Trigger Warning: Scenes of Graphic Violence
Scattered around the transformed memory room were various objects that Zabuza recognized from his years with Haku: a ruined, useless copy of the handgun he had always carried, the ornamental bracelet that Haku's mother had left him, and a pocket-sized wooden statuette of St. Jerome Emiliani, the patron saint of abandoned children. Zabuza eyed the statuette with weary eyes, remembering the excited chatter Haku had shared with him the day the boy had found it in the streets of Osaka.
"Mr. Zabuza, look what I found!"
"What is that, boy? I don't recognize that man."
"This is a statuette of St. Jerome Emiliani, the patron of orphaned children! I'm so happy! I feel like my momma helped me find this!"
"Then by all means, congratulations. I'm glad it makes you happy."
That day, now easily five years past, was a dim but peaceful memory that made Zabuza meekly smile.
"He was so damn thrilled when he found that thing. Haku probably wished for a sign that his mother was at peace and watching out for him. Looks like in the end, he got one."
Zabuza turned to the door with the tear-like stripes, and tightly gripped the gun he had found in Neely's Bar. The ominous, distorted footsteps sounding from the floors above were still echoing even after the transition, and Zabuza knew that another monstrosity awaited him in the shadows of the derelict hospital.
He opened the door and closed it behind him, taking in the ruined 1st floor hallway before him. Whereas everything in sight had been dilapidated, the walls and doors were now all a dark blue, with more splotches of blood appearing at random. It seemed that the entire hospital had taken on a symbolic representation of the sadness and painful, violent memories repressed in Zabuza's psyche.
A bizarre giggling resounded from around the corner, and Zabuza froze up in terror at the sight of a deranged, cackling nurse wearing a permanent maniacally wide grin dancing towards him. Her dirty uniform was splattered with crimson blood, and it took Zabuza a moment to snap out of his fear and ready his weapon.
"Back away from me, bitch!" he shouted, but the nurse made no sign of stopping.
A grand total of six rounds were emptied into her torso, and the deranged nurse fell to the floor, twitching sporadically and cackling some more before finally ceasing movement. Zabuza glared down at the atrocity and involuntarily shuddered.
"What a clownish nurse. Reminds me of the vermin back in Osaka who Haku told me didn't take his pain seriously, simply because he was an orphaned boy. Apparently, being homeless for so long makes any testimony on your part incredulous in the eyes of society, too."
Zabuza backed away from the corpse and headed towards the front door, aching to get out of the bizarre hospital. When he came to the door and attempted to twist the handle, he found to his irritation that he couldn't make it budge whatsoever. An irritating clicking sound kept resonating from the keyhole above the knob, and Zabuza knew that he needed the main entrance key to leave.
The map of the hospital guided him to the stairwell door, which was also locked for some reason. Zabuza huffed with irritation and turned to find the elevator, which miraculously dinged with a sign of life. The doors opened, allowing Zabuza to step inside the grimy metal box. As the doors closed behind him, he took a moment to breath.
"Finally, some progress. Now then…where is that bastard, Kabuto? I'm gonna make him pay for tricking me like that!"
The only button on the floor panel that worked was for the 3rd floor, and when Zabuza pressed it, the elevator lurched upward painfully slow. When another ding resounded, the doors opened, depositing him onto the uppermost level of the hospital.
Almost immediately, a couple of maniacal nurses appeared within the beam of his flashlight, cackling and brandishing what looked like medical knives in their bloodied fists. Zabuza snarled, reloaded his gun and gunned them down, wasting an entire box of ammo on the bizarre fiends.
"What a damned nuisance. Where am I supposed to find that key?"
He approached the door leading to the adjoining "S" hallway, which was similarly locked, with a rusted 9-digit keypad imbedded in the wall next to it. Zabuza eyed the keypad with annoyance, and tried to determine what the passcode could be.
The numbers "0", "1", and "9" were particularly rusted over, and Zabuza's brows wrinkled in confusion as he pondered what combination they were meant to create. In whatever logic remained in the demented hospital, the code was likely to be made from 4 digits instead of 3, and the renegade was suddenly dumbfounded.
No clues could be seen in the immediate vicinity, and Zabuza knew he was stumped.
"I don't know any codes that could work here. Besides, why are only these three digits the ones looking so used? The only number that can think of working here would be…"
Zabuza sighed softly and hesitantly typed in "0109", the digits of Haku's birthday.
Sure enough, the telltale clicking noise suddenly echoed down the hall, and the door gave way to the adjoining hallway beyond, splattered with more alternating hues of blood and dark blue. More cackling resounded down the hall, and Zabuza reading his gun for more fighting.
A trio of nurses came capering towards him, shrieking together in insane laughter, and Zabuza swore desperately as he gunned them down, having to take precious moments to use another box of ammo to reload. The third nurse came dangerously close to cutting him with her knife before he killed her too, sending her twitching to the floor before coming to a stop.
Most of the doors lining the hall were locked, except for the room "S7", which gave way to a ruined bedroom containing a crucifix, a diary stuffed under the soggy pillowcase, and a random torn page from a Bible. Zabuza bent forward to read the Bible page first, knowing that his lack of knowledge on the book was sure to befuddle him.
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. "Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly." Jesus said to him, "Shall I come and heal him?" The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, "Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that very hour.
"What's this?" Zabuza muttered, confused as he finished reading the passage. "Why did this resident cling to this passage so much?"
"Wait a minute. Now that I remember, when I first introduced Haku to the other criminals in the slums of Osaka, I called him my 'boy servant'. My argument was that I was going to use him to trick my enemies into a false sense of security by using Haku as a lure. I guess they took that at face value. But what does that have to do with this passage?"
The diary entry made him grimace as he read it and understood the author's fury.
"February 11"
I'm sick of the officials here disregarding my trauma. Just because I'm a man doesn't mean that I'm invulnerable. The world acts like men can't get emotionally wounded like women can, and I'm sick of it. I'm expected to act all tough and shit, but sooner later, I'm going to collapse just like every other wretched soul in this forsake "mental health" hospital.
It was almost like Haku himself had written the entry. Zabuza thought back to the appearance of the joker-like nurses, and snarled softly. He found a random bronze key lying next to the diary entry, and took it, eyeing it suspiciously and knowing full well that it was too small to be the key to the main entrance.
"This must go to something else in the hospital. But where?"
He stepped out of the patient room and crept down the hall, where he soon found another elevator and stairwell door awaiting him. Zabuza glanced at the stairwell door, found the keyhole and tried his luck with the bronze key. To his surprise, it worked, and the door swung open, revealing pitch-black stairs descending into the darkness of the hospital.
"Now we're getting somewhere. Good."
Zabuza ran down the steps, aching to finally leave the hospital and continue his journey within Silent Hill. Doors presumably leading to other floors of the hospital zoomed past him as he fled, until he reached the very end of the stairwell, a metal door covered in brown rust. Without hesitation, he yanked it open and continued to the other side, a winding labyrinth-like hall.
It looked like he was in some part of the hospital's basement, but Zabuza didn't care to look at the map with him to be certain. He walked quickly around the bends, and then, to his alarm, he heard heavy footsteps and an ominous screech of metal coming towards him quickly. When he turned around, he shouted in horror at the sight before him.
The Bandaged Man was pounding towards him, no longer moving slow and gracefully like his first appearance in the apartment complex. The Kubikiribocho was poised high in the air, ready to cleave Zabuza in two with one swing.
"SHIT!"
Zabuza fled for his life, feeling the swoosh of the massive blade behind him as the Bandaged Man swiped and missed him by mere inches. Faster and faster they ran, the monstrosity chasing the renegade through the hall, giving him no time to rest.
At the final bend of the hall, with what looked like another elevator at the very end, Zabuza pounded forward, aching to get there in time. In his terror, he nearly bowled into the lone Penitent standing before the door, snarling with sudden rage and still as a statue.
With a sudden guttural shriek, it charged at Zabuza, and he knew that he was pinned without anywhere to flee. The scabbed creature knocked Zabuza aside, and then, a horrific squelching sound was heard behind him, as he stood paralyzed before the elevator, which finally opened with a low groan.
He turned around to behold the Penitent standing between him and the Bandaged Man, its meek, ruined hands clutching the blade that had cut almost entirely through its body. The Bandaged Man sneered in what looked like triumph at Zabuza, who was at an utter loss for words at the sight.
And then, the Penitent shakily turned around as far is it could, staring up at Zabuza with Haku's doe-like brown eyes, its previous grey, empty sockets suddenly replaced without warning.
"R-run!" it gurgled at him, and then, it shoved him back with a strong push belying its weak form.
Zabuza was hurled back into the elevator, which promptly closed before him, giving him one last look at the dying Penitent in the hallway before him. The creature looked like it was waving goodbye at him, and the image that Zabuza had tried to repress for a whole month finally resurfaced violently in his mind's eye.
When the elevator doors closed and the metal box slowly lurched upwards, Zabuza bit his lip hard and fought back tears as the memory of Haku, his frail arms spread outward in a protective stance, standing before him, taking the bullet meant to kill him returned to the front of his mind.