The Last Dainv-Chapter 98

The Last Dainv-Chapter 98

The door creaked open, revealing an office through the door's crack. Mia stepped forward, pushing the door open when suddenly, she was pulled into the room. She stood up, rushing back to the door.
It was too late. The door shut. Lights turned off for just a second. When they turned back on, the door was gone. Mia banged on where the door should've been. Nothing was there.
Her back hit the wall, sliding downwards. She clutched at her head. Maybe Jacob was right. She was already dead, and all of this was just a nightmare produced by hell.
The hum of a CRT screen filled the silent room. Looking around, the whole room was just an office space with a large wooden desk at the centre. A single fluorescent light shined above the desk.
She stood back up and walked towards the desk. It had no layer of dust. The bookshelf behind the desk had neatly aligned books. Their pages weren't yellowed, looking more white than most of the books she had seen in public libraries. On the CRT screen, the date on the terminal displayed "July 6, 1987."
Mia chuckled. "This can't be real. Nothing makes sense. Hahahaha."
Her eyes reached down to the journals and file folders covering the keyboard. The top file was labelled "PATIENT ZERO - GALLARD, MARY."
Mia picked it up, 2nd from the stack. Upon opening it, inside were close ups of a woman. Her eyes were completely dilated. Dark circles that looked more like black eyes. Medical charts showed Hgb (Hemoglobin count) trending downwards into dangerous levels. Two more charts followed it. HbA1c (Fasting Glucose) and ALT (Alanine Aminotransferase) were both trending upwards. Together, these charts would've indicated Mary Gallard's health was physically deteriorating. In a controlled environment where patients are on a strict diet and exercise routine, this should have been treated.
A note, written in messy handwriting, was clipped to the file:
[Subject: Mary Gallard
Journal Entry: Subject showed sudden changes after being let out at night. She now shows extreme violence to staff. One of the other mental patients noted that she had changed into something called a 'Skin Walker'.]
Beneath that file was another labelled "PROJECT THRESHOLD." Mia opened it, showing diagrams of the asylum's layout with certain rooms circled in red.
Reading into the few logs on the front page showed:
[Experiment Log: Initial tests confirm Gallard's hypothesis. The building exists partially in our reality and partially in what Gallard calls 'the slip.' Subject says that a core is forming at the central botanical area.]
[Journal Log: Gallard has started asking where her mom was. Note: subject has killed her own mother. The subject had also started attacking other patients and nurses whenever she asks where her mom was.]
[Experiment Log: Grating sounds could be heard from the hallways when the core containment is at 50%. I've suggested to the head researcher to drop the subject, but the head researcher was entranced by something inside the core itself, telling him that there was paradise beyond the
door
as he called it.]
[Journal Log: Subject has killed one of the nurses and drinking the blood from the nurse's neck. Immediate containment into white room was necessary. Upon containing subject Gallard, she has repeatedly shouted wanting to see her mom.]
Mia flipped through more pages. Technical specs for computers she didn't recognize. If only Jacob or Andrew were here, they'd make it make sense at least.
Other pages mentioned staff members disappearing, only to be found days later in the woods nearby with no memory of where they'd been. Photos of rooms where the walls change from green to red.
One document showed:
A sticky note was stuck on that page. In all capital letters it read: "KILL THE CORE."
The single fluorescent light started flickering. Walls began to crack, so did the floor. Behind the crack, a single eye peeked through. Its pupils looked left and right before centering on Mia. It disappeared as soon as she looked at it, replaced by the maw of triangular teeth.
"Where's my mom?" a voice echoed.
Mia grabbed the Patient Zero file and the Project Threshold documents, holding them tight as the cracks widened.
More cracks webbed through the floor beneath her feet, giving way to nothingness. There was nowhere to go.
She climbed over the desk, hugging the files tightly in her chest. The floor around her broke. Now, all she had was just the desk that floated in space. She was going to die. She should have never agreed to Andrew's stupid shenanigans. It was all his fault that all of them were going to die.
Soon, the desk she sat on started cracking as well. Bark by bark, the desk fell into disarray, chipping away from one corner until finally, it broke as a whole. Mia fell, screaming at the top of her lungs, eyes closed tightly.
Something tugged at her collar. Her body launched by something towards a light in the distance. Next thing she knew, she was skidding along a tiled floor until her back hit a wall.
The impact knocked her flashlight from her hand, sending it sliding across the floor. Its beam cut through darkness before stopping, lighting up the thing she didn't want to see the most.
Tall, skinny. Black hole for eyes, and the thing that killed Gale stood just a couple of metres away from her. However, it wasn't looking at her.
The thing jerked sideways, twisting its body. It slashed at the empty air, its head snapping back 180 degrees that seemed to follow something moving Mia couldn't see. The fifth limb it had was suddenly sliced at the base. Black blood sprayed from the fresh wound across its skin.
"WHERE'S MY MOM?" it screamed; this time, no longer sounding like a child. Instead, it sounded like a broken record.
The air rippled like a heatwave around it. The invisible thing that herded her earlier fought against the thing that killed Gale. Walls cracked and exploded. More black blood sprayed everywhere. It seemed the invisible monster was stronger than whatever that thing was.
Of course. Monsters fought for territory. Hunting grounds for stuff to eat. Fighting for her as the prey, and the winner gets to eat her.
Mia crawled away, still holding on to the files.
"WHERE'S MY MOM?" it screamed again as another limb flew off of its body.
This was her chance. Both monsters busy. She grabbed her flashlight and ran. She didn't know where to go. The legs just needed to keep moving.
"Andrew!" she called. "Jacob!"
No answer.
She checked the file in her hands as she ran. The diagram showed something labelled "Core Chamber" at the building's centre. Red circles marked "weak points" throughout the structure.
She turned another corner and bumped into someone, almost stumbling to the floor.
"Shit!" Andrew caught her by the shoulders. "Mia! You're alive!"
"Andrew!" Mia smiled, genuinely finally finding someone. "The monsters. They're fighting. We need to go!"
"Jacob's hurt," Andrew said. "I found him, but he's kinda fucked right now."
He pulled her into the room they were staying in. Inside, Jacob laid on the floor, mumbling to himself about harmony.
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"There is no chaos, all of this is not real, only harmony exists in me," Jacob mumbled flat on the floor.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Dunno. Found him like this."
Mia knelt beside Jacob, checking his pupils with her flashlight. His eyes were dilated, not responding to the light at all.
"Jacob! Jacob!" Mia slapped him across the face. It didn't work.
"I tried everything. He won't snap out of it," Andrew said.
"We need to keep trying." Mia slapped him again, and again, and again. Still nothing, and her hand already hurt from slapping him.
"Nothing's working…" Mia said. "We have to leave him here. We just… just need to go. I'm sorry."
Jacob's body started to float off the floor. And in a sudden movement, his body flew up to almost hit the ceiling, and then falling down backwards.
"Shit shit shit!" Jacob suddenly screamed, falling onto the tiled floor. He looked around him and blinked, seeing Mia and Andrew. "Mia? Real Mia?"
"Yeah, it's me. We need to move."
Andrew helped Jacob to his feet.
"Where do we go now?" Andrew asked. "I'm straight up not having a good time."
Mia opened the file again, studying the diagram. "There's something called a Core Chamber. It's at the centre of the building. I think... I think it's what's causing all this."
"What, like a reactor?"
"Look." She showed him the note: KILL THE CORE. "We need to do whatever this thing is telling us to do."
Jacob stood silent for a moment, then said, "Huh? The whispers stopped."
The sound of another wall exploding echoed down the hall. Monsters, things, fighting against each other. No time to lose.
"This way," Mia said, following the diagram. "Down this hall, then right at the junction."
The group walked through the corridor, Andrew carrying Jacob by his shoulder.
According to the diagram, the Core Chamber should be just ahead. But where the door should have been, they found only a blank wall.
"No!" Mia pressed her hands against the surface. "It should be here!"
The wall felt solid under her touch. No seams. No cracks. Nothing to suggest a hidden entrance.
The building groaned around them. Pipes in the ceiling rattled. Something was coming.
"Check the papers again," Andrew yelled. "There must be another way."
Mia flipped through the files frantically. A loose handwritten note fell out.
"Wait," she said. "The core room... it doesn't exist in our space continuously. It phases in and out."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means it's only sometimes here." She looked up at the blank wall again. "We need to wait for it to... to come back."
Jacob laughed, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. "Sure, let's wait for a room to just come back. Why not, right? Why the hell not? Because rooms magically just appear. Crazy, am I right?"
The building shuddered. Dust rained from the ceiling. The sound of cracking walls and 'where my mom's' from the thing came closer and closer.
"How long?" Andrew asked.
Mia scanned the notes. "It doesn't say. But look, it says there's a pattern to the phase shifts. They match temperature drops."
Suddenly, the air around them chilled to lower than freezing temps. Their breath fogged up once again.
"Like now," Mia whispered.
The wall before them twisted at its seams, changing its position like a puzzle. The corridor rotated as they saw different parts of reality through the seams. One moment, it was the service tunnels, the next, it was the pale red walls. At the border were the seams that showed two different materials merged together. Rough concrete and muddy tiles.
"Shit," Andrew whispered.
Mia pushed the door open. "Come on!"
They entered a circular room with a high glass ceiling that looked to be a greenhouse. They stood on a platform, with railings and stairs leading to the lower platform enabling access to the pillar that stood at the centre. On top of the pillar was an orb of swirling darkness. A growing headache formed in Mia's left eye when she tried to look at it directly.
"What is that?" Andrew asked.
Mia checked the diagram again. "The core. According to these notes, it's a... a weak point between realities. It says it's a rift."
"How do we kill it?"
She flipped through more pages. "There's a procedure. They were studying it, trying to contain it." Her finger traced lines of text. "There's a control panel. We need to activate the containment routine."
Andrew went over to the bank of switches and dials that looked to be from the 80s for controlling industrial equipment. "Like this?"
"Yes!" Mia hurried over, studying the controls. A lot of the texts were etched out with a knife as if someone didn't want anyone to read it or be able to operate it. However, one of them still had legible print under the marker strokes. It read "EMERGENCY CONTAINMENT."
"This must be it." She reached for the switch.
The door behind them that they came from smashed open. The thing had three of its stick-like limbs left, its skin riddled with tears and slice marks. Broken bone jutted out from where the limbs were. One of the limbs even looked like it was ripped out from its body. Air rippled behind it, which was definitely the invisible entity stalking them.
"WHERE'S MY MOM?" the thing shrieked.
"Shit!" Andrew backpedalled away and pulled Jacob with him.
The thing scurried forward with its remaining three limbs. Jacob flinched, backed off even more until he fell down the railing and hit his head, knocking him out.
Before the thing could reach Andrew, the invisible entity struck it from behind, sending it skidding against the floor and slamming into the glass of the greenhouse wall.
The two monsters circled each other. The visible and the invisible. Both unclassifiable by normal human standards. Though this was the plane of the occult that Mia never wanted to cross or study or experience.
"The switch!" Mia shouted, reaching for the control panel.
The thing's head snapped in her direction, scuttering at a speed her eyes couldn't keep up with. It stopped right in front of her, blocking the path to the switch. It raised its needle-like arms, aiming for Mia.
"No!" Andrew shouted.
Before it could strike at Mia, the air rippled again. The invisible entity slammed onto it, sending it back to a different part of the room and creating a crater in the wall.
The control panel sparked. Something manipulated the switches. Lights flickered. Gauges spun. A hum of something electronic filled the room.
Then, the thing shrieked with a deathly sound. It jumped at the control panel, only to be sent back to another wall.
The room shuddered and shook. The orb of darkness at the centre pulsed and contracted.
A klaxon blared, forcing all three to cover their ears. Red warning lights flashed around the room. The darkness at the centre of it all looked like it was caving in on itself.
The thing screamed and repeated its lines, reverting back to the young girl's voice. "MOMMY! MOMMY! I JUST WANTED MY MOMMY!"
It twisted, thrashed, pulling at anything that it could hold on to as it was getting pulled back into the imploding orb. The air rippled around it, and the limb holding onto a railing was cleanly sliced off.
It hurled into the black orb. The thing's scream suddenly cut off. The Orb of Darkness shrunk to a small, dense point until it disappeared entirely.
The room stopped shaking. The air warmed.
"Did we do it?" Andrew asked.
Mia checked the gauges on the control panel. "I think so. The containment gauges are all below the green line, whatever that means."
Jacob stirred, his eyes clearing. "What happened? Where are we?"
"I don't know, but it's fine now," Andrew said. "We fixed it. We're getting out of here."
The door they entered through vanished. Now it was just a plain wall. They looked around and found another door had appeared at the opposite side of the room.
"Come on," Mia pointed to the door. "It's the only way out of here."
They helped Jacob to his feet. As they moved toward the new exit, the air rippled one last time. The invisible force, whatever it was, seemed to watch them go.
The door opened to a straight corridor. No twists. No merged seams of different materials. Just decaying old walls with the familiar peeling pale green paint. At the end of it was a stairwell going up.
"We're at the lower floor," Andrew said. "This must go up to the main floor."
They climbed, Jacob getting stronger with each step. The stairs ended at another door. Andrew pushed it open.
They came out into the main entrance hall of the asylum. Moonlight came through broken windows. The front doors stood open to the night.
"We made it," Mia said.
As soon as they walked outside, the cold autumn air hit them. Behind them, the asylum stood unlit under the moon.
They walked to Andrew's car, parked where he had left it just behind the fence that kept trespassers out.
"We're not doing that shit again. No more," Jacob said, voice still shaking slightly.
Andrew didn't say anything. His hands shook as he fumbled to put his keys into the ignition.
Mia held the files to her chest. It was the scientific supernatural evidence of what happened in this asylum.
When the engine whined to a start, Mia looked back from her passenger side window at the asylum one last time. The air rippled in one of the upper windows. The invisible entity protected them, but why? Maybe it didn't need to eat like the thing that chased them.
"Did you see that?" she asked the others.
Andrew was already pulling away, tires spitting gravel up as he pushed the gas too hard.
"I'm not looking back," he said. "I'm never looking back."
Mia pressed her face against the window, watching the asylum get smaller and smaller until it vanished behind the tree line.
“What about, Gale?” Jacob asked.
“He might’ve escaped. Maybe.” Andrew turned onto the main road.
That was clearly a lie that Mia wanted to believe.

Chapter 98