"You're telling me that when the Bloody Doctor, a woman responsible for hundreds of murders, started hallucinating, you weren't able to put a rush on things?"
I haven't known Mila for very long, but I can tell that there is wrath in her eyes. It's not quite fury that plays in her gaze, but something wilder, something that is both beautiful and impressive. More intelligent than simply raw anger. She faces Carlyle, her face set in a serious mask.
She is formidable. Though I'm quickly becoming addicted to Mila's blue eyes, that is not a look I would ever want to see directed at me.
“You have to understand. Despite her notoriety, she doesn’t rank above anyone else in the prison. They’re all humans, all get the same treatment.”
"But she isn’t human, is she?” There is no question in Mila’s tone. “Those bodies we found at the cabin, they fall on you for not being more careful. It falls on me for not providing care. Do you understand that?" Carlyle shakes his head. "We found a fresh dumpsite earlier. She’s killed again. We have blood on our hands."
I don't agree with her, but the force of her conviction keeps me quiet. It's shaken Carlyle to his core. This is Mila's battle, and I'm man enough to let her be the general in this fight.
Mila shouldn't feel like she is responsible for her mother's actions. It's clear that she has felt guilty for Sveta's crimes her whole life. I don't know how to appease her, to tell her that it's not her fault. That no matter what she believes, there is nothing she could have done to stop any of it.
It's not my place.
Maybe if Mila was mine, I could take her in my arms, hold her close, and whisper in her ears, over and over again, that she doesn't need to be absolved... Maybe then she would believe me.
The thought strikes me deep in the chest, and I have to shake my head to clear it from thoughts of tucking Mila into my side to protect her from the world, from her own beliefs.
She crosses her arms, her eyes still narrowed at Carlyle.
"Had this been brought to my attention, I would have paid for an evaluation out of my own pocket. Hell, I could have gotten FUC involved. They would have sent someone over if they thought the Bloody Doctor was a rising threat."
"Be that as it may, there is a long process to get a private evaluation completed. It involves lawyers and about a mile’s worth of red tape. We had no way of knowing that her situation would go into a tailspin. We sure couldn’t predict an escape."
"And now my typically deranged mother is on the loose and in an unknown mental state." Mila inhales sharply. "We should have warned the public."
It's Carlyle's turn to blanch this time around.
"No, absolutely not. That would be nothing but a huge mess."
"Sure. For the system that let her go. For the jail that, perhaps, has faulty security systems." There's an underlying threat in Mila's words. Carlyle doesn't miss it.
"I assure you, Miss Starling, that we have every security in place, just like any other prison."
"If that were true, she would still be behind bars. And please address me as Agent Starling." When those last few words leave her mouth, I want to fist-bump the air in victory.
Carlyle's demeanor slips and changes slightly. "I didn't realize you worked for an agency."
9
T-Bone
Standing in the horribly upsetting cell that housed her mother, Mila crosses her arms, staring down Carlyle.
"I do work for FUC. I'm not here as a daughter. I'm mostly here as a professional who has to find her before Sveta adds another victim to her long list. Now, we would like to see the visitors' log." She points to a stack of letters on the floor by the bed. “I didn’t write her those. I want to know if her pen pals paid her any visits.”
There's a dare in Mila's blazing eyes. With a sigh and a headshake, Carlyle turns on the tablet he brought with him. After a few keystrokes, he turns the screen toward us.
"She very rarely has visitors. Besides, she spends too much time in solitary to be available for visits."
My eyes scan the list of people who visited her. Mila's name is the only one there, but then, out of nowhere, a man by the name of Oscar Trow appears. He's come by to see her a handful of times in the past six months.
"Who the hell is this Oscar Trow person?" I ask, taking out my phone to run his name through a search engine.
“That sounds sort of familiar,” Mila says, scrunching up her face, deep in thought. “Oh.” Her blue eyes go wide. “I know where I’ve seen it before.”
Mila takes out her phone and starts scrolling through it. “I have media alerts for Sveta Markov to keep an eye on things. A little while ago, I ran by this sick, twisted fan page operated by this guy.” She flips the phone over to me. “It’s anonymous, but I had Jessie, the FPU’s super hacker, look into the IP address. It was Oscar Trow. I check the website every now and again to keep an eye on him.”
As I scroll through the site’s blog posts, I get a deeper sense of just how twisted this man is. He has a website dedicated to the research and study of Dr. Sveta Markov's work. It's all praise and filled with hypotheses on where her exploration of blood, eradication of diseases, and the quest for immortality went wrong. He offers up what the next avenues of analysis should be.
None sounds very plausible. Or sane.
“The last blog post is a long, drawn-out description of his visit with Sveta,” I say, my eyes scanning the entry. “He gushes about her bright intelligence and the scintillating conversation they
