Page 8 of Haunted Prey

“Y-you…you were a nurse from the…” My heart hammered as rage curled in my stomach.

She came forward cautiously. “Nurse Andrea.”

“You were there,” I hissed, feeling the chains rattle as I tried to lift myself.

“But she’s with us now, Emery.”

I stilled, glancing at the man beside me in disbelief.Why? No, that was wrong.“Who are you?”

“I’m Micheal.”

Micheal.

He straightened in his seat. “I was only there for a brief time that you were. You and your sister were new.” He glanced at Andrea, then back at me. “I was lucky enough to steal a surgical knife and stab one of the nurses. They threw me out after.”

The memory of a boy a couple years older than me being dragged away with blood on his hands slipped into my head. A boy with white-blonde hair and blue eyes.

Before I uttered a word, I caught the cop’s gaze. I saw her scarred eye with the faded pupil. Memories assaulted my senses, cooling my rage.

“Cassidy,” I breathed.

Her tight lip twitched a little. She crossed her arms. “And I thought I got all messed up from that shithole.” She shook her head. “Still got the hallucinations?”

I saw my sister at the corner of my eye and nodded.

“Too bad. I only get them every so often now. And some bad dreams.” She glanced at Nurse Andrea. “Even the meds can’t make them go away permanently, but it’s better than nothing.”

“You got out,” I said. “I didn’t know…I thought maybe…”

“That I got the same fate as your sis?” she snapped, and I flinched. “Sorry, that was uncalled for. But, no, just like you, I got thrown out. Ended up on the streets for a while. Got thrown in a mental ward for little while until Micheal found me.”

I turned my gaze back to the man. “I remember you now.”

“I wasn’t there as long as you,” he answered. “Or Cassidy. Or even Leslie and Dominic.”

My gaze trailed over to the man sitting by the wall who took off his mask and tossed it on the ground. The third man standing by the door followed suit. Twins. Identical except for the eyes. The one by the wall had sharp green, while his brother at the door had jet-black. I remembered them too.

Not hallucinations. They were really here. Survivors from the warehouse. Grown up like me. Just as damaged. “The twins,” I said. “You were only a couple years younger…I remember your screams from across the building.”

Leslie, who rubbed at his mangled ear, pretended to study the curtain. “Yeah, well, Dom stopped speaking so I had to scream for the both of us.”

“Is he still that way?”

“Yeah.”

And Martel had done that to him. Another core memory shot into my head. I was walking past the exam room with a nurse and had seen Dom on the cold metal slab, blood dripping from his mouth, his eyes glassed over. Some bad drug gone wrong. They had tried to operate on him and only botched it more. Leslie’s screams had been ear-shattering. They separated them once, and Dom had been placed beside my room. We’d started to tap on the walls to each other.

I heard a soft tap and looked over to the door. Dom smiled at me, nodding in acknowledgment.

“We’re all that’s left?” I said, unsure yet how to feel about…any of this.

“Yes,” Micheal said. “There were a few others I went looking for. One of them died by suicide. Another ended up in a mental ward and dissociated from this reality entirely. The last died of alcohol poisoning. We’re the only ones who…well…got out alive.”

“Not our sanity though,” Cassidy said, tilting her head, grinning.

“I don’t know. I think I came out all right,” Leslie said, flipping his gun over on his lap.

“Dude, shut your dumbass mouth,” Cassidy spat. “You go into full psychosis mode and start thinking everyone around you are parasitic aliens who abducted you so we can impregnate you. How many times did we have to lock up your weapon stash so you didn’t blow us away? Huh?”

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