As they turn me towards the door, Alexander seems to snap out of his daze. His eyes drop to the ruined psychiatric order, then flick to my coat pocket. With a sudden, violent motion, he shoves his hand into it. His fingers close around the worn leather of his own wallet, the one I'd taken from the wreck. He pulls it out, holding it pinched between thumb and forefinger as if it were contaminated.
"Filth," he spits, the word dripping with venom. He strides to the minimalist fireplace embedded in the far wall. With a flick of his wrist, he tosses the wallet onto the gas flames already dancing behind the glass screen. The leather curls, blackens. The plastic ID card within bubbles and melts. For a fleeting second, before the flames fully engulf it, I see the embossed date on the burning license: NOVEMBER 7. His birthday.
The same date typed at the top of a different document, locked away in a shoebox under my narrow bed in a Chicago studio apartment. The Mercy Hospital file. The one detailing the complications after donating a massive unit of RH-null blood to a stranger five years ago. The date burned onto both our lives, forever linking us in ways he couldn't begin to comprehend. The flames leap higher, consuming the physical evidence of his identity, casting flickering, demonic shadows on his stony face as he watches it burn.
The rain is a cold, relentless drum solo on the roof of the unmarked transport van as it rumbles across the rain-slicked expanse of the Brooklyn Bridge. The city lights smear into watery streaks through the reinforced, wire-mesh window. The nylon restraints bite into my wrists with every bump in the road. I shift, trying to ease the pressure, and the rough material scrapes abrasively over the old scar on my left wrist – a thin, pale line usually hidden beneath my watch strap. The contact sends a phantom ache radiating up my arm, a familiar discomfort on rainy days I'd always dismissed as arthritis. A souvenir, perhaps, from the massive, unregulated blood draw in a muddy ditch.
The two Aster Institute attendants sit up front, separated from me by a thick plexiglass partition. They haven't spoken since we left the penthouse. The radio, tuned to a low, crackling police band frequency, provides the only sound beyond the engine and the rain.
Suddenly, the static erupts into frantic, distorted speech:
"All units, Code 47! Repeat, Code 47 at Aster Institute, West Wing! Patient riot in progress! Multiple staff down! Requesting immediate backup! Repeat, Code 47!"
The driver and attendant exchange a quick, sharp glance in the rearview mirror. The driver's knuckles whiten on the wheel. The attendant leans forward, craning his neck to see the dash-mounted computer screen displaying GPS and, presumably, facility alerts.
On that small, flickering screen, amidst scrolling text alerts, a grainy black-and-white security feed window pops up. It shows a chaotic hallway scene – overturned gurneys, scattered supplies. The camera angle is high, looking down a corridor. Near the edge of the frame, by the shattered window of a heavy security door marked:
"ISOLATION WING - ACCESS RESTRICTED", lies a small, shattered plastic vial. Even through the poor resolution, the label is partially visible, reflecting the emergency lights: Prom...theus. The rest is obscured by debris, but the name alone sends a fresh jolt of unease through me. What kind of drug caused a riot? Why was it in a psychiatric lockdown wing?
The van accelerates, the engine note rising to a whine. The attendants are tense, focused on the road ahead, on the crisis unfolding at our destination. The flickering image of the shattered vial burns in my mind, adding another layer of dread to the gilded cage awaiting me. Aster Institute wasn't just about silencing me; it held its own, volatile secrets. The Prometheus vial was a tiny, broken piece of a much larger, darker puzzle.
Darkness envelops the van as it plunges into the thick, storm-laden night, leaving the illuminated bridge behind. Only the rhythmic sweep of the wipers and the red glow of the brake lights from vehicles ahead pierce the gloom inside. The cold from the metal floor seeps through my thin clothes. I touch my tongue to the corner of my mouth, tasting the coppery tang of blood where Alexander's grip had split my lip. It's the same metallic tang I'd tasted five years ago in the Connecticut ditch – the scent of his blood, then mine, mingling in the rain-soaked earth.
That blood, my rare, life-giving RH-null blood, still flows through Alexander Sterling's veins. A permanent, unwanted transfusion connecting predator and prey. He thought he had ended things tonight, burning his wallet, signing me away to oblivion. He thought the debt was settled, the betrayal punished.
He was wrong.
As the van carries me deeper into the storm, towards the chaos of Aster and its broken vials, the cold fury within me crystallizes, hard and sharp as a scalpel. His veins run with my gold blood.
My vengeance had only just received its first, vital infusion. The transfusion of retribution was beginning. The storm outside mirrored the tempest brewing within, and Aster Institute, with its rioting patients and mysterious drugs, was merely the first operating theater.
The transport van's rear doors yawned open, revealing Aster Institute's gothic silhouette against a bruised evening sky. Rain sheeted off its peaked roofs, turning the brick façade into a weeping wound of oxidized red. The two white-coated orderlies hauled me out, their grip impersonal as butcher's hooks. My shoes skidded on wet pavement, the nylon restraints sawing into my wrists.
"Welcome to your new home, Dr. Lin." The taller orderly smirked, flashing a gold molar. "Or should I say, Patient 114?"
The number punched through my haze. *114*—the same as my Mercy Hospital file. The same as the anonymous FDA warning I'd mailed about Prometheus. Coincidence was a luxury I couldn't afford.
They marched me through iron gates, past a manicured lawn where skeletal figures shuffled under the watch of more orderlies. One woman in a tattered silk robe clutched a dead rose, humming Madama Butterfly—Vivian's signature role. The air reeked of gardenias and antiseptic.
Inside, the lobby was a perversion of medical sterility: crystal chandeliers dripping light onto marble floors, but the walls were padded, the windows barred. A bronze plaque read: "Aster Institute: Where Wellness Meets Discretion."
A man in a $3,000 suit stepped forward, his smile a scalpel's edge. "Dr. Archer, Chief of Psychiatry." His handshake crushed my fingers. "Mr. Sterling insisted you receive our premier accommodations."
They stripped me, catalogued my scars, forced me into a paper-thin gown. Archer circled like a vulture as a nurse injected something cold into my arm. "Prometheus-enhanced sedative. For your agitation."
The drug hit like a velvet hammer. As my vision tunneled, Archer leaned in, his breath reeking of mint and malice: "Funny thing—your bloodwork shows RH-null. Yet Ms. Shaw's records indicate she donated to Mr. Sterling after the crash." He dropped a file in my lap. Vivian's "medical report," stamped with a familiar logo: Mercy Hospital.
The forgery was flawless—except for one detail. The listed attending physician, Dr. R. Singh, had died three years before the crash.
Darkness swallowed my protest.