Be the Light

4. The Tub

TW: a little more blood and death but we are getting out now!

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The strain of the stench and the sights in the medical wing wore on the group. They all needed some time to sit down and drink some water, but they didn't want to risk getting cornered by anyone. Enough raiders found their demise in the hands of these researchers and while they might not expect such a large group, Wooyoung rather pushed through now and relaxed once they were safe.

They followed the blood trails guided by Mingi and weren't shy about their noise. Anyone foolish enough to attack would get shredded with bullets, no questions asked. Not everyone in the group had become close, but they didn't wish the grisly demise under those medical supplies on anyone.

With his eyes trained on San's shoulders so he wouldn't look too closely at the beds framing the corridors with corpses, Wooyoung marched on. This place was sterile enough that the fungus didn't settle in, and the electricity worked when they hit a switch to battle the incoming darkness. After everything that happened today, they might need to spend a night to calm down before they searched for Seonghwa's computer. No one could expect such a gruesome scene at this place.

Once more, Wooyoung contemplated San's hand, but both of them had to carry their weapons. He envied Jongho, who hugged Seonghwa to his chest with haunted eyes. If this was how the research to help him got conducted, he didn't want its result.

The bloody tracks led to a series of rooms that had to have been office spaces once. Most of them were locked, and no sound escaped from inside. Only one other set of doors was simply wrung shut by a rusty iron chain. Mingi peered through the rectangular window.

"More researchers," he uttered. Wooyoung tightened his hold around his rifle.

"I see some more corpses that aren't hacked apart yet, but they don't look alive either." He stepped back so Wooyoung could lever his gun. Through the glass, he found the unbothered scientists, busy with their obscene and too used to the sound of fighting and screams nearby to mind today's disruption. If it had become this much of a habit, the lack of reaction was chillingly inhuman.

Wooyoung shot the first one and the sound of the shattering glass had Yunho pluck his lock pick tool from his belt. He kneeled to undo the chain while Wooyoung reloaded. For a split second, the second researcher stared wide-eyed at the barrel of the gun pointing at her. Then her head flung back.

Wooyoung didn't like doing this. Murdering human, he wasn't any better than those proclaimed doctors who also killed without mercy. But the dead flanking the corridors were lost raiders just like their group. If they settled down nearby, they would get ambushed in their sleep to meet the same fate.

No, it was better to kill them. And to put an end to the cruelties they committed in this place of healing. San was the living proof that the cure didn't demand victims.

Wooyoung leaned his gun against his shoulder as they marched inside. White curtains divided sections of the room into makeshift stations and while some were specked with blood, others were relatively untouched. Perhaps the communal space where the patients assembled before "treatment?" This wasn't one of the tormenting chambers, but the patients kept waiting here struggled against their bindings, and fought against the bandages covering fresh wounds.

With pale faces, the group wandered past. Most of these people were infected with primary stages of the fungus. Its splotches were still faint, similar to Jongho's. Although a bunch of them were dead, clipboards tucked to their beds to describe their condition and whether they had chunks bitten out of them from fouls or if the fungus seemed to spread from right at their nerve center without apparent wounds to enter them.