"I'm what?" Aaron asked, still pressed up against the wall.

"You're incomplete," the creature replied. Blood dripped down his mouth like saliva. Aaron couldn't tell if it belonged to the Deadman or the last thing he ate.

"What do you mean he's incomplete?" Jade retorted. "He's not the one with most of his face missing."

Harry and Kyle snickered. Aaron, however, remained in his reserved position against the wall. The fragile Deadman smoothed his bony fingers against Aaron's cheek. They were cold and uncomfortable. It felt like a knife was being brushed across his face.

"You're not one of us," the creature said. "A part of you is still detached. It is still...living."

"I love all this irony going on," Kyle chimed in. "You say he's detached, yet your jawbone is practically holding on by a thread."

"Uh, Kyle," Harry said. "I think this is the part where we shut the hell up."

"What happened to you?" Aaron said, ignoring the others.

"We...need...flesh," the Deadman replied. He held up his decomposing hand and slowly flexed his fingers. His bones cracked with every movement. "Without it, we will fall apart."

"What is your name, sir?"

The creature remained quiet for a moment. "Call me Orwell."

"Orwell?" Aaron repeated. "Like the author of Animal Farm?"

"Lad, I've been trapped here for over eight years starving to death. Do you think I'd know or care about literature after everything we've been through?"

"Well, whatever you call yourself, what do you want with us?"

"I've been expecting company," Orwell replied. "In fact, we've all been expecting visitors. We're aware of how curious humans can be, even if their discoveries might kill them. Plus, I know that one." He pointed at Harry.

Aaron and the others turned to look at Harry. He had an amusing shocked look on his face, something Aaron would never expect a Deadman to do. He even formed a hilariously awkward grin, rotten teeth and everything. "Of course!" he said. "How could I forget about you, Orville?"

"Orwell," the Deadman corrected.

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"Stay here as long as you like," Orwell continued. "But be careful. Some of the others can't distinguish between living and dead. Hope that explains the bite marks everywhere."

Then he walked away, passing by several other Deadmen in similarly decrepit states. Meanwhile, Aaron and his arguably healthier-looking undead friends stood at the entrance to the room with the fusebox, watching in bewilderment as Orwell disappeared down the hall, small bits of his own flesh drifting off like snow

"You knew that guy, Harry?" Jade asked.

"I have absolutely no idea who that guy is," Harry replied. "And if I do, it was probably when he looked prettier."

"How do you guys not know him?" Aaron asked Jade and Kyle.

"I was the only one who woke up in this place, mate," Harry said. He placed one arm on Kyle's shoulder and used the other to take Jade's hand. "I didn't meet these guys until I fled to the Dead Center with Bloodletter. And that was the beginning of the ultimate post-mortem friendship."

"The day fate brought three weirdos together," Jade added with a smile.

Aaron slouched his head down. "I used to have that."

Jade's smile faded away. "Who are the special people in your life, Aaron?" she asked.

"Like you said, three weirdos. My best friend Jonah. Nika, the love of my tragically short life. And Natalya, Nika's twin sister who hates me with a passion. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm better friends with this other girl named Kat."

"You're friends with a cat?" Harry asked.

"No, you wanker. Kat is her nickname. Her real name is Katrina. Just like how you're Bloody Harry and Kyle is the Cavalier Corpse."

"Oh."

Jade walked over to Aaron and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Well, don't you worry, lad. We'll help you. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine."

"But my friends would try to kill you and me," Aaron replied. "We're both Deadmen, remember?"

"Well, if you want to be negative about it."

"You did your best, Jade," Kyle added, patting her on the shoulder.

"Thanks, love," Jade replied.

Aaron continued down the hall. Harry shortly followed after him, as did Jade and Kyle. It was quiet those first few minutes as they took in the morbid scenery. Corpses littered the floor. Blood painted the walls red. And many other Deadmen watched them pass by, each one looking weaker and more physically ruined than the last.

Yet as hideous as they were, not a single one of them looked threatening. In fact, they reminded Aaron of scared animals. They all glared at him and his friends with the kind of curiosity one would expect from a child, observing the details of a new encounter. Aaron couldn't help but feel sympathetic. He felt like he was walking through a Holocaust concentration camp, except that they were too late to save anyone. And the only survivors looked nothing like survivors.

"What could've caused them to like this?" Jade asked. "We've been wandering the Dead Zone for years, yet no one we know looks like these poor devils."

"Zero nutrition from a lack of uninfected flesh to eat," Harry replied. "Even after two years of being trapped here in this lab, the signs started showing. Many of the Deadmen were losing weight horrifically fast and some started eating each other. Turns out eating infected flesh doesn't help at all. Just starts more conflict and adds more bodies to the pile."

"What happens when you eat Deadman flesh?" Aaron asked. Jade and Kyle glanced at Harry, apparently unaware of the answer just as Aaron was.

"It's terrifying," Harry shuddered. "Y'know how you used to hear screeching instead of regular speech before you were infected? That's exactly what happens here. A Deadman who commits cannibalism somehow becomes even more feral, to the point even we can't communicate with them anymore."

"How many times has that happened?"

"My memory is a little hazy considering that was just a few weeks after I turned, but I can recall it happening nine times. Bloodletter killed all of them, though. That's when we started calling him the Man in the Red Mist."

Aaron stumbled upon another open door. Streaks of dry blood trailed across its wooden surface, and he and his friends nervously entered the room. The first thing he caught a glimpse of was a corpse leaning against the wall. Half of its skull was missing, instead caked on the walls behind its head like the remains of an exploded dye pack. What was left of the skull was heavily decayed. The eye socket was just a hollow hole, and the corpse's mouth was forever trapped in a shriek of pure terror, offering the others a perfect view of the gaps where its teeth used to be.

"Fucking hell," Jade said. "Poor lad's head was blasted clean in half."

Aaron looked down at the rest of the body. Most of the bones were visible through the withering flesh, but what caught his attention was the attire. The body wore a lab coat darkened as black as coal from a mixture of dust and blood along with a tattered skirt ripped apart in multiple places. One of the legs was missing, torn clean from beneath the knee. Right in the middle of the lab coat was a name tag labeled ARTEMIS.

"This 'poor lad' was actually a girl," Aaron replied, taking the name tag. "Artemis?"

"The rest of these bodies also have weird names," Kyle chimed in. He leaned down in front of another corpse, one with the entire top half of its skull splattered on the wall behind it. "This one was named Hera, looks like another lady. And that wanker on the floor without a face is Helios apparently."

"I like the Greek myth theme we've got going on here," Aaron chuckled darkly. "Did Bloodletter ever explain the reason behind that, Harry?"

"Not really," Harry replied, observing the bodies. "The first time we met, he kept calling me Atlas. I kept correcting him by telling him my name is Harry, but he just kinda ran off. And then there was that bloke I told you about earlier, Hermes. His real name was Archibald."

Aaron continued glaring at Artemis's name tag a little longer. His finger came in contact with a small button on the back of the tag. Once he clicked it, the name tag transformed into a new message. ABIGAIL MADDOX. "Her name is Abigail Maddox," Aaron said. "Click the button on the back of the name tag."

Harry grabbed the name tag from Hera's corpse and pressed the button. "Sabrina Smythe," he read.

"Listen, I know it's heartwarming of us to remember these poor bastards' names," Jade chimed in, "but shouldn't we focus on figuring out why they were killed in the first place?"

"Easy," Kyle replied. "Shotgun."

"What makes you say that?"

Kyle held up a grimy bullet shell. "Found it lodged in the wall behind the missing half of Artemis's head."

"I'm calling it. I bet they knew too much. Probably saw something they should've have seen."

Aaron walked out of the room into the hallway. He watched two extremely decayed Deadmen walk through the other end of the building before turning his view to the door beside the one he just exited. He pushed it open and was greeted by the sight of another corpse missing most of its skull. Now with multiple images of mutilated bodies burned into his brain, he collapsed to the floor and crawled to the nearest trash can.

"Whoa! Aaron, you okay, mate?" Harry shouted. He ran out of the other room to find his friend vomiting up his last meal.

Aaron coughed up a few more chunks before regaining control of his body. He pushed the can away from him and leaned against the wall. "Yeah, I'm fine," he replied in a raspy voice.

"What the hell is up with all the headless corpses?" Harry asked. He kneeled down over the new corpse, a male scientist with hardly any flesh left, and glared at his name tag. POSEIDON. Then he plucked it off the lab coat and pressed the button on the back. "Here lies Simon Reid," he said, "one of many victims of Missing Head Syndrome. I came up with that."

"Yeah, I can tell," Aaron groaned as he stumbled to get back up. "Could we just get back to exploring?"

"There's a box on that desk over there. Might have something useful."

Aaron pressed himself against the wall as he hoisted himself back up, borrowing Harry's soldier as support. He rubbed his head and stared toward the desk Harry was just talking about. Noticing several pictures scattered all over it, he walked over to it.

Each picture offered Aaron a quick glimpse into the past. Artemis and Hera were alive and admittedly beautiful, especially Artemis. Her flowing copper hair and spellbinding green eyes quickly caught his attention, especially her amiable smile that reminded him of Nika's. In fact, she was the only one smiling in her photo. All of her colleagues had blank, stoic faces in their pictures, focusing more on their project rather than expressing personalities.

Harry's mouth gaped open. "That's Artemis?!" he gasped. "She looks cute, especially since she actually has hair and eyeballs this time."

"I'm guessing you've got a way with the Deadman girls?" Aaron said sarcastically. 

"Nope," Harry replied. "Aside from Jade, pretty much all of them hate me. And there are some days where Jade can't stand me as well."

"He's right," Jade chimed in as she and Kyle approached the doorway, a smirk plastered on her face. "I never thought a zombie could be so adorable. Can't stand him."

"We're allowed to use the Z-word?" Harry said sheepishly.

Aaron briefly chuckled alongside the others before continuing to study the pictures. He caught a quick glimpse of Simon Reid, known as Poseidon in that facility. He was scrawny and young, almost Harry's age (or at least what he appeared to be, somewhere around his early twenties), and wore glasses. He had light brown hair similar to Aaron and had a smug look in his place that made him appear to be the kind of person who'd brag about their intellect. He then moved on to Walter Bennington, additionally known as Hades. He had black spiky hair and multiple small scars all over his face. He was extremely pale, and his eyes were cold and unsympathetic. It reminded Aaron of a portrait he once saw of the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy.

He moved the photo out of the way with the others. The next one, however, nearly made his heart stop.

It was Colonel Schaefer, in a lab coat, sporting his usual charismatic grin that distracted people from his suspiciously dark nature.

"What the..." Aaron muttered. "What is he doing here?"

Harry approached the desk beside Aaron. "So that's the Schaefer guy Bloodletter is always talking about?"

"I remember him saying he was here when the Deadmen broke out, but he didn't really elaborate much on his role in the situation."

Harry glanced over at the aforementioned mysterious box he saw earlier. "You think he might've been the main man?"

Aaron turned toward the same box. A digital voice recorder was placed on top of the box, luring the two toward it like a moth to a flame. Aaron looked closer at the box and found a message scrawled in marker around the edge. He felt confident he found the source of all of their problems.

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