thorned rose

The lights in the ER were painfully bright. White light flowed through the frosted glass down the hallway, and the beeping of the monitors quickened, like a panicked heartbeat pounding against the metal trays. Allen’s veins bulged on the back of his hand, pressing against the sleeve of his school uniform, where the frayed iris embroidery scratched at his ulna. Three years ago, Lia had sat huddled in the storage room of the orphanage, stitching him up by the moonlight, leaving the same dark red stains on the fabric when she pricked her finger. Allen stared at the embroidery on his sleeve. The thread shimmered under the LED lights, a strange pearlescence flickering in the light. The footsteps at the end of the hallway grew louder. He suddenly grabbed Lia’s wrist, pulling her into the fire escape. The crunch of leather shoes over medical waste startled a flock of white pigeons. Lia’s nails dug into his hand, and Allen caught the familiar scent of antiseptic gel lingering in her hair—exactly like the morning when Lu Zimo had patted her head, the scent still clinging to his fingers. "Go down, don’t look back!" Allen’s voice was cold, his grip tight as he shoved Lia into the fire escape. The rusty door creaked open with a dying groan, and Lia’s canvas shoes slipped on the edge of the stairs. Lia stumbled but didn’t stop, her uneasy eyes meeting Allen’s, the urgency pushing her to hurry. As she turned, the hem of her school uniform brushed against the doorframe, knocking a cloud of dust loose. The fire escape was empty and silent. But with every step Lia took, her sneakers echoed, just like the late-night halls of the orphanage. The last footsteps of the children taken away had sounded like this, breaking into shards of moonlight against the stained-glass windows. Lia’s heart raced. She couldn’t think, only run down the stairs. On the seventh landing, the emergency light flickered, casting a greenish glow that pinned her shadow to the wall. It felt like she had been in this quiet, empty space for a lifetime, as if there was no end, no time, no space. The rust on the stair railing flaked off, and the sting of it digging into her nails collided with the sharp pain from three days ago when the needle had pierced her vein. As she neared the fire escape exit, she slowed her pace, but the crash of the door slamming open startled her. The door hit the wall with a loud bang, triggering the motion-sensor lights. Three dark silhouettes lingered in her eyes. Three bodyguards in black rushed in from the exit. Their cologne hit her before they did—cedarwood mixed with patchouli, the scent of the executives’ lounge at Huanyu Pharmaceuticals. Suddenly, Lia remembered the nurse from her PET-CT scan last week, the same smell drifting from her collar as she had pressed her hand down on Lia’s shoulder. Lia’s heart sank into ice. Her nails dug deeper into her palms, but before she could react, they roughly yanked her away. One of the bodyguards pressed the sharp tip of his crocodile leather shoes into the scabbed burn on her ankle. The pain shot through her, waking a memory—the night in Allen’s study when hot ginseng tea spilled on her skin, and her “brother” had pressed a silk handkerchief to the burn, saying, "Scars don’t look good." "You can’t do this! This is illegal!" Lia struggled futilely, looking desperately toward the exit, wishing someone would appear. The sound of a wheelchair rolling, mixed with the squeaks of an emergency bed, echoed down the hall. It reminded her of what she had seen from the hospital window last week—the elderly woman on a respirator being pushed through a special passageway, the cries of her family swallowed by the heavy, radiation-proof door. One of the bodyguards smirked. "You think this is someone else’s orders?" He yanked Lia’s hair cruelly. The platinum edges of his cufflinks grazed the crescent-shaped scar behind her ear, a reminder of that rainy night when Lu Zimo had rushed her into the emergency room. The cold metal of the doorframe had scraped against her skin, the scent of disinfectant now mixed with the same sterile smell. Lia stopped struggling. There was something in her eighteen-year-old eyes that went out, like the flickering light in the orphanage when they first met. The last light in her iris reflected the corridor through the fire escape’s glass, a nurse pushing a white-covered cart passing by. Yeah, who else but the CEO of this pharmaceutical company, her "beloved brother," would have the power to do this? The ding of the elevator above rang out, mingling with the constant beep of the heart monitor. Lia suddenly understood the persistent alarm from the neighboring room late that night, three days ago—the grandmother from bed 7 who always gave her candy had never appeared again. "Playing the good guy, huh?" she muttered softly to herself, her voice barely audible. Her lips twisted into a crooked smile. "Not a single good one." The last rays of dusk streamed through the high windows, casting the neon sign of the pharmaceutical company into her pupils. The blood-red cross glowed in the fading light, just like the unblinking red light at the top of the orphanage building. And it never went out.