Side Effects

20 - Entrance to the Truth

Gadolin backed out of the door silently, making sure that he went unnoticed.

That girl - Tina Petrenko - had no chance in hell of survival, and he did not want to be around when she was gone. Not because he, himself, would feel remorse for the girl, but because he loathed dramatic scenes of loss and anguish and pathetic wastes of time like that.

Grief was not a miracle worker that could bestow life back onto someone if other people miss them enough. Crying and screaming "why" at the walls never helped anybody in any situation. That was what he had learned from the Periculum Prison.

Crossing through a corridor he knew far too well, Gadolin noted every cracked floorboard and every peeling strip of wallpaper as they had been before. The same spiders in the windows' cobwebs. The same depressing weather outside. After that girl's death passed - nothing was going to change. She was just another victim of the Periculum Prison, passing and waiting for the next to join her.

Gadolin pulled down his sleeve, which had smudged writing that had been there since that morning, in handwriting that only Gadolin could read. With its worn blue colour, on the back of his wrist wrote '18 days'. He rolled his sleeve back over the daunting reminder. Every day, he wrote how many days since his freedom. Every waking moment, he forced himself to count how long he would last as a free man before his inevitable death.

For now he was still living, so he did not want to waste his time doting on it. Besides, there were more important things to think about.

Before he comprehended it, he was outside the hospital, refusing to look back at the tragedy within. Now that the Cards were off his back, it was the time to finish what he had planned since his prison escapade.

Now was the time to finish what he started against Rhine.

Out of his right pocket, Gadolin took a miniature black leather book filled with notes from Rhine. This was not meant to fall into anyone's (never mind Gadolin's) hands, but his powers allowed him to take it during their revolution meeting without anyone noticing.

He flicked the pages until he reached one in particular - a page that he had found and folded the corner for reference.

It was a map of New Orbis - a perfect circle in the middle of nowhere. Though Rhine may have not been a man of many talents, he could surely draw the map accurately to a smaller scale. The intricate details of the lines that crossed between each area of the city were drawn to absolute perfection.

The central was a flawless circle which was correctly depicted in Rhine's art piece without a single clue of tracing. Crossed in red pen was a tiny point close to the very heart of the city - slightly in front of where the Town Hall would be.

On the right page was a sketch of what exactly he was after. A circular item in the ground with the city's symbol on it. An hourglass, with a cityscape trapped inside it.

Due to what Rhine had shaded, the object in question was likely to be metallic, with the symbol as an engraving. At the top of the circle read '0001' to mark the city's first year in use, and on the bottom of the circle it was clear to see the words 'The First Mayor's Demise'.

It was a time capsule. It was buried in the early days of New Orbis, and would not be opened until Mayor Cermentia Grates was dead.

He knew what Grates was doing by having this. As long as she was alive, she would not allow the truth to be told. But once she was dead, everyone would see what was hidden.