Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 50: The Last Light

From the far end of the portrait gallery, a door opened. Lieutenant Hayes emerged, his black boots striking the floor with a rhythm that brooked no obstacle.

He moved with terrifying efficiency, covering the distance in a blink. His dark green eye locked onto Leon’s long before he reached him.

A wave of pressurized air slammed against Leon’s skin and made it hard for him to breathe. The pressure vanished when Hayes stopped before him.

Leon’s heart heaved as he saw Hayes standing close to him, his stare stripping away all thought of eavesdropping.

Hayes opened the door without knocking and slid inside.

Leon stood frozen, barely daring to breathe after noticing, sensing a bone-crushing silence ruling in the room behind the door.

After three minutes, the whispers resumed in a lower and more urgent tone.

"...is he aware?" Hayes’s voice was unmistakably cold but clear.

"No." Again, that unsettling chorus rose – the female and the male tones.

"That’s good." Hayes’s voice paused. "What about the preparation?"

A boot-screeching sound erupted as Mr. Lee’s voice cut in with a tight but controlled tone. "Will inform him when everything is set and ready."

’Set and ready for what?’ Leon’s face wrinkled as the question screamed in his skull. He took a hurried step back from the door just as a metal clicking sound echoed from the handle.

Mr. Lee stared at him with a face full of a carefully composed mask as he emerged. He closed the door firmly behind him, then exhaled while his gaze remained on Leon.

For a long moment, his eyes kept scanning Leon as if he were a threat that needed to be scraped off. Then his expression changed as he placed a hand on Leon’s shoulder.

The gesture was reassuring, yet it was heavy with unspoken truths in his guts.

"Let’s go," Mr. Lee said, the smile on his face not reaching his eyes, only his lips and cheek. "You’re done here."

They walked out of the hall of galleries in silence.

A relief fell on Leon as he caught sight of the deep, bruised purple evening sky streaked with orange.

"Haa..."

Leon inhaled the cool air, trying to calm the frantic drum in his chest. Dry and brittle leaves spun in the miniature cyclones as they neared the fruitful trees.

Mr. Lee stopped suddenly, the gravel crunching under his boots. He turned a tense gaze to Leon.

"What came into your mind," he asked, his voice echoing in, as if strained, "that made you do that foolish act?"

Leon stood there for a while, then opened his mouth, his eyes full of shock and confusion. Then, the only thing he remembered struck his skull – the video.

The explanation about it was poised on his tongue longer than he could even imagine. But he noticed Mr. Lee was already shaking his head, his eyes lifting away from him to the darkening sky.

Three crows passed overhead, their cries sharp and lonely in the settling sunset. Mr. Lee’s eyes closed briefly, as if pained by the sound.

When they opened again, he turned a sharp, penetrating gaze back to Leon.

"Don’t beg anyone. Ever again. You hear me?" The command wasn’t just about Vera; it felt like a warning for something far larger than the world ground they stood on.

Leon nodded, his words stuck and queued in his throat.

Mr. Lee held his gaze for a second, then turned and walked away, leaving Leon alone at the front of the trees.

With swift movement, Leon walked to the quad and stopped. The space, usually buzzing with evening activities, was eerily still, like a cemetery.

No whispers trailed him as he made his way back to the cream-colored dormitory. Inside the building, too, was also silent, devoid of the usual muffled sounds of life behind closed doors.

Even those faint, wet sounds that sometimes echoed from the first door on the second floor were absent. The silence now seemed like a presence in itself, thick and watchful.

Saliva snaked down Leon’s throat the moment he reached the seventh door, his own. It stood ajar, swaying slightly in a draft from a hallway vent.

A cold knot tightened in Leon’s stomach as he stretched his left arm forward and touched it.

He pushed it open slowly. The perfect and godly-arranged room was chaos. Zoe’s cosmetics were swept from the table, lying shattered on the floor.

Clothes – the ones he saw and left in the drawer after taking the training gear, and her delicate silks – were strewn everywhere.

Some lay behind the door, across the pink mat before the bathroom, draped over the large king-sized bed like grotesque confetti.

The drawers of the wardrobe hung open, empty. Even the light curtain that hung at the side of the table remained on the ground, wet.

"What’s going on here?" Leon whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a thunderbolt. Panic overrode the ominous dread from the proctor’s office, the questions he needed immediate answers to.

He dropped the datapad on the bed and dashed back into the hallway. He whirled around, his eyes scanning for any sign or sound.

The long, lively corridor that he remembered as a club the previous evening was empty. He moved forward, but all other doors remained firmly shut.

Then, with a soft, definitive pop, the overhead light at the far end of the hallway went out. Darkness claimed a twenty-foot stretch. Another pop, closer. Then another.

One by one, with a dreadful, sequential finality, the lights began to extinguish themselves, each dying bulb plunging another section of the hallway into deep shadow.

He turned, thinking it was only from the side he stared, but got slightly annoyed, noticing it was from all sides.

The wave of darkness moved with a steady, deliberate pace toward him, almost like a silent tsunami swallowing the light.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

It advanced past the closed doors, over the discarded white envelopes scattered at the side of the windows.

Leon stood frozen before his open, violated door, watching as the last light between him and the advancing darkness blinked out.

Pop.

The final light, the only one directly above his head, remained. Its density increased, then hummed softly, casting a stark, solitary pool of illumination around him.

Sweat traced down his brow as he held his breath, staring into the impenetrable gloom, waiting for the last light to go out.