Note: The... verse this is written in is kind of a mutant, crossed between more complete or more favorable parts from the movie, cartoon and game.
Window panes quiver silently as thick rain drops dash stolen silver through the halls, snatched from the moon. There is peace in the patter and the breathing of men; they lie in their beds, but they do not sleep.
He watches their eyes, two pairs of wide, staring questions. Unmoving but for the rise and fall of their chests. Watching until he can no more, cannot stand being far from knowing the questions and farther from any answer.
The floor is warm beneath his feet, slicked, as all his body is, with cold sweat. Uneasy of his footing on the wood for a few damp steps along a familiar path out of the room.
The bathroom is an unnatural kind of cool, tile shinning white but the mirrors dark. Faint is his reflection as he turns on the faucet, made fainter by warm puffs. He doesn't remember putting on his glasses. He does not remember arriving here.
There's a flicker in the mirror. Some shimmering shadow behind him, in the dual shower stall. He turns, of no will of his own. Two small steps and he can see within.
Black slime. Oily, clumpy tendrils of it over the walls and ceiling. Almost alive, whispering, laughing, crying.
You shouldn't have come…
All your fault…
Nothing he hasn't heard before.
"Help me."
But that…
A streak of the darkest red crawls down from the mocking mass, along the tile grout, barely distinguishable. Disappears into the drain.
He follows its path back up, to a half-covered mass within the mass. A body. A man.
A man he knows.
Skin smokes where the uniform has been burnt through. Blood bubbles, boils where the skin has been pierced, streams of it flowing down through the gunk with increasing speed. Muscle shows where the skin is gone.
Bone.
Foot in melted boot is hanging off its joint.
Wheezing, haggard breath, and wild eyes with their lids burned away, with the acid dripping into them, tell him the poor soul is still alive.
"Why won't you help me?"
One of them sobbed. It was probably him; he couldn't imagine Ray could anymore.
Then he was on his knees, with the same burning ink dripping from his lips, splattered in a pool beneath him.
Please…
Please.