Chapter 42
CHAPTER 42
MICHAEL
“Why are you helping me?” Adnan asked, just as I began going down the front steps.
I turned around and faced him. His expression was still wary of my presence here, but he was much more relaxed than when I showed up less than an hour ago.
Our conversation hadn’t been long—nor did it need to be—but I'd gotten what I’d needed from him. Now all I had left to do was help clear his name. I wasn’t sorry for completing my Order, and he’d been responsible for his own demise, but without this, there’d be no coming back for what I wanted in the end. He didn’t know about the House, but my motives had nothing to do with being an Atlas.
I looked him squarely in the eye. “Because I’m in love with your daughter.”
My heart twisted painfully at the confession. I’d known for a long time now that I was in love with Azara, but I’d never said the words out loud or admitted them to anyone. I’d always imagined that Azara would be the first to hear them, but there was no point in hiding the truth from him.
His eyes widened at my admission, a mix of surprise and disbelief flashing across his features. “ My daughter?”
I nodded once. “Yes.”
His jaw set into a hard line and protectiveness hardened his features as he crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “What makes you think I’d ever give you my blessing?”
I slid my hands in the pockets of my coat and didn’t shy away from his sharp gaze. “I don’t need your blessing. I only need hers.”
His eyes lit up with indignation at my response, but there was a hint of respect hidden beneath his apparent disapproval.
Azara’s father might hold significance in her life, but to me, only her opinion mattered. I didn’t owe him anything and I was already doing more than he likely deserved.
But seeing the anguish on her face at her thinking her father’s situation had been her fault when it had been mine had broken my heart. And I’d do just about anything to make things right for her.
“I should leave before they get back.”
Azara and her brother were out for the evening to watch some sort of musical, and the last time I’d checked her location, they were on their way back.
Despite how much I longed to see her, I doubted she wanted the same.
Especially here of all places.
I’d made it to my car when I remembered the one thing I needed to make sure Ziani did for me. I turned back to glance at him. “I don’t want her to know,” I called out before he closed the door.
His brows pulled together. “Why?”
I didn’t want Azara to think that I’d helped her father in some calculated attempt to win her back. It would be a lie to say I hadn’t considered using it to my advantage, but it wasn’t fair or right to do so. I wanted to make amends and deserve her forgiveness by my actions toward her , not by any favor that I could do for her.
But I kept that to myself.
Without another word, I climbed into my car, the engine roaring to life as Adnan retreated back into his house. I didn’t pull away immediately, and instead lingered in the driveway as I replayed our conversation in my mind and what I’d learned. I had a week left before my Ascension, and wanted to wrap this up before then.
Otherwise it’d be too late.
I was about to dial Sofiane’s number when an eerie sensation crawled up the back of my neck. Before I could place it, something sharp pricked my neck. My hand flew up instinctively to find out what it was, when a wave of drowsiness hit me, dulling my thoughts and slowing them to a crawl.
My hand grew heavier while a tightness gripped my lungs. My head lolled back, my breaths growing increasingly shallower with each passing second.
Through the fog, I heard someone mutter something before my vision faded to black.
The first thing that hit me was the smell—like wet earth and mildew.
The staleness in the air clung to my lungs and made it hard to draw in a proper breath. There was even a faint, bitter chemical scent that made my stomach churn so I squeezed my eyes and wrinkled my nose, hoping to somehow dissipate the smell, but it was no use.
I groggily stirred, but they must have injected me with some sort of sedative because a dull throbbing headache drummed against my temples. Even my body felt like it had been dipped in concrete, my muscles stiff as I tried to regain sensation that was slowly beginning to creep back into my arms and legs.
I slowly opened my eyes to gather my surroundings but there was a black hood over my head, keeping me from seeing where I was or if there was anyone in the room with me.
“Where am I?” I muttered, the words coming out slurred with how dry my mouth was, like I’d swallowed sand.
I forced myself to push past the dizziness and figure out what happened.
The last thing I remembered was leaving Ziani’s place and getting in my car. After that, everything was dark. Was he behind this? A retaliation after what I’d done. But that wouldn’t make sense, it would be stupid of him after I offered to end his entanglements with Nyx.
Just as I started to gather enough of my bearings to figure out how I got here and more importantly, how I could get out, a blaring sound echoed in the space around me.
“Young Seungwon,” I heard my name over my pounding headache. “Welcome to your Atlas trials.”
My what?
Was that where I was? The House?
This didn’t make any sense. My Ascension wasn’t for another week, why was I already here? What about my job? People would wonder where I’d gone off to without notice. Besides, I’d never heard or read anything about trials.
A lot was kept under wraps until we officially became members, but we’d been briefed about the night of our Ascension.
Completing our Order was meant to be the only thing we were expected to do.
But I should have anticipated this.
After all, we'd always been taught not to trust everything and question things.
This should have been no different.
I tried to move but quickly realized my hands were shackled in front of me and I was in nothing but my underwear. I shifted uncomfortably, the cold metal of cuffs digging into my skin, as I attempted to break my wrists free, but suddenly, hands grabbed me from behind and yanked me to my feet.
I wanted to fight them, but thought better of it. It was smarter to save my strength for whatever was about to come from these trials. Whatever that meant.
And this was the House. Any sign of resistance would probably have me terminated and I didn’t make it this far to die now.
My cuffed wrists were brought above my head, the strain pulling on my shoulders, before the hood was pulled from my head. I took in a deep breath, but the damp smell was so pungent, the phantom taste settled on the back of my tongue.
I moved to peel my eyes open, when a blinding spotlight blared right at me. I winced, blinking several times, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, but I knew it was somewhere inside the House. They wouldn’t have brought me anywhere else for this.
I stood on a sunken circular platform in the middle of a two-storied stone chamber. There were empty tiered-wooden benches around me and I was strung up to a metal structure like a witch about to be burned at the stake, my bare feet barely touching the floor.
My body was pulled so tight, my muscles were screaming for relief. I looked up and felt my hands growing numb from the frigid temperature and how tightly the metal cuffs were digging into my skin from the new position.
Unlike the room I’d been in before, this one was weathered by time and the acrid smell that overpowered my senses suggested this place had been witness to countless atrocities.
And I was about to become another one of its victims.
“Let the trials begin,” the same voice from earlier called out, just as a figure emerged from one of the arched openings ahead of me, a creaking sound of wheels joining the echo of their footsteps.
At first, the blinding glare made it impossible to make out who it was. It wasn’t until he stood a few feet away from me that I recognized him. I’d only seen the man once before, but once had been enough to never forget his face.
He looked older, his former black hair now peppered with streaks of grays, but the jagged scar that spanned from his right brow to his hairline was still there.
His presence had been discomforting when I was nineteen, but being the entire subject of his attention now was slightly terrifying.
I couldn’t make out what was displayed on his cart, but it didn’t matter. It might even be better if I remained ignorant of what was in store for me.
The Fixer’s cold, steely eyes were fixed on me with a piercing intensity. I waited on bated breath for him to say or do something, but he just stood there. Hours may have passed of him simply staring at me because I’d lost count after counting to thirty-seven minutes.
The torture of waiting for what came next was almost as painful as the physical strain of the position my body was hung in. My muscles were screaming in protest from being forced to remain outstretched. My wrists ached from the cold iron as the metal dug into my skin. My head throbbed with each heartbeat, fatigue washing over me and threatening to take me under.
But I knew I couldn’t fall asleep or move to alleviate some of the pain.
I wasn’t sure what type of test or trial this was meant to be, but I shoved any distractions of my body’s response to this waiting game to the back of my brain and focused on staying awake and not faltering from his gaze.
I waited and waited until finally , he moved. I almost sighed with relief, but I swallowed it back before it escaped my lips. Wishfully, I wanted this to be the end of whatever this was meant to be, but I knew it wouldn’t be this easy.
Without averting his gaze from mine, he reached for a needle on the cart and headed right for me, his movement slow and deliberate. My instincts screamed at me to fight against my restraints, but I didn’t move.
Just like I hadn’t for the entire standstill.
When he stopped in front of me, I braced for impact but nothing came. At first.
Then the sharp sting of a needle bit into my thigh.
I swallowed a curse as I tried to maintain my composure. “A warning would have been nice,” I commented, forcing my voice to remain steady as if that didn’t bloody hurt.
He didn’t respond. He never did.
He merely stepped back and resumed his previous position.
My worry didn’t have time to take root as I wondered what he’d injected me with, because soon the room I was held in started to shift, and everything around me softened at the edges. Like I was drifting away from my body and becoming an observer to my upcoming predicament. Even my previously sore limbs felt light, distant, as if they belonged to someone else.
And I slowly became too disoriented to realize he’d injected me with ketamine or to question why. Just a few minutes later, I got my answer when the Fixer returned with a scalpel in hand, the cold gleam of the blade catching in the glaring light
Then, he started what I assumed was the trial the earlier overhead voice mentioned.
Each strike to my torso was followed by a fresh shallow cut on my lower abdomen. I could still feel the pain from his ministrations, but it almost felt distant. As if it was happening to someone else. And I didn’t know which was worse. Feeling the pain or being so detached from it, I couldn’t gauge the extent of the damage I was sustaining.
I tried to maintain my focus on what was happening, but every time a semblance of clarity washed over me, he injected me with another dose.
Agony became an elusive concept and the ordeal stretched on to a point where every second that passed twisted into a slow crawl, but my perception of time was too distorted to grasp how long it lasted.
Until it finally stopped.
The moment the Fixer stepped back, I heard a clicking sound above me and my wrists were released. I crumpled to my knees, but I barely felt the impact of the cold concrete against my knees.
My visions blurred and my head swam with the remnants of the last dose still coursing through my veins. My eyes fluttered, my eyelids growing heavier with each passing second, until hands dragged me off the stage.
At a certain point, I was pulled onto something soft, but it barely registered in my disoriented state. My head lolled to the side, as I was wheeled away to god knows where.
Right before everything faded away, I caught a glimpse of three masked figures, standing motionless behind where I’d been held and I could feel their gazes intently aimed at me. For a brief moment, I wondered if they’d been there the entire time.
Until darkness swallowed me whole.
I smelled the blood before I opened my eyes.
The copper scent was so thick and oppressive, I couldn’t draw a single breath without the metallic taste choking my lungs. As a surgeon, I’d gotten accustomed to the sight and smell of blood.
But this… this was different.
Every inhale only deepened the dread of the gory scene that awaited me and I fought against the bile rising up my throat from the pungent smell. I braced myself and blinked away the grogginess until the room came into gradual focus.
I didn’t know how much time had passed since I’d last been here—it could have been a few hours or days—but I was back in the same stone chamber again.
This time, however, I found myself clad in scrubs, my cuffed wrists tethered to the floor, and right before me, no more than ten feet away, were two bodies restrained to operating tables with a towering monitor between them, its glaring red countdown ticking down from fifteen minutes.
My eyes widened at the grisly sight, but my instincts immediately kicked in, my brain quickly catching up, and assessing the situation. Surgical drapes covered them from chin up and waist down, each mangled body hooked up to monitors and IVs, but no screens were switched on.
I stood up, grimacing from being knocked about, and tugged at the chain, testing how far I could move, when the same deep, distorted voice from however long ago it was—one I was growing to resent—halted me in my tracks.
“Choose.”
What?
I furrowed my brows in confusion, my mind struggling to make sense of what it was asking me.
“Choose,” it repeated, more insistent now. Then, the monitor in the middle blinked and an entire minute was shaved off in an instant.
I stood there for a moment, frozen, because it couldn’t possibly be asking me to choose between the two.
“What? No,” I retorted to whoever was listening, my voice rising as I tugged harder on the chain. “Let me out. I’m not?—”
“Choose,” the voice growled, the sound reverberating against the stone walls and taunting me with its command.
The timer blinked again and another minute was deducted.
“Alright, alright, okay,” I spat, as I watched the seconds go down. “I’ll choose, just stop.” Fifteen minutes was barely enough to make a proper assessment and I was down to less than thirteen. I couldn’t afford angering whoever was in charge of this twisted game.
But I didn’t even know who needed my help more. I had no insight on their conditions, no knowledge of their medical histories, no idea what injuries they’d sustained or what their vitals signs and results of diagnostic tests were.
My pulse quickened as the urgency of the situation pressed down on me and it felt like the walls were closing in on me.
Twelve minutes.
Shit . What kind of trial was this? I’d been called out in the dead of night more times than I could count to stitch up strangers—sometimes in conditions far worse than these—but this was sick and went against everything I believed as a doctor.
How do you make the right decision with no information? What if I chose wrong or worse one of them was already dead?
Michael, get a bloody grip. You’re a doctor, for god’s sake.
I steeled my shoulders and forced my gaze to flick back and forth between the bodies, trying to glean any hint that might help me decide, but their bodies were in such bad shape, it was difficult to assess from my vantage point.
I didn’t want to fucking do this, but the uncertainty of what would happen if I didn’t choose wasn’t something I wanted to find out. Especially if it meant neither of them receiving any medical attention.
Eleven minutes.
I made an instinctual decision. “The one on the right,” I shouted.
The moment the words left my mouth, my restraints clattered to the floor and a blaring, shrill beep pierced the air, breaking through the silence like a jagged knife.
Both monitors flickered to life.
The sight of the readings relayed that both were in critical conditions, but my stomach lurched when the patient on the left’s heart readings transformed into the dreaded straight line of asystole.
Without hesitation, I rushed to his side to begin CPR and formulate a plan with the limited resources that were laid out for me. I’d barely made it to his side when the floor beneath him opened up and with it the patient vanished.
I stood there, stunned for a moment, starting at the empty space where the patient had just been seconds ago. The screen next to me flashed and when I glanced over at the countdown again, two more minutes had been deleted.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I gritted out.
I had less than nine minutes now to help the other patient before whatever the fuck happened after the timer ran out. If it wasn’t someone’s life at stake, I wouldn’t entertain this.
But I didn’t have that luxury.
I snapped my focus back to the remaining patient. There was so much fucking blood everywhere, coating the floor in thick, dark pools. I couldn’t even see their face, since it was trapped under some sort of locked contraption.
This is so fucked.
I swiftly donned a mask, and gloves then assessed him as best as I could given the limitations. I checked his vitals, then his chest for any trauma before reaching for the stethoscope to listen to his heart.
I glanced at the clock.
Eight minutes.
I shut my eyes for a brief moment, drawing in a deep breath, fighting to steady my racing pulse. I needed steady hands and a sharp mind to do this because one wrong move and I’d kill him.
I let everything around me fade away—the relentless ticking clock hanging over my head, the shrill, incessant beeping of the monitors, the oppressive silence suffocating the air. Until all I could hear was the slowly steadying drum of my own heartbeat.
You’ve done this a thousand times , I told myself, though a small, lingering voice in the back of my mind retorted that I’d never done it blind and in a non-sterile environment like this one.
Because of course they’d have all this bloody equipment, and no ultrasound.
Dragging the small cart with supplies behind me, I quickly identified the key landmarks, sterilized the area with whatever antibacterial cleanser I found, then draped it with sterile towels.
His condition was deteriorating at a frightening pace, and there wasn’t any time for anesthesia—not that I had time to look for it. I hoped, for his sake, that he was sedated or this would be much harder. I was flying blind, relying entirely on years of experience, and prayed to anything that was up there that my differential was accurate.
With no time for hesitation, I drove the needle in and reached for the syringe, carefully attaching it. After positioning the needle where I needed it to be, I began aspirating.
The ticking countdown seemed to stretch into an eternity as I watched the syringe with bated breath. For a moment, I wondered if I’d made a mistake when blood-tinged fluid filled the syringe and my shoulders sagged with relief.
With no catheter to help, I kept aspirating until finally his blood pressure and heart rate improved. After finally pulling the needle free, my hands gripped the side of the table and I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
I glanced at the clock beside me, noting I’d made it with ten seconds to spare.
Ten bloody seconds.
A flood of what ifs rushed through my thoughts as I watched those final ten seconds slowly tick away.
What if I hadn’t been right?
What if there were complications and I’d killed whoever this was?
What if I hadn’t made a choice and had let the clock run out?
The countdown eventually flickered to zero, marking the end of this second trial.
Then, the screen went dark for a few moments before bold, glaring red text flashed across it.
Congratulations, Seungwon. You’ve made it to the final round.
I sighed and averted my gaze when the overhead lights reflected off the small ring on my pinky, the engraved yaz gleaming back at me. It was meant to symbolize being a free man and breaking the chains of how this society had treated people like us.
Suddenly, despite the exhaustion that weighed on my shoulders, a fresh wave of determination surged through me. I had no idea what this final trial would bring, and if the previous two were anything to go by, it would hardly be a walk in the park.
But it didn’t matter.
I’d set my mind on completing my Ascension on my own terms. And although I hadn’t had a choice in the outcome of the last two, I was determined to make this one matter.
No matter the consequences.