Patient 1543 (1543 Series Story 1)

1543's End Game

1.

      1543 sat in his wheelchair; his thin, anorexic body cast an even thinner, ghostly shadow on the floor from the full moon light. He was alone on the second floor, the rest of his minions were on the lower floors, searching for the third antagonist, Doctor McCoy, who Devin had cut before being dispatched by Doctor Mel. All of this, 1543 knew; he knew it the same way that he knew the intimate details of other people’s lives: Mel’s insomnia, Terry’s miscarriage. It was like being in the darkness and then putting on your night vision goggles, and 1543 had grown so accustomed to their advantages that he never really took them off. And of course, there were more things that he could do with his “night vision goggles” than know the details of other people’s lives; there was so much more that he could do. Like the inmates, with an easy push he had all of them under his control, as his personal, insane army of soldiers who seek only the shedding of blood and who don’t ask unwanted questions or have a sense of consciousness. In the end, they were the means to an end; an end that 1543 hadn’t seen in many, many years. It was an end where he could take something that he was desperately needed now, especially after the many years in this weakening, anorexic body.

     As he was sitting there, thinking of his end game and how exactly he would accomplish it, one of the inmates approached from the darkened hallway that lead to the stair case. 1543 knew he was there before his ears had heard the shuffling of feet. The body was weak but the spirit is willing, as the saying went, couldn’t be more true. The inmate approached with an apprehensive manner, 1543 jerked his head to the left and the inmate fell down face first towards him and began to slide across the tiled floor as if 1543 was reeling it in with a fishing line. 1543 jerked his head again, but this time up and the inmate stopped sliding right in front of him and shot up straight on its own two feet. The inmate gave its report, which consisted of the things that 1543 couldn’t see or know for whatever reason. The old doctor was dead – McCoy – and the other two were somewhere on the upper levels as they had searched the entire first two floors. 1543 gave his orders and the inmate ran back to his comrades with 1543’s orders.

     Once the inmate left, 1543 realized how he was going to achieve his end, and what a fantastic end would it be for him.

2.

     Mel and Terry were exploring the fourth floor, looking for food, other survivors, and some other weapons that might have more reach. The first they had some decent luck with, the second their luck was nonexistent, and with the latter their luck was more along the lines of “what luck?”. The thing that worried Mel about the last part, was that not only had they not found any survivors, they hadn’t found any bodies of the people who would’ve been survivors if the inmates hadn’t killed them. And the fact that there were no bodies pointed towards a cold, hard truth that Mel didn’t especially want to consider or think on too much. They had found some health bars in the nurses’s station on the fourth floor, but no survivors, and no weapons that they didn’t have. They found another scalpel, but what’s the point of having two? The blade itself is so small that it’s highly unlikely that it would get stuck in someone; and, even if it did get stuck, the blade was more than sharp enough to cut its way out of whatever it was caught in or on.

     Mel and Terry had just finished going over the entire floor, and – after doing much convincing on Terry – they’d agreed to go down one flight of stairs and go over the third floor. She was very hesitant, which Mel understood, but to Mel this was a death sentence in its own way with the illusion of hope. He knew that they were both going to die, sooner or later, and he wanted to at least have a chance to sink his knife into 1543’s neck, and who knows, that might actually stop everything because Mel was more than one hundred percent positive that 1543 was who – or rather what – had caused all this. That wasn’t in doubt in Mel’s mind at all.