Place For My Head

[Aiden]

The body that lay on the bed became consciously aware of the light that streamed in through the window, past the curtains, and onto the previously sleeping face. With his brown eyes opening, Aiden Wood was met by a world of white. His brows furrowed slightly at the sight, and he squirmed in his bed as he sat up. He blinked heavily as he glanced around the room: white walls, white bed, bright white fluorescent lights overhead. The curtains and their dark blue hue contrasted this, adding a darker edge to the room. However, the confusion that the teenager felt stemmed from the fact that this wasn’t his room. Or his place of residence. Or his clothing.

He sat up in the bed, glancing down at his attire. A white sort of uniform, it seemed, and there was a silver chain around his wrist that denoted his name, blood type, and other medical characteristics. Wait a second…that wasn’t silver, it was some cheap remake. His eyes swept over the wall to the door, where a window was placed like a hospital would have. In fact, it was reinforced. And not a moment later, a woman walked in holding a clipboard, dressed in scrubs, hair tied back. A nurse.

What the hell? Did a mission go badly, and did Yuki and Teagan bring him to the hospital? His body looked fine…or had he fallen into some kind of coma due to his demon blood? Art had mentioned something like that in the future. Was it some kind of common occurrence?

”Good morning, Mr. Wood. Feeling alright?”

“What? Yeah…I feel fine…” he said with a hint of uncertainty.

”Okay, I’m just going to take your morning vitals, and then you’ll be free to go mingle with the other patients.”

“What, was I hurt or something? Have two girls been here?” At this point, the nurse gave him a strange look, and then her face washed to a neutral gaze, and she approached him.

”Mr. Wood, you weren’t hurt. You’ve been here for nine years now, just a few weeks ago. Your parents were in an accident, remember? You’ve had some post-traumatic psychological effects since and…”

“How do you know about my parents?” Had Teagan gotten chatty again? He was going to kill her.

”They were in a car accident when you were on a road trip, there was an icy road and another driver slammed into your car.” She scribbled something down on the clipboard, and as she moved Aiden caught the words ‘bad day.’

“What’s going on? Where am I?”

”You really don’t remember? You’re in Rockwood Institute, for those with mental conditions.”

“You mean an asylum?”

”In a matter of speaking, though that is a little negat—“

“I’ll be back.” Aiden pushed himself off of his bed, and shoved past the nurse. He spun out of the door, and navigated down the hallway as quickly as possible before the nurse could catch him. He cut through a doorway that led to a stairwell, and paused pressed on the wall, the nurse speeding by the door.

The stairs led both up and down, and Aiden chose the latter. There was definitely something going on here, he had been in Portland hours ago as a hunter, and now he had woken up to be told that he was insane. It wasn’t something you just took with a grain of salt—speaking of, he decided that it’d be best to get his hands on some. He slowly moved through the door at the bottom of the stairs, and entered a new room, one full of patients that populated a sitting type room, where most just stared with empty looks on their faces.

In his mind, he was racing through the possibilities; malicious dijinn? Wraith? Powerful demon? Something else he didn’t know about? His mind was also flashing with ideas about Teagan and Yuki. If they were caught up in this too, all he would have to do would be to find them, and together they could figure out what was going on. Unless they were all in their own dream hell. In which case they were screwed.

“Good morning, Mr. Wood, how are you today?” inquired a feminine voice behind him. He turned to find a short, petite young woman with dark hair. He furrowed his brow, and tilted his head to the side. “I’ve been better,” he said slowly, truthfully.

“You remember we have our meeting today, yes? Or do you need a nurse to bring you when its time?”

“Meeting? Oh, right,” he played along. “That’s today, isn’t it?”

“Just like every other Thursday counseling session,” she quipped, giving him a smile. “I’ll see you at two, then?”

“Yeah, sure.” She moved past him, her white coat framing her small build, her heels clacking on the tile floor. The air about her and that smile seemed eerily familiar, but Aiden dismissed it. At the current moment, he was still trying to wrap his mind around waking up in an insane asylum, it was only justified.

He began to slowly walk to the door leading out of the room, into another hallway. “Okay…okay…Just focus on finding Teagan and Yuki. You’re not insane…aside from the fact that you’re talking to yourself…” he muttered as he walked down the hall. He wandered around for ten minutes before he spotted the kitchen and cafeteria area. There were several tables with chairs in the room, with nurses letting only specific people in; Aiden could only guess that they were the more…well, the saner insane patients. As he got closer, the nurse held a hand out to him.

“Aiden, coming to eat?” He slipped a quick smile, one that was a mix between ‘I can’t believe my luck,’ and ‘I’ll smile to show you I’m acknowledging you.’

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, slipping past her into the room. Instantly he plucked up a salt shaker off the nearest table, and slipped it into his pocket. He took a seat nearest the opening to the kitchen, and began listening, again unable to believe his luck. One of the cooks was talking about his new set of knives, a set of silver chef’s knives he won from some famous chef, that the hospital was letting him use. Aiden made a mental note, grabbed some food, and decided that figuring this mess out on a full stomach would be better than an empty one. At least it wasn’t Yuki’s cooking.

Once he finished, he noticed a clock on the wall. It was one of those mundane, cliché black clocks, reading one o’ clock. He had an hour before he was supposed to meet with the doctor, an hour to continue trying to figure this out before he’d be stuck in a room with her for who knew how long. He pushed himself back from the table and exited the room, taking a left in the hall and continuing the way he had been walking before.

Passing through the hall, he began looking through the windows of the rooms at the occupants inside, trying to catch a glimpse of black eyes, or some kind of monster, or…well, anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but it was probably one of the most ordinary things in the hospital that made Aiden stop dead in his tracks.

Inside one of the rooms was a body, female, laying in a bed. She was connected to various machines and drips, her heartbeat normal. But it was the identity of the person that caught Aiden’s attention. In the bed was none other than Teagan Cassidy, and while it looked like she was asleep, he had the sinking feeling that it was worse than it appeared. He entered the room, quietly reaching for the clipboard at the end of the bed. Reading it over, he found that Teagan S. Cassidy was transferred in only a few weeks earlier. She was comatose, without reason, since the summer months. She’d been transferred in based on her brain activity, with the basis that if she did wake up, her mental capacity wouldn’t be the same.

“Hey, hey, hey, we stopped that…the shtriga…no way. No no no,” he said quietly, his fingers tight on the clipboard. It made sense, technically speaking. If Aiden had been here, then he hadn’t met Teagan and therefore didn’t save her from the shtriga over the summer at camp. What did that mean for Yuki? She’d been with Aiden from the time they met, so any number of things could have happened had she only met Jefferson and Deacon. So the supernatural world did exist outside of the facility, which meant that there had to be something—

“Excuse me, what are you doing in here?”

Aiden turned around, and his breath caught in his throat, causing him to gasp for air. No… he thought as a chill ran down his spine. Standing him front of him, aged only by a few years, was Malcolm Black. The same Malcolm that rescued him. The same Malcolm that trained him. The same Malcolm that had died right in front of him. Alive. The age he should be. A doctor.

“Why don’t you head back to your room?” he said more than asked, placing a hand on Aiden’s shoulder and guiding him out of the room. Aiden shuffled awkwardly a few feet in front of him, and turned back to look as Malcolm walked the opposite direction down the hall. Aiden felt cold, his eyes were locked on Malcolm as he slowly grew distance before turning the corner.

Suddenly Aiden turned on his heel, and ran right into a male nurse that had been walking his direction. Swiftly Aiden grabbed the cell phone that was clipped to the man’s scrubs, and apologized, dodging around him and finding the nearest empty room. His fingers punched in the number he knew by heart, and he held the phone to his ear. The number was disconnected. He frowned, and then dialed another number. A staff member answered. “Yeah, can I talk to Jefferson please?”

“Who?”

“The owner of the building?”

“We’ve had a female owner for five years now, guy before her died while on a hunting trip, sorry.”

Five years ago when Malcolm and I saved his ass. He shut the phone, and returned into the hallway. It was nearing two, so Aiden asked a nurse where he could find the therapist, and walked to her room slowly, trying to once again figure out what could be messing with him. When he entered, she was behind a wooden desk, papers organized on top of it, with rows of file folders lining the wall behind her.

“Aiden! Right on time. Take a seat,” she said, gesturing to one of the chairs in front of her desk. He chose the one on the right, watching the therapist, one Dr. Evans, as she grabbed his file. “It says here that you’re having a bad day today?”

“You’re telling me,” he responded almost instantly, not really realizing he had done so.

“Is it the demons again?” His brows furrowed as he focused on her.

“What?”

“Well, you usually tell me about demons and monsters on your bad days.”

“And on my good days?”

“You tell me what you remember about the day your parents died,” she said slowly, confused.

“Right, right. No, you know, I don’t think this is a demon anymore, honestly. It’s something else, something that knows my brain.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Teagan Cassidy is in a coma, and Malcolm Black is alive,” Aiden replied, a little nonchalantly.

“Doctor Black, you mean?”

“Yeah, I saw him in Teagan’s room. Tell me, did he used to be a hunter at all?”

“Not that I know of, why?”

“No reason. For that matter, have I ever had any visitors? A woman with dark curly hair, to be more specific?”

“Is she another one of your hallucinations?”

“Hallucination?”

“It’s a symptom of your paranoid schizophrenia, Aiden. You know that there are no such things as monsters, right? You were in a car crash, it killed your parents, and left you alive. You suffered post-traumatic psychological problems, and you’ve been here for just over nine years.”

“Who found me?”

“Your neighbor. They heard screaming down the street, and called the police.”

“Did they find sulfur at the scene?”

“Sulfur, demons leave that, right? Not that I know of, but then, that report is almost ten years old, and I’ve only been here for a few years, remember?”

“Yeah, of course.” Aiden stared at her, suddenly realizing why she seemed so familiar. “You know, you’d look better as a blond, Lori,” he said, looking her over.

“I’ve asked you to please stick to Dr. Evans, Aiden.”

“Right, right, apologies. Are there any new additions to the staff here, say, within the past month?”

“A few, yes. Why?”

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you if you stop giving the nurses trouble. You have to listen to them, Aiden. Running off, refusing your medicine, not sleeping, it doesn’t help them. It doesn’t help you.”

“I won’t give them any trouble.” Because I won’t be here much longer. Lori gave him three names, which Aiden ingrained to his memory, and finished up her questions.

Walking back down the hallways of the asylum, Aiden was a mess of feelings. Confusion, frustration, wonder, regret. He wanted to chase down Malcolm and talk to him, wanted to make a deal with a demon to wake Teagan up so she could go to college. But none of that would be right. This world wasn’t supposed to exist. Or was it the other world that didn’t exist? Was it all a bunch of coincidences? Swiping a tube of paint from a janitor’s cart, he placed it in his pocket. Let’s find out.

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Night had fallen outside of the building, but Aiden wasn’t concerned with that. Slowly and swiftly he made his way down into the basement of the building, to the place where the staff would be least likely to come. With the tube of paint in hand, Aiden slipped into a room where pipes, wires, and circuit boards lined the walls and acted as walls in the middle of the room. Within minutes, various symbols covered the floor to create one cohesive symbol. Muttering the incantation under his breath, Aiden stood, waiting for the demon to be summoned.

It was a stupid idea. All he had was salt from a salt shaker, and the exorcism memorized. He waited, standing in one spot, watching the room, looking at all sides. His heart rate increased, as did his breathing. His eyes kept scanning the room, until five minutes later he gave in. With the remainder of the paint, he created another sigil, and recited another incantation, one that had never failed him the two other times he’d used it to summon demons. Again he waited, his pulse beating in his ears. Nothing. No demon. No sulfur.

Aiden rushed through the halls, finding Teagan’s room once more. With the two paper clips, he unlocked the door and entered, grabbing the chart and flipping through it. Cause of the coma…he flipped through papers until he was on the last one, the police report. She had been hit by a car, in California. He glanced at the address on the header of the institute’s papers—he was in California. Chills ran down his spine. So the supernatural didn’t exist?

The next morning, Aiden awoke in his bed, though he barely felt rested. His mind had raced all night, and he flew through dream after dream. It was fully possible that he had hallucinated it all, since the people all worked or were patients in the institute. Although he would never admit it, Aiden was on the verge of breaking down. Nothing made sense. Well, it did, but Aiden didn’t want to believe it. Everything from his…real life? Other life? Whichever it was, it felt too real.

With a sigh, he forced himself out of bed, and changed into a new set of white clothes before the door opened. A female nurse entered, announcing that she would be giving him a partial examination. She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm, her warm fingertips brushing his skin. He read her name tag, finding himself once more unbelievably lucky that one of the new people had come to him. Faking a sneeze, he hid the word ‘christo’ within it, trying to see if she’d flinch. When she didn’t, he took note of her appearance, and then let her finish her work.

He wandered out of his room and back towards the kitchen he’d been in the previous day. He grabbed a tray full of breakfast foods, and took a table that was empty off to the side of the room. He took a bite of his food, trying to map out his progress thus far. He’d gone to sleep in Portland, woke up in California, and established that there was nothing supernatural in the world, or at least no demons. His mind teetered on the edge of acceptance and disbelief—how much easier life would be to live here, safe, with no worry about Ariel, or Casey, or finding people to train as hunters. No fear that he’d become angry enough that his demon blood would surface.

His reverie was interrupted when someone sat at the other end of his table, three seats away and on the opposite side. A nurse, male, red hair, tall, built. “Deacon?” The man looked at him, and then down at his ID badge. “Yeah, I just started my job here today,” he said, giving Aiden a smile, something that wasn’t very Deacon-ish. He seemed…different. As much as Aiden wanted to inquire about Art, he knew that’d be too suspicious. “Isn’t there a patient here with the last name of Rook?”

“Sure is. He’s the reason why I got this job, didn’t even mean to work at this place in particular, it just worked out for me. He’s the one who went catatonic, up on the fourth floor,” Deacon said. “He used to get these bad headaches, and then one day, he had a seizure. After that, he wasn’t Art anymore.”

Aiden stared at the man, in disbelief. Teagan, Lori, Malcolm, Deacon, and Art. If things were technical, then Yuki must have been in Japan still. At least she was safe…or so he could hope. That being said, it was too coincidental that they were all here. Something was up. Something supernatural. Taking in a breath, Aiden pushed the tray in front of him away, and exited the room.

To the nearest nurse, he listed the second person on his list of three, and after fifteen minutes of searching, he found her. Another female, this one blond, working behind a desk with no interaction with the patients. He crossed her off the list, and inquired about the third, and last person on Lori’s list. He found the man later in the day, a short, stocky sort who was bald and too cheery for his own good. He clapped Aiden on the back after their conversation, leaving him torn between the two newcomers; the nurse that had been in his room that morning, or the man who was happy-go-lucky, and the least likely suspect.

Walking back to his room, Aiden was so lost in thought that he bumped into a tall, built frame. He stumbled back and immediately apologized, looking up to once again find Malcolm. He fell silent, looking at him. Malcolm stared back at Aiden, the silence between them stifling. Malcolm opened his mouth as if to say something, but the device clipped to his pants started beeping, causing him to turn around and walk the other direction.

Letting out a short breath of hot air, he ran a hand through his hair. He took a step forward, and then one back, clutching his head as excruciating pain ripped through it. Before him the scene flickered to one years ago, on a dark night when Malcolm was ripped apart while Ariel stood laughing. And then he was back, within the confines of the hallways, with the staff looking at him curiously.

Rushing back to his room, he sat on his bed, thinking everything over. Girl or guy, this was going to end. He knew more than they thought he did, he was going to end this. He was in the kitchen within ten minutes, searching for the silver knives that were hidden in the third drawer from the left. Encasing it was a sort of sheath, to be used when the knife was stored. Aiden slipped the knife into the waistband on his pants, hid the handle beneath his shirt, and then left the kitchen as quickly as he had come.

He wasn’t going to risk guessing which was which; instead, he would simply go for both, and if he struck out the first time, he’d have to maneuver his way out of the situation in order to get to the second. He wandered the halls, his eyes darting at each of the staff members, until eventually he spotted the woman. Behind her he followed like an assassin until she was alone. Striking with frightening accuracy, he slid the knife across her forearm, watching the blood drip out like a faucet. No other reaction, aside from the obvious screaming and calling for the other nurses. Aiden slipped through a door and down the stairs, knowing he had a limited amount of him before the nurses tracked him down. He’d probably be tranquilized after all of this.

Ten minutes of hiding the bloody knife and speeding through floor after floor of the building, Aiden finally locked eyes on the man. Passing by, he slid the knife across the man’s arm subtly, without him realizing it was Aiden who did it, but…no reaction. It was…neither of them? Aiden hissed a series of curses under his breath and glanced up just in time to see Malcolm look at him and slip through a doorway. Already on edge and frustrated, Aiden took off after him, full out running through the crowd of people

His breathing was haggard as he pushed people aside, chasing the figure that was somehow always at the end of the hallway just as Aiden turned the corner. “Malcolm! Wait!” he called, his hands outstretched. “God dammit,” he hissed, sliding along the floor as he grabbed the wall to propel himself around the corner. He had been gaining on the man, Malcolm should be right around the corner, but when Aiden entered the new stretch of hallway, Malcolm was gone.

Panting, he tore open the nearest door, finding a storage closet. He slammed his fist against the wall, closing his eyes and regaining his breath. Inhaling deeply, he stepped back out into the hall, closing the door and running into a head of brunette hair.

“Aiden, there you are,” said a rushed voice. Below him, Lori was looking him over. “They said that you assaulted one of the nurses when she was alone, is that true? Why would you do something like that?”

“I…I don’t know what’s going on,” he finally said, his voice faltering. “Nothing makes sense. People are here…but they shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be here,” he went on, his breathing once again growing irregular. “What’s happening to me, Lori?”

“I’m going to take you back to your room, come on,” she said softly, placing a delicate hand on his arm and guiding him down the hall. His mind was racing; there were so many possibilities, but his leads thus far were dead ends. Was he really in a world where he was insane, where the supernatural didn’t exist? Sure, salt was far-fetched, but it worked, didn’t it?

Aiden shuffled down the hallway, his eyes darting all around. Who was behind all of this? It must not have been someone that he had directly encountered, a behind the scenes person, someone Aiden would automatically rule out. When they reached his room, he entered and heard the click of the lock behind him, obviously realizing that he wasn’t going anywhere else.

Hours later, he had papers taped up to his wall, scrawled from edge to edge with notes, theories, and lists. There was a list that was names which were crossed out; people that Aiden was now sure weren’t any sort of creature. There was a list of people from his life as a hunter he needed to contact. Notes for things that had changed, like Teagan and her coma, and any possible connection between them. His most recent addition was a list of safe people, such as those in his faction, Lori, and Malcolm.

But his mind was restless, his body was restless, and he was growing paranoid. Someone was messing with him, and they didn’t want to be found. No one was on a safe list, so he soon ripped the list from the wall and let it slide to the floor. His head whipped to the door at a new sound. Whispering. Aiden slipped off of his bed and approached slowly, trying to make out the words, but it was jumbled, nothing coherent. The same noise picked up behind him, in his room, and he turned around to find empty space. He glanced at the door again, and pressed himself against the wall, looking through the window on the door. The hallway was dark, lit enough for staff to make out objects they might trip over in the dark. There were no outlines of anything in the hallway. Great, so I’m hearing things now? Pull yourself together, man, he thought, closing his eyes and blocking the noise out.

Someone had to have made some sort of contact with him, most likely physical, for them to be able to mess with his head as they were. But he had crossed everyone off the list…no, there was one more person. He had bumped into someone else briefly, someone that always seemed to be entering and disappearing from the scene. His body grew cold at the thought, but it appeared his only lead was probably the only person that Aiden would allow himself to be killed by.

Picking up the cell phone he’d stolen earlier, Aiden scrolled through the contacts. Eventually finding Dr. Malcolm Black, he hit the call button, and waited for the tone indicating that the call had connected.

“Black, what do you need Reynolds?”

“I know what you are,” Aiden breathed into the phone, trying to push the fact that he was hearing his mentor’s voice again for the first time in four years aside. “I know what you’re doing to me.”

“Who is this? This is a private number, how did you get it?”

“Just putting the skills you taught me to use, Mal,” Aiden said in response.

“Is this a patient?” he asked with a hint of irritation. “Where did you get this phone?”

“Don’t worry about that, worry about what I’m going to do to you. They never took my knife from me, now did they? Smart move there. So what are you, exactly? Dijinn, wraith, demon? You’ve had me going this whole time, I can’t figure you out.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Listen, I’m hanging the phone up now,” the voice said. There was a click, and Aiden closed the phone, biting the inside of his lip. Try as he might, Malcolm wouldn’t be safe.

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The next night, after being allowed from his room per psychological exam and chaperone during the day. However, it was during the day that Aiden was planning, calculating, and when he learned that Malcolm would have the night shift as the attending doctor that night. The chaperone would leave him when it was sleeping hours, during which Aiden had no intention of sleeping.

Placing a layer of tape over the lock on his door, Aiden ensured that the lock would not be able to follow its function. By now he knew that the patrols came by at eight fifteen, nine thirty, and once more at midnight before they ceased in his section of the building. At twelve fifteen, he slipped out of his room, having had retrieved his knife from between his mattress and the box spring. He lurked in the shadows, finding himself drawing closer to Malcolm’s office, a level up.

The stairwell was lit as opposed to the hallway that Aiden had just come from, and upon his entrance inside, the light flickered a few times, only adding to the creepy vibe that Aiden was giving off. His face was hard, focused, and if he didn’t know any better, the sane, logical part of his mind (which was submitting to the insanity) swore that his demon blood had something to do with it. He crept up the stairs noiselessly, his bare feet cold on the stairs.

Pressing himself against the wall, he spied through the window in the door for anyone walking by, and then slipped out into the dark. He slid against the wall, shrouded in shadow, knife at the ready. The doorway of his office came into view after what felt like an eternity, light spilling out onto the floor in a neat parallel pattern.

With a swift motion, he swept into the room, and grabbed the man that had his backed turned to him. With his other hand, the knife plunged downward towards the man’s body. Malcolm twisted and grabbed Aiden’s wrist, knocking his hand against the wall and thus causing the knife to clatter to the ground. Aiden balled up his fist and struck the man’s gut, in turn causing his hand to be released. He grabbed the man by the white jacket he wore, and slammed him on the desk, sending the materials on the top scattering all over the floor.

“What are you?!” Aiden almost yelled, holding an arm across his throat, and pinning the man’s hands above his head. He spotted a letter opener on the desk, hanging off the edge and leaning forward in an attempt to fall off. Striking Malcolm across the head, he reached for the letter opener, and held the blade to his throat.

“Tell me,” he pleaded. His eyes were growing wide, they were heavy, and they almost betrayed the hold on the tears that were welling up in his eyes. “You’re supposed to be the good guy. You’re supposed to look out for me!” he growled shakily. “You died, you left me! I’ve suffered enough, don’t make me more insane!”

He stood back, holding the blade in his hand in a combative way. “You put those whispers in my head, you changed all of this…why aren’t you fighting back?!” The man stared at Aiden with wide eyes, his mouth slightly agape. In his defense, fighting back would mean potentially being attacked by a patient wielding a blade. Suddenly there was a new sensation; arms looping through his and dragging him back through the door. Aiden turned to face his attackers, noting one to be Deacon.

“Let me go, Rook! It’s Malcolm, I have to—“ He turned back to face the man that was once his mentor, but there was no one else in the room. Papers were still strewn about, but there was no sign that a man had ever been there. “What?” he mumbled, his brows furrowing downward. Outside, he heard the men telling another staff member that he had been out after hours, broken into an office, and was ripping it apart when they entered. No mention of Doctor Black.

The next morning, Aiden sat on his bed, back against the wall with his arms wrapped around his legs. He stared straight ahead, not moving when he heard his door being unlocked.

“Hello Aiden,” a feminine voice said.

“Hi Lori,” he croaked back, his brown eyes meeting hers. He looked exhausted, with dark bags beneath his eyes.

“I heard about what happened yesterday. We need to talk about what’s going on with you,” she said, taking a seat on an empty chair on the other side of the room. “Eight years with no problems, and now you have two incidents within days of each other. You’ve been taking your medicine?”

Honestly? No. “Yeah.”

“Have you been hallucinating?” she asked, jotting something down on her clipboard.

“I’m not sure.”

“From what you were saying within the past few days, as well as the past few months, I think there has been a progression in your disorder. Firstly, I believe you’ve gone from solely paranoid schizophrenia to both that and disorganized schizophrenia. On top of that you have delusions, ranging from religious, to nihilistic, to guilt, and especially persecutory. The nurses told me what you were yelling last night, about how Ms. Cassidy being in a coma is your fault, about someone named Jefferson, about Malcolm. Tell me why you think you know Malcolm like you do.”

“Because I do,” Aiden said his voice level and low. “He came to my house when my grandfather killed my parents. My grandfather was possessed by a demon, and Malcolm exorcised it. He trained me how to fight and hunt and he died. He shouldn’t be alive, Teagan shouldn’t be in a coma, Yuki should be here. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Who is Yuki?”

“The other faction mate!” he finally snapped, his tone progressively getting shakier. “I shouldn’t be here! This isn’t right! Something supernatural is out to get me…or got me. I don’t know.”

“Which is where your religious delusion comes in. Aiden, you’ve been here for almost nine years. There is no such thing as the supernatural.”

He leaned forward, placing his hands on the edge of the bed. “Have you ever wanted to live in Portland?”

“In Oregon? I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

“Just…just answer me, please,” he went on, raising a hand into the air.

“Uh…no, never even thought about it. I don’t like the rain; I like the sun here in California. Why were you in Malcolm’s office last night?”

“I was going to kill him,” Aiden said, his voice trembling. “I was going to…” He buried his face in his hands, terrified at his own words. “Lori, I have to get out of here. I’m going insane,” he said, the words muffled by his hands. “I hear things, I see people that should be dead…people that are dead should be alive…” he paused, glancing up at her. “I can’t take this.”

“Aiden…” she called softly, reaching forward to console him.

“No!” he snapped, glaring at her. “What’s dead should stay dead! Malcolm died because of me, he died protecting me! The man is alive, and he can’t say a damn word to me when he sees me! You, you act like I’m some…just another person. Teagan is dying because I didn’t save her, I let that damn creature get to her. Who knows what happened to Yuki, or Jeff, or Deacon, or Art. It’s all my fault! And I’m stuck in here, haunted by it all. You. Don’t. Understand.” He growled. “I can’t do anything! I’m stuck rotting here, going insane! Is this some kind of sick joke or something?! I just want…I need it to end.”

Lori stood up, motioning to someone outside of the door. A woman of average height with a head full of dark, curly hair tied up behind her entered the room, pulling a vial and a syringe out of the inside of her coat. Instantly his eyes widened and he shot up from the bed, pointing to her and looking at Lori.

“What is she doing here?!”

“Ariel here is going to give you a sedative via IV so you can relax, alright?” Lori said, forcing Aiden down back onto the bed, and taking his arm. He was too distracted by the fact that Ariel was in the room to notice the IV actually puncturing his skin and entering his vein. He watched Ariel intently the whole time, and once she was close enough for him to fully take in the syringe, his breathing escalated. “What is she giving me? She can’t, no! She did it to me, she made me a monster! Get away from me,” he growled at her, his eyes fierce. His warning didn’t work, though, and even though he uttered the phrase ‘christo’ there was no flare of her eyes. She was human. The drip began, and Ariel exited the room, and soon after Lori followed. Aiden sat on his bed, looking at the IV bag.

Thunder crashed outside, so much so that his room shook. Rain pelted the window, audibly alerting him of the storm. Lightning flashed, thunder following once more soon after. His eyes were transfixed on the flashes, before he realized something. In his time in southern California, it never rained, and when it did, it was never a full blown thunder storm. This storm was just like the ones that occurred in Portland…a chill ran down his spine as he realized what he needed to do.

Drawing in a breath, he ripped the IV from his arm, grabbing a towel and holding it to his now bleeding limb. His body was heavy, he was slowly becoming drowsy, but he needed to get out. He pushed his door open and stumbled out into the hallway, knowing he had at least one flight of stairs to go down. He shuffled over to the stairwell, trying to keep his focus, when the ding for the elevator sounded. He entered, closed the door immediately, and hit the ground floor button.

By the time he was out of the elevator, the towel held against his arm was noticeably crimson, and getting darker and moister by the second. He stumbled forward, his gait awkward as his body tried to shut itself down using the sedative that now ran through his system. He rounded the corner, and the door came into view, displaying a storm that was picture perfect for Portland outside the glass doors. Almost as if a zombie, he shuffled forward, slowing by the second. He was almost there, he ignored the whispers in his head, he ignored the looks that the patients gave him. He was almost there, and he could see the staff now alarmed at the bleeding patient that was trying to break out.

Chasing after him, several nurses pushed their way through other patients to get to him, and it would only be a matter of time before they reached him. He pushed his body as fast as it would go, trying to get to the door. He was dizzy, lightheaded, his hand wet with blood. His vision was growing hazy, but the door was so close. He felt hands on his shoulders as he pushed the handle down on the door, and watched it swing open as a hand wrapped around his arm and tugged.

“You’ll never see me again if you go,” a deep voice said behind him.

“I know, I get that now. I get it all,” he mumbled, collapsing forward, out into the rain. His vision grew dark, but he was free.