Page 17 of No Asylum Here

“No, we haven’t reached that part of her onboarding yet,” Rook answered.

I hadn’t moved or opened my eyes. They didn’t know I was awake yet.

“Looks too delicate, this one, sir. Won’t handle the stuff,” the man with the warped voice wheezed with a mucus-filled cough. “She’ll break, like the weak souls.”

Weak soul?

I resisted the urge to react. Even a twitch would alert them that I was awake, and they’d stop their conversation.

Who was the person speaking? How dare he call me a weak soul? And what did they mean by “won’t handle the stuff?” What stuff were they referring to?

The easy explanation was that they had trouble keeping physicians on their staff. Not shocking, considering this facility was an archaic pit, just begging for an inspection. It was a wonder they hadn’t been reported yet.

OSHA would have a field day with this one.

“Nonsense. She’s desperate. That’s exactly what we need.”

“She’s a modern doctor, this one,” the stranger wheezed. “Won’t like how we do things.”

“It doesn’t matter if she likes it,” Rook said with indifference. “She’ll bend to our ways. You know I have my methods, Fredrick.”

There were no specifics with what they were referring to, but the conversation they were having when they thought I wasn’t listening filled me with prickling unease.

“And if your methods don’t work…” The man with the unfortunate voice—Fredrick—carried closer, a plume of rancid breath making me bristle. “Can I have her? She’ll look so pretty all in pieces—ack!”

The sound of skin striking skin had me flinching. Rook had hit Fredrick. Normally, I wouldn’t stand for abuse in the workplace, especially since Fredrick clearly wasn’t mentally well… Yet, after the sick comment he made about me, I couldn’t help reveling in his grunt of pain.

“If you put your filthy mutant hands on her, you’ll be the one in pieces. Understand?”

“Y–yes, sir.”

I couldn’t stand lying on this table for another second. Slowly, I started to shift and immediately felt Rook's presence looming over me. My eyes flicked open to find the noseless doctor smiling down at me.

“Ah, good, you’re awake.”

Swallowing, I pulled myself into a sitting position and surveyed my surroundings.

Whether Lauren was a product of my gut instincts or something else, it didn’t matter. She was right. I shouldn’t have come here. The space was dark, poorly ventilated, and the damp air was rank with the stink of death and chemicals.

The white subway tiled walls were lined with steel shelving, holding a myriad of glass containers—most of them filled with wet specimens of all varieties. Severed hands, mason jars of eyeballs, sorted by colors. There were even a few severed heads, bloated by the yellow liquid preserving them.

When my attention landed on a shelf dedicated entirely to reproductive organs, I cringed and forced my attention elsewhere. What was the likelihood of this macabre collection being ethically sourced? It made me sick, knowing the answer.

There were a few small rectangular windows near the basement’s ceiling, but they didn’t bring in much light since the unmowed lawn outside covered most of the glass.

Even down here, there were bars over the windows. If following OSHA wasn’t one of Doctor Rook’s concerns, it made sense that he wouldn’t lend much thought to the fire code.

“Ah, don’t panic, Doctor,” Rook said, likely reading my facial expression. “You just had a little fainting spell. Probably the altitude. The lack of ventilation down here doesn’t help either.”

Behind the noseless doctor was, whom I assumed to be, Fredrick, cowering behind one of the shelves loaded with specimens. He peered through a jar that magnified his yellowed sclera to monstrous proportions.

“Oh, don’t worry about him. That’s just our resident pharmacist.” Rook pivoted, motioning at the cowering man. “Come out, Fredrick.”

A strange little man with a warped spine shuffled out from behind the shelving. As a medical professional, I’d seen plenty of people with various deformities. But not like this. The skin around his mouth was covered in scabs and sores that oozed. His bulging eyes looked like they might pop at any moment, with one so swollen that his eyelid struggled to close with every blink. His thinning sable hair was so greasy, it stuck to his forehead.

Several medical conditions sprang to mind while I quietly appraised the creature. What I couldn’t name was the cause of the elaborate network of acid green veins running all over his body. It couldn’t be chronic venous insufficiency, a condition where blood couldn’t return to the heart due to damaged valves. Blood would become trapped in his veins, causing them to blacken and bulge.

No, that’s not what this was. These veins were a shade of green so bright they were nearly incandescent, as if he were radioactive.