Vicki gasped, waking up and still thinking she was still on Delmar. No memory of the missions or even her own vampirism, just the strange familiarity of the gray brick floor, the single bright-orange sodium lamp to her left, beaming straight down to the right side of a wooden door. She didn’t know where she was, just that she had never been there before, and somehow already knew it. The familiar pool table and layout was oddly known to her.
“This has to be a dream…” she muttered to herself. “Nicole just had a traumatic experience with the old Delmar mines… it makes sense I’d have a nightmare about it.” she said, hearing it repeated aloud like a memory. She reached for her Beretta, drawing it from her holster mechanically like she was used to it, but she never remembered owning one, let alone the familiar one she had now, an extension of her hand, like a body part. She looked down and was surprised to see an old colt 1911 instead, somehow sure it was a different gun when she reached for it. She closed her eyes and dropped the magazine, already knowing by the weight alone it had 8 rounds in it.
“Well, fuck me.” She huffed. Starting to doubt if it was a dream and worried that somehow she ended up in the mines as well.
Gizzy woke up, feeling hungover and confused, lying on carpeted stairs in an unfamiliar little room. She distinctly remembered the last thing before bed being her wife Izleena. She looked down and picked up a small gold coin, her rage swelling up when she recognized the face on the coin. Her murderous ex-wife Jenny, the one ex that her security system had a lockdown code specifically for.
“You fucking bitch…not dead after all are you?” Gizzy said looking for a gun and realizing she didn’t have one. “Fine…fine by me. Prefer to tear you apart with my bare hands anyway you sneaky little shit. Now where the hell am I?” she asked, pushing on the metal panel above her, blocking the stairs from going up. She engaged hydraulics and put her back into it, surprised that it didn’t snap open or even try to move.
“That is an alarmingly impressive lock.” She huffed, trying the downward direction instead.
“What is this place? What is this room even made for?” she asked, following the light to the doorway out of the strange bathroom and encountering a wire fence bolted from the other side to close off the room, with no clear way out. She tested the wire fence and found it sturdy enough to not even attempt to break it, especially one-handed and bleeding. She stepped over the metal grate to see into the blackness below and steadied herself on a support rod running up the center of the room, like a flagpole with no flag. She noticed the scrapes on the pole, deep scratches like it had been scraped by something steel. Her mind flipped through the most terrifying options, machete slashes, chains bolted down too tight, handcuffs worn in by struggling, or maybe just old scratches from the pipe wrench that was used to install it in the floor plate.
The idea of going further down was intolerable, knowing in her heart going deeper in was never good, and only going up could ever reach any surface. She pondered her options a minute before realizing there weren’t any. This place was closed off to BE closed off, and the barred openings just tempting ways to make noise and struggle, false hope. She started down the ladder, suddenly realizing the grandeur of the fact that her left hand was virtually useless, and the fear of never using it again sunk it. Getting medical attention means nothing if you never get out alive.
She checked the mirror, purely to see her reflection and debate if this could be a dream. She leaned closer, noticing the light hitting the mirror at that specific angle was telling her something. She could see THROUGH the mirror. There was another side.
“This is just…designed to watch people run.” She whispered, almost in tears, before realizing the room behind it may have access. She carefully tried to pry the mirror back without the sound of breaking it loudly. There was a moment of temptation to just kick it out and climb through, but as she stood back and stared, she noticed the floor drains in this room had no bars on them. Tucked under the thick pipes and on either side of the lower level ladder, were two very open holes, mossy with the evidence of drainage…and they were temptingly large, yet hauntingly tight. About 12 inches wide by 8 inches high, rounded at the top, she could fit through, but it would be snug. Breaking the glass and drawing attention would be the worst thing she could do before trying to climb one-handed over a rusty sink and through jagged glass, and as she leaned over to assess the lower level, the shimmer of water let her know it was flooded, and somehow even worse. It was through the floor drain or back to the thing hunting her.
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Vicki tucked the gun in her boot, sticking her head through the opening and feeling the unnerving memory of what happened last time, or two times she put something through an opening in the walls, but by the time she got too scared to try, she was partway in and frantically scrunching to get through, just in case. For a moment, her left shoulder wouldn’t fit, and the stone on her ribs and shoulder firmly pressed whispered in her ear, what if you get stuck here?
She grabbed for leverage and gave all of her strength to push onward, and barely slip her left shoulder through the opening, curling around the bend to stand up in a narrow 2 foot wide maintenance hallway, just lit enough to see it dead-ending to the left and giving her one way to go. She remembered the dreams now, vividly, as she carried onward. For what felt like miles, she quietly pushed down the corridor, bumping metal pillars in the narrow path through the blackness, and towards the faint light she could see slowly approaching and turning right into a properly lit area, for once. She imagined both the freedom of a real room with lights and working doors and the fear of a metal grate taunting her with defeat. She sped up and turned to the relief of an arched opening into a well lit stairwell with a wooden door forward and the sweet serenity of an upward direction to her left, via stairs. She climbed the stairs and pushed on the metal top, that did not even begin to give or bend. Like a car was parked on it, the hatch may as well have been or might have been welded shut. Her hopes of freedom crumbled as she stepped back down and tried the wooden door, opening and revealing a dizzying sight she struggled to understand. A pool table with no pool balls or pockets, a wooden cabinet, 2 stacks of wooden boxes and an orange sodium lamp illuminating the fact that the door had no handle on this side. This was in the exact mirrored copy of the room she started in, backwards, but identical in every detail possible. She almost wondered if it was the same room and her mind was losing sense of direction, until she noticed the Vicki-sized hole in the back corner was not there. This wall was solid and unbroken bricks, and she was in a dead ended room, staring at the familiar metal barred door she knew was locked.
Vicki sat down in despair. Feeling completely alone, and then that feeling went away as she spotted the set of glowing orange pupils behind the barred door, and heard the sound of keys being sorted. She scurried up and backed into the doorway, ready to close the wooden door with no knob on that side, assuming it would have a secret way through for those who knew it, and she drew her gun, the orange and green fiber optic sights lined up between the eyes of the key-wielding observer.
“I’ll kill you if you open that door. I swear it.” she growled, shaking and trying to hold the target. A gentle snort of a restrained chuckle broke the silence, as if to find the threat adorable.
“That better be one hell of a gun, chicken tender.” Said the voice, chills hitting her as she recognized Kraken’s voice and that sadistic nickname he used for Nicole. She really was in the same tunnels, and she wasn’t sure if a 900 pound Delmarian Soldier’s skull could stop a 45 round, even assuming there was no armor on him.
“I’m not Nicole. You don’t want me.” She sniffed.
“Why would I want any witnesses, regardless?” he chuckled. The door opened, and she fired 2 shots before shutting the wooden door and feeling the door itself flex under impact. She plowed into the narrow corridor, thinking surely he couldn’t fit, and not risking it by slowing down, as glowing eyes somehow rounded the corner to the sound of splintering wood. It followed her snaking through the tunnel, somehow able to not just fit through but almost as easily as her. She dove to the floor, squeezing through the drain and struggling to get her shoulder past the metal rim again. Pushing on the slippery wet stone with no traction, she inched through, popping out and suddenly feeling herself yanked backwards by the ankle. She let out a scream, firing into the opening and trying not to blow her own foot off in the process as the grip let go, and she was simply thrilled to still have a foot attached, even if bruised and sore.
“Still alive, little one? I’ll be back around for that skinny ankle, and your head.” He whispered, scrunching back into the darkness and fading to silence. She checked the magazine. 3 rounds left.
“FUCK!” she yelled, realizing they didn’t help much anyway and almost throwing the damn gun. She noticed the wire fence, from before, was left open slightly. She darted to the door, aiming the gun and focusing her attention left and right before trying to squeeze through. Her boot strings snagged on the wire, and she reached down to free it, rising back up nose to snout with a pair of orange eyes. The gate pulled shut tightly on her neck as she raised the gun and fired 3 shots to the face. The beast moved just enough for the rounds to hit neck, collar bone and shoulder, the spray of blood settling like mist as she lightly sobbed, holding an empty gun at its shadowy face.
“So close.” It whispered. The last thing she saw was a row of teeth moving towards her caged head.
