After we were done talking to all of the people in the hospital, it was almost night. Olbert recommended that we stop for the time being and retire to our rooms. However, even after coming back and sitting down for a while, I wasn’t able to get Sylvia out of my mind. I wondered if she had understood Olbert’s message. It hadn’t been the cleverest way to make sure that she got it, but it should have been fairly obvious.

Right now, maybe she was in the underground floors, checking out the whereabouts of the person who had been taken away by the doctors.

Also, what exactly did she mean when she said that ‘something was up’ with the hospital? People were being illegally experimented on, out in the open. But that, somehow, wasn’t what was wrong with the place? Maybe there was something bigger, something worse to worry about?

I got back out of my bed and went to the room on the ground floor where the stairs were. However, the door to that room was closed for some reason.

I slowly pushed the door open and peeked in to see what was happening. I had expected something that would get me into trouble, but the place was empty. There was absolutely nobody in there.

I opened the door completely and walked in with a weird mix of confidence and dread. It was nice that I wasn’t being chased by the doctors right now, but it was still unsettling to think that all of these people had just gone away somewhere. Regardless, I went right to the stairs, and down to the floors.

Somewhere down here, the man who had been taken away by the doctors was still being held. We hadn’t seen him in any of the rooms upstairs, so this was definitely the place where he was. He might have been dead, but maybe I could still find his body.

I walked through that stench-filled corridor once more, unable to see most of the place, and avoided Olbert’s room. I did not want him to see me and start asking questions. He could also get into trouble if any of us ended up saying something we shouldn’t. I had somehow not been harmed till now, so I wasn’t breaking the story in any way. He might not have the same luxury.

I decided to head to places that I hadn’t seen yet. Something that I had realized pretty quickly after coming down here was that this part of the hospital was more like a maze. It sprawled over a very large area, since they didn’t really have any limitations, and it also didn’t have any particular shape or form to it. Rooms were just wherever they needed to be, and did not conform to an order.

Unfortunately, I soon forgot where I was supposed to be. I had taken lefts and rights purely based on instinct, and forgotten to keep track of which ones I took when. The place was indeed a maze, and I had already gotten lost in it. I continued to walk clueless, then, in any direction that my mind pleased. If I was lost already, then there was no loss in getting a bit more lost. I would make it out somehow, especially when those twenty-three minutes started and I could scream for people to help me out.

I was wondering what the time was, and how long it would take for those minutes to start, when I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.

I stopped walking.

“Yes?” I whispered before slowly turning my head around.

To my right, was a completely dark room. And from the darkness in there, the hand had come out right to my shoulder. I couldn’t see its owner yet, but judging by the sleeves I could see in the little light provided by a nearby candle, it was obvious that it was a doctor.

‘I shouldn’t have come out of my room in the first place’, was the only thought which revolved around my mind.

I took deep breaths and asked the same question once more. Yet, there was no answer. The hand was still on my shoulder. I could hear the person breathing right beside me. If only the light was just a little bit closer, and at a little bit of an angle, I would be able to see the expression that face carried.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Without a word, the hand roughly pulled me inside the room, and I felt something heavy hit the side of my head, taking away my consciousness.

I was tied to a chair when I woke up.

The entire room was dark, except for the light coming in from the roof. Well, it wasn’t exactly the roof, but a hole in it. This room wasn’t under the actual hospital. It was just underground. So, through the broken roof and dug-out dirt, I could see the moon shining brightly.

It made me wonder why it looked exactly the one I was used to. After all, wasn’t this supposed to be a completely different world? Thinking of that, could it be that I had just been teleported to a different planet or something?

A sound alerted me to the presence of someone else. In the shadows which surrounded the corners, I saw the silhouette of a man moving. He was muttering to himself while holding different kind of medical equipment, walking from one place to another and using all sorts of machines that were present everywhere. He bent down in front of one, and opened a small drawer that it had attached to it. Then, he put something in, and pulled something out. Once done, he closed the drawer.

Then, he turned, and saw me.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Aah!” He shouted and jumped before calming himself and continuing on in a controlled voice, “Looks like you’ve woken up.”

“It seems so.” I tried to be snarky, but it definitely wasn’t the right thing to do here. I felt stupid.

“Very full of yourself, aren’t you?” He stayed in place, “Wasn’t the door to the room closed? Why did you still come down? Isn’t the meaning of a closed door obvious to you?”

I did not reply.

He continued, “Or wait, are you one of those people from another world?”

This time, he stepped forward a bit, paying more attention. I wondered where the idea had come to him from.

“Does the concept of doors not exist in your world? That would explain your lack of attention when faced with such an obvious visual clue.” He was thinking out loud, “We are doing important, very sensitive work down here. It is not for common people such as you to see or understand, do you get it?”

I slowly nodded. Better if I got to get out of this situation.

“You’re lying.” He declared, “You don’t intend on following my orders at all. It is so very obvious. You came down here on purpose, and you know exactly what a closed door means.”

How was he still caught up on the thing about the closed door?

“Wait here, please.” He put everything he was carrying down on he ground and left the room.

The door closed with a creaky sound. Perfect.

I started looking around a bit more. The man had been right about me not being able to understand what he was doing, since my head was spinning just looking at all the kinds of machines that were present in the room. Some of them had shapes that I wouldn’t have even thought of, normally. Eventually, I decided that there was no point in trying. There was the chance of me being punished once more, if I started to investigate those machines and tools.

Instead, I tried to see if I could escape. First of all, obviously, I made sure that my hands weren’t loosely tied. It would have been way too easy like that, so thankfully they weren’t. Next, I tried to violently move my chair around, in the hopes of falling down and being able to move better. My feet weren’t tied, after all. Unfortunately, however, the chair was joined to the ground. It did not move at all.

Based simply on the fact that I had no hope of loosening my hands, and there was no way to move the chair, I gave up.

The idea behind it was that there was no way I would actually die so quickly. Surely, God had to have planned something much worse for me. Despite not wanting to see it, the thought was a little calming for now. This doctor probably wouldn’t do anything too bad to me, because there was no way the story unfolded in such a poor way.

I settled in the chair, made myself comfortable, and waited for the man to come back.

He didn’t.

Not anytime soon.

It felt like hours upon hours passed. I kept waiting for him to come back, doing nothing. And then, I got tired and fell asleep. When I woke back up, he still wasn’t there, so I continued to wait once more. And yet, he did not come back.

It must have been late in the night now. There had been no new instructions yet, so at least it wasn’t the next day.

Unable to accept the boredom any longer, I sighed and started to move my hands again, hoping that the rope would come lose eventually. At the same time, I tried to move my legs up and down to see if there was any way for me to move myself in a position where I could untie it myself. But there was no method I could find, especially not one that would be feasible for me.

And then, when I was flailing around and moving my hands wildly, the door opened once more, and the doctor came back in with a suitcase.

“Are you trying to escape?” He asked.

I put myself back to how I was supposed to be, and stayed silent.

“Quite pathetic that you weren’t able to do that till now. The knot is so weak, and you still can’t go through it.” He came forward with a syringe in his hand.

“I am sorry.” I whispered.

He clicked his tongue and came right next to me.

I kept my eyes on him, intending to see what he looked like. Him being in the shadows for so long had piqued my interest. But when he finally appeared, I felt sick.

Both of his eyes were missing. But this wasn’t like how mine had been when I had first met God. No, his eyes had been removed directly from his face, with no tricks. And yet, when he had turned, he had been surprised to ‘see’ me.

The needle of the syringe hit my arm and I gave a short shriek. The pain from a needle like that could never not be felt. He shushed me and pulled out a large amount of blood. Then, he pulled the needle out and walked away. Blood started to flow from the place where he had pierced through. I sighed with helplessness as it made its way down my tied arms.

He went to his suitcase and brought it towards me. Once right in front, he sat down and started doing something with the syringe. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I calmed my curiosity.

“Have you ever killed someone?” He asked, looking up all of a sudden.

“What? No.” I answered.

“Hmm, shame. I would have asked you to kill me.” He said with a smile, “But I guess it wouldn’t be right to put that on you, huh?”

“You want to die?”

“It has been twenty minutes since the unmonitored time began.” He said, “And even then, I am trying to follow my orders and finish my work. Weird, huh?”

The unmonitored time…began twenty minutes ago? I had started to form a theory about how he was probably able to see due to the stage directions, but that wasn’t possible at a time like this. If I had understood properly, those directions did not even exist right now.

“One more minute.” He said as he closed his suitcase, “Your blood is unsuitable. I’ve wasted all my time.”

He smiled and stood up. Then, he threw the suitcase away and went behind me.

I felt his hands touch the rope, and he untied me.

I immediately threw the loose rope away and stood up. Once there, I turned and looked at him, taking a few steps back. He was still smiling.

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t bring myself not to.” He said, “I must ask – can you please kill me?”

“No.” I confidently responded. There was no way I was taking a life. I was already way too disconnected from these people and their sadness. If I killed someone, then where would that take me?

He laughed and asked me to leave.

“After all I’ve done, I would have liked to have some justice done to me.”

He sat down and started looking up through the roof, “But I guess I am not even good enough for that, huh? Relying on someone like him is truly pathetic.”

What had happened to this guy? First, he was more than happy to disrespect and annoy me, and now, he was crying about how many bad things he had done.

“The blood, you see.” He said, “It’s to awaken a demon. One that all the doctors of the hospital want. But the demon needs the blood of innocent patients, so we can’t give ourselves. That’s why we’re harvesting it from all of you.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

He sighed, “Time’s up. You should look in the baseme-”

His head dislodged from his body, as if a sharp sword had cut it. It fell to the ground and stayed there. His body did not move, still in a position that felt like he was looking up at the sky.

Without a word, I opened the door, and went outside.

Even now, I found myself feeling nothing at all.