The air buzzed with electricity not just from Lucas's spear but the world itself.
Lucas stood in what was once a staff lounge of the hospital. He was gazing out at the broken city beyond. Fires raged in the distance, smoke curled toward a glitched sky. But none of this matched what he remembered.
This wasn't how the simulation was supposed to go.
In the novel, this arc was brutal. It was true but it was also filled with heroics. He remembered reading it vividly, cheering for himself, strangely. The hospital was a checkpoint for everyone but other teams were supposed to arrive. Npc's were meant to give them clues. The simulation had a rhythm. A structure. There were choices for them to take but there were also safety nets.
This? This was chaos.
No students. No backup. No checkpoints. The monsters were more weird. They didn't follow the novel's rules. And the Chimera? It wasn't even supposed to appear until the very end of the simulation.
"What the hell is going on…?" Lucas muttered to himself.
His fingers tightened around his spear. Electricity crackled.
And Ryker...
He is been strange too. That unnatural calm. That moment in the fight when his eyes had gone dark, not light. The way he was hiding something. How he was clutching his side not from pain, but from something else.
Lucas frowned,
He didn't know who the enemy was anymore. But he was damn sure what is happening its not following the story.
And someone, maybe everyone was improvising.
.
.
.
.
Arthur stood tall despite his posture stiff and his sword still in hand.
"We need to secure the rest of the hospital. Floor by floor," Arthur said, his voice was cold and sharp.
"If this place is our base, it needs to be safe."
"Let's not split up too much," Dean muttered as he was rubbing his shoulder.
"I agree," Ryker said, voice quieter. "We don't know what else this simulation might throw at us."
Lucas gave him a nod as arcs of lightning still crackled faintly around his spear.
Lia, her skin was ash smudged and her cheeks were red from the heat of her spells.
Sasha leaned against the doorframe, blades already cleaned. "What's the plan, Captain?"
Arthur exhaled. "Two floors. Clear them. Secure the main control room and the emergency grid. Then we fortify."
And so, they moved.
******
Upper Floor, Surgical Wing
Arthur's group, which consists of Arthur, Dean and Lucas, ascended the main stairwell. The air was heavy and it was filled with digital static and the occasional flicker of corrupted textures. Blood stains on the walls twisted and moved slightly, like they were alive.
The hallway outside the operating rooms was choked with broken equipment and twisted corpses of nurses. Some of them shifted as the group passed.
Dean was first to react.
Swish!!!!!
"Wall!" Dean shouted.
A wave of Earth surged upward, forming a barrier just in time to block a barrage of surgical tools launched from around the corner, scalpels, needles and bone saws.
"They're ambushing us now?" Lucas growled, sliding into a sprint.
Crack!!!!
Lightning burst from his spear and he launched himself over the wall, jabbing his weapon through a corrupted nurse's eye socket. Sparks exploded.
Graaaar!!
The corrupted nurse screamed, then disintegrated.
Arthur followed close behind, his Voidfire blade igniting in a ripple of black and violet.
"Void Slash"
Slash!!!
He spun, carving through two enemies with one sweep. Their data flickered violently before deletion.
Behind them, Dean reinforced the hallway.
"Reinforce the room! Clear and close it!"
The trio moved room to room surgical bays, intensive care units, storage rooms each filled with increasingly twisted enemies.
But they held their formation. Power and precision. By the time they reached the generator room, their bodies were covered in scratches and bruises but no one had fallen.
******
Lower Floor , Pediatric and Emergency Wing
Ryker, Lia and Sasha headed in the opposite direction. The pediatric wing was worse.
Children's toys littered the floor. Some moved on their own.
"Don't like this," Lia muttered as she stepped over a twitching plush bear.
They opened a triage room door only to find corrupted patient models fused to the walls, groaning. One detached with a scream and leapt at them.
"Scorching Embers"
Lia shouted, summoning a bunch of fireballs on her palm. As she moved her palm.
A wide arc of fireballs spread in a semicircle, lighting the hallway and cooking the enemy mid air. Two more emerged from the walls.
Swoosh!!!
Sasha dashed forward in a blur of wind.
"Gale Fang!"
A spinning blade of compressed wind carved through the enemy, then curved around and hit the second one in the neck.
"Luminous Barrier"
Ryker moved to shield Lia with his skill Luminous Barrier just as a flaming corpse hurled itself their way.
"Thanks," Lia breathed as her hands glowing again. "I've got one more trick if things get ugly."
But Ryker's attention was already drawn to something else, a faint static buzz at the far end of the hallway.
There, where light met darkness, the hallway shimmered oddly. A ripple in the simulation.
******
The trio breached a secured metal door using Sasha's blade and Ryker's Light wedge. What they found left them speechless.
A long hall. Stasis pods. Dozens of them.
Each pod held a student. Frozen and they were glitching. Some are already blank.
"They're…the other students," Sasha whispered.
Ryker moved forward, heart pounding. He touched a pod screen flickered but it came blank.
"Deleted," Ryker said.
"No way. But this… this is a simulation," Lia said behind him. "How could they be..?"
"Erased. From the simulation. From the memory," Ryker muttered. "That means someone is…"
Sasha drew her weapon.
"Company," she said.
A shape stepped out of the shadows. A corrupted humanoid figure, its body stitched with wires and medical tubing, head rotating 180 degrees before locking onto them.
It charged.
"Sanctuary Veil"
Ryker raised Sanctuary Veil. The enemy's claws slammed into the glowing dome and cracked it.
Lia raised her arms. "Blazing Vortex"
A swirling pillar of fire shot from her position, wrapping the creature in swirling flames. It screamed as data bled from its joints, liquefying in mid air.
Slash!!!!
Sasha moved behind it and slit its throat mid burn. The kill was clean.
But that's when Ryker saw it.
Another card. This one on a table beside the last pod.
Blood red.
Black ink.
He picked it up silently.
"Erase them before they erase you."
Ryker's eyes narrowed but he didn't tell the others about it
*********
Hospital Control Room
The team regrouped in the central control room. Broken monitors lined the walls. One displayed a corrupted map of the city. It was blinking red zones everywhere.
"We're isolated," Arthur said. "Just us."
Dean slumped into a chair. "No one else made it."
"No," Ryker said quietly.
"They never existed here. Something's messing with this place."
Lucas paced. "But why? And how the hell are we supposed to finish the mission?"
Ryker didn't answer. He looked down at his blood smeared boots. At the card hidden in his sleeve. At the truth he couldn't say.
"Because this mission isn't just training," Ryker thought.
"It's bait. And we are the only ones left alive on the hook."