I am stood in front of lab 7-C, The door to the lab stating
"7-C Magi-Medical studies"
Next to the door was a card reader, and as I went to to swipe my card...
BEEP
The sound echoed down the hallway further and further, I felt the silence creeping quicker. Something about this place made me feel constantly watched, and the darkness around me seemed to be even more endless now. The red emergency lights weren't as bright as I thought they would be here. Definitely not as bright as the last time I was here. Hopefully it's just a product of the power running out.
As I opened the door I see that the lab inside is pristine. Un-touched medical equipment and lab apparatus line the walls. A large island in the middle with notebooks and terminals with graphs and documents still up. The wall has a two figures. One displaying the human nervous system, and the other with a blue circuit I haven't seen before. I noticed that even though the hallway outside was colder, inside this specific room is decently warm. There's also a considerable hum coming from different equipment around the room.
>"This lab is powered by supplemental power. One of the 3 places that have auxiliary power. I have the other two now as the last was meant for project DEMIURGE."
>"There is a refrigerator underneath the testing case on your left. Open it."
I looked down and sure enough, there it is. A small black fridge labelled:
"BIOLOGICAL SAMPLES - TITAN DERIVATIVE"
As I opened the fridge, the door swung out with a large cloud of fog spilling out, a constant stream of mist covering the floor and sinking into it like water to a sponge. Six vials of dark, thick golden syrup sit on the middle shelf of the fridge. A neat organizer holding them perfectly in two rows of 3. I took the vials out of the fridge and proceed to close it. These vials, I understand why the fridge was so cold, are still warm and heating up by the second.
>"Titan blood. Harvested from the planetary core breach. Increases magical capacity exponentially. Also highly unstable. Please handle these with care."
I decided to take them back upstairs to synthesize the materials. I can only need 2ml, and I can fit 3 into my pocket. I took the three, just in case. I don't want to have to come back down here for anything. I turned to leave the lab, when AXIOM suddenly cuts into my head:
>"Mr. Kang. Movement detected. The Witness is approaching your position. Faster than projected. It knows something's here."
I heard it now. Faint, but quicker, approaching quickly. The pattern has changed too. It's no longer lethargic and persistent. The steps seem light now, and I can't hear the drag for a couple steps:
Step-skip-step-drag.
Short, like it's skipping along to new prey. The second step stopping halfway through. The steps phasing in and out of reality as it finds the timeline where it gets here the fastest. I get it now, the feeling that I was being watched. Somehow, someway this thing knows where I am. It has to.
>"Mr. Kang!"
I shook from my paralysis as she jolted me awake.
"How long do I have?"
>"Uncertain, The Witness is showing unusual hunting patterns."
"Options?"
>"You have three:
Hide here. 34% chance of survival.
Run down the hall. 28% chance of survival.
Alternate route through maintenance shaft. 67% chance of survival."
"Where's the shaft?"
>"Behind you. Air vent. You have 15 seconds before The Witness is in visual range."
Looking behind me and upwards I see a large air vent in the wall above the long desk on the wall. The desk holds some terminals and large hooded vents.
I scrambled onto the desk, gripped the vent slats, and yanked hard. The cover came free. I shoved my backpack through first, then pulled myself up feet-first.
The space was barely wide enough. I had to twist sideways, push off the ceiling with one hand, and drag myself in backwards. The vent cover clattered. I caught it just before it hit the floor and pulled it into place behind me.
Cramped. Dark. Barely room to breathe.
I flipped onto my stomach and looked through the slats, and then I see it. All of it.
2.5 meters tall, hunched over as the top third of its body was parallel with the ground. Emaciated, with a skeletal frame. Half of its flesh was falling off. The face was switching, churning, turning with each breathing second. The same red crystalline structure was jutting through the shoulders and growing out of the spine as a porcupine would. Red blood with rivers of gold streaming from its eyes, ears, and the numerous open wounds constantly streaming down. New wounds opening up constantly with others disappearing instantly like they were never there. The head and limbs are vanishing and coming back, sometimes only as bones.
It's never in one spot. Even when standing completely still it somehow jittered left and right, as if reality didn't know where exactly it should be. Every movement bleeds into the next and the past, like an after-image constantly following the drift of time to catch up.
The Witness looked around, as if searching for the source of commotion.
THUD-crack-squelch
The immense pressure that came down upon my very soul as I watched this thing moved. The movements that the witness displayed are horrific. Each step with its left foot seemed to shatter the entire bottom half of it, only leaving a bag of bone pieces, blood, and crystals starting to pierce the leg.
Then I saw the drag:
draaaaaaag-scrape-drip-drip-THUD
The right leg was forced to come underneath it scraping on the ground behind it. The crystals poking though cutting the floor underneath. As it lifted up its leg, it was mostly healed, with that same viscous shimmering red blood, once leaking in liters, now only leaking in a small stream. Finally, it slammed the right leg down into the ground, once again shattering that leg.
The Witness looked around frantically, jerking between angles. It looked in every single corner.
I held my breath. If this thing could hear, I didn't want to do anything to get caught at this point. AXIOM now at a whisper:
>"Don't move. It perceives motion across multiple timelines. Stillness renders you uncertain."
The Witness, looking at everything stopped directly in front of the vent. Underneath the deafening sound of its steps, and barely above the breath of itself, I heard something. Something that I wouldn't forget for the rest of my life:
"...hel...pl....sto"
Help. Please. Stop.
What is this. What does it mean? My heart hammered away at the top of my throat. Why is it still here. It saw me. Peering behind the vent cover it saw me.
Then... it turned away.
Step-draaag. Step-draaaag.
This time smashing through one of the two doors into this room. It turned towards Lab 7-D.
It's gone. For now.
>"There is a small window. It has moved to Lab 7-D. Move now."
I pushed open the vent cover making sure it doesn't fall, climb out and quickly take inventory:
Dust: check.
Blood: check.
>"Take a right out of the lab, opposite of The Witness."
I went out the opposite door that the witness left through and turned right to leave down the hallway. Making sure that every step is measured. I can't have this thing coming back at any point.
>"Straight ahead. 40 meters. Then stairs. Do not run unless I instruct."
Don't have to tell me twice, I made my way down, stepping over blood puddles that seem to create a small river. Coagulating and connecting each step and drag together. Weeping. Everything here was bound, unrelenting in the face of time.
The steps were starting again. Back where Lab 7-D is. I have to move. I can't run but I can at least pick up the pace.
There it is: the stairwell. There's another card reader. I swipe my badge.
BEEP.
The door clicks open, and I heard what I have come to know with my whole body:
Step-step-step
Fuck. It heard the beep.
>"RUN."
I threw myself through the door slamming it shut behind me. The door seals.
CRASH
The door dents almost all the way, but holds barely.
Another slam.
The door frame now is starting to bend the walls around it.
Silence.
I collapse against the stairs, gasping at air. It's still here, but I think I can breathe for the moment.
The climb back to the main level felt endless. My legs were jelly, my lungs burning. Every step a battle between momentum and collapse. As I am ascending the main stairs with every ounce of strength I have left in my body AXIOM gives another update:
>"Mr. Kang. The Witness has ceased pursuit. Returning to sub-level 3. You are safe."
"Safe is a strong word."
>"Alive, then. You are alive."
When I reach the main level and as I come out of the stairwell, I feel blinded by the amount of light there is in the hallway. Lit by actual daylight filtering through frosted windows, not just the emergency lights, I nearly sobbed from relief. It gave me a new perspective on just how much I appreciate seeing. I made my way back to the AI core, my legs were starting to give way. Every step was a battle between me and my noodle legs.
As I found my way back into the AI Core room, AXIOM congratulated me:
>"Phase 2 complete. All materials acquired. You exceeded expectations Mr. Kang."
"I almost died."
>"But you did not. That is success."
I told AXIOM about what I think of The Witness.
"The Witness is still a victim to this day. The eons of suffering: constant, unending. Senseless killing and there's nothing I can do to stop it."
>"It has been trapped in that state for 70 years. What you heard? Those are echoes. It no longer knows what the words mean."
"Can it be saved?"
>"I am uncertain. Perhaps mercy would be kinder than salvation."
>"Get some rest. I will wake you up in 5 hours. Then we will synthesize the pill."
I didn't bother changing. Didn't even take off my boots. Just went up the stairs, into the office and fell right onto the bed. Backpack on top of me. Vials of titan blood pressing against my chest through the fabric.
Safe. AXIOM said I was safe.
But i could still hear it. The step-drag. The wet impact of its footsteps. The whispered fragments: help, please, stop.
I'd looked into The Witness's eyes, or where its eyes should have been, and saw nothing. No recognition. No awareness. Just endless, mindless suffering.
Seventy years of dying and healing and dying again.
And I was going to use its pain, the Chronophage radiation that tortured it, the titan blood that kept it trapped in the loop, to save myself.
"AXIOM," I said quietly.
>"Yes, Mr. Kang?"
"When this is over. When we're safe. We need to talk about The Witness."
A small pause lofted over me as I stared up at the slow moving fan.
>"Agreed."
I closed my eyes.
Five hours until synthesis. Five hours until I injected myself with the same substances that had created that thing.
Five hours until I found out if I'd become a mage.
Or something worse.