Straight after the announcement, I sat up and bolted for the door. On the way out, I bump into Enzo who rushes in. "What's the rush? Couldn't wait to see me?" he asks, still charming in the chaos. He probably thrives in these situations.
"My mom said she was here and Hanzo said he was here because I called him, but I never did. They're probably in the lobby."
I move around him, but Enzo steps in my way again. "If someone is going to die every hour, that means there's a killer in here, Reyna. You're not going by yourself. Actually, you're not going at all."
"Says who?" I challenge, worry consuming me bit by bit.
Enzo reaches behind him and pulls out a pistol. "Says the guy with a gun. And last I checked, you didn't have your crowbar."
"Are you threatening me?" I scrutinize.
"Not at all, sweetheart," he grouches. "But don't you think it's a little sketchy that we're all here when Type just happens to lock us down? That phone call you never made could've been done by Type. He knows something about hacking."
"Someone says hacking?" Makai asks, behind us. "I know a thing or two. There's a computer area in the café here. Get me there and I can see what I can do. Maybe I can get the lines up."
"Reyna," he whispers so Makai can't hear. "This is the smart choice. Stay here with safety," he holds up the gun, "and your brother."
"Enzo, my mom is down there," I stress."I can't just leave her down there."
"I-" Enzo's face gets angry and frustrated as he runs a hand through his dark hair. He huffs and glowers at me. "Fine. You stay up here with everyone else."
"Wait, what are you doing?"
Enzo thrusts the gun into my hand. "I'll check up on your mom, Rey. Get Makai to the café."
"What if there's a killer down there?"
He shrugs in the way that he does – he knows he's "all that" and he glorifies it. "I've got a knife. Don't worry."
Nervously, I laugh. "We're trapped here in a blackout and you're telling me not to worry?"
"Everything will be fine," he promises.
"How do you know?" I ask, searching for any kind of solid relief in this situation.
"Because I..." Enzo shrugs, but this time unsurely; hesitantly. "I just do."
Without another word, he darts out and heads for the stairs. "Okay, then," I sigh to myself. Now, I turn my attention to Kai. "Can you walk?"
"Do I have to?" he grudgingly questions, standing up. "You know I'm lazy, Rey..."
"Alright, I'll take that as a yes, you bum."
Aero charges in the room, blood covering his arms. For a second, I think he's bleeding and injured, or that he's the next target. "Where's my brother?" he hurriedly asks.
"He just left to go downstairs. What's wrong?"
"There's a kid a couple of rooms down. A wound opened and all the nurses are busy helping the more critical patients. Can you help?" he asks.
"Makai, you got it?" I check with him, not wanting to leave him alone.
"Yeah I'm all good, sis," he assures.
I stop dead in my tracks. Does he know? "What?"
"I'm good, Rey. Go ahead and go with Aero. I'll meet you in the café."
Nodding, I say, "Alright," before following Aero to room 4516. "Okay, what's going on?"I ask the patient.
I snatch the clipboard from the slot on the whiteboard with a food schedule. Motorcyclecrash. Patient Oscar "Ozzy" Alvarez, 18, was hit by a car while motorcycling down apopulated street. He's allergic to penicillin. Blah, blah, blah...where's the actual injurycount? I flip a few pages before finding it. There are major parts of his body that sufferroad burns and he's suffered from an arm being fractured in three places. I'm about to askhow one of these wounds could've possibly been the culprit for all the blood on Aero'shands when I notice exactly how his arm broke.
One of his bones pokes out of his tanned skin, protruding right next to a major artery. The cut bleeds a lot but it doesn't gush as much as a severed artery would. Maybe the wallof the artery was only nicked. "What did you do to do this?" I question, examining thebloody arm.
"I sat up using this arm," he moans in pain, gritting his teeth.
"Who the hell sits up using one arm?" I question.
"Reyna!" Aero calls. "Not important."
"Right," I agree. "I think a major artery was nicked. We need to get the bone back in place and slow the bleeding down."
"Slow it down? Why can't you fix it?" Oscar questions, eyes a kaleidoscope of various colours.
"I'm eighteen," I argue. "I don't exactly have my PhD."
"And we don't have any machines to give you a proper X-Ray," Aero supports my position. "So slowing it down is going to have to be okay with you for now."
"So, what? Do we just push the bone back down?" I question, hushed.
"I can hear you," Oscar argues. "But yeah, that's what the nurses did."
Aero and I lock eyes – a silent understanding: let's do this. I brace Oscar's arm whileAero pushes it down. I don't think I'll ever forget the sound of bone scraping boneanytime soon. Oscar's groan turns into a shout as it goes back into place. "I'll hold ittogether, you get some medical wrap," Aero demands.
"On it," I say, already ahead of him, scavenging the drawers as if the identity of the killer would be in there.
"Bottom drawer," Oscar supplies
I drop down to the drawer and yank it open. The contents rattle and spill as I toss outjunk I don't need, desperately searching for the wrap. Finally, my fingers close around thetan spool. "Bingo!" I unravel the material and rapidly circle Oscar's arm, Aero moving hisarms when necessary.
"You said you were eighteen?" Oscar asks, trying to think of something else.
"We both are," I answer, focused on the task at hand...or is it the task at arm?
"You go to Solaris High?"
I nod in response, manoeuvring around Aero's hands.
"I'm transferring there. I was turning onto the road, and I'd never been there before. I didn't see the oncoming traffic lane and – bam! I'm on the ground...bottom line, maybe I'll see you guys around."
Warily, I look at Oscar, unable to say what I'm thinking.
"I mean," he shrugs. "If I make it through the night."
"Yeah, there's that," Aero grumbles.
After I finish wrapping him up, I go to the sink to rinse my hands when I realize there'sno power. No running water, which means..."Is it hot in here or is it just me?" Aeroquestions, fanning his shirt.
"No AC," I explain. "No air, no water, no power, no phones."
"Awesome," Oscar grumbles.
"Aero, you texted me saying you wanted to talk," I change the subject. "Might as well do it now."
Aero hesitates with whatever he was going to say. "It can wait. Where's Makai?"
"I'm supposed to meet him at the café. Can you handle this?" I question.
"Wait, why to the café?" Aero King asks, caramel brows furrowed and pieces of hair swinging in his face.
"Makai's a master hacker. His dad..." my mom's affair. "His dad worked for Adelina's mom with securities. Makai thinks he can work some magic, somehow."
"I'll come with," Oscar cheers. "I'm pretty fine besides the obvious."
"Are you sure, man?" Aero inquires.
Oscar shrugs and stands, barely taller than me. "Totally. Café is this way." Oscar takesthe lead, hair bouncing as he walks. In case you're wondering, his hair is a collection of brown churro locks that mainly turned golden from the sun and chlorine. His lion's maneends at shoulder length and looks incredibly soft if we're being honest.
Oscar leads Aero and I passed the lobby area and to the computers, where Makai furiously works in the back with some wires.
"Makai, this is Oscar," I introduce once we get there.
"Call me Ozzy, for the love of God," he begs.
"Sup, Oz?" Makai nods his way before falling into a chair. "There's no power herewhatsoever. It's like..." Makai searches the air for the right words when he comes to arealization. "Shit." He stands and hurries to the window, pulling blinds apart. "Shit!" heloudly exclaims. "The entire damn grid is down."
"What's that mean for you?" I ask him.
Makai shakes his head and runs a hand through his floppy brown hair. "Even if I could connect to the mainline grid with these sucky computers, it wouldn't matter. We're doomed."
"We aren't doomed if we can find out the killer's clues..."
"Okay, hold on..." Ozzy holds his hands up and scans us. "Makai, Reyna, Aero...you're the guys involved in all this shady murder stuff! There's this guy who's got a whole blog about you."
"Can't blame them – I mean, look at me," Makai grumbles, trying to be humorously cocky in his time of frustration. "How could you not blog about me?"
"Who?" Aero inquires.
Ozzy answers with, "Don't know. They never sign anything and their name is nowhere to be found."
"That's a little disturbing," I admit. "But it's also the least of our worries. We need to figure out what the killer wants us to find."
"I mean, we need to get the hell out of here," Makai corrects. "But yeah, playing the killer's game is totally the way to do it."
"Isn't it always?" I grumble.
"Reyna?" Makai questions. "If you don't mind me asking, what's going on with you and Enzo exactly?"
Ozzy looks at us in confusion, blissfully unaware of who Enzo even is. Aero looks at mewith intrigue and by the look on Makai's face, he totally asked in front of everyone tomake me feel bad. I'm sure there's a part of him that hates me for not hating Enzo with him. Little does he know, there is a part that will never forgive him for doing that to mybrother, but I feel like that part is small and only shrinking.
"Nothing's going on. The power is out, Makee," I snap.
I turn on my heels and leave the room.
"Where are you going?" Aero calls from the café.
"I'm going to find out what the point of this is. And don't worry," I pull the gun out from my waistband. "I'll be fine."
I stomp through the halls, illuminated in the floodlights that only make this situationcreepier than it needs to be. My eyes search for a note on the wall or a message saying"GO THIS WAY" but I come up empty-handed.
I enter a darker corridor when there's a light on the wall, emanating from my pocket. Ireach for my phone and pull it out, amazed that it's turning on. Is the grid coming backon? Should I go back and tell everyone about my discovery?
I expect my lock screen to pop up, but I get something else, instead. It's a GIF of me wandering through the hall just a minute ago. YOU'RE ON THE RIGHT PATH, thetext above the moving picture says.
The floodlights don't quite reach the walls back here, so I use my phone to find a signor something to tell where I'm going. My light bounces alongside me as a rotten stenchhits me like a freight train. It's so bad that I physically gag and tear up. Finally, I find a sign. There's a sign that tells me where I'm going. There is only one place down here: themorgue.
The smell must be coming from the bodies – there's no power to keep them cold andcontained, but it's only almost been an hour. Nothing can smell that rancid already, can it?
My footsteps make small pattering noises and the lights flicker ever so slightly. Mybreathing is slowed and as I approach the morgue, a billion thoughts race through myhead. What if there's a killer in the morgue? What if it's a trap and I'm the first death of the hour?
I freeze in my tracks. The thought of dying never really occurred to me. I've been the victim of Type's games for this long and I've been spared every time. Why kill me now? There's been a strange comfort walking into the unknown and it's based on pure assumption. Where did I get this confidence?
I approach a door at the end of the hall: the morgue. The spoiled smell ofdecomposition is definitely coming from here and I'm suddenly terrified of what I'll find. Once you see something, you can never un-see it. Whatever is passed that door will be apermanent stamp in my memory that will see no expiration date.
My sweaty hand curls around the cool handle and I pause as if waiting for someoneinside to say "come in."
Slowly, I push the door open and the strong stench of bodies hits me full force. Insidethere are two bodies on a metal table in the centre of the room. Stapled on the walls aredocuments and ultrasound pictures of twins.
The DNA in the mix of blood in Destiny's room included Destiny, Enzo, and a set of twin's who passed away long ago. Could these be those very twins? I decide to get used to the smell by looking at the information posted around the walls.
There's a newspaper clipping proclaiming "Giovanni King, acclimated doctor, loses twins in the fatal incident." Giovanni King? Is that a relative of Aero and Enzo?
Further down the wall, there's the ultrasound of two twins with the last names of"King" as well. Coincidence or mystery?
Chills begin to race up and down my spine as goosebumps form on my arms. There'sanother clipping – this one is a screenshot from a webpage. "Donating blood changes more lives than you think..." Under this, the article explains that "King twins lose lives due to unavailable donors matching their blood type..."
My heart rate picks up as I read the next clip. "Suicide in the Copulas householdtraumatizes family." And the next images aren't really comforting, either. Photographs of Aero, Makai, Della, Allister and Hanzo encircle an image of myself. There's a spray-painted red X over Allister, and I trace a finger along with it, grief flooding my heart. Why dowe feature as the main subject in the killer's games?
All we know is that he has something against certain blood types and a doctor by thename of Giovanni King who couldn't save twins. From the basic looks of it, the twins wereactually Giovanni King's. Why harass a family who had already lost members? What job isthere to finish here?
I return my attention to the body bags. Trepidation weighing me down, I unzip them both; foul scent radiating from the bodies. I pull the first bag open, crinkling sounds filling the stiff room. A corpse browned and almost totally decomposed, smiles up at me with a faceless skull. Recoiling, I shriek and cover my mouth with my hands to shut myself up. Backing away, my hands search for the doorknob behind me. My eyes are super gluedto the body and my hands have no interest in revealing the second specimen.
Suddenly, I'm grabbed from behind, rag pressed against my mouth and nose.
My first instinct is to grab at the overwhelmingly sweet-smelling rag and dispose of it.
Get it off, get it off, get it off.
But then I remember Enzo gave me his gun. I reach into my waistband; vision blurringand the room spinning; and I fire behind me, letting off three shots before I pass outcompletely. I lose conscientiousness and I hear the gun clatter to the floor as I'm dragged into what looks like a storage closet.
With the very last of my energy and strength, I lift my arm in the air and graciously raise my middle finger.