Chapter 16

 Ahmet woke up with an unbearable pain in his right arm. He had fallen into the garden behind the main building. When he got up and looked around, he saw that it was darker outside. Street lights were turned off, leaving those outside at the mercy of lunar light. Ahmet knew that the shadows he saw could approach him again. He was nervous, and besides, feeling cold. He got up and began walking very carefully. He trembled as she took his steps. The cold air seeping through the holes in his clothes, was striking Ahmet.

Ahmet noticed one of the shadows was approaching him. To get over it, he hid behind a bush to his left. And to avoid being seen, he had his hands between his head and pull his legs to his tummy. He faded away in the bushes. Even though he couldn't see the shadow itself, he could feel its presence. Like last time, he had lost control of his limbs. However, after waiting in silence for a while, he gradually regained control of his body. He got up and continued walking with a limp.

He entered the main building through the back door. He was determined to get to the tower. This time he knew where to go. He just had to be careful. He didn't want to be caught in one of those shadows. Honestly, he didn't even know what would happen if he was caught. It was imaginary after all; a product of the thoughts of the people in this building. But they were also quite effective in the real world. This shadow was a reflection of how much a thought can effect the real world. See how dangerous can an imagination we thought is innocent be!

Ahmet entered the big room. He heard the sound of things falling to the ground. Since it could be one of the shadows, he immediately hid aside and began to watch what was going on in the room. He saw that petite woman, with her newborn baby in her arms. She was walking slowly inside the room. When the woman came in the middle of the room, Ahmet saw two shadows enter, one from the door opposite and the other from the main entrance door on his right. The two glided swiftly towards the woman in the shadows. The shadow that entered through the main door was moving faster than the other. However, since the distance between other shadow and woman were shorter, both shadows approached the woman at about the same time. The baby in her hand began to cry as the shadows approached. Ahmet wanted to save the woman and baby from the terror of the shadows, but he knew he could do nothing. It was too late for him; now only a miracle should have gotten rid of them.

Miracles are things that happens in legends. In the legends, a tunnel is melted through iron mountains by lighting a fire, babies grow in forty days and begin to speak as they suck milk from their mother. Only in the legends, rivers split in two just because someone wanted it, people fly to the sky on horseback, people who die disappear. They are just stories that touches the truth. Such things happen in dreams. What if the world you see, feel, taste and perceive is mixed with dreams? Then, miracles in legends become your reality. Absurd becomes real, real becomes ambiguous. There is no difference between what you see and what you think, everything you think exists becomes your reality. This was what happened to Ahmet.

Ahmet was stunned by what he saw. The shadows approached the woman but were stopped by the baby's crying. They slowly began to circle around her. It turns out that what the crazy pastor said was true. The prophecy was true! Or perhaps, these were all his hallucinations. The man made up all to sacrifice.

The woman continued to walk across the room as she calmed her child down. Ahmet kept hiding. He saw the woman getting into the elevator. The shadows followed her too, but again they could do nothing. Was the elevator going down? Ahmet began to strain his memory. Was there a basement or was she going down to the secret floor? If she was, what was her purpose?

Ahmet thought for a while about what to do. One of the options was to go to the tower and face that man named Halil. The other was to follow the woman. Although he wanted to execute the first option, Ahmet doubted the rationality of this option. He might not be able to find Halil when he went to the tower. He also didn't know what would happen to him on the way to the tower. There might be those shadows in the front yard. Considering there were less to hide behind in the front yard, he thought it would be a bad idea to go there. What if he followed the woman? He has witnessed the importance of the woman's baby with his own eyes. However, one had to take into account that the secret floor was still a dangerous place. On the other hand, reasoning was not a viable strategy in these circumstances. If we think logically, shadows should not be taken into account at all. But things didn't work that way here. At the end of this thought, Ahmet decided to follow the woman.

He walked silently towards the elevator. He didn't see the shadow running around the room. But when he stood behind the couch across from the waiting room, he saw the shadows roaming the front yard. He was right in his guess. He shouldn't have gone to the front yard without a plan. He had noticed other things as well. Mesut's body in the waiting room had been removed (though he couldn't be sure whether he died or not), and the red shape he had seen last time, drawn with blood on the floor, was missing either. When Ahmet approached the other side of the room (the side where elevator was), he saw that there was a blue strip leading to the upper floor. As far as he can remember, this strip was not here before. This time though, he was confident. Because he remembered seeing this room before the events started, that is, when he first entered the building. At that time, this strip did not exist. So, this strip was added later. Ahmet thought for a while whether he should follow or not, but later gave up and took the elevator.

As soon as Ahmet to hopped on the elevator, he looked at the buttons. There was no floor below the ground floor. He could only see four buttons: the ground floor button, the first floor button, the second floor button, the help button. He held the ground floor button down until the elevator began to move. This time its descent was louder. The elevator suddenly made a loud noise and began to descend to the lower floor. The movement was so sudden that it even caused Ahmet to fall. By the time Ahmet got up again, the elevator had arrived to the secret floor.

"Where are you?" shouted Ahmet. He could hear the woman's voices, but could not tell where they were coming from. His voice echoed throughout the entire floor. Ahmet began walking along the corridor. The floor wasn't like the first time he'd arrived, it was all cleaned up, lit by a glowing red light from the ceiling, but not an annoying siren like last time. The annoying siren had been replaced by the meaningless sounds the woman made; although it was annoying because of the echo, it wasn't as much as the sirens.

As Ahmet walked, he noticed that the light coming from the ceiling had changed color. The bright red light had both increased in brightness and turned white. The change of light had also changed the color of the walls, which were dark red on the bottom and pitch black on the top. The underside was whiter; upper part blue. Ahmet saw that there were two people approaching him with a smile. Arm in arm, he was walking along the corridor. But voices of the woman had disappeared.

Ahmet had a stomachache. He had to stop and breathe. Meanwhile, he noticed that the light had changed color again. He had gone back to the dark room he had just wandered into. That woman's voices he had heard beforehand, began to increase slowly. When Ahmet straightened up again, he realized that women wandering the corridor were gone. Annoying voice was less resonant now. He moved towards the direction the voice came from.

As Ahmet took a step, he realized that others were walking behind him. The sound of high heels came behind him. Ahmet stopped in front of the window on his left. He turned and looked at his own reflection. Although he could not see the details of his face clearly, the tiredness on his face was evident. Ahmet saw another reflection behind him. She was a woman he knew.

"Are you okay?" asked the woman behind him. Ahmet recognized her when he heard her voice. She was Sibel the nurse.

"Where is this place?" he asked in a lower tone.

The woman touched Ahmet's shoulder. "Do you want me to take you to your bed?" she asked.

"Where am I?" yelled Ahmet. Sibel was tugging at him, but Ahmet didn't want to go anywhere. He was still keen on finding the woman. Recent events he saw slowed him down.

The red light turned white again. Ahmet could feel the pain in his foot slowly vanishing. He even seemed to be able to step on it with ease. With him, the room around was also changing. The large windows in the rooms were getting smaller, with them the walls were filling the gaps left from smaller windows. After the windows got smaller, it started to darken. After a while, they acquired a metallic color. A part of the top of the windows melted to form railings. When the transformation was complete, the large glass-paneled rooms became small cells with metal doors. Ahmet could still see his face from the reflection of the metal door.

"Come, let me put you to bed," she said and grabbed the door handle in front of Ahmet. Ahmet took a few steps back. He realized that he could walk normally. It turns out that all that limping was unnecessary. But the brain's 'watch that area' signal had overcame the reality.

Nurse Sibel opened the door. "Go inside, honey," she said to Ahmet. Ahmet looked through the door to the cell inside. A cell about five square meters, the plaster on its walls had started to fall off, there was a shattered glass on the upper part of the cell, pieces of that glass are scattered throughout the cell. A drain pipe was leaking sewage from the upper right side of the cell. The smell created by the dirty water had surrounded the cell. Why would I go into this?

"No!" shouted Ahmet. "I may have psychosis, but it's not that deep. Using the highest dose of olanzapine, Taken ECT twice. After ECT, my impaired judgment dwindled. I'm on treatment, it can't be that much," he said.

"Are you not taking your meds again?" asked Sibel.

"No, I do. The drug algorithm is simple. Take the drug, 10 mg. Wait 12 hours, take medicine 10mg. WHO AM I?"

"Go inside, Ahmet."

"No. That room is so filthy," he said, and shook his head.

Sibel looked into the room. "Dirty? Everything is clean," she said.

"Something is wrong," said Ahmet, and started running. Sibel was on his tail. Ahmet was walking quickly past all the rooms. He was looking inside all of them, trying to find the woman with the child. Another man had joined Sibel, this man was a more muscular, taller man. The two chased Ahmet for a while. The chase ended with Ahmet slamming the door of the room at the end of the corridor. Behind the door, was a woman. She was breastfeeding her child. He turned to look at Ahmet because of the noise made by the slamming of the door. She was smiling, regardless.

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