In front of us was what looked like thick, black smoke. It moved around constantly like some ominous rain cloud that announced a storm was approaching. A horrifying face emerged from its midst and I squinted at it, trying to figure out if it was the face of a child or of a very old man. It was so weird and shocking, that I couldn't look away even though I felt the urge to do so.
"PLAY!" it yelled again. Chips started emerging from the smoke and flying towards us at such a speed that it hurt when they made contact with our bodies.
"Liv!" Elliot screamed in my ear suddenly and I jumped. He grabbed my arm and started pulling me away from the smoke.
"What the hell, Elliot?" I yanked my arm out of his grasp, irritated, and he grabbed my hand instead.
"Are you okay?!" He sounded panicky.
"Yes. What do you mean?!" His tone confused me. We were next to each other the whole time and he saw that nothing had happened to me.
We ran toward the far side of the room, trying not to trip over all the objects scattered around the place. Twice I bumped my foot against something but I couldn't stop and acknowledge my pain. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that the smoke was still behind us. I kept looking back at it. Something about it was mesmerizing and I couldn't understand it. The thing was terrifying to look at, why was I drawn to it?
"Liv, aim the light at the wall, I think I see something!" Elliot accelerated the pace we were moving in and I started to feel out of breath. He was way more fit than I was and in non life-threatening situations, I could really appreciate how good he still looked. At that moment, I only regretted not being able to keep up with him anymore, like back in the day when we were younger and he and the job were all I had, so I spent all my time on them. Nowadays, between the job and parenting, I barely had time for anything else, so fitness had been pushed down my list of priorities.
I loosened my grip on his hand automatically as a response to my exhaustion and he tightened his in return. He wasn't going to let me go.
I did as he asked with the light and at once it illuminated the darkness at the end of the tunnel. Or the beginning of it: an opening the size of a very large door led into more darkness. We couldn't see what was in there but it was probably our only shot. I kept aiming the light at it but it didn't reveal much, even as we drew nearer. Even as we passed through the opening we couldn't see much ahead.
Elliot led me into the shadows of the new space and we came to a stop next to the opening with our backs against the wall. I turned off the light so we wouldn't be visible from the big room we had just left. I didn't want to be seen by the black smoke, but hiding from it also made us not able to see it. I tried to look back into the big room but there was no way to tell if it was still out there, lurking. From where we were standing, everything seemed quiet. We didn't perceive any movement or sounds.
I turned my head to look at Elliot and realized our noses were almost touching. My heart was already racing from running and the fear, but I could swear I felt it beating even faster. I hated myself for it. Why couldn't I be indifferent around him after a decade apart?
"What happened to you out there?" he whispered and I felt his breath in my face.
"What do you mean?" I whispered back, grateful to discover that I didn't, in fact, lose the ability to speak as I had feared. "Why did you yell in my ear like that?" It was the quietest conversation I've ever had. We both tried not to let anything that might be out there know where we were.
"You were unresponsive, you stared at that thing like under hypnosis or something. I said your name several times and you didn't react."
"Are you serious? I only heard you that one time," I was shocked. How could I have lost my grip on reality like that and not even notice?
"Yeah, it scared me. I was about to carry you away from there on my shoulder."
I opened my mouth to respond but nothing came out. His words left me with zero words and a hundred mental images. I stared at the outlines of his face – the only thing I could see in the darkness – desperately trying to find something to say before he could hear in my silence everything I couldn't say aloud. The fact that he still had that effect on me after all this time both annoyed and comforted me. He was the only one in the world who had that power over me and while he was gone, I got used to having complete control of my emotions – and therefore my actions. But even if I didn't like not having full control, having him back was infinitely more comforting. Someone had my back again, I wasn't alone.
"What now?" I finally pulled myself together. We looked around us but it was too dark.
"I think I saw a passageway over there right before you turned off the light," he said and I assumed he was pointing to somewhere in the darkness.
"Maybe I should turn the light back on," I mumbled and woke my phone back up. The screen's bright light hit my eyes and I squinted.
"Wait," he grabbed my hand, blocking access to my phone. "This light is enough, let's not use the flashlight."
"O-okay," I stuttered. The palm of his hand was warm on my hand and I could feel it even with the phone between us.
He let go of me and my phone and the light emitted from the screen reappeared. It wasn't very strong, but it was enough to see the passageway Elliot had talked about. I listened and tried to catch any sounds in the big room, but it seemed to be quiet. For a moment, I wondered if what happened there actually occurred, or if something made us hallucinate it somehow. Maybe we were too hungry or thirsty. That thought reminded me of the water in my bag.
"Wait," I pulled out our bottles and handed him his. He looked at it and smiled at me before taking it. It made me wonder if he missed having someone to have his back in the same way that I missed having someone who had my back. I didn't know anything about him and Kathy in the last ten years and I had no idea if they were finally getting along or not. After she died, Elliot said they were happy. Except for the sting I had felt in my heart, I didn't give it much thought at the moment. We both had bigger things on our minds, but after the OCCB took over the investigation of her death, I had more time to think, and I often wondered and tried to imagine what their life in Rome might've been like. At one point I had to force myself to stop doing that, because it hurt too much.
"Thanks," he gave me his almost empty bottle back and I shoved it along with mine back in my bag. We were both thirsty and could really use some food, but the priority was to get out of there as quickly as possible.
"Let me carry the bag for a while," Elliot said and I felt his hand grabbing the strap on my shoulder.
"It's okay," I said, but he didn't let go. Instead, he started pulling the strap down and I just stood there and allowed him to as I thought about how much I wanted him to take other things off of me.
As soon as he took the bag from me, Elliot started walking carefully along the wall instead of directly crossing the room to the passageway and exposing us to whatever might be lurking in the dark main room. I stayed close behind him and kept looking back to make sure nothing was about to take me by surprise. Right before we entered the passageway, I felt something warm on my hand again and realized he had taken it in his to make sure we wouldn't get separated, or that what happened a few minutes ago when I was unresponsive wouldn't repeat itself. I squeezed his hand gently to signal that I was ok with it as we left the room and started to walk along the passageway. Our footsteps echoed softly in our ears as we advanced in silence.
"There's a left turn over there," Elliot said into the quiet of the place after a while.
I aimed the dim light from my phone's screen to where he was pointing and saw it too. "Careful," I pulled him to the wall before I handed him my phone, so he could peek safely around the corner before we went in there and became vulnerable to whatever might be out there.
Elliot moved slowly to look beyond the wall and lingered for a moment before turning back to me. "I can't see much, I'm not sure if it's empty or not."
"Let me try with the flashlight for a second," I tried to take my phone back from him but he moved his hand out of my reach.
"Wait, let me take another look before we put ourselves at risk," he tried again to do exactly what he did before.
"How's that going to make a difference?" I was glad to feel irritated again, to have my self-control back, even though I knew it wouldn't take much for him to take it away again.
He turned back to me but didn't have anything to say because he still couldn't see much. I held my hand out and he placed my phone in it in defeat and moved so I could get closer.
"Make it quick with the light, we shouldn't expose ourselves."
I stared at him impatiently but decided not to say anything for now and focus on my mission. I was a cop, after all, I knew what I was doing. I was used to risky situations. Maybe he forgot that about me as he lived his comfortable European life in Rome with the 15th-century buildings.
I looked around the corner with the screen's light to begin with, but couldn't see far enough ahead. The flashlight had to be turned on, there was no other choice. I clicked on it and aimed my phone at the darkness, first on the farthest side of the remaining passageway, and then I moved it slowly closer to us, squinting to get a better look.
"I think I see stairs and a door on the other side. Could be an exit! Otherwise it seems empty, I–"
Before I could complete the sentence, the light reached the closest spot to us, right around the corner. I froze on the spot, the air getting stuck somewhere in my throat.
A woman in a pink mini skirt and a crop top with a flowery pattern was standing with her back to me. Her clothes were very dirty and pretty worn out. At first I thought it was the same one who attacked us before, but she was different. Nevertheless, something about her outfit was familiar to me. Her straight, dirty blonde hair fell down her upper back, unkempt and lifeless looking. As soon as the light hit her, she started turning around slowly, like it was her cue to move.
When I saw her face I took a step back, almost tripping backwards, if it wasn't for Elliot holding me. She looked just like Ellie Porter, Noah's biological mother, and at once I understood why I recognized her clothes. She was wearing them the first time I ever met her – and arrested her. "Oh, my god," I whispered, shaking my head in disbelief.
"What's wrong?" Elliot's voice sounded next to me but I didn't move or respond. He walked around me so he could see what I was looking at. "Who are you?" he asked her immediately.
Her expression was the most angry I've ever seen on anyone's face.
"Give him back," she said in a low voice. It was filled with so much rage that it resembled a growl.
We both stared at her without saying a word, Elliot in confusion and I in terror. I've had the nightmare of Noah being taken away from me so many times in the first two or three years of having him, and then it came true with Sheila. In spite of it, I always wanted to believe that Ellie Porter would have been happy to know that her son had a safe home and a healthy, normal childhood, but now this was happening and I didn't know what to make of it.
"You stole him from my mother. Give him BACK!" she yelled the last word and it echoed in our ears several times as the sound bounced from wall to wall before it died out.
"Liv, who is that? Do you know her?" Elliot tried again to understand what was happening.
"We have to get out of here," I ignored his question and grabbed his hand so we could start running toward the exit.
"You're never going to leave this place, just like all the others before you," Ellie's voice became more and more distorted with each word she said. "You will pay for what you did to my mom." A nasty smile appeared on her face. She looked evil with her dead eyes and rotting teeth.
"Who the hell is she, Liv?!" Elliot started to panic. I could tell he was also angry for being ignored, but I wasn't going to give him a summary of my life in the past ten years right there and then.
"No one! She's not really here, just like everyone else we've seen in this place! Now let's go!" I couldn't control my voice. It was much louder than I would've preferred. I didn't often raise it to get my point across, but I was close to my breaking point.
Elliot obviously realized from my tone how serious I was because he just nodded and we started running, passing Ellie as fast and farthest from her as we could. Her angry yell behind us didn't sound human and it sent chills up and down my spine. I had no doubt she was coming after us.
This part of the passageway wasn't as long as the previous one and we could see the stairs getting nearer with the dancing light in my hand. Another yell behind us made us move a little faster to reach them sooner. Just as Elliot's hand landed on the railing, my phone died and the light went out.
"No!" I said desperately.
"Never mind that, hold onto the railing and you'll be fine!" he placed my hand on it so I didn't have to start feeling for it in the dark. "Come on!"
We started climbing, both panting and gripping the railing as if our lives depended on it. At this point, after all the time we had been stuck in this place, I was absolutely sure they were.
"Got it!" I heard Elliot say in front of me.
"The door?!" Before he answered I could already hear the sound of the door handle being wiggled frantically.
"It's locked, damn it!" he sounded on the verge of becoming hysterical. "Get back, I'm gonna kick it open."
I moved two steps down to give him the space he needed. The sound of his shoe hitting the door echoed just like Ellie's voice before, bouncing on the walls around us, except it was much louder. So loud that it hurt my ears. It sounded as though the door trembled with every kick, but it still put up quite the fight. Elliot groaned every time he sent his foot to the door and I felt sorry for not helping him. It was obviously a strenuous task.
I was about to offer my help, even though I knew that my kicks wouldn't be as forceful as his. Still, I wanted to do something. I opened my mouth to speak but before I could say anything, I felt an arm creeping around my waist as I was being grabbed from behind and dragged down the stairs. I couldn't say anything or call for help because a hand landed on my mouth. I knew it was probably Ellie and yet I still tried to turn around to see the abductor, but I was being held too tight and it was too dark.
"I can see your death," I heard a whisper in my ear.
We reached the bottom of the stairs before Elliot even noticed I was gone. I heard a sound that at first didn't register in my brain, as I was trying to hold onto the railing and pull myself back up, but then it gradually surfaced in my consciousness until I realized that it was water. A big water source of some sort, which I couldn't see.
"You're going to pay for it."
My abductor loosened her grip for a moment to grab my arm instead of my waist. I heard her stepping into the water and felt her pulling me further down. I resisted with all my strength, pulling my arm desperately away from her but she was too strong.
"If he can't be with my mom, he can't be with anyone," she kept whispering. At that exact same moment, the door flew open from Elliot's kick and the faded moonlight washed the stairs with its faint, silver light.
Suddenly, Ellie loosened her grip again from the surprise, which allowed me to turn my head. The moment I looked at her, something sparkling caught my eye and I looked down to see the water I had heard a few moments ago. It went up to Ellie's waist and seemed black in the darkness of the passageway, but the moonlight managed to highlight the little ripples moving around her. I had no idea where it had appeared from and I wasn't going to ask. Instead, I was too busy fighting my already lost battle against her. She was way stronger than me and I was already with one leg in the water.
"Elliot!" I called out in desperation and he turned around immediately. Shock washed over his face as he realized what he was seeing. Ellie jerked my arm powerfully and made me fall down. I was completely immersed in the water and Ellie was trying to push me under and drown me.
"Olivia! Oh, my god!" he rushed down the stairs to me just as my head went underwater.
For a moment everything slowed down. The little ripples moved soothingly above me, distorting Elliot's figure. I could see movement outside of the water but I couldn't tell what was happening. As my lungs ran out of air, I thought about Noah and how much I wanted to see him again. Then I thought about all the things I wanted to say to Elliot, the bad but mostly the good, and all the things I wanted to hear from him. I saw images from our past – the first time I walked into the precinct and introduced myself, Cragen pairing us up, the awkwardness of the beginning. Then I saw images from later on – the difficult times, the mutual support and love. There was so much love between us, love that was never expressed or experienced, such big love that was about to go to waste. He had just gotten back into my life and there were so many things we still needed to say. We still needed to heal together, to experience so much together. Life couldn't be THIS unfair, could it?