The call came at 3:17 A.M.
Kane Rowe was half-asleep in his rig when the dispatcher crackled over the radio:
> "Code Black, Outskirts Sector 9. Unknown injuries. Immediate response required."
He sat up straight.
Code Black meant multiple casualties.
Usually a car crash or a gang shooting.
He didn't ask questions.
He just gunned the ambulance through the empty streets, tires screeching as he tore past dead traffic lights and crumbling strip malls.
Sector 9 was the abandoned district — the city had written it off after the riots, left it to rot.
Nobody lived there anymore.
So why was there an emergency call?
---
The hospital loomed out of the fog like a broken tooth.
St. Armand's Memorial — shut down five years ago.
Windows shattered, paint peeling like skin, front doors chained shut and rusted.
Kane killed the engine and stepped out into the night air.
It was... wrong.
Dead silent.
No wind, no crickets, no distant city sounds.
The world felt paused.
The front doors stood open now — chains snapped like wet spaghetti.
Something inside had pulled them apart.
Kane's gut twisted, instincts screaming to leave.
But duty pulled him forward.
He tightened his grip on the emergency kit and stepped inside.
---
The air inside the hospital was wet.
Not humid — wet.
Each breath dragged a damp, metallic taste down his throat, like breathing blood.
The emergency lights flickered weakly, painting the hallways in sickly red and green.
His boots squelched with every step.
The floor was coated in something thick and warm.
Blood.
It flowed in sluggish rivers along the tile cracks, too much, far too much for any normal human body to survive losing.
The walls pulsed slightly — he thought it was his imagination — then shuddered in time with his heartbeat.
From deeper inside, something scraped across the floor.
Heavy. Wet. Dragging.
Kane called out, voice cracking:
"EMS! If you can hear me, call out!"
Only silence answered.
No — not silence.
Whispering.
Faint, desperate voices.
Not coming from a room — from inside the walls themselves.
Begging. Pleading. Crying.
The emergency kit slipped from his hands, thudding to the ground.
---
At the end of the hall, the elevator doors were stuck half-open.
Through the gap, Kane saw a figure.
Bent. Twisted.
A doctor's coat soaked black.
It was sawing something on the floor — something that made wet, snapping sounds — but the thing wasn't moving naturally.
It was moving like it was hanging on puppet strings.
Kane's heart pounded so hard it hurt.
He took a step back.
The figure stopped moving.
Slowly, mechanically, it turned its head toward him.
Kane didn't wait to see the face.
He ran.
Boots splashing through blood.
Sprinting past doors that slammed themselves shut as he passed.
At the lobby, he threw himself toward the exit — but the glass was gone.
The doorframes were now open mouths.
Rows of teeth lined the frames, twitching hungrily.
One mouth gnashed as he passed, snapping the radio off his belt.
He stumbled backward.
The floor buckled under him like a drumskin.
Beneath the tile, he could see things pressing up — hands, faces, screaming silently.
The hospital was alive.
It didn't want him to leave.
It wanted him to join.
---
Suddenly — a spotlight.
Blinding.
A voice barked through a megaphone:
> "Down! Get down now!"
Kane dropped instinctively.
Glass shattered. Gunfire cracked through the air.
Men in black armor stormed the hospital, symbols etched into their suits glowing faintly blue.
They weren't police.
They weren't military.
They were something else.
Kane saw one of them — a woman with long silver hair — pull a blade that looked like it was made of frozen shadow from her belt.
She slashed it through the air, and the blood on the walls shrieked — actually shrieked — pulling itself back into the cracks like reversing a video.
One by one, the living mouths slammed shut.
The hospital howled.
The leader of the black-armored squad knelt over Kane, eyes hidden behind a mirror-black helmet.
"You're contaminated," the voice said.
"Congratulations. You're coming with us."
Kane blacked out before he could answer.