It was morning. Hummingbirds were chirping joyously just outside the building as if they had not been affected by the violent anarchy in the hospital. Well, of course, they hadn't been. The livelihood and mirthful atmosphere outside made a distinct contrast to Matthew's mood.

Matthew and Megan were able to make sure that they didn't fall asleep, thanks to fear of being endangered by an unknown stalker that Megan had spotted the previous night. This was unlike everyone else in the room, who didn't see anything because they had already fallen asleep.

"Good morning," Daniel greeted brightly as he got up and stretched. The atmosphere around him was contradictory to the dullness that Matthew and Megan possessed. "Is there something wrong?" he asked as he watched Matthew and Megan stare into space blankly.

Matthew turned over and looked at him while Megan continued to look out of the glass panel on the door. "Oh, you're up," he noticed as he snapped out his thoughtless spell. He pulled himself up from the cushy armchair, stretching his stiff limbs.

"Yeah, actually, we were up ten minutes ago," Daniel corrected before glancing over at the frosted shower glass. "Jean's freshening up right now."

"Well, I guess we should all get clean, shouldn't we," Matthew said as he began moving around the room to get himself active.

Meanwhile, Megan still lay motionless on her uncomfortable wooden chair. Unlike Matthew, she wasn't in a spell of mindlessness. She was in an episode of thought. Every second she stared out of the window, a thought ran through her mind.

The sight of the figure wavered before her eyes again. Peering through the glass pane and watching that eerie smile. Penetrating through the windows, the sunlight distorted Megan's memory a little, but every aspect of replaying her vision frightened the life out of her.

"Megan? Are you all right?" Daniel asked as he waved his hand in front of her face.

"Oh," Megan responded, breaking out of her spell after realising she was just recollecting. The vision faded away a little, with a monotonous cackle replaying in her mind, but the traumatising memory didn't vanish from her brain completely. "I was just... um... recalling something I saw yesterday, or at least I thought I saw."

"What did you see?" Daniel questioned.

Megan looked over at Matthew for a moment. She seemed hesitant to say a word about the incident, fearing that she might provide incorrect information. However, Matthew nodded his head, gesturing to her to tell Daniel despite the fact that she might be wrong. After all, it was better to be safe than sorry. And so, she turned back to face Daniel and began explaining.

"I thought I was seeing things since it was so dark," she started, her voice wavering slightly. She cleared her throat, gaining a little more confidence, before continuing. "But then the lights flickered on, and I could see short, combed blonde hair and a strange, menacing kind of smile on his face. It was as if he was... stalking us."

Daniel scratched his chin, attempting to process the information. "Well... if someone is tracking us down, we've got to find and confront them," he commented.

Matthew sat back down on his armchair after realising that walking around the room wasn't going to help him conserve any more energy. He finally contributed to the conversation, expressing his opinion and feelings about their situation.

"You know, I have this underlying feeling that there's something about this hospital that is abnormal," he spoke. "I'm beginning to feel that the hospital is linked to Yael. After all, the creatures seemed to have originated from here."

Daniel shook his head in dismay before dissenting. "But this hospital is owned and managed by Palmer East Corporation. Are you suggesting that they are in cahoots with Yael Technologies?"

Matthew stumbled for a moment. He couldn't wholly accuse Palmer's company for being in with Yael on this, but he couldn't prove his own idea wrong either. "I... I don't know. But listen. There's something I didn't tell you guys about. Something I saw in the elevator."

Megan pursed her lips. "What is it?" she asked after pausing for a few moments.

Matthew sighed before beginning to recall what he had seen on the lift buttons: the fifth-floor button and the key card scanner. "There was a button to get up to the fifth floor. It can't be pressed, though," he said. "I noticed a key card scanner beside the buttons, so I'm assuming that authorised access is required to go up there. And I think... I think there's something up on there that Palmer's company doesn't want the general public and the rest of the hospital staff to know about.

Megan gasped all of a sudden. Her teeth began to chatter violently, and her hands shook erratically. She stared at Matthew for a moment, muttering a fragment of her statement in repeat. She feared that what she was going to theorise would be a false alarm, but if it wasn't, she ought to tell them her thoughts.

Matthew angled his head to the side, trying to get a better glance at her face. He could see her lips quivering subtly and droplets of sweat rolling down her cheeks. He could tell that she wasn't just nervous but petrified.

"Megan? Are you okay?" Matthew asked, although she clearly wasn't. "You're trembling all over."

Megan didn't answer. She soon began shaking her head left and right. Matthew and Daniel couldn't interpret what was on her mind and had no choice but to try to calm them down. However, when Matthew tried to move Megan over to the armchair, she refused.

Instead, she turned and slid the ward door open, dashing out of the room frantically.

"Megan!" Matthew yelled as he instinctively began to chase after her hurriedly, leaving the room in a matter of seconds just as Megan had done.

"What's going on?" Jean said as soon as he stepped out of the bathroom, staring at the opened door.

Daniel sighed, pacing around restlessly. He didn't even understand why Megan had gone shaking violently all of a sudden, followed by running out of the room. "Megan went catatonic and all and just left the room after that. Matthew followed after her."

Meanwhile, Megan arrived at the stairwell located near the end of the west wing of the hospital. Matthew caught up to her soon after, panting as he looked at what Megan was focusing her gaze on. He stepped forward, getting a better view of it.

"T-t-the door is broken," Megan stuttered as she looked down at a fallen door at her feet as if it were bowing to her. She looked back up and stared up at the stairway. It was clear to the two of them that it led up to the fifth floor.

"I'll call Daniel over," Matthew informed before running back to their ward. After more frantic sprinting, he arrived back at the ward to see Daniel and Jean shuffling around the room, presumably waiting for the other two to come back to them. "I need you guys to take a look at this," Matthew instructed plainly.

Daniel turned to face Jean. He knew they couldn't leave the room unguarded, exposed to the other unknown dangers. He also knew that they couldn't risk all four of their lives, so he decided that someone should stay behind and guard the room. At the same time, they would be able to remain safe in the ward.

"Jean, I'll go with them. You should stay here and guard the room. Alert us if anything goes wrong," Daniel told Jean briefly before following Matthew and leaving the room. "Why did you call me over?" he questioned Matthew, running behind him.

"It's hard to explain right now," Matthew stated. "You should see it for yourself."

Soon enough, Matthew was back at the stairway with Megan, accompanied by Daniel this time. He gestured towards Daniel to have a look at the fallen stairway door. Daniel noticed that there was a key card scanner beside the stairway, just like the one that Matthew had described seeing earlier on in the elevator.

"Is this the way up to the fifth floor?" Daniel questioned, although it was fairly obvious that there could only be a fifth floor above the fourth.

Soon, the group began their trudge up to the unchartered dangers of the fifth floor.

Megan and Daniel both hesitated for a moment but followed behind Matthew after realising that they might be able to discover important information if they went up. After climbing the flight of stairs, they arrived at the fifth floor, only to see that there was another fallen door. The door fell inward towards the stairwell, which strengthened a theory that Megan had in mind.

Matthew stepped out of the stairway and walked out into the corridor. The fifth floor didn't seem very much different from the others, just that the wards were replaced by laboratories. Megan and Daniel soon got a glance at the labs for themselves. Daniel seemed thoroughly shocked, while Megan just nodded her head, acknowledging what was on the fifth floor.

Matthew began picking up his pace, after seeing that many of the rooms were empty. Suddenly, he stopped when he noticed a cloud of mist confined in one of the labs. He turned to look at it and saw what seemed to be laser pointers shining through the fog. The lasers were rather faint, however.

And just when Matthew had least expected, a creature emerged from the cloud of mist, pounding on the glass vigorously. The red lights that shone through the fog weren't from laser pointers with weak batteries or faulty mechanics.

They were coming from the creatures' eyes.

"My goodness," he retreated in shock. "Daniel, Megan, take a look at this," he called.

The two, who were busy inspecting the empty labs, quickly ran over to see what Matthew was calling them to see. They stopped and faced Matthew, with Megan raising an eyebrow.

"What?" Daniel asked.

"Look," Matthew directed as he pointed at the creature in the misty lab room.

The two looked through the glass and came face to face with the red-eyed beast. Daniel couldn't help but shake in fear while Megan began panting heavily.

"Calm down. It's contained within the lab," Matthew reassured.

"Well, that doesn't explain why the glass in one of the labs was broken," Megan commented as she recalled what she had seen in one of the labs earlier.

Matthew frowned. He was thoroughly confused. It didn't make sense that the hospital would store creatures in labs that weren't capable of handling them. Unless there was something else about the storing process that wasn't what Matthew had thought it to be...

Either way, he didn't know how to respond to Megan's question. He opened and closed his mouth constantly, trying to say something, but he couldn't. He didn't know what to say, nor did he feel he had to say anything. As such, he moved forward through the hallway, going on further.

Suddenly, something at the corner of Matthew's eye caught his attention. Something much more dreadful. He turned and saw that the glass of the laboratory was broken. An entire hole was torn through the thick glass. But that wasn't the most frightening and unsettling part about the lab.

Matthew focused his attention on the observatory room, separated from the test area by another layer of glass. The glass was broken, and in the room was a dead worker.

As he stared at the body, Matthew breathed shakily. On closer inspection, there were claw marks and possibly teeth marks on the body, hinting the worker was attacked and killed by a creature. It wasn't surprising, however, seeing how the monsters already overran the hospital.

He slid the door to the observation room open. He pinched his nose tightly to get rid of the pungent stench of the blood on the scientist and his decomposing body. He certainly didn't want to keep the awful smell in his nose.

He moved his attention away from the corpse and focused on some notes that were left on a desk in the room. Some were still attached to a clipboard, while others were left unorganised in messy piles of paper, many of which had fallen onto the floor. Dried blood stained the sheets of paper, covering some of the wording slightly.

Matthew focused on one of the worksheets which had caught his attention. At the top of the worksheet, the heading appeared as 'Abnormal Euclid Substance 128 (AES-128)', followed by 'Project Lazarus: Potential Cure for White Fever' as its subheading. Matthew moved down and found something that he had to inform his friends of.

"G-guys? Come take a look at this," Matthew alerted the group. As such, Megan and Daniel swiftly moved over and entered the room. Daniel gagged at first before pinching his nose to rid of the stench. Megan followed along, doing the same.

"Look at this worksheet. It supposedly has information on AES-128. Below is a list of records regarding the first test subjects that AES-128 was performed on," Matthew explained to them.

Daniel inched closer and squinted to see the tiny handwriting. The size of the text wasn't very ideal, but it didn't matter. The information on it might as well be considered of paramount importance. He then began reading aloud the records.

"'May 6, 2020. Testing on the Pace family is going well. We have recorded boosted immunity and strength. The youngest, George Pace, was absent, however.' Next entry, 'May 7, 2020. The substance has still been working well on the subjects. However, they have been experiencing drastic mood swings. George has still not shown up.' Now, the last entry." Daniel paused for a moment to read the entry for himself. He gulped nervously, seeing how unsettling the information was. It was just frightening enough to read aloud.

"'May 8, 2020.'," he began. "'George remains missing for this session of testing. Rachel is also not present due to work commitments. Penelope was allowed to leave after testing, but Perseus remains here for further observation. The subject is showing extreme signs of aggression. A fellow programme member has seemed to be "infected" by the spread of a virus through the blood. Preliminary tests show that a virus, Bipolar Meningoencephalitis Virus-2 (BMEV-2), is present in AES-128. It causes aggression (an "urge" to attack any uninfected subjects), pupil dilation and eye fluorescence. The subject seems to start enlarging and slightly resembles a boar-human hybrid. This'. That's it. A stain of blood follows after it."

Matthew then grabbed the paper from the dusty table. He looked at the bottom of the last page, which listed the enterprises and companies involved in the project. He focused on the primary organiser, sponsor and supplier. "The supplier is listed as Yael Technologies. I mean, it's obvious that they're involved, but there's a separate sponsor and organiser," he continued.

"Who are they?" Megan questioned.

Matthew hesitated for a moment. He couldn't believe what he was about to say. He couldn't even believe the information laid out in front of his eyes. Furthermore, his gaze shifted, and he noticed a thumb drive sitting at the corner of the desk.

However, there wasn't any time for him to dramatically announce the bad news or to pick up the thumb drive and inspect it carefully.

An ear-piercing bawl coming from the fourth floor ended their conversation instantly.