Built in 1935, the Old Changi Hospital was shut down in 1997 and ever since then, it has had a reputation for being a cross-junction for wandering ghosts. The fae, at least the ones that live alongside humans, avoid this place like the plague, but human youths had no issues trespassing its premises to conduct vandalism, ghost-hunting and, on rare occasions, trying to summon someone from the Lesser Key which usually ends either in disappointment or in a possession. One would have expected the building to be torn down, but it gained so much notoriety that steps were taken to preserve it instead.

An hour ago, two security guards had discovered a group of teenagers snooping around in the 130-year-old abandoned hospital and had ordered them out, but then discovered that the whole group of them appear to be stuck in stasis right before something attacked the guards. Both men managed to make it out of the building despite their wounds and the police were called in, but when two officers who entered the building were heard screaming along with gunfire from their service pistols, the inspector on the scene made the decision to call in the Special Hazard Exorcism Unit.

The time was now five minutes before midnight. A number of police vehicles formed a perimeter outside the gates of the hospital, lights flashing as a pair of black armoured sedans with green lights on the roof pulled up alongside them. From the first sedan emerged a man of Afro-Asian descent in his late forties, dressed in a two-piece suit with a lanyard holding a police pass hanging from his neck and a pack of cigarettes in his hands as the inspector in charge of the scene approached.

“AC Bradley? Thank goodness you’re here, sir. I think I’ve already lost two of my men to whatever is inside that building,” he explained, clearly looking lost for words.

The man in question was AC John Bradley-Wong, the man in charge of the Special Hazard Exorcism Unit, who calmly nodded and looked over the inspector’s shoulders at the building, sighing as he pulled three cigarettes out from the pack and lit them all without putting a single one in his mouth, then staring at the smoke that was emitting from them.

“Sir, you know we can’t smoke while on duty, right?” the inspector said as he stared at the man with confusion.

“It’s not for me, I don’t smoke. These aren’t the kind of cigarettes you buy at a convenience store… I see, this is troubling. All the ghosts haunting this building are outside, not daring to go in. There’s something inside, not a ghost…. Something much darker, it seems.”

Dropping the cigarettes and stubbing them out, Bradley signalled for his men to exit the cars, and the inspector watched as six officers wearing tactical vests over their uniforms appeared carrying bags of salt and other strange objects such as oil lamps, crucifixes and Chinese talismans.

“Inspector, have some of your officers accompany my men as they set up the barrier around the whole hospital. In the meantime, you may give the details of the situation to my agent who will be going in,” Bradley said to the inspector as he tapped the roof of his sedan.

The inspector, along with a number of police officers near him, were stunned at the sight of the young Chinese woman emerging from the sedan. Unlike everyone else who were either in uniform or dressed in a professional manner, this young woman wore a green biker jacket over a black cropped tank top and a pair of modified jeans, complete with leather gloves and boots. But the most striking details of this young woman were her dishevelled, blood red hair, her crimson eyes which seemed to glow in the dark, and the black wings growing out the area between her temporal and mastoid bone, just behind her ears, which upon closer inspection turned out to be horns.

"Is that a cambion?"

"Why's she dressed like that?"

“How’s the ribs, Xiaoye?” Bradley asked, ignoring the whispers of the other officers standing around.

“Fine, a wee bit of pain when I cough, though. This better not be another babi ngepet I have to deal with. Those piggies are fast…”

“That’s your agent? What is with her attire? It’s atrocious, showing her navel around-”

“How she dresses is up to her discretion, Inspector. This is one of the veteran officers of the Special Hazard Exorcism Unit, Sergeant Di Xiaoye,” Bradley cuts the inspector off.

“I have heard of her. An ex-murderer who somehow got invited to join the very police force that arrested her.”

Bradley, who stood at a good height of six-foot-eight, walked up close to the inspector and bent over slightly, looking straight into the latter’s eyes with a nonchalant expression.

“Inspector, since you know who and what Di Xiaoye is, don’t you think you should be a bit more careful about your choice of words in front of her? All you need to know is that she’s here to clean up the place and save your officers if possible.”

Bradley never raised his voice nor show any anger at the inspector’s disrespect of Xiaoye, but the meaning behind his words were clearly stated. The inspector gulped, looked over Bradley’s shoulders to see Xiaoye giving him a goofy grin which showed her fangs, then back at Bradley before nodding and backing off.

“Now, my dear inspector, details, if you would.”

“Yes, of course, sir. The two guards at the ambulance there, they found about four teenagers having trespassed into the hospital and tried to get them to leave, only to find them in some sort of, well, they were not moving at all, as though trapped in time, stasis. ”

“Stasis, huh? That means they’re currently in a vortex. A ghost must have trapped them,” Xiaoye replied.

“I don’t know. All I know is that they tried to help the teens when something attacked them. They escaped by breaking out through the window over there and their colleagues called us. Two of my officers went in to see if they can find the teens, but then we heard them screaming and some gunfire, then silence. That was when I made the decision to call your unit in.”

“Thank you, inspector. That’s all I need.”

“You know what’s the foe we are dealing with already?” Bradley asked Xiaoye as the inspector returned to his men.

“No, but I have a feeling that the ghost that trapped those teens the inspector spoke of may have done it to protect them. Either way, I’m going in to get the two cops first.”

“Good luck, and stay safe.”

Stepping through the gates of the hospital, Xiaoye motioned for her colleagues to start forming the salt barrier before walking towards the building, pausing as she neared it as she sensed the presence of a ghostly woman with long black hair dressed in a white baju kurung standing among some trees. Turning to her direction, Xiaoye immediately recognized what she was: A pontianak, and she was not alone. Around her were a number of other ghosts and feral fae such as pixies and orang bunian.

“Selamat petang, cik puan, is everything fine with you all?” Xiaoye called out to her.

The pontianak, seeing that Xiaoye was no threat, floated towards her.

“Tidak baik. Kami dihalau keluar. Disana ada anak, hidup, terperangkap di dalam.”

The pontianak then pointed to the upper levels of Old Changi Hospital.

“Tingkat atas di suatu tempat, ada sesuatu yang jahat di sana, dan ia adalah berbahaya.”

“Terimakasih. Anda tinggal di sini. I'll deal with the problem so you all can go back to haunting it.”

"Anda berhati-hati sekarang."

Leaving the pontianak and her cohorts to wait by the trees, Xiaoye carefully entered the ancient building, drawing one of her two pistols as her eyes adjusted themselves to allow her to see in the dark. The place was a mess, with a pentagram drawn on the far side of the entrance lobby and a combination of paint and mold peeling off the walls and ceilings to form eerie shadows. Unfazed, Xiaoye began her search, all the while keeping an eye and an ear out for trouble.

Having been informed by the pontianak that the source of trouble was coming from the second floor, Xiaoye cautiously made her way to the stairs to the second floor where she was greeted by the sight of three bullet holes in the wall. Making sure her earpiece was one, Xiaoye was about to radio back to Bradley when she heard a strange, buzzing sound coming from the floor above her. Immediately, the cambion retreated into one of the abandoned wards near her, carefully closing the door shut just as the source of the buzzing sound appeared: A grasshopper-like creature with the sting of a wasp and the mandibles of a spider, almost as big as a human. Xiaoye waited until the creature had moved on before radioing Bradley to update him on the situation.

“Bradley, get the blokes to reinforce the barrier and be careful of the windows, we’re dealing with a pelesit.”

“A pelesit? I thought those things have to have an owner or something.”

“Aye, but this one’s gone feral. Its owner must have failed to find someone to pass it on to. Didn't perform the proper steps to get rid of it either.”

“Do you think you can take it on?”

“Sure, but first I need to locate the missing cops and the teens. Damn thing’s patrolling the second and third floors, so I need to be fleet-footed.”

“All right, update me once you find the missing cops. Bradley out.”

Once she was certain that the coast was clear, Xiaoye used her one of her fangs to make a small cut on her left thumb and wiped the blood across her eyes before her wound healed as she murmured a single sentence:

"ꓘɔɒlꓭ ƧɈɿA: ИoiƨiV – TʜϱiƨwobɒʜƧ"

Immediately, Xiaoye could see the layout of the entire building in her mind being drawn out in blue, smoky lines. On the second floor, just at the other end of the corridor near her, were two individuals, while on the third floor were four more individuals, each marked by a green glow. The ones on the third floor were accompanied by two white glows, and the pelesit she just saw had returned to the third floor, represented by a red glow.

Noting that the two glows on the second floor were dim, Xiaoye ended the spell and headed to where they were located. As she had suspected, the two glows were the two officers, however…

“Shit.”

Xiaoye cursed when she saw what had happened. She was too late for one of the officers, a senior staff sergeant, whose face and chest had been reduced to a mangled mess of flesh and bone. The other one, a young Malay, had somehow managed to survive three severe stab wounds, two of which were made at his stomach. The pain and blood loss had robbed him off all energy even though he was breathing heavily, and he flinched when he saw Xiaoye’s glowing eyes.

“Hey, hey, it’s fine. I’m Sergeant Di, from the Special Hazard Exorcism Unit. Damn, you’re still in NS?”

The officer weakly nodded, and Xiaoye gently held one of his hands in hers.

“Tough bloke, you are. You just hang on as long as you can, all right? I’m going to get you out of here.”

The wounded officer nodded and Xiaoye carefully picked him up, one arm around her shoulders, and began making her way back to the stairs

“Bradley, I found one of the cops. Alive, but badly wounded and in urgent need of medical aid. I’m taking him to the entrance, get someone to collect him,” Xiaoye radioed to Bradley as she carefully helped the wounded officer down the stairs one step at a time.

“Good, paramedics are ready to receive him. What about the other cop?”

“Gone.”

“Damn it… All right, understood. Get the survivor out and resume the hunt.”

Just then, the wounded officer began to panic, gripping Xiaoye’s collar and pulling it as he stared at something behind them. At this moment, Xiaoye could hear it. The buzzing sound of insect wings, clicking of mandibles, acidic saliva hissing as it dripped onto the floor.

Using her own body to shield the wounded officer, Xiaoye held him tight against herself before plunging down what was left of the stairs, her drawn pistol firing wildly at the pelesit trying to ambush them both. Two of the bullets struck it, causing it to shriek in pain before it flew off while Xiaoye hits the floor hard. Gritting her teeth as she fought through the pain shooting up her spine and her freshly-recovered rib, Xiaoye checked to make sure that the wounded officer did not accumulate another injury before half-dragging him back to the entrance, all the while making sure that the creature was not following them.

What was worrying Xiaoye, however, was the pelesit’s ferocity and cunning. She has encountered wild pelesits before, when she was still trying to learn about the local creatures on Singapore, but most of them would blindly attack whatever living thing was in front of them. This pelesit, however, actually attempted an ambush, not to mention it was at least thirty to forty times larger than it should be. It knew she was in the building and waited until she was at her most vulnerable before attacking.

It was sheer luck that the wounded officer had spotted the pelesit before it could strike, which allowed Xiaoye to quickly launch a counterattack, but soon she was going to be on her own against a creature that was showing a level of intelligence beyond its normal capability.

Xiaoye suddenly missed the babi ngepet that fractured her rib on Pulau Ubin. It was a lot easier to deal with than what she was facing now.