Mica walked around the kitchen, wondering why everything was so grotesque after discovering that even the food in the refrigerators had now become a disgusting mass of unrecognizable waste. At the same time, he searched for anything he could use to defend himself in case the false teachers managed to break into their makeshift bunker.
Because of its state of destruction, the science lab hadn't served as a hiding place for very long. It had only taken one of their pursuers peeking through the broken window for them to be spotted and their hunt to resume.
They didn't run for very long before Jacob came up with the idea of barricading themselves inside the kitchen, which was why they were there now. Mica was looking for utensils to defend himself, while Jacob blocked the metal doors with anything he could find. Only two minutes had passed before the creatures on the other side were already pounding against them, but the barricade seemed to be holding.
"I hope you know how to use the secret art of the ladle and the pot," Mica said, missing Hugo's humor at times like these. "It's all I could find. For some reason, all the knives have disappeared."
"I can imagine why," Jacob commented, glancing at the door. "At least we can hold out here until Cat breaks the bond and gets us out of the Dimension. There must be plenty of food."
"Yeah, about that... For some reason, everything has turned into garbage."
Jacob sighed and, after shrugging, took the ladle and pot lid Mica offered him.
"Why do you think this is still Cat's Dimension?"
"What else would it be?"
"I don't know, but I know Cat. There's no bigger scaredy-cat than her when it comes to ghosts and stuff like that. She can't even hear us talk about a horror movie without getting disturbed. I doubt she did all this herself."
"You know her well, huh?"
"We've been friends for a long time and... Yeah, I guess."
"Just friends?"
"What do you mean?"
The door began to rattle as though more creatures were joining the group outside.
"Come on, kid, it's obvious from a mile away. I can't promise I'll stop trying to win her over. Cat's an amazing girl, but I won't play dirty against you if you promise you'll make your move. Just some advice: stop fooling around with the other girl in front of Cat. It's in very poor taste."
"I'm not..."
"Come on, how old are you? Stop acting like a ten-year-old kid."
Mica turned red, though he couldn't tell whether it was more from embarrassment or anger.
"You're the one who acts like a kid. Acting all tough and criminal."
"There are things you don't understand, buddy. Besides..."
"Besides..." Mica interrupted him. "What are you doing talking about this right now? At any moment they'll break down that door and a dozen nightmare monsters will swarm us and tear us apart."
"So you'd rather spend the last few minutes of your life worrying and shitting your pants?"
"I'm not..."
A particularly powerful blow against the door caused one of the containers Jacob had added to his barricade to fall to the floor.
"Never mind, Mica. All I'm saying is that if you really like her, you should give it a shot."
"Are you going to keep going with that? Seriously?"
"It's just too damn funny watching you there, unable to decide whether to get angry or blush like a little kid," Jacob teased, bursting into laughter.
"I'm angry. Very angry. I don't think you should be making fun of me in this situation and..."
"Okay, calm down, buddy. Whatever you say. If you're embarrassed to talk about your feelings, that's fine. I don't care. It's not like I'm interested."
Fuming, Mica let the silence stretch for as long as possible, trying to focus on the door that wouldn't stop shaking under the impacts of the false teachers, who would manage to get inside at any moment.
"Do whatever you want, Jacob," he muttered suddenly. "It's not like she... Ugh, never mind. What we should be thinking about is how to get out of here and go help her. As long as we're still in this Dimension, it seems like she needs us."
"We can't do anything. If they knock down this barricade before Cat manages to do her part, we're dead men. So... why stress ourselves out more than necessary? I think I'd rather spend my possible last few minutes talking about nonsense than about exactly what's going to kill us."
Mica began to think about that, but his thoughts immediately returned to the threat behind the door when one of the steel shelves, a main part of the barricade, finally fell. The gap it left made it easy to see that the hinges on the right-hand door were about to give way.
He gripped the handle of his ladle tightly, hoping it would be enough, while knowing that it most likely wouldn't be.
"As soon as they get in, I'll distract them," Jacob said, changing his tone and ignoring his own earlier speech. "You run. We'll meet on the second floor. The girls should be there."
Mica nodded. He thought he should say something heroic, like that he would stay and fight alongside him, but it wasn't difficult to convince himself that Jacob's plan was the best one. He didn't know how to fight, not without being Swordsman, and having both of them die there wouldn't help Cat. Although it wasn't as if he could help her himself if she had to face something else on the second floor...
Listen to my voice. Accept who you are.
He turned to look at Jacob, but before he could ask him one more time if he was the one speaking, the right-hand door fell.
The first one to enter was the creature resembling a snake, framing the doorway with its dozen long, bony hands before climbing onto the ceiling, clinging to it like an insect. Following it came the false Anabel and three other false teachers.
Jacob lunged at them before Mica could even process what was happening.
Skillfully dodging the swipes coming from the ceiling, he approached the false Anabel and struck her with such force that the ladle bent against her head. She fell, and Jacob moved forward, holding the pot lid in front of himself and using it as a shield to knock down the next false teacher. In doing so, he created a domino effect that made the ones behind him lose their balance.
"What the fuck are you waiting for!?"
Mica finally reacted and, leaving his nerves behind, sprinted the distance separating him from the door, also dodging the snake's attempts to grab him before jumping past Jacob.
In the dining hall, two or three dozen false teachers were waiting for them, but they seemed so surprised that their vanguard had been overcome that Mica managed to flank them and escape at a run.
He ran down the deserted hallway as fast as his legs could carry him, trying to think of nothing but Cat. He soon reached the stairs, and when he went up to the second floor, Jacob caught up with him.
"Man, you're slow, huh?" he teased, breathing heavily.
Mica stared at him in surprise. He hadn't expected to see him again, much less so... alive.
"What, see a ghost?" the boy teased again.
"How?" was all Mica managed to say.
"Pretty much the same way you did... They're not exactly very smart. I only had to knock down a couple more and..." He stopped to groan and put a hand against his side. That was when Mica finally noticed his actual condition. Jacob had suffered several deep claw wounds, thin streams of blood flowing from the cuts, as well as two other large wounds that were difficult to make out beneath his soaked clothes: one on his left arm and the other on his right side.
"Are you okay?"
"Sorry to tell you this," Jacob began, taking some time to catch his breath. "But what a stupid question, buddy."
Mica stared at his wounds for a few more seconds, but the look Jacob gave him convinced him to ignore them and keep moving.
"When we find Rose, she'll be able to help you."
"It's Rose... Not Healer."
Mica knew that, but he had to say something to give him hope. No, to give himself hope.
It was strange. When he had left the dining hall, he had done so thinking he would never see Jacob again. Now that he had him at his side, badly wounded, he couldn't imagine letting anything happen to him.
They headed toward the music room. The girls weren't there. But only a couple of rooms farther on, they found evidence of a battle. Mica was relieved to see only green blood on the floor.
They continued onward, and shortly before reaching the stairs in that wing, they spotted the corpse of a huge head-shaped monster.
"Looks like they had it better than we did," Jacob joked, although by then he already seemed to be having as much trouble talking as walking. "Come on, they must have gone upstairs."
"You don't think they're on the rooftop, do you? If they made it this far, they should've thought about going down to the main entrance."
"Did you see them anywhere while we were running through the first floor?"
"No."
"Then the best-case scenario is that they're on the rooftop."
Hugo ran in front, striking anything that looked like it might be an enemy with his improvised weapon, a piece of wood tied to his right wrist. Tomás, meanwhile, kept watch to make sure they were leaving their pursuers behind. They hadn't encountered anything for several minutes now.
The demonic jailer with the flaming sword had turned out to be threatening, but slow. So they had been able to leave that nightmare behind without much effort. Then, after climbing several sections of stone stairs and reaching the first floor of the school, they encountered other monsters that only vaguely imitated the appearance of teachers and danced around a bonfire made of chairs and tables. But their strategy had been enough: avoid the ones they could and hit the ones they couldn't, clearing a path for themselves.
"The door!" Tomás exclaimed behind him, pointing ahead. "We made it!"
Hugo saw the school's main entrance and was surprised by the intense light shining through its glass panes. And although that light attracted him immensely, he stopped.
"What are you doing? We have to escape," Tomás protested, catching up with him.
"Not yet, my dude."
"What? Why not? We're so close."
Hugo looked at the light again. It conveyed safety, peace, but...
"It's suspicious, don't you think?"
"What? The light?" Tomás asked, catching his breath as best he could.
"Yeah. Everything else has been pitch-black. Every window we've seen has shown nothing but darkness on the other side. It's... kind of convenient."
"Yeah, I have to admit it, but... What else can we do? We have no choice but to try. Besides, I don't think any of these creatures would use a light like that to trap us."
"You're right, my dude," Hugo replied after thinking it over. "Although you can't tell me this doesn't look way too much like a video game..."
"The worst video game ever, in that case. Come on, Hugo, we can't let them catch us."
"And the others?"
The question fell over both boys like a bucket of ice water, concerned as they were about their friends.
"Well... I'd like to think they've already gotten out, but..."
"But what if they haven't? Exactly. Now that we know the exit is an option, we should go to..."
A growl interrupted Hugo, a terrible one, a familiar one. At the opposite end of the hallway, another light began competing with the one at the entrance, but this one was orange, its reflection dancing across the walls.
"We'd better get out. If we don't find anyone outside, we can come back in once that monster leaves," Tomás suggested.
"What about fighting?" Hugo asked. "We already beat it once."
As if they wanted to answer him, a dozen shrieks echoed down the hallway from the same direction the demonic jailer was coming from.
"All of them? Impossible."
Finally, the jailer revealed himself again as he crossed into the hallway. He brandished his flaming sword and ran toward them as fast as his short, thick legs could carry him. A dozen false teachers followed behind him.
Without thinking, Hugo assumed a fighting stance, gripping the piece of wood tightly, but Tomás grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the exit.
Hugo let himself be dragged along. It was the most logical choice, but he wanted to fight. He needed to fight. He thought of his brother and how he always stayed behind whenever he protected their mother... He couldn't lose anyone else because he was a coward.
But there was no point in letting himself get killed either.
When they stepped through the doors, they found themselves in the school courtyard. Not the nightmare version of it, but the real school courtyard, with the reddish sunlight of dusk and the smell of the wind, free of any trace of rot.
"We made it!" Tomás celebrated, but Hugo wasn't nearly as happy when he looked around and realized they were alone.
He angrily gripped the piece of wood that, strangely enough, was still tied to his hand and deliberately crossed the doorway again, but inside he found only the school hallway, deserted, ordinary, and mundane.
"Damn it!" he shouted, frustrated. "We abandoned them!"
"Hugo," his friend called from outside the school. "You have to see this."
Reluctantly, Hugo stepped back to see what Tomás was pointing at, and his anger once again turned into fear and concern when he saw half a dozen patrol cars parked haphazardly on the other side of the school courtyard.