Chapter 6 (Part 4)

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Adam was lying on the couch, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. The rain wasn't letting up, and thunder kept on rolling in the sky. There was no one else in the living room with him, but he felt their eyes on him and tried to tell them to leave him alone. I can't talk. It was as though his voice had been reduced to gasps, each breath a struggle. I need air. He had to get up from that stiff couch and open the balcony door.

They are going to kill your sister.

"I need to breathe," Adam said.

"What you need is Prozac. Maybe Zoloft."

An icy shiver shot up his back. Adam wasn't imagining this. He had heard a voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. And this voice sounded very familiar.

"Adam, they know," said a voice to his left.

"Destroy the video!" another voice shouted behind him.

"This is your fault," murmured a third voice from below.

"Bianca is on the Red List," assured a hollow voice inside of Adam. "They will kill your sister."

"No!" Using every muscle in his body, Adam finally got on his feet. "There's no evidence. I'll delete this video."

"And Raul?"

"I asked him to destroy the originals. He didn't watch them. He never does," Adam walked to the balcony door and tried to open it. "Raul never watches his client's videos because he's too busy watching his own back."

"But Bianca marched several times, she signed the recall referendum," whispered someone behind Adam.

Covered in darkness, a woman laughed and said, "she signed it."

"Every time there was a referendum against the President, she signed it. What an idiot!"

"It doesn't matter." The darkness thickened around Adam as he tried to see who was talking to him. "Many people signed. Almost every Venezuelan has been with the opposition at one point or another."

"Run," said someone in the distance.

"It's too late," someone outside the apartment assured him.

"The file..."

"I said I'd delete the video!" Adam shouted, desperate to open the balcony door. He feared that this breathlessness would kill him.

"No," said a voice coming from the ceiling. "The audio file."

"Yes," agreed a female voice in front of him, chuckling. "The audio file that your dead girlfriend sent you."

"That's right," Adam wiped away the cold sweat from his forehead and stopped wrestling with the doorknob. "The stego-message that Zhang found. Bianca was in that video. Rafael too."

"That's why you went out tonight," muttered a voice in his ear. "You had to find out who sent that email. Did you forget that?"

"It was a threat," said a voice behind him.

"It was a warning," said a voice moving in the dark.

Bianca got out of Lili's bedroom and started walking straight to Adam, holding a beer bottle in her left hand.

"For Christ's sake, dumb-dumb! Are you ever sober anymore?"

"Bianca!" Adam took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, hoping the hallucination would vanish. A few seconds went by, however, and his sister was still there. "Are you here?"

"I am not."

Every attempt to make sense of what was going on proved to be futile. Adam had no power in his voice. He couldn't tell if this was Lili's apartment or not. Don't know where I am. His eyes followed Bianca as she walked towards him in a hallway that seemed to grow larger with every step she took. The lamp covered by the piece of red tulle turned on—on its own.

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