Shadows in the Dark (Dark Lotus #1)

13. Adrian

The cloud of dizziness passed, and when my eyes opened, I immediately cursed. “Fuck!”

Feeling something cold and wet at my feet, I ignored the fact that I was outdoors when I should have been in bed, and focused on the dirty puddle of sludge I was currently standing in. It was pitch black outside, and other than the dim light coming from the only unbroken streetlight on this stretch of road, I knew it was still nighttime.

I looked around, and thankfully I didn’t see anyone or anything prowling about. Turning my focus back to myself, I was dressed in a pair of jeans, but nothing else. The cool breeze coming off the Pacific had the hairs on my arms raising. A slight shiver wracked me, but I couldn’t dwell on it.

I needed to concentrate on where I was. The how I had gotten here could wait until later, preferably once I was back in the warm safety of my penthouse. My sanctuary. I looked up and around, and finally realized I was just outside of the downtown limits. My place wasn’t that far away from here. Thankfully, this time I had only walked instead of having driven somewhere.

Many years ago, just before leaving Greece for America, I had developed somnambulism, or what others simply referred to as sleepwalking. At first, it was harmless. I would go to sleep, then end up in either one of the many bedrooms at our family home in Athens, or in one of the many hallways. Eventually, I might find myself outside on a lanai, but never far from where I had strayed.

In the last decade, however, I would find myself far enough away from home that it would give me major cause for concern, as it was now. Many of these sleepwalking incidents also coincided with periods of blackouts. It was during those darkest of times that I would immediately shudder. Events would happen that would be far too coincidental, and a frisson of fear flittered through me at the possibilities for tonight.

What happened? What have I done now?

Those questions lingered in my mind, and it seemed to echo incessantly within the confines of my skull leading to what I knew would be one hell of a headache in the morning. It would start off sharp as if someone was stabbing me in the skull with a fireplace poker, or worse, a tire iron. Another shudder passed over me at the thought of one of those. The headache would then affect most of my senses, before dulling into what I would consider a migraine. Once or twice, I had sought help for the affliction, but the tests they wanted me to undergo would cause me to abandon the consultations and not return for any follow up ones.

While the doctors had seemed perplexed as to what could be causing these sleepwalking episodes to happen, they would focus on some potential childhood trauma. I didn’t like others poking inside of my head. They were wrong. I grew up in a loving household, and while I no longer visited my parents or the home I had grown up in, it wasn’t for some reason buried deep inside my subconscious. I didn’t return because the memories on the surface were too much to deal with.

“She passed away, and as tragic as it is, you have to allow yourself to live, Adrian.”

My mother had more than once told me that, but the vision of my sister lying lifeless in a pool of her own blood was too much to simply get over. I would never be able to erase that horrible sight from my head. She had been so young, and when I woke up a few feet from a corpse and realized who it was, it was as if a part of me had died right alongside her.

“Aria! Aria! Aria! Wake up,” I had urged her as I had dropped to my knees.

I’d pleaded with her to come back to me, then resorted to shaking her stiff, dead body, until the realization that she was truly gone had seeped into my cold bones. Her face had been beaten beyond almost all recognition, but her eyes shone through the cuts, wounds, and layers of blood. They were so familiar, achingly so, because they were my own.

I had been staring down into the same eyes I saw each time I looked into the mirror at my own reflection. Aria’s true killer had never been brought to justice in all of this time. And he, too, was someone I knew well.

The clanging of metal broke me out of my thoughts, and I instantly went on guard. Turning toward the sound, I expected to find someone out there in the shadows, occupying the very places I usually did, but a quick flash of gray confirmed the cause of the noise. I watched the large rat as it bounced once more against a garbage can, before it scurried into the nearby alleyway. I had avoided detection so far, but I didn’t want to push my luck.

I glanced down once more at my dirty, bare feet, then I quickly began walking in the direction of my penthouse. I stayed hidden the best that I could because the city wasn’t the safest one to be, especially at this time of night. Once or twice, I would see the red and blue flashing lights from a passing police car as it patrolled the area. A few quick dips into an alleyway allowed me to avoid detection for the mile and a half it took me to reach my building.

There was a doorman available twenty-four/seven, but he was likely on break because I didn’t see him as I slipped inside the lobby. I hurried over to my private elevator, and seconds later, I was headed back to the safety of my own place. Once there, I finally stopped in the foyer to look at myself in the mirror.

My dark jeans were wet and muddy, and my feet were also dark as the dirt started to settle and harden on my skin. There were streaks of brown across my chest too, but luckily, nothing else seemed to be there. My hair was a bit disheveled, and the shadows under my eyes were darker than usual. I had likely avoided real trouble tonight, but there was no solace to be found in that.

What the fuck have I done?

That question should’ve been easy enough to answer, but as I had learned in recent years, the most obvious answer was usually the unlikeliest one. Frustrated over this nighttime excursion and the inability to remember how, when, or why only irritated me more. I raked a hand through my hair, then headed to the bathroom to shower.

“Cyril, Adrian needs to get washed up. He looks terrible.”

“He should after what he did, Eleni.”

I shook that remembered conversation between my parents away. I didn’t want to hear it then, but as I had stood on the other side of the door that night, their voices had been hard to ignore. I no longer had that problem, and forcing myself to think of anything else, I soon focused on the immediate task at hand.

I turned the tap to hot, hoping to get it as scalding as it could go, then I quickly removed my soiled pants. I had obviously gotten dirt on them via my hands because the prints ran up the legs. The bottom seam was coated in wet dirt, and small pieces of grass were sticking to it courtesy of the mud. I tossed them into a nearby hamper, before checking the water temperature.

It was hotter than I usually liked, but as I had done that dark night in Athens, I grabbed a loofah sponge and began to scrub away the dirt and grime. I scrubbed harder until large red splotches appeared on my skin, a combination of the water temperature and the incessant scrubbing. No matter how rough I was though, the unknown would not leave my flesh.

I continued scrubbing until the sponge began to tear. I finally dropped it to the floor at my feet, then leaned against the stone tiled wall. I pressed my palms to the still cool squares, and I tried to regulate my breathing. It was much easier said than done because I still had no idea what had happened out there tonight. I didn’t even know why I had gone out in the darkness, and in such haste.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I had gotten into meditation a few years ago, and practicing what I had learned quickly had my racing heart slowing back down to its normal cadence and rhythm. Once settled, I continued to stand under the hot spray of water. Steam encompassed me, and I breathed in deeply a few times more. Finally, I looked ahead at my hands. My fingers were dirty, and after grabbing the nail brush I kept in one of the alcoves, I started to just as vigorously scrub at my fingernails.

The water ran brown beneath my hands. At least this time. On other occasions, I would stand much like I was now and see the slight pink color of blood instead. Tonight, it had only been dirt which set my mind at ease. My breathing became more labored as relief washed over me. I still had no idea where my ultimate destination had been tonight, or if I had even had one, but I had survived once more.

I finished washing up, and it was times like this when I was thankful for my tankless hot water heater. I could stand for hours if need be, and the water would never run cold on me. I lingered a few minutes after, then got out. I grabbed a pair of boxers, and nothing else. Once dressed, I went out to the living room. On the way, I had gotten a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator, then moved over to my laptop.

I logged onto Olympus, and even at four-thirty in the morning, there were quite a few people still online. There was no one I was interested in talking to, so I logged out of the site as quickly as I had logged on. I then pulled up my emails where I noticed a number of them from the partners in Japan.

I had decided to work with them on the microchip. Right now, it was going to be used for medical purposes, but I had never truly abandoned other ideas that I had for some in the future. Benedict Technologies had its hands in many different products. The technical wave was that of the future, and in just the last couple of years, almost everything electronic had been elevated. Gone were the days of large, hand-held cellphones. They were replaced with state-of-the-art smartphones, and with each release, the technology within them got more advanced.

Robots were something that had always interested me, and when my father would try making me learn the family business, I would ignore how they did things then, and instead filled my head with ways to improve the shipping industry when I got older. Cyril Benedict was a very rigid man, and it was no mystery that he had always been disappointed with the son he’d sired. I knew it, my mother knew it, and likely anyone else on the outside looking in did as well. I never allowed his feelings for me to alter my plan for my own life. I couldn’t.

“You’re shunning generations of Benedict men,” my father had told me when I showed him the acceptance letter for Yale University, and had expressed my desire to leave Greece for school in America.

“I’m following my dreams,” I had retorted in response, and while I didn’t remember what he had told me afterwards, the look of sheer disappointment on his face told me everything I needed to know.

I had tried to make amends over the years with him, short of coming back home to take over the family business. Nothing I did was ever good enough, and even if I had relented and did what he wanted, he would never love me again. That emotion had died alongside Aria.

Who could blame him?

Knowing what I now knew, I certainly couldn’t. I didn’t let his displeasure over my life’s choices, or his hatred toward me deter me from my goal. About five years into Benedict Technologies, I had created an autonomous robot that not only transported cargo throughout the shipping yard, but it could load the inventory onto nearby trucks and vessels for delivery. It replaced the manually operated ones controlled by yard workers, and was completely autonomous. The artificial intelligence knew where and when to do each task, and did it flawlessly, saving man hours and eliminating common operator mistakes.

Even that had done little to change my father’s opinion of me. It took me years to realize that nothing I did would ever be good enough because it couldn’t erase what I had done. I’d taken something from him that even I had yet to get over myself.

My mother... bless her heart... she tried her best to mend the rift between my father and me, but only one thing would ever bring him peace. It was the only thing that would ever bring me complete peace, too.

“Death,” I said aloud to no one, then I returned to the email and began to read it.