MMPS Ch. 2

Chapter 2: Arming Up

Yu An staggered out of the storage room, his single-strap backpack weighing heavily on his shoulder. He slipped back into the hospital ward and emerged moments later, gripping a cold, metal IV stand in one hand and dragging a cotton blanket with the other. Moving as silently as a shadow, he positioned the IV stand against the exterior wall of the nurse’s station. Then, with painstaking care, he bundled the blanket and tucked it into the bathroom.

His movements were precise, almost methodical. With his preparations complete, Yu An entered the nurse’s station, shutting the door softly behind him. He crouched over the severed telephone wire, pinching the frayed ends together with his fingers. The receiver in his other hand felt heavy, its weight anchoring him to the moment.

When the line connected, a voice as calm as glass spoke from the other end. Yu An didn’t wait for pleasantries. He lowered his voice, his tone tight with urgency.

“I’m reporting a major homicide. A nurse has been killed. The murderer is still here—wearing a goat skull mask. Yes, the body is under the desk in the nurse’s station.”

The words spilled out in clipped fragments, each syllable designed to jolt the authorities into action. He said nothing about his own abduction. There wasn’t time for personal context; the situation demanded he emphasize the immediate danger.

He glanced down at the desk as he spoke, his body stiffening as his eyes locked on the dark, empty space beneath it.

The corpse was gone.

His breath caught, and his chest tightened as though the room itself had squeezed shut. A dark stain smeared the floor where the body had been, half-dried blood snaking outward in a grim trail. The trail led out the door, turning sharply into the pitch-black corridor beyond.

The realization clawed at him. While he’d been rummaging through the storage room, the goat-headed figure had returned and reclaimed the body.

“I… The body is gone,” he told the operator, voice taut. “There’s a blood trail—it’s been dragged out of the station, toward the hallway. The killer must’ve come back.”

The dispatcher’s voice remained eerily composed: “This appears to involve an Aberrant case. Please hold while I transfer you to the Perceptive Eagle Bureau. Do not disconnect, stay calm, and remain silent.”

“An Aberrant?”

The word sent a strange shiver through Yu An. It brushed against the edges of his memory, familiar yet unclear. His head throbbed, as if his thoughts were caged behind a veil he couldn’t lift.

The line clicked, and a new voice took over—a woman’s, sharp and cold, every word precise and deliberate. “This is Perceptive Eagle. State your location and the number of Aberrants.”

Yu An’s eyes darted across the cluttered desk until they landed on a stack of papers. Red ink stamped across the headers declared: Hongli City, Guxian County Hospital.

“This hospital,” he said hoarsely. “Guxian County Hospital.”

The operator pressed him for numbers. He hesitated, the memory of footsteps above stirring uneasily in his mind. More than one set. More than one killer.

“There’s more than one.”

The line went dead.

Yu An blinked at the receiver in his hand. He’d dropped the telephone wire without realizing it. There was no need to continue. The essentials had been relayed, and silence was now his safest ally. It was better to stay quiet than reveal his location from all the noise.

He turned toward the station’s desktop computer, its faint hum cutting through the oppressive stillness.

A recent email caught his eye: “Basement morgue camera malfunction—repair request.” It had been sent the previous morning at 9:00 AM. The hospital’s security office replied at 6:00 PM with a perfunctory note: “Understood. We’ll send someone tomorrow.”

Nine hours of silence for a critical repair. The realization sank into him like cold water. This hospital wasn’t designed to protect anyone.

He opened the browser and typed a single word into the search bar: Aberrant. The computer sputtered and lagged, its slowness amplifying the growing tension in his chest.

Finally, the results loaded.

Aberrants: K034. The infamous explosion at the Hongli City research facility. Three hundred thousand tons of illegally buried biochemical waste sealed underground by researchers. 

Aberrants generally have fixed living territories. Some boundary-crossing behaviors may occur, invading human settlements and posing a serious threat to human life and property.

Aberrant Core: The source of their life—a malformed stone embedded within their mutated bodies. Destroy the core, and the Aberrant dies.

A banner flashed across the screen: If your life is threatened by an Aberrant, click here to contact Perceptive Eagle Bureau.

The details were stark, chilling. Links populated below:

• Forum: Top Three Aberrant-Hunting Companies Compared
• Official Site: Underground Metro Recruitment – Protecting Civilians
• News: Missing Obese Patients—Aberrants Suspected

One headline snagged his attention: “URGENT! Two breeding goats missing near Pizzeria Ranch #6.”

Two.

Yu An’s stomach twisted as he checked the ranch’s location. It was disturbingly close—just a few hundred meters from the hospital.

Apparently, not only the police capable of dealing with monsters, but also some specialized hunting companies that make a living from it.

He scoured the site for contact numbers, but before he could act, a low, metallic groan crawled down the hallway.

The elevator.

The sound made his blood run cold.

He’d been the only one to use it, leaving it on the third floor. Now it was moving. Someone—or something—was calling it.

The bell chimed.

The elevator and the stairwell were located at opposite ends of the corridor. Taking the elevator at this moment would be undeniably dangerous, yet a goat-headed creature was dragging a corpse toward the stairwell. Yu An was now trapped from both ends, leaving no other options.

Yu An rose, swinging his heavy backpack over his shoulder. It carried his lifeline—tools for survival. No matter how cumbersome, it couldn’t be left behind.

Ding.

The elevator doors creaked open.

It had arrived.

 Yu An spun around, his gaze darting across the disheveled room, searching for a place to hide. The overturned medicine cabinet and the desk offered fleeting possibilities, but the gruesome death of the nurse under the desk warned him of the danger. The cabinet, now smashed to the floor, might provide shelter—if he curled into the narrow space inside, he could perhaps avoid being found.

But doubts gnawed at him. The creature hunting him might rely on more than sight. It might have an uncanny sense of smell. Hiding inside the cabinet was risky—if it discovered him, there would be nowhere to run.

He didn’t hesitate. Choosing the high ground, Yu An scrambled up the radiator pipes, peeling back two ceiling tiles to conceal himself in the cramped space above.

Below, the corridor grew louder. Heavy footsteps reverberated, each step resounding like a hammer pounding into the floor. The creature was approaching. Its gait was purposeful, its stride long and deliberate—no human moved with such force.

The steps grew louder, closer. Then, they stopped. From the pattern, Yu An knew the beast had arrived at the very door of the ward he had passed through earlier.

Then, as if in response to an unseen signal, the silence shattered like glass. A crash erupted, echoing down the hall like the aftermath of a multi-car collision. The creature had caught his scent. It barreled into the room, tearing through everything in its path. The building trembled as though the very foundations were about to give way.

Yu An’s guess had been correct—the thing’s sense of smell was extraordinarily sharp, perhaps too sharp. No human could have hidden from it in such a confined space.

Perched on the radiator pipe, Yu An’s legs carefully balanced on the narrow metal frame, his body taut with the effort of keeping still. His breath caught, barely making a sound.

Then, the chaos outside stilled. No footsteps. No movement. Only silence.

But in that silence, one question gnawed at him relentlessly: the bloodstains on the floor were marred with hoofprints. The prints were enormous—wider than any human foot could have been, larger than even the broadest of adult feet. The creature’s steps were heavy, almost deafening. Could it be that someone was wearing shoes with hoof-like soles? Or, more terrifyingly, had it grown hooves beneath its legs?

Yu An leaned forward, cautiously peering down. His heart froze as he saw the door—once barely ajar—now wide open.

There, standing in the doorway, were legs covered in thick, coarse fur. No shoes. Beneath the ankles, each foot was a grotesque hoove, with only two toes.

The creature was massive—easily towering over two meters in height, its body bulkier and more muscular than even the strongest human. Its head was a twisted mockery of a goat’s skull, complete with two long, curling horns.

The goat-headed beast inhaled deeply, its nostrils flaring as it sniffed the air, savoring the scent of its prey. Step by step, it advanced into the nurse’s station, its shadow consuming the room. The room’s dim light flickered weakly as the creature’s wheezing breath filled the space, a sound like wind through an old bellows.

A toppled medicine cabinet caught the creature’s foot, stumbling it for a moment. It raised one of its iron-like hooves and stomped down, crushing the cabinet beneath its weight.

If Yu An had been hiding inside, he would have been nothing more than a mess of broken bones and flesh.

A long, deafening silence followed. Yu An pressed his hand over his mouth, desperately keeping his breath shallow and quiet.

Then, disaster struck. A small piece of the ceiling, already loose, cracked and fell under his weight. Yu An lunged to grab it, but his fingers only managed to clutch half of it, the other half tumbling to the floor in front of the beast.

The creature’s head slowly lifted. Its eyes locked with Yu An’s, and in that moment, time itself seemed to slow.

The next sound was a bone-shaking bleat—loud, harsh, and unmistakably that of a goat.

Yu An’s stomach lurched. It wasn’t just a bleat—it was the sound of the beast’s hunger. 

It was chewing something in its mouth. As it opened its mouth to cry out, something fell from its jaws—round, red, and slick with blood. The object rolled twice before coming to rest.

Yu An’s heart stopped. He knew what it was before it even came into full view.

A severed finger.

A wave of nausea crashed over him, but there was no time to process it. His body moved before his mind could catch up. Without thinking, he launched himself from the radiator, landing on the desk with a grunt.

His hand snatched the office phone, and in one swift motion, he hurled it directly at the goat-headed beast. The receiver connected with its face, and the phone’s cord wrapped itself around one of the horns.

Seizing the moment, Yu An cut through the wires of the computer. With every ounce of strength, he lifted the heavy computer and hurled it at the creature.

There was an explosion of sound as the computer collided with its skull, sending the beast stumbling. Glass from the shattered monitor rained down, a cloud of smoke rising in the aftermath.

Yu An didn’t wait. He leapt off the desk, launching himself onto the creature’s back. The stench of decay was overwhelming, a nauseating mix of hay and animal waste. The creature’s muscles rippled beneath him, but Yu An held tight to one of its horns.

His other hand fumbled through his bag until he found a glass bottle. Without hesitation, he smashed it over the creature’s head.

The glass shattered, and a cascade of clear liquid splashed over the creature’s skull. The fumes of alcohol flooded the room, sharp and pungent.

The beast recoiled, startled by the sudden sting to its senses. It shook its head violently, thrashing about in a fit of rage.

In that chaos, Yu An’s gaze flicked to the creature’s head once more. The goat skull—it wasn’t a mask. It was part of its body, a grotesque extension of its flesh.

Between the jagged teeth, Yu An saw blood, fragments of bone, and even human hair wedged between them. The thing had just fed.

A horrified realization settled over him. Sure enough: this was an Aberrant.

In fact, after browsing through some pages about aberrant beings, the only useful conclusion Yu An could come to was that killing an aberrant being was considered self-defense.

Yu An had seen enough. This wasn’t a fight for survival—it was a fight for justice.

He didn’t wait. With a sharp pivot, he dashed out of the room and hurled four more bottles of alcohol inside. Each bottle exploded on impact, the glass shards raining down like fireworks.

He pulled out a lighter and ignited it, tossing the flame into the room. The fire erupted immediately, devouring the alcohol and engulfing the entire nurse’s station in flames.

Yu An slammed the door shut and, with swift precision, dragged the IV stand to the door. He wedged it against the handle, locking the creature inside, ensuring it could never escape.

A surge of blue flames erupted from the nurse’s station, the fire licking the air in an angry, crackling dance. The thunderous sound of iron hooves striking the ground reverberated through the building, but despite the repeated battering, the door remained surprisingly intact, its surface only slightly deformed. It might hold for another two minutes at most.

The nurse’s station was a fortified security door, unlike the flimsy wooden doors with windows found in the patient areas. It was the reason why Yu An had chosen this place as his temporary refuge, even though he would have preferred to avoid stepping back into a murder scene. But in this moment, it was the only option.

When the alcohol bottles shattered, their fiery contents splashed over Yu An, the thick liquid igniting instantly. Flames erupted along his fingertips, racing up his body, consuming his clothes in a flash.

Yet, Yu An remained eerily calm. With quick, practiced movements, he darted into the bathroom, wrapping himself in a dampened blanket. He rolled frantically on the ground, extinguishing the fire with desperate urgency, each movement a dance of survival.

Lying on the floor, drenched in water, his body temperature plummeting, Yu An was overwhelmed by the oppressive darkness. The cold seeped into his bones, and the exhaustion threatened to pull him under. The weight of despair clung to him as he lay motionless.

Then, a soft noise caught his attention—something had dropped nearby.

It was black, small, the size of a fingernail. A Bluetooth earpiece.

With a groan, Yu An dragged himself forward, reaching for the earpiece, and slid it into his left ear.

The crackling static that followed was interrupted by a man’s voice, calm but commanding.

“Get up.”

Get up… The voice wasn’t gentle, but it carried an undeniable weight, something that grounded him, steadied him. A police officer? He clenched his teeth, pressing his palm against the wall to push himself upright.

“Run to the end of the hallway. Come to the monitoring room to find me.”

In that moment, the stranger’s voice was his only thread of hope, the only thing that could guide him through the chaos. He didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. Without a glance back, Yu An bolted forward, leaving behind the echoes of the goat-headed creature’s bleats and its violent collisions.

As he ran, he passed a fire extinguisher alcove. Grabbing a heavy dry powder extinguisher, Yu An continued his sprint. It was a risky choice—if it were to explode under a heavy blow, it could be catastrophic—but there was no time to hesitate.

The lights of the corridor grew dimmer the farther he went, the shadows pressing in on him like the throat of some massive, unseen beast. The air felt thick, suffocating, and the silence around him grew heavier, like the calm before a storm.

Ahead, the door to the monitoring room came into view, but standing before it was a figure. A hulking presence that blocked the path. Yu An knew, instantly, what it was—a towering silhouette crowned with the unmistakable shape of a goat’s head.

He couldn’t explain why, but for some reason, the voice in his earpiece gave him an unwavering trust, as if it had already woven its way into his very being. He gazed at the door, just within reach, and it felt like something sacred—like the entrance to salvation. All that mattered now was reaching it.

This was it. He was going all in. It was a final, desperate gamble.

Yu An focused on the center of the goat-headed figure’s skull, his mind locking onto the target. His hands tightened around the extinguisher, and with a sudden shift, he swung it powerfully toward the creature, charged to the left rear, and struggled—

Suddenly, the door to the monitoring room exploded open with a loud crash as a booted foot kicked it in.

Then, from the room, came a sharp, maniacal laugh, high-pitched and piercing, like the sound of a creature on a killing spree. Yu An’s mind involuntarily filled with the imagery of a bungee-jumping zombie, plummeting from the sky to steal a plant. “Heh—ha!”

A flash of pink appeared as a figure leaped from the room. He was holding a long, hollow metal pipe, raised high above his head. The figure landed with deadly precision, crashing down on the goat-headed creature’s back, driving the iron pipe deep into its thick hide, pinning it to the floor. His long hair fluttering up and down with his movements.

Yu An watched, frozen, as the creature was overwhelmed by the sudden attack. Its massive form buckled under the force, its body crashing to the floor with a bone-rattling thud. The goat-headed figure’s limbs flailed in panic, its head thrashing as it let out a terrible, guttural roar, but it didn’t last. The noise abruptly ceased, the air falling silent.

The man who had struck the creature stood tall, his head thrown back in a moment of triumph. His lips curled back to reveal a mouth full of jagged, triangular teeth. For a long moment, he reveled in the aftermath of the kill, savoring the stillness that followed.

Then, as if noticing Yu An for the first time, the man relaxed his grip on the pipe and stood, adjusting the metal clasp on his leather gloves. He slowly approached, his eyes burning with an intensity that could cut through steel.

His appearance was unsettling—pale, light plum-colored hair that cascaded in wild waves, a burgundy shirt peeking from beneath a long trench coat. A silver badge shaped like the subway icon gleamed on his chest, with his name engraved below: “Zhao Ran.”

The sight of him was more terrifying than the goat-headed monster, and Yu An’s mind raced in panic. Was this some kind of nightmare? Had he triggered the boss fight?

The man kept advancing, each step bringing him closer and closer.