X-Hale Chronicle I – The Red Vice – Chapter II

Chapter II: White Noise

The quiet does not last, and at first it is only a sound, low and electrical, threading through the dark like a nerve waking beneath skin, not loud or sharp but persistent enough to pull Angie back toward the surface of sleep as the air in the apartment grows heavier than it should, dense and pressurized like a storm building inside a sealed room.

The light above her mattress flickers once, then twice, and the hum deepens, stretching thinner and higher until it becomes something almost tonal, a frequency rather than a noise, vibrating through the metal frame of the bulb, through the cracked plaster of the ceiling, through the rusted pipes in the walls before it surges to life with a violent buzz that floods the room in pallid white. The bulb rattles in its socket, screaming with static like a live wire dragged slowly across bone, and Angie’s eyes snap open as her breath catches in her throat.

The room feels wrong, too bright and too flat, as if depth has been stripped away and the world pressed into a single plane, and when she tries to move she cannot, her limbs heavy, distant, unresponsive, not restrained and not paralyzed but delayed, as if her body is operating a fraction of a second behind her thoughts. Her ears ring as the hum begins to pulse, and she feels it in her jaw, in her teeth, behind her eyes, before she sees her.

The woman in white stands at the foot of the bed, still and upright, barefoot, her blonde hair damp and clinging to her jaw and neck in darkened strands while droplets cling to the ends as if she has just stepped from water, though nothing falls. A thin white dress hangs from her shoulders, spaghetti straps resting against pale skin, the fabric brushing her knees in front and trailing longer in the back, moving though there is no wind, not fluttering but drifting as if suspended in something thicker than air. She does not sway and she does not breathe, her arms hanging at her sides, her posture calm in a way that feels arranged, positioned, wrong.

Angie’s heart slams against her ribs as she tries to whisper no, but no sound comes.

The woman’s head tilts upward and her eyes lift, hollow and completely black, not shadowed and not blood-filled but empty, as if the light has been removed entirely and only absence remains. The hum fractures into static as Angie’s vision blurs and sharpens at once, the edges of the room vibrating while the walls stretch and contract in slow pulses, and for a moment the apartment peels away, the cracked plaster smoothing, the dirty floor whitening, the broken windows sealing as the space elongates into something white, clean, endless.

A chamber.

Angie’s chest tightens as something tugs at her sternum from the inside, a pressure that is not pain but extraction, forcing her breathing shallow as the woman’s skin begins to change. Small punctures bloom across her arms and torso, precise and evenly spaced, while dark lines spread beneath her skin and veins rise unnaturally. Thin beads of blood form at each puncture and then stop, not because the bleeding ends but because it is being redirected, and the sound of liquid moving fills the room, not splashing and not dripping but flowing, measured, collected, twisting Angie’s stomach.

The woman’s body lifts slowly, as if drawn upward by invisible lines threaded into her flesh, her toes leaving the floor, her arms drifting outward, her head tilting back to expose her throat and collarbone as her dress spreads gently around her hips as if suspended in fluid. Something brushes Angie’s wrists, cold and circular, like adhesive pads pressed firmly against her skin, and for a split second she sees it, not the woman but herself, her arms extended beneath white overhead light, steel framing above her, a ring of figures blurred by glare, before the vision snaps away.

The hum intensifies, vibrating through the mattress and into her spine in a way that feels invasive, like something listening from inside her, while the woman’s black eyes remain fixed forward, unblinking and unmoving. Her mouth opens, but no scream comes. Instead, Angie smells metal, warm and wet, copper and salt, as the woman’s jaw trembles as if something is trying to form but cannot escape, tightening Angie’s throat as she tries to inhale and finds the air thick and resistant.

Her vision fractures again into flashes of white tile, steel, and glass, a large cylindrical chamber below something suspended above it, clear liquid inside, fog clinging to the interior walls, thin tubes descending from above, gloved hands moving with calm precision, a flash of silver instruments, and a brief, horrifying glimpse of something lifted from a face. The woman’s body jerks once, sharp and unnatural, her limbs spreading wider before settling again as blood begins to rise along her skin, not falling but rising, drawn upward against gravity in thin red threads toward unseen points above.

Angie’s chest spasms and smoke pours from her mouth, thick and grey and chemical, tasting wrong and manufactured, burning her throat as if something foreign is being forced out of her lungs. She coughs violently, her chest convulsing as the smoke keeps coming, dragged out of her like something extracted, while the woman lowers slightly, her black eyes still locked on Angie, not accusing and not pleading, simply waiting.

One final image overlays everything, the woman suspended above dark, still water with a perfect circular opening below her, calm and waiting, before three sharp cracks split the air and the world snaps.

Angie bolts upright, gasping as her body catches up all at once, her hand flying beneath her pillow as her fingers lock around the pistol and she swings it toward the empty room. The light above her flickers weakly, then steadies, the hum gone, the apartment cracked and filthy again, the woman gone, and only silence remains.

Her hands shake and sweat slicks her skin as her lungs burn as if she truly inhaled smoke, and she scans the room, corners, doorway, windows, finding nothing. Her wrists ache faintly with a circular soreness beneath the skin, and she flexes her fingers until the sensation fades.

Then sound rises from far below the building, footsteps running, a door slamming, glass shattering, voices sharp and panicked shouting over one another, “Get it, get it, get it!” and “Who has the bag?” and “We gotta go!” Angie freezes as sirens wail in the distance, growing closer, too close, and her grip tightens on the gun as she forces her breathing steady, the noise below feeling disturbed, charged, like something has been uncovered.

She lowers the gun slowly and sinks back onto the mattress, her eyes locked on the ceiling as the bulb flickers once more and then steadies. Angie swallows, her chest aching in a way that does not feel new as the image lingers behind her eyes, the stillness, the blackness, the feeling of being drained instead of killed, and she does not know why it feels familiar or why her body reacted as if remembering instead of witnessing.

All she knows is that something in the white noise is not random, that it is reaching, and that somewhere in the static something is waiting for her to remember.

Enter Chapter III