CHAPTER 3

As darkness and bewilderment established themselves, two almost depleted candles in the Waiting Room proved the only source of illumination. The silence became unbearable. After a minute of laying deadly still on my metal gurney, I knew I had too much on my mind to fall asleep. The patrol nurses murmured as they kept an eye on me and Alvinne. Nurse Margo, the horse-faced nurse who I had seen pushing Alvinne's gurney, had her head leaning against the wall while her stout and stubby partner allowed her eyes to close.

I couldn't blame them for being so unconscious and drowsy, it was way past midnight..

I pretended to snore, letting them think they'd kept the conversation quiet enough for us to be oblivious. The nurses talked, their voices ascending from a whisper to, sometimes, shouts.

"Margo?" The plump nurse nugged Nurse Margo, and yawned herself.

"Yes?" Nurse Margo rubbed her eyes and struggled to stay awake. She reached for her coffee cup and walked around the room, stopping as she came upon us. I twisted my head while looking over my left shoulder to see Alvinne wide awake as well.

"Filthy animals, these are, I tell you." The nurse shooted her insult at us.

The other nurse put a finger in front of her lips. "Shh, Margo. Are you sure they're asleep?"

"Nah, don't worry about them. They are as good as dead." She sneered, making her face look lopsided. She pulled out my gurney and pushed it against the wall-- not particularly gently, sending it crashing into the barrier. They laughed. I saw Alvinne bite her upper lip and ball her fist.

The laughter soon dropped to the whispers again. "Adele? Know anything about the system error that happened this afternoon? Thought ya were in the control room so ya might know something."

Nurse Adele tensed her shoulders and she sniffed. "Might be something, I heard Tatte murmur something about, um, the "project" had stopped working just yesterday morning. Doctor Issac went crazy."

Nurse Margo gasped, her hands on her hips. "Are you quite sure? The "project" had been working successfully for almost a year already! Nurse Tatte said we are close to enabling the necklace. What could possibly have gone wrong just yesterday?"

"Not sure, but Doctor Issac ordered us to clean out the secondary testing room and make it another cold storage for the rats' bodies," Nurse Adele answered.

"Another room?! More than a hundred corpses have already piled up."

Nurse Adele shrugged. "He needs more."

"Gosh, he's crazy." exclaimed Nurse Margo.

"No, he's brilliantly crazy."

They continued to discuss for a while before drifting into their sleep again, their snores were the only sign of them still alive.

I remained motionless on my gurney in case the nurses snapped awake; I was relieved when they did not rouse.

Easing my way off of the bed with extreme caution, I did not want to make any unnecessary clamour to stir the others. Who knows what the reward was going to be, probably not a hug and a goodnight kiss. Tiptoeing to Alvinne's gurney, which was only separated from mine with a drawer, I nudged the shape under the blanket. A head slowly appeared beneath the bed sheet and scolded me when she saw my face.

"Are you awake?" I whispered, watching the nurses out of the corner of my eye.

"No thanks to you, Captain Obvious." She did a salute and it was my turn to roll my eyes. "Now, let's be serious." Alvinne continued. "Did you hear what those pigs were talking about?" She motioned to Nurse Margo and Nurse Adele who were using their hands as pillows against the rough stone wall.

I nodded grimly. "Yeah, do you have any idea what they were talking about?"

Alvinne sat up straighter. She looked up into the unseeable ceiling, her hand lifting her chin. "The project, you mean?"

I nodded again.

"Well, I've heard the nurses mention that word before, but I never have the chance to figure that out," she replied.

"Sounds creepy to me."

Alvinne covered her eyes with her palms. When she looked at me again, I could see determination in her eyes. "But I know one thing." A corner of her mouth lifted into an irresistible smirk. "We have to escape."

I knew what she said was right, because if we didn't get away quickly, we would be a piece of dead meat. Though the idea suddenly seemed ridiculous when spoken out loud.

"Escape the nurses, is that even possible?" I asked, unsure.

Alvinne bit her upper lip. A moment later, as if lightning hit her, she gasped. A feeling inside me told me I would not like what she was going to say next. "The blue door." Alvinne announced.

"What?! Are you crazy? That's the doctor's lounge!"My voice came out in a high pitched tone.

Alvinne shrugged, but I could sense the uneasiness in her expression. "So what? Are you in for it or not? That's the only possible way out from what I know." Her voice was indifferent, but it didn't help to push my discomfort of this plan away.

At least it's a chance, I thought to myself.

I remained silent for so long until Alvinne spoke again. "I know we could do it."

"How's that?" I stammered out, Alvinne sounded so confident.

"Because I just figured out the "problem" that caused the project's error."

"Huh?"

The girl fidgeted with the blanket. When she closed her eyes and sighed, I felt a tinge of impatience boiling inside me. Alvinne turned and pointed at me. "You! You happened yesterday."

I sank into an abyss of confusion. I had to admit sometimes Alvinne's wisdom could scare people. "Me? What do I have to do with anything?"

She grunted and spoke one word at a time, like explaining a complex math question to a two-year-old. "Are you really that ignorant? Look, since you appeared yesterday morning, two meetings between the nurses and the doctor were held in an emergency. In the two months I've been here, I have learned that meetings are usually held only if absolutely required. And remember how Nurse Tatte and a bunch of other nurses rushed inside this afternoon? It's your deflection power! I knew it! I knew it, it's you. You're the key to everything. We might actually have the possibility to survive!" She spilled out the whole thing without taking a single breath between her words.

I was swamped by her enthusiasm, though bafflement seized me. "Okay, but how does that explain anything?"

Alvinne ignored my question, and beamed like a Cheshire cat. "Tomorrow afternoon," she declared promptly, acting like a commander. "During the shift hour, we could try and go through the blue door. We gotta move quick, all Nurses at that time would have gone back to their headquarters. It's the best opportunity we could get."

I nodded, knowing that the faster we escaped, the safer we were. Anxiety and hopefulness were mixed together and curled up inside me like a freezing cat clinging to its warm bed.

After we made a pinky promise, I shuffled back onto my gurney and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Anyone would need a good sleep for the long journey ahead tomorrow, but what I didn't know was that first, escaping wasn't as easy as Alvinne had planned, and second, a lot of things could change in one night.

My eyelids fluttered open as the morning bell rang in the hospital. I immediately knew something was wrong because I wasn't welcomed by the smiling face of Nurse Hanna anymore. Instead, I woke up with the snarling grimace Nurse Tatte standing right beside my gurney. My heart beat so rapidly, I wouldn't have been surprised if it ripped. Trying to find an answer to my own worry on Nurse Tatte's face, I was greeted with an even more scornful curl of her lips.

"Where is Nurse Hanna?" I forced myself to stay calm.

She examined her nails and smiled, showing her hideous teeth. "I'm your nurse now."

"But, I needed to talk to her."

"Ya can talk to me about anything. Right?"

I knew in an instant that the help Nurse Hanna gave us had been found out. I tried to keep the anger below my erupting level, seeing that being enraged at Nurse Tatte would do me no good.

"Can you at least tell me where she is?"

"Oh, that's none of your business, don't ya think? That wretch isn't going to live much longer anyhow."

Cursing under my breath, I knew if I took out my knife and struck at Nurse Tatte in that moment, she would have been dead or at least badly injured. The motivation of taking my first revenge sounded so satisfying and well-planned that I would have struck without further hesitation, but I thought about our escape plan again. That day was our big day, I couldn't mess it up. "Where is she now?"

"Back in the VIP headquarters." Nurse Tatte spoke in a nonchalant voice.

I imagined Nurse Hanna being whipped by the other women, not being given any food, her colorful eyes turning pale and lifeless in the back of my head. I knew if she was punished, it was for helping me.

Swallowing the saliva in my throat, I buried my face into my gurney. A hot stream of tears began to flow down my cheek. Feeling useless, I looked up to find Nurse Tatte had already left. Feeling guilty, I sank into my pillow with such heaviness that it soon consumed my consciousness and allowed me to be brought back into another dream...

I sat on a wooden chair in a house decorated with photos and objects hanging on the wall. I looked about four or five in the dream, a little chubby but with the same black hair and brown eyes. Fidgeting with a necklace that glowed a bright light, I stared at it in amazement.

"Samael, there you are!" The woman I saw in my first dream entered the room, and when she saw the necklace in my palms, she took a step back. "Where did you get that?"

The younger me shrugged. "Where's papa?"

The woman grimaced, her face turned sickly pale. "Let me tell you something about the necklace, okay?"

Whatever I was thinking at the time disappeared like a vapor of white mist, and my thoughts inverted back to the shimmering necklace. My two fists pounded on the table, urging the woman to tell the story.

"Well, a thousand years ago, there was a place called Insland, it was a place where all of the magic people lived." The woman paused in her sentence and smiled dreamily. "And this necklace was originally passed down by the Heir of Magio to his descendants. At that time, Insland flourished and grew with its magic each day. Every single citizen that lived on that piece of land was granted a specific magic by their king, some controlled "la animo de fajro"-- the soul of fire, some could summon wind, and oh, some could even transform into whatever they were thinking! But of course, the Heir of Magio possessed the most magic, and with the power from the necklace, there was absolutely no one that could overthrow the king. When the Heir passed away, it was given to his descendants, and it had always continued that way."

Tears began to fill her eyes, she choked on her words. "One day, a t-terrible disaster happened to that piece of sacred land. A h-huge tsunami swallowed the kingdom, only one person had survived, and he became the owner of the necklace. Since then, his family retained this necklace, until now…"

I rubbernecked at the necklace that was floating in the air above us. The juvenile me began to speak when a "cling" sound shook me from my dream and I bolted upright, frantically looking around.

It was the unpleasant odor of food that hit me the second I woke. The nurse that sent me my lunch probably had left, since I was alone in the room with the tray of yellowish victuals. Not to mention the dead patients.

There was no sign of Alvinne, her unmade gurney made me panic in frustration. Looking up at the wooden clock hanging on the wall, it showed 3:30. Time ticked by in such an agonizingly slow manner that made each second seem like hours.

Minutes were cruel.

Hours were punishing.

I returned my focus to the untouched food, deciding what to do with it. Who knows what the nurses mixed into it, but I decided to eat a little and reserve my strength which would undoubtedly be needed if I was going to escape that afternoon. Or at least die trying. I scooped up a handful of rice and shoved it into my mouth, since the nurse that brought me my lunch apparently "forgot" to give me any eating instruments. The rice was cold and hard and felt uncooked. I swallowed the brownish protein without even bothering to bite, and gulped down the bowl of soup-- which was most likely made out of water, salt and a slice of potato skin. When I dug my hand into the rice again, I saw it. A piece of ripped paper! I immediately pulled it from the stack of rice and opened it.

On the stained paper, it stated:

120709. Buena suerte.

That was it. Nothing else was on there.

That was it, just a useless chain of numbers and wait, is that "good luck" in Spanish?

That was it! My eyes widened in surprise as I realized the note was written in Nurse Hanna's handwriting. She wasn't dead, I thought to myself, consolation and relief erased all of my frustrations while I sighed. My tension eased, and my rapid breathing gradually slowed.

I spotted the door knob slightly turned, and a gap appeared in the metal door. I thrusted the note into my jeans pocket with all possible haste, and waited for the shape to come into view. The next things I saw were those serious brownish- black eyes and silky black hair that could only belong to Alvinne. I laughed under my breath, and my awareness dissipated.

As she shut the door behind her, Alvinne turned and glared straight at me. Before I could say anything about Hanna's secret note, she grabbed my wrist and hurried on. "Come on. It's the switch hour. We've got to go, now."