Screams...Blood...So much blood...

Why was there so much blood?

Shit...Steve...what did that do to you?

Oh god...why did we come here? We should have known better than to toy with this...

Ryan...where is Ryan?

RYAN!!

Suzannah jolted awake. Not a gasping and sweaty awakening, like in some horror movie, but a silent, and almost calm, sudden awareness that was unsettling, because she couldn't remember what had forced her to wakefulness. She turned over to see the warm body next to her cocooned in a large portion of the covers, snoring (even though he denied ever doing it wholeheartedly when he was awake). Looking at the clock, it was barely past one in the morning.

Groaning at the early hour, Suzannah rolled over to huddle against her boyfriend and set herself to the task of going back to sleep. They had a job today and would have to be on the road in about three hours; she needed to be rested up. Just on the brink of unconsciousness, she had a red hot thought flash through her mind, out of nowhere...

Death

She dropped off into the tight embrace of sleep. When she and Ryan woke up a couple hours later, she didn't even remember waking up.

"Ok, so why did we even take this job again? Nobody would want to use this place."

Steve always had to point out the obvious. The ramshackle remains of the hospital where the three of them had been dispatched loomed almost eerily above them. The almost was pushing it--honestly, after years of doing this job, being slightly creeped out was so commonplace in their lives that they had started to suppress that shiver down the spine that said, "Watch out, danger is lurking."  Suzannah always wondered if that was a bad thing or not.

"We took this job because we go where the department sends us, and unfortunately for us, we are good enough at this that we get results, but not good enough to get the cushy jobs."

Hauling their supply bags out of the trunk of the work-issue (read: rundown) vehicle, Ryan handed one to Steve and one to Suzannah before putting the last one on his own shoulders. As the senior agent, he knew how the politics that the administration got up to worked. He realized that until they got even more seniority, they would be stuck chasing down the tips that would lead to either nothing or a very low level practitioner, the kind that was just bored and had no talent to speak of.

"Well, it would be nice to have just a little excitement every once in a while, nothing life threatening to the human race or anything, but something to break up the monotony."

Ignoring Steve's mutterings about wanting adventure, Suzannah and Ryan started towards the building.

According to the file given to them by dispatch, there was intel indicating that a small group of practitioners lacking just the right amount of brains, but with just enough skill to be dangerous, was going to try and break one of the cardinal rules. But of course "intel" didn't know which of the rules they were going to break, so they sent Ryan, Suzannah and Steve to do the recon and on the off chance that it turned out to be important, a more experienced team would be deployed to deal with it.

As they walked through the empty halls and room after room of the hospital, it was looking like the intel was most likely wrong. There were no indications of preparation of any sort of rituals or spells, and they saw no signs that indicated anyone had been in there since a fire had torn through the place about two decades before.

"Alright, we've got about a dozen rooms left on this floor--if we don't turn up anything, I'm calling this one a bust."

Ryan wandered off to look over the rooms on the east end of the hall while Steve headed off towards the west end, leaving Suzannah with the rooms right next to what looked like an old nurses' station.

The first two rooms Suzannah checked were empty, each only containing the remains of cheaply made hospital beds and various bits of wood that probably used to be dresser drawers. The last room was completely empty, suspiciously empty.

She took stock of the room. It was big, at least twice the size of the other two and had a blackboard in it. Probably used to be a meeting room for the staff, or maybe a classroom. Walking carefully around the room, she scanned the walls, but found no sign of sigils or talismans and there were none on the floor.

There's nothing here, just a false alarm.

Suzannah was headed out of the room, planning on finding one of the guys to tell them of her non-discoveries, when something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.

There were some faded paint marks on the wood planks that made up the floor, so faded she had almost missed them. It was possible they were nothing, just some hoodlums practicing tagging before going to vandalize buildings in the city, but she figured better safe than sorry.

Crouching down, she studied the marks. She had a gut feeling they made something, and after a few minutes of study, she had the distinct feeling that that something was not good. She heard movement behind her and turned to look as Ryan and Steve came through the doorway.

"Hey Suzie, we didn't find anything over in our rooms, I'm going to call it. The tip must...have...been...."

Ryan stopped talking in the middle of his thought and stared past Suzannah at the floor. He saw something she didn't.

"What is it? I found these paint scuffs but I can't tell if they are for anything, don't seem to make a pattern...."

Suzannah stopped talking when she realized neither man was making a sound. She looked back to the floor but still couldn't see what had stopped them. Ryan came forward and pulled her back to the wall on the far end of the room and turned her head so it was facing towards the end with the blackboard. At first she didn't understand, and was going to bitch at him for manhandling her, when she saw it.

Almost the whole floor had been painted with a massive sigil.

It was hard to see at first; the marks were very light, but it was there. Upon closer inspection, they appeared fresh enough that they they could be practice attempts that someone, or a group of someones, had used to work out their ritual.

"Damn, that thing is huge. Someone is planning a pretty big party or something. They probably used this place to plan out what they are going to do, whatever that might be."

As usual, Steve stated the obvious, but he wasn't wrong. The problem they had now was figuring out what these people were up to. The marks were scuffed just enough that they couldn't tell what it was for. In order to prevent whoever it was who had done this from completing their mission, they needed to know what it was for. Ryan started digging in his bag.

"We can use the spray paint to redraw the lines. Once the sigil is refreshed, we can see what they were trying to do with it."

A funny feeling tickled the back of her mind, something that said maybe this wasn't the best way to go about this, but Suzannah let it pass. Ryan knew what he was doing and she trusted him.

About a half hour later, the three of them stepped back to survey the reconstructed symbol. Any hope they might have had about this being a low level offense went out the window after looking at the framework of the ritual.

Someone was trying to raise the dead.

There was no mistaking the markings for this type of ritual once you saw them. Once a practitioner had drawn the sigil, all that was needed was even a drop of blood to touch it, activating it and starting the spell.

"Shit, we need to smudge this out right now. What if we accidentally activate it?

Steve was panicking. With good reason; these rituals never turned out well for the practitioners. If they survived the activation and the actual spell, they were usually killed by whatever deranged thing they had brought to life.

"No, we need to call for backup, the department heads need to see this. We'll be alright because we didn't have the intent when we drew it, without intent this won't work even if we tried to activate it."

Ryan headed for the doorway, being careful to tiptoe through the blank spaces on the floor. Steve followed close behind, his focus entirely on the floor. He wasn't watching where he was walking until he ran into the door frame with a crunch.

"Ow! Damnit! I think I busted my damn nose!"

He clutched at his face, bent over in agony. Suzannah and Ryan went to him to inspect the damage. They ushered him out into the hall where the light was better.

None of them had noticed the drops of blood fall off Steve's hand and onto the floor below.

They were still trying to get Steve to move his hand from his face so they could tend to his wound when the building gave a violent lurch. They all stilled immediately and looked at each other, like deer in a spotlight.

"What...was that?"

In the ensuing silence, they could hear noises coming out of the room with the sigil.

Noises that sounded like wet, ragged panting.

Ryan was the first to rush to the doorway, with Suzannah and Steve hot on his heels. What they saw struck them dumb and turned their blood to ice.

A figure stood hunched over in the center of the sigil. It was dressed in a ragged and singed pair of hospital scrubs and was barefoot.  Deathly pale skin was sagging over a grotesquely skeletal frame. A mop of matted tangled black hair concealed its face and they could smell a sickly sweet smell emanating from it. The sickly sweet smell of death.

The realization hit them all at the same time. They had raised the dead.

At first they couldn't do anything; they were afraid to even breathe because they didn't want to catch the attention of the thing in the room. Ryan came to his senses first and carefully grabbed their hands. He motioned towards the door with a slow nod of his head, and they began to silently move towards the door.

Steve let out a small sigh of relief when he made it to the door; he was almost safe, he could put a heavy door between him and that thing. He felt movement right behind him, and a hand grab his shirt.

He had a brief second to look at Ryan and Suzannah, horror etched on their faces as they stared at him...no, stared past him...before he realized that both of them were in front of him. There was only one person, or thing, left in the room behind him.

Steve screamed.

The thing jerked Steve backward into the room and slammed the door. By the time Ryan and Suzannah had snapped out of their horror, they could hear Steve's terrified wails coming from the room. They pounded on the door, trying desperately to get inside to save their friend, all the while hearing the horrible screams and sickening noises that sounded horribly like some living thing getting ripped to shreds.

Suddenly there was silence.

Suzannah and Ryan stopped pounding on the door and listened. The ragged breathing started again, right on the other side. They looked at each other for a split second before they ran.

They sprinted down the hall, trying to reach the stairs, but in their panic they forgot that the stairs were on the opposite side of the hall. They could hear the sound of bare feet running behind them. Suddenly they were faced with the end of the hallway, and realized their error. Suzannah looked at Ryan with tears of terror in her eyes as they slowly turned to face the source of the ragged panting behind them.

The thing was even more horrifying when drenched in blood. Steve's blood. It stared at them.

Ryan gave her a strange look, then glanced pointedly down at the radio on her belt. The radio that connected to dispatch. Suzannah was afraid to move. She could hardly breathe, in fear of breaking the horrifying stand-off with the thing.

Out of nowhere, Ryan lunged at the blood-soaked figure.

"Run, Suzie! Get out! You have to tell dispatch to...we need to destory this thing! Use the radio!"

His voice was like the pistol at the start of a marathon, sending her hurdling down the hall without a thought. She could hear the fight going on at the end of the hall for few seconds, followed by a moment of silence and then the sound of bare feet sprinting and getting closer.

It was getting closer and closer. She wasn't going to make it to the stairs; it would catch her first. The door to the awful room was right there. She ran inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

Suzannah reached for the radio on her belt and froze, taking in the sight in front of her. Steve was scattered around the blood-stained room.

The thing started pounding on the door. She began to sob, the true horror of her situation becoming apparent. Her hands fumbled on her belt, extracting the radio. She hit the talk button.

"D-dispatch. We...I...I need immediate backup...C-code omega....oh god....we...we didn't mean to...there's--"

She didn't get to say anymore, as the door was forced open and she was knocked forward onto the floor, losing her grip on the radio.

In the time it took her to turn over, it was on her. It pinned her down and stared intently at her face and in that moment she had a bizarre sense of serenity, which led to a realization.

Intent...we did mean to do it...we wanted to recreate the ritual...and we were successful...

Suzannah turned her head to look at the radio. It was still functioning.

"Suzannah! What is your status? What happened? We can't reach either of your partners, where are they? Report!!"

She looked back at her and her partners' creation and screamed.

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