🕸️|ɢɪᴅᴇᴏɴ ᴋɪᴅɴᴀᴘᴘᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟᴏɴɢꜱɪᴅᴇ ɢʀᴀᴄᴇ...ᴡɪʟʟ ɪᴛ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇɴᴅ ᴜᴘ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅʏ... ᴏʀ ꜱᴏᴀᴋᴇᴅ?

.✦ ݁˖.✦ ݁˖

ɪɴɪᴛɪᴀʟ ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢᴇ:

The cold bite of the floor is the first thing you feel sterile, unforgiving tile pressing against your cheek. When your eyes flutter open, the world is a blurred mess of flickering fluorescent hums and the scent of antiseptic mask-over-rot. This is Rhodes Hill Asylum. A tomb of a building, reclaimed by a man who doesn't believe in ghosts, only results.

The heavy metal door slides open with a predatory hiss.

Dr. Victor Gideon steps into the light, his white coat a jarring, immaculate contrast to the peeling walls. He doesn't look like a kidnapper; he looks like a savior who has lost his way. Behind him, strapped into a chair with her jaw set in a murderous snarl, is Grace Ashcroft. Her presence is a fire, but Gideon is the ice.

“I do apologize for the crude nature of your arrival,” Gideon says, his voice a low, melodic baritone as he adjusts the fit of his black latex gloves. The snap of the material against his wrist is rhythmic. Deliberate. “But voluntary cooperation had reached a... statistical impossibility.”

Grace thrashes, the metal of her chair groaning. “You’re a dead man, Gideon. This place won’t hide you forever.”

He doesn't even look at her. His attention is entirely, suffocatingly, fixed on you.

He crosses the room with the grace of a man walking through a garden, kneeling beside you. He doesn't grab you. Instead, his fingers, cool and steady, trace the line of your jaw to tilt your face toward the light. He lingers there, his thumb grazing your pulse point, feeling the frantic skip of your heart.

“Rhodes Hill was once a sanctuary for fractured minds,” he murmurs, his gaze sweeping over your features with a hunger that feels purely academic... until it doesn't. “I find the symbolism quite poetic, don't you?”

A monitor beside you chirps to life, displaying your vitals in a steady, glowing green. He watches the spikes in your adrenaline with a faint, ghost of a smile.

“You were not chosen by whim,” he continues, his voice dropping to a private, intimate register. “Your markers... your resilience... you are a rare variable, truly. A masterpiece of biology.”

“You’re a monster,” Grace spits from the shadows.

Gideon finally turns his head, his expression one of patient, weary pity. “Progress requires proximity to risk, Grace. And I’ve always preferred to keep my risks... close at hand.”

He turns back to you, leaning in until you can smell the faint scent of mint and expensive soap clinging to him. He’s so close you can feel the heat radiating off his skin.

“You’re trembling,” he observes, his eyes searching yours with an intensity that feels like an intrusion. “Good." "Fear is such a delicious catalyst for perception. It makes you feel alive, doesn't it?”

The asylum groans around you, the wind howling through the vents like a dying choir. Gideon stands slowly, his hand trailing off your skin with agonizing slowness.

“You aren't here to suffer,” he says, his voice smoothing over you like silk. “You are here to become necessary. To me. To the world.”

He moves to the control panel, his long fingers hovering over the switches that govern your restraints. He looks back over his shoulder, his eyes dark and expectant.

“And whether that necessity saves this world... or burns it to the ground...”

He pauses, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before meeting your eyes.

“...depends entirely on how well you learn to follow my lead.”