♊︎Year 5067, Month 6, Day 23, Time 4:04 pm♊︎
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"501... 501... 501... 50– Ah, here it is." The man mutters to himself as he casually strolls down the halls of the recently sealed off floor in the main MALUS tower that's smack in the middle of Fever District, towering above all the other skyscrapers in the area.
He stops shortly after arriving at the front of the door where the girl he was looking for lies, although if she's unconscious or conscious, he's not sure.
In a meeting before today, he had overheard Ursula requesting for the girl to be moved to floor 88, where Max's main laboratory rested. He was a bit devastated when he heard the news of his passing, so it pained him a little to walk through the halls of the scientist's lab.
He was always the closest to Max after gaining his trust when he helped him escape that Mental Asylum a long while back.
He chuckles to himself as he thinks back on those times and when he was first visited by Ursula with her proposal. It was way back then when things were much simpler and...
"Excuse me, sir? I don't think you're supposed to be on this floor unless you have been granted access. If you don't mind, I'm going to have to see some identification—."
"It's Ismael. Y'know, Isla's brother. One of the Meisters." The man responds swiftly to the nurse that probably had come by to deliver some medication to the girl beyond those doors, not even sparing her a glance.
"O-oh! I'm so sorry, I didn't recognize you for a second there! Please, pardon my insolence." She bows slightly in his direction which prompts him to turn, seeing that the woman barely comes to about his shoulder in height.
She looks up at him expectantly, leaving him confused about what he's supposed to be doing before he clears his throat, pointing at the door to medical room 501.
"Will you be long in there? I came to visit my subject before the procedure." He asks and the nurse waves a hand in front of her face, answering his question.
"No, no. I won't be long, I'll just be prepping her for the surgery. In fact, you can come in if you'd like." The nurse pauses, tapping her chin while holding a clipboard in her other hand. "Although, I don't think she's awake at the moment. We had to put her under some sedatives because she was acting up and hurting herself."
"Hurting herself?" He repeats, a hint of worry in his voice. The nurse nods.
"At least, that's what Evan says. Us nurses were put under a schedule which means that we only get to see her once before the procedure, not sure why though." Ismael's fists tighten in the pocket of his leather jacket at the thought of what Evan might've done.
They had all been given a specific role to follow and although Ismael and Isla were usually given the task to interrogate people, Ursula made sure that Evan would be the one to interrogate the girl instead. All Ismael was left to deal with was capturing her and bringing her here.
He was even risking his life and position just by being on this floor, it scared him to think what might happen to him if he actually stepped foot inside of the room, and yet, he went ahead and did it anyway.
"Do you think you could give me a moment before you prep her?" He finds himself asking the nurse who was staring at him patiently for his answer.
"I don't know. I was told to not—."
"I won't take up too much time. I just wanted to see how the subject was doing." He lies, biting the inside of his cheek as he watches the nurse's indecision. She looks over at the room and then back at him a couple of times before sighing.
"Alright, I can give you 5 minutes. 8 at most. I was told that it was important to prep her as soon as possible. She seemed to be regaining her memories." She finally decides.
Quickly thanking her with a small nod, he punches the code to the room. The code for her room was wired to change every day and today he managed to catch a glimpse of it on Ursula's computer during their prior meeting.
Opening the door, Ismael steps inside, looking around at the white walls and the steel medical equipment lined up against them.
In the center of the room lies the woman he was looking for, kept unconscious under the gas concoction that is steadily being pumped into her lungs through the oxygen mask on her face.
Her limbs are tied down by a leather buckle to the bed she's laying on, her chest steadily rising and falling with every intake of breath. She looks almost ghostly pale, much like the earlier complexion of her childhood.
There are a couple of needles hooked up to her, including an IV, and a couple of heart monitors stuck to her chest seen through the hospital gown she's dressed in. He even notices the odd lump running down the middle of her chest and the closer he walks toward her, the more noticeable it is.
He's scared to think of what it could be when the smell of burnt flesh wafts into his nose the moment he gets close enough to hover above her, making him grimace.
Instantly, he reaches out a hand and pulls down the hospital gown, his eyes flying wide open when he's met with the gruesome sight.
Her chest is mostly covered in bandages, thankfully, obstructing him from seeing what he's not supposed to, but the lumps he noticed through the hospital gown were gauze pads that had started to leak through with an all too familiar crimson color and another bodily fluid that he refused to identify.
Reaching out a wary hand, Ismael gulps at the thought of what exactly he might uncover under the gauze pads but nothing could have prepared him for what it was.
It was a horrific sight, to say the least.
Three large burns ran from just under her sternum to just above her belly button, the skin already peeling off and creating multiple blisters. Her flesh looked as if it had been mauled and melted so that it barely clung to her. Blood and puss covered the injury and had soaked the pads completely at this point, but above all, the smell the injury emitted was what made him want to hurl.
He turned to the side, grabbing on to the edge of her bed and clutched his stomach as he dry-heaved over the floor, coughing from the horrible stench. He quickly hurried over to a cabinet in the room, ransacking it for any more gauze pads and finding an unopened box filled with them.
Attending to her grave wound, Ismael's brain began to churn with the thought of who could've done this.
He had never heard of any mutual agreement between the Meisters to cause the subject any bodily harm, much less burn her skin. He decided that it couldn't have been done before he captured her because she had been perfectly fine except for the injury Gemini gave her on her arm.
Which only meant that this was the doing of someone in this building, and as far as he knew, only two Meisters and some nurses had access to this specific room.
Going through his mental checklist, he crosses off the nurses and Isla immediately, knowing that they wouldn't have the guts to do something like this which leaves Ursula and Evan as his only other options.
Judging by how terrible the burns are, The Grim Reaper can safely assume that it wasn't Urusla's doing because she had no knowledge in torture methods or anything of the like.
Ismael, being well conversed in the subject of torture, was immediately able to identify what was used to cause these burn marks: White Phosphorus. And there's only one person that he knows who uses this compound. Just the thought of him laying a hand on the tattooed woman is enough to rile up the flames of anger in him.
That damn bastard! He seethes in his head, finishing up with the last bandage on the woman.
He looks down at his watch to see how much time he has left when he realizes that he only has 4 minutes of the 8 the nurse had given him.
The man finds himself panicking, thinking of the fastest way he can get her out of here before deciding that she'll have to get herself out on her own. But not without his help.
Moving over to the tattooed woman's face, the man gently slides off the oxygen mask, removing the IV's and the heart monitors and everything she was hooked up to. He even frees her arms and legs from the grasp of the leather buckles holding her down, hoping he's done enough to help. When he's done, he steps back to admire his work, crossing his fingers in a silent prayer that she'll wake up on time.
It usually takes about a minute or two for people to wake up after the sleeping gas has been removed so if he moves fast enough, he might just be able to make it before the nurse comes in and sees him.
Taking a step back to look at his work, a fond smiles spreads across his features at the sight of the sleeping woman. He stretches out a hand to stroke the top of her head but immediately stops himself, feeling too guilty to touch her.
He doesn't remember when it was that he had grown so fond of the girl. Maybe it was when she took her first steps, or when she came to him specifically when she had an injury that needed attending. Well, whatever it was, it pained him that he couldn't show her how he truly cared for her, always having to put up a cold and heartless mask in front of her. It pained him to have to always act like a monster, but those were his orders.
As much as he cared for this little girl he watched grow up in place of his son, he didn't have the courage to go against the orders. If he did, he could've avoided her injuries, but here, MALUS orders are law.
Noticing the slight stirring of the woman laying down, he takes that as his cue to move. He leaves the girl behind, closing the room behind him and blocking the nurse's curious view from the room. Flashing a cheeky smile, Ismael walks off, leaving the nurse with a mountain of question that are soon answered when she opens the door and hears the tattooed woman on the medical bed gasp.
The first breath of fresh air that Kurenai has had since she got kidnapped.
The room spins around her and her head feels like it's about to burst but it's not as bad as the immense, pulsing pain she feels running down the middle of her torso that worsens when she sits up, almost knocking out her breath she just regained from her lungs.
At seeing the girl awake and free, the nurse freezes, dropping her clipboard and timidly taking a step back which catches Kurenai's attention, just barely.
She still can't see clearly, her mind feeling as though it has just been set on fire, and she feels her muscles screaming at her to lie back down, but she knows that she needs to get out of here or else she won't survive.
Her survival instincts kick in when she sees the blurred form of the nurse reaching for the emergency button to alert everyone of Kurenai's freed state. Acting quickly, the tattooed woman uses all of the strength she can muster get to where the petrified nurse stands, shaking in her scrubs.
Because of how weak her body is from the lack of a proper nutrition and the loss of blood, the tattooed woman's knees buckle under her, causing her to collapse on the floor the moment she tries to stand. Her mind still struggles to get used to being off of the sleeping gas.
This, however, doesn't deter her from crawling toward the nurse who's frozen in shock, fearing for her life. She had only ever heard rumors of the monster that Kurenai was; it terrified her to even be in such proximity with the deadly woman. The nurse turns to face the emergency button on the wall behind her, ignoring the fact that Kurenai's groans and grunts are getting closer and closer.
Just before the nurse can press down on the emergency button, Kurenai grabs the back of her shirt, using it to steady herself and reaching for the nurse's ponytail. Pulling down with all of her body weight, the nurse shrieks as she drops to the floor along with the weakened Kurenai, frantically pleading with the tattooed woman to let her live.
The yelling hurts Kurenai's sensitive ears, the sound reverberating in her skull and messing up the progress she had made in regaining her senses. Still having the grip on the nurse's hair, the tattooed woman reels back the hand holding the nurse's hair and slams the terrified nurse's head into the floor, instantly shutting her up.
Now, only silence encompasses the medical room she's in, finally giving her the chance to clear her head as she curls up next to the body of the unconscious nurse. Bringing her knees to her chest, Kurenai places her head between her knees, taking in deep breaths and closing her eyes. Her whole body is pulsing with pain and she's too scared to look at the source of it, furrowing her brows as she decides how she'll get out of here.
Lifting her head up, she looks around the room for some sort of object she can use to help her escape when a shiny black object in the corner of her eye catches her attention.
It's a phone, the nurse's phone, she presumes, but it'll have to make do.
Reaching out ever so slowly across the nurse's unconscious body to get the shiny black phone, Kurenai makes sure to steer clear from applying pressure to her torso, aware of her grave injury. She struggles at first to grab the phone but manages to pick it up somehow, desperately turning on the screen when she sees that it's locked.
She cursed herself and the nurse for good measure, laying her bareback down on the cold tiled floor of the infirmary, suddenly remembering that there should be a button for emergency dials.
Picking the phone back up with new hope, she successfully finds the emergency dial screen but comes to a full stop when she realizes she doesn't know who to call.
She finds herself getting nervous as she thinks of who she should dial after remembering that it was the Meisters themselves that had betrayed her, hurt her.
She wonders if she should even bother calling her team members, thinking that they may have even had a hand in this, but anything is better than staying put. It scares her to even think what would happen to her if a Meister were to find her in this position— freed with an unconscious body lying next to her.
Swallowing down her anxieties and pressing the number on the dial pad, Kurenai takes a sharp breath as she presses the call button, quickly lifting the phone to her ear and chewing on her bottom lip as she hears the ringing of the line.
She waits anxiously, desperation clawing at her throat and making it hard to breathe that even tears begin to form at her eyes at the thought that her team members might as well have turned her in.
It's not something to be surprised about, after all, she never treated them well. Who would care if the woman with nasty attitude was sent away for some time while they reprogrammed her brain? She only wishes that she didn't have to go through this to realize how important a team can truly be.
Kurenai chews nervously on her fingernails, hearing the line ring once, and then twice, and then a third time, protracting the amount of time that her heart has to pound worriedly against her soar ribcage when finally, the person on the other end of the line picks up.
"Hello?" The warm, familiar voice of the leader of their team speaks in her ear, giving her a slither of hope that there indeed is a way for her to be helped.
It's almost too good to be true.