Chapter Text
Zack was certain he was alone.
Because even in this haze, the air was eerily still and empty. When he tried to open his eyes, nothing distinguished the darkness of the cell from the black behind his eyelids. And there was this chill sinking into his skin, something deeper and more raw than the metal clasps strapped against his arms.
But as his breathing became less shallow and his voice registered above a faint moan, gasps of neon yellow bathed the room in light. A guttural click ricocheted through the room, then the sounds of puttering rainfall accompanied by snaps of static.
Zack was greeted with four bare walls and a single door. He turned his head to get a better sense of his surroundings, but his neck cracked in protest. He groaned, and instinctively lifted his hands. He had been strapped to a chair, he realized, but the clasps had been undone. His wrists, somehow strangled under his threadbare bandages, were chapped and red from the cold metal. And when he stood, his legs were shaky, as if he had been sitting for a very long time.
Where am I?
The last thing Zack remembered was being grabbed from behind, and a piece of fabric being stuffed in his mouth with an odd, chemical smell. He had heard of it before - chloroform - but never thought to watch out for the stuff. Nobody made the effort to kidnap a kid with a blood-soaked knife. Until now, that is.
Zack frowned, and looked around again. There were no windows in this room. Just a faint bulb in the middle of the ceiling. A cluster of machines watched him diligently from the corner.
Zack clicked his tongue against his teeth. Who would want to watch him? He was an enigma. A ghost. No one should want to watch him, at least. Unless they planned to run, or submit to a fight they could never win.
Pat. Pat. Pat pat pat . . . pat pat . . .
The speaker paused, then shrieked in protest upon repeating the loop. A shiver rushed violently down his spine. Somehow, Zack was convinced that the pattering of rain had grown louder, because it was starting to hurt his head.
And it was really starting to piss him off. It was so loud, and it made him feel so small. And there were some things he knew he wouldn’t forget, no matter how hard he tried.
He headed for the door. Whoever was fucking with him was bound to regret it.
Pat. Pat. Pat pat pat . . . pat pat . . .
Pip . . .
There were puddles in the hallway, stretched against the walls in thin veins. Zack pushed his nose into his arm, trying to block the overpowering smell of mold. He guessed there was a leak somewhere, but couldn’t identify the source of the dripping. Everything was shadowy and faint under the red gazes of the cameras and the sputtering lightbulbs stringed along the walls.
If it weren’t for the echoes of artificial rainfall bouncing throughout the corridor, Zack would have been convinced this place was abandoned. And as he walked on, things only got weirder.
There were paragraphs clawed into the stone. Zack couldn’t read them, but they looked awfully full of themselves, drafted in loopy cursive he only associated with the snobbiest of people.
And there were mud-caked footprints too. Some were spinning in circles, some pacing back and forth between the paragraphs, and one set trailing the right side of the hall in a perfect line. Zack kneeled down to get a closer look, slightly perturbed that they were deeper and crisper than the other footprints. Someone had made this trip many times before. So many times, in fact, that their paths were identical each time.
Zack paused. The only other person who followed their own steps so carefully was the blind, old man at home. His memories rushed to nights waiting tirelessly for the old man in the middle of a thunderstorm, wondering if he would make it home. He had refused to repeat the mistake of searching for him in the rain. He could never shake the image of the old man’s disappointed face. He had scolded Zack all the way back, telling him to have faith that he would return home every time.
He always did. His ceremony was clockwork: brush his shoes on the doormat, step into the house, shuffle to the right until he bumped into the workbench, take off his shoes, and call Zack to take his coat before it ruined the floor. Zack would tell him that the floor was already soaked, and the old man would smile and point to the mop resting at its usual spot by the fridge.
Zack’s tender smile faded into a frown. The last time he saw the old man was on a rainy night as well. They got into an argument, and Zack ran out the door. He wanted to get the chill out of his system, it was practically boiling in his blood, and went on the hunt for some new prey.
That’s when he was attacked. He frowned. The old man was probably worried sick about him. And unless he could haul his ass out of here, there was no way to tell if Zack would survive to explain what happened.
Zack stood and look back to the hall. It was difficult to tell how long he would have to walk, but there didn’t seem to be any other options.
Fortunately for him, there was another door at the end. Zack placed a hand on the knob, and braced himself for the worst.
Mirrors. The room was full of mirrors.
“The fuck is this?” he murmured, closing the door behind him out of habit. He walked into the space, doing his best to avoid his reflection on the back wall. There was a small machine in the center of the room vying for his attention, something Zack had never seen before. It looked almost like a small computer that was missing its screen. In the screen’s place was a bundle of paper that curled in on itself due to the moisture in the room.
With a click, a wide cylinder slid to the left all on its own. Zack jumped back, and watched as the keys started to type a message by themselves in drippy ink. His eyes instinctively scanned the paper, trying to decipher what those strange symbols meant.
“Shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” he muttered.
After a moment, the typing stopped and Zack was left standing in a quiet room once again. He shook his head, and walked towards the dreaded mirrors. What the hell was he supposed to do with a piece of paper he couldn’t read? At least the glass was unexplored territory. Maybe there was something on the ground he could use as a weapon in case someone busted in. If he managed to break the glass, a shard would do nicely to replace his knife.
But before he could walk too far, the speakers shrieked a garbled announcement. Zack froze, listening intently for any kind of message. Then the speaker fell silent.
He waited for a moment, then continued on his path. The blue light reflecting off the walls gave the room a haunting, but almost soothing quality. And as Zack approached that back wall, he saw his full features for the very first time.
He had seen his reflection once or twice, usually when he caught a glimpse of himself in a window on a sunny day, but never had he seen his entire body before now.
He was a scrawny little shit, for one thing, with long limbs and sunken features that looked weirdly old for a kid his age. His mess of hair looked even blacker in this strange, blue light, as if someone had drawn his darkest features in pigmented ink. It made his other eye and bandages stand out like a sore thumb, and he felt the urge to look away, like someone was shining a light directly into his eyes.
The speaker shrieked again, and whispery sounds started to form into coherent words. Zack spun around, looking for the speaker, when his eyes landed on a mass of red dots glaring at him from the corner.
“Greetings, Isaac Foster.”
Zack blanched. “Who the hell are you?”
“Do you know why you are here?”
He rolled his eyes. “What do you fucking think!”
“Do you know why you are here?” the speaker insisted.
The voice coming from the speakers didn’t appear to be recorded, but fuck all if Zack could honestly tell the difference. It was a male voice, though, that much was certain. And however soft it was, there was no hiding its deep resonance.
Zack didn’t want to trust whoever was talking with him, but he didn’t know how else to get out of this stupid room. The old man was waiting for him.
“I . . . remember being taken.” Every word was dragged out from Zack in a slow and painful way. “I remember someone putting up a measly fucking fight, and then nothin’.”
“Do you not remember?”
“Are you fucking deaf? That’s what I just said!”
There was a lengthy pause as Zack waited to hear the man’s response. The speaker crackled eerily at the silence, holding Zack’s attention hostage. Finally, the static faded into a buzz once again. “If I were to tell you it was possible to leave this place, would you prefer to go?”
Zack glared. “Well I’m already sick of this shit hole, so yeah.”
“Tell me something. If you had nothing to which you can return, would you stay?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“If you had nothing else outside of this place, would you stay?”
Zack paused, and felt that chill coming on again. He was used to having nothing, used to living off of everyone’s garbage to survive, and killing others to make end’s meet for himself, but it was the kind of nothing that he had grown accustomed to. This sounded more like a threat.
“Isaac Foster, will you become an angel?”
He wasn’t sure what to expect, but it sure as hell wasn’t that. “A . . . what?”
“Come find me, Isaac Foster. Prove to me that you have what it takes to become an angel.”
The speaker fell silent, and the red lights faded into darkness.
“Hey!” Zack yelled, trying to jump up and hit the machines back into speaking. “What the fuck are you trying to pull here?!”
The machines did not react. Instead, a hushed scratching broke the silence. Zack turned to see that the middle mirror had been pulled away, revealing yet another dark corridor.
He sighed, and considered breaking the glass again. Deciding that he’d rather go into a fight with fists flying rather than a bloody wrist carrying what could barely be called a weapon, he pushed onward.
As he approached the elevator, Zack found himself almost intimidated by the monstrosity in front of him. It was a hulking, metal contraption cut in half by a band of yellow caution tape. Bordering it was a humorously small button with an arrow pointing up.
Zack licked his lips and jammed his finger into the arrow. A chorus of bells sounded off immediately, whining in an octave just a little too high for comfort.
The doors opened, revealing a landing so garishly opulent that Zack had to balk. It was like a golden “fuck you” announcing that there would be no going back. After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped in. The doors shut, and within seconds another announcement blared through the speakers. This time a woman’s voice rang out robotically:
“The boy on the bottom level is confirmed as a sacrifice. All floors, please begin your preparations at once.”
There was a click, some whirring, and then the sensation of rising. Zack reached for the wall behind him, trying to settle his breathing.
“A sacrifice, huh?”
Somehow, the realization that this whole thing was a trap calmed him down. At least someone confirmed his suspicions, even if it was a robot. It got him into the right frame of mind.
He wasn’t about to play this fucked up game and act as an “angel” for some lunatic in a speaker. He wasn’t supposed to be there at all, so he sure as hell wasn’t going to stay.
Zack resisted the urge to fall to the ground and hug his knees. For once in his shitty life, things had been calm, and he paid the price for it.
But despite his train of bad luck, all he really wanted to do was get back home. He wanted to keep replacing his fucked up memories with nights mopping up a puddle under a dingy old coat, hiding a smile from a stranger who promised to feed him on a measly paycheck only meant for one, rather than digging another grave in the rain for two people who would rather see him face down in a coffin.