Male Ward (part 3)
As the crazy doctor walked away into another room, it was time for the duo to leave. They couldn't stay there forever. They stood up and started to go towards the elevator. Trager never stopping snapping his shears. Each sound making Naegi flinch. He was playing with the brunette's nerves, trying to make him do a mistake that will lead him to his doom between the skeletal fingers of the Variant.
He was doing his best not to look at his own hands… was that how Kirigiri felt when she burnt her hands the first days?
They reached the elevator and quickly got inside. Kirigiri quickly started to push buttons, but nothing happened. Naegi saw the keyhole.
"God dammit! We need a key? What the hell?" he exclaimed and quickly regret it as the snapping of the shears got closer.
"There you are!" shouted Trager as he walked towards them, raising the scissors high in the air, ready to stab the brunette.
But at his angle, he couldn't see Kirigiri. And she used that to her advantage to punch him in the face when he entered the elevator. Throwing the old doctor to the ground.
"That's for knocking me out!" she spat before kicking him once in the ribs, "And that's for what you did to my fiancé!" she continued.
Trager quickly grabbed back his weapon and started to flail it all around him, managing to cut the skin of her leg, making her retreat another kick. Naegi grabbed her and asked her if she was ok while the doctor was still on the ground, putting back his nose in place. She nodded and they ran away. The female detective saw that a vent was open right next to them so they jumped in before Trager got up. But he saw them getting inside.
"I'll kill you all!" he threatened but when he didn't hear them anymore, gone inside the vent he seethed, "Nobody likes a quitter…"
The couple stood one minute inside the vent for Naegi to calm down before finally deciding to start moving, as always, there was a hole in the vent and they had no choice than to jump down. They landed in another corridor next to the elevator hall. But the gridded door leading to it was blocked by a storage unit. They slowly walked to it, trying not to get the Variant's attention. They saw that he disappeared from where they'd left him, certainly looking for a way to the other side.
They had no choice but to move the storage so they can get an easy access to the elevator. It hurt Naegi to move something heavy and pressing his injured hands against the cold surface of the unit, but he braved himself. He mustn't be a weight for Kirigiri, he just can't. He won't die. They will get out of there alive so he must stop whining and help her push the heavy object.
Once the unit was out of the way, it was time for them to resume their escape. They looked around. The L shaped hallway they were in had a dead end, right behind them. So there was no other choice but to go the other way. There was a double door blocked by another storage unit. They must go there so they started walking over there… only to see the form of Trager emerge from the darkness.
He didn't see them, so they quickly went to the hospital room to their left. In almost all the beds of this room were tortured patients, sobbing, praying or sleeping, waiting for death to claim their souls.
Trager kept snapping his weapon in the distance, the sound echoing in the hallway. The couple discreetly walked through the room, making the least noise possible. Reaching the door at the end that connected to the neighboring room. The room was like the one before: patients in beds, all silent. They heard the doctor going away so they walked, discreetly again, toward the double doors leading to the hallway.
They approached a patient that was strapped in a bed, the skin of his leg was gone just like his eyes. When he heard the footsteps of the detectives, he suddenly shot up, yelling:
"If you touch me again I swear to FUCKING CHRIST I WILL MURDER YOU WITH MY MIND! Just try it! You fucking sick motherfucker! Try it! TRY IT!"
The sudden yell made the detectives jump and bump an occupied bed. The patient on it woke up and started to scream too. In mere seconds all the patients started screaming, pleading and begging for mercy. And Trager appeared at the entrance.
"BUDDY!" He called Naegi in a joyful shout.
The ahoge boy concentrated all his strength to scream into his leg, and started to run away, grabbing his fiancée's hand. They did the loop reaching the storage unit and kept on running. They ran to the other room and closed the door behind them, any second gained was a blessing that could save them.
They ran by another patient that yelled at them, but was actually yelling at Trager:
"Kill me! Go ahead, fucker! Go ahead and murder me, see what happens! You think I'm scared of anything? I've been fucked in the brain by the Nazis! You goddamn pansy! What could you do to me, huh?"
When Trager entered the room, the couple was already halfway to the door. The doctor seemed offended by what the patient just yelled so he stop next to his bed to slit his throat open.
The detectives closed the double doors behind them and ran to the storage unit to push it out of the way. The moment they've done it, the doctor was just a few meters away from them. They opened the door and ran down the corridor behind it. Each time they approached a bed, a scream from the patient attached to it was heard. There was an open vent at the end of the corridor so they jumped inside. Trager yelled a curse when they were out reach of his shears.
They jumped down a hole deeper inside the vent that lead them to another toilet, much cleaner. They decided to take a small break. Since they didn't heard the snapping of shears.
"Are you alright, Makoto?" Asked Kirigiri, not hiding her worry, no one was around anyway and there was no point to hide her concern. Her fiancé just lost two important fingers!.
"Y-Yes… it hurts… but I can't slow us down. We need to get out of here" he smiled, "We're not yet married." he added, blushing.
Her face turned red too, she smiled and gently grabbed his hands. She eyed guiltily his left ring finger, where his engagement ring was … she couldn't stop the tears to form at the corners of her eyes as she whispered an apology.
"I should have been there to protect you…"
"Please don't… it's not the fault of neither one of us. It's that sick bastard fault. He seemed already deranged even before everything here turned upside down." He squeezed her hands, ignoring the sharp pain it gave him.
Just the image of her taking his place in this horrible place… he could already imagine the sick fucker taking off her gloves and making fun of her burn marks… Saying that there's no need to cut the fingers since no one would want to 'buy' them… that's the kind of thing Trager would have done…
"We'll get out of here and get the most beautiful wedding we can. Well… it will be difficult for me to have the ring and… slide it on your finger… again…" he couldn't finish, his eyes were already wet.
"I promise that I'll protect you Makoto…"
"And I'll protect you too…" he smiled as they embraced.
After a minute of nice silence, it was time to go. They walked out of the restroom and entered another hospital room. At least it was empty of patients. They walked out and reached a silent corridor with all doors locked. There was just an office open. They got inside it and saw another door. But what caught their attention was the key hooked on the board, next to the door. It's the elevator key!
They both wondered how it got there but there was no time for hesitation, Kirigiri grabbed the key.
As if on cue, the door next to her got stabbed by the bone shears. Naegi let out a frightened scream and Kirigiri yelped loudly. They ran out of the office, ignoring the angry threats of the doctor.
They ran back into the hospital room and Naegi had the idea to push the toilet door open before hiding under a bed with his partner. When Trager entered the room his attention was immediately attracted to the open toilet door. He got baited as he walked inside the toilet and the couple ran out of the room, closing the doors behind them. They got back to the office and ran down the hallway behind the newly broken door. They quickly saw that they were near the elevator. After closing every door behind them, they got inside the elevator and the lavender haired detective put the key in and pressed the down button.
When the engines roared and the cabin started going down, both let out a sigh of relief… until they reached the floor below and saw the elevator gridded doors being forced open by bone shears.
"I'm not giving up on you, buddy!" Exclaimed Trager as he pried the doors open.
They didn't had the time to wonder how on Earth did he got down so quickly that he barged in
This time though, he was smarter as he ran to Kirigiri and pinned her against the wall, his left forearm against her neck and while she was fighting back so he could releases her, he lifted the bone shears, ready to pierce her belly and everything inside.
"NOOO!" Shouted Naegi as he pushed the Variant away with more force than Trager thought he had.
He managed to push him half out of the elevator cabin but Trager kept pushing back as Naegi was grabbing his shoulder. Finally the doctor tripped and his upper body fell inside the moving elevator. The ceiling was already too close for him to stand up. As he felt the ceiling of the cage starting to squeeze his back and breaking his spine, he let out a horrible painful shriek, his arms flailing around, desperately looking for a way out. He was being crushed and when a loud crack was heard, he fell limp. The bone shears slipped out of his hand but fell in the space between the elevator and the next floor, down the elevator shaft.
The elevator got jammed. It wouldn't go down anymore.
Kirigiri looked for a way out but stopped as she saw Naegi staring at his own hands, trembling.
"Makoto..?" She called out.
"I… I… I killed him…" he whispered.
She saw where this was going, she quickly walked in front of him and took his hands.
"I'm a murderer! I killed him. I-I-" he started to shout and stammered, not taking his eyes off his injured hands.
"Makoto, listen to me. You are not a murderer! It was self-defense. And this man has committed more crimes that you would ever do in your life. He killed probably dozens of men here. Everything is alright." she hugged him once more.
He slowly fell on his knees, she followed him, not letting go of him. She started to stroke his hair as he rested his sobbing face on her shoulder.
"It's over now…" she whispered in a comforting manner, "it's over…"
They stayed there for some minutes, both in each other arms and the corpse of the sick motherfucker that was Richard Trager behind them.
This eventful chase was over…
But the nightmare isn't…
To be continued…
In the next chapter of Survival at Mount Massive Asylum…
"Let's go now…"
"Thank God, you survived!"
"Father Martin…"
"Can you smell that?"
"I had to burn it. All of it… Murkoff took so much from us…"
"You gotta be fucking kidding me."
"Finally found you little pigs!"
The doctor is dead. Our heroes survive this trial.
But the monsters are still lurking.
They must go on.