THYME'S POV:
The elevator chimed, signaling its arrival at the ground floor. The doors slid open. And my heart stopped.
Blocking the exit was a figure so large it seemed to consume the entire doorway. An oppressive silhouette against the lobby's harsh, fluorescent light. As my eyes adjusted, the familiar, vicious white scar that traced from his cheekbone to his lip came into focus. It was him.
My blood turned to ice. A guttural sound of pure terror escaped my throat. "Shit… you again!" The words were a strangled whisper. "Are you a ghost?"
My body began to shiver violently, every cell screaming in fear. This wasn't a dream. This was the man who had pressed a gun to the ground beside my head. The man whose grip had felt like iron around my throat as he choked the life from me. And he was standing right in front of me.
"CATCH HIM!!"
The enraged bellow echoed from the lobby, a promise of brutal violence. In a blur of motion, the scarred man was on me. He didn't ask, he didn't warn. He grabbed a fistful of my shirt, slammed me back against the elevator wall with a force that knocked the wind from my lungs and sent a painful jolt through my skull. My head snapped back, stars exploding behind my eyes for a blinding instant.
"SHIT!" he roared, not at me, but at the world. "Those bastards are already here." He hammered the 'door close' button with the butt of his heavy black pistol. As the old doors began to groan shut, he pivoted, leveling the weapon into the closing gap.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but there was no escaping the next moment. The world became a white-hot flash and a deafening roar that vibrated through the floor and into the bones of my feet. The enclosed space amplified the BANG into a physical concussion, rattling my very teeth. Acrid smoke, sharp and choking, stung my nostrils and made my eyes water. A hot brass shell casing ejected from the pistol, clattering onto the worn floor with a sound like a single, metallic tear.
My ears rang with a high-pitched whine. Through the haze of shock, my senses started screaming that everything was wrong. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and rust. The walls weren't smooth steel; they were scuffed, dark wood paneling. The light overhead was a weak, flickering incandescent bulb that cast our shadows like long, dancing ghouls. The whole world had shifted when the lights had flickered.
"What are you gawking at, brat?" His voice was a low growl that cut through the ringing in my ears. He stood over me, a terrifying silhouette of coiled rage. He smelled of smoke and bloodlust.
My mouth opened, but only a pathetic squeak came out.
"Whatever game you're playing," he snarled, taking a menacing step closer, "I don't have time for it. Stay out of my way, or I'll leave you for them to find." He punctuated the threat by pressing the cold muzzle of the still-hot pistol against my chest for a split second. The touch was like being branded with ice and fire.
The elevator shuddered to a halt. The moment the doors creaked open, he grabbed me by the collar and hauled me out into a grimy, dripping service corridor.
"OVER HERE! I SEE HIM!"
The shouts were right behind us, closer now. He dragged me into a frantic run down the narrow, concrete hallway. My feet pounded against the wet floor, my legs burning to keep pace, the sounds of our pursuers' heavy footsteps echoing like a death drum behind us.
"BANG!"
Another gunshot, louder, closer. I saw the muzzle flash from the end of the hall. A phantom fist punched through my sternum, a split-second of icy displacement that stole my breath. I instinctively slammed my hands to my chest, bracing for the impact, expecting the warm, wet gush of my own lifeblood. My fingers met only the fabric of my shirt, dry and impossibly intact. My mind fractured, unable to bridge the gap between cause and effect. This isn't real. It can't be real.
We careened around a corner and a wall of bodies met us. Three of them. Dark suits, dead eyes, guns already rising.
My scarred companion was a blur of brutal efficiency. "You're a ghost!" he roared at me as he shoved me aside and dove behind a thick concrete pillar. "So try not to get in the way!"
Two of the men opened fire. BANG! BANG! My world dissolved into noise and chaos. The air filled with the sharp scent of gunpowder. I saw the first man's head snap back violently, a fine red mist exploding from where his face used to be. He dropped like a bag of wet cement, his limbs flopping at unnatural angles, a crimson stain blooming on the concrete. The second man's glasses flew from his face as a dark hole appeared on his forehead. He crumpled without a sound, his gun clattering to the floor.
The third, terrified now, fired wildly. Bullets sparked and ricocheted off the pillar with a shriek of metal. Kun returned fire, but his gun answered with a hollow CLICK-CLICK-CLICK. Empty. With a guttural roar of frustration, he hurled the useless, heavy pistol at the man's face.
The gunman flinched, ducking the projectile. It was the only opening Kun needed. He burst from behind the pillar, not just running, but launching himself forward like an apex predator. He slammed into the gunman, driving a knee hard into his stomach, doubling him over with a strangled gasp. Before the man could recover, Kun seized his gun arm, and with a sickening, wet SNAP of breaking bone, twisted it back. The man shrieked, a high-pitched sound of pure agony.
Kun wasn't done. He slammed the man's head backwards into the concrete wall. A sickening, melon-like CRACK echoed in the corridor. The man slid to the ground, dazed and whimpering. With cold, practiced fury, Kun wrenched the gun from his broken hand, straddled his chest, and jammed the barrel into his mouth, shattering teeth.
My mind screamed NO!
BANG.
The sound was choked, wet, and intimate. The back of the man's head erupted against the concrete floor in a gruesome spray of crimson and gray matter. His body convulsed once, a grotesque electrical jolt, and then went utterly, horribly still, a pool of dark blood quickly spreading from beneath his head.
The world tilted and went gray. The high-pitched ringing in my ears became a deafening roar. A sour, hot bile rose in the back of my throat, and I collapsed onto my hands and knees, retching violently onto the grimy floor. I couldn't breathe. My vision swam. The image of the man's empty eyes and ruined head was burned onto the inside of my eyelids.
A hand, slick with something I didn't want to identify, grabbed my arm in a vise-like grip, hauling me to my feet. I stumbled, my body a boneless, sobbing, retching mess. He dragged me away from the carnage, his pace urgent and merciless. I was no longer running; I was being pulled, a horrified puppet in a butcher's theater. My mind was a wasteland of pure shock, every coherent thought incinerated by the horror I had just witnessed. Only one desperate, childish plea remained.
I wish this is just a dream.
A car screeched to a halt in front of us. My breath hitched, bracing for another enemy, another wave of violence. But then, the terrifyingly scarred man—Kun, I finally started calling him in my head—yanked open the back door and pulled me inside with him.
"I've never seen a ghost so scared of death. Are you really a ghost?" he asked, his voice calm, almost detached. When my gaze met his eyes, a fresh wave of terror washed over me, so potent it threatened to swallow me whole. I was too petrified to respond, but then something else shocked me to my core.
"Uh, Boss, who are you talking with?" the driver asked, glancing into the rearview mirror.
My world tilted. Was this guy... couldn't he see me?
"Nothing," Kun replied, his tone dismissing the question.
A sudden, chilling realization slammed into me. The three men Kun had just brutally killed—none of them had aimed at me. Not once. Their bullets had passed right through me, as if I wasn't there at all. And now, his driver...
"Wait, can't you see me?" I shrieked, my voice cracking, a desperate, frantic plea for attention. I waved my hands, trying to catch the driver's eye, but he just stared straight ahead, utterly oblivious. I tried to scream louder, but only a strangled, desperate sound escaped my throat.
"Calm down," Kun's voice cut through my panic, startlingly close. "I'm the only one who can see you."
My eyes widened, the world spinning. What? The word echoed hollowly in my skull. What is happening here? Am I already dead? Am I a ghost? Every horrifying memory, every impossible event, every brutal hallucination crashed down on me at once. The confusion, the terror, the sheer, mind-bending impossibility of it all became too much. The edges of my vision blurred, then darkened, and I finally succumbed to the overwhelming stress, passing out into the suffocating void.