Sparrow shivered as a cold draft passed through her damp hair and clothes which were still a little wet from earlier. She stayed by Juli as they walked through various buildings, hoping to come across Leslie sometime soon. She cursed at herself for being separated from him so quickly again.
'He's alright, he has to be,' Sparrow thought as she hopped through another window with Juli.
"I think I can hear the haunted up ahead," Juli warned as she rounded a corner followed by a cautious Sparrow. Before Sparrow realized what Juli was intending to do, Juli fired at the single haunted in the room, hitting it in the head before it collapsed, dead.
"I thought there would be more," she said as she went up and lit a match before throwing it on the body, burning it. As Sparrow watched the flames, she couldn't help but step back away from the heat, the memories and pain of Laura being burnt alive becoming alive inside her mind.
Suddenly rapid footsteps could be heard coming from an archway at the far end of the long rectangular room; haunted came swarming around the corner.
"Shit, there's too many－ run!" Kidman yelled before bolting down the way they came, this time running up the stairwell towards the third floor with Sparrow running just as quickly. She made sure to stay behind Juli and also that she wasn't looking before using her power. Sparrow looked back and with a flick of her hand, the first three haunted that was in front of the horde suddenly flew to the side of the wall with great force, essentially squashing them with nothing but a giant blood patch on the wall as evidence of their fate.
Although there were still many more chasing them, Sparrow grinned at her victory, taking note that her powers were recovering.
"Quick! Get to the balcony!" Kidman yelled as she let Sparrow go through the white door first, looking back and shooting as many haunted as she could before she had to follow Sparrow through the door. Both ladies pressed their backs to the cold white door as they tried to block the haunted from coming through.
'Great, now we're trapped and it's not like I can just vanish in front of her either－ that is if my powers have fully come back yet,' Sparrow thought as she continually got shoved forward by the haunted trying to push the door open.
"Sebastian! Help, there's too many of them!" Kidman yelled as she waved to a form crossing the river, shooting bodies so they fell in the water. Sparrow questioned why he was wasting his bullets before some sort of mutated water monster came to the surface and grabbed the bodies like a shark at feeding time.
"Kidman! Hang on!" Sebastian yelled back before hopping onto another floating car. He turned around and beckoned to the place he just came from, when another form jumped through. Sparrow never thought she'd be so happy to see her counterpart once again.
"Lady Sparrow! Why hello there!" Wren shouted as she waved frantically from where she stood, although from Sparrow's perspective Wren was basically an ant.
"Keep your voice down, you could attract the monster." Sebastian scowled but Wren didn't take the warning.
"My dearest, you have little to fear now that I am here!" Wren continued to shout while not looking where she was treading, ending up slipping off the edge of the car and into the water.
"You have a twin?" Kidman asked, still with her back pressed on the door.
Sparrow just nodded in reply but couldn't stop the small smile spreading on her face.
"Get out of the water!" Sebastian yelled before helping the now soaked Wren out of the water.
The monster hidden in the murky waves made itself known as it swam towards them, making a ripple through the flooded street before it stopped at the side of the car and turned around, swimming away from them.
"That was close!" Wren laughed before being shook by the collar by Sebastian.
"Are you so willing to die that you'd be that careless?" Sebastian angrily shouted at the grinning girl, who in turn laughed at him while still being shook by him.
"What do you care? It's not your life!" Wren shouted back before yanking away from him.
"That may be, but while we're in this fucked up world, I'd like to at least try and keep everyone alive." Sebastian replied, this time in a much calmer tone.
Wren looked at the detective with a confused expression. 'But why? We just met,' she thought, watching him throw a bottle into the far side of the street.
"C'mon quick!" Sebastian encouraged as he hopped into the water and got to some steel stairs, Wren following closely behind. Both heads suddenly turned towards a high pitched beeping sound initiating the release of a gate. Like last time, the two observed as the yellow and black gate lifted up and held for two seconds before slamming down into the water again.
"Just like last time, we have to release those bodies so that the monster is preoccupied." Sebastian instructed but before he was about to take his gun out Wren stopped him.
"There are two of them this time." Wren observed as two ripples in the water appeared at opposite ends of the street.
"Shit."
"It's okay, all we have to do is release two bodies this time," Wren pointed out before her psychotic grin appeared again, "Or we could just wrestle them."
"Are you insane?"
"Yes." Wren muttered in reply before hopping onto a wooden crate, finding her balance quickly and stabilizing it. A serious expression dominated her face as she contemplated what he said earlier. "Sebastian, why do you feel the need to protect and save everyone?"
"What kind of question is that?" Sebastian asked, making her sigh in annoyance.
"One that needs an answer." the impatient girl said, wanting a straight answer.
"Well, it may be because I work for the law, but don't you even feel the need to protect your sister?" Sebastian asked, quite baffled that the girl had to ask the question in the first place.
'Sparrow IS me－ that's different.' Wren thought. Suddenly she turned around and dived into the water, startling Sebastian into action as he muttered a quick curse before quickly shooting the two hanging bodies above, then dived into the water, luckily getting through the gate just as it slammed down.
"A little warning next time." Sebastian growled at the girl skipping up the stairs who just ignored him in turn. Since Sebastian never gave Wren a weapon, and for good reason, she had to use glass bottles to distract the haunted before Sebastian would stealth kill them from behind. Once they killed all the haunted in that area, Kidman and Sparrow opened the door.
Sparrow stared at Wren once they stood in the same room, still not sure if she should trust her at all.
'When I first met her, the only reason she didn't kill me was because she would die as well. Why is she suddenly being so... accepting of me?' Sparrow wondered. Both sisters blocked out Kidman and Sebastian as they discussed any information the other didn't know.
'If only I could tell you,' Wren thought, making sure Sparrow couldn't read her thoughts, 'But if I do….' Wren's grin fell, realizing the truth that Sparrow could never know, but for now she could at least make it up to her.
"Let's go." Wren announced in an unnaturally calm state. "Before he realizes what I'm going to do, we need to go now."
'Go where?' Sparrow thought to her as she caught Sebastian's and Kidman's attention.
"You mean altogether right? We're stronger together." Sebastian stated. Wren turned to him, her eyes were like stone, cold and emotionless.
"Sorry Seb, but we have to go down this road alone." Wren said before walking up to Sparrow and grabbing her still damp sleeve before vanishing.
"What the fuck? Are they part of Ruvik's mind as well?" Sebastian stepped back, startled.
"No, but they seem to have found at least some conscious influence here." Kidman replied in a cold and emotionless tone, making Sebastian wonder how she knew this in the first place even though he just asked her.
'You can teleport as well?' Sparrow thought to her, wondering why Wren didn't just teleport when they went to rescue Leslie.
"There's no time to talk, you need to know what Ruvik did to Leslie. Then maybe you'll realize why you need to get out of here and forget about Ruvik." Wren said, avoiding Sparrow's gaze as she walked around the small square room, "I'll distract him for as long as I can, he wouldn't want you to see this."
'What… what do you mean?' Sparrow started to get nervous as she wasn't even sure if she wanted to know the apparently terrible things that he has done.
Wren waved her hand on the cold wall as it begun to shift and change. Soon enough, all the walls in the room started to pulse and Wren quickly stepped up to Sparrow, putting a hand on her shoulder in comfort. It made Sparrow wonder if Wren was truly the mad and insane proportion of her fragile mind.
"Don't fret, we'll see each other again in the near future and maybe then you will realize why you should stay away from Ruvik."
'I don't understand.' Sparrow's wide eyes showed nothing but confusion as Wren's hand slowly traveled from her shoulder to her pale bruised cheek, suddenly reminded of the hospital staff and their… abusive nature.
"Soon you will and then we can get out of here and you'll be safe." Wren gently smiled as she caressed Sparrow's cheek. Suddenly Wren vanished, probably teleporting elsewhere.
'So I'm safe? Wren, why the sudden change of character? Are you really the insane part of my mind?' Sparrow pondered before realizing that the room was still pulsing before the whole scenery around her changed into the familiar hospital she spent her life in.
'Why am I…?' Sparrow wondered as she tread carefully down the empty hall.
"Birdy, birdy." The familiar cautious voice of her best friend instantly made a smile appear on her face.
'Leslie!' She turned towards the room where the voice came from and suddenly remembered that this was the hallway where hers and Leslie's rooms were situated. Had it really been this long since Jimenez put her in this machine? As she stepped towards Leslie's room and peered through the bars, she noticed another shadow in the dark room.
Once the shadow stepped into the only source of light, which was coming through the bars of the door, Sparrow saw her own face and realized this must have been a memory.
'This must have been when I still had the key… yeah I remember, Leslie had a bad nightmare like usual.' Sparrow confirmed.
Suddenly a shadow in the corner of her eye drew her attention, a tall shadow at the end of the hallway stood facing her. Sparrow couldn't stop the small beads of sweat forming in the palms of her hands, or the small thin specks of hair at the back of her neck from standing on end. It made her feel a tingling sensation down her spine. The shadow turned and walked away around a corner before Sparrow released a breath she didn't know she was holding.
'It's just a memory, nothing can get you here,' she tried to convince herself.
Walking down the hallway reluctantly and following the shadow, Sparrow was lead deep into the underbelly of the hospital where she had never been before. Going through two pristine, clean double white doors she discovered she was in a lab of some sorts; the place was clean and lit up nicely but deserted with another single door up ahead.
Sparrow walked up to one of the tables pushed up against the wall, observing the shiny clean tools neatly laid out with even spaces between each other. A white cabinet stood nearby consisting of various books and jars containing some kind of liquid Sparrow wasn't familiar with.
'Why would a lab be down here?' She wondered before seeing a red filing cabinet next to the door she hadn't gone through yet. As she walked towards the filing cabinet, she saw cream colored files held various names.
Looking at the files she took note of all the names. 'Dylan Westcott, he had to be hand fed in the canteen. Freddie White, he was stable enough to be let into the lobby and read all day. Leslie Withers!'
Sparrow made a grab for the file but found her hand went completely through it. 'So I can open doors but objects are out of my reach. Great.' she sighed, staring at the file longingly and wondering why there was only one filing cabinet.
'This thing wouldn't be able to contain all the files of every patient in this hospital, it must be for something else.' Sparrow concluded. She suddenly caught a shadow from the corner of her eye dash past the square window the door next to her had.
Turning her attention to the door she opened it, a blinding light made her lift her hand up to cover her eyes. Once her eyes had adjusted, she brought her hand down uncovering a white tiled room with crimson blood splats here and there.
The room was quite small and on the ceiling hung processed square photographs depicting different people with exposed brains.
"Subject 5 showing signs of consciousness but no connection established. Subject is still showing signs of the Cerebellum being active, yet no stimulation in the Occipital lobe. Yet with the brain stem still connected to the mechanism, it tells me that this subject is experiencing delusion and the pain of continued suffocation, which both subject 2 and 7 experienced before their Frontal lobe shut down, followed by the temporal lobe and then the parietal lobe. If I can overcome this obstacle, I may be closer to perfection than I realize." The man said, who stood hovering over a body on a gurney in the middle of the room... But Sparrow knew exactly who it was.
'Ruvik?' Sparrow wondered, but her dreaded thoughts were confirmed as the young man turned around and took off some bloody latex gloves before pushing a button on a tape recorder.
Sparrow stiffened as Ruvik started wiping his tools down in front of her, as if he was about to look up and spot her.
'It's just a memory, this isn't him.' Sparrow thought before sidestepping to get a better look at the subject on the table. Her eyes widened as she recognized the face of one of the fellow patients at the hospital. 'That's Dylan Westcott'
She looked at the younger Ruvik with a confused expression, her trust in him slowly diminishing.
'Ruvik you... you've been experimenting on the patients here?!'
AN/ WOAHHH WAT, so yeah Sparrow has finally found out 0.0 dun dun duuuun so I hope you guys liked this chapter um for the next chapter it will mainly focus on what else Sparrow finds out so yahhhh :3
I appreciate all reviews/favourites and follows they motivate me to do more chapters and holy shit guys 73 reviews? That makes me so happy! All I can say is thank you guys so much :)
Hope you like this chapter and until next time :)
QUESTION OF THY CHAPTER: do you think Sparrow will be able to forgive him?
THAT IS ALL