Chapter 15 #2
With that I watch Eli take the first door on the left, and I take the first one on the right, letting Lyla inside the corridor first. She takes careful steps down the dimly lit hallway, her gaze darting around to every small sound she hears and I follow behind her, keeping my gun steady.
“Found anything?” Eli speaks through the comms and I reply, telling him the corridor is bare. We both agree to continue on, moving with precision between each corridor that seems to lead onto another, like a never ending maze of white wash walls and tiled flooring.
Scattered footprints cover the grim tiled floors, each of them leaving a black outline behind.
I can almost envision whoever they belong to, running through these cold corridors, their bare feet skidding across the tiles.
The vision is so clear in my mind but Lyla’s snapping teeth quickly yanks me back into the present, the harshness of the prison flooding my system once again.
She stops in front of what looks like an office door, her nose nudging the battered door handle.
Wrapping my hand around it, I give it a small turn, the mechanisms clicking together to release the lock inside and allowing me to enter.
It’s nothing fancy, but it’s definitely being used as an office of some kind.
A desk and chair sit in the middle of the room, the surface scattered in random papers.
There’s also a chair in the corner with a small waste paper basket next to it.
This whole place is a fucking ghost town. I haven’t seen any sign of life. Either the SatNav was wrong in the van, or Ricky is stashing these girls somewhere deeper in this prison because it shouldn’t be this quiet.
Lyla enters the office space and begins to sniff around on the floor, her nose leading her towards the desk where she then sits, waiting for me to join her.
Her chocolate brown eyes look at me with so much love that I can feel it stabbing into my chest. She runs her nose against the edge of the desk, short huffs of breath lifting up the papers.
Striding over to the desk, I plant my hand on her head and give her a quick scratch behind the ears which she seems to enjoy, then I reach out to Eli to check in.
“Storm? Everything good?”
It’s silent for a moment before his voice spills through the earpiece. “All good. It’s fucking dead over here, man. I haven’t seen anyone. You found anything?”
So it seems I’m not the only one who hasn’t come across any living being. Where the fuck is Ana? The rest of the girls?
“Yeah, nothing here either. We’ve come across an office if you wanna head over here?” I say whilst lifting up random pieces of paper and turning them over in my hand before picking up another one.
“Ten four, Viper.”
“Keep an ear out for Eli, will you baby girl?” I say to Lyla who simply tips her head to the side whilst I scour over the surface of the desk.
A single piece sticks out amongst the rest of the white sea and I grab the corner to pull it free.
Names upon names fill the paper, all in alphabetical order.
There must be hundreds, and to the right of the names are what I assume are ages, the youngest I see is thirteen.
The sight of the number has my stomach curdling with boiling anger and it takes everything in me not to absolutely trash this office to bits.
These people are some fucking sick bastards and it only fuels the fire of wanting to skin Ricky alive, to feel his flesh beneath my hands as I tear it away from his bones, his screams for mercy piercing into my eardrums.
Lyla’s quick bark has me snapping out of the vision, my gaze firing towards the door where Eli fills the space. He gives Lyla’s head a small scratch before coming to stand in front of the desk, his gaze roaming over the mess.
“What’s that?” He says, pointing towards the paper in my gloved hands.
“Names and ages of girls and women.” There’s a sadness to my voice as I tell Eli what’s on the paper. He takes it out of my hand and scours the page himself, I don’t even have to ask him what he’s looking for, I already know because I’m looking for a certain name too on another page.
There’s no dates on the pages but some of the names are highlighted in different colours.
Green, orange and red. I’m unsure of what they mean, but I’m going to assume the red means that they’re either dead or they’ve been sold on which causes my stomach to drop like a lead weight.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I find Ana’s name on these pages, highlighted in red.
I don’t even know who I’ll become if she’s no longer breathing the same air as me.
The thought is like a knife to my black heart.
Scouring over the paper, I use my index finger to trace over the names, the various colours skipping across the page until I come across Ana’s name. It’s right there in front of me, staring back at me.
Annabelle De Rossi.
A green stripe of colour across her name.
My breath catches in my throat when I see the colour. She isn’t dead. She’s still alive. She has to be.
“Dean?” Eli says, his head still dipped low.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve found Sophia here. There’s an orange line across her name.”
The orange must mean that they’re due to be picked up.
“Are you sure it’s her?” I hate to question it but I don’t want my best friend to put everything onto this young woman, hoping that she’s actually his sister.
“It’s her. Look.” Eli says, tipping the paper towards me.
Sophia Rodriguez, age thirty.
I look up at my best friend, Eli Rodriguez, who had a sister who was only four years younger than him, constantly attached at the hip with each other.
“It’s her Dean, I know it is.” He whispers, his eyes glazing over as he looks at me, and I take the paper from his hand and fold it into a neat square before slipping it into the front pocket of his vest.
“Then let’s finish what we have to do here. Find Ana, then we can get to your sister.” I order, knowing if I don’t put some ground rules down, he’ll spiral. Eli shakes his head and rolls his shoulders, then takes his gun into his grasp.
“Let’s do this.” He says with certainty and leaves the office with me and Lyla in tow.
We clear the hallways and corridors, noting that everywhere we look is empty, like something spooked Ricky and for some reason, I can’t seem to shake that idea.
“What if Ricky found out about the driver and the girls?”
Eli stops in his tracks for a moment before turning on his heels to face me. “And he cleared everyone out?” He asks with an edge to his voice, like he’s feeling what I’m feeling.
“Yeah.” I nod. “There’s no way this place is this dead all the time with how many girls Ricky is collecting. They’re either hiding somewhere, or we’re too late.”
The words are sour as they leave my mouth.
I want to believe that they’re just hiding somewhere, waiting for us, not that we’re too late again.
I watch as Eli takes a deep breath, probably collecting his thoughts then lifts his head to face me.
“We scour the building. There’s gotta be something here. ”
I try to keep that positive mindset but I feel like I’m slowly going insane, like a dog chasing its tail, over and over again until that’s all it knows. The finish line is always inches away from my grasp and I’m never fast enough to make it, continuously falling at the final hurdle.
That’s how I feel without Ana.
Insanity.
“Yeah.” I simply say, my voice low. Then we continue scouring the place, checking every single inch until we come across a door we didn’t see when we entered the building.
Eli stops at the side of me, Lyla at my feet and we both share a look between us.
Communicating without words, I lift my gun as Eli wraps his hand around the metal handle, pushing it down until the door clicks open.
The sound echoes around the large space before quickly falling silent again.
A set of stone steps comes into view from behind the door, which seems to disappear into a void of blackness, leading me to pull my goggles down over my eyes.
Immediately I’m able to see into the dark abyss, noting the stairs go all the way underneath the prison before trailing off to an unknown destination.
Before entering the dark stairwell, I fish around in my pocket on my cargos for a short lead that attaches to my belt and Lyla’s vest. She’s excellent off of the lead but it’s dark as fuck down there and I’m not risking her safety if anyone tries to grab her.
The metal clasp clicks, then locks around the O ring that’s on the back of her vest, successfully attaching us together.
I lift my hand and signal with two fingers to Eli that I’m going down first, he nods and falls in line behind me, protecting my six.
The three of us work like a well oiled machine as we take silent steps down towards the basement, my rifle ready in front of me.
Through the night vision goggles, a similar hallway to the ones upstairs comes into view, the small space leading us towards a singular door and I lift my hand to signal to Eli to stop.
I hear his feet come to a halt behind me and I motion with my hands for him to stand at the side of the door with me taking the other side.
Lyla takes her place at the side of me, her stance strong and focused.
Eli takes the handle in his hand and gives me a sharp nod the moment he opens the door and I’m in there, rifle first. Within seconds I’ve got the whole room scanned over, finding it completely bare.
I don’t even notice the smell at first, adrenaline bursting through my veins, but then it hits me like a ton of bricks, burying me under the weight of it.
It’s nothing like I’ve ever smelt before.
I thought those bodies outside had a foul smell, but this is something far worse. It’s worse than death.