“What do you think the deal is with the Shadow Man and Lyla?” someone asked.
Lyla pressed into the wall, curious to know what others were thinking about the whole thing.
“I didn’t even think he was real until all this. Now, I’m not sure what to think.”
“I think he’s just a client gone territorial,” another voice chimed in.
“Lyla hasn’t had a client since she came here,” a girl pointed out. “He takes them out.”
“Maybe he loves her.”
Lyla gripped her shorts, her heart racing. He wasn’t capable of loving, and she wasn’t desperate enough yet to imagine he could.
Two girls laughed inside, the sound chipping into her. “That doesn’t exist here, Millie. Maybe he just wants to get her out.”
“But why hasn’t he already then? It’s been like… what six years?”
Ouch. That hurt.
“I think he’s just using her for his own agenda, whatever it is. That's all we're good for anyway.”
Listening to the conversation, a large part of her agreed.
He had some agenda, and she was just what she’d always been—collateral with damage.
***
A week after the drug incident, she was thrown out of the complex figuratively, and her nerves were fraught. Not only because she was moving again and the girl’s warning was ringing in her head, but because he had been absent. She hadn’t seen him since the incident, or even felt him, and the absence was gnawing, spinning her mind, making her thoughts oscillate between him having an agenda and him genuinely caring for her in his own twisted way. The more the time passed without him, the more the latter thought flickered.
In record time, she packed her entire collection of material possessions in one box, and waited outside the building as one of the guards came to collect her. He put a blindfold over her eyes, routine if they were being transferred to some secure location, and it disoriented her, not knowing where she was going.
She knew it was the fallout from that night, she knew it had something to do with Mr. H’s death and whatever message it sent. She just didn’t know if it was good for her or not. The guard deposited her in a vehicle and she heard the ignition start, driving away from the longest housing period she had been in. She had been seventeen when she had come to this Complex, eighteen when she’d met him for the first time, eighteen when her life had changed on one fateful night.
With the blackness behind the blindfold, she could remember the thunder and the raindrops splattering her as she’d run into the woods around the complex, desperately seeking escape when she’d collided—
The car jerked, breaking her thoughts, splintering them until she took a deep breath and centered herself. Memories, her memories, were a powerful vortex that sucked her in every time, taking her to dark places. She couldn’t remember a single moment in her life where she felt happy without the pressing weight of something terrible. She didn’t know how to smile anymore, the lines between her eyebrows becoming more permanent than they were not.
“Who are we going to?” she asked, just to break the monotony of her thoughts, not really expecting a reply.
“Don’t know,” the guard told her. “I’m just the delivery guy.”
Nice.
The car came to a stop after a long time. She heard the guard opening his door, before coming to her side, and hauling her out. She felt the sun on her skin for a split second before he guided her up some low steps. Still blindfolded, she stumbled her way through, her only box of possessions clutched against her chest. He took her down a long walkway, the ground under her flats solid, like concrete of some kind. Musky scents assaulted her nostrils, too mixed up together for her to discern.
Finally, after what felt like hours of walking, she was pushed into a chair.
The blindfold was taken off, and she blinked rapidly to let her eyes adjust to the sudden light, realizing she was in some kind of warehouse office, in a room made of wood, one with a brown table that was so rough and scratched it was probably older than she was, and—she counted—four chairs around it.
Wondering what this new place was and what her role in it was going to be, she took it in, waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
After a long time, a door opened and three men, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, walked in. Nervous energy filled her, her feet tapping the ground as she looked at the three strange men, not knowing who they were. But they looked menacing, rough, one of them even more so. The mean one was bald, his head gleaming as he took a seat at the head of the table, wearing a ring with the same snake design as the man from the club that night.