Chapter 48 Very Clearly Not Dead
VERY CLEARLY NOT DEAD
Hurt - Atalia
Honeymonster
The first thing I register is what isn’t here.
No smoke.
No heat.
No burnt metal or cordite.
That’s wrong.
Places like this don’t empty quietly unless something interrupted them mid-thought. Evacuation leaves a smell. Panic leaves a mess. This place smells like bleach layered over iron and nothing else – like someone tried to clean and didn’t have time to finish.
We’re ahead of Seytan at least. If she’d found this place, she would have razed it to the ground and we’d be standing amongst nothing but burning embers and ash right now.
That’s got to count for something, right?
We split without talking. Habit. Nightshade takes point. Valentine hangs back. Bones angles right. Ghost drifts left, already listening for things the rest of us can’t hear. Snow stays close enough to be annoying. Hatchet ghosts the rear.
I peel off down a narrow side corridor marked MONITORING and OBSERVATION, the kind of words people use when they don’t want to say control.
The lights hum overhead. Too steady. Too calm.
The door at the end is ajar.
Inside, the air changes.
Antiseptic first. Then blood – not fresh, not old. Clinical blood. Measured. The kind that means procedures, not violence. That tightens something in my chest I don’t give a name to.
Banks of monitors line the wall. Most are dark. A few are still running, green lines crawling over black backgrounds like the place hasn’t realised it’s dead yet. A chair lies on its side, one wheel still turning faintly.
Someone left in a hurry.
I step closer to the screens. Vital signs. Oxygen. Temperature. A couple read zero. A couple are frozen mid-curve, as if someone pulled the feed without shutting the system down properly.
One flickers as I pass.
STATUS: ACTIVE
My stomach drops.
Active doesn’t mean alive. Not in facilities like this. It means in use.
I look away before my head fills in what the word implies.
There’s a clipboard on the counter. Paper. Old redundancy. I flip it open with two fingers.
Sedation protocols.
Restraint durations.
Handwritten notes, sharp and irritated.
Subject remains resistant to compliance.
Increase isolation time.
Monitor stress response.
I curl my fingers around the edge of the board until it creaks.
They weren’t trying to kill her.
They were trying to keep her.
That’s worse.
The medical bed sits against the far wall. Straps still buckled. Sheets half-peeled back like someone got up – or was dragged away – mid-procedure. The restraints are sized for narrow wrists. Slim ankles.
I don’t need to imagine who.
There’s blood on the rail where someone grabbed it. Not arterial. Not catastrophic. Enough to hurt. Enough to remind you you’re not invincible no matter what they tell you.
I grip the bedframe and for half a second I see her here – jaw set, eyes sharp, refusing to give them what they want even when it costs her. I imagine the sound she’d make. Not screaming. Laughing. Saying something cruel just to prove she still owns herself.
My grip tightens.
Metal groans.
I yank once, hard, and the bed scrapes across the floor with a shriek that echoes down the corridor.
I freeze.
Noise carries.
I breathe it back down, force the violence back into its cage.
Later.
There will be a later.
If she’s still alive.
I check the adjoining storage room. Shelves stripped. Refrigeration units powered down but not defrosted properly. Missing equipment. Someone left fast. Not planned. Not clean.
Interrupted.
That’s the pattern everywhere.
If they moved her, they didn’t do it through the front. Too exposed. I spot the ceiling access panel immediately – scratched edges, recently opened.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
A distant mechanical whine hums through the building, like systems cycling back online after being forced down.
I key my comm once. “Procedure rooms,” I murmur. “They were using her. Monitoring. Looks interrupted.”
No reply yet.
Good. Everyone’s still moving.
I turn back into the corridor – and then I hear it.
Not metal.
Not alarms.
Not machinery.
Laughter.
Bright. Unafraid. Wrong in exactly the right way. My heart leaps into my throat.
It echoes from deeper in the facility, followed by the sound of someone running – not fleeing.
Playing.
I stop cold.
That sound hits me like a punch to the chest.
“That’s her,” I breathe.
And then I’m moving – fast, silent, heart slamming – toward the sound of a woman who is very clearly not dead.