Consequences

I got up, noticing that my jacket was peeled to shreds. Blood snaked down my arms and I shivered from the cold air. My mind was scattered from that voice, it was so shaking that I couldn't concentrate on anything as I walked onward.

Leslie's voice, with Ruvik's vernacular.

He had spoken about Leslie being his vessel eight years ago; the last time that I was in STEM. I tripped on something and coughed blood onto the floor. 'What had he done to me?' I thought, 'I can't concentrate and I'm coughing up blood-'

The blood swirled into letters before my eyes spelling out,

"Need I remind you of the consequences of failure?"

Before my eyes, all the words changed into the word: consequences. Gritting my teeth I pushed myself up and could hardly identify my surroundings due to the pain. After a few minutes the pain decreased into a throb and at the end of a concrete hall was a set of double doors.

I grimaced as I shoved them open and stepped into darkness. Silence enveloped me until the sound of a click and whir startled me. Following the sound was white light projecting onto the screen. My eyes zeroed in on a black figure on the screen in a suit but the face was darkness as he cocked his head to the side. Could it be-?

Then a contorted voice came through the surround-sound, the voice was followed by text on the screen that was shaking distressingly saying,

"Are there sins you are ashamed of?"

The questions continued to roll and my memories of Mobius asking me them from eight years ago bombarded my mind.

"Do your past secrets haunt you?"

"Are you sure enough in yourself? Sure enough to face the responsibilities of your actions?"

My concentration was broken by a man who hobbled onto the theater stage with blood following him in his wake. I tried to identify what was in his hands but then he saw me and stumbled in exhaustion. The stumble causing him to drop his intestines that he was holding inside his abdomen.

He mumbled something inaudible towards me, a weak plea for help, but the voice on the surround sound continued.

"Have you ever felt abandoned by the ones you trusted?"

Then as if in climax a hooded, dark dressed, and elaborately masked figure sliced through the screen with spinning vertical slices. I tried to muffle a shriek and duck down under the theater seats. With my mind's eye I could name the sound of the masked marauder slowly stepping up to the gutted man. I listened for a stomp that never came but instead I heard the sound of a superhuman foot resting softly on the man's neck before popping his head off like a toothpaste cap.

The watery sound of blood draining from the man was like the credits of a movie. Once silence prevailed the man spoke in a contorted voice,

"I know you're there."

I stayed in place, in case it was a bluff and in fear for my life.

"Kidman," he added as if reading my mind, I heard his voice growing closer, "I know what you told him."

I almost risked a glance back. What does this monster know?

He snapped his fingers and Sebastian's voice played through the speakers and my jaw dropped.

"Don't worry, I can't fault you for what you did... but I still blame myself for his death..."

It was a recording of a past conversation. The recording of my own words played,

"You don't have to do that, Sebastian-"

"Why not?" He replied.

Meanwhile the figure walked closer.

"You'd prefer that I'd blame you? You're the one who actually killed him."

"No I didn't."

"I saw you shoot him, Kidman."

"I know you did, but..."

"But what?"

"Joseph isn't dead."

I shot from my seat I was hiding behind.

"Who the hell are you!?" I exclaimed.

I could sense the smile in his voice.

"I am Apollyon," the masked man said and I noted the long horns protruding from the black mask, "Ruvik's Angel of the Pit, Lord of Locusts."

"I swear to God I'll-"

"Kill me?" He interrupted and casually tossed an assault rifle at my feet, "Go ahead and try."

I grabbed it hastily and the flashes of my gun lit the theater. The man disappeared in a cloud of smoke and insects as the ever familiar tune of Claire De Lune played.

"Did you know," he said before a knife was thrown into my shoulder, I collapsed back as he finished, "that the number of one horde of locusts in Bible days were about as much as the world's population today?"

I grit my teeth and pulled the blade from me.

"Enough of your games!"

"Pfft," he said and another magazine landed at my feet, "fine."

I grabbed it and loaded it before unloading it in the corner the knife came from. The muzzle flashes illuminated the room and I saw the man levitating with a cloud around him redirecting bullets before he teleported again.

"You told Sebastian that you would explain what you knew about the fate of your friend after he exited STEM?"

"Shut up!"

"You told him Mobius took him and you've searched ever since."

Another magazine clattered.

"But the truth still stands. He trusted you and you more than abandoned him," he spat, "leaving him in the pit!"

I snatched the mag, blind in rage and shot at him as he teleported multiple times. He tossed me something else and I hastily went to grab it but realized that it wasn't bullets.

It was his mask.

I heard the air ripple as the man flew towards me and grabbed my throat, pressing my into wall, and burning me with the hate in his eyes.

My anger vanished.

Joseph's eyes.

"You left ME in the pit!"

He tossed me aside and I gasped for air.

"They've been watching you know-"

"Joseph- h-how-?!"

"The Joseph you know is dead. He died, out-of-sight and out-of-mind in a suspended consciousness as a lab rat for Mobius' STEM experiments. Some of which I spied on you and others. Mainly those with Unity Cerebral Chips."

"W-wha-" I mumbled dumbfounded.

"Surprised?" He hissed, "The hours felt like days, days-weeks, and weeks-years!"

He added cocking his head, "This all started with a dead man's suspended consciousness in a machine. Why are you surprised if one's consciousness is now suspended in someone else? Do you not recall the second torn letter you found before-" he air quoted with two fingers cruelly, "'killing' the administrator?"

I shook my head, disbelief crushing me, and tears pricking my face.

"What happened to you?"

He smiled and raised his wrist,

"I was marked, just like you! We are all his vessels now!"

"H-how did you spy on me?"

He sighed, "I don't know how I, Ruvik and the Admin spied on you even before you got a Unity Cerebral Chip."

He began to fade in smoke and bugs.

"Maybe you're as much as a lab rat as I was."