Chapter 96: Saint Hilarius Hospital (27)
The words struck Kyle like lightning.
Cold logic slapped his mind.
Eva was absolutely right. One hundred percent.
If it were a major "Harvest" night for thousands of patients, the vaults would be swarming with staff, mercenaries, scientists, and doctors operating the capsules and blood transfers.
But they found no one. They found abandoned slaughterhouses for humans, guarded by monsters released to tear apart any intruder.
"There is no harvest tonight..." Kyle whispered, his crimson eyes widening in horror beyond the terror of monsters.
"Lieutenant Gray... knew I would pull his memories. Alexander Vance... planted this false memory in the lieutenant’s head on purpose!"
"They... lured us..." Sia whispered in a dead voice.
They all realized the absolute truth at the same moment.
They didn’t come to save anyone. They didn’t come to prevent a catastrophe.
Alexander Vance and Saint Hilarius wanted Alpha Squad to descend into these vaults.
They wanted them to go down floor after floor, to be drained, shattered, and torn apart by the zone kings, so they would reach the bottom as completely exhausted sacrifices.
This wasn’t an infiltration.
This was a carefully prepared journey to bring them to their voluntary demise.
And as they processed this psychological nightmare and terrifying conspiracy...
KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!
The metal platform they were standing on, and the concrete wall holding the steel door, suddenly split in half!
The catastrophic battle of the three monsters on B4 above them had shattered the final foundations of the hospital’s middle layers!
"Damn it!" Kyle roared.
There was no time to say another word.
The floor collapsed completely beneath their feet.
The steel door marked (B5) fell into the darkness.
And they fell with it. Kyle, Eva, Sia, and Valisera.
Plunging into absolute black abyss, piercing the ceiling of the fifth floor — the second-to-last floor — toward a new hell, now realizing they were not heroes or rebels... but merely foolish prey that had fallen into the deepest trap in Elysium’s history.
...
...
...
Falling into darkness doesn’t frighten a human as much as what awaits at the bottom.
When the metal floor collapsed beneath them on the fourth basement level, it wasn’t just a drop; it was a slide into the throat of the abyss.
Above them, B4 boiled like a cauldron of hell, where the fiery "Executioner," the acidic "Viscous Reaper," and the frequency-shattering "Brood Mother" collided.
The roar of their battle shook the foundations of Saint Hilarius Hospital, and reinforced concrete blocks weighing hundreds of tons fell with them into the same dark shaft, threatening to crush them midair.
Kyle, Eva, Sia, and Valisera... the four remaining members of Alpha Squad... were plunging toward Basement Five — B5.
"Prepare for impact!" Eva roared, trying to adjust her body in zero gravity, expecting to fall into the "Great Harvest" hall.
But... when their shattered bodies hit the floor... they did not hear the sound of capsules shattering.
Nor did they smell blood or the usual chemical fluids of the hospital slaughterhouses.
They landed on a solid floor, smooth, and extremely cold.
"Ugh..." Kyle groaned as he rolled to absorb the fall, bracing on his knees, raising his remaining magnum pistol with his good hand, while his right hand still pulsed with the darkness of the "Forgotten Blade."
Eva lit her tactical weapon light, Sia lit her hand with faint golden light to see around them, while Valisera breathed with extreme difficulty, leaning against the wall behind her, the newly sealed black cracks on her arm throbbing with hidden pain.
The four looked around, expecting to see a nightmarish army...
But what they saw made their minds stop working from sheer contradiction.
The fifth floor... was empty.
Completely empty.
There were no thirty thousand capsules.
There were no civilian patients.
There were no aberrations, no energy tanks, no fusion machines.
The floor was a massive hall, perhaps the size of two football fields, painted entirely in pristine white, clean enough to blind the eyes.
The ceramic tiles reflected light like mirrors, sinister in their purity, devoid of a single speck of dust or drop of blood.
The absolute emptiness screamed in their faces, mocking every drop of blood they had shed to reach here.
And in the middle of this endless white void... there was only one person.
A man wearing a pristine white doctor’s coat, elegant and meticulously pressed.
His face was covered by a white surgical mask extending to cover his eyes with black lenses that reflected nothing.
He stood with terrifying calm, unconcerned by the earthquakes shaking the ceiling above him, holding a small medical notebook and a silver ink pen.
The man stopped writing in his notebook.
He slowly raised his head toward the four shattered figures, stained with blood, mud, and acid, who looked like scraps that had just escaped the bottom of hell.
The sound of the pen closing with its metal cap rang in the empty white hall like an execution bell.
"Oh... you are our guests,"
The man spoke in a soft, polite voice devoid of emotion, his echo reverberating across the white walls.
"Welcome to the depths of Saint Hilarius Hospital. We’ve been expecting you... though you were slightly late."
Eva aimed her pistol at him, her hands trembling with rage and paranoia eating at her mind.
"Who are you?! Where is the harvest?! Where are the capsules that were supposed to be here?!"
The man ignored her shouting, looked at his notebook, and shook his head with feigned regret.
"I must admit, it seems you’ve caused a very large problem in the hospital. The upper floors are a bloody chaos, the purifier is destroyed, the blood farms have evaporated, the Chimera laboratory is crushed, and now the children’s nursery is being erased from existence thanks to the savage battle of the S-rank test samples you awakened."
He pointed his pen toward them in a scolding tone, as if reprimanding children who had broken a window.
"This will look very bad in the press. The hospital’s reputation will be in the gutter tomorrow morning... not to mention my superior’s anger. You’ve cost us billions in biological investments."
"I’ll make you pay for that investment with your guts!" Kyle roared, stepping forward, his crimson eyes blazing.
The man chuckled softly behind his mask.
"I’m merely a simple administrator. I’m not the one who receives terrorist VIP guests. My role was only to ensure your arrival at the bottom."
The man stepped one step backward.
"Please... Saint Hilarius welcomes you."