West's grip on my hand was firm enough to break my fall with a sharp tug.
"What the hell?" I cried, studying the gobsmacked expression gracing West's features. Pulling myself upright, hand still in West's, I followed his gaze to the gaping blackness where the bookcase had stood moments ago. Gently pushing me aside, he took a tentative step across the threshold.
At once, a series of lights flipped on inside as if by magic. I jumped a little with surprise, my hand shooting up to clutch at his arm, a whirlwind of wonder and trepidation rapidly rising in my chest.
The staircase that had now emerged plunged deeper into the earth with each glass step. West and I exchanged an anxious look. "This is some next level shit," I finally said, shaking my head with disbelief. "A fucking secret door? Explain yourself, West."
"I-I've never seen this before," West stammered, making me raise a brow in concern. "You knocked out this book," he said, letting go of my waist to crouch down to pick up the green hardcover now on the floor. "Must've triggered the movement. I don't think Mr. Kreep built this, though?"
"Well then, who did?" I asked, but it was as if he hadn't heard me. He gravitated further forward, and the next second, he had disappeared down the stairs. I looked upward, shot whoever was up there a stinky look and followed him in on naked feet.
I found West at the entrance of a colossal stark white hall, gaping at the bizarre scene before us. A 'holy shit' rolled off my tongue subconsciously as I stepped in beside him, jaw dropping.
I identified the rows of forehead-height glass containers inside the cavernous room as small greenhouses. Inside the greenhouses were an astounding array of poppies, 10 times their regular size! My mind whirred with questions...and answers.
"West, w-what exactly did you mean when you said that you're not from a normal family?" I stuttered, waves of dread seeping into my chest as if they were beings thrashing around in quicksand. Just as he opened his mouth, a frightening moan sounded from deeper down the hall, making me yelp and seize his arm again.
West took a step forward, but I tightened my grip on his bicep, a thousand silent pleadings in seconds of eye contact. His eyes weren't fearful like mine, they glistened as if he was slowly sinking and he knew that he wouldn't make it. "I don't really know, Aditi...but I'm going to find out exactly how fucked up this is."
Genetically modified poppies...drug abuse in Edelweiss suddenly skyrocketing...an Asian man killing off Sharmaji...all drugs disappearing just when the police got involved...it all made sense now. But West knew all of this all this time and was keeping silent?
I gingerly followed West around the greenhouses towards the source of the moaning, my heart throbbing with an entirely different emotion than mere moments ago. Oh God, I kinda wish we hadn't found out about this.
I froze.
The woman strapped to the steel chair was ever familiar and yet unrecognizable, her soulful features now sunken and swollen in different places. Speechless, I took several shaky steps towards her, falling to my knees. "Ma?" I whimpered, tears clouding my vision as I reached my hand out to her.
Ma had become deathly pale. Her skin was riddled with red needle marks, making the stinging tears roll down my cheeks. She stared ahead blankly through tiny slits in her swollen eyelids as I grasped her hands in mine, choking on the tears.
As soon as I felt the hand on my shoulder, I flinched away from West, my voice trembling as I warned him, "Don't you dare! Stay away from me, you- you lying little asshole!"
Ignoring the hurt glistening in his brown eyes, I wiped my tears on the hem of my saree and quickly dedicated myself to unwinding the duct tape holding Ma in place.
"Aditi- I swear I didn't- if I'd known I-"
"I said STAY AWAY!" I yelled, pushing him away when he tried to help me with unstrapping Ma's frail body since I was failing to peel the tape off with my trembling fingers. I couldn't think - all I knew was that I had to get Ma out of the hellhole.
Then we heard footsteps approaching.
When I looked to West, he was just as apprehensive as I was. "We'll never make it," he whispered as the footsteps turned louder, tugging on my wrist. I cast him a desperate look, knowing that he was right, and let go of Ma.
I let West guide me several yards away and we hid ourselves behind the ginormous poppies from whoever was approaching. The unsuspecting footsteps came into view, making my lips quiver with realisation.
Shuan tore the duct tape off of Ma in several fluid motions, and I winced. Hoisting a nearly unconscious Ma onto his back, he began to retrace his steps to the entrance. As I made to follow him, West immediately pulled me back, giving me an are-you-crazy-he-has-a-gun look. I hopelessly stared after Shuan as he trudged down the hallway, turned off all the lights and disappeared at the door.
Seconds later, I extracted my phone from the pocket of my blouse, the glaring screen illuminating our faces in the pitch black darkness. "What're you doing?" West protested, snatching away my phone as soon as I'd typed 999 into the screen.
"Give that back!" I cried, reaching for the phone that he'd lifted into the air.
"Aditi, listen to me. The police are in it with them- it'll be useless to call 999," he explained, making me shift my weight from right to left as I wiped away more tears, barely noticing the smudges of mascara and eyeliner on my palm.
"Then what do I do?" I asked, and an idea shot across my head. "Shit, I gotta tell Doc, West! He'll know what to do - Bapi will only freak out! Are- are you coming with me?"
West nodded, and I wrapped my arms around him in a frantic hug, "I'm so sorry for reacting like that- I just couldn't think for a while. I do trust you, asshole."
"I understand," he said, placing a chaste kiss on my temple. "Let's get out of here."
When we couldn't hear any noises from the other side of the door upon aligning our ears with it, the two of us crept back to the room by pressing a rather conspicuous red button next to the door. Just as we stepped in, a thundering roar of the Mercedes engine whirred to our ears and we rushed to the window to see the car beginning to drift along the road outside.
With me barefoot, we practically ran down the road until we reached Doc's house, my feet protesting against the ice-cold gravel. "The lights are off, he's not home," West stated, panic laced in his voice.
I didn't waste my breath letting him know that I was well aware of Doc's absence. Rushing through the gaping hole in the wall into Doc's lawn, I headed for the pentagon-shaped garage lying harmlessly on side. Praying that memory was serving me right, I dropped to the ground, looking for the can of mints buried in the ground. Soon enough, with the help of my phone's light, I'd located the shiny tin can and extracted the set of keys from it. With West watching my actions, bewilderment printed on his features, I jammed one of the keys into the garage's lock.
Heaving the shutter open took tremendous effort from both of us. We threw ourselves into the small space, and groping in the darkness, my fingers found the light switch and flipped it on.
"What the fucking hell is this?!" West gawped, eyeing the huge machine before us. Romeo was a lot like a normal ruby red car, except that its ceiling was seven feet from its floor. On the ceiling littered with cables, numerous, multi-coloured lights beeped on when I swung the door open.
"Something faster than that damned Mercedes. Get in!"
Following my motions, West quickly strapped on his seatbelt. The eco-friendly supercar silently but swiftly veered out to the road when I pulled the necessary levers and pressed the right buttons on the enormous, device-riddled dashboard.
"This is like, insanely cool," astonished, West remarked.
"Leave it up to Doc," I gunned the engines when we'd descended onto the road, and we had sped across the town to the highway within 5 minutes, the speedometer climbing up with bewildering rapidity.
I felt wildly nauseous, driving this fast and all. Moreover, we'd naturally assumed that Shuan would be heading out of town, but what if that turned out to be a misjudgement? However, momentarily putting my mind to relief, we soon spotted the car some distance ahead of us on the highway. Maintaining the distance, with one hand on the steering wheel, I reached up and yanked at the rear-view mirror, which dipped a little, lit up like a computer screen and resulted in a robotic voice filling up the car.
"What can I do for you, Aditi?" a romantic British male accent chipped.
"Hi Romeo, call Doc," I commanded, my eyes glued to the Mercedes in front of us. Even though Doc's cell was unavailable, he'd mentioned that he was always wired to Romeo's system.
"On it," Romeo affirmed, and we heard a loud ringing sound as the car called Dr. Amiruddin.
"How'd it know that it's you?" West asked, amazed, his gaze travelling around the car in wonder.
"Doc added my biometrics to the car last year when he taught me how to drive this thing," I muttered, anxious when Doc didn't pick up. I asked Romeo to call him again, Dr. Amir didn't receive this time, either. "Okay Romeo bro, text him 'why tf aren't you picking up, I have location on Ma', all caps, thanks.".
Tens of texts later, Doc still hadn't picked up, and London was already in view. Just as I was going delirious with worry at how the city's residents would react to a supercar in their streets, the Mercedes thankfully shifted its route, heading for the bank of the Thames.
We found the car stopping in front of a pier after a few minutes. As surreptitiously as possible, I parked Romeo behind a generous clump of bushes that offered a clear view of the car. A gorgeous cruise ship hovered in the calm water of the Thames near the pier with the words 'The Narcosis' printed on the hull, and we watched Shuan alight from the vehicle, supporting a now fully unconscious Ma in his arms as he hobbled aboard the ship.
"Oh god, seriously? The Narcosis? They could've been a little less conspicuous," West finally muttered under his breath, watching the scene in terror.
Just when I was about to open my mouth, a silhouette in the side-view mirror made my heart jolt.
"Don't move," a cold Asian accent suddenly cut through the air, making us freeze. As I turned to face the source of the voice, the barrel of a gun stared back at me right in the eye, the soft lapping of the Thames growing faint in my ears as the dizziness settled in.
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