"Who is that?" I ask, my voice tight.
"A patient," David says simply. "He came through the door after you. Must have gotten caught by the shadow. He was... in a bad way." David walks toward the figure, and I follow, the pipe held loosely but ready. "He's a bit broken."
As we get closer, the details resolve into a horrifying picture. The man is young, maybe early twenties. He's wearing what's left of a fast-food uniform, stained with dark, dried blood. His body is contorted, limbs bent at unnatural angles. He's not just injured; he looks like he was put through a wringer. His skin is pale and waxy, and when David nudges him with the toe of his shoe, the man's head lolls to the side at an impossible angle. His eyes are wide open, staring at nothing. He's still breathing, but it's a shallow, wet, gurgling sound.
"He's alive," I say, the words tasting like ash.
"For now," David says, crouching down. "The shadow... it doesn't just kill. It... erodes. Drains you. If you don't die, you become... less. Sometimes you recover. Sometimes you don't."
He looks up at me, his expression unreadable. "This one is almost gone. But I think I can save him."
He reaches into the pocket of his lab coat and pulls out a syringe filled with a murky, greenish fluid. He flicks the needle with a practiced motion, sending a tiny bead of the liquid flying.
"Where did you get that?" I ask, taking an involuntary step back.
"Found it. On Floor 3, I think. It's a stimulant. Gives the system a little kick. Helps the body heal, if there's anything left to heal." He holds the syringe up to the grimy light filtering through the high windows. "If you're clever and can survive, there's not only death in these rooms. There's medicine, too. If you look hard enough."
He doesn't wait for my response. He plunges the needle into the young man's neck, directly into a vein. The man doesn't even flinch. David depresses the plunger, injecting the entire contents of the syringe.
The effect is immediate and horrifying.
The young man's back arches off the concrete floor in a spasm so violent I hear his spine crack. A wet, guttural scream tears from his throat, a sound of absolute agony. His limbs flail wildly, smashing against the concrete with enough force to shatter bone. Blood flecks from his mouth, spraying across the floor.
"What are you doing?!" I scream, raising the pipe.
"Helping!" David yells back, not looking at me, his eyes fixed on the thrashing form. He grabs the man's shoulders, pinning him down with an inhuman strength that belies his wiry frame. "It has to get worse before it gets better! It has to burn out the rot!"
The thrashing intensifies. The man's eyes roll back in his head, showing only the whites. A dark, viscous fluid—black as oil—begins to leak from the corners of his eyes and his nose. The screaming continues, an unending, piercing sound that grates against my nerves. This isn't healing. This is torture.
I step forward, my grip tightening on the pipe. I have to stop him. The resemblance to my husband is gone, burned away by the spectacle in front of me. All I see is a monster in a lab coat, inflicting pain for some insane, forgotten reason.
"Stay back!" David commands, his voice sharp and hard as steel. He catches my eye, and the gentle, vacant look is gone. It's been replaced by a chilling, focused intensity. "This is the part where you don't interfere."
I hesitate, my mind screaming at me to act, but something in his gaze freezes me in place. This is not the confused man who jumped from the catwalk. This is someone else entirely. Someone who knows exactly what he's doing.
The young man's convulsions begin to slow. The screaming tapers off into a choked, gurgling whimper. The black fluid stops flowing. He lies limp on the concrete, his chest heaving with ragged, shallow breaths. The grotesque angles of his limbs seem... slightly less severe.
David releases him and stands up, wiping a smear of the black fluid from his lab coat with a look of mild disgust. He looks at the young man, then at me.
"See? Better," he says, as if he's just fixed a leaky faucet.
I stare at him, my mind struggling to process what I just witnessed. The violence of it, the cold efficiency, the complete lack of empathy. "You call that better?"
"He was fading," David says, a hint of impatience in his tone. "Now he will wake up again. I don't know how many times, but even one is better than none, yes?" He looks down at the broken form on the floor. "I don't know how much of him is left to save..."
He sighs, a heavy sound, and steps away from the collapsed figure.
"But a doctor can't choose his patients." He says it like it is a mantra he repeats to himself. A justification.
"You're not a doctor," I say, the words cold and final.
He shrugs, a small, almost sad gesture. "Maybe not. Are you?" He gestures toward me, at the pipe in my hand. "What's your story?"
"I..."
I'm. Not a doctor.
I'm no one.
A housewife with no ambitions. A woman whose husband thought so little of her he could end her life on a whim.
A woman who is dead.
"A survivor." I answer, my own name feeling alien. "My name is Ariel."
"Ariel." He tests the word on his tongue, as if tasting it. "It's a very pretty name. Did you pick it?" He looks at me with that unsettling, vacant curiosity. "It's a good choice. It suits you."
I don't know what to say to that.
"She won't last the night."
The voice is a low, raspy growl from the shadows of a nearby rusted-out machine. It's not the same kind of voice as the thing in the hallway. This one is... human. But frayed at the edges, worn thin.
I turn, my pipe raised, toward the sound. A figure detaches itself from the gloom, stepping into the dim light.
He's tall and lean, dressed in a strange mix of tactical gear and scavenged rags. A patchwork survivor. But it's not the clothes that catch my eye. It's the man himself. His face is gaunt, his cheekbones sharp, with a day's worth of stubble shadowing a strong jaw. His hair is a messy shock of dark brown, streaked with premature grey at the temples. And his eyes... they are a startling, almost luminous blue.