Chapter 6:
The murmur of voices. That was the first thing that registered within Lyner's foggy, whirling mind. Voices that were familiar. He could not understand what they were saying. The voices were too low, too quiet. Unable to pass through the excruciating headache and the pulse that thundered in his ears.
He needed to open his eyes. He needed to…wake up. It was important that he did so.
"Hey, I think he's waking up."
That…was Lazarus' voice.
"Lyner?"
Ay…Ayatane? That was Ayatane's voice. That was definitely Ayatane's voice.
What happened?
…That was right. He and Lazarus had been recaptured. By those Crimson Entities. And were taken to the head doctor himself. Where he revealed he wanted to experiment on them. To make them into the perfect soldier. The perfect angelic soldier.
And Lyner was the first to go under.
What happened after that?
Lyner furrowed his brow as a low groan rumbled deep in his throat. It took more effort than he would like, but he fluttered his eyes open. The light was not blinding, thankfully. His vision was still blurry and it took him a few moments for him to finally take in his surroundings.
He was lying on his side, not quite curled up in the foetal position, but comfortably all the same. His head rested upon Lazarus' lap, the two of them situated upon a bed. Lazarus seemed to be in one piece, thankfully.
"Laz…?" Lyner murmured, his voice hoarse. He rolled his head to the side and blearily looked up at his fellow blond.
"I'm here," Lazarus immediately replied, reassuringly. "We're both fine. And wingless, I'm afraid," he finished with a joke.
Lyner sighed and relaxed, even mustering up a smile despite his dizziness. "That's a relief. I can't imagine how cumbersome those things are."
Not to mention the back pain it would cause.
A hand gentle rested upon his shoulder prompted Lyner to roll his head forward and his gaze met with that of Ayatane's. Lyner felt himself calm further upon seeing his friend. In one piece. Unharmed. Safe. With his weapons and armour.
"Lyner. How are you feeling?" Ayatane asked him, his hand moving to touch the side of his face.
Lyner reached up to place his hand against Ayatane's. In an attempt to reassure him. "Ayatane. I knew you would find us eventually."
A slight frown, one tinged with unfair guilt, appeared on Ayatane's lips. "I almost didn't make it in time."
"But you did make it," Lyner returned firmly. "That's what is important."
Ayatane sighed but did not refute his claim. Not verbally, at least. Internally, he would likely replay events over in his mind. Still, he gave Lyner a small smile as he reluctantly pulled his hand back.
As Ayatane stepped away (not too far, though), Lyner noted that there were two others in the room with them. Troy and Vivi, the former by the door in a guarding manner and the latter sat in a chair in the centre of the room.
It was good to see that the two were also safe and sound. Yet…
"Where are the others?" Lyner asked.
Troy momentarily turned away from the door to answer him, "York and Zelos have gone to destroy that doctor's operating room. Raze has gone with them to keep an eye on them, though I don't know how successful he will be."
"They get all the luck," Lazarus added, in a light-hearted manner.
Lyner uttered a light laugh in response.
Operating room, huh? That must have been where Dr Edwald took him after he was knocked out by the sleeping gas. He guessed it really was a close call at that point. He could not imagine what Ayatane saw when he…
Wait…Dr Edwald…
Lyner grasped his forehead as he struggled to sit up, even with Lazarus' help. "Easy. You're still under the influence of whatever drugs that lunatic used on you."
"I'm…all right," Lyner murmured, but he leaned against Lazarus' shoulder nevertheless. "I…just remembered something. I had a strange dream. While I was under."
"A dream?" Ayatane questioned. "What was it about?"
"About that doctor, Edwald."
That caught Troy's curiosity, too. "Do you remember what it was about?"
Lyner clutched his forehead again as he tried to remember. "It was just him, in his office. He was sat at his desk as he wrote in his journal. But the thing was, I could hear him. He didn't speak a word, but I could hear him narrate what he was writing. It was like I could hear his thoughts."
Edwald, he…never looked up from his journal. He kept writing. Flipping from page to page as he wrote. His thoughts jumbled. Incoherent at times. But they were about the hospital. About his work. About his patients. About his experiments.
And about his victims.
"You must have seen the doctor's memories," Vivi rather unexpectedly stated, firm in his belief. "M-maybe they can help us better understand what is happening here. Do you remember what he wrote?"
Lyner removed his hand from his forehead to instead touch his temple. "Y-yeah, some of it. His thoughts were jumbled. Let me think."
What did that man say? What was important in his incoherent ramblings? What could help them better understand the situation?
Lyner snapped his head up. "He killed his patients."
"Ah, yeah, that's obvious," Lazarus replied with a half grin.
"No," Lyner shook his head. "He did it on purpose. For his experiments to work, his patients had to, well, 'cross over to the other side.' In his words."
"His experiments involve actually killing his patients?" Lazarus murmured. "No wonder he had a hundred percent failure rate."
"He thought that by killing his patients, they would return as 'earth bound' angels. And since they were angels, they would have the innate knowledge how to fly, so in giving them wings, in his head, was a gift or a mercy," Lyner explained. "And with those wings, they would gladly aid him in his battle against good and evil."
The room fell silent until Lazarus finally broke that silence with an astute observation.
"This guy really is a lunatic."
To put it mildly.
"From what I can recall, the guy never actually succeeded in transplanting wings to anyone," Lyner continued. "Everyone has died and, well, stayed dead on the operating table."
"Any reason for the narrow-minded focus on blond-haired males?" Lazarus asked.
Lyner shook his head. "No, that was never brought up."
Troy held his chin in a pondering posture. "What of the victim count?"
Lyner took on a similar stance. "Well…no, there isn't an exact number. In fact, he doesn't know. I think…"
A peculiar thought occurred to Lyner and he furrowed his brow. All those patient files. The black markers censoring them. That was not something Edwald had a hand in. He could have cared less. He had conducted his experiment, and when it had inevitably failed, he threw the file aside and went in search for a new victim. Steadfast in his determination to achieve his goal.
"Wait, he doesn't remember what he had done to his victims. They were that insignificant to him. And the files here, right now, reflect that."
So, those files…
Uncharacteristic for the blond gunner, Lazarus seethed. "So, the reason for the files being blacked out and censored was because this bastard had forgotten what he had done to his victims?"
"I think so," Lyner replied. "And the victims themselves had forgotten. Remembering only their names and descriptions, but having no memories of what Edwald had actually done to them."
"So, those shadowy entities are his victims?"
Lyner nodded. "Right."
They were likely trapped within the hospital, with Edwald, because they had been forgotten. Because Edwald himself blatantly ignored them. Refused to admit any wrongdoing. Refused to admit their existence. And they, themselves, had no idea what happened. Where they were.
They barely remembered their names, and that meant nothing if there was no one around to remember them. To mourn them.
To help them.
"What of those Crimson Entities?" Ayatane inquired. "What could they possibly be?"
Lyner shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know. They're not victims. I don't think they were human, either."
They were something else. Something entirely unworldly. Though what they were and how Edwald, a very human doctor, came into possession and control of them, he had not the faintest idea. Edwald never mentioned them in his ramblings. Not in the time he was observing him.
"Though, it is somewhat ironic that a man who is so desperate to find a victim to survive the afterlife is, himself, dead," Ayatane mused aloud.
So, Edwald was also just a spirit?
"Are you sure?" Lazarus asked. "The guy is unlike the other spirits and souls we've encountered so far."
"In a newspaper article that Raze discovered, apparently the man had killed himself when it became clear that he was to be charged with multiple murders," Ayatane unexpectedly revealed.
"And from the news articles I've read, the guy has been dead for over a hundred years," Troy added.
"Oh, the years make sense to you?"
Troy shifted his stance and placed his hand into the pocket of his trousers. "I don't know this man, but from the articles, I can say that this man is from my world. He lived well over a hundred years ago, during an era where untimely deaths were commonplace and not investigated nearly as thoroughly as they would be today. Still, to think he would have such a high victim count…"
Edwald was from the human world? But those Crimson Entities? They could not be from the same realm, could they? Yet, it was possible. The Bakus existed.
And it was possible that Edwald had encountered them moments before his death. Or after. Having reached beyond the veil, like he wanted with his patients - no, his victims.
That did bring about a very important question - did Edwald know that he was dead?
No, probably not. He was held a narrow-minded focus to achieve his goal. He wanted to turn Lyner and Lazarus into angelic soldiers. He wanted them to pierce the veil and to return as earthbound angels, where he would then give them wings. He thought they were 'alive,' in his world. From his world. From his realm.
He had no idea that he was already dead.
That meant…
Lyner sighed and clutched his forehead. A headache was truly setting in. "Where we are right now it due entirely to Edwald. This hospital is his world. His obsession."
And they were not going to get out without going through him first.
Lazarus roughly raked his hand through his hair. "And I assume that you and I were the reason why we were brought here?"
"I think so, yeah. We were his main goal. Ayatane and the others were just collateral. Fortunately, his full attention was on us, so he just threw them aside rather than doing anything to hurt them."
Lyner would not have forgiven himself if anything happened to Ayatane and the others.
"If we got too feisty the bastard might have gotten violent."
"Probably."
Yet, for the life of him, he still could not remember how they were dragged into the hospital. Into this mess. Was that by design? Did Edwald do something to their memories? To his?
"I see," Ayatane murmured as he held his chin in thought. "So, there is no other choice. We must find this Edwald and defeat him in battle. This is the only way for us to return to the World of Souls."
Troy released a sigh and roughly folded his arms across his chest. "Something tells me he won't make it easy for us."
Not with them in the middle of Edwald's personal little world.
Both Ayatane and Troy raised their heads and turned toward the door. They had reacted to something, yet their posture was not negative. And it was not until Lyner himself heard footsteps and the murmur of voices that he understood why.
The door opened to reveal three men, all of them recognisable.
"About time you guys came back," Troy said in a form of a greeting.
"Yeah, well, we had to fend off some of those red bastards, too," Zelos replied as he closed and locked the door behind them.
Lyner leaned back to rest against the wall next to the hospital bed. "Hey, welcome back," he called out, which earned him the immediate attention from the three men.
While Lyner was indeed quite lightheaded, he managed to notice that there were varying degrees of surprise and then relief on their faces. Not dramatic by any means. But subtle changes to their expressions. The slight widening of eyes before the quiet releasing of sighs.
It…left him wondering what they had seen in that operating room.
"Hey, you're awake," York was the first to greet him.
"How are you feeling?" Raze followed up, his concern evident in his voice.
"I'm all right, just a little bit dizzy," Lyner instinctively replied. He managed to give the three a smile in a small act of reassurance. "So, I've been told you've blown up the good doctor's operating room. Have fun?"
The smirk that York gave him was playfully wicked. "He won't be using that room for his experiments anytime soon."
Good.
"I hope the structure itself is still in one piece," Ayatane chided lightly. "We will need to walk through it to venture through the doors that this doctor disappeared in."
"Yeah, yeah." York dismissed Ayatane's reprimanding, however, and walked over to a chair, to which he quickly plopped himself down in. "The structure's still sound."
"We did inspect the area, though," Raze revealed. "We tried searching for Lyner's and Lazarus' weapons and armour, but they weren't there."
Yeah, that would have been too easy. Where could Edwald be keeping them?
Zelos leaned against the wall next to the door and folded his arms across his chest. "What was there was the way to another floor."
So, that was where Edwald was hiding. They needed to traverse through a whole new floor.
A high-pitched static screech from the overheard announcing system caused everyone to instinctively wince and cover their ears. They still looked up toward the ceiling as a voice, one that was unfortunately familiar to Lyner, came through.
"Attention all units, proceed with the recapture of Patient Number 12-25-14-5-18 and Patient Number 12-1-26-1-18-21-19. And kill any outside interference. I repeat, proceed with the recapture of Patient Number 12-25-14-5-18 and Patient Number 12-1-26-1-18-21-19. And kill any outside interference. Order to commence immediately."
The intercom then cut off with a loud click, plunging the room into silence.
Lyner could hardly believe it. Edwald's operating room had been destroyed, yet he was still after him and Lazarus? Did he possess another operating room on the next floor?
Well, he supposed he should not be surprised. The whole hospital was his world. His obsession to create the perfect angelic soldier was his purpose. It was the reason why his world, this hospital, existed in the first place.
"Heh," Zelos suddenly snorted, breaking the silence. "The good doctor isn't happy."
Troy sighed aloud and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We expected as much. Looks like we have no choice but to seek him out now."
The was no prolonging it, he supposed.
Ayatane immediately turned his attention toward Lyner. "Will you be all right, Lyner?" he asked, cautious and concerned. Clearly not liking the idea that not only was he unarmed, but he was to be the subject of recapture by who knows how many Crimson Entities.
A prospect that Lyner, himself, did not enjoy.
"I'll be all right," Lyner insisted as he slipped off the bed. He was still a little dizzy, but nothing he could not handle. And it was not like he had the luxury to wait until he felt one-hundred percent. He had to be alright. "I can still use my lightning abilities. It's not like I can do anything else."
Lazarus hopped off the bed next to him and draped an arm around his shoulders. "Being the ones who are being protected is going to take some getting used to."
Lyner gave his fellow blond a half-hearted laugh. "Tell me about it."