Singing Parasite [On Hold]

Prologue

Dr. Neil tripped over something and fell hard on his chest and chin, biting his own tongue. Pain flared up in his lungs, and his chin and tongue began to bleed, his blood tasting like metal. Huffing like an old dog, he clambered to his feet and resumed running.

The power was out. The gloomy hallway was only lighted by solar-powered led lights that had been installed on the ceiling ten meters apart. Dr. Neil dashed past one of these lights and glanced behind to see what had tripped him. It was hard to tell in the dimness, but it seemed that he had tumbled over a dead body-- probably one of his friends. He couldn't tell, nor he had the time to stop and see who it was.

Dr. Neil Dery kept on running across the long, dark hallway. The air was damp and his whole body was now covered in his own sticky sweat. He tore off his white, coarse lab coat and tossed it behind him onto the floor.

How much time did he still have? He was hoping that he still had ten minutes with him. Anything above ten looked good to him.

He rounded a corner and skidded to stop. The person who had forced him to do this mad dash was standing before him. Neil faltered for a second, realized he was wasting time and ran past the man in a black, tattered cloak, and a black mask with a beak protruding out of it. The mysterious man didn't stop Neil. He just raised his grey-gloved hand and tipped his ebony, tall hat.

"My, my, now that's the spirit," the beak-masked man said. His voice was echoey and clown-like.

Neil didn't reply. He began climbing the stairs. When you still have sixty floors to climb, you can't stop and chat with the person who wants to kill you.

And besides, Neil thought; I would see him again.

Neil was right. The beak-masked man was sitting on the stairs of the next floor. "Nine minutes to go," the man said. He held out something. "Want some chocolate?"

"W-why are you doing this?" Neil asked, panting.

"I told you. I just want the information."

"I don't have any," Neil screamed.

Neil was now on the forty-seventh floor, and as he had expected, the beak-masked man was already there.

"W-who are you?" Neil said as he ran past the guy. "Why are you doing this?"

The masked man replied to him on the next floor. "How many times will I have to tell you? I'm someone like you."

"No... you are not." Neil stopped and propped himself against the railing. His lungs were burning. There was no way he could go on without giving them a little break.

"I'm just like you," the masked man repeated. The porthole-like eyes on his mask boring into Neil's. "We both are very much alike. You and I stand on the same floor. We look up at the same sky. Breath the same air. Bleed in the same way. Cry from the same spot."

Neil had now regained his breath. He began climbing again. He spotted the masked-man on the forty-seventh floor. "We are very same," the man said as Neil tore past him. "But sadly we humans don't value similarities but differences. If you had seen me in the crowd you would not have given me even a second glance. Because..."

How is he doing this? Neil thought. Either the man was really fast or there were different people behind the mask on each floor.

On the next floor. "... You won't give me a second glance," the man was saying. "Because we humans notice differences before the similarities. You will look down on me because there is a difference in our income. In our education. In our clothes..."

On the landing of the floor above it. "... In the size of our house. In our looks--Wait. The face behind this mask is definitely more handsome than yours. Your nose is ugly."

This guy is nothing but trolling me, Neil thought and went on climbing.

"You are rocking this game," the beak-masked man said greeting Neil on the Sixty-seventh floor. "I think you'll make it." The man seemed to be playing an invisible electric guitar.

He was clearly enjoying Neil's predicament. Neil felt like punching the man in the face. But he knew that would be pointless. After all, their bullets had failed to put even a single scratch on his glossy mask.

Neil was now crawling on his four limbs. Everything in his body hurt. "Only four floors to go," he told himself. "You got this... Hahaha. You... ha... got this." He stood up. His legs shook. He punched his both claves and trudged onward.

He burst onto the terrace, crawled for a second, then lay sprawled on the cold floor, staring at the black sky. A strange, melodious sound was reverberating in the atmosphere as if the whole city was singing beneath him. Ignoring his heaving lungs, Neil sat upright and searched for the man who had given him this task.

He spotted the beak-masked man on the edge of the terrace. His tattered black cloak rippled in the wind, making it look as if the man's body had caught black-flames.

"I... I made it, didn't I?" Neil asked, his chest moving up and down.

"You lost by seven seconds," the masked man said.

"No, I didn't." Neil shot to his feet. "I reached in time. I won. You lost. Now let me go, you lying bastard."

"No. You lost. Now," the masked man said, "either die or tell me where the others are..."

"I don't know," Neil screamed, spun around and ran toward the door from where he just came.

Neil must have been a foot away from the exit when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, black glitches appeared before his eyes, crowding his vision like electric sparks. His ears began ringing. And all of a sudden, the door got replaced by the night sky. Neil gasped. He was no longer running toward the exit but was charging toward the ledge of the terrace. He forced his legs to stop, but the inertia got the better of him. Before Neil could blink, he was falling down the hundred-story building.

A narrow strip of the road lay far beneath him in the gloom, but the road was getting broader and broader with every passing second. The wind rushed into his eyes, ears, and hair, sputtering his shirt and trousers. The hand was still on his shoulder. He looked to his right and realized that the beak-masked guy was falling along with him.

"Last time," the masked man said. His other hand was holding down his hat. Neil could see the reflection of windows that were blurring past them in the mask's lenses. "Where are the others?"

"I don't--" Neil couldn't finish. It had taken him almost fifteen minutes to reach the top, but it only took four seconds to plummet back to the earth. His body clobbered into the tarmac road and every bone in his body shattered into pieces, his organs turning into jelly. Neil didn't feel any pain.

He died the moment his body hit the ground.