Chapter 11 - SEEING RED
In the darkened corridors of the West Wing, rested the twisted and fused mass of the conglomerate. Its various limbs had been bent, broken and hacked off. Its horrific bulbous form lay nearly flat and deflated. But then it shifted. The interwoven corpses and veiny membranes squirmed and pulsed until a crimson figure emerged from a massive carved opening in its form.
Luna pushed out like some newly born monstrosity and collapsed to the floor. She vomited out blood and bodily fluids and ultimately gasped for air.
The fight had taken everything out of her, pushed her far beyond her limit. And yet, even now, after all that, all she could think of was her sister. Her mind was a whirlwind of terrible thoughts. A ravenous need to tear apart flesh and bathe in blood.
Growl.
Luna looked up and found the awful visage of Mama Brutus lording over her. But its form had changed. Its head nurse uniform had been all but torn off and its skin had blackened and hardened. Twisted horns and spikes had pushed through on various parts of its body and its hair now drifted weightlessly in the air.
Even in her frenzied state, Luna understood that Mama Brutus was becoming something else entirely. Something that had not walked this earth in hundreds of years. Its singular eye stared down at her and its mouth smiled with maddening glee. Only she couldn’t tell where its form ended and the darkness around it began.
It leaned down to stare into her darkened eyes and Luna could hear the deranged whispers in her mind intensify. She suddenly knew exactly what she needed to do.
The monstrosity reached forward with its gangly and twisted hand and in its palm it held a key.
“What should we do with him?” asked Nikolai.
“Did you hear what he said about the experiments?” asked Luna, still maintaining her fixed gaze upon Brimwall.
“Only the last part, but I heard enough.”
“Please…” Brimwall whimpered. “You have to understand…I didn’t want any of this.”
“Were you forced to do it?” Alba asked. And when he didn’t answer she continued. “Did your superiors put a gun to your head and force you to sacrifice lives?”
Tears streamed down Brimwall’s face now. “You don’t…understand…”
“I think we understand just fine.” said Nikolai. “What should we do?”
Alba inhaled deeply. “We need to get the fuck out of here, somehow. We can bring shitstain over here as bait if any of the monsters attack. But I am seriously ready to get the fuck out of this fucking hospital.”
Nikolai noted an anger and determination he had not seen from Alba before. A singular focus that was almost terrifying to behold.
“And after that?”
“If we escape…we’ll kill him and find our way home.”
“And what about Luna?”
Alba finally broke eye contact with Brimwall as doubt found its way to her mind yet again. Her hand clutched the still healing stab wounds on her stomach.
“I want to believe we can find her on our way out and save her…but I don’t know if she can be saved anymore.”
“I’m sorry.” said Nikolai.
“If you spare me, I can tell you how to save your twin.” said Brimwall. “I can tell you how to bring her back from her bloodlust.”
Alba’s eyes returned to the sniffling doctor. Without any hesitation she pulled blood from her fingers and formed a long, crystalized blood needle and pointed it towards one of his eyes.
“Talk. How do we do it?”
“S-s-she needs to be sedated first. Then she should naturally calm down and regain her senses. But if she’s too far gone we might have to…lobotomize her.”
“What?!” Nikolai exclaimed.
“What? What’s that?” Alba asked.
“It’s a…procedure where a metal spike is inserted through the eye cavity in order to sever the connection between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain. It has been known to calm patients down.”
“It has been known to destroy people’s minds or even kill them. Alba, it would turn Luna into a-a-a vegetable. She would never be able to function properly ever again.”
“That’s your solution? To damn my sister to a fate worse than death?!”
“Honestly it’s a mercy compared to the hell she’s going through right now, that is if she has become frenzied. Warlings notoriously become incredibly dangerous once frenzied.”
Alba and Nikolai looked at one another. The bottle of ether that Nikolai hand swiped now rested on a nearby table.
“Do you think we can do it?” she asked Nikolai.
“What? Catch her? No idea. She was frighteningly fast and strong the last time we met and it almost killed you. Almost killed us both.”
Alba looked inward as she contemplated her options. Brimwall noticed this and seized his moment.
“I know it’s hard. But sometimes we have to do terrible things for the greater good.”
Alba looked at him with conflict in her eyes.
Nikolai clenched his fist and pummeled it into Brimwall’s face. His glasses flew off and he tumbled to the ground with a whimper.
“The greater good?! The greater fucking good?! If ‘what needs to be done’ includes sacrificing people’s lives then there is absolutely nothing good about it! Why do you keep trying to find excuses to kill people like us?!”
Brimwall wiped the blood from his nose and looked up at the furious young man that towered over him.
“You don’t understand. People like you don’t understand the weight of the decisions my kind is faced with every single day.”
A terrible fury gripped Nikolai as he stepped forward and brought down his foot on top of Brimwall’s leg. The doctor wailed in pain.
“The entire hospital has been destroyed! Your staff abused your patients! You abused your patients! Everyone is dead and those who live have turned into monsters! Whatever decisions you had to make, my gods, you failed every single one. You couldn’t have fucked this whole situation up even if you tried!”
Nikolai felt Alba’s hand rest on his shoulder. Looking back he found the alabaster girl standing in the darkness with her almost luminous red eyes fixed on Brimwall.
“We need him…for now.”
Nikolai stepped back and Alba crouched down to be eye level with Brimwall.
“You know the real tragedy here?” she asked in a frighteningly calm tone of voice.
Brimwall shook his head.
“None of this had to happen. None of these decisions needed to be made. It was your greed and your complete disregard for human life that brought this hell upon us. I’ll make sure you suffer for all the terrible things you did to us.”
Tears and sweat intermingled on Brimwall’s face as he beheld the furious embodiment of his actions made manifest before him.
Suddenly, they heard the jiggle of keys and the metallic creak of a door opening.
Both Alba and Nikolai turned to look towards the sound, finding only a bricked hallway leading into darkness.
“What’s over there?” asked Alba.
“Th-th-that corridor leads to the entrance to this lab.” Dr Brimwall answered. “That was the security door where you two got attacked.”
The two warlings looked at one another. They were still healing and in no condition to fight at the moment. Nikolai quickly scanned the lab and found his carrion weapon resting on a nearby table.
“You stay right there.” Nikolai commanded Brimwall as he darted off to fetch his weapon.
Alba spotted Nikolai’s bag leaning up against one of the tables. If they needed to accelerate their healing they needed that bloodshot and fast.
While the two warlings were rapidly gathering their things, Dr Brimwall looked towards the darkened corridor. His mind frantically evaluated all the options. Should he try and make a run for it out the only exit? Most definitely not. There was no telling what monstrosity was making its way towards them right now. Should he try to escape the opposite way, through the rift? That would most definitely lead to certain death. And even if he survived the ordeal he didn’t want to become like them. He wanted to remain human.
His eyes suddenly picked up on nearly imperceptible movement in the darkness and soon two crimson eyes came into view, staring at the three of them. He could faintly detect the outline of a feminine figure lurking in the shadows, like some feral predator ready to pounce.
Alba rifled through the bag and pulled out the bloodshot and two vials. They only had one left after this. She injected herself with one of them, reloaded the bloodshot and handed it off to Nikolai.
“Here.”
“Thank you.” Nikolai replied until his eyes now spotted the intruder.
With his enhanced umbral sight he could much more clearly pick out the distinct shape of Luna standing there in the darkness.
“She’s here.” he said quietly.
Alba froze in place, not daring to turn to look.
“What do we do?” she whispered back.
“I don’t know.”
Alba suddenly noticed a keyring resting on the same table where Brimwall had picked up his scalpel. It became painfully clear to her that there was only one place for them to go if they wanted to escape. Her eyes now found the security door containing the rift and the abyssal opening beyond it.
It was the only way.
“Hold her off, I only need a couple of seconds, and then you follow me, okay?”
Nikolai’s eyes remained fixed on the shadowed figure in the corridor and he offered no reply. He only nodded affirmingly.
In a flash, Alba ran towards the keys and picked them up, meanwhile Nikolai placed the bloodshot against his throat and pulled the trigger. The feral, crimson shape of Luna dashed forward like some horrific wraith. Nikolai just barely managed to activate his weapon in time to deflect her first flurry of strikes.
The eldritch crimson daggers bounced off the much heavier cleaver but she was much quicker than he was. It was only a matter of time before she got past and gutted him.
Alba grabbed the keys and rushed towards the door. She quickly recognized the same key they had been using elsewhere in the hospital but she knew that one didn’t work on the other security door. It was fair to assume that this one door also required a different key. Most of them look rather plain but there was one more key that resembled the design of the security key but except it was a bit heavier. It had to be it.
In one swift movement she inserted the key, turned it and much to her relief, she heard the heavy door unlock.
“Nikolai!” she called out as she opened the door.
As she did, however, she felt an oppressive wave hit her. Like some force had just spilled through from the open doorway to constrict her body and mind. But she ignored it and pushed inward.
Nikolai parried another flurry of attacks and when he saw his opening he pushed the flat of his cleaver forward and smacked it right into Luna’s face, sending her stumbling backwards. He then turned on his heel and rushed through the door, hearing Luna’s rapid footfalls right behind him.
As he passed through Alba quickly closed the door and turned the key on the other side, locking it. Luna slammed into the door and then wildly struck at the window as if to try and break through. When it became clear that she wouldn’t be able to do that she stopped and glared at the two of them. Like a wild but cunning animal that now took in its surroundings, trying desperately to figure out a way inside.
Alba looked at her sister now once more and felt nothing but heartache. She had wanted to save her sister so badly but now, after everything, she no longer recognized who this was. All her hopes for rescuing and being reunited with her sister were slowly falling apart. Her eyes briefly found the bottle of ether they had brought with them down here and wondered if that would even work on her.
Luna started slowly pacing back and forth, her eyes remaining fixed on the two of them.
“What now?” asked Nikolai, wincing at the oppressive presence of the rift.
The smell within this confined space was revolting. The fleshy roots or veins that had spread out from the rift smelled absolutely foul, like they had all rotted. And yet they all ever so gently writhed on the ground and walls.
Luna now slowly looked down at the lock on the door and realized something. She then turned back towards the corridor she came from.
“Oh no.” said Alba.
“What?”
“I think she’s going back for the other key. The one she used to get down here.”
Luna then quickly sprinted down the darkened corridor, disappearing into the shadows once more.
“What do we do?!” asked Nikolai.
Alba looked back at the tear in reality that seemed to pulsed and writhe in their presence, like some hungry maw awaiting a meal.
“Oh no, tell me you’re not thinking of going in there.”
“It’s the only way. We’re stuck here and we’re too weak to actually fight.”
The two of them looked at the rift, dreading their one remaining option.
“You ready?” she asked.
“No.” Nikolai answered.
For one fleeting moment they looked at one another and held each other’s hand. As Luna emerged back from the shadows, key in hand, the two warlings stepped through the rift and left this dreaded reality.
Luna ran through the subterranean lab, unlocked the security door and swung it open. But she hesitated before entering. As if some measure of horror managed to give her pause in her frenzied state.
And then she rushed in as well, following her prey.
The lab was silent for a few moments…until Dr Ian Fletcher Brimwall stood up from behind one of the tables. It seemed like everyone had forgotten him in all the excitement. An opportunity he was not sure to waste.
“Time to leave.” he said as he began gathering up his research, preparing for a swift departure.
