I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 71: Saint Hilarius Hospital (3)

The darkness at the bottom of "Purgatory" was not merely the absence of light—it was a living entity, breathing, watching, waiting for the right moment to swallow you whole.

I was lying on my back atop a rusted metal grating, the viscous water coating it soaking into my heavy clothes.

A faint buzzing—like the dying hum of a giant insect—emanated from broken fluorescent lights dangling from an unseen ceiling, washing the long corridor in a sickly, pale, nightmarish green glow.

I raised my hand very slowly, my head throbbing from the impact of the shattered elevator cabin that had torn apart and thrown us down here. I touched my face.

My fingers met pale human skin—cold, soaked in blood and filth.

I hadn’t worn my black plastic mask since I entered the FBI.

I had come in with my real face. The face of "Kyle Valtier." A young man with sharp features, skin devoid of any living warmth, and crimson eyes that glowed in the green darkness like two drops of pure blood falling into a sea of poison.

As for the "Black Joker" mask—that fractured theatrical face representing half my identity—I hadn’t lost it.

It resided safely within a spacetime pocket of my consciousness, floating in my sea of dark Etra, slowly repairing and reassembling its shattered pieces, destined to become whole again one day.

But now, I didn’t need it as a piece of plastic.

I had become the mask.

I sat up slowly, ignoring the dizziness crushing my skull.

Two meters away, Eva Blackwood was leaning against the twisted wreckage of the steel elevator wall.

She was breathing heavily, clutching her bleeding head. Her sniper rifle, Piercing Shadow—the weapon she took pride in, the extension of her very soul—lay beside her, its barrel split clean in half from the force of the crash, reduced to nothing more than useless scrap metal.

Eva lifted her black eyes toward me in the dim green light.

There was no shock of revelation in her gaze.

She already knew that the pitiful recruit who used to cry and hide behind her back was nothing more than the nightmare that once tore through her insides in that dark warehouse—the same "Black Joker" who made the underworld tremble.

But that prior knowledge did nothing to lessen the fear and revulsion in her eyes now.

To be trapped in absolute darkness, isolated from the rest of the squad, at the bottom of a horrifying slaughterhouse—with me as the only one standing beside her...

That was a nightmare within a nightmare for her.

She drew her secondary tactical sidearm with a trembling hand, but didn’t point it at me directly—she kept it in her lap, gripping it so tightly her knuckles turned white.

"Don’t you dare... don’t you dare come near me, you monster," Eva whispered, her voice hoarse, torn between hatred and absolute certainty.

"Don’t think that falling here together means I’ve forgotten what you are. If I had a choice, I’d rather fall with a Volider demon than breathe the same air as you."

I stood up slowly, ignoring her burning hatred.

I brushed dust and blood off my torn black coat and adjusted its collar with cold precision—nothing like the "recruit Kyle."

"Save your hatred for what’s coming, Eva," I said in my natural voice—rough, deep—echoing through the metal corridor like a warning from the grave.

"I am the Joker, yes. And I’m the one who tore you apart. But I’m also your only chance to get out of this damned Purgatory alive. There’s no Valicera here to protect you, no Damian to shield you. You’re with me now. And if you want to survive—so you can come back and kill me later... we move."

"I don’t need your protection!" Eva snapped in a restrained hysteria, her eyes watering from rage and physical pain.

"You do," I stepped toward her.

She recoiled instinctively, her back pressing against the warped metal.

"Look around you, elite sniper. Look carefully at what Alexander Vance is protecting. Do you really think your hatred for me is your biggest problem right now?"

Slowly, Eva turned her gaze away from me—and looked at the corridor we had fallen into.

It had no walls.

It was a narrow metal walkway, stretching endlessly into the nightmarish green darkness.

On both sides of the walkway, hundreds—no, thousands—of hexagonal cages hung from the unseen ceiling by rusted chains.

The cages swayed slowly, emitting a nerve-shredding creak.

And inside them...

Was the horror that breaks the human mind.

Humans.

Or what remained of their humanity.

They were naked, their emaciated bodies covered in purple and green bruises. Transparent plastic tubes pierced their veins—not to feed them, but to inject a chemical fluid that kept their hearts beating, denying them the only mercy left: death.

But the true horror was their faces.

Their eyelids were gone.

Completely removed, with rough, cauterized edges to prevent bleeding and decay.

Their white, bulging, bloodshot eyes stared into nothingness—forced to witness this hell every second, unable to blink, unable to close the curtain of mercy over their suffering.

Their lips were sewn shut with thick metallic thread, preventing screams, allowing only muffled, collective groans—a continuous hum like a swarm of bees—vibrating through the air of the entire level like a cursed chant performed for sadistic gods.

Eva’s pistol slipped from her hand, clattering onto the metal grating.

She collapsed to her knees, covering her mouth to stifle a scream of pure terror that nearly tore her throat apart and shattered the military discipline that had grown accustomed to clean kills.

"Oh God... God of the heavens..." Eva began sobbing silently, her body trembling violently.

"These are... people... the missing... children... young ones... they’re here... hanging like cuts of meat in a damned purgatory... why? What is the purpose of this hell?!"

"This is B1. The sorting chambers. Purgatory," I said coldly, drawing my twin black magnums, my crimson eyes scanning the darkness.

"Here, they strip them of identity and keep them alive by force—preparing their bodies before their turn comes to descend into the blood farms below... or the dissection labs, where they’ll become abominations. This is the hell we came to invade, Eva."

I walked toward her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

She flinched as if burned, but I grabbed her by the collar of her tactical jacket and pulled her to her feet.

"No time to cry, Eva. Crying here is an invitation to dinner," I whispered firmly into her ear, pushing her forward.

"Pick up your gun and your knife. If we get separated—you die before you can scream."

Eva swallowed, wiping the blood from her forehead.

The survival instinct of an elite finally awakened. She bent down, picked up her pistol, gripping it with both trembling hands.

We began walking along the narrow metal path.

Our footsteps echoed over the grating like the drums of execution. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Below us was absolute darkness—we had no idea how deep the abyss was that swallowed fallen cages.

On both sides, those forcibly opened eyes watched us in despair, silently begging us to end their lives.

But the charged silence didn’t last long.