Escape

It was a chilly night. Tabitha wrapped herself in a blanket and cuddled up on a wooden bench. She swept her gaze across the cracks in the ground but her mind was blank.

She did not realize when the fog rose inside the hospital. The white fog enveloped her in seconds. She clenched the blanket in her hand while watching the fog gradually fill the corridors. The girl felt like she had returned back in time to when the hospital had been abandoned. Was it possible… for her to return through the fog? She looked up at the tungsten lights, and as the light was screened by the fog.

She turned her head in disappointment. Somehow, what appeared before her was not the original corridor but a huge mirror. A careful artwork of different birds and vegetation lined the mirror's rim, and a large one-eyed beast head stood atop the mirror. Once again, Tabitha didn't understand what had happened. She stared at her image in the mirror. She was on the lookout for any sudden changes. The person in that mirror was still not "her" but a young nurse. The girl's expression was blank and nervous. Everything was getting weird despite everything remaining normal.

Tabitha stared for a moment before her eyes blinked with weariness. Right at that moment! A pair of gray-white hands appeared in the mirror and grabbed the girl's face to the mirror. Tabitha jolted in fright as she reached out to the blanket that had slipped halfway to the ground. The corridor was still the same corridor. No fog, no mirror, nothing had happened.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead. She looked around vigilantly as her heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

Was it a nightmare?

Recalling the nurse that had nightmares after she went to the clean room, she was pretty sure that clean room had something inside. She stretched her hand out under the light and looked at her fingertips. The powder was gone, nor was there the smell of rotten eggs.

She looked at her pocket watch; it was four o'clock in the morning. The medical staff of the hospital would have already left. People who were on night duty were at their posts… If she went back to the clean room, no one would notice…

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The girl held a small flashlight that she found in a sundry room. Gingerly, she opened the door to the clean room. After she entering, she switched on the flashlight and finally had a clear look of the room.

She had believed that the room was made of cement. Now, she realized that she was too naïve after seeing the silver everywhere. In this era, other than wallpaper, the interior of buildings would only be lined with pure, dry cement. How could a cement wall be so smooth!? There was a layer of silver all across the walls in the room. Although they were not as clear as real mirrors, they were capable of showing the outline of a human. Sitting in the middle of the room was the stool. Under that, a small magical circle was painted with ginger-yellowish powder that enclosed the stool.

She squatted down and dabbed the powder with her fingertips. It had the same rotten-egg smell. They were wrong! It was definitely not human experimentation but something related to magic… What was the real purpose of that director?!

"I thought you would be timider."

A tender voice rang in Tabitha's ear. She jerked back and saw Dr. Mile standing in the doorway, smiling at her.

"Calm down, you are not the first to learn about these things. Believe me, you won't be the last one either. It's only a shame that you can no longer be my next guinea pig."

The man had a wistful expression. If Tabitha didn't know his intentions, she would assume he was talking about something serious, such as the future career of a young nurse.

Tabitha's mind raced for a solution. According to him, she was supposed to be the next experimental subject. But now, she had discovered the secret to the clean room. Was he going to kill her in response? She bit her lips tightly. What else could she do!? If he really wanted her dead, there was no way for her to fight back

"Oh, come on~ Don't show me that face. I won't do anything to you. Basically, I agreed with that devil to sacrifice one person every month to gain his assurance that my experiment would be successful. But didn't you see!? People die in my hospital! My experiment has failed! Why does it fail again and again? Why!?" The man's face twisted as his voice turned louder. The golden chain from his monocle hanging across his cheek gave him a strange look.

"And that bastard even took twenty years of my life! Twenty years! Why? Because of the failures of my experiments? Mirrors, mirrors! Those that are restored are not humans at all! I even have to resolve the matter eventually!" The more agitated the man was, the more he flailed his arms. It appeared as though he had held back his grievances for a very long time. The young girl did not dare stare at him. She used the corner of her eyes to calculate the distance to the door so as to make plans for an escape.

Tabitha looked at the man approaching her. He was still cursing angrily as he did so. She jerked toward the door and before taking two steps, she felt her whole body rise. Dr. Mile had lifted her up.

Tabitha's throat was squeezed tight by her collar. She could hardly breathe as she began to panic in horror. She tried desperately to rip her collar while kicking with her legs, hoping to escape the man's grasp. The man who usually acted as a gentleman grunted and threw her to the corner, showing no signs of pity.

The girl felt a burning, agonizing pain in her chest after being slammed into the wall. The pain pulsated all the way to her spine.

"Did your parents never teach you about listening when your superior is speaking?" The man seemed to instantly become the stately director he used to be. His bloodshot eyes were the only evidence of his rage just moments ago.

He adjusted his tie and came in front of the nurse, touching her head tenderly. "Look at yourself. Why did you bring this upon yourself? I don't want to hurt you. The only thing I wanted to do was to switch the target for exchange. I had chosen Mr. Brown, but you turned him into his current state. He would be lucky just to live for another few months. I won't live long even if I transferred my soul into his body." He shook his head. "There are wars everywhere. It is difficult to find a healthy man now, but I have never tried being a woman. Maybe I might find something enjoyable about that. Who knows? Heh heh heh."

The elegance on the man's face turned sinisterly gloomy with his smirk. Tabitha felt sick. Although this body was not hers, she was disgusted by the thought of a normal girl becoming such a perverted person from then on. The fingernails lodged deeply into her palms. The pricking pain allowed her to sweep away any of her irrelevant feelings.

She leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, hoping to calm herself down. She carefully studied the situation and finally realized the reason for all that had happened. The director had indeed used patients for experimental trials. However, he sought the help of a devil after numerous failures. The devil did allow his experiment to be approved but it was not perfect. It caused strange mutations with every new patient. The things in the hall were patients who had mutated! She couldn't imagine what Dr. Mile did to keep them in the hospital for so many years.

With all the information flooding her head, Tabitha was only capable of reaching the most obvious conclusions at that moment. She did not have the luxury of time to decipher more facts. The man pulled her up and pressed her to the stool. Tabitha struggled to resist but hurt her back from her resistance. She didn't realize the situation with her back previously but once she moved it, the excruciating pain prevented her from doing anything else. The man seemed to expect her inability to resist. He stood behind her and mumbled an incomprehensible language.

Tabitha's hands gripped the sides of the stool. She knew that Dr. Mile was planning on exchanging their souls so that she could die in his stead. No… something was wrong. According to Aaron, the director hung himself in the hospital one year later after the series of suicides… Was it possible that the exchange had failed because of her? Since she was not "Tabitha D.," he had failed to transfer his soul into the body she was occupying? But it was still illogical…

The girl's thoughts were in confusion, but the man had already finished his spell. A red light suffused from the ground and there was no time for her to take any action. Tabitha felt an indescribable suction that attached to her soul. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Aaron's concerned eyes.