He stood at the end of a long hall. Everything around him was a stark, cold white. Columns lined the hall on either side, towering above him. At the end of the hall above a short set of steps was a set of double doors, their pale gold beckoning to him. The tap tap tap of his footsteps echoed around the walls as he drew closer to the doors. He reached for the curving handles and hesitated; there was a nagging feeling in his mind that he was forgetting something. A cursory glance behind him was enough to reassure that the hall was empty. He pulled open the door.

A floating staircase rose above him in the middle of a vast, dark space. In the distance he could hear the faint tapping of footsteps running above him. His heart leapt. "Wait!" He ran up the stairs in pursuit. No matter how fast he ran the sound of the footsteps stayed ahead. He gasped for air, chest heaving. His legs were aching and he struggled to keep climbing, as they grew heavier. Whispers of unintelligible conversations drifted around him, growing louder as the ground below sank away.

The floating steps behind him began to drop. He struggled to keep up, but soon the steps beneath his feet were dropping out from under him. He leapt forward and clung to the steps, wincing as they gave way and he fell. Wind rustled his clothing and rushed past his ears, drowning out the sound of his own scream as he fell down towards the darkness.

His body slammed against the ground and Sora flinched, eyes blinking open in shock. He was lying on the ground, scattered blades of grass and dirt stretching out in front of his eyes. Donald and Goofy were whispering to one another a short distance away, eerily lit by the headlight lying at their feet. The familiar sight of his friends pulled him back to reality. The heartbeat threatening to burst from his chest slowed, and he breathed a deep sigh. Just a dream, he thought wearily.

Sora groaned as he pushed himself up, looking around. They were outside in a large, enclosed grassy area. It might have been a garden if it had any actual vegetation in it; it was overgrown with dead weeds. It was light out again -- as light as it got, Sora guessed. It was still too dark and foggy to see much outside the limits of the garden. He looked up at the side of the hospital, but could just barely see the edge of the roof where they had fallen off. Oh yeah, we fell off the roof. The realization struck him as he thought. Wait, what? He swayed to his feet, heading towards Donald and Goofy.

Donald was sorting through an assortment of items laid out on the ground in front him. Goofy was trying to fix the dents and rips in the trash can lid. He looked up as Sora approached and collapsed on the ground in front of them.

"Are you okay, Sora?" Goofy asked, ducking his head down to see Sora's face.

"I guess so..." Sora shrugged. He felt fine except for a dull pain in his arm and chest. Considering the last thing he remembered was a bolt of lightning and being thrown off a roof, he was a little puzzled.

Donald scooped one of the bottles off the ground and held it out towards Sora. The red liquid inside sloshed against the side of the glass. "Here, drink this!"

Sora eyed the bottle skeptically. "What's that?"

"It'll make you feel better!"

He took the bottle from Donald, staring inside. It certainly didn't look like something that would make him feel better. The stench rising from the bottle gave him a rush of nausea. He gagged. "So? Anyone want to fill me in? What happened?"

Goofy set the trash can lid aside. "Gosh, Sora, I don't know... you were fighting that pyramid thing... I ran out to help ya --"

"Me too!" Donald interjected.

"-- and there was this bright flash, and next thing I knew, Donald was waking me up!"

Sora glanced at Donald. "How 'come you didn't wake me up?"

Donald shifted uncomfortably and shuffled through the papers on the ground. "You looked pretty tired, so I thought you'd want to sleep!"

"Yeah, we haven't slept in... uh..." Goofy gazed upwards, pursing his lips. "Well, I dunno! A while."

Sora took a sip of the drink. He immediately did a spit take, spraying Donald.

"Hey! What's the big idea?!" Donald squawked, frantically shaking off the droplets.

"How can you drink this?" Sora gasped.

"It's not so bad! I drank a whole bottle!" Goofy beamed. Sora stared at him in blanched horror.

Donald glanced down at the items in front of him and brightened. "Oh yeah! Sora! Look what I found!" He grabbed two of the items off the ground and passed them to Sora. Sora set the health drink aside and held the items towards the light.

One was a bronze key. A tag trailed from the end, "Pharmacy" written in fading, smudged letters. The other item was a piece of plastic the size of a playing card. On the front was a crudely drawn image of a gray tower. A jagged yellow lightning bolt was striking the top of the tower, and three little stick figures were falling towards the ground. Sora frowned; the stick figures looked awfully familiar. He flipped the card around, but there was nothing on the backside -- just a number of small holes on the bottom.

Goofy peered at the key. "Hey! Isn't that the key we were lookin' for?"

"Only one way to find out," Sora grinned. He pocketed the key and the card, and pulled the headlight on over his head so it hung loosely around his neck. Gathering up the rest of their supplies, they headed for the door back into the hospital.

The interior had changed back to the way it was -- collapsed ceilings, moldy walls, chipping paint. A set of doors that had been locked before now opened into the first floor hallway. Everything appeared as before, except for one small detail -- the corpses were gone. Sora glanced at Donald and Goofy to see if they had noticed, but they were fixated on getting to the pharmacy. Apparently this morbid detail had not crossed their minds.

The "pharmacy" was actually a cramped, dusty room crammed with shelves and cabinets full of medical supplies. To their mutual disappointment, most of the supplies had been destroyed when the shelving caved in. They managed to salvage from the wreckage a packaged syringe filled with a red substance labeled "Ampoule" (Sora shuddered -- he hated needles), another health drink, and a first-aid kit. Sora unpacked the first aid kit and attended to Goofy's wounds and his own in turn. He remembered bandaging his teddy bears as a kid, and smiled -- how far he seemed now from then, how different the blood and torn skin to stuffing pushing out of ripped fabric.

Donald continued to paw through the debris. He pulled a metal walking stick out from behind a cabinet with a triumphant flourish.

"You look kind of like Scrooge with that thing," Sora snickered, packing the leftover supplies back into the box.

Donald scowled. "I'm nothing like Uncle Scrooge!" he fumed, stamping his foot.

"Yeah, you're dirt poor."

Donald brandished the cane in Sora's direction. "Why, you--!"

"I'm just kidding, Donald, relax," Sora laughed, hold up his hands to ward away the cane. "Come on, there's nothing else here."

"Where are we going?" Goofy asked, pawing at the gauze on his ear.

Sora froze in the doorway. Sooner or later he knew he had to tell them about the mysterious figure that spoke to him in the mirror room. He didn't want to explain that he was derailing their objectives just so he could settle a score. "We gotta keep looking for a way out of here, right? So come on, let's go."

To Sora's relief, Donald and Goofy did not seem suspicious, and they followed him out. The front entrance had completely changed since they last saw it -- the wires and warping had disappeared. Donald tentatively reached for the handles, but this time there was no electric shock. The doors creaked open into the courtyard, and the three piled out.

Donald let out an enormous sigh. "Finally! I thought we'd never get out of there," he groaned. "I told you it was a bad idea!" He glared up at Sora.

"Yeah, but we got the supplies, didn't we?" Sora smirked.

"Well, yeah! But..."

"Hey, look at this!" Goofy called. He was standing nearby waving a piece of paper. Sora and Donald walked over to have a look.

The paper was yellowed and the top edge was torn, as if it had been ripped out of a book. A crayon drawing of trees took up most of the paper. In the center was a large red circle with symbols Sora didn't recognize. A squiggly brown line rose from the bottom of the paper towards the red circle. "Huh? What's that supposed to be?" He turned the paper around, as if viewing it at a different angle might reveal something.

"Beats me," Donald shrugged.

Sora glanced away from the paper, defeated. A sudden movement drew his eyes to the courtyard gate. A small figure was standing in the fog, watching them. It must have noticed Sora staring back, because it turned and ran.

"Hey wait! Stop!" Sora yelled, chasing after it. The drawing floated to the ground behind him.

"Not again!" Donald cried, following after.

Goofy blinked in surprise. "Wait for me!" he wailed, snatching the paper and pocketing it before running after them.

The foggy street was unusually quiet as they left the hospital, retracing their steps back to the main road. Donald and Goofy tried desperately to keep pace with Sora, each glimpse of the figure inspiring a new burst of energy. As they left the town and turned up a side road, Goofy felt increasingly anxious. Finally catching up, he pulled Sora back.

"Goofy? What are you doing?" Sora frowned.

"Sora, I... I think we should turn back," Goofy panted.

Sora shifted his weight, glancing from Goofy to the road stretching back over his shoulder. He had lost sight of the figure a while back, but he knew it had to have come this way. "What? Why?" he huffed impatiently.

Goofy seemed to lose his nerve and looked down at Donald for support. Donald leaned on his cane. "Every time you see something, you go chasing after it! There's nothing out here! What if you're just seeing things?"

Sora temporarily forgot the urgency to keep running and stared down at Donald. "What are you saying? You guys think I'm crazy?"

Goofy flinched. "No, that's not--"

"I'm not seeing things and I'm not crazy! There's a girl here! I know she went this way! I saw her!" he snapped, pointing down the road.

Goofy's eyes traced Sora's gesture to a dirt road leading into a stretch of trees. The road darkened out of view as the trees grew closer and more numerous in the distance. Struck with a sense of familiarity, Goofy began searching his pockets.

Oblivious to Goofy, Donald and Sora were immersed in a spat. "Maybe you hit your head when you fell off the roof!" Donald argued.

"Maybe you fried your brain when that door shocked you!" Sora countered.

"Well you're a few peanuts short of a nut case!"

"And you're a few notes short of a Silly Symphony!"

"Sora!" Goofy yelled.

"What?" Sora snapped.

"Look!" Goofy held out the drawing towards Sora.

Sora grabbed it out of Goofy's hands, still staring daggers at Donald. Glancing down at the wrinkled page, he held it back out towards Goofy. "Yeah, so?"

"It's a forest, see?" Goofy pointed at the scribbled patches of green and brown.

"What's your point?"

Goofy held up the drawing towards the road. Together they looked from the crude picture to the forest road.

"So... it's a drawing of this place?" Sora guessed.

Goofy nodded. "I think we're supposed to go this way!"

"Maybe I am arguing with the wrong person," Donald muttered.

"No, I think Goofy is right. She must have left it for us to find. Let's check it out."

The three set off down the road, Donald dragging his cane in the dirt behind them.


Author note: Please see my profile/bio for updates and more information about this story. Again, I am sorry about the wait but I hope it will be worth it..!