A girl screamed somewhere at the end of the hall.
This gave Tyler new initiative, and he found a system to help himself up. First of all he would press the top of his head against the wall as strongly as he could. From there he rolled over and ended up on his knees, his head still against the wall. He would then inch his head up slowly, following by bringing his knees closer to the wall. After a few grueling minutes he managed to stand completely, although a little off-balance from the tape binding both his feet together.
He mumbled something through the gag, biting at it until it became wet and slipped off his mouth onto his chin then neck. He took a deep breath. He managed to take off his shoes, and then hopped slowly and carefully down the hall.
He heard sobbing.
He hopped faster.
Once the hall stopped there were two doors, one of each side of the hall. Caleb was nowhere to be seen, so he assumed he was inside one of them. Tyler bent down a little and looked into the keyhole of the door on his right. It was dark and there wasn't anything there. He turned around painfully and looked into the next one.
This door was ajar, so he didn't have to look through the keyhole. There was a dim light coming from inside. Tyler looked in. He blinked a few times to make sure he was seeing things properly.
The room was painted a light pink, with a small bed in one corner, a bookshelf in another and some more furniture everywhere. But what was unbelievable was what was happening in the middle of the room. A young woman, who looked maybe in her early thirties, with light blonde hair and light eyes was dressing a doll with a little girl with equally light hair. The girl had pigtails tied with pink ribbons, was wearing a white dress and was radiating a gorgeous smile. The woman looked almost deliriously happy.
Then a crash occurred, and a dark figure appeared from another door. (a closet?) The woman panicked, grabbed the girl and brought her to the bed, telling her to hide under it. The girl obliged, and hid under the bed until only her eyes were visible amongst the shadows.
The dark figure was a man, who entered and grabbed the woman roughly by the arm. She screamed, he threw her against the wall. She fell, started bleeding from a gash in her arm. The man ran towards her, and shoved her on her back on the floor. She screamed again, he slapped her. He undid his belt and started raping her violently, from this angle Tyler could see the woman, tears in her eyes, making eye contact with the girl as if telling her to stay put and to not move. The girl moved further under the bed.
The man finished, stood, redid his pants and took out a gun. The woman cried, tried to run with her skirt ripped and pulled down, tripped, and was shot four times in the back. She hiccupped once, and fell to the floor, dead. The man looked around once, stuffed the gun in his pocket and ran out the way he came.
The small girl snuck out from under the bed and crawled over to the woman.
"mommy."
She placed her little hands on the woman's back, getting blood all over her blonde hair and white dress.
"Mommy, why are you sleeping? Mommy?"
The little girl ran her hands through the blood-soaked hair, than looked up at someone sitting in a dark corner of the room.
"Now wasn't that grand?"
The dark figure stepped out of the closet and became Chase Collins. He grinned at Maddie, who was sitting on a wooden chair in the corner of the room, her arms wrapped around her chest. Tears were slowly seeping down her cheeks and staining her skirt. She looked straight ahead at the little girl. A moment later she and the dead woman disappeared in a twirl of smoke.
Chase walked closer to Maddie. She didn't even react, just stared where the girl used to be.
"Madeline, it really isn't polite to ignore people." He said with a smirk. Maddie still didn't look up at him. "Madeline." She blinked. "Don't make me hurt you."
She finally looked up at him with her painful grey eyes.
"Isn't that the whole point of this?" she whispered.
Chase snickered. He walked closer, and ran a finger along her cheek, getting it wet from her tears. He brought it to his lips and licked the salty liquid off. Maddie peered at him hatefully.
"It isn't the point. You see, Maddie, I don't hate you, far from it. You're so… interesting. And peculiar, and I'm only hurting you to get to those Sons of Ipswich you insist on protecting. No hard feelings?"
"None at all." She said. "But you aren't going to get to them through me. They hate me. I'm not expecting anyone to come save me, so you can kill me as soon as you want." She spat the last sentence out.
Tyler thought this would maybe be his cue to jump out, heroically save the damsel and foil the bad guy's plot. But his feet were still tied, he could barely move his hands an he knew there was no way in hell that he could defeat Chase, even if he had his usual level of power. So he gritted his teeth and mentally punched Chase in the face.
Then Caleb appeared out of nowhere, looking like a tough-guy hero in his long black coat and leather gloves. He stood in the middle of the room, Chase looking satisfied and Maddie looking mildly shocked.
"I'm not here to save you." He said coldly. "I'm here to kill you before he does." He motioned to Chase. "So move."
Chase was standing inadvertently between he and Maddie.
"How about no?" Chase hissed. "I'm the only one that's going to be hurting this beautiful young girl…" he ran his fingers across her cheek again.
Caleb sighed, reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun.
Chase flinched at the sight of the gun, Tyler froze in shock and Maddie didn't blink. She just looked up at him with her sad grey eyes. Caleb closed his, pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger.