I sighed as Price looked down to the old doctor. “You kept him alive.” He stated distantly.

“Not that he doesn’t deserve it… I just don’t have it in me.” I responded curtly. After saying that, Price looked from the old doctor to me, then back. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and I had little care to object. While I had no reason to do anything to the doctor, Price certainly had a fair excuse.

Without a word, I left the room as Price crouched next to the old man.

I heard no words exchanged or cries, just a few solid thuds against the tile floor.

Trying to clear my mind from what was going on behind me, I focused on our current plans. Price had said that the authorities were also against us, meaning that running would be difficult. And for what? When we escape, do we simply let ourselves become consumed by madness? What about these creatures? The things I have seen. Their impact on reality. They could not be just delusions, could they? The implication that they were real, though, opened an entirely new, much more distressing, outlook on things.

I had told Price we would try to escape this place once we stole Dr. Prescott’s journal and received answers, but the growing shadow in the corner of my eye only became more prominent. There was no longer any way for us to get our medicine without aid from the hospital, and without our medicine, the living nightmare would only continue to devour our psyches’.

In any case, that was all something to despair over after we figured out what was happening. Things might have a bleak outlook, but I’d be damned if I was not to figure out why we were put through this torment.

Before I could continue my contemplation, Price slowly opened the door behind me. He looked down the hallway stoically. “You ready to go?” He said.

I nodded and began to walk, putting my contemplations away for another time.

Once further down the hall, I began to take note of the doors I passed. If we wanted the upper hand, we needed to get all the materials we could from the medical bay.

First thing was first, I wanted to find my belongings. And from what I read on the map, there was a storage closet where they kept the belongings of their medical patients. I had to hope that due to my head injuries, they took me to the medical wing first and deposited my things there.

After a sufficient amount of walking and recalling the map I had seen earlier, I came upon the door which I believed held my things.

The closet was simply a variety of wooden boxes stacked upon one another, all labeled by patient. I began to scroll down the long list of surnames, Price quickly understanding what I was doing and following suit.

To my luck, I indeed found a Chatwood. Inside was my clothing, shoes, and a smaller, sealed, metal box. Price also found his belongings, and similarly, he had a metal box in his.

Price looked it over, then threw it to the ground. The poor make of the box led the hinges to break as it slammed against the floor. Inside, Price retrieved the knife he would always keep in his boot.

Following that logic, I assumed that my box had to have my revolver safe locked. I did not care to risk a misfire, though, and instead decided to get on my knees and carefully bash only the hinges against the tile.

Mine as well popped open, and once more I was armed.

I loaded the weapon to the best of my ability and stood upright. Price started sorting through his clothing and spoke. “Might as well dress in our street clothes. Better to blend in when we get out of here.”

“Right…” I replied, unsure as to whether it would matter. In any case, it made no difference for our mission, and I might as well be comfortable.

After donning my attire and concealing my pistol, I took lead once more and made my way to the end of the hall. We had to find something to help Hughes, and I believed that the only option we would have was sedation or numbing. All of our symptoms had increased tenfold after we had been taken into the hospital. With how Hughes relied so heavily on our medication to subdue the itching, I could only imagine the suffering he was in currently. If we wanted him to function at any capacity, we needed to drug him.

I continued down the endless corridors, hoping to find some sort of room or closet that held something potent enough to help the last of us five. My only direction was the map I saw days and days ago, but my memory served well. We passed hall and hall again, taking countless turns and rummaging through numerous cabinets of useless medicines. Every place I had made a mental note of came up dry.

As we searched further, I noticed an anomaly in the medical wing’s architecture. Every room and hall swiveled in a circle, continually leaving an empty space in the middle. The map that I had seen made it appear as though the walls had touched in the rooms surrounding this chasm, but I could tell that there was more space than we would be led to believe in these chambers.

And as I noticed the flawed design, my eye caught something in the distance. It was a footprint. A cold, icy, footprint.

The tile was not wet, simply chilled so deeply that it took on a white frost in the pattern that these feet stepped.

Whatever left the trail was heading closer to the center of the circle and hugging the wall. I cautiously followed as Price walked behind.

He questioned. “Didn’t we already look here?”

I did not answer, and instead, let my hand glide across the wall as I followed the footsteps. Whoever left the prints would have had to been made from ice to leave such a trail, or simply not a man at all.

Following the footsteps might not have been wise, but I was now armed, and I had Price with me. There was no better time to investigate strange goings-on than that particular moment. And as well as that, these footprints did not seem suspicious. They moved in a stride that seemed calm, intent, and went in a direction that I did not think to wander.

Price muttered to himself as I made my way along the inner wall, gradually moving faster as the distance between each step grew longer.

Before I knew it, the tracks simply dodged into the wall. If my suspicions were correct, then I knew what I had to look for.

Along the border were hanging medical instruments, along with a few large standing cabinets. As I suspected, a standing cabinet, about the size of a man, was placed directly where the feet had moved.

I inspected the metal cupboard and noticed that the door was locked. The steel was thin and flimsy, though, and I believed that it could be forcibly opened. My fingers pried at the crease in the door, yet could find no purchase. As my mind began to race for alternative methods of entry, Price stepped in from behind. I had forgotten I was no longer alone.

He pulled the dagger from his boot and stuck it into the opening. After shifting it around for a moment, Price let out a grunt and popped the door open.

My mouth opened to thank Price for his help, yet I did not find the words to speak as I witnessed what was inside. The cabinet led down a flight of cobblestone stairs, just like what I had seen days prior. A gust of icy wind blew out and caused me to wince.

Price muttered out. “What the hell is that?”

“I’m not sure…” I replied, still gathering myself at finding yet another passageway. The entire hospital had to be connected somehow. The only question was if it was some sort of basement or something much larger.

Price looked back at me, eyebrow raised. “I hope that you aren’t thinking of going in there.”

I sighed. Price and I both knew that was a rhetorical question. We needed to understand what was going on, and I had ignored the caverns once. Now that I had support and defenses, there was no more cowering.

Without replying to Price, I continued to step through the cabinet and into the freezing stairwell. He groaned behind me as I assured him. “I only want to see where this leads. It might help us escape when the time comes.”

With that, we descended into the dark, looking for an answer to the never-ending mystery of the hospital.

Each step was steeper than the last, and we traversed much lower than I initially expected. I had decided to turn back if the light of the entryway became too dim to see, but with each step I went down, I knew that I was becoming too committed.

My eyes began to adjust, and soon I had seen that the stairwell was indeed not endless. A dimly lit room of stone was just before me. The temperature only lowered as we grew deeper, and at that depth, it felt nearly intolerable.

Still, my feet moved hesitantly forward.

As I entered the room, a noise became apparent. Struggled breaths wheezed and echoed throughout the chamber, all resonating from the center of the room.

I slowly drew my revolver as I crept closer to the source of the noise. Price, understandably, stood at the entrance.

In the pitch black, my eyes began to make out a dim candle, only barely lit. The hand clutching my revolver struggled to keep hold as it jittered in anxiety.

Yet, what I found was no monster nor supernatural phenomenon, but something very real and just as horrifying.

A man, just like myself, lay nude on an operating table. He breathed shallow breaths as his limbs twitched uncontrollably.

His skin was not his own, but strips of flesh draped over a skeleton and carefully sewn back together. His eyes were open and bloodshot. They sat unnaturally shallow in the sockets as if someone had plucked them out and put them back in. His jaw and chin were unnaturally jutted out for his round face, and stitch marks laced the mandible, leading me to believe a complete replacement was made. His head was shaved clean, and numerous stitches showed that his cranium had been opened and toyed with. His ears were also unbefitting of his stature, meaning they were also replaced. Larger cuts also led into the ear canal itself.

I took a step back, trying to control my now racing heartbeat. This was real. This was a breathing, living, human.

The man’s face slowly began to veer towards my direction in surprising lucidity. The eyes so unnaturally lying in the sockets struggled to meet mine. He was not only alive, but able to acknowledge my presence. His breathing grew sporadic as he spasmed in sobs. The man’s mouth moved as if he were trying to speak, yet nothing but a gurgling cry escaped him. I tried to listen, but no matter how much time I gave him, his words came out indecipherable.

I had to look away, as I could not stand to keep eye contact with a person in such a state.

As my vision wandered elsewhere as I stowed my revolver. I noticed something else on the operating table. Scalpels, clamps, and a vial of medicine.

While it pained me to come to such a heartless conclusion, I decided the man could not be saved. After a long moment of reluctance, I picked up the vial of medicine. The name itself I could not pronounce, but it described itself as a pain killer. If anything could help Hughes, it would be whatever kept this man’s heart from stopping due to the pain.

As for the man himself, I knew that in the most merciful outcome, taking his drug did not matter. My hand drifted over the scalpel as I thought about the cosmic irony of sparing the evil doctor’s life only to be forced to put down a tortured man.

The person continued to gurgle and cry as I gripped the knife and brought it to his throat. I could not tell if he was purposely not resisting, or if his limbs were simply unresponsive due to the severe nerve damage he had accrued. If his cries were him pleading for his life or praying for his suffering to end.

No matter the case, I had decided I would do what had to be done. Slowly, I pushed down on the scalpel. It dug in easily and pulling down felt like gliding a sharp knife across paper.

For the longest while, he did not bleed. Most likely due to a mix of the freezing room and drugs made to keep him from hemorrhaging during whatever horrible operations he underwent.

Despite all that, though, the cut was grave enough to eventually bring red gushing from his pale white skin. After I knew my work was done, I sat down the scalpel and turned back. By the time I had made it across the room, there were no more gurgled words or struggled breaths.

When I returned to Price, he looked at me concernedly. “What happened?”

I did not care to answer, and instead handed the vial to Price. “This will help Hughes… I think…” With that said, I began to promptly walk up the stairs. Price understood that whatever I did was something I did not want to speak of and decided to simply follow silently. Once on our way, I changed the subject to yet another difficult decision I had made. “You bring this medicine to Hughes and gather the others… I’ll be the one to get the journal.”

“Are you sure that’s a bright idea?” Price questioned.

While I was conflicted at deciding such a thing, I knew that our best bet of escaping would be to utilize all the time we had on gathering ourselves. “The passage to Dr. Prescott’s office is small and crowded. It’d be much easier for one person to make it there rather than five, and with what we just did, they will already be looking for us. You get everyone out, and I’ll meet you when I’ve gotten our answers.”

Price grumbled to himself, but in the end, we both knew I was the only one familiar with the layout of the building, and while everyone had a score to settle with Dr. Prescott, if we grouped together inside his little office there would be no getting out. “Fine.” He said, “You better not fail. We’re putting all our eggs in one basket with this.”

I nodded.

I knew I would get answers, or I would die trying,