Episode 5 : The Escape

Days passed.

Then days turned into weeks, and with each one, Mia tried to convince herself that the prison interview had been nothing more than an unsettling assignment—one disturbing encounter she had allowed to linger in her mind for far too long.

She buried herself in work.

If she wasn’t in class, she was in the library. If she wasn’t in the library, she was in her room, surrounded by open books, case notes, and half-finished drafts of her criminal psychology report. She rewrote Damian’s interview transcript more times than necessary, telling herself it was because the assignment mattered, because she wanted it to be perfect, because this grade would affect her final standing.

But the truth was simpler and far more inconvenient.

Every time she wrote his name, she heard his voice again.

*The wait is over.*

*I found the one I was looking for.*

*We’ll meet very soon.*

She had not returned to the prison. She had not spoken about the interview to anyone beyond what was required for her report. She had not even allowed herself to say Damian’s name out loud unless absolutely necessary.

And yet, somehow, he had remained with her.

That afternoon, Mia was sitting at a desk near the back of the university library, writing the final portion of her interview analysis. The pages in front of her were already crowded with notes—behavioral observations, possible trauma markers, inconsistencies in Damian’s responses, emotional triggers, signs of obsessive fixation. Her pen moved quickly over the paper, though her thoughts felt slower than usual, heavier somehow.

A burst of chatter rose from a nearby table.

At first, Mia ignored it.

Then one of her classmates said, in a voice too loud to miss, “I’m telling you, there are police everywhere outside. I saw three vans near the front gate.”

Mia frowned faintly but kept writing.

Another girl lowered her voice dramatically. “Someone said a few criminals escaped this morning.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know exactly. But everyone’s talking about it.”

Mia’s hand paused for the briefest moment over the page.

Then she shook it off and continued writing.

Rumors spread through campus all the time. A fight near the station became a murder by lunchtime; a missing file became a stolen exam paper by evening. She had no energy left to chase gossip, not when her assignment deadline was hanging over her head like a threat.

So she stayed where she was, forcing her attention back to the report in front of her.

Still, by the time she left the university that evening, the campus felt different.

There were more officers than usual on the road outside, their presence hard to miss. A police jeep stood near the crossing, and two uniformed men were speaking to the security guard at the main gate. Even at the bus stop, Mia noticed more police than she would normally see on an ordinary weekday.

She watched them for a second through the bus window as the vehicle pulled away, but her mind was too cluttered to hold onto it. The final draft of her report still needed to be cleaned up. Her professor wanted a polished submission, and she still hadn’t decided how to phrase the section about Damian’s mental state without sounding either reckless or absurd.

By the time the bus neared her stop, the rumors from college had already slipped to the back of her mind.

When she reached home, the familiar quiet of the house settled around her almost immediately.

The television was on in the living room, casting a flickering wash of light across the walls. Her mother was sitting on the sofa, absentmindedly folding clothes while half-watching the news, and somewhere deeper in the house Mia could hear the faint sound of papers being turned—her father, most likely, still working through files from the office.

Mia slipped off her sandals near the door and walked in without a word.

She was tired in the way that sat behind the eyes and in the shoulders, the kind of tired that no amount of sleep really fixed. Without thinking, she crossed the room and lowered herself onto the sofa beside her mother, then slowly rested her head in her lap like she had done a hundred times as a child.

Her mother glanced down at her and immediately set the folded clothes aside.

“What happened?” she asked, fingers already moving into Mia’s hair. “You look exhausted.”

“Nothing, Ma,” Mia murmured, closing her eyes as her mother began gently pressing her scalp. “Just the assignment. I have to submit it in a few days.”

“So you haven’t finished it yet?”

“I have,” Mia said, letting out a quiet breath. “Almost everything is done.”

“Then why are you stressing yourself like this?”

Mia didn’t answer immediately.

Because she didn’t have a real answer.

Because how was she supposed to explain that everything was finished and yet nothing felt settled? That the report was complete but the interview itself still felt unfinished, as if something had been left hanging in the air that day in Cell 214 and had never truly come down?

“I don’t know,” she admitted softly. “Everything’s done, but I still feel like… something is wrong.”

Her mother’s hand paused for a second before resuming its slow movement through her hair.

“That’s stress,” she said in the practical tone mothers used when they wanted to make things smaller than they felt. “Too much thinking, too little sleep. Go take a bath in a while. I’ll heat up dinner.”

Mia made a soft sound of agreement but didn’t move.

A moment later, her father stepped into the living room, a stack of files in one hand and his reading glasses pushed up slightly over his forehead. He looked tired too, but in a different way—the neat, familiar exhaustion of a man who had spent the whole day buried in corporate paperwork.

He stopped when he saw Mia sprawled across the sofa.

“There you are,” he said, a faint smile touching his face. “How was college?”

“Fine,” Mia said without lifting her head.

“Just fine?”

She gave a small shrug against her mother’s lap. “Library. Classes. Assignment. Same as always.”

Her father huffed quietly, setting the files down on the side table. “That sounds miserable.”

“It is miserable,” Mia muttered.

Her mother laughed under her breath. “Then finish your degree quickly and stop complaining.”

The conversation stayed ordinary after that—small things, harmless things. Her father asked about a professor Mia disliked. Her mother complained about the vegetable prices going up again. Mia answered automatically, half-listening, half-lost in the dull ache of exhaustion.

And all the while, the television continued talking in the background.

She wasn’t paying attention to it.

Not until she heard a name.

Damian Darcurs.

Mia sat up so abruptly that her mother startled.

The room seemed to tilt for a second.

On the television screen, the news anchor’s voice had sharpened into that urgent tone reserved for breaking developments.

“—authorities have confirmed that convicted criminal DAMIAN DARCURS escaped from prison earlier this morning. The incident is believed to have taken place during an internal transfer, though officials have not yet released full details regarding how the escape occurred. Search operations are currently underway, but at this time, no trace of the fugitive has been found—”

Mia stared at the screen, all the blood draining from her face.

A photograph of Damian appeared beside the anchor.

The same name.

The same man.

The same prisoner from Cell 214.

For a second, she couldn’t hear anything else.

Her mind had already lurched backward to the prison cell, to his eyes on hers, to the cold stillness of that room and the low whisper only she had heard.

There’s still one person left.

We’ll meet very soon.

The words slammed into her all at once.

The police near the university.

The gossip in the library.

The officers on the road.

It hadn’t been random.

It had been about him.

“Mia?”

She flinched.

Her mother’s hand was on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

“I’ve been calling you,” she said, frowning. “What happened? Where did you go?”

Mia blinked and looked at her, but for a moment she couldn’t seem to form a proper answer.

“Nothing,” she said too quickly. “I was just… thinking.”

Her father, however, was still looking at the television.

“Damian Darcurs,” he said slowly, as if searching through an old memory. “That name sounds familiar.”

Mia turned toward him.

Her father frowned, then gave a small nod to himself.

“Yes. I remember now.” He looked at the screen again. “He was the adopted son of a friend of our chairman.”

Mia froze.

“A friend of your chairman?” she repeated, her voice quieter than she intended.

Her father nodded. “The Darcurs family. I’ve heard the name at work before. Not often, but enough to remember it.”

Mia barely heard the rest.

Her thoughts were moving too fast now, tripping over one another.

Adopted by the Darcurs family.

Left after three years.

No relationship with them.

He had told her that himself during the interview.

And now he was out.

Free.

Her pulse started climbing.

Had he escaped because of that “one person” he still needed to kill? Had he already gone after them? Had he found them? Had he—

Mia.

Her mother’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts.

“Enough. Go upstairs and freshen up,” she said firmly. “You look half-dead. I’ll heat dinner.”

“Yes,” her father added, softer now, glancing at her face. “Go take a bath first. You’ll feel better.”

Mia forced herself to nod.

She stood, though her legs felt strangely unsteady beneath her, and managed a weak, distracted “Okay” before turning toward the stairs.

But as she climbed them, one thought kept pounding at the back of her mind with every step.

Damian had escaped.

And before leaving that prison cell, he had looked her straight in the eye and promised—

We’ll meet very soon.

For the first time since the interview, Mia no longer felt like those words belonged to a mystery.

They felt like a warning.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***