Floor B2
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“Calm down, calm down,” Du Yixin attempts to defuse the situation, “I was just worried we’d be busted. I definitely didn’t try to suffocate you or whatever. We just happened to be in bed like that with me on the top so I’m sorry about that. Calm down?”
‘Fuck off’ is what Ying Sheng’s eyes seem to be saying.
“Let’s go. We have no idea when the next patrols will be here,” with his soothing ineffective, Du Yixin tries to change topics instead.
Ying Sheng does successfully hold himself back without blowing up.
Though if it were not for the darkness all around, Du Yixin would definitely noticed a suspicious reddening on Ying Sheng’s earlobes; not because of anger, but from a more obscure reason that Ying Sheng doesn’t want to admit himself. He can admit that he isn’t just angry from being stuffed or whatever.
Well, if it were just anyone else climbing on top of him and pushing his head down he’d have beaten them to a pulp already. It was also his first thought when Du Yixin did it, but for some reason, when his hand was all over his head, his ears, his skin started to boil.
And the damned smell. Unlike the stench of blood and rusted iron he always has, it’s clean, refreshing, like…
Ying Sheng has no appropriate words for it, but no matter, because he’s been successfully disgusted by his own thoughts. So when Du Yixin is following him closely, he pushes him, saying, “don’t get so damned close to me.”
Du Yixin “???”
They close in towards the elevator. Du Yixin looks around and ensures no one is nearby when he swipes his magnetic card. This time, the elevator is coming from floor B2.
There’s a deeper floor.
Intuitively, the deeper the floor, the less likely something untoward would remain undiscovered. He was hesitating about which floor above to investigate, but the answer is clear now.
‘Ding——’
The elevator opens. It’s designed not unlike its other ‘down-only’ counterpart, with all metallic plating and a functioning, blinking security camera.
Oh, a security camera.
Then it can’t be helped they would be discovered. At least, they can’t rely on the chained and locked fire exits and stairs to navigate. He thought about it in the darkness earlier and concluded the reason time flowed backwards seemed to be because he muttered the hospital’s name. It’s some kind of trigger. Then can he also expect that if he finds enough clues here and does another correct trigger, they’ll be sent back?
Anyway, it’s no time to dally. They have to move.
“Who are you?!”
Suddenly, a light shines on them from behind. It’s a tall and imposing security guard with a baton next to his waist. He yells out, “how did you open that?!” Before retrieving his baton and threatens them, saying, “come back here. Don’t try to fight.”
He might be a patrolling guard or at least one of them. They can see his belt still halfway undone. Perhap he just had a quick trip to the loo.
Ying Sheng ignores the blabbering and is rushing right over already, dodging the baton swung in panic nimbly, and hits the guard right in the waist. Then an elbow to the guard’s chin and he has him knocked to the ground.
“W-, wait…” the guard struggles, but his sense of balance feels off now.
“Too bad for you. If only you just walked quietly past and didn’t yell,” Ying Sheng takes his surgical knife out, slapping its cold metallic surface against the guard’s face.
The guard seems to be in deep fear, “no, please…”
Ying Sheng then smacks his head hard against the floor, and the man faints.
“I thought you’d kill him.”
“It’ll scatter blood all around,” Ying Sheng rubs his nose once and gets back up.
“Right, it’ll blow our cover immediately,” Du Yixin then suggests, “let’s move him to another room quickly.”
They open the Archives back up. It is the only room they know that wouldn’t be too frequented. After dragging the man inside by his arm, Du Yixin begins to undress the man.
Ying Sheng looks in silence for a while before asking, “… what’re you doing?”
“Undressing him.”
“Why are you undressing him?” Ying Sheng asks, a bit less patiently.
“I just thought that even if we broke the CCTV someone will still have noticed something weird. We might as well change into convenient clothing,” Du Yixin pauses before asking Ying Sheng, “there’s only one set of clothes though. Do you want it or should I wear it instead?”
“…”
Ten minutes and another fainted, naked guard in the Archives later, they open the elevator again and walk in proud and tall.
“Let’s go to floor B2,” pushing the brim of his hat down, Du Yixin pushes the button reading ‘B2.’
As soon as the elevator opens up on floor B2, they can feel a chill in the air. Compared to the narrow corridors and endless streams of doors above, this area is much wider. The doors are much further apart on the cold off-white walls, hinting at how big each of the rooms are within.
As more stuff are captured on camera, the progress bar rises steadily to 30%.
They chose correctly and are another step further to the truth. Du Yixin decides to mutter ‘Save’ in his mind again, choosing to save here to save himself from potentially having to induce vomit in himself again.
He pushes open the closest door where there’s dozens of ‘beds.’ Or rather, not exactly beds, but more long tables of stainless steel with many people lain above, their heads covered by a sheet of white cloth. The exposed skin is showing really obvious livor mortis. Clearly even the low temperature isn’t any help in preventing stages of body decay.
Put simply, the room is a morgue.
There’s a row of low-lying cabinets on the wall opposite the beds. Du Yixin pulls a drawer out to see and is shocked.
“Oh fucking hell!”
It’s also a corpse inside, that is close to visibly rotting and not covered up by even a white cloth, putting the person’s terrifying last gasp for life on full display. Although the corpse is still dressed, but the stomach is visibly flattened – sunken. The organs have already been harvested.
Du Yixin moves the body back into the cabinet with knit brows. He also notices there’s another area on the left.
It’s really obvious what this sectioned-off area is. It’s for incineration.
So they put bodies here and then harvest them, before burning them whole on the left? Even if he knows it’s all artificially constructed plot from the Instance, but it’s still so realistic it is revolting.
The progress bar continues to rise, reaching 40% now. Du Yixin is looking at his camera when Ying Sheng, content there’s no enemies to see here, walks right out and heads for the opposite side of the morgue, which leads into another area.
“Wait!” Du Yixin yells out, exasperated. Can’t he at least wait while he’s investigating?
Ying Sheng turns his head and rolls his eyes at him, but does stay in the morgue to wait for him to catch up.
They enter the opposite room together, where the chilliness is turning to freeze. This room is filled with shelves hosting bottles of various sizes. There’s some sort of liquid inside, all keeping the organs harvested fresh. Each bottle also has various descriptors, for identity, age, blood type, date of harvest, and some even has a label for expected date for dispatch.
The progress bar reaches 50%.
They leave the morgue behind, and walk along the corridor, until they reach stairs leading further underground. It is much narrower downstairs, and the decor is much more bare, with only concrete and industrial grey. The low ceiling could make one suffocate.
‘Bang’!
That is when one of the doors makes a crashing sound, indicating there’s people inside. The man is wearing the striped patient’s clothes. He looks really malnourished with yellowish skin and a big mouth with yellowed teeth. He is pushing his face onto the window on the door, yelling, “let me out! Let me out!”
Is he treating them as the actual guards?
But it’s also problematic if he just keeps yelling, so Du Yixin can only pretend to be a real guard, and waves his baton menacingly, warning him, “keep quiet!”
The man shuts up, but still keeps staring at them with these murky, spiritless eyes. It’s creeping Du Yixin out, and he’s about to move further in when the man suddenly says, “I know! I know. You’re the same as us,” the emaciated man is suddenly excited again, “you’re not guards!”
How did he even recognise them? They should look no different from normal guards?
“How did you come down here? Tell me, did you get the key?”
Ying Sheng kicks the door out of irritation, saying, “shut up!”
The man quiets down for a bit before widening his mouth and saying, “hey, let’s make a deal. Open the door for me…”
“We’re leaving. The guy’s mad,” Ying Sheng is dragging Du Yixin away while saying, but then the person suddenly raises his voice and yells, “if you don’t open the door for me, I’ll call the guards!”
How troublesome, but Du Yixin really is worried they’d be busted here and boxed in, and says, “not that we don’t wanna help, but we don’t have keys.”
“You can steal them,” the man in the room quickly says and spits in his hand, then hurriedly draws on the window of the door, “there’s some kinda security room here. You must have missed it, right where you passed by. There’s definitely keys inside!”
Apparently, right next to the elevator on floor B2, where they thought the fire exit was, is actually the security room. Speaking of, the door actually wasn’t locked up like the fire exits above, but Du Yixin didn’t mentally register it as being something to investigate.
Du Yixin’s camera has been on the whole time. The moment the man’s face enters the screen, the progress bar rises to 55%.
It seems the man is also key to the hospital. Not just as a patient, but perhaps to the reason behind the hospital becoming abandoned or even it being set on fire in the first place. Why is there a separate area for holding patients down here? How did they even know that it was a security room right besides the elevator?
“Who are you? Why are you locked up here in the first place?” Du Yixin asks.
“You wanna know?” The man looks squarely in his eyes with a little fire in those murky eyeballs, “then let me out, and I’ll tell you.”
When Du Yixin is about to answer, he is suddenly frozen. Or rather, everything is frozen. The Protagonist is making a choice.
[The Protagonist chooses to:]
[A. Agree to open the door]
[B. Refuse to open the door]
Wait, what?! The Protagonist isn’t even by their side, but she’s going to choose what happens to them here too?
TL’s notes: A cliffhanger, oh you sly author… Thankfully I have the raws’ power on my hands! Haha!
Oriental Rabbit 