You'll never come back, Shallie.
"Everything is gonna go back like it was, right?"
It's not.
"Yes, you'll be fine. Your family is waiting for you. Drew too," I'm sorry. "They'll be so happy when they see you again."
They won't.
"I feel sleepy… Is it okay if I sleep for a while?"
"Yeah… When you wake up, you will be home." You'll never open your eyes again. "Rest well, so that you can greet everyone with a big smile." Forgive me.
"Dan… thank you."
Don't thank me.
It was all my fault.
I opened my eyes suddenly, covered in sweat and with my heart pounding strong. It took me some time to remember where I was. The first light of day was coming in through the window of my room in Bill's apartment in Pholis. Next to me, Drew was sleeping like a baby. I looked at him and finally realized that it had really happened: we had spent the night together. I didn’t expect it at all; we hadn't talked to each other in almost a month, and that night I went back home rather depressed, after I had rejected Bill. I didn't realize my psychological condition was so precarious. It wasn't the first time that it happened to me since I had left the rehabilitation center. Whenever somebody touched me and tried to undress me, I got flashbacks of that man's touch on me, and I would reject them immediately, terrified.
Only with Drew things were different. As he touched me, I found myself wishing he would take me, no matter how much it could hurt. I wanted him to let me forget all the things that man did with my body, and I wanted to give him everything I had left. It was my own choice, and yet I had so many emotions fighting inside of me. I felt happy and excited, but also scared and humiliated. Overwhelmed by the total confusion messing up my head, I had been crying all night with my face buried in the pillow, hoping he was drunk enough not to see. As I woke up naked next to him, a suffocating sense of guilt took control of me. What the hell was I doing? I shouldn't have let it happen. How could I do that to Shallie? And how could I do that to him, after all the lies I had been feeding him? I was growing weaker again: the same weakness that made me rely too much on Bart, the same weakness that killed him and Shallie.
How many times was I about to get on my knees and confess everything to Drew? With much effort, I held back every single time. I didn't want him to die or get hurt because of my inability to finish what I had started. I planned to watch over him from a distance and make sure that reality wouldn't do to him what it did to me. And then the simple act of being with him, of being able to admire his courage, his smile, the way he was naturally drawing people to him, making them want to help him, got me closer to him. So close I wished I could touch him.
When our lips touched for the first time, I forced myself to stay still, to hide from him all I held inside, one more time. I tried to pretend it was nothing for me. I even let Bill kiss me that very night, as to prove to myself I wasn't really so tied to him.
But it was just another lie that I was telling myself. Shallie's death broke me into a thousand pieces, and every time he looked into my eyes, he was slowly putting me together. I loved it, and it was cruel and unfair that he was helping me carry on; me, the one that was the very cause of his suffering.
I want to be with him. Yet I want to leave.
I want to apologize. But I don't want him to forgive me.
I got dressed and went out before he woke up, and I walked by the sea shore alone for hours. I decided I should never do that again. Whomever Drew was attracted to, it wasn't the real me; my lies built an image of me in his eyes that was nothing but a facade, a projection of what I was seven years before. A part of me was tempted to use it to be close to him, even just temporarily, until the sect was finally over.
But what after that? I was tired, tired of myself, of my lies, of my nightmares. I wanted to disappear into some place far, far away, forgotten by everybody. The restless, seeming calm of the ocean had never been so inviting.
Chapter 67.b
"Thank you, Dr. Miller," I said when we finished our talk about Dan.
"What are you going to do now that you know the truth?" he asked me, clearly worried for him.
"I'll talk to him," I said. "I have a lot to tell him, and he will have to listen to me. Until now he did everything on his own; he decided what to tell me and what to hide from me, and he decided he had to protect me instead of trying to have trust in me. I made a lot of mistakes with him, and he made a lot of mistakes with me. It's time to sort things out now."
"I see," he said. "I wish you good luck, Andrew."
"Thank you."
Sean and I left the center, and I was aware he was making an effort not to stare at me. "Sean, can we stop by the sea for a while?" I said. We walked to the seashore, where tourists were now enjoying their summer vacation.
"Drew, are you alright?" he asked me.
"I'm fine," I replied, lost in my thoughts. "He used
to come often here, just to walk by the sea. I wish I had done it with him. I wish I had just asked him more about his feelings. I wish I had tried to know him better.”
"You can do it next time," he said. "You said you want him back, didn't you?"
"I did," I replied, "but after I talk to him, I'll make him choose."
"Choose what?"
"What about you?" I changed the subject. "You don't hate him anymore?"
"I… all those things seem completely insane to me. I wonder if there was something else he could have done right from the start, instead of throwing away his life like that. But no, I don't hate him."
"He could have done many things differently, that's for sure… but it doesn't matter, because what's done is done." I thought again of that fucking bastard who hurt him and killed Shallie, and I kicked a rock into the water. "Fuck!" I screamed, then I covered my eyes with my hands and tried to calm down. I needed to escape into the darkness for a while.
"Drew," Sean nicely put his hand on my shoulder.
"I'll stop them," I said. "The whole world has to know who they are and what they've done. If this City has to fall because of that, I want it to crash hard." I uncovered my eyes and said, "I have a plan."
Chapter 68
The best solution to reach our goal with no losses and minimum risk was to infiltrate the bunker beforehand and hide a camera in it; this way it would record their ritual and stream it online on the major social networks and blogs available, thanks to Sean’s help. Information might be controlled, but nobody can stop something that goes viral on the internet. Journalists and police officers would soon be on site, and they wouldn’t have any other choice but intervene and stop them. Of course, infiltrating the bunker before also proved itself fundamental to helping the police forces get inside in time to save the victim. After that, the government would have a choice: try to deny the evidence, stand for the sect, disappoint the public opinion and risk a motion of no confidence; or try to save face, condemn them and uncover everything. All of this, considering that I already had all the intention to provide the journalists with the evidence they needed to bring the scandal to a worldwide level.
"I said there will be no losses, but it all depends on the success of infiltrating the bunker and placing the camera. It’s a one-shot chance. One mistake and it will be over; more people will die and they’ll be unreachable for another seven years, in which they’ll search for those of us who’ll survive and have them killed with all the proof destroyed. So I’ll do it. I started all of this, and I’ll bring this plan to its very end with my own hands. I don’t want to hear any ‘buts’; I just ask you to support me until that moment comes and to run away from this city as far and as fast as you can if the plan fails," I said when I finished explaining my plan to the others.
"I understand the sentiment, but you’re sure you can do it?" Bill asked me.
"I couldn’t be more sure." I looked at him without a blink. "It has to be me."
"I don’t think we’d have any chance to stop him, and even if we wanted to, Drew is really the best person who could do it," said Sean. "He’s the one who knows this sect better, he’s fought with the soldier, and he’s the most determined to bring this plan to success."
"I agree, I have nothing to complain about," said Jim. "The problem is how you get inside unnoticed. They’ll have their own surveillance cameras there, a blinded door with a security code to enter, and I am being optimistic. The door might have a voice recognition system, digital fingerprint or even a retina recognition system. When you were busy with your love problems, we went through a lot of trouble even to get close enough to verify if there was really a bunker in that place."
"And how did you do it in the end?" I asked.
"We had to get quite a piece of tech ourselves which allowed us to scan the soil and map the underground area. It cost me a fortune," said Jim.
"Just admit you’ve always wanted to buy that. We would have found another solution eventually," said Bill.
"Whatever," said Jim.
"About the surveillance cameras, once we hack the system I can block them easily; I know an old trick that allows you to display the same image over and over so you could go in unnoticed," said Sean.
"That's great," I said, "and can you do anything for the door code?"
"Let me think… I'd exclude the idea of the retina or fingerprint recognition system. That bunker is old, renovation work would attract too much attention on it, and a system based on his own or his family members' fingerprints wouldn't allow the other members to go in alone. And if you think about it, it's not like they're gonna go there all together happily like they're about to do a picnic; they'll go separately, with a certain time distance between one another."
"That makes sense. So it's just another code to crack," I said.
"Yes and no," he explained. "Until now we've deciphered their messages because they were simple references to the book. But this is a security code, it's a series of meaningless numbers and digits; there's no way we can simply figure it out or crack it."
"Maybe he'll send it to them," I said.
"If he does, it would be encrypted."
"We can decipher it."
"We'd need the key, and we're not even sure he'll send it to them," said Sean again. He wasn't giving us good news but he seemed calm, so I was sure he had some sort of idea.
"So what do we do?" I asked.
"We'll go there twice. The first time we'll put a micro-camera in a position that will allow us to read the code when they go in. The second time we'll remove it from there to place it inside the room of the ritual."
"You need one that’s almost invisible. Does something like that even exist?" asked Jim.
"It does," said Sean. "It just costs a fortune."
"You're not gonna use my money again, are you?"
"Come on," said Sean, "this is not the time to be greedy."
"Damn the day I got involved with you," said Jim, but he immediately looked it up on the internet.
"Thanks, Jim" I said. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't for them. All of them. How did Dan get to this point alone last time? I admired his courage, and at the same time I was angry at him for not trusting me and at myself for not being worth his trust.
"Drew," Sara slowly called my name, while the others were still playing around and discussing about the price of the camera, and she seemed worried. "Your plan is good, but… if Dan is with them, wouldn't he be in trouble too?"
I put my forehead on hers and passed her curly hair by my fingers. "Don't worry," I reassured her. "Whatever might happen, he won't get arrested with them."
"You will bring him back, won't you?"
"I… I won't leave him alone ever again."
"Drew..."
"So, it's set," said Bill, interrupting our conversation. "You'll infiltrate that place on your own, twice."
"No problem," I said calmly.
"Guys, it's an emergency!" shouted Nick, rushing in the room, his face flushed.
"What's wrong?" Bill stood up, ready to act.
"That poison maker escaped!"
"What?" Jim and I spoke at the same time. "How?" asked Jim.
"We don't know. Our monitors and cameras are broken to pieces," replied Nick nervously.
"Let's go take a look," said Bill, keeping his cool.
Bill, Jim, Sean and I were headed to the casino where we were keeping Cruise. We accessed their reserved area, just to find all the cameras and monitors completely destroyed like Nick had said.
"It's only the cameras on Cruise's floor, in the elevator and by the exit," commented Bill. "Somebody got him out of here. Somebody who knew the way well." He didn't say his name, but everybody was thinking about Dan.
"What can we do now?" I asked.
"First of all, we’ll have a talk with the owner of this place to ask if we can check his security cameras too, the ones on the outside of the building," said Jim. "As for Cruise, there's nothing to do."
I looked at Bill, who seemed to be thinking deeply, in silence. I wondered if he had understood something he wasn't telling us. "Sean, I want you to take a look at those broken cameras with Martin, maybe some of them have still something recorded," he said at last, and he brought Sean with him to another room.
"So, it seems you'll be meeting the boss of this place with me," Jim told me, and he led the way outside of their private area to the main entrance of the casino. "I don't like this guy," he said. "He's irritating. But I think that your presence here will make it amusing."
"What's that about?"
"You'll find out when we meet him," he told me. We walked to the front desk and Jim showed the receptionist a pass. "Tell him it's urgent." I tried to hide my nervousness. That was the guy Dan negotiated with when Jim's sister was kidnapped: a man so powerful even Jim wasn't completely comfortable around him.
"He can meet you right away, please follow me," said the receptionist, and she led us to the elevator. She passed an electronic card on the elevator display, then pressed a sequence of numbers, and it started going up. The door opened to an elegant hallway in traditional western style, which was rich but sober compared to the luxury Jim was used to. I could feel why he didn't like him. Particularly, on the furniture style, that guy was definitely winning. We turned around a corner, and as I saw the painting hanging on the wall, I completely froze on the spot.
