We've hit chapter 3! YES! Thanks so much to everyone who is following this fic, following me, and leaving reviews. You guys are my heroes!

Quick warning: We're starting to get into the weird, gory aspects of Silent Hill. Just warning for people who weren't expecting it.

58:27:43 remaining

The basement of Brookhaven Hospital was dimly lit, only by emergency lights that were either sparse or broken on the first floor. It felt like more traps on the part of some entity unknown to him. At least that's how Weiss saw it. The maps couldn't have been a coincidence. There was clearly more to this situation. Maybe some kind of back-up plan for the Restrictors. In addition to the virus, have one more line of defense guarding the antidote. It was cunning, the sort of back-up plan that DeepGround utilized frequently enough. He wouldn't be surprised if something lurched out of the darkness and gutted him. Weiss kept a cautious left hand over one of his swords while he checked through the basement.

The electrical control room was a tiny room, housing a large generator that appeared to be off. That was odd. Would the enemy not benefit from electricity as well? Advanced DeepGround technology indeed, Weiss thought as he flicked on the control panel. The generator whirred to life. That would help to guide Shelke, anyway. Nero was fine in the darkness.

As Weiss left the electrical room, he noticed that the lights had turned on. While that was probably not the best situation for the enemy, he was confident that he could cut them down. With the help of the lights, Weiss took note of the creeping, black mold, the missing tiles in the walls, and the holes. Tiny bullet-holes, all uniform, and scarcely larger than his finger. Perhaps someone had tried to make an escape. As Weiss finished this thought, he came across a smear of blood that trailed from around the corner to his feet. He laughed, a small one that didn't carry out into the stairway. Perhaps someone hadn't made it.

Weiss tried the pump room and storage room and discovered that they were locked. Or at least that the locks were broken. Weiss could turn the handle well enough, but the door didn't budge. Interesting. Cutting the lock would be rather useless, but shooting it might work. Weiss stepped to the other side of the hallway and fired a bullet into the door of the pump room. He went to open the door, only to find that it still would not open for him. Perplexing, now.

The boiler room was properly locked, with no key in sight. No turning the door-knob here. It would seem that Weiss' search of the basement had been a failed one. That was fine. Weiss didn't really think someone would keep important information in a boiler room, but it never hurt to check.

Wonder of wonders, the storage room actually did open for him. There were items in the cob-web ridden room, ranging everywhere from practical to completely useless. Among the practical items was a key. It made Weiss think again of traps. Why keep an important key on a store shelf? So that no one will find it, except someone who was actually looking. Thinking that he had solved his boiler room problem, Weiss took the key and turned it over to check the key-tag. This was for the Doctor's Lounge on the first floor. More of a setback, than anything, really. Weiss pocketed the key and headed up over the stairs.

His back was turned to the walls when the blood began to drip out of the bullet-holes on the wall, like a fresh wound.

58:26:03 remaining

As soon as Rosso was completely alone, she punched a wall and let a small noise of anger burst out of her throat. It wasn't the sky, or even the fact that they were on a trivial errand of a mission, but it was her apparent teammates. Azul was fine. Rosso could live with Azul because Azul understood her operation, at least to some degree. He would never be able to predict her, in the same way that a scientist could never predict a bouncing ball beyond its first two impacts. They knew about how it functioned, but never precisely. Azul was the same with Rosso, knowing that she would snap eventually, but never what would set her off.

Rosso had learned to live with her own instability. Her emotions were volatile and she had come to accept it. She was complacent when she was stable, but could slip just as easily into a rage and find herself justified in either state. Rosso didn't understand her madness, didn't pretend to understand it like the Researchers did, but she was content to live in its whirlwind. Rosso enjoyed it, enjoyed the feeling of a lack of control, enjoyed the feeling of a human being's pulse falling in frequency and intensity, and she enjoyed the way that blood congealed underneath her gauntlets' nails until it was solid grit. She enjoyed it.

Argent was something that set Rosso off. Argent's methods, Argent's level-headed behavior, Argent's always being right and polite and so restrained! Rosso stormed off to check doors for her fool errand, still thinking about all the ways she wanted Argent dead. Rosso wanted to see Argent unrestrained and screaming, just once. Wishful thinking, Rosso thought, opening a door at random. Argent was excitable as an iron bar.

Rosso opened another door. Nothing was inside, and that was only slightly disappointing. As Rosso was about to close it and try another, she saw a sheet of paper sitting on the desk. Check everything, she supposed, so that no one could say that she had walked directly past the cure. It would be a failure on her part and the only thing Rosso hated more than other people was other people saying she was in the wrong somehow.

Staff Memo:

A reminder that all staff members should pay attention to where they have placed their keys. They must not fall into patients' hands.

Underneath, Rosso read the handwritten:

Girl in A6 has been sewing them into her clothes. Left all of them in the laundry room, behind the detergent. – Nancy

Thank you for the tip, Nancy, Rosso thought to herself as she left the room and began searching for the laundry room. It wasn't far, only a hallway away. Rosso opened the laundry room's door. Nothing of importance, save for the box of detergent on a shelf on the far wall. Sure enough, there was a small, plastic bin behind the detergent. There was only a single key, marked "Orderly."

As Rosso pocketed it, the paint on the door began to crack and peel.

58:25:08 remaining

As Nero ascended the stairs, he was solely focused on his mission and its outcome. He didn't care at all about research and experimental results. In fact, after what they had done to him, Nero had come to dislike experiments. He didn't care about Shelke's data, save for the fact that the information could save Weiss. Saving Weiss was worth anything. Nero would let masked Researchers stab a million needles into his back, inject as much poison as they would like into his blood, and he would endure it. As long as Weiss would be unharmed. Such sentiments were kind thoughts, but unrealistic, impractical, and not helpful. Nero could be helpful by finding those results.

Inwardly, as he opened the door to the hospital's roof, he scoffed. Nero was a Tsviet. He always got results.

The roof was barren, save for a small structure to his left. He checked it first and, according to his map, it was the elevator's control room. He opened it up. Nothing worth noting, he decided. Everything appeared operational, with even lights blinking. Convenient, he thought. Either Weiss had restored the power or the hospital was not as abandoned as he had surmised. The only question was whether they were anticipated or not. Even if they were anticipated, Nero didn't think opposition would hinder them.

The third floor was in a similar state to the first floor. Bland and covered with mold. He wrinkled his nose at the state of the place. Contagions were not commonplace in DeepGround. He consulted his map. The third floor seemed to be a place reserved for the truly insane. The equivalent of a psychiatric ward, he supposed. He went around, opening doors and checking them. The rooms marked "Day Room" and "Store Room" were broken somehow, but the "Special Treatement" room was merely locked.

Nero also made a point of checking the elevator. During one of his field tests, Nero had turned off the lights in a main elevator and hid in the shadows until the recruits he was being tested against entered the elevator. He slaughtered each of the small groups when the doors closed, just to trim the numbers down. It was a clever tactic, in his opinion. He would not put it past the current opponents. He doubted very much that the enemy could use the same tactics that he did, though. Still, the elevator was an excellent hiding place and ambush point.

The last area to check was a long line of fourteen rooms, tiny cubicles that Nero highly suspected could only contain a bed and little else. Rooms S1, S2, and S3 were all locked. Room S4 contained a bed, as Nero had thought it would, along with a nightstand and a sheet of paper taped up to the wall. "I DON'T WANT ANYMORE SHOTS" was written in grey crayon in a child's scrawl. Nero frowned at the paper, but pocketed the sheet anyway.

Room S5 was also open to him, though it contained nothing at all. Room S6 and S7 were locked. Room S8 was a peculiarity; It contained a box on the bed. Nothing to indicate the contents of the box though. Curious. Nero left it alone, examining the other rooms, in what was quickly becoming a tedious process. Thankfully, he only had another six to go through. Nero thought it was unlikely that classified data would be hidden in a patient's room, but his orders were to search.

Room S9 was empty and S10 was locked. Room S11 contained still another letter, from a different child apparently. "Billy has a monster in him. The Docktors can make it go away. I fownd their seecrit recipe and put it in my trezure chest. Theyll never find my key." Secret recipe, eh? Nero kept the note, putting it alongside the paper about the shots.

The last three rooms were locked. Nero stared blankly at the notes. He was following advice from children, it seemed. As he turned to get to the last few rooms, on the other side of the hallway (a bathroom, showering room, and examination room), Nero didn't see the veins of red suffocating the blank, white-ish paint.

58:26:03 remaining

Honor and duty went hand-in-hand when Argent lived in Wutai. She had a duty to honor her village by serving as a swordswoman in the resistance movements against ShinRa. Likewise, she honored her village by doing her duty, bringing victory to Wutai alongside her countrymen. The synchronization of work and emotion was easy for her to reconcile when she was home. She would not be dishonored for shedding enemy blood because they would dare to destroy her home. Argent was able to live as a swordswoman and the daughter of a blacksmith. Her existence was peaceful.

Later, her philosophy was overdue for a solid revision in the opinion of the ShinRa operatives that took her away to serve in their military. Duty to the company came before everything else in ShinRa, honor be damned. The mission at hand came before other peoples' lives, Argent's own life, and everything else behind that. When she entered the ShinRa military, they had beaten that into her head. Literally, when she came to DeepGround. She could crawl back to the DeepGround, only when the mission was done. The rate at which Argent climbed the stairs was quick, but the entire mission had an unidentifiable impossibility to it and she felt as though this would be a crawl mission.

Truly, Argent thought as she shoved the door to the second floor open, the mission was crawling. First, they had been separated. Then they had made their way to the asylum, only for it to be conveniently open and potentially an enemy base. Lastly, Rosso was acting like a fast-moving thunderhead on the horizon. Azul was doing nothing about her behavior. In fact, Azul seemed to be encouraging Rosso in some ways, allowing her to go off on her own. Azul outranked Argent on a technicality, but Argent possessed seniority over him. She respected Azul as a fellow Tsviet, but Argent was not willing to let Azul's combative behavior sabotage the mission.

It made sense for the files to be in one of four locations on the second floor: The staff office, the library, the administration office, or the archives. Argent made these rooms a priority. The staff office was locked. Argent entered the second floor's lobby, and then the library. That was open and she entered the room. It was dusty, but well-organized. Argent had no idea of what to look for. A computer would be the obvious thing, but she was uncertain if the power was even working. She turned her attention to the books. Nearly all of them were medical journals, not published by the asylum. No, it made sense that she would want to try looking through the publications of the asylum. Perhaps not even those, but the hard-copy files in the filing cabinets towards the back of the room.

Argent crossed the room, opened one of the filing cabinets, withdrew a stack of files, and began to painstakingly read them. As she read, the room began to deteriorate in the most horrible ways.

58:26:02 remaining

Shelke didn't feel very much. Physically, she had been beaten so many times that feeling was no longer a deciding factor in whether or not she fought. Mentally, a Net Dive was the only thing that could exhaust her and that was an obligation that she did not consider to be painful, only dangerous. Lastly, Shelke felt as though she no longer possessed emotions some days. There was nothing in DeepGround to be happy about since she did not get swept up into fights, kills, or morbidity the way her fellow Tsviets did. Negative reactions, like crying and defiance, had been beaten out of her long ago. Shelke passed long stretches in hazes of neutrality, not caring about anything except the tasks that were being put in front of her. The mission to Silent Hill was the first time Shelke had felt anything other than apathy in weeks. First, she had felt regret, guilt, and inferiority when her fears altered the mission's path. Next, she was feeling irritated by her commanders' behaviors and orders.

Shelke openly acknowledged that she was not in a position to criticize the mission given to her, but she felt as though she was being belittled by Weiss and Nero. She was being given an order that was equivalent to "Go play and don't break anything." It was annoying, the way mosquitoes had been annoying in childhood. The sense that they simply wanted her out of the way was grating.

The second floor was bare and abandoned, just like the first floor had been. Similar layout, as well. Shelke followed the hallway until she found a group of doors and began trying them. The first door that opened led her to what looked like a laundry room, or at least a linen closet. The room contained six industrial-sized hampers, each filled with what looked like patient gowns. Shelke had only needed to wear a patient gown once in her life, when she had an ear infection and needed to be taken to the hospital as a child. The gowns in Banora had been a soft blue color, but these were a sickly shade of green.

Something caught Shelke's eye as she crossed the room to examine the shelves of the room. A shining, silver key was nestled into one of the hampers. As though someone knew that Shelke would be looking for something and had laid the key out for her as a sign. Shelke looked at the key distrustfully. On one hand, it could be necessary. On the other hand, it could be a trap. Shelke removed one of her sabers and activated it. Shelke jabbed the canvas of the hamper through, leaving a singed hole. The clothing shifted, but there was no indication that a person lay waiting in the hamper for her. Shelke repeated the process on the other five hampers, each receiving a quick stab and a burnt hole roughly the size of Shelke's palm. The room was safe, or at least uninhabited. Shelke removed the key from the hamper, turning the cold metal over in her hand. It had a tag on it, marked with the word "Pool."

A dilemma, then. On one hand, Shelke's only orders were to investigate the second floor. In a way, she was not cleared to investigate the first floor, which was Weiss' territory. On the other hand, Shelke was not about to allow them to accuse her of not following clues through. Shelke would go to the pool and, if Weiss found her on the first floor, she would explain the situation. Weiss was reasonable, moreso than Rosso or Restrictors were. He would understand her.

As Shelke left the room, her sneakers made an unpleasant squelching sound as they made contact with a thick layer of human flesh that was coating the floor of the hospital hallways.

58:25:16 remaining

The only person Azul could depend on for actual results was himself. He didn't distrust Weiss' orders or judgment calls, but orders and judgments were not results. Weiss would not be brought to life on his own orders and judgments. He would also not be helped by Nero's fervor, Argent's dedication, or Shelke's approach. He needed results and Azul felt that he was the best man for those. Results were easy to get for him.

As Azul descended the stairs, entering the basement of the asylum, something odd began to happen to the walls. The paint began peeling and Azul laid a hand on the cannon he had holstered on his waist. He had heard about using heat in a weaponized manner and that seemed to be the tactic. Yet Azul perceived no temperature change, only the sounds of paint chips skittering to the floor. Something was shifting at the bottom of the staircase. Azul's heart leapt up and his lips curled into a grin. A fight.

Fights were the only enjoyment Azul truly got out of life. They were challenges for the sake of challenges, but they were also a way to determine superiority. Intelligence was measured too many ways for Azul to base status on that. Combat was clear-cut in the same way mathematics tended to be. There was either a winner or a loser. A draw was a fight that hadn't been completed yet.

Azul approached the bottom of the stairs much more rapidly than he would have otherwise. At the bottom of the stairs was… Something. It was not human, Azul was certain of that much. At the same time, it was not a monster he was familiar with. Even more interesting, then. Squinting through the darkness, Azul began to realize that this was not the sort of monster one generally found on The Planet. For one thing, it was large and bloated, but still mobile. For another, it was pale in the same way Rosso was pale. It was a pallor only associated with those who had never seen sunlight and never would. The creature's veins stood out against its skin, each about the thickness of a drinking straw. It made feverish sucking noises, as though feasting on a kill. Very interesting.

As the bloated creature fed, Azul made no attempt to disguise his presence and walked directly up to it. He had hoped that it would stop its meal and fight. Instead, it continued eating. Azul did not exist, as far as the monster was concerned. Azul brought one of his feet down on it, squashing it like a fat spider. It popped grotesquely, revealing that it was, in fact, pregnant. The fetus was underdeveloped, but a perfect clone of its horrid mother. Azul crushed that, too. Just to be safe.

Clearly, they had done experimental research at this asylum. Monsters like this didn't exist in DeepGround. The equipment had yet to be seen, but Azul surmised that it was all located in the basement somewhere. Kicking a wall to dislodge the pieces of monster stuck in his boots, Azul pressed on. He was not afraid of what this asylum would dare to throw at him.

END OF CHAPTER 3