Chapter 62: Annabelle
This time I moved slowly, trying to trace our steps and looking around with dark curiosity. This part of the HQ was clearly allocated for laboratories. All kinds of strange machines, surgical equipment and high-tech monitors were packed inside every room, making me wonder about what exactly were the Protectors studying here. Something told me that I didn’t really want to know.
Judging by the still steaming cups of coffee and slight mess, the scientists themselves evacuated in a hurry just minutes ago. There was not a soul around, allowing me to stroll through the PA’s HQ like a tourist, gawking at different pieces of advanced and, without a doubt, extremely secret technology. Most of them looked like elaborate torture devices.
All in all, I felt like Dante descending further and further down into Hell.
In one of the laboratories, I found nothing but rows and rows of shelves filled with blood bags. In another, a hermetically sealed glass chamber encompassed something that closely resembled a humanoid figure made entirely of shadows and light. The figure was either artificial or dead. In any case, it didn’t feel like something alive.
And in another laboratory, which looked like a surgical theater, I found Mickey’s body.
He was lying on a metal table, pale and naked. No one bothered to cover him up after performing the autopsy. Neither had they closed him up, leaving his corpse butchered, organs laid bare in open view. His skull was cut open, and his brain -- what was left of it after the Protector’s bullet had passed through -- was floating nearby in a bottle of preservative solution. His one remaining eye was open, staring at me with silent blame.
I spent several minutes on the floor, puking. Every spasm hurt my chest and broken ribs, plunging me into a sea of suffering. Tears rolled down my face, and I wasn’t sure if they were caused by pain or sorrow.
After a while, I regained control over my body and stood up. Wiping off tears and bile from my face, I approached Mickey and closed his eye with a shaking hand. Then I covered his body with a white sheet. I tried to find some words to say to him, but nothing came to mind. Finally, I forced myself to speak.
’Goodbye, Mickey. You were my friend. You didn’t deserve any of this.’
None of this did, really.
Then I left him for the last time.