Chapter Text
Even a well-lit place can hide salvation
A map to a one-man maze that never sees the sun
Where the lost are the heroes
And the thieves are left to drown
But everyone knows by now
Fairy tales are not found
It Has Begun - Starset
Diamond Hrist was trapped.
Trapped in a cruel world where she couldn’t break free from the constant pokes and prodding she was forced to endure in the hospital. At the age of 20, she was diagnosed with a rare form of myeloma. As time went on, her body broke down.
Drip…drip…drip… She watched the green liquid with tired eyes. It seemed to glow as it dripped down the tiny tube that was connected to her arm through the needle. Bruises littered her arms from all the attempts to get the IV in her. At least she wasn't in pain. It was the IV or the IV plus chemotherapy.
She had refused to go through with chemotherapy. She was only 20 for fucks sake! She had too much to live for. That was when she was recommended an experimental drug that she had never heard of. She was told it was being tested to see if it would cure myeloma, if not, then a way to let her live a little longer. She accepted, not knowing what trouble it would cause her.
Now she was trapped in a hospital bed, eyes drifting from the IV to the window. The sun was setting... Orange, pink, and yellow filled the sky as the sun kept sinking lower into the horizon. It has been a long day. A long day filled with her blood being drawn and nothing but tests being conducted. All Diamond wanted was sleep and to be left alone for one day…
What seemed like hours had passed by when Diamond reawoke to the sounds of screams. Blood-curdling screams filled the air, followed by an ear-piercing screech. Something… inhuman was out there. Once again, she looked out the window…Terror gripped the 20-year-old’s heart as something darted past, something she hadn’t seen before. A sleek black body with a tail whipped wildly as it pounced on an unsuspecting victim.
What.The.Fuck. What was going on!? Was there an attack? Or was it something much worse? Diamond didn’t want to stick around to find out. She unhooked every single cable connected to her body, hissing as the heart monitor went off.
Pushing what she could, she finally silenced it. God, she hoped it didn’t attract the thing that was out there killing those people. Unhooking the now-empty IV, she stood, but she didn’t leave. Staring at her bed, she reached under the mattress and pulled out an old pair of scissors from a hole she had created.
A simple-looking pair of scissors, yet they looked deadly. Wickedly sharp, unlike standard sewing or cooking scissors. Diamond accidentally cut her finger on them when she first got them; now, that was nothing but a tiny scar on her left thumb.
Gripping the handle of the scissors, Diamond quietly made her way through the hospital she was in. The further she got from her room, the more screams she heard. Blood stained the walls, and the scent of death filled her nose. Heart pounding in her chest, she looked inside an open room; her eyes widened: The body of a fellow patient.
His body was lying there limply as his chest had been ripped open, organs spilling out carelessly on the bed and floor.
What the hell had caused this?
Stumbling back, Diamond covered her mouth, bile creeping up her throat as she stared at the body. Forcing her body to move, she kept pushing forward.
Finally, she got to the next floor below hers—the same story. Blood was everywhere, and bodies were lying in their beds, ripped open. Diamond forced herself not to stare at the bodies.
She needed to get out. Alive.
As she wandered the halls, she came across a dead security guard, his head and arms missing. His weapon is still in its holster. It was as if whatever got him didn’t give him a chance to try and fight back. Grabbing the gun and whatever ammo she could, Diamond had tucked it into her shorts. Just in case…
Now, in the maternity ward, she saw the real damage…all these pregnant mothers were ill, their stomachs ripped open. Diamond felt a sense of anger wash over her. These ladies were helpless.
Why!? Why them!?
Gripping the scissors, she stood still in the hallway, not noticing the creature crawling above her as it pounced, pinning her down.
Diamond fell, bracing her arms to prevent teeth from sinking into her flesh. Staring up, she got a good look at the thing that was killing all these innocent people:
A sleek black body with an elongated head that showed some rather hideous teeth.
This thing hissed and snapped at her, its tail whipping wildly as it tried to get to her face. Opening its mouth, an innermost mouth appeared. Snapping and threatening to harm her if she didn’t move quickly.
Diamond reached out desperately for anything to defend herself with, gripping a nearby IV pole. She smashed it into the monstrous creature’s head, throwing it off of her. It recoiled and then gave a low, threatening hiss at her. Ready to pounce again.
This time, Diamond was ready.
Shoving the pole against the beast’s body, she pinned it down in a corner. It was immobilized.
For the moment.
Now, she could have fled, but she knew she couldn’t. This thing killed so many innocent lives. She wasn’t going to let that slide.
She fell into a violent rage, pure hatred for this thing and anything like it. Pulling the gun out of the waistband of her shorts, she fired blindly, all the rounds she had found into this fucker’s skull and chest. It didn’t die immediately, but its distorted screams of agony let her know it didn’t have much left to give.
Gripping her scissors, she was now stabbing them in its neck. Hacking away, praying that she would just kill the damn thing
Green blood squirted everywhere, melting everything it came into contact with as it hissed and bubbled. Some got on her skin, and it burned. She wasn’t expecting it to hurt this much. For now, she ignored it.
Screeching, the creature thrashed its tail, slicing her chest with large, bloodied talons. Her blood oozed down her chest, staining the porcelain skin underneath. Diamond felt nothing. She kept attacking. Hacking away at the creature's neck, now severing tendons and muscles until the green blood began to deteriorate. The blade she held turned to a gross mass of goop as she kept up her assault. More of its blood hit her, burning and eating at her skin.
Through her rage, Diamond opened the remaining portion of the scissors, swinging with all her might, using what she had left to decapitate this freak of nature. More acidic green blood spewed everywhere, her scissors melting down to almost nothingness and only leaving the handles.
Chucking them to the side, Diamond wiped her hand on her outfit as she stepped back, staring as the body twitched and gushed out the last of its green blood. As she watched, she couldn’t help a smile from stretching over her face. A broken-sounding laugh left her mouth. God, she was going insane now.
First, the cancer, now this!
She laughed and laughed, dropping to her knees, the blood of herself and other patients soaking into the fabric and staining her hospital gown. Right..she was having a breakdown, and there was no one to help her now. That laughter turned into a harsh, broken sob as she crumpled completely onto the floor. Hugging her chest tightly, she stared off, eyes distant, floating through bodies, lost in her mind.
After finally calming down and finding herself, she stood weakly, stray tears falling silently. The sticky feeling of her blood drying made her wrinkle her nose in disgust. She was covered in so much blood.
Great. Just fucking great.
She was oblivious to the sound of glass breaking and metal snapping under intense pressure. Three figures stood near the maternity ward entrance. Looking over, wanting to make a quick exit, her amber eyes fell on them.
It was a woman and two others who she could tell weren’t human. They towered over the human they were with, their dreadlock-like appendages swinging with every movement. Picking up a nearby gun, another security guard who seemed to have dropped the weapon in their struggle for survival. Securely holding the gun in her hands, she limped over to a concealed hallway, peeking out from behind the wall, and then the gun tightly in her hand.
Before getting a single word out, a haunting screech echoed through the room. One of those fuckers appeared again. But this time, it was… different . It had the same glossy body as the one she killed, but the same dreads as the figures with the woman.
Fuck this!
She wouldn’t stick around and find out what they wanted. But she needed to patch her chest up and fast. She was losing so much blood that her vision started to blur. Standing was becoming a challenge.
Backing away, she glanced around, spotting a directory on the wall. There was an empty OR room, just a few rooms down. Perfect.
She continued backing away slowly, making sure to keep her steps light so that none of those creatures would spot her.
Unknown to her, one of the figures was already watching her.
They saw her kill. Her sick and twisted smile as she watched the creature die.
Turning, she darted off to the OR. Shoving the door open, she barricaded herself in and started rummaging through the leftover supplies. Thankfully, she found a needle and thread, plus tons of gauze and tape.
Grabbing a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, dumping half of the bottle into a metal tray, she just dropped the needle in. As the needle soaked, Diamond got enough thread to seal her wounds just long enough to get out, hopefully. Untying her gown, she let it drop, leaving her in her shorts and sports bra. Now she needed a way to stay quiet. Rolling up a small towel she found, she bit down hard. Finally, she pulled the needle out of the bottle, wiped off the needle, and threaded it. Breathing deeply through her nose, she started.
Stabbing the tip of the needle into her skin, she sank her teeth into the towel harder. More blood spilled out as she stitched herself up. Loop after loop, she tightened the stitches. The blood from her wound coated her already blood-stained fingers. Painstakingly, she got the wound closed enough to stop some of the bleeding. She wanted to scream. She was in so much pain. There were sedatives, but she didn’t trust that they wouldn’t knock her out and leave her as an easy meal for whatever was still here.
Still biting the bullet, she grabbed a pair of nearby forceps and picked up a pad of clean gauze. Dipping it in the alcohol, she braced herself as she cleaned the blood off her fresh stitches. The burning and stinging sensations were almost too much. It felt as if her chest was being burned. Fresh tears started to fall as she kept cleaning the wound.
Dropping the now bloodied gauze, she grabbed a clean pad and pressed it onto the wound. Doing her best, she also ripped off pieces of tape and secured them onto her chest. Maybe taking that emergency nursing course did come in handy, now that she needed it. Finishing securing the clean gauze onto her chest, she wasn’t paying attention to the creatures lurking both outside and now in the OR.
Looking up, all she saw was a chest through the window. Scrambling back, she panicked. That was when a hiss caught her attention. Looking back, she saw one.
One of those fuckers was here. In the room with her.
She didn’t have anything but the gun she snatched. Frantically, she searched for the gun she had stolen, but it was on the other side of the room, well out of her reach.
She had one outside and one in here with her.
She was going to die here!
As the one inside hissed once again, it pounced. Its whip-like tail smacked her into the wall. Her head hit the wall with a sickening crack. She watched in a daze with blurred vision as the creature stalked closer, listening to metal crunching as the door ripped down and a figure rushed forward. It was one of those figures with the woman. Did they follow her? Or were they there to kill her?
A roar came from the masked figure, and they slashed a pair of blades at the other, quickly decapitating it. Green blood oozed from the creature. The blood bubbled and smoked as it came into contact with everything it splattered on.
A huff came from the figure as they turned their attention to Diamond, who hadn’t moved from her position against the wall. Her vision started going black as she felt herself being lifted, her limbs falling limp as she blacked out from her head trauma and blood loss…
After what felt like hours, she woke up. But she wasn’t in the hospital anymore. She was lying on a cold metal table. Attempting to sit up, she felt a large hand land on her chest, pushing her down. Staring at her was one of those figures who had been with the woman. One of the others was standing off to the side, staring at them, allowing Diamond to get a good look at the pair, mainly focusing on the one standing off to the side:
Long dreadlock-like appendages fell to their shoulders. His face was nothing like she imagined. For his mouth, he had mandibles. Which were twitching and flexing as he watched the other work on her. His entire left side was scarred up, his eye a milky white from what she assumed was fighting whatever invaded the hospital she was at. One of his mandibles was missing as well. Again, she believed it was from the things at the hospital. Or did he already have these scars? Oh, whatever, she was in too much pain to care.
The one standing over her looked similar, but their dreads were pulled back into a ponytail as they worked on her wounds. Their mandibles twitched in irritation as they tried to push a needle into the wound. Diamond couldn’t help her flinch every time they attempted.
Her eyes widened as she stared at the one working on her, as they made a clicking sound. They had their mandibles flared open in annoyance, presumably at her flinching. Diamond muttered a quiet “sorry” as they kept working. Finally getting the needle into Diamond's skin, they injected her with something. Instantly, she felt the pain almost melting away immediately except for a dull throbbing. Thankfully, that wasn’t noticeable.
Diamond felt her eyes grow heavy as she watched them use what looked like a scalpel to cut the skin near her collarbone open, peeling away the skin and muscle as they slowly cut into her. Finally, they pulled something out with their claws. It was dropped onto a table next to them. Diamond propped her head up the best she could to see what it was: It looked like a disk-shaped tracking chip.
What the fuck? Why did she have a chip implanted in her body? Did the doctors fear she would leave without them knowing? Or was that experimental drug much more than an experimental drug?
While Diamond was distracted, they used what looked like a staple gun to staple her wounds together. The loud click was enough to startle Diamond back to reality, but she tried her best to stay still as they finished sealing her wounds. Well, at least she didn’t have to worry about being tracked now, or at least she hoped so…