The elevator wobbled under his feet and the cables whined with stress. A violent lurch wracked the platform, and Sebastian dropped his center of balance. He looked at the fragile fraying steel wires above him, to Joseph, and then to the floor below. Another shudder shook the walls and the elevator dropped with a shriek. With little time to think, he leapt from the surface with a burst of impulse and adrenaline. The final push off gave under his feet. The cable snapped like a gunshot. Metallic screeching poured sparks along its careening descent with the warbling of cables thrashing behind it. Its landing rocked the building with an explosion of sparks and dust. Haunted voices from beyond the walls hissed their notice. Others laughed.
Sebastian's shoulder ached from the combat roll, but he lay on debris-littered floors instead of the bottom of the elevator shaft. He straightened himself up stiffly and looked down the tunnel, assessing the damage he could have had. A plume of smoke and dust snuffed the sparks out and a industrial bellowing still rattled from the broken parts. His heart pounded as he looked up and asked, "Joseph, are you all right?"
"Yeah," Joseph assured breathlessly. "That could have been close." A hesitant silence followed as he approached the crumbling edge. He assessed the crash and the distance to the floor below. The gears turned in his sharp, corrupted mind. All that training at the police academy couldn't have prepared them for this nightmare. The real world was bad enough. He peered over the long way down and shifted his weight, readying himself for a leap of faith.
"No," Sebastian warned, showing his palms to catch his attention. "Don't risk it."
Joseph pursed his lips guiltily and backed away from the edge, surveying the surrounding area quickly. "Hold on," he swallowed dryly as he scanned the limited space. An eerie disappointment tinged his voice. "I think I see another way down. I'll meet you on a lower level."
"Okay," Sebastian concurred. "Be careful."
Joseph nodded in confirmation and moved out, disappearing behind the shaking walls and falling debris. Sebastian turned and ducked into the only passage before him. Brutal croaking groans and vocal clicks of the half dead reverberated tinnily as he crept through the ducts. He gripped his handgun and minded his trigger discipline. The sounds of horror swelled. Shattered, cold light spilled into the mouth of the vent. "Dammit," he breathed. Anxiety sunk in his gut like a billiard ball. "First Kidman, now…" He trailed off and tried to push the feeling away, focusing on his rounds instead of the new, familiar solitude. The sounds of the haunted swelled. While he wasn't alone, now he had no ally, as the haunted ghouls milled the area ahead in swarms. Eyes like headlights illuminated odd corners as they scanned for movement and foreign, living blood, or an untainted psyche to corrupt.
A draft moved the stagnant dusty air through the the hallways. Glowing red lights and eyes loomed in the unlit passageways. Sebastian held his lantern out and surveyed cautiously around the corner of the hallway. A heavy, metallic sound grated over the uneven floors. The flapping of thick, wet fabric fell with each encumbered footstep. The plinking of barbed wire on thick metal rattled dully, and the organic shushing sound of limp limbs dragged with finality, as the box-headed monster pulled its most recent victim down the corridor.
"Shit," he breathed, pulling back into cover. The shushing sound faded as the monster dragged weapon and victim together down one of the many twisting hallways. When it was out of sight, Sebastian vaulted the demolished wall in front of him. Doors wrapped in barbed wire implied that other atrocities had set off the traps that the Keeper had laid. He crouched low to the bloodstained carpet and held his breath against the putrid stench, disabling the pitfalls while he could. Gears came away in his hands with a metallic plinking, too quiet to catch the attention of the monsters.
The smell of acid and rot stung his nose as he prowled the corridors, hoping that the threatening beeps of proximal bombs wouldn't give his location away. The corrosive drips slowed to stopping with a little reconfiguring and he pushed forward into the depths of the building, the sting of the vapor still hanging in the air. Green gel smeared the walls and floor, suspending blood and offal in its iridescence. The stairwell had to be nearby. The torrent of undead had to flow from a source. The only way to find it was to go against it. The manic laughter of the ghouls was short lived and silenced by a few expertly aimed shots. Rounding turns and navigating the traps that lay beyond, a broken staircase led downwards- hopefully to Joseph.
He leapt to the landing below and the wet, organic sound of monsters tearing apart old corpses filled every room. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth as the fresh blood smell walloped him. The heavy metallic sound of meatcleaver on tile squealed from just a few doors down. The Keeper knelt by a fresh corpse, tearing flesh from bone with a wet ripping. It didn't notice when Sebastian dropped to a crouch or cocked his shotgun decidedly and mounted it on his shoulder.
He unloaded the barrels into the monster, who whipped around and stood, towering over the pulped body. He lumbered threateningly forward, clanging his weapon against his skull. Sebastian struggled to reload his weapon as the monster approached, raising the wielded metal spike. Sebastian snapped the barrel shut and took a firing stance. He didn't blink when the explosion ripped through the leathern apron and the Keeper buckled, spilling onto the floor.
The room shook and buffered so he saw double. Blue and red outlined every image and buzzed with a high feedback pitch. The new corpse twitched and writhed, lifting its oozing face from the bloodied tile. Sebastian popped the rounds out of his shotgun. His pockets empty, the rest of the ammo in his pack, there was no time to reload. The monster clanged its weapon on the ground and lifted itself up.
"Shit," Sebastian spat again. His head swam. The world tipped and spun as the ringing in his ears increased. The red and blue outlines of every object vibrated further apart, vertigo inducing, nauseating. A scream would give away his location to the other atrocities. Ruvik would stop the manipulation soon- if he could find a safe spot to wait it out.
With one hand over his ear, he backed out of the room and turned back down the hallway. The screaming frequency followed him as he blindly pushed on doors, hoping desperately for haven. Barbed wire bit his palm as each door only rattled on its hinges. Making blind turns and twisting through the hallway, the desperation mounted with an irrepressible ferocity. He walked with his hand on the wall until his fingers dipped into the inlaid door. The physical pain didn't register as he dragged his hand across the paneling to the doorknob. One deft kick broke the bolt and sent the door flying open.
The room on the other side was almost completely dark, taking the edge off the abating ringing in his ear and the hallucinations. The pattering of rain plinked heavily on the broken glass windows, high out of reach. The screams of the undead ebbed to growls, then hisses, then silence. He slung his pack off his shoulder and loaded two more slugs into the shotgun, taking a moment to breathe. "Goddamnit," he muttered to himself, as if he could shake the profound mental fog from his head. All had gone quiet, and the cold lighting in the architecture didn't waver. Not even the bootfalls tramped through the halls. He picked through the rest of the ammo. A few more shells for his pocket A few rounds for the pistol. No bolts that would really help.
A quiet click sounded from the back of the room. Sebastian raised his weapon so quickly that the bag he was holding crashed to the floor with a confetti of ammunition. His iron sights were set on a figure against the wall, black against the cold light, haloed in blonde and blue.
"Lower your weapon," a woman's voice said evenly. "I'm not one of them. You don't seem like you are, either."
"I'm not," Sebastian replied, setting his weapon gently by his fallen pack and putting his hands up. "I'm not a threat."
The silhouette's head bobbed as she considered. "Kick it over to me."
Sebastian almost chuckled. "Don't get so used to giving orders, sweetheart." He set his foot on the grip of his gun and pinned it to the ground. "Would you rather have the gun, or someone to open fire on those monsters when they find us?"
"Get used to taking orders, sweetheart, it's the only way we're getting out of here." She spat. An angry silence writhed between them. She shot it with a question: "Who do you think you are?"
"KCPD," He answered levelly, resting his elbows against his ribs. "I'm here to clean up this mess."
"Funny," She scoffed in disbelief. "So am I."
Sebastian took a step forward. "If we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it as a team," he reasoned. "We're on the same side. Officer…?"
"Detective," she corrected. "Castellanos. You can call me Myra."
He stopped in his place, pausing his negotiation as her name pierced him like a bullet. "Myra?" he iterated, with a boyish upwards inflection. A incredulous stutter started in his throat, before he managed, "It's me– it's Sebastian."
"That's impossible," she smiled tensely, "he would never be sent into STEM."
He opened his mouth to answer, but a deafening iron crashing split the room before any words came. Thick bars fell from the ceiling over the high windows and burst from the floor, lining every wall. The slim light of the room was nearly snuffed out entirely. Sebastian turned the handle on the lantern and held it by his face so she could see that it was him. "I've got so much I want to say to you," he said.
"Sebastian," she gasped, lowering her weapon and covering her mouth with one hand. "I never thought–" she cut herself off as a torrent of disbelief and conflicted emotions swirled between them both.
"I have to other partners in STEM with me," he assured, walking over to her carefully over the debris-littered ground. "As soon as we reconnect with them, we can find a way out of this whole thing."
"If only we could find a way out of here, first." Myra put her and on the cold metal and pushed, finding no sway or give that permitted escape. A poignant silence hung in the air as the warm lamplight stretched across the floor and doubled the bars with their shadows. The blocked light from the windows faded with the passing of another swollen cloud, so the dancing of the small flame moved the layers and the lines of entrapment into a shifting echo of itself.