Void Fever

Chapter 1

Inky

    It was dark. There were distant screams echoing through my ears. I sat up with a start, in a completely white room with a bed and a slightly walled in toilet. The only window took place of the fourth wall, and looked out into what looked like a government facility. Every so often, someone in either a white coat or people in Hazmat suits walked by, dragging someone in a brightly colored uniform behind them. My vision blurred and I flopped back onto the floor, desperately trying to remember what had happened before. The only thing that I could remember was one word, and it might not even be a word: Inky. I tried again to stand up, and this time was successful. Ashy blonde hair fell into my eyes as I tried walking towards the glass. Stumbling a few times, I made it to the glass of the window/door. It was then that I saw my hands.

They were black. Not as if they were charred or burnt, but black. I pulled away from the window, trying to call out for help, but the only sounds that escaped my mouth were strangled strings of nonsense. Looking back up at the window, two black and dripping hand prints were on the glass. I ran over to the white wall and wiped my hands off frantically, then when that failed, on my bloodred uniform. The black stuff didn’t come off, but it just kept dripping out of my fingertips.

“Ah, you’re awake.” A Filipino woman in a snow-white lab coat was standing at the glass door. She sneered and flipped her slick black hair to the side. “I am doctor Avery Belle Estoque, but you may simply call me doctor.” She pulled a clipboard from behind her back and then looked back at me. 

“And according to this, you are pris— patient B-6182937, also known as Inky. A Bloodred Danger Rank, with the “ability” to morph the ink in your blood and that leaks out of your hands into anything, or to…” she paused, evidently shocked by what came next. “...grow tentacles of ink out of your back?” The doctor looked at me, ”Inky”, and grinned in an evil fashion.

“This might be interesting,” doctor said. She called out and two people in hazmat suits ran over to her. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the way the doctor gestured towards me and back to the hazmat people, it didn’t look good. The hazmats nodded, and opened the glass door of the room. I tried to speak again, but I could only sputter and shake my head. The hazmats advanced and on instinct I back myself against the wall, smearing my “ink” everywhere. They grabbed my arms and dragged me out of my cell. I struggled, starting to cry, and scared out of my wits.

Then I felt it.

Something cold spilled down my cheeks. I didn’t mind it, it felt like it belonged. The same, tasteless stuff filled my mouth and spilled down my face. I heard a rip and a cold presence on my back, as if I had four more, very flexible limbs. They smacked at the hazmats, and I realized they were tentacles, made of the same ink from my hands. Tentacles…? I wondered. Just like the doctor said…

 I looked at the knocked out hazmats in awe, ignoring the blaring alarms. A small, muffled cry came from my right and I looked to see a short haired teenage girl in a blue dress-like uniform and a soft pink button sewn over her eye pointing frantically behind me. Suddenly, a massive jolt of electricity hit me just above the small of my back, right in between my tentacles. Falling to the ground I saw it was doctor, holding a taser and a video recorder in her hand. She cackled, and then everything was black.