Demon Contract

The sliding doors of the hospital parted with a mechanical wheeze, slower than they should have. The rubber seal along the top dragged in uneven bursts, as though something was snagged in the track. The motion sensors still caught them, though—opening just enough to let the three of them through. Good enough to work. Probably.

Chloe stepped in first. The sudden change from the glare of afternoon sun to the pale wash of fluorescent light made her blink. Her arms tightened around the bouquet of white carnations, petals already bruised from the taxi ride. The stems were warm to the touch, heat trapped in the plastic wrap, the flowers sagging like they knew they'd been too long without water. Still, she kept them close.

Alyssa came next, hoodie knotted at her waist, hands buried in the pockets of her cargo shorts. Her backpack hung half-open, the zipper tugged down far enough for the glint of a phone charger, the corner of a snack packet, and a mess of receipts to spill over. Her gaze kept sweeping—left, right, ahead—as if expecting someone to block their path. Her chin was tilted up, eyes sharp, shoulders loose in that practiced way Chloe recognised from someone who'd already decided they'd meet trouble head-on.

Jack lingered outside for a beat longer than either of them. One step, then a hesitation—like the air on the other side of the threshold had weight, and crossing into it meant agreeing to something he didn't want to name. But eventually, he came in.

The lobby should have been busy.

Instead, it was hollow.

No one at the reception desk. No hurried footsteps or clipped voices echoing down the corridors. The waiting area chairs sat in perfect rows, all empty, as if someone had set the scene for a crowd that never arrived. The only sounds were the hiss of a faulty air vent somewhere overhead and the soft, impatient chirp of an elevator button being pressed again and again—though no one stood in front of it.

"Okay," Jack muttered, keeping his voice low, "why does this place feel like a jump scare waiting to happen?"

Alyssa didn't look at him. "Because you scare easy."

Chloe didn't join in. Her eyes had caught something on the floor—a narrow streak, dark as rust, trailing from the far corner of the lobby toward the admin hallway. The edges were already drying, but the colour was wrong for coffee, and the shape too uneven to be a spill.

She followed the line with her gaze and found more: the sharp glint of glass fragments under the bench nearest the wall, scattered like the remains of a broken window no one had bothered to sweep away.

Her pulse ticked higher.

She turned, half-expecting to see a cleaner emerge from some side door, a guard with a walkie, anyone who might explain why the place looked like it had been left mid-shift. But the entrance doors had already closed behind them, sealing them in with a faint pneumatic sigh.

"I don't like this," she murmured.

"Yeah, well, it's still a hospital," Alyssa said, the words flat but edged with the kind of practicality that tried to smother unease. "Hospitals are creepy even when they're working. Maybe they're just understaffed."

"We're in Singapore," Jack muttered. "They don't do understaffed."

Alyssa ignored him, striding toward the elevators. An overturned wheelchair sat in their path, one wheel still turning slowly as if it had been knocked over only moments before. Chloe avoided looking at it, focusing instead on keeping her grip on the flowers steady.

She'd wanted lilies—something brighter, something Liz liked better—but the florist at Changi had quoted a price that made her chest tighten. Jack had bought the carnations while Alyssa argued with the taxi driver about which terminal to meet at. They weren't perfect, but Liz wouldn't have cared. Liz never cared about perfect.

She just wanted them to be there.

The elevator dinged as they reached it. Chloe's eyes flicked to the panel: only one lift in service. The other had a sluggish red light blinking above its doors, a curling sheet of paper taped across them—MAINTENANCE IN PROGRESS—so faded it looked older than last week's news.

Alyssa stepped into the working car without hesitation. She either didn't see—or didn't care about—the dark smear across the rear wall. Chloe saw it. She lingered a beat, then stepped in after her.

"Eighth floor," Alyssa said, jabbing the button.

Jack hesitated in the doorway. "Shouldn't there be… someone at the desk? Or anywhere?"

Chloe looked out over the empty lobby one last time. "There's no one to ask."

The doors slid shut, their closing hiss quiet enough that the flicker of the overhead lights was louder. Chloe flinched anyway.

Alyssa leaned back against the wall, folding her arms. "You good, Clo?"

Chloe nodded, lying without thinking. She hadn't been good in over a year—not since the morning Liz didn't wake up. Not since the texts stopped, the dumb inside jokes faded into silence, and the warmth in her voice became something Chloe could only replay in memory.

Jack dug into the front pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a small, crumpled paper crane. Its wings were bent, one tip torn.

"I brought this," he said, almost to himself. "She gave it to me once. Said it'd keep nightmares away."

Alyssa's mouth twitched. "Pretty sure she meant the emotional kind, dude."

He didn't answer.

The elevator rattled faintly as it climbed. No music, no cheerful voice announcing floors—just the hum of the motor and the tight silence they carried with them.

Chloe's gaze dropped to the bouquet. Two blossoms were already curling brown at the edges. She hated herself for not stopping for water. For not remembering Liz's favourite. But at least they were here. That had to matter more than what she'd forgotten.

The lift jolted to a stop.

Ding.

The doors parted to reveal a hallway caught between day and night—flickering fluorescent strips overhead and the last burnt-orange glow of sun through a cracked window at the far end. A limp length of police tape drooped across the next corridor, but no officers stood guard. No voices carried down the hall.

Jack's eyes narrowed. "This… doesn't look right."

"It's fine," Alyssa said, stepping out. "If something was wrong, someone would be here."

The lack of conviction in her voice made Chloe's skin prickle. But she followed anyway, the elevator sealing behind them with the same sigh as the lobby doors.

Ten steps to Room 805.

Ten steps to Liz.

Above the exit sign, in the far corner of the ceiling, a bead of black liquid swelled and trembled—catching the dying light as it hung there, glistening.

No one looked up to see it fall.

***

Room 805 was exactly as her father had shown in the pictures.

Too clean. Too quiet. Too still.

Jack stopped in the doorway and stayed there, half-shadowed by the frame. Chloe and Alyssa moved past him, their shoes whispering against the tile, the sound dampened by the hush that clung to the air. It smelled faintly of antiseptic and cheap plastic tubing, that flat, chemical scent hospitals could never quite hide.

The blinds were drawn halfway, cutting the late afternoon light into long amber stripes that stretched across the floor. Somewhere inside the walls, a light fixture buzzed—steady, unbroken. Not loud enough to demand attention, but constant, like the room itself was holding its breath.

Liz lay in the bed.

Unchanged.

She was thinner than Jack remembered, but not breakable. Her arms rested neatly at her sides, the white hospital blanket tucked just below her collarbones. The monitors at her bedside murmured in soft electronic rhythm—heart rate, oxygen levels, and one green display Jack couldn't name. Her skin was pale, hair rumpled, tucked behind one ear in the way she always said she hated.

She looked like she might open her eyes, toss out something sarcastic about how late they were.
But she didn't.

Chloe moved first, her steps measured. She unwrapped the carnations with slow care, even though the flowers had wilted in the taxi heat. One stem bent under her fingers with a soft crack. She didn't flinch, just placed it in the vase by the window as if nothing had happened.

Alyssa dropped into the chair in the corner, stretching out like she was claiming territory. She glanced at Liz, her mouth quirking into something almost like a smile.
"Well," she said, "you still look like shit."

No response.

"Jack got taller. Chloe's a brunette now. And I passed chemistry." She paused. "Okay, barely passed chemistry."

Still nothing.

Alyssa's grin slipped. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "We told you we'd come back. You better not make us keep doing this alone."

Jack didn't speak. He kept watching—Chloe fussing with the pillow, Alyssa throwing words like they might wake Liz if she aimed them right. The longer he stood there, the more it felt like he was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, wearing a skin that didn't quite fit.

Finally, he stepped forward. His hand slid into his hoodie pocket and found the paper crane.

It felt smaller now. Fragile in a way he hadn't realised before. The paper was softened from being held too often, its folds fraying at the edges. One wing was torn from the time he'd clenched it too hard during an exam, trying to stop his hands from shaking. He'd never taped it. Never wanted to. Pretending it was whole would have felt like lying.

Liz didn't stir. The faint red halo above her brow flickered—dim and far away, a signal trying to reach them from the other side of glass. None of them saw it.

The memory came without warning.

Rain hammering on the school roof. The white gazebo out back. Mud swallowing the edges of his shoes. His hoodie soaked through, every inch of him heavy with a grief he couldn't explain. His dog had died—sudden, unfixable—and he'd been too young to know how to fill the empty space it left.

Liz had found him there. She didn't say a word. Didn't ask what was wrong. She'd just sat down beside him, the silence folding around them like a blanket. Then she'd pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket. Her fingers worked quickly—unfolding, refolding, pressing the creases with her thumb until a lopsided crane took shape.

"It's stupid," she'd said, pressing it into his palm. "But sometimes stupid helps."

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And somehow, it had. Not because it solved anything—nothing could, not then—but because she had stayed. She'd sat beside him in the rain, letting the silence do what words couldn't, the warmth of her presence holding back the cold in a way no umbrella ever could.

Now, years later, his thumb found that same folded wing, brushing over the faint smudge of her fingerprint pressed into the paper. He had never noticed it before, and the discovery felt like finding a relic hidden in plain sight, as though she had left him a map he'd only just learned how to read.

He moved toward her bedside with the kind of caution usually reserved for waking someone from a deep sleep. The crane rested in his palm like a promise too delicate to break. When he placed it down, he didn't set it on the table with the others gifts visitors had left; instead, he nestled it close to her hand, close enough that if her fingers shifted by even the smallest fraction, they might touch it.

"I kept it," he said, the words quiet but steady, as though speaking any louder might shatter the air. "Every day."

His voice caught, not in a sob, but in the way truth sometimes catches when it finally leaves your chest.

"I didn't know what to say when you collapsed. I should've been here sooner. I thought maybe you'd hate me for taking so long. But I never forgot. Not once. Even when it started to fall apart… even when I did."

The monitor gave a single, soft blip.

His head turned toward the screen, searching for meaning in the green line's brief tremor. Liz's face didn't change, but something in the room felt altered—lighter, or sharper, he couldn't tell.

When he looked back, Chloe was watching him. Not with pity, and not with judgement, but with the kind of understanding that required no words. She seemed to see all at once the quiet weight he carried, the way his loyalty lived in silence rather than in declarations.

He returned his gaze to the crane. It looked small there against the wires and monitors, but in that moment, it felt like the truest thing in the room.

As he withdrew his hand, the monitor blipped again—another solitary beat before settling. Chloe's head snapped toward the screen, and Alyssa straightened in her chair.

Jack's breath caught. He would have sworn her fingers moved. Only once. Almost imperceptible.

Hope pressed into his ribs, sharp enough to hurt.

And he let it stay.

***

It started with a click — soft and hesitant, like a loose screw rattling in its housing. If the room hadn't been so still, they might have missed it entirely.

Alyssa didn't react at first. Her attention was on Jack, who still hovered beside Liz's bed, his hand caught halfway between reaching out and pulling back, as if even the air above her might be fragile. Chloe was by the window, fussing with the carnations yet again, turning them a fraction to the left, then the right, trying to find some arrangement that might disguise the way the petals were browning.

The sound came again, sharper this time.

Clickclickclick.

Chloe went rigid.

Alyssa noticed immediately. "What?"

Chloe's gaze stayed fixed on the ceiling. "The vent," she said, her voice quiet enough that it seemed meant for herself more than the others. "I heard something."

Jack followed her eyes. "Like what?"

She raised a hand to point at the grille above Liz's bed — metal edges yellowed with age, dust caked so thick it looked part of the frame. "Clicks. Scratching. Something's in there."

Alyssa tilted her head, squinting. The corners of her mouth pulled into a smirk that didn't quite reach her eyes. "It's probably the AC. Or a rat. Hospitals always have—"

Another click cut her off.

It was louder now, and different. Too deliberate.

Jack's shoulders twitched, and Chloe moved instinctively toward Liz, her stance shifting so she was between the bed and the sound, bouquet still clutched in her hand like she'd forgotten it was there.

"That's not a rat," she said, each word spaced and certain. "It's… wrong."

Alyssa had a reply ready, but something in Chloe's tone stopped her.

The air had changed. It felt heavier, as though the room had sunk a few inches deeper into the earth. The hum from the fluorescent light above them faltered, becoming uneven — a slow, faltering pulse instead of a steady note, like it couldn't decide whether to live or die.

Crossing to the wall, Alyssa pressed the nurse's call button. Nothing happened. No chirp, no reassuring green light.

She pressed it again, harder this time, muttering, "What the hell…?"

Still nothing.

Jack edged closer to the vent, leaning back to get a better angle. "Maybe it's jammed? Or the wiring's shot?"

Chloe shook her head without looking away from the grille. "It's listening."

Alyssa glanced at her sharply. "Listening?"

"You know the feeling," Chloe murmured. "When someone's staring at you in a mirror and you haven't turned around yet."

The lights flickered twice in quick succession.

Something clattered in the hallway outside — loud and metallic, the sound of a tray hitting the floor hard enough to bounce and spin. The noise rattled the window glass, then rolled into silence.

No footsteps followed. No voices.

Only the clicks. Louder now. Faster.

Jack moved directly beneath the vent, tilting his head to peer inside. "If I just—"

Two narrow slits of molten orange flared in the dark.

They didn't blink. They didn't shift. They just fixed on him.

Jack staggered back so fast he nearly tripped over the chair. "Nope. No. That's not a rat."

Alyssa was already moving. She grabbed the IV pole from its cradle and spun it into a ready grip, the metal base scraping over the tile in a sound that matched her heartbeat — too fast, too hard.

Jack's hand shot out for the nearest chair, yanking it around to hold like a shield.

Chloe didn't grab anything. She moved sideways instead, putting herself directly between Liz and the vent, and pressed a palm gently against Liz's chest.
"You're not alone," she whispered, and wasn't sure if the words were meant for Liz or herself.

The vent groaned. The sound built into a long metallic scream as the grille tore free, screws clattering down in a spray of rust and dust. The panel hit the floor with a sharp clang, and something began to force its way through the gap.

At first, there were only limbs — too long, jointed wrong, bending at angles that made the eye recoil. The skin was the pale, almost translucent kind that belonged to deep-sea creatures, stretched so thin the bones shifted visibly beneath.

Its head followed in a jerking, uneven lurch, snapping left and right in abrupt, unnatural twitches, as though the neck didn't quite know which way belonged to the body.

Alyssa's breath caught. "What the fu—"

Then the face slid into view.

Almost human. Almost.

The jaw sagged too far open, split down the middle like a curtain drawn apart. Inside, teeth layered in endless rows — not sharp points, but tightly packed plates, the kind designed to drag things in and tear them apart slowly.

It inhaled once, the sound wet and deliberate, and the air seemed to curdle.

Then it screamed.

The noise pierced the room like a blade, high and wet, vibrating in the bones of their skulls.

Alyssa stepped forward with the IV pole raised like a spear. "Get behind me!"

And just like that, the room erupted.

***

The thing was almost through.

Its arms slid into the room first, jointed too many times, each bend sharp and deliberate, the bones underneath pushing like knots beneath thin, colourless skin. The sound of it was worse than the sight—wet cartilage grinding inside its sockets, knuckles tapping against tile in an off-tempo rhythm that made the air feel wrong.

It dragged itself in stages, never quite crawling, never quite walking. As if the motions of life had been taken apart and put back together with a different purpose.

The head came last.

Half-human. Half something else. Its mouth was already open when it appeared, but the shape of the jaw was… wrong. Too slack. Too wide. Rows of layered teeth fanned deep into the darkness of its throat, like a series of gates meant to filter whatever went in.

It hissed. The sound scraped like rusted metal being twisted in a vice.

Alyssa planted her feet and raised the IV pole, knuckles blanching white around the cold metal. She didn't blink.

Jack's sneakers scuffed as he backed toward the window, the chair in his hands trembling against the frame.

Chloe didn't move away.

She neither stepped back nor forward — only slid sideways, planting herself squarely between the bed and the vent.

The bouquet in her hand drooped, crushed petals hanging like small white flags in surrender to the heat and the fear. Her knees threatened to shake, but she locked them, holding herself upright like the flowers still mattered.

The thing was close now. Ten steps, maybe less.

Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her teeth, but her feet stayed rooted. She raised her arms slightly, not in surrender, but in warning.

"Don't you dare touch her."

Her voice didn't waver. The words felt older than her own lungs, drawn from somewhere far deeper than fear could reach.

The demon stilled.

It didn't lunge. Didn't recoil. It studied her. The tilt of its head was sharp, birdlike. The twitch of its claws deliberate. It sniffed the air, joints creaking as it leaned forward just enough to feel like a question.

"You want someone?" she said. "Take me."

Behind her, she could feel the faint rhythm of Liz's breathing through the stillness, the warmth of her in the bed like a fragile flame that could be smothered in an instant.

I'm terrified. The thought flared and faded.

But I'm here.

The thing twitched. One claw scraped a slow, deliberate line into the tile.

I'm not strong, Chloe told herself. I'm not a fighter. But I've seen people who are. I've seen them stand. And I can stand too.

It leaned lower, until its mouth was level with her chest, jaw yawning wider, skin stretching wetly around the impossible hinge.

Alyssa's voice came from somewhere behind her, tight with urgency. "Clo—get out of the way!"

Chloe didn't turn. Didn't answer.

She thought of Liz's voice, the way it used to cut through her spirals of overthinking. She thought of her laugh, sharp and bright. She thought of the afternoon in the school gym when Liz had taught her how to throw a punch, saying, You don't have to be strong. You just have to stand.

And she thought of that night in the park, the one they never told anyone about—when Liz had stood in front of her during the attack, bleeding from the lip but still grinning, telling Chloe to run while she stayed. Liz hadn't run then. So Chloe wouldn't now.

So Chloe stood.

The demon's growl rolled out of it, a sound more felt than heard, vibrating through the floor into her bones.

And then—

A new sound swelled beneath it.

A hum, deep and rising, as though the air itself was bracing. The lights overhead flickered in warning, then steadied. The floor seemed to pulse once beneath their feet.

Footsteps. Heavy. Fast. Getting closer.

The demon froze mid-shift, head tilting toward the door. It inhaled sharply, tasting the air—then hesitated.

Chloe didn't move. She was a wall now.

It could go through her.

But it would have to go through her.

And she didn't care if that was the last decision she ever made.

***

The door gave way in a thunderclap of splintered wood and steel.

Wood split, steel hinges tore loose, and the sound rolled through the corridor like a single, violent heartbeat. Max was already moving before the fragments hit the floor, the weight of his body carrying him through the wreckage. Gold fire shimmered along his arms, not yet certain if it wanted to become a shield or a weapon.

Victor followed, his footsteps heavy enough to rattle the frame of the doorway. Dan came last, a low radiance already building under his skin, spilling out in slow, deliberate waves like a prayer you could see.

The first thing that hit Max was the smell—ozone, powdered glass, and the faint metallic tang of blood. He scanned the space automatically, firefighter instincts cutting in before his thoughts could catch up: check the entry points, locate hazards, find the living. The window was shattered outward, its edges ringed with crazed fractures in the tile below.

Above the bed, the vent hung open, twisted from the inside as though something had forced its way through with a single, brutal wrench. A faint haze of dust still drifted in the air beneath it, and for an instant—just long enough to doubt later—Max caught the shape of something pulling itself back into the dark.

Long, jointed limbs bent at angles they shouldn't. A flash of pale, membrane-thin skin stretched over too many bones. And eyes—two molten slits—turned toward him for a fraction of a heartbeat before vanishing deeper into the crawlspace.

As it withdrew, a thin, wet scraping echoed from inside the duct, like claws dragging lazily over metal. The smell it left behind was worse than the sight—damp stone and rotting leaves, a scent that clung to the back of the throat and refused to leave.

Then it was gone.

Only then did Max see who was still here.

His gaze swept the room in one hard pull — Chloe standing guard at the foot of Liz's bed, hands frozen mid-defence; Alyssa pressed into the far wall, still clutching the IV pole as if it were the only thing keeping her upright; Jack crouched in front of her, shoulder squared to shield, a broken chair gripped so tight his knuckles had blanched to bone.There was no screaming. No sobbing. Just the dense, ringing silence that comes when the danger has passed but hasn't quite let go.

Max's chest tightened, not with fear, but something worse—recognition.

Kids.

His pulse spiked, and the edges of the room seemed to pull inward. Liz's friends. Her people. And he had left them here. A hospital was supposed to mean safety, not this. The image burned in his mind: Chloe trembling in front of the bed; Jack crouched like a makeshift shield; Alyssa cornered, still braced to fight.

And Liz.

God. Liz.

He had promised himself they would be safe. Promised them. And now the only question in his mind was the one he hated most—what if he was wrong? What if he was already too late?

Victor moved in a slow, predatory arc, crouching by the vent with his head tilted slightly, nostrils flaring as if the scent in the air could tell him where the thing had gone. His amber eyes narrowed, reading the space without words. Dan stepped forward, lifting one glowing hand.

"Stay still," he said, his voice low, steady.

The light unfolded from his palm in a soft bloom, spreading through the room with the quiet inevitability of dawn. It curled into corners, sank into bruises, and eased the taut lines of muscles wound too tight. Chloe's breathing caught, then settled. Jack's shoulders dropped by a fraction. Alyssa's grip loosened enough for the pole to slip and clatter against the tile.

Max closed the distance to Liz's bed in three long steps. She lay exactly as he had left her—still, untouched. The faint red halo above her brow pulsed steadily, though it shimmered now with a clarity he had never seen before. It was not a surge of power, but something subtler, as though she had turned her attention toward the sound of the people who had stood for her.

He hovered his hand above her chest. Not touching—just waiting, feeling.

There. The smallest shift. Not pain, not the raw pressure of Soulfire. Just… movement. The way an ember glows a little brighter when the wind catches it.

Behind him, Chloe let out a long breath she had been holding. Jack sagged into a sitting position, his head dropping between his knees. Alyssa gave a tired, incredulous laugh. "That thing had teeth."

Dan's light sank back beneath his skin. "You're safe now," he said quietly.

Max didn't reply. His eyes stayed fixed on the torn vent, the jagged scatter of glass, the claw marks that stopped inches short of the bed. It could have taken her. But it didn't.

It had watched. Waited. Tested.

Not her.

Us.

He looked at Chloe—still trembling, but still on her feet. Then back at Liz. Then at the vent again.

And in that moment, the thought crystallised, dark and certain.

They weren't hunting her. Not yet. They were testing the ones who would stand between her and the dark — and finding out exactly what we'd give to keep her safe.