Page 51 of Devoured

Before I could answer, more bodies slammed onto the grating behind us. Dr. Alan hit hard, her face smashing into the metal. When she lifted her head, blood streamed from her broken nose.

Good.

Her black dress was torn, her perfect hair hanging in sweaty, tangled clumps. She looked around at the hellscape and something shattered behind her eyes.

“This isn’t possible,”she breathed, staggering backward from the pulsing walls. “This isn’t real.”

But it was real. It was very real.

Tobias landed next, rolling to absorb the fall. He got to his feet quickly, his eyes locking on Dr. Alan. “Doc, where the hell are we?”

“How the fuck should I know?”she snapped, her composure cracking. “Look around, you moron. Does this look like anywhere I’ve ever been?”

The walls weren’t just rusted—they were alive. I could see shapes embedded everywhere. Limbs. Faces. Twisted human silhouettes pressed into the surface from within, mouths frozen in silent screams.

One of them turned its head and looked at me.

I scrambled backward, bumping into Marion. She grabbed my arm with ice-cold fingers. “Did you see—”

“Yeah. I saw.”

The face in the wall was young. Female. Her eyes wide with terror. Her mouth moved frantically, but no sound came out. Behind her, more faces strained toward us. The walls were full of them.

Dr. Alan saw them too. Her control fractured entirely. “No,”she whimpered, backing away faster. “This is a hallucination. A breakdown. This isn’t happening.”

“Doc, calm down,”Tobias reached for her. “We stick together—”

“There is no ’we’!”she screamed. “You’re all going to die here, and I’m not dying with you!”

She turned and bolted down the corridor, her heels clattering against the metal grating. Tobias cursed and ran after her, but the corridor stretched—growing longer, the distance between them widening.

“So will you, you bitch!”I shouted after her, but my voice was swallowed by the building’s wet, breathing walls.

“Alan! Wait!”Tobias’s voice faded as the building absorbed them both, leaving us alone with the faces in the walls—and something massive, breathing in the dark.

Isaac tried to sit up, his face pale and drenched in sweat. “My leg! It hurts so bad!”

I crawled over, palms burning from the hot metal beneath me. The veins on the metal floor pulsed faster, like our presence excited whatever lived here. Isaac’s leg was mangled, bent at an impossible angle—shattered.

“We need to get out of here,”Sela said, struggling upright. “This place—it’s alive somehow.”

She was right. I could feel it. A hunger in the air. An intelligence behind the rust and rot. The building was watching us, tasting our fear, savoring our pain.

“Can you walk?”I asked Isaac.

“I can try.”But when he put weight on his leg, he collapsed, biting back a scream. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then we carry you,”Marion said, despite barely standing herself.

I scanned for a way out—and there it was. The door Varnar had brought us through.

“If this place mirrors the hospital, then beyond that door should be stairs,”I pointed. “That might be a way up.”

We started moving, supporting Isaac between us. Every step felt like dragging ourselves through molasses. The door always seemed just out of reach.

“Move faster!”I gasped.

Finally, we reached the stairwell—its steps made of the same pulsing, breathing metal.