Reality Quest: How I Accidentally Made a Harem of Villainesses Chapter 46: Psyche Ward

The corridor stretched endlessly before her, a skeletal throat of peeling paint and rotted beams. Each step Nellie took made the wooden floorboards sigh and creak beneath her body weight.

Her flashlight’s beam wavered slightly as her hand trembled. The light cut through the dark in thin, nervous lines, revealing glimpses of a long hallway, as the doorways were half open.

The rain outside still beat against the shattered windows, the wind slipping through the crack glass.

She glanced to her left. The hall forked there, a narrow side passage nearly swallowed by the dark. The main corridor ahead stretched further still, and just ahead, a faint color was breaking through the dark. "Is that." She paused, giving the thing a good stare trying to decipher what it was.

"A pink light coming from that open room." Soft at first, like the hue of fading neon. It pulsed faintly, rhythmic and distant, painting the far end of the hall in a strange glow.

"The hell... She whispered under her breath. Her cara picked up the words, her voice small and uneven, layered over the low rumble of thunder.

The pink light flickered once, twice, before fading slightly.

Her first instinct was to turn back, she even took one step backward, her boot brushing against damp debris. But then she stopped herself.

"No, I can’t back out now... This is what I ca here for." She muttered, while steadying her breath.

Her flashlight beam wavered as she started forward. The pink light grew stronger as she walked, bleeding into the corners of the corridor. It made the water on the floor shimr faintly, asked ripples of reflected color like blood diluted in rosewater.

She passed by old plaques nailed to the walls, nas half-scratched off as the tal being as old as it is corroded to green.

But the room was marked as "Psych Eval B" and "Containnt Chamber 03."

And the further she went, the worse the sll beca. The oder a blend of rust, mold, and chemicals.

She swallowed hard, trying to push the thought aside, but her hand instinctively tightened around the flashlight.

At last, the hallway opened into another section, a large glass door hung cracked open, its reinforced fra fractured like a spider’s web. The pink light open through the glass from within, soft yet almost beautiful in its unnatural way.

"Okay..." She said under her breath, angling her cara toward it. "Looks like... a lab?"

She stepped closer, the soles of her boots scraping across the tile. Inside was a room consud by ruin.

Broken tables and toppled cabinets lay scattered across the floor. The walls were lined with tal counters, their surfaces covered in rusted instrunts, scalpels, clamps, syringes so old their plastic had turned yellow.

Shattered beakers littered the ground, their contents long evaporated, leaving stains of black and green crusted like dried tar. A toppled gurney lay near the back, its leather straps snapped, the cushion rotted through.

And then there was the source of the light. A cracked glass cylinder stood upright in the far corner, glowing from within with that soft pink hue. The liquid inside shimred faintly, thick and viscous, its surface disturbed every few seconds by a ripple that had no visible cause. Nellie took a cautious step closer, her cara pointed straight ahead.

The walls around the cylinder were covered in paper pages torn from old ledgers, hospital notes, and what looked like dical photographs. They had been nailed or taped in haphazard layers.

So were written in Latin, others in English, their ink sared or faded. Words like "Subject Incomplete" and "Spinal Reaction 7B" where visible through the gri.

There were drawings too. Crude sketches of human anatomy, distorted limbs that stretched in an uncanny manner, even elongated skulls, with eyes that were drawn far too large. Soone had taken a pen and scribbled red circles around certain parts of the drawings: brain, heart, spine.

"This is quite the ssed up sight." She whispered, and turned slightly, her flashlight catching on a large table in the center of the room. It was made of tal and covered in a tarp that looked slick and wet.

Her instincts told her to leave it alone. But her curiosity got the better of her. For that reason, she decided to reached forward, her hand trembling slightly, and lifted a corner of the tarp.

Underneath was a body.

Or at least, it had been once.

The flesh was desiccated, drawn tight over bone, but the proportions were wrong. The torso was stretched unnaturally long, the ribs visible and curved outward, as if forced apart from the inside. The skull, she froze when she saw it, was fused with tal plating bolted directly into the bone.

Sothing about it was both human and not. Her breath stilled at the horrific sight. "Oh my god..." She muttered, her voice silent. "What the hell were they doing here?"

But just then, in that mont a faint sound answered her instead. A dripping sound was present, then another, naturally she turned toward it.

The cylinder in the corner had started to bubble faintly, pink fluid sloshing against the cracked glass. She took a cautious step back, her eyes still fixed on it.

The bubbles grew larger, rising faster, the fluid frothing like boiling water. A low pressurized sound filled the air, chanical but deep, vibrating through the floor.

"Okay, no... nope, not good." She muttered, backing toward the door. The sound grew louder.

Then, with a sound like glass under pressure...

CRACK!!

A fracture ran down the cylinder’s side. The pink fluid spilled out in slow, syrupy waves, hissing as it touched the floor. Nellie froze in place. Sothing was moving inside the fluid.

She saw a hand first, long, thin, jointed wrongly. Then another, pushing against the glass from within.

"No, no, no..." she whispered.

The glass split completely, a jagged tear running from top to bottom. The liquid poured out in a gush, splattering across the tiles.

And sothing fell out with it. It hit the ground hard thud, and from it a mass was inside. It had a shape that was familiar, it was vaguely human, it’s skin slick and pale under the pink glow. It twitched, gasped like it was choking on air for the first ti. "Ok, ok, ok, you where expecting bullshit like this."

Nellie said as she began to stumbled backward, tripping over a piece of broken furniture, her flashlight spinning out of her hand. "Ahhh fuck, my leg." She comnted as searing pain shot up her feet

The beam rolled across the room, slicing through the pink haze, and the thing from within it started to move.

It rose slowly, jerking like its bones were held together by wires. Its body was malford, limbs of uneven length, spine arched too far, it’s ribs visible under translucent flesh. Its face... was almost featureless. As it had no eyes, nor lips, just smooth skin that bulged and pulsed where a mouth should be.

It tilted its head toward her, sniffing from its plushie like nose. Then it opened its mouth. The flesh split in the middle, tearing upward into a wet, circular maw lined with needle-thin teeth. A monsterous sound ca out, a gurgled sound, that was more of a wet hiss mixed with a strain groan than a typical roar.

Nellie scread quietly, as she quickly got up, adrenaline, coursing throughout her body. "Nope, nope, nope, I am.not staying here." The creature lunged at her.

As it moved faster than it should have, slamming into a table and sending it flying aside. The tal fra crashed against the wall, sparks bursting from an old light fixture.

She turned and ran, her boots splashing through the pink-stained water. Behind her ca the sound of claws scraping against tile, rapid, and uneven. She glanced back once, as goosebumps travel up her spine. It was crawling after her, its limbs bending wrong, dragging its twisted fra along the ground like an animal learning to walk.

The corridor lood ahead once more, it was dark. She sprinted for it, her breath ragged, the cara still running. Her flashlight beam bounced wildly across the walls, as she navigates herself through the building.

The creature screeched behind her, a raw, piercing sound that cut straight through her skull.

She stumbled, slamd her shoulder against the wall, but kept running. "The fuck was that!?" She comnted as head started to get tight and tighter. But thankfully just ahead, a door stood slightly ajar. She grabbed the handle and shoved it open, tumbling inside, slamming it shut behind her.

Her breath ca in short, ragged bursts. For a mont, there was silence, except for the sound of rain and her heart hamring in her ears.

Then....

Thud!

A single heavy impact against the other side of the door could be heard. She stumbled backward, holding the cara close to her chest. The pink light still pulsed faintly through the cracks in the doorway, casting her shadow long and trembling across the floor.

ThudthudThudthudTHUD!!...

Another hit, then a other each head and fierce. Till eventually the door started to slowly break. Nellie swallowed hard, trying to steady her breath. Her mind raced, the lab, the thing, the glow, all of it running together in a blur.

She pressed her back against the far wall, the cara still pointed at the door, as she began whispering under her breath.

"What the fuck D, fuck, fuck, fuck!" She curse at the person who sent her here. As the creatures hiss bled through the cracks.

Knocking after knocking ca, it tried to break the door down, but it couldn’t. Till eventually silence, was all that was heard.

And the only sound, Nellie could hear was the rain from the outside. "Oh my god." She said while holding her chest.