Chapter ten
I wake to the stink of blood.
Metallic. Thick. It clings to the air, to my skin, to the back of my throat. I cough, gagging, but it only sharpens the nausea twisting in my gut. My mind races to piece together last night—fragments spinning with no order, no answers.
Where am I?
What happened?
Shapes begin to take form in the blinding haze.
Rows of people kneel on concrete. Arms bound tight. Blood pools beneath them—dark, wide, shimmering like oil. Some are still. Some tremble.
My stomach lurches.
I shut my eyes, but the images stay, burned in. This blood—it's too familiar. Too much. My mind begins to spiral, desperate to escape.
When I open them again, the guards are gone.
They've been replaced.
Figures in black now stand in silence. Dozens—maybe more. They don't move like people. They make no sound. Their suits don't shift or clink. They absorb sound. Swallow it.
Their masks are smooth, blank. Just holes for eyes—watching. Judging.
The warehouse is vast, endless. No walls, no windows. Just concrete smeared with blood and something darker. The air is too thick for echoes.
I'm kneeling too. Ropes dig into my wrists. My knees throb against the floor. Around me, the others wear steel bracelets.
Mine are still bare.
Not for long.
One of them steps forward. Kneels beside me. Silent. Mechanical. He snaps the cold metal band around my wrist.
Click.
It hums.
Faint at first. Then deeper. Like a pulse. Not just sound—pressure. Like something alive is locked to my skin. I jerk, trying to shake it off.
It doesn't move.
How the hell was Will able to take his off?
The figure steps away. Another approaches.
Syringe. Long. Slender. Filled with something dark.
I flinch, try to recoil—but I can't. The needle pierces my neck.
Fire.
It starts at my throat, spreads like lightning through every nerve. I seize. My jaw clamps in a scream that never escapes. My limbs lock. I'm burning—from the marrow out.
I collapse.
My body trembles. My vision fractures. Color floods and twists before it fades, leaving only a pounding ache behind my eyes.
Somewhere—cries. Near. Far.
"You will sense the red gate," says the one who injected me. His voice is cold, robotic. "Like heat. Like hunger."
"Let instinct guide you. The gate exists in our world. But no human can find it."
He pulls a knife from his pocket.
I barely register what's happening until the blade bites deep.
Pain tears through my arms. I choke on a gasp as blood streams down my hands in jagged lines.
They yank me forward.
My wrists are shoved above a rusted funnel. Blood splatters into the bowl, slides through a coiled tube, down into a glass jar. One. Then another. Then another.
By the third, I'm lightheaded. Nausea rises like bile.
Finally, he lets go.
My blood pools beneath me. I shut my eyes. Tears swell, but I refuse to let them fall.
They drag me up. The others too. Some stumble. Some scream.
A metallic door groans open behind the line of black figures. Darkness seeps through the gap—thick, cold, alive.
They shove us forward.
The light behind us dies.