#could’ve crawled to mount doom

[steponmetommi]

Saruman on Sauron: “Concealed within his fortress, the Lord of Mordor sees all, his gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh”

Also Sauron: Can’t see these two chuckle heads after they lay down

[tyrannoninja]

“The Sultan of Finback Isle” Excerpt

The below is an excerpted chapter from my self-published novelette The Sultan of Finback Isle, which you can purchase in Kindle format on Amazon.com.

After slamming his palm on the start button, Abdullah Kalua lowered himself to his PWC’s dashboard, popping his bronze-brown knuckles over the handles. He hooted a lyric from his favorite Hawaiian victory song as the untethered watercraft flew off from the flank of the FBI boat, the latter disappearing as a gray-and-blue speck on the azure surface of the equatorial Pacific.

He grinned with pleasure and rocked his head about, cheering for the breeze that flowed through his wavy black mane. His destination may have lain twenty degrees south and twenty-five degrees east of his father’s home archipelago—as indicated on the dashboard’s coordinate panel—but it felt fantastic to return to the tropics after almost three decades. Balmy as Los Angeles had been, its Mediterranean climate was too dry and the California current too frigid for Abdullah’s tastes.

Monique lagged ten yards behind him. He could hear only the faintest hint of her PWC’s jetting out water.

“Got to speed up, babe!” Abdullah shouted. “You’re being too cautious again!”

She sped up a mere three yards closer to her husband. “We’re taking enough risk with this already!”

“C’mon, girl, that’s what makes it fun! Admit it, who wants to enter this dude’s house the ‘proper’ way now?”

“Well, you sure don’t!”

From the horizon ahead rose a sliver of green beneath a halo of clouds. It swelled into a mass of overgrown hills and ravines grooving down from a flat plateau, with a blinding white band of beach at the bottom. To the left, the beach gave way to rocks beneath a low black cliff.

Holding his hands over his eyes in imitation of a surveying explorer, Abdullah hummed out loud an iconic tune from a certain movie score that John Williams had composed in the early 1990’s. “There it is! Magellan’s Finback Isle! Da-dun, da-da-dun, da-da-dun bong, bong, bong—”

Monique roared out an annoyed groan. “You sure chose the corniest theme for the moment!”

“What else would you have chosen for this particular island? How about the one from Jurassic World? Bong, da-dun, da-dun, la-la, la-la…”

He continued to “sing” out tracks from both films’ soundtracks until the splashing of his wife’s accelerating watercraft drowned out his voice. With a vengeful snicker from Monique, the starboard of her PWC’s bow thrust into the portside of Abdullah’s stern with a banging bump. One of his hands slipped off a handle over the jolt.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! These are government property, remember? Our taxes pay for their repairs!”

Monique pointed ahead with widened, horrified eyes. “Then you really should—watch out!”

The hull of Abdullah’s PWC grazed over the slanted face of a black rocky outcropping. The craft soared high into the air until its bow smashed into the cliff’s upper lip. Flung off his mount’s seat, Abdullah collided face-first onto the coarse trunk of a stout and palm-like giant cycad. The fronds of tree-ferns, club mosses, and pandanus trees clawed him as he bounced all the way down to the mossy floor.

A flock of scarlet honeycreeper birds fluttered in panic beneath the treetops. One screeched before disappearing in a burst of red feathers when a yellow-and-black blur intercepted it in one leap. Abdullah blinked thrice and squinted up from where he lay without spotting the creature again. He wouldn’t know for sure, but there weren’t supposed to be any wild cats on Finback Isle. Right?

Abdullah gave his arms and legs a shake to wake them back up. He winced from the strain of a hundred sores as he raised his torso up to his knees. All those scratches and cuts had ruined the tattoos on his shoulders and pectorals, erasing slices of the Arabic calligraphy that flowed parallel to the swirling Hawaiian lines. The kapa designs on his swim briefs had taken on almost as much damage.

He pounded a fist on the spongy earth. “Allah damn you all. These’ll cost over half a grand for my old uncle to fix. You hear that, local plant life? Half a goddamned grand!”

His voice bounced between the trees until it subsided under the rhythmic buzzing and whining of insects interspersed with the squawks of Polynesian bird life. One thing he did not hear was even the faintest note of his wife’s PWC. Had he fallen so deep into the island’s jungle, far away from shore? Or had the watercraft turned off? Abdullah prayed that Monique had switched it off herself rather than getting into an accident like his own.

Not that she’d dare get herself into an accident like this. The woman had always been too cautious.

Ferns rustled over the crackling patter of paw-like feet over the dead leaves of the forest floor. From the shadows within the undergrowth scintillated a pair of bright green, cat-like eyes. Below them glistened a maw of elongated canines drenched wet with saliva.

Abdullah dug his fingers into the moss beneath him and froze still, the sweat chilling to ice on his brow. There weren’t supposed to be any cats on this island. Much less big cats, like leopards or jaguars. Monique had promised him so, and she wouldn’t misinform her man like that. Would she?

It did not stride to him on the underslung legs of a cat, or any other mammalian creature. Instead, it crawled forth on legs bent outward like those of a crocodile. Its hide, golden orange with black mottling, sparkled with a hairless and pebble-wrinkled texture from the dapple of sunlight overhead. As the animal encircled him, swaying its tapered tail, it brushed his skin with the sniffing nostrils on its long square-chinned muzzle.

This was no cat. This was a lizard with the fangs of a cat, and possibly a dog’s sense of smell. Abdullah had seen something like this in a natural history museum when and he Monique first dated. He forgot its complicated name, but the sign had identified it as living in the Permian period tens of millions of years before the earliest dinosaurs roamed the earth. And it was almost certainly a carnivore that ate—

With a cry partway between a reptilian hiss and a cougar’s shrill roar, the creature launched itself onto Abdullah’s breast. He seized its neck with his left hand, his arm muscles buckling in their struggle to keep the fanged jaws away from his own jugular. Extending his right arm down to his tactical knife, he wriggled his fingers to pull it out by the hilt until the beast punctured his biceps with its front talons.

He pounded against the monster’s flanks with his knees. It did not even flinch once. Its jaws snapped an inch closer to Abdullah’s face with each heartbeat as the strength drained from his limbs. If he had no way of getting this savage prehistoric holdover off him, then he might as well have his mission doomed before it even began. Chief Fawal and his whole force would get off scot free, and everyone they ever wronged­—not least of whom was his Monique’s own younger brother, as well as the boy’s husband—would rest in heaven unavenged.

With a cracking bang, followed by a spurt of blood and brains, the leopardine lizard rolled off Abdullah to lay limp on the earth. There stood over it the ebon silhouette of a tall svelte woman with a thick crown of Afro hair, steam still slithering out from her Glock’s barrel like a serpent.

Abdullah giggled, half nervous and half thankful. “That’s my girl! I must say, though, that was a risky shot. If you missed, you could’ve killed me.”

Monique lent her hand out to her husband with a smirk. “And you said I was too cautious.”

“I never said you always would be.”

He straightened his back and brushed specks of dirt and blood off his body. “So, what happened to you in the meantime? You found a safe landing place?”

After slipping her pistol back in its holster on the thong of her leopard-print bikini, Monique unsheathed a machete from her opposite hip. “A little to the north, near some old ruins on the beach. Stay close and keep your eyes on the foliage at all times.”

She crouched beside the dead creature’s tail and hacked it off in a double chop.

“What is that thing, anyway?” Abdullah asked. “Some kind of extinct lizard?”

“Don’t you remember seeing these at the museum on our first date? It’s a gorgonopsid. They’re more related to us than to lizards.”

“Right, they’re mammal-like reptiles, from before the dinosaurs.”

Monique hauled the gorgonopsid’s tail onto her shoulder. “They’re not reptiles, either. They’re synapsids, as are all mammals.”

Abdullah shrugged. “Whatever. They should have died out alongside their mainland cousins two hundred and fifty million years ago. Wait, I did get that number right, didn’t I?”

“Almost. Give or take an extra million years or so. Let’s get going, we don’t want another hungry Paleozoic relic overhearing us in this jungle.”

[grim-faux]

13 - Too See

There was only black and I began to wonder if this was death.  Was this the great beyond scholars and science speculated when the brain finally died, when the soul departed the body?  Penetrating and encompassing black?  Was this eternity? Then I coughed, and felt the dull ache in my side.  Everything in me ached.  I was hurt, but I wasn’t dead.  My senses trickled in little by little, I could pick up the stagnant veil of this place, the cold digging into my skin - though my arms felt warm crushed and numb under me.  Couldn’t feel my hands, didn’t care about that.  I tried opening my eyes and saw only black.  Typical.  And I was laying on top of that camera again.

It was a requisite.  Car keys, a cell phone, a nice pocket knife, you nod of with one of them in your pocket, it will dig into your side.  Damn camera was bigger than those, I was going to wreck the NV sooner or later.  I could cart it through sewers, keep lunatics with clubs from smashing it, but sleep on it and it’s all over. I feel asleep?  How?

I didn’t bother to figure this out, or try and get of the cold vent. It was quiet and I needed a few seconds to get my bearings, and make certain that I was awake this time. The nightmare had shaken me, I still felt those shears in my chest and the blood spilling from the wound. How unsettling to dream about my own death in this place. Made everything feel ten times more dangerous than it already was, if I touched the walls they’d scorch my hands. Same thing happens whenever I see a rattlesnake, suddenly every bush and every rock has one.

Grunting, I turn over getting off my poor camera and let the cold work its way into my coat, the thin metal buckled as my weight was redistributed.  I felt a little better, more so than that crappy fifteen minute break before I stumbled into the basement. I pulled my camera up onto my chest and stopped the recording, in order to wind it back to where I stopped. I guess when I was crawling to the edge of the vent toward the light I just passed out. Probably needed it, I’m just damn thankful I didn’t keel over while I was still at the opening or when Trager was….

That damn psycho.  I had nearly forgotten him.  Couldn’t outrun him in my nightmares. I couldn’t bear to view the footage.  The way the hoister was designed would still allow the cameras eye to record, idea for when security got involved and ordered me to put it away.  The picture was not always the best, but it’d catch the more obvious actions and conversations.  I put my hand over the speaker feed as my voice came through, panicked and pitiful.  Sounded like a different man. An hour and fifteen minutes.  Felt longer in the dream, felt like I had dreamed something else after it.  Something worse than death, either of which I didn’t care to remember.  While I was MIA Trager could have lost interest in me and found someone else to cut up.  Maybe Father Martin.  Now that was praying to god. Getting out of the vent was tricky, after my muscles had relaxed in the cramped space.  I lowered myself carefully over the edge, bracing with one arm to relieve some of the pressure in my sore hands before I dropped, then limped off the resulting shock.  I staggered into the nearby lavatory and gave the area a hasty scan.  No sounds to suggest Trager was near, or anyone for that matter.  Just the soft patter of rain on glass. What an odd sense of Deja’vu. At least the walls weren’t covered in blood, and there was no bucket full of severed head.  It had all seemed so real, so vivid.  No surprise, I had great source material.  This place could still fuck itself though. I checked the stalls before I gave pause, nothing was contained in them, not even severed limbs.  The janitorial closet did have a small table cart with files spilling over it, the pages covered in a fine silt made apparent as I shuffled them around.  I pulled out a few to view and shut the main door to the room, before settling near the shattered mirrors. Male ward.  Check.  I didn’t think I would be using the bathroom for a while, fuck you very much psycho doctor.  Sinks lined one wall and they did work.  Carefully, I washed the blood from my hands and around the ragged digits, but I didn’t mess with the injured area too much.  I would be going through hell to keep the scabs, let alone the surface from getting more ripped up than it already was. I poked a bit more at the index finger where the bone was exposed, a little amazed at how the minimal pressure didn’t bother too much.  A translucent skin still coated the bone’s surface and I could make out….uh veins…. The granola was still in my coat.  I don’t know if it was safe to eat, but it was still sealed.  I fished it out of the breast pocket and inspected it, there was a bit of blood and some dirt smudged on it, from whenever I dug around for the notepad.  The label didn’t do its contents justice, promoting high fiber in a balanced diet.  I needed sugar in my blood and this little thing was better than some overpriced dinner. I rinsed it and shook most the water off, then gingerly took the edge of the package in the thumb and middle finger of my right hand, as I pinched it normally with the left.  It was easier than I anticipated to pull the wrapper apart, but the bar was a little melted and impossible to get out whole.  I ate what I could and drank some water, a lot of water.  Then got up, moved around a bit, jumping and springing back and forth, and prepared myself for what may come. I went ahead and recorded some of the files I had picked up, nothing relevant to the Project Walrider, but there was an interesting Request notice. From: David Annapurna  To: hresources.us@murkoffcorp.lu  Subject: Request for Reassignment  To Whom it May Concern,  This is my third asking for reassignment after two months without an answer.  I don’t want to work at Mount Massive any more. I have been an orderly my entire adult life, but have never experience such a consistent level of secrecy and disrespect.  I even have suspicions that some of the patients may be being abused.  I know personally two of them who have been moved to the basement ward and never returned.  If I don’t get an answer to this email, I will be forced to resign, and my very well consider contacting the press.  Thanks for your time.  David Annapurna I said the name aloud then looked through the files for anymore emails or reports that related to this.  David Annapurna.  I couldn’t say I ever heard the name before, but he mentioned the press.  Was this my contact?  Why the fuck didn’t he warn me about this place?! Well, he wasn’t high clearance.  That was a pissy excuse.  He could’ve at least alerted me to the nature of some of these people?  Don’t note, “They have massive anger issues,” when the fucker throws people out of windows!  Put down, “He’s fuckin scary and he’ll eat children!!  Hope you have a pilot’s license.” Have you also met or local physician in practice?  He likes to cut off fingers, and tongues, and peoples balls off!  By the end of this, you’ll no longer have grievances for cold water. Good god, I needed to get out of here. The door gave me some trouble, the knob stuck and my palms had fresh lines of blood.  I managed to force it with little sound and stepped into the connecting hall.  Still no sign of Trager, and anything living for that matter.  I was running on borrowed time, sooner or later I’d get a nasty surprise.  The next door gave no trouble, and the room beyond looked deserted.  Beds had been left at the back near the barred windows, I almost expected to see patients chained to them but they were void of life.  The room felt colder than those that held the doomed people, but I attributed that with the lack of electricity. Even the light at the front of the room felt cold. I walked around the beds but found nothing that stood out from the usual, some files to record but nothing noteworthy.  The ominous doors loomed at the end of the room, and I stood before them studying the dry kindling that comprised their matter, the gray tone adopted after years of neglect.  I inhaled slowly and slipped one open, as always listening for the danger.  The hall beyond was short and didn’t extended into the dark depths as I thought it might, bed frames had been crammed between the walls at the left.  In the other direction was another set of duo doors, blocked with boards. I stared into the small office across from me, the dial tone of a phone hummed on the floor somewhere.  This seemed more than coincidental, this looked exactly like it did in my dream.  Except…there was a key hanging on the wall now.  I slipped over the counter and crossed to it, the label above read Elevator.  Well, now I had it. I took the key and dropped it into my pocket.  The door was jammed but with my weight braced to, the frame snapped.  I tumbled out catching the wall against my hands, the pain stretching through my knuckles nearly overshadowed the menacing scraping noise of those scissors as Trager stepped in from the next hall. “Hey buddy, where you been?” I slammed the door in his face, completely forgetting it was already busted.  He still had to swing it open, while I had already sprint over the counter and lunged into the other room.  I flung the next door shut and retreated to the middle of the room, where the shadows were not diminished by the outside light.  As I slid under a bed, the grating chatter announced Trager’s entrance.  I buried my face in my shoulder to muffle my heavy breathing. “You’re overreacting.”  He snipped the shears and scanned the room.  “How can I set you to ease?  I swear, you’re not gonna get a better deal elsewhere.” Seriously, I didn’t understand what the fuck he was talking about.  Made me hate him even more.  I tensed when it sounded like he was directly beside me, but he was nearer to the wall clinking as he dropped down to check under a bed.  He wasn’t facing me. I crawled out from my hiding spot and slinked across the room, ducking down again and faced the wrong way as he stood up snipping the shears.  For a minute Trager stood in total silence gazing over the room, the odd monocle glinting in what light slipped in through the barred window.  Where did that light brave from, through the storm?  I could almost see him clearly, the sharp textures accenting his skeletal skin.  I slipped the camera into its pack and watched him unmoving.  Waiting.  Waiting for someone to blink, someone to give in.  The rain drummed gently on the glass and I heard something thudding hard, like the desperate rap on a door. My heartbeat. Trager fixed his eyes on something in the distance to the side, and I waited for my opportunity to move.  When he turns his back, when he averts his gaze, that will be my chance.  Thunder crackled right outside the window and a sudden blaze of light lit up the room, his face snapped to where I lay. “Hey!”  He dashed over to me and reached under the bed, as I rolled away and leapt over his back, the door in my sights.  He thrust his elbow up catching my knee in midflight, and I flopped against one of the pillars.  He spun around as I recovered, “Come on now, don’t be difficult.”  He swept the shears out as I twisted away, they slapped my shoulder and I dropped hard to my knee. A bed was right beside me, I had enough time to crawl under as Trager brought his weapon down through the thin mattress.  I yowled when the shears pierced my backside, he grunted as he attempted to force the blades down but the metal frame prevented that.  I jerked out from under them, and rolled away as he tore the shears free.  As he vaulted over the next bed, I crawled under the last and shoved myself upright and sprint for the open door.  I didn’t bother to shut it as I went, I needed to reach that elevator. I exited into the original corridor, with the two rooms and the patients.  The elevator was just down at the end. Everything was as I left it, the shelf shoved aside and the door left wide open and welcoming my dubious return.  I zipped through into the cheerfully lit elevator, with the foreboding blood splatter right at its entrance.  I paid it no heed as I dug the key from my pocket and being as gentle as broad panic would allow, inserted it into the slot.  I hit the down button and stood back, breathing a sigh of relief when the gate jerked shut.  The grumpy machine gave a stubborn lurch before it began to descend.  Once I was stationary I began to notice the painful throbbing in my hands and recalling the wounds, checked to see fresh blood spilling.  This didn’t surprise me.  In my desperation to escape, I had dug my fingertips into whatever was within reach.  Just had to ignore it, and for a while I’d forget. I was slipping down to sit when I heard the gate of the elevator rattle below, and all at once I forgot. “I’m not giving up on you, buddy,” Trager grunted, accompanied by sharp metal clinks and snaps. I backed up into the furthest corner and watched him force the shears between the lock on the elevator, the mechanism snapped and the gate came loose.  He shouldered his way through and raised the shears over his head. No.   I lunged forward snaring his elbow in one hand and used the other to shove him backwards.  Trager looked stunned by this retaliation, and slapped at my face as I bullied him out the opening.  The shears spun wild in his grip grazing my hair, I tucked my face down and glared with the edge of my eye.  He snagged my coat sleeve as I pressed him out, the elevator was still going down throughout this and I was losing leverage as he leaned onto me.  I grabbed the metal frame on my right, rammed him in the chest with my elbow and threw him back out. Just DIE! Trager recovered and lunged, thrusting the metal blades at my face.  I pulled myself UP out of the lift to snag them at the base, and felt them breeze by my forehead.  We were suddenly fighting face to face, I was teetering on the edge while Trager struggled to wrench the scissors from my grip.  If he had another chance to lunge, I didn’t think I could stop him.   Something happened in that instant.  I turned my face up to his and looked into his murky eye.  I swear I saw something there, something fleeting in his expression.  And it scared me.  That ‘look’ in his face scared me more than ‘Doctor’ Rick Trager himself. “Wha—?” he stammered. Just fucking die. My foot slipped and I latched onto his shoulder, jerking him with me.  He yelped as he toppled forward, his fist gave me a good smack as he fell halfway into the elevator.  I winced from the sudden impact and snapped my arm up, when he swung the shears for my head.  He cut a long slice up my sleeve instead.  I stooped lower as they snapped once more in empty air, but it probably wasn’t necessary.  He took one more swipe at me, even as the lift lowered over his torso. The mad doctor gave a sharp squeal of pain as the machine compressed his organs, I heard bones crunch and skin splint as the metal frame nearly cut him in half.  I stepped back as he gave a small whimper, his hand finally releasing the shears - they fell between the connecting floors and thereafter lost to the depths of hell.  With the unyielding obstruction, the elevator ground to a despairing halt.  It was almost worth it. For a while I stood, back pressed against the wall as I gazed at Trager, wondering if this were true.  Was he…dead?  Was it possible to kill him? I pulled out the camera and filmed.  A little bit of blood was dripping from his lips, his oily hair had settled over the top of his bald head in clumps, and he finally shut up.  He must’ve been dead, regardless, he was no longer a threat. “How To Make Trager Juice Step 1:  squeeze.” I tucked the notepad away, wincing as my exposed bone got caught on a loose thread.  It cut at the remaining skin, but didn’t hurt the bone.  I snapped the troublemaker free and zipped the pocket shut, then turned to locate a way out.  There was an escape panel in the roof.  I secured the camera in its hoister and unlatched the panel.  I gave the now deceased Trager a final glare, before I climbed up.  A hot pain made itself known in my backside.  Where he stabbed me. The elevator hadn’t gone down very far, I still needed to reach the ground floor.  I paused under the light that greeted me, but saw a stronger source down a hall where some filing cabinets had fallen over.  An open gate was there as well, a good place to start in my search for the exit.  I stood by the cabinet and turned as far as I could to view the damage.  There was a tear in my coat, revealing my shirt and red had spilled all the way down, soaking the back of my pants almost to the back of my knee.  The wound felt soggy and it hurt when I applied pressure through the coat, but nothing else was broken.  Nothing serious.   I had to take a moment to look at my hands.  Yeah, anything short of decapitation and I’ll feel insulted. This definitely was an older section of the asylum.  The stairs looked ancient, the wood railing worn with the slick polish of a thousand hands, everything was wood and each step creaked as I took it gently.  I couldn’t shake it, but I thought I could smell something burning.  Maybe just the stale air of the hall playing tricks with my mind, it was hard to think fire with the storm outside and the soft rain splattering the windows. I walked down the steps relying on the nightvision, despite how low I was on batteries.  The current charge was still good, a little less than half remained. The gate at the steps bottom was locked effectively blocking my progress, but in a small corridor on the left was a partially rotted wall.  I crept around the railing and peered into the break, where someone had torn away the plaster surface.  The wood was loose enough that I could get some of the panels out, allowing me to lean down and squeeze through.  On the other side was a small office setup and a phone with its typical complaint.  I picked it up and set it on the receiver as I looked over the room. The desk with its neglected monitor seemed out of place in this museum.  Billboards hung on the walls, pinned with notices, a few filing cabinets lined the walls.  A shattered chair lay on the other side of the room, I flipped through the shelves loaded with medical books and boxes of files, but nothing held my interest.  On the wall hung a Team Work plaque.  I scoffed at it and searched the desk.  A few batteries had made home in a CD player. CD player?  They still made those things? I crossed to the door and paused listening before trying the handle.  I winced when my finger brushed against the rough wood.  Careful, I didn’t need to be leaving little blood trails all over the place.  I’d seen enough of that. On the other side was a larger office with only a small desk situated near an outdated furnace.  Heating must have been terrible in this place.  Not far from this set up, a crushed door was pinned in its frame.  The door didn’t matter, there was a massive hole blown out of the wall a few feet away.  I wondered if someone came in here, or if they tossed the filing cabinet through the wall.  It didn’t look like it had been previously tossed.  Glass crinkled underfoot as I stepped through, and lowered the camera to view the new area. The exit was near the kitchen, that’s where Trager caught me.  Bad memories, all of it behind me now.   It was on this floor, I’m sure.  Just needed to find a way over there.  I wasn’t certain where I was.  Some large open hall with overturned desks and files scattered everywhere, chairs lined the walls between the large decorative and ornate pillars embedded with the plaster.  The air was musty, everything used and worn out then forgotten.  This place resembled an atrium or waiting room, but with less grandeur.  Had I gone back in time?  Everything was beginning to look ancient. I had to keep in mind the Asylum was shut down in the seventies, it wasn’t exactly the medieval times but it had been built long before the more modern conveniences.  Most likely when Murkoff took over, the outdated facilities were condemned for public appearance, then they built the newer areas for their precious staff and left everything else – old drafty building and prison blocks - to the patients.  Grade A bastards right there. Then, did this mean the patients had not been in the newer section of Mount Massive when everything began?  It was clear now they traveled between the two sections via their own means, but Murkoff never bunked them with their people?  It did make sense.  If you viewed it from Murkoff’s perspective, whom barely credited their victims with a shred of humanity.  I’m sure they didn’t want the scientists awoken in the dead of night to the shrieking, when god knows what was being done. I walked along filming the walls, taking in details.  This area looked much tamer than the other section of the asylum, a lot less death and gore.  No one had been on this side at the time when the shit storm hit, probably never made it here with the front doors on lockdown.  There were no mechanical doors on this side, I had seen that first hand.  That exit was wide open and waiting for me Movement behind the windowed in office startled me, and I had jumped back several feet before a light shown through at me.  I let out an exasperated sigh as I resumed my path to the dark figure.  I didn’t get too close though, despite the wall between us.  Who knew what He was up to? “Thank God, you survived,” Martin gushed.  I sighed and lowered the camera to my side.  “I feared that secular maniac would carve you up like the others.”  He glanced around, as though he expected someone other than me to be listening or nearby.  “Meet me outside, we’re close now.”  With that vouch of encouragement he turned and jogged off. Close to what?  He took the exit, but that’s as far as I could tell.  This just made matters worse.  I had no idea what this ‘Father’ was getting at, he kept leading me around the Asylum and the idea he could locate me easily never settled well.  Not after he jumped me in the Security room. The door was nailed tight, and the glass was that shatter proof junk.  Unless the big fucker just appeared on the other side, I wasn’t getting through.  It might’ve been easier do tear the rotten wood beneath the windows, but the interior wood was either too thick or reinforced in some manner asylums included in their layout of inconvenience. On the left was a large archway that led into more dark halls, for a change of pace.  This place was a maze of halls, and I was the mouse.  The mouse that smelled burning feathers.  I’m sure something was burning, it was a blistering and out of place scent among these frigid walls.  It had that bad plastic stink from a microwave, or when an idiot burnt the popcorn.  Piercing and lingering after each exhale. The hall took a right, but beyond that at distance trailed the thin line of light beneath a door.  I pushed aside a small cart that was in the path and paused, listening as the oppressive silence wound around.  Something was hissing, a pipe in the wall, the sound was soft and inconsistent.  The light danced in its little slice of heaven and a thick vapor did not go unnoticed as it crept between the thick slats of shadow.  I gave the door a light push and tilt around the frame to see inside, the NV wasn’t necessary in the restroom due to the light wavering in the sink.  I gaged at the foul air that stung my throat and pressed my arm over my mouth.  Ugh. An arm and leg roasted away, the skin hissed and bubbled, most of it scorched with dark smoke billowing off the cooked pieces.  For some reason they were on fire.  I didn’t understand why, or what sort of logic could be behind this.  Did someone light them or was someone playing with a lighter?  This did not bode well.  The smog began to dissipate immediately with the door open, but not enough to clear the air or make it any more breathable.  Fucking hell, this didn’t even surprise me anymore.  I wish it did, I really do, but I think it’s expected by now. The fumes were making me nauseous, prompting me to shut the door and move on.  It wouldn’t be worth it to risk checking the stalls if the pyromaniac was still there, more unstable than usual due to smoke inhalation.  I didn’t doubt there was a fire here somewhere, and I’d stumble upon it too soon.  How it came to be was a mystery, but I should either do something about it if I could or try a little harder to find that exit.  Now. Let this place burn to the ground, but not before I’m outside to watch. I returned to the foremost corridor, passing by pictures of the Asylum’s founders, and an abandoned wheelchair.  Somewhere a patient or another of Murkoff’s surviving personnel shrieked, I barely paused before trying the unobstructed door at the end of the hall.  Tile walls met the NV, and as I entered the distant echo of crashing came.  I waited in the doorframe staring up and blinking, the sound of my steady breathing seemed thunderous in the small space.  The noise eventually settled into a less threatening fumbling, I tried to figure out its origins as I shut the door and slipped down the small hall.  Could it be people in the walls?   It was a short walk then a left, and I stopped to peer around the corner and listen for the natural symphony of the Asylum.  Most old buildings creaked and settled, this place murdered and screamed. I shut off the NV and scanned around.  A large shower room for the male ward, rectangular in shape with a wall built through the center.  Showers lined one wall with lockers on the other, benches to sit at and laundry baskets scattered near the lockers.  A couple of the doors looked to have been torn open, I envisioned someone was searching for the guard that lay bloody and beaten on the floor. I stepped by the man and checked the backside of the room where it ended via uprooted lockers.  A box of files had been dumped here, the contents ruined by a lot of blood and water leaking from a cracked shower head.  I flipped through some of the salvable pages and found a note that was pertinent. From: r.trager@murkoffcorp.lu  To: p.walsh@murkoffcorp.us.com  Subject: Annapurna, employee no. 531920  Mr. Walsh,   Please accept the immediate resignation of Orderly 531920, David Annapurna, and process him as a patient of Mount Massive to treat his prosecutorial delusions. Treatment should continue until the time of his death. Thanks, buddy.  Rick Trager  Murkoff R&D This couldn’t possibly be the same Rick Trager that liked to tie people down and cut them up.  Not by a long shot.  I noted the guard as I walked by, his wounds appear fresh and the puddle of blood still crept along the tile’s cracks.  Which only meant his killer was nearby, which didn’t mean a whole lot.  Every other persons killer was nearby, it would be weird if I ran into a none psychotic, lucid patient.  I pause and note a trail of bare feet prints leading around the next corner, and the only path currently open to me.  The shower room had excellent acoustics, but I carried on with caution when slipping around the corner. Urinals lined the wall on the other side, no lockers of alcoves for a person to crawl into.  The end of the room had no light leaving the NV as my only visibility.  The smell of smoke was getting stronger and the air was unbearably stuffy and thick, I was coughing before I opened the door and stepped into a wall of heat.  My left was blocked by tables and cabinets, I was forced to the right where the visibility was obstructed by the thick hazy.  I lingered in the next hall and checked my corners before stepping out. High above, windows wavered with orange and yellow streaks.  I walked along the wall determined to find a way around rather than through, I didn’t care how many magnet key cards I needed to pull off dead security.  The hall on the left ended in what looked like a blockade, with tables crammed at a door just to discourage the trip. The only door into the room, cafeteria the plate said, was stacked with more tables and containers, setting me a bit to ease.  I didn’t need to fight the door yet, and no one could break it down.  I navigated around discarded furniture, a broken desk and a wheelchair, toward a shattered door frame beckoning at the other end.  There had to be a way around, there had to be an alternate route to the cafeteria. The fire crackled on the other side, and the smoke seeped through a high open window.  I breathed a little easier upon stepping into the next hall, across the way another door nailed shut.  I ventured left listening to the wood crackle behind the walls, sweat gathered on my brow to slip down around my eyes.  The halls end was obstructed by all manner of useless crap, but a door had been left ajar on the right.  I was beginning to surrender to the concept of just climbing through that window. Behind the door was a small utility closet.  Fuck. There was only the open window into the heart of hell.  Fuck.  I retraced my steps and found bloody handprints on the edge of the window.  Fuck.  I climbed up, getting a face full of heat as I pulled myself over into the room.  Everything was on fire.  Even the fire was on fire. I hate this place. Upturned lunch tables, long table carts, everything piled and jammed in every direction as though orchestrated to utilize the mother of bonfires. The wooden tables were a wild blaze and at first glance it looked like there was no way through without roasting, but the floor ahead was plenty clear enough.  If I didn’t fall sideways.  The metal wasn’t on fire, only the walls and most of the ceiling.  I noted to myself to use caution with the camera, the heat could damage the memory drive and that would just wreck this entire ordeal. No matter what, I would get out of here with all my evidence, everything.  That had always been my goal in the beginning, and it has been what kept me going.  It might seem petty, but someone had to remember what happened here, and that everyone had been killed by something – the former victims, Chris Walker, a lunatic with a fancy for taking people apart.  And people were not done dying. The heat had swelled within its small confines until the room had all but burst, I coughed against the smoke and kept low out of the heavy fumes.  I stepped around the small pieces of kindling that had already fallen from the ceiling, scanning the bright yellow fingers for the safest path.  My face was beginning to feel parched as my sweat dried, and my fingers ached against the brutal onslaught.  I ducked to the side as some of the timber from above crashed down, sending a swirl of red embers across the tile.  Needed to get out of here before it collapsed. Some tables were stacked over each other, but I could see no other way around.  I pulled my collar up around my neck and ears before I knelt low and crawled underneath.  A couple dozen trays had been scattered across the floor, which I kept away from as I stood up and stopped.  A patient sat on the table beside my current path, his feet had red coloration but that could have been the orange flames mingling with my vision.  I coughed a bit at the smoke as I stepped closer to him. “I had to burn it.  All of it.”  Subtly, I raised the camera from the pack to film him. “Murkoff took so much from us.  Used us.”  He held up his hands, indicating the mutilation.  If he turned his head to my left, he looked almost normal.  “Turned us into these things because nobody cares about a few forgotten lunatics.”  He dropped his hands over his lap and slumped forward. “So let it burn.  Burn the whole god damned thing down.  Get out.” He indicated me with a thumb.  “If you still want to live.  You can get out through the kitchen.” Good to know.  But the kitchen was on fire too. “I’m not the only victim here, not by a long shot. I watch a man wait to burn to death, the most painful death imaginable, rather than stay in this place.” I put the notepad away, and wrinkled my nose at the stench of burning meat.  A Murkoff or someone was pinned under a table, rotten and on fire, a horrible combination.  There were not many areas open to me, most the tables were engulfed with flames or getting there, I crawled over a shelving cart left sideways.  A piece of timber from above hit my back, and I swatted it away before damage could be done.  I picked up the pace, before the whole roof could crash down, or worse. I snapped the camera into its hoister and pulled my coat up over my head more, as I navigated the furnace.  A table in my path was catching fire, but not enough yet to deter me.  On the other side more of the staff lay slain, dried blood stuck to their cloths and fire chewing on their skin.  I was able to get under a shelf into a side of the cafeteria that hadn’t been overwhelmed by flames.  I exited through an open door to the other side, and shut it behind me.  To keep the fire from following.  I fixed my coat and fanned some of the heat from its surface.  Felt good to be dry and warm for once, it was difficult to recall what being cold and damp felt like.  The cool threads digging into the fibers of my coat reminded me that we’d be reacquainted here very shortly.   The hall went two ways, the right had nothing but a dead end and boarded up double doors.  To suffice my curiosity I made sure those nails were tight, then wove my way around broken wheelchairs and a crushed shelf to the other side.  Cabinets and industrial shelves had been stuffed into the hall, my only path would be the dark corridor that was open opposite of the way to the inferno.  Things were looking up. An archway straight ahead would have led to another room, if not for the stacks of shelves and whatnot packed into it.  Continuing to the right was another set of double doors, one open and accessible.  The churning roll of the flames had died down once I turned the corners into this corridor, and the creeping chill enveloped my skin.  How despairing the decrepit and harmless walls around me were less unfavorable, than that of the inferno. When I entered the office wing, I shut the door and exchanged out the battery.  I examined the room over extensively seeking a way out, an alternative path much better than charging through a kitchen that was on fire.  There was little to this room, it was large but most of that were the segregation walls and an area to the side encircled by a counter, inside, the walls had a few bookcases loaded with files and books.  A receptionist’s desk?  I glanced over a few but it looked like outdated pages before Murkoff.   Through an open doorway on the left side was another member of Murkoff slumped over his desk and blood staining the carpet under him.  His wrists were black, but that was the most of his injuries.  He might’ve committed suicide, but why?  Had he received word of what was happening in the Asylum and given up hope for escape?  What had been so horrible? The other side of the room had another desk, and a dead employee slumped beside the base, soaked with blood and multiple wounds wrecked his body.  An obvious contrast between him and his colleague.  A few files had been left on the desk, I flipped through finding one that made me uneasy IF YOU’RE SEEING THINGS, SAY SOMETHING. There’s no shame in Psychopathologist Proximity Stress Disorder (PPSD). Talk to your supervisor to get help from a Murkoff Success Counselor. Well, sure!  We want you to further the Murkoff Charity Association, also called BULLSHIT.  And you too can further OUR research with your mangled corpse, or highjack your brain and make you see some scary shit! Trager had also mentioned cutting employee pensions, wonder if this was part of his scheme to collect more bodies for the fucked up carnival ride Murkoff was running.  None of this surprised me, this was Murkoff after all.  Every underhanded and malicious tactic seemed to have been employed by the cooperation in this Project Walrider, and now they reaped what they had sewn.  Death, chaos, religion, and me at the center of it all. Burning was too good for it. There was little else in the remaining section of the room, just a box of pamphlets warning about sanitization work areas, nothing to note.  Nowhere to go.  The double doors on the other side were nailed tight, unless I really wanted to fight them.  I still had no idea what would be on the other side.  Nothing? I returned to the previous hall and looked over the shelving that was stacked there, and found a few carts and things that I could dislodge.  Easy, just drag them out and push the rest through.  I squeezed through, then stopped on the other side to check my back.  The fabric was stiff but that meant the bleeding had stopped.  I’d need a mild procedure later to fix that, the wound will have set long before stitches and I was certain it needed stitches. More dark, more failed security.  Another door on my left, barricaded shut from the other side with shelves and a table.  Might be one of the doors I’d viewed from the cafeterias hall, I’m certain I did come from that direction.  I stepped along murky windows hearing…a curios tapping, almost like the rattle of pellets, but I couldn’t find the source.  It faded as I continued and I decided that was a plus.  Whenever I heard that sound…. A plaque on the wall indicated Baths and Laundry ahead, and the Cafeteria was indicated the former hall I’d come from.  From where I stood, the faint outline of a medical table was visible, laying parallel to the wall.  Beyond that a door bolted up from inside the room and therefore not worth wasting my battery.  The NV was also giving me a mild ache, the monotone green haze dug into my concentration.   I could see through some of windows on the wall, within was a room with large vats, tile floors, but I had no way of accessing it.  At the moment it didn’t seem important, unless it provided an immediate means of escape.  There was no visible door that I could make out. The hall took a left and at the end light scared away the dark, but there was a door at the wall just before the corner.  Above the frame a plate labeled the room Emergency Sprinklers.  That seemed useful, if not better than nothing at all.  Though this section of the Asylum was out of date, it would still have the barest of fire prevention.  Either it was shut off along with the lockdown, or the basement was now a pool. I entered the dim room and found a pressure gauge, surrounded by its large pipes and a tank to the side.  The gauge was not as helpful as I had thought and read zero pressure for the water.  There had to be a way to get water back into the system.  I had no idea where to start, no map was available to indicate where additional tanks would be located. Sounded like someone in the floor above was having a wrestling match.  I stepped out of the room staring up, wondering if whatever was up there would tumble down here.  Or were people trying to escape the blaze that was catching.  Maybe both. At the halls end, where the light began, was another plate reminding where the Baths and Laundry Room were, and the cafeteria that was currently on fire.  This hall would lead back to it if it wasn’t blocked by the shelves and cabinets I had viewed from the opposite side.  It might’ve been easier to climb over, if it looked stable at all.  I sighed and pivoted to the lit hall unexplored. There had to be a way to redirect water into the emergency tanks.  The bath would be a good place to start, I’d have to check and get out of there fast.  Or find a bucket for water, that would be better than nothing.  I wasn’t asking much. The only light source was a lone lamp.  Beyond, the next room was dead with electricity, but on the opposing side was another light.  From my position I could make out silhouettes, the shapes obscured by the window frame on my side.  I moved towards the open doorway, where the door was I didn’t care, it wasn’t on its hinges and therefore could NOT be locked.  I jerked in my tracks catching the flutter of a shadow on the far wall.  I saw that!  I saw that! Then the big fucker marched into view, and I receded to the dark hall I had stepped from.  I knelt down and checked the corners edge to see if he was coming, I don’t think he saw me.  Chris stepped through the shadows towards the doorframe and paused, examining the area over.  In my new position, with the camera aimed and zoomed I could easily identify the body of Murkoff’s own, suspended by a cord fixed to his throat.  Another suicide? No matter what, I was getting out of this place.  Whatever it took.

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

I was just rereading the Mount Doom chapter of Return of the King and God it makes me respect Frodo so much. Like I know it's kind of a thing to fans that Frodo ultimately fails and can't throw the ring away into the fires, but I can't bear to call anything Frodo does a failure, not after seeing how hard he fights. In the Mount Doom chapter, we see a Frodo that's quite literally dying. He's had the ring for so long, and it's actively killing him as he gets closer and closer to the place of its destruction. There's this scene right before Sam picks him up where Frodo wakes from sleep, he attempts to get up, he falls and then it says that he pitifully begins to crawl on his hands. Frodo doesn't fucking stop. When he can't walk, he crawls rather than just give up. While there's even a sliver of his humanity left (hobbit-manity?) he somehow propels himself forward.

Like yes, Sam is critical, and Frodo wouldn't have gotten 2 feet without him but Frodo's strength of will is absolutely incredible. I mean he may not have been able to cast the ring away in the end but he fucking got the ring to where it needed to be, and I don't think a single soul who had been through what he'd been through could've done better. No Frodo hate from me.

Tl;dr Guess who just watched all of Lindsay Ellis' lotr franchise analysis videos and now is having Old Fandom feels

[tatticstudio55]

Parallels between Rhaena I Targaryen and Daenerys - discussion

Ever since posting about the parallels between Daenerys and Rhaena I Targaryen, I’ve been thinking. @kallypsowrites, @thousandeyesand-one, @rainhadaenerys and myself have been pondering on what such parallels could mean, and, well, some things take days to chew properly (that, or I’m just a slow chewer). In the end, I’d like to suggest something, though of course this remains up for discussion.

I think Daenerys was meant to tie the ends Rhaena left loose.

Because when you think about it, a good deal of Rhaena’s tragedy laid on close miss and what if. The last years of her life are spent at Harrenhal (pretty much the castle of ghosts) and she, herself, becomes a bit of a ghostly figure, as hinted from passages like these:

Her hair of gold and silver turned white before the end, and the smallfolk of the riverlands feared her as a witch. Travelers who turned up at the gates of Harrenhal in hope of hospitality were given bread and salt and the privilege of a night’s shelter during those years, but not the honor of the queen’s company. Those who were fortunate spoke of glimpsing her on the castle battlements, or seeing her coming and going on her dragon, for Rhaena continued to ride Dreamfyre until the end, just as she had in the beginning. – F&B, 254, 255

Not to sound too tinfoil here, but after all, aren’t ghosts supposed to be wandering spirits with unfinished business down here? In my opinion, there’s three major misfires in Rhaena’s life:

She sat out a battle

Her brother-husband Aegon (yes, I said Aegon) flew his dragon Quicksilver in battle against Maegor and Balerion. Had he won, Rhaena would’ve been queen of the seven kingdoms and her life, I assume, would’ve turned out drastically different. But Aegon and Quicksilver were killed. Although Rhaena also had a dragon, she didn’t partake in the battle, having just given birth to Aerea and Rhaella and (as the book implies) wanting to protect her daughters. It’s believed that even if she had joined her husband in battle with Dreamfyre, it wouldn’t have made a difference (Quicksilver and Dreamfyre were too young and small against Balerion), but… there’s still a what if.

All that is known for certain is that Rhaena remained at Pinkmaiden Castle with her daughters when Aegon marched… and with her, Dreamfyre, Would the addition of a second dragon to the prince’s host have made a difference when battle was joined? We shall never know… - F&B, 91

She couldn’t make amends with her mother

Moments later, Dreamfyre descended, silver crests flashing along her back as her pale blue wings beat against the red dawn sky. Rhaena Targaryen had come to make amends to her mother. She came too late; Queen Alyssa was gone. Though the king told her she did not need to look upon their mother’s mortal remains, Rhaena insisted, ripping away the bedclothes that covered her to gaze upon the maester’s work. – F&B, 218

Nor her daughter

Little and less need be said of the return of Rhaena Targaryen from Estermont after her daughter’s death. By the time the raven reached Her Grace at Greenstone, the princess has already died and been burned. Only ashes and bones remained for her mother when Dreamfyre delivered her to the Red Keep. “It would seem that I am doomed to always come too late,” she said. – F&B, 253

To a certain extent, one could say that Rhaena failed as a spouse, as a daughter and as a mother. Daenerys not only shares many parallels with her, but there’s also an interesting possibility for Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion to be the offspring of Dreamfyre… Rhaena’s dragon. So, one might wonder… is Daenerys set to “correct” the misfires above?

Will not sit out the battle

-The battle between Aegon II and Maegor I happened above the Gods Eye. Some have theorized that the final battle between the livings and the Night King would happen on the Gods Eye (check out Smokescreen’s channel on YouTube) or, at the very least, that the endgame would involve the Gods Eye, somehow.

-Maegor the Cruel is sometime referred to as the “dead king”, or the king raised from the grave (Night King, anyone?)

For twenty-seven days Maegor Targaryen lingered at the point of death […] Tyanna was a tavern dancer who had risen to be a courtesan. She was rumored to be a poisoner and a sorceress as well. Many queer tales were told about her… yet as soon as she arrived, Queen Visenya dismissed her son’s maesters and septons and gave Maegor over to Tyanna’s care. The next morning, the king awoke, rising with the sun. – F&B, 77-78

Jaehaerys was oft bruised and bloody by evening, to Alysanne’s distress, but his prowess improved so markedly that near the end of his time on Dragonstone, old Ser Elyas himself told him, “Your Grace, you will never be a Kingsguard, but if by some sorcery your uncle Maegor himself were to rise from the grave, my coin would be on you.” – F&B, 153

It had been long years since the Black Dread had last been seen in the skies above the city, and the sight filled many a Kingslander with dread, wondering if somehow Maegor the Cruel had returned from beyond the grave to mount him once again. Alas, the rider clinging to his neck was not a dead king, but a dying child. – F&B, p. 246

-Two dragons against one: it could’ve been Quicksilver and Dreamfyre against Balerion. It will (or might) be Drogon and Rhaegal (and Daenerys and Jon) against Viserion (and the Night King).

Will make amends to a mother

We’ll recall that Alyssa died of complications related to her pregnancy, and that as a last resort, the maester had her belly cut open to retrieve (and possibly save) the child. Knowing that, we can imagine what Rhaena saw when she ripped away the bedclothes covering her mother’s body.

Daenerys also has a vision of a woman’s battered body in the House of the Undying. It’s generally accepted that the woman was an allegorical Westeros ravaged by the war of the five kings:

In one room, a beautiful woman sprawled naked on the floor while four little men crawled over her. They had rattish pointed faces and tiny pink hands, like the servitor who had brought her the glass of shade. One was pumping between her thighs. Another savaged her breasts, worrying at the nipples with his wet red mouth, tearing and chewing. – Daenerys, ACOK

So while this might be tinfoil, it’s possible that the “mother” from Daenerys’s arc be Daenerys’s motherland, Westeros. The what and the why of these amends would mostly be speculations at this point: it could be a reconciliation between the realm and the Targaryen name (and Daenerys did apologize to Jon, on behalf of House Targaryen, for her father’s crimes). Or maybe it simply means that Daenerys reached Westeros in time to “save” it from the white walkers (whereas Rhaena came too late). Or maybe something else – hard to tell at this point.

And a daughter

I’ll let the speculations fly on this one for now: Daenerys has a lot of children, and has failed many: when the freed slaves of Astapor and Yunkaï were enslaved again. When Astapor was sacked and she couldn’t intervene. When she locked two of her dragons. When the Sons of the Harpy were murdering her “children” in Meereen. When unknowingly sacrificing Rhaego. The “daughter” could also be her subjects in Westeros, or the northerners (who might reject her at first, but eventually warm up to her.)

I expect Daenerys’s endgame to bring a sense of closure to what was left undone in Rhaena’s life. There!

[cortex-reaver]

Chapter 61: From the Jaws of Victory

Warnings: Language, cyborg horror

Masterpost

Goggles watched the sleeping Hacker silently, wincing every time the Super-Reaver's wires plunged into his head and bored into his brain. Every sickening crunch and schlurp sounded as if from her own nightmares, and the sight of both her good friend and one of her greatest heroes in that thing--

She held her staff in front of her, running scans on the Hacker and the Super-Reaver frame every few moments. She knew he'd want her to take him out if the plan failed and the Super-Reavers, and PsychoDAN by extension, got full control of his mind. She warily watched his sleeping face.

Sleeping faces could fool you. And that went double for when neuro-tech was involved. You had no idea whether someone was actually unconscious or suffering the worst depths of Hell in there.

The walls' machinery hummed softly, as if holding its breath.

Yeah, me too, Goggles thought grimly as a bead of sweat trickled down her face. C'mon Hacker. Wake up already.

The staff pinged a notice: Armor modifications detected. Nanite-based modifications detected.

She glanced down to the Hacker's suit of body armor from Craig's Reaver factory. A faint silvery sheen now covered it, and its wrist bracers had begun growing a series of mean-looking modifications. She guessed the Super-Reaver's nanites would soon turn them into the monster's wrist-mounted rapier blades.

Hacker's skin looked the same, save for a slight tracery of circuit-board lines along the sides of his face near his ears. Otherwise he looked as fleshy and normal as ever. She wondered whether his implant would let him dictate how the Super-Reaver frame's modifications went.

A quick glance via the staff's systems told Goggles that the Hacker's body now had several billion more nanites than before. And looking at bio-scan mode revealed the nanites repairing all of his injuries and restoring him to full health in a fraction of the time a regenerator would take.

She let out an impressed whistle. No wonder he thought he wouldn't need regen time.

“Bet you can eat bullets and blades now too, huh?” she asked softly.

The staff pinged once more: Subject regaining consciousness.

Oh here we go...

Hacker's eyes opened abruptly, wide and focused at some spot over her head. They had once been a warm brown, but had turned a dark silvery gray. His face remained slack and expressionless, and his Super-Reaver frame rose up menacingly--

Oh shit shit shit SHIT--

Goggles turned the staff over to Focus Fire.

A demonic grin split the Hacker's face. He lifted both hands, wiggling their fingers evilly.

“Boo!”

The staff's beam scored into the wall a split-second before Goggles disabled it.

“FUCK YOU!” the soldier screamed, finding the curse woefully short of the sheer fury she’d crammed into it. “I ALMOST CUT YOU IN HALF!”

Hacker merely cackled as he sidled away from the crater her staff had left in the wall. The frame's tentacle legs wobbled and flailed as he struggled to control them.

“C-couldn't resist,” he giggled. The frame bobbed in tune to his laughter.

Goggles just smoldered at him.

“Really couldn't r-resist,” he went on, now howling. “Your face!”

She flipped her most obscene gesture at him with her free hand.

“Oh God, that was great,” Hacker wheezed, then his frame crumpled to the floor, leaving him sitting with his legs akimbo.

He blinked a moment.

“Wait, what? Don't they run these things with self-training gait software like the bots or...?”

He closed his eyes a second, then groaned with an expressive rolling of his eyes.

“No, cause they programmed the gait into the mutant bodies' brains so they didn't have to stuff the software into the frame's CPU. Idiots. How'd you even pick up new bodies if....ohhh....they weren't meant to just zombiefy random bodies? Wow. Specialization's a bitch.”

“That's weird,” Goggles remarked. “The old ones certainly were. By the way, you ever use cybermechs in your spec-ops time?”

“My guess is SHObeta intended 'em to be all-out,” Hacker muttered. “So she went with Beta-Grove style mutants for the corpse bodies. Probably more programmable that way.”

He blinked as he looked up at her.

“Mechs? Sure. Ever driven a Crawler? The one they call the Armchair of Doom? One of the reasons I thought I could do this. Now I'm not so”--

“Yeah. It's four-legged so it translates to a Reaver pretty easy,” Goggles replied. “Had to drive one for a couple missions. Tried it on my Reaver. Worked nice for getting the gait right. Try going 1-2-3-4 on the rhythm. Stick to a side-to-side sway to keep your balance evened out.”

She eyed his crumpled position on the floor with a lopsided smile.

“For uh, getting up,” Goggles added, “just push up with all four limbs.”

The frame heaved itself upwards, then smashed into the ceiling. Hacker yelped when he hit the floor, then skittered backwards until he hit the wall.

“Ow! Ow. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU GIVE A CYBORG LIKE THIS A PAIN REFLEX?!”

“SHObeta. You know how she thinks,” Goggles muttered blandly as she rolled her optics. “Pain's her idea of behavior control.”

“Yeah, well she's an idiot!” Hacker growled, then pried himself off the wall. “Just so we're clear on that.”

This time the Super-Reaver frame obeyed him. After some bobbing and frantic clattering, he finally managed a better balanced standing position with the tentacle legs.

“Oh. Oh okay. Kinda like a big spider with long coily wires for legs or something...okay just uh 1-2-3-4, and repeat,” he muttered while slowly walking forwards. The frame wobbled, but kept its balance. He looked up at her with a slight smile.

“Doesn't hurt anymore. Not on my body, anyways. I think the pain's just wired to the frame's sensors so the uh, Reaver doesn't go too all-out and waste its hardware. Though given how tough they are, I can't imagine them doing that real easy.”

“Well they're valuable chess pieces,” Goggles pointed out. “PsychoDAN probably didn't want 'em going out on a limb.”

Hacker stuck one the limbs out sideways and wiggled it. He nearly tipped over in the direction of that limb, but kept upright by shifting his weight to the other direction.

“Hah to that,” the soldier remarked with a snicker.

Distant clattering echoed down the corridor. Hacker perked, then frowned.

“Damn. Wasn't expecting a response for a while,” he commented. “We should get going. They figure out what I did, they're gonna swarm us like locusts on Stam-Up and Berserk.”

Goggles nodded her agreement, then eyed him quizzically. Had he cut the Reaver frame's network connection to the station?

“And no, they can't hear me,” he answered her puzzled expression. “The rig is so like Tri-Op hardware that null.ethic did most of the gruntwork. Dropped me off the network, and had the system glitch out all the internal passwords on reset. The rest I can fine-tune as time goes on. Since null.ethic, uh, flips control to the core processing element. In the station, that was SHODAN. In here, that's my brain.”

He squinted at the clattering as it grew louder, despite nothing coming into view.

“For that much noise already and them being that far away? Damn. Didn't count on the network throwing an alert that fast. We gotta run.”

“Anything to get further away from Fugly Town is a good idea,” Goggles agreed, then headed to the elevator.

Hacker followed, his limbs clattering more evenly as he got the hang of the massive machine's walking style. The soldier reached the elevator then slapped the DOWN button. She froze at the massive shadow of Hacker's new rig falling over the doors.

“Shit,” she muttered, then turned back to him.

“What?”

“Did you figure out whether you'd be able to fit in here once you got wired in?” she asked, jerking her thumb to the doors. “Rebecca said something about having to bundle those legs like a yarn ball.”

Hacker blinked, then blinked again. He swore softly.

“Shit. I sorta did, but with you on the next elevator! I didn't think they'd react this fast!”

He turned to survey the hallway. Still nothing came into view yet, but the clattering had turned into a dull roar. He turned back, disgust and exasperation flooding his face.

“There's no way we're both gonna fit in there,” he groaned.

“Sure there is,” Goggles replied, an evil grin on her face. “How are you with full-body tentacle hugs?”

“WHAT?!”

The doors banged open. Thankfully it wasn't the ambush elevator this time.

“Grab me, then get inside!” Goggles shouted. “Fold everything up once you get in!”

“But how do I...? Without crushing you?”

“This armor's from the Reaver factory, remember?! You know my loadout! Now get your metal ass in there!”

Behind Hacker, the dull roar had become a thunderous rumble that shook the walls.

Grimacing, he carefully lifted one tentacle limb before looping it once around the soldier's waist. Goggles tried not to think of how many Super-Reavers that din amounted to. Her armor creaked as Hacker's limb squeezed her more tightly.

“Okay, going in,” he muttered, threading two limbs into the elevator.

Their claws angrily scraped the walls, throwing sparks as Hacker struggled to find his footing. He leaned the rest of his frame inside, then pulled up the last limb behind him. Then he huddled down, wrapping himself with all his limbs except the one holding Goggles.

“Okay just do a Reaverball, just do a Reaverball,” she heard him mutter over the noise of grinding claw feet, straining elevator walls, and sliding tentacles.

Through the open doors and Hacker's squirming Reaver limbs, Goggles could see the first Super-Reavers coming into view – from all sides of the corridor. Some crawled along the ceiling, while others skittered along the walls. And all of them moved with more unholy speed than she could've imagined.

“Get the door! Get the door!”

“Working on that!” Hacker shouted. “They're not coopera—AHAH!”

The doors suddenly banged shut, silencing the roar of the approaching mass of Super-Reavers. She sucked in as deep a breath of relief as she could with her squeezed torso.

“Don't worry about the elevator controls,” Hacker called out faintly amid the squished mass of bent tentacle limbs. “I figured out how they hacked the elevator in the ambush. It's really easy. Okay uh...here goes.”

The conveyance abruptly shot downward, with even more zeal than the regenerator room's doorway. Goggles crashed face-first into the ceiling along with Hacker and his new cybernetic toy. He clearly hadn't figured out how to keep his balance yet.

They stayed plastered there, screaming for what felt like an eternity.

Screeching loudly, the elevator bolted to a painfully sharp halt, sending both to its floor with simultaneous crashes. In Goggles' case, Hacker's long tentacle limbs mostly broke her fall. He landed face-first and stayed there.

Its doors whizzed open so loudly Goggles would've jumped if not for lying in a stunned heap next to a sprawled Super-Reaver. The limb holding her uncoiled, releasing her as it flopped limply through the doors.

The soldier tumbled out with it, her face in too much pain for her to think about moving just yet. One of her cybernetic lenses had cracked, showing a splintered picture. The other had gone out completely, blasting angry blue glitch into her brain. She heard her staff clunk into the floor and roll away from her limp hand.

“Hey,” Hacker called out, “You OK over there?”

“Next time, your ass is riding a freight elevator.”

He paused a beat.

“Gotcha.”

[asktemmie-frisk]

Confessions Of Two Monster-Human Hybrids, Part 1 (Lost and Found Arc)

As they learned that all of the monsters knew something was wrong with them, and even Frisk's parents, they knew they had no choice but to tell them. So they got ready to tell the truth. ALL OF IT.

"Fine." Frisk and Chara said in unison.

"WHAT?! WHAT DID YOU SAY?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! WHAT?!" Asriel blared, trying to get them to speak louder.

"YOU WANNA HEAR OUR SOB STORIES, FINE! YOU'D JUST PRY IT OUT OF US ANYWAY! JUST DON'T SAY WE NEVER WARNED YOU!"

Frisk and Chara wiped their tears away.

"Finally. Chara, you first." Toriel commanded.

"Fine, mom." Chara relented.

She took a deep breath, letting every last memory she had of the past come back to haunt her to almost no end.

"My parents were normal people. My mother was originally a human. Her name was Laura. She was a brunette that had shoulder-length hair. She had very simple clothing back then. She met and married my father. He was an astigmatism named Charon. When he fell in love with my mother, they conceived a child. In essence, me. They were super kind to everyone, and were completely and totally innocent. My mother and father didn't want to raise me in Mount Ebott, so they had a plan: take me to the surface, and raise me up there. In order to do just that, my mother gave my father her soul so he would be powerful enough to cross the barrier. After that, my father held us both in his arms, passing through to the barrier. I suppose being what I am, my soul was powerful enough to cross the barrier without needing a monster soul beforehand.

After crossing the barrier, my father returned my mother's soul to her body, but in exchange, a small bit of his soul got stuck in hers, and vice versa. Then, we went to a nearby village that settled at the base of the mountain. It was a small village, and not a lot of people lived there, but it was safe. Or at least that's what we thought.

Then...the so-called 'humans'. And I'm not talking about the type that actually genuinely try to better people's lives. I'm talking about the REAL monsters of this world. The ones that only identify as human physically, but are actually demons in human skin."

Chara stopped for a moment, remebering exactly what happened to her poor mother. Then she clasped her chest, making her creepy face.

"My parents had always been so careful as to not let them know a magician and a monster were living amongst those animals. But then one day, entirely by accident, my mother slipped up, and one of the villagers saw her casting magic. It was fire-based, for she was trying to cook, but she didn't have any kindling for dinner she was making. That villager spelled doom to my entire way of life, and we were practically already living in poverty, being forced to scavenge for our food. They told everyone that mom and dad were a wizard and a monster, and they even mentioned they had a child, which, again, was me. Later that night, they and the rest of the village came to our home, intending to kill us all. My mother tried her damndest to stop them. They stabbed her enough times to force her to stop fighting, and they burned her alive at a stake!"

Everybody went into shock immediately, especially Alphys and Asgore.

"Y-y-y-y-your m-m-m-mother... sh-sh-sh-sh-she was b-b-b-burned? AT A STAKE?!" Alphys stuttered, thoroughly petrified.

"Yes! She was burned at a stake! My village was one of those that looked down at magic, and they had a policy: anyone who uses magic, or is magic, will be destroyed! And that's just what they did to my mama."

"Dear God. I had no idea. So it is true. Magicians were burned at the stake after all."

"Yeah. My father and I couldn't take being forced to watch as my mother was burned alive. Then they went for us. My mother's soul left her body, but, not wanting to be separated from my dad, it flew as fast as it could to him. He reabsorbed it, and they fought to protect me. As first, they were winning. It looked like they could protect me from them. Then, one of the villagers snatched me from behind and tried to slit my throat right then and there. My father spotted this, and killed them before the knife could touch my neck. Then, my parents locked my soul, and threw me into the house, but not before they both said 'goodbye, Chara. We love you.' I told them 'I love you, too' as they locked my soul and gave me a chance to hide. I hid as far into the house as I could. I even camouflaged myself so I could hide in plain sight. However, I could sense them all ganging up on my parents, so, still camoflaged, I snuck out to see my parents fighting them all. The villagers overwhelmed them, and my father's body succumbed to the injuries. Then, they turned to my house. They burned it down, thinking that even if I was still inside, I would perish. They were right to think that. In fact, I almost did. The smoke became a lot for me to handle, but I was determined to live, so I found a cubbyhole in a closet, and I crawled out through there. I barely survived, but as I finished crawling out of that impending doom I called an inferno, I passed out. The smoke I inhaled while trying to escape was overwhelming.

The next day, I woke up to find the charred remains of my former home. I cried to myself, lamenting the loss of everything. My parents, my home, the pittance of stuff I had. I couldn't help my parents, and I blamed myself for both of their deaths. I was depressed for a very long time, but the villagers made it exponentially worse. They knew what I was. They all treated me like I was some piece of meat. Some of them beat me, some of them teased and laughed at me like I was a freak, and some of them called me names, like 'cyclops girl', or 'orphaned abomination', and even...'devil child'.

 I wasn't evil. They just didn't understand. They proved that much when I begged for food, water, or simply a place to stay. They turned their backs on me, and I was forced to resort to other methods, since it seemed like they wanted me to starve to death. So I stole what I could to fight off starvation and thirst. I stole some water and a canteen, and I stole food whenever I could, not knowing when my next meal would be, or even if I'd get another one. They hated me for that, but I didn't know it was wrong to steal. I had no choice but to for four years.

Then one day, a villager actively seeked me out. I was in a tree sleeping, and they found me and woke me up. I was so scared, but they looked so nice initally. I thought maybe they would help me, but that dream was quickly dashed to smithereens, for they told me why they wanted me. My soul. They knew I was a hybrid. I didn't know how until they told me of a prophecy I was involved with. They figured with my soul, alongside the genocide of all the monsters of Ebott, they would ascend to a level of normally unattainable power. Then, they tried to kill me right then and there by choking me to death. I struggled, but he wouldn't let go. Suddenly, I found a knife on him and realized it. No one would miss me in that village. They would throw me away simply because I wasn't an ideal little girl. So I took the knife, and I stabbed him. It was enough to force himself off of me. After that, I stopped trying to give him mercy. I stabbed him over and over and over again. And the worst part is I enjoyed it. I liked it because that man was getting exactly what he deserved.

 By the time I realized what I did, it was too late. His blood was all over my hands, my clothes, my body. Luckily, none of the other villagers saw anything, so I took that knife and ran away. I didn't look back, not even for a second."

The monsters that were listening started feeling bad for Chara. None of them knew what she went through.

"Princess. I had no idea. You ran from that village?" Gaster said, lending his heart out to Chara.

"Yes. As far as I could, as fast as I could, as hard as I could, and as long as I could. I refused to stop or slow down until I was absolutely certain that I was safe. By the time I stopped running, however, I was in a forest similar to this one. I had to take some time to catch my breath. I practically blew out a lung, trying to run away and never go back to that village. As far as I was concerned, my mind was split between two voices. One said 'I should go and face the consequences, regardless of the circumstance', but I couldn't hear that voice because there was an even louder voice roaring 'NEVER GO BACK TO THAT VILLAGE! IF THEY DIDN'T WANT YOU DEAD THEN, THEY'LL ESPECIALLY WANT YOU DEAD NOW!' I listened to that voice, and that was the last and final step I took before I officially became 'Chara'."

"Chara, I wanna know something." Sans said after hearing Chara out.

"Couldn't you have just left the village before that man came after you? Because you could've just went to the mountain after your house got burned down. Don't push this on all humans. You're the issue."

"It's not that simple, comedian. But I will admit, in a way, you're absolutely right. At first, I was so scared and so desperate to get help. Each day, those people saw me beg for the most basic things I needed to stay alive, and every last one of them chose to do absolutely nothing. The milk of human kindness abandoned me. Abandoned me, betrayed me, and left me to die within the cataclysms of my own despair. But when that man came to speed up the process, I discovered the power to end the life of a threat with a few well-placed blows and strikes. Never before had I felt so liberated.

After I made it to the forest, I quickly took off everything I had on my body, found a stream, and cleaned off the blood. After that, I stayed up there for a while. I scavenged for my food, and I got my water from that stream. It was hard, but at least the food was consistent...to an extent. Sometimes wolves came nearby and tried to take what I had. I killed one, and used its pelt to keep me warm at night. Whatever meat it had, I cooked and ate it.

After a few weeks of living in the forest, I calmed down. I started to feel better. I felt so far away from those humans that I stopped caring whether anyone was around. I got my things and traveled further up the mountain. I made it far up enough to find a cave. I figured it would be the perfect place for me to remain in, so I went inside to check it out, but then I tripped on something and fell in a huge hole it had."

"Wait. Are you telling me you didn't mean to fall into the underground?"

"Yep. Fell completely by accident. Crazy, ain't it?"

Sans was dumbfounded. Chara survived on her own, only to trip on something. He didn't know whether to laugh, or to rage.

"Anyway, as I made my descent into what I thought would be death, I reflected on my life. I thought about all the times I had take something from someone just to survive. The times where I had to kill little animals just so I could eat. The grown man I murdered just so I didn't take his place. I figured that even though I didn't wanna die, it was no longer possible to avoid at that point, especially if I deserved it. So I accepted my fate, and continued my descent with a clear mind, only to drop down on something and survive. When I found out I survived the fall, the first thing I thought was 'AAH! THAT FUCKING HURTS! OW!' It was beyond painful to endure.

Suddenly, I saw Asriel for the very first time. When I saw him, I didn't know that the legends were true, but there he was, a monster, trapped within the mountain with almost no hope of escaping at all. And yet, he was kind and caring. At first, I was just scared of him because he was a monster. But after I warmed up to him, he took me to his parents. You know, mom and dad? I was scared of them at first, but after getting to know them initially, they felt good to be around. They loved me enough to take me in as their child. They said I gave them hope, but what they didn't know is that they did the same for me. The monsters helped me when the humans wouldn't. That's when I realized it. Humans believed the monsters to be evil, but they were wrong. But when I learned that Asriel was a prince, and his parents were the king and queen of monsters, it was...strange. I expected a king and queen to be one of those rich types and stuff, but there they were, humble as ever. I looked up to them, and I still do. I wish I could have that nature to nurture others.

Eventually, the royal family and I got close enough for me to tell them what happened to me on the surface. And they cried. Mom, dad, and Asriel, they all just cried. They were so sad that it happened to me. They held me close, and told me that I would always be welcome in their family.

After that, I started acting like a normal kid would. Asriel and I got into trouble every now and then. But I never forgot the buttercups. When Asriel and I accidentally tried to make a butterscotch pie with buttercups in it, I was traumatized."

"I don't know." Undyne said, playing devil's advocate.

"According to Asriel and those tapes we heard, you laughed."

"Yes, I did laugh, Undyne. But it's not because I found it funny. I laughed because I was trying to stop myself from crying. I failed miserably at that especially because later that night, Asriel heard and saw me crying my eyes out. He asked why I was crying, and I just told him it was the buttercups. He hugged me and cried it out with me, too. I still regret calling Asriel a crybaby. When he cries, at least he does it when it would be normal for someone to. In truth, between the two of us, I'm the real crybaby."

"If you tried to laugh it off, then why'd you cry when you kept telling Asriel to stop crying?"

"Because I hate watching someone cry because it reminds me of myself. Also, I just...couldn't hold it in anymore. Believe me, I tried my hardest, but lately, I haven't been able to hide the tears at all. They've just been flowing like crazy."

"Well, what happened after the whole butterscotch thing or whatever?"

"BUTTERCUP. And after that, it gave me an idea.

 I asked why they were trapped in the first place. Long story short, humans, or should I say magicians, were to blame. I realized that with my soul, Asriel can cross the barrier, grab six more souls, and destroy the barrier. I told him my plan, but to kickstart it, I had to die. I remembered the buttercups, and I got really sick. It was bad. Death by buttercup is fucking torture. Never again."

"Chara, you d-"

"NEVER AGAIN! Anyway, after Asriel absorbed my soul, I took over and carried my dead body to my village. But then I saw those things, and I got really angry. I was ready to murder every last one of them. Give them the exact same mercy they gave me: absolutely none. Before I could perform the first blow, Asriel snatched back control before I could kill the first one. It was mortifying. I trusted Asriel to let me get the six human souls we needed, and that was how he repaid me? I was so angry at him. I started screaming at him 'GIVE ME BACK CONTROL, REI', but he wouldn't budge. He just took my body up again and carried me right back home. I was pissed off beyond all comprehension. Not just abandoned, but betrayed, too? I just kept yelling and yelling at him. I told him to absorb my soul, and let me do the work. I told him that we needed six souls. No more, no less. I never told him, however, that I was only going for six. To be honest, I also wanted revenge. Revenge against the humans who threw me away like trash.

Once he got back home, I asked him why he brought me back. He said it was because I deserved to be around people who loved me. When he said that, he made me snap out of it. He made me realize that my people are the monsters, and they'll accept me no matter what. My life was infinitely better with the Dreemurrs, but the worst part of all was I never realized it until it was too late. At that point, I hated myself. I got Asriel killed just because of some vendetta with humans? I can't believe I was actually that stupid. The only arguable good part was that I got to say my love for my brother one last time before we both died."

Asriel remembered the pain of getting killed by those humans of the past, and sulked. More monsters felt Chara's pain. Some started crying. Erica felt the urge to cry and howl. Soichiro broke down. No one wanted to hear anymore, but they needed to hear Chara say the truth.

"And then what happened?" Asked Asgore with his head tilted downward.

"You all know the scenario, I'm sure. After I died, again, I fell asleep for a long time. I just remained that way. I heard things like mom leaving dad, dad declaring war against the humans. I felt like it was all my fault. If I didn't take that first step to trying to give all you monsters freedom, then maybe things would have been different. Erica, maybe you wouldn't have had to resort to sneaking out with Frisk and Soichiro. In essence, I'm pretty sure I'm the reason as to why all of you had to suffer like that.

Anyway, many years later, I woke back up. I found out that a boy about my age before I died fell onto my grave. At first, I was so confused. I asked myself why I was awake. Our plan had failed, hadn't it? Asriel made sure of that, but I stopped holding it against him a long time ago. Then I found out that there was a talking flower. He went by the name of Flowey, and I had no idea that Flowey was actually Asriel. He ended up trying to kill the boy. You know, Frisk. He was so scared after that first 'friendliness pellet' struck him. But then mom stepped in the way. Didn't amount to much though; even after she told Frisk to try to resolve fights in a more peaceful manner, Frisk just kept striking things and people down. I could tell he was scared, but I kept trying to keep him from killing, and every single effort, especially with mom, was in vain. When he finally got to face mom, I just got desperate. I showed myself to him and madly begged him to let her live. He didn't wanna listen, and he killed mom.

At that point, I just lost it. I couldn't believe that he killed mom. It was like with my real mother all over again. I just broke down, and I couldn't dry my eyes no matter how hard I tried. The rest I'm certain you know."

"What about after Frisk did his reset, and after Asriel absorbed us while he was Flowey?"

"Well, hold on. You know about what happened with Papyrus and Sans, right? Well, all Frisk wanted was to atone. That's what caused the reset in the first place. Frisk touched a yellow star, and reality broke apart. Before we were separated from Sans and Papyrus, he vowed to make things right. Then everything went black.

After that, we went back to the flower bed. I was lying next to Frisk, who was still asleep. At first, we thought Frisk was dead, and I was just his imagination gone wild. But then we found out we just went back in time. We got a second chance, so that time we went through without laying a single finger on everyone, at least in a violent way.

Once we got to New Home, monsters started telling Frisk about Asriel and I. Long story short, we got fucked over. When Frisk found out what happened, he couldn't be mad at me at all. He was just sad. The others took notice and said he should be happy because he was gonna be free. But he and I knew why we weren't. We felt that...we would never be free if you guys weren't."

"Wow. So what you're saying is all you wanted was to free us all in the first place, but you think what happened was your fault?"

"Yeah. After Frisk loaded his save file, he faced you again, dad. But this time, you know what happened. Flowey took the souls, he got you and everyone else. But that wasn't as shocking as what I saw after. I've seen twists in movies before, but boy did Flowey turning into Asriel fuck me up. I was stunned. At first, I tried to call out to him. But then he became 'the absolute god of hyperdeath'. I was so happy he was back, but he wasn't thinking clearly. I thought we had to snap him out of it.

Suddenly, he used his full power, and pelted Frisk multiple times, only for Frisk to come back to life, feeling determined. I realized Frisk couldn't save himself anymore, but then I had an idea: have Frisk use his power to save others instead.

As I told him my idea, he used his remaining influence to free you all. Then he managed to get Asriel to snap out of it. But while Asriel was coming back, I was wondering why he went this far. Didn't know he cared more about me than everybody else. All he wanted was his best friend back, and I was right there, unable to speak with him. So he lashed out as hard as he could, but it wasn't enough to kill Frisk, especially since I stood in the way and took some of the damage for him. After that, Asriel just gave up and destroyed the barrier. As for the rest, I'm certain you all know."

Everyone else was stunned. This was why Chara was acting like that? She just felt guilty and blamed herself for things going the way they did? She shouldn't be doing this, everyone thought. She didn't care though. She knew what she did, and she refused to back away from whatever consequences betided her.

[grim-faux]

7 - Men in Shadows

This cell block was small, possibly for the more deranged or criminally insane.  With this place it was hard to tell, unless there was a sign saying

Criminally Insane

Please Do NOT Feed

  I couldn’t tell.  At this point it didn’t matter, the patients were everywhere.  The only detail that would make my current location relevant was whether there was a way out of this area.  From the pile of corpses I couldn’t discern what was once patient, or if they were what remained of the staff.  The idea sickened me that they were left stacked like this, I tried to avoid looking at them as I moved around.  I didn’t want to be here longer than necessary.

This choice wasn’t mine.  As soon as I spotted the big fucker, I had dashed to the nearest door that would open and ducked inside.

Miraculously the room was clean, aside from the grotesque stench of rot and human waste.  I didn’t hesitate to huddle under the bed and listen for the telltale sound of snuffling and mutters about protocol.  What was it the reports said, his retardation to former military security protocol?  For some reason I fell within this parameter.

“I’ll make the pain go away.”  I pushed myself under the bed a little more, until my back was to the wall, and stared at the door. 

Worst position I had been in yet.  These doors couldn’t be unlocked from the inside.  If he, for whatever reason decided to shut it, I was doomed.  If he found me locked inside, oh god.

The minutes seemed to drag by as I listened.  He muttered to himself, sometimes going to his security protocols, the dangers of contamination, then would swing back to the current task.  His mind was damaged, but he still revisited the present and his current mission to locate and kill me.

He knew I was here, that was the only reason he remained patrolling the cell block.  It seemed the other patients beyond their fixations could lose interest or forget what they were on about, but the big ugly fucker kept on his task until it was done.  Scary as hell.

I was using my NV to track his movements, figure out his pattern.  For a short span he became enraged and began throwing things, shoving what sounded like solid metal pieces around.  Beds, I think.  I saw a few frames discarded outside before I hid.  I had to get out of here before the door was flung shut.

The battery needed to be changed first, and better right here should the cameras cheerful peep alert him to my position.  I made double sure he was nowhere near the door before I slid out from the bed, on my knees and elbows I crawled out listening.  His chains rattled beyond the cell as he calmed his rampage, but resumed a casual stroll.

“I’m coming….”

I pressed myself against the doorframe and stared, and listened.  He was on the other side of the room beginning to move in my direction, eyes blazing with a fury that could not possibly be attributed by the cameras night vision.

MOVE Miles!  Get going!

I kept low and sprint alongside upturned bed frames.  I could make out his heavy foot falls, his labored breath as he shortened the distance.  My leg bumped an upturned wheelchair arched over a decapitated body.  I froze and waited as Chris seemed to pause.  When nothing happened for a long, silent, painful moment, I began up the long row of grated stairs.  My steps were nearly nonexistent, but I was certain he could imagine my progress.  He wasn’t fooled.

High overhead the light filtered out through the murky windows hitting the dull wall, but not low enough to compromise my stealth.  There was one door to the left where I had envisioned ‘Father’ Martin’s form, but of course it was locked.  I gave the handle a gentle rattle before I abandoned it.  The big fucker’s movement seemed to be getting louder, and his murmurs were more based on how he was going to find me.  Restraining my panic, I kept my progress discreet and slow.  He was still on the lower floor, he had to find me first.  The trick was, not to get caught.

“Little pig, little pig.”

What the fuck was with him?  Seriously.

Doors and a few crushed wheelchairs had been jammed into the walkway, which shifted and gave some sound as I pole-vaulted over them on my hands.  The walkway was lined with that thick chicken wire, along the wall more patient rooms dotted the walls, nothing to bother with.  I didn’t need to encourage myself to hide at this point.  All that would manage would be me getting locked in a room.

There must be a way out.  If I pretended that I left, maybe the big fucker would resume his search and smash down another door.  I’m sure HE could break these metal gates down.

“Come here, little pig.”

I slipped over another bed frame and knelt down, taking pause to try and locate exactly where he was.  I couldn’t find him on the lower floor, but he might’ve ducked into one of the open cells.  Even if I trapped him in one, he would still smash out.  I just needed to stay far from him and everything would be fine.

A segregation point awaited in my path, the door ripped off.  One of the two inside might be open, I doubted it though.  With the grace of a specter I tried the door before me, then the one to my left.  Both were locked, which left the broken opening to my right.  I had gone in a big loop around the room with very little to show for it, but I had not seen the end of this path yet. 

I still couldn’t find where the big fucker was, but it sounded like he was closing in.  Where was he?  Had he found a way that I had missed?  Unless he smashed down a door, this would be impossible without a sound!  There was nothing, nothing I could see.

“Little ghost….”  That was right next to me.

I turned the camera, and on the other side of a steel gate stood the big fucker.  Shocked, I stumbled back as he began smashing at the door.  Maybe he couldn’t break them down?

But as I watched the metal warped inward, around the latch.

Stupidly, I shot forward just by where the door was folding in, torn from its steel hinges.  Chris was calling me to come back.  I ran, taking the first open route on my left.  Could’ve been a dead end, I didn’t give a damn.  I needed that distance behind me.

Ahead was another blockade piled high with beds and furniture, somewhere in the collision I’m sure I spied what looked like a gate.  I didn’t slow before I shoved my shoulder against the metal frame grunting as I pushed, wedging between broken beds and metal tables.  I smashed the side of my brow on the leg of something, but refused to pause as Chris Walker charged up grabbing at the calamity.

Meanwhile, I toppled out the other side falling onto a puddle of filthy water.  That was the least of my concerns as I turned back, Chris fought with the metal crammed against the bars of the gate.  The more he thrashed and tore at the obstruction, the more it twisted into a cage against the small opening.  I dragged myself backwards, not realizing I had dropped the camera as I watched the grinning face with morbid fascination.  I dared him, I fuckin dared him to tear down that wall and come after me.  I would run again.

“Fuck!”  With his anger rebuffed by junk, he pivoted and marched off.  Presumably to locate another path to me, or perhaps find someone else that had missed their daily decapitation.

I dropped to my back beside the foul smelling water and panted, dark blots pulsed in my vision and my ribs ached like sharp ice.  I had an odd feeling before long, I’d see him again.  The sooner I accepted that, the better off I’d be.

I didn’t bother to wait and let myself settle, there was no safe place in Mount Massive and I couldn’t afford to let my guard down at this point.  I took up my camera and gave it a look over as I sat up.  The red blotches along its side were still there, along with a few new scratches it received somewhere when I was bumbling about.  Probably when I fell, which was between cell Block B and Block…wherever the hell I was now.  I tried to spit on my damp sleeve and get some of the blood coating its side off, but I was dehydrated.  I had been since I awoke in this nightmare, but hadn’t had the chance to pause for a drink.  Hell, I doubted any of the water lines still worked with the basement flooded as it was.

The puddle of discolored water?

No way.  Rotten blood was ten times cleaner than whatever that was.

I gave up on my coat.  I had no idea what it looked like on the backside, I didn’t want to think about it.  The inmates might identify me as one of their own the way I was looking now, I just didn’t give a flying fuck anymore.

The path ahead looked ‘favorable,’ that term was used lightly.  Another fallen, but the door across from me and the one on my left were both locked.  I might’ve recognized the door to my left as being one of the gates I had tried while the big fucker was hunting me on the other side, but I was conserving my batteries for the time being and barely noticed the shades beyond the bars.  I returned to the previous darkened hall I had passed by, where bed frames and tables had been stacked precariously against a gate resembling an odd fort.  I went ahead and crouched on my knees and hand to crawl through the small space left open.

A silhouette jutted out in my face, and I tried to shove myself backwards only to succeed in hitting my shoulder on the table wedged between the walls.  I moaned in pain, my bruised arm not taking the action well.  Before I progressed the camera was raised, and I glared at the face.  He retreated around the side of the bed, and I slunk forward wary of the obvious dangers.  I began to doubt that.

Another man curled in on himself, trembling in the dark like a child hiding from the monster.  His hand looked mangled, and an assortment of scars decorated his arms and chest.  Even as I moved away from his line of sight, he stared forward at nothing but the cold wall.  I left him where he was.

The door at the end of the hall looked locked, I bet money it was locked.  I won that bet, and returned to a cell door open part way that led into one of the many nightmares buried in the Asylum.

This was where I learned my fate if I was unable to escape.  This area by appearance seemed as general as the Asylum went, but that same forbidding that crawled through my veins when first I set eyes on this place had returned.  I knew now not to disregard my instincts.

Crumpled on the floor was the security guard, alive earlier this day, dead now.  I had seen the tail end of his life as it was ripped clean out from under him.  His head, who the hell knew where it went?  Some toilet, a shelf, who cares?  Blood had pooled around the stump of his shoulders, he no longer had a neck.  It went with his head.  I glanced at my camera, before I raised it and filmed.  I took in the fallen security operative, then zoomed out on the cell blocks in an uproar with activity.

Most still had people in them.

“Are you my friend?”

I jerked away from the bundled up patient as he approached.  Once my initial shock wore off I stood and watched as he came closer and stopped, I checked my visor to make certain my shot of him was clear. 

I’m not certain how he saw me, his face was wrapped tightly with gauze, maybe he sensed me.  I was beginning to believe anything I came up with.  I doubted there was much to fear from him, his arms were tangled tightly in his straightjacket.  It looked like his most violent action would be to kick the tar out of my shins, but as it was he only stood at arm length and mumbled through his gag/muzzle.

“Silky.  You look so silky.  Let me just…” I moved away when he tried to approach, and ignored him as I commenced scouting this place.  From the looks of it, the other patients I had seen frantically searching for a way out of here had succeeded, I wondered how the big fucker had gotten out with the fort built in the hall.  Some of them might have assembled it when he left.  That man trembling, had he been one of the ones seeking a way out and given up?  I couldn’t remember, it was dark and I was suffering from shock.

“I need to tell you a secret.”

I didn’t know what to make of this Block D.  It was by far the largest, with long thick pillars holding up the high walkways and rooms.  The lights still worked gleaming off jagged cement cut like teeth, emphasizing on a sort of ancient rot like being trapped within the ribs of some ancient derelict of a monster slain by science.  Shadows were near extinct in this area which unsettled me.  The room was a symphony of chatter as patients rattled their bars and yapped for help, or screamed nonsensical phrases of lives left behind.  I kept my distance as I searched for an alternative way out, somewhere to climb up or crawl through.

Unlike Block B, the cells in Block D were actual jail cells.  Thick bars designed to withstand time and abuse, the patients fought their cage but I couldn’t decide what few had achieved freedom between those that had been freed.  The way the floors above had degraded it was no wonder they were trapped inside.  Many of the cells on the ground floor were open, I explored a few doubting the capacity of locating a clue to my whereabouts.  They were too foul to linger around and many had been stripped of furniture.

“You!  Hey!”  I didn’t jump back in time, the man had shoved his arm between the bars and caught my coat.  “You, you have to let us out of here.  These bars, they won’t stop the Walrider.”  I shook my arm, but he held tight.  “It’ll come for us one by one until we’re all gone.”  A final jerk and he lost his grip, I stumbled away and caught myself by one of the pillars.  “Please.  For the love of god!”  He was still reaching for me shrieking.

Another man in his cell paced back and forth mumbling dates and facts.  “What did we bring home?  What did we use it for!?”

I ran to the other side where, I couldn’t tell exactly, someone was sobbing about the therapy he was forced into.  “My family needed money, they said had debts, things to pay….”

My pant leg was ripped up the back of my calf.  I leaned down to examine it pretending I couldn’t hear the man confessing.  The very bottom of my jeans always wore away at the base, where they met the floor.  The material on my leg was still intact, it was only noticeable if I pulled at the denim.  My main concern was how well it would protect me, my own blood had seeped through the fabric from shallow scraps I hadn’t noted in my earlier panic.  The stain was nearly impossible to distinguish from the dark smears of—

Back to task.  I needed to get out of here.  There was a way out the patients used, I wasn’t thinking critically enough.  How did the lunatics escape?  How did they work this out?

Someone, or a few of them, had set up a small collision of beds that were stable enough to climb on.  I took it as my best option and crawled up.

“…and there was only one thing I had worth any money.”

Briefly I paused glancing over at the doomed soul, before I climbed up.

A foul reek of fecal waste hit me, forcing me to turn away.  “Nurse!  Nurse!  I’m going to need some help getting clean.”  His voice was heavily suggestive, as he ended with cackles.  “Nurse.”

Fuck you.

Another locked door, but I checked anyway, couldn’t leave no stone unturned.  I raised my camera to check my path, there was a lot of debris from the upper floor on the walkway.  The next cell I heard sounds that confused me at first, but I reasoned it was better off not knowing.  The door was locked, everything was good.  I hurried back to the other path.

I just hated this place.  It needed to be nuked from orbit, it was the only way to be sure.  Just, god damn these people, and the people that assisted in making them more fucked up than they were in the first place.  Was that even possible?  I don’t give a shit, blame Murkoff, blame them for everything, including me stumbling into this nightmare!  It was all their fault.  End of story.

I wasn’t going to note that.  Just film whatever and get out with everything I could.  My body, my sanity, and most important, my love for living.

But damn!

I turned the corner, another patient rattling his bars and a man in a chair.  I paused to examine him, recalling what happens with people in chairs.  He wasn’t in a wheelchair though.

“One day.  I’ll be free.”  I held my breath as he stood and swayed.  I should probably not be in his way, let alone be anywhere near him.  “You too will see!”  He lunged grabbing me by the neck, I held my ground but staggered back with a low gurgle.  I couldn’t get his grip off, I felt my neck being crushed as a soft bubbling filled my ears.

I released his arms and took his throat in my hands, my vision distorted as I squeezed with everything in me.  I envisioned myself wringing a wet rag, trying to get every little drop of water out.  Tighter and tighter digging my fingernails in to reinforce my grip and twist all the moisture free.  I felt my lips draw back as I grit my teeth tight enough it felt like my skull would shatter.

His grip loosened a little, allowing my mind to clear.  I stepped back, my heel hit the bars of the cell behind me and inside the man muttered about sheep and followers.  I braced my shoe between the bars and pushed with my fading strength.

The man toppled backwards hitting the rail and plummeted.  I collapsed near the path staring over the edge, but I couldn’t see where he had fallen.  I pulled myself forward and managed to get on my feet, a little wobbly but I’d walk it off.  Below, I could see where he had fallen.

“Do you itch?  You look like you have an itch.” 

I didn’t have the heart to tell straightjacket, his new friend was dead.

I pressed my forehead down on my cold hands curled over the rail and zoned out, not staring at anything in particular.  I let the noises of the patients fade, let everything swarming my head turn gray.  I had a sudden attack of nausea but I didn’t feel like moving to settle myself, I felt rotten about what I had done.  As if this should have some sort of impact on my life and I was letting it roll on by, like water off a ducks back.  Incredible, the guy tries to kill me, and I felt bad about throwing him to his death.  It was an accident anyway. 

I took a deep breath through my mouth and let it out.  Just keep moving, don’t overthink what I see.  Filter.  Filter.  Healthy thoughts.  Sane thoughts.

Was it insane I had to keep reminding myself of this?

Ahead, the path ended but what was left along the wall seemed stable enough.  It was a portion of the floor that looped around the block, cracked and fallen due to whatever happened to this place.  It looked recent, I wasn’t quite certain myself anymore.  Murkoff reported one thing, the patients recollected another.  I had taken note that there was fewer of Murkoff staff in this area, aside from the guard that might have been hiding here or searching for a way out.  Murkoff must have stored the patients in this area and abandoned them before the disaster.

That didn’t matter at this point, speculations and theories was my fuel and I was running low.  My only concern at this time was the set of bars on that path, and the creature patrolling behind them.  Just…don’t dawdle, he might not even notice me.

I edged onto the footpath and slinked along, gripping the bars behind me whenever I felt my shoes slip.  The gap ahead of me didn’t seem too far, a straight jump.  I had jumped further in my youth, with more at stake.  But the rebar along the side looked cruel, if I hit it with my weight I wouldn’t be worried about the many ways I could die.

I braced myself against the bars and leapt—

Missing! 

I fell to my feet and tumbled, barely avoiding the shock that traveled through my body.  I leaned over trying to work out the pain in my ribs, and rose to my feet.

I went all the way back to that damn ledge, this time pulling my camera out and making sure I knew where I was going.  I couldn’t hesitate, had to get this done and keep going.

“What’s the experiment the dead would perform on the living?”  He yelled behind me.  “I’ll give you a hint.  It’s still happening.  The experiment is still happening!”

I hit the ledge and gripped for dear life, my camera still held in my right hand.  I unhooked it and pushed it away before I tried to drag myself up.  No stopping, not here.

The fingernail on my left hand had snapped, just below the skin line.  It hurt whenever I touched it, or when it brushed something, and deemed a mild nuisance as I traveled.  I bit it between my teeth and tore it off, taking a bit of skin in the process.  It bled some, and I didn’t want to imagine the possible infections I could get roaming the vile surfaces, but survival came first.  I wiped it on the inside of my coat where it was mostly clean.  After this I was going to get a whole new wardrobe, sentimental value on my coat aside.  And shots.  Lots antibiotics or whatever.

Once this little crisis was dealt with, I picked up the camera and checked the first set of bars I came upon on my left.  Inside was light along with the very helpful phrase Witness written in blood, and a large crimson puddle drying on the floor.  It looked fresh, but I didn’t care to confirm this.  A man was curled up in the blood, quaking under the bed frame.  On the wall across from me was the very cryptic message written, it what might have been authentic black Temper paint, He did not Kill his Enemies.  I’m not sure what to make of that, I’m pretty sure all these people were not doing much of anything else

It was against my dear wishes to enter his room, but on the desk there was a file that might shed some insight on this mockery of a hospital.  More about the Project Walrider?  It seemed whenever I flipped through the pages, more questions arose between the blank lines than what were answered among the staffs reports.

OBITUARY FROM

www.denvereagle.com/obituaries/obituary.aspx?pa ge=lifestory&pd=17827364905

Rudolf G. Wernicke

Dr. Rudolf G. Wernicke, age 90, passed away doing the work he loved on February 28th, 2009. He was born in 1918 in Munich, Germany, and achieved fame in the mathematic and scientific communities for a paper written with early computing pioneer Alan Turing. After a cloudy history with the German war effort, he emigrated to the United States in 1949 with a visa from the State Department. Several decades of government research in Los Almos led to New Mexico, where Dr. Wernicke retired to pursue landscape photography and care for his cats. He came to Colorado shortly after the turn of the millennium to pursue charitable work for the Murkoff Corporation. A statement from the company calls Dr. Wernicke “a true humanitarian with a generous spirit.” He leaves no survivors.

I’m sure his history with Germany was cloudy.  They couldn’t have their “true humanitarian” looking bad before he fractured the minds of a couple dozen mentally disturbed people, and a delusional finger painting ‘priest’ guy.  What a loud of shit.

“We have faith in all the wrong things.  And it will destroy us.”

I looked from the man beneath the bed, and turned with the file to the foul toilet.

That wouldn’t have been very professional, so against my best wishes I left the file on the desk.  It would have made me feel better to dump it in that sludge, but if ever there came a day that they might find that file, it had a better chance of being illegible if not soaking up filth.

With a sigh I left the cell, not bothering to shut the door.  There was a purge gate a short distance ahead through another segregation gate, but of course it was locked.  Might’ve been the one that doctors head was in, I’ll never know.  Metal steps from here led to the upper floor, and more aggravated patients hammering at the bars with whatever they could lift.

“It’ll stretch until you snap.”

And fuck you very much, too.  I reeled around the nearest corner and found a dead path, broken completely.  Unless I wanted to risk climbing the bars, but there was no guarantee there was any way open on that side.  I didn’t want to test my bruised arms unless absolutely necessary.

I breezed past the patient, only satisfied he’d probably rot and die in there, but I had nothing to do with that.  Camera, night vision, and the comfort that I could see mostly where I was putting my feet.  The floor was clear, most of the wreckage had occurred on this floor which would impede my progress.  I’d manage though.

Showers.  I was supposed to escape through the showers.  Or, I was promised there was a way out through the showers.  How did I get there from here?  They were on the other side, that was my presumption.  I needed to find a way through this block, back to them.  It felt like I was far off course, I needed to know where I was and where I was going.

As I was passing a set of cells, the patient within opened his door right in front of me.  I had to back away or get knocked over the side, this seemed his intention as he stalked towards me, a whirlwind of insanity building in his eyes.

“Don’t you look at me like that.  Don’t you fucking think you’re fit to judge me, doctor!”

What the fuck!  He swung at me, and I put my arms up protecting my face, and the camera.  I shoved it in its pack as I tried to get around him, but he clubbed me in the mouth anyway as I ducked down.  “The well was always here, always poisoned.”

I dropped to my knee, but managed to stagger by as he tried to kick me.  Was there a way out over here?

Just another ledge that looked too short for my feet, but I took it anyway stuffing my heels back between the bars.  “Everyone, over here!”

Fuck him.  I scooted along the ledge, using my hands more to hold me steady when I repositioned my heels.  I fought with my horrible curiosity to look down and imagine what would happen, as my shoes slid against the loose cement.  It was all right, I wouldn’t let go, just had to keep a firm grip on the bars.

A set of arms thrust over my shoulders, grabbing me around the torso.  I gagged and grabbed them, shaking until I had bashed the side of his elbow against the bars.  I was free, but falling.  Twisting, I managed to snag the bars with a hand and swing about to face my attacker.  He punched out, and I was forced to twist away again, this time placing my back to a solid, safe wall. 

There was very little left of the wall, and it permitted me into the remains of a room with a desk and bed, and toilet.  Not much to film, but it was dark and I found myself relying more and more on my camera.  Regardless, it was all evidence to use.

I hadn’t really given thought to a lawsuit against Murkoff, even if it were possible.  After everything I had seen, everything I had endured, what were they going to give me?  Money?  Pfft.

There was a small hole knocked into the lower side of the wall, joining it to the next room, but not the one with the psycho that tried to strangle me.  I crouched down and peeked inside seeing only a bed and a body under it.  I was startled when it cringed away and spoke.

“The doctor told me once, that if you showed a caveman our technology, he would think it was magic.  And that if you showed a modern man magic, he would think it was technology.”

Another controversy of the reports, and the recollections of the patience.  They had to be talking about Dr. Wernicke, but many believed he was still among them.  Performing his experiments?

Dates and details of the Obituary and Death certificate conflicted as well.  But why?  Why cover up his time of death?

Or did he mean another doctor?  That was the higher possibility.  But so far, I doubted this.

There was no way out of this room, but for a cell door.  By the good grace of god it was unlocked, and I shuffled around the broken floor into an open walkway and solid ground.  The cells along this level looked as though their doors had been torn off, but there was no one here.  I soon saw why.

One room had a light that still worked, I lowered my camera to peer inside along a red streak that had been painted.  For me, for them, for us.  It didn’t matter what I thought anymore.  This was some sort of calling, a message to gather.  The options were follow and see, or remain and rot.

It looked like a body had been dragged here, and pulled down the hole chiseled out in the floor.  I couldn’t imagine what had done this work, didn’t want to either.  I dropped down the hole into a familiar chamber.  Tile walls, and grungy cement floor with a red streak indicating my route.

The egress, I think he called it.  Down the drain, follow the blood. I turned the camera up toward my path and paused, I wasn’t sure but it looked like a shape had moved on the wall beneath the steps.

That one other guy had gone the other way, he might still be down here.  Just to be certain I took the camera and fiddled with the options and played back to before the end.

The night vision had caught what looked like a shape, something I had seen before.  But I couldn’t be sure, it was too obscure and resembled your typical shadow.  I exited out and returned it to its regular functions.

I stepped down the steps listening for any sounds, the rumble of thunder came through causing me to pause and wait as the lights dimmed.  There was safety in the dark but I needed batteries to implement it fully.  At the base of the steps I saw only a crimson pool awaiting on the cracked tile.  Smelt like soured water and mildewed gym socks, and bad meat.  When I reached the bottom I saw in full the horror left to me.  Entrails and a spinal cord ripped apart, looked like somebody mopped the floor with innards.  All over the lockers and walls were written the words

Walrider

On one side was a symbol, vaguely reminding me of the atom.  Perhaps it meant a similar form, a poison or contamination.  Murkoff had called it ‘Environment contamination.’  I made certain to film everything, the bloody footprints, the God the ‘Father’ praised, and what he believed was its work.

“The word “Walrider” is all over this place. Murkoff was running an experiment here called PROJECT WALRIDER, but the patients talk about the Walrider like it’s a physical presence. A spirit or demon. Something they found in the mountain. I’d chalk it up to schizophrenic delusion, but I just saw something. Maybe. Maybe it was a glitch in the camera. Or maybe this place is getting to me.”

Yeah, just maybe my coat was beige and had a big blood stain on the back.  It was starting to dry, and it smelled almost as bad as this room.

I tried to rationalize what I had seen, it hadn’t been clear in the first place.  Just a shadow, the egress guy might’ve been hanging around, or anyone else.  Patients were everywhere, they had a habit of showing up where they could do the most harm.  Thunder, the lights dimmed from the storm.  There was an explanation that I would feel comfortable with, it just needed to sound like more a valid scientific fact rather than coddling bullcrap.

This place was just getting to me.

The showers looked more like a death camp gas chamber.  Spouts hung off crooked pipes from the ceiling, and more lockers had been placed at the far end of the dark room.  With blood.  I saw no handles to turn, water would have been sweet nectar, to clear the taste of blood in my mouth, and a little to clean the camera a bit, but it was not to be.

There was another battery that had fallen from a locker, which I took.  I couldn’t have too many in this place.

I stood beside the egress staring down into the chiseled cement, attempting to fathom in my scarce knowledge how these people might have managed this.  Where would it lead me?  Down the drain, it was the only way out.  Why?  To what purpose?  Why the elaborate detour through hell?

To find whatever it was the Father wished me to see?  This Walrider?  I doubted it.  But a part of me felt that this was his Calling for me.  Ever since he discovered me in the main lobby, he had orchestrated this all out.  My path, the patients, the messages.  I was here to see something, and I was seeing too much of it.