PROLOGUE
“They’re paired.”
The man with the manila folder looks up, keeping his face low and eyes sharp. “They won’t remember that.”
Adjusting his lab coat, the medical superintendent pushes his glasses back, nodding curtly and resuming his leading walk through the stark white hallway. “Aggression is expected. Patient 0516 has a close monitor. The female presents outbursts due-”
“I don’t care,” the man interrupts.
Ignoring the chart of medical history and behavior analysis, he taps his finger on the black and white image of a young woman with timid, big eyes and tears staining her cheeks. “Her. I want to see her.”
The medical superintendent gets an ill feeling, studying the man’s wicked coldness. But he cannot afford drama with the man. So, he trains his attention where it matters. Straight ahead. Down the fluorescent hall. And chauffeurs the buying man to the paint flaking off the bars containing the woman that caught his interest.
“Patient 1013,” he starts, both men peering between bars at the silk cocooning a lithe human body from the padded ceiling, each vertebra pressing through the delicate fabric like second skin. “Female, 22, admitted with suicidal tendencies and unregulated behavior. Seems to only have a response to patient 1018.”
The interested man flips the page, curiously scanning the grayscale image of patient 1018, the 24-year-old man who is more destructive than abused arsenic.
An awful smirk cuts his lips, diving deeper into what mental issues causes the disturbing umbra around the patient’s eyes, what trauma he stores in his body from the acts he’ll never escape.
“They’re perfect,” the man chuckles darkly.
As he flips through the remaining patients he came for, the medical superintendent hides his clammy hands in each pocket of his coat, watching the faint movement of the woman in the room.
Thoughts of making a mistake eat at him. A lump settles in his throat and his chest draws taut, recounting the precise care he’s implemented in rehabbing the outcasts found in the remains of a massacred circus.
The buyer doesn’t notice his discomfort. He’s flipping back to patient 1018 and stepping around the blonde man shifting in his coat.
Perusing what seems to be an everlasting list of failed medication and successful attempts of breaking free of confines, he steps up to the bars in his peripheral, the room next to patient 1013, and slides his eyes up to the carnivorous stare looking back at him.
The man smiles evilly at the patient, making an unspoken promise to remove the straitjacket tying his arms all the way across his chest—for as long as he gives him a run for his money.
The patient doesn’t blink.
He doesn’t move.
His dead eyes are locked in, like a hungry predator, an animal driven by targeting instinct, the darkness of his gaze a spiraling vortex in the white room.
EXTENDED PROLOGUE
PATIENT 1013
Black flutters over warm light, separating my conscious mind from what exists around me. Confusion trickles in. It stirs the ache in my muscles, and the angst of having heavy eyelids threatens me with an unsettling spike of my heart rate, my fingers twitching a nervous dance over something slick.
Open… Come on, open.
With a deep breath, I get my eyes open and blink against the dense light raining dust. It’s hot. The penetrating heat is weighing on my spinning head, causing my neck to struggle to peel my sweaty face away from the firm fabric I’m lying on top of.
Straining to lift my head, my hair separates from my scalp, amplifying the tingle from being on the side of my head for too long. It radiates like an itch, blooming wider the farther I get my head up, pulsing and drilling, making the carousel of my mind run too fast.
I blink. And blink. And blink. Breathing heavier. Faster. Needing my sight. As it clears, I start taking in the sweaty bodies surrounding the living room we’re in. The torrid air sinks into me, exerting so much pressure it squeezes, slipping acid up the back of my tongue.
They’re all unconscious or stirring, lying in various positions in pairs on the stained carpet, like we had too much to drink and passed out wherever we were standing.
Except—I don’t know them.
I don’t know me.
I don’t know where I am.
