Again, sorry for the delay. I hope it's not ruining the story, having to wait so long between chapters. Now, onto a warning: I know swearing in this fic is not unheard of, but I feel that in this chapter there is a lot of what I call 'anger swearing'. I hope it doesn't bother anyone. Okay then, on with the story.
I do not own Mount Massive Asylum or The Walrider. They belong to Red Barrels. I do, however, own Simon and Sebastian. Enjoy!
"Do we really need to go down there?" questioned Simon as he stared down into the darkness of the hole. He clicked the button on the flashlight he was holding and the white beam penetrated the black, not revealing nearly enough of what was down there, save for a ladder.
"You have a fucking better idea?" muttered Sebastian.
Simon looked over to the man who had been utterly silent since their meeting with Father Martin. That had been nearly fifteen minutes ago, when the Father had briefed them over what they needed to do and equipped Simon with a flashlight before telling them to "make haste!" And now, the two men were standing at the mouth of a hole that led down into the sewers underneath the asylum. If it were up to Simon, he would have just come back the way he came, rather than trudging through the pitch black sewers to reach the Male Ward. But the Father said that it was imperative that no one saw them, and argued that the sewer was the better way to travel.
Simon let out a sigh. He seemed to be doing that an awful lot lately. "Guess I'll go first," he said. He bent down and placed one foot on the wrung of the ladder, then grabbed onto the sides, still holding the flashlight in his left hand. Slowly, he began to descend. Every few shaky steps, Simon would nervously look down and wave the flashlight around, looking for any signs of danger.
"Would you hurry the fuck up?" growled Sebastian from above.
Simon narrowed his eyes, but kept descending the ladder. He was becoming a bit irritated by the man's sour mood, but he really couldn't blame him for it. Simon had inadvertently gotten him into trouble with the priest, and then on top of that, he had been revealed as a traitor—and he was sure that was how Sebastian now viewed him as. Taking this into account, Simon decided that he would take whatever insults Sebastian threw at him. He deserved it.
As he moved his foot to take another step down, it touched solid ground with a splash. Simon quickly jerked his now soaked foot up from the water and turned on the flashlight. The sewer floor had several inches on water on it, but, to Simon's relief, the edges of the tunnel were dry. He looked back up the ladder and called to Sebastian. "It's clear down here. If you don't want to get wet, I suggest you step to the side once you reach the bottom."
Without any response, Sebastian started making his way down the ladder.
Taking his own advice, Simon sidestepped to the tunnel's edge. He kept the light of the flashlight trained on the ladder's landing as he waited on Sebastian to join him. When the other man reached the bottom, both of them slowly made their way through the dark tunnels in relative silence—Simon on one side, Sebastian on the other. The journey continued like this for the most part. There were several times when Simon had to stop and reassess where they were. Both he and Sebastian had never been in the asylum's sewers before, which was why Simon had not been keen on using them to get to the Male Ward.
After getting lost and turned around several times, Sebastian snatched the flashlight from Simon's hand and began leading them.
"For Christ's sake! You've wasted half the battery, numbnuts!" growled Sebastian as he turned the flashlight on and off, testing the power of the beam.
Simon took a breath before sarcastically responding, "I'm sorry. I didn't usually traverse the sewers on my commute to my cell."
Simon's comment was met with a blinding light on his face. "Stop being a fuckin' wise-ass," Sebastian said angrily, taking a step closer to Simon. "I can't believe you got me into this. Lost in the fuckin' sewers with some fuckin' asshole," he went on, his words more directed at himself than at Simon. "You know, I could be up there, sittin' pretty with all those other assholes. Hell! I'd rather be takin' a beating by the two butt-brothers. This errand you got us going on is fucking suicide!"
Simon was pressed against the damp wall, squinting away from the light. He stayed silent as the other man continued his rant. The words stung at him, and he hoped that his passivity would hold out. Finally, feeling that he'd had enough, he butted in. "I apologize, okay? I'm sorry! I did what I thought was right—"
"Bringing me down with you to face off against your boss is what you consider fuckin' right?" Sebastian scoffed. "Wow, I'm sure glad the Conscience Fairy managed to hit you on the head with her little hammer!"
"He's not my boss!" protested Simon. "He forced me to help him. I couldn't—"
Sebastian spoke over Simon's words. "What? Did he tie you down and force you to chop up all those guys? Well, did he?"
"No, but . . ." Simon's shoulders sagged and his face turned downward. He had lost that argument immediately, and it made him feel even more disgusted with himself. But Simon's sulking did not cause the other man to relent.
"Yeah, I fuckin' thought so. Tell me, how many of those men did you murder? Or help murder? Huh?" demanded Sebastian, closing in on Simon.
Simon remained quiet, not changing his stance. He knew this was the man's way of releasing his anger; he would just have to let it pass.
"You little piss ant! I ought to murder you right now, you piece of shit!" yelled Sebastian. Before Simon knew it, he was roughly pushed against the wall and pinned there by Sebastian's forearm on his neck. "Talk, damnit! How can you even live with yourself? After what you did to those men? Did you enjoy it, you sick fuck?" he spat in Simon's face.
Simon tried to push the bigger man away, but Sebastian was so full of rage that it would take several men to even get him to budge. "I didn't . . . kill anyone," Simon managed to get out as the pressure on his neck increased. "I swear. Do I . . . look like a murderer to you?" he asked through gritted teeth.
Sebastian still kept Simon pinned to the wall, staring hatefully at him. Ever so slowly, he backed off, allowing Simon to breathe. After taking in a few shaky breaths Simon stood, only to be thrown back against the concrete wall by a right hook from Sebastian.
"That's for not tellin' me the truth! And for getting me into this shit!" he hissed.
Simon rubbed his jaw as he leaned against the wall. He heard Sebastian splash around in the water, and saw the beam of light going off further down the tunnel. Still holding his jaw, he pushed himself off of the wall and slowly followed after. As much as Simon feared being near the man who had just strangled and punched him, he feared being left alone the darkness of the sewer even more. He made sure to keep to the edge as he felt his way through the tunnels that didn't seem to be leading anywhere. That is, until the two men turned a corner and found a section of the sewer that was actually lit. As Simon looked down the long stretch of tunnel, he saw that the lighting was out in some places. There was also metal grating on the tunnel's floor, and for that, Simon was grateful; he wouldn't have to worry about treading through the disgusting water.
"Halle-fuckin'-lujah," said Sebastian, verbalizing Simon's thoughts, as he turned off the flashlight. "Don't know about you, but I'm going down this a way," he said, stepping onto the metal grating. Simon nodded and joined him. He was still wary of the other man, but hearing him talk in a non-threatening manner lessoned the tension he felt. However, both men still stuck to opposite sides of the tunnel, but this time they kept at the same pace.
"Not that I really care or anything," Sebastian spoke up after a minute, "but what the hell're we gonna do when we find the doctor?" asked Sebastian.
Simon looked over to the other man, who was staring straight ahead. "Hopefully we won't actually find him. He's not exactly a people-person," said Simon under his breath.
"You would know, wouldn't ya?" quipped Sebastian, not as much malice in his words as before.
Simon didn't respond to the small jab, and instead said, "I've been thinking about it. I think our best bet is to enter through a door on the second floor. It's right by where he keeps some of his patients. The door leads to a hallway that we can hide in if need be. When I, uh," he looked sheepishly to the ground.
Sebastian narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, when you worked with him. Whatever. Go on," he said.
Simon waited a second before continuing. "When I . . . yeah . . . I noticed that one of the doors that led to the elevator room was blocked. Because of that, the doctor would always enter the hallway through a door further down. If we're quiet enough, and fast enough, we can slip into the first room and get the patients out that way," Simon explained. He felt that his plan was a good one; maybe not the best, but it made the most sense to him. Despite it being a good plan, though, there were so many things that could go wrong. And when it came to Trager, one wrong thing would spell disaster.
"Okay, so we have something at least. I was worried we were gonna just half-ass it and end up getting butchered," said Sebastian in that cool, uncaring tone of his.
After a minute of walking in relative silence, save for the metallic noises coming from the grate beneath their bare feet, Sebastian spoke again. "Y'know, I kinda hope we do run into the doc," he murmured.
Simon's head shot over to him questioningly.
"I mean, let's face it, there's no way any of us is gettin' outta here. If we could, wouldn't ya think we'd have heard about an escape by now? It's been what? Several days of this shit. Hell, we're going to save people who are just gonna end up dead anyways. Know what? I say fuck 'em! And fuck that asshole doctor wannabe!" Sebastian's voice was rising in volume, and Simon could make out the vein in his neck. "Did you know that he used to actually work for those Murkoff fuckers? He fucked us all over! If I run into him, I swear to whatever deity is out there that I will fucking kill him," he growled.
Simon honestly did not know what to say. It had never really occurred to him that someone was capable of killing the mad doctor. He had just seemed so . . . inhuman, like he was untouchable. Now, hearing Sebastian, who was a man in every sense of the word, talking about killing him, was quite surprising. He was so intrigued by the other man's speech that he almost fell face-first into the sewer water.
Of course, as luck would have it, while Simon's attention was focused elsewhere, he had stepped on a hard object that made his foot roll out from under him. As an added bonus, the metal grating that had been covering the sewer floor had ended, leaving Simon to fall on his hands and knees in the rust colored liquid.
Immediately, Simon pushed himself up and scrambled to the tunnel's edge, frantically rubbing at his arms and pant legs. His frenzied actions were stopped by chuckling coming from Sebastian.
"The hell was that about?" he said between bouts of laughter. "You afraid of a little water?" he crooned.
Yes.
"No. I was taken off guard!" replied Simon. He could feel the heat rising to his face as he started walking off. "I think we're getting close to where we need to be. Let's just go."
"It's a miracle you weren't slaughtered on the first day," mused Sebastian. After watching Simon swat at his wet clothing, the other man looked to the grating and found a shiny, cylindrical piece of metal. "Well looky here. A battery. Of all the fuckin' places to be, huh?" he said amusedly as he snatched up the battery and proceeded to swap it in for the flashlight's old battery. He tossed the other battery into the water and caught up to Simon, who had his arms folded and a particularly sour expression on his face.
The tunnel up ahead was no longer lit, and Sebastian turned the flashlight on. "Aha," he crooned. "Now that's what I call convenient."
Simon was about to mutter something about the nonsensical positioning of the battery when his ears picked up a sound off in the distance. He reached out and grabbed Sebastian's arm. "There's som—"
"I know," said Sebastian, turning off the light. Simon backed up until he could feel the sewer wall and held his breath. He couldn't tell how far the person making the noise was, since the tunnels seemed to make any sound appear to be really close. But whatever it was, it was coming closer; Simon could now tell that it was splashing. Someone was running towards him and Sebastian.
Simon was beginning to wonder when the person would reach them, but then he was able to hear the sound of heavy breathing accompanying the splashes. And then . . .
. . . And then there was a buzzing. It was subtle, but undeniably there. Simon could feel it; it started out as goosebumps, but then progressed to being bone-deep. The vibrations had traveled from his extremities to his spine, and then up his neck, and now seemed to be resonating within his skull. He felt like he was going to be sick. He felt cold, and frightened. He was so caught up in this unpleasant sensation that he had almost forgotten about the man running towards him. Water splashed onto the front of his asylum jumpsuit as the man passed.
Whatever was chasing the man was now affecting Simon in ways he didn't understand. The buzzing increased to near unbearable levels as the man passed, and Simon had to clench his eyes shut. Even behind his eyelids, his imagination was going wild. He imagined a monster with terrible, glowing eyes. It had no physical body; it was as if the darkness had manifested itself into the image of a person. Simon fought back a scream—oh how he wanted to yell out at this point—but as soon as the buzzing started, it ceased. He still had his eyes clamped shut, but Simon could now feel that the threat was gone; at least for the time being. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and realized that he was now curled up into a ball. He looked blindly around in the darkness, then to the lit tunnel to his left where there was no sign of the man who had passed by.
"S-Sebastian?" he said, barely above a whisper. There was no response.
Shakily Simon rose to a somewhat standing position. "Sebastian? W-Where are you? Please, answer me," Simon begged.
"I'm here." His voice came from across from Simon. It seemed that he, too, hadn't moved.
Simon hugged himself as he crossed to the other side. In the darkness he could barely make out the shape of the other man. "What was that?" he asked.
He heard Sebastian sigh before answering. "I have an idea. But I don't think you wanna hear it . . ."
Simon's lip quivered at the man's solemn response. Suddenly, the consequences of failing their mission beat down on his shoulders.
Okay, I just had to put a battery reference in here. This chapter was kind of a slow chapter. If things go as planned, this should be the last of those. Things get real next chapter. Like, really, really real. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, and for those of you who don't celebrate the holiday, then I hope you had a wonderful day nonetheless. :)