“That's efficiency,” he replies with a grunt. “Turn it on, Tal.”
Talon nods once and shuts the furnace door. Then he glances at me, sends me a wink, and aims for the exit. Before I can even process what he's doing, he's already out of the room. Out of curiosity, I follow him. With a quick thought, I sift through the old hospital walls and catch up to him in a back hallway.
I watch as he pulls open a metal door, revealing a short flight of concrete stairs leading down into the basement. He glances over his shoulder at me.
“What is it, Little Grim?” he teases. “Are you that curious to know all our secrets?”
I lift my eyebrows but decide it's my cue to let him go alone. His footsteps echo down the stairs. A moment later, a deep, mechanical groan rumbles through the building.
He comes back up, smirking.
“The generator,” he tells me smugly.
It coughs once—twice—before roaring to life. The low vibration shakes dust loose from the ceiling. The overhead lights flicker, struggling against the surge, before buzzing to life in a sickly yellow glow. The hum of electricity pulses through the morgue, and with it, the furnace seems to wake up.
We come back there, and Talon presses the red ignition button.
A heavy clunk echoes through the chamber as the furnace kicks on, followed by the sharp hiss of the gas line engaging. Asecond later, a deep, pulsing flame ignites within, swallowing the darkness inside the metal chamber.
The heat... it's something.
“Like you said,” I murmur sarcastically. “A real cozy place.”
“It's an old hospital facility,” Nathaniel says, unpacking yet another piece of the body. This time, I don’t even wonder what he’s going to do with it. I just look away. Apparently, even the dead have limits to how much grime they can stand. “It's been abandoned for decades. Used to be a research hospital—one of those state-of-the-art facilities that specialized in high-risk surgeries and experimental treatments. It was built way out here for privacy, mostly. No prying eyes, no city regulations breathing down their necks. Just doctors, patients, and whatever questionable practices they could get away with.”
Holy shit.
I glance around at the sterile surfaces and the gleaming steel.
Something tells me that this room has seen more body parts than a butcher’s shop on discount day.
“And what happened? Why shut it down?”
Nathaniel shrugs, casually folding a piece of cloth over the remains he’s keeping.
“Funding disappeared,” he says. “Or maybe someone found out about something they weren’t supposed to. Either way, it was condemned and left to rot.”
“Until you guys came along,” I mutter.
He doesn’t deny it.
“We make use of what’s already here,” Talon chimes in. “No one comes looking. No one asks questions. That’s the kind of place this is—forgotten. Just the way we like it.”
Hm. I don't argue. It’s morbid. Disgusting, even. But I can’t say it’s not perfect for their… unique brand of extracurricular activities.
“So what? You live here?” I ask. “In a corpse-ridden tomb?”
“Don't be so dramatic, Little Grim.” Talon chuckles. “It's not corpse-ridden. Whatever was left after the experiments, we burned. But yeah, we live here now. And it seems like you're going to live here with us.”
What a ridiculous idea. I want to scoff, laugh in his face, but… I don’t. Instead, I just stand there, watching the furnace devour what’s left of a man who, just hours ago, was fully functional.
Except for the… breathing, not-moving…thing.
“Someone's bound to find you here,” I say instead. “That generator back there makes a lot of noise. The furnace produces fumes.”
Nathaniel looks up from his work, a smirk twitching at the corner of his lips.
“The generator's housed underground,” he replies. “The noise is muffled. And the exhaust? Vents out through an old system the hospital left behind—leads straight to a collapsed section of the woods. No one’s going to see or smell a thing.”
