Hospital (4)
William woke without warning. No one had deliberately roused him. The reason was the vibration he felt through whatever was covering his body.
Where am I?
When he opened his eyes, warm liquid stung them. He blinked a few times, and his vision slowly adjusted. He was submerged in a healing solution inside a recovery capsule, an oxygen mask fitted over his face.
So I didn't die.
When he had resolved to take his own life, he had already resigned himself to death. He had wrecked the ceremony meant to welcome the Prime Capital delegation on behalf of the Noble Capital.
Layla Chamberlain, the master of this city, was a reasonable woman — but reasonable did not mean merciful. Under normal circumstances, William would not be waking in a recovery capsule right now. His brain would have been extracted while he was still alive.
That he lay whole in a hospital at all was thanks to Denver's protection. Which meant his plan had succeeded — halfway.
As expected of His Excellency. He understood my inten—
THUD.
The therapeutic fluid around him lurched violently. Something had shaken not just the liquid, but the entire healing capsule he floated in.
What the hell?
It couldn't be an earthquake. There was no such thing as seismic activity aboard an artificial structure suspended in weightless space.
THUD.
This was a tremor originating inside the hospital. Something massive was shaking the building to its foundations.
Don't tell me—
THUD.
William felt the blood drain from his body. There was only one thing it could mean: something large enough to rattle the hospital in the dead of night was prowling its halls.
'It' has come for me.
THUD.
The vibrations grew stronger. The thing was getting closer. Just then, the ICU door burst open and a figure in silver armor rushed inside. The helmet hid whatever expression he wore, but the frantic way his gaze swept the room told William everything he needed to know.
The knight spotted William, eyes open within the healing capsule, and hurried over. When he operated the terminal, the treatment fluid drained away through vents in the capsule's interior.
"Are you conscious?"
William nodded as he climbed out of the capsule, and the knight handed a patient gown to his naked body.
"I don't know what's happened in this hospital, but an unidentified creature is attacking us."
William said nothing. He knew exactly who the monster had come looking for — and he could not say it. The parasite still lived inside his head. Whenever he committed or even contemplated any act of disrespect toward 'it,' the parasite punished him with pain, and the graver the transgression, the more the agony multiplied.
If he told the knight about the parasite now, what would follow would make every punishment so far look like a child's prank. Passing out from the pain in the middle of this crisis would only make things worse.
Bitter as it was, silence was the only move he had left.
"…What happened to the people in the hospital?"
"My comrades were all slaughtered by the thing. As for everyone else in this building…"
The knight's voice trailed off. He didn't need to finish. William understood perfectly well.
"The central AI should have detected the emergency and called the police. I've already requested reinforcements myself. We only need to hold out until they arrive."
"…Understood."
A strange sense of déjà vu washed over William. He had lived through something like this before. The battle at the apartment complex — back then, too, he and the android had judged the fight to be well within their power to win.
And the result? Every comrade dead, and a single puppeted police detective left behind.
THUD.
A tremendous sound rang out from beyond the door. The thing had reached them.
The silver knight stepped in front of William and drew his weapons: a plasma bolter in one hand, a blade claw locked over the other.
A soldier by training, William knew exactly what a blade claw was. It was an upgraded derivative of the sonic blade — a heavy gauntlet fitted with twin ultrasonic vibration saws across the back of the hand. Far heavier than a sonic blade, but with superior durability and cutting power, it was the weapon of choice for armored soldiers and Hulk Mutants.
Against any other creature, he would not have worried. The problem was that the knight's opponent was 'it.'
Engaging that thing in close combat is suicide.
Having fought the monster before, William was certain the knight had no chance of winning.
If anything, getting outside would be better — out there, the thing can't rampage freely. It cares about being seen.
He had lived as the monster's slave long enough to know exactly what it feared. The cunning beast understood it could never win an all-out war against the city, so it operated in secret — feeding on the prey William provided and killing only those rare few who attacked or tailed it. Its horrific hunts took place exclusively in the empty hours before dawn.
That was why William was about to urge the knight to jump out the window with him. Civilians would surely be hurt — but that was a better outcome than his own death. If William died, the intelligence only he possessed would die with him.
But there was one thing he did not know: what state the monster was currently in.
With a deafening roar, the steel door was flung outward like paper in a gale. Half the wall came down with it, and a cloud of dust billowed up from the wreckage.
"Here it comes!"
Squinting against the dust, William made out a figure standing atop the rubble, clad in armor identical to the silver knight's.
What—?
No. To be precise, the figure only appeared to be standing. It hung in the air, dangling, as though held aloft by something.
"Charlie!"
"Ru-run, it's— AAGHAAAGH!"
The man called Charlie tried to say something more, but the words never came. His body twisted grotesquely, and a sickening ripping sound split the armor apart. Charlie's screams ended as his body tore into three pieces, red blood, viscera, and shards of bone raining down in a wet, tangled heap.
My God…
Some of the blood from the corpse ran down through empty air, along something invisible, before spattering across the floor. Only then did William understand why the knight hadn't simply fled outside.
Whatever trick it had used, the monster was cloaked — invisible. And not by any crude measure; this was a level of concealment only the highest-grade technology could achieve.
Even William, with his sharp eye, had only barely registered the thing thanks to that trickle of blood. Ordinary civilians stumbling outside would never see it coming at all.
"Damn it! GET DOWN!"
The knight seized William's head and shoved. Thanks to that, William ducked just in time — a hair's breadth ahead of something slicing through the air where his skull had been.
Whatever it had swung, the weapon was enormous. The healing capsules of the ICU had been sheared clean through, along with an entire stretch of wall.
The people inside those other capsules were cut to ribbons by the same strike. Blood mingled with therapeutic fluid until the floor was awash in pale pink.
"Goddammit! I'll hold it off — you survive however you can until backup arrives! His Excellency must be told!"
"I— I—!"
"That's an order!"
Without waiting for William's answer, the knight hurled himself at the invisible monster.
Not bad.
My tail had whipped toward William's head to finish him, but the knight interfered. Their sensing equipment, built into the reinforced armor, was evidently good enough to track my every movement with precision.
"Run — anywhere, just GO!"
"Ghh! Damn you!"
At the knight's shout, William bolted through the gap in the ruined wall. I had no intention whatsoever of letting him escape. I swung my tail at his legs.
"Oh no you don't!"
My attempt to carve William's limbs from his body was thwarted by a plasma bolt from the knight's bolter. He had timed his shot to my swing, and the round knocked my tail's trajectory wide.
The venomous barb at the tip buried itself in the corridor wall instead of William's flank. He flinched violently, clutched his head in both hands, and fled.
"GRAAAAAH!"
With the tail failing, I moved to finish it with my spine blades — and was interrupted yet again. The knight bellowed a war cry and slammed his shoulder into me at full force.
Several hundred kilograms of reinforced armor, driven by a power plant rivaling the reactor of a small spacecraft — the momentum those two things generated together was genuinely terrifying. Enough to topple my own body, which outweighed his suit by more than double.
The knight's charge sent me not merely through a corridor wall but clean across the ICU and into the patient rooms on the far side. When the room's wall collapsed, the patients inside and the doctors on night duty scrambled out in a panic.
"Kyaa, KYAAAAH!"
"Somebody help me!"
I intended to leave as few survivors as possible. Even if no one could see me, I couldn't afford to take chances. From the tip of my lower left arm, a spine blade launched and punched through the backs of everyone who turned to flee.
"Khhk!"
"Gah!"
Unfortunately, a single spine strike could kill at most three at once. One survivor tore away at a speed that made me wonder whether patients were supposed to be able to run like that.
Where did William go?
In the brief moments I'd spent on the survivors, William had already put distance between us. His back vanished beyond the emergency stairwell. Having confirmed it, I turned my head back to face the knight.
The knight showed no intention of protecting the patients either — he took no action at all on their behalf. Worse, he kicked a corpse sprawled across the floor out of his way like a mere obstacle.
"Slaughtering the innocent, you vile monster!"
The knight's conduct matched his words not at all — though there was nothing surprising in that. The Edgerton knightly order carried the name of knights, but in truth it was a special force drawn from MegaCorp's upper crust.
The "honor" they spoke of existed to build a positive public image, and bore no relation to reality whatsoever. Knowing the patients in this hospital ranked among the low castes, of course he treated them like trash.
Not that all of them are food anyway.
Watching the knight — clearly raised without a shred of table manners — I calculated my remaining time.
About eight minutes until the effect wears off.
I'd planned to kill William first, but so much time had slipped away, and the knight kept being a nuisance. Sensing my gaze, the knight activated the blade claw mounted on his arm.
A blade claw, then.
Under ordinary circumstances, the plasma bolter would be the far superior weapon, but in a cramped, restricted fight like this one, the blade claw was no poor choice. Like the sonic blade, it was purpose-built for destroying the armored plating of heavily defended foes.
To wound my carapace, an enemy had exactly two options: a weapon with plasma-launcher-grade firepower, or something with exceptional cutting power — like that blade claw.
"Die!"
The knight charged at me, laying down suppressive fire with his bolter. A plasma bolt streaked toward the tentacles beneath my jaw.
Whether he'd aimed deliberately or not, my auxiliary organs were the one part of me left unreinforced. I crossed my upper combat arms and blocked the bolt.
While I did, the knight closed the distance and swung his blade claw upward in a vicious arc. He wasn't going for my head — he was targeting my combat arms. The twin sawblades shrieked through the air with an ugly scream.
I backpedaled a single step to open the range and met the oncoming blades with my crossed arms, using them as a shield. Ultra-vibrating steel ground against carapace harder than alloy, spraying sparks.
Showing no trace of alarm, he calmly leveled his bolter at me at point-blank range. His composure was admirable — but his plan was never going to work. I still had plenty of weapons left.
My tail lanced through the darkness and the dust, striking for his waist.
"Ghhk?!"
Instead of firing, the knight twisted his torso and barely twisted clear. Before he could retreat, my combat arm snapped out and seized the hand gripping the bolter.
"You dare—!"
Thinking I meant to wrestle him, he poured strength into the arm holding the bolter. The reinforced armor boosted his musculature until his strength rivaled my own.
More than a combined ton of mass stood locked in place, pressing down on the hospital floor. The concrete cracked and split beneath our struggle as he grabbed my other arm — clearly intending to shove me off.
But he had made one miscalculation. I was never trying to win a contest of strength.
My dorsal arms lashed down onto both of his shoulders.
"GUWAAAH!"
The bone blades on my back arms punched straight through the knight's body. Each blade was at least fifty centimeters long — and they had driven in until nothing showed, which meant his insides had been pulped beyond recognition.
I twisted my dorsal arms a few times to aggravate the wounds before ripping them free. The man no longer had the strength to stand; he crumpled to the floor.
"H-His Excellency will never forgive y—"
I had no time to hear his last words through. I kicked the head off his kneeling body.
Even a reinforced suit armored head to toe in plating couldn't cover the neck or the joints in alloy. There was a pop like a burst rubber ball, and the knight toppled backward.
The corpse on the floor now had a neck more than twice as long as it had been in life.
I should eat everything here before I go.
To squeeze the full value from the Paragon of the Hunt, I had to devour every genetic essence on offer, without leaving a scrap behind.
Not that William can escape as long as the parasite is in his head.
That parasite was telling me as much: William had not left the hospital.
While keeping track of his movements, I busily stuffed the corpses into my mouth. Some tasted good, some didn't, but with time running short, there was no savoring the meal. Each time I finished one, text boxes kept popping up, which I ignored — no time now; I'd review them later.
I don't need a new trait at the moment anyway.
Ten minutes — that was how long I had before an unclaimed trait offer auto-cancelled. There was still room to spare before the selection window.
Fortunately, the civilian corpses wore nothing but patient gowns, so they went down smooth and easy. The meal finished sooner than I'd expected.
Only took two minutes?
The Metal Absorption window had, at most, ten minutes left on it. More than enough time to eat William and get back.
Then let's go.
The signal was drifting down from the floors above. Dragging my massive bulk behind me, I set off in search of the traitor.
"Hah… hah… hah…"
Gulping for breath, William threw himself against a cabinet so hard the cleaning supplies inside came tumbling out. He snatched up one of the high-pressure washers the androids used. Against that monster, it was an absurdly pitiful weapon — but he had no other choice.
Truthfully, he wasn't even sure he could swing it at the thing at all. The parasite was still alive and well inside his head.
"Damn it all…"
William laughed at himself, bitter and hollow.
All his life, he had served MegaCorp faithfully. Which meant he had always been less a man who did bad things than a man who caught the ones who did them. Of course, MegaCorp was a rotten order that ground countless people into misery — an institution with no claim whatsoever to justice.
Whether a man loyal to such an organization could truly be called righteous, he couldn't say. But at the very least, William had believed his own creed was worth defending.
Yet even that conviction was helpless before a disaster no single individual could bear. He had been a brave soldier who did not fear death — but that monster was something else entirely. An inconceivable terror had seized him by the throat and awakened something primal slumbering in his heart.
The emotion called fear.
William steadied his trembling thighs. Moments ago, he'd heard the androids clattering around outside making a commotion. Now there was only silence.
Holding his breath, he pressed his ear to the door. From the corridor came the sound of a patient mumbling. Muffled by the door, the voice broke up in fragments, like the static-cracked garble of a broken radio.
There were survivors, then — which meant the monster must have moved on to another floor. The evidence was plain: its heavy footfalls were nowhere to be heard.
This is my chance.
William eased the door open. What greeted him as he slipped out of the utility room was a corridor in ruins. The ceiling lights had been shattered wholesale, a few still sputtering with the occasional spark. The patient beds that had lined the hall had taken some tremendous impact; every one of them was bent double or broken outright. The hospital's clean, sterile image was nowhere to be found, and the only soul standing in that ruined corridor was him.
The voice came again. Only then did William realize whose voice he had been hearing. He had assumed the door was muffling the sound — but that wasn't it at all.
The voice had always sounded that way. A grotesque rasp layered with static, as if broadcast through a broken radio.
'It' had been waiting for him to step out, right there at the door.
William squeezed his eyes shut.
The instant his eyelids closed, something invisible cut his body clean in two.