The Chapel Within: Chapter I: The Fourth Ring

Sebastian Castellanos doesn’t answer unknown numbers anymore.

The phone rings three times on the kitchen table before he looks at it. He’s got coffee going stale in a mug, a cigarette he hasn’t lit sitting between two fingers, and rain tapping at the window like it wants to be let in. The house is quiet. Too quiet, maybe, but quiet is better than screaming. Quiet is better than alarms and sirens and the wet sound of something dragging itself across tile.

He watches the number flash again. No name. No city. Blocked routing. That means trouble, and trouble has never had the decency to call during business hours.

Sebastian picks up on the fourth ring. “Yeah.”

For a second, there’s only static. Then Kidman’s voice comes through, low and tight. “Sebastian.”

He closes his eyes. “No.”

“You haven’t heard what I’m calling about.”

“I heard your voice. That’s enough.”

There’s a pause on the other end. He can picture her face, calm because she makes herself calm, not because she feels it. “A Murkoff facility went dark twelve hours ago. Officially, it’s a psychiatric hospital. Unofficially, they’ve been sitting on stolen Mobius research since Union collapsed.”

The cigarette stops halfway to his mouth. He looks at the rain instead of the room, because the room is too normal for what she just said. Normal table. Normal chair. Normal coffee. Normal life, if he squints hard enough and lies to himself.

“Murkoff,” he says. “That’s not Mobius.”

“No. But they bought pieces. Files, hardware, maybe personnel. We don’t know how much.”

Sebastian gives a dry laugh that has no humor in it. “That’s comforting.”

“I found your name in one of the leaked documents.”

That does it. The cigarette goes into the ashtray unsmoked. Sebastian leans back in his chair and rubs a hand over his face. His beard is rough against his palm. He’s tired down to the bone, and no amount of half-assed sleep helps. Beacon had taught him that people could turn hell into a hallway. Union had taught him they could do it again with better funding. Now someone else had apparently found the blueprints and decided the world needed a third try.

“What did they want with me?” he asks.

“They classified you as a resistant variable.”

He stares at the table for a long moment. Then he says, “I hate scientists.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. I really hate scientists.”

Kidman exhales through her nose. “The facility is called St. Sybil’s. It’s in the mountains. The lower levels were built over an abandoned Mobius prototype site. The patients started calling it the Chapel.”

Sebastian looks toward the hallway. It’s dark past the kitchen light, ordinary dark, the kind that belongs in a house at night. Still, his hand shifts closer to the drawer where he keeps the gun. Old habits. Bad ones. Useful ones.

“What happened there?” he asks.

“We don’t know. Last transmission was corrupted. Security feeds showed patients loose, staff dead, and sections of the building that aren’t on any floor plan. Then the system started broadcasting one phrase on repeat.”

He waits.

Kidman says, “The Chapel is awake.”

Sebastian sits very still. Rain runs down the glass in thin, crooked lines. For a moment, he smells hospital disinfectant instead of old coffee. He hears a distant buzz from lights that aren’t there. His fingers flex once against the table, and then he stands.

“Send me the file,” he says.

“It's in your inbox.”

“Presumptuous.”

“Sebastian.”

He stops before hanging up.

Kidman’s voice softens, just a little. “You don’t have to go alone.”

He looks at the dark hallway again. Then at the rain. Then at the gun drawer. Simple choices, that’s what he understands. A door opens, someone screams, and you go in because nobody else will.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says. “I do.”