It was like taking off one of his shoes and letting the beast slip its foot in. His body came alive as something familiar, and yet so foreign sizzled through his veins.
“He will do you no good here,” Dr. Kore turned to Brooks. “This is the land of the dead, and it is undermycontrol.”
“I cannot save you, but I can make sure you do not forget who you are. You may not remember this moment, but I will not let you slip back into oblivion.”His passenger’s voice was a deep rumble in his mind. Black stained his fingertips as it melted up his hands and forearms.
Why? Why now can you hold the memory? If Lytta speaks the truth, why have you let them reset my memories?
“Because you’ve never let me in enough to hold them. You’ve fought me every step of the way, but this time you have opened up to let us bond. This time, we are one.”
Though fear prickled the hair on the back of his neck, Brooks steeled his shoulders. He may be lost, and he may be broken, but if he had learned one thing since Lytta’s arrival, it was that you had to let go of control in order to trust.
To trust her.
To trust his mind.
To trust the darkness within.
“Do your worst, you fucking psycho,” he spat.
Dr. Kore smirked as an ominous shiver raced through the air. Groans echoed about as a truly terrifying scene unfolded before him.
The bodies, dismembered and bloody as they were, rose from the floor in awkward, jerky moves. Unseeing eyes turned his way and Lytta cursed beside him.
Brooks scanned the faces, every single one of them familiar. Ariadne, Paul, and even the poor bastard who lived with prunes in every available hole.
All of them… massacred.
“Take a look around, Brooks. This was your fault. You and your pretty little rabid dog. You could have stayed here forever in solitude, living out your days in peace. But instead you’ve tested my patience and brought a plague to my doorstep.” A smile of pure venom spread across her face. “Luckily for me, the deader, the better.”
The room shifted as every corpse moved in toward him and Lytta. They weren’t particularly fast, but the issue would be cutting through enough of them to run.
You can’t, afterall, hurt the dead.
Dr. Kore turned and left, and her confidence in their defeat made him see red. The mutilated bodies were closing in, herding them until their backs pressed against a cold, concrete wall.
“We can’t fight them all,” Lytta murmured.
“Maybe we make a run for it?”
“It’s as good of a chance as we’ve got.”
Brooks surveyed the incoming horde of undead and tried to discern the clearest path to the exit. There was no intelligible movement of the corpses and they seemed to stay on the same path they started.
“Brooks, just run!” Lytta burst forward and shoved the bleeding bodies from her path.
It was a mistake. As soon as she touched them, their animation changed from lumbering to mania. They hissed and clawed, tearing at Brooks’ clothes as he tried to follow behind Lytta, kicking and shoving in every direction.
Fire burst through his shoulder and hindered his movements. Brooks turned to see Paul’s mutilated face, his teeth tearing through the fabric and cutting through flesh. More corpses rushed to where he stood, their unforgiving fingers bruising his arms where they ripped and clawed their way to his skin.
Brooks screamed, agony overwhelming his senses.
“Brooks!” Lytta’s scream echoed through his ears, but he was becoming overwhelmed, his knees giving as the force of the onslaught took him to the ground.
The last thing he saw was a path clearing and a head of fiery hair stopping before him.
“We must make mistress happy, Brooks. Then she will let us be together.” A syringe plunged through his neck and he met the dark with open arms.
WhenBrookswoke,itwasn’t the shit-stained ceiling tiles he stared at, but pristine white padding. He tried to move his head, to sit up or use his arms, but everything was too heavy to move.
