The climb was a long, vertical meditation. Each upward pull was a conscious effort to leave the filth and psychological venom of the sewers behind. The cold, unyielding steel of the ladder rungs was a grounding reality after the horrors of mimicry and manipulation. As he ascended, Leo let his new power settle into him.
He was Level 7. Another reservoir of strength, another sharpening of his senses. He paused his climb, hanging in the abyss between the nexus below and the promise of the hospital above, and opened his status screen. Five points. His last battle hadn't been won with agility or endurance, but with the cold application of a skill and the insight to use it correctly. The hospital would be a complex system. He needed to understand it.
[Allocate 3 points to Intelligence.]
[Allocate 2 points to Endurance.]
He felt the change not as a physical surge, but as a subtle click in his mind. The tangled mess of his thoughts—the map, the monsters, Sarah, the failing world—seemed to snap into a more orderly grid. The purpose of his [Improvise Tool] skill felt clearer, its potential broader. His body felt sturdier, the deep ache of his journey receding into the background.
[Name: Leo Miller
Level: 7
Class: Janitor
HP: 240/240
MP: 125/125
STR: 8
END: 23
AGI: 17
INT: 14
WIS: 28
LCK: ?]
He continued his ascent, his movements now more certain. The air grew warmer, the smell of damp earth giving way completely to that unmistakable hospital scent: a sterile mixture of antiseptic, floor wax, and the faint, ozonic hum of electronics. He was rising back into his own world, or a shattered version of it.
The circular hatch at the top was heavy, but unlatched. With a grunt, he shoved it upward. It lifted easily, sliding to the side on a well-oiled track. He hauled himself over the edge and into the Mercy General Hospital sub-basement.
The first thing that struck him was the quiet.
It was the wrong kind of quiet.
A sub-basement like this should have been a symphony of machinery. The thrum of ventilation systems, the rhythmic click-and-whirr of pumps, the deep, constant hum of the backup generators. But this place was holding its breath. The only sound was a faint, high-pitched whine from a single active electrical panel and the slow, agonizing drip of water onto a concrete floor somewhere in the darkness.
He clicked on his flashlight. The beam cut through the gloom, revealing a space that was the antithesis of the sewers. The floor was smooth, sealed concrete. The walls were lined with meticulously organized pipes and conduits, each one labeled with stenciled lettering. This was a place of order, of systems meant to preserve life. And it was dying.
Red lights blinked feebly on equipment that should have been blazing with green. Digital displays that should have shown pressure and flow rates were dark. This wasn't just a power outage; this was a systemic failure.
He began to move, his boots now making soft, squeaking sounds on the clean floor. He was a janitor again, reading the story of a space. He saw the scuff marks on the floor—the tracks of a gurney, moved in a great hurry. He saw a hastily-made barricade of old filing cabinets and tool lockers blocking a service elevator, a clear sign the initial chaos had reached even down here.
Then he found the source of the dripping. A maintenance worker lay sprawled near a massive diesel generator, the size of a small truck. The man was dressed in blue overalls, and a large, jagged shard of bone—something inhuman—was embedded in his chest. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, and a small pool of water from a leaky overhead sprinkler had collected near his head, dripping onto the floor with metronomic regularity.
In the worker's hand was a tablet, its screen cracked but still faintly glowing. Leo gently pried it from the man's stiff fingers. It was unlocked, displaying a diagnostic screen for the hospital's power grid.
[MAIN GRID: OFFLINE]
[SOLAR ARRAY: OFFLINE (SYSTEM DAMAGE)]
[BACKUP GENERATOR 1: OFFLINE (CATASTROPHIC FAILURE)]
[BACKUP GENERATOR 2: ONLINE]
[FUEL RESERVES: 4%]
[EST. RUNTIME: 58 MINUTES]
Fifty-eight minutes.
The words hit Leo with more force than any monster. The entire hospital—the lights, the surgical equipment, the ventilators, the incubators—was running on a single generator that was about to run out of fuel. The life support systems keeping dozens, maybe hundreds, of people alive, the machines keeping Sarah's patients safe, had less than an hour of life left.
Frantically, he swiped through the tablet's logs. The last entry from the dead worker was a desperate, thumb-typed message:
Containment breach Lvl 3. Creature from vent system. Fck. Generators hit. Trying to refuel Gen 2 but main valve is locked down. Manual override is in the West Wing maintenance closet, 3rd floor. Repeat, 3rd floor. God help us.*
Third floor. Sarah's floor. The override for the fuel valve was on the same level as her barricade.
A new objective slammed into place, sharp and clear and terrifyingly urgent. Reaching Sarah was no longer enough. He had to reach the manual override. He had to get the fuel flowing. He had to keep the lights on.
The quiet of the sub-basement was no longer just eerie; it was a countdown timer.
He turned his attention to the path ahead. A single flight of concrete stairs led up to a heavy steel door marked: "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY." This was his way into the main hospital.
As he approached the stairs, his enhanced senses picked up something new. It wasn't a sound. It was a smell, so faint he almost missed it beneath the scent of bleach and ozone. It was the smell of lavender and burnt sugar. A smell that was both pleasant and deeply, unnervingly wrong for this place.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs, his flashlight beam creeping up the steps. The smell grew stronger as he ascended. It was cloying, artificial, and seemed to coat the back of his throat.
When his light reached the steel door at the top of the stairs, he saw the source. A fine, glittering pink dust was spread across the floor in front of the door. It looked like someone had sprinkled a pound of bath salts in a perfect semi-circle, a bizarre, fragrant warding line. The door itself was unblemished. But as he looked closer, he saw that the handle, the hinges, and the small, wire-reinforced window were all coated in a thick, shimmering, crystalline substance.
The same kind of web-like crystal the Stalk-Weaver had used to trap its prey.
This wasn't a barricade to keep things in the sub-basement. This was a trap, laid by something in the hospital to keep whatever was down here from getting out.
And floating in his vision, a chilling notification appeared, confirming what he suspected. He was no longer just a target of opportunity. He was being actively hunted.
[You are being watched by the Night-Stalker.]
[New Skill Unlocked due to Class advancement and sustained threat: [Sense Contamination (Lvl 1)]]
[Description: You can now sense the presence of non-mundane substances and hostile supernatural influences within your immediate vicinity. Purity is a form of Order.]