Char felt an impulse to crouch down behind the brick pillar, to hide from those staring windows and the danger that lurked within them, but she knew it was useless. They’d approached openly. If the inhabitants were paying attention, then they’d already been spotted.

  There was something imposing about the solid brick construction, the bars on the windows. It looked more like a prison than a hospital.

  Her newly sensitive instincts were warning her, and her new mana senses detected something… she couldn’t find the right words to describe it. It was like opening your refrigerator and catching a faint whiff of something that had gone bad, but not being sure you’d actually smelled it, or if it was just paranoia. It was subtle, and she didn’t have the knowledge or experience to be sure that it was more than the seeds of a hundred horror movies sprouting in the fertile soil of her overactive imagination. Something magical was definitely going on here, though.

  Declan gulped audibly, trying to wet a suddenly dry mouth. “I… um… Are you sure we need to go in there? I mean, maybe if we just circle around… we might pick up the trail on the other side…” His voice trailed off, and she could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe it. She couldn’t blame him for grasping at straws. She didn’t want to go in either.

  Squaring her shoulders, she thought about the monsters she’d defeated: the Lurking Dread, the Dryad, the Root Mother, and others. She was the strongest person on the planet, and she had the title to prove it. Well, OK, she’d been the strongest a few days ago, but even if someone had caught up, what were the odds she’d run into them? It was a big planet. Whatever was in there, she could handle it.

  “Come on. Not getting anything done standing out here,” she said, the words for herself as much as they were for Declan. She passed between the pillars and headed for the double doors of the entrance. She heard Declan take a deep breath before following. Lulu stalked alongside, alert. The hairs on her ruff were standing on end, and occasional flickers of flame licked across her coat.

  The double doors were nothing grand, just sturdy institutional doors with wired-reinforced glass; the sort you’d see at the front of any older government building. The word “Ravenmoor” was painted on each window in stark black letters. The doors hung ajar, one of them blowing back and forth as the wind caught it. Rusty red handprints marred the edge of the door. Next to the doors was another sign. This one read: "Caution. High Security Facility. All visitors must be accompanied by staff. To inquire contact West London NHS Trust."

  Lulu growled. The hair on the back of Char’s neck prickled, and ice ran down her spine. She glanced back at Declan. His eyes were a little too wide, and he gripped his crowbar tightly in both hands, but he nodded his readiness. She nudged the door open with the toe of her boot, keeping both hands on the sword held ready before her.

  The interior was a dark contrast to the stark desert sun. She stepped inside, trusting her Foresight to warn her in the few moments it took for her eyesight to adjust to the gloom. Lulu stepped in after her, and the flickers of flame running down her back lit the space with flickering, unsteady light.

  They stood in a small foyer-style lobby. It smelled of industrial cleaners layered with the funk of unwashed bodies, the coppery tang of blood, and the sickly stench of sewage. A short set of seats sat against one wall, a potted ficus tree lying across them as though it had shucked its pot and decided to take a nap. A window in the wall across from the door shielded a receptionist’s desk, but the window was crazed with cracks, the center of the wired glass bulging outward, as though something had hit it with great force. The center of the bulge was stained red.

  A security door next to the window hung open, battered and deformed to the point Char doubted it would close at all anymore. Odd symbols, like aborted child’s drawings and fever-dream sigils, were graffitied across the walls using substances Char didn’t want to identify.

  A high-pitched giggle echoed down the hallway from beyond the security door. The ominous sound was cut short, the fear-inducing eeriness of it undermined by the shushing noise that followed. Another voice started to sing off-key, “Did somebody say just eat? Ding, dong, a ring-a-ding-ding-dong.” The giggle came again.

  “Katy Perry? Really?” Declan muttered from behind her.

  Char readied an Arc spell, but she tried to crank the power down by putting in the smallest amount of mana that would let the spell hold together. These were people she was facing. Crazy people, maybe, but still, they weren’t monsters. She would rather stun them than kill them. The reduced mana made the spell unstable; it tried to twist away from her. She clamped down on it with her will, but beads of sweat popped out on her forehead. It wasn’t going to hold together for long.

  She swept through the doorway, watching for danger. A shudder ran through her as the cold, malicious feeling of some invasive mana grew stronger, like it was trying to worm its way into her. “We’re not here to hurt anyone. We just want to know what happened to the people from the other buildings.”

  A chorus of answers came back, overlapping and nearly unintelligible. “They were delicious.” “Don’t want to hurt us. Can’t believe them, always hurt us.” “Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies!” “Come and find out, sweets.” “Wouldn’t you just like to know.”

  The voices echoed in the hallway, making it impossible to tell how many there were. The hallway was empty, but open doorways lined it on both sides. The first door, immediately to Char’s right, opened into the receptionist’s area. The desk was splintered, and paperwork had been flung everywhere; some of it stuck to the floor and walls, adhered by puddles and smears of dark blood.

  Too much blood for the donor to have survived losing it.

  Char hardened her heart and pumped more mana into her spell, stabilizing it. She didn’t want to hurt these people, just because they had mental problems didn't make them automatically bad people, but there was something strange going on here, and every sign pointed to it being deadly dangerous. If they tried to kill her, she had to be willing to do what was necessary to survive. She stepped forward, making room for Declan and Lulu to follow her. One more step, and it was like she’d rung the dinner bell for a pack of starving animals.

  People rushed out of the rooms on all sides, pouring down the hallway in a tide of grinning, knife-wielding insanity. There was nothing human in their eyes. Char released her spell. The arc of lightning hit the lead man, blasting him backwards into the mass of his fellows and slowing the rush. For a moment, she stood, stunned by what she’d just done, looking into the wide, surprised eyes of the man as he was pushed backward by the force of the spell, the front of his gray t-shirt a smoking, black ruin. The blank madness had cleared from his features, and he only looked confused as he died.

  Then, the tide was upon her, and she had to fight. Lulu took one inmate to the ground, snarling. Declan swung his crowbar, breaking the wrist of a woman with wild, dreadlocked hair who screamed. Char blocked another knife with her sword, and the riposte came from instinct, not conscious decision, as the blade twisted around the blocked blade and slid into the chest of the man wielding it. She hadn’t meant to kill him, but her instincts knew what was needed, even if she didn’t

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  She tried not to wince as she pulled the sword free. She couldn’t afford to dwell on it. More bloodthirsty foes pressed in, and only the narrow confines of the hallway prevented them from being overrun.

  One of the inmates broke away from the mob, screaming, his clothes on fire from a blast of Lulu’s fire breath. He ran back up the hall, a human torch. Another fell to a blow from Declan, and the crunch as the crowbar hit his skull was unmistakably final. Char took a deep slice to her arm above her bracers, and the pain snapped her attention back to reality. It was kill or be killed. She could feel sorry for these people later, but doing so now was going to get her or her friends killed.

  With a scream of frustration, horror, and rage, she started to fight in earnest. Two more of their attackers fell under her blade, another to Declan’s swings, and yet another to Lulu’s red-hot teeth, and the mob broke. They ran, scattering up the hall and through the doorways.

  Char stood, breathing hard, surrounded by bodies. The blackened, smoldering corpse of the human torch lay in the middle of the hall, twenty feet away, filling the space with smoke that smelled disturbingly like barbecue. Char twisted to the side and vomited.

  When she turned back around, Declan was holding out a rag and a bottle of water for her. She gave him a weak smile. He looked as green as she felt, and his eyes were a little too wide, his breath a little too shallow. He was just as affected by it as she’d been. She wiped her mouth and swished the water around to get rid of the taste, spitting it out.

  “We’ll unpack this later. Let’s focus on surviving for now, OK?” She watched his face as he nodded. The wild disbelief and horror in his eyes firmed into determination, and she nodded.

  When her dad returned from his deployment, he’d tried to hide how it affected him at first. His violent nightmares and bursts of frustration and anger had scared her. When she’d flinched and run away from him after one particularly bad episode, he’d changed tactics. He took her with him to see his therapist, and with her guidance, he’d explained to Char what he was going through, how it affected him, and, most importantly, let her know that he wasn’t upset with her, that none of it was her fault.

  After that, she’d read everything that she could about PTSD, looking for ways she could help her dad, or at least support him as he found ways to heal. She had a pretty good idea of what happened to people who experienced the sort of things she and Declan were going through now. They were going to need to have a serious talk when this was over. She knew what to expect, but Declan probably didn’t. He was a kid, damnit. He might be technically old enough to join the military and go off to war, but he shouldn’t have to be dealing with this shit. No one should.

  Those damned aliens had a lot to answer for.

  She pushed aside the anger and worry and refocused on the situation. Her mind kept finding tangents to wander off on, and that was not good. She wasn’t exactly dissociating, but her brain kept trying to dodge the truth. She made herself look at the bodies around her.

  They were a mix of ages, genders, and ethnicities. Most wore variations on the same institutional uniform: gray sweatpants, gray t-shirts, light-blue slip-on shoes, but two of them wore nurse's scrubs, and one the overalls of a maintenance worker. They’d personalized their clothes in makeshift ways that made them look like they’d rolled through a riot after losing a fight with a hardware store. Marker graffiti, torn-off sleeves, a necklace made of cabinet hinges and handles, wraps of electrical wiring—one woman had pulled the tail of her shirt up through her cleavage to make a halter top. That woman also looked like she’d tried to dye her blonde hair with melted crayons—half red and half blue. A dime-store Harley Quinn. Another man had half-healed slices over nearly every inch of exposed skin, some old scars, and many that were much more recent, like the tribal markings of extreme self-harm.

  All of them were filthy, splattered with blood and grime, as though they’d made no attempt at all to take care of themselves in the past week since the aliens came. Had they been this disturbed before the apocalypse, or had something driven them deeper into madness?

  Lulu bumped against her leg, shaking her from her thoughts. Sounds from deeper in the building reminded her that there was no time to stand here contemplating. “You good?” she asked Declan, her eyes on the hallway and its doorways.

  There was a long pause before his answer came back, but Char was glad he’d taken the time to think about it instead of snapping off a macho reassurance. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m OK.”

  A voice, barely a whisper at first, echoed down the hallway. It was impossible to make out the words, the chant, but it grew in volume until the words were clear: “Master’s gonna get ya. Master’s gonna eat ya.” They repeated, over and over, other voices joining in. A chill ran down Char’s spine, and she shuddered.

  “Please, tell me they don’t mean that literally.” Declan’s voice was a quiet mutter.

  The hallway was only dimly lit. Diffuse sunlight from rooms that had windows leaked into the hall from a few of the open doors, leaving patches of light with deeper shadows between. Lulu’s flickering flames made shadows dance and waver. More of the strange symbols were painted on the walls.

  Char felt like she was making a foray into Hell, but she stiffened her spine and went forward anyway. ‘Come on, Adair. You’ve got this.’ The internal pep-talk helped, and she moved forward.

  She’d missed seeing the man who’d ducked through the first doorway during the fight, but her Foresight warned her half a second before he popped around the door frame, a massive meat cleaver raised high. She had her sword raised before she knew what the danger was, and the massive man in blood-spattered clothes impaled himself with barely any effort on her part. She only had to step to the side to avoid the cleaver as it dropped from his suddenly limp fingers.

  Exhaling in shock, she pulled the blade free, letting the corpse slump to the ground. She’d be seeing his surprised expression in her nightmares. She was faster and stronger than these people, with advantages they didn’t have. She could probably carve through them all easily if she let herself go. But she didn’t want to lose that much of her humanity.

  A snarl and scream from behind her made her spin. Lulu was pulling down a woman with a sharpened pole who’d come out of an office across the hall. Her teeth were in the woman’s arm, and she was shaking her head viciously side-to-side, jerking the woman off balance and shredding her flesh with teeth that glowed and smoked. Declan stepped up and put the woman out of her misery with a quick blow. His jaw was set in grim determination, but Char could see the same battle that she was fighting going on behind his eyes.

  These people had ventured out and attacked others. They might be mental patients who only needed care and understanding in normal times, but the cold, hungry mana that permeated the building had done something to them. As they were now they were a danger to every other survivor in the area. She had to stop thinking like a civilized person with the luxury of being merciful. It was a noble goal to aim for, but not all goals were attainable. Killing these people felt like a failure; it made her feel dirty on the inside, but she’d be saving more lives by putting them down. It would be even better if she could find the source of what was driving them to this and end it before she had to kill more of the patients.

  “Dec, you can wait outside if you need to. No shame.” She tried to sound like she knew what she was doing, but she wasn’t sure it was working.

  “No, I…” He paused, taking a steadying breath, “I get it. I’m OK. Let’s just get this over with.”

  The chanting had stopped. They made their way down the hall, checking each room. Every inmate they encountered rushed them, madness in their eyes. They didn’t try to talk; they only attacked. Char and Declan had little choice but to kill them. Char was starting to wish she'd chosen Taser Touch as her Lightning spell. At least then she'd have a less lethal option for fighting back. By the time they reached the T-intersection at the end of the hall, Char was certain there was more than normal mental illness at work here. There were five more bodies behind them, and more blood on her hands than she wanted to think about.

  At the T-junction, there was a set of double doors under a sign labeled ‘Staff Cafeteria.’ The sign had a line drawn through it in blood. More blood had been used to paint words across the doors. “Hell’s Breakroom.”

  Long hallways stretched away to either side. There was a directory on the wall next to the cafeteria doors, but it had been defaced beyond readability. Someone had taken a knife to the sign and the wall all around it with manic abandon.

  The halls were silent, but Lulu’s hackles were still up, and Char could sense wariness from her. The dog’s attention was locked onto the double doors of the cafeteria, and a low, steady growl rumbled from her.