To the other part of the city.

At the moment I saw the tuxedo guy the girl tackled him taking him down. She looked at me with infuriating eyes.

“What are you doing? Come with me now!”

Once more, I was shocked. I couldn´t understand what was happening before my eyes. She noticed that quickly and grabbed my hand. I stood up and we started to run. The tuxedo guy recovered as well and started chasing us. What in the world is going on?

“What is happening?” I said to the girl.

“Shut up! Don´t talk until we escape from him.” A direct answer, how can I respond to that? After hearing that I started to give everything I had to escape from the tuxedo guy. We run through the hospital´s corridors at full speed avoiding the personnel and patients, however, the tuxedo guy is cutting his way through again. Hell, if there was a word to describe this carnage it would be hell, how can something this horrendous be happening in a hospital, a place that should be safe for everyone even at wars they respect that. This man, this tuxedo guy, why is he chasing me? Is it money? Does he hate me? Is he someone I know? Is it vengeance towards my family?

“Jump!” the girl shouts, bringing me one more time to reality. I see the stairs; it seems we won´t take the elevator. We jump. As soon as we land we jump once more to the inferior level, one, two, three, four, five, just what level are we in? I´m getting tired. Finally, after jumping seven times, we get to the first floor.

“You need to follow me, he won´t find you in the place we are heading.” She says that with a calm voice, it seems she feels less stress after not seeing the tuxedo guy in a while. But, from what she said, I can tell that the tuxedo guy wants me dead not her. I hear the sound of the elevator that apparently was going down. It opens. There he is, cover in blood, surrounded by corpses.

The tuxedo guy is here.

My heart starts to accelerate; I’m feeling the adrenalin pumping up throughout my whole body. I don´t want to die I say to myself. I run like crazy, I even surpassed the girl who had been in front of me this whole time.

We get to the entrance, she tells me to follow her, we turned left to the parking lot. The girl takes out some keys and turns the engine on of a motorcycle.

“Do you know how to ride that?” I say.

“I told you to shut up, just come with me and don´t ask questions until we are safe.” A direct answer again. Now I´m feeling stupid for not understanding that this girl is as preoccupied as me to not letting me get killed.

The motorcycle starts and she rides at full speed. Damn, this girl is very intense, everything she does or says is blunt, straight to the point, firm and with no hesitation. I turned back to see if the tuxedo guy is still chasing us. We pass a couple of blocks and we don´t see traces of him.

“Ahhh” I sighed in relief.

Where are we heading? If we continue this way, we will get to the suburbs. These suburbs are not like the ones the middle class lives in, these ones are for the lowest class, the poorest of the poorest.

Danger.

Why is she taking me there? How can a dangerous place be safer than the city? I thought that I would feel better after escaping from that guy and now I´m feeling stressed because we are going to a place where the police never go. All I know is that, only the people who are in powerful gangs or mafias get to leave that place, every single person that is not part of them will have to live working for them. That is a place where, violations, murderers, and many other infractions are committed. Is she part of a gang, the mafia, is she going to kidnap me to blackmail my family? Does she want money? If she wants that, then she won´t kill me.

“Calm down” she says with a firm tone of voice.

“You are hurting me; you are grabbing me too strong. Relax a little bit or we will walk instead.”

I breath heavily in order to calm down. She´s right, if I continue like this she may lose balance and crash or something I don´t know, I have never ridden a motorcycle before.

“I?” I´m surprised, memories of a bad time come to me when we pass the old theater. It seems we are heading to the most isolated part of the poorest suburbs. Back in the day when the theater was running, the government and some mafia from this area built it with the purpose of uniting the mafia with the government, though, they didn´t expected that years later my older, and only brother, will get confirmed there. That day, I witnessed the most atrocious thing possible for a child, hundreds of people in flames, the theater falling apart, only few people survived.

“Hey, we are close.” She says. She is unexpressive. I just don´t understand this girl at all, there are many questions I want to ask. Maybe that way I can understand her better and see if I can trust in her.

Here we are, we arrived at some apartments. They look abandoned, I´d dare to say there is no one living in here, broken windows, clothes scattered all around the place, there are even burning marks on the walls.

“Follow me.” She says without looking at me.

There are traces of dry blood on the floor, it seems that a fight took place here in the past.

“Don´t worry, this place is safe, there is no one around. If you want, you can start asking questions.”

“Why are you helping me?” I ask ready to run as soon as she gives me an unsatisfactory answer. There are plenty of apartments here, if something happens I would just lock myself in one of them hoping to find something to use as a weapon and defend myself from her.

“Why? I can´t say that to you right now, I don´t feel ready for that. But, trust me when I say that I don´t want to kill you. If you don´t trust me, you can escape. I will protect you even if you don´t want to” she says that without stopping nor turning to face me.

What an answer, even if it doesn´t satisfy me, I can tell she´s not lying. After all, she has risked her life two times.

“What happened at school after I vanished?”

“I got there and hit him with the bat on the right knee… that guy is really something, he barely flinched. After that, he just run away. Maybe that´s why he took the elevator, the hit must have had an impact after all. Haha” she laughs.

She stops and takes out her keys, she opens the door and we get in. After entering her apartment in the ninth floor, I look around her house, it´s almost empty.

“Come, sit.” She sits in her couch stretching her legs and then faces up as if looking at the roof with her eyes closed.

I sit in a bigger couch, it feels comfortable. “Where were you at the hospital back then?”

“After they took you to the hospital, I took the principal´s motorcycle and rode my way to the hospital. I stayed there for two days until the doctor told me that you had already woken up. He gave me some clothes and after I changed I went straight to your room. That´s where I saw him.”

“I see…” it makes sense the doctor has women´s clothes, I know him. He is a friend of my family, he hires women to work for him at the hospital while he abuses them… I heard once that he had killed several girls in his sexual affairs just to satisfy his lust. He is despicable, that´s why I don´t trust him. But what is her relationship with the principal?

“Why the principal?”

A short silence, she faces me and answers. “He owes me.”

My gaze begins to darkened, I´m exhausted, I didn´t rest when I could and now my body feels like resting without my permission.

She stands up and approaches me fast, she looks distressed.

“I need to rest…” I hope she heard that. And so, I close my eyes.