Vivian jumped into the courtyard of the police station without making a noise.
Looking up, she saw a faint light coming from a room on the second floor. Swallowing her fears, she climbed up in Kurt's wake and found herself in the coroner's office.
A strong smell of formalin invaded Vivian's nostrils at her arrival. She was stunned to see the young man transfixed by a corpse that had undergone an autopsy.
“Isn't that Jason?”
Vivian's dark eyes widened as her tiny hands clapped to her mouth.
How did he know that Jason's body would be here?
Her pupils dilated in horror, and Vivian's head swam with more questions than answers since leaving the hospital.
However, Kurt barely moved a muscle as he stood over the body. After staring at it quietly for five minutes, he gently touched its stone-cold face.
Vivian was not sure if she had imagined detecting a trace of sadness in his gesture.
A little later, Kurt returned the corpse to its locker before emerging again.
“Kurt?” Vivian called tentatively. She did not hide from him. Instead, she craned her neck to look at him cautiously under the cold and dark night sky.
Instead of acknowledging her, Kurt merely stared into the pitch-black distance with a cold menace in his eyes.
Without warning, he jumped out of the window.
Vivian panicked. We're on the second floor! What about me?
After stomping her feet in silent frustration, she climbed down the building clumsily crawling out from the place he had disappeared through seconds earlier.
Vivian detected a sprinkle of white powder on the ground where she last saw him.
“It's a good thing I thought ahead,” she muttered with a triumphant smile. “I knew he wouldn't wait, so I tagged him with a handful of lime powder from the yard before I came up!”
Following the trail of white powder under the faint moonlight, she dashed off in the direction he went.
Vivian next caught sight of Kurt at a hotel in Jadeborough. It was one of the few places in the city where the lights were on at that hour. At that moment, screams of horror were coming from inside.
“Murderer! Murderer!”
Without hesitation and regard for her safety, Vivian ran in.
The young man who suddenly turned into a maniacal killer was wielding a sharp dagger in his hand. Completely ignoring the guests, he stabbed one of the hotel's waiters as soon as the latter emerged.
Vivian must have blanked out for a moment because the next thing she remembered was the noise of police sirens blaring outside the hotel. She looked up and found the dagger in Kurt's hand pointed at the only clerk left at the front desk.
“Did you enjoy committing murder?” he asked.
“You!” the clerk cried, color draining from her cheeks.
“None of you will make it out of here alive tonight. Just like how he didn't.”
She stood there for what seemed like an eternity watching the boy approach her, bringing the stench of iron and death along with him.
“You're not killing them at random, are you?”
“Random?”
“They're the bad guys, aren't they?” Vivian asked softly with tears in her eyes. “Who am I speaking to right now? Is it Kurt or Daphne?”
Kurt would never kill so many people at once.
Also, it was impossible for Kurt to recognize Lucy's henchmen or where they hid when even her father had not managed to unearth anything.
How did he know upon waking up?
Vivian stared at the young man intently.
The question she asked managed to draw his attention. Kurt slowly turned his cold and familiar eyes up at her with such fierce intensity that it felt as sharp as his dagger.
“Daphne? Who is Daphne? I only know that I should execute these people.”
There was a murderous glint in his eyes as he spoke.
Suddenly, Vivian remembered a biologist's report she had seen long ago. The report mentioned the possibility of some viruses having certain memory. Upon invasion of the human body, it would eventually take over its host if the infected victim's immune system could not expel it in time.
Kurt isn't himself. He's ill from the virus.q
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: The Love that Never Really Dies (Sasha and Sebastian)