The pill goes into hyperdrive and shocks my system, trying to restore order. Everything blurs at the edges for a moment, and the room feels like it tilts slightly before stabilizing. Colors bleed together, and it feels too bright and too dark all at once. My thoughts are slow, and an underlying frustration rises in me as my mind can't think clearly.
I blink a few times, hoping to clear the haze, and I focus on the man.
He's tall with broad shoulders and dark hair, and he's staring at me.
Wait. That face. I know that face.
My stomach twists and my breath catches. For a moment, it's like I forget how to breathe.
Adrian?
It looks like him, but it can't be.
No, he's not real. He's never real.
I've seen him before. In the basement where they first kept me, in the dark van when they transported me, in the corner of Maxim's bedroom when the pills first made the shadows come alive. I've seen Adrian's face a hundred times in eighteen months, and every single time, he disappears when I reach for him.
Every single time, I'm left alone with the reminder I wasn't worth looking for.
So this is just another hallucination. Another trick my broken mind is playing on me for some fucked up reason.
The man who looks like Adrian is staring at Maxim, his chest heaving, his fists clenched at his sides.
Maxim groans from the floor, rolling onto his side, and the sound pulls my attention away from the hallucination.
The man who looks like Adrian takes a step toward me.
No. No, no, no.
I press myself harder against the wall, my pulse racing, the pill pulling me under, making everything feel distant and unreal.
He's going to disappear any moment now.
But he doesn't.
He keeps moving toward me.
"Leni."
The voice is low and familiar. Wait. What did he just say?
He reaches out, his hand moving toward me, and I flinch violently, jerking my body away from him so hard that my shoulder slams into the wall.
I shake my head, my eyes squeezing shut.
Not again. Not again.
"It's me," the voice says, closer now. "Elena. It's me."
I open my eyes, and he's crouched in front of me, his face only a few feet away. His dark eyes are wide, searching mine, and his lips are parted like he's about to say something else.
He looks so real.
The scar on his jaw is there, the one he got when he was twelve after Matei dared him to climb the old fence behind my apartment. The way his hair falls across his forehead is the same. It's exactly how I remember.
But it's not real.
"Leni," he says again. "It's Adi."