PART 6 — The hideout in the suburbs
The train pulled slowly into the old station. It was now three o'clock in the morning. The city was in a deep, cold sleep, but inside my head, a hurricane of thoughts raged. Unit 4. What was Unit 4? It was on no map of the hospital I had ever seen. I got off in a dreary suburb and walked to a small, run-down apartment on the fourth floor of a building.
It was the place I had lived in all these years since Thomas's disappearance—a lonely den filled with memories and silence. I switched on the light and threw the folder onto the kitchen table. The binders and papers covered the small table. I searched feverishly for more documents regarding Unit 4. After an hour of flipping through pages, I found it.
An old architectural blueprint, apparently from the hospital's original firm back in the 1970s. Drawn in thick red marker was a wing that officially should never have existed: an underground expansion beneath the psychiatric ward, connected directly to the city's water treatment system. That explained why no one could find it. It lay outside the standard building layout and was powered through the old utility lines.
But as I was studying the drawing, I suddenly heard a soft noise at the front door. Tick. Tick. Not a knock on the door. It sounded like someone carefully picking at the lock with a metal tool. My breath hitched. They had found me. How on earth had they tracked down my address so quickly? I stood frozen, my hand gripping a heavy metal candlestick off the cabinet. The door handle slowly moved downward. The metal creaked in the silent hallway.
