CHAPTER 2

The silence after the dragging faded wasn't silence at all. It was a vacuum, filled only by the frantic drumbeat of my own borrowed heart and the roar of the thirst. That faint, fading tang of blood – human blood, warm and vital – lingered in the air like a cruel ghost. It wasn't just a smell anymore; it was a physical force, a hook sunk deep into the gnawing emptiness inside me. My mouth flooded with saliva so thick and metallic I choked on it. My vision pulsed, the harsh white walls momentarily sharpening into painful clarity before blurring again, edged with a crimson haze.

*Blood.*

The word wasn't a thought. It was a demand. A primal scream echoing in the hollow chambers of my skull. My fingers, long and pale, dug into the cold concrete floor, scraping uselessly. The tiny metal shard hidden under the mattress felt laughably distant, utterly inadequate against this consuming need. The weakness I'd felt since waking was no longer just exhaustion; it was *starvation*. A starvation that burned worse than the Moscow fever, worse than the phantom agony of my lost arm. It clawed at my insides, a ravenous beast demanding to be fed.

I pressed my forehead against the freezing floor. The cold did nothing. It was a surface chill, unable to penetrate the inferno raging within. Memories warred with the hunger – the snow, Mark Velics' hate-filled eyes, the Door's chilling call. But they were fading pictures, brittle and distant, overwhelmed by the immediate, visceral *need*. Only the core of hatred, the burning coal of vengeance against Mark, remained solid, a desperate anchor against the rising tide of monstrosity. If I lost that… if I became only this hunger… what then?

"O?" Jark's whisper sliced through the buzzing silence from the other side of the wall. It was thin, frayed with terror. Not just the terror of the Cart, but something new. "O? You... you feel different. Like... like *them*. Hungry. Hungry like the dark things that watch."

His words landed like ice shards. He sensed it. This change. This descent. The dreamwalker, drowning in nightmares, could feel the predator stirring next door.

"Shut up, Jark," I rasped, my voice a dry scrape. The effort to speak intensified the thirst, sending a fresh wave of dizziness crashing over me.

"They drain us," he persisted, his voice trembling. "This place... it sucks the life. But you... you feel like you want to *suck* it back. From anything. From *me*?" The last word was a terrified squeak.

The accusation, the raw fear in his voice, sent a jolt of revulsion through me. Prey. He saw me as prey. Was he right? Was that the only path left? The thought sickened me almost as much as the grey sludge. Almost.

I didn't answer. What could I say? *No, Jark, I only crave the blood of our captors?* A lie. The scent from the corridor still tormented me, and it hadn't belonged to a Succubus. It had belonged to a broken victim, dragged away to be disposed of. Like I would be. Like we all would be. Gamma-Seven. A number. Then disposal.

Time lost meaning again, measured only in the pounding of my heart and the gnawing void inside. Minutes? Hours? I lay curled on the floor, shivering not from cold but from the sheer effort of *not* screaming, of not tearing at the walls with my bare hands. I focused on Mark Velics' face. The hard line of his jaw. The cold determination in his eyes as he raised his weapon. *His mission is to kill him.* Mine was to kill *him*. That purpose, that hatred, was the dam holding back the beast. It had to be.

Then, the sound. The soft, rhythmic *click-click-click* of precise footsteps approaching down the corridor.

The Succubis. Bringing the sludge.

Adrenaline, thin and sour, cut through the haze of thirst. Not the clean rush of battle, but the jagged spike of desperation. This time, I wouldn't pretend. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, ignoring the wave of weakness that threatened to slam me back down. My muscles screamed, but the hunger screamed louder. I needed to *see*. To understand.

The lock clunked. The heavy door swung open silently.

Two figures. Identical. Stark white dresses, high collars, white caps hiding their hair. Waxen faces. Empty, dark eyes that scanned the room with mechanical indifference. Dolls made for a nightmare. Each carried a metal tray bearing the familiar bowl of grey slop and a cup of water. The smell of it – bland, starchy decay – hit me like a physical blow, intensifying the nausea warring with the thirst. My stomach clenched violently, rejecting the very idea.

One Succubus moved towards Melin, placing the tray on her table with robotic precision. Melin remained a statue, her dark eyes fixed on the middle distance, utterly unaware. The other approached my bed, her steps unnervingly silent on the concrete. Her dark, lifeless eyes swept over me, registering my position on the floor, my obvious wakefulness. No surprise. No concern. Just… observation. Recording data.

She bent slightly to place the tray on the small table beside my empty bed. This was the moment. She was close. Turned slightly away. The scent of the sludge washed over me, but beneath it… beneath the sterile chemical smell that clung to them… was there something else? Something faint, dry, like old paper and ozone? Not blood. Never blood. But perhaps… a hint of what they were?

The thirst roared, a white-noise shriek drowning out reason. *Now! Test them!* The beast surged. Hatred for them, for this place, for my weakness, fused with the primal hunger. I moved.

It wasn't graceful. It was a lunge powered by desperation and the last dregs of my strength. I shoved off the floor, aiming not for a kill I knew was impossible, but for her extended arm as she lowered the tray. My target: the pale, smooth skin of her wrist. Scratch it. Bite it. *Make it bleed.* See if there was anything real, anything *edible*, inside these hollow shells.

My fingers, tipped with nails that felt unnervingly sharp and hard, reached for her. My jaw ached, my mouth opening, a low growl tearing from my parched throat –

Faster than thought. Faster than anything human.

Her free hand snapped out. Not a punch. A cold, vise-like grip clamped around my wrist. Bone ground against bone with a sickening *crack*. Agony, bright and shocking, lanced up my arm. I gasped, the sound strangled.

Simultaneously, the other Succubus – the one who had delivered Melin's tray – was suddenly *there*. No transition. One moment near Melin, the next beside her counterpart. Her hand pressed flat against my chest, just below the collarbone.

Not pain. Not impact. *Cold.*

A wave of utter numbness exploded from the point of contact. It was like liquid nitrogen injected into my veins. It raced through my torso, down my limbs, up my neck. My muscles turned to water. My vision greyed at the edges. The agonizing pain in my wrist vanished, swallowed by the chilling void. I collapsed, not falling, but melting, a puppet with its strings cut. I hit the concrete floor with a soft thud, utterly paralyzed. I could blink. I could breathe, shallowly. I could feel the cold seeping into my bones. But move? Impossible. My limbs were leaden, disconnected.

I lay sprawled, staring up at the caged light, helpless. The Succubus who held my wrist released it. My hand flopped uselessly to the floor. The bone was broken, the wrist already swelling grotesquely, an ugly purple bruise blooming under the pale skin. But beneath the numbness, I felt… a faint, strange itch deep within the fracture. A cellular stirring, unnervingly fast. Repair? Was that part of this new curse?

The Succubus who had paralyzed me straightened. Her expression hadn't changed. Not a flicker of exertion, not a hint of satisfaction. Her dark, empty eyes scanned me, then shifted to the metal tray. It had clattered to the floor during my lunge, the grey sludge oozing across the concrete, the water cup rolling away. She noted the broken tray piece I'd hidden – she must have found it when I was incapacitated – now held loosely in her other hand. A data point. Aggression. Attempted weapon use.

They didn't speak. They didn't look at each other. They simply turned in perfect unison and walked back towards the open door. The one who had placed Melin's tray paused only to collect the broken shard of the first tray from the table beside my bed. Security protocol. Maintained. They stepped out into the corridor.

The heavy door swung shut. *Clunk.* The lock engaged.

Silence. The buzzing light. The smell of spilled sludge. The coppery tang of my own blood from where my teeth had cut the inside of my cheek during the fall. My own blood. It smelled… tempting. Close. Warm. But tainted by the sterile horror of this place. The thirst flared weakly against the numbing cold.

I was trapped. Not just in the cell, but in my own useless body. The despair was a physical weight, crushing me into the cold floor. They were too fast. Too strong. Too *wrong*. And during that frantic lunge, my elongating canine – a fang, I realized with a fresh wave of horror – had scraped against the Succubus's wrist as her grip closed.

I had tasted it.

Not blood. Not life. Nothing like the tantalizing scent from the corridor. It was… *nothing*. An absence. A void. Like licking cold stone coated in dust and static electricity. Dry. Empty. *Hollow.* Utterly devoid of the vital warmth my body screamed for. They weren't just guards; they were constructs. Golems animated by something cold and alien. *No sustenance.* The realization was a death knell. My only potential food source inside this white hell was poison or ash.

Hopelessness, thick and suffocating, threatened to drown me. I had failed. Spectacularly. I was broken, paralyzed, and now I knew the true depth of the trap. The Court hadn't just caged a monster; they'd caged it in a place designed to starve it into submission or madness. Disposal awaited. Gamma-O. A number. Then nothing.

Time crawled in my frozen prison. The numbness held me in its icy grip, a terrifying counterpoint to the burning thirst that still smoldered beneath the surface. I could only stare at the ceiling, the caged light burning into my retinas, or turn my eyes slightly towards Melin.

She hadn't moved during the commotion. Not a flinch when I lunged. Not a flicker when I fell. But now… as I lay helpless, my broken wrist already showing disturbing signs of rapid, unnatural healing beneath the bruise… her head turned. Slowly. Deliberately.

Her dark, empty eyes, which had stared at nothing for so long, lowered. They focused on me. Not with pity. Not with fear. With a deep, ancient weariness that seemed to hold the weight of centuries. It was a look of profound recognition, as if she saw not just O, the failed attacker, but the *hunger*, the desperation, the monstrous potential, and the crushing weight of the curse. She held my gaze for a long, agonizing moment. There was no warmth in that look, only a bleak understanding, a shared burden of the unnatural. Then, as slowly as she had turned, her gaze drifted away, returning to its fixed point on the far wall. The statue had acknowledged the fallen, then returned to stone.

The tiny spark of… something… that look had ignited was immediately doused by Jark's voice. It wasn't a whisper this time. It was a fractured moan, seeping through the wall like cold water.

"He knows…" Jark whimpered, his voice thick with sleep-terror. "He knows you fought… the cold hands… the ash…"

He was dreaming. Or trapped in the waking nightmare that was his existence.

"He's *angry*," Jark's voice rose, laced with panic. "The Tall One… the cold eyes… walls of ice… burning chains! He sees you thrash! He sees the hollow ones hold you down!" A ragged sob tore from him. "He's *interested* now, O! Oh god, he's turning his eyes this way! The ice… it's coming! Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!"

Jark's screams dissolved into wordless, terrified cries, the sounds of a man being flayed alive in the landscape of his own mind. The 'Tall One'. The Watcher. A member of the Court. And now, because of my reckless, desperate act, his attention was focused here. On me. On us. What did 'interested' mean in the cold calculus of the Court of Doom? More tests? Sooner disposal?

The numbing cold was finally beginning to recede from my limbs, replaced by a deep, aching soreness and the returning, sharper agony in my healing wrist. I could twitch my fingers. Wiggle my toes. The paralysis was lifting, leaving profound weakness in its wake. The thirst, momentarily subdued by the shock and the numbness, returned with a vengeance, sharper, more insistent than before. The scent of my own drying blood was a constant, maddening whisper.

*Click-click-click.*

The Succubis? Back so soon? No. This sound was different. Heavier. Slower. Accompanied by a low, wet dragging noise. *Squelch… thump… squelch…*

The Cart. It was returning.

A fresh wave of terror, icy and sharp, cut through my thirst and pain. Jark's cries hitched, turning into terrified whimpers. "No… no, not again… not for me… please…"

But the dragging sound didn't stop at Jark's door. It passed mine. It stopped further down the corridor. Keys jangled. A lock disengaged. A cell door groaned open – the one directly across from mine, slightly angled so I could see a sliver of the corridor if I strained my neck against the concrete floor.

Muffled voices. The same cold, clinical tones as before.

"...minimal viability. Neural function degraded beyond baseline recovery. Maintain for passive observation only. Note tissue necrosis progression in appendages."

"Subject Theta-Three is terminated. Log time of cessation. Prepare for incineration protocol after the new transfer is secured."

"Understood. Transferring Subject Psi-Nine now."

Transfer? New subject? Or returning one?

There was a wet, heavy thud from the cell across the way, followed by a low, broken sound that wasn't a moan, nor a whimper, but the raw scrape of breath through a ruined throat. Then, the dragging sound receded, followed by the clunk of the lock on the distant cell where the terminated subject had been taken.

Silence. Then, the sound from the cell across the corridor. A weak, wet rattle. A shuddering, pained inhale. A faint, continuous whimper of pure, unadulterated agony.

And then… the *smell*.

It cut through the bleach, the chemicals, the scent of my own blood, even the lingering numbness in my limbs. Warm. Coppery. Rich. Overlaid with the stench of infection, of opened flesh, of antiseptic failure, but underneath it all… *lifeblood*. Seeping. Flowing. *Real.*

My body reacted before my mind could process. Saliva flooded my mouth. My healing wrist throbbed with a sudden, fierce pulse. The thirst roared back, not as a demand, but as a *command*, overwhelming, all-consuming. My vision tunnelled, focusing on that sliver of the corridor leading to the cell across the way. My senses, already heightened, exploded. I could *hear* the weak, fluttering heartbeat of the broken thing in that cell. I could *smell* the precise location of the wounds – a deep gash on the leg, weeping crimson through filthy bandages; crushed ribs grating with each shallow breath; the sweet-sick odor of decay from a festering shoulder wound.

*Blood. Warm. Human. Dying.*

It was right there. Maybe fifteen feet away. Separated only by a locked door… and my own shattered morality.

The Succubis were hollow. This… this was real. This was life. Weak, fading, broken life, but life nonetheless. It was the only sustenance within reach. The only thing that could possibly quench this infernal thirst, mend this broken body, give me the strength to even *think* of fighting back, of escaping, of finding Mark.

But to take it… to feed on a fellow victim, broken and tortured by the same captors… to prey on the helpless… it was the final step. It was embracing the monster the Court expected. It was becoming everything the world believed the Right Hand of Hitler had been. It was damning whatever shreds of the man who crawled towards the Door might still remain.

The whimpers from across the corridor were a constant, pitiful counterpoint to the roaring thirst. The scent was an intoxicating perfume. My fangs ached in my gums, fully extended now, sharp points pressing against my lower lip. The numbing cold was gone entirely, replaced by a feverish heat radiating from my core. I could move. Barely. My limbs trembled violently as I pushed myself onto my side, facing the door. My broken wrist screamed, the healing bone knitting with unnatural speed, sending jolts of fiery pain up my arm, pain that only fueled the desperate need.

I stared at the heavy grey metal. The lock. The small, thick window. Beyond it, the white corridor. And across it, the cell holding agony and salvation.

*Find Mark. Kill him.* The hatred burned, a beacon in the monstrous dark.

*Feed. Survive. Become strong.* The thirst hissed, a serpent coiled around my soul.

The whimpers continued. Weak. Hopeless. Ending soon anyway.

My hand, the uninjured one, twitched on the cold floor. The fingernails, pale and hard, scraped against the concrete, leaving faint white marks. Not a gesture of defiance. A spasm of need. Of decision forming in the crucible of desperation.

The choice wasn't about escape. Not yet. It was about surviving the next hour. The next minute. It was about whether the hatred for Mark Velics could fuel a monster, or whether the monster would consume even that last vestige of purpose.

I dragged myself an inch towards the door. The scent of blood grew stronger, sweeter. The whimpers sounded like an invitation to the damned. My red eyes, burning with hunger and hate, fixed on the barrier separating me from the broken thing across the hall. My lips pulled back in a silent snarl, revealing sharp, glistening fangs.

The dam was cracking. The beast was rising. The choice hung in the sterile, blood-scented air, terrifying and absolute.