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His hand wasn’t responding. Ekko had expected this sort of pain to be something that made your nerves scream and burst and twist from your flesh, but it was numbness instead. Cold metal buried in his shoulder blade, a dented rusty saw which had been thrown with force that left the bone in fragments beneath the skin.
The hallway shook with eager footsteps, and a brief memory flashed in his mind, the sight of a cat having crippled a sumprat. Watching it slowly limp away, sauntering with an eagerness only tempered by the desire to watch something struggle, Ekko flexed his fingers a few times in his palms. Deep breaths, try again.
This wasn’t the right time, and though his instinct begged him to tend to the weapon in his back, he reached behind himself, to the heavy pack slung just below his hips.
---
Puddles of dark fluid lined the flickering hallways, cracks along the asylum walls pulsed and split apart and Zaun’s eyes watched through them, the boy with the hourglass face running frantically. The hourglass, the ticking clock, the hourglass, the eyes. Something was wrong with him, unwell with him, white hair spilled over his brow, curtains over a terrified gaze. Lips trembling softly, stuttering, stammering, stuttering, stammering.
Synopsis? Syonopsis? Sycophant? Selective mutism. Sore throat? Mundo would have to split him open and see what uglies lingered in the poor boy, to peel back the skull and poke about, to split open the esophagus and dig his fingers around. The boy with the hourglass face. The ticking clock face, the hourglass face.
But he couldn’t do that if he was running.
Calling out to him didn’t work, it never worked and he never knew why it never worked, but he felt like he had done this and the asylum breathed a similar tempo again. The asylum never took any breath the same way, it rumbled beneath his steps and the cold linoleum slinked up into the pores of his bare foot and up his leg, like ice in the veins and the meat and the veins and the meat.
Mundo, for a moment, thought nothing of it.
He had walked these halls many times.
But the asylum was breathing the same. And it never took the same breath twice. He was a doctor. He knew a lot about breathing.
Mundo’s arm reared back, flinging his saw in an attempt to stop the boy. It cut through the air like bone and skin and flesh and bone. For a split second, it seemed as though it would sink itself firmly into his back. But it didn’t, instead it clattered into the concrete wall, and the light flickered and buzzed like Zaun had blinked. It blinked and spoke to him in hushed whispers and mumbles he heard from the mouths of patients who slept too long.
He trampled forth, nearly stumbling on his two legs, gathering the saw back in meaty fingers where it belonged. He turned his head, thick tongue drooling from swollen, scarred lips. He saw the boy disappear behind the corner and the cracks climbed towards him. Help him, help him, help him. Like groping, grasping fingers, Mundo scrambled forth again, eager to help him. Help him.
---
They scolded Ekko often for taking the stairs too many steps at a time. Maybe hysteria was setting in, but it was all he could think of as he tumbled down them, he could hear that fucking monster’s slavering in the distance. Calling for him. Patient! Patient! Ekko’s guts curdled, this place felt like a labyrinth, did every step take him deeper in a winding maze? He couldn’t kite the creature around forever, he needed anything. A window, a door, a way out.
The air was stagnant with the scent of rot. He thought of the stairs, because if he recalled why he came here, it would’ve made him sick to think of what was causing it. He had seen corpses before, on the street, men who had drunk themselves to death, who gave into the sickness in Zaun’s grey, this was different. This was butchery, this was abominable, this was-
Something clipped at him, he’d stumbled. Crashing to the ground, feeling blood oozing from a newly formed gash in his lower leg. Shit. Shit shit shit- Heaving breaths, to meet eyes that glimmered a haunting pink, empty and without intent. Empty like a dead fish’s gaze.
“PASHENT! LEG HURT BAD!”
He needed to focus next time, he couldn’t get lost in his head, he could think about this after he was safe.
Hands twitching, he reached for his bag.
---
The boy with the hourglass face navigated these halls too well. He worried that maybe the asylum was helping him avoid his treatment, but it would never do that, would it? The hospital knew how important it was that Zaun’s people were cared for, that they weren’t sick, that they were healthy. The cracks shuddered, like a heartbeat’s pulse, as if to say yes. Oh, yes they knew, Zaun needed good doctors, good doctors like Mundo. Mundo was a good doctor.
Zaun’s eyes flickered like the lights, and the walls curled in like they were holding a breath, he could praise his handiwork once the boy with the ticking clock face was cured. The hourglass face. Stone trembled like it was afraid, he dragged his hands along a long crack, it was hot like fluid from a wound. Sometimes he dug his fingers into the cracks to see if he could milk the pus from the crevices, stitch it up well so that it could heal, milking and stitching and milking and stitching.
The asylum was of Zaun too?
Something didn’t feel right.
The asylum air was tinged with fresh blood, he could smell it in his mouth, taste it in his nose. It oozed from every pore, but there were no injuries, no fresh ones. Spit shivered through his teeth, dripping down his chin as his fingers twitched, body churning like an engine, his veins bulged for just a moment as he flicked his gaze about. He could see the boy just down the way. The way. The hallway? The lights had gone out down there, he needed to replace them so patients couldn’t fumble about. Hurt themselves more, they always managed to hurt themselves more.
Passing by the railing, a thick piece of metal was jutting out. Mundo knew this because it sliced through his ankle. The flesh rippled and skin snagged, tearing and hanging from the jagged, rusted bit. He didn’t feel it but a little, it was mended before he took another step forward.
He would have to fix that too. The boy could’ve hurt himself on that. The boy hurt himself on that. Zaun’s eyes quivered, watching them. Watching them? Watching him. Sometimes it saw more than Mundo, knew more than Mundo.
But that wasn’t true, was it? It watched and it knew, like he watched and he knew. Because Zaun whispered in the cracks of his home, and the asylum would heave as if to confirm, and it would tell Mundo everything it watched and it knew.
---
This time it would be easy.
It was coming from the left, it would swing from the left. He would duck and drop himself from the window. The fall would hurt, but it was nothing Ekko wasn’t familiar with, he had tested it. If he landed in the dumpster below, it would be softened. He could climb out and run without a hitch.
His hands ached, his back ached, his leg ached, but he was almost out.
The bars were rusted, flimsy, he would have to wrap his hands when he was safe, but that was a small price to pay if it meant getting out of here. It called from below the hall, yelling about ticking clocks and bleeding wounds. Ekko shivered, then grit his teeth, pulling harder.
It came away with a clang, and he tossed it aside. He took a deep breath. From the left. It swings from the left. He tried not to remember how he’d been caught in the side, how it sliced through his stomach and if he had hesitated a moment, he would’ve succumbed too quickly to his injury to try again.
When Ekko opened his eyes, it wasn’t there.
What?
He cried out as metal struck at his arm, from his right, from his right, it had rushed down an entirely different hall to reach him. Blood splattered from the shredded wound, and Ekko stumbled back, screaming as he fell from the space he’d made in the window. Just as he’d done before, this time with his gut in one piece, Ekko fell atop the many bags left in the dumpster.
Dazed, his nerves were shrieking with pain and he clamped a hand over the gushing wound. From the window, he could see it standing there, staring at him. Eyes dead and glowing in the dark, beneath the taut skin, something flushed throughout its meaty body.
He could live with this outcome, he would have to…
Ekko felt sick. He clamored from the dumpster before it had the sense to come down there to retrieve him, and took off into the fog. Tears budding in his eyes, painful swallows, he heaved and couldn’t muster anything up his throat.
Why can’t I save them all?
---
Zaun told Mundo the hall to take. From the cracks, its voice whispered what its eyes had seen, and the asylum seemed so small, the many halls had become one, it begged him to walk this path. When he heard the bars being pried away, he knew they were right. They were always right, like he was always right.
The boy’s head had been turned the wrong way, expecting him where he was not. Mundo was not there, he was expecting Mundo somewhere else. He couldn’t see the hourglass, the ticking clock, the hourglass. Was he going to jump out the window? Was he really so scared of being healthy that he would do such a thing? The doctor couldn’t reason such madness, and for a split moment, he watched the boy’s eyes open.
They were peaceful. Until the bonesaw cleaved through the flesh of his arm.
He had tried to grab him, but he had fumbled, and he watched the boy drop from the window into the streets of Zaun below. The ground itself seemed to rise upwards and cradle his body, to hold him close, to guide him into where he had thrown so many patients before. Patients who didn’t make it, patients he’d tried so desperately to save. To save, to make it, to save, to make it.
Their gazes met, and the boy was still bearing enough strength to climb from the dumpster and flee into the night. Mundo watched him disappear, melancholy flushed through him, or maybe it was blood or maybe it was juice. He felt his body swelling, twitching beneath tight flesh, like his veins would burst and flail about from beneath the skin.
Why can’t I save them all?