AN: Welp, I hope Friday wasn't too rough on anyone because it's time for round two. (To the surprise of absolutely nobody, there's some gore in this chapter too, you have been warned). Please enjoy,
***15***
Tendrils of organ and flesh knitted themselves back together while the emptiness that greeted me twisted into something still-dark but with form. I fought to breath and found nothing but putrid, bitter water. With my lungs filled I struggled someway that I hopped was up. After some eternity my head broke the surface and I gasped for air.
The void was gone, replaced with something halfway between a sewer and a swamp. Molded plants wove their way over rusted pipes and dripped more stinking liquid into the green pool that I floated in. Something brushed my leg, without taking too long to think about it I paddled to the closest thing resembling dry land.
The ground was a saturated gray muck, I didn't get to standing before my lag sank halfway to my knee.
Well shit. At least I was back in once piece after the horde from wherever that last place was. I took another look around. The dreamers are probably still after me, the memory of one of them clinging to the ceiling and lifting me with withered hands burned bright in my mind. Correction, the dreamers already got me, this isn't real and I need to get away.
I slopped my way through the muck, trying my best to ignore the smell and find somewhere dryer. I'd never admit it, but the Walrider was right. The things were too strong and I'd been an idiot. I tried to reach out to the Walrider, though I couldn't find a trace of its presence to save my life.
Ok, calm down. It's probably just out of reach because it's fighting the dreamers. The dark expanse reminded me of our very first chat in my stolen car where I first saw Waylon. The dark hadn't been so friendly this time. Was it still fighting, or had the Walrider already lost?
I scrambled onto a rock.
No time to worry about that now.
I took another look from my vantage point. The rotted remains of some flowers still sat on a damp green vine intertwined in the pipes overhead. There were no walls that I could see, a mossy gray mist clung to the air that cut visibility to less than, what, twenty feet? Ten?
A couple of bubbles surfaced from the muck.
I slid back into the thick water. It got up to my neck before I started swimming. I had to move, the dreamers were still out there somewhere. Something brushed past me. The water was gray and green and covered in sickly algae, I swam faster. A piece of pipe sat just above the water line at the edge of visibility. Whatever was down there slid against my hip.
That last touch was enough for me. Giving into the panic I sent water splashing in every direction as I paddled away.
I was nearly to the pipe when the thing below the surface wrapped a weedy hand around my ankle. It pulled down just as my hand landed on the slickened metal. One more second was all I needed.
I didn't get it.
Before gulping down a breath of stale air I was in the dark muck once again. I would have yelped in surprise but instead the foul water rushed into my mouth and lungs. I opened my eyes only to have the dust and shit in the water sting and force them shut again. Blind and without breath I struggled to the top again. The hand in the deep slit my side open. The wound stung and seeped but the thing lost its grip and I broke the surface of the water in a terrified flurry. My head hit the pipe and my muscles protested, the weight of past wounds- though healed- catching up to me. Coughing up bile and gray water I clung to the rusted iron. The thing in the water ripped at my legs.
It had to be a dreamer.
I'd let these things catch me so I could face the on my own terms. Well here I was damn it, and I'm not going without a fight. With the weight of the dreamer and the water pulling me down I forced myself onto the cold steel. My bleeding side made the climb that much harder, but I kept going. I felt my left leg being turned into glorified hamburger. As more of me broke the surface the sounds of splashing and occasional drips gave way to a sickly moan. I twisted onto my back, still struggling to cling to the pipe.
There it was. Another gangly and rotted thing tearing at me, fighting to drag me back to the murky depths. With my free leg I kicked at it. I landed one hit before a gangrened hand caught it and the thing strengthened its grip. It opened its festering mouth, black rot coated its teeth, another ageless moan tried to escape but was blocked by a mouthful of my own flesh.
A strangled yell escaped me, though like every other time I made a sound; it never reached my ears. I couldn't afford to spare an arm to beat the thing away, I needed the both of them to hold myself on solid ground. Desperate I rolled to the side. The dreamer held tight despite getting knocked against the hard metal. Back on my stomach I inched forward away from the water's edge. I made it a whole six inches before the dreamer crawled up a mangled leg and ripped at my sides again. With a new rip my left side spasmed and twitched. With no say my arm lost its strength and I tumbled back to the stinking water.
In its element the dreamer clawed over me and made it to my face. Fighting blind again I made for the surface. Without the use of an arm or either leg I didn't go anywhere but where the dreamer wanted. The mushed flesh of its hands pushed through the rip in my side. It twisted itself into my guts. The pain and lack of breath conspired with the dreamer. More of me lost the strength to go on. The wet and putrid parts of the dreamer dug deeper. I gasped for breath finding only festering filth to fill my lungs.
More of the creature twisted into me, a dead hand gripped my beating heart and squeezed.
The fight for one last breath wound to an end, one by one more limbs became heavy in the sludge and refused to move. I opened my eyes as one last act of defiance, expecting to only find more stinging black water.
The lab that I found instead was a stark white and blue. The hard lines of instrumentation that stood in front of me were warped and twisted through the water and curved glass that separated me from them. I gasped and found air despite the clear liquid. I gasped again, some tube, maybe it was plastic, forced its way down my throat. I fought the sensation of choking but gasped for breath three or four more times before the rest of my body checked in. More tubes threaded through my veins and deep into my organs. I couldn't move my head much for how stiff the ones forced into my neck were, but I saw the room around me for what it was clear enough.
The metal stairs to my right, the door at the edge of the room, the giant orb in the middle of it all.
The morphogenic engine. Where it had all started.
I would have slipped into a painful memory if I weren't distracted by the shape that moved in front of my sphere.
A man, early 40's, dull brown hair, a matching brown jacket that was tattered and torn, an abused white shirt, and ruined boots.
He had a beaten and battered camera in his hand.
Shit.
He rushed forward and slammed shredded hands onto the control panel under the orb. An instant later he swirled around and lifted to the camera to eye level. I remembered what happened next before the tubes shook themselves apart in my veins. Bright red blood clouded the clear fluid around me when sound started to shake my little chamber.
Pain like a thousand little needles rippled through my skin. Strands of muscle trembled with some energy that had to be from the machine that filled the room.
In wordless agony I watched the man with a camera get blind sided by the thing that had been hunting him all that night.
Three spindly bodies ripped into the me outside the orb.
I watched the massacre from third person, feeling each attack happen. Having every blow magnified by memory and machine. I shouldn't have lasted more than a second with limbs being torn from each other but from my place in the orb the spectacle lasted a lifetime.
It was getting cold in my liquid coffin. The not-air around me grew redder by the second. The me outside the orb lost a leg. Was I screaming? I had been all night, I probably was now too.
It was getting cold. More bright.
What hell was I going to now?
The three dreamers squabble over the broken man at their feet. The burnt thing lashed out that the dry husk that attacked me in Chicago. The gangrened creature made to bite into my chest before the other two turned on it.
They all became a crumbled figured in the cold red around me.
They still moved ever so slightly through the murk. I thought my body had become sludge when some pain, sharp and real, cut at my back.
What hell would I find now?
The red drifted into black but the cold around my grew to what felt like a cutting blade made of ice. The sting reached deep through my arms, one of them wouldn't move.
The scene was gone now. Was this another trip to the void? Were there more memories of the dead ready to rip into me here? I stood up, finding solid ground and new agony. The howl of wind filled the darkness around me. My left leg twisted and threatened to give out with each new step. Every foot fall was greeted with the crunch ice or snow. My left arm still refused to move.
They still had to be out there somewhere. I heard nothing except for the empty wind, but the shrieks and howls of those things couldn't be far off. In a wild panic I picked a direction and struggle to run.
Maybe five feet later I fell and landed on cold and soft ground. Sharp shards of agony bit into my back and little drops of frost soaked into my limbs. The one working arm I had clawed through the melting ground to push my body up. Raw and exposed slivers of muscle in my back strained and protested against the movement.
Those things have to be out there. I don't have time to stop because of some shitty little aches and scratches!
I had forced my broken body to my feet by the time I heard ragged moans and shrieks drift over the weary air. Half falling I ran headlong into the stinging dark. My limbs locked up in the cold, but fear and the promise of another death sentence kept me stumbling. I should have been bleeding but frost clotted the fluids as they seeped to the surface. The sounds that signaled the dreamers faded from the edge of hearing, the adrenaline that forced me into motion vanished with them.
With uneven gasps and freezing limbs I fell in exhaustion to the cold ground. Only my ragged breathing kept me company now.
I rested in the icy dark.
I took a second to focus on my breathing.
My breathing that I could hear.
I could hear myself.
Shit, I could hear myself. Was I out? I had to be. I forced myself from the snow and wobbled onto two legs again. Was the walrider there?
Hello?
Nothing stirred in the corners of my mind.
Hello?
The wind picked up slightly and carried a wavering howl with it. A new wave of adrenaline forced my frozen and tattered muscles to start moving again. I stumbled over uneven ground that I couldn't even see.
Of course I had to wake up in the middle of the fucking night.
The crashing of the dreamers through the trees grew louder, my twisted legs did all they could to carry me anywhere but here. The snow came to my knees and slowed each step. I had just gotten used to the impossible conditions where the ground flattened and became solid again. The wild hunt came closer bringing with it a distant grumble. I had just enough time to face the shrieking dark before a hard body sent me clattering to the ground. Still fresh wounds split again, the ice that had frozen them together splintering under the shrieking beast.
The ground shook more and a deafening horn split the air.
The weight lifted off of me only to be replaced by a bone breaking blow to my right. For a second the world was nothing but pain and sound and black again, below it all the skittering of papery bone on pavement disappeared to some far away place.
"Oh my God, Ruth! Call 911!"
I stayed on my place on the ground. Fresh blood leaked from the re-ripped wounds, the last surge of adrenaline faded just as fast as it had appeared.
"Sir? Sir!" A man's voice grew frantic and distant.
The cold of the pavement dug its claws into my throbbing body.
I think I heard a "stay with me" before the sounds around me swirled into the nothingness that plagued my eyes.
My breath rattled. My head swam. Every inch of me screamed for relief. I would have stood but I was too heavy. The inky black swirled, swallowing the sounds and sensations of the the world until nothing remained.