Adrian found himself seated in the low-lit confines of his office, a space shrouded in shadows that felt almost suffocating. The faint flickering of the desk lamp cast an eerie glow on the small tag that lay before him, the single word "Again" etched into its surface. The word sparkled uneasily in the harsh light, as if the very paper were hesitant to perpetuate the weight of the message it carried. He realized he had not uttered a single word for over an hour, lost in the suffocating silence that enveloped him. While the tremors in his hands had subsided, his mind refused to settle. Thoughts spiraled in slowly disorienting circles, each one colliding with the other in a chaotic dance. Hello again. No, it was more than just a greeting from beyond; it was a somber reminder that something was amiss, a message too intimate to ignore.
The chilling reality of the situation weighed heavily on him. Behind him, just out of sight, the body lay still and cold in the sterile confines of Drawer Six. This time, rather than delegating the grim task, Adrian had zipped the body bag himself—a decision born not out of necessity but rather from a desperate need for control over something, anything, in a circumstance so utterly devoid of it. Even as he performed the motion, it felt achingly hollow, and the girl's face flashed in his mind's eye every time he blinked, haunting him. The evidence was clear; the marks were not figments of his imagination. They bore a pattern that was intentional, unmistakably crafted. Yet there was a word, a name, that lurked just at the edge of his consciousness, a name he was unwilling to utter. It had been nearly two decades since it had last crossed his lips.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the office door—quick, firm, and all too familiar.
Without even having to look up, he knew it would be Lena.
"Come in," he rasped, his voice sounding rougher than he had intended. The door swung open, revealing Lena Ward—a whirlwind of energy with her short dark hair and those ever-tired eyes. She wore an oversized sweatshirt emblazoned with "St. Jude's ER 2013," almost swallowing her slight frame. As she stepped into the room, he could see she clutched a paper bag tightly, her expression marred by a frown. "You didn't eat again," she observed matter-of-factly.
He attempted to downplay her concern, waving her off dismissively. "Not hungry," he insisted, though the words felt more like a feeble excuse.
Lena's eyebrows furrowed with worry. "You appear as if you haven't slept in two days straight."
"I probably haven't," Adrian admitted, submission in his tone.
With a sigh, Lena set the bag down on his desk, inadvertently pushing the tag aside without a glance. She perched on the arm of the plush leather chair in the corner, her posture both casual and concerned. "You got another floater this morning. The County PD is asking for your preliminary report."
Adrian stared at her, the term "floater" echoing in his mind. "Floater?"
"Yeah. A girl found on Calgrove Street. Teenage brunette. The report mentioned she was discovered half submerged in a drainage tunnel and half in the riverbed," she explained.
He didn't respond immediately, merely nodding in acknowledgment, absorbing the news.
"Are you okay?" she pressed, her demeanor shifting to one of deeper concern. "You look really pale."
"A mirror-touch flare-up. A particularly bad one," he replied, rubbing his ribcage absently, though there was no visible injury to account for the discomfort. "It hit me hard before I even had contact with her."
Without missing a beat, Lena stood up and moved behind him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder in a supportive gesture. "Did she remind you of someone you know?"
The question hung heavy in the air, and he chose silence rather than risk the burden of the truth spilling out. Some truths, he felt, were too monstrous to verbalize. He held back from revealing the details about the mark's significance; he couldn't share that yet. He wasn't even sure where his memories ended and where his stress-induced imaginings began. Instead, he flipped open the autopsy notes laid before him, seeking solace in the details.
"Blunt force trauma to the chest, three fractured ribs, internal bleeding due to a ruptured spleen. Additionally, there is secondary trauma to the back of the skull. Notably, there are no defensive wounds, suggesting she didn't attempt to fight back," he detailed, his voice steady yet strained.
"She was drugged?" Lena proposed, her brow creased in thought.
"That's a possibility. The toxicology screening is still pending," he responded, his mind racing.
Lena leaned in to examine the notes more closely. "Wait. You wrote something unusual here. 'Bruising pattern—non-random. Symbolic.' What does that even mean?"
Adrian instinctively shut the folder, the words feeling daunting. "I don't know yet," he admitted quietly, uncertainty thick in his tone.
Later that afternoon, as the sun dipped low and shadows cloaked the city, Adrian found himself driving across town toward a private archive facility—Greywood Medical Storage, one of the last bastions still holding onto non-digitized records from various shut-down institutions. It had been years since he had set foot in that building.
The structure loomed ahead: a blocky concrete edifice devoid of windows and unsettlingly silent. Inside, a solitary elderly clerk manned the front desk, her gaze fixed on the paperwork before her, not even lifting her eyes as Adrian signed in.
He knew precisely what he sought, even if it felt like a ghost hunt through the past.
St. Enoch's Children's Home. Closed in 2006.
He couldn't help but feel a flicker of doubt—were the records still even there? Typically, case files from orphanages were sealed or discarded entirely. However, St. Enoch's was different; it had long been intertwined with state funding and controversial medical trials.
After a moment, he located the drawer marked "E-N." As he pulled it open, the drawer protested, sticking halfway as if it hadn't been accessed in years, its groan echoing a sense of foreboding in the stillness of the archive.
The files lay before him, brittle and fragile, their edges tinged with an unsettling yellow that spoke of age and neglect. Each folder was meticulously labeled with last names, some typed in a precise font, while others bore the uneven scrawl of a hand that seemed to belong to someone with a story of their own. He flipped through the contents with a deliberate care, absorbing the weight of each document as he sifted through the pages.
Then, all at once, his hand halted as if it were struck by an unseen force.
A file stood out—stark and significant—with the name "Keller, Adrian" emblazoned on the front.
He pulled it from its place with a sense of foreboding.
It was surprisingly thin.
In fact, it was far thinner than he had anticipated, leading him to question what vital information might be missing from it. Slowly, he pried open the cover to reveal its contents.
The first page held a few essential admission details. The year of birth: 1991. A note chronicling an unsettling transfer from foster placement at the tender age of seven. It detailed troubling observations that described him as being "emotionally withdrawn" and exhibiting a "speech delay." Below this chilling account was a faint red stamp that read: "Subject transferred—Program Alpha."
Adrian felt a tremor ripple through his hands, a visceral response to the starkness of the revelations laid out before him. There was an unsettling absence of explanation. No documented exit date. No indication of where he had been sent after this transfer.
Only a final, hastily scribbled note at the bottom margin caught his eye:
"Witness to Incident 14B. Unfit for recall. Recommend suppression."
He found himself riveted by those words, each one weighing heavily on his mind. Suppression. The term was a punch to the gut. Not relocation. Not discharge. Suppression. A chilling sweat broke out across his back as the gravity of the document settled in.
That night, without a crumb in his stomach and without exchanging a single word with Lena, Adrian found himself driving aimlessly back to the morgue. The car's interior was silent, with only the steady hum of the engine accompanying his thoughts, which looped endlessly like a worn-out record:
What on earth happened during Incident 14B?
He opened the drawer again in the morgue, his heart racing. The girl's face remained eerily serene, but he felt a visceral instinct to recoil—not from her, but rather from the implications of what she represented. Somehow, he sensed a connection between them, but the nature of it eluded him. Summoning his courage, he pulled the sheet away once more and looked closely at the bruises marring her chest. It was then that he did something he hadn't dared to do in years.
With utmost hesitance, he reached out and let his fingertip make contact with her cold skin. In an instant, pain shot through his chest, but alongside it came an unexpected spark—something illuminating behind his closed eyes.
Suddenly, he was confronted with disjointed images:
A door slamming echoing through the air.
A piercing scream from a child.
And then, his own voice—a boy's voice—crying out for help, desperation infusing every syllable.
Before he fully comprehended what was happening, he yanked his hand away as if burnt, and before he knew it, he had collapsed onto the floor, gasping for air, disoriented and drenched in sweat.
Something within him had shattered the chains of time.
Deep inside, a long-buried past had begun to awaken, surging back to the surface with a force he couldn't contain.