CHAPTER 4:THE MOURNING WARD
799 Words
POV: CAPTAIN ELIAS VANCE
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"Status check. Everyone still in one piece?" I asked, my voice rasping against the dry air of the third floor.
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We had escaped the basement, but the cost was our remaining salt-grenades. Jace was leaning heavily on Bravo, his face pale from the possession. The third floor was different. It didn't smell like rot; it smelled like lilies and funeral incense.
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[ Jace: I'm... I'm okay, Cap. But my tablet is fried. The frequency pulse burned the motherboard. We're blind. ]
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[ Bravo: We still have my shotgun and your rifle. That's enough 'eyes' for me. ]
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I scanned the hallway. Unlike the floors below, the walls here were pristine white. No blood. No peeling wallpaper. Just rows of closed white doors and a long, red carpet that looked like a tongue stretching down the corridor.
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"Don't touch the walls," I warned. "The Doctor likes to hide in the symmetry."
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We moved slowly. Suddenly, the lights didn't flicker—they turned a soft, warm amber. From behind the door marked Room 303, I heard a sound that made my blood freeze. It was the sound of a humming bird—a lullaby I hadn't heard in fifteen years.
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"Cap? Your vitals are spiking," Bravo whispered, his hand on my shoulder. "What do you hear?"
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"Silence," I lied. But the humming was getting louder.
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I walked toward Room 303, my boots sinking into the red carpet. I didn't wait for a tactical breach. I turned the handle.
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The room was filled with sunlight that shouldn't exist. Sitting by the window was a young woman in a hospital gown. She was brushing her hair, her back turned to me.
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"Sarah?" I whispered.
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"Elias, you're late for visiting hours," the woman said. She turned around. It was her. My sister. The same Sarah who died in my arms during the Subic Breach. But her eyes weren't black sockets; they were bright and full of life.
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[ Bravo: Cap! Stay back! There's nothing in that room but shadows! ]
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I looked at Bravo through my HUD. In his eyes, I was staring at an empty, rotted room. But in my eyes, I was looking at my sister.
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"It's a sensory trap, Elias," a different voice whispered—the feminine voice from my earpiece. This time, she wasn't taunting. She sounded urgent. "The Doctor is using your grief as a bridge. If you touch her, he enters your mind."
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"Who are you?" I demanded, pointing my rifle at Sarah—or the thing that looked like her.
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Sarah’s smile widened. Her jaw began to stretch, the skin tearing at the corners. "I'm your favorite memory, big brother. Don't you want to stay here? No more Breachers. No more Mercury. Just us."
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"Cap, she's a Class-5 Mirage!" Jace shouted, fumbling for a manual talisman. "Close your eyes!"
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I didn't close my eyes. I reached into my tactical pouch and pulled out a small, glass vial. It wasn't Mercury. It was Holy Water mixed with Phosphorus.
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"My sister didn't hum that song," I said, my voice cold and steady. "She hated that lullaby."
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I smashed the vial at 'Sarah's' feet.
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FWOOSH!
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The room erupted in blue flames. The sunlight vanished. The beautiful woman shrieked, her face melting like wax to reveal a pulsating mass of black nerves and surgical wires.
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"ENGAGE!" I roared.
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Bravo didn't hesitate. He emptied a buckshot into the center of the mass. The Entity—the 'Mourner'—recoiled, its form flickering between Sarah and a skeletal nurse.
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"The voice was right," I muttered, firing a burst of Mercury rounds into the creature's chest. "It was a bridge."
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The creature dissolved into a puddle of grey fluid, and the 'sunny' room reverted back into a dark, rotted cell. I stood there, breathing hard, my heart aching more than my lungs.
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[ Bravo: Cap... who was that voice? The one you were talking to? ]
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"I don't know," I said, looking at the ceiling. "But she just saved my life."
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[ Jace: Cap, I found something. ]
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Jace pointed to the floor where the creature had vanished. There was a rusted key with a tag that read: DIRECTOR’S OFFICE - TOP FLOOR.
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"He's inviting us," Jace whispered.
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"Then let's not keep the Doctor waiting," I said, grabbing the key. "Bravo, Jace, move out. We’re finishing this."
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As we left the room, the feminine voice whispered one last time, so low only I could hear.
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“The Doctor isn't the only one who lived through the fire, Elias. See you at the top.”
- Writer
