Shadow Slave
Chapter 2489 Pursuit of Balance

"Miss Morgan? Can you hear me?"

Saint sighed.

The woman in front of her was not responding. She was strapped into a straitjacket, sitting in a wheelchair, and looking quietly into the barred window of her patient room with an absent expression on her pale face.

The world outside the window was dark. It was already late into the night, far past the time Saint was supposed to get off work. Her schedule was in shambles… which was a point of intense frustration. However, she could not do anything about it — this particular patient gave a whole new meaning to the word VIP, so Saint had been assigned to her and ordered to get to the bottom of her condition with utmost haste.

She had been spending a lot of time with this patient as of late, but things were not going well. That hurt her pride.

Miss Morgan… was a difficult puzzle.

She was both unhinged and chillingly cunning at times, and worse than that, she was prone to violent episodes. Worst of all, though, was the fact that this seemingly delicate woman somehow managed to deliver eerily gruesome wounds to the orderlies each time they tried to restrain her. Several had already been hospitalized, some of them irreversibly maimed and crippled.

Therefore, Miss Morgan was put in a straitjacket and regularly fed a cocktail of powerful neuroleptics, which curbed some of her violent behavior, but made Saint's work much more difficult.

After all, how was she supposed to have a conversation with a person who had been drugged out of their mind?

It was almost as if the leadership of the hospital had no intention of helping this patient, and was perfectly content simply keeping her locked up.

Letting out another sigh, Saint left a note in her journal and stood to leave.

"I will see you tomorrow, then."

She was almost to the door when Morgan suddenly spoke — it was the first sentence she had spoken today, making Saint stop.

"You… something is different about you today."

Saint lingered for a moment, then turned around.

She did not say anything, studying her patient silently.

Morgan studied her, as well.

…Why did it seem like her eyes had a scarlet glint to them?

Naturally, it was impossible. Iris pigmentation was determined by the melanin saturation level and varied from brown or dark brown, which could appear black in certain lighting, to lighter shades like green, blue, and grey. In rare cases, such as albinism, melanin was entirely absent, which exposed blood vessels behind the iris and gave the eyes a pale reddish tint.

However, there were no people with vibrant, vivid vermilion eyes.

Saint frowned subtly.

'I must have seen wrong.'

Morgan, meanwhile, smiled slowly.

"You are... real, aren't you? But how strange. I don't recognize you. Well, no matter — since you arrived with that man, you must be one of his."

She seemed to be delirious, talking nonsense. In fact, considering the amount of antipsychotic medications administered to this patient, it was a miracle that she was able to form coherent sentences at all.

Morgan's smile did not seem like that of a person heavily dosed with tranquilizers, though.

She chuckled.

"Tell him to come see me."

She looked at something behind Saint, then exhaled slowly.

"...Then again, maybe I'll come see him myself."

With that, she turned to look out the window with an absent expression once again. The brief moment of lucidity seemed to have come to an end.

Saint remained silent for a few moments, then turned around and left the room. The padded steel door locked behind her with a loud click.

'Her condition seemed to have worsened. I must make them change her prescriptions at all costs.'

An unfamiliar nurse and a few orderlies were loitering in the corridor outside. She did not recognize any of them, which would have been strange on a usual day… there had been many new hires as of late, though, precisely because of the patient in the room behind her. Saint had not memorized their faces just yet.

Still, the fact that they were new did not mean that there was an excuse for how poorly they were carrying out their duties.

Saint frowned, then forced herself to speak:

"Do you know what time it is? Why hasn't anyone helped the patient to bed yet? Were you planning to keep her in that wheelchair the entire night?"

One of the orderlies looked down.

"Sorry, doctor. We will strap her in right now."

Shaking her head slightly, Saint left them behind.

Her schedule was already a mess, but if there was one thing she could not compromise on, it was proper sleep. Sleep was a cornerstone of both physical and mental health, so Saint maintained a healthy sleep cycle meticulously. She had to clock out and return home swiftly.

Soon enough, Saint left the hospital building, opened an umbrella, and headed to where her car was parked. She looked at the phone while walking to check the time and noticed a dozen missed calls from a certain number. Detective Sunless seemed not to have taken her warning seriously.

Pursing her lips, Saint blocked his number and put her phone away, retrieving the car key instead. Approaching her car, she exhaled slowly and looked up.

The hospital was situated on the outskirts of the city, in the prestigious northern suburbs. So, the view would have been quite picturesque on a normal day — sadly, the world was veiled by rain, and the stars were obscured by the heavy mass of storm clouds.

The only bright lights Saint could see were the spotlights on the immense dam towering above the city in the north. Behind it was one of the three great lakes of Mirage City — due to the heavy rainfall, its levels had risen, so the floodgates of the recently renovated dam were open.

Saint could hear the hum of falling water even from a distance. That water would feed the main lake — the Mirror Lake — and if that was not enough, the floodgates of the southern dam would be open as well to alleviate the pressure.

That was how Mirage City, built around a system of three artificial lakes, avoided drowning during the storm season. It remained safe and sound by maintaining balance, releasing pressure when needed, and letting the water flow between the three lakes.

All systems pursued balance above everything else, after all. That was their nature.

A human mind was much the same. It needed balance to stay healthy… all disorders originated from instability and imbalance.

Saint wondered what Miss Morgan's imbalance was. What was there that she, who had everything in the world at her fingertips, lacked? Or was that exactly the root of the problem…

The fact that she had too much.

Shaking her head, Saint raised the key to unlock her car.

It was then that she sensed movement behind her, and suddenly, there was something sharp and thin wrapped around her neck.