After stripping myself of makeup and throwing on a sweat and jeans, I headed down to the medical wing. The others understood why I was so adamant that Kuza wasn't left alone. Not all of them have experienced this demon but that doesn't matter. We're a family. We stay by each other's sides and we believe each other. Even if one of us is spinning insane stories about demonic beings, we still give one another the benefit of the doubt.

When I reached Kuza's room, I saw he was asleep. Angelo was sat in the large window with his legs crossed. He had his notebook over his knee and pen in hand. His crystal eyes met mine as I stopped in the doorway.

"Where's Chris?" I asked.

"His phone died, so he went back to his room to get a charger." He replied.

"Oh, okay. I'm going to stay here for the rest of the night if you'd like to go get some sleep." I said.

"I'll wait for Chris to get back here. I think we'll go get some food before we turn in."

I took a seat in my normal chair. Kuza looked so peaceful. They pulled his breathing tube out this afternoon since he was breathing on his own just fine. That's good progress. I mean, he's not going to be jumping out of bed any minute to go eat someone, but he's also not dying anymore. He's stabilized. Hopefully he'll be talking again soon. And when he does start to talk, I hope what comes out of his mouth is that he remembers me.

"What're you drawing?" I asked, just trying to talk about a happy subject for once.

Angelo tilted his notebook towards me. It was a rose with a spiderweb on the stem. "I like to draw spiderwebs because they remind me of Chris for some reason."

"Maybe it's because he has them tattooed all over him." I replied.

He got a small grin as he pushed his hair behind his ear. "Maybe. Or maybe it's because they're a lot alike. They're so beautiful and complicated and just... Amazing, but people are afraid to go near them."

"Especially women." I muttered, earning a laugh from him. Angelo had a beautiful laugh. One of those ones that makes you want to smile without even thinking about it. "How's he doing after... everything?" I asked.

"Surprisingly well. He never told me exactly what his dream was about. I think he was scared to say it out out. I have a pretty good feeling about what it was about though..." He glanced down, mumbling, "I know his biggest fear in life."

I was about to ask, but we heard a sudden scream from down the hall. Angelo's head snapped up. He disregarded everything in his hands and rushed out the door. I began to follow but remembered I couldn't leave Kuza alone. It was Chris' scream. I've only heard him scream like that once before. That night at the cabin, when we got caught, and they shot him with a dart... Hearing him scream like that again made that memory come back. It was scarily vivid.

Chris was on the ground in the hall outside. His back was against the wall. I could just barely see him and Angelo from the doorway of the hospital room. Chris was in a lot of pain though. I could easily hear him screaming. Not all of it made sense. Of what did scared me though.

"Shh, Baby, Baby." Angelo frantically tried to get him to calm down, "It's okay. I'm here. Baby, it's okay. Just breathe. Shhh, shhh."

He shook his head repetitively with tears rushing down his face, "I saw it... It..." Chris turned his head to the side, closing his eyes tightly. The words he said next were so quiet. Yet, I somehow heard them from here. He whispered, "Ange... I smell death."

Angelo glanced up at me across the hall. He didn't even know what to say. What exactly do you say to that? He didn't know that I've heard those words before, out of Kuza's mouth. When he was full of cuts and we had to bring him to Ryan's lab for medical attention, he told me that. A few seconds later a dead body was wheeled past us. He knew when someone had died.

One of the monitors from another room started to go off like crazy. The nurses began to rush down the hall to help a seizing patient. That much chaos was stressing Chris out. He grabbed his head, rocking himself a bit. If I leave this room for just two seconds, I'm sure Kuza will be fine. I've got to take the chance. We have to get Chris into a quiet place and Angelo can't support his weight on his own.

I rushed across the hall as fast as I could. Angelo helped me stand Chris up. He could barely walk. It was just like when Kuza got fucked up by that thing. We helped Chris back into the hospital room, setting him in that chair in the corner. I closed the door to cut down on some of the noise. Giving him that peace and quiet really meant a lot.

"It's okay, Baby." Angelo softly told him, "I'm right here and I'm not going to leave you."

"Lift up his shirt." I said.

He glanced over at me, "What?"

"Just trust me." I replied.

He really had no other choice than to listen to me. We have no clue what we're fighting here but I've at least got a little bit of experience. Angelo carefully pushed Chris' sweater up his chest. He turned his head away for a moment out of shock. I stepped closer, seeing those same cuts beginning to form that Kuza had before. They had yet to open as far as his did and they weren't black yet. At least we're catching this early enough.

"I'm going to text Ryan and tell him to come get you two. I'm sure the treatment he used on Mike will help Chris too, and we did catch it a lot earlier." I typed away on my phone, then slipping it in my back pocket. With a sigh, I slowly opened the door, "I'll be right back."

Why does this thing suddenly want to attack Chris? Maybe now that it's incapacitated Kuza, it figures it doesn't need to focus it's energy on him anymore. Chris is not the most powerful one of us though. Why would it bother trying to pick off the weaker ones? I don't understand it. The energy this thing has is potent. That's why I knew it was best to figure out who it was that just cored.

I followed the buzz of monitors. They were flat lined and the nurse was reading the time of death when I reached the room. I knew the three that were still alive from before were on this floor. As I saw the face of the patient, I realized it was now down to two. Those four didn't exactly seem that evil or that powerful. Did it need to get rid of them because they saw too much? Fuck if I know. I have no idea anymore.

Ryan is a fast son of a bitch for someone with a bad leg. He got down to the medical wing within five minutes. It's adjacent to his lab but that's still fucking fast. The second he saw the cuts on Chris' chest he was obviously alarmed. Ryan decided to take the two of them back to his lab so he could monitor them throughout their treatment.

Once they were gone, I could finally relax a little bit. When shit hits the fan, it really hits the fan. Everything just exploded at once. After about ten minutes of just resting my eyes, I began to settle in. Normally I'll read or work on my laptop while I'm here. I was going to do that, but then I realized Angelo had left his notebook. It's his private drawings... But fuck it, I can't help myself from looking.

He's almost filled out the entire thing. I flipped through the pages, seeing he was mostly making drawings that incorporated spiderwebs. He drew a lot of horror characters too. His artwork was similar to american traditional tattoos. Those are the kind of tats he used to do when he was a tattoo artist. It was because of that fact that I was a little taken back to see a very realistic drawing towards the back. It was... Horrific. And that's coming from me.

The reason it terrified me was because I had seen some of this before. Only a very small bit, but you don't forget it. I barely got to reach that realization before my eyes were taken off the page. Kuza started to wake up. How he slept through all the shit before, I don't know. When you're that sick, it's probably easy to sleep through a building crashing down. I closed the notebook and set it back on the window.

As I got up and approached his bed, I spoke just above a whisper, "Hi, Baby." I gently slipped my hand into his.

He squeezed my fingers and managed to say something very slowly, "Hi..."

A smile beamed across my face. It might've been just one word but he spoke. I haven't heard him speak in over a week. It was driving me crazy. This was a good sign though. It meant his brain was healing at a good pace. Hell, it just meant his brain was healing. We got extremely lucky that he's pulling through this.

"Does your head hurt?" I asked.

"Uh-huh." He groaned.

It was hard to hear because he could just barely make out words. I was still happy about it though.

"Do you want the nurse to give you some more pain medicine?"

His eyes slipped closed again. He was too tired to keep them open. "Yeah..." He muttered.

"Okay." I reached up to the buttons above his bed and hit the one that called the nurse in. "She should be in in a minute."

I had to get the nurse anyways to tell her Kuza was talking. She'd go get the doctor and he'd pry at the poor thing for awhile. I didn't want that for him but I can't do anything about it. They have to do their jobs. As much as I wanted to ask him a million questions, the doctors warned me against over-stimulating his mind. The only thing that can truly help him is silence and sleep. I know he has function and feeling in his hand. Other than that, we have yet to know if he's been paralyzed anywhere. The only way we will know is over time. It's just a waiting game now.

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A/N: Double updating just bc I forgot to tell you guys that I posted a new story called The Black River. It's Kuzaless, Sitkolson, & Ghauro. Please spam the comments so I know how you guys like it!