Silence is an extraordinary aspect of the discernible reality. Some call it an echo of the great nothing; further adding to the paradoxical chaos of the questions that point to the existence of reality. To the greater mass, silence suggests an absence, and to a minority, silence itself is a manifestation of absence; a conflict of comprehension that eventually boils down to the abuse of semantics, like many other conflicts among the living.
The living are of high significance, for it is they who can comprehend both the horror of and the sweetness of silence. Who amongst us doesn't appreciate the silence inside a graveyard, or a morgue? It is the absence of silence herein that would horrify us, more so if you've seen a necromancer raising the damned dead men from their early graves. God's gift of vision wasn't meant to be a hostage to such atrocities.
But atrocities are at times, a necessary evil; so a dead man's shrill scream can still be a sweet sound fighting the horror of absolute silence.
"Mmphh!"
CLANG!
The thin slab of steel covering the morgue refrigerator trembled.
CLANG!
The rusty hinges let out weak cries of protest against this exertion of force from an unusual angle.
They were meant to safeguard the corpse against the outside world, not to prevent the corpse from fighting its way out.
Just outside the cold storage, Crawley was dipping his dry mop into a bucket of muddy tap water, ready to wipe the dirty storage room clean as usual.
The ease in his practiced motions was upset by the unusual sound coming from within the cold storage.
Crawley straightened up and cast a vigilant look around the narrow corridor. Not a single soul ahead or behind.
The electric lightbulbs were stable, ruling out the possibility of magical interference nearby.
If not magic, what else could make sounds inside a storage for corpses?
"...Did anybody leave a pet behind?" Crawley muttered to himself, finding his own voice somewhat unsettling.
His right hand automatically sprang up to his chest, clutching onto the triangular, crystalline emblem of Doomhorn.
It had cost 25 sable. Not every devotee of Doomhorn was lucky enough to find a piece. It provided him with just enough willpower to push his finger inside the biometrics scanner guarding the door of the Cold Storage.
Even as his finger was being scanned, he heard a loud thumping sound on the other side of the door.
The scanner lit up with the green indicator of recognition, and the door slid back an inch. Almost instantly, an uncomfortable chill hit Crawley in the face.
Used to the cool air inside the room, Crawley stepped in gingerly, his left hand gripping the mop like a lifeline.
His heart sank as the realization set in after a preliminary observation of the morgue.
He would've been much more relieved had there been a corpse thief inside. He might have even fought the thief off.
The worst thing one can discover in a quest to find a noisemaker is the lack of one altogether, especially when the room happens to be a morgue filled with a fresh supply of deformed, damaged, dead bodies.
Thump!
Crawley's eyes jerked down to a corner of the massive morgue refrigerators lined up against the wall on the other end of the room.
One of the compartment doors had just quivered very minutely.
Thump!
"Mmphh!"
For a moment, Crawley felt his mind go blank. The body inside wasn't dead!
His first instinct was to help. But...
"No, no, no, wait...The examiners couldn't have skipped checking the corpses before storing them," he told himself audibly.
"How can a body in there just turn alive unless something unnatural is involved?"
But if this was indeed the work of a rogue mage, there would've been signs. For example, the electricity of the entire underground floor would probably be killed. Unless of course, the mage was highly accomplished, not just any common rank-1 or rank-2 practitioner...
Instead of rushing in to find a way to open the compartment, Crawley took out his comcell and sent a message to Blackwood, one of the managers of the Hospital.
Perhaps Doomhorn himself was assisting him today, because the ever-busy man responded immediately. Crawley's comcell lit up with the text message on the screen.
"Guard it. Coming."
Those three words were enough to infuriate Crawley.
"Guard it, my ass!"
If a powerful mage was involved in this unnatural development, Crawley could very well be facing death! Just as he was contemplating whether to run and risk his job-
The lights went off inside and outside the morgue.
CLANGGHHH!
The sound of steel hitting the ground reverberated throughout the room. The hinges of the broken door of a refrigerator flew off to the other end of the storage, screeching their way toward Crawley in the suffocating darkness.
Nerves screaming, Crawley stumbled out of the room, his hands busy trying to pull out the crankbulb in his waistband. Putting his back up against the wall of the corridor outside the storage room, Crawley spun the shaft of the bulb with a crazed urgency.
A dull sound of turning gears sounded from his hand as sparks came into life inside the bulb.
A weak beam fell upon the abyssal darkness ahead, giving Crawley a hazy view of the insides of the Cold Storage.
Through the opening created by the destroyed door of a refrigerator, two bloated feet wriggled their way out, followed by an emaciated body connected to them.
The glare of Crawley's crankbulb got stronger and stronger, and the features of the corpse became distinct.
A tall, reedy young man, perhaps not past his late teens; with long hair covering most of his face. A series of jagged bone-deep gashes were visible across his chest, reaching both of his shoulders– probably the result of a vehicle accident.
Involuntarily, Crawley's focus went back to the bloated feet on display. Considering the muscle mass on the rest of his body, the boy shouldn't have legs half as thick. More concerning was the fact that the bloated mass didn't seem to hold water or fat inside.
To kick off the hinges of one of those compartment doors...those legs had to be crammed with inhuman strength.
The broken compartment door was still there on the floor. Crawley could see the indentation in its center even in the dim torchlight.
With a shaky hand, the young man moved his hair out of his face, revealing a jovial countenance.
In a foreign tongue, he roared a sentence jubilantly, arms outstretched to the fullest. Crawley was familiar with several languages and dialects of the neighboring regions, and he was certain that this wasn't one of those.
Sounds of rushing footsteps came from a distance. Crawley turned right and discovered rays of bright light appearing at the end of the corridor.
Blackwood was here, and he was not alone, judging by the noise.
Electric bulbs on the corridor ceiling began to blink back to life one by one. Even inside the cold storage, a couple of bulbs lit up.
The young man bent down and picked up the small, indented door of his compartment and examined the damage he had inflicted on it. Unconsciously, he flexed one of his legs as if imagining the kick that had blown it off its hinges.
"What a fascinating rendition of power progression," he said almost inaudibly. Crawley would've missed it had he not stood a mere dozen feet away.
"Crawley!"
Blackwood's voice jerked his focus back to his rescuers. A team of four, including a doctor and a security guard had come running through the corridor. Mutely, he gestured at them to take a look inside.
As the four of them entered the view of the young man, he placed the ruined door inside the empty compartment and put his arms up in a motion of surrender. Mouth stretched in an easygoing grin, he greeted them inside with a nod.
"Good evening, everyone! Would you believe me if I said I met God?"