Something inside him twitched and there was another burst of agony, stopping all coherent thought.
Struggling, his every move stiff and forced, Xander pulled himself into his bed. His muscles aching as if he’d just run a marathon, he rested for a moment and then quickly fell into a profoundly deep and dreamless sleep.
Carl Dent slipped silently past Mike’s hospital bed, snagging some of his charts. He glanced up at the sleeping child, making sure he was in fact fast asleep, then turned and opened the file.
He looked them over quickly, jotting notes on what medication he was on and when he was getting out. His eyes widened a bit. They were letting the kid out next week.
“Gawd dammit,” he cursed, biting his lip when he realized how loud he had said it, throwing another look at Mike to make sure he hadn’t awoken the child. That didn’t grant him much time.
Mike stirred.
Dent looked up momentarily, then quietly put the chart back in its rightful position. He looked at his pad with glee. It was Mike’s social security number, birth date, and all other information. With it, he could find out exactly where Mike had been adopted from.
As he left the room, he saw a small security camera aimed directly at him. He realized quickly that he had no warrant to have invaded this boy’s privacy. He reached up and unplugged the camera with one swift tug. No one could know. Frowning at his own actions he continued on, trying his best not to look back.
As Dent walked past the nurses’ station, a tall nurse with a pronounced upper lip and a nametag that read ‘Riley’ gave him a hard look as he hurried onto the elevator. As he got on, a man dressed all in black bumped into him while getting off.
“Watch it!” Dent stammered, his papers scattering.
The black man just walked by, barely noticing Dent was even there.
Dent hurried his papers together, then got on the elevator, muttering a long string of curses under his breath as he did.
The black man walked past the nurses’ station and over to the room where Mike was staying. A room whose security camera happened to be offline. He took a piece of paper out from under his arm. It was the same one that Dent had been copying notes onto, his jot notes scrawled onto it in his almost illegible shorthand. He compared the number on Mike’s door to the number on the paper and walked in. Smiling and as silent as the dead, he took an I.V. bag from inside his jacket and switched it with Mike’s. He moved with such swiftness, as if every move he made was calculated, no movement made for no reason. The new liquid dripped down into the tube, then pumped itself into Mike’s very veins, as the man slipped back out as quickly as he had come.
Dent walked down the street in a hurry. He wanted to get this information back to the station so that he could process it. Sweat began to bead on his forehead. It was unusually hot for this time of night. His bones began to ache as he walked faster and faster, accidentally dropping the stack of papers again.
“Fuck,” he uttered, bending down to pick them up. A small pain was developing in his right side, but he ignored it. He had to catch the creep that was murdering these kids. As the pain only seemed to get worse the more he tried to ignore it, he mentally swore off Dunkin Donuts for the third time this week.
He heard a sound up ahead of him. He looked up, but saw nobody. The streets were deserted, an eerie quiet surrounding them. The type of quiet that was almost louder than sound itself could ever be.
The sound happened again, louder this time. Metal on metal.
Dent drew his weapon from its holster. Maybe I won’t need to track down the dirtbag, he thought to himself, smirking a little. He put his back to the brick wall and slid on it to the corner, bringing his gun up to eye level. He swallowed hard and listened.
Several long moments passed, with no sound at all.
Then suddenly, a loud crash.
Dent spun around the corner and yelled “Police! Stop right there!”
The alley was dark and for a minute he thought the killer was hiding in the shadows, until he saw a small kitten crawl out of an old, dented garbage can. Dent sighed with relief, putting the gun back in its place. He turned to walk back toward the precinct.
He slammed face first into a large black figure. The person raised his long blade and drove it into Dent’s side, jigging it up even further once it was in.
Dent shoved past the killer and broke into a run down the street toward the station. Each breath caused his body to ache, every step making him want to bend over and throw up. He listened hard, hearing the click of the killer’s boots as they stepped past the rocky path. They echoed loudly, the sound reverberating off all the buildings then back again, making it seem as though it was coming from all directions at once. He felt the blood run openly from his wound as he tried desperately to tap just a little more speed into his legs. Dent sped around a corner at top speed, finally ducking behind a doorway. He pulled out his weapon again, then looked through the door of the house he was standing in front of. It was deserted. There would be no aid there. He once again brought the gun up to eye level, peeking his head around the corner. Nothing. The street and all those connecting to it were completely void of all life. Dent once
