Chapter 3
1476 Words
I couldn't settle all day.
Something was wrong—I couldn't put my finger on exactly what, but I could feel it in every nerve, a low, constant hum of wrongness beneath my skin. I was jittery, like I'd downed ten espressos on an empty stomach, yet my skin was cold. My senses felt sharpened in ways I couldn't explain, but nothing around me felt quite real.
Because of the voice in the kitchen, because of the wound that had closed itself before my eyes, I couldn't let Adrian out of my sight. The thought of something happening to him while I was unraveling terrified me more than anything.
"Wait for me," I said, rushing to tie my shoes as he checked his watch for the fifth time.
"I'm going to be late, Ate. My professor this first period has a reputation."
"Just walk with me to the corner. I need to talk to you about something later. Please."
He scratched the back of his head but relented when he saw how pale I looked. "Fine. You look like you've seen a ghost, by the way."
If only you knew.
I hadn't even managed coffee before we left—the smell of it had turned my stomach the moment I got near the pot. My appetite had vanished entirely. Something in my body was searching for something else, something I didn't want to name.
We walked out into the morning, the pavement already beginning to warm. I walked in silence beside him, my eyes tracking every shadow, every stranger who glanced our way. The city felt full of surveillance. Every alley, every gap between buildings—someone was watching from there. I could feel it.
"You okay?" Adrian asked as we reached the jeepney stop. "You look pale. Even more than usual."
"Fine. Just tired. Go on—there's your ride."
I watched his jeepney disappear into the traffic and felt the anxiety spike the moment he was out of sight.
I caught the next ride toward the hospital. I needed a doctor to tell me that my cancer was causing hallucinations, that what I had witnessed in the kitchen was a trick of an exhausted mind.
But I never made it through the doors.
Halfway up the front walkway, I stopped cold.
It was barely nine in the morning, but the sunlight felt wrong. Not warm—sharp. Like needles made of fire pressing into every inch of my exposed skin. I pressed a hand to the side of my neck. My skin was flushed. Hot.
"Something's wrong..."
It wasn't the ambient heat. This was internal—a fire spreading through my veins, radiating outward from somewhere deep in my bones. The edges of my vision began bleeding red, a crimson haze crawling across everything I looked at.
I leaned against a lamp post and squeezed my eyes shut.
That was when the thirst hit me.
A hollow, desiccated ache in the back of my throat. Not an ordinary thirst—nothing a glass of water would fix. This was a craving with teeth, a deep, grasping hunger originating somewhere far darker than physical need.
I forced myself toward the small street vendor near the hospital entrance. An elderly woman in a folding chair, selling water and snacks beneath a faded umbrella.
"Water, please," I rasped, pressing a coin into her hand.
Then something made me stop.
A white cat was perched on a styrofoam cooler near the stand. The moment I approached, it flattened its ears and hissed—a low, guttural sound, nothing like ordinary feline displeasure. It stared at me with wide, terrified eyes, as though I were something to be fled from.
I swallowed.
Because something was happening to me that I couldn't fully control. My gaze drifted to the cat's throat. Beneath the fur, the faint rhythm of a pulse was visible. And I could hear it.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Clear as a drumbeat through all the noise of the street.
And God help me—I wanted to lunge.
I stumbled back, revulsion flooding through me. "What is wrong with me?" I breathed.
I grabbed the water and moved away quickly, retreating toward the shade of a large tree near the hospital's side entrance. I opened the bottle and drank deeply.
And immediately spat it out.
The water tasted like ash. Like stagnant pond water. Like something dead. I doubled over with nausea, hand clutching my stomach, my tongue recoiling from the memory of the taste.
"This can't be happening," I whispered.
I forced myself through the hospital's sliding doors, the air conditioning washing over me like a reprieve. But the red haze in my eyes wouldn't clear. My legs were unsteady. The sounds of the hospital—the squeak of gurney wheels, the rustle of scrubs, the PA system—were all too loud, too vivid.
Before I reached the nurses' station, the floor rushed up to meet me.
Everything went black.
✦ ✦ ✦
When I came to, I was in an emergency room cubicle, separated from the rest of the ward by a thin blue curtain. A doctor stood over me, clipboard in hand, studying my face with an expression caught somewhere between confusion and careful professional neutrality.
"Good to see you're back with us, Ms. Sinclair," he said.
I pushed myself upright, dizzy but strangely energized. "What happened? Did I faint?"
"You collapsed in the lobby. Possible heat exhaustion. But your vitals are... unusual."
"Doctor." I pressed my hands to my temples. "I think the cancer is affecting my brain. I'm hearing voices. Hallucinating. This morning the sunlight felt like it was burning me alive. The tumor must be pressing on something."
He frowned, tapping his pen against the clipboard. "That was my initial assumption as well, Ms. Sinclair. So I ran your bloodwork and a quick CT scan while you were unconscious."
My breath caught. "And?"
"The results are... surprising." He paused, clearly choosing his words with care. "The tumors are gone. All of them."
I stared at him. "That's impossible. You told me Stage Four. You told me months."
"I know what I told you. I thought there was a file mix-up and ran the test twice, on different machines." He held out a set of scans. "The results are consistent. Your brain is clear. Your blood iron is unusually elevated, but the malignancy is entirely absent."
I took the scans with hands that wouldn't stop trembling.
No evidence of neoplastic growth.
Gone. The cancer was simply gone.
"I don't believe in miracles," the doctor said quietly, snapping his clipboard under his arm. "But I may have to start. Congratulations, Ms. Sinclair. You are cancer-free."
He stepped out, and I sat alone in the small blue cubicle.
Cancer-free.
The voice came back immediately, drifting up from the center of my mind like smoke.
"But I gave you a new life... you owe me your life."
"No," I said aloud to no one. "No. This isn't happening. I'm still in the river. I'm still drowning."
I grabbed my bag and walked out, ignoring the nurse who called after me about discharge papers.
I needed to go home. I needed to figure out if I was still me.
I moved toward the exit, pushing through the lobby—and then the world stopped.
Not the quiet of an empty room. Not the hush of a library. This was a total, catastrophic cessation. Like the air itself had been flash-frozen.
I turned slowly.
Everyone around me had stopped moving. The nurse mid-stride with a syringe. An elderly man with an IV line. A child mid-cry. Every one of them frozen as perfectly as statues, mid-motion, mid-breath. The second hand on the clock above the nurses' station was motionless.
Footsteps. Heavy, deliberate, and perfectly measured. Each one landing with a sound that vibrated through the still air.
I turned toward the entrance.
A figure moved through the frozen world like a blade through silk.
A man. Tall, dressed in a dark, impeccably cut suit. Every step he took seemed to press weight into the atmosphere itself, making it difficult to breathe.
Then I saw his eyes.
Gold. Gleaming beneath the fluorescent hospital lights.
The memory of the bridge, the black water, and the bite detonated in my memory with agonizing clarity.
"You."
He stopped inches in front of me. His presence was overwhelming—the scent of ancient forests and cold rain, and beneath it something older than both. He tilted his head slightly, looking at me the way a painter might study a finished canvas.
Then he smiled. For just a moment, his fangs elongated—white, precise, and lethal.
"My thrall," he said softly. His voice was a low, resonant English baritone that settled somewhere in the center of my chest. "Did you miss me?"
- Writer
