“Yes, but there's a secure room. I'll need you to pull the power.”
“Hold tight.”
Christian purses his lips before leaning against the wall with his hand in his pockets, silent.
It takes a few minutes, but soon there's a clicking sound throughout the house and Aster’s voice is calm through the phone’s speakers, “We can stall the generator for five minutes. Work fast.”
Fucking—!
I get to work quickly on the door and I’m grateful for a lot of things in this moment. Like Christian noticing the door’s security. I admit, without his warning, this may have ended badly. For the lock being the most basic of its kind, which allows me to get the door open in twelve seconds. And for my ability to work under pressure. Fuck Aster for raising my blood pressure so suddenly like this.
But the moment I open the door, I’m unable to take a single step inside.
There are photos everywhere. It’s almost a mimic of Xavier’s case-room which houses every scrap of data he accumulated over the course of five years—every single piece of information no matter how small or useless—the physical manifestation of his madness.
Our shadow, Philip Warren is the Harvester.
And he’s just the same. There are photos of all his victims. All that have come to pass… and even ones that will be—brand-new faces on every corner of the walls.
“Four minutes left,” Aster’s voice snaps me back into myself.
I use my phone to take photos as I step into the room, and Christian does the same. We’re both quiet as we ruffle through Philip’s things, careful to put everything back in place after, just as we found it. This is the one part of the house that stores every bit of Philip’s personality. A twisted type of darkness.
There are scrapbooks of each girl lining the shelves on the wall, diaries of some kind, detailing their habits, relationships and personalities, with the same erratic writing penned on every unblemished corner of each page:
‘You deserve better’.
‘I’ll save you.’
“We’ve got a serial killer with a saviour complex,” I mutter. “How charming.”
I rummage over the unfamiliar faces. Every year, the type of woman he chooses changes. The first year it was Caucasion women, blonde hair, brown doe eyes, small frame. The second, mixed-Korean women with jet black hair, full breasts, bold piercings.
This year, the first victim was an African American girl, with long black braids and a slender frame.
“Thirty seconds.”
I grab Christian and pull him out of the room sharply, closing the door just as an alarm blares through the house. It lasts barely a moment before going quiet, and the security systems click back into place.
“Thanks, Aster. We’ll be back soon.” I hang up on my brother with a sigh of relief, before turning to Christian with a raised brow. “How’d you know the room was secured?”
He places a hand on his shoulder with visible disinterest and rolls his neck, “I told you already. I could hear the hum of the system. The entire house is quiet,” he nods towards the door with a grim expression, “except for the walls surrounding this room.”
Ah. His hyper senses.
My lips tighten, and I hesitate for a single moment before following through with the words on my tongue, “So why is it that I don’t run from you and your superpower, but you ran from me immediately?”
Christian’s expression doesn’t change, but there is a flicker of surprise in his energy before he turns away, “Now’s not the time to talk about this. Besides, I told you the reason already.”
“Right,” I don’t make a motion to move as I put my hands in my pockets, “something about not wanting me to see your emotions anymore. It sounds rather convenient so why don’t you be honest instead?” My lips form into a sneer as I tiltmy head, “You’re running from me because you think I’ve lost my mind.”
Christian’s only gotten three steps away from me when he stops, “What?”
“You don’t believe me.” I’m only half-sure that’s the reason, but any type of goading is bound to give me a clue, “You’re questioning my sanity.”
He snorts but he makes no motion to turn around, “I knew you were insane from the start. If it was just that, I’d have run from you long ago.”
That checks out. “Then—”
