Chapter 91: Saint Hilarius Hospital (23)
In the lexicon of elite snipers, there is a golden rule engraved into their minds before they even learn how to pull the trigger: "When the position is exposed and weapons become ineffective, survival equals a free death. Tactical retreat is not cowardice; it is a reset of the battle equation."
Eva Blackwood knew this rule by heart.
She was kneeling on the crumbling metal grating on Floor (B1), "The Purifier," as scorching heat lashed her pale face and singed the tips of her black hair.
In front of her, across the dark gap, stood "The Executioner"—an S-rank nightmare—swinging his blazing steel chains.
In a fraction of a second, the fire-aspected Eitra condensed within those chains erupted into a massive tsunami of orange hell, surging toward them like a wall of inevitable death, devouring oxygen and melting everything it touched.
Eva glanced right and left.
There were no walls to hide behind, no side corridors.
The grated walkway was narrow, cages hung around them. There was no right. No left.
Then Eva looked at Kyle.
The Black Joker. The monster who had torn her open in the warehouse.
The cold killer who had vaporized an army of flayed abominations minutes ago.
But now... he was not a monster.
He stood completely frozen, his crimson eyes wide with indescribable terror, hot tears streaming down his bare face devoid of any mask.
He trembled violently, shaking like a bird caught in a snowstorm. His lips moved with incomprehensible words, calling out the names of the dead. His hands hung limply at his sides.
He had been swallowed by PTSD.
The smell of burning human flesh and the orange glow of fire had shattered every psychological wall he had, dragging him back to a child burning inside the Dawn Hope Orphanage.
In that naked moment, with only meters separating them from being burned alive, time stopped in Eva’s mind.
Her resentment faded. Her hatred for the Black Joker evaporated.
What she saw before her was not a terrorist or a cold-blooded killer.
A child... just a broken, traumatized child.
Eva screamed internally. My God, what kind of hell did this boy live through to fear fire like this?
Elite instinct, mixed with a sudden surge of human compassion, propelled Eva into action faster than conscious thought.
If there was no right or left... then the only open direction was down.
Eva didn’t try to drag Kyle to run back—the fire tsunami was far too fast.
Instead, she drew her secondary tactical pistol and aimed not at the invincible monster... but at the floor beneath them.
Her sniper’s eye identified structural weak points in the metal walkway in a split second—rusted bolts and corroded joints connecting the grating to the ceiling supports.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Four precise shots, sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. The bullets shattered the rusted bolts completely.
The metal beneath them groaned with a terrifying grinding sound.
The grating lost its structural integrity... and split in half.
At the exact moment the inferno swept over their heads—melting the metal they had stood on a fraction of a second ago—the walkway collapsed beneath them.
"Kyyyyyle!" Eva roared as she threw herself into the void.
They began to fall into the dark abyss.
The scorching heat passed above them like the breath of an enraged dragon, burning away the remaining air.
They plummeted through total darkness, surrounded by debris of molten metal and falling cages.
But Eva had no intention of dying crushed at the bottom.
Mid-freefall, she pulled a tactical rope with a grappling hook from her belt.
With a desperate acrobatic motion, she wrapped the rope around her arm and fired the hook into one of the thick, rusted chains hanging from the ceiling—chains used to lift the cages.
With her other hand... she stretched as far as she could and grabbed Kyle by the collar of his coat as he fell like a lifeless corpse, completely unconscious in his shock.
CRAAAAAAAAACK!
A horrifying tearing sound came from Eva’s body as the rope reached its limit.
Her weight plus Kyle’s, multiplied by gravity and fall velocity, created immense tension.
Her right shoulder dislocated with a sickening pop. Muscles and tendons in her arm tore violently, hot blood surging beneath her skin.
"AAAAAAAAAAARGH!"
Eva screamed, her voice shredding her throat.
Her arm was nearly torn off from the force, but her fingers clamped onto Kyle’s coat like a steel vise that refused to let go.
They swung violently in the air, suspended by the rusted chain as darkness and sparks rained around them.
But... the disaster wasn’t finished.
The Purifier wasn’t built to withstand this level of destruction.
The massive weight of "The Executioner," combined with the infernal heat of the fire tsunami that melted the structural supports, caused a total structural collapse of Floor B1.
Eva heard a sound like a continent splitting.
The ceiling holding the chain... began to collapse.
Concrete pillars shattered.
Metal walkways melted.
The entire floor caved in like a house of cards, dragging cages, corpses, and chains with it... along with The Executioner himself, who roared metallically as he lost balance and fell into the abyss.
"No escape..." Eva muttered, her dislocated shoulder numbing her consciousness.
The chain snapped from the collapsing ceiling.
They fell again—deeper and deeper—surrounded by tons of burning concrete and steel, along with the massive body of The Executioner, all plummeting toward the lower floor.
Floor B2.
"The Blood Farms."
They didn’t land on solid ground—or they would have been reduced to paste.
SPLAAAAASH! SPLAT!
Eva and Kyle crashed into something wet, sticky, and so revolting it defied sanity.
They had fallen into the heart of B2.
Specifically... onto a massive mountain of rotting, drained human corpses, piled in a blind corner like biological waste, half-submerged in a deep pool of thick, semi-coagulated blood.
Rotten flesh, brittle bones, and dense blood acted as a grotesque natural shock absorber.
They sank into a sea of remains. Corrupted blood covered their faces, seeping into their noses and mouths.
"Cough... cough..."
Eva coughed violently, spitting out a mass of rotten blood and white maggots nesting within the corpses.
She tried to rise, but the pain in her dislocated shoulder nearly knocked her unconscious.
She crawled with extreme difficulty over cold human limbs and flayed faces.
Beside her, Kyle jerked awake.
The violent impact, the cold blood, the suffocating stench... snapped him out of his PTSD trance.
Kyle gasped like a drowning man breaking the surface.
He opened his crimson eyes, looking around in horror.
Where was he? Where was the fire?
He found himself submerged in blood and dead flesh.
Beside him, Eva writhed in pain, her right arm hanging unnaturally, her face smeared with the filth of the Blood Farms.
Kyle understood.
He understood that she had saved him.
He understood that she had seen his moment of absolute human weakness... and instead of shooting him, she broke her own body to keep him alive.
"Eva..." Kyle whispered, rising quickly despite the pain tearing through his body.
He grabbed her by her good shoulder and pulled her from the corpse pool onto a relatively dry patch of concrete.
"Don’t touch me..." Eva whispered weakly, gasping, tears in her eyes from pain.
"My shoulder... put it back... quickly..."
Kyle bit his lip and nodded.
"This will hurt. Bite your jacket."
She didn’t hesitate.
Kyle grabbed her arm, and with one swift, brutal motion—
CRAAACK!
He forced the shoulder joint back into place.
Eva let out a muffled scream into the fabric of her jacket, nearly losing consciousness... but she steadied her breathing.
"Thank you..." Eva whispered coldly despite the pain.
"I should be the one thanking you," Kyle said, his voice carrying sincerity his mask had never known.
But there was no time for gratitude.
Because Floor B2 was shaking as if struck by a hurricane.
The collapse caused by their fall—and the tons of debris from B1—was nothing compared to what was happening on the other side of the vast Blood Farms.
Kyle and Eva turned toward the source of the terrifying noise.
The scene before them unfolded like a surreal painting from the depths of mythological hell.