Chapter 25:"My unpleasant pleasures"
SPENCER'S POV
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, caged bird trying to beat its way out of my chest. The elevator doors slid shut with a soft, mocking ding just as I lunged forward, my fingers brushing the cold, polished steel. They closed on nothing but empty air.
"No!" The word was torn from me, raw and desperate.
I slammed my fist against the unyielding metal, the pain a bright, sharp shock that traveled up my arm. It was a futile gesture, but the physical sting was better than the numb panic freezing my veins. The digital display above the door began its agonizingly slow climb. Up. It was going up, leaving me behind. Sixty seconds. The message had been clear: I had only sixty seconds before something unthinkable happened to Allen. Every beat of my heart was a tick of a clock counting down to his doom.
Waiting for this elevator to descend was not an option. It would be a surrender. A death sentence for my best friend. The stairs were my only path, even though the logical part of my brain, the part not screaming in pure terror, knew that conquering twelve flights in a minute was a superhuman feat.
My breath hitched as I fumbled the sleek, new phone from my pocket. A million-dollar device that felt like a worthless brick in my trembling hands. My thumbs, slick with sweat, slipped on the screen as I typed a frantic message to the unknown number.
> Don't harm Allen. Give me 2 minutes. Elevator is full. I'm coming up.
I stabbed the send button and watched the message status change to 'Delivered.' There was no reply. No typing indicator. Just silence. That silence was more terrifying than any threat. It was a void, an abyss that promised unimaginable pain.
I couldn't wait. I shoved the phone back into my pocket and burst through the heavy door to the stairwell, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the concrete cavern. The air was dry and stale, tasting of dust and despair. I took the steps three at a time, my muscles screaming in protest almost immediately. It was a nightmare of exertion; I drove my body forward, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs like razor blades, but it felt like I was running in quicksand. The same cold, grey concrete, the same metal railings, the same numbered doors flashing by in a hellish, repetitive loop. I was a hamster on a wheel, trapped in a vertical race against time.
He can't die. Not Allen. Not him.
The thought was a mantra, a prayer, the only fuel that kept my legs moving when they begged to collapse. He was the only good, pure thing left in the wreckage of my miserable life. My constant. The brother I had chosen. Yes, he deserved hot, stinging slaps across the face at least twice a week for his infuriating, cheerful obliviousness, for the way he could chatter on about nothing when the world was falling apart. But he was mine. My childhood. My friend. The memory of his stupid, grinning face, so full of life, flashed in my mind, a stark and painful contrast to the cold fear icing my veins.
A sharp, intrusive beep from my pocket sliced through the roar of blood in my ears. I didn't want to stop. I couldn't afford to. But the need to know was a clawed hand gripping my heart. I skidded to a halt on a landing, my chest heaving, my body slick with a cold sweat. I yanked the phone out. The screen glowed, revealing a new message.
> An extra 70 seconds. You sure will make it up to here? Or you'll be late to see Allen's death. It's going to happen a second before your arrival.
The words didn't just appear on the screen; they branded themselves onto my soul. A fresh, paralyzing wave of panic washed over me, so cold it burned. This phone, this million-dollar piece of corporate mobile garbage, was a tether. A leash. A burden slowing me down when every single millisecond was a piece of Allen's life being shaved away. It was a distraction I could not afford.
A guttural roar of fury, despair, and utter helplessness tore from my throat. I didn't just drop it. I wound up and hurled it with every ounce of my strength over the railing, down into the dizzying, dark void of the stairwell's center. I didn't watch it fall, but I heard it—a distant, satisfying crunch-shatter of glass and plastic as it met the concrete ground far, far below. Good. Let it be dust.
Unburdened, I pushed on. My body was now a machine of pure pain and grim determination. Twelve stories is no joke. My vision spotted at the edges, swimming in and out of focus. My throat was raw sandpaper, and every gasping breath felt like inhaling fire. But I didn't stop. I couldn't. Allen was at the top of this concrete hotel.
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Author POV
The woman known only as Spain's accomplice sat in the quiet luxury of a Range Rover Velar, a semi-expensive jeep that spoke of both utility and style. Her eyes, cold and sharp as shards of ice, were fixed on the screen of her phone. A single, glowing red dot pulsed with a steady rhythm, moving erratically through a wireframe blueprint of the Cambridge Leveling Hotel.
"He's on the stairs," she murmured, her voice low and devoid of emotion. The driver merely nodded, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
The dot moved upward, a determined, vertical climb. Then, it flickered. A digital hiccup. She leaned forward, her spine straightening, her knuckles whitening as her grip on the phone tightened. The dot twitched, spasmed like a dying insect, and the signal strength indicator plummeted from full to a single, desperate, blinking bar.
She tapped the sophisticated communication device nestled securely in her left ear. "Collins. Are you seeing this?"
The reply from the computer expert, safe and sound in his climate-controlled lab at Spain's villa, was laced with a hint of static. "Yes, ma'am. I am. There must be something wrong with the device. It's… degrading. It will cease functioning any moment now."
"What's the cause?" she asked, her voice a whip-crack of impatience. This was an unacceptable deviation from the plan. Spencer was supposed to be trackable, contained, a predictable variable.
"Spoiled or damaged. The diagnostics indicate a catastrophic failure," Collins replied, his tone annoyingly clinical.
"All of a sudden?" she thought, her lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line of fury. Damn it. As if on cue, the tracker died completely. The screen of her phone went blank, the detailed map vanishing as if Spencer had been wiped from existence by a digital god.
"Spencer is in the hotel and on the stairs," she stated, forcing a frigid calm into her voice. "Apart from the guest rooms, where else do those central stairs lead?"
"The rooftop," Collins answered promptly, eager to be helpful. "Guests sometimes go there to relax, to see the city lights. But it's also a highly restricted area. A fall from that height… it wouldn't just kill you. It would shatter your bones mid-air before your body even realized it was no longer supported. The impact—"
"I didn't ask for your morbid opinion or your lectures on the restrictions of high places," she interrupted, her voice dropping to a temperature that could freeze hydrogen.
A beat of terrified silence. "I-I'm sorry, ma'am. Copied," Collins stammered.
She severed the line with a mental command and, with a swift, precise movement, dialed another number. Spain's private, encrypted line. It was picked up on the second ring, the connection crystal clear.
"There is a small problem," she said, her face a perfect mask of cold resolve, her eyes fixed on the distant silhouette of the hotel. "And I will need you to do me a little favor." She was all in, every resource, every pawn mobilized. Failure was not an option.She wanted Spencer at their custody at all cost
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SPENCER'S POV
My body was a traitor, a failing engine on its last legs. My frantic sprint had deteriorated into a desperate, lurching climb. My heartbeat was a frantic, runaway drum solo in my chest, the circulation pounding in my ears like a funeral march. I was panting, great heaving gasps that made me sound like a wounded animal caught in a steel trap. The numbers on the wall doors—10, 11—blurred in my sweat-stung vision.
Finally, my trembling, numb hand pushed against the heavy door marked '12'. It swung open to reveal not a plush hallway, but a final, brutal challenge: a steep, industrial-grade ladder, painted a grim grey and bolted ruthlessly to the wall, leading up to a heavy-looking, insulated hatch in the ceiling. A bright yellow and black sign was bolted to it, the words screaming a warning: RESTRICTED AREA. DO NOT ENTER. DANGER OF DEATH.
A bitter, breathless laugh escaped my chapped lips. Death was already here, waiting for me. I was just racing to keep my appointment.
I climbed, my arms burning, my muscles trembling with fatigue. I used the last of my strength to shove the heavy hatch open, and the world transformed in an instant.
A blast of fresh, cold morning air whipped my hair back and stole what little breath I had left. The sounds of the city—a distant, wailing siren, the relentless hum of a million lives—floated up from the world below. The rooftop was a vast, flat expanse of gravel and tar, illuminated by the garish, shifting colors of the hotel's massive neon sign. The light was so intense it felt like a physical blow, forcing my light-starved eyes to screw shut for a moment of blinding pain. I exhaled sharply, a cloud of steam forming in the chill air, and crawled out onto the rough, gritty surface, struggling to find my balance as a violent wave of dizziness from the exertion and the terrifying height washed over me.
"Spencer."
The voice was sharp, distant, and laced with a pure, undiluted terror I had never heard in Allen's voice before. It was the sound of a soul breaking.
Allen.
My eyes flew open, forcing themselves to adjust, to search the rooftop. And then I saw him. My heart didn't just stop; it plummeted, down through the twelve stories I had just climbed, and shattered on the pavement below.
Allen was suspended in mid-air, dangling directly over the lethal, sheer edge of the hotel's rooftop. There was no visible force holding him, no rope, no harness. Yet he hung there, his body rigid with petrified fear, his feet kicking uselessly over a hundred-foot drop into the glittering, indifferent city downwards.
"ALLEN!" I yelled, the sound a raw, torn shred of my voice.
I surged forward, a primal instinct to protect, to save, overriding every ounce of self-preservation. I had to get to him, to pull him back from that unimaginable edge.
I never made it.
Before I could take four steps, an invisible, crushing force wrapped around me. It was like being encased in solid, unyielding iron. It lifted me off my feet as effortlessly as a child plucking a dandelion. I kicked, I thrashed, my legs cycling frantically in the empty air, searching for the solid ground that was now just a memory, a promise broken. I was floating, completely and utterly helpless, a specimen pinned in an invisible display case.
"Welcome."
The voice was a hoarse, dry rasp, the sound of a grave being unearthed after centuries. It was a voice that should not exist. I twisted my head, straining against the invisible vise that held me captive.
And I saw him.
Mr. Thorne. But it was a grotesque mockery of the man I remembered. His expensive suit was torn and stained with dark, unsettling patches. His skin was a canvas of grotesque, rotting wounds that wept a dark, viscous fluid, yet he stood straight, utterly oblivious to the pain that should have been crippling. His eyes, once sharp and cunning, were now pools of solid, bloody red, holding a sinister, ancient light that promised endless, meticulous suffering. A cringe-inducing smile, a rictus grin of pure madness, split his face. He looked like a reanimated corpse, a nightmare given form and substance. The smell hit me then—the coppery tang of old blood mixed with the sweet, foul, cloying odor of advanced decay. He was a monster, straight from the darkest corners of a fever dream.
He spoke again, that awful, fixed smile never wavering, the words slithering into my ears like serpents. "We finally meet, Spencer Postlethwaite…"
He paused, letting the weight of my full name hang in the air between us, a sentence in itself.
"…My unpleasant pleasures."
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WEDNESDAY'S POV
I stood before the bathroom, silver-backed mirror, my small hands clenched into tight fists on the sink. My own reflection stared back, but it was a stranger, a usurper. Its arms were crossed over its chest, its expression one of cold, impatient judgment. It did not mimic my slow, sad breaths. It did not mirror the tremor in my hands. It simply waited, an entity of silver and shadow trapped in the glass.
"I have made a decision," I whispered, my voice barely audible, a fragile thing in the quiet of the room. The words felt hollow, like pebbles thrown into a deep, dark well, never to be heard from again.
I bent my head, placing my forehead on the cool, smooth surface of the sink. A profound, bone-deep sadness settled over me, a heavy, suffocating cloak of sorrow and inevitability. This was the path. The only path left. A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path down my cheek. I sighed, the sound shuddering through my small frame, and forced myself to look up again.
My reflection was still waiting, its silvered eyes boring into mine, seeing through my fragile ghost shell to the power that slumbered within.
Suddenly, I snapped my head up. A jolt, like a lightning strike of pure, unadulterated psychic energy, coursed through me. It was violent and electrifying. My vision whited out, the familiar confines of the room dissolving into a searing, blinding wall of brilliant silver light. A power, ancient and terrifying and vast, flooded my veins, burning away the weakness, the fear, the sadness. It shifted my gaze, hardened my features into a mask of grim purpose. The vision was gone, replaced by something far older and more potent.
When I spoke, my voice was no longer my own. It was layered, resonant, the voice of the storm and my ghostly nature a chorus of power speaking through a single vessel.
"Spencer is in big trouble…"
A pause, as the new presence within me assessed the tangled threads of fate, seeing the unfolding catastrophe on a rooftop miles away with terrifying clarity....
To be continued ....