At first light, Rhea showered and dressed for the day. The water was freezing, but it helped wake her up. She had slept through the night, but her unconscious decided to invade her mind with haunting images: glowing yellow eyes, white teeth ripping flesh. She saw her mother's decaying body beside her father, half his face missing, laughing as he stroked the hair of the dead woman. The image would melt away and she would find herself on her knees in the middle of a Samadoya street, feeling her body tremble and tasting salt on her lips as someone ripped her head up and dumped water down her throat.
She awoke with a scream, sweat coating her back, the taste of salt still in her mouth. She had never had a dream like that before, even when she first arrived in Samadoya. With thoughts reeling through her head, she decided she wanted to find Hyun again. Talk to him about the things he had seen here, things she was afraid to see herself.
After dressing in overalls not drenched in filth and sweat she made a cup of coffee in the kitchen, slipping one of the knives in her pocket before heading out. The more time she spent on the city streets the more she realized she needed to protect herself.
Following the suicide bridge, Rhea's mind tried to latch onto her drunken memories to find the path to the abandoned motel. The neon lights from her memories sat dead in the daylight. People walked down the streets with pistols hanging under arms, blades up their sleeves, and the bridge felt less opposing with the sun shining on it. The heat made fresh perspiration build on her forehead.
When she saw the noose hanging from the Hara-Kari bridge she knew she was close, but disappointment weighed her down when she approached where the abandoned motel had been, rubble and ash in its place.
She approached the charred skeleton of the building with sad eyes. She could see several crisp bodies still buried in the rubble. She looked to the post holding the motel sign that still stood and saw the motorcycle was gone.
Across the street was a small pharmacy with bulletproof glass and security cameras pointed at the door and surrounding sidewalk. Rhea pushed the door open and walked to the back counter. Most shelves held personal care products and first aid supplies. The drugs were locked behind the counter.
"Does your security camera work?" Rhea asked as she approached the counter where a young Asian woman sat reading a worn magazine.
"Of course it does," she said, eyes still on the magazine.
"Can I take a look at the footage?"
"What for?"
"Do you know what happened to the building across the street?"
"Oh, that? Some religious fanatics burnt it down, claiming they had to kill something inside. Just a bunch of crazies that got their hands on some matches and gasoline."
"I'd still appreciate looking at the footage."
"I'm sure you would." The woman continued to stare at her magazine.
Rhea sighed and dropped money on the counter. The girl's eyes raised and she let out a sigh. "If you insist. But the image is not very clear."
She followed the woman behind the counter and into a small office with stained walls and a desk where a simple laptop sat. The woman opened the computer, typed in a few words, and pulled up the footage from when the fire started, dated last night at 11:33 pm. The woman lent back and let Rhea gaze at the screen, not missing the kris dagger the pharmacist had at her hip, fingers brushing the handle while Rhea watched the replay.
The image was certainly out of focus, the camera angle only just able to grant a side view of the scene across the street. The light of the flames was bright enough that it cast a glow along the road, and she could see the scampering of feet circling the building. The motorcycle was still chained to the post.
Rhea leaned forward and watched the recording closely, waiting for Hyun. The light of the fire began to grow, feet began to shuffle again as though the circle was being broken, and for a moment she caught sight of a bloodied man who rushed to the motorcycle. His form and clothes told her it was him. She could see resistance, someone trying to pull him off the bike, but eventually, Hyun broke free, started the bike, and sped down the street, out of view.
"You should have heard them," said the woman. "Chanting like a bunch of lunatics."
"Do you believe there was something inside?" Rhea asked.
The woman rolled her eyes. "The only monsters there were the ones inside their heads."
Rhea left the pharmacy and stared again at the burnt building, trying to imagine the scene, a fit of madness that had taken over. She walked across the rubble, stepping over bodies that must have gotten trapped inside when the blaze started. She was not sure what she was looking for. The entire building was almost completely gone, making her think that the fire must have been exceptional.
There was a crunch under her boot and she looked down at a ribcage. She backed away quickly, almost falling backward, feeling guilty at disturbing the dead. But as she looked closer she realized the bones were not quite human. Not animal either, as the cage suggested the structure of a homosapien chest. But there were too many ribs, too long a spine even for a human of exceptional height. She knelt slowly, trying to study what parts she could see, pushing aside crusted planks and bricks.
The spine had several extra vertebrae, bony protrusions extending from each that made it look like a row of spikes. The ribcage had almost twice as many bones as an average human, some jutting out of the chest like claws, and some sort of stone wedged between the bones. She moved another burnt plank and saw the skull half buried in ash, elongated and deformed. There was a protruding jaw and exaggerated teeth and an extra eye socket.
Rhea's stomach began to sink, fear weakening her limbs. This creature looked like something born in fire, and she wondered how the flames of this building destroyed it. She looked at the stone in its chest, looking like a foreign object among the bones. She extended her hand and reached into the ribcage, grabbing the stone from its lodged spot between the ribs. The stone was cool to the touch, a smooth surface with a dark blue coloring to it. But when her fingers made contact with the bones her fingers began to blister and burn and she fell back into the bones of humans, dropping the stone and gripping her fingers as the skin blistered. There was a screaming in her head that was not her own and she saw fire behind her eyes and pain in her chest for a moment. Then the entire skeleton fell to ash, as if nothing had been there before.
The burning went halfway down her finger, the flesh about to melt off the bone and Rhea feared for a moment that she would pass out amongst the burnt. She took deep breaths and tried to calm her mind as it tried to race frantically. The thought of the cool stone came to mind and she gripped it with her burning fingers. The cool sensation began to crawl through her and the burning began to stop. After a few moments, she was able to stand on her feet and moved away from the remains of the motel. She gripped the stone in her pocket and followed the bridge back to Sockeye, thinking of how she had both the living and the dead to worry about.