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Taylor stumbles on her feet when she realizes she isn’t in the locker anymore. The contract was real, she wasn’t just hallucinating.
She’s free! She’s… not sure where she is actually.
A medieval tower is the best comparison she has. Smooth stone surrounds her on all sides, as well as bookcases and wood furniture and a lump of flesh as wide as a person is tall.
She takes a step back, away from the thing she’s reasonably sure is a beating heart, and steps onto something fleshy.
Good news, it’s not another heart. Bad news, it’s a person.
Taylor hastily backs away from the prone body and the heart, and backs away further when one finger twitches. She freezes when the head snaps up and stares straight at her.
The figure is armoured in a style she can’t name. A gold helmet over the entire head leads into gold pauldrons that both lead into gold vambraces, all made of interlocking gold plates. The eyes on the helmet are an opaque red, but she knows she’s being watched.
She swallows her nerves and manages to speak.
“Who are you?”
“You are the last of the Ironclads,” the figure says. You could even describe his voice as pleasant if it didn’t trail off into something reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard.
“Why-“
“Kill.”
Taylor tries to talk over him, “I don’t-“
“Kill.”
“Just wait-“
The figure cuts his hand on the edge of his armour, letting his blood spray across the floor and onto Taylor’s exposed cuts.
“You.”
The cut on Taylor’s shoulder bursts into flame.
“Will.”
Taylor’s hand follows when she tries to put out the growing inferno.
“Kill.”
She tries to scream, but all that comes out is the sound of nails on a chalkboard, reverberating through her locker.
Her blood is boiling beneath her skin, building pressure until it pops out from the scratches she makes in her panic, and the scratches she has no hand in. While her right arm spasms, her left balls into a fist and slams into the locking mechanism of the locker door. Again, again, again while she swears her skin is melting.
The physical pain is nothing compared to the hell of her mind, filled with thoughts that are so like hers yet terrifying in their violence. Taylor has many enemies. Many enemies to kill, and Taylor can’t stop it.
The metal has begun to dent under her fist, despite the bone deep pain she can feel with every punch. It’s nothing compared to the fire. She’ll be free soon. She’ll kill someone soon.
Taylor braces her feet against the locker door to slam her head as hard as she can into the back wall. Her left arm falters, and that’s all she needs to slam her head back again. She slams her head forward when her left arm braces against the back wall, then she into the right wall when her legs no longer obey her.
She’s forcibly jerked to the side, but not fast enough to avoid the hook forcing its way into the side of her forehead.
“Soon,” the nails on the chalkboard say, “Again.”
‘Kill.’