NOVEL NEXT Chapter 34: Hospital Wing
We sweep the two floors upstairs before entering the decrepit collapsing hallway. The upstairs contains more giant zombies and nothing of importance other than a really good museum. We kill around 50 giant zombies total and for the effort only some of us gain levels, though we rack up more NYC subway tokens.
After a breather and some healing from Odysseus, we reload and recharge before heading into the dark. Everyone slides their night vision eyepiece down from their helmets. Except for Mercy.
“Well, we did not think about NV for you, did we?” I ask.
“It's okay,” she says. She squints and her eyes turn completely black.
I yell, “What the crap!”
“It's fine,” she assures me. “It's a Witch class Hex called Dark Eye. It's like night vision but everything is black and white.”
“That's just night vision,” says Jose drolly. He doesn't use an eye piece either. He's got magical sniper powers.
We enter the spooky tunnel and don't hear anything at first. That's almost worse than hearing something. By now the deluge outside is starting to flood the hall and we're up to our ankles in cold, dark water.
I hear Mercy shiver and turn back to her. “I'm fine!” she says, while also clutching her cloak around herself. I see Gwen also starting to show signs of chill.
“You two don't have military boots on. You want to sit this out?” They both shake their heads no and try to look tough. I sigh and we move forward.
We get to the end of the hall and the only way forward is left. I know from the building diagram that this way leads to the old hospital, where immigrants would be treated, sometimes for months, while waiting to get into America. I'm sure nothing bad ever happened here.
We get to the former hospital and it's now a massive warehouse, filled with rotting old wooden bunks, ankle deep water and ghosts. Lots of ghosts.
The ghosts look like dead patients in dressing gowns, with various causes of death ranging from horrible pox to partial decapitation. They float a few inches off the ground, are transparent, and glow bright blue. There's about 30 or so of them in this room, which is three times the size it should be. Seems like yet another case of “bigger on the inside.”
In the center of the room is a large ghost with a stamp in his hand. He seems to be inspecting spectral papers on a rotten desk, each paper appearing just as he grabs it, then fading away when he puts it down.
Jose shouts and points in vindication. “I knew ghosts were real!” All the ghosts turn and look at us. It's at this point I notice that some of the ghosts are doctors and nurses and those ghosts have syringes in hand. Seems like a bad sign.
“Dammit Jose!” I shout, and we open fire for a few seconds before realizing that bullets don't hurt ghosts. Mercy swings her Data Stream like a whip and it manages to cut a ghost in half- only for it to reform a second later. Jose finishes charging an electro shot and I shout “Wait!” all too late.
The electric bolt fires into a patient ghost that's closing in on us. The bolt hits the ghost and the ghost fades away. The bolt also travels down into the water and arcs to the next closest target, which is Diaz. Madeline gets zapped by Jose's lightning shot and drops to her knees.
“Shit! Odysseus!” I say.
“On it!” comes Odysseus's reply. He's at Madeline's side and using some chant which I can only hope works. “She's alive, but out of it.” He shoulders her and runs back down the hall.
I glance at Jose. He's got a look of determination on. I know he'll apologize later. Right now, we're in combat. Feelings and regret can wait.
Electricity works but is bad. Data doesn't work. A patient ghost closes in and I vainly try a knife stab, which goes right through it. The ghost reaches for me but I quickly step back behind Gwen, who is creating a card and holding it in the air. She holds aloft the card. “I play ze Sun card, as a field effect spell!” The card transforms into a white hot ball of fire which hovers over the center of the room. Immediately the room fills with steam as the water on the floor begins to evaporate. The ghost I dodged gets to Gwen and grabs her by the throat. I see it waver and lose physicality for a second. I should probably scan this thing.
Geo Ghost. Tier 2. This type of ghost takes on whatever element is most prevalent in the surrounding area. So don't fight one in a volcano.
Possible Loot: Ghostly clothing.
It's affected by both evaporation and electrical attacks. So it's made of water? Let's see if I can freeze it in its tracks.
Freezing Beam
You shoot a laser of cold. It's pretty cool.
Range: 25 feet
Cost: 1 Arcana Point per second.
Proficiency: 30%
I fly a knife around Gwen so I have a clear shot at the ghost and fire Freezing Beam at it. The blue beam hits the ghost and it starts freezing from that point outwards. Sensing something wrong, it loses grip on Gwen and flails around before being frozen solid. As if on cue, Jose fires a round into the ice, blasting the fro-go away.
“Alright, so now we have a plan,” I say, patting Gwen on the back as she coughs to get her breathing back on track. Jose nods and I hover knives in different directions and start Freeze Beaming anything that comes close. The others smash frozen ghosts with bullets and Data Streams.
We clear out the front half of the room pretty easily by sticking close to the entryway. That's when the big paperwork ghost notices us.
“Who's there?” he suddenly asks with wobbling jowls. “Orderlies! Remove these troublemaking patients!” At his command all the other ghosts spin and become hulking old fashioned male orderlies in plain uniforms. And they all charge at us.
I don't have time to freeze each one so I align my four knives in a horizontal line, fire Freezing Beam with each one and swing them together right to left. Various parts of each orderly get frozen. One has a frozen eye, another a hand, another part of his chest. Gwen snipes a few icy chunks and the parts that get blown away don't regrow. I sweep another four beams across the room as more close in on us. Arms and legs and heads get frozen. Jose shoots and blasts apart frozen hands. Mercy stabs into one with her energy spear and a frozen leg snaps in two. Gwen takes on the smallest ice chunks and her accuracy is outstanding today. Frozen ghost chunks fly.
I try to swing another icy assault but my AP hits zero. Chimerablood’s effect causes me pain in my feet and knees. I look down and sharp ice horns have grown from my knees. I lift a foot and find that icy claws have burst from my feet, and upon wiggling my toes I discover that yes, they are in fact functioning toes. Weird.
I continue my freeze rays, this time each mere graze against a ghost freezes a whole foot sized chunk of it. These bigger chunks are more than big enough for my comrades to smash, stab and shoot. Each ghost comes apart chunk by chunk. The ghosts come close to getting us but we manage to keep them back.
Suddenly the paperwork ghost looks up at us in alarm. “Those must be mental patients! I must subdue them at once!” All the orderly ghosts get sucked up into the big paperwork ghost and he grows. His increasingly fat body grows to meet the ceiling, his sides sticking out like an obese cartoon character. His hands transform into straight jackets.
Director Ghost. Tier 4. Directs and controls other ghosts. He takes all the credit for any successes, and puts failures on his lackeys. Also, it can eat your soul.
Possible loot: Stamp, Stethoscope
Balls. My head is already splitting from using too much Arcana. I have to force my eyes open against the migraine. Jose and Mercy attack without any effect. Gwen is doing another card thing. I go into my inventory and pull out a small, red and white camping cooler. I flip it open, grab an orange soda and begin to chug overly sugary soda to restore my AP.
The ghost's straight jacket hands reach for us. While everyone else gets back into the hall behind us, Gwen's standing still trying to cast her spell. “I play ze reversed Lovers as-” She doesn't get to finish as a straight jacket wraps around her and begins to squeeze. She screams in pain and I hear the snapping of bones.
I immediately jump back into the fight and fire, not at its left hand, but the arm it's connected to. Four knives fly out to my right and Freezing Beams start to condense the ghostly arm. As it starts to freeze the ghost whips its other hand at me. I take two steps back to dodge the first swing, then I run forward and to the monster's right. I can't see the left arm, the one holding Gwen, now so I pull my knives back to me. My knives fly straight through the ghost and that gives me a great idea. I fly my knives back into the ghost and then fire Freezing Beam from the inside. This is drastically more effective and the monster's side freezes almost instantly. I hear the shots from Jose's rifle and the ghost's right torso falls apart into boulder-sized ice chunks.
I hear Gwen scream again. The right arm flips back around as if it had no bones, which I suppose it doesn't. This catches me off guard and I get caught up in the ghost's straight jacket hand. I immediately feel it constrict around me. I feel my shoulder pop out of its socket.
I grit my teeth and pull my knives back to me and try to ice down the jacket. I didn't want to do this to Gwen because I knew the ice would come with frozen shards that would cut into her. Now that I'm caught, I have no choice. I freeze the jacket and as it ices up I feel dozens of small icicles reach into my flesh and stab. Some of them stab several inches into my body. I know that I won't last long if this keeps up, but I have to keep freezing the hand until Jose or-
With a loud crash the ice around me shatters, fragments cutting into me and slashing my face and hands. I drop to my knees in the water below and it feels freezing. I spit out blood. That's probably bad. I turn to see Gwen and she's being strangled by jacket ties. Her face is turning blue.
I throw my knives at the wrist holding her and freeze ray as quickly as I can. Part of the wrist freezes and Jose pops it with his rifle. Gwen gasps for air as I guess she's got a little breathing room. I freeze the rest of the arm and Jose shatters it. The entire straight jacket hand puffs away like mist, dropping Gwen. The ghost reels, yelling about its missing hands, and if we know who we're dealing with.
“Get... Her... Out...” I struggle to say. Mercy rushes to my side and helps me up onto my feet. Jose goes to Gwen and princess carries her away.
The monster recovers and grows 4 more arms, each with a straight jacket hand. “Now you whipper snappers, you listen here!” It yells. “I'm in charge of this facility!”
My head is splitting and my ears are ringing. I feel blood trickle from my nose. I don't know what'll happen if I keep using Arcana Points. I don't know if these head pains can get bad enough to kill me. But I don't know what else to do except fight. I pull my knives into a circle in front of me and prepare to cast Freezing Beam again when I hear Odysseus's cyber voice behind me.
As the voice begins the fake sun that Gwen made moments ago lights up. “Sun above, smite with unerring light! Solar beam, destroy the darkness!” Halfway through the incantation a beam of yellow-white light erupts from the fake sun and lances straight through the ghost's chest. Odysseus steps up beside me and takes my other shoulder. I see his hand conduct the beam, sweeping it through the boss ghost's head and face. Everything the beam touches evaporates instantly and when the magic ends the sun winks out of existence.
All that's left of the big ghost is his arms, sides and legs, like someone took a big bite out of a gingerbread man. These parts collapse and then evaporate away. The last part to evaporate explodes into tokens and a rubber stamp. Odysseus runs over to where the stamp fell and fishes it out of the water. Then he comes back to treat me and Gwen. I shoo him away and he checks Gwen first.
I look over and know it's bad. Odysseus has to use four different chants before Gwen even looks like a human. Most of the bones in her body must have been broken. I look at Mercy who's got my shoulder. If it had been her... If she had been hurt like that I don't know what I'd do.
It takes Odysseus several minutes to treat Gwen, then he apologizes that he has to take a breather before he helps me out. I say that's fine and Mercy feeds me a bag of recovery peanuts from the break room. I really need some healing spells of my own.
It takes us about half an hour to recover enough to continue. Odysseus hands the stamp over to Gwen. She examines it. “Ze stamp, it is for approval. It approves someone to enter ze United States.” I scan it from there.
Medical Approval Stamp. Key Item. This stamp proves that you are medically able to go be a poor immigrant in America. Congratulations!
“It says it's a key item. Maybe it's what we need to revert this place?”
Gwen struggles to her feet and, with Jose's help, gets over to the dais where the paperwork ghost was originally filing his spectral pages. She goes to a desk, sees something on it, smiles, and then slams down with the stamp on the desk. There's a sound like breaking glass as reality breaks, or perhaps unbreaks. The walls close in on us, the ceiling comes down. The empty room is replaced with multiple small rooms. I look out the window and see the museum shrink back down to its normal size.
I turn back and see something glowing. It's the stamp.
Medical Approval Stamp. Once per day this stamp can be applied to any one person, healing them of all illness, wounds and harmful effects, except for curses.
Gwen is still pretty beat up. “Gwen, stamp yourself!” I yell at her, who is now down a narrow hall from me.
She nods, stamps her own hand. The black ink marking left on her hand grows until it envelops her. The mark glows golden, then fades away and Gwen stands upright and lightly pushes away Jose. She's perfectly fine. I think we all breathe a sigh of relief. She starts to come over to me with the stamp and I wave her off. “Only once a day, according to the scan.”
“I see. It is invaluable none ze less.” It disappears into her inventory.
We sweep the area but all traces of enemy activity have ceased. We gather loot, mostly tokens but also some ghost clothes, which are pretty cool.
Ghost Pants. While wearing these your legs are transparent and partially incorporeal. That means you take less damage from physical attacks but more from elemental attacks.
There's a few ghostly shirts, 4 pairs of pants and a newsie cap as well. Interesting items that would be incredible when fighting regular old humans. Mercy stuffs them in her inventory and says she needs at least one.
Some of the orderlies dropped the arm sashes off their medical staff uniforms.
Ghostly Hospital Staff Arm Sash. Proves you work with the sick. You will not be attacked by mindless undead. Your healing incantations restore HP 25% faster.
Those are pretty cool and Mercy, Odysseus and I each take one.
With that, our mission is complete. We double check and clear out the museum. We look outside to see that the rotting zombie docks are just gone. There's definitely a huge mess to clean up in the museum, but nothing looks too damaged. A few plexiglass displays are cracked but, all in all, we did a really good job of keeping it clean.
By the time we finish the weather has finally cleared up. Under a sky where sun is breaking through clouds, we take the zodiac boat back to the ferry docks and deliver the good news.