Later that afternoon, after blowing off some steam, I was walking to the food court when I heard a loud crackling sound coming down the hall. My eyes lifted toward the source of the sound; the wall itself. It was covered in a heavy glare. Bubbling and bursting as the material of the wall itself bent, forming into some sort of bulbous shape. From the shape a pair of arms stretch; lines of plastic extend out as the blob morphing into a human shape poorly crafted like a clay figure from a child’s hands. The thing breaches from the wall and lands onto the floor with tethers of plastic stringing from its body. They snap as it rises to its feet.

I am left watching, stunned and frozen in place by a mixture of curiosity and absolute horror. From what I can best describe the white plastic body reconstructed itself losing that soft plastic sheen and replacing it with flesh like material. Standing straight up, the thing looks over itself. As it lifts, its knobby arms in front of where its face should be the knobs spread open forming fingers which rip through the solid material. As the last remains of plastic pieces stretch falling away from its face something that looked kind of human generated out of the plastic cacoon.

“Eh eh eh eh eh!” the alarms screamed as the warning lights on the wall oscillated a deep red haze. I hardly noticed them, to be honest. I was too in shock of what I had just witnessed. From its nude body, clothing quickly spread out from its flesh. However, the attire of the person is entirely wrong. A t-shirt and jeans. What I remembered as common clothing from before I went into stasis; foreign and forgotten now.

“Hello.” the odd wall person says to me in a deep male voice. My eyes grew wide as I backed away from the impossibility. “Are you afraid of me?” It spoke again, taking a wet stringy step forward.

“What are you!?” I screamed.

“Human.” the thing lied. “You want to get out of here, don’t you?”

My heart skipped a beat. How did it know? I wanted to run. But I had to know if it knew. So I swallowed my fear and the words the just came out of my mouth. “Do you know how!?”

“I know a way out. I certainly do. I do, I do, I wouldn’t lie to you. For sure, I certainly would. Down down below, you must go further down then you ever been. Below in the arteries of the world and once you have found yourself deep in the squirming world, you must crawl out the throat of that place. Only then you will reach the surface.” The wall man finished his statement with a haunting cackle. From down the hall, the loud servos of the door crank open. “We have company.” it sung in such a horrible tone.

Too scared to turn my sights away from the wall man, I heard the sound of boots approaching from behind. “Get away from that thing.” Hellibor shouts. He dives in front of me, shielding me. Protecting me. “Stay behind me girl.” This is the closest thing to affection Hellibor has ever shown me. He never hurt me. Yes, that is true. But he scared me all the same. However, at this moment. I… I trusted him.

I felt my skin crawl as another loud crow escaped the wall man. “You people are like little mice hiding inside your shelter. Thought you could hide forever? Your ice has failed you.”

Raising his hand into the air, Hellibor revealed a blue ring of laser-light much like a computer interface. His fingers split open, releasing three tiny metal stamps much like a typewriter’s in each digit. They typed rapidly entering data into the holographic kiosk. “Aren’t you funny?” the thing groaned. “I guess I will have to mess you up!” The thing screamed, charging towards Hellibor. It raised its right arm as it turned into a long blade ready to chop as an axe.

A quick hand pushed into my chest forcing me against the hard wall knocking my very breath from me. Hellibor side stepped the attack all the while entering new data into the system. “Your fast or maybe I am just playing with you.” the wall man growled. Hellibor furrowed his brow, holding me behind him. Still shielding me from harm, even though his life is in danger. The wall man turned his face towards me, half of it already melting like a bleeding candle. “Looks like I will have to be saying goodbye. Hope we can play again, girl. I’ll be waiting… outside.”

“Doubt it.” Hellibore snapped as the blue hologram beams disappear. The wall man fell on his knees, his body bursting to pieces into dust like a demolished building. “Are you ok.” Hellibore asks, his sight still focused on the disappearing phantom.

“Yeah,” I quietly say. It was so casual, as if routine. To be honest, I think something broke in me. My belief in everything was rocked, and it came crashing down, shattering into a million sharp splinters. “What was that thing?”

“That was a rogue AI, um artificial intelligence. They are kind of like ghosts. Normally our ICE, intrusion countermeasures electronics, keeps them out. This is a disturbing development.” Hellibor commented. He followed his little fact blast with a dull mumble to himself. However, I heard it clear enough to make out what he was saying “We don’t have enough staff to maintain the systems anymore. The wards are already breaking.”

“There are missing people.” I murmured under my breath.

Hellibor nodded his head. “Indeed, I am aware. Primina.” The open admission was bitter sweet. I knew I was not crazy, but the affirmation scared me. However, if people were missing then they had to be going somewhere. Down; a place which I must find for the truth’s sake alone. Hellibor turned toward me, kneeling down to my eye level. “Don’t trust anyone anymore. Not even me.” the words bit deep and weighty. His fingers snuggly grasped onto my shoulder rubbing, gently, very gently. “If they are asking you to do something funny, they might be an imposter.” As the sensation of his touch became clear, my eyes grew wide, he touched me. He touched me. Immediately, Hellibor removed his hand. He looks at it, his eyes too wide with surprise at his own actions.

The silence we shared became awkward, “An imposter?” I ask.

At once Hellibore shrugged off the moment. “An AI may want to hurt you. They require hacking into the nano machine network this before they can materialize. However, they can choose to look like anyone once they manifest. Even me. Be careful.”

”Whats a nano machine?”

“Its what this building is made out of.”

He was being so candid with me. Nano machines? I heard of them before. They were all over the news when I was a kid. People on the news said they were going to change everything. “Doctor Winters, what happened to the world?”

Hellibor smirks. “If I have it my way, you will never find out, but it is looking like you will observe it for yourself.” And like that, he was closed again.

~

Traveling through the maze of the garden, I descended deeper down as the halls wound in a spiral obscured by artificial hills. However, the peaks and folly of the hills continually wound lower. So hidden, but in plain sight. One would be easy to mistake the depths they were traveling to, as if designed at a wrong geometry. Rivers of water flowed around the sides of the walls, following the strange paths. Wooden bridges arched over the waterways. I found this place curious. In all of my years of living in this hospital, I had never gone so deep. I didn’t even fathom the corkscrew tower I lived within. I suppose it was at least ten floors down and I as I traveled I wondered how deep this building went. After turning another corner, there was a white staircase leading to a large mirror black door.

Staring up at the black monolith left me with images of the gates to hell. “Is this where the truth of everything is?” I asked myself. Walking up the pure white marble stairs, I approached the door. It felt like the stairs grew longer as I climbed the sacred steps. Looking back, I saw that I was much further up than the stairs appeared to be on the ground. Atop the staircase I locked eyes with my own reflection gazing back at me. A young girl, that’s all I was. I placed my hand onto the icy stone and pushed, but the door did not budge. “Huh.” I pushed against it with my other hand and when that provides no purchase I used the rest of my body but still the door would not move. I pushed again, but this time with all my might. I pushed so hard I screamed.

“That door won’t open for you.” I turned around to see Vanity at the bottom of the steps.

“How does it open?”

Vanity smirked and held up her hand, twinkling her fingers. “You just have to have the right touch.”

I am free. My smile beamed. “Come up here and open it then.”

“I can’t do that for you, Prina.” My face downturns as I realize how foolish I was to think Vanity would help me. After all, she is the one caging me here. This isn’t a hospital. This is something else. A prison, a stage, a theater, and the curtain call comes soon. “You should not be down here.”

“How did you know I was even here? No one comes down this far.”

Vanity stretched like a cat getting up from a long nap. “Well, I was going for a walk and saw you sneaking. Figured you were up to something. Come down here and we can talk about this.” With a short sigh, I make my way down the stairs.

I knew when an impossibility arose. There was no convincing Vanity to help me. “What is this door for anyway?” I inquired.

With no hesitation, she told me. “It leads to the Amala, it’s a tunnel system that runs throughout the entire world. However, there is a laboratory inside there too. It is a terrible place.” Vanity told me. I now make my last steps off the stairs.

Standing next to Vanity, I was full of wicked thoughts. If I had a knife… I might have stolen her hand. “What kind of terrible place?”

Vanity turned around and started walking away from me. “We call it the body room. You don’t want to see it.”

“I want to go through the door, Vanity.” I told her. “Show me.” Vanity kept her stride without saying a word, and I followed.

~

Laying back in the chair for the millionth time I gazed at the tubes sucking the blood from my arm like some kind of mechanical vampire. Helibore was quite consumed in his own thoughts, pacing the floor, not even talking to me today. “How many more times do I have to do this.” I moaned my minor complaint.

To my surprise, he answers. “Three.” I straightened up in the chair. “After this one makes two.” He did not even look at me. Still focused on whatever it is he was contemplating. “Happy?”

Happy, yeah. “Yes sir.” I replied.

“Good.” But not just happy, terrified, what did the end of my treatments mean. What happens when they stop sucking my blood?