Caleb woke to the smell of antiseptic and death.
His eyes opened slowly, his vision blurry, and his head pounding. White ceiling tiles stared down at him. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in harsh, sterile light. He was lying in a hospital bed, wearing a thin gown that left him feeling exposed and vulnerable.
A sound came from his left. Wet and rhythmic. Like meat being carved.
He turned his head carefully, trying not to make any noise.
A nurse stood beside the bed next to his. She was tall, wearing pristine white scrubs, her blonde hair pulled back in a perfect bun. From behind, she looked completely normal.
But the "patient" on the bed wasn't.
The man was awake. His eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling, but he couldn't move nor speak, for his limbs and mouth were tied. Only small, muffled sounds escaped his throat as the nurse worked.
She was cutting him open.
Not with precision but with enthusiasm. Her hands moved efficiently, peeling back skin, exposing the muscle and organs beneath. Blood pooled on the white sheets, dripping onto the floor with steady plinks.
The patient's chest rose and fell rapidly. He was alive and conscious, watching his own vivisection.
The nurse hummed softly as she worked, a cheerful tune that made Caleb's skin crawl.
She reached for a piece of equipment. A giant bone saw. The thing must have weighed forty pounds, but she lifted it with one hand like it was made of paper. When she moved, Caleb felt a heavy, predatory pressure, his skin crawling as if he were prey standing before its natural hunter.
This thing wasn't human.
The patient's muffled screams grew more desperate as the saw came down.
Caleb forced himself to look away. He needed to move. Now. Before she finished with her current victim and moved on to him.
He waited for a moment when she was distracted, setting the saw down and turning toward a supply closet. Then he slipped out of the bed as quietly as possible, bare feet touching cold linoleum. His knife was gone. His clothes were gone. He just had the hospital gown and nothing else.
The nurse kept humming, absorbed in her search.
Caleb slipped out of the room.
The hallway beyond was worse.
Flickering lights. Blood smeared on walls. The smell of decay and chemicals mixed into something that made his eyes water. More rooms lined the corridor, and from each one came sounds. Moaning. Screaming. The wet noise of flesh being torn.
Caleb stayed low, moving from shadow to shadow. The whispers in his head were quiet for once.
He needed weapons, clothes, and an exit. Even though the Tower seemingly gave no instructions, he knew that this was probably the objective.
A door at the end of the hall was marked "EMERGENCY EXIT" in faded red letters. It felt too obvious. Why would the exit be so clearly presented? Or was leaving not the objective? But what choice did he have other than to check?
He was halfway there when he heard it. Someone was running and shouting.
Around the corner came a man in his twenties, wearing torn jeans and a blood-soaked t-shirt. Behind him, three figures in hospital scrubs giving chase. But these looked different from the nurses.
They were zombies. They had to be. They moved wrong, joints bending at angles that shouldn't be possible. One had its jaw hanging loose, another was missing an arm. The third looked almost normal except for the black veins spreading across its face like ink.
The running man was injured. Badly injured. His left arm hung useless, bone showing through torn flesh. He was fast, but the zombies were faster.
Caleb calculated the odds instantly. Three zombies. Each one at his level or slightly above, based on the pressure he felt from them. The injured man was weaker, maybe Level 8 or 9. If Caleb intervened, he'd be fighting three-on-one with no weapons while wearing a stupid hospital gown.
It would be stupid to do so.
He pressed himself against the wall, quickly hid, and let them pass.
The man made it maybe twenty more feet before they brought him down. His screams echoed through the hallway as he was being eaten.
Caleb kept moving toward the exit.
The door was locked. As he reached it, he realized the door was locked. Of course it was. He rattled the handle, then softly put his shoulder into it in hopes of pushing it. The door was solid steel. He didn't even try to burst it open, scared he would attract something.
Then footsteps echoed behind him.
He turned to see two zombies in doctor's coats shambling toward him. Slow, but purposeful. Their eyes locked onto his, and their pace increased.
He had no choice but to fight.
The first one reached him just as he grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall. He swung it like a club, connecting with the zombie's skull. The impact sent vibrations up his arms, but the creature barely staggered.
It lashed out with clawed hands. Caleb ducked, but not fast enough. Three parallel cuts opened across his chest, tearing through the hospital gown and into flesh beneath. Blood flowed freely.
The second zombie circled behind him.
Caleb swung the extinguisher again, this time at the first zombie's knee. Something crunched. The creature went down, but immediately started crawling toward him, fingers leaving bloody tracks on the linoleum.
The second zombie lunged. Caleb rolled aside, came up swinging. The extinguisher caught it in the temple. The skull dented, black fluid leaking out, but it kept coming.
They were strong. Stronger than the goblins. Stronger than anything he ever faced.
The crawling zombie grabbed his ankle. Its grip was like a steel trap. Caleb brought the extinguisher down on its head, again and again, until the skull finally cracked open and it stopped moving.
The standing zombie tackled him. They went down hard, Caleb's back slamming into the floor. The creature's weight pressed down on him, its rotting face inches from his. Yellowed teeth snapped at his throat.
Caleb got his hands under its jaw, holding it back. Its breath was like sulfur and decay. Black saliva dripped onto his face.
The fire extinguisher had rolled away. No weapons. Just his hands and whatever strength he had left.
The zombie's claws raked across his ribs, opening more wounds. Caleb screamed, more from rage than pain, and drove his knee up into its stomach. There was no effect.
He shifted his grip, got his thumb under the creature's eye socket, and pushed. Hard. The eyeball popped like a grape, black fluid spraying across his face. The zombie shrieked and reared back.
Caleb rolled out from under it, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and brought it down on the back of its skull. Once. Twice. Three times.
Finally, it stopped moving.
Caleb lay on the bloody floor, breathing hard. His chest and ribs burned where the claws had torn him open. The wounds weren't deep enough to be fatal, but they'd slow him down.
More footsteps in the distance. More of them coming.
He struggled to his feet, grabbed a scalpel from a nearby medical cart, and kept moving. The emergency exit was still locked, but there had to be another way out.
Behind him, something roared. It didn't sound like a zombie, but something else.
Caleb ran, leaving a trail of blood behind him, the whispers in his head finally stirring again, engrossed in his fear.
[Welcome to Floor Eight] the Tower finally said.