Chapter 2: The Herald at the Window

Chapter 2: The Herald at the Window

The predatory light in Alex’s eyes was a reflection of the fire now roaring through his veins. Dr. Stillman took a single, deliberate step back from the reinforced glass, his clinical composure momentarily fractured. He stared at the tablet, then back at Alex, a frown tightening the unseen lines of his face behind the helmet. Without a word, he turned and exited through the seamless door, which hissed shut behind him, leaving Alex alone once more.

Alone, but not alone.

He fears us, the voice, or rather, the voices—a discordant chorus of whispers—sang in his skull. He senses the power. The cage will not hold us. Not for long.

Alex pushed himself to his feet, this time with an unnatural strength that surprised him. The weakness from moments ago had vanished, burned away by the strange heat. He stumbled to the glass wall and pressed his palms against it. It was cold, thick, and impassive. On the other side was an empty observation room, a bank of dark monitors, and the now-sealed door Stillman had departed through.

“What are you?” Alex whispered aloud, his voice trembling. He was talking to himself, to the thing inside himself.

We are the will to live. We are the strength you lack. We are the Sanguine Chorus, and we yearn to be whole.

His desperate love for Cass was the core of his being, the singular desire that kept him from shattering. The Chorus latched onto it, weaving its promises around his frantic hope.

She is the other half. The key. They keep her from us. A king needs his queen. We will find her. We will take her back. You only need to let us sing.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to fight it. He was Alex Vance, a graphic designer. He loved lazy Sunday mornings with Cass, the smell of her shampoo, the way she’d hum when she was sketching. He clung to these memories, these fragments of a life that felt like it belonged to someone else. But the Chorus was a parasite on his soul, twisting every pure memory. A vision of a Sunday morning flashed in his mind, but this time, the sheets were stained crimson, and Cass looked at him not with love, but with a matching, hungry fire in her eyes.

He recoiled from the thought, from the glass, stumbling backward. “No. That’s not us. That’s not her.”

It is what we could be. Strong. Eternal. Together.

The number on the back of his hand, the bloody ‘3’, began to burn, the sensation pulsing in time with the thrumming in his veins. It was a brand, a mark of ownership. He was no longer just Alex. He was something being remade.

His internal battle was cut short by another hiss. This time, a different panel slid open on the side wall. Two men, large and imposing in stark white uniforms with no insignia, stepped inside. They moved with the silent, efficient menace of trained predators. They weren't doctors; they were guards. Orderlies. Jailers.

Alex tensed, his body coiling like a spring. The Chorus screamed in his head, a wave of primal fury. Tear them! Break them! Feed!

But his body, despite the newfound energy, was still unaccustomed to the alien signals. He took a half-step forward, a snarl on his lips, but the orderlies were faster. One lunged, pinning his arms, while the other jabbed something sharp and cold into his neck. A powerful sedative flooded his system, but it didn't work as intended. Instead of succumbing to a peaceful darkness, it felt like pouring water on a chemical fire. The drug fought the Chorus, creating a violent, nauseating conflict within him.

His muscles spasmed, his vision blurred. They dragged him, struggling weakly, back to the metal slab and expertly strapped him down with thick, metallic cuffs at his wrists and ankles. The click of the magnetic locks was a sound of absolute finality. He was helpless again, pinned like an insect for dissection.

The orderlies checked his restraints and exited as silently as they came, the door sealing him back into his white tomb. The sedative warred with the entity inside him, making his stomach churn and his head spin. Defeat washed over him, cold and bitter. The promises of the Chorus were just whispers. The cage was real.

And then he saw it.

At the reinforced glass window, a figure was standing where no one had been seconds before. It wasn’t Stillman. It wasn't an orderly. It was a thing of nightmare and shadow.

Its form was indistinct, wavering at the edges as if it were made of heat haze and dried blood. It was tall and painfully thin, its limbs too long, its joints bending at angles that were fundamentally wrong. It had no discernible face, just a smooth, dark surface that seemed to drink the sterile light of the room. It wasn’t looking at him, but into him, a gaze that bypassed his eyes and pierced directly into the screaming Chorus in his mind.

A terror colder and deeper than anything he had ever known seized him. This creature was impossible. It defied the sterile logic of the laboratory. It was a glitch in reality, a monster from a place that should not exist.

The Chorus, however, did not scream in fear. It sang in joyous, ecstatic recognition.

The Herald! The call has been answered! Open the way! Let us greet our kin!

The figure outside the glass raised one of its impossibly long arms and pressed a three-fingered hand against the transparent wall. It left no print, but Alex felt a phantom pressure against his own chest, a sympathetic resonance.

The churning in his stomach intensified, rising up his throat in an unstoppable, volcanic surge. The war between the sedative and the Chorus had reached its breaking point. A violent wave of nausea clenched his entire torso. He couldn't fight it. He arched his back against the restraints, his throat working convulsively.

He vomited.

But it wasn’t food or bile that spewed from his mouth onto the pristine white floor beside the slab. It was a thick, glistening glob of his own blood, dark and coagulated, steaming faintly in the cold air. For a moment, it just lay there, a disgusting puddle.

Then, horrifyingly, it moved.

The edges of the puddle quivered, then drew inward. Tendrils of crimson goo extended from the central mass, pulling it across the floor. It slithered, an amorphous, living thing born of his own sickness. It moved with a clear and terrifying purpose, leaving a faint, corrosive trail on the white surface.

Alex watched, paralyzed with a mixture of revulsion and awe. The Herald at the window remained perfectly still, a silent, attentive observer.

The living blood crawled directly to the magnetic lock on his right ankle restraint. It swarmed over the metal cuff, blanketing it in its grotesque form. A sharp, sizzling sound filled the silence, like acid eating through steel. A wisp of acrid smoke rose into the air. With a soft click, the cuff fell open.

The creature of his blood, now slightly smaller, detached itself and slithered unerringly toward his left ankle, then to his wrists. One by one, it dissolved the mechanisms of his prison. Sizzle. Click. Sizzle. Click.

Finally, his last restraint fell away. He was free.

Alex lay on the slab, trembling, his body slick with a cold sweat. He looked from his freed hands to the living pool of his own blood, now shrinking and reabsorbing its corrosive power. He then looked to the window.

The Herald was gone.

But its presence lingered, an echo of the impossible. The Chorus in his head was a triumphant, deafening symphony. A monstrous servant had answered its call, born from his own body to set him free. The sterile white room was no longer a cage. It was the first stepping stone on a path paved with blood and horror, a path that would lead him to Cass.

He sat up, his limbs his own again. The game had changed. He wasn't just a subject anymore. He was a weapon, waking to its own terrible purpose.