16;

Though regularly filled with passing cars and people walking its sidewalks, the storefront street at this hour was void of life and took on a dark lonely atmosphere. By the time the girls finally reached it they had already ran past several major roads and their stamina was nearing empty. Riley stopped and laid a hand on one of the buildings and leaned over slightly.

Ellie stood behind her breathing heavily. "We can catch our breath while walking. We can't stop."

Riley forced herself to pull her hand back and to start walking quickly again past the dark store windows. They reached the alley, turned into it, and made their way past the garbage cans and boxes scattered throughout before reaching the end that spilled out into the neighborhood.

"What now?"

"We just start knocking on doors. We should split up, we can cover more houses that way."

"What? No." Ellie shook her head and sounded as though she were pleading. "We're not splitting up."

"Ellie…"

"I'm coming with you."

Riley gave in knowing that she couldn't convince her otherwise. "Okay, okay. Let's just hurry."

They looked around for a brief second and ran across the yard and up to the door of the nearest house they could see from the alley exit. Riley ran up and banged on it while Ellie rang the doorbell and anxiously paced.

Riley yelled as loud as she could manage between her shallow breaths. "We need help! Anyone in there?"

They banged on it again and repeatedly pressed the doorbell button but after a minute of unresponsiveness they gave up.

"God damn it! Next one, come on."

They hurried down the steps and took off across the lawn and into the house's next to them. They jumped the small hedge that separated the two and ran up the steps up to the identical door. They began banging on it hard enough to vibrate the wall itself.

"Hey! We need to use your phone! It's an emergency!"

They stopped and backed up when a light flicked on in a window on the side of the house. They waited for a few moments and then the light over the porch turned on and an older woman in her robe opened the door a crack, a chain blocking it from opening completely. She was squinting against the light as she peered out at them.

"What? What is it?" She seemed equal parts worried and annoyed.

"Can we use your phone? We need to call the police right now, our friend needs help."

They both stood fidgeting on her porch while the woman's eyes analyzed them up and down. The door closed and then swung open completely.

"Okay, come in quickly. The phone is on the nightstand in the hallway."

"Thank you!"

They rushed past her and straight ahead to the hallway that was brightly lit from a couple of wall sconces. The woman scanned the area outside her house before closing the door and locking it up.

Ellie took the phone and had called the police, stuttering as she forced out her words. "Our friend Tino was drugged… or poisoned, or something. He needs help right now. He's in the basement unconscious, I think." Riley could hear some low mumbling coming from the other side. "Oh, not here, uh, at the Gateway Orphanage. Yes, we're away from there, just please hurry… Ellie! I don't know where we are!"

Her hands were shaking as she handed the phone to the woman who calmly took it and gave the operator her address.

The woman relayed the information she received from the operator on the other side of the phone. "They're sending someone to the orphanage right now. They're also sending an officer over here as well to come talk to you." She looked at the two girls in her home who were clearly on edge. "I'm sorry about your little friend, I'm sure he'll be okay. Go ahead and take a seat, I'll grab you something to drink. You two look terrible."

After her unnecessary critique she scuttled off into the other room and began pouring some of the orange juice she pulled from the fridge into two glasses. She returned to the room where she left them to find them still standing in the same spots.

"Here, hopefully this will help. Sit."

They obliged and sat together on one of the couches unaware of the glasses they were holding in their hands. Each second that passed while waiting for an update felt like an hour. Something, anything, was better than not knowing.

Within a short time after their initial call the red and blue lights of a cruiser penetrated the house followed by a knock on the door. The girls stayed seated while they watched the woman open the door outright. She spoke with the officer for a second before directing him to the couch inside.

"Hello, girls. Are you the two that called the police?"

"Where is Tino? Did you find him? Is he okay?"

The officer glanced over at the woman and back to them. "I think it's best we discuss this back at the station. Is that okay?"

"Just tell us!"

He held out a hand palm straight out, a signal to calm down. "Please, just come with me."

"This is bullshit."

"I can force you to if you'd rather do that."

Riley huffed and held her tongue at the risk of worsening their night. She looked over at Ellie who looked back with a silent agreement. They pushed themselves off the couch in frustration and staggered past him and out to the car still rotating its lights. The officer nodded at the woman and walked out the door after them.

He opened the back door of his car and shut it after they hopped in and walked around to the driver's side. The girls watched out the window as the car drove out of the neighborhood and through streets they had never seen before. The car exited the area and out onto a main street where, not long after some swift driving, they noticed an office building further down the road that was brightly lit. It had large black letters on it that read 'Police Department 227'.

The officer pulled into the parking lot and reopened the back door. They followed him through the building's entrance and past the front desk and into a small cubicle that they assumed was his.

"Enough of this, just tell us about Tino!"

"Calm down. There's an officer over there right now speaking with the caretaker of your orphanage."

"I'm not gonna calm down, and why are they talking to him? They need to arrest him!"

"Please keep your voice down. The officer already went through the building, including the basement, and has so far found nothing. He has reported that this Mr.… David Murphy and his assistant have been cooperative and have let him check throughout the building in its entirety."

"Well then he didn't check good enough 'cause he's down there."

The officer ignored the criticism and continued. "Now just because he was accommodating doesn't mean he's innocent, which is why I brought you down here. I want to get your side of the story, so please, describe what happened."

They both started talking over each other which forced the officer to be even louder. "One at a time!" He pointed to Ellie. "Ellie right?" She nodded. "You first."

"Okay, so it started with David taking over the orphanage after the Edgar left, the old caretaker. When he took over, he locked the basement and cooler for some reason. Then he locked Riley in the basement as some sick form of discipline." She realized she was just spouting out information as fast as she could but didn't stop herself even if useless. "After she got out I noticed our friend Sam was missing, so we confronted David about it. He said he was fostered out, but Sam didn't say anything about it, which is weird. So we sort of… snuck into the basement at night to see why it and the cooler down there was locked. We were hoping to find something on him."

"Why the cooler?"

Riley cut in, unable to hold back. "Because I knew something was messed up with David. Why lock the thing when it only holds food? It was fine without one."

He shot her a glance which shut her up. "Ellie, please continue."

"So, we opened it with the combination we found in his office. There was a chair in there and a notebook with some messed up stuff in it. Riley even ripped out a page from it."

Riley eyes lit up when she was reminded about the piece of paper. She leaned to the side and reached into her side pocket, paused for a second, and then quickly reached into the other one. She stood up and checked her two back pockets.

"No… no, no, no! Shit, where is it?" She stood there with her mouth open in disbelief. "It's not here, I don't have it."

"You have to, you're the one that took it. Check your jacket."

Riley felt through each pocket but still came up empty handed. "Nothing."

"Well where the hell is it?"

"I don't know, Ellie! If I had it don't you think I'd show him?"

"You don't get to yell at me, I'm not the one who lost the damn paper!"

"Girls! Be quiet and sit down!"

Ellie crossed her arms and Riley huffed before sitting down.

"What is this paper you're talking about?" He looked back and forth between the two of them but suddenly couldn't get a response. He sighed in annoyance and looked at Riley. "You. Talk."

"The paper, which I can't find, had a table on it. It listed names, dates, a category titled drugs, and… uh, duration. Oh, and symptoms. It was essentially a list of people that were drugged with something, their symptoms from it which were horrible sounding, and then an amount of time. Maybe how long the drug took to kick in? Or, shit, how long until they died even. I didn't recognize any of the names, but one of the drugs was something like Shrike or Shriking. I don't know exactly remember but it was fucked up, you have to believe us."

He raised his eyebrows and thought about the seriousness of her accusations. He nodded and looked back over at Ellie. "Continue where you left off, after finding this 'notepad'."

"We found the notepad, we did, and as soon as we had it someone began opening the basement door behind us. So we shut the cooler and hid below the stairs. David and James came down with Tino, our friend that we called about, the one your cop failed to find."

She was outright glaring at the officer at this point. "They sat him in the chair and stuck a needle in his arm. They closed the door and locked him in. After they left the basement we opened the cooler and tried to get him out, but he was too heavy so we had to leave him. We ran to that woman's house where you picked us up and now we're here."

"That's a hell of a story."

"Jesus, it's not a story! It's what happened!"

"Officer Clarke and White are there now, once they update me on the situation we'll figure out how to proceed. If there's something going on over there, we'll figure it out, okay?" The girls just sat there quietly, distrusting to an extent everything he said. "And until they do, you can take a seat in the waiting room. There's some water and snacks out there. Go on."

They stood up and dejectedly walked to the small room at the front of the building and sat on the corner bench.

Riley scoffed. "He doesn't believe us. Should've guessed as much."

"He will, just… give him time."

After waiting for even just a few minutes for the officers to return, Ellie closed her eyes and rested against Riley who herself was strongly feeling the pangs of exhaustion. It was a half past four in the morning and both had given into sleep when they were eventually roused by the officer who drove them there. They groggily looked up to see two men standing in front of them, one the officer they've been talking to, and the other someone new.

"This is Officer Clarke. He's the one that took your call and investigated the orphanage."

"Hello girls."

Ellie stifled a yawn and leaned off of Riley. "What happened? Did you find Tino?"

"Officer White and I did a thorough search of the building, including the basement where you mentioned you saw the attack. But... it came up clean."

"That's not possible. Did you check the cooler?"

"We did."

They stared at the officer with their minds swimming in disbelief. "Well then what the hell happened to him? He was there just the other day, did you ask that asshole about him?"

"Who's that?"

"David."

"Oh, the caretaker. We questioned him about the situation and he was very cooperative. He answered all our questions, let us search the building, and even provided us with the documentation of Tino's legal transfer."

"Of course he did..."

The initial officer interjected himself again. "I'm sorry girls, but right now it's down to his words against yours. He has documentation, whereas you apparently lost yours. Unless you are able to come up with some sort of evidence, I'm afraid we can't continue any further at this point."

Ellie had begun to tear up while Riley was nearly speechless. "What now?"

"Now, because you're underage and still in the custody of the city, we're legally obligated to return you to the orphanage."

"What? We can't go back there! He'll know it was us and he'll do the same thing he did to Tino…"

"I'm sorry, but until you two turn eighteen you don't really have a choice. It's just how the system works. So come on, I need to get you back."

The girls sat in defeat while everything was crashing around them. They knew what happened and had the evidence, but knew it would've been pointless to keep trying without it now. They didn't have any fight left in them so early in the morning so they gave in and followed the orders of the cop standing in front of them.

They slowly walked out of the building and into the back of Riley's car. He took off from the parking lot and back out onto the street heading west. Ellie sat leaning against the door of the car, her head against the window and legs stretched to the side. She stared at the roof while watching the interior repeatedly transition from dark to light to dark as they drove underneath street lights.

A squeal from the brakes brought her back into reality as the car slowed down to a stop in front of the red building. The driver side door opened followed soon by the back door closest to the building. The girls both got out and stood on the sidewalk in a daze.

"Please, please don't make us go back in there."

Clarke was clearly uncomfortable with the decision but had no choice in the matter. "I'm sorry, but I have to. If anything happens again, call the police immediately."

Riley was exhausted and tired of dealing with him. "Because that worked great the first time."

Clarke sighed but understood her sarcasm. He couldn't think of anything to say to regain her trust so he decided against it and walked them up to the front door and rang the buzzer. "This is Officer Clarke, I have here two of your… inhabitants."

Moments later they could hear the door locks on the other side being undone followed by the door fully opening, both James and David standing directly behind it. They looked at the girls for a terrifyingly long second.

"Get to bed you two. We'll have a discussion tomorrow about everything."

The girls grudgingly filed back into the bedroom with James watching carefully from the bedroom doorway until they reached their beds.

David turned back toward the officer. "Thank you officer for bringing them back. I very much appreciate it."

"You're welcome. Have a good night."

"You too." He nodded his head at the officer and closed the door.

He walked back towards his room and glanced at the beds as he passed by, unconcerned about the two for the time being.

The girls sleepily walked by the other orphans and straight towards Riley's bunk. Most of the others were still asleep though some had been woken by the commotion outside the bedroom.

Ellie kept watch on the door for David while Riley slowly climbed the bunk ladder. As soon as she cleared the edge of the bed Ellie followed immediately after. "Move over. No way in hell am I sleeping alone tonight."

Riley complied and pressed up against the side as far as she could while Ellie slid in next to her and put her head on the pillow facing her. They stared at each other with racing thoughts and unstable emotions.

Ellie whispered out into the black room. "What do we do?"

"I don't know... but we can't stay here."