Green lights from the emergency sign hollowed a vacant space between the turn of stairs. The squeaks of my footstep, the squeaks of wooden floor combusting three walls away where hell broke loose on a controlled chaos.

  Lining up my sight to the edge of the green halo plating the vision into neon and over-saturated darkness while everything is losing balance. I take a breath in and stare into the abyss as I take another stair up and another as each creates a lasting squeak of scornfulness at my action.

  The green light of a 30 by 10 plank hangs on top with the miniature of a person running downstairs as I reach the landing. The painting of an arduous ridge runs along the scroll as the colors are reversed. The sky is dimmed green by the lights, and the mountain plains are ink black as the lines cast along the shade of me.

  I can hear my own beating heart like a response to the yearning breaths in my ear, through my systems straight up the emptiness of my skull as I give off control to my instincts for the last time. My figure casts upon the corner with tip of my head reaching an inch under the last step of stairs going up. I lower my posture as I emerge through the path carved between emergency LED lights.

  The steel notch and the dot of white shakes in my sight as do my arm, the other ragged and stiff as my breath. The tranquility of the cold air still hangs in the still air as I can feel a breeze on the sweat-stained rag on my head on each level I climb, so does the smell of iron and animal fur.

  My shadow casts across the empty hallway of the second floor. Walls on both sides are paved and trimmed in gold on the edge and carved in panels on the second ring as the middle is covered in plain white silk of no decoration.

  My second step hurled a spent case on the soundless wooden floor. The rifle round rolls round and round in front of the first room on the left, the door swings inward, the lower hinge soaked an emerald glint as this is the end of the LED's reach.

  I inhaled deep to tell if it truly was the smell of blood. Unlike common depictions, to smell the scent it takes an open wound and intestines hanging or something more dire. Standing beside the entrance of complete darkness away from the faint, layered, illuminated corridor. I turn my left shoulder forward, back against the wall as I move. The suture of endless Stygian between the door frames blinks at me, and its brothers and sisters smile. My eyes haven't fully adjusted to the dark or the setting, but ain't got much of a choice.

  With the gun held closer to the chin, hold clench and release. I enter the room hugging the left wall with the line of aim moving accordingly. West corner, east wall, north-east corner. There’s not a shift in the dark but the smell continues. My footsteps silenced on the solid and waxed floor making three paces forward like a walk to the nether. It creeps up on me, and moving feels no different than stepping a circle as my figure blocks the last angle for the emergency light to reach. The grey lines in the dark are by the blessing of the singular source of light slanting 45 degrees behind me.

  I'm alone and the breaths are getting louder as a few peeks of paranoia soak into my strained mind and exhausted body making every step as real and solid as a punch in the gut.....

  Until I hit something while I was moving towards the east wall. I lower my sight to a...figure in the corner, contours in the dark made it look like some deformed animal skeleton which is the only thing in this room that isn't distinguishable or at least imaginable as furniture, armrests by couches or pots on tables with curled legs.

  I crouch next to it with heed and reach forward as the smell of blood and fermentation grows like a warning. The touch was sleek, as how you'd imagine a newly made casket in a funeral or the cheap polyester of the market at B5. I was going to check the pulse but as the touch became slippery and soft then turned coarse. I get up from the southeast corner.

  It wasn't them.

  It was another poor bastard with a missing portion of the skull, odor coming out as metallic and freshly turned soil from the unmoving mess. Judging from the bullet case Har got him right through the door, the guy falters back on the ground next to...

  A step to the left, I prob the wall which leans for a door knob. The notches by the panel felt moist against the finger, blood had settled in by now. Across its surface, I find the seam between walls as I hint at the edge for a release but there's none, not even on top. My hand swipe over a door lock by the side but found the same notch of panels and columns, like the one further to the left.

  I inhale a breath in and step a pace away from the corpse. With my right shoulder extorting flat between the panels, arm flat, barrel by the edge aiming horizontally. I give the uneven wall in the dark a push.

  ***

  It moves about as slow as the safe in my apartment (The one in 4th) Either it has three layers of ceramic plate or I'm at the end of rope.

  As the more imminent dark wavers and swings like a clad, first was the white dot at the front sight of pistol. Then it took another moment for me to register the interior of this room, at least the part by the left is viable by the eye despite still resting in blind.

  Antiques gather dust on and under the desks of finely carved. Vases, glass miniature of cricket in acrylic box, urn for incenses the size of my palm tilted on the ground covered by a heavy rug of deep green and show hints with dotted lines of red tracing an arc along the turn of this damn door.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  12 o’clock, straight ahead. A slit of light pokes like a dame in white dancing in night sky.

  The door hits a permanent stop at 90 degrees. I eagerly leave it for the half-hidden window. Five strides over the soundless floor and a drag. The copper ringers sound off against the pole as implicit night fills the room.

  The moment of clarity and euphoria was short-lived by a snatch of awe.

  Another body in a black blazer snuffed on the ground in an obscure manner. Face tab on the wall right next to the old potteries, arms stiffly by waist defying gravity as its body are slanting upward like a bridge. Not much blood, just a dent on the left temple not even sure it was a bullet that did it.

  All the fragile million bucks lying around a compliant corpse by the window, tracing back from thy point of view and nothing seems...

  Across the room, through the camouflaged door, perfectly align to where I stand, lies another one of the Qins. Sitting on the ground, torso leaning by a large armchair, shoot to shit with at least six spreads of crimson soaking half of his white shirt black. Its left arm seems to be pulling him towards something even in this state, the hand gripping the barrel of a rifle in reverse. In a trance of focus, I take a step to the left so the dim street light marches a few meters further, but the gap seems smaller by the slow movement of the door swings back in the most slothful manner. My gaze raises to confirm there is no auto hold on the hinge as my pistol's raised already.

  First is a pair of running shoes, tips pointing either way. Then the shoulder tilts to the closing door. The tattered jacket with its collar flipped to the side while the lower half was torn, both cloth and flesh. The person look as if he was penetrated by a shell but I can see the gauge amidst shreds of fabric has layers of shade in its red. Finally, the head pushes the body off the door as it closes behind him.

  Not even a body dropping on the floor made any sound. That was my first thought.

  The bastard lost an eye. That was the second followed by the notice that he was wearing a balaclava as well.

  I walk over in a state I'm not too familiar with. Nonchalantly, I held his head off the ground to pull the mask off him with effort since the blood had glued his skin and wool after settling.

  Short black hair reaching both ears over shaved sides. Wide nose bridge sliding into the shallow eye sockets with one being brown circled in red and the other's gone. Pushed into the tear-through perhaps. There's a horizontal stab on the right eye stretching the hollowness apart, I can tell how much force was behind the stab just by the ripped skin by the eyelids. Deep red then purple draws right under his eye bag for the ski mask had trapped the leakage by the rim of the eye hole.

  The neck's relatively clean, and so is the left arm. While the killing lies by his belly, shallow stabs repeated by the right kidney on the same spot until the last one is buried to the hilt and runs horizontally through the fabric, skin tissue, muscle, intestines, skin again. Carving a way for the knife to leave. The killer probably switches to a hammer grip by the last step before driving it back to the eye.

  Found Har. Standing up over this mess. The last notion hits after I recognized the jacket's original color was deep blue.

  ***

  Some find it desecrating to move the dead within the first hour. I mainly found their eyes odd, lightless, unmoving, right up till the moment I press a thumb to shut his remaining eyelid. Couldn't feel much for him. But ain't got nothing personal to him either.

  There's still Budimir. And if I'm not mistaken. There's only one room left on this floor.

  I pick myself up and take a whirl around the stash. Taking no more than five seconds to find another set of trap door on the west wall where the seams betrayed the paint job. Hinging the left end, the door spins as both sides rotate soundlessly like a scythe in the air. I dive into the dark again.

  Stepping into the hallway, the first thing that came to mind was the itch behind my face, above the nostrils and soreness around the iris. The smoke is reaching fast.

  I shed off the bothersome thoughts and raise the gun towards the door directly across the hallway. The streetlight outside the window is limited to the fine line drawn by the turnstile wall that's vertically still to the layout, just enough to tell the silhouettes in the dark, and the heavy flops of curtain by my left. I prowl a hold and yank it open so the light is welcomed into this floor once more illuminating the rest of corridor all the way where till it meets the green in the other end. My left eye blinked to adjust to the stiff that came unannounced as the world dyed a bluish hue with purple popping here and there.

  Turning back to the closed door in carved wood. I can see an elaborate and mirrored 'Qin' in ancient Chinese sink into the door. Circled by a dragon whose head overlaps with its tail.

  I reach my wounded arm towards the brass knob as it takes more moonlight splattered on the waxed floor, linking my slanted shadow to the wall of text and painting. Just as my palm grazes the cold metal, my mind produce the most possible imagery behind the door. Another kid by the wall, few dozen cuts.

  Raising the Italian 9 close by my waist, the same height as the knob. I grip it tighter. Breathing the smoke into an uncomfortable knit of loose helms. I do not try to chase off the thought.

  The cylinder heeds for a few margins before the latch stops it whole. Jackpot. I let go of the knob, half a step to the left, muzzle aiming straight down at it...

  One and a half seconds.

  That's how long it took.

  To walk the line between oblivion.

  The latch ticks a loud tack around the string, but it’s to the further right where the green LED still touches. My aim shifts accordingly to the other door on this side. It falters back above the hilt of iron sight. A figure falls head first out of the door, by the fire exit light on his left and the reflection on my narrowing pupils. His black blazer hangs stiffly on the shoulder.

  Three-quarters of a second.

  Finger back on the trigger, the resistance on the trigger was molded into just half a pound away as my reflexes kicked in.

  1 second.

  But something else holds it back firmly like a whack on the back of my head. My aim follow the man in black as he dives and....falls face first in the corridor.

  1.2 second.

  The green light catches the man's seedy mess of blonde hair curling back on his scalp.

  1.3 second.

  Another latch ticks. A shiver down my spine pacifies all the doubts, guilts, familiarity I can’t even register, all rendered to none by the shock.

  1.45 second.

  I drag my line of sight back straight. The door falls back into a 2 meter lightless dark escaping the moonlight.

  1.5 second.

  A face of sleek and smooth black and curled fangs tilting on four corners like the stitches of a sewed mouth, full black pupil or none at all. Traces of red settled as dots on the left where the cheekbones hinge into a swirl like a smile in feral, perpetual pain. Caged in its hungry bones. It approaches in less than a blink.

  ————————————————————

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  I blast this thing for three hours on the train ride to my dorm.