Page 36 of Immersed
Before Asher could finish the thought, Levi gripped the knife handle with his uninjured hand and dragged the blade across his own throat in one savage, decisive motion.
The cut was deep and precise. Blood fountained from the severed artery, pulsing in rhythm with his racing heart. The hot wetness cascaded down his chest, pooling beneath him on the wooden floor.
“NO!” Asher’s voice shattered the stillness, his composure crumbling. The predatory confidence vanished, replaced by something Levi had never seen in those eyes before: pure, unbridled panic.
Asher lunged forward, pressing his hands against the gaping wound with desperate urgency. Blood seeped between his fingers, unstoppable and warm.
“What have you done?” he demanded. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
Blood continued to pump from the wound despite Asher’s frantic efforts. Levi’s vision began to darken at the edges, but a strange calm washed over him. He’d chosen this—chosen death over violation. For the first time since the nightmare began, he’d taken control.
“Stay with me,” Asher commanded, though his voice shook with desperation. Blood-slicked fingers fumbled with the fabric of Levi’sruined shirt, pressing it against the wound with trembling hands. “Don’t you dare die. Not like this. Not when we were so close.”
Levi’s lips curved into a smile, his teeth stained crimson. The world was fading, sounds becoming distant, but Asher’s voice remained clear, desperate and devastated.
“You’d rather die than be with me?” The question emerged broken, almost childlike in its wounded disbelief. Asher’s features twisted with genuine hurt, and a tear tracked through the blood spattered across his cheek. “After everything—after I showed you what we could have—you’d choose this?”
Levi couldn’t respond, couldn’t form words through the blood filling his throat. But his gaze answered for him, holding Asher’s stare with defiant satisfaction even as the light began to fade from them.
Asher’s fingers trembled against Levi’s neck, his composure shattered. The monster was gone, replaced by something almost pitifully human.
“Please,” he whispered, “please don’t leave. I can’t—I won’t let you go.”
The tremor in that voice, the quivering lip, the tears mixing with blood—they seemed impossibly genuine. For a fleeting moment, Levi wondered if there was something real beneath the monster’s façade. Something capable of actual love, however twisted.
But it didn’t matter now. The darkness was closing in, his heartbeat slowing as blood continued to pump from the wound. Asher’s face blurred above him, those mismatched eyes the last points of color in Levi’s fading world.
“I’ll find you again,” Asher promised, voice fading into the encroaching darkness. “Next time will be different."
12
New Game+
Levistirredatthesound of familiar voices bickering. The low rumble of an engine vibrated beneath him, and the scent of marijuana smoke hung in the air. Something warm pressed against his right side—an arm draped casually over his shoulder.
“I’m telling you, man, we need some Zeppelin for ghost hunting. Sets the mood,” Jasper argued from somewhere in front of him.
“That’s so basic,” Tyler shot back. “Everyone plays Zeppelin. We need something unexpected, like Chopin. Creepy classical shit.”
Levi kept his eyes closed, confusion washing over him like a cold tide. This wasn’t the meadow. Where was the familiar grass beneath him? The morning sunlight? Instead, he was... moving? In a vehicle?
What’s happening? Where am I?
The weight against his side shifted, the arm around his shoulders adjusting its grip. Someone was holding him, and the casual intimacy of it made his skin crawl with unidentified dread.
“Hey, pass me that other microphone, would you?” Owen’s voice came from the front seat. “I need to check the battery level. The EMF detector is already showing interference, which is weird because we’re not even at the location yet.”
“Maybe it’s picking up our phones,” Maddie suggested, her voice coming from Levi’s left. “Or Tyler’s watch. That thing has more tech than NASA.”
“It’s not the watch,” Tyler snapped defensively. “It’s military-grade. Doesn’t interfere with anything.”
Ghost hunting? EMF detectors? Levi’s mind struggled to process the fragments of conversation. Nothing made sense. Last he remembered, he was dying in a barber shop, blood pouring from his throat as Asher—
“So we’re voting, right?” Jasper asked. “Ghost town or abandoned hospital? Because I’m telling you, Riverbend has serious energy. My cousin went there last year and his camera batteries drained in like five minutes.”
Terror spiked through Levi at the mention of Riverbend. The abandoned mining town. The place where Asher had nearly—where he’d chosen to—
“The hospital has better documentation,” Owen countered, shuffling papers. “Drosselmeyer County Sanitarium has seventeen confirmed deaths on record, plus rumors of experimental treatments in the east wing.”
