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I do. I’ve always trusted myself.
It’s a blur as the drug-induced dream version of myself leads me out of the room. I know it’s just my subconscious acting as a guide to get my waking brain to lurch into action, but it’s working.
I follow myself out of the room. Horror stabs into me as I stumble over bleeding and bloodied bodies of men who look like Vadik’s soldiers. I stagger after my reflection, down a hallway and into a huge wine room.
“This way.”
I balk when I try to lead myself into the gaping black maw in the wall.
It looks like the gates of Hell. But just as I think that, just as the nightmarish fear threatens to break me, I shake it away with a snarl.
No.
He’s in there. And even if it’s Hell itself, I’m not leaving without him.
I push past my reflection, staggering into the blackness and almost losing my footing as the floor disappears.
“There are stairs,” I tell myself. “Don’t fall.”
I clutch the banister for dear life, shuffling and stumbling down the staircase into the darkness. I get to the bottom, turning and feeling the wall for a light switch. I find it, focusing all my brain power on one finger to flick it on.
And I scream.
He looks dead.
Drazen is strung up by the arms, hanging from chains embedded in the ceiling. His legs are limp, his feet barely touching the floor. He’s shirtless, head bowed and eyes swollen shut. Blood drips from his mouth and from a dozen weeping cuts on his body.
But he’s breathing.
“I need your help,” I hiss to myself. “I can’t do this alone.”
“Of course,” I choke back.
“The wall. There’s a winch.”
I stumble to it, trying to ignore the spiders crawling over my skin and the mountain of bodies bleeding in the corner as I grapple with the mechanical switch on the wall. A motor whines to life. The chains clink and rattle behind me. I spin and rush back over, helping me to catch him as he sinks to the floor.
I yank the chains off him, cradling his head in my lap. Drazen’s eyes flutter open and shut, his lips moving without making sound.
He’s not just beaten to hell. He’s drugged, like me.
“Help me get him up the stairs,” I urge myself.
I don’t know how, but I manage to get him up the steps.
Drazen is half walking, half being carried by me with his arm over my shoulder as we shuffle down the hallways of Vadik’s mansion. More terrors fly out of every corner, snarling in my face. The walls drip and the floor melts. I ignore it all as we keep going.
We step over more bodies in the foyer. A cloud of blue butterflies ripples through my hair as I kick open the front door drag Drazen outside. I lean him against the wall and go through his pockets, pulling out his phone.
Mercifully, his last four phone calls were from Milos, so it’s hard to miss as my thumb stabs the contact.
“Boss?”
“Help…” I croak. “Milos…help.”
“Annika?” he hisses.
“Vadik…drugged us. We’re free. We…we need help,” I wheeze.
