Opening File: Marie Kanker
The Era of Rending was a time when many people became the absolute worst versions of themselves; Delinquents became marauders, perverts became rapists, disgruntled workers and civilians became raiders, bandits, and ruthless gunmen, the creepy kids in back of the class became murderers and cult leaders, and the geniuses became mad scientists and cyborgs. So, what do people like the Kankers become?
During the Great Rending, the middle Kanker sisters were separated from her family and left wandering around an abandoned part of GrimmFall, known as the "Dark Zone" due to it being devoid of power, during the entirety of Era of Rending.
Marie's story, however, was much different than Lee's or May's.
After finding her mother, whom was wounded from the Great Rending, demanded her help. However, all those year of physical and emotional abuse finally boiled over, causing Marie to snap and kill her mother. Though initially horrified by her act, Marie suddenly felt utter liberation and power after killing her mother, unlike any she felt in her life. Desiring to feel such power again, Marie became a psychotic killer, killing and flaying those she disliked and defiling those she liked.
Marie's despicable actions gained her a feared reputation and the moniker of "The Flayer of GrimmFall." At age 18, she joined a cult of murderers and rapists known as The Unhallowed Hearts lead by Katz after Sammael's disappearance after the Great Rending.
The cult terrorized the Dark Zone along with the other cults and tribes in the dark parts of the city, engaging in many killing sprees and blood filled orgies. One day, however, Marie and several others of the cult were exposed to a deposit of a Semblance mutating material called M-Y-K-0-5-Y-N-7-H or 'Mycosynth' and her original Semblance, Camouflage, became Metamorphosis, which she exploited to no end.
After Modus' domination of the US, Marie went was sentenced to five years for her crimes, if only because the judges didn't have much time to issue a proper ruling for her. During her time in prison, Kanker grew remorseful of her acts as the "Flayer of GrimmFall" and decided to move away from that persona of her.
After serving her sentence, Marie took a job at the Operator's Amazon Fulfillment Center in the rebuild GrimmFall under Modus' jurisdiction. The middle Kanker sister has managed to lead a fairly stable life albeit with a lot of ambition until the Incident at the Wellness Center.
Close File
Marie sighed as she stared out of the window of the car, with her only seeing the Megacity writhed in snowfall. Just like everywhere else in the world.
The last 2 days had been a dozy; First, she lost her car keys. Second, The Operator told her that she had to visit a 'Wellness Center' in the German Megacity of Berlin to retrieve a client of his that had not returned for 3 months. And thirdly, she wasn't allowed to go casual as 'she needed to look formal' as the Operator put it.
After getting off her flight to Berlin, she took a train to the nearest parts of the alps before taking a cab reserved for her to the Wellness Center, a drive that took almost three hours due to the snowfall and traffic but the driver told her the Wellness Center wasn't fare now so she didn't need to worry.
On the way though, she'd opened up an old music box she kept during the Era of Rending that, for some reason, she kept playing over and over again. The driver either didn't mind or liked the music as he didn't say anything as she kept play it.
According to the driver, the sanitarium was built over an old castle. In the 1820s, a baron that lived there was performing a form of witchcraft which caused the villagers to rise up and burn the castle to the ground.
Marie honestly didn't care as she kept thinking about the message that the executive sent yesterday.
2 days ago:
"To my fellow members of the board,
"A man cannot unsee the truth, he cannot willingly return to darkness or go blind once he has the gift of sight, any more than he can be unborn. We are the only species capable of self reflection, the only species with the toxin of self doubt written into our genetic code. Unequal to our gifts, we build, we buy, we consume. We wrap ourselves in the illusion of material success. we cheat and deceive as we claw our way to the pinnacle of what we define as achievement: Superiority to other men.
"There is a sickness inside us, rising like the bile that leaves that bitter taste at the back of their throats. It's there on every one of you seated at the table. We deny it's existence until one day the body rebels against the mind and screams out, 'I am not a well man.' No doubt you will think only of the merger; that unclean melding of two equally diseased institutions. But the truth cannot be ignored. For only when we know what ails us, can we hope to find the cure.
"I will not return. Do not attempt to contact me again.
"Sincerely, Roland E. Pembroke."
The room was silent after Rigby finished reading the email before Marie broke it with, "Okay, so he's insane?"
The Operator only shrugged, "Maybe. But I'm getting tired of delaying his company's criminal investigation ever since his company did that merger, so you have to go retrieve him. If you do, you get that promotion."
"Wait, why do I have to get him back?" Marie questioned, slightly annoyed.
Offdensen then said bluntly, "Well, he is a womanizer so..."
The blue haired woman only made an offended sound.
"We're here, ma'am." The driver said, snapping her out of her thoughts as she saw that indeed, they had arrived at the Wellness Center.
The center looked like a castle from the country itself, bricks and design in all. It was rather nice and peaceful looking with a dome to keep out the cold weather while the various men and women around the outside were at tables, talking, reading, or eating, while other simply played golf or Croke. What perplexed her wasn't the white spa-like uniforms they all wore but the fact that they were getting along with each other. The high class of Modus usually only get along with other members of their families, and as far as she knew, no one here was related.
Getting out of the car, the dark blue dress that matched her hair waved around in the breeze, while the coat she wore had served to keep any men or women from staring at her, but she suppressed those thoughts as she entered the Wellness Center.
She couldn't keep her mouth from dropping open in shock.
The place was obscenely cleaned and well maintained with the staff buzzing around, carrying trays holding pitchers of water, much to her bepuzzlement before she found the receptionist's desk.
"How may I help you?" The receptionist asked pleasantly and with a smile. She was a blonde haired woman with a pony tail, wearing a white nurse's uniform.
"Hi, I'm here to see a guest." Marie replied, "Mr. Roland Pembroke?"
The receptionist answered, "I'm sorry, but visiting hours are over for the day." She pointed to a sign that read "VISITING HOURS 11AM-3PM." Marie looked at her cellphone: it was 5:30PM.
She sighed exasperatedly and said, "Look, miss, I came all the way from America to get here. Maybe, can you make an exception?"
"There are no exceptions." The receptionist replied with that pleasant smile plastered on her face.
Now, Marie was getting annoyed, "Look, I'm on a tight schedule. Is there a manager or someone I can speak to?"
The receptionist only pulled out a piece of paper and set it in front of her along with a pen. "Please sign here."
Marie looked puzzled for a second before shrugging and signing the paper with the pen.
"Thank you, miss..." The receptionist trailed off as she looked at the paper for a second to confirm her name, "Kanker. I'll see what I can do."
She then left her desk and walked off, presumably to the manager's office, while Marie just sighed in annoyance and looked at her phone to call the Operator, only for her not to a connection to the SkyWeb.
Confused, she walked out to get a better connection but the results were the same.
One of the patients on the patio by the entrance saw what she was trying to do and said, "Don't bother, the SkyWeb is only available to the staff here."
Marie put down her phone and silently thanked the man before an elderly patient came up and asked kindly, "Hello, miss. I hate to be a bother but can you go get my Croke ball? It's over by that vent."
She sighed and walked over to the brick-made vent, only to notice something odd. There were sounds of running water and mechanical piping echoing from beyond the inner parts of the vents before she was snapped out of her thoughts when she picked up the ball.
Handing it back to the elderly patient whom thanked her, Marie then saw one of the staff members arrived to tell her the one of the doctors would like to speak with her. She muttered, "Finally." as he lead her into the center.
The doctor, a middle-aged man with greying hair, lead her into his office where he started with, "I believe the receptionist explained that visiting hours end at 3PM precisely?"
His voice was heavy with a German accent as he talked while sitting at his desk. Marie simply followed him while looking around his office; it had a typical hunter's feel with a stuffed stag's head, a bunch of filing cabinets and framed pictures, some guns on display, and some oriental canes on a rack.
"She did," Marie replied, palming one of the canes, "But Mr. Pembroke remains one of the Operator's executives, so he asked me personally to retrieve him. Under the circumstances, I was hoping you could make an-"
She paused when she saw the doctor consuming some drops from a small blue glass medicine bottle.
"-exception." Marie finished, even more puzzled.
The doctor noticed her bepuzzlement and explained, "Vitamins. If we are to help the people that come here, we must keep up our strength. May one ask, what it is concerning."
Marie only set the cane down before saying, "It's a matter of the Operator's. I'm not allowed to say more than that." She walked towards the doctor while looking at the pictures he had framed up.
"Of course." The doctor replied, "And I hope you understand that we also have our rules. Our treatments here are most effective when exposure to the stresses to the modern world is strictly limited. Director Volmer is quite firm on that."
Marie looked over the pictures which showed various photos of the center, of their treatments involving the water, and of some of the staff. A plaque that read "Purity before Wellness. Henrich Volmer."
"Hydrotherapy?" Marie inquired.
"That is correct."
"Long way to come just for water." She snarked as she continued to look over the pictures.
"The sanitarium was built over the ancient aquifer with uniquely rejuvenating properties." The doctor explained as he got up and poured himself a glass of water from the sink. Marie then noticed that he said it wrong and corrected him.
"Rebuilt you mean." She corrected, causing the doctor to look at her before she continued, "After the fire you mean."
The doctor seemed to realize what she meant, "Yes, history is full of darkness." Marie raised an eyebrow before the doctor continued, "If you would like to leave a note, I would happily pass it along to Mr. Pembroke."
Okay, enough of this.
"Doctor... Peterson, is it?" Marie asked, the doctor nodded before she explained, "I understand the work you do here is important and you're obviously a very busy man, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd manage to find a time between his treatments to tell him that he has a visitor with very important information."
She kept her composure as she continued, "Of course, I can make a note and you can give it to him tomorrow morning but that's not gonna cut it. See, I flew a 7 hour flight, and 8 hour train ride, and a 3 hour drive in a dress that I hate to get here, just to hear that I have to wait. There is a 8AM flight tomorrow and I intend for me and Pembroke to be on it."
Peterson is silent before he speaks after the sound of the dripping faucet, "You intend to take Mr. Pembroke back with you to America?"
"Is that a problem?" Marie politely shot back.
"Of course not." Dr. Peterson replied, "It is entirely up to Mr. Pembroke. He is a patient not a prisoner." He then flipped through some papers while humming for a second before saying, "Let's see. He'll be in treatment until after 7PM. If you'd like to come back then, I'll make sure he's available."
Marie sighed in relief, "Thank you for your understanding." She then looked to the glass of water, before pointing to it, "May I?"
"Oh, help yourself." Peterson politely replied, as the blue haired woman drank the whole glass in one go.
At the entrance, Marie walked out of the entrance to the chauffeur waiting for her to return.
"Leaving already?" The elder patient from earlier asked, but she ignored him.
The chauffeur finished his cigarette and looked confused, "Where's your friend?"
"When's the last train out of this town?" Marie asked abruptly.
"10PM."
"Get me to a hotel. I gotta make a call." Was all she said before she got in the car, not seeing Dr. Peterson walking out of the sanitarium as they drove off, before he turned around and looked upwards towards a window where someone watched them leave.
Marie laid back in her seat, relieved that was all over. Now she just had to get to a hotel, make a few calls, come back, get Pembroke, get on the train, get on that flight, and go home. Pembroke gets back to the Operator, she gets her promotion, all is fine and dandy.
She leaned against the window of the car only to blink as she saw someone standing on the top of the stone railing near entrance. She blinked again and they were gone before she turned around. That person was standing on the railing across from the entrance as they stared at each other for a few moments before she turned away, very confused.
Was she seeing things? Because that person looked a lot like the Operator.
Marie's thoughts were soon ripped from her head as a stag happened to run across the road. It hit the car with one of it's antlers piercing the windshield, causing the chauffeur to panic, sending the car over the road. Marie wasn't aware she was screaming while the windows shattered and the car tumbled.
She rolled out as the world went white, and idly, she wondered, was this how she was die. Reality faded as she felt like she had submerged in a warm bath.
A woman awoke.
Something brown dripped from a machine into a blue bottle.
The Operator bellowing in fury while surrounded by fire.
A million eels slithering.
The sanitarium on fire.
Someone twirling underwater.
Marie screaming while trapped underwater.
A portrait burning.
Finally, herself staring heatedly at someone unseen as the music box played.
She stood there silently, in the ruins of the place she once called home; it was torn open with it's remaining material in the shape of claws, flaying against the cold and drearier air.
Her mother's body laid there on a bed of clothes, like the ones she slept on for her whole life. It was dressed only in the clothes she only ever wore, same as she did, even if she had the common sense to wash her's ever now and again.
Marie only looked down on her mother's body, emotionlessly as she drenched it with a jug of gasoline. She poured methodically all around and circularly before coming full circle. She dropped the jug and glared for a few moments before igniting a flare.
"You know, Mom?" Marie droned while approaching her mother's body, "You always told me that strength ensures victory but there you were begging for your life before I killed you."
She leaned down to the body.
"You were weak, so that means you lost."
Marie then readied the flare.
"And you can't hurt me anymore."
She dropped the flare before walking away as the makeshift pyre lit ablaze. It's clothing burned, it's still blood boiled, with Marie just standing there stoically.
Marie's eyes slowly fluttered open. She was in a cleaned and pristine room, with amazing décor while a nurse was folding clothes and preparing some food. Marie groaned as she awoke, only to find herself in a bed, wearing a white long sleeved shirt and white bottoms.
Don't get her wrong, she was elated to get out of that dress somewhat, but she was still confused.
It was only then when she turned her head to her left that she saw an open window showing a very familiar sight. She was at the sanitarium.
"Sleep well?" The nurse asked her.
Marie chuckled slightly before sighing as laid back down, "Yeah, I... can't remember having slept better."
"It is the mountain air." A voice with a German accent filled her ears. She turned to see a middle aged man with combed back black hair, wearing a light grey suit and pants with a white dress shirt, sitting in a chair by the door. He smiled pleasantly, "Ms. Kanker, my name is Heinrich Volmer. I am the director of the sanitarium here."
She looked confused, "How long have I been here?"
"Three days." Volmer responded.
Marie groaned, "Oh, fuck." The Operator is not gonna be pleased.
She got up and pulled off the sheets only to see her right leg had been bandaged to hell and back along with a lean leather leg brace on top, clung kinda comfortably to her.
"You can count yourself lucky, Ms. Kanker." Volmer said in response to her dumbstruck face staring at her leg, "Your femur was only cracked and we managed to remove the metal and glass from your leg, even though most of the metal pierced your femur. But I do feel partly responsible."
Marie looked at him even more confused. Why did he feel responsible? He saved her life.
"The officials at Modus tell me I should hunt the deer on the property," Volmer shrugs, "But I can't bring myself to harm such innocent creatures. After all, they were here long before us."
She just let out a sigh and said, "I need to call the Operator."
"I took the liberty of informing him after the accident." Volmer replied, with Marie blinking in surprise, "And he agreed with me. Business can wait and your health cannot."
Okay, now Marie knew something was off. The Operator never allows something like a company review wait at all, unless it's on the holidays or if someone's been life threateningly injured. Which she admittedly was, but she was in Germany not America.
"The Operator said that?" She asked incredulously.
The director only smiled before he pulled the sheets on her, "Even one of the Consortium can't argue with the consequences of a serious car accident. Also, we don't get many visitors here."
She looked curious, causing him to smile and walk to the windows, "Most of my patients have done extraordinary things: Built vast fortunes, commanded great empires, but at a terrible cost." He stared out the window longingly before looking back at the blue haired woman, "They have no one who cares for them."
Marie was so puzzled by what he said that she barely registered the nurse pouring a glass of water before Volmer smiled again, "Mr. Pembroke is lucky. He has you."
Now Marie even more puzzled. What did he mean by that? She barely knew the guy. Hell, it was only before she left that she even knew his name.
"Do try your best to relax." Volmer continued as he walked to the door, "Enjoy yourself! You are at the foot of the swiss alps, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Think of it as an enforced vacation." He then joked, "Although I imagine employees of the Operator's have a hard time with vacations."
Okay, she admits that was funny.
"And remember you are at a higher altitude than normal." The director motions to the nurse whom being a tray of water as he talks, "It may take a while for you to acclimatize so please be sure to drink plenty of water."
The nurse presented her the tray with the pitcher and glass, which she took after a second of hesitation. Marie then proceeded to down half of the glass in one go, the cold liquid spilling down her throat and into her system.
As she finished her drink, Volmer finished the conversation with a smile, "Believe me, you are in good hands."
The director and the nurse then left the room, leaving Marie by her lonesome. She set her water down on the stand beside her bed, where her phone was sitting by a lamp. Deciding she needed to check, Marie picked up her phone only to see that it had no power.
"Oh, great." She mumbled as she set it aside before getting out of bed. Thankfully, her leg brace meant she didn't need a cane to walk but she still had an awkward limp whenever she walked.
She walked to the window while taking another drink from her glass. Everything seemed the same but she noticed a man bricking off the vent she looked at when she got here 3 days ago. Other than that, everything seemed the same. The patients were outside, playing Croke, reading or writing. Everything seemed fine.
Marie took another drink before noticing something in her glass. Her face of confusion, she used her finger to pick it up from the bottom of the glass; a small tick-sized worm, deep green with a beige underbelly rested on her finger. It squirmed, but she'd gotten over being grossed out by bugs. Being a serial killer in the Era of Rending can do that to ya.
She simply crushed the worm in her fingers before deciding she might as well tour the place around.
After she put on a white bathrobe over her long sleeve and some slippers on her unbandaged and bandaged foot, Marie got out of her room to explode the sanitarium and find where Pembroke is. While she very much appreciated the director's help, she still had a job to finish.
As she explored, the first she saw was an aquarobics lesson in the large pool on just below her floor with the session involving red and green exercise balls and stretching from side to side. The second was when she looked in the saunas, where there were simply one person machines and bathes where the patients read, ate, or relaxed while the staff tended to them. The third was went she was walking through another hallway went she noticed a window to the pool where a bunch of attractive patients were swimming.
To this day, Marie denied gazing at any of them.
After deciding that she was officially lost, Marie walked down some stairs to the entrance to find some of the staff where the receptionist happened to be at the bottom of the steps.
"Are you lost?" She politely asked.
Marie looked surprised when she spoke before sheepishly admitting, "Uh, yeah. I guess I am."
"Where is it you are supposed to be?" The receptionist asked, looking at her papers.
"Um, I don't know. I'm looking for someone actually." Marie also admitted.
"Name?"
"Pembroke. Roland E. Pembroke."
The nurse looked through her papers for a second before answering, "Ah, here it is! Pembroke; Room 609. Steam bath."
"Thank you." Marie thanked with a fake smile, before limping off to the right part of the hallway before the receptionist called.
"Um, Ms. Kanker?" Marie turned back, "The steam baths are in that direction." She pointed in the opposite direction of where she was heading.
"Oh." Marie's cheeks were slightly pink, "Thanks. I'm losing my mind." The blue haired woman joked, trying to hide her embarrassment. The receptionist only giggled before frowning when Marie passed her.
She had arrived at the entrance to the bath house but was stopped by a male staff member before she could enter.
"You can't go in there." He says before before picking up a pair of sandals and a towel, "Not like that."
Marie groaned, "Oh, come on."
The staff member at least had the decency not to look at her as she changed, but the only comfort she had was that most of the other in there were like that. Marie then entered the bath house, wearing only a towel that covered her modesty and a pair of sandals.
It was a circular room with several of the patients showering, in the hot tubs, or being messaged by the staff. And half of them didn't have their towels.
Marie kept her head down, desperately trying to hide her blush as she tried to find her way to the steam baths to find Pembroke and get out of here. On her way, she saw two men getting hosed of by one of the staff to her left while to her right were a pair of men playing chess... in their hot tub, and to her left again was an attractive woman about her age getting massaged by a staff member.
The blue haired woman tried desperately to compose herself before she saw the entrance to the steam baths. She entered to find a yellow room with tiled floors before going to her right where a pathway was.
As she walked down that path, she entered a tile room filled with steam and lights on the top corners before she took another door to her right, only to blink when she ended up in the same room, right entrance and all. She shook her head, maybe it just had a similar design.
Marie walked through the entrance only for the same room to be there. She entered to the right again and the same room was there except this time there was no right entrance. She sighed in relief before turning to see the doorway she entered through was gone.
Her eyes wide, she frantically patted down the wall where the doorway should have been before looking around, breathing heavily as her surrounding confirmed she was trapped. Marie leaned against the wall, her heart pounding from all her fear before the doorway faintly revealed itself with her sight landing on another two that ended in different room.
Marie breathed, trying to calm herself down, whispering to herself, "Maybe I should consider taking a few days off."
She limped through the two doorways into the room, this one was rectangular with two stone benches and a hot tub. On the stone bench to the left sat a man with wet thinning and greying black hair and a white beard. He thankfully wore a towel but he had an empty expression on his face. It was Roland Pembroke.
Marie limped towards him, gaining his attention when she said, "Pembroke?"
He looked up, an empty expression still on his face. Thinking he didn't hear her, Marie repeated, "Mr. Pembroke?"
"Do I know you?" The man answered, sounding genuinely puzzled by the woman in front of him.
"My name is Marie Kanker," She replied, "The Operator sent me."
Pembroke looked down, "I thought he'd send Morris."
"Morris is dead sir." Marie said, to her surprise Pembroke didn't react, "Heart attack." She then said beside the old man, "Mr. Pembroke, I've come to take you back to America."
That got him to look at her in a thankfully normal gaze, "You want me to leave here?"
"Just for a few days." She replied, hoping that would convince him.
It didn't. "I'm afraid I can't do that." Pembroke told her, causing the blue haired woman to ask, "Why not?"
"I'm not well." Was the old man's only response.
That puzzled Marie; for one thing, Pembroke looked fine to her. Sure, his hair was thinning but that was it. Secondly, from what she was told, Pembroke was only 49 years old. So, he couldn't be unwell from age.
"You look alright to me." Marie responded.
"It's because you are blind, as I was." Pembroke immediately responded.
She blinked, where did that come from?
"But soon you'll see," He told her with a smile, "Rest assured; they'll take good care of you here."
"I'm not a patient." Marie mumbled.
"Well, what happened to your leg?" Pembroke then asked her.
"Car accident." She signed before trying to convince him to leave, "Look, Mr. Pembroke, the situation with your company is really quite serious-"
"No longer my concern." Pembroke interrupted before he got up with Marie following, "The practices said I should not involve myself in business matters."
The business man then took off his towel before entering the pool with the blue haired woman staying around the edges of the pool.
"Have you meet Director Volmer?" Pembroke asked her as he entered the pool.
"This morning." She replied as she still tried to convince him.
Pembroke smiled, "He is a great man. A kind man. Not like other doctors."
"Mr. Pembroke-"
Marie was interrupted when he said, "This obsession with blood, you see they have it all wrong. You know the body is 65 percent water? It's our fluids that must be purified."
She breathed through her nostrils, "Look, Mr. Pembroke, I know this place is very nice and all but I need you to come back with-"
"Kanker?" Pembroke interrupted her, "You're not in any relation to May Kanker, are you?"
That caused Marie to stop. She hadn't seen either of her sisters since the Era of Rending. She knew Lee was wanted for sealing Narcotics and multiple counts of murder, but she knew next to nothing about what happened to May.
"Y-yeah," She said after a long pause, "That's my little sister. You know her?"
"She's my secretary." Roland said with a sad expression, "Terrible what happened to her family." He then looked to her with an empathetic expression, "She said something about her family being torn apart during the Great Rending?"
Marie now also had a sad expression, temporarily forgetting her mission, "We were separated during the Great Rending. Haven't seen her in 13 years." She then chuckled sadly, "I don't even know what she looks like."
"I truly am sorry, Ms. Kanker," Pembroke said sincerely, "She didn't deserve what she went through. None of you did. You were raised by a cruel mother whom believed in strength above everything, poisoning you with aspirations."
"Well, people get fucked over everyday." Marie shrugged, "Either you have what it takes to survive or you don't."
"And I suppose you do?"
Marie froze. Those 5 words had more impact than anything she felt before; doubt in her abilites.
"Is that why you came all this way? Ambition?" Pembroke spoke. Taking her silence as a yes, he continued, "Then you have it worse than any of us. Even worse than the Operator."
She was starting to get scared, "And what's that?"
"The sickness." He said it as if it was the devil, "Your mother was poisoned with it, as she did with you and your sisters. Now I see the truth, the pointlessness of the entire endeavor. We've all done terrible things. So many terrible things."
He finished this as he sunk into the water, unaware that his words cut Marie to the core. Was all that she had done pointless? Yes, she was promised a promotion if she got him home, but what was that worth in the long run? She'd have more money and power but would she be happy? Would she felt better about herself or would she feel the same as she did for these past 6 years?
She was dragged out of her thoughts when Pembroke immerged from the water.
"What's it trading at it?" He asks, not facing her. His tone void of the empathy he had before he submerged.
Marie blinked, bewildered by the sudden change in tone, "What?"
Pembroke turned and raises his voice at her, angerly, "The stock! What's it trading at?"
The blue haired woman jumped but gathered her bearings, explaining calmly, "8 and a half. If closed on Friday."
"Parasites." Pembroke growled in anger, turning away from her.
"It'll be lower by now." Marie continues sycophantically, "We're all concerned for your wellbeing, Mr. Pembroke."
The businessman simply thought things over before Marie continued, "There are certain irregularities in some of the accounts that need to be clarified before the Operator can review your productions and your stocks can recover."
Pembroke looked at her, saying, "Then I suppose someone has to take responsibility."
"Something like that." Marie said after a pause.
"Then I better get my things." Pembroke finished.
Marie internally was jumping for joy; now they would finally be able to leave this place, she'd get her promotion, and she'd be home free from slaving away in the Fulfillment Center.
After they left the steam baths, Marie got back to her room and got dressed in green cargo pants, a black shirt, a red leather jacket, and a pair of black shoes with grey soles. If you're all wondering where she got them, haven't you ever heard of packing extra clothes?
Marie then limped down to the entrance of the Wellness Center, where the receptionist was. She limped swiftly towards her, asking forcefully, "I need a car to take me to the station. Will you call him for me please?"
"I'll see what I can do." The receptionist smiled, making Marie internally roll her eyes as she exited the building, waiting for Pembroke. The blue haired woman paused slightly when she saw all the high class people staying here chatting, playing, painting, and writing.
Marie couldn't help but feel slightly envious. Even after she bettering herself from her days as "the Flayer of GrimmFall", she never felt any peace with herself like the people here seemingly had.
Her thoughts then turned to the bricked over well where the top part of a tower from a church sat by the east part of the sanitarium.
"That's where the baron hung the priest," A woman Marie meet 3 days ago said, making her nearly jump out of her skin. She was a year or two older than her, with short blonde hair, and happened to be holding a book.
"I'm sorry?" Marie politely asked.
The blonde woman showed her the book; a drawing showing a small church in the Alps but the back was a blank extended and attached to the top of the window frame, where a noose was. And a priest was hanging from that noose.
"See?" She pointed out to Marie, "The church would have been right over there. Where that funny little building is now, I'm sure of it. People used to come from miles around for the miracles attributed to the holy water."
"Guess somethings don't change." Marie snarked, causing the blonde woman to chuckle.
"Marvelous." She smiled before frowning, "Terrible thing though, such violence."
Marie shrugged, "Well, that's what you get when you torture innocent people."
The woman then looked confused, "Torture?"
"Yeah," Marie explained to the blonde woman, "The baron kidnapped people and tortured them to death."
"How fascinating." The blonde woman said with an intrigued expression, "I must look into that."
"Nice to see you back on your feet!" Marie jumped when she saw two middle aged men walking towards her and blonde, whom greeted her kindly, "We heard about the accident." The balding man then got a good look at her, "You're American, Ms..."
"Kanker. Marie Kanker." The blue haired woman answer as she shook a hand that the balding man extended.
"Frank Hill, Stockholm." The balding man replied kindly before introducing his friend, "And this is Mr. Nerie from London."
Mr. Nerie was a middle aged man with well kept greying hair smiled as he also shook her hand, "Nice to meet you."
"And I see you meet Mrs. Watkins." Nerie said, making the blonde woman smile, "Historical study."
Watkins shook Marie's hand, "Oh, how rude of me. Victoria Watkins, 20 years of study.'
"Why don't you pull up a chair?" Mr. Nerie asked her as he pulled out a pack of cards, "We need four."
The patients all walked towards on the table while Hill stopped and whispered to her, "Careful. Like most British, he cheats."
"Heard that." Nerie said in a singsong tone.
"Oh, I very much appreciate it, but I have to decline." Marie politely declined, "I'm waiting for someone."
The three looked slightly disappointed but appreciated her politeness so they accepted that.
"Mrs. Watkins?" An orderly came by to the blond, "Time for your treatment."
"Oh, of course." Victoria replied before smiling to Marie, "It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Kanker. I wish you safe travels."
Marie smiled and nodded as Victoria went back inside for her treatments but suddenly, she heard someone humming. Turning to where it was coming from she limped over where it was loudest, sounding like her music box.
It was coming from the edge of the Center, near the exits. As she neared, the humming grew louder, more methodical and deep before the sight before her almost made her faint from shock.
The humming was coming from a man whom was nearly identical to the Operator; same height, same hair color, same voice except that he was dressed in a grey long sleeve, a burgundy open sweater, pale green pants, and tall black rubber boots. The major differences were that his hair was almost waist length and that his eyes were crimson instead of the familiar purple. He happened to be holding what appeared to be a bag of fish food, gently sprinkling it to a large reservoir-like pool, which was oddly void of fish.
Marie just stared at the man in front of her. What was the Operator or a lookalike of him doing here? Why did he look so different then the last time he saw her? What the hell is going on?
The Operator lookalike seemed to notice her presence as he turned to look at her, curiously. The two seemed stared at each other for several moments with the air around her being one of awkwardness and confusion and the air around him being one of simple curiosity.
"Is something in the water?" Marie asked, trying to break the awkward feeling she had at seeing this man whom looks like the Operator.
The man nodded, "At the bottom." Was his only response as he turned back to the pool and continued to sprits the fish food. Marie raised an eyebrow and limped over to the pool for a closer look. She still didn't see any fish or even worms in the water.
"I don't see anything." She admitted to the man, whom only shrugged. Suddenly, he began staring at her bandaged leg for an uncomfortable amount of time.
He then looked at her in the eyes, pointing to her leg, "Did that hurt?"
Marie laughs, trying to hide her uncomfortableness, "I can't remember."
"Better that way." He responded, before turning away from her while humming and continuing to sprits the water with the fish food. Marie followed him, trying to get some answers. "Are you a patient or something? Cause I saw you near the entrance and you seem like the right age for a patient."
"No, I'm a gardener." The lookalike replied, "My name is Lockhart by the way."
"Marie." The blue haired woman shook his hand.
"What about you? Are you here for the cure?" Lockhart asks her, in a tone as if she had stolen something.
Marie laughed nervously due to how Lockhart phrased that, quickly explaining, "No. Actually, I was just leaving."
The Operator-lookalike looks at her strangely before he replies with, "No one ever leaves."
Marie blinks at his statement before furrowing her eyebrows, confused and a bit disturbed. What did he mean by that?
"What are you talking about?" The blue haired woman questioned.
"Why would anyone want to?" Lockhart motioned to the alps before continuing to hum while sprinkling the water with the flakes.
Marie looked at the alps, it was almost sundown while the ending tide of snow carrying clouds most of the population had grow accustom to were still present in all their grey beauty. Marie had to admit, it was an amazing sight.
"Touché. I see your point." The blue haired woman admitted as she watched the Operator duplicate doing his job before he turned to her and asked her abruptly.
"Did you get what you came for?"
Marie nodded after she got closer to him, "Well, I came to bring someone back to America. So, yeah, I did."
Lockhart then asked after stirring the water for a second, "Does he want to go?
She paused for a second before answering, "Not really."
Lockhart only has a look of slight disapproval before Marie then asked, "Hey, that song you're singing, where'd you learn that?"
The man remained silent and darted his eyes towards the center for a second before he pulled the bag of flakes to rest on his shoulders, "It's a popular song in the alps. Anyway, I have to go. Gotta then to the gardens."
Marie looked at him strangely before relenting and limping back towards the center to get Pembroke.
Of course, things were not going to be easy. When she re-entered the sanitarium, only was the receptionist not there. After groaning in frustration, she rung the bell twice only for no one to answer.
She then limped up the stairs to Floor 6 and got to 609; Pembroke's room only to find the staff there, folding his clothes and making his bed, with the executive nowhere in sight.
"Hey, miss?" Marie asked one of the nurses, "Where is Roland Pembroke?"
"You will have to speak with Director Volmer, ma'am." The nurse responded as she finished folding some sheets, "He's in the dining hall for brunch."
She nodded as she exited the room, only to stop and punch the wall in frustration. Only to see that her punch made a crack in the stone wall of the hallway.
Marie stared at the crack before staring at her hand before speed limping towards the dining hall.
In the dining hall, various patients and doctors sat at a table with Director Volmer at the front, all sharing tales and jokes as they ate delicious foods from Volmer's most prized chefs.
"-And you know what they used to recommend for the common stomach aliment." Volmer began his joke as he cuts a piece of meat on his plate, "The application of leeches. Based on the prediction, I always prefer the leech."
The men and women at his table laughed at his joke before he noticed Marie entering the dining hall.
"Ms. Kanker!" Volmer announced, getting her attention, "Please, come! I'd love some more company!"
'Okay, Marie, go over the plan.' She thought, as she approached the table where Volmer sat, 'Be polite, make some small talk to get him comfortable enough, then ask what happened to Pembroke, get Pembroke, call that driver, get to the train, and get home with them none the wiser.'
"I'd love to Director," Marie sat down at the opposite end of the table from Volmer, "I'm famished."
"Of course." The director smiled and turned to Dr. Peterson whom was at his right, "Peterson, can you be a peach and go get our lovely guest some food?"
Peterson nodded and got up from the table, while the others talked for a few moments before he came back with a plate of some meat and fruit. As much as Marie loved the food, she still had a job to do.
"So!" Volmer unknowingly started for her, "How are you enjoying your stay at the Wellness Center?"
"Fine, I guess." Marie replied, "But your gardener is really freaking creepy."
Volmer blinked for a second, before asking for clarification, "My gardener?"
"He has white hair, a red open sweater, and is named Lockhart?" Marie added details.
"Oh, Lockhart!" The director laughed, "Do not worry, he has always been peculiar but he is mostly harmless. A great worker too. He always tends so well to my gardens. Has a terrible drinking problem though."
"Cool." Marie sighed, relieved that the anemic gardener was just being creepy, "But I've been meaning to ask; What happened to Pembroke?"
"Oh, Mr. Pembroke has unfortunately taken a turn for the worse." Volmer told her while eating, "It seemed your conversion about business matters caused a reaction from him. No matter, we have moved him to phase 2."
"He seemed heathy to me."
"Well, on the surface at the very least, Ms. Kanker."
"Look, Director, I talked to Pembroke earlier today," Marie explained as politely as she could, because she was really growing tired of what was going on, "He agreed to leave, and I find out that he was then admitted for advanced treatment. So, you'll have to forgive me for being more than a little suspicious."
Volmer simply nodded in understanding, "I suppose it cannot be helped. All though..." He paused slightly as he stared analytically at Marie, making her slightly uncomfortable, "You could very much benefit from the treatments, Ms. Kanker."
Marie only rolled her eyes, "Thank you for the offer, Director, but I'm pretty sure I-"
"Uh, Ms. Kanker?" Mr. Hill politely interjected, "You have a nose bleed."
Marie blinked before she slowly noticed a wet feeling on her upper lip. She wiped it gently with two of her fingers and held it to her eyes only to see it stained with a drop of blood.
"Oh," Was all that she got out before her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she faceplanted onto the table.
2 hours later:
Volmer shined a light into her eyes as he held her head for examination, her pupils dilated as they followed the light.
"No signs of concussion." He said before he turned off the light, "Any headaches? Hallucinations?"
Marie blinked twice, trying to get the afterimages out of her eyes, "No."
"You may dress." Volmer said after she confirmed his suspicions, before walking to retrieve something.
The blue haired woman simply got up from the table and put her shirt back on. After she blacked out, Volmer, his staff, and some of the patients had dragged her to this examination room where she woke up a half hour ago. She was utterly flabbergasted though; why'd she pass out? She'd drunk plenty of the water so how'd she get a nose bleed? Oh, she doesn't know what's going on anymore.
"Are you drinking the water?" Volmer snapped her out of her thoughts.
Marie blinked for a second, before answering, "Yes. Plenty."
"Good," Volmer said as he pulled out a file from a cabinet, "Be sure that you do." He then lead her to his office. On the way, the patients asked if she was fine and the director answered that she was going to be staying here for a while. Marie would have protested but she felt more exhausted than ever in her life, so she didn't have the energy to talk back.
They got to Volmer's office where they both sat at his desk while the former opened the file.
"I took the liberty of running some tests after your accident." Volmer explained to her, "The results are alarming; Imbalance in fluids, strain to the major organs, depleted immune system. Many indicators of my other patients, but I confess I have never seen a case so advanced as yours."
Marie was indeed alarmed, but remained skeptical.
Seeing the skepticism on her face, Volmer sighed and asked her, "Tell me, Ms. Kanker: When was the last time that you actually felt well?"
The blue haired woman opened her mouth but closed it as she thought. She dug through every memory she had in the last 13 years to find the ones where she actually felt well, and the ones where she indeed felt well were ones where she was a much more horrible person.
"Before you came here, when was the last time that you even slept through the night?" Volmer asked, before motioning to the papers, "The mind may lie but the body cannot. I should like to help you."
The director got up from his chair and sat on the desk as he continued, "What we offer here is a simple process of purification, away from the pressures of the modern world. A return to a simpler time. Mr. Pembroke will not be ready to travel for a day or two and if you're willing, I would like to recommend of a treatment. I can speak to the duty nurse and we may be able to start as early as this afternoon."
Marie looked at him before she noticed the cabinets, that supposedly had all the medical files of everyone staying. The gears turning in her head, she gave her answer to the director.
"If you think it's necessary."
The director smiled pleasantly, "Good." He got up from the desk and opened the doors to call down one of the nurses. As he did, Marie scurried to the drawer labeled "P" and quickly shifted through it contents. Behind her, she heard the director talking to a nurse that she didn't see in German before her eyes and fingers locked onto a file labeled "Pembroke, Roland E."
She darted back to see the director still talking to the nurse. Good, he was still distracted.
Marie pulled the file out, only for her to accidentally knock over a small blue bottle. It rolled neared the edge of the stand but she caught it before it could fall to the floor.
"You are in luck, Ms. Kanker!" Volmer announced as he reentered his office, only to pause when he didn't see her. He turned saw her looking at a locket on a stand by the filing cabinets. "We can get you in right away." He continued.
Marie nodded before she took the locket off it's case and palmed it. It was held by a very fine and thin chain while the locket itself was silver with "VR" engraved in gold.
"VR." She though out loud before it hit her, "Von Reichmerl."
The director nodded as he walked with towards her, "It was found during the reconstruction."
"And it belonged to the Baron?" Marie said as she hid the file in the back of her pants with her jacket.
"The Baroness actually." Volmer corrects, "Vanessa Von Reichmerl. She was very sickly and frail," Marie had opened the locket at that point, only to see that it had no pictures, "The Baron was obsessed with finding a cure. It was he, in fact, whom first discovered the medicinal properties of our water."
Volmer held his hand out for the locket which Marie relinquished after closing it. The director simply hooked it back to it's frame while monologuing, "He sacrificed everything."
"He must have loved her very much." Marie said softly.
The director only gave a soft 'yes' and looked at the locket for a moment before turning back to her.
"History is right, of course, to judge him on moral grounds but..." Volmer paused for a second before answering honestly, "As a man of science... I can't help but admire him."
Then a nurse came in the door frame, holding some of the patient clothing.
"The duty nurse will escort you to our isolation wing." The director said, not looking back at the nurse as she entered, as if he knew already.
Marie only nodded, "Thank you." She said, managing to hide her unease and went to the nurse before Volmer abruptly called, "Ms. Kanker?"
The blue haired woman froze as she turned around. Did Volmer notice the file she was hiding?
Her fears and thoughts, however, were shattered when he held up a sampling cup.
"If you wouldn't mind." He only smiled at her.
As such, Marie's face transformed into one of utter embarrassment as she meekly took the cup and left the office with the nurse. Marie then gave her a huge glare and seethed with her angry and embarrassed face, "You. Saw. Nothing."
The duty nurse only giggled at her embarrassment which only made Marie's face redden further in embarrassment.
After getting to the isolation wing and changing into the clothes that the nurse brought (while hiding the file), Marie took her sample and placed it where the nurse directed, only to notice something about one of the samples.
The filled cup's contents were paler than others and had odd moss-like... stuff sulking to the bottom of the cup while something else nearly made her squirm in disgust. What she could only as dark colored worms sat down in the stuff, twitching endlessly.
Marie grimaced in disgust, before she noticed the name on the cup. The label read; "Watkins, Victoria."
'Jesus, no wonder that blondie was admitted here.' Marie thought as she grimaced again.
Shoving that thought aside, she limped to where nurse motioned her to go; A massive sensory deprivation tank that seemed to be a fusion of old and advanced technology. A massive silo-like formation with a pully-like system for opening and closing the top of the tank while the operating room seemed for inclined with Modus' operating systems technology.
Unfortunately for her, the best way for the treatment to work is for her to be in her underwear. She would have lashed out but she knew they were professionals so, she did so. The staff were kind enough not to watch her undress, at least, and the director had a plastic covering put on her bandages to prevent infection.
Marie limped up the stairs to the tank and climbed down the inner latter before she put on a breathing apparatus connected to a long and thin tube so that she could breath that was also intertwined with sensors so they can monitor her heartrate and breathing.
Laying down and floating in the water, Marie watched as the top closed with a horrid creaking before shutting softly. After a few minutes, she heard Volmer communicate though the intercom, "Are you ready, Ms. Kanker?"
The blue haired woman turned to her side, seeing Volmer and his staff through the porthole. Her answer was a simple nod.
"Then let us begin." The director replied after giving a command she didn't hear to one of his staff.
"Life on this planet first came from water," The director started a monologue as the tank suddenly started to fill with water, "We been the first nine months of our existence submerged, our bodies most illy equipped."
The water washed over her, dulling her senses while still filling the chamber as Volmer spoke.
"This sensory deprivation chamber simulate a return to that embryonic state. Think of it as a cleansing of the mind, as much as the body."
The chamber seemed to grow thicker and denser as the water reached halfway.
"Some patients experience increased heartrate, visions, even primal memories."
She exhaled, the thousand of bubbles resulting sizzled towards the surface in inspiring patterns.
"But, rest assured, that is just the toxins leaving the system."
The tank filled completely.
"Give yourself over completely to the process. And you will see the results."
Marie felt drowsy, her eyes felt heavier than lead. And for the first time in awhile... she felt well.
Volmer put down the microphone to the chamber's intercom before looking at the staff member sitting at the desk, "Keep a close eye on her."
"Yes, sir." The observer responded.
The director and Peterson then left the room to tend to the other patients. After they left, the observer spoke to his patient over the intercom, "Miss Kanker?"
The blue haired woman in the sensory deprivation chamber turned to him via the porthole.
"The treatment lasts thirty minutes. I'll be monitoring you from here. If you have any issues, just tap on the side of the tank."
She responded with an OK hand sign before laying back into the non existent bed of water.
With that solved, the observer just kicked his feet up and pulled out his favorite book. The job was simple: just observe the patient, check the heartrate monitors for any changes, and he's golden.
And it was now a whole lot easier since he saw that she felt asleep.
She was back at the ruins of Grimmfall, the Dark Zone her fellows had coined. The Hall of Heroes was completely unrecognizable, it now resembled a crude four fingered hand of metal and porcelain deeply sunken into the ground. The buildings and homes have been ravaged. One block after another sports nothing but gutted, smashed buildings that stand at bizarre angles.
A sea of corpses stretched across the blackened terrain, farther than one's eyes could ever fathom.
They were a smelted grey, the skin hard and leather like, they varied in size and form but, they were bone thin, no muscles of any kind. They had no hair or genitals, their eyes sunken into their skulls long since liquefied, the cheeks were tore apart and exposed to the few that were still living. Strangely, they were positions as if they had fallen, their backs broken and misshapen.
At the edge of a slope leading down to a polluted bank, sat a 17 year old Marie.
She was clothed in a black stained shirt under a beige hooded jacket, faded green pants, black boots, black fingerless gloves, and a thin blue scarf. In her hand, she twirled a serrated blade as she looked bored staring at the horizon. What the black shirt hid was a brand shaped as a heart wrapped in thorns seared into the center of her torso.
"Marie!" She heard before she turned to see Katz whom wore beige long sleeve shirt and pants with a red scarf around his neck, "It's time."
The blue haired girl grinned sadistically as she brandished her blade while following Katz to the camp. It was simple, consisting of several tents and huts with the other members of the Unhallowed Hearts stood at attention while their captives were on their hurting knees, gazing at the two in utter terror.
"My followers," The Mobian serial killer turned cult leader began with his speech, "It is only in these times that we are allowed to be what we are and what we always will be; Savages!"
Marie and the others of the Unhallowed Hearts grinned sadistically as the captives looked even more terrified.
"We rape and murder, steal and pillage, burn and immolate! But it is not enough. No. The hunger grows and it must be sated."
The grins and terror grew with every word.
"So my followers." Katz then grinned before yelling, "FEAST!"
The Unhallowed Heart then descended on the captives. The latter's screams rang through the night, and in Marie's memories.
In the tank, Marie was out cold with her heartrate and breath steady, her body still as a corpse and unmoving like a statue.
Suddenly, something slithered in the water in front of her, though she did not notice. Another thing slithered, coiling around her body before uncoiling. She stirred slightly, before more things started slithering, circling around her, not harming her. She somehow felt it in the currents of the water, something unpleasant and dreadful.
In her dreams, she saw Lockhart looking at her while underwater and under a blue baleful light. He only raised a finger and said, "Shh."
Eventually, the feeling became unbearable and Marie's eyes shot open. And if she could, she would have screamed.
She was surrounded by these dark colored eels that swam and coiled around her in random patterns. One of them just then happened to slither straight in front of her. And there were dozens of them.
Marie panicked, swerving around the eels as they swam around her. She swam in a panic and started banging furiously against the porthole, only to notice that the observer was nowhere in sight, the observatory was utterly empty.
Where the hell was he?!
Utterly panicking at this point, she frantically swam up, trying to get away only for one of the eels to snag on her breathing tube, pulling it downwards, causing the apparatus yanked out of her mouth.
That yank caused Marie to clamp her mouth shut to avoid losing breath, before she turned to the hatch and started banging against it furiously. She slammed her fists against the steel until her knuckles bled before trying to force the hatch open, futile as her chances were.
She was losing breath, the more she struggled, the more she lost breath.
She couldn't hold it back anymore.
She screamed so loudly, the water rippled, yet it cost her last breath.
Water flooded her lungs, Marie's mind went blank, her body grew still and her eyes grew glossy. The blue haired woman sunk down to the swarm of eels as the life began to exit her body.
So, this was how she'd die.
Everything being still.
Everything being blank.
Lockhart looked at her down at with a sad face.
Reality faded, as she saw the Unhallowed Hearts beckoning her towards the end.
'Huh. You know what?' Her last thoughts rang, as a smile drew on her face, 'This is kinda nice.'
In the ruins of Peach Creek, there laid the Kanker Matriarch, wailing and screaming in pain as the rubble that trapped under broken all the bones in her legs. Her middle daughter stood in front, staring down at her with a blade in hand.
"Marie!" Her mother wailed out, "Help me! PLEASE! HELP!"
Marie just remained still with her breath ragged and unsteady as she stared down at her mother. All her life... all her life her mother beat into her that the weak should be purged and the strong should thrive.
And here her mother was, crying for help... Like a weakling.
With a furious roar, Marie swung.
The blade slashed opened her mother's neck, blood burst like a high pressure hose, her eye's went glossy and her mouth issued a wet gurgling sounds before her arms went limb and she fell to the ground. The Kanker Clan Matriarch was dead. Soaked in her own blood.
Marie gaped for a few seconds before dropping her knife and to her knees, horrified by what she'd done. But another part of her mind smiled.
As for why the observer wasn't there to check on her.
"So, care for a date?" He flirted with a beautiful brunette nurse, whom giggled.
"Maybe." The nurse winked as she walked off to meet her boyfriend in the dining hall.
The observer watched her leave before pumping his fist with a cheer, "Oh, who just asked Janessa out?!" He sang as he walked into the observatory room, only for his smile to disintegrate when he saw the heartrate monitor.
"Oh, Scheiße! Oh, Scheiße!" He swore in German before sprinting into the chamber room. Oh, Volmer is gonna kill him for this!
The observer dashed to the tank and slammed his fist onto the Emergency Release button. The pulley turned with an old groan as the hatch unsealed and rose up, the water overflowed but he paid it no heed as he sprinted up the stairs to get the patient out of the tank.
He saw her floating upwards to the edge of the chamber, swiftly pulling her out. The blue haired woman was deathly pale and wasn't moving or breathing. Knowing what to do, the nameless observer cracked his knuckles and started performing CPR.
3 compressions.
Mouth to mouth.
3 compressions.
Mouth to mouth.
The blue haired woman spewed out the water in her system, coughing harshly as the observer patted her back to get the rest of water out. After few minutes, she'd heaved out the last of the water while the observer apologized profusely.
"Ms. Kanker, are you alright?" He questioned as he touched her shoulder, only for her to shove him off and glare at him.
"Get off me!" The blue haired woman roared at him in understandable rage before the sudden rush of air left her coughing and wheezing.
"I'm terribly sorry." He apologized as he tried to explain why he didn't show up, "Something must have gone wrong with the machine. Please, try to stay calm."
After a few seconds of regaining her breath, Marie managed to get out, "There's something in the water."
"I'm sorry?" The observer inquired, puzzled.
"THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE FUCKING WATER!" She repeated nearly screaming, pointing frantically to the tank.
The observer simply raised an eyebrow and pulled out a flashlight before shining it into the chamber. 15 seconds later, and with Marie panting and wiping the water out of her eyes, the staff member turned back towards her and responded with, "There is nothing in the water, Ms. Kanker."
Marie looked at him incredulously, before grabbing the flashlight out of his hand and shined it to the water, only to blink in disbelief. Sure enough, the eels were gone from the bottom of the tank.
"But... I saw them..." She breathed out in disbelief as she continued to search the tank.
The observer explained, "As the director explained, some patients may experience visions. Just the toxins leaving the body. It's all part of the cure."
Marie felt a myriad of things after that sentence: confusion, disbelief, doubt, and desperation. What is going on? Were the eels really there? Or was she just seeing things? Maybe she was unwell.
"You need to rest now." The observer soothed her as he gently took back his flashlight, "I will help you to your room."
For once, she allowed this with no resistance.
The orderlies had brought her back to her room in a wheelchair as she was too exhausted to walk, one of them told her the director was furious when he found out about how the observer left his duty to flirt with one of the nurses.
The sense of satisfaction Marie felt when she heard that was like being drunk.
After they got her back to her room, she told them she was fine from there and they left her alone. After peaking through her door and windows to check for anybody watching, Marie locked the door and closed the blinds to her windows.
Letting out a breath of relief, she then pulled Pembroke's file from underneath her bandages.
When she'd changed into her patient garbs, Marie hid the file in her bandages as they'd notice if she'd hide it in her normal clothes. Sure, the edges got a little wet after she had been in the tank but other than that it was fine.
But it was only after opening it did she notice one glaring problem.
It was all written in German. And she didn't know shit about German.
Marie mentally screamed at her lack of foresight, before some X-Rays images fell out of the file and landed on the bed she was sitting on.
'Huh,' She thought, before shrugging and putting the file on the bed as she stood up with the X-Rays, 'At least there's these things. Don't need to know German to read an X-Ray.'
The blue haired woman held one of the images up to the light in her room. It showed the right side of Pembroke's skull but several of his molars were missing. The next image showed more teeth being missing from what looked like the front of his mouth. And the last image definitely showed the front of Pembroke's mouth, but he was missing his incisors.
Marie was both disturbed and confused, she never saw Pembroke missing any teeth nor did the Operator mention him missing any teeth. Part of the Operator's procedures was the disclosure of all medical problems or conditions.
Suddenly, she heard a noise. Marie turned her head and identified it as a clanking, like a softer version of shaking a metallic chain, from the bathroom.
Putting down the X-Rays, the blue haired woman limped into the bathroom. The room was empty and dark, save for an open window, and the sound was coming from the toilet. Abruptly, the noise ceased, leaving Marie in the room, alone.
Unsettled, Marie flips the lightswitch, only for the light in the bathroom to flicker and give out. The sound resumed and this time she saw that the handle to the porcelain throne was moving with every clank. Limping over to the toilet, Marie simply touched the handle and the noise stopped.
The blue haired woman was bemused but shrugged before hearing another noise outside of her window. Raising an eyebrow, she peaks outside to see the courtyard of the Wellness Center but her eyes then locked into something that made her blood go cold.
A staff member was wheeling away a filled body bag to a passageway under the ruins of the cathedral.
Sufficed to say, Marie's mind went wild for a moment before she calmed herself down and got out of the bathroom to think things over. She paced and paced all over for what felt like hours, her mind going in circles trying to make sense of what was going on.
Something was definitely wrong. Firstly, Pembroke acted like a compassionate man, the opposite of what she was told. Secondly, Marie was told that he had taken a turn for the worse just as she managed to convince him to leave. Thirdly, Lockhart tells her that no one ever leaves. Fourthly, she finds that Pembroke's been losing loads of his teeth for some unknown reason. And lastly, she just saw one of the staff wheeling away a dead body!
Her mind stilled as her eyes then lock onto the file on her bed and for a second, she thought that maybe it can help.
But what can she do about the rest of the file? Everything else is in German and the only people here who can speak German are Volmer and his staff! If she goes to the staff to translate it, they'll tell Volmer and who knows what he'll do! And she couldn't use her phone to translate and call the Operator because-
'Wait,' A lightbulb then went off in Marie's head after screeching to a halt, 'The Operator!'
He has clients and partners from all over the world! Meaning he has to know a few languages to understand some of his clients! Maybe one of those languages is German! Afterwards, she could then tell him what's happening and he could send some people to get her!
However, Marie quickly remembered and realized the gaping hole of a flaw in her plan: She has no way to contact the Operator.
Her phone's battery was dead, and Volmer made it so only him and his staff had any reception in the Wellness Center, meaning she has to get to the town just down the mountain if she wanted any hope of getting in contact with the Operator. And she just can't walk out of the Wellness Center and to the town! She'd freeze to dead from the storms!
'Gah! I'd need to bribe one of the staff to-' Marie groaned mentally before she paused, 'Wait... One of the staff... Lockhart!'
Lockhart has to have a car or something! And because he's creepy, he seems like the kind of guy she could bribe! Sure, it'd probably cost most of her money to convince him to take her to town but as long as she has enough for to pay for a call, she's home free.
For now though, she has to sleep on it. But tomorrow? She makes her play.
The next morning, she had breakfast and got dressed in her patient garbs but had her red leather jacket instead of the bathrobe despite how much more comfortable the latter was.
Setting her plan into motion, she walked outside of the entrance to the Wellness Center and saw to her right Hill and Nerie eating breakfast before they happened to her.
"Ms. Kanker!" Frank welcomed jovially, while he happened to be wearing sunglasses for some reason, "Are you feeling better?"
Marie smiled, "Yeah, I feel better."
Both of them smiled at hearing that, "Good. Care for some breakfast?"
"No thank you, I already ate." She politely declined before noticing Watkins sitting at another table, reading something while working on a crossword puzzle. Marie then looked at the remains of the church and then back to the woman. Maybe Watkins might know something about what it's being used for, given that she knows so much about the place.
She walked over to the blonde haired woman and asked her if she knew what the remains of the church were used for.
"I couldn't say." Watkins replied but started with something, "You know, you were right about the Baron and his torturing of people. But that's not the reason the villagers burn the place down."
Marie raised an eyebrow.
"It was on account of the experiments."
The blue haired woman blinked before she saw that the crossword Watkins was working on had words like, Von Reichmerl, Baroness, Fire, Vanessa, Experiments, Bodies, and Health.
"Some sort of medical experiments." Watkins continued, "Apparently performed on his own peasants. People went missing. And then," She muttered something in German as she picked up a book, before continuing in English, "Farmers turning their own fields stumbled on human bodies, disfigured and emaciated, dried up like the mummies of ancient Egypt."
Marie looked disturbed and befuddled before it hit her, "He was looking for a cure."
Watkins seemed confused as she asked, "A cure?"
"For the baroness." She told her, "She was sick."
The blonde woman's eyes went wide, "Oh, I see. I knew you'd be good at puzzles." She then wrote 'cure' on the last empty crossword before Marie could see the gears turning in her head, "Oh, of course." She whispered as if she's realized something.
"Mrs. Watkins?" Both woman jumped when they saw a staff member behind them, "Time for your treatments."
Victoria looked confused, "Are you certain? I just had one this morning. I'm sure of it."
The staff member checked the papers on his clipboard before responding, "They have you on a schedule."
"Oh, I must not be feeling myself today," Victoria said as she gathered her things. Before she left though, Watkins leaned into Marie's ears and whispered, "Be careful, dear. There is a terrible darkness here."
With that, Victoria Watkins took off while the staff member stayed behind for a moment to stare at Marie, creepily before walking off. As the two faded from her sight, the blue haired woman turned her attention to the remains of the cathedral, deciding to check it out.
As she got to the doors where she saw the staff wheeling away the bodybag, any chance of her investigation was dash when she saw a rusted padlock bolted to the doors. After sighing at this, Marie turned around only to yelp in surprise.
Why? Because Lockhart was standing right behind her.
Steeling her nerves, Marie glared at him, "Don't sneak up on me like that!"
The gardener didn't respond to that, only asking, "What are you doing here?"
Marie remembered her plan before clearing her throat, "How much would it cost to take me to the town?"
Lockhart paused before looking around the courtyard. When he was sure no one was looking, he got within whispering distance of the blue haired woman, "How much we talking?"
"200 hundred dollars." And that wasn't counting the ones she needed if they had a payphone.
The gardener nodded before he saw something in her pocket and pointed to it, "What is that in your pocket?"
"Oh, it's a music box." Marie replied as she pulled it out and played some of the music for him. Lockhart seemed as mesmerized as she always was when the music played, in all it's melodic and soft beauty.
After it was finished, Lockhart told her, "I'll take the music box as payment."
The blue haired woman blinked, "Really, you'll take a music box over 200 dollars?"
He shrugged, "Money can't buy happiness, Marie."
Marie felt something odd about that statement but shrugged and gave him the music box. At least that saved her 200 bucks.
After making sure the staff didn't see them, the two snuck into the gardens as Lockhart lead her to his car by the exit path, a red civic with red flames and heavily tinted windows. He opened the door to the backseat and motioned for her to get in before Marie entered.
Lockhart then tells her after she seats herself, "I gotta tell Volmer I'm going on break or he'll get suspicious. So, stay here and be quiet. The car's got tinted windows but it's not sound proof."
Marie nodded as the gardener closed the door, she saw him walk off to find Volmer only to run into the director himself as he turned the corner, and the latter looked rather serious. Lockhart backed away slightly, whether in fear or to make space, before asking, "Director Volmer, how may I help you?"
"Mr. Lockhart, have you seen Ms. Kanker?" The director asked politely, with his arms behind his back.
Lockhart hemmed for a second and looked around before replying, "No, can't say I have." Marie was still as a corpse while staring from the backseat, praying that the director bought that.
"Well, if you find her, please tell her that it's time for her treatments." Volmer replied.
"Alright. By the way, I'm gonna go into town." He told the director, whom nodded before walking off.
When he was out of hearing range from the director, Lockhart simply exhaled through his nostrils in relief while Marie let out a breath of relief in the car as she fell back into her seat. Lockhart then looked around again before getting into the driver seat as quickly as he could.
"Oh, that was way too close." The gardener breathed, before glaring at Marie, "You're gonna get me fired."
Marie at least had the decency to look sheepish.
After that whole heart attack, Lockhart drove her down to the town, a small village alighting the constant blinding snowstorms with those holo-neon signs indicating where they were. It was the same peopleless streets with several stores, banks, and bars being where the people were congregating in small numbers.
As Lockhart drove to his favorite bar, Marie thought everything she found out over. The sanitarium definitely had something sketchy going on, and she's sure even some of the patients are a little suspicious. For one, the fact that it was built over the Baron's castle was a red flag in of itself, but she swore that the eels she saw in the tank were real and not a vision. Many other people had to see the same thing as her and Volmer and his staff were acting like nothing was happening!
The X-Rays only confirmed some of her suspicions, as according to them, Pembroke had lost teeth and had gotten dentures. Now that she noticed, most of the patients' teeth seemed to be too white and too clean. As if they were... fake.
Gah! This raises more questions than it answers! Why are they losing teeth? It can't be because of age! Some of the patients are in their late 20s! Nobody loses teeth like that!
The last thing that disturbed her was the remains of the cathedral. Not only had she seen someone wheel a dead body there but that it was bolted shut. Argo, whatever Volmer has there, he definitely wants it to stay secret.
But maybe if she can call the Operator, Marie can get the file translated, call for help, and get out of here while the Operator sends a team to investigate the Wellness Center.
The cold was like blades of glass, sharped and lifeless, dashing against her skin, her jacket, shirt, and pants providing the barest protection against the storms that plagued this world. With such guidance, Lockhart lead Marie to a small bar not to close but not to far away from the sanitarium, a one story grey building with 4 windows and a holographic sigh that simply read "THE DEAD BARONS."
Both quickly got inside the bar to escape the overwhelming cold, with the bar being occupied by the two bartenders, some random guys, and a familiar face; the Chauffeur that drove her to the sanitarium. A little beat up but it was still him.
Marie then hobbled and sat at a few seats away from him while Lockhart went to the bathroom. The chauffeur noticed her but didn't looked surprised.
"You're still here?" He asked her, causing Marie to look at him, "I thought you were just here for a visit."
"You've looked better." She snarked at him.
"Same to you." He snarked back.
Marie squawked before groaning, 'You walked into that one, Marie.' She then paused for a second then asked, "What happened to your car?"
"That car was a piece of shit." The chauffeur replied bluntly, causing her to blink, "The sanitarium offered me enough to buy a new one. So, say goodbye to my old car! Everything happens for a reason, right?"
The blue haired woman pondered his words before she asked the bartender, "Is there a payphone here?"
"In the back. Pay's 2.50." The elderly man explained, motioning to the bathrooms.
Okay, good. She gets a drink with Lockhart then she calls the Operator. Speaking Lockhart, the man came out and ordered two mugs of lager before getting him and her a table by one of the windows. The two seated themselves before the Operator lookalike raised his mug before Marie raised hers.
"To alcohol!" Lockhart cheered, gaining everyone in the bar's attention, "The cause of and solution to all of life's problems!"
"Amen, brother!" Marie and the rest of the bar shouted in unison before clinking each other's mugs and taking a drink. Simultaneously, they all then let out a satisfied breath.
"Ah, lifegiving drinks." The blue haired woman sighed as she laid back in her chair, feeling the drink flood her system. Lockhart chuckled before pulling out one of those blue bottles and taking a few droplets of the stuff.
"You're on those vitamins too?" Marie asked him.
"Yep."
"Can I try some?"
Lockhart blinked, before making a chuckling sound when she opened her mouth for some. "Okay." He relented before putting some of the droplets onto her open tongue. She smacked her lips for a second before her face twisted in disgust.
"Eugh!" Marie grimaced in disgust at the taste of the vitamins, causing Lockhart to laugh softly, "It tastes like sweaty seafood!"
"It's an acquired taste, but you get used to it." Lockhart couldn't help but to chuckle, "Eventually."
Marie chuckled too, before taking another swig from her mug and standing up from the table, "I'll be right back. Can ya stay here?"
Lockhart only shrugged before taking a drink as she left for the bathroom. The gardener then took the opportunity to stare at her rear end as she walked away. He chuckled, "Nice."
After getting to the back room, Marie found the payphone by the emergency exit; a holo-projector and a card reader mixed together, colored black with red accents contemplating it.
Marie produced a black card with the Modus Emblem out of her pocket before swiping it across the scanner. A holographic screen then appeared from the projector, reading, "Welcome, Marie Kanker. Who would you like to call?"
She typed the Operator's number almost immediately, hearing the monotonous ringing before the vestige of the Operator appeared on screen, sitting at his desk. He wore a red suit, a black long sleeve shirt, red pants, and black shoes.
"Yes, what-" He started before pausing when he saw her, "Marie?"
The blue haired woman smiled and waved awkwardly, "Hey."
"Why the hell haven't you called?" The Operator demanded in his usual polite and calm tone, "It's been almost a week! And I had to delay the company's investigation yet again and it's filing for bankruptcy. Look, did you at least find Pembroke?"
"Yeah, I found him." Marie responded to the last question before she blinked when the first question hit her, "Wait, I thought you knew."
He blinked before raising an eyebrow, "Knew what?" The Operator seemed genuinely confused.
'What's going on?' Marie thought before deciding to explain, "I was in an accident? I injured my leg?" She showed her leg to the screen for proof, "The director of the sanitarium called you and told you about the accident and you had uncharacteristically agreed with him?"
Each statement from her seemed to make the Operator more and more puzzled, "I never received a call from the director. Much less one about an accident." He explained to her.
Marie's mind went blank when she heard her boss' words. He was never called? But... If the Operator never got a call from Volmer... Then... That means...
"That son of a bitch." The blue haired woman whispered, before remembering her plan. She pulled out the file, and held it up to the screen, much to the Operator's confusion, "Please, tell me you know German."
"No, Offdensen does though," The Operator responded before turning to his left and calling, "Offdensen!"
Seconds later, the Operator's right hand man appeared to his left, dressed in his usual attire, like the loyal man he was.
"You summoned?" Offdensen said in his usual calm voice.
The Operator snapped his fingers before pointing at the screen, "Please translate."
His bodyguard then leaned into the camera's view, adjusting his glasses as he absorbed the contents of the page. He did the same with the next page and rest of the file as he asked Marie to turn the page when he was done.
"Well, what does it say?" She asked Offdensen when she assumed that he was finished reading the file.
He responded with after adjusting his glasses again, "Well, Pembroke's losing quite a lot of his teeth."
"Yes, I know he lost teeth," Marie snarked as she rolled her eyes, "But, is there anything else wrong with him?"
"Other than that, nothing."
"Then how is he losing teeth?!"
"Well, barring any pre-existing medical conditions, which he has none," Offdensen started, citing his medical expertise, "The only answer to why he'd be losing teeth is due to chronic dehydration."
Marie gawked, "Dehydration?! All they do up there is drink water!"
"Well, it's only explanation," Offdensen shrugged, "Well, according to our records, Pembroke is in perfect health for his age. In fact, aside from a smoking problem when he was younger, Pembroke got his act together when he started the company."
The blue haired woman was now utter flustered. But as she thought about it, everything started to click.
The dried up bodies found by the farmers? The sanitarium being built over the burnt down castle? The staff taking those 'vitamins?' Lockhart looking just like the Operator? And the locked off parts of the cathedral remains?
"Oh, my god. It all makes sense." Marie realized out loud.
The Operator and Offdensen looked at each other confused before the former asked, "What makes sense?"
"Guys, listen! The-" That was all Marie could get out before the power suddenly went out, ending the call with her boss and putting her in total blackness aside from the light from the windows.
"OH, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING!?" She screamed in exasperation before someone touched her shoulder. Marie swung around to hit them before seeing it was just Lockhart.
"Whoa! It's okay!" He put his hands up when he saw her raised fist, before he tried to explain, "The generator blew a fuse. We got get back before-"
"Before what, Mr. Lockhart?"
Both of them turn to see Volmer, standing in the door frame with an expression that was both calm and disappointed.
"Marie?" The Operator said at the screen that read 'Call Interrupted.'
Offdensen then typed something before the screen showed a projection of the world before closing in onto Germany, then to the alps and then to the town by the sanitarium. It connected to a camera from a store nearby showed the blue haired woman getting into a car while someone who looked a lot like the Operator was speaking to a man in a white suit.
"What the-" The Operator looked befuddled, before his gaze locked onto the man in white, pointing to him, "Wait a minute. Who's that?"
"That is Heinrich Volmer, director of the sanitarium Pembroke is staying at." Offdensen informed like the loyal man he was, "Many of the high class go to his sanitarium for a vacation but suspiciously, no one has yet to return."
"'No one has yet to return?'" The white haired man repeated incredulously before asking his right hand man, "Did it not occur to those people that that's a red flag?"
"Well, there has been no deaths at the sanitarium so far." Charles replied, "So, there has yet to be any suspicion against him. And people say he's a good man."
"Well, I'm not one of those people," The Operator shot back, "Call the Commander and have him deploy Epsilon 6 to the town by the sanitarium. Tell them to leave no stone unturned."
"Yes, sir." Offdensen bowed before walking off, leaving the Consortium member in charge of production handling and security to his lonesome.
The Operator leaned back into his chair, "Oh, Marie, what did you get yourself into?"
After they got back to the sanitarium, Marie went back to bed while Lockhart had to talk to the director for taking a patient to town.
"Look, I'm sorry." Lockhart apologized to Volmer, "I though it won't hurt, she seemed nice."
"I understand and am grateful that you are taking responsibility, Mr. Lockhart." Volmer replied politely, "But you cannot do this again or I will deduct your pay. These people are here to be healed, not to be taken out for a drink. We can't allow for any distraction."
The director then looked at the necklace for a second.
"Not when we're so close."
It was a white room.
Marie limped through it to only to find another white room, though this one had a single bath tub.
As she got closer, a hand raise from the tub. Her own hand.
Suddenly, she saw herself laying in the tub naked.
Her other stared at her before she saw the eels squirming around her instead of water.
Marie yelped as she sat up from her dream, panting heavily. She was still in her room in the sanitarium. Her white, old school, and kinda fancy room in this odd as hell sanitarium.
Getting out of bed, she paced back and forth with the lights off, her mind in disarray, trying to rationalize everything what's going on. After everything she's learnt and heard here convinced her that the experiments were still going on but she needed proof.
'Okay,' Marie planned in her head, as she drank a glass of water, 'I find Pembroke, get some proof, steal Lockhart's car, call the Operator again, hide until he gets here and I get the hell out of here. But-'
She stopped when she heard the handle clanging again. Marie sighed as she hobbled into the bathroom and, sure enough, the handle on the toilet was moving in sync with the sound. Thankfully, the lights in the bathroom were fixed this time, and like last time, the clanging stopped when she simply touched the handle.
Just then, she felt one of her teeth wobble when she clicked her tongue in annoyance.
Marie placed a hand over her mouth, her face one of utter panic and fear. She was starting to lose teeth just like Pembroke and the other patients. This means she truly was unwell...
'Wait,' Marie realized, 'I got an idea.'
The blue haired woman then got up to the mirror, felt the loose tooth with her tongue, before latching onto it with her finger and thumb. Marie then took several deep breaths in preparation.
'1. 2. 3!' She counted down mentally.
She then yanked as hard as she could.
After biting down the sheer agony of ripping out your own tooth, Marie got out of her room and made her way to the nurse's station where the one currently stationed there quickly noticed him.
"Hello, Is there something wrong?" She kindly asked, noticing some blood on her shirt.
The blue haired woman simply showed the nurse her tooth with an awkward smile that no doubt showed the empty socket where the tooth had fallen from. The nurse simply extended her hand for the tooth which Marie placed the former's palm before the nurse walked back for a preservative cup.
When she left, Marie saw the schedule and quickly grabbed it, skimming through the pages until she came across the "P"s. She trailed her finger down the page until she found the name she was looking for.
It read, "Pembroke. R.: TRANSFUSION."
"The transfusion wing, eh?" Marie muttered to herself before she speed-hobbled over to the transfusion wing just as the nurse came back with the cup of preservative in hand.
After a few minutes of searching, Marie had finally found the doors to the transfusion wing only for them to be locked. She let out an annoyed sound before she scramble to the sides when she heard some of the staff coming from behind the doors.
The doors swung open, just barely missing her while a female nurse and two orderlies came out with the nurse saying something in German. As they got away from hearing range from her, Marie grabbed the door before it closed and snuck in.
Getting down the stairs, she found an intersecting hallway with two signs at the corner: One read "DETOX" and the second read "TRANSFUSIONS." Obviously, she went down the one that had the lead to Pembroke. It was a long hallway with the ceiling and upper half of the walls being dark green, the lower half of the hallways being tiles of beige, and the floor white with green diamonds.
Limping nervously down the hallway, she started hearing a sound akin to a heartbeat from the second room to the left. Swallowing a lump in her throat, Marie peaked into the room only to see it was just the laundry room. What caught her eye though was a slightly overweight male staff member peeling what appeared to be red potatoes while smoking a cigarette. Marie just let out a silent breath of relief before she saw a Zippo lighter and pack of cigarettes near her.
After a split second of thinking, she snatched both and stuffed them into her pocket before she crept away from the room with the staff member non the wiser. When she got out, Marie caught a glimpse of a staff member rolling away a dead body before he drew out of her sight because he traveled down the right hallway.
Marie, having a gut feeling that she was going in the right direction, traveled down the corridor and saw the gurney carrying the dead body; an elderly fatty man with heavy wrinkles. After looking to the sign to confirm she was going in the right direction, Marie decided to get a closer He looked even more repulsive as she got closer to investigate, what with the fatty lips and wrinkled skin like he was drying up.
Suddenly, there was a ding as the light above the elevator doors at the near end of the hall alit. Just as she turned to confirm what she suspected, the old man lying on the gurney opened his eyes and let out a loud yell, showing only two teeth while startling Marie.
She swore under her breath before getting to the left corner of the hall next to the elevator as quickly as she could. The elevator doors opened before two orderlies walked out as they saw the man on the gurney freaking out, shouting at him in German while not noticing her scramble into the elevator when they weren't looking as the doors closed.
Marie then let out a huge breath when the elevator doors closed and the lift descended, 'I'm gonna get a heart attack at age 26.'
The elevator dinged again before the doors parted, revealing a similar but significantly shorter corridor that ended in a two-way corridor and a double door of wood with a single window each planted into the center of the opposing wall.
Marie got to the doors but they had special distortion so it would be hard to see inside, thankfully they weren't locked so she simply opened the door and walked in without a second thought.
On one side of the room were a dozen machines identical to the iron lungs of the times of the Polio disease, on the opposing side were wheeled shelves with those same blue bottle in the hundreds or thousands, some filled to the brim or filled halfway. Marie got closer to one of the iron lungs to investigate, peeking into the moist interior through the windows only to hiss in pain when her finger briefly touched the machine's superheat surface.
After rubbing her fingers on her shirt to alleviate the pain, the blue haired woman heard classical music coming from the door leading out of the room. Hobbling there, Marie peaked through the window to see a lit room with more of those Iron Lungs, dozens even. All lined up and in working order from the looks of it. Suddenly, two staff members walked passed the windows, talking in German with another two following behind.
She quickly pressed herself against the walls by the door the moment she saw the first two, thankfully not noticing her as they passed by none the wiser. Marie breathed a sigh of relief before she noticed something behind the shelves of blue bottles; another gurney with the feet sticking out and the rest covered with a medical sheet.
Marie hobbled closer, around the shelves as quietly as possible to not alert the staff, before she was seeing who it was on the gurney. It was Watkins, naked as the day she was born with only the coverings giving her any modesty while it showed only her head and shoulders. She seemed to be breathing, as her chest rose up and down so Marie got close enough to whisper to her, "Victoria?"
Watkins opens her eyes, them seeming dulled and empty, glazing drowsily at her visitor as if drugged. She barely moved, as if chained down to the gurney by unseen bindings.
"Victoria, where is Pembroke?" Marie asked her, thinking that she may have seen something of importance.
She blinked in honest confusion, answering deliriously, "You took him. Back to America."
"What? No, they-" Marie let out a breath to calm herself down, "They moved him. He's down here somewhere." She then remembered something from what the blonde said before, "You told me about the experiments, remember? Your puzzle?"
"I like puzzles." Victoria replied deliriously, responding after Marie said 'Yeah', "I left it for you. You'll see."
She spoke like a senile woman, her voice slow and grating. Watkins' body seemed like it was compromised by... something, like the life and sanity was slowly being drained from her like the letting of blood.
"Listen," Marie tried to tell the other woman of what was happening, "The experiments. I think they're still happening.
"No. Not experiments." Victoria responded, putting a hand to Marie's chest. "Beware Lockhart."
Marie blinked at what the blonde had abruptly said, "Lockhart?"
Victoria grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close, whispering in the rows of eternal sleep, "Lockhart is not who he says he is."
Suddenly, something seemed to slither under her skin while a soft groaning sound came from her bones as her innards seemed to contract. Marie wrenched herself from Victoria's grip as she freaked out and backed away only for her sudden movement to knock over one of the shelves, falling loudly while spilling the blue bottles onto the floor.
The staff most definitely heard that as she saw them a second later at the doors, furiously trying to unlock them before she bolted out of the room and into the corridor. Marie tried to get to the elevator but the overhead light came on, signaling that someone was coming. Thinking fast, she scrambled into the room nearest to her right and closed the door so she could hid, not seeing the staff get out of the room and jog down the corridor to the right.
Marie kept the door slightly open so she could see if they were following her. She stared for a few seconds before she saw the two staff members from earlier roll the now dead or unconscious old man from the above floor down the hall. It sounded like they were joking to each other despite her not understanding German.
The blue haired woman gently closed the door when they left before quietly letting out a breath, her heartbeat like a engine on rocket fuel. Unable to deal with the stress, she pulls out the lighter and pack of cigarettes, took one out and rested it in her mouth before lighting it. The smoke flowed into her lungs as she inhaled and out of her mouth and nose as she exhaled, not having the will to hold it with her fingers.
At least it helped her to calm down, but as Marie lit the cigarette again to ease herself again, the light from the lighter's flame caused something to catch her eye. She lit the lighter again and held it to the far right of her. It was a large and horizontally faced rectangular plexiglass window that showed a body suspended in water with only the lighter showing the single body while dimly implying that there were more.
Marie, still gazing at the body the lighter revealed, used her free hand to frantically feel around for a lightswitch. Her fingers soon glided over the switch before grabbing and flipping it.
The lights blared on, showing something that made her blood freeze and drop her cigarette.
It was a rectangular room made of dark colored tiles, but the most damning thing were 16 tanks built into the walls where the bodies of many of the patients were suspended in what she could only presume was preservatives, clothed only in skin colored wear that covered their modesty. Each of the bodies, if they were alive, were stuck in a unique position, not blinking or breathing while they floated aimlessly in a weightless dance.
They held them there like they weren't people, more they were specimens.
Marie hobbled for a few seconds she looked around the room with a horrified expression before her gaze locked onto one specific body.
Pembroke. He was floating aimlessly in the suspending liquid, expression and form frozen with his eyes still, hair moving with the current in the liquid, and his gaze blank. Marie stared for a few second before Pembroke twitched in the liquid. He was still alive.
Not thinking rationally, the blue haired woman began banging and pounding at the glass separating the two, desperately trying to get it to break but she quickly realized her efforts were futile. Stopping her attempts to free the man she was sent to bring back, Marie just stared distraught at him for several minutes as Pembroke seemed to float further back into the tank. Flying into an utter panic, Marie bolted out of the room and to the stairs that she found after a minutes of frantically trying to navigate the wing.
She managed to get up 3 flights of stairs before barging out of the nearest door, sprinting down the hallway before a staff member appeared from the corner causing her to stop and try to get away.
Too late. The staff member noticed her and said something in German as she backed away with her, fumbling out, "I'm sorry, I-I..." Marie forced down a lump in her throat, "I don't understand."
He replied in German with his expression and posture seemingly hostile as he walked towards her.
Marie backed away in response, putting her hands up to hopefully placate him, "H-Hey, take it easy!"
She heard someone say something in German that made him stop and her turn around before what she saw made her freeze. 'Oh, shit...'
It was Volmer with another staff member by his side, the former putting a placating hand to the latter, like to prevent him from hurting her, "It is alright."
Internally, Marie began to panic; She didn't trust Volmer a single bit, not with the Operator informing her that he'd never called him or that she knew what Lockhart meant when he said, "No one ever leaves." Volmer basically brainwashes them into believing they're unwell, then he does twisted experiments with them and those damned eels. But unfortunately, if she revealed anything, Volmer may do horrible things to silence her so she had to keep quiet.
"Ms. Kanker," Volmer said, wrenching her out of her thoughts, "Every time I turn around, you're somewhere you're not supposed to be."
"I guess I'm lost," Marie lied, hoping he'd buy it, "I'm just- I'm trying to find my way back to my room."
Unfortunately, Volmer saw through it instantly, as he chuckled in amusement, "This is a restricted floor, there are sign everywhere. Surely, you didn't wander off here by accident. What is it exactly that you are looking for?"
'Don't tell him about the bodies, Marie.' She thought before fumbling her words, "I-Uh.. Um... I had a problem with my tooth."
"Your tooth?" Volmer repeated, curiously.
'Oh, shit!' Marie realized her mistake, trying to correct herself, "Actually, its feels much better now. I-If you could just point me into the direction of my room-"
"Nonsense." The director of the sanitarium dismissed, as he walked towards her, "We can't let you to get an infection. You must let us take of you. After all," He then had a pleasant but unnerving smile, "That is why you are here."
Marie only gulped. This is not gonna be good.
An overhead light beamed over her face, causing her to wince before a staff member with blonde hair dressed in a rubber apron opened her mouth, revealing her right canine was clean out of her jaw while the rest of her teeth had yellowed slightly.
The staff member then looked at Volmer whom said, "Dr. Brenan takes care of all our patient's dental needs."
Brenan then stood up and said something to Volmer in German while the latter responded in German as well, while Marie just sat there looking scared.
They had lead her to the denial room, a large one with shelves and glass medicine cabinets where they sat her down in this chair was this Dr. Brenan examined her mouth. The shelves around her were containing all kinds of dentures, models, and equipment for dental needs, the cabinets behind holding bottles filled with medicine. But her heart stopped when her eyes locked onto a jar full of teeth.
A jar full of old teeth.
A jar full of rotting old teeth.
A jar full of rotting old teeth that shifted slightly for a few seconds.
Marie laughed, desperately trying to hide her growing nervousness before she blurted out, "I'm sorry."
"Hm?" Volmer inquired as he looked back at her.
"About Lockhart." She clarified, "It won't happen again."
The director nodded in thanks before getting closer to her, "Tell me, Ms. Kanker, what were you doing in town."
"Oh, you know. Just wanted to get out, have a beer." Marie smiled, hiding her nervousness, "That kind of thing."
He only smiled before motioning them with a look. The orderlies then suddenly held her arms down against the chairs arms as they placed the metal restraints of the chair around her wrists before wrapping a cloth restraint around her legs.
"What are you doing?!" Marie struggled against them and the restraints, "Get your hands off of me!"
"It's all for your own safety, Ms. Kanker!" Volmer said loudly as one of the orderlies forced her head back into the headrest before pulling over a head restraint and tightening it around her head, "We don't believe in chemical anesthesia at the institute. The impurities will inhibit the cure."
Dr. Brenan grabs some of his tools while the dentist used special hooks on Marie's cheeks to pull them back despite her struggles.
"But you will find that with the proper amount of focus, the mind can overcome any amount of pain."
As he was talking, an orderly used a special mouth piece to keep her lips open before hooking it into the headpiece. Marie started panting hysterically as her eyes dart around the room.
"Trust, Ms. Kanker." Volmer started as he picked up a familiar looking file before walking to the door, "I mean, if we can't trust each other, then how can I help you?"
The file in his arms was Pembroke's. Before Marie could try to grunt out an explanation, the dreaded sound of a dental drill piped through her ears. Her eyes shrunk in terror as the dentist readied the dental drill.
"I'd be lying if I said these wasn't going to hurt." Dr. Brenan said before he started drilling.
The floor was flooded with her screams for the next 10 minutes when they were done.
Outside the Wellness Center, a middle aged redheaded woman, rotund and portly, stood at the entrance with the Chauffer. She wore a heavy fur coat and hat, so heavy in fact that what she was wearing underneath wasn't seen while holding a black leather purse. Then a fairly old man wearing a white dress shirt with a blue tie under a green Casmir sweater, black pants and black shoes. This is the head of the orderlies at the Wellness Center.
"Mrs. Abramov." The head of the orderlies welcomed the woman as she turned around, "So glad that you are here." He then snapped his fingers, causing the orderlies beside him to pick up her suitcases, "How long do we have you with us?"
"Just two weeks," Abramov said in a Russian accent as she walked with the head of the orderlies, "I probably overpack."
"Nonsense." The man reassured, "You'd be surprised how time just slips away here at the Institute."
The Chauffer just closed the trunk as he saw another customer enter the sanitarium before getting into his car while smoking a cigarette. Another day at work. Time to drive home, get some sleep, and get ready for another day of driving customers to the Wellness Center.
At least, that was his plan before Marie jumped into his car after opening the backseat door. The blue haired woman had a bloody cloth pressed against her mouth before she yelled, "DRIVE!"
"The hell-?!" He looked back at her, shocked, "What happened to your face?"
"JUST DRIVE, DAMN YOU!" Marie violently interrupted him, removing the cloth, showing one of her incisors were missing along with her mouth being absurdly bloodied and with some stains on her shirt.
The chauffer slammed on the gas pedal, causing the car to jet down the road while Marie closed the back door before it could get smashed against the stone wall entrance.
After 3 minutes, the chauffer drove her to the police station where she managed to get a talk with the chief.
"They held me down and ripped my tooth out," Marie hastily informed the police chief about her experiences, "They threatened me!" She pounded her hand onto the desk for emphasis.
The police chief, a 40 year old man with slick black hair and an old school military uniform, simply asked her, "Why would they do that?"
"Because I know what they've done." She replied firmly, before telling him what she saw at the Transfusion wing, "There is a room filled with bodies, floating in tanks like specimens. They are performing all kinds of fucked up experiments in the Transfusion wing."
He hemmed and hawed for a minute before replying, "These are some very serious accusations-"
"NO FUCKING SHIT, THEY'RE SERIOUS!" Marie interrupted him in an outburst, her patience running on fumes at nobody listening to her. It wasn't just some of her teeth being missing that was affecting her; Her natural blue hair had become disheveled from her struggles and massive bags under her eyes formed from the stress and sleep deprivation, signifying that she's been through quite an ordeal.
"Director Volmer is a well respected man." The chief remained calm despite her outburst, "His sanitorium is of great importance to the local economy."
The blue haired woman just fidgeted in frustration before blurting out, "Take me up there and I will show you what I saw."
He paused for a second before taking in a breath and asking, "Do you have any identification on you?"
"No. T-They- they have everything..." Marie facepalmed when she realized that in her rush to escape, she forgot her ID Card that signified her connection to The Operator.
"Well, then is there someone I can speak to?" He asked, causing her to grab a paper and pen to write something down, "To confirm you are who you say you are? Friends, family? I hope you understand the need to verify your identify."
Marie finished writing and slammed the paper in front of him, before ungraciously placing the pen into it's holder and laying back in exhaustion, "You can call the Operator."
The police chief paused and stared at the paper before saying "Alright." He got up from his chair, taking the slip with him, asking her, "Can I get you any coffee or tea?"
"You got anything stronger?" The blue haired woman asked. All the pain and stress from the last few hours of this day was really getting to her and she desperately needed something to take the edge off.
"Of course," He said as he pulled out some scotch and a glass before placing the latter object next to her and filling it with the former object, "Rest assured, we will get to the bottom of this."
"Thank you." She shakingly responded, feeling a sense of euphoria unlike any she's ever felt in a while. The chief patted her on the shoulder before walking off to some unknown part of the building.
Marie took the glass and took a big chug before stopping to gag slightly. The drink tasted and smelt like furniture cleaner but felt like flames sliding down her throat while spreading through her veins, muscles, and bones. The blue haired woman then brought it back to her lips before chugging it all down, putting it down and laying back in the chair in what she could only describe as the greatest high she's felt in 5 years, letting out a small snicker of relief.
Finally, the Operator would be here, she goes home, he hopefully arrests Volmer and shuts down the sanitarium. Course, she'll need to get replacement teeth and a few days off to let her leg heal, but we all have our disappointments.
Marie swiveled the chair around as she and the chief were the only ones in the building before she noticed an huge arc-shaped shelve that took up 2/3s of the wall. It was filled with guns, gear, Pickelhaubes, models, and some books from World War 1.
'Heh, guess he likes stuff from World War-' Her thoughts stopped dead when she noticed a small glass bottle in front of an old metal box on the shelf.
A small blue glass bottle.
A small very blue, very familiar looking glass bottle with an mouth drop dispenser.
Marie kept staring, her mind blank only to snap back to reality when she heard a car pulling up. She turned to see the headlights through the window before she scrambled out of her chair, frantically searching for a weapon before grabbing a saber from a table and unsheathing it before hiding it behind her back when she heard footstep.
Volmer, the head of the orderlies, and the chief walked into the room with the first one saying, "Ms. Kanker, We've been worried about you-"
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" She shouted as she revealed the saber, pointing it at them. The head orderly and the chief jumped back but Volmer remained calm and raised his hands in a placating manner.
"Is this woman a patient of yours'?" The chief asked Volmer whom nodded in response.
"I'm not a patient!" Marie seethed, her patience and composure utter dust as she continued to keep them at blade point, "I was in an accident!"
The head orderly then showed a file and opened it, "You have signed the admission. I have it right here."
"That's bullshit!" She grounded out, she didn't remember signing any papers!
"I did warn you about possible delusions." Volmer told her, "It's only a side effect of the toxins, leaving the body."
"And my leg?" She held up her leg for emphasis, "Is that a delusion?"
"Ms. Kanker has been a disruptive element since she arrived," The head orderly said as he checked her file, "She stole confidential information, assaulted a member of our dental staff, and threatened Mr. Pembroke."
"THREATENED?!" Her frustration and incredulousness began boiling over along with her disbelief, "I didn't threaten anybody!"
The head orderly remained calmed, "I believe your exact words were, 'If I have to, I will hit him over the head and drag him out of here.'"
Marie blinked, "I..." She looked at them in confusion, "I don't remember saying that." She shook her head before trying to explain, "Look, I was sent here to bring Pembroke back to America under the Operator's orders!"
"According to the Operator himself, it's due to his company being investigated by his production review team." The chief told her.
That caused her eyes to widen when it hit her. The chief was in league with Volmer.
"You're one of them!" She accused the chief.
Volmer responded, "Listen to yourself, Ms. Kanker. You're not a well woman."
"STOP! SAYING THAT!" She seethed out, her frame losing it's stiffness from all this.
"Please, let us help you." The director took a few steps towards her.
"YOU GET BACK!" Marie yells as she brandished the saber at them, causing Volmer to stop and continue to try and placate her into coming back, "I know about the experiments. The Baron and his sister."
"She has been spending time with Mrs. Watkins." The head orderly said causing the police chief to looked confused at what they were saying.
"Who is Watkins?"
"She was institutionalized before she came to us." Volmer told him, "The others humored her but it clearly Ms. Kanker's condition has made her susceptible to her conspiracies."
Marie growled, "I know what you're trying to do. All of you. You're trying to make me think I'm insane."
The men just remained calm before Volmer took a few steps forward, "I've seen this before. It's not uncommon. Some deep seat childhood trauma rises to the surface, something a patient has been running from their entire life."
Her eyes narrowed but didn't flatter or lower the saber.
"In your case, I would say it's your mother and your guilt over your actions as the Flayer of GrimmFall."
Marie felt like someone hit her with a sledgehammer, she was so shocked that she nearly let the saber fall to the floor. She was so floored by that statement that she couldn't speak for half a minute.
"How... How do you know about that?" She demanded, though her voice betrayed her attempt to seem calm, "I never told you that."
"You didn't have to." Volmer responded, compassionately, "That's why you came to us isn't it?"
The blue haired woman shook her head, regaining her bearings, "I saw him. Pembroke is dead."
"That what this is all about?" Volmer replied after letting out an amused scoff, "The evil doctor killing off his patients?"
"That's right." The blue haired woman did her best to look sure of herself.
"Alright," Volmer responded, "Perhaps we should consult Mr. Pembroke?"
That caused her to raise and before she saw a figure approaching them through the hallway. When he got to them, Marie's eyes went wider than dinner plates and her jaw on the floor with her lowering the blade.
The figure was Pembroke, alive and well, dressed in the same attire as the rest of the patients. He seemed more timid and unsure as he looked at her, almost in fear of her.
"Do you know this woman?" The police chief asked the newly arrived man.
Pembroke nodded gently, "She tried to take me back against my will."
She could barely keep herself together before she got a few steps forward, sputtering, "P-Pembroke?"
"Please keep her away from me." The older man said meekly as he took a few steps back in fear of her.
Marie's thoughts became garbled and erratic, unable to focus, "Y-You were dead..."
She was able to register the sounds of the chief asking the director if he wanted to press charges against her for all that she'd done.
"That won't be necessary." She heard Volmer respond as he got closer to her, "Ms. Kanker is not a criminal. She is a patient."
Marie barely felt the tears fall down her face nor the saber slipping from her fingers and clanging onto the floor. Her legs moved of their own accord as she allowed Volmer to take her back to the sanitarium.
"Yeah," She responded in a broken voice, tears still streaming down her cheeks as her world crumbled, "I'm a patient."
Volmer looked surprised at her words before his expression turned into one of pity as he stroked her hair.
After the director took her back to the Wellness Center, Marie just said in her room, staring into space and at the stuff Watkins gave, unable to understand if she had stumbled onto the truth or if she has well and truly insane. She barely even reacted when the open window let a breeze flow in that shifted around the cutout cross-words on her table.
Several minutes of silence later, that damn clanking sound rang through her ears again as Marie turned to the bathroom door, where it was coming from as always for the last few days.
The blue haired woman robotically got up and limped into the bathroom, where she saw the toilet's handle moving in sync with the clanking. She just stared for a minute before putting her finger to the handle, causing the sound to cease. She stared again for a second before turning away to leave.
Then the clanking resumed.
It was louder and the handle shook harder, so hard she wouldn't be surprised if it broke off from the force of whatever was pulling it.
Marie looked back with a surprised expression before narrowing her eyes at the porcelain throne. She got closer, almost inches away, the sound growing louder and the handle jiggling faster. She leaned in with an unsure expression as she wrapped her fingers around the cap of the toilet before slowly pulling it off the tank.
She yelped as she staggered back, slamming to the wall in both fear and shock while the removed cap shattered against the floor.
The tank was filled with those eels, dozens of them. All fully grown with a blue surface and white underside, slithering and coiling spastically around the parts of the pluming. They convulsed violently and appeared to be gazing at her like a piece of meat.
Suddenly, as quick they appeared, the eels were gone.
Marie blinked before she stepped to look down in the tank. The eels she saw before were nowhere in sight, other than a glimpse of oil around the mechanisms and pipes. She opened the bowl, hoping for proof that she wasn't insane.
Nothing. The bowl was empty with not even the water disturbed. She stared at it for what felt like hours as she felt the last cords of her mind snap, her body not even twitching from the shock of this.
Suddenly, her lips started tugging against her will as a quiet giggle issued from her throat before it morphed into a chuckle and then into a full blown cackle. Marie fell back to the floor, her laughter growing louder and louder, unable to stop or breath before tears started pricking from the corners of her eyes.
Marie continued laughing for untold amount of time before her tugged up lips went limp as her laughter slowly morphed into sobs and tears ran down her face. She slowly curled into a fetal position and continued to sob hysterically, her eyes scrunched shut and her tears streaming.
She just laid there for the rest of the day, convinced she had lost her mind.
'I really am unwell...'
After waking up in the bathroom and not knowing what else to do, Marie got up and wandered around the sanitarium's hallways and grounds with a dazed expression on her face.
Wandering around for a bit, she found the stone pool where she first met Lockhart, staring at it as the water and her hair flowed listlessly in the wind, while the gardener himself look at her from afar with a sorrowed expression. He took a few step towards her, only for Marie to abruptly walk off not even noticing him, causing Lockhart to slump slightly.
She eventually found herself at the balconies at the entrance, only for someone to call out to her, "Ms. Kanker?" She turned to see Frank Hill and Mr. Nerie playing cards while sitting at the table they usually sat at, "Care to join us?"
"Please?" Nerie asked politely.
The blue haired woman looked at them for a second, her expression still dazed, before sitting down at the table with the two men. Hill looked at her in concern but decided not to press it as she looked like someone who lost everything.
After a few minutes of Hill shuffling and laying out the cards, Marie abruptly asked either of the two, "Where is Mrs. Watkins?"
The two didn't paus when she asked before Hill decided to break it to her, "Oh, they took her away this morning. Apparently, she was upsetting the other patients."
"It's a shame." Nerie lamented, "She was happy here. She made our days that much brighter here."
As they said that, images of Watkins laying on that gurney in that horrid room flooded into her head. Suddenly, a sense of guilt that felt like her heart was stabbed by a shiv flooded her system. The blue haired woman couldn't hold it in.
"It's my fault." Marie said in a hollow voice, causing the two to pause, "My whole life I lied, cheated, stole, killed, defiled, and fucked other people over just to get my way. That's why the Operator send me here, and I can't even do that right." She said that last sentence with a choke/chuckle filled with grief and self loathing.
The two look at each other before Hill told her, sympathetically, "We've all done terrible things. You're not responsible because you are not well."
She looked confused before Nerie said, "Accept the diagnosis and you will see." He smiled at her, "It's wonderful here."
Marie stared for a while as she absorbed and processed the words the two said tp her, but before she could give assimilate them, she was snapped out of her thoughts by a staff member.
"Ms. Kanker?" She drowsily turned to see the same staff member that took Watkins standing behind her, "Time for your treatment."
She only nodded submissively, robotically getting up from the table and following the staff member to wherever he wanted to take her while Hill and Nerie looked on in pity.
They lead her to the transfusion wing, to the same room where she suspected she had found specimens of some devious experiment. The staff guided her up the stairs to a platform they instructed her to stand on. The tank operator hit a switch which caused the platform she was standing on to descend into the tank.
"Do not worry," The operator of the tanks assured her, "The water of the aquifer has been highly oxygenated. Though you may panic when the liquid fills your lungs, best to surrender to the process. After all you've done it before. We all have. No matters who."
Those were the last words he said to her before she was submerged in the tank. It was a few moments before the liquid began filling her lungs.
She choked on a breath, then a second breath, and finally a third breath.
Panic set in as Marie began pounding and banging against the plexiglass separating her and the staff. When her thrashes didn't even dent it, she tried reaching through the gridded texture to escape but could not.
Suddenly, she felt like she was breathing the liquid without worry. After another second, she felt free, relaxed, and kinda drowsy.
Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, and hours became days.
Marie felt herself go limp, her eyelids grew heavy, and reality faded from her sight while the dreams began.
The car crashing into the forest.
Lockhart twirling around with her underwater.
Five tanks containing a duplicate of her curled into a fetal position before they twirling into a straightened poise.
She entered the steam baths and turned left, only to see herself sitting where Pembroke should be. Her expression one of emptiness.
The music box played it softening tune.
Volmer rushing towards her, arm extended and expression of worry.
The stone pond where she meet Lockhart, whom was working there.
It was back where her mother died, only she was laying there dead instead. Someone unseen threw the flare, setting her corpse ablaze.
Unseen to her or anyone, the lights to the room came on, an eerie glow of green slicked the floor and walls. The patients didn't react, they had sunken into their dreams in water.
Lockhart walked in, his footsteps echoing in the emptiness of the room, only to stop when he sees Marie floating in the tanks. Like the rest of the patients, she was dressed in skin colored undergarments, her expression one of fear and sweet relief.
Tears went down his face as he stared at her, wondering if he should have gotten her to that train station when she got here. He knew of all the horrible things Volmer did, he knew she saw the truth, and he knew what happens to the people here.
He only wished he could have acted sooner.
The gardener took out the medicine bottle Volmer gave him and glared at it in loathing. The only reason he has done nothing is because without these 'vitamins', he would have died 2 years ago. A genetic disease or whatever the director said it was.
Lockhart looked back at her with a sad expression, "I'm sorry, Marie."
He walked silently out of the room, the lights going out as he left.
"To the Operator.
Marie was in her room, her expression blank as she began typing her message to the Operator on a holographic screen.
"You sent me here for a purpose: To retrieve a man against his will and bring him back to your world."
The woman was then seen naked as the staff of the center cleaned her using towels and clothes after another Sensory Deprivation Tank treatment, while she only had a blank expression.
"But I realize now, that is not the reason I am here."
She was then seen in one of the saunas, her face still blank as a female staff member maintained the machine.
"There is a sickness inside each of us."
Marie was then standing in the bath house, naked as a male staff member hosed her down with a sprayer.
"We do our best to deny it's existence. Dealing lies,"
Marie was then in her bed stared upwards into space, before she found herself playing cards with some other patients, not seeing Lockhart gazing at her.
"And distractions. Until one day the body rebels against the mind and screams out, 'I am not a well woman.'"
The blue haired woman watched on, naked as she sat in one of the steam baths.
"A man cannot unsee the truth."
Marie was back at the desk, typing her message before suddenly stopping as she looked at a pitcher of water nearby.
"A man cannot unsee the truth. He cannot willingly return to darkness or go blind once he has the gift of sight, any more than he can be unborn."
Absentmindedly, she shut off the screen and turned away from the desk to then stare at her right leg. Suddenly, without forethought, Marie undid the bindings to the legbrace. It fell to the floor ungracefully before she started tearing off the bandages on her leg, absorbing pads ripping up and inner tape unfurling, she didn't stop ripping until the limb was entirely bare.
Nothing. No blood, punctures, cuts, lacerations, stiches, or even scars. Her leg was perfectly fine.
She stood up and tested her leg for a moment, before walking around the room to confirm she could still use her leg. Marie just stared at her healed leg in shock.
Volmer said... Volmer lied to her... just like he did with everything else.
Her shock was subsumed as a grim but determined expression overtook her face while she got out of her room. She was going to find out what was under those ruins and nothing was going to stop her.
Outside the ruins of the cathedral, Marie broke off the rusty padlock with a shovel she stole from Lockhart's car. The right part of shackle snapped off and the rest of the door gave way when she kicked it open, revealing a dark brick-made tunnel and stairway curving right.
Not one to be intimidated, Marie marched down with the shovel in hand.
Getting to the bottom of the stairwell, she, perhaps unsurprisingly, found another tunnel. But this one stretched a long way with lights hooked into the right side only, the floor wet and mossy. It was constructed out of bricks, old bricks that were likely there when the cathedral burnt down, instead of being craved of stone like the mines in old America.
Marie trekked down the long tunnel, shovel in hand, with the occasional pools drenching her feet before she came to an odd sight.
It was the aquifer, natural pillars and all with the azure pools around laying stilly. Each surface seemed dampened and alive, as if what she had entered was the corpse of something impossibly old and vast. A feeling of unease filled her as she continued to stare and hear the frequent dripping, tapping, and smacking of the many streams and droplets flowing and falling.
The blue haired woman was dropped out of her thoughts when she saw to her right a walkway built over one of the streams, recently made judging by the lack of rust or grime, and trekked across in search of answers.
Getting across the walkway, Marie heard a wheeling sound and twirled around to see the shadow of a staff member pushing a gurney displayed on one of the rock walls. She swiftly sprinted across the trail and hid behind an opening in the walls. Due to the darkness, the blue haired woman pulled out the lighter she swiped before in the transfusion wing and lit it.
The flames revealed an entryway blocked off by massive old wooden boards that were black and burnt, the same color and texture as the entryway with pieces of the burn wood scattered around the floor. Marie ducked down under the burnt wooden boards, noting that they appeared to be slightly warm and that they appeared old and glossy to a degree.
Soon after, she saw a light on the left end of the tunnel. Narrowing her eyes, Marie wormed through the wood blocking her way with the burnt wood on the floor crunching under her feet until she found where the light was emitting from.
It was a laboratory of sorts, under a cathedral made ceiling lit with chandeliers, overhead lights, and oil lamps, made of several tables and carts containing notes, sample jars, and surgical equipment.
Extinguishing the lighter's flame by closing the tab, Marie trekked in the ancient lab.
Her first stop was to a table containing a dissected eel atop a hand drawn sketch of the eels with the cut off tail of another eel in a petri dish beside it. Marie then handled and examined a jar holding many eels, the length and width of asparagus, in a brown fluid in which she could only assume was a preservative. Putting the jar down and looking at some drawings and note for a second, she turned to another part of the lab.
This set of table held a bunch of surgical tools, an old occult looking book with decorative markings, a plastic mold with a face being molded on by some odd material next to a three set mirror. The most noticeable part were the five sets of bowls that each contained a very convincing looking face mold, veins and everything. What caught her eye was a terminal at the west point of the lab.
She got close enough to get better details; in front of the terminal was a black metal floor with six 'hatches', each big enough for a human to enter and exit from but were void of any hinges or locking mechanisms. The terminal's panel had a big red button with nine white buttons and a speaker besides.
Curious, she pressed the red button on the terminal.
The hatches turned counterclockwise before plexiglass tubular vats extended out of the ground, filled with clear fluid. But the contents of the vats was what utterly horrified her.
They were 6... things, on of each floating in it's personal tank, but their appearances... Dear god, their appearances. The first was tall and lean, bones curved inward and outwards, void of eyes, nose, or hair with it's mouth overtaking it's face and black skin coating it's lower half. The second one was thin, unnaturally thin with the skin barely clinging to it's bones while its face seemed twisted like a Picasso. The third seemed to have sores all over it's skin with visible red veins pumping clear colored blood. The fourth had scar-like 'cracks' that seemed to distort, as if breathing. The fifth had three more eyes than normal while something seemed to push against it's chest. And the sixth had innumerable tooth-like growths all over the body with it's frame long and lean.
That's when something hit her. They all looked like the Operator.
Marie backed away, mouth and eyes wide in abject horror as she gazed at these things before she remembered the white buttons on the terminal panel. Each button appeared to activate a recording to a tape, likely Volmer's notes on... whatever these things are.
She pressed the button labeled "#1."
"The date is January 23, 2023. My name is Dr. Heinrich Volmer. The purpose for these logs? To record my progress of creating the final component of my plan. A clone of the Operator will be the only component that will be the most difficult yet most easy to produce. To ensure a quick development, we have added a gene that stimulates the growth of the embryos. This is to reduce the life span so they will depend on the elixir to live. I will begin in 3 days."
Marie decided to skip to the eighth log. She had a sneaking suspicion that this involved someone other than Volmer.
"December 4th 2023. Success! Specimen 7 resembles The Operator almost perfectly! Eye color may be wrong but we all have our disappointments. I have decided to name him Lockhart."
She felt her heart go still.
"However, on a personal note, I must discuss the mutations I have discovered on the Failures."
"Specimen 1's bodily frame can deform or contort in unnatural shapes without the disruption of biological processes. Specimen 2's skeletal system has the tensile strength of titanium. Specimen 3's bodily fluids are toxic to the eels from the aquifer. Specimen 4's skin pores can absorb oxygen directly from any water it is submerged in. Specimen 5 has four hearts and it's bone marrow produces 8 times the amount of blood in a normal patient. And specimen 6 has unusually high sodium monofluorophosphate and hexafluorosilicic acid as well as, obviously, enamel in it's system. Even Lockhart has a dangerously high metabolism which prevents him from gaining weight or muscle mass, along with having a semi-immunity to intoxicants."
"While I am fully aware that I am a medical professional not a geneticist, I admit to being utterly dumbfounded by these mutations. I originally thought it was the lack of sufficient DNA but the same amount of genetic material for Lockhart was the same as the original six. The only conclusion I can surmise is that there is an anomalous gene that is in the Operator's DNA that allows the development of unnatural organs or abilities in any attempted clone or duplicate. But that only leaves me pondering: Who or what is the Operator?"
Marie's head was in shambles trying to process all that she just heard. Lockhart was a clone of the Operator? That made sense but what did Volmer mean about the final component? And what was that with the Operator's DNA?
However, a noise strung in her ear.
The noise came from a lower part of these tunnels. Marie hoisted her shovel and strode to where the noise was emanating from, a tunnel going downward into the aquifer.
It was an open space with a gurney with bodybag sitting on the edge, the water bright and calm. She set her shovel aside and pulled one back to reveal who was under, only to gasp in shock.
"Watkins?" Marie whispered.
It was Victoria Watkins. Or rather her corpse. Hair and skin greyed and dried, emaciated as if something leeched the fluids out of her and only left behind a dried husk. Who knows how many more suffered this fate?
Marie stared before hearing the sounds of someone wheeling another gurney in while whistling 'A Hunting We Will Go.' She quickly hid behind the nearest wall, unintentionally leaving behind her shovel on a barrel of coal.
A man wearing a plague doctor uniform wheeled another gurney to the edge of the pool before noticing the uncovered body of Watkins and the shovel by the barrel of coal. He picked the shovel up before shrugging and putting it down.
"So, that's where that went." The man wearing the uniform mumbled, before uncovering another emaciated corpse of a male, "God, I hate this job."
He pulled the gurney up, dumping the male body into the aquifer. Suddenly, dozens of the eels gathered around the body and attacked it, shredding chuck after chunk of flesh until it was nothing but a skeleton swimming in red.
'Food.' Marie though, horrified, 'They're using the bodies as food for the eels. But what dries them up?'
All thoughts stopped when she felt a needle pierce her shoulder.
She screamed but before she could struggle against whomever got to her, all the strength in her muscles faded. Soon after, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell unconscious.
Lockhart held Marie in his arms as she slumped unconscious, removing the syringe and setting her down by the stairs before he dumps Watkins into the aquifer. He watched as the eels devoured the young woman's body, leaving another skeleton floating in red water before the eels ate the bones too.
He sighed, this job was tiring. Gardening and taking care of the , getting the bodies from the transfusion wing, covering them up, wheeling them to the aquifer as quietly as he could, dumping them into the water to let the eels eat them, return the gurneys to the wing, and go to bed. Rise and repeat for the next day.
But a job's a job.
The gardener/eel feeder got out of his uniform, took Marie into his arms, and carried her up the stairs back to the Wellness Center. Hopefully, he could get her back to her room before-
"Mr. Lockhart?"
'Shit.'
He turned around to see Volmer standing behind him, looking at the woman in his arms curiously.
"Why is Ms. Kanker in your arms?" He asked, in a voice that was both calm and polite but one that you just obeyed.
Lockhart gulped, realizing there's no point in lying, "I found her wandering your underground lab. Apparently, something undid her brainwashing or she broke out of it. I don't know what she found out but it can't be good."
Instead of being angry, Volmer just seemed impressed, "Really? She must have some will. It's going to be a shame to break such a strong will."
The gardener just looked uncomfortable but relented when some of the staff appear with a gurney that had restraining belts. He softly laid her peaceful looking self to the table before the staff fastened the restrains and wheeled her off to wherever.
Volmer then turned to Lockhart, "Good job, Mr. Lockhart. You can take the rest of the week off. I'll have Herman cover your shifts."
Lockhart only nodded before walking off. He knew what was going to happen, and he was gonna hate what that woman is gonna go through.
But a job's a job.
Marie's eyes flutter open to reveal a tiled ceiling. With the sounds of classical music in her ears, she tried to get up from where she was laying, only to notice that she couldn't move her limbs. She looked down to see herself neck deep in one of the iron lungs, and in that room in that she peaked into when she snuck into the transfusion wing.
"Relax, Ms. Kanker!" Volmer said to her as he approached, "It'll all be over soon."
Her eyes then locked to the jar filled with the brown water and the eels, which the director noticed.
"Ah, yes. Such wonderful creatures." He said affectionately as he grazed his gloved finger on it, "Anywhere else on the planet, these species lives a dozen years at best. Here in our aquifer? They can live 300."
Volmer then looked to the machines as he continued, "The human physiology's effect on the water can be quite toxic, as you have discovered. Unless it is properly filtered."
He showed her one of the blue bottles for emphasis.
"The baron devised the process. Using the bodies of peasants that belonged to his land, he managed to distill the water to it's life giving essence. Of course, he paid a terrible price for his ingenuity. His mistake? He used subjects that were unwilling. Now? Times have changed."
Volmer motioned to the utterly drugged looking Pembroke who laughed softly, while the former had grabbed a hard plastic mouth piece shaped like a circle attached to a white belt.
"The last 200 years have been the most productive in human history," Volmer started as he approached her and hooked in the mouthpiece to the right side of the table. Marie clammed her mouth shut defiantly but Volmer simply pinched her nose shut, "Man rid himself of God, of hierarchy, of everything that gave him meaning, due to him worshipping the empty alter of his own ambition."
Marie couldn't hold her breath any longer, taking in a deep breath but the director used this to place the mouthpiece over her mouth, keeping it open even as she gagged. He hooked it into the table as the blue haired woman began panting loudly and frantically, her eyes displaying all the emotion needed.
"That is why they come." Volmer continued, "Men and women like you."
He then grabbed a clear plastic tube that was connected to the glass IV full of the toxic water and eels. Marie immediately put two and two together and started panicking.
"Mr. Lockhart was quite right." He continued, "No one ever leaves. But what you fail to understand is that no one wants to."
Volmer then inserted the tube into the mouthpiece and then into her mouth. Before she could react, he began forcing it down her throat with Marie struggling and gagging the whole way, pushing it further and further down through her until it reached her stomach.
Marie started crying and screaming but the tube only allowed a small whining sound. Her eyes then locked onto Volmer, whom was standing beside the jar.
"Do you know what the cure for the human condition is?" He asked her, knowing full well that she couldn't respond, "Disease. Because that's the only way one could hope for a cure."
The director twisted a valve, causing the water to flow down the tube and into Marie's system. She squirmed in agony before she saw the eels slithering down the tubes. She desperately tried crying out but it was not use as the eels flowed down the tube and into her stomach.
It was utterly repulsive, she could feel them wriggling and writhing inside of her, munching down on the contents of her stomach, feasting on her lunch, dinner, and even those grapes she had earlier. She wanted to vomit but the tube prevented her gag reflex from activating.
She screamed and screamed more, only coming out as a soft whine, as she tried to struggle out of the iron lung before her eyes rolled into the back of her head and the world gave way to merciful silence.
3 weeks later:
In the gardens of the courtyard, Lockhart whistled while wiping the sweat off his brow as he finished planting the last of the Clematis into the dirt. It had been three weeks since he'd last seen Marie but it wasn't the first time he'd had a friendship with one of the patients.
Than again, what made him keep thinking of her?
"Mr. Lockhart?"
He was snapped out of his thoughts when he heard his name being called. He saw Volmer approaching with his hands behind his back, face calm and formal as always. The gardener dusted himself off as he stood up and greeted him.
"Hey, what's up?"
"It's time."
He blinked, "Really?"
"Yes," Volmer nodded, "I finally have enough to begin the ritual." He then lets a massive grin grow on his face as he breathes in, "Finally, we can have what we truly desire."
The gardener looked down at the ground, sadly, "I'm not proud of what we had to do, director."
"I am not proud, either, Mr. Lockhart," The director told him, "But doing the deed so many times tends to numb one to the horrific parts of the deed."
Lockhart only nodded as Volmer left to prepare. The man then decided to stroll out to the courtyard, to clear his head. He wandered for a bit before noticing someone familiar looking over the mountains on a bench.
Raising an eyebrow, the gardener got closer and closer until he got near enough to see that they were female and had very blue, very familiar looking hair. His eyes went wide before he started jogging towards her before coming close enough to confirm who she was.
It was Marie. Her hair had grown out to where it reached her neck with her bangs at the sides of her face and she seemed a paler but it was definitely her. But instead of her usual attitude, she just had a broken stare as she gazed into the mountain range.
"It's beautiful." He tried to get her to talk. She didn't respond. So, he tried something else, "I liked that trip to the town 3 weeks ago. It felt great to get leave this place every once in a while."
That got a reaction from her. She turned her head to look at him, brokenly.
"Why would anybody wanna leave?" Marie asked him in a hollow voice before giving a broken smile, showing that all her teeth had been replaced by the dentures.
Lockhart looked horrified by this, while tears flowed down his face. She stopped smiling and looked at him curiously, like a child interested in something that they've never seen in their lives.
He blinked the tears out before remembered something that he thinks could snap her out of it.
"Here," He showed her the music box that she gave him to get her to go to town 3 weeks ago, "I wanted to give you this back."
The gardener placed it in her hands, causing her to look at the music box and palmed it thoughtfully.
Lockhart then leaned in and whispered, "I miss you, Marie. Please come back."
He then left as he saw Volmer motion to him to follow, not knowing his words planted the new seeds in Marie's head.
4 hours later:
It was a dark tunnel. Hundreds of men and women in hooded white robes, carrying countless white coffins and candles, followed Volmer and Lockhart to a dark area, with the group splitting off from the front two to form a large circle around a massive tank in the middle of the room, along with a ritual circle made of red dust.
There floated a woman. Beautiful as an angel, dressed in the finest of clothing, her long dark hair not lost a single hair to the stain of time, her skin fair as could be, and her beauty not faded.
Volmer smiled sadly as he stroked the glass of the tank before turning to Lockhart, whom nodded and motioned for something.
Several of the robed staff wheeled a smaller tank filled with the elixir to the room and hooked it up to the larger tank. They turned a valve that caused the contents of the smaller tank to flow into the larger tank.
"It has begun." Volmer breathed before opening an old book and reciting something.
Back in Marie's room, the blue haired woman just stared at the music box like a curious child.
She opened it, revealing a picture of an 18 year old version of herself, dressed in a grey ragged outfit with pale skin and her blue hair reaching her waist. The Marie in the picture was grinning at the person holding the camera with a knife in her hand.
The blue haired woman laid back on her bed before playing the music box.
Listening to it for what felt like hours, she slowly drifted to sleep.
Marie awoke in the ruins of Peach Creek, the torn apart houses and trailers of vague familiarity from times she wanted to forget. She just stared before she heard, "You..."
It was herself, wearing a ragged clothing under a cloak made of human skins, her face painted like a skull with her neck length hair having white highlights. She looked down upon her current self with a disgusted sneer.
"You tried to get rid of me." The Flayer growled before attempting a downward slash but Marie dodged.
She scowled at herself, "Of course, I did! You're a monster!"
The Flayer roared as she did a flurry of slashes against her current self but the latter managed to twirl out of the way and clotheslined the former at the neck, causing her to stumble back.
"I'm a part of you! A part of you that you hid because you are weak!"
They fought for what felt like hours and hours before Marie realized what she must do.
"You're right."
Her flayer persona stilled in shock before she explained.
"You are a part of me. I think that..." She paused for a second before continuing to explain, "I think that we are the same person. But I changed because I want to be better. I've learned that mom has no power over me anymore, that I can't be worse than she was. I need to be better. I know I've had a late start, but isn't the fact that I wanna try count as something?"
Instead of a sadistic or maniacal smile, her Flayer persona just had a gentle smile.
Then everything went white.
Back in her room, Marie's body suddenly convulsed while a blue aura flared around her. Her veins and eyes were blindingly shining before she then sat up and the light faded.
She slowly walked out of her room, face blank and eyes hard, ready to kill.
"Kanker!" The blue haired woman turned to see a staff pointing a gun at her, alarming the others in the hallway, "Please, return to-"
He was cut off when he was impaled in the chest by a dark blue tentacle. He hurled blood before Marie retracted tentacle from his chest, revealing the tentacle was her arm as it took it's natural form again.
After a few seconds, her body then took on a dark complexion as her features faded, leaving only a onyx androgenic figure in her place.
Suddenly, the figure lost all shape as it expanded into an amorphous mass of blackness, destroying her clothes in the process.
It burst from the hallway doors, sending wood and staff flying. Those left standing stared in fear before it crawled and flowed down the hallway, terrifying the staff and patients alike.
The amorphous mass destroys the environment around it, killing several of the staff in the process before bursting from the doors of Peterson's office.
It looked around for some answers, before noticing the picture of the sanitarium being built. Narrowing it's many eyes, it formed an arm to grasp the picture and get a closer look. After 2 seconds, it noticed that one of the men looking over the blueprints to the sanitarium had extensive bandages all over his face while holding an old book with decorative markings.
Wait, why does that book look so familiar.
That's when it hit her. That was the book from the laboratory! And the man with the bandaged face and the faces held in the bowls?
The pieces slowly fell in place as she realized what was going on.
"Volmer is the baron..." It said in a multitude of voices before it glared at the office windows and rocketed out of them, flying into the courtyard where it then slithered down the hidden entrance in the cathedral ruins.
The tank's water mixed with the elixir, browning it before it abruptly turned into a deep red, almost like blood. The circle of red dust ignited into a pseudo pyre with red smoke that soared through the chamber. Lockhart took out a dagger and slit his wrist, letting the blood flow into the fire.
It roiled and flared before the fire turned dark crimson. The followers took a few steps back along with Volmer and Lockhart as the smoke roiled, creased, and groaned before it formed dozens of tendrils of the same red smoke.
Suddenly, the tendrils lashed out, flying through the air and shattering the nearest white coffins, picking up their contents and adding them to itself. It did the same with the other coffins, shattering them one by one and absorbing their contents, growing fatter and larger with each absorption. It finally finished and seemed to relax in satisfaction.
"THERE!" Volmer roared to the thing in front of him, "I gave you your sacrifices! Now hold up your end of the bargain!"
The smoke seemed to swirl in annoyance before forced the tank open and it formed twin liquid tendrils that coiled around his sister's body, before the latter object floated into it's being. A flash of light blazed through the caves with a thunderous roar quaking the bedrock in parody of the end of the world.
Everything cleared, the mist receded to reveal Veronica, beautiful as ever as her brother preserved her. She descended back down to the alter with a ruby sunken in and embedded into her chest as Volmer watched.
The long lived former baron jogged towards his sister, catching her in his arms and holding her gently.
Her eyes fluttered open, but instead of the lively and energy filled ones he knew and loved, these were glossy and empty, devoid of anything that he remembered about her. It was there that he noticed more irregularities; her pulse was slowly than humanly possible, her skin was grey and cold, and there was what he could only describe as a 'wrongness' around her.
"This..." Volmer sputtered as he gazed at the thing that looked like his sister, "THIS ISN'T WHAT I WANTED! This thing only looks like her! THIS ISN'T HER! YOU LIED TO ME!"
The smoke seemed to chuckle before a whispering voice, wavy and melodic, "You said you wanted to bring her back to life. You didn't specify she had to have her soul back."
The former baron looked shocked and angered at this revelation before it spoke again.
"By the way, you're about to have a visitor."
At the moment he uttered the word 'who', a dark blue blade pierced an upper part of the the room. The blade then shifted liquescently, splitting into four hooks that grappled the wall before whatever was behind the wall wrenched against it, tearing it apart.
Volmer and his followers covered their eyes with their arm against the dust, before they saw what rended the wall apart.
It was an amorphous blob of dark blue, features such as limbs, organs, and bodily structures appearing and disappearing at random intervals, flowing and reforming like an ocean of blue shapeless flesh.
It jumped before becoming formless as water before it landed on the tank, dispersing the crimson smoke while taking an arachnid-like shape with it's legs around the edges. It then grabbed Volmer by the neck and hoisted him up, with him struggling against it all the way.
"Never wound..." The monster said in a voice of a million whispers before it lost shape, compressing and shrinking until it had taken Marie's form, her face and hair in their normal form while the rest of her body resembled her wearing a catsuit.
"What you can't kill." She continued before she threw the director away, only for him to be caught by Lockhart and his followers.
He looked shocked before he had an angry expression as he revealed a remote and pressed the only button. An alarm sounded, along with a hissing noise that drew Marie's attention.
Suddenly, the Failures came crawling into the chamber, drooling and growling at him, much to the horror of Volmer's followers.
"Keep her busy!" Volmer bellowed, causing the six to barrel towards Marie, tackling her into the aquifer before she transformed into a serpent-like form and sunk her fangs into Specimen 5's chest. The Operator clone bellowed underwater, nearly drowning, before Specimen 2 threw a punch so hard that it pierced through her serpentine chest.
Marie mentally roared before she shifted into a multitentacled monstrosity that coiled it's tentacles around the failed clones and slammed them all hard into the cave ceiling.
The cave rumbled, causing Volmer and his followers stumble before the latter yelled, "The aquifer is becoming unstable! We must leave!"
His followers didn't need to here that twice. They sprinted down the pathway with Volmer and Lockhart leading the rest of the staff out of the caverns, the former having abandoned his sister's body in a panic. The ceiling rumbled before flames burst from the cavern, fissures began spreading as the tunnel collapsed. Fires lit the the other side while they reached the surface, only to see a shocking sight.
The Wellness Center was ablaze. Every corner and space a lit with orange and red flames, releasing pillars of smoke into the clear sky. Sounds of crackling and searing meat sulfated the air in horrid intervals. All the while, the patients simply continued to do their normal activities, not noticing the fires.
Volmer was the first to snap out of his daze.
"PUT OUT THE FIRES! QUICKLY!"
His yell snapped the others out of it. The staff dashed to the fountains, pools, or other source of water and collected liquid with buckets before dashing to the fires to try and put out the fire.
"Director?" Lockhart said behind Volmer.
The director of the burning facility turned to the gardener, questioningly as to what he wanted as the sanitarium was burning, only gape in shock.
Lockhart had a large gash across his chest, bleeding profusely, stumbling forward before collapsing onto Volmer's arms, with the former accidentally grabbing the right side of the latter's face.
Suddenly, the piece of Volmer's face that Lockhart was holding onto ripped off, revealing a horrific sight. The face that Volmer wore was a chemical mold that hid his real face; a face with horrific burns, scar tissue pulsing a nauseating green.
Lockhart fell back to the lawn, gripping the piece tightly as went into convulsions.
Volmer yelled, "A medical kit! Get me a medical kit!"
A staff member nodded and dashed off to get a kit while Volmer kept pressure on the wound, telling the gardener to stay with him while they get the kit.
Unseen to anyone, something dark blue oozed from the cracks and openings between the debris in the collapsed tunnel, hundreds of tendrils slithering out and reaching to each other. The tendrils started weaving together into a slithering mass that grew and compressed. The last of the mass pulled out of the tunnel, joining the main mass as it took a humanoid shape before vomiting out a pair of dirty white medical pants, a dirty white long sleeved shirt, and a dirty white bathrobe, and shifting so that it was wearing them. The mass then shaped itself to Marie's shape, face and hair before taking on her pigments.
Marie gasped for a breath in a second as she shook her, "Damn, that was a rush."
She then saw that the sanitarium was on fire, the staff rushing around trying to put out the fire, and Volmer on the lawn doing something to Lockhart.
'Wait, what?!'
Marie snapped back to the last things she saw, sprinting towards the director as a staff member also reached him with a medical bag in their arms, giving it to Volmer who had the most fucked up scar she'd ever seen.
He noticed her as she got close to him, "Ms. Kanker?"
"What's wrong with him?!" Marie interrupted in a panic when she saw the 6 inch gash on Lockhart's chest, kneeling down to help.
Volmer immediately replied, "He has a large gash and possibly a contusion. I need you to keep pressure on the wound while I stitch it shut."
The blue haired woman nodded before she pressed her hands against the wound as the director readied the needle and thread. He tied the string to the needle before he began stitching.
Marie was tearing up as she saw Lockhart's pale and delirious face, gazing drowsily at her while he glided his fingers over her hair as he muttered, "You're beautiful."
Her cheeks burned before she paled as she noticed his eyes slowly closing. Marie unconsciously formed another arm from her wrist to gently yet rapidly slapped his check to keep him awake. It succeeded, keeping Lockhart awake long enough for Volmer to finish stitching the wound shut.
The director checked Lockhart's pulse and breathing with a stethoscope before laying back with a scared looking Marie, "He is stable. Lost a lot of blood but stable."
Marie let out a huge breath of relief as she collapsed next to Volmer, whom let her as the two sat there as the staff continued to put out the fire.
"What happened to you and your sister?" She asked abruptly.
Volmer looked surprised but relented, "It was so long ago."
"I loved her more than anything." Volmer's voice spoke over as the scene changed to show the Baron and his sister as kids, playing in the fields around their castle as their parents watched happily.
"When we both fell on harder times, I was the one whom took care of her."
The Baron and his sister both looked on as their peasants buried the bodies of their parents, the Baron looking sad while his sister sobbed hysterically.
"But my sister came down with the same illness that took our parents."
Veronica was laying on a bed, while the Baron checks up on her, worried sick.
"Determined not to lose her, I vowed to cured her at all costs."
The Baron works in his laboratory, writing his notes down on various sheets of parchment.
"It was soon that I discovered the aquifer, under the castle by pure accident as I was collecting minerals for my experiments."
He was scrapping minerals off a cave wall with an ice pick. Suddenly, the wall collapsed, with the Baron stumbling back as he did so. He got up, confused, when he saw the massive aquifer behind.
"My experiment revealed that the aquifer was a 'prototype' of the Lazarus Pits of old. But, I also discovered that in the centuries that the eels had inhabited the pools, their DNA had proliferated the water, making it toxic to humans."
The Baron swiped his desk in anger, putting his hand to his faces. When all of the sudden, the Baron struck an idea.
"So, I experimented on my peasants, hoping to find any means to distill the liquid."
The Baron dumped another dead peasant into the field and ran before anyone noticed.
"I eventually I distilled enough to cure her of her ailments."
Veronica seemed healthy enough to walk while the Baron seemed elated.
"But the peasants soon revolted. They burnt both of us at the stake before doing the same to the castle."
The Baron and his sister screamed in pain as they were burned at the steak, angry peasants surrounding them, screaming their heads off.
"I managed to survive..."
The Baron managed to crawl out of the wreckage of the fire, the burns on his face scaring away the peasants. He then desperately looking around the wreckage of the castle.
"...but my sister did not."
He moves as much rubble and debris as he could before he saw an arm sticking out of a pile. The Baron clawed away the pile, only for a devastated expression to adorn his burnt face when he saw the body. It was bruised and burn, her dress singed with tears and rips, yet nothing compared to the burns on her torso and sternum.
The Baron fell to his knees and tears falling down his face.
"I wanted to move on, but I couldn't." Volmer lamented, looking at his hands, "I found the book in whatever remained of the castle. There was a page that contained a ritual involving resurrection. One of the requirements was an entire vat of the distilled liquid."
"To ensure that I was not burnt again, I changed strategies and rebuilt my castle as this sanitarium." He motioned to the burning institute, "I offered my services to the rich and powerful for the process. The Era of Rending allowed me to produce an absurd amount of the distilled essence, but it wasn't enough."
Volmer then turned to her, "Until you came."
Marie blinked.
"You somehow produced ten times the amount of distilled essence. It met my quota just in time. Maybe it was your semblance or something else. But I met my quota and I enacted the ritual." Volmer's expression then grew sad, "But as you saw, all that work was for nothing."
Both were silent before Marie spoke to him, "I can't forgive you, Volmer. Not after all this."
"I know." He only said in understanding as both continued to stare off into the distance as the sanitarium continued to burn around them.
"Director!" A staff member yelled as they ran to them from the entrance stairs, "Modus is here!"
Just as he said that, seventeen Modus officers appeared and yelled for everyone to get on the ground. Several of the staff complied and threw themselves to the grass, others got to their knees. The officers cuffed most of the staff before they tried to helped to put out the fires. The Operator then appeared with Offdensen at his side, the latter going to help the officers and the former finding Marie by the director.
"Jesus, Marie." The Operator asked, bemused at her dirty and blood-soaked attire, "What happened to you?"
Marie just stood up and walked towards him, practically irradiating exhaustion and relief, "Sir. It's been... a long day."
"Well, are you okay?"
"Yeah. In fact," She breathed before she collapsed against him, laying her head on his shoulder, "I've never felt better."
He just said nothing, just letting her lean against him as they watched as Offdensen cuffed a willing Volmer, the officers using Ice Dust to put out the fire, and the medics stitching up Lockhart.
"...Is it weird that I think the fire is calming?" The Operator randomly asked her.
Marie just let out a chuckle before relaxing at the two just stared on in silence.
Marie Kanker
Aura: Blue
Semblance: Metamorphosis
Description: After being exposed to the Semblance altering material known as Mycosynth, Marie's semblance now allows her to physically alter her body into any form she wants, regardless of mass or state of matter. Examples include turning her arm into a spear-like tentacle or turning her entire body into an amorphous creature. The only limits are her imagination.
Despite this, there are drawbacks. Firstly, should she be rendered unconscious, Marie will return to her normal form. Secondly, should she change into an inhuman form, her clothing will be destroyed, though she has found a way to circumvent this. And thirdly, regardless of form, Marie needs to intake nutrients unlike Eddy, so she does need to eat.