Janet and I hurried into the hospital building, ignoring the receptionist at the desk near the entrance. We took the elevator up to the fifth floor to see Lucas standing in the hallway, watching as a trio of police officers surround Tyler outside of Valeria’s room.

“What’s going on?” I asked him. He stared at me with a small smile before his expression turned grim.

“Ali, it’s Valeria’s foster parents. They...wanna pull the plug, but Tyler is refusing to let it happen.”

I looked closer and saw Val’s foster parents behind the policemen. If there was a chance I could’ve gotten away with it, I would’ve punched them both in the face for authorizing the death of my best friend. But there was nothing I could do. They had the power to decide if she’d live or die.

“He’s a damn rapist,” Tyler shouted, seething. “You should be arresting him.”

I walked more toward the scene. Lucas and Janet followed. “What are you talking about, Tyler?” I asked.

“When this old hag,” he pointed at Valeria’s foster mother, “stepped out the room, this fat slob,” now pointing to her foster father, “had his hand under Valeria’s sheets. I’m certain now that Val tried to kill herself because this pedophile raped her.”

I couldn’t hold back after hearing that. I marched over to Valeria’s disgusting excuse of a foster father and swung my fist, connecting with his jaw. His coward ass wife stood there in shock as two officers detained me.

“Let go of her,” I heard Lucas say as the officers pushed my head down to the floor, busting my lip in the process. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Janet stepped in with her fire, but I was glad she didn’t.

I felt the cold metal of the handcuffs around my wrist before being held against a wall next to Tyler, who was also restrained. “This is murder,” he cried out. “And screw you, Lucas. At least Aliyah tried to do something.”

“What the hell, dude?” Lucas questioned. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Something. That’s your friend about to die in that room. Or do you only care about music and Robyn?”

The mentioning of her name made my heart sink. I turned my head to look at Lucas, who appeared offended and confused.

“Bro, you’ve lost it. Don’t blame me for what’s happening.”

“I’m not your bro anymore,” Tyler retorted in a deep, hateful tone. “You don’t care about us. I found that out the night I caught you kissing Robyn before you knocked her up. You don’t deserve Aliyah. She can do better than your punk ass.”

As if the day couldn’t get any worse, hearing Tyler speak about what happened made me wish I had never met Lucas. Just like that, any thoughts of getting back together were gone. I wanted to lose all feelings for him. A part of me even wished he’d lose his life instead of Valeria.

He said nothing in defense, which hurt me even more. Only the grumbling from Valeria’s foster parents and whispers from the hospital staff filled my ears as the policemen walked me and Tyler to the elevator. When the door opened, Alvin Steinberg—the man in charge of the facility—stepped out with a grin.

“Aliyah Dawn, pleasure to meet you again in such...strange circumstances.”

“Sir, move out of the way,” one of the officers said.

“I will do no such thing,” Alvin replied with a stern demeanor. “I am in charge of this facility, and I demand to know what happened here.”

“These two delinquents were causing a disturbance on this floor, so we had to—”

A sudden bang came from one of the floors below, and a thick, purple fog began to form inside the building. My first assumption was that Tyler’s rage attracted the demons here, but it was very possible they found other hosts in the hospital to leech off of.

A doctor approached Alvin. “S-sir, t-two of them have g-gone mad.” He tried to mumble through his stuttering voice, but I heard him loud and clear.

Alvin stared at the officers, showing no facial reaction to what the doctor had said. “It would seem you officers are needed elsewhere, yes? Why don’t you disregard the trivial antics of children and concern yourselves with more important matters.”

The three officers muttered to each other before they sat me and Tyler down against a wall. One of them then yelled, “We’ll be back for these kids after we investigate what’s going on downstairs.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

They got on the elevator in a hurry. When the doors closed, Janet kneeled to speak to me. “I can burn those cuffs off easily, but we have to get somewhere private,” she said, glancing at everyone around us. She helped me to stand as Alvin walked up to me.

“It would appear you have a job to do as well, Miss Dawn,” he said with a grin. “Unless your incapable of saving us all without the ability to use your hands.”

Giving him a look of disgust couldn’t remove the smile off his face. “I’ll be fine. Just keep everyone on this floor until I come back.”

“I’m going too,” Janet said, shooting me a quick wink.

Alvin rubbed his chin hair and observed her. “I see. Interesting. Very well.”

We walked to the elevator and waited for the doors to open. Lucas grabbed my arm, but I pulled away.

“Ali, let me come with you. You have to believe me when I say there’s more to the story than what Tyler said.”

“No. I actually thought I needed you, but after hearing that, I’m done. Leave me alone.”

I got on the elevator with Janet and turned my head to avoid seeing his face. A sigh escaped my lips when the doors closed and the elevator began to move.

“That was intense,” Janet said behind me, burning the cuffs off. I could feel the heat from her flames on my skin. “Hold on. I’m almost done torching these things.”

The elevator doors opened just as my hands were freed. There was no time to take a breather. The enemy was down the hall in clear sight.

“Hold up.” Janet stopped me from walking further after we stepped out of the elevator. “I don’t like being recorded.”

The cameras in the top corners of the room exploded into flames, causing mechanical parts to fall on the floor where injured doctors and nurses laid unconscious. It was smart of her to destroy any potential evidence of our abilities, but the explosions alerted the man down the hall, who had his back turned before the cameras were destroyed.

“I’m guessing that’s our possessed guy?” Janet asked with a raised brow. I nodded, not keeping my eyes off him. He wore a hospital robe and was bald with enough muscle to make a bodybuilder jealous.

He shot us a crazed smile, and I could sense the demon controlling him even more despite how hard it tried to hide behind his massive build. The man lifted the receptionist desk off the floor and flung it at us with ease, causing it to smash through the elevator door after we dived out of the way.

“My god, did you see that?” Janet exclaimed, disturbingly excited. There was no fear in her. “This guy’s a monster.”

She was right. His desire couldn’t have been anything else but superhuman strength. He made his way over to us with giant stomps.

“Check it out,” Janet said with a smirk. “I got this trick straight from an anime.”

With the snap of her fingers, the man’s body was engulfed in flames. He panicked and so did I. “Janet, don’t kill him,” I yelled. “I just need to free his mind and get rid of the demon controlling him.”

“Relax, I only gave you an opening. I know how to control the temperature of the fire, and the flames aren’t hot enough right now to kill him, but you better make your move before he loses his skin.”

I rushed into action after her words, getting behind the man and slaying the Shadow with my chakram. A blinding flash emitted from my palm afterward that made him collapse on the floor with a hard thud. The situation at the hospital wasn’t over with yet, as I could see a Shadow Current leading downstairs to our next encounter.

We took the stairwell to follow the negative energy, with Janet behind destroying any cameras along the way. Upon reaching the second floor, we were confronted by a woman in a hospital robe with short, platinum blonde hair and tattoos on her arms.

“She’s under the influence too, huh?” Janet questioned, pointing at the woman.

“Yeah, and more than you know,” I replied, seeing the woman’s dark aura while observing the demon levitating above her.

“Alright. I’ll do what I did last time and—”

In the blink of an eye, Janet’s body flew back. Before I could even react, a hard hit to my chest shot me back as well. With speed like that, this woman was built different, that’s for sure.

“She’s fast,” I coughed out, holding my breast from the pain. Janet stood up and glared at the woman.

“If she can run faster than I can snap my fingers, I’ll have to—”

Again, the woman dashed too quick for my eyes to follow, striking me and Janet in the face before we could react. She tried to continue her assault against me, but was stopped in her tracks by a circle of flames surrounding her feet.

“She’s trapped. Aliyah, do it now.”

My chakram was thrown at the Shadow hovering over the woman’s head, piercing one of its eyes and destroying the creature. All that was left to do was free her mind, and I did so by emitting a gleam that caused her to fall to the ground. Finally, the nightmare was over.

Or, at least I thought it was.

“They’re coming.” My words were spoken low with apprehension. Looking down the hallway, not only did I see the lifeless bodies of the three cops from earlier, but a legion of demons stampeding through the glass doors that separated the two sections of the floor.

I wasn’t sure if we’d win against that many, unless an idea I had been thinking about actually worked.

“Janet, manifest a huge fireball. I’m gonna generate enough light energy to match it, and we’ll combine our powers to take the whole group out in one shot. Just make sure to put out the flames if they spread, okay?”

“Got it.”

The giant, fiery orb she conjured was both astonishing and terrifying. I took a few steps back and shouted, “Let’em have it,” while pointing in the direction of the mob.

When she released the bomb, I infused it with my light energy, creating a shining sphere around the fireball that engulfed the horde of demons, annihilating them within seconds. Only embers veiled in a white glow remained.

“Did we get’em?” she asked as the sprinklers activated from the flames spouted out.

“We sure did,” I confirmed, Wiping the water off my face. “That was fire. Literally.”

“Right? Okay, we so have to name that attack,” she joked, or at least I had hoped so. Though the thought of coming up with stylish names for our moves was kinda cool. “How about, purity bomb?”

I smiled until a surge of dark energy filled the air again. My senses detected that it was coming from one of the floors above.

“Something’s going on upstairs. We have to get back up there.”