Page 94 of The Arbiter
He eventually gave me a dismissive nod, telling me to focus on my "cadavers and paperwork" while the real police handled the kidnapping. He thinks he’s protecting me from a gruesome reality, unaware that I’ve already stepped through the glass, looking into a world he can't even imagine.
I retreat to my floor. My sanctuary. The morgue.
The heavy stainless-steel doors hiss shut behind me, sealing me in with the chill and the silence. The dead don't lie, and they certainly don't play games. But today, the silence is suffocating.
I sit at my desk, staring at the blank monitor of my computer. My bandaged arm feels like it’s being gripped by an invisible hand.
Since I walked out of that bunker, Deimos has been a ghost. No calls. No encrypted messages. Just that terrifying, gouged riddle in a locker and the photo of Bryan. A living warning that my "normal" life is nothing but an illusion he allows me to have.
Every flicker of the security camera above my desk feels like his obsidian gaze. He’s watching, I think, my breath hitching. He’s always watching.
The realization that he kidnapped Bryan, not for information, but simply because Bryan looked at me, is a poison in my veins. It’s a level of possessiveness that borders on insanity. Deimosisn't just protecting me from the Elite; he’s erasing the world around me until he is the only thing left.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, my thumb hovering over the dial pad. I want to scream at him. I want to beg him to let Bryan go. But I remember the look in his eyes when he mentioned his father. That raw, jagged vacuum of a man who had lost his tether.
The hours pass in agonizing crawl. I bury myself in the cold, repetitive rhythm of the morgue. Filling out death certificates, cataloging personal effects, and reviewing toxicology reports until the words blur into meaningless symbols. Every time a door creaks or the ventilation hums, I flinch, expecting a shadow to detach itself from the wall.
But there is nothing.
No texts. No silent black sedans idling in the parking lot. The absence of him is more suffocating than his presence ever was. It’s as if Deimos has vanished, leaving me alone with my thoughts. The silence feels like a test, a psychological game designed to make me break.
By 10:00 PM, the morgue is a tomb of fluorescent light and white tile. I’m the only soul left in the building.
I’m staring at a photo of Bryan on my computer. A staff ID image where he’s smiling, oblivious to the fact that his kindness would one day become a "terminal illness."
Suddenly, the monitor flickers.
The image of Bryan distorts, the pixels bleeding into static, before being replaced by a live feed. My heart stops. It’s a camera angle I’ve never seen, low to the ground, positioned at the end of the hallway leading to Autopsy Room 4.
At the very edge of the frame, a tall, dark figure moves past the door. It’s a flash of a tailored black suit, the unmistakable silhouette of a man who moves like a predator in his own territory. Then, my desk phone rings. The caller ID is blank.
I pick it up, my fingers trembling.
ME:"Deimos?"
There’s no voice. Just the sound of rhythmic, heavy breathing and a distant, metallic clink. The sound of a scalpel hitting a stainless-steel tray.
Then, a low hum starts coming through the office speakers, a song I recognize. A haunting, classical melody that feels like a funeral march.
The monitor on my desk flickers again, but this time, the static doesn't resolve into a hallway. It snaps into a sharp, high-definition overhead shot of Autopsy Room 4. My own workspace.
There is a body on the dissection table.
It’s laid out precisely where I usually perform my exams, under the clinical, unforgiving glare of the surgical lights. The figure is pale, stripped to the waist, and secured to the stainless steel by heavy, industrial nylon straps at the wrists and ankles.
"Bryan," I choke out, the name catching in my throat like a shard of glass.
His eyes are closed, his head lolling to the side. From this angle, he looks like one of my usual "residents". Cold, still, and beyond saving. The silence coming through the office speakers is absolute, broken only by the faint, rhythmic drip of a faucet I must have forgotten to tighten.
I bolt from my office. My lungs burn as I tear through the pitch-black hallway, my hands skimming the cold tiles for balance. I burst through the double doors of Room 4, the smell of formaldehyde and ozone hitting me like a physical blow.
The room is exactly as it appeared on the screen.
"Bryan! Can you hear me?"
I cry out, rushing to his side.
I reach for his neck, my fingers searching for the carotid artery. His skin is clammy, chilled by the basement air, and for aterrifying five seconds, I feel nothing. My vision blurs with tears of frustration and guilt. This is because of me. This is because we talked.
