Lights | A Forever Fanfiction

Chapter Fifteen: Avoiding the Shrink

Two weeks of painful nothingness occurred. The police were slow to move, and Dr. Morgan seemed puzzled over most of the messiness. However, whenever I spoke to him about it, he shut me out and changed the subject. We talked a lot - about life, about everything that had happened.

It was confusing to me, that so much had happened in my so few days. I'd found my dad after I'd gotten back from kendo club. The next day had been a vacation day, when I found the details of his death and met Dr. Morgan, discovered my mother was alive, and learned of his immortality. The day after had been Friday, and secret rooms had sprung to life.

It smelled of conspiracy.

I visited Jo, and we talked about nothing in particular. Small talk. I fell asleep soon after she did. I was woken by Hanson and Reece.

"Wha-?" I grumbled when they woke me. Hanson offered me a bagel which I accepted graciously.

"Hey, Lights," Reece began, hear calm brown eyes looking me up and down. I must have been a mess. "I thought it would be good, since you couldn't speak to your school counsellor..." She paused.

"She wants you to see a shrink," Hanson deadpanned. I groaned.

"He's the best shrink we've got. He helped Detective Martinez out, after Sean's death," Lieutenant Reece explained.

"Yeah, but Jo hated every second of it," I retorted weakly. "Um..."

"But it helped," Hanson said awkwardly.

I sighed as Reece pulled me to my feet. Just as I was hauled out of Jo's room, Dr. Morgan appeared.

"Lieutenant Reece!" he exclaimed. "Very good to see you. I was just about to take Lights to her kendo lesson, since Jo asked me to." I frowned. It was Saturday. I only ever had kendo lessons after school.

"No, she's going to the-" Hanson picked up on what Dr. Morgan was trying to do, and his mouth formed a perfect O.

"Dr. Morgan-" Lt. Reece began.

"Well. Come on, Lights!" Dr. Morgan practically chirped, dragging me out of the hospital as I protested loudly.

"What the hell?" I demanded as he dragged me down the street.

"I need a favour," he said, finally stopping in front of a cafe. He held the door open, and as I shot him a skeptical glare he beamed at me sarcastically. Was he drunk?

We sat down at one of the tables by the window, and Dr. Morgan bought some hot chocolate. I was hungry - incredibly so. I hadn't eaten in a couple days, which was surprising, since I liked food.

"So, Lights," Dr. Morgan said, placing his hands on the cheap table emphatically. "I need you to hack into something for me."

"And what would that be?" I asked lightly, sipping my hot chocolate.

"I need you to look into someone for me. His name is Lewis Farber. He's a psychiatrist," he explained.

"Who is he?" I asked as I got out my laptop, starting the bootup sequence on my hacking profile.

"Someone I hope you never have to meet," he answered. "Someone you almost had to meet."

I frowned, not sure what he was talking about, or if I even wanted to know. I silently began my work, concentrating on the screen. "There's like... nothing." I continued working, trying to hew away the layers of firewalls surrounding the little amount of information there was. "Seriously, it's like- Oh, crap." A security company's logo flashed across my screen, lighting up everything and changing codes.

"What?" Dr. Morgan demanded, peering over the top of the screen as panic flooded through me. "Is it bad?"

"Only if we get caught, which will happen in exactly three minutes if I stop focusing," I snapped. I kept typing, my fingers missing keys as I typed in line after line of invalid code. I discarded everything and started over, with one minute left on the clock. Finally, the computer window closed, and I sighed, checking my data files for viruses that I may have downloaded.

"Oh, thank god," I breathed, falling backwards in my chair. "Okay, there were like, no files from the interweb, but there was stuff on the police database and I-"

"The police database, as in the high-security file database?!" Dr. Morgan demanded.

"Mhmmm," I replied, opening up the copied files. "Ooh, there's... nothing. Scanned images of diplomas, and a record of skinny dipping." I frowned. "Is he-"

"Yes. He also goes by Adam," Dr. Morgan sighed, crossing his legs.

"Adam, huh. How long has he been around?"

"He claims to have been alive for two-thousand years." He began fidgeting, glancing around the room. "Adam and I aren't exactly friends. I believe he may be involved in this."

"How so? What evidence is there, to prove this?" I challenged lightly. "And how does he tie in?"

"His DNA was found under your father's nails. They swabbed under them before the surgery, to get anything that could help us. It's just, he's not on file as a criminal. He's a psychiatrist for the NYPD." Dr. Morgan glared into the steaming, swirling depths of his hot chocolate, stirring it with a plastic spoon violently. "The thing is, he might be a murderer. Not might be, but he is. The only way I know who he is, is because of his DNA. He caught the bubonic plague, like many others who suffered from the Plague. We could detect that. We did, in a case last week, about an artist- nevermind. What I'm saying is, Adam is related to this. I just have to find out how."

"But, since my mum was immortal, too-"

"Oh, I totally forgot to mention it," Dr. Morgan muttered. "The results returned for the blood samples from that room..."

"Yeah?"

"It was your mother's blood."

I opened my mouth in shock and began to respond, when suddenly the doorbell to the cafe jingled as the door opened forcefully. Dr. Morgan and I both snapped our heads towards the newcomers.

"Doctor Henry Morgan, you are under arrest for the murder of Alexandre LaVaughn," one of Jo's friends, a detective from the station by the name of Duncan Devereux, called. "And the attempted murder of Persephone Reid." He was flanked by two police officers, and two pairs of shiny, silvery handcuffs glimmered in his hands. "I suggest you step away from Miss LaVaughn. Your accomplice is under arrest, too."

Dr. Morgan and I glanced at each other, confused.

"What?" we demanded in unison.

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