Warning: character death. Other than that, enjoy. :)

Chapter Twenty-One

The Maze of the Dead

Hang on, Adrian, Heather thought as she ducked under windows and behind doors, the safety of her weapon off and ready to shoot its target without hesitation. We'll find you, and I know it. The same adrenaline and fear coursed through her as it did the night of the riot. But now that it had fully set in her mind, that night had been the best of her life, but now was much worse than that.

This was our wedding night, supposed to be the best of our lives. Eternity, just the two of us; eternity which actually exists when so many cynicals said it didn't. And it was shattered by the Wicked Witch of the police force, and the man who took my best friend from me.

Her heart's blood was on fire more than the rest of her body's chambers. This is for you, too, Bianca. If I find Dr. Moreland on the way, he gets blown into the next century.

To her right, there was a noise heard, like something falling over – was that a trash can or something ridiculous that one of these creatures would do to get her attention and get her off-guard? Turning behind her, she saw nothing there. Scowling, Heather shook her head. Creeps trying to scare me? Not working. She took a few slow, tentative steps in the opposite direction she was heading; she would have to move faster because she was running out of time, whatever how much was left.

"Twenty minutes."

"Ten minutes already shot out through your ass!" Heather shouted, no real reason for saying that other than to make herself laugh. She got no response from him, not even a laugh or offense. Served him right. She didn't expect one anyway.

There was a shuffle down the hall, where the light was flashing at the very end, threatening to go off. Heather felt like she was in one of those modern Asian ghost movies, but this was real life, and there were no ghosts. This was real life with zombies, the ghouls of the graveyard which blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. Scarier than the child she'd been who used to be terrified of them, but having experienced them herself, she could handle them on her own. And don't get too cocky about it, she scolded herself. You know what happens when you brag.

She got that terrible feeling up her spine that someone – something was following her, and she raised her gun, finger on the trigger...

An inhuman bellow was heard behind her, and she whirled around to see one of them burst out from one of the office doors she'd passed by and fired. This one had apparently been killed previously by the work of a giant saw blade; the man had been a construction worker based on her memory of the autopsy at the hospital less than two weeks ago. No family claimed him, and his corpse had been left to rot in the morgue like others in there. He stood there, his eyes wild and bloodshot, blood dripping from his mouth and the opened, nauseatingly graphic details of his stomach from the saw further ripped open to show ropes of intestines spilling out and more gore leaving a trail on the floor. Heather fired a shot first to his shoulder; that hadn't done the trick because he snarled and kept on moving for her, slow at first before he began to pick up speed, and matter splattered onto the window beside him like a volcano model exploding the matter in a freak accident. He fell to the ground right there, and Heather turned to run only to find herself face to face with another one...this one more grotesque than the other.

Well, not grotesque in terms of appearance entirely, but grotesque because of the state this one was in, totally contrasted to the last time Heather had seen her; this undead was covered with more gore than before, features feral like her companions, and savage, devoid of reason.

"Leslie, no...!"

Heather turned to run, but the monstrous re-animated Leslie Coburn grabbed her by the arm and threw her backwards with all her might; Heather found herself flying through the air and landing on the ground, sliding across the slick floor before hitting the wall at the far end of the hallway; to either left or right, she would be forced to make a choice, and now she was at the mercy of the woman she and Herbert tried to save before her ex-husband – now a re-animated entity with the power that her husband had in his own hands – intervened and ordered his partner to finish her off before tonight when he was no longer needed. In Heather West's book – she loved her new surname even though she had yet to adapt to it; Heather West – you should never take all the credit and off your partner as the great sacrifice to get what you wanted. It was called greed and thirst for power.

Heather picked herself up and ran to her left; there were a few of the empty holding cells in this area, but if she hid in one of them, she would be found easily by re-animated Leslie. No, not Leslie. She's not Leslie anymore. The adjoining office which oversaw the prisoners who would occasionally be held under supervision until transferred to the county prison was the best option. Heather ran for the opened door, finding the body of a guard with his throat eaten open and blood making a mess once more. She had less than enough time to note that the angle of the desk's under space would hide her enough from the pursuing zombie on her heels, so she crawled underneath and waited, holding her gun close and ready to fire whenever "Leslie" or any others would come here.

It was a waste of time, and she knew it. She was risking her own skin for this; Moreland's rules were clear that she had less than enough time to regroup with the others and find Adrian. And his next announcement said so: "Fifteen minutes."

The door had been left open, and the feet of the dead were so silent that she didn't hear or see anyone come in until too late. Heather screamed when the desk was lifted by bare hands and exposed her; the uplifter was a big black beast whose face was splotched by an ailment she didn't have time to identify because "Leslie" howled with rage and reached down to swipe her weapon out of her hands before she had time to pull the trigger, leaving her vulnerable and unarmed before the corpse's powerful grasp took hold of her neck, clamping around her windpipe and pushing her up against the window the same time the brutish one threw the desk against the back wall and shattering it to pieces. Heather tried to wrestle free but found that the dead woman she once called a friend and colleague was too strong for her, and her vision was getting darker and darker...

~o~

The lights were flashing overhead, threatening to go off, and they would be alone in the dark, but it was a miracle that the detective had a flashlight on her, and Herbert stuck close to her. He felt naked without his bag of re-agent; he needed to get to it if Moreland or any of his minions haven't. It never stops, someone else stealing it, that's for sure. "Where was my work taken to?" he asked.

"To the evidence room, level two," she answered. "I ordered it to be retained until the pathologists came by in the morning. Which means we have to take the stairs."

"And hold in court against us." He stated the obvious. "This won't be the last time someone against me takes my pride and joy from me."

Chapham laughed. "Nice words of choice, and appropriate, too. Is that what happened with Dr. Carl Hill? You didn't start the panic in the morgue, but that glowing green stuff was yours."

Herbert nodded, tightening his jaw. "And Hill used it against us. Just like Moreland, my old friend turned enemy."

Then the light overhead in this one section of the second level went out, leaving the rest of the labyrinth down flickering randomly and the eyes in a blind spot. Blind spot, he mentally recited, being the back of the eyeball where all the fibers of the optic nerves emerge. But that's not important here. Moreland is playing with us, and this is part of his game. Another light went off, leaving another fully on, all in an "every other" pattern until the end of the hallway which ended with the door labeled Evidence Room was left darkened, but Chapham's flashlight found a small pool of red leading to the body of yet another police officer. "Oh, God, Davis," Miranda Chapham gasped. "He's in charge of storing the evidence."

Herbert quickly moved for the door, finding that it was unlocked, and quickly bolted inside, ignoring her cry of caution altogether. Damn it, he must have it now! He turned the lights on, seeing no instability with the electricity in this part, and the storage appeared well-organized, but that didn't calm him any more than he was. He searched high and low, shelf to shelf and drawer to drawer until he was at the bottom, yanking the third to last open and finding his beloved black bag there. His relief was short-lived as he opened it, fearing the worst...

...until he saw that everything was exactly as he left it. Everything is here: the formula, the notes, and the capsule. His fingers searched further until he found what he prized the most: Moreland's nanoplasm. "YES!" he hissed in delight, putting it back into place. "It's all here," he told Chapham, whom he did not look up to as she came in and knelt down beside him.

"What was that I saw? Electrical source?"

"What I found in prison, in my three years of solitary confinement," he answered. "The Nano-Plasmic Energy, abbreviated to NPE. To keep it short and only slightly fresh, any devout religious believer would call this a rebellion against God and the soul, but this is exactly the answer to the question as to whether or not the soul exists. It's a neutral energy which leaves quickly upon death, so to extract it, you have to work fast."

Chapham's face was dumbfounded the whole time, but her eyes said another story. They spoke of evident disbelief that he would speak of God in such a manner, but it was no surprise and never would be. "Whose...NPE is that?" He laughed; she couldn't even say "nanoplasm" or its longer, scientific name.

"It's Eric's. I saved this for the next subject I have not yet had the chance to acquire given the circumstances as of late."

"I believe you will have your chance soon, Herbert, if you don't hurry up."

Herbert glared up at the ceiling, spotting one of the cameras in the upper right corner, above the door. "Oh, do tell us how much time left, old friend," he said sarcastically.

"Ten minutes, and you have but one more level to go, and you have yet to find your friends...if they're still alive."

And then he and Chapham heard the voices calling their names from outside.

~o~

There were so many of those things that Francesca kept screaming each time they encountered them and fired them down together without wasting bullets, always aiming for the heads and blowing the brains out. Not that Dan minded, but he had to keep reminding her to be brave for their son; he remembered her screaming it off too much in the lab and the crypt as it was, and it got her almost killed just screaming and being the helpless little girl. They had ten minutes left, and still no sign of Adrian.

"Where the hell are they keeping him?!" Francesca cried when they came to a stop on the second level, having run all the way up the stairs to this part, but also seeing no trace of Herbert, Heather, or Detective Chapham. "He's got us going in circles, separated from each other...!" She stopped right there with a gasp, slapping a hand over her mouth. "Unless..."

It dawned on Dan, too. Unless he has our son on the rooftop. He won't kill us, not really, like Herbert would say. "Honey, you're right. He's just messing with us. He has us where he wants us, sending his dogs out to play with us so he can watch and enjoy. He's putting us on a timer because..." Because he's scaring us into speed.

Francesca nodded, reading his mind. "He's scaring us, and it's working."

"Was working," he corrected, leaning down and capturing her lips with his briefly. "So what do you say we find the others now and make way for the roof?" he asked in a low voice, keeping his head close to hers so Eric wouldn't see his lips move and read them. Francesca smiled and nodded eagerly.

"Daniel, you magnificent darling." She took his face in both her hands, her gun still in place but the barrel safely away from his face and her finger nowhere on the trigger. "Il mio angelo...my brave doctor." She pecked his mouth one more time before letting him go. "Now, let's find our friends and our son."

Unfortunately, they had to make it fast since the lights on this floor were blinking and going out uncontrollably, which meant either Moreland was doing this himself at the power generator or had one of his monsters do the deed for him. "Herbert!" he yelled, barely catching the door at the end of the hall...the evidence room. If the work is there, then he has to be. I just know it. "HERBERT!" he tried again, taking Francesca's hand and running in that direction, nearly running into the figures of Herbert and Detective Chapham running in the same direction.

"Dan!" Herbert exclaimed. Slung over his arm was none other than his recovered possessions in the black medical bag. "Francesca! Are you both all right?!"

"We're fine," Francesca panted, trying to catch her breath. "We haven't found Adrian. And I see you haven't either," she noted, then turned her hostile eyes on Chapham, whom Dan wasn't happy to see, either. "And what about you?" she spat. "Wasting time interrogating him when our son needs us?"

"She's on our side for now," Herbert returned. "You can count on it due to some...mind techniques of mine," he added with a devious wink and smile to one corner of his mouth.

Dan was shocked; he wanted to ask – no, demand – why he so suddenly changed his mind about the woman who hunted them down and brought them all in like captured animals, not giving a damn about any of them. "He told me everything, Daniel, if I can call you that," she said. Her shift from cold politeness to soft and understanding baffled him, but looking more closely, Dan saw in her eyes that he could believe her. Would believe her. "I realize that all of you were doing what's right, but there is no way I can get any of you off the hook without actual proof. However," she added with a lift of the finger, "I can get you all out of here if all of us make it."

He smiled at her. "Thank you, Detective."

"Yes, thank you, too," Francesca piped up brusquely, "but now can we make it upstairs?" She stopped. "Wait, where's Heather?"

Damn it, she's still out there! And ALONE! "W-what if any of them got to her?!" Dan shouted. "She's in trouble, and we have to find her, too!"

Chapham nodded and began to run in the lead. "Get to the rooftop quick, people!"

They ran back down the hallway; everything had been a maze worse in person than on any piece of paper reserved for little ones to play with. This one was a battle of the wills and filled with real walking corpses popping out from every corner only for them to fire off. None of them found Heather yet, either...and the fear returned, eating away at Dan's heart. Oh, God, if she's dead...please, please please please don't be dead, Heather...! He wasn't sure if he could take her loss the way he lost Meg and so many patients at the hospital.

The stairs to the rooftop were outside, with the balcony of one of the offices they came across, climbing their way up the iron steps – Herbert first, then Francesca and Dan, Miranda Chapham behind them – and the cold air assaulting them under the pitch black sky which grew powerful when they all came to the spacious rooftop, their feet hitting gravel and standing before the figure whose back faced them, hands behind himself and looking over the view of Boston. On either side of him were two figures who didn't face the group, either, and not one of them uttered a sound. One was a big black brute, the other whom Dan knew was poor Leslie, now remade into a machine the demon in the middle could control at will. And then said demon spoke, his voice normal as ever but hollow as the wind.

"You figured it out." Moreland was amused and unsurprised at the same time. "I figured as much."

Now that they were here, Dan wanted to cut right to the chase. "Give us our son and let us finish this, Eric," he ordered. "The game is over, and so are you."

"Oh, please, don't play the hero role on me, Daniel." He turned around; he wore a long trench coat with some blood spilling down the front. The left side of his forehead had a deep purple-black gash dried with red blood that remained in streaks down that side of his face. "That's not the way anyone in Arkham or this town see you now. By now, they're calling you crazy like Herbert here."

"Oh, I don't think so," Herbert declared, stepping forward. "Now let's cut to the chase and settle this the old-fashioned way. Give us the boy."

Eric smiled, baring pinkish teeth and turned to his left – left if you were in his position now – and said, "Well, show them the child, Les." The stiff figure, still in the yellow dress the night she died, obeyed and turned around with the robotic rhythm of a soldier at attention and held in her iron grasp a face which had been taken from him and his wife only less than an hour ago.

"Mommy, Daddy!"

"Oh, Adrian, my baby!" Francesca wailed, starting forward when Dan had to reach and take her arm, pulling her back to him when Moreland held up his hand.

"I wouldn't try that just yet, if I were you, Fran. Leslie is stronger and more powerful than she was before, so she can tear the boy limb from limb. Would you really risk your son's life for that?"

"And what about my wife?" Herbert spat. "What have you done to Heather?"

Eric's face was a pretense of hard thinking, trying to remember who he was talking about. "Oh, yes, Heather. Well, let's just say that this was the best part I decided to save for last, my old friend. Something which I know will fully shatter your brilliant mind into the state that you've been labeled." He snapped his fingers, and the monstrously muscled African American turned around – and in his arms held a silent, limp form which ultimately did what the speaker had said would do to them all.

The beast tossed the body of Heather West to the ground carelessly for them all to see, treating her no better than a rag doll. Eric Moreland's wicked laughter was the bane of all sounds to their ears, especially to Dan Cain and most especially to Herbert West, Heather's husband who howled in agony and fell to the ground before the corpse of his beloved new bride.

NOOOOOO HEATHER! :O Oh, but don't worry, we're FAR from over. Next is the epilogue and end of this third amazing story which has also been a journey for me.

"Il mio angelo" means "my angel". :)