The door swung open, revealing a dark interior and Kay’s butterflies flowed past me, carried on the wind that blew into the room. The meagre light from outside cast my shadow across an antique couch with green upholstery and gold floral patterns inlaid into the wood. Large bookcases stood menacingly in the shadowy corners of the room. The black butterflies fluttered about, landing on surfaces, blurring the borders of the furniture.
“Nothing strange,” Kay whispered.
I felt along the wall and found a switch. I tried flicking it on. Lights from a few ornate lamp fixtures bathed the room, washing the walls with warm colours. It was a small reading room. The place was spotless, no cobwebs in the corners, no dust along the coffee table. It was being maintained.
“Stick together,” Conrad said as he brushed past me to observe the room. “No one splits up or leaves each other’s sight.”
He turned and pointed a finger indiscriminately at our group as we entered. “To any would-be betrayers, think carefully about your next move. It won’t go unnoticed. You have my word.” He smiled coldly. “We’ve all been working together for some time, so you know I get results.”
He had somehow gotten more confrontational. Had the encounter in the woods shaken him?
“Why would you say something like that? Capiz asked, hugging herself as she looked closer at the books.
“Pressure,” Conrad said stiffly. “We’re all feeling it. Don’t think the fight is over now that we’re inside. They would have tried harder to keep us out if they didn’t have confidence in their failsafes here.”
“You aren’t gonna scare us like that,” Kay said, jaw set.
Conrad rolled his neck and a tendon popped audibly. “No? How’s this, then? I suspect we are on our own. The main force will never come. The Director is not the one who made the decision for a multi-nation attack within the country. Their higher ups made that call and they can just as easily revoke it.”
Capiz’s eyes widened. “And risk leaving us all to die?!”
“Pray tell, why would they send us in at all, when a missile could wipe this place off the map in an instant with little risk to our combatants?”
“That’s reckless,” I said. “There could be innocents-”
“We’re talking about bio-terrorism and human experimentation within our own country. Sillwood has set the precedent. The average citizen would nod their head in acceptance that a few innocent lives lost is preferable to an entire city. No one wants a second Sillwood tragedy. No, the real reason is because there was never a group in the game that doesn’t want what Organ has. The higher ups on our side want the weapon just as badly. A few troops is a price they’ll be happy to pay to secure it. It won’t even be a hard sell when so many people distrust Shapers already. The public won’t see it as a major loss.”
“It’s possible that a missile wouldn’t destroy the weapon, or it would disseminate it in some way,” a soldier said quietly.
Conrad wheeled on him. “Again I say, in light of Sillwood, they could justifiably do it. Any threat we face now could potentially be a contagion. There are so many unknown variables that we can’t tiptoe around every possibility like that and as a H.E.S.P. operative you know this. Face it. They already know what the weapon is.”
The room was quiet. I wanted to deny it, but Conrad’s words rang true. This was not the actions of a government who wanted to wash their hands of all danger and protect the many over the few. The Director likely had known this, since before the operation was even announced. There wasn’t a way to stop these plans, only to fight from within them.
The last soldier that entered was about to shut the door behind us when Isipho planted his hand on the door and staggered inside. His multi-coloured pupils swirled behind half-closed eyelids.
“Woah,” the soldier said, steadying him. “You sure you’re good? You can opt out and wait for backup.”
Isipho shook his head and almost lost his balance from the motion. “You need me,” he murmured.
“Oh.”
I turned to see that Kay had her hand on the far door. She had already partially turned the door handle.
“This one’s not even locked. Guess they don’t care if we go further, hm?” She gently pushed it open a crack and let her butterflies stream through the opening.
Kay noticed my concerned look and smiled bravely. “What? Why are we worrying about something that might be true? Let Conrad twist himself into a knot with all that worrying. We only have one option. We keep going.”
I swallowed and nodded. It was impossible for me to brush aside Conrad’s words like they were nothing. But I could simplify things. There was only one person here that I absolutely had to keep safe. That was Kay.
“The next room is weirder,” Kay said to the group. “There’s something living on the floor. I felt it twitch when I landed on it.”
“Let me go first.”
I cautiously stepped through into the next room.
The lights were already on. There was no natural lighting, as the windows were sealed with metal plates. The curtains I had seen from the other side must have been an illusion created by screens or projections.
A large carpeted staircase dominated the space. It ascended to my right, then split into two smaller sets of stairs that curved around either end of the room and led to a second floor. The bannister was a deep brown wood, carved into a rippling wave that seemed a tad eccentric for what otherwise seemed like a stately house.
Splotches of fresh blood decorated the carpet and railings, a vibrant red against the warm browns and tans of the carpet and walls.
The thing that Kay must have been referring to trailed along the carpet like a snake. It was a flat strip of what looked to be skin. It had a rosy hue. The skin hung down from the second floor through a gap in the bannister posts, draping across the stairs partway down before winding its way around the main floor and disappearing underneath a closed door.
The others entered the room and I cut my examination of the room short to stay close to Kay.
“Stay clear of whatever that stuff is,” Conrad ordered, indicating the strange strip of skin.
There were framed paintings on the walls and Kay stopped beside one to examine it. It depicted a lighthouse standing at the edge of a peninsula, casting its light across the dark waters. One of Kay’s butterflies landed on the crest of a wave.
“The way you described the last Organ hideout, I was expecting something more high-tech and lab-like,” she said.
“There’s time for that yet,” I said. Our radios had gone silent since entering the building.
Nell was too busy to do much more than send the occasional check-in pulse my way. Whatever was going on outside, she was handling it. And it felt like she was getting closer.
“Do you know if Tom’s okay?” Kay asked, mirroring my concern.
“Definitely. Nell would tell me if he wasn’t.”
“Shit!” someone shouted.
I whirled to see that one of the soldiers was nursing their hand. A glistening red spike was protruding from the bannister, like an icicle that had somehow frozen sideways. It had a crystalline quality to it that caught the light.
“Don’t touch the blood!” the soldier warned as another went to his side to administer first aid.
Kay drew back from the wall. The one next to the lighthouse painting had a few drops of blood on it that accented the face of the woman portrayed.
I suddenly realized I knew who the painting was depicting and I clenched my jaw. She looked uncomfortable in the jade dress she wore, a twinge in her otherwise infuriatingly impassive face. She was a little younger, but it was undoubtedly her. Are these traps your doing?
“You recognize her?” Kay asked.
“She’s the one who abused Nell’s powers for years. I don’t know anyone more unapologetically evil.”
Kay took that in. A butterfly landed on the painting and the moment it touched the red splotch, a spike erupted, stabbing the butterfly and disfiguring the painting. The frame rocked on the wall from the sudden movement.
Kay winced and I pulled her away from the painting.
“Don’t do that!” I hissed.
“What? I was just testing if my butterflies triggered the blood.”
“Okay, just be careful? You have a finite number of those things.”
“Sure. I’m gonna pull my weight like everyone else though,” she said calmly.
Conrad cast a shadow over us. “Return to the group,” he said. “This is not the time for discreet conversations.”
“I’ve found a few doors that I can get under,” Kay replied evenly. “I’m scouting ahead as we speak. I’ll if I find…” she trailed off, frowning.
“What is it?”
“Sorry, I thought I noticed something. It moved away and now I can’t find it. My butterflies are sensitive to heat. It was definitely a living thing.”
“Which way?” Conrad pressed.
Kay pointed to a door. It was the one with the flat strip of flesh going underneath.
“Speaking of living things,” Kay murmured. “But it didn’t do anything dangerous when I touched it.”
“I’ll check it out.”
I went over to the door and leaned over the skin, avoiding stepping near it and gently tried the door handle. It didn’t turn. I rattled it and put my weight against the door, fully expecting the disturbance to elicit some reaction from the skin. But nothing happened.
“It’s lock-” I started.
BANG.
A gunshot went off and I threw myself backwards.
It then registered to me that the source of the sound had come from the room we were currently in. Someone cried out and I turned to see that one of the soldiers, Wilson, had fired his gun towards the second floor. In surprise, one of the soldiers near him had taken a hasty step backwards and stepped on a bloodstain, resulting in a spike skewering her foot.
Everyone waited in tense silence, waiting to see what he had fired at. Splinters of wood from the bannister were scattered across the stairs. I didn’t see anything up there.
“What did you see?” Jason whispered tersely.
Wilson’s arms were shaking as he whipped the gun back and forth, scanning the balcony.
Jason went over and patted his shoulder and Wilson spun, knocking his arm away.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Woah!” Jason raised his hands. “Relax. Tell us what you saw.”
“There’s nothing up there,” Kay murmured to me. Her butterflies were already investigating the space, filling the silence with gentle wing flaps.
“I… I don’t know,” Wilson finally admitted. “It looked like… I don’t know.” His eyes roamed restlessly.
“Alright,” Jason said gently, then he bent down to help Socorro extract her foot off of the blood thorn. “Let’s not linger. Being too cautious could work against us.”
After Socorro was bandaged up, they managed to limp along while supported by Capiz.
We decided to avoid the strange skin and instead go down a long open hallway. I stayed at the back this time and before we left the room, I took one final look over my shoulder at the second floor.
My heart thudded.
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought for a moment I had seen something move. In the shadows on the other side of the bannister.
A real threat? Or was the stress getting to all of us?
“There’s nothing there,” Kay repeated, trying to reassure herself more than anything.
The blood. The skin. The unknown threat and the lack of people inside. It was as if the house had swallowed up its inhabitants. There was an ever-present feeling of being watched. That Aberrant in the garden had been a warning and we’d ignored it. We were trespassers and our punishment lurked behind every locked door.