Phase 43

Epilogue - Finn

It was a bloody prison.

It was a bloody prison.

This was no safe zone - this was no quarantine. This is where they would throw in the crazies and let them kill each other.

After going back through the Pristine lockdowns, I was washed, stripped, scrubbed and then shoved into the clothes they had given me. The scrubs were stiff and scratchy, but the sweater was surprisingly soft, so I wasn't complaining that much.

As I was let into the 'Compound', which was what they called it, I had felt a sudden numbness spreading up my legs. The guards took one last blood test before opening the doors, and then with a shove and a hiss I was tossed in, the doors slamming shut behind me. I picked myself off the floor, my arms tight at my sides as I took in my surroundings.

It was the smell that hit first. The smell of rotting bodies and iron blood. There was that unmistakable tang that clung to the air like perfume, and I was quickly able to spot the many sources.

Puddles of blood. Everywhere.

I almost lost my breakfast. Bodies lay discarded everywhere in the Compound. Dismantled, stabbed, burned, beaten to a pulp - pretty much dead in every way except shot. I quickly swallowed my stomach down, and then cast my eye up into the large complex.

The building was clearly an old hotel complex that had been upgraded to hold hundreds of thousands of phasers. But, it still had the chic interior design and complex architecture of a 5 star hotel. The ground level, where I had been discarded, was still carpeted, and there was a destroyed bar across the long open hallway. There was what was obviously a reception desk about 15 feet away from me, but I preferred not to inspect it too closely considering the body of a young woman had been impaled and discarded on the desk. I could look up into the building, and see all of the levels of floors. They all faced the inside of the hotel, and at the very end the entire backside of the building was a complex system of reinforced glass panes.

There were hundreds upon hundreds of people here. Both dead and alive. They all wore the same bright orange scrubs, but 90% of their clothes were stained with the same dark crimson fluid that stained the floor and walls.

I had to remind myself that I had just been tossed into a prison with the world's most psychotic killers. Then I had to remind myself that I was going to become one of the world's most psychotic killers.

It was not a comforting thought.

I was startled into stillness when I heard a scream, and then a cheer. I was about to step out from under the balcony of rooms above me when a body toppled over the edge and splattered to the ground in front of me. My heart jumped into my throat when I realized only half of the body had come down. The torso and head of an elderly man. I blinked away, trying to expel the horrid image from my mind.

"Ey, look'y'ere! There's a new one!" A thick voice sputtered towards me. I glanced up, my drying eyes narrowed. There was a fat man with bloodstains on his scrubs hobbling towards me. A stubbly chin protruded from his face. "What's yer' name sweethe'rt?" He jaunted, grinning slyly at me.

Something terrible, sickening, and repulsive turned in my stomach.

It was in that moment that I decided I was not going to play nice girl anymore. I wasn't going to be human anymore. I was in a room full of killers, so I would join the club. I had heard the guard - he had told me one thing before shoving me in.

"Kill, or be killed."

So be it.

"Seraphim," I responded, using my full name and its origin creature. The man recognized the word, his smile faltering for the tiniest moment. I noticed other men and women alike turning their heads towards me.