“Grand-mère!”
Their gazes met and she could see, in an instant, that her grandmother would not be moving again. Her dry lips managed to stammer—“Ru…” But nothing followed. Her eyes lingered open, eerily empty.
Scarlet shoved herself off the wall, but Ran was there first, his massive form crouching over her grandmother’s body, scooping one hand beneath her back so that her head fell heavily onto the hard floor.
Like a starved animal having brought down his first kill, Ran leaned over and clamped his jaws over Michelle’s neck.
Scarlet screamed and fell backward. The world spun with the sight of blood and Ran crouched on all fours.
Her grandmother’s accusation echoed back to her. They’ve turned you all into monsters.
Still in shock, she forced her face away and rolled onto her side. Her stomach heaved, but there was nothing inside her but bile and saliva. She tasted iron and acid and blood and realized she’d bitten her tongue when Ran had thrown her at the wall, but there was no pain. Only hollowness and horror and a dark cloud creeping over her.
She was not here. This was not happening.
Stomach burning from trying to push up food that wasn’t there, she crawled toward the far wall, putting as much distance between her and Ran as she could. Ran and her grandmother.
Her hand fell into the streak of light from the hallway. Her skin was sickly pale. She was trembling.
Run.
Lifting her head, she could see the start of a stairwell at the end of the hallway. Beside it, a painted sign long since faded. TO STAGE.
Run.
Her brain struggled to find the meaning of the words. TO STAGE. Stage. Stage.
Her grandmother’s last words.
Run!
Reaching forward, she wrapped her fingers around the bars of the cell and used them as leverage. Straining to pull herself up. To stand. To push forward, into the hallway, into the light.
Her legs felt nonexistent at first as she hobbled to the bottom of the stairs, but as she climbed, she found strength in them. She pushed forward. She ran.
A closed door loomed at the top of the stairs, an old wooden door not even equipped with an ID scanner. It creaked when she shoved it open.
Then footsteps below, coming for her.
Scarlet emerged backstage. Old pillars stood clustered together to her right and a maze of fake stone walls and painted trees filled the shadows to her left. The door slammed behind her and she ran into the wooden forest, grabbing a wrought-iron candelabra.
She lifted it in both hands and waited, feet braced.
Ran burst through the door, chin covered in blood.
Scarlet swung as hard as she could. A roar was wrenched out of her as the iron bar collided with Ran’s skull.
He cried out and stumbled back into the curtain. He tripped on the fabric and fell backward.
Scarlet thrust the candelabra at him, not sure she had the strength to heft it again. She heard fabric ripping, but she was already gone, dodging between the set pieces, scanning the creaking wooden floorboards as she lunged over coiled dusty power cords and toppled spotlights. She stumbled onto the stage, the empty expanse of wooden floorboards and trapdoors, and half jumped, half fell into the phantom orchestra. Ignoring a jolt of pain that burned across her knee, she shoved the music stands aside and bolted into the auditorium.
Footsteps thumped across the stage behind her. Inhumanly fast.
The rows of empty chairs flashed by and all she could see was the door looming ahead.
He grabbed her hood.
She let him pull her back, used the momentum to swing around and aim her knee for his groin.