Free Web NovelChapter 16: Now We’re Both Red
The shotgun stayed in my hands as I started down the basement stairs, and every step made my body complain in a different way.
My chest still hurt from the rifle round that had slammed into the plate, my side kept leaking warmth beneath the carrier, my neck still felt wrong from the hammer strike, and the migraine was still sitting behind my eyes like it had never really left.
And yet, for the first time since entering the compound, I felt something close to relief.
[Almost there... gotta hurry up... I still need to handle first aid...]
After all, Kara was close. I knew she was close. And that was enough to keep me moving.
The staircase got narrower as I went down, with concrete walls pressing close on both sides while fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
The lower I went, the stronger a strange smell became, and I knew I did not like it before I could even name it properly because it smelled like chemicals.
It took me a few seconds to figure out it smelled like a hospital. After all, it had been three years since I had come across that smell.
And by the time I reached the bottom, the smell had thickened into a stench.
[That’s not what I expected....] My feet stopped on their own.
Instead of opening into some huge underground garage, the stairs ended in a small corridor.
Two doors sat on the left. One door sat on the right. At the far end stood a heavy reinforced steel door.
I pushed my awareness through the walls almost instinctively.
And what I felt inside chilled my spine.
The first room held a man and a woman, and another woman lying on what appeared to be a table. The second room held the same thing.
Yet no heartbeat came from either woman on the table.
The third room was an empty office.
And the excitement I had been carrying down the stairs vanished in one hard second.
[Motherfucker...] the thought floated as my breath ragged, feeling out of breath without so much as moving a muscle.
I sent the shotgun into back inventory and pulled the hatchet from my back, gripping it in my right hand while my left finger hooked through the karambit’s ring and pulled it free.
A shot to the face would be a little too quick.
I kicked the first door open hard enough to slam it into the wall, and a man and a woman inside screamed the second they saw me.
Both of them wore light blue medical clothes, with gloves and head covers still on, and both of them looked terrified enough that for a moment they almost seemed human again.
They stepped back when I entered, but my eyes stayed fixed on the naked woman lying on the operation table in the center of the room.
I walked straight past them and checked her pulse anyway, even though the awareness had already told me exactly what I was going to find. But a part of me really wished the awareness had detected it wrong.
But sure enough, there was no pulse.
"Kidnapping... forcing prostitution... and if that was not enough..."
My voice came out rough, and I could hear how bad my breathing had gotten.
My heart was pounding hard enough to hurt the bruising, and my breathing had become fast enough that I wasn’t even able to talk properly.
I turned toward the man and the woman, and the rage hit hard enough that my vision narrowed.
"You assholes... won’t even let them be whole..."
The man came forward almost immediately, crying and begging with his hands together, eyes wide, tears and snot coating his face.
"Sir, please! We could not refuse them! We surrender! Please save us from them!" he said, shaking so hard the words barely stayed together. "I have a family too, sir! A daughter! Please, I swear, please..."
I stared at him for a moment, then my eyes dropped to his wrist.
Seeing me pause, hope started to show in his eyes.
"That a Rolex I see on your wrist?"
"Huh...?"
I spat on his face and swung.
-Thlirdth-!-GHHRRRAA-!
The hatchet hit hard, ripping apart his jaw hard enough that blood and teeth sprayed across the room.
He stumbled backward, tongue hanging from his jawless mouth, showering blood everywhere, making a sound that was almost a scream and almost not.
But I still wasn’t done.
The karambit went into his eye and held him in place while he kept trying to claw at me, somehow still begging through the damage.
The screaming had turned into wet choking sounds, but I still twisted the wrist holding the hatchet, drove the blade into the side of his neck in a backhanded swing, shoving it in with a wet squelch of the blood that poured out.
Wrenching it out of his neck, I swung again with everything ounce of my being.
This time the axe ripped through.
-Thud-! freewebnovёl.ƈom
The body collapsed, and I was left standing there with blood all over me and the dead man’s head hanging from the karambit ring.
The woman behind him had gone rigid by then, too stunned to even scream while his blood splashed onto her face.
My eyes turned to the woman next.
And that was the exact moment her mind finally broke.
"AAAAAAAHHHH!"
She scrambled for the door, slipping in the blood on the floor, falling face first before she could get there.
But I wasn’t going to let her escape.
I threw the severed head at her, and it hit the back of her head hard enough to drop her flat again.
By the time she turned around, I was already on her.
"P-Please! I’m sorry!"
My hand caught her hair, and the hatchet came down without ceremony.
-Thlirdth-!
Blood pooled into his mouth almost instantaneously, yet the hatchet didn’t go all the way through.
So I wrenched it out and swung again.
Then again, and again, and again, while blood sprayed out with every hit.
She was dead by the second swing, but I did not stop until the head finally came free and the body fell over; only then did I take a breath.
I tossed her head into the dustbin as I gave the dead girl on the operating table one last look before walking out.
[To think I used to trade with these people for food...]
The thought made me feel sicker than I had ever felt.
The second room was more of the same. Another dead girl. Another pair of ’people’ in medical clothes. Another flood of excuses followed by another flood of blood.
The screams echoed through the corridor, then the begging, then more screaming, and by the time I stepped back out of that room the air itself felt dirty. freewēbnoveℓ.com
The third room was different.
It held records. Files, surgical reports, stacks of paperwork.
Boxes full of evidence.
Enough evidence to prove this was not random; this was a business. An organized industry built on people.
Then came photographs for their next targets pinned on the wall, full with their routines written.
And among them was Kara’s photo, taken right outside our apartment.
By the time I walked out, blood was still dripping off of my entire body.
Even my boots left red footprints behind.
And for a second, I just stood there breathing hard, still angry and still shaking, until something finally felt wrong.
Tikki was not on my shoulder.
A cold spike of pure panic instantly punched straight through the adrenaline.
Snapping my head left and right, I found him standing several meters away in the corridor, with his tail puffed, his ears flattened, and his eyes wide open... just watching me in an unblinking stare.
[There...] I sighed.
"Dude, you gotta stop doing that..." I took one step toward him, and his back arched immediately, freezing me mid-step.
Only then did I realize: Blood covered everything. Bits of flesh clung to my gloves. My jacket was soaked.
I instinctively gazed at my shoulder, where Tikki sits, and found a small piece of flesh where his paws usually rested.
And my gaze averted by itself.
"There’s only so much even you can ignore..."
The words came out quietly.
"Look, I shouldn’t have... I’m-" I stopped myself before the last word could come out.
Because I knew exactly what I was about to say next, and it would have been a lie.
The fact of the matter was, I was not sorry.
Looking up at the ceiling, my shoulders slumped as I dragged a bloody hand across my face and took a slow breath that felt heavier than anything I had ever breathed.
I slid the karambit back into its sheath on my chest plate as I crouched down where I stood before extending the back of my hand toward Tikki and holding it there.
He looked at my outstretched hand with obvious hesitation, then looked back at my face, then looked at the hand again.
I could see the fear in him, and that made my chest hurt in a way the gunshot had not.
"Tikki... Let’s go get Kara."
My voice sounded tired.
"She’s scared too... and I bet she’s crying."
Tikki stared at me for a long moment.
Then he approached carefully, one slow step at a time, and sniffed my hand before backing away slightly, then sniffed it again.
And just as the thought surfaced that I may have done something irreparable, he moved forward again, slowly and carefully, and rubbed his face against my hand.
The blood on my hand marred his face immediately, staining his pristine white, grey, and orange fur in red ugly streaks.
But he did not pull away.
Instead, he rubbed against my hand again, then again, until both sides of his body were stained with blood.
Then he looked up at me with something hard and steady in his eyes as though trying to communicate:
Now we’re both red. Let’s go get Kara.
A second later he jumped onto my shoulder, slid into the pocket, and settled there even though the fabric was soaked through with blood.
While I stood back up slowly and silently.
The hatchet went back to my waist.
And the shotgun came back into my hands as I turned toward the reinforced door at the end of the corridor, while my awareness stretched through the metal and into whatever waited beyond it.
Tikki’s claws dug lightly into my shoulder.
And I started walking.
