Chapter 15: The Laboratory

Val slammed the heavy metal door shut and threw the latch, engaging the thick cylinder lock at the top with a dull clunk. She took two steps back, her breath ragged, the echo of her boots swallowed by the silence. Then—sharp pain. Two quick pricks in her neck.

An instant later, a surge of electricity ripped through her spine and limbs. Her muscles clenched, her jaw locked tight enough to grind the enamel of her teeth. She staggered, instinctively twisting toward the source—but the pain was dull compared to what she’d already endured.

Battle Damage

Name Val Health 100% → 95% Source Taser

Three figures stood behind her. Acolytes. Draped in the same crimson robes as before, their faces impassive and empty. One held a compact, humming device with wires trailing from it to the metal prongs now buried in her neck. The second gripped a sidearm low at his hip. The third—an axe, chipped and stained, resting casually on his shoulder.

Name Acolytes of The Good Doctor ×3 Occupation Unknown Health 100% Gear Robe Weapons Taser, Glock 17, Axe

A taser, she realized, brushing her fingers against the prongs in her neck. My taser, she thought bitterly, recognizing the familiar casing as the one from the constable's pistol belt. She growled through clenched teeth, muscles twitching, refusing to drop the helm even as the current coursed through her. Her knees threatened to buckle, but she forced herself upright, shaking beneath the pulse of the voltage.

With a quick reach of her arm, Val grabbed the metal wires still trailing from her neck and yanked them forward. The taser sparked violently, the device jerking from the Acolyte’s hands as he stumbled toward her, pulled by the momentum.

She didn’t hesitate. As he came into reach, Val seized the front of his robe and hurled his body across the room. He collided with the second Acolyte—who was raising his pistol—just as he pulled the trigger. The shot went wide, striking the stone floor with a sharp crack, and both men crumpled in a tangle of limbs.

The third charged, axe raised. But it was futile.

Val sidestepped the clumsy swing with ease and brought the helm crashing down across the back of his head. The sound was wet and final as he collapsed in a heap, motionless.

Spinning back to the other two, she saw the second Acolyte fumbling for his dropped firearm. His partner still lay atop him, groaning. Val stepped in fast and drove a brutal kick across the man’s chin. His neck snapped with a sickening crack, his body going limp immediately.

“Woops,” she muttered, blinking in surprise, not yet fully appreciating her new found strength.

Picking up the Glock from the floor, Val took a moment to assess the room. It was stark and sterile—white walls, linoleum-tiled floors, and humming fluorescent lights overhead.

How the heck do they still have power? she wondered. Generators, maybe?

In the corner stood a plain metal desk with a plastic chair—something you’d expect to find in a forgotten office building. Atop it lay the gear they’d taken from her while she’d been unconscious.

She crossed the room quickly. Holstering the pistol into the holster on the desk, she picked up her red backpack, now empty. Carefully, she opened it and placed the helm inside, zipping it shut with deliberate care. Slinging it over her shoulders, she felt the weight of it immediately—dense and unnatural.

Next came her belt and the familiar dagger she’d taken from Thomas’ garage. She slid it into place at her side, clipped the pistol and magazine holsters on her opposite hip, then slung the constables belt across her chest.

She exhaled, just a little. Not safe. Not even close. But at least she didn’t feel completely naked anymore.

Val turned her attention to the staggered Acolyte still crawling toward the white steel door on the far wall. He moved slowly, disoriented but determined. She crossed the room in a few strides, grabbed one of his ankles, and dragged him back across the floor, the limp slide of his body echoing off the sterile walls. Reaching the door that led back into the dungeon, she pulled out the set of handcuffs from the constable’s belt and secured one of his wrists to the thick iron door handle.

“There,” she muttered. “Not going anywhere.”

Kneeling beside him, she let the questions flow.

“Where are we?”

The Acolyte remained silent, his head down.

“Who are you people?” she asked, firmer now.

Still nothing. No reaction. No acknowledgement.

“Why are you doing this?”

At that, the man smiled—a faint, unsettling curl of the lips—and began to murmur under his breath. The cadence of it was familiar, like the chants she’d heard before. Slow, deliberate. Ritualistic.

Frustrated, Val scanned him more closely. He wore the same crimson robe, the same style of amulet as the others in the ritual chamber. Her mind flashed back to the masked figure—the one the old man had referred to as the Harlequin. Without hesitation, she reached down and yanked the amulet from the man’s neck.

The Acolyte’s eyes opened wide as he gasped and lurched forward, one hand reaching desperately toward the amulet. “Give it back!” he cried, his voice suddenly panicked and hoarse. “Give it back!”

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Val stepped back, startled by the outburst. “So you can speak,” she said, her voice cold and steady.

The man’s body jerked violently. His eyes rolled back and darkened to pitch black as his muscles tensed, locking in place. Black ichor began to stream from the corners of his eyes, trailing down his cheeks like tar. His back arched, tendons straining, and for a moment it looked as if he might break free entirely.

Then he collapsed, slumped against the doorframe, one cuffed wrist limp and dangling.

Val looked down at the man, then at the amulet still clutched in her hand. The metal felt unnaturally cold—wrong, somehow. Its surface was etched with strange, curling inscriptions that seemed to shift under her gaze. The feeling it gave her was the same as the one she’d felt outside that cursed cell. Heavy. Wrong. Unclean.

She dropped it to the floor with a metallic clink and turned back to the Acolyte. Crouching beside him, she pressed her fingers to his neck.

Nothing.

“Dead,” she whispered to herself.

But no sooner had the word left her lips than the Acolyte's eyes snapped open—black and soulless.

Val recoiled as his free hand lashed out, clawing at the air between them. His mouth opened in a snarl, teeth bared, a guttural growl rising from deep in his throat. The chain of the handcuff clanked against the iron door as he strained against it.

Without hesitation, Val drew her dagger.

One swift strike silenced him.

This time, for good.

Val rose and walked to the door. With one final glance at the lifeless body behind her, she pulled it open and stepped into the next corridor.

The walls here were white and sterile, lit by buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. She moved slowly, cautiously, passing a series of identical doors—each sealed with a sleek digital keypad and flanked by glass windows. They reminded her of cells, but not like the medieval ones from before. These were modern, clinical. Cold in a different way.

Val approached the first set of glass rooms. On her right, the chamber resembled a surgical suite—spotless and unnerving. A polished metal table stood in the center beneath a ceiling-mounted lamp, surrounded by trays of pristine instruments, each one neatly arranged. Not a speck of blood. Not a hair out of place.

The room on her left was empty. No table, no tools. Just bare white walls and a drain in the floor.

She shivered. These weren’t just cells. They were something worse.

Val moved forward to the next set of rooms, her boots silent on the polished floor. As she approached, her breath caught in her throat.

To her left, a dissected body lay motionless on a surgical table. The torso had been split open, organs exposed, limbs splayed unnaturally. The tools nearby—scalpels, rib spreaders, bone saws—were bloodied and blackened, as if stained not just with gore but with something far worse.

To her right, behind another pane of reinforced glass, three undead stood chained by the neck to the wall. They didn’t move. They didn’t snarl. They simply stared—silent, unmoving, eyes locked forward. Their stillness was unnatural, like mannequins posing as corpses, or corpses posing as men.

Val’s fingers tightened on the strap of her bag as she studied their gazes. Were they seeing her… or only their reflection in the one-way glass?

She didn’t wait to find out.

At the end of this laboratory of horrors, Val found the worst of it.

To the left, a room with a pile of corpses stacked nearly a metre high in the far corner—men, women, some barely recognizable. The black ooze—the same substance she’d been injected with—stained the tile floor beneath them, pooling and trailing like oil.

But it was the thing in the center of the room that truly stopped her.

An undead figure, its legs severed at the thighs, sat strapped to a metal chair bolted to the floor. Its skin was pallid and taut, its head and face covered with a black sack. Around its neck was a mechanical collar studded with long metal needles, each piercing deep into its flesh. From the collar, a web of tubing extended like black spider legs, leading to a pair of large bronze centrifuges on either side of the creature.

The machines spun with a low, grinding whine. Housed between them was a tall glass cylinder stretching up to the ceiling. Inside, some kind of smoke or vapor rotated endlessly, lit from within by a pulsing, sickly glow.

Val turned away as the realization hit her, her stomach churning in disgust. Could it really be true? Were they manufacturing the fog, the madness that had drowned the country and turned its people into monsters?

She kept walking, putting distance between herself and the abomination strapped to the machine. The corridor ended at a small office area—a pocket of mundane chaos tucked inside this nightmare.

To the left stood a simple desk, cluttered with loose papers. Val approached, sifting through them, hoping for answers—or perhaps confirmation of the terrible truth already blooming in her mind.

She picked one up. No company letterhead. No official seal. Just a line of cold data at the top:

Subject X229482 – Update 3

7/15/2025 – 22:32

Subject expired. 214.3 liters final output.

Val clenched her jaw and tossed it aside.

She grabbed another.

Subject A494 – Update 27

7/15/2025 – 12:21

Substance output: 230,248 liters. Estimated expiration: Unknown.

Estimated size of subject increased to 5 meters.

She stared at the pages scattered across the desk, a nauseating blend of body counts and substance volumes—hundreds of entries. Names replaced with numbers. Lives reduced to yield reports.

Her breath came faster. Anger rose. She crushed the paper in her fist.

Rage pushing her forward, Val stormed back toward the rooms with the undead, her boots echoing loudly against the tile. Reaching the door to the room generating the fog, she drove her palm into it with a crack. The hinges groaned and gave way, the door slamming open under the force of her strength.

She strode in, heading behind the centrifuges. The hum of spinning metal still filled the space, accompanied by the faint, whispering hiss of vapor escaping upward through the ductwork.

Without hesitation, she grabbed a thick coil of wiring that split into both of the bronze machines and gave it a hard, sudden yank.

Sparks erupted in a violent shower. The centrifuges sputtered and spun down with an agonizing whine, until the room fell into mechanical silence. The tall glass cylinder stopped swirling. The fog—the vile product of all this death—stopped venting. Its remnants dissipated slowly into the still air.

Val stood among the wreckage, chest heaving, heart pounding in her ears.

Name Val Occupation Combat Medical Technician (CMT) Health 95% Hunger 45% Thirst 80% Gear Light Clothing, Lighter Backpack Helm of the Valkyrie Weapons Glock 17, Engraved Dagger Ammo 9mm – 41 rounds Skills Battlefield Medicine, Standard Weapons Trained Kills 17

Name Acolytes of The Good Doctor ×3 (Terminated) Occupation Unknown Health 0% Gear Robe Weapons Axe