My lab let out into the hall. I padded down the half-lit passage, my boots barely echoing.
The first room on my right opened into a trashed lab, but the broken glass on the floor had been there long enough to gather dust, so whatever had happened here must have gone down before I passed out. There was nothing there that could help me, so I moved on.
The next room looked like a sort of call room, with rows of cots set up. Blankets lay haphazardly on the floor and dresses, shorts, boots and weapons littered the room, closely stacked to each cot, like each one had belonged to a specific person who had just walked out to grab a bite to eat.
Or had become a bite to eat.
I ran my hand along the fabric of a dress laying on one of the makeshift beds. Whoever had been here before wasn't here now. This place had an emptiness to it, one of the things I'd remembered all too well.
A loud clang jolted me from my reverie. I spun around, automatically sinking into a crouch as I scanned the room, searching for the movement. My adrenaline spiked for a moment until I noticed the precariously stacked pile of weaponry in the corner. I could see where a knife had slid of the pile and landed point down in the floor.
"Dumbass." I whispered to myself, tucking one of my own knives back into my waistband. I stalked over and jerked it from the floor. "Big Bad Alice, huh?" I looked over at the pile and noticed a pair of short swords, and added them—along with a couple other choice pieces—to my ensemble. They made me feel safer, if not any less idiotic.
I turned to leave when my boot caught on the edge of a blanket and drew it off the cot it had previously covered. Underneath it was a corpse.
It was me. Again.
This time I couldn't help myself and the vomit pushed up my throat and onto the floor.