Fever Dream Red

50

Inez smiled at me strangely, perhaps in forgiveness. Then she laughed.

"It's okay, kiddo. I was stupid, thinking you would stay here forever. I've got over it now, lucky for you."

I was grateful for the forgiveness. It made some of my guilt dissipate away. It was still there though, some of it.

Probable because I didn't see her when I left. I imagined, or I hoped, that she was in a state, frantic and crying insesently.

Maybe she wasn't.

"How did you figure out that Danny was here, anyway?"
"He told me." Inez revealed nonchalantly. "When I forced him to."
"What do you mean?"
"I got angry. Nick throughly freaked out when he figured out you had gone. Like, more than he did when Danny and Zack supposedly left. I thought that was suspicious. So I got a gun and forced the truth out of him."

I stared at Inez for a while, a bit confused. Inez had always been calm, collected and cool. She had seemed to turn rotten while I had left.

Maybe she always had been. Maybe I had never thought of her in that way.

How hard it must've been for her.

We came to the door and the men came to a stop.

I recognised it to be the same door that Doug had stupidly set off the alarm to. I had last seen it on bleary surveillance footage. It felt weird to at last be there. It was like visiting a location that was in one of your favourite movies.

One of the men fumbled with the keys, trying to unlock the door while the other worked to disable the countless alarms.

I grasped Inez's hand as I was sure the same thought was running through both of our minds.

I knew and I hoped Danny was behind this door, but what if he wasn't? What if we were locked in there instead? What if we had been wrong and Danny had escaped, and Nick was just toying with us the whole time?

What if we were walking willingly to our deaths?

I looked down the long dim corridor we had walked down, and wondered how many ghosts could linger in the dark. How many men could come up and shoot us now, if they really wanted?

Plenty.

The door opened with a full audience, the cranks and groans of the old metal awakening once more.

The room was small. That was the first thing that struck me.

It was lit by warm white lights around the room. It wasn't dimly lit like a dungeon, nor brightly lit like a store. It was somewhere in the comfortable in between.

To the right of the grey; concrete room was a bed. It was the worst kind of bed: narrow and thin and manky, by the looks of it.

Lying on that bed was a guy.

All you could see of him was his mop of dark hair, but I knew at once who it was.

I couldn't believe we had found Danny.

Me and Inez almost ran to him, but were stopped by the men, much to our dismay.

Danny opened his eyes slowly, slowly adjusting to the real world after emerging from the translucent one I can imagine he much preferred.

He awoke with little surprise looking at the majority of his surroundings, until he looked through the doorway.

I could imagine it looked much like we were all peering into his world from another universe, the doorway a portal to the other realm. Perhaps it was the translucent one he favoured.

He saw us and immediantly sat up. His eyes narrowed then widened immediantly after, confirming his beliefs.

He stood up out of his bed immediantly and tried to run to us, but the men stopped him too.

We were staring at each other, barricaded at both sides.

I took this chance to look at him and I came to the conclusion he looked awful. His once shiny hair was now only shiny with grease, the darkness of his hair only ecuentiating it.

His face was haggard and yellow, and although there must've been nothing else to do but sleep in that room, he still looked tired.

Danny's poxy face looked like one you'd see on a poorly made wax figure. It didn't feel quite like I was looking at him, only a skewed version which didn't align with the sight of him in my mind.

It hits me then that he doesn't know anything.

He doesn't know that Aggie is dead. He doesn't know that I managed to escape for a few days. He doesn't know I only came back for him and Inez.

He has a lot to catch up on.

And I do too. With all the chaos of the running and catching, I had almost fogotten about Aggie laying dead in her bedroom.

The sight of it flooded into my mind, and a wave of nausea threatened to set in. I swallowed it back.

I wondered if that had been solved. I wondered if it was Nick or one of his men. If so, it had probably been covered up as an accident of something. It had to be one of Nick's men. Who else could it be?

I also wondered for Skye's sake where Zack was. He

I hoped he was in a room much like this one, but I couldn't be sure what Nick would do. He was unpredictable at the best of times.

"Danny." Inez breathed, tears slipping down her rosy cheeks and her cool composure faltering at once before the sight of him.

Even though he looked awful, I was relieved to see him. I thought he was dead. To see him sent a heavy burden off my chest. I didn't even know I had it, but it must've been weighing me down every step I walked.

I was glad to be rid of it.

And I was glad to have him back.