Beep. Beep.
The soft beeping of her phone dragged her up from the depths of a dreamy sleep, and Sienna's hand fumbled across the nightstand, her brow furrowing in sleepy annoyance as her hand finally grabbed the device. She squinted at the screen, the bright glow punishing her unprepared eyes.
The message was from an unknown number.
She clicked it open.
"You have one more day, Dr. Rivers."
The words glared back at her, bold and glaring.
The sleep in her eyes disappeared immediately. She was fully awake now, her heart clenching tightly. They had even gotten her personal number. Just how connected were these people?
She stared at the message for a long, heavy moment. Then, with steady fingers, she typed her response.
"Let's meet."
The message was marked as read immediately. A reply came seconds later.
"Come to the tea shop from last time by noon."
Sienna set the phone back on the nightstand and let herself sink into the soft embrace of her mattress. There was no point in waiting; it was inevitable. She had to choose her stance.
She took a sick leave from work, dismissed Ava for the day with a lie about wanting to rest alone, and by noon, she was stepping out of a taxi in front of The Doré, moving with so much vigilance and secrecy she had never needed before. In fact, she barely had privacy, but now she was being so secretive because of a mistake that happened due to her overexcitement.
The barista greeted her the moment she stepped inside, just like the last time, but his smile was less formal and warmer this time.
"Welcome back to The Doré, my lady."
Sienna returned the smile, though hers couldn't hold the same warmth. "I hope you won't disclose to anyone that I was here today."
"Of course, my lady. We maintain a very strict respect for customer privacy." He began leading her toward the familiar private quarters. "By the way, you can just call me Gabriel when you next come here."
Sienna nodded, and the barista's face brightened with genuine pleasure at the acknowledgment.
He raised his hand to knock, but before his knuckles could meet the wood, Craig's voice came from inside: "Let her in."
Gabriel paused, then pushed the door open and offered a respectful bow. "Thank you," Sienna murmured as she walked past him.
The door clicked shut behind her.
The scene was identical to her first visit. Isaac sat in the single armchair, his presence as mesmerizing and ethereal as before. Craig occupied the three-seater adjacent to him, rising slightly in acknowledgment as she entered.
"Welcome back, Doctor Rivers." Craig gestured for her to sit.
This time, Sienna's expression held none of the previous visit's flustered warmth. She was all business now, her face holding an expression of cool professionalism.
"So what do you say, Dr. Rivers?" Craig asked.
"I agree to your deal."
Craig smiled. Isaac, however, remained unchanged, sipping his coffee with the same maddening calm, as if her answer had never been in question.
"Good." Isaac set down his cup and slid a slip of paper across the table toward her. "Sign that, and we have a deal. No one throws the other under the bus if we somehow end up getting caught."
The words didn't please her; she had no intention of getting caught at all, but she picked up the paper nonetheless and signed her name with decisive strokes.
"Now let's get down to business," she said, meeting Isaac's azure gaze directly. "What's this ailment you have? I want to know everything."
Isaac extended his hand toward Craig, who immediately placed a thick document folder into it. Isaac passed it to Sienna.
"Those are results from past diagnoses, from medical doctors and psychologists. None of them were able to discern anything wrong with me. In that document, there's also a video recording of one of my... phases."
Sienna opened the folder and began flipping through. Page after page of medical reports, all concluding the same thing: 'Totally fine.' 'No abnormalities detected. ''Patient appears healthy in all respects.'
Her curiosity sharpened to a fine point.
She found the video file and played it. The sound filled the room, guttural and animalistic.
She almost couldn't believe what she was seeing. The person on that screen bore no resemblance to the composed figure sitting across from her now. This was a beast chained to a wall, straining against his restraints with terrifying strength. His eyes were blood-red, veins bulging grotesquely against his skin. If those chains broke, he would devour anyone in his path.
Sienna's eyes brightened with interest. Unlike every other person that had seen him like this, there was not the slightest hint of fear in those eyes, and this greatly impressed Isaac.
This was exactly the kind of puzzle that made Sienna's heart race, the impossible cases, the ones everyone else had given up on.
"I don't get any warning before it starts," Isaac said, his voice cutting through the video's snarls. "Which means it could start here and now, and no one would be able to control it."
Sienna raised an eyebrow. "Should I be scared, then?"
"Not necessarily. That is, if Craig is alert enough to stab me with a tranquilizer before I lose control."
"Has such ever happened before?"
Isaac's gaze didn't waver, but his voice became lower. "Yes. And I killed people."
Sienna let out a low whistle. "When it happens, do you usually remember what happened?"
"No. My memory becomes foggy, but the evidence is always right in front of me."
Silence settled between them as Sienna processed this. Her mind was already racing, going through possibilities, connecting dots. His condition straddled neurology and psychology. If even psychologists couldn't decipher what was wrong, it had to be something deeply hidden, something that only manifested during the surges, leaving no trace in his brain or blood for scans to catch afterward.
A slow smile spread across her face, filled with professional sharpness and hunger.
"IAD," she said. "Idiosyncratic Adrenal Dysphasia."
Craig's eyes brightened; for the first time they were able to get a diagnosis. He couldn't help but look at Sienna with more admiration than the one he already had for her.
Even Isaac allowed a flicker of something to pass through his carefully guarded eyes. Hope, perhaps.
"Naturally, in a healthy brain, the prefrontal cortex, the logical, decision-making center, acts as a brake for the amygdala, the emotional and primal center. In your case, you suffer from a synaptic disconnect; without warning, the neural pathway between these two areas 'shorts out,' the wires are cut, and your brain enters a state of pure, unfiltered survival aggression." Sienna continued, her voice taking the tone of a lecturer.
"It's a condition so rare it's been deemed almost nonexistent in the medical world. In fact, it's been labeled fictional by most practitioners, with tales that a medical scholar proposed it decades ago, but because every aspect of the ailment sounded so unreal, the medical community dismissed it as fantasy."
She paused for a while as if realizing something.
"Treating this ailment," she said finally, "is basically impossible."
The mood in the room plummeted.
Craig's newly kindled hope screeched and died. Even Isaac's composure seemed to falter, almost unnoticeable.
Sienna watched them both, her excited expression not changing.
Impossible to others, but she couldn't say the same about herself.