Chapter 5: The Weeping Bride

Chapter 5: The Weeping Bride

The sound of weeping cut through the dusty silence of the archive, a fragile, human counterpoint to the monstrous symphony Alan had endured so far. It wasn't the guttural rage of the Mother-Thing or the static-laced shriek from the abyss below. It was a sound of pure sorrow, something his shattered psyche recognized on a primal level. After confronting the cold, clinical madness in his own journal, a madness born from a grief he could now faintly taste, the sound of another’s sadness was an irresistible siren’s call.

Was it another prisoner? Another victim of the man he used to be?

Driven by this new, desperate question, Alan pushed himself to his feet, the heavy journal still in one hand, the flashlight in the other. He moved cautiously, his light beam cutting a path through the towering canyons of steel shelves. The weeping grew louder as he advanced, punctuated by soft, shuddering breaths. It led him to the very back of the vast chamber, to a section of wall that seemed unremarkable at first glance. But as his light traced its surface, he saw the faint outline of an alcove, partially hidden by a towering shelf of botanical specimens.

He squeezed past the shelf, the air growing thick with the scent of dust and a faint, floral perfume, like flowers left to decay for decades. The space opened into a small, hidden room, no larger than a closet. The source of the weeping was here, huddled on a simple wooden stool.

And the source of the faint light was here, too. A single, bare bulb hung from a frayed wire overhead, flickering erratically, casting the cramped space in a sickly, pulsating yellow glow. It was this weak light that illuminated the weeping woman, and the sight of her made Alan’s blood run cold.

She wore a wedding dress, or what was left of one. The delicate lace was tattered and stained, the white silk yellowed with age, clinging to a frame that was both beautiful and deeply, fundamentally wrong. Her skin was a patchwork of different tones, flawless porcelain stitched almost invisibly to skin with a warmer, olive hue. One of her hands, resting limp in her lap, was slender and pale; the other was slightly larger, more weathered, the suture line a faint, hair-thin scar around her wrist. Her dark hair was a cascade of mismatched textures, some strands fine as silk, others thick and wavy, all of it spilling over shoulders that were just slightly out of proportion.

She was a mosaic of people. A collage of flesh. But unlike the haphazard butcher’s work in the lab above, she was an artist’s attempt at perfection. He knew, with the same horrifying instinct that had plagued him since waking, that this was his work. Not a failure in nerve-splicing or a study in somatic rejection. This was an attempt at creating a companion. His first success.

She hadn't noticed him. Her face was buried in her mismatched hands, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. He saw a glint of metal on her finger—a simple, elegant wedding band.

"Hello?" Alan whispered, his voice cracking. He felt none of the cold analysis from his journal now, only a profound, gut-wrenching pity. He had done this to her. Condemned her to this strange, piecemeal existence, forever trapped in this dusty room, mourning a wedding that never was.

The woman’s head snapped up. Her face was heart-stoppingly beautiful, an impossible composite of features that should have clashed but instead created a fragile, uncanny harmony. Her eyes, one a deep sapphire blue, the other a warm hazel, widened in surprise before filling with a flicker of recognition.

"You came back," she breathed, her voice a soft, melodic thing laced with sorrow. "You promised. You promised the ceremony would be perfect. But it's not right. It's so cold down here." She was looking at him, but her gaze seemed to pass through him, fixed on a memory he couldn’t share. She was trapped in a loop, replaying the same moment of grief over and over.

"I… I'm sorry," Alan stammered, taking a hesitant step forward. "I don't remember."

"You don't remember?" Her expression clouded with confusion. "But you built this place for me. For us. Away from her."

"Her?" Alan’s heart seized. The journal had mentioned his obsession with resurrecting one woman. Who was this?

"The glass-eyed woman," the bride whispered, her gaze dropping to her hands. "She watches. Always watching. You promised she wouldn't interfere. You promised, Alan."

Hearing his name from her lips sent a jolt through him. Marie. It had to be Marie. The calm, collected woman at the top of the stairs. Her sharp, analytical eyes. Glass eyes. Had she been part of this from the beginning? A rival? A saboteur?

"Marie," Alan said, the name feeling alien on his tongue. "Where is she?"

"Up," the bride murmured, gesturing vaguely toward the ceiling. "In her throne of light. Always watching. She said… she said the Heart wasn't stable. That you were a fool." She looked up at him again, a new urgency in her mismatched eyes. "You have to get to the Heart, Alan. You have to make it beat again. It's the only way. It keeps everything alive. It's… it's down below. It's what powers everything."

The Heart of the Lab. A central power source. The static-shrieking thing had come from below. Was that the Heart? A power source in agony? The clues were fragmented, filtered through her looped sorrow, but they were a path forward. A goal.

Suddenly, a piercing klaxon blared through the archive, a deafening, rhythmic alarm that shattered the melancholic quiet. The single bulb in the alcove flashed from yellow to a stark, pulsing red, plunging them into a crimson nightmare every other second.

Alan spun around, his flashlight beam cutting wildly across the main archive. He saw it then. With a deep, grinding roar of tortured metal, a heavy shutter, thick as a blast door, was descending from a hidden slit in the ceiling, sealing off the main entrance to the archive. Another slammed down on the other side of the chamber, and another. The entire archive was being converted into a steel tomb.

They were being locked in.

He instinctively thought of the Mother-Thing. Had it found a way to trigger the lockdown? Or was it the creature from the pit below?

But the bride’s reaction told him otherwise. Her sorrowful loop shattered instantly, replaced by a raw, lucid terror. She scrambled off the stool, her beautiful, patchwork face contorted in a mask of pure panic. She wasn't afraid of the monsters in the complex. She was afraid of the one who controlled it.

"No! No, no, no!" she shrieked, her voice stripped of its melodic sorrow, now sharp with fear. She pointed a trembling, stitched-together finger towards the ceiling, towards the world above.

"She's found us! The glass-eyed woman! She knows you're here! She's found us!"