Page 152 of Interion

I took a deep breath, and it wasn’t a good idea, because the bucket we were carrying was full of sheets soaked with bodily fluids.

“I’d like to know when the gods’ blessing plans to stop being so childish.”

No matter how hard I tried to tune her out, she always managed to get under my skin. Carrying shit and vomit was terrible, but listening to Adele insult me made the work unbearable. The elevator finally arrived. I stepped inside, bringing the bucket with me.

“When you go back to the wilderness where you belong, along with those filthy creatures like you,” Adele said as she stepped onto the elevator.

She struggled to carry both buckets, and I noticed she was limping as she brought them inside. I pressed a button, and the doors closed. As we descended, I caught the smell of blood inside the small space. I glanced sideways at the girl and noticed she looked terrible today. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her skin was so pale it had turned greenish. I kept my face neutral and decided not to say anything; whatever shit the Yonserian was doing with her life wasn’t my business.

The elevator doors opened, and we headed toward the contaminated materials storage room. The hallway was long. On the right side were the morgue, the pharmacy, the contaminated organic matter storage, and the incinerator. On the other side, there were six recovery beds for patients in vegetative states. In one of those rooms, the mysterious patient was still asleep. My phone buzzed, and I set the bucket down in the middle of the hallway. It was a message from Ambrose urgently asking for more IV fluids and antibiotics.

I sighed, exhausted. It was 5 p.m., and I must have walked about 12 miles around here. Adele seemed too weak to carry more buckets, her arms struggling to dump the excrement down the chute. That got me thinking of a way to make better use of our time.

“What if you stay upstairs and send the buckets down in the elevator, and I stay down here to dump them and send up the medicine?”

She turned toward me, wrinkling her nose at the disgusting smell wafting up from below. Her eyes filled with contempt every time she looked at me. She opened her mouth to say something nasty, then closed it again and seemed to think it over before saying:

“Save my number in your phone. I’ll text you the requests.”

I saved the number and sent her a snake emoji. The girl shot me a mocking look and sent me a poop emoji back.

“Ambrose asked for four more bags of saline and azithromycin,” I said as she turned away without bothering to respond. Her steps were stiff and unsteady, as if she were trying not to move too much. Even her usual hip sway was absent as the Yonserian walked to the end of the corridor and entered the medication room to get what was needed.

I went back to dumping the contents down the chute that led to the incinerator room. It was better to work this way—at least I’d only tire out my arms, and she’d only tire out her legs. When she came back down the corridor and passed me, I smelled blood again. I pretended not to notice. It could be remnants of her period, actually, and that would also explain the sunken eyes and pallor. I still didn’t know what to make of the conflicting information about her absences. At the academy, they told me one thing; at the hospital, they said another. But I had to remind myself that this wasn’t my problem. The last time I tried to get close, I ended up in the principal’s office.

Minutes later, Adele texted that they needed more antibiotics, so I went to the medication room to sort them out. The room was controlled by high-tech systems, and any medication taken had to be logged and registered under the patient’s name. But today there was no one to enter the information into the system, so Adele and I just grabbed what we needed and wrote the details down in a notebook on the counter.

I spent the rest of the afternoon pulling buckets out of the elevator and leaving medicine in a basket. I didn’t like coming down to this level. The atmosphere felt heavy down here, as if too much negative energy was weighing it down. In human religion, they believed the soul wandered among the living after death, and the nurses were always making up ghost stories. I’d never believed in superstitions, but today, while I worked, something about the air around me felt off. It was as if the energy was shifting and pressing down on my body, giving me a headache. I tried not to think about the stories so I wouldn’t get more unsettled, and at this pace, between buckets, medicine, and a vague discomfort, the afternoon passed quickly and night finally fell over the world.

It was 7 p.m. when the buckets stopped coming. Adele texted that this would be the last request for saline, since a team from the Fae district would be taking over the night shift. I dragged myself down the corridor with the last bucket. The smell didn’t even bother me anymore—my nose had gone numb from the constant stench. I dumped the contents and headed to the medication room. The white light from the archemic globes strained my eyes, and my eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. I grabbed the last saline bag from the cabinet, logged it in the notebook, wrote the time next to the patient’s name, and signed before leaving the room. But when I stepped into the corridor, that slight sense of unease spiked to unbearable levels, and I felt something watching me.

I looked around, but there was no one. Strange, I thought. Then the air grew colder, making my skin prickle in a way that felt deeply wrong. In the empty silence of the corridor, I heard something metal hit the floor and roll before coming to a stop. It sounded distant, as if it came from the last room at the far end.

“Is someone there?” I called out, frightened, clutching the saline bag like it was a weapon.

No one answered, but I still felt like I was being watched. A door at the end of the corridor slowly creaked open, and the sound made me shudder.

“Who’s there?” I took a step forward.

The moment my feet moved, a light globe at the opposite end went out. My heart raced. Archemic globes didn’t just go out like that. The strange sensation intensified, making my stomach churn. Just like on the day I visited Sonar, my intuition opened its non-eyes and whispered in my ears that I needed to get out of there. I looked around desperately, knowing I had to reach either the elevator or the emergency stairwell—they were the only exits. And they were right in the middle, halfway between one end and the other.

I took a few more steps, and another light went out. I threw caution to the wind and broke into a frantic run. On the other side, the globes were going out at the same pace. The more I ran, the more they went dark, racing toward me, and the air was freezing. My heart pounded, and fear flooded through me as the darkness closed in around me. My feet skidded on the smooth, waxed floor—the slippers had no traction at all. As I ran, I caught a glimpse of something dragging itself across the floor. It didn’t seem to have any form and moved like living mist, but the lights kept going out, preventing me from seeing more. Panic spread through every nerve ending in my body. I ran like my life depended on it, and that damned corridor never ended.

Too much corridor and too few lights.

I reached the elevator when only one archemic globe remained lit. The moment I touched the button to open the door, total darkness swallowed the corridor. I looked around but couldn’t see anything—only the glow from the emergency stairwell sign a few meters away, closer to where the globes had started going out. I pressed my back against the door and sank to the floor, frantically jabbing the elevator button, but it stayed closed. In my desperation, I heard a labored, dying breath and realized it was getting closer—but there were no footsteps. Only thick darkness and heavy breathing. My body was shaking so badly that if I hadn’t already been on the floor, I would have collapsed.

It was close.

That thing seemed to be sniffing the air, getting closer. I kept moving in desperation, knowing no amount of physical training could have prepared me for this. I felt the aura of power slam into my body. My legs buckled, sending me sliding down against the door. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing. The force of that aura was crushing—not even Zion had power like that. Something wet ran down my legs. It was the saline bag I’d just burst with my own trembling, rigid hands.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, fingers touched my ankle. They wrapped around my foot, creeping up my calf. The touch was cold—as cold as the decomposing corpses in the nearby morgue. I drew a deep breath to scream, but a loud noise blared in my ears and the elevator door opened, flooding everything with light.

I tumbled into the metal box and hit my head on something soft. When my vision cleared after the impact, Adele was staring down at me with a furrowed brow.

“What the hell?” She yanked her feet out from under my head.

I bolted upright, trembling down to my soul, looking around in terror. My heart felt like it wanted to burst through my ribs and run far away.