The Kingmaker

3 - Ward

Sixteen weeks of recovery followed by six months of physical therapy. All the small indignities and discomforts faded away under the weight of the grueling regimen: so torturous was her rehabilitation that Eden was restricted to an almost exclusively liquid diet for a time. She withdrew from formal education and lived in a hospital as a ward of the court, with no visitors from the press and certainly none who claimed to be friend or family. Eden had none of those, after all, or at least none close enough to care about.

But it wasn't her opinion that was the deciding factor of all this: for some reason, her state-assigned, temporary custodial figures had in loco parentis taken on the grim and serious duty of sequestering her away from the rest of the world for her own protection. Their enthusiasm didn't go unnoticed. Even today as she took slow, careful steps under the steady guidance of her physical therapist at the parallel bars, she could see the shadow of a man in an immaculate suit standing just outside the half-open door. His shadow wavered on occasion, and she glimpsed him turning around from time to time to check on her as he spoke into his cell phone.

"I'm not the biggest fan of having someone watch me day and night," said Eden. "It's been almost a year. I'm tired of it."

"Your recovery's his greatest priority," Isaac assured her. "Hang on, careful there."

"No, it's not." She wobbled on unsteady feet and nearly pitched over, caught only by a quick arm that barred her chest before she planted her face onto the mat below.

"Smaller steps, Eden."

"You know, I should have been assigned a legal guardian by now. It's not like I can stay here forever. Eventually, I'm going to have to live someplace with an adult who can claim me as a dependent on their taxes."

"Very funny, Eden. Please focus." Isaac rapped the back of her hand with his knuckles on the bar when she gave him a withering look. "Look, we both know you should be making much better progress than this. If you want to get out of here so quickly, then maybe you should be more serious about healing. And healing properly."

"Why? What's the rush?"

The bald man sighed and rolled his eyes at her flippant attitude before leaning back away from her. "Eden, you know I'm not getting any younger treating you, right?"

She raised her eyebrows at him and then sprawled sloppily over one of the bars, her legs splayed slightly at an awkward angle under her. "You're getting paid a lot for it, though. Like a lot more than you should be."

Isaac froze suddenly, and they stared at each other in silence for a brief moment. It wasn't until Eden began pointedly swinging her foot around over the mat that he finally reacted. With narrowed eyes, he gave his lips a nervous lick and spoke.

"What makes you say that?" he asked, and Eden didn't miss the way his eyes flitted to the open door. Just beyond it, the man on the phone was still leading a hushed conversation with the same mysterious voices he was always speaking to every day that she came in for PT.

"I looked through your phone. You really shouldn't use the same PIN for your unlock screen and your banking mobile app. That's probably the worst possible thing you could do next to not having a PIN at all."

"You what?"

"It was easy."

"That's not why I - Eden, don't go through people's phones. You know better than that."

She gave him a pitying look with a single bob of her head that raked him from head to toe. "Anyway. So tell me what's up. I want to know."

He glanced at the door again when Mr. Suit-and-Tie began pacing the hallway again, his voice growing more distant. "Eden."

"Yeah? I'm listening. And don't tell me it's none of my business, because I've made it my business. I know you have a habit of ordering Chinese takeout every night except Sunday when you hit up the sports bar three blocks from your apartment. I know you subscribe to four different streaming services that you don't even use three of, but you're letting your ex-girlfriend use them so that you can peep what she's been watching because, I don't know, maybe that's the closest you feel you can get to her right now. And yeah, I saw those deposits. That's a lot of money that anyone would find suspicious, especially because the three separate weeks that you went on vacation and weren't here to treat me, you didn't get that money."

"Eden, I swear to God."

"Yeah, change your banking app PIN when you have a chance. I've already got all the information I want anyway. Also, don't leave your phone in the room with me. So anyway - what's the deal? They pay you more the faster you get me out of here?"

Isaac sighed and ducked his head in a visible attempt to control himself. "Let's talk about this later, okay? Just....just do your repetitions. Come on."

"I can multitask."

"Eden, please -"

"You said my recovery's his greatest priority. But he's just a guy on a phone who's been paid to watch me. Who's he work for? Is he the one who takes care of all your payments?"

Isaac pressed his lips together.

"Oh, come on. He's not like you. Doesn't leave his phone unattended with me that can be unlocked with a basic four digit passcode. Doesn't ever come close enough for me to overhear his conversations. Doesn't even say hi to me, and I don't even know his name. Come on, you can give me something. If you do, I'll tell you what you can do to get Laura back. I looked up all the stuff she watches on your streaming services, and it's so obvious."

"Eden."

"Isaac," she said, and her voice dropped to a low whisper when Mr. Suit-and-Tie began pacing back down the hallway again. His voice was steadily growing more audible, though it remained nothing more clear than a vague buzz of unidentifiable words. "You can give me something. Anything. Yeah, I almost got killed, but I'm five states away from where it happened and I get a little bodyguard detail for the last year? Please. Give me something."

But he shook his head and stubbornly motioned toward her listlessly fidgeting knee. "It's not up to me," he said shortly. "I've got my own affairs to worry about. I'm not messing it up now."

She gave him a long, searching look that he did his best to ignore. "Isaac," she said quietly. "I'm fifteen. I spent my birthday breathing through a tube with half my ribs still blown out. I haven't been able to see the same person more than twice at most in the entire time that I've lived here, except for you and Dr. Hertz and Mr. Cell Phone out there in the hall. You three are my entire world, and that's it. Do you know what that's like for me? Dr. Hertz isn't even pretending to try to help me, he's just trying to get in my head every session. The questions he asks...You know, whenever he gets mad at me for dodging, he always starts asking questions about my family out of nowhere. You know that, right? You've heard him when he does it."

Eden knew she had him when his eyes darted away from her to examine the wall. Funny how guilt could weaken someone's resolve so quickly. It was such a tragedy that Isaac was a genuinely nice man, if a little misguided and careless when it came to his digital security. And he was damned good at his job, that was for sure. The only reason she wasn't out of this hospital yet was because she didn't know where she would be taken to next. But while pretending to hobble had been enough to secure her a little valuable stability for a few extra months, it wasn't going to last.

"He's a quack," Isaac muttered. "I don't even think he's a real therapist."

"Me neither."

But the look on his face when his gaze slid back to her remained shuttered, cautious. And afraid. She noted every detail, the minute hesitations between every word:

"But I can't tell you. I'm sorry."

Eden observed the tight lines in his face, the nervousness that shone in his brown eyes. This guy was so unlucky, she thought to herself. Cursed with being good at his job, he had been pulled into this high-stakes game of hide-and-seek where she was It - except she was playing with a blindfold on, and everyone else in the game were just shadows that she couldn't possibly catch.

Not yet, at least. Because she was fifteen and confined to a private ward in a deserted wing of someone's hospital, guarded day and night and spied on like she was a criminal. Because she had no resources, no way to connect with the outside world. Just her, the court, and vague intentions of parties she couldn't trust.

"That's alright," she said, and she smiled at the flicker of surprise that passed over the man's face at her easy acquiescence.

"Just like that, huh? That easy?" Clearly skeptical, he even gave her a disbelieving scoff. But it was the truth; he had already told her enough for her to make her decision. She didn't need anything more from him.

"Yeah, that easy," she said, and she immediately straightened her stance to stand effortlessly between the parallel bars. It had been ten month that she had remained here, trapped like a caged bird. She had no allies to lean on, no friends she trusted, no family at all, so she had done her best to scout what she could from here. But there was no more information to be had, no more sources to try to tap. She was out of options.

Isaac gaped at her, utterly astonished at her abrupt, miraculous recovery. No limping, no hobbling. Funny that he had fallen for her act all this time, as good at his job as he was. Or maybe it was just because she had abused his trust, befriended him to cloud his judgment for that exact reason. Whereas Eden had noticed several weeks ago that the man in the suit outside had begun giving her suspicious looks. Someone was on top of his game, at least.

In any case, the gig was up, and so was her time here.

"That easy," she said again, and she peered over at the door where Mr. Cell Phone had stepped halfway into the room to check on her progress. There was an irritated yet knowing expression on his face as he stared at her.

Completely ignoring the awkward tension that had blossomed in the room between the three occupants, Eden pointed at the man's tie with an accusing finger. "You need a new tie. You've worn that thing three times a week for as long as I've been here, and it was already old then, too."

Isaac was giving her a warning look, and she could almost hear his silent pleas to shut the hell up. But the other man didn't even seem to care. With a roll of his eyes, he pushed open the door the rest of the way and beckoned them out of the ward.

"About time," he said curtly. "Hope you had a fun time of it boring yourself to death in here. You'll find better entertainment outside of this place."

"Entertainment?" Eden slipped on her shoes that she had left by the edge of the mat and trudged toward the door, leaving an open-mouthed Isaac behind her. "You think a sad little orphan baby is going to have any fun out there in the big, wide world?"

"Don't bother trying anything with me. I know all about you."

They were out in the hallway now, headed back to her live-in hospice room where she would be told to gather her few possessions before being hustled out of this sterile prison. She guessed as much, anyway.

"You know all about me?"

"Enough. One day we'll hear about you on the news, some resident sociopath who snapped out of her chains because you impressed the right people when you were a little preteen prodigy."

Eden smiled, ignoring everything he said except for one thing. "Snap?" she repeated. "You think I'll snap one day?"

"I've seen your type, kid. Eventually, you'll chew through the leash and end up graduating from killing small animals to other human beings. Happens all the time. You'd think they'd learn by now, but that's just how our country works. Put all the f****d up brains in one room and try to put them to work, until one day, they get bored and go around hacking people apart on the street. All of you f*****g sociopaths."

"A serial killer, huh?" she mused aloud, once again ignoring the brunt of his tirade. "That's the road you think I'm headed down?"

"Ha."

Not an answer, but that was fine. He had made his thoughts clear already anyway. Just as they turned the last corner down the hallway, Eden gave the man a sideways, lilting smile.

"I love it when people underestimate me. We're going to have a good time."