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girl wonder. chapter eighteen
THERE'S a strange atmosphere at the asylum. Not because of its nature, or the fact that it's empty and the only thing that illuminates the hallways is the dull moonlight. It's familiar. It's the same atmosphere that causes goosebumps to rise on my skin and sends shivers all over my body every time. It's cold, and somehow I can sense her magnetic presence drawing me to her. That didn't happen when I first met her. Her power is growing.
Behind a pair of large double doors, a body lays sprawled out in a pool of his own blood. Adamson. A few feet away, Rachel stands there staring at him.
"Rachel!" She whips around at the sound of my voice, her face morphed into shock. Without hesitation, she runs towards me and wraps her arms around me tight. "Are you okay? Where's Dick?"
"Kory, Gar and him are being tortured," she tells me, pulling away from me. "I have to find my mom."
"Wh- what?" My voice comes out small and I swear my heart physically drops. My throat starts to close up as my mind imagines the worst, but boy am I thankful I stayed at the safe house. Still, a clock begins to count down in my mind, taunting me with the possibility that I might be too late to save any of them.
Rachel makes a beeline for the laptop on a grand, carved oak desk at the back of the room, where she types furiously. I stand next to her when the screen displays a map of the asylum on which a cell is marked 732. Angela Azarath.
Rachel and I share a look before she grabs a key card from the desk and we storm out of the office. She tugs her hood over her head and I glide my shield onto my forearm as we press ourselves against a wall. I hold my breath as security guards approach a gate behind the corner we're at, but soon their voices shrink into silence once again.
Rachel unlocks the gate while I'm on lookout. Once we're through it, we head down a hallway, take a few turns and arrive at another gate. All the while my heart races as if I'm standing at the edge of a cliff.
Rachel's struggling to breathe when we finally arrive at cell number 732. She hesitantly faces the heavy iron door for a moment.
"Hey," I whisper, taking her hand in mine. I squeeze it gently. "I'll be right out here."
She nods, sucking in a deep breath before she reaches up and scans the card.
The cell hardly has enough room for one to take any more than three steps. It contains nothing but a toilet and a single, rusty bed on which a woman sits curled up, facing away from the door, mumbling an incoherent melody to herself.
