Wake up! Time to die
- Not sure where this quote came from, but the speaker's name was Leon
Squall had quickly descended the stairs, taking three at a time before he suddenly jumped the remaining four steps, his feet falling securely onto the landing below before he started from scratch. But when he reached the eighth floor, he had heard the familiar tapping of claws atop stone. He hadn't needed to turn around to know that it was one of the infected dogs and he hurried his pace, however after that, the sound of the dogs increased.
He had recalled Laguna saying something about the eighth floor training guard dogs, and hadn't wasted any time moving away. Unfortunately, they had already picked up his scent and followed him. It had been when he reached the sixth floor that he found himself in trouble.
The door had been opened at some point or another and more of those things were making their way towards him, moaning with their arms outstretched in his direction. Turning around, he had known the dogs were closing in and so he had pulled himself over the banister and had jumped, falling the remaining three flights that he needed to go. When he had reached the second floor, he had grabbed a hold of the banister, flipped himself back over it and continued on his way.
Since then, he had run into much more of those creatures, resulting in loss of essential ammunition. Deciding to search the bodies for anything useful, he had managed to liberate a small amount from less than a percentage of the creatures he had searched. Amongst the 'treasures' he'd discovered was a double-barrelled shotgun off one of the former employees (Squall assumed that it was an item brought from home), two micro Uzi submachine guns, both of which were grabbed from two fallen Estharian soldiers at two different incidents, six combat knives (also from one of the fallen soldiers) and a small handheld Beretta – PX4 Storm version, with about half a clip inside the chamber and another full clip – seventeen rounds – sitting uselessly on another soldier's (this one looked as though he was only security detail) belt.
Now, he threw away one of the Uzi's, the ammunition having been spent and checked the second one, finding that it wasn't too far behind. The shotgun, while having been the most useful, had run out too quickly and he hadn't had the shotgun shells to reload it. It too had been discarded. The .45 Calibre had been the next in line to go, and now all he had was the remaining Uzi, the MP5K (of which only had one clip of ammunition remaining), the Beretta with ten rounds remaining, and one out of the six combat knives.
All things considered, so far so good.
He had passed the elevator when the first of his comrades – his friends – had died, and he tried hard not to think about the expression on Zell's face as the elevator doors closed, separating the two. He had an objective – a mission – and he couldn't afford to let his emotions botch it. Without sparing the elevators another glance, he crept down the hallway, weapons poised and raised as he headed towards his office.
He heard moaning and wondered if he would be able to get past them without wasting a shot, only to find that it was a small gathering he was coming up to. Frowning slightly, he held down the trigger for the Uzi, four out of the collective seven of them falling to the floor when the weapon ran dry. Tossing the weapon aside, he pulled out the Beretta and hit the remaining three. He was about to keep moving when one of the four fallen creatures started pulling himself up onto his feet, but that stopped when another bullet was lodged into his forehead.
The Beretta still raised, Squall moved towards the prone bodies, before turning, facing the room they had seemingly come out of. From what he could see, it looked like a break room, and it held no meaning whatsoever to the SeeD. More moaning came from ahead – from where he was heading.
Moving away from the break room, Squall continued down the hallway, until he reached the curving corridor he and the others had wandered through so long ago. There was still a group of those things around, but not nearly as many as there had been before.
One of the closer ones reached forward, his lips parting and moaning out his hunger while the others soon followed suit, blocking his path. Cursing slightly, he took deliberate aim and fired five times, knocking down each and every one of the things standing in his way before quickly moving before the others could do the same. Checking the Beretta, he only had one bullet left, and after that he had about a clip for the MP5K still inside the chamber and the lone combat knife. He didn't like his odds of escape, but at least the objective would have been completed.
Continuing along the curving corridor, he swapped weapons, the MP5K held tightly in his grip with the Beretta stashed inside of his pocket and the combat knife attached to a belt loop. He returned to the junction – the same junction he and the others had run into Laguna, Kiros and Ward – and veered to his left, knowing his office was at the end of the corridor.
A hand suddenly clamped onto his shoulder and he turned to see one of the creatures barring down at him, his mouth wide open revealing decayed teeth—
—half a second later, the creature was still and Squall was down to zero combat knives.
As he turned back around to continue towards his office, he heard more moaning and didn't need to turn around to know there was more of those things heading in his direction. Picking up the pace, he could very nearly see the outline of his office. He reached the door but found that it was locked. Cursing his luck as he headed right – hoping it would lead him to another door. As he continued his quickened pace, the moaning became louder and he realized that he had landed into their strong hold. From the sound alone, he knew he was facing a massive herd the size of the one he had seen wandering around in the cafeteria before the Licker attack and he quickened his brisk walk into a jog.
Finally, he reached another door leading into his office and pressed the keys on the card lock, hoping against hope that it was still operational. The Estharian technicians had worked out a system where – in the event the key card was lost or misplaced, an activation code would override the lock and allow him access into the room. He hadn't thought he would need it then but he was grateful he had conceded now, even as the numbers lit up after he touched them. The last of the numbers were in place and the computer beamed that access was granted—
—but the doors wouldn't open.
Squall cursed, remembering that the central door leading into his office had a delay in the mechanism, resulting in the door staying shut for nearly a minute longer than any of the others. He knew he should have called the maintenance team to fix it but he had had too much to do already. Now he wished he hadn't procrastinated.
A moan sounded from his immediate left and, cursing once again, he turned around to face his attacker, but very nearly dropped his weapon at the sight.
He had finally found Ellone, but not in the condition he had hoped.
Skin a greyish hue, eyes milky white, teeth decayed. The girl had obviously been attacked and had become one of them. She hadn't been lucky enough to escape like Laguna, Kiros and Ward had ascertained. Instead she had been killed and forced to turn. Ellone shuffled towards him, the SeeD taking a reflexive step back, bumping into the still closed door behind him as the girl closed the distance. She reached out to him, the same hungry look in her eyes, her mouth opening as she reared forward to bite him.
Squall stopped her, his own arms extending forward and pushing her back, Ellone viciously snapping at him, mindlessly attempting to overpower him and feed. It was then that he realized that she was no longer the girl he had known. She was no longer the sister who had looked after him at the orphanage. What she had become was a twisted representation of her memory and he knew she wouldn't want to be remembered as such.
Squaring his shoulders and positioning his hands, he stared into the decaying face of the girl he once knew before shutting his eyes tightly.
"Sorry, Sis…"
A loud crack echoed off the walls in the corridor and she fell limp in his grip. He cradled her still body for a moment before finally letting it go, allowing her to fall onto the ground in front of his office door. But when he looked up, he realized that he was completely surrounded on all sides – more of those creatures looming towards him, their arms outstretched as they slowly closed the distance between themselves and their target.
Finally, the hissing of the door sounded behind him and Squall took a step inside, but as soon as he did, the shuffling beings suddenly stopped where they were, their hands suddenly dropped to their sides and a blank look replaced the one filled with hunger. No one made a step forward, no one made an attempt to fulfill their need to feed as he moved further into his office and he couldn't help but wonder why, even as the door slid shut and obscured his view of the beings.
His knees threatened to buckle, but he managed to remain balanced. They were blocking that exit, but that didn't mean he couldn't go out the west door. It was relatively clear from when he had seen it a few moments ago, and he could easily take the stairs back to the first floor and get out of the building. He still had a means of escape.
But as he looked up and took in the sight of the window behind his desk, all hope of escape vanished like a puff of smoke. More of those things were surrounding the room, all standing there with the same vacant expression he had seen on the others. It was strange seeing them like this and it didn't give him any satisfaction knowing that they hadn't even tried to attack him once he got inside of the office.
So why had they suddenly stopped?
The answer to that question eluded him, but he did know something for certain. If those creatures were standing immobile in front of the window, and in front of the central door leading out of his office, who was to say they weren't already converging around the west and east doors? It was as though they had been leading him there all along, making sure he made it there without too much incident, but also making sure he didn't become suspicious about the lack of enemy sightings.
It was a trap… Squall thought to himself. And like it or not, I'm not getting out of here alive.
Hopelessness began to descend upon him, but he fought it off in favour of the mission. Even if he couldn't get out of there alive, those things weren't even attempting to come into the room so he was safe, for the moment at least. And he still had a message to deliver to the headmaster. If he could warn him and get him to initiate a city wide quarantine, just in case Nicholas had already spread the outbreak to the other cities and countries, then his death wouldn't be in vain.
It was the least he could do for his repeated fuck ups, and failure was most certainly not an option.
He caught the sight of blood and looked down to the floor, remembering the woman creature that had been cut in half attempting to get into the room after Rinoa and Quistis earlier in the evening. She had been the first of the things he had ever seen, and he had watched in shocked awe at the way she dragged herself towards them even though she was already dead.
But that wasn't the reason the panic was back, clutching at his gut at such a force he thought he was going to become physically ill.
The body was gone.
He knew he and the others hadn't touched the thing anytime between them entering his office and all of them leaving together, which had to mean that someone else had been in the room afterwards. Someone else had locked the door to the west entrance and herded him towards the central door and since he knew he had left the door unlocked the last time he had been there, he immediately didn't like the direction things were heading into.
Everyone else was dead. Kiros, Ward and Laguna didn't come anywhere near his office. His team had been with him when they'd initially left, and no one had thought to lock up behind them. Which meant there was only one person he could come up with that could have done all of this.
As if on cue, the chair situated behind his desk which had, up until this point, been facing away from him, swivelled around, and sitting in the object was the smiling visage that was Nicholas Griffith. His hands were clasped together, as though he had been expecting company, his trench coat having been discarded and revealing the dress coat and shirt that had been underneath the object. More importantly, the combat knife that had been launched into the man's forehead was still there, blood having pooled out of the wound, but it looked as though the flow had stopped. The blood had dried around the weapon and onto his skin surrounding the wound. He hadn't even bothered to wipe it away.
"I find this quite ironic…" Nicholas stated simply, gesturing towards their surroundings. "I believe that this is exactly how we met the first time. You had entered the room directly through that door, and I had been sitting in this exact spot. Fancy that."
Squall said nothing, clenching and unclenching his fists and mentally cursing himself. If Nicholas had somehow managed to get into his office unannounced before, what was to stop him from getting in again?
"You even managed to take your sweet time in arriving, as you did that day," Nicholas continued, rising from his seat. "Ironic still. But I suppose that it's all in the past, wouldn't you say?"
Squall made a move towards the desk, but a low growling sound coming from Nicholas's right stopped him in his tracks. Nicholas raised a hand at the same time as the sound, his grin widening slightly. "I wouldn't do anything rash if I were you. You honestly didn't expect me to just come without set precautions, did you?"
The SeeD turned his attention towards the side of his desk and recognized the creature growling at him. It had been a collie while it was alive, but skin was slowly flaking off the dog's body, leaving patches of muscle and blood in its wake. The animal's face, which had always boarded a friendly expression, was set in a hungry gleam, her teeth barred and her red eyes narrowed, but she obediently stayed where she was sitting.
As Squall took in Angelo's features in morbid shock, Nicholas laughed lightly. "Didn't you ever wonder how the raven-haired girl died? Her animal companion's immune system is far weaker than that of a human being's. It would take but a few moments before she succumbed to the infection. The girl didn't want to acknowledge this and she died, mourning the loss of her companion."
Squall was certain that if he clenched his fists any tighter, the fingers would snap off.
"Relax," Nicholas waved off. "She won't attack unless I give the order. None of them will actually."
"So you control them?" Squall asked and Nicholas nodded.
"I've always had an interest with necromancy. Raising undead creatures – zombies as you would call them – and controlling them for my own purposes."
"There's no such thing as a zombie."
Nicholas laughed once again, only louder this time. "Foolish boy. They have stared you in the face and tried to turn you into their companion and yet you still deny their existence. I don't know if that is by sheer rejection or by sheer stupidity. But you shall hold onto your ideals I suppose. Far be it for me to change your opinion.
"But getting back on topic. These creatures will not attack you unless I allow it. I knew you would come here and so I allowed it, but mark my words, one turn out of line and they will annihilate you."
"And you allowed me to come here because...?" Squall asked and Nicholas nodded again.
"I supposed this question would come up. The answer is simple. Because I knew you would. Obviously I have jammed the power systems of Esthar, but it wasn't enough to jam the frequency you have set up within this room. Since the communications device is still active, I knew you would come here hoping to contact others in case you yourself didn't make it out of here alive. It'd be against your nature to do otherwise.
"And I suppose you would like to know exactly why it is you're still alive while the rest of your collective group is either dead or among my legions. It is because I willed you to stay alive, for my own purposes of course. True, you did get bitten and and you are infected, but I allowed it to happen only because you possess the anti-virus and your pride wouldn't allow you to lie down and die if you knew there was something you could do about it." Nicholas' expression darkened slightly. "I didn't appreciate your little act of retaliation, however, which is why you were attacked once and only once."
He grabbed a hold of the combat knife and pulled it out carefully, the wound closing up slowly with each movement of the object before he finally tossed the bladed weapon aside. The only indication that he had been hit by the object was the dried blood still caked upon the man's face. The knife itself bounced off the wall on Nicholas' left hand side and landed on the ground next to the desk.
"I can entirely understand why you're upset though," Nicholas went on to say. "No one likes to be lied to. However, if there is anything I didn't falsify it was the things I said about your mother."
Squall was careful not to allow his surprise show on his features as Nicholas continued. "She was a very strong willed woman, extremely intelligent. She regarded me as a threat near the end of her pregnancy, and because of that, certain things were made difficult for me."
"What was your interest in my mother?"
Nicholas chuckled at the question. "I knew that question was going to pry itself into the conversation, one way or the other. She possessed the potential to better herself, to rise above those lesser fools in that pathetic little village she lived in, and all she had to do was to leave, to see the outside world. But, instead she chose to stay, to live amongst the riffraff. So I had to take steps in order to assure that her legacy – that would be yourself – did not fall to the same fate. And now look at you. The one person responsible for the deaths of two Sorceresses who threatened to destroy our world as we knew it, and you're not even of age. Remarkable, don't you think?"
"Why?"
Nicholas threw his head back and laughed. "Why? Because I have plans for you, child. I tried to execute them before, but you just had to nobly stay behind in order to find the rest of your comrades. Look at how well that turned out, by the way. I only allowed you to do so because I knew the result would have been the same either way. They would have died and you would have been trapped, with me, with no way out. It was a win-win situation really. The odds in my favour, of course.
"But I do believe that the time for idle banter has come to an end," Nicholas concluded as he rose to his feet. "It is now time for me to put my plan into effect."
Almost instantly, the creatures standing outside of the office began to pound against the walls, all of them trying to gain access to the room. The sudden action startled the SeeD, forcing him to look all around at the windows, taking in the sight of the creatures as they leered at him hungrily, the blank expressions having been wiped away. From the similar sounds coming from around him, Squall didn't need windows to know the rest of the creatures surrounding the office were doing the exact same thing.
"I wouldn't mourn too much over your fallen friends." Nicholas shouted out over the near-deafening noises. "I assure you that you shall see them all again very, very soon."
A loud banging sound caught the SeeD off guard and he turned to see that the doors were beginning to possess indentations – all because of Nicholas' legions banging onto the surface. Looking over towards the right and placing the bag onto the floor, Squall hefted the MP5K at the door in case it was ready to give in when he heard a sound directly in front of him. Turning back around, he was barely able to dodge as Nicholas flew towards him, forcing the elder man to fly into a chair instead. The SeeD landed in a crouch, shooting at the man, but Nicholas was back up onto his feet, whirling around and lunging for the teenager. Once again, Squall dodged, but lost his footing, landing onto his side, the side of his head hitting the ground lightly as he did.
A growling sound came from his left and when he turned he was barely able to hold Angelo at bay. The reanimated dog was snarling and biting at him. Angelo fervently snapped at open air, positioning her weight atop the SeeD and started aiming those bites at his left arm. His right hand was reaching for the Beretta all the while. He managed to grasp the handle and raised the gun, firing the last bullet in the dog's forehead. Angelo fell forward and did not rise once again.
Pulling himself up onto his feet, Squall concentrated on his magic and sent a blast of Blizzaga towards Nicholas, forcing him backwards. The elder man's arm froze upon impacting with the spell, but soon afterwards, the ice melted, not exactly what Squall had been expecting. Rising to his feet once again, Nicholas flexed his fingers before charging towards the SeeD again, who was already in his casting stance. Throwing out his left hand, a blast of wind flew towards the elder man, knocking him into the wall with Squall not too far behind the aero spell. Grabbing a hold of the bookcase positioned nearby, he pulled it down on top of the other man, books falling onto the floor as Squall made his way towards his desk.
Just as he reached it, he saw Nicholas push the object off of him, books falling to the ground behind him as he shook himself off. There was a cut on his forehead, but soon the wound closed like the one he had inflicted. Before he could take a step, however, Squall was already standing on top of his desk, MP5K in his hands as he pressed down on the trigger, bullets flying and imbedding themselves into Nicholas' body, pushing him back and up against the wall. Even when the man was trapped Squall did not release the button, and continued to fire bullet after bullet after bullet in the elder man. Even when he slid down, Squall did not relent, aiming for the back of the man's head and watching as a puddle of blood began to form around the now prone body.
Finally, the clip ran out, and the only sounds permeating the room were the near-desperate pounding of the creatures trying to claw their way inside, and the repeated clicking of the submachine gun in the teenager's hands.
Jumping off of his desk, Squall pressed a button on his left, and a very loud clank sounded above the creature's pounding. He had managed to add another layer of metal against the doors, something the Estharians had created just in case someone unwanted was trying to knock the door down. It wouldn't hold them for long, but it would be long enough to send his message.
Throwing the now empty and useless submachine gun to the ground, Squall began typing in the co-ordinates of Balamb Garden into the terminal uplink. The sooner he sent his message, the better everyone else's chances would be. Nicholas had been right about one thing though; he knew he wasn't going to make it out of this alive, and he would see the others soon – wherever the dead travelled anyway – but he was confident that it wouldn't be as one of those things. Angelo was no longer moving, those things wouldn't get inside of the room in time, and, unless Nicholas knew how to turn him into one of them without being infected, he wasn't going to be doing anything either.
Spying the knife on the ground near the desk, he returned his attention to what he was doing. After the message was sent, he would use that knife and ensure that he wasn't going to turn. The others were gone and his guilt was nearly killing him anyway. If the others – all of whom had been cruelly dealt with by a mad-man with a virus – couldn't live past all of this, then he – who had been helped out of this whole mess the entire time – didn't deserve to either.
Nicholas had made sure he hadn't been infected until after he had the anti-virus. It wasn't because of blind luck, it was his fault.
Yet he still felt responsible.
Without Nicholas' help, Squall was positive that he would have been infected when he had lost his jacket after having left Zell and Kiros behind in the elevator lobby. He was positive that he would have been ripped apart by that Licker in the cafeteria, and, even if he had survived through all of that, he wouldn't have made it out of the sewers alive. But Nicholas had wanted him alive – for one reason or another. He still hadn't quite figured it out yet – and that was why he was still living and breathing.
And Squall was going to make sure that it was the biggest mistake Nicholas ever made.
As soon as the co-ordinates were typed in, he was ready to set it up when he looked up from what he was doing. It had almost sounded as though one of those things had gotten through, but looking around the room, he knew it wasn't the case. Sighing out of relief, he instinctively took a look at where he had seen Nicholas' body fall—
—only to find that the body was no longer there.
Panic rising, Squall looked around, cursing himself as he did. If he had survived a knife imbedding right between the eyes, what was to say he wouldn't survive being pumped full of bullets? It was a stupid assumption and Squall figured that he would end up regretting it.
He turned around, noticing that the monsters outside of his office were still hard at work trying to get inside of the room and kill the only person still alive in the building. Squall would be damned if he was going to turn into one of those things, but he had bigger things to worry about. Looking left and right, even up onto the ceiling and down at the floor, he couldn't find a single trace of Nicholas anywhere. It was as though he disappeared out of thin air, but Squall knew that it was impossible. People didn't just evaporate from one place and couldn't reappear somewhere else, it was biologically unlikely.
Turning to the screen and readying himself to relay his message, something suddenly wrapped around his front and pulled him out of reach of the uplink, and he heard Nicholas laughing behind him. He tried to break out of the man's grip, but Nicholas merely tightened it, causing the SeeD to wince as a response.
"What an unfortunate waste of ammunition," Nicholas said from behind him. "You obviously didn't get it the first time. You can't possibly hope to kill me."
Nicholas tightened his grip still and Squall was almost positive that he was planning on crushing him to death. He tried to reach out towards the uplink once again, but his arms were pinned to his sides. Like it or not, he was trapped.
It's not fair, he thought feebly. It just isn't fair!
"So what do you plan on doing now?" Squall asked through clenched teeth. The grip was making it painfully uncomfortable to breathe. "Turn me into one of those things?"
Nicholas laughed again, an action that made Squall feel sick with dread. "Squall, if I wanted to do something as repulsively simple as that, I would have done it ages ago. Did I not tell you I have plans for you?"
I can't let it end like this. His thoughts denied what was happening. That everything he and the others had gone through that entire night was all going to be in vain. Their self-sacrifices, their deaths, everything that had happened between that evening and this morning were going to be for nothing. Though he had already acknowledged his fate, he didn't want it to end this way. In the iron-clad grip of the enemy, unable to move and helpless to stop whatever it was this mad-man had planned for him.
Suddenly, he felt as though pinprick needles were piercing into the left side of his neck and he couldn't hold back the gasp of pain as those needles pierced deeper, biting past his skin, making it even more difficult for him to breathe.
Something was flowing into him. It felt cold and foreign and he didn't like it. He raised his arms as best he could and tried to pull Nicholas' arms off him, but he could feel his strength leaving him with each additional second the foreign substance was pumped into him. His vision blurred for a moment before he was able to focus again, but before he could do anything else, Nicholas' arms disappeared from around him and he found himself falling hard against the floor, powerless to stop his descent and landing painfully onto his left arm. Wincing slightly, he heard Nicholas start to chuckle before it transformed into victorious laughter.
Hopelessness and despair began to take over as he recognized what was happening to him – it was over. He had been the last chance anyone had of knowing what had happened in Esthar, and he had blown it. He had failed to deliver the warning and now Nicholas was free to do whatever it was he had planned. He felt his eyes begin to sting but forced the emotions back, preventing them from surfacing. If anything, it was the only thing he was capable of doing at this point.
That was when Squall saw it. The knife he had used earlier in the evening. If he could get to it and will his vision to hold steady, he could pull himself up and attempt to attack Nicholas again. There had to be a weak point in the man. There was no such thing as an immortal being.
Willing himself to at least try, he slowly raised his right arm and reached out towards the object, feeling something wet seep underneath his face and knowing that it was his own blood. Nicholas' laughter pounded in his ears but he tried to ignore it as his arm moved steadily closer to the combat knife. If he could just reach it, he would at least stand a chance.
His arm felt heavy to him, but he continued to press on, even when his eye lids began to droop over his vision. He knew he didn't have much strength left but this was his only chance. He wasn't going to let any of them take him or turn him into whatever twisted creature they were. If he was going to die, it would be on his own terms and there was no way in hell that he was going to be getting back up after he was dead.
His gloved fingers brushed the hilt of the knife, and even as he tried to grab a hold of it, the light-headedness that had come over him became too much for him. He tried to shake it away, but the light buzzing that had come with it just grew louder. He was suddenly very tired. He didn't want to let Nicholas win, but his strength was just about gone by then. He forced himself to continue moving, forcing his fingers to curl around the handle of the bladed weapon. No one was immortal. There had to be a weakness that he could exploit, one that would prevent what happened in Esthar from happening to the rest of the world…
Suddenly, his hand rested against the floor just millimetres from the combat knife, and his eyes shut without his permission before he suddenly knew no more.