Don't give me that look, Elizabeth glanced down, as if watching a frog strapped onto a dissecting table. It's not like I' m going to chop you up and put the bits into a pot of chili. Well, not this time.
I think potato salad would be a better choice. She smiled, like an overenthusiastic kid who was expecting to be praised for her ingenious idea.
Muffled screams and more wild struggling against the restraints were clearly not her preferred response, and the smile quickly shifted into a cold, disdainful frown.
What, don't you love potatoes? She sneered, before bending down to retrieve a saw from underneath the steel table. How rude of you.
She was in tears now. Her captor must have noticed it, too, because there was this...glint in the young woman's eyes, as she moved closer and closer, until their faces were only inches away from each other. So close. She could see the small flame logo on that baseball cap.
She had already squeezed her eyes shut when she felt a light kiss on her eyelid. If there wasn't a piece of duct tape over her mouth, she would have gagged at the sensation—
She opened her eyes, just in time to see the electric saw coming to life with a buzz, before Elizabeth covered her eyes with her free hand. All she could hear was the blood rushing into her ears and her own deafening heartbeats, as the buzzing sound hovered above her shoulder, moving closer and closer to her right hand, and her screams were squashed into a whimper that died in her throat.
Stop squirming. It would hurt less if you keep still. I promise.
She jolted awake with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat. The faint buzz was still echoing in her ears when she checked her hands. All her fingers were still there, thank goodness, and she was not tied onto a steel table, about to be tortured to death by a certain creepy fuck.
Wait. Where did this strange light come from?
She looked up, and stared right into the glowing red eyes of a translucent phantom, wearing a huge witch hat. The ghostly figure only spared a single glance at her, before passing right through the floor without a sound.
It was even more bizarre than her recurring nightmare. For a few seconds, she just sat there in stunned silence, until she heard the voice coming out from above her.
"The fire alarm has been sounded on Level B2. Please evacuate the building—"
Okay. The random building she chose to sleep in was definitely haunted, and maybe on fire now.
Wonderful.
She didn't smell smoke, which, considering that Level B2 seemed to be the basement, wasn't all that surprising. Either way, it would be a good idea to start moving towards the ground level.
She had her palms pressed firmly against the wall as she tiptoed her way down the stairs in the darkness. She didn't turn the lights on—she could not remember where all the switches were, and her eyes were burning from the lack of sleep, to the point where calling up the concentration she needed to see through the dark felt like such a daunting task—
Crack!
A loud, sharp noise pierced through the air, while she was making her way down to the third or second floor. She missed a step, tripped over the edge, and came tumbling down the stairs until she crash-landed at the bottom with a yelp.
For a few seconds, she just lay there, like a sad sack of potatoes. That fall was definitely adding a few more bruises to her sore and moderately battered body, and she almost did not want to get back up. But the shrieking fire alarm reminded her that there was still an emergency, and the sound must have come from somewhere below her. So, she dragged herself up with a weak groan and kept moving down the stairs.
The first thing she saw, upon reaching Level 1, was the faint street light. It was shining through the small window, reflecting off the glass shards that were scattered all across the floor. She grabbed the handle of the nearby staircase door and gave it a forceful shake. Still locked.
She turned her sight back onto the shattered window—that explained the noise. But if someone had just broken into the place, where were they now? They could not have exited the staircase or made their way up onto the higher levels. She would have run right into them as she fumbled her way down.
Only one way to go now...
She stared into the staircase below, engulfed in pitch darkness. Whoever the intruder was, they must have headed down to the basement levels before she could see them.
She shook her head, to get rid of the floaty drowsiness that was clouding up her mind. Then, she pressed down on the switch in her bracer, her blade out and ready as the power flowed back to her, and the darkness ahead faded away into a gentle twilight of distinctive shapes and silhouettes.
The staircase leading down to the basement level was empty. As she made her way down onto Level B1 in a mad dash, she saw a sliver of light, shining through the gap below the staircase door. The door swung open with a single push, revealing a narrow corridor behind it.
The light was coming from a fluorescent light bulb, hanging right above the glass barrier that separated this small segment of space from the rest of the long corridor. A keypad was mounted on the nearby wall, and the only other object in this space was a small water cooler.
Now that she could see clearly, she did not need the heightened senses anymore. Just as she was about to cut off her power, something surfaced in her vision and caused her to stop dead in her tracks.
There was a line of footprints on the floor, glowing with a gentle golden aura. It took a turn next to the keypad, before going straight through the sliding door on the glass barrier.
She stepped forward, pressing her face against the glass for a better look...
...And, right at the end of the trail of footprints, behind the foggy greyness of multiple walls that her enhanced sight could just barely penetrate, a small golden silhouette entered her line of sight.
No flames or smoke were in Verdna's sight when she descended into the corridor of Level B2. The fire must be entirely contained within the walls of a single unit. Or it could be a false alarm after all.
She made a beeline for the steel door with a red label on it—if any artifacts on B2 had caught on fire, it was probably in there. However, as she hovered past rows of obsidian statues and stone reliefs engraved with blood-red runes, neatly frozen inside giant blocks of ice and suspended in mid-air by spells, she did not see any damage to the containment structure.
She went through the left wall, and headed straight for the Repair & Conservation Lab, past multiple smaller units with their content securely stored inside heavy Nitendium containers. Some of the paints used in there were flammable, too, and she winced thinking about the damage a potential fire could do to the new batch of artifacts awaiting restoration.
Fortunately, as she scanned through the room, the murals and fragmented ritual objects still lay securely in their original position, in various stages of repair and disrepair.
Now that Flame & Heat Hazard was out of the way, time for Electricity...Spatial Anomaly...Incomplete Runes Sector...
After going through the whole B2 Level, Verdna did not see so much as a spark. As she came to a stop in front of the familiar glass casing, where her own amulet was stored, she was positive that it was a false alarm. Still, something about this just didn't feel...right.
Except for the High Hazard Storage Units, most fire alarms in the basement levels still needed to be triggered manually, an unfortunate reality that came with the archive's aged architecture and the pitiful amount of funding available for renovation.
The library sections had smoke detectors, at least, but she was dead, not deaf, and there was no way she could have misheard the message blaring out of the intercom at top volume—
Another alarm started beeping right above her. It was faint and barely audible through the concrete ceiling, but it was going off, without a doubt.
She remembered the sound from the workplace safety drills that every living employee was forced to go through every month—because the head librarian would rather overcompensate for the inadequate safety features than trying to get more funding from the Basilicom. How very, very wise and responsible of him.
Must be the B1 Checkpoint lock, near the stairs.
She zoomed right through the ceiling and into the corridor above. The sliding door panel on the barrier was completely obliterated, its remnants scattered all over the floor. As she moved through the corridor, she could hear loud footsteps coming from the other end, near the barrier gate to the elevator, followed by the sounds of someone banging on a door.
"Hey! I know you're in there! Open up!"
Verdna recognized the person before she even reached the Life Rune Sector door. Despite the darkness, it was hard to mistake that white hood and cloak for anything else. How did she even manage to get down here?
"I don't know who you are, but I need an explanation—" The person in white paused, to catch a breath, before shuddering in discomfort and noticing the ghost floating behind her. For a few seconds, they just stared into each other's eyes, without a word.
"Oh. Hi there." She finally broke the silence, and awkwardly waved to Verdna. "So...any unfinished wishes?"
"I'm afraid not, darling."
"Okay? Why are you...drifting around this place, then? You don't have to tell me, I'm just curious—"
"Well, I died."
"Obviously?"
"...I got better. And become a librarian." She said, in her most tired and dry voice. If she still had lungs, she would definitely be taking a long, deep breath right now.
"Now, would you please explain your unauthorized entry into Lowee's National Archive?" Verdna narrowed her eyes. If the one from B2 was a false alarm, this person was so going to pay for the damage to the glass door. The last thing the archive needed right now was an additional repair bill.
"Well, I heard the fire alarm, saw you, and went down here—The point is, someone is in this room right now!" She pointed towards the door in front of them. "And sorry about the glass! I'm just trying to help!"
"Oh, you are doing great, sweetie." Verdna could not help but roll her eyes, under the shadow casted by her huge witch hat. "Now, stay where you are, and—"
A blinding light burst out of the wall, followed by a shockwave that went right through her, but sent the other person stumbling backward. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling. Amid the smoke and darkness, Verdna saw a pair of glowing eyes, inside the gaping hole on the wall—
Another flare of light erupted out of the same hole, then quickly faded away. Light, panicking footsteps were heard in the darkness, darting out of the room and heading straight towards the other end of the corridor. It did not go unnoticed, however, and a white silhouette soon went after the fleeing intruder in a mad dash.
She must have caught up to them next to the barrier, for Verdna heard the sound of scuffles before she even moved close enough to illuminate the space with her light. The person in white had tackled the intruder to the ground, and just as she was shouting for her captive to hand over the stolen object, Verdna caught a glimpse of her eyes, glowing bright gold.
She grabbed onto their wrists, trying to wrestle something away from them, but because of how tightly they were holding onto it, when the object finally came loose, it flew out of their hands and landed somewhere on the floor. The dim light did not seem to hinder her, and she quickly leaped towards the object, catching it in her palms—
The golden glow of her eyes suddenly disappeared in the dark, like two candle flames snuffed out by the wind.
She collapsed onto the floor, stiff and unmoving.