Chapter Text
The elevator door slid shut with a grating clunk, its grimy lights flickering overhead.
Dr. Dickens did not stand tall and menacing any longer, but rather swayed and stumbled ungracefully in a desperate attempt to find something to hold on to.
He struck buttons at random, squinting hard in an attempt to stop the buzzing sensation that permeated his skull. The lights endlessly nagged at his overwhelmed senses, seeming a hundred decibels louder than usual and equally as bright.
Speakers didn’t blare this time when the elevator finally stopped moving.
No one was controlling them behind the scenes; there was simply no need. Rachel was already on Gray’s floor by now, a plentiful distraction from surveillance of the others.
Of course, Danny was neither physically nor cognitively fit enough to piece that much together. To his pleasant surprise, however, the floor he was carried to was much darker than his own or the elevator.
He took a step, nose-diving in the general direction of a wall. The doctor barely caught himself on it before he would surely have fallen face-first into the dirt floor.
Eddie’s floor. He realized, propping himself up against the wall in an attempt to look around.
It was cold and desolate. Too quiet, too. Eddie always came to greet whoever was visiting when the elevator stopped… but not this time.
His shaky analysis was interrupted by a lurching sensation as he doubled over, clasping hands over his mouth in an attempt to stop the oncoming cascade of vomit; of course, to no avail.
It streamed down his wrists making perhaps more of a mess than it would have if he’d just let things go.
The world was full of surprises today, and he didn’t care much for them so far (if he did say so himself.)
Everything hurt, and it felt like the edges of his vision were deceiving him.
A bitter, burning taste lingered on his lips as Danny attempted to minimize the damage, a disgruntled huff escaping him.
He hadn’t noticed how sick he’d felt before… but whatever the problem had been, it seemed less, now. He found himself still bleary, but in less pain as he took mental note of his surroundings.
His lab coat was weighed down with medical supplies and… a pistol. He didn’t know where he’d gotten it, and had the sneaking suspicion that he did not want to know where he’d gotten it.
It wasn’t just the unexplained items that irked him. The previous 2 days seemed detached- like a dream. And before that… he failed to remember much of anything at all. 164 hours of missing memory… a gap far too wide for his taste.
It was as if nearly a week had passed in which he was asleep, but he knew that wasn’t possible.
That would be considered a coma, not sleep. And even so, it seemed unlikely that it was the case, seeing as he retained fleeting glimpses of time seemingly from the missing period.
He remembered feeling happy, really happy. Something had happened to spur a good memory. No, someone. The girl; his patient. Rachel. She was here. Something had gone wrong, she wasn’t following the path he’d meant for her.
Something had triggered her from the dazed state… and before that. Her own floor. He remembered that. He remembered visiting her like he did Eddie, a quieter, more centered happiness in the companionship.
And before that— before that…
Why, he’d been having tea with the reverend, discussing that very patient. He’d been telling him about her resemblance to his mother, at least as far as eyes went.
Gray seemed interested enough, offering her the highest floor for ‘recovery.’
“There’s a certain type of person that just can’t integrate back into society, Daniel. After a point… they’re just too far gone.”
He’d said.
He’d seemed very compassionate then, offering an alternative to bouncing her between foster homes before she inevitably ended up in prison.
"Besides, this way … you won’t ever have to search again. You can use your time for research now. She’s a perfect case study.”
And in all fairness, she was. Gray was quite persuasive in his suggestions.
Always had been.
That was the most recent memory he had that seemed fully intact.
Danny pulled himself from the train of thought, picking up a spare bit of burlap that lay at his feet and attempting to clean his hands of the mess he’d made. It yielded mediocre success, but success all the same.
His stance felt a little stronger than it had been after a bit of resting, though still not particularly steady. He used the wall as a grounding point and leaned on it a while, before gaining the confidence to walk on his own.
There was still no sign of Eddie, not even a sound. It was an awful, foreboding feeling.
By the time the doctor reached Eddie’s garden, he was out of breath again. Not nauseous or particularly dizzy this time- At least, not more than he’d already been.
His legs felt heavy as he looked around, surveying this section of the room. The sensation of dread nagged at him; something was different. Wrong . It took him a moment to realize what, though.
Eddie’s graveyard was in disarray, carefully carved tombstones reduced to bits of rubble.
And the piece de resistance…
A large headstone had been overturned, lying face down over… something .
If there was to be an answer to these puzzling circumstances, he was certain it would be with the intact grave.
Driven by adrenaline, he dropped to his knees to lift the stone slab.
It was heavy… but not as heavy as the others. He’d helped the small mortician place his esteemed headstones before.
This one must have been granite, rather than his usual choice of marble. It slid after a moment of pushing, just enough to confirm his suspicion.
It did in fact conceal the answer- a flower-laden coffin with Eddie’s distinct work boots poking out of the bottom.
He pushed harder, forcing the plaque off of its shallow grave fully.
As he’d suspected, Eddie was indeed there. He laid on his side, curled into a ball with his hands pressed over what seemed to Danny to be an abdominal wound.
He looked even smaller and frailer than usual, alarming paleness tinting his cheeks. But… he wasn’t dead just yet.
Eddie looked up at him wearily. It seemed to take him a minute to register who stood over him- before he broke down into quiet tears. Out of relief, fear, or pain, he wasn’t sure.
Danny figured that that was a good sign either way, as he was yet to meet a corpse that could cry.
The young mortician attempted between gasps for air to explain, heaving stopping much of anything coherent from escaping him.
His overalls were torn quite unevenly around the wound, that blade must have been on its way out… Speaking of dull weapons and jagged wounds-
He gingerly touched his own, a flash of recognition in his mind. “I think I can guess what happened, no need to waste breath trying to force it out.”
Zack .
That’s right… how had Zack escaped his floor, anyway? Rachel had come up to his floor alone. He could vaguely remember that, through a fisheye perspective. It didn’t make sense… one minute he’d been trying to snap Rachel back into reality and the next… a scythe through the sternum.
He’d been slurring his words… Everything was dizzy. But it still didn’t make much sense, nor did it then.
Zack didn’t have authorization to operate the elevator. So how…?
Danny knelt, digging through a pocket in search of rubber gloves.
Between his own blood, dirt from the walls, and vomit he was in no position to be administering medical help- but if he was going to, he had the sense to at very least do it correctly.
Eddie seemed to understand what he meant after staring at the gash for a moment, dying down into periodic sniffles. His wound wasn’t quite as bad as it had first seemed.
It was far from a scratch, but the slice across his midsection was just past skin deep; Nothing liquid stitches couldn’t fix.
Danny had managed to salvage two bottles from his floor, among the other things he’d loaded himself with in his dazed state.
“How’d you know I was stuck in here?” Eddie asked finally, breaking the somewhat awkward silence between them.
The doctor was unsure whether or not he should explain that it was a coincidence entirely, hesitating to respond at all.
Thankfully, a new distraction interrupted the course of that talk.
He’d nearly missed them- splotches of yellow and purple bruising dotting his torso.
They weren't just ordinary impact wounds. Danny recognized that much, shifting his shirt up to reveal a hopelessly bruised frame.
Eddie had obviously managed to break a rib or two, given the state of him. But perhaps the most out-of-place sight was grimy painter’s tape wrapped around his chest.
It was far too tight to have been safe, much less comfortable.
As it registered in his mind, Danny seemed to waver.
“Ed-”
Eddie turned to face away from him hurriedly, arms crossed over his chest.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
He paused. “...Do you want to explain what it really is then?”
Eddie shook his head. “Not really.”
Danny had counseled transgender patients before. He understood, at least to some degree, what was happening. He started again, choosing his words carefully. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me. You were a boy when we met, and you’re a boy right now, Eddie. Nothing has changed.”
Eddie was very quiet, but he didn’t seem upset. Not in the way he had been.
“I need to take care of your wound, will you let me do that?”
He’d reverted to the tone he used with his patients in the practice, applying the surgical glue hurriedly at Eddie’s allowance.
“You can’t move until they dry. After that, you’re a free man. But…” He hesitated. “I want to talk to you about your binding method, too.”
He didn’t intend to insult or undermine Eddie, but that bruising looked severe. It worried him.
“Being able to breathe easy would help you be more comfortable. Besides, if you keep it on- your ribs might heal that way.”
The ‘stitches’ grew tacky… almost dry. Only a little longer…
“I’m not going to take it off- if that’s what you want.” Eddie shook his head. “I can’t do that. I don’t want anybody to see.”
He did have a point… or at very least he made sense in his reasoning to Danny.
“...I… understand why you wouldn’t want to, but I think we can find a solution instead of making the problem worse.”
Often it was difficult to remember how young Eddie truly was. Or Rachel, for that matter. They’d been through so much that they hardly acted appropriately for their age group.
Still, it shined through upon occasion; like now. It felt strange to respond in the same way he did with his patients to Eddie.
But- it also felt important to do so for him. He was just a kid, graves aside. A kid who must have been in a lot of pain both in and externally.
The doctor did his best to remind himself of that.
”...What kind of solution?”
He hadn’t really decided yet. But put on the spot, it seemed he wouldn’t be allotted extra time to consider.
Danny hastily emptied his lab coat’s pockets, before offering it awkwardly. “It’s uh- a bit of a mess, but it should be big enough to hide anything uncomfortable.”
Eddie didn’t exactly seem pleased.
“Turn around or something, I’ll tell you when to come back.”
He did as he was told without a word, half wondering if the distaste was because there was still blood on it.
The doctor focused on fitting all the supplies into his pants pockets, rather than lingering on the thought.
Moths and butterflies flitted around in the dark corners of the floor, bumping up against the few pilot lights that had remained lit. The sounds of their wings scratching at the glass of the bulbs was oddly loud, and always unpleasant,The same as the plunking sound they made upon impact.
He couldn’t fault them, though. They were only searching for familiarity. It seemed likely they hadn’t ever been in the dark before—since Eddie kept his gardens lit. Had they not been insects he might have stopped to consider the fear they must have felt, having their world suddenly plunge into darkness.
It was a frivolous, short-lived thought.
“I’m done.”
He returned his attention to Eddie, now buttoned up in a lab coat that was far too big for him. The mottled mess of bandages and tape laid mangled at his feet.
“Why did you come down here?” He repeated his previous question, with a new sort of suspicion in his tone.
Daniel figured there was no use in lying.
“I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t see, much less stand up straight and I ended up hitting the buttons to your floor by mistake. I think…”
He paused as he recalled his first meetings with Gray, more pieces of the puzzle clicking together. The memory gaps… the mania. It was familiar after all, in a vague sense.
“I think Father Gray put something in my tea. Everything’s been fuzzy since then. And… I missed a meeting with him yesterday because of my untimely stabbing. So it’s safe to say this was… some sort of withdrawal fit. Psychosis .”
Eddie seemed to take a minute to absorb that. “So you think-” He paid, brow furrowing. “You think the father was poisoning you on purpose?”
“Not poisoning. At least not to kill. But he changed the way I was thinking. Worsened the severity of outbursts. I think…”
He hummed in contemplation for a moment.
“I think he’s getting bored of us, Eddie.”
Eddie slowly made his way to sit next to him. “Just you and me?”
“No, all of us. He’s always said he wanted authentic ‘angels.’ Test subjects in their natural states- killing. But lately… It seems like he’s been intentionally interfering with the way things play out. Zack should not have been able to escape his floor on his own. I think he opened the elevator for him.”
He paused. “And with me… I’ve always been methodical and practical in my work. But… I flew off the handle earlier. It was really… really bad. I think it was the drugs, though I can’t be sure without a test. He’s isolated Cathy more than usual too. The longer she’s alone- without attention, the more aggressive she becomes.”
Eddie seemed to scan every word as it came to him, his dubious gaze faltering for a moment.
Danny only continued on.
“And Rachel, she found a bible in her room and had a meltdown after reading it. I’m the only one that ever stocked her room, and I never bought her that. It’s… just a bunch of little things, really. But together, they sort of add up quickly.”
His voice wavered as he tried to wrap his own mind around it all.
“He’s always said that a finale should be the most spectacular part of an event. So with everything… I can’t help but think that he plans to bring an end to us soon.”
Fragments of memories began to connect, little by little.
He might very well just have been developing a new delusion, he rationalized. Maybe he really was going insane. It felt like it.
He couldn’t trust himself to know the truth.
“Then I think,” Eddie started tentatively. “I think I’m going to try to leave before he does it to me. There’s nothing left for me here. Nothing left for you either. If… Father Gray really wants to kill us, then there’s nothing left for any of us here. We have to escape. Right?”
His guileless expression contrasted heavily with the bruise-purple circles beneath his eyes. They searched for some kind of agreement or validation in the doctor’s face.
Danny only shook his head.
“There’s nowhere to go,” he replied.
“Maybe for you, but not for me. I tried it up there, and there’s no one that will accept someone like me. I couldn’t return to society.”
Eddie half-mumbled his response, eyes focusing on the dry, dirt floor.
“If all of us tried together, maybe they would. Before, you tried alone. How can you know it won’t be different?”
It was the desperate, naive perspective of a child.
But Eddie’s voice was strangely familiar when he said it, like the ghost of his childhood self- the smallest, most foolish part of him – insisting that it wasn’t fair not to try. That he’d be a coward to give up now.
His face twisted into an uncertain grimace, head shaking almost imperceptibly.
“Even if we did try that… he’d probably stop us. Besides-” He paused. “What do you mean by all of us?”
Eddie seemed to consider. “Everyone except Gray. Me, you… Ms. Ward, Rachel. Maybe even Zack.”
That, he couldn’t begin to understand. “Zack tried to kill you, and nearly succeeded.”
“And Rachel rejected me and watched him do it. Let him do it. But I tried to attack them too. We’ve all done terrible things to each other, but there’s strength in numbers. So if Gray wants to do the most terrible thing… with a common enemy, I’m sure we could convince them.”
He held out his arms for emphasis with a wince at ‘most.’
Eddie almost had a point. Danny was unsure how to feel about that.
“I don’t want to die, doctor. Not yet.”
Damn it .
Danny gave a heavy, disgruntled sigh.
This was a ridiculous, barely thought-out plan.
But it was a plan.
“Fine then… Say we try, either we’ll die here or try to escape and probably die anyway. We might as well give it a shot.”
Eddie seemed pleased enough with that response.
“Cathy’s floor is the closest one up from here. We can get her first.”
Danny dreaded trying to explain all of this the most when it came to her. She was the most like Gray when it came to theatrics… and he was almost certain she’d deny the poisonings at all in favor of assuming Danny was just becoming more of an “unforgivable sinner” of his own accord.
He gathered his medical supplies all the same… plus Eddie's shovel at his request, leading him back to the elevator.
Upon reaching the next floor, there was both good and bad news about Cathy’s reaction to their proposal.
The good news was that she didn’t oppose the plan.
The bad news was that her lack of opposition happened to be because she was lying face-down in a puddle of her own blood.
Not ideal, really.
Danny found her severed arm to be a particularly concerning matter.
Eddie, on the other hand, seemed a mixture of disturbed and curious.
“Is she dead?”
“No, I don't think so.” She’d lost quite a bit of blood but… not enough to die just yet.
Cathy’s shoulders continued to shift slightly with shallow breaths, reinforcing his assumption.
The scene seemed relatively fresh; as if it had happened less than an hour ago- more fortune that only he seemed to notice.
As much as it would have been easier to leave her there and move on, a strange sense of obligation told him that he simply couldn’t do that. They’d been begrudging friends too long to just leave her behind now.
“This might take a little while to fix.” He conceded, taking inventory of the wounds. “And I’ll need your help.”
Eddie nodded. “I can try… But her arm…?”
Danny sighed. “Well, it’s certainly going to be a bit of a hassle… but I’ve seen successful reconnections done before. You’ve got to file down the bones, plate them, transplant a little muscle, and make sure all of the vessels and nerves reconnect. Even then, it probably won’t work the way it did before.”
He attempted to explain, kneeling beside her body and laying out his tools meticulously. “You’re going to need to get supplies for me while I deal with the gunshot wound. Can you do that?”
Eddie nodded solemnly. “But where do we get muscle? You don’t have any.”
Danny couldn’t tell if that was a joking slight, or just that ‘thing’ children did where they were far too honest without cruel intent.
“Everyone has muscle in them- er- even if it doesn’t show, but I was thinking more of her prisoners than myself as a donor.”
Those poor sots certainly wouldn’t be needing such things anymore, anyway...
“Can you handle bringing an arm back? Just take it off at the shoulder with your shovel. They need to be alive, but try not to go after anybody too fresh for you to fight. The last thing we need is more injuries.”
Eddie nodded, shouldering his shovel with a small wince. He looked for a moment like he might vomit, but it passed quickly.
“It’s just down the hall… mind the gas chambers, I don’t know if any are still active.”
Eddie nodded again, running off into one of the halls that branched from the arena.
Danny turned his attention to Cathy, inspecting the shot wound. It didn’t seem to have hit anything all that vital, considering its placement. Still, bleeding and infection were trouble enough to worry him.
Cathy hadn’t experienced as many near-death beatdowns as the others. Her body wasn’t used to shutdown mode. …That could make recovery less than pleasant. All the same, he set about removing the bullet fragments meticulously.
He packed the wound with gauze, watching her chest rise and fall slowly with a weary expression. “You’d better not leave me to deal with this by myself, Cat. I won’t forgive you.”
There was a scuffle in the hallway, drawing his attention away. After a moment, Eddie emerged again cradling a shriveled, bleeding arm proudly.
“Got it!”
Danny changed his expression to something less grim, responding after a moment’s pause.
“Good job, Eddie. That'll do just fine. …I should be alright now, you can watch or try to find something of use. Whichever you prefer, really.”
Eddie nodded, plopping down beside him with a small, eager smile. Danny attempted to mirror it, though as tense as he was it came out as more of a pained grimace.
The next half hour consisted of painstakingly attempting to keep vital functions operational, while simultaneously frankensteining an arm back together. It was hardly perfect, but then again, he didn’t have the tools to make it turn out perfect.
Still, if she maintained her arm, Danny could only hope she’d be happy enough with that.
She was still out like a light, which he could only assume was a blessing- because he most certainly didn’t have enough pain medication to placate her conscious self.
“She’s gonna need something so it doesn’t just fall off, right?” Eddie sort of piped up as he finished stitching.
“Like a sling?”
“Yeah, or a cast? I can make one! She had an extra shirt or two back by the dead guys…”
Danny nodded. “I’m sure she’d appreciate that, can you bring it here?”
Eddie nodded.
The ‘shirt’ in question was a combat vest- but he saw no value in correcting Eddie, who held it up proudly when he returned. It would do either way.
The doctor did his best to tie its outer fabric into a sling, propping Cathy up long enough to put it on and situate her within it.
Ideally, a patient in her condition shouldn’t have been moved after an operation like that; however, it was rather clear that staying put would not be an option. At least, not out in the open.
“...Until we get the others, we shouldn’t move her much. But I don’t want to leave either of you out here too long, in case something goes wrong- so…” He considered a moment, before walking off mid-sentence.
Eddie was quite used to such mannerisms by now and merely watched, shooting him an odd look when he returned with a charred door.
“It looks like it was blown off its hinges in the other room, so that’s lucky.”
How exactly that was lucky was lost on the young mortician.
He laid it flat by Cathy, rolling her onto it. “This way she can’t move too much during transport. Like a stretcher.”
Eddie nodded, musing to himself that that information would have been better suited between the trail off and the doctor’s ramble upon returning.
“The door’s metal though... Solid. So we might not be able to carry it. Better to slide it so she doesn’t get dropped.”
The two laughed nervously at the thought of how Cathy would react if she found out that they had dropped her.
“So, more like a sled?”
“Y…eah, like a sled.” Danny nodded. “We’ll go to the control room since it’s secure, you can wait there with her and watch the cameras.”
Eddie nodded. It seemed like a solid enough plan, especially under such stress. They slid the panel along painstakingly, reaching the control room after a few tries.
“She’s really no good at drawing…” He sighed, looking at the crude depictions of torture that she’d scribbled across the walls.
Danny agreed silently, before standing. “Don’t let anybody in if I’m not with them, alright? Check the cameras before you open any doors.”
“I will.”
Eddie figured it was a bit like being home alone. Same rules, anyway. Don’t open the door without checking first. That was easy enough to do. He watched Danny exit Cathy’s floor through the elevator, nervous about his absence almost as soon as the elevator closed.
He was sure he’d be alright.
Not really- but it felt a little reassuring to say.