Claudette Morel and Quentin Smith have told him many times to care for the lives of others, because death of the soul is going to take one of them some day, and running back from an open door to freedom is a good thing to do, because it means you are looking for ways to escape.
Claudette Morel and Quentin Smith are dead right now.
Now, Ace Visconti? Ace Visconti is alive, if you can even call him that.
His glasses are gone, and so is his hat - he decided to wear a pink dress shirt today, because Dwight Fairfield found a building in the fog that held boxes of old clothing, giving trend setting survivors like Ace Visconti something to wear that wasn't the same grime stained suit and bloody jacket he's held on to. He considers himself very handsome, even in the throes of death.
His leg is bleeding. It is bleeding very badly. His knee - below the knee, below the shin, there is a manged shape of what could have been a foot, just meat and bone dragging across the tile of a hospital. The pain has swollen to a degree he could not imagine, not even in the hell that was the fog - and through such pain, it has gone numb. There is nothing, just the memory of bear traps and teeth and the tears blurring his vision so he didn't have to see his leg when he ripped his fingers tearing the trap off.
He didn't die. He wasn't found. The pain pulses up his body so violently, so erratically, that he is dizzy. It's pain, and it's blood. Ace Visconti does not want to die on a hospital floor.
Ace Visconti was not found because Quentin Smith was found first. Ace Visconti was not found because Claudette Morel went to save Quentin Smith and she was ripped off him and dragged to another place to die. Ace Visconti heard Quentin Smith scream when the claws came for him. He could hear him because Quentin Smith died in the room separate from Ace Visconti.
He crawls - he is crawling. Reaching forward to drag himself along, blood on his fingers staining the tile every time he pulls his body along. He's learnt a bit of tenacity, dying over any over - but that doesn't break the hope and prayer that the doors are still open.
Of course they'd be open. But each time, when he's tricked into caring about the life of someone who got caught, there's always the fear they'll shut. No one escapes death, but he's not going to listen to that. His arms are tired. He has to focus.
He'll curse how he didn't see the steel and oak later, when there is a fire and his leg becomes more limb, less viscera. Maybe they'll have to cut it off. Has anyone lost a limb for good yet? Most of them die before it gets to that. Sacrificed and brought back. Punished with despair and absence. Isolation. Ace feels pretty alone. He doesn't know where David King went, if he escaped at all.
Using his elbows makes the crawl a little easier on his worn down fingers, but not much faster than pulling himself along. He passes a wooden door frame, doors long ripped off the hinges and discarded. Maybe in the real world there were actual doors present. Or maybe it was in this fake world that gets created from nightmares and vicious memories that they were ripped off and never returned. Nothing loved or regarded fondly, but memories all the same. Places of tragedy. Fuck. He wants out.
The blood is getting worse. He doesn't look back, but he can feel it drag from his body and against the tile, leaving a trail for the bastard to find him. But the scream of Claudette Morel came from far, far away, that he hopes, he fucking hopes, that he can pass the decorations and pillars to get to the exit before he gets caught. Please let him go.
Let him go. He sees the exit. The red exit light is dim, flickering with lost power, power dedicated to a mad doctor's torture chamber than safety and survival. Let him go. He hears the footsteps, but they are far enough to pray, let him go.
It's harder to drag himself through the dirt. It is hard, frozen dirt, cold from a winter that does not exist anywhere but here, and it dirties the shirt he was so proud of discovering. Ace Visconti reaches forward, and hisses when the cold earth rubs itself against his open wounds. It hurts - it stings, it stings so bad, bad enough that he rolls to his side and punches the ground with the arm supporting him, because he has to stop. Oh god. Oh god. It hurts. Oh god. It hurts so bad.
It hurts. Evan is here. It hurts so bad he doesn't see him until the clinical lights are obscured, whatever shadow he could have now given to Evan. Evan. Trapper. The Trapper. Oh god it hurts so bad. It stings. Please. Please let him go.
Ace Visconti opens his eyes and sees him. It. He crawls. Faster. The machete is slick with the blood of his comrades. Allies. Friends. Survivors. Please let me go.
He crawls faster. He crawls as fast as he can without a leg, with no blood to keep him steady.
Let me go. Let me go home. I want to go home. The beast follows. The beast does not touch him. Please. The beast watches. Ace Visconti feels tile, and it is not the tile of a hospital but the tile of brownstone archways and the memory of please let me go. Let me go. I want to go home. Ace Visconti is grabbed. Please let me go. I want to go home. Don't kill me.
He is grabbed by the bleeding leg. Please let me go. Ace Visconti cries. He cries because he is in pain, he cries because he wanted to save people. He cries because the monster with a machete slick with the blood of his friends is holding him by the ankle tightly. He sets a bear trap in front of Ace Visconti's head and grabs his hair.
Ace is crying. The beast grips his head tighter. The teeth are so sharp. He doesn't fight, because the blood is gone. The force on his head is worse than the teeth in his neck and the darkness that comes.