Hey everyone!

I recently realised how long it's been since I updated, so thank you to the guest who reminded me! I have a few more chapters nearly ready, and you'll be pleased to know I've got over my writers block! I know my last few chapters haven't been great but I'm working really hard to improve my future ones!

I've recently gone back to school, which has been... an experience. I hope you've all had a great summer, and getting back into work/school hasn't been too rough on you! Thank you all again for reading, you're the best!

Enjoy!

Sometimes memories are the worst form of torture.

And sometimes, having to relive those memories is even worse.

Unfortunately for me, walking down this corridor again brings back too many unpleasant memories of when I first arrived here, escorted by the man who I suspect is torturing the one person in my life I was close to for who knows what.

I can't help thinking how strange it is that everything is interlinked somehow. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realise that everything is. Chloe getting me sent here means that I met Adrien and in turn learnt a lot about myself. So I suppose in some strange way, everything ends up working out for the best one way or another. However, some things can never work out well. Like being in this unnerving situation. Moving down the corridor, I become camouflaged, my body moulding into the grotesque shadows on the walls, the echo of my footsteps swallowed by the walls that are on my side, helping me slip from silhouette to silhouette without a sound. I'm passing door after door, shadow after shadow, cell after cell, and I've never felt more alive.

I am invisible.

I am stealthy.

And I am free. To some degree.

I know the truth is that I'm still trapped inside this asylum meant for crazy people, but I remind myself that I don't need to be here.

I'm not crazy.

Depending on who you ask.

So, I let my other thoughts cloud that truth, letting them all fog over it, engulfing it and sending it to the back of my mind where I won't be tempted to remind myself of it for a while. Not until I've focused on the matter at hand. My thoughts flicker to another matter entirely. I know my plan wasn't fool proof, I know that soon enough Lila is going to realise that I'm gone and have all of the guards looking for me, I know that my next move has to be figuring out where I'm going to go in the time before I can escape. I know I have two options on where I can go.

The room Adrien was tortured in.

Or the research room Lila mentioned.

I've got to be logical about this. I've got to be smart and I've got to make the right move, or else the consequences-

No, no consequences, not yet. Not ever. It won't get to that.

My guess is Gabriel will most likely be away from here, or in the chamber Adrien described being tortured in. What if Adrien is in there right now suffering whilst I'm up here dithering?

My blood turns to ice.

My heart freezes.

I'm trying to grasp logic, to hold onto rationalism, but my hands are slipping and I'm about to be torn away from them both and tumble into my own imagination, the dark place that it has become. I'm trying to hold on and not think about it, I'm trying to believe that he's going to be okay, but I'm losing focus and soon my mind is flooded with Adrien's bruised face, his scarred forearms, his gashed side.

I open my eyes, gasping.

I inhale.

Take a shaky breath.

Steadying myself, I know where I need to go, and I have an idea of where this room could be. I remember the first time I walked along here, so naïve with no idea of what was waiting for me on the other side of that cell door. Love. Loss. Friendship. Heartbreak. Pain. Joy. So much conflict. Everywhere. This place lives and breathes it; conflict oozes through every crack in the walls, tension radiates through the dim glow of every light, pain drips from the ceiling and floods the building. The very life source of this entire institution is sadness. It is what you'd find at the core of the building, that is if you were courageous enough to try to get there. I remember when I first came into the building, how I noticed that every single door was crafted from perfectly smooth wood. I remember how I found out that behind each one of those doors was another one, made from damaged iron, the complete opposite to the door in front of it. I remember thinking that it was sick of them, to try and disguise the fact that behind every door was a shell of a human imprisoned inside their own heads and shackled by the knowledge of what they had done.

Told they were monsters.

Never given hope.

But there was always one door that stood out from the rest of them. Well, it stood out by blending perfectly in. One door, one panel of wood that was chipped and scratched with age. It never bothered to conform to the perfect façade that had been painted by Gabriel, never tried to hide its raggedness from the rest of the world. Not once did it ever attempt to conceal the fact that whatever lay behind that door was something of despicable evil. So, in a way, it was almost too imperfect to seem like it mattered. In a twisted way, it is a work of a malevolent genius. Because it's so horrific, it blends in with the rest of the corridor, seeming less suspicious to other people.

Because evil blends into evil.

Now the memory of this door is standing out in my mind, so vivid I can picture it exactly. I don't know completely where I'm going to get to it, but I trust myself to find it soon.

After minutes of slinking down corridors with a non-existent sense of direction, I find myself on a corridor that I recognise. I don't know how I do; every hallway has a consistent neglected theme. I figure fear must imprint itself on our minds like a tattoo so that we are sure to never forget it.

I could never forget this place.

Unfortunately.

I run down the corridor, constantly watching over my shoulder in case I have been spotted by guards, trying to supress the noise my footsteps make as I dart towards my goal. The door within my reach, I try the handle, but as I expected, it's locked and won't budge. Scanning the lock with my eyes, I notice that there's no keyhole, just a keypad with letters on it. After inspecting all of the keys to see if there are any clues to what the password may be, I sigh in defeat.

26 letters.

26 impossible letters that have never been so defeating.

26 impossible letters that could form any word ever written in the human language since the beginning of time.

This password could be anything.

How on earth am I ever meant to figure this out?

I start to panic again, running my hands through my hair in an exasperated manor. What do I do? What do I do? To make matters ten times worse, the clatters of footsteps echo off the walls.

My heart drops to my stomach.

Someone is coming.

The footsteps are too loud, too close, too distant, too difficult to hear how close they are. The halls are too black, the lights are too dim, the walls are too close and here I am, crouched in the middle of a dilapidated doorway to who knows what. And the best part is I don't know how to get in.

The footsteps are definitely getting louder.

Maybe this was a stupid idea, the worst idea, an unreasonable idea. Maybe I shouldn't have come. Maybe I should've just stayed hidden away from the world. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to fight back. Ever.

The footsteps are getting closer.

I desperately try the handle, pulling and tugging and yanking on it, stupidly hoping that some miracle has happened and somehow opened the door. I don't know who the footsteps belong to. Lila? Gabriel? Guards? Another patient here? Each option is equally as unnerving.

The footsteps are almost here.

In an attempt to conceal myself, I press myself against the door, hoping, wishing, needing the shadows to draw me into their cloak of invisibility, to shield me from this mystery person. I press my hands firmly over my mouth to stop myself from making a sound.

The footsteps are here.

I mentally exhale a sigh of relief. Kind of. The footsteps belong to two guards, who are marching down the corridors in silence. Thankfully, since they're not looking for me, they don't expect me to be there, so they don't see me. They turn the corner a few metres in front of me, completely unaware. But as they go past, I have the opportunity to get a better look at them.

I'm pretty sure they are the two guards that first escorted me here, and upon a second glance, they seem like they are roughly my age. And although their faces are untouched by weapons and their complexion is completely without any imperfections, they seem scarred in other ways. The things they must have seen, I think to myself. The things that they must have done, must have had to do, the evil they must have witnessed, or been instructed to carry out.

It saddens me.

Innocent people. Innocent lives. Corrupted and infected by the plague that is evil so early on in life.

But they've turned the corner now, so I go back to focusing on the matter at hand. The more of this place I see, the more fuel that is added to my fire of wanting to fight back. I know now this wasn't a mistake, it was never wrong, just like I was never crazy. I'm going to find a way in here, and I'm going to win in the end, and then all of these people, people like those guards, will be set free, and the lives they have been robbed of will be returned to them at last.

I glare at the lock. The flashing keypad that is mocking me. It knows the password, it knows the secrets of what lies in the room it's protecting, and yet I have no idea. Okay, think about this Marinette. What could the password be? I ask myself, closing my eyes and thinking so hard it hurts my brain. Who else knows this password, who else could know what it was? Gabriel would know, he created the password, so it would have to be something related to him. I know that much. Lila, she'd know wouldn't she. After all, she is Gabriel's little lap dog, always running his errands and helping him out with his scheming. Plus, she came in here with Ad-

Of course.

Of course!

Adrien! He came in here. He must know the password. And if he wanted me to find the room, which I feel like he did, he might've tried to tell me what it was. I replay my earlier conversation with Lila in my head. But nothing she said would make any sense. In frustration, I put my head in my hands and supress my urge to scream in annoyance. He told me that he would fix everything when he sent that message, but he could have helped more than that.

Click. A piece of his plan falls into place in my head.

The message.

Click. I'm starting to understand what he wanted me to do. I close my eyes and picture his message to me. Burnt into the floor of my cell.

M, i Will fix THis, i Have to. i lOve you, oK? A

I always thought it was strange the way it was written, with capital letters in the middle of words. Until now, I'd just thought it was his magic being unstable and this was the best that he could do.

But it wasn't.

It wasn't at all.

Click.

Everything slots into place. I know what he was trying to tell me. Eyes still closed, I pick out all of the capital letters in my mind.

A

These are the letters that make up the password! This whole time, Adrien was on my side, trying to tell me how to get in here. Now, I just need to figure out what these letters could make. I arrange them in various ways, but none of them seem like a word. There's something about this jumble of letters, this handful of letters in my head, there's something that looks really familiar about them, like they're itching to switch places and form a word, like they're on the brink of being a word I've seen before. Every letter looks so familiar. I take a deep, calming breath, and instead of trying to force them to move. I just let the letters remain in my head, and slowly drift around into other positions. I feel so calm and relaxed, like it's therapeutic watching them shift into place.

But suddenly that changes.

A black and purple speckled butterfly appears in my head, swooping around the letters. It's the same one I've seen before. The same one that has haunted me in my sleep for years. I've had nightmares about this butterfly as a child, I saw it emblazoned on the van that brought me here. But most recently, I dreamt of this butterfly, in that strange nightmare. The butterfly, it flew at me, it shifted from a word to a butterfly and then swooped at me. The word.

I gasp, remembering.

I open my eyes, turning to the keypad with glee.

The word that morphed into the butterfly in my dream.

'Hawkmoth'

That's what these letters spell. That's what Adrien tried to tell me. That's what I've been missing this whole time. That's the password. Hawkmoth. Fingers shaking with concentration, I press the letter keys as quickly as I can, each one illuminating red as I do. I press the final 'H' and hold my breath, hoping I'm right.

Nothing.

Just as I begin to doubt myself again, all of the letters change from red to green, flashing once before the most miraculous thing happens.

The door swings open.

I'm right.

I opened the door!

I get to my feet and push it open further, my movements slow with caution. I've only got so much time before I'm found to be missing, and I know that then the place will be teeming with guards trying to find me.

So, I take a deep breath.

Remind myself of what I have to do.

Open the door.

And step inside.