Migraines hurt. No, that's not right. They don't just hurt. They clench and shiver and tear down your nerves like liquid pain with every jolt. They make light into a living, solid and malicious thing that glides into the gaps between your tightly pressed eyes, makes your guts clench and your eyes squeeze tight trying to block it out. Moving hurts, though, so you try to lie still but the pain makes you want to bunch up into foetal position. You want to stop the pain but all you can think about are ways to make it worse. Shatter your skull against a wall. Claw at your face. So you just grit your teeth and try not to cry because crying just makes it worse.

A week ago, I'd have wanted to die. Now I've spent so much time living through pain that I just wanted to blink through the pain and ignore the buzzing fluorescent light flickering above so I could get to my feet. Everything was wonky, though. The agony in my limbs made them weak, jelly-like, and I just couldn't quite get them under me.

I felt gutted, like all of my nerves were stretched out before me.

Maybe, in a way, they were.

The nanoswarm buzzed in the back of my head but it was so far away and I couldn't call it back. Something held us separate, ramming force between the threads that bound. All I knew was that I was on the floor, lifted up on my hands, and the lights were flickering and that never meant anything good. All I knew was that the pain came hot on the heels of that dream.

I should've known this brief respite was anything but. I just hadn't expected a re-run of all my worst nightmares come striking back together only now I might be the monster. Maybe I … no, this wasn't me. It wasn't the nanoswarm. I was sure of it.

There was something else here.

I could smell it like a coppery tang mixed with chlorine. It hung on the air between me and the miniature airlocks they populated these places with. I wanted to crawl into that little room and stay there but I knew it wasn't any real safety for me. They were good against the nanoswarm but whatever was here was different to that.

I managed to pull myself up to my feet, leaning back against the wall, head screaming with agony with every inch I moved. It was enough to make my vision blur. No, not blur, shatter into a million pieces and then rejoin in separate explosions of pain.

The door to the security room was open.

The jolly security guard stood in the corner, staring ahead, swaying slightly. Every so often he shook his head a little but he otherwise didn't move.

I stayed where I was a moment. Before I had the patients to fear but it was the guards, in the end, who shot me. Besides I didn't really want to see everything from the beginning. I didn't want to see these peoples whose names I had learned, and would later remember once the pain cleared. I didn't want to see them disembowelled, torn apart.

I waited and flinched every time he shook his head slightly, though the flinch cost me in fresh starbursts of pain. But nothing happened.

Somewhere, further in the facility, I heard a single shot fire.

Then long minutes passed with nothing else happening. The pain started to clear. I started to see things more clearly, started to hear things over my own heartbeat pounding in my skull. There was something else here. A hiss in the static.

A radio?

I moved further into the security patrol room, moving on tip toes in a half crouch that was useless in this kind of light, and picked up one of the walkie talkies. I turned it on and carefully put it to my ear, backing away as quickly as I could and darting a quick glance down either side of the hall.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" The kennel guard's voice. What was his name? "I repeat: Is anyone there?"

A dog barked in the background, then growled, then made a strange little yelping sound.

I was tempted to just switch off the walkie talkie. I couldn't afford to buy into another man's problems, but I also couldn't just shrug aside a man whose name I knew, even if I couldn't quite recall it right now. "Hey, I'm here."

"You seem to be the only one. Everyone else's just … standing around. Even most of my dogs … they're just … listening. I swear to God I reckon they're listening. What the hell is going on here? What the fuck did those scientists do?"

I let the silence grow. I really had no idea.

"Makes me glad for my hearing aid," he said, chuckled a bit. A humourless laugh, more desperation then anything. I'd laughed like that before in the asylum. Maybe I would again. I hoped so. Desperation could be funnier and more enjoyable than despair. "I never quite change the battery often enough. Maybe that's it. You got a hearing aid?" This time I must've let the silence grow too long, because he got anxious: "Hey, talk to me! Or you one of them freaks?"

"I'm here, I'm just … I got a migraine," I said.

"Well, pop some painkillers and come to me. Oh wait, you're that new guy, right? Saw you yesterday? Look, head to one of them medical stations or some of them cubicles with the handbags on them. Women always carry around enough painkillers to dope a horse. Pop some of them and come find me, okay? I'll be in the kennels. Quickly now, even the dogs are acting strange."

That's just what we needed.

"Sure, I'll see what I can do." I didn't know about going to fetch him. Escorting someone out of this facility seemed less safe than going it alone by this point but I also really didn't want to be alone and I didn't know the layout of the place as well as he did. Still, whatever I was going to do I had to do fast. I really, really didn't want to get caught out here when the song stopped and these creatures woke up and came for me again.

So I made my way into the staffroom that stood not far from my position and crept past the three individuals who stood around the room. One stood by the microwave, coffee cup poised before his lips. Another faced the corkboard. Another the vending machine. They all seemed to be within a foot of the walls. Did the sound carry through those walls? Is that what was drawing them?

I crept up to the table as quietly as I could, ready to duck underneath it if one of them moved, but they didn't so I got to reach into a handbag and rummage around for pills. Nothing but paracetamol. I popped a few. There was a laptop at one end, opened to a password-protected screen, with a decent enough camera attached to it by a cord.

It wasn't mine but it looked close enough so I snatched it up and flicked through its options.

Nightvision. Excellent.

Maybe I'd be in with a chance, at least if the power went out.

Then I backed out of the room before anything overly strange happened and started down the corridor toward the kennels.

Maybe this would be the extent of it. Everyone gets stopped. I get to rummage through files, record experiments, and maybe even do a few interviews with some of the more lucid patients. Maybe I could add to the growing collection of evidence I had, add it to Waylon's stuff, and bring this whole company down.

Maybe.

Maybe these guys would all suddenly flip if the tempo changed and then there'd be carnage in the halls. I know I wouldn't want to deal with a bunch of frenzied para-military types. Chris had been bad enough. I certainly didn't want to be responsible for the death of my adoptive team mates who had got me out of the frying pan, fiery end or not.

And hell, maybe if I ran far enough away the nanonswarm would detach from me and I'd be free.

Stranger things had happened.

Though not generally in a positive way.

I figured I knew my way to the kennels but I got myself thoroughly lost. The migraine cleared away my mental map of the place and I couldn't concentrate. Maybe I was hearing the song and not quite knowing why. Maybe I was just smelling it. At least the smell seemed weaker out here.

I passed through cubicles devoid of people who had taken up places in the walkways by the walls, passed a first floor skyway where staff stared blankly out through the windows, and tried to scrutinise the various emergency exit plans that seemed to hinder rather than help in my addled state.

I ended up at the gym, not far from where I slept, and I paused to rummage through all of the full-length lockers, shuddering at all of the memories of hiding inside such friendly pieces of furniture. There were some panadeine in one of them. I guzzled the recommended limit + 1. I wasn't sure if it would help but I'd try my damndest to see if it would. Then I sat down on the bench and allowed myself a minute. I'd try the walkie talkie again soon. I'd see if the kennel guy was even alive. Maybe he could make his way over to me.