05 – Fortress of Doors

Erika stalked down the halls of the asylum, accompanied by The Butler, The Maid, and one of The Mind’s creepy monster things.

“Ahead, next left hall, immediate left door,” the monster spoke, words dripping from its maw. “You should find yourself in the atrium.”

Should, he said. The hostile architecture of the asylum fought against its owners and was only kept stable by The Mind, from what Erika had heard—but she still would have preferred a little more confidence.

“What about Anna?” Erika asked. “Did you figure anything out yet?”

The monster lacked eyes, but it still swiveled its head to face her even as it prowled forward ahead of the group. “Daniel reports that he did contact The Hunters before you arrived.”

“You’re telling me things I already know and aren’t answering my question.”

The faint shape of a human skull set somewhere beneath the dome of its head gave Erika chills as it continued to face her rather than watch where it was going. “I can’t tell.”

Erika clicked her tongue in annoyance. Even as irritated as she was, she could tell through the tone of the monster’s voice that The Mind was even more frustrated.

“Three heroines marched down the halls, wary and alert. The dank, damp tunnel seemed to press in on them, shadows closing around them with every step. The faint light of the flashlight withered, like it was afraid.”

Erika raised her eyebrows. “Uh…”

“She posts fictionalized accounts of our activities on her blog,” The Butler said, looking pained. “Just ignore her.”

The Maid harrumphed, getting a gleam in her eye. “The hulking giant took the lead, large chest thrust out in pride,” she said, describing the exact opposite posture that The Butler actually had, “backed up by the cute perky one and the goth baddie, would they find a wayward ally, or a vile foe draped in the visage of a beloved friend?”

Unable to take her own advice, The Butler glared down at The Maid. “Why do you always go on about my chest?” she asked in a tone about as flat as the look Erika shot The Maid.

“You’re twice the size of anyone else here, boobs proportioned to match.” The Maid swept her hands out and around her own relatively petite chest for emphasis. “It’s what the readers want.”

“Maybe you could write your stories for a different audience?”

“It’s what I want,” The Maid admitted without a hint of shame. Ignoring the heavy blush that crossed The Butler’s cheeks, The Maid pranced on ahead, turning the corner before The Mind’s monster. “She stopped at the first door, hand trembling on the handle. Was it fear? Anticipation? The only way—”

“The Gadget has retrieved the external communications device,” The Mind’s monster interrupted. The trembling Maid lost any semblance of fear as she turned to it with annoyed hands thrust to her hips; it ignored her completely. “Daniel is hooking his phone into it.”

“Should we wait?” Erika asked. “Get confirmation whether Anna came here or not?”

“We cannot allow intruders to wander alone regardless of the outcome. Either it is really her and she runs the risk of becoming permanently lost in the asylum, or it is an enemy who we would prefer to not come across our more sensitive areas.”

The Maid laughed a harsh snort, then quickly cleared her throat. “Yes, the heroines couldn’t allow anyone access to their sensitive areas,” she said with a heavy note of barely restrained humor in her tone, planting her hand on the handle again. “Counting on the element of surprise, she flung the door open and barged inside.”

The asylum atrium felt odd in many ways; as an indoor-outdoor area, it had the expected walls surrounding a courtyard of greenery. A little grass park with some trees to provide shade and comfort would have looked right at home at any normal asylum. Erika walked along the dirt path, passing by a few benches, and even over a small wooden bridge set atop an obviously cultivated stream.

Erika fully expected some kind of nightmare sky, maybe a massive swirling pit of darkness or a million star-like eyes staring down. The bright blue sky with a few wispy clouds lazily drifting by made her almost as uneasy simply because of how normal it felt.

The big problem was the walls. Heavy red brickwork made up the exterior of the asylum, darkened like the light of the sky couldn’t quite reach it. Wrought iron fencing partitioned the asylum off from the cheery greenery, like its inhabitants simply did not belong in such a world.

Shadows moved through the brightened windows surrounding the atrium. Erika couldn’t discern features, only vague silhouettes. The humanoid ones paced back and forth, arms strapped to their chests, looking more like animatronics on rails than proper living creatures. One thumped its head against a pane of cracked glass—not hard, just repeatedly thumping—while another looked caught in the throes of an endless scream.

The less humanoid shadows gave Erika fewer feelings of uncanny unease, but radiated far more malevolence as they stared down to the courtyard, like Erika’s presence upset them personally.

She opened her mouth, but The Butler shook her head. “I wouldn’t ask, if I were you.”

“Now I’m more curious.”

“Try not to think about them too much,” The Butler said with a wan smile. “One might take a liking to you and follow you home.”

“I’ve already got one—” Erika paused, blinking. With the meeting and the interruption, she had almost forgotten about her hitchhiking ghost. She scanned the atrium like she would be able to see…

And she found the ghost, hollowed out and hovering near a large tree off to the side of the atrium. Unlike usual, she wasn’t pointing, more just staring. Not that Erika had time to process the ghost’s expression. The ghost vanished the moment Erika looked, making her frown. Was it some aspect of her nature that she could only appear in her hauntee’s peripheral vision? Or was the ghost just shy?

Erika didn’t get a chance to consider the ghost more before Anna strode around the side of the tree, her eyes sweeping the canopy like she was looking for a lost cat. Anna hadn’t noticed Erika yet, giving her a chance to look the woman over.

She wore black biker leathers, had an unzipped jacket showing off her tee shirt covered in a bunch of scribbles that might have been a death metal band name. Brown hair dangled partway down her back, longer than it had been when Erika first met her, and the undercut shave on the side of her head was a thin fuzz, almost blocking out the circuit tattoo she had over her ear. The scar The Monk had given her over that same ear was a bit more prominent, lacking hair along its line.

Anna… looked the same as usual. Erika couldn’t find a single thing wrong with her, other than her presence in the asylum.

“The intruder shows herself,” The Maid announced, drawing Anna’s eyes. “Fiend or friend?!”

“What.” Anna spoke, tone flat as she stared at The Maid. She didn’t stare for long, quickly turning her attention to Erika. “There you are,” she said, sounding relieved. “Where’s Daniel?”

Erika didn’t answer right away, straining her ears to figure out if that was or was not the real Anna. Was there a bit more gravel in her voice than usual? Or was Erika imagining things out of paranoia?

“Leslie flipped,” Anna continued. “Gets a text from Daniel that you guys got abducted by The Castle and then no responses? I was in the area, so I volunteered…” She trailed off, looking from Erika to The Butler and The Maid. “Is something wrong? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Are we all seeing the same person?” Erika asked, glancing side to side.

“Tight leather outfit?” The Maid asked.

“Shaggy undercut hairstyle?” The Butler said.

“You are seeing the same person,” The Mind confirmed, making Erika wonder exactly how deep he could see into her head. “But it is possible that I tainted your perception by stating who I perceived. We won’t know enough about how the mimics work until The Doctor gets one on the autopsy slab.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Anna asked, taking a guarded step backward. “Did they do something to you?” she shouted at Erika.

“Say something only the real Anna would know.”

“…the fuck?” she muttered, shaking her head. “This is the thanks I get for saving your ass when you slipped down the feeding tunnel in the ziggurat?”

Erika relaxed a little, shoulders losing tension. “Alright.”

“Technically,” The Mind said, “that is something you both know.”

Erika shot the monster a look, shrugging a little. She couldn’t verify something that literally only Anna knew, and that was known to a sufficiently small group of people. “Daniel get a message back yet?”

“Ten minutes ago, Anna replied to the group chat that she was nearby, but she is not picking up her phone.”

“She wouldn’t get a call in here, right?”

“Then she’s a friend,” The Maid proclaimed, sounding proud of herself.

“The hell are you guys talking about?”

“You come out here alone when there are clone things on the loose?” Erika snapped back. “Of course we’re worried.”

“I thought The Fixer said they wouldn’t be able to break into the real world unless you broke another chain.” Anna cocked her hip, glaring. “Did you break another chain?”

“No.” Erika hesitated. “Not that I know of.”

“Very reassuring.”

“How did you get in here anyway?”

“Just walked?” Anna gave a flippant shrug, looking to The Maid and The Butler. “They said I could come back if ever I felt… unwanted.”

“That’s true,” The Butler said slowly, scratching the side of her cheek with a white gloved hand.

Erika let out a long sigh, hands clapping to her sides. “Alright, fine. I’ll believe you’re you. Sorry for the interrogation, but—”

Anna huffed, flipping a stray lock of hair back over her shoulder. “It’s whatever. Where’s Daniel?”

“The Stalker’s keeping an eye on him while we looked for the intrud—you.”

“The Stalker? You left him with that psycho?”

“She’s not going to hurt him,” Erika said. The Stalker was a lot of things, but untrustworthy… might have been one of them. Still, Erika had made the rules clear, and The Stalker hadn’t had a problem with Daniel yet.

She was still a little touchy about The Art for some reason, but since Erika didn’t meet up with The Art every other day, nothing had really come of it.

“Well,” The Maid said, whipping her phone out of her apron pocket. “This sucks. I’m going to have to come up with a different ending.”

“Ending?” Anna asked, cocking her head.

“My blog!” The Maid rushed over to Anna, taking hold of her hands, leading to Anna leaning as far back as she could manage. “I can’t believe you guys haven’t seen it yet, it’s popular. Let me tell you about the current story arc—”

“Why don’t we start heading back first,” Erika said, slowly glancing around the wooded atrium. It felt like more of those silhouettes had stopped to stare. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“Same,” Anna said with a shudder. She tried to pull away from The Maid, but The Maid wouldn’t let go.

A smile flashed across The Maid’s face. “We can talk while we walk!”

She proceeded to do just that. For every step the group took, The Maid had ten words to say. Her story revolved around a trio of Men in Black-style government agents—based off a revolving cast of the various Castle members from the descriptions—going about and solving mysteries in episodic flash-fiction style. She carried on, describing each little arc in so many words that Erika felt it would have been faster to just read the blog.

The whole time she spoke, she kept her hand clamped around Anna’s, preventing the absolutely uninterested woman’s escape. The Butler maintained a plain, neutral expression that Erika decided was just her tuning out the chatter. Even the monster prowled along the asylum’s hall, not looking back over its shoulder even once.

Just as The Maid got to the part where her trio had to split up to advance through a dungeon filled with relatively trivial traps, her breath hitched. Given her breathless way of speaking, rivaling even The Gadget when she really got going, Erika wouldn’t have been surprised to find her coughing on her own spit. Erika would have thought nothing of it, except The Butler staggered a step at the exact same moment, boot scuffing the floor before she caught herself.

The Maid kept on yapping and The Butler didn’t say a word, but Erika felt a tension crackling between them.

“Alright,” Anna said, trying to reclaim her hand for the umpteenth time. “Haven’t we walked far enough? I don’t remember it taking this long to get—”

A sharp click of heel against stone tile made Erika’s ears perk, the sound bringing back memories of her first visit to The Castle.

The Orderly stepped around the corner, garbed in a short-skirt version of her old-fashioned nurse outfit with a bandoleer of syringes strapped to her thigh. She advanced down the hall, moving slow and relentlessly steady, each step sending a loud click through the corridor. Her odd red eyes remained locked at a point in the distance, as if she couldn’t see the group despite the commotion Anna was making.

Erika tensed, lowering her stance as her fingers itched for a baseball bat.

For a moment, it looked like The Orderly was going to walk right past the group.

“Let go,” Anna snapped, yanking her arm back hard enough that her hand came right off, seam splitting at the wrist.

“Hey—” The Maid started, cut off by Anna’s other hand gripping her face and slamming her down into the ground with enough force to splinter tiles.

The Butler started to turn; the monster leaped to the wall, bouncing off it to flip around and face Anna; The Orderly broke into a sprint, slipping underneath the monster.

“Erika!” Anna shouted, ducking under a thrown syringe that vibrated like a tuning fork as it jammed into the wall. “We need to…”

Erika stood, baseball bat in hand, aimed and held out toward Anna, but wavering and uncertain.

“Tell me they didn’t get to you,” Anna said, sounding distraught.

Erika’s eyes flicked over the group. None of them were attacking, focusing on Anna but occasionally glancing over, like they were still deciding if they were going to have to fight Erika as well. The Butler watched her, warily, but her posture set her fully against Anna. All their postures did. The Orderly was new here, but the monster, The Maid, and The Butler hadn’t left Erika’s sight since leaving The Mind’s vat.

“Stand down,” Erika said, firming her grip on her bat. “We can talk this out.”

“Talk?” Anna squeaked with a pointed look over her shoulder at the twanging syringe. She yelped, doing a front flip over the monster’s scything tail as it tried to use the distraction to take her legs out from under her. Her remaining hand stretched out far more than a human’s would be able to, snatching her dismembered hand from The Maid’s loose grip.

That triggered The Maid to stir. She sat up slowly, brushing a little rubble from her hair but otherwise looking pristine. “Looks like I get my alternate ending after all,” she said, turning a more feral grin toward Anna.

“You guys are insane. All of you. Erika—”

“Daniel got a response,” The Mind interrupted. “Anna—the real Anna—is outside. I’ve sent a servitor to collect her, but this… is an impostor.”

“Lies,” Anna said, backing up slowly. She jammed her hand back onto her wrist, wiggling it back and forth until it latched in place. “That must be the fake. You guys are fucking—”

The Maid darted forward, accompanied by The Butler in a pincer attack. Anna dove, springing up in a sprint to try to flee, but the monster bounded off a wall and blocked her path.

The Butler caught up first, large hands clamping down around one of Anna’s legs as she tried to jump. The Butler slammed her down into the ground, fracturing tile, making Erika wince as Anna coughed up a spurt of blood. Anna wasn’t done, rolling out from under The Maid’s flying kick and right to the feet of The Orderly.

Syringe in hand, The Orderly stabbed down. Anna caught it with her hand, needle puncturing straight through and out the other side. A spurt of luminescent green liquid splattered Anna’s face and the floor, which only seemed to make Anna angry. Anna clamped her punctured hand down over the syringe and The Orderly’s hand. Some pistons in her legs pushed her upright in an instant, and the same in her arms shoved The Orderly straight through a wall. Bits of plaster and wood collapsed as Anna drew her hands back, and she turned.

With The Butler, The Maid, and the monster blocking off one end of the hall, the only way for her to go was through Erika.

“Stand down,” Erika said again, bat up, but not swinging.

Erika couldn’t make her arms move. She had watched, closely, but… nothing Anna did was anything that the real Anna couldn’t have done. Even reattaching her arm was well within Anna’s capabilities.

“This is fucked and you know it!” Anna shouted, still approaching. She slowed, however, not quite willing to cross Erika. She still stepped closer. Maybe she sensed the hesitation, maybe she saw something in Erika’s eyes, but she stepped closer, well within striking distance.

The Orderly stepped back through the hole in the wall, red eyes sweeping until they locked onto Anna. The monster still blocked off the far path while The Butler planted her hands around The Maid’s waist, hefting her up and out of a knee-deep hole she made trying to kick Anna.

Teeth grinding together, Erika lowered her bat, passing it to her left hand as she dropped it down to her side. A look of triumph crossed Anna’s face as she turned, squaring up into a boxer’s stance like it was Erika and her versus The Castle.

Erika stared over The Castle, watching the disappointment in The Maid and The Butler’s faces. The monster in the back went still, just observing, while The Orderly slowly cocked her head from one side to the other, evaluating.

Erika’s eyes dropped down to The Orderly’s thigh.

Anna started to look back, moving almost before Erika moved, eyes wide—

Erika pressed the plunger of the syringe in her hand, flooding Anna’s neck with glowing green liquid.

“I’m not…”

Anna’s eyes rolled back as she collapsed to the ground, motionless. Erika watched, waiting for it to be a trick or a trap or for some sign that Anna wasn’t who she said she was. But she didn’t move. She lay there, needle jutting out from her neck, as The Maid rushed over and secured her arms behind her back. The Orderly advanced, removing her syringe and inspecting it, before swapping out to a light blue syringe from her thigh and administering a dose of that to Anna’s left buttock.

“Fuck,” Erika hissed, stumbling back, panting harder than she did after a real fight. “Fuck!”

The Butler caught her as she stumbled over a stray bit of rubble, keeping her upright. Erika brushed her off, feeling sick.

“Is that her or not?” she shouted, eyes tied to Anna’s slack face.

The Mind’s large monster padded closer, making way as The Gadget rushed up the hallway with a wheeled cage towed by a pair of mechanical humanoids. “We’ll find out,” The Mind said.

Those words made Erika feel sicker than she ever felt.