The Games (Ziall)

Prologue

"What are you doing?"

The question sounds loud in the silent room Niall is working in. He has been hiding in his workroom for a few weeks now and has been secretive about what he is creating. Not that Zayn is particularly worried. Niall never likes it when Zayn sees his creations before he has finished them.

Zayn had met Niall in the mental hospital where he had volunteered to take care of the patients. He had done it for his sister, who had been hospitalized for being schizophrenic. Zayn was prohibited to go see her, so he had found another way in.

Waliyha Malik is the only one Zayn has left of his family. He had taken care of his sister starting the minute their mother died in a house fire. Zayn had been in his own room when it happened, but little Waliyha had seen it happening. The older Malik cannot imagine how bad it must have been for a four-year-old to see her mother die in an explosion. And if it wasn't for their father, Waliyha would have died too, but the man was able to pull both siblings out of the house before anyone else could have gotten hurt.
After the funeral Waliyha had told Zayn that she saw who killed their mother. What had killed her...

Waliyha had never been the same after that. She saw things that weren't there, often getting scared of monsters only she could see. Her older brother, of course, had tried to protect her from the invisible monsters.

But their father didn't care for that. He became an alcoholic, not being able to process his wife's death. His daughter's problems only got him angrier than he already was. Zayn tried to shield his sister from the drunk beatings their father gave her for being 'a freak'. Zayn would take them for Waliyha, hoping she wouldn't get more scared than she already was.
Waliyha's condition only got worse.

At the age of twenty, Zayn got the news that his father had been killed in a car crash. He couldn't say he cared much. The last time he had seen that drunk bastard had been when he turned eighteen, the night before he took Waliyha, most of the money they still had and the car with which they left. It was the best decision he had ever made.

They had been able to find a small flat in a town so small it wasn't even marked on the map. Zayn had gotten a job as a mechanic in a close-by, bigger village that got him good money to survive.
But things didn't turn out as he hoped it would. Waliyha didn't get better, she only got worse. He would come home to his sister screaming at people that weren't there. She would be bleeding from the glass she threw at the wall and stepped in. So the 23-year-old Zayn believed it was the right decision for Waliyha, to send her to see a specialist.

Not a year later, she tried killing her doctor. She had thought he was one of the demons haunting her and had snapped. Ever since then, Waliyha had been stuck in a mental hospital nearby, labelled as one of the most dangerous patients they have inside. And Zayn, he was left on his own in the small flat, eventually deciding to do something about it and volunteering in the institution his sister is in.

Volunteering hadn't been the easiest thing Zayn has ever done, but it is interesting for him to learn about how the patients see the world. He had been glad he was finally helping people and doing something with his life, besides being a mechanic in the mornings. He still needs the money to survive after all. And after some time of volunteering, he had been allowed to take care of Waliyha, even though the lifeless stare his sister has always made him feel sad. They keep her hair short too. Zayn almost didn't recognize her the first time he was allowed to see her.

Either way, Zayn enjoys the stories of the patients. His favourite one to spend time with is Emma, a girl of only fourteen years old, placed for being bipolar. Her mood swings had been uncontrollable. Her anger was so bad that she almost killed one of her bullies once, something she isn't proud of.