Valentine Strain

Chapter 4: Inmates

The search had been fruitless.

Every door, except for the ones they've already been in, where either locked or missing. The mansion seemed to mock them, reveling in their plight. Lex was right. This place had changed.

"R.C.P.D! Is anyone home?" Lex yells in the foyer, more out of impatience than procedure, shattering the silence of the foyer.

She gets a slight hint of an echo but a response other than her own voice would have been preferred.

"We haven't checked the back," Scottie says.

They decide not to waste any more time.

To the left of the stairs was an arch leading down a hall. A few paces beyond Scottie notices a heavily ornamented door. Something stood out amongst the bronze roses and vines that adorned it, a chilling detail that marred its beauty.

"Look," Scottie says.

"The Dining Hall" Lex responds.

The doorknob was smeared with blood, fresh and dripping, a macabre invitation.

Whoever it belonged to, it was still fresh. Lex forces a deep breath, hoping to whatever god was out there it didn't belong to someone she knew.

They unholster their firearms and make eye contact.

Knowing what they have to do in situations like these, Lex takes point and breaches the door, her gun leading the way to an unseen threat. She aims to her right. Scottie takes her flank and covers her left.

The sight that greeted them was a tableau of abandonment and desolation. An empty dining hall stretched out before them, its grandeur a ghost of celebrations past. A long table, capable of hosting a score, lay under a stretched white sheet, untouched by time or company. The only sounds were the relentless ticking of a grandfather's clock and the soft dance of flames in the fireplace, their light casting shadows on the walls.

Scottie's warning halted Lex's motion to holster her weapon. "Hold on. We still don't know where that blood came from." The unease in his voice was palpable, and Lex agreed, keeping her firearm at the ready.

"The food must have been bomb though," Scottie says with a wink.

"Really?" Lex says, "We're doing this right now?"

She couldn't help but roll her eyes at his attempt at humor, but also couldn't deny the truth in his words. The meals they had shared with Talia, filled with laughter and burgeoning sibling dynamic, seemed like a distant memory in this haunted hall.

Most of the time, breakfasts, lunches and dinners were just between Talia and Lex. The crew joined in occasionally but that was only if Jodie wasn't around. Most of the time, Jodie was away if she wasn't in her office.

Which Talia was ecstatic for. She finally had someone around her age to chat with while eating.
She also learned a lot about the people who worked for her, hearing mind-blowing truths for the first time. A perplexing notion since she always thought of herself as grounded and approachable.

The one time Jodie managed to join them was right before Talia's upcoming eighteenth birthday where the stakes for a seventeen-year-old couldn't be much higher.

Lex had been plotting something and was going to convince Jodie no matter what.

Jodie had already made plans of her own to invite guests, acquaintances, and family friends to the mansion.

Lex's argument, however, was that Talia needed to get out. To see normal people. In fact, the girl was dying to get out.

She had agreed, without protest, to play big sister to Talia. A task she's grown to enjoy and intended to make the most out of.