In the moment the doctor raised his head, the atmosphere around the room changed. The already constricted air grew even more constricted as a suffocating tension burst forth as the doctor’s gaze fixed on the figure that stood before him.
Drip!
Somewhere deeper in the ruined lab, something was leaking. The emergency lights flickered above, staining the surroundings red with every pulse. Shattered glass. Overturned equipment. Dark stains spreading slowly across the white floor...
And in the middle of it all, the doctor stood smiling.
For just a moment, silence swept through the surroundings as both sides stared at each other. But eventually, a soft chuckle escaped the doctor’s lips as he began to speak once more.
"I didn’t really want to do this, you know?"
He started rambling.
"But you all didn’t leave me much of an option. Rather than waiting for you all to do something, I decided to come for you directly. Because..."
The doctor suddenly paused, his head lowering as he pinched his chin. His complexion turned serious, as if he was contemplating something extremely serious.
It was a natural gesture.
And yet...
That very gesture felt... off.
Like something wearing human skin was checking whether it had gotten the movement right.
Then, as his head rose once more, he revealed the same wide smile as before as he stared at the figure before him.
No...
It was wider.
"...I wanted to send you a message."
The words seemed to echo across the entire room, sinking into the silence that stood between the two of them. The figure standing opposite him didn’t say a single word as he stared at the doctor in silence. His gaze remained fixed, with no single fluctuation within his dark pupils.
The silence stretched on for several seconds.
Five seconds.
Ten...
The only sound was the slow ’drip... drip...’ echoing from somewhere within the surroundings. It echoed in a steady rhythm, almost like the ticking of a clock.
This persisted until the figure finally spoke.
"You wanted to send a message?"
There was no fluctuation in his tone.
Just like before, it was lukewarm. As if it was missing any semblance of emotion.
No...
There did seem to be an emotion mixed within the tone. One akin to incredulity.
They continued, "I don’t think you seem to be aware of the circumstances. Do you truly wish to send us a message?"
"Hahaha."
The doctor burst out laughing.
From the way he was looking ahead, it was almost as if he was looking at an idiot.
"What do you mean by ’do you truly wish to send us a message?’"
His laughter continued as he stared at the figure opposite him. Rather than fading with time, it only seemed to grow worse. The doctor’s body hunched slightly, his shoulders trembling with every breath.
"Kkh... pft."
But something about the laughter felt off.
Buried deep beneath the doctor’s familiar voice was something else. A second voice, laughing along half a beat behind. Likely the sound of the true voice behind the doctor’s current actions.
A thin line of red slid down from the doctor’s nose.
His movements were noticeably less stiff than before as the doctor continued to laugh before shifting his attention back to the figure.
"Are you saying that I can still take back the message? From the way you’re speaking, you’re saying that everything that I’ve done means nothing, right? So if I just raise both hands right now, will you forgive me?"
The doctor raised both hands.
But as if thinking that it was wrong, he extended both hands forward. Almost as if asking him to handcuff him.
"Here. Here."
In a way, he seemed eager.
Like a child holding out his wrists for a game that had long been finished.
But the figure didn’t budge at all. Despite the provocations, he didn’t show any semblance of emotion. Scanning the room and taking a look at the mess that had occurred, he shook his head.
It was a mess.
Shattered containment units. Ruined samples. Years of research reduced to nothing but broken glass and spreading stains...
"My apologies. I guess you’re right. It’s a little too late for that."
"Right?"
The doctor pulled his hands away, smiling.
"It’s a little too late for you to forgive me, but..." The doctor’s smile suddenly faded as his eyes narrowed. "In the first place, why do you assume that I should be the one to be forgiven?"
The doctor’s hand lowered.
The smile was gone, replaced by something deeper.
And with it, the temperature of the room seemed to drop. The flickering light stuttered, and for the briefest of moments, the doctor’s shadow on the wall behind him didn’t match the way he was standing.
But only for a moment...
"In the first place, you’re the ones who provoked me. What makes you think that you’re the ones in a position of forgiveness?"
"....."
"I should be the one asking for forgiveness."
"....."
The figure didn’t answer, but in the first place, this was never meant to be a proper conversation.
The thing standing in front of him wasn’t asking questions.
The thing standing in front of him was no longer even the doctor.
This right here... was a message.
One that Seth had carefully set up for this exact moment. All of it had been prepared long before the figure had even stepped into this room. There was no negotiation in this situation.
"I have a good idea about what you guys are. Your motives, and just how big you all are."
"I don’t think so."
The figure shook its head, but the doctor merely smiled, the figure’s words going from one ear to the other. It was as if he was talking to himself.
Because he was.
There was no longer anyone left inside to listen.
"In the end, I just wanted to make it clear."
The doctor’s head tilted while staring ahead.
It tilted...
And then it kept tilting, reaching a degree past what was normal. His eyes remained locked forward the entire time, never blinking, as a second line of red slowly began to leak from the corner of his eye.
"This right here was merely me sending a message."
His voice grew incredibly hoarse.
"If you come at me, then I can come at you. And trust me..." The doctor paused, his voice growing even more intense. Beneath it, the second voice no longer bothered to hide, the two voices speaking in perfect unison.
"I won’t just stop at breaking your precious lab and important research."
The doctor suddenly smiled again.
"Consider this a friendly warning."
Cra Crack!
With that, the doctor suddenly raised both hands and, with a quick ’snap’, his head twisted, his body falling to the ground with a quick ’thump’ a moment after. It all happened incredibly quickly, giving no time for the figure standing opposite him to react.
But it wasn’t like they couldn’t react.
They didn’t react on purpose. From the start, the doctor’s fate had been sealed. Even if they did somehow manage to stop the doctor, his mind had already been corrupted. Hollowed out and worn like a glove, only to be discarded the moment the message came to an end.
There was no saving him.
There hadn’t been anything left to save for a long time.
"....."
A tense silence followed as the figure stared at the doctor’s lifeless body.
The emergency light flickered.
Red. Dark. Red.
And with every pulse of light, the smile was still there. Frozen onto the dead man’s face, stretched wide, aimed directly at the figure. As if the message hadn’t quite finished being delivered.
Even in this situation, the figure didn’t show much of a reaction. Eventually, however, a ripple formed in their pupils as a soft voice whispered into their ears.
"Oh dear~"
It hadn’t been there a moment ago.
There were no footsteps or anything. One moment the figure had been alone with the corpse, and the next, a soft breath was brushing against his ear as if it had always been there.
"It seems like things have taken a weird turn. He was quite useful, this doctor. This has set us back several years."
"....Yes."
"The damage we’ve sustained is not cheap either."
"Yes."
"But as usual, you don’t seem to be very concerned. What do you say we do now? Should we get back at him for what he’s done?"
The voice grew seductive, a fair hand reaching forward and gently caressing the chin ahead.
The fingers were beautiful. Slender, and fair.
But they were also cold.
Cold in a way that no living hand had any right to be.
"Say the word, and I can have it done. I⎯"
"⎯Need to stay put."
The soft voice interrupted the seductive one as the figure turned around, no longer paying any attention to the body of the doctor. At the same time, the figure standing behind him froze.
But the figure didn’t elaborate.
He didn’t need to, as he continued forward, the woman’s attention turning away from them and onto the doctor’s body.
A twisted smile greeted her back.
One that, for just a moment, seemed to stretch wider.