Ch. 7- Final Fantasy VIII and a HAM Radio
Pain, heat, noise. I could feel and hear all of those around my body. I could see nothing, but I knew that something was happening to my body. My heart was pounding heavily and my body was hot. My body felt like needles were being jammed into it.
Flashes came to me suddenly. I saw Caroline standing around, laughing before she crashed her car into another, her body flying through the windshield and landing on the street. I saw July's mother being burned alive in her burning house. I even saw Sherry's father mutating into a horrible monster. Why was I seeing all of these? I never met them save for the monster Caroline.
After the flashes, I couldn't see anything. Then I realized something. My eyes were closed. I opened them and peeked around my room. I was lying in a hospital bed and still clad in my red hospital gown that I was wearing when Miss Scarlet injected me with whatever it was I got. I wasn't strapped to anything and I was no longer dizzy like I had been before. What the? What time is it? I thought as I sat up.
I turned my head towards a beeping sound coming from the left of me. A clock perched against the wall flashed red digital letters "6:00AM." It was 6:00 in the morning. But what day?
I moved my right arm and saw wires and an IV sticking into it. I hated IVs. They felt horrible and hurt when they came out. That and they limited the mobility of my hand. I knew because of my coma from two years ago.
I wanted to leave the room, but so far, the IV was preventing me from moving. With my left hand, I yanked the IV out of my right arm. I couldn't help but to scream. It hurt like a bitch.
I slowly got to my feet and waited for the feeling to return to them. Then, I walked to a calendar on a wall next to the clock. It was the month of March. A bunch of days up until the 28th were crossed out. I just assumed that it was the correct date. If I was correct, then the seven of us girls had been kidnapped for at least three weeks. Now to find the other girls.
There was only one door in my room and to my surprise, the door was not locked and no alarm went off when I opened the door. What surprised me the most was that there were no guards or nurses patrolling the hallways.
I walked quietly down the halls so I wouldn't disturb anything or anybody that could have been hiding. Next to my room was a door with a number and the letters on it "5. M.B." M.B.? Could it be? I thought as I stood in front of the door.
Like mine, this door was unlocked and lead to another hospital room. Lying in the bed was Mari with an IV in her right arm. She was sleeping. I walked to her bed and shook her shoulder, "Mari…Mari…wake up."
Mari let out a little moan and muttered, "Courtney, leave me alone. Just give me ten more minutes."
"I'm not Courtney. Now open your eyes." I commanded.
Mari slowly opened her eyes and blinked, "Oh. Hey, Lilie."
"Mari, have you been seeing flashes of the past or death?"
"Well, I saw my mother back in our cell and the last thing I remember is that I bit the two Japanese twins."
I didn't say anything to her although I was wondering why she bit them instead of hitting them with her fists. I did, however, without saying anything, pulled the IVs out of her hand.
Mari sat up quickly and shouted, "Ouch! What the hell was that for?"
"What, so you wanna lay here in this hospital bed with an IV in your hand?" I asked.
Mari shook her head, "Hell no!" She wobbled out of her bed and moaned, "My body feels weird."
"They probably gave you something that did something else to your body. For some reason, I'm seeing weird things of the past…horrible things. I wonder what they gave you."
Mari shrugged and headed for the door. She tripped over a hidden wire and fell flat onto her face. She picked herself up and yelled, "Dammit!" Mari clenched her hand into a fist and punched the cold, stone floor. A dent was formed in place of her fist. So that's what she got…extra strength. I thought as I watched her stand up on her two feet. I told her the date on both our calendars before I realized something about this day. March 28th was Sherry's birthday. It was her fourteenth birthday and she was stuck here in a hospital.
"Come on, Mari. Let's go. We have to find the other girls. Maybe then we can get out of here." I told her. She agreed and carefully followed me out of the room.
As we walked, I was so grateful that we were given slippers that completely covered our feet and had a sort of foamy substance on the bottom because the floors were extremely filthy with rocks all over the floor. Dirt, grime, and broken bits of dirty concrete lay scattered everywhere. This place, wherever I was in, was almost as bad as Marysville during the zombie invasion.
The musty smell was so strong that it was almost unbearable. Across the hallway was a door with the number six and the initials "S.B." That was Sherry's room. I opened the door to room six and led Mari inside. As Mari was before, Sherry was sleeping in her blue gown with an IV in her arm. I motioned for Mari to pull out Sherry's IV. She did it with ease, a lot quicker than when I removed her IV.
Sherry quickly sat up and screamed. I placed a hand on her left shoulder and said in a calm voice, "It's okay, Sherry. It's only Mari and me."
Sherry stopped screaming and looked at me. I placed my hand on her forehead where I saw something. What looked like a piece of bone in the shape of a horn was sticking out of her forehead. "Oh my God, Sherry." I gasped.
"Holy crap!" Mari gasped as she looked at the horn.
"What is it?" Sherry asked in a scared voice. With the careful help of me and Mari, Sherry walked to a mirror on the wall so she could look at her face. Her face paled as soon as she saw the horn. Her hands touched it to make sure it was real. When she realized it was, she started to look like she was going to cry.
I placed a hand on her shoulder and said in a soothing voice, "Well, on the bright side, Sherry. It's March 28th. Happy Birthday and as a presant, we're going to find the four other girls and get out of here."
Sherry nodded and said, "Okay." Sherry, Mari, and I walked down the hallways, looking for the rooms of the other girls. I turned the corner and ran into a person.
"Ouch! Watch it, Coen!" a snobby voice shouted.
I looked up and saw Hazel standing in front of me. She looked the same as she did before except for the fact that her once hazel eyes were now a gold color. Standing behind her were Liana and July. Liana had a hospital mask over her mouth, but otherwise looked the same. July looked so much thinner than before and almost looked anorexic.
"Why is Liana wearing a hospital mask?" I asked.
"It's my breath. It's toxic." Liana explained.
"Who do you know?" I asked.
"I breathed on some plants that were in my room and they died. I put on this mask so that I can't poison anyone else." she explained.
Before I could ask anything else, July piped up, "Where's Catie?"
I shrugged, "I don't know. I haven't seen her."
"Okay, so far we've found everyone here. All we need to find is…" Mari started.
"Catie!" July shouted. She sped off down the hallway. She used to be fast, but the liquid given to her must have made her faster because she was gone in a second.
All the other girls except for Hazel followed July. By the time we got to her, there was Catie. She looked like she normally had. Thank god she wasn't all that far away because I did not feel like doing a bunch of running.
Catie looked at Sherry and gasped, "Oh my…Sherry, what happened? You look like you're growing a horn."
Sherry moved her head to the ground. The hallway was momentarily silent.
"Okay, does anyone know where we are?" Liana asked, breaking the silence.
Catie leaned in towards July and whispered something. The smaller girl shook her head. Nobody said anything. Nobody knew.
"Well, girls, then let's go search for the exit or at least something to call help from." Liana announced. She began to walk to the far end of the hallway. All the others followed her.
There was a staircase leading both to the floor above us and the one below us. We went down to the floor below the one we stood on. Next to the staircase was a bulletin board with a paper pinned to it.
I took the paper off and read it out loud, "One of you girls knows her way around here. Which one?" I turned to the girls and asked, "Okay, seriously. Which one of you guys knows your way around here?" Nobody answered. Maybe the note was lying.
"Hey, there's the main office!" Sherry shouted. She pointed at a door with the word "office" painted on it. She opened the door and walked into the small office. The others followed her.
"Holy crap! It's a HAM radio!" Mari shouted. She sat in the chair in front of the radio.
"Do you know how to work it?" I asked.
Mari nodded, "Lucas taught me how one time." She began messing with the knobs.
As she worked, I talked to all the girls to see what happened to them. I could currently see pasts, Sherry was growing a horn, Mari had super strength, July was give super speed, Liana had toxic breath, Hazel's eyes had changed, and Catie wasn't sure.
A voice came from the radio, "Breaker one-nine. Breaker one-nine. This is Cloud Strife. Is anyone there?"
Mari gasped, "It's Lucas. He's using Final Fantasy VII names."
"Say something back! Use new names." I said.
Mari thought for a second before saying, "We're going to be the Final Fantasy VIII girls." She whispered each girl our own names. She then spoke into the radio, "Cloud Strife? This is Rinoa Heartilly. Are you still there?"
-------MARC-------
"Cloud Strife? This is Rinoa Heartilly. Are you there?" the female voice over the radio called.
From next to me, Casey gasped, "That's my sister. It's Mari."
"Rinoa, are the others with you?" Lucas asked into the radio.
"Yeah. I'll have them confirm that they are here." Mari said.
"Quistis Trepe here." a girl's voice said.
"Sherry…" Casey whispered.
"Fujin." another girl said.
"Liana…" David said from next to me.
"Selphie Tilmitt here. Alive and well." a hyper voice.
Lucas chuckled, "That's July."
"Adel…" a snobby voice said confidently before muttering, "Dammit, Mari. Why the hell did you choose the ugly one for me?"
"Hazel." all of us boys muttered.
"Okay, I'm Ellone." another girl announced.
I felt a sigh of relief as I heard the melodic voice of my girlfriend. "It's Lilie."
"Ummm…Edea Kramer here." the deepest voice said. It must have been the other girl, Catie.
"Where are you guys?" Lucas asked the girls.
Mari came back onto the radio, "We don't know. It looks like a hospital, but abandoned."
I pushed Lucas out of the way and spoke into the radio, "Did anything happen to you girls?"
I heard Mari's faint voice shout, "Ouch! Dammit, Lilie." Then I heard Lilie's voice over the radio, "Yeah, something happened to us. We were crammed in a cold, wet cell for a while then were shown our biggest fears. Then we had this liquid put into our bodies by a syringe."
I froze, "Liquid inside your bodies? Like with the Umbrella Corporation?"
"The Umbrella Corporation was the one that gave us the liquids. Wesker's here." Lilie told me.
I felt a pain in my heart. The Umbrella Corporation, they killed my parents. They infected the old Raccoon City, Marysville, and the prison Lilie was thrown in almost a year ago. They experimented on people and animals, turning them into monsters and zombies. Now they came back and experimented on the innocent girls that were taken.
"Did you have any side effects?" I asked. I silently prayed that she would say that there weren't any side effects. Unfortunately…
"Yes. For some reason I can currently see horrible things of the past. Quistis is growing what looks likes a horn in the middle of her forehead. Rinoa has super strength. Selphie's much thinner and faster then she was before. Adel's eyes are golden. Fujin has toxic breath. So far, only Edea doesn't have one.
I suddenly heard static over the radio. The signal was being lost and I could no longer hear any of the girls, but at least they were all alive even though I didn't know where they were or how long they were going to last if they didn't get any help.
Lucas pushed me out of the way and began messing with the knobs, trying to get a connection with the girls. My teacher was gone, so I helped myself to the phone and dialed the number for the S.T.A.R.S. room to reveal the information we got.
"S.T.A.R.S. office." It was Chris.
"Chris, it's Marc. I just got a hold of Mari and Lilie over the HAM radio at school.
"You did? Are the girls okay?"
"Sort of. They were experimented on by Wesker and some started to mutate. They're all alive."
"Where are they?"
"They don't even know. All they know is that they are in an abandoned hospital. We lost connection before we could find anything else out. We'll keep trying to get in touch with them."
"Okay, good. We'll be waiting for your new information." Matt hung up and so did I. Now to play the waiting game to see if we could talk to the girls again.
-------BILLY-------
The phone in the S.T.A.R.S. room went off. It started everyone in the room. The phone hadn't rang in almost three weeks.
Matt was the one to answer it as he was closer. When he answered, his face showed the emotion of fear. Each time he asked a question, the other S.T.A.R.S. members stiffened up. Anxiety overtook my body. I had a feeling he was being told something bad about the girls.
When he hung up, he told everyone what Marc had told him.
I felt relieved. My sister was alive, but where was she? And more importantly, how much more time did she have left to live?
-------LILIE-------
"Vincent! Cloud! Are you there?" I shouted as Mari messed around with the knobs, trying to get a connection with over the radio. We were so busy with the radio that we failed to notice that the other girls were searching through drawers, shelves, and boxes.
Suddenly, Hazel screamed, "You little lying bitch! You have been here before!"
I turned around and saw Hazel lifting July up in the air by the corner of her dress. By her feet was a folder that was closed.
"Hey! Put her down!" Catie screamed as she and Liana began to remove July from Hazel's grip.
I walked to the folder and picked it up. I opened it and in it was two pieces of paper, forms with a younger July on each. The first read:
Name: July Larkspur Caden
DOB: July 5, 1985
Date Committed: 8/23/94
Age: 9 years
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Green
Doctor: Norman Henderson
Date Released: 10/17/94
July is a sweet girl, but suffers from acute schizophrenia and often believes she sees her recently deceased mother in front of her.
The second said:
Name: July Larkspur Caden
DOB: July 5, 1985
Date Committed: 7/30/98
Age: 13
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Green
Doctor: Norman Henderson
Date Released: 11/4/98
July has been here before and returned due to acute schizophrenia and believes she sees her recently deceased uncle.
At the top of both documents was the name: Westside Psychiatric Institution. This hospital was for mental people and July had been instituted here twice. Maybe that was the explanation of why she was so weird.
I turned to July and asked her in a shocked voice, "Why didn't you tell us you've been here before?"
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A/N: Okay, that's chapter 7. In the next chapter, the monsters will come and all hell is going to start to break loose.