“So you think Desiree’s been captured and being held in this asylum—in this other plane?” Anna asked, finally speaking up as her color returned.
“And you want our help to break her out?” Eli added.
“I’m not asking for your help. It’s going to be a dangerous path,” I said, trying to suppress a large lump in my throat. “I just thought you deserved to know the truth. And if I don’t come back, then you can tell Mr. Gordon where I went.”
“Why aren’t you going with him? Wouldn’t he be a big help?” Anna asked.
“He seems to think he can’t even do this.”
“And you think you can?” Eli’s skepticism returned.
“I don’t know, but I’ve gotta try,” I said, tired of always having to defend my actions.
“I’m going with you,” Anna said with sudden conviction.
“No!” Eli snapped.
She turned to him and explained why she felt she needed to do this. The ensuing argument brought tears to her eyes. Eli dropped his face into his hands and growled, and then combed his fingers all the way through his shaggy hair. He cracked his neck, bit his lower lip, and blew out a lungful of air like he was expelling a demon.
“I’m not letting you go alone,” he finally said with a disheartened intensity in his eyes. “I just wanna say though that I don’t approve of this plan. But I’m not gonna sit back and do nothing. For you,” he said to Anna. “And for Desiree.” Eli looked back at me. “Not for you.”
“Understood,” I said.
When I suggested we all join hands to transition over, Eli almost walked off. I assured him I was getting no pleasure from this and the faster he’d commit, then the faster we’d get there. He reluctantly agreed after a few insistent words from Anna and grabbed my hand like he wanted to rip it from my arm.
On my first transition, I found myself sitting in the grass alone. On the second, Anna made it through with me. Luckily, we were right next to a hospital in case her heart didn’t start back up. Her heart had come to a screeching halt. Her breathing stopped and her mouth hung open.
“I believed what you were saying, but…” she stumbled as she finally regained a breath.
“But you don’t really know until you see it for yourself.” I was beginning to sound like Mr. Gordon.
“Exactly,” she said, her head turning and craning as far as it could possibly go.
I told her to stay in that spot while I returned for Eli. He was an even tougher customer without the assisted coaxing of Anna, but I warned him that if he didn’t help me out, then he’d never make it through. I wasn’t jerking him around. He needed the calm and focus to allow me to take him through. And with Anna already there, he didn’t want to be left behind.
We clasped hands and I closed my eyes again, instructing him to do the same. It wasn’t until I heard the gleeful squeal of Anna while still feeling Eli’s hand in mine that I knew we were through. I had transitioned a bigger doubting Thomas than myself, and that was quite an accomplishment.
Eli’s eyes were opened. He didn’t have quite as dramatic of an expression on his face as he took in his new surroundings, but I felt like he was deliberately holding back his awe.
“I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” Eli said.
“Right?” Anna exclaimed.
“Count yourself lucky that you weren’t hit by a car your first time through like I was,” I said, pointing across the river, to the roaring highway. “That’s where we live and that’s where I transitioned the first time, right in the middle of the freeway. Not pleasant. Fortunately for me, their medical facilities are ridiculously more advanced than ours. Also, see the river?”
They both nodded.
“That’s the ravine back home. Crazy, isn’t it?”
Anna pointed to the distance at the shimmering buildings shooting up into the purple clouds. The sunlight was fading fast. “And that’s the city, isn’t it?”
“Provex City,” I said. “It’s something else.”
“How far is it from here?”
“About forty miles or so.”
Anna shook her head in disbelief. This wasn’t real life anymore; we had fallen into a fantasy world to them.
My shock had worn off now with my multiple exploits into the city. It was very much real. Provex City, this whole plane, the powerful Lorne family with all their secrets—all were very much real. And now, we were about to find out if this mysterious asylum actually existed, or if it would be our first revelation of fantasy.
While Anna continued to gaze out at the city, I noticed Eli surveying the close cluster of buildings behind us. The hum from the freeway lessened any sound coming from the medical facility.
“Is that where we’re headed?” he asked.
I nodded. “The asylum has to be in there somewhere. Desiree has to be in there.”
Anna brought her attention back to us. We stood up in unison, gazing upon our future, our fate, and possibly our tomb—though I didn’t want to say anything close to that aloud. I didn’t even want to think it, but the possibility kept clawing its way into the back of my mind. I had told Anna and Eli a lot, but they really didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. Hell, I barely knew. All I knew for certain was my determination to get Desiree back drove me like nothing had ever driven me before. More than my desire had been to find Jeremy. More than my desire to find my father. I yearned to see Desiree again like I yearned to stay alive. I would do anything, though the two yearnings may be diametrically opposed now.
We became cast in shadows as the sun sank behind an overgrown tree close to us. The blue buildings of O.P.C. Medical Facility seemed all the more bright as the last of the daylight was pushed back to the end of the earth.
“Do you really think she’s in there?” Nero whispered in my ear.
“I don’t know, but it’s all I got right now,” I said, speaking more in my own head than aloud.
Nero still seemed to hear me. “There are no signs for this so called SUSY Asylum. It’s not on the map.”
“It’s probably not really called that. The Psych building, perhaps?”
“It’s on the far side of 4C.”
“Then I’ll follow you there,” I said.
“What did you say?” Anna asked, turning to give me an inquisitive look.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I know where she is and we’re going to break her out.”
“How is it you suddenly know?” Eli asked, his skeptical tone turning to fearful for the first time.
“The voice in my head tells me we’re in the right spot,” I said and led the way into the closest building—Building 4C.
20
O.P.C. Medical
I almost forgot to warn Anna and Eli that the tinted doors leading into the building wouldn’t open. I passed through and looked back at both of them standing right outside the door like they were locked out. I went back out and coaxed them through, promising that passing through the doors didn’t require any special skill.
“Let’s try not to arouse suspicion,” I said once we were all in Building 4C.
We had entered the Maternity Center. The building didn’t look much different than the hospitals back home or the hospital where I had awaken in Provex City, but I already knew the treatments were nothing like back home. Not many people occupied the waiting area, but those who did sat with jittery impatience. Women at the admissions desk sat behind tinted glass much like the front doors. They could reach through to give and receive a computer tablet, which I presumed took the place of our archaic paperwork for patient records. As an arm reached through the tinted window, the arm drastically lightened like it was moving from shade to sunshine.
We passed through the waiting area and down the hall with the purpose of people who belonged. Most people we saw gave us a first glance, but none gave us a second. The bright florescent lights washed over everything, leaving no shadows in sight—nowhere to hide. The doors we passed on either side of the hallway had either th
e tinted, translucent look, or appeared like solid white extensions of the walls, only noticeable by their thin door frame. Even the opaque doors had no knobs or handles and reminded me of when Jeremy had taken me to Kafka’s penthouse. The door had been opaque at first and then faded, which seemed to be the signal to walk through. How was the fade activated for these?
“You don’t need to worry about that because you can walk through walls, remember?” Nero whispered in my ear.
“Yeah, but they can’t,” I said, referring to Anna and Eli. I hadn’t brought them all the way here to abandon them. “This is still the best way?”
“The most direct.” I couldn’t tell if it was wise to be following his instruction, but at least he was giving me sane directions and wasn’t spewing random obscenities. His voice was now calm and almost reminded me of when I could talk to TJ.
Pregnant women in wheelchairs were pushed by, holding their stomachs, and new mothers were pushed by, holding car seats with newborns asleep inside. Men on their own paced the hallways or ran past on emergency errands. They were too consumed by their present situations to even notice our existence at all.
Nero led us out of the Maternity Center and into a central courtyard between the buildings with stone paths, fountains, benches, and groomed shrubbery. Very few people were outside in the now dark air. The paths had ankle-high lights placed along the walkways. But the buildings themselves generated enough surrounding light to see clearly.
“This doesn’t look like the kind of place someone would be held hostage,” Eli said as we made our way to an adjacent building.
“No, it doesn’t,” I answered. “The beauty of this whole plane can be deceiving. Trust me on that one.”
Anna brought up the rear, dragging her feet with her arms folded across her chest. I glanced back to make sure she was okay, but she didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, her eyes continually darted around at her new surroundings.
Building 8A was the next building we entered: the Psychiatric Center, just as Nero had said. The nurses at the admissions desk didn’t look over as we passed. They simply continued to talk amongst themselves. The only way farther into the building seemed to be through a hallway-sized opaque door—restricting just anyone from entering the Psych ward. I knew the door wasn’t going to just let me through, but that I could pass through it like a regular wall. Without breaking stride, I grabbed a hand from both Anna and Eli, instructed them to close their eyes, and led us through the door like it wasn’t even there.
“Don’t stop. Don’t look back. We need to keep going,” I said when they reopened their eyes to find themselves in a long hallway. Eli pulled his hand away immediately, but Anna kept hers snuggly in mine.
“I’m really not big on holding your hand,” Eli growled.
“If you’d rather, I could have left you back there.”
The white maze of hallways seemed never-ending. Almost all the doors were opaque—or closed. And this building was lacking almost any activity. The thought of us being the only ones roaming the halls made me nervous, but I tried my best to keep my anxiety hidden for the sake of the others in my group.
We then turned down a hallway only to find a petite female doctor quickly approaching.
“Visiting hours are already over for today, children,” she said upon reaching our location and stopping us immediately. “And even despite the late hour, it is required that each of you have a visitor’s badge.” She examined us closely for what I assumed should be clipped-on badges and an explanation.
“She’s not going to let you wander the halls,” Nero whispered.
“We were just on our way out,” I said. “Don’t worry about us, we know the way.” I tried to brush past her, but she grabbed my arm.
“Then you would know that the way out is in this direction,” the young doctor said and pulled me backwards until I obediently turned around. She escorted us through the halls we had recently walked through without saying anything further. After one more turn, I could see the door from where we had first entered, but from this direction I could see the waiting area darkly tinted. The door wasn’t opaque from this side.
“Dr. Aguilera, please report to room 1104 immediately. Dr. Aguilera, please report to room 1104 immediately,” a soothing voice said over the intercom.
The doctor stopped, looking at us and then at the doorway ahead. “The exit is right through that door. I trust you can make it the rest of the way on your own.” She waited a moment to watch us head toward the door before hurrying off to answer the call.
As soon as she rounded the corner, we stopped and turned around.
“Are you sure we should still be here?” Anna asked.
“I never expected this to be easy,” I said. “We need to hurry before we’re stopped again.”
Eli nodded and glanced over at Anna. “Are you still good with this? If not, we can still go home.”
“No!” Anna declared. “I’m not leaving without Desiree.”
We retraced our steps through the intersecting hallways and I looked for anything that looked different than the rest of the building. The halls were as quiet as a sarcophagus, but I didn’t want to jinx our luck at the last moment. Yet all the hallways looked the same. Each new waiting room looked like the last. I took it that this was a building that either wasn’t used much or was new and hadn’t been fully transitioned yet…or it was a building simply for show.
“This place is a ghost town,” Anna whispered.
“We can’t be in the right place,” Eli added.
I wasn’t feeling good about our current location myself. Each new hallway we turned down felt more hopeless then the last.
“I don’t think your friend is here,” Nero said as we passed another empty nurse’s station.
I peeked into room after room, most of them with nothing but untouched furniture and shut-off machines, and some less than that—bare rooms or patient rooms being used for storage. Maybe we were in the wrong place.
The next waiting room we passed was bustling with life—nurses behind the counter, and doctors talking and working around them. We jumped back, each of us pressed up against the wall in a line. I had spotted the doctor who’d stopped us earlier amongst them.
I gestured for the others to follow me and we made a run for it when no one was looking. Hoping we had made it to the other side of the waiting room entrance unnoticed, we hightailed it down the hall and around another corner. I continued checking the rooms as we passed, but each one was as empty as the last. When we came across an alcove of elevators, Anna stopped.
“Maybe we should try another floor,” she said.
I looked down both ways of the empty hallway and figured it was worth a shot.
The elevator doors were clear and bowed outward, but the rest of the capsules leading up were hidden behind the walls. I randomly picked one of the four and led Anna and Eli through, who were now moving through the semi-permeable glass more confidently. Now the question was: where to start looking? What floors were available? I hadn’t counted them from the outside; I could tell there were at least five or six.
“Excuse me,” said a voice from behind us.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the doctor from before, with a tablet cradled in one hand and the other placed firmly upon her hip.
“I believe I escorted you all out earlier,” she said in an exasperated tone. “Come with me, your snooping shall not go unnoticed any longer.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could get my vocal chords to comply, I thought of the third floor and we instantly shot up. I figured skipping a floor would at least buy us a little bit of time. The good doctor would probably have people looking for us on the second floor before making their way to the third, or start at the top and work down. They wouldn’t start in the middle.
We turned down a similarly empty hallway and skidded to a stop at the echo of a voice coming from around the next corner.
“No, Dr. Aguilera, I don’t see anyone,” said a d
eep male voice. “But I’ll make a third-floor sweep.”
We sprinted in the opposite direction, away from the incoming staff member, but I knew we weren’t going to make it to the next hallway before he rounded the corner to see our panicked escape.
“Quick, in here,” I said, sliding to a stop and pushing through the nearest opaque door.
Anna and Eli both crashed into the door like I had slammed it in their faces. Hoping I could manage it in one try, I reached out and pulled them safely through the door.
“Why can’t this place have regular doors,” Eli complained, rubbing his nose.
We found ourselves in an electrical room the size of a large closet. Wires and pipes and machines chugged away at a grinding volume. The stuffiness of the room made me begin to sweat immediately. The only light came from a few small electronically lit screens positioned on the machines and the wall near the door. It was just enough light to make out each other’s faces like we were sitting around a dying campfire and to see how far the room extended, which was not more than an arm’s length in any direction. The other thing that became apparent after a moment’s assessment of the room was there was no other door besides the one we had already come through.
“Now what?” I said over the loud hum of the machinery.
Anna and Eli looked at me dumbfounded, like it should be obvious that they weren’t going to be able to produce an answer. But unbeknownst to them, I wasn’t talking to them—I was talking to Nero.
“Maybe you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist,” Nero said. “Perhaps it’s time you came to The Line. Your friends can come, too. Everyone’s welcome.”
“Who said that?” Anna flinched and drew closer to Eli.
“Yeah, I heard it, too,” Eli said.
“That’s Nero, my mirror—the voices I mentioned earlier. If we’re here long enough, then we’ll hear yours as well. Don’t listen to them if they talk,” I said, thinking of the first time I had heard the unnerving voice.
“Like you’re not listening to me now?” Nero retorted.
SUSY Asylum Page 23
