Rumors of Dr. William Walter’s planned surgery spread throughout the hospital like a wildfire. It was the hottest topic among all the staff, with the best Doctors and Physicians lining up to see if they would be selected as a part of his groundbreaking procedure. Although everyone present feared the Director, the staff working at Hope’s Memorial were first and formally trained medical personnel, and to have a one in a lifetime opportunity to create a new life under the famed Dr. Walter was something that many could only dream about.

In any other year of operation at the hospital, the process of selecting the staff working under the Physician would have been a carefully screened process, but the current situation was anything but normal. With the huge influx of abnormal patients hitting the hospital all at once, every employee at Hope’s Memorial was swamped with work just trying to keep things in operation. There was precious little time left to interview for the position, much less showcase the various doctor’s fields of expertise.

Yet every single individual associated with the hospital knew just how important it was for Dr. Walter’s operation to succeed. Every staff member felt the squeeze the invaders have been asserting lately, and they all knew that it would only be a matter of time before something in their carefully crafted society would break. The Director herself, although formidable and more than a match for any one invader, was tied too closely with the Hospital. She could, at most, send out false bodies to help with communication and organization, but her powers would mostly be tied down.

Her daughter, on the other hand, was the perfect candidate if only they could stabilize her condition. Alice’s powers could easily eclipse the Director’s own if only she learned to control it, but that can only begin once her emotions were in check. The child’s lifetime of loneliness has stifled her growth, and it was only exacerbated by all the failed attempts at fixing this grudge.

Strangely, even though the Director had failed time and time again, and any physician or doctor understood just how difficult of a task it would be to create a being that Alice could truly call a friend, everyone at the hospital were still strangely optimistic about Dr. Walter’s chances. There was just something magnetic about the man and his impressive physique that made the people around him confident, and so, the race was on to provide the good doctor all the resources and supplies that he needed.

There was only one final day before the scheduled operation, and the only major obstacle left was to provide enough fresh resources for the doctor. Thankfully, or perhaps regrettably, getting those was the least of everyone’s worries.

“Dr. Walter!” one of the nurses stationed nearby said, “We have five more patients who made it out of the building!”

“God damn it!” the doctor cursed, “What are the Disciplinary staff doing?”

“They’re working on it. It’s a new batch with strange mutations again!” the nurse quickly explained, “One of them’s able to shrink the size of their compatriots, while another had the ability to briefly blind our staff.”

The number of mutations had exploded in recent days, and the staff were fighting an uphill battle trying to contain all the escape attempts. This kind of mass exodus was most likely staged by one member of the patient population, and it would only be a matter of time before that individual was found. But they had to weather the storm and contain as many patients as possible first.

“Where’s Alice and the other physicians?” Dr. Walter asked as he scrambled towards the door, “I can’t catch five by myself.”

“The young lady has managed to isolate three of them in the crypts and the other physicians not on other duties have secured the exits to the courtyard.”

“So it’s up to me to chase down the two stragglers, again.”

The nurse looked at the doctor in shame, “I apologize, sir, but you’re the only one who can communicate with the young lady’s doll. The two who have escaped have strange abilities that make tracking them the normal way very difficult.”

“Molly’s by reception like always?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright, I’ll go get them,” Dr. Walter sighed, “I swear I feel more like an animal wrangler than a physician these days.”

“I’m sorry, sir!”

“Not your fault, just make sure no one else gets out while I’m gone.”

The nurse almost saluted the doctor before he collected himself, “I’ll make sure to do so, sir! You can count on me!”

Dr. Walter nodded and bid the other staff members farewell. It would be another exhausting afternoon.

It had only been two and a half days since patient 755 escaped, but news about William’s need for fresh material must have made its way to the patients as well, because everyone seemed to be trying to leave the ward lately. Most don’t make it past the Disciplinary staff, especially after the Director increased security measures, but when there were hundreds of mutated patients versus a handful of staff, some sneaky individuals were bound to escape.

It had been William’s job, with the help of Alice and her doll, to catch the most tenacious ones who made it to the courtyards. Not a single soul managed to thwart capture when he was on duty, but many had managed to do just that when the doctor was busy with other concerns.

Dr. Walter grabbed his coat as he met up with the living doll near the entrance. This had been his fifth foray into the courtyard, and it was starting to wear down even his patience.

“Where’s the two stragglers?” he asked the doll.

It gestured incomprehensibly as it made its way atop the doctor’s head. No one else could understand what the creature was saying aside from the Director and her immediate family, but somehow William could. The staff had long since given up trying to understand the genius behind the man, and accepted that he could regularly do the impossible.

“Alright,” he answered the doll, “Let’s get this over with. I’m sure even Alice will get tired of hide and seek soon if this keeps up.”

The doll made more gestures.

“Fair point,” the doctor nodded in amusement, “But she’s still young, it’s best not to overdo things.”

The doll pointed towards a direction and waved its tiny hands.

“Right,” Dr. Walter said before turning around to grab a hat from the desk, “Almost forgot the hat; keeps the worst of the rain out of my hair. Let’s get the two idiots before I get the rest of me soaked again though.”

William was so acquainted with capturing stray patients at this point that his movements had become automatic. There was a formula that he could follow that would result in the quickest capture rates. First of all, the positions of each escapee was tracked by the doll so finding where the patients were posed very little challenge. The main issue was catching them once Dr. Walter closed in on their positions.

The best method, he found, was to sneak up on the unfortunate individuals by using the ever-present rain and gloom as cover. The doctor’s heavily augmented body made navigation in the poor weather a simple process, and he was very adept at sneaking despite his large size. After that, it was just a simple matter of allowing the doll to shoot one of its cursed darts at the victim and wait for the wound to do the majority of the work for him.

Of course, that was the best case scenario, and it was impossible to predict what would happen when each patient had such unique mutations. That was the case for this afternoon’s hunt. The doctor was able to easily sneak up on the unsuspecting duo, and the doll was even able to hit one of the two patients. However, this alerted the second one, and the female patient disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving the first victim squirming on the ground in pain.

The doll contained the escaped man and made some frustrating gestures before pointing at another location.

“Seems like short range teleportation then,” Dr. Walter muttered, “That’s going to be a pain in the ass to deal with. There should be some limits to her mutation though, otherwise there’s no way any one of us could feasibly catch her.”

The doll paused for a second before saying something else that only the doctor could understand.

“Shit, you’re right…” he answered, “And Alice is busy at the moment, right?”

The doll nodded.

“Damn, there’s no easy answer then. But wait…” Dr. Walter continued, “if what you’re saying is right, then how come the patient didn’t leave already? She could have easily gotten away before we even arrived. I’m willing to bet it’s because she doesn’t want to leave the people she escaped with behind.”

The doll thought for a moment before responding with a shake of its head.

“That is true,” the doctor answered, “But only certain patients disappear when one of them leaves; I think the files say that at most 4 others go, and they all would have been processed at the same time. What if the people she left with were not a part of that group?”

The doll nodded slowly, seeing the logic behind the doctor’s words. One of the most frustrating things that the hospital staff had learned to deal with over the years was how nebulous the patients under their care could be. If even one of them manages to leave the hospital’s property, many others, usually patients with adjacent designation numbers as the escapee, would mysteriously vanish along with them. That was why the Director was so keen on keeping security as up to date as possible.

The doll stopped for a second before relaying some information to William.

The doctor laughed, “I knew it! If she’s stopped now, then she’s hesitating between leaving her friend behind and escaping herself. We just need to incentivise her to stay. Tell me where she is, and we can use her new friend as bait. I have the perfect way to make him cooperate with us.”

The doll nodded and allowed the doctor some private time with the healing patient.

Dr. Walter looked at the man gently and smiled. Then, gently, as if speaking to an old friend, the doctor spoke, his voice containing an ethereal power to them that drilled deep into the man’s psyche.

“We’re here to help, Jaylynn, your friend Isabelle needs to see a doctor badly and she’ll die if we don’t get her treated, but she’s fighting against us.”

The patient looked at the doctor with glazed eyes, looking as if he was trying to fight off some foreign entity, but eventually he nodded slowly.

“Yes…” the patient mumbled, “Isabelle needs treatment. I need to help her… we promised to leave this place together.”

Dr. Walter nodded, “Good, can you help us catch her? All you need to do is stick this little dart in her without her knowing, and she’ll get the treatment she needs. Then she’ll get better again.”

The other man nodded slowly, his speech still slurred, “Yes doctor… I can do that. She will listen to me. She needs treatment.”

“That’s a good man!” William said with a smile, “Now just follow where the nice doll is pointing to, and you’ll meet up with her again. Remember, she’s avoiding treatment, so best not to alert her!”

“Yes, doctor…”

“Alright,” Dr. Walter said to the doll this time, “He’ll cooperate, at least for the time being. Just bring him close to the other patient’s path and let him do the rest. We’ll collect both of them once he’s done.”

The doll frowned and said something.

“Oh please,” the doctor replied with a laugh, “I’m the best physician in the world, do you honestly think I don’t have my ways of getting a patient to cooperate? The brain, and in turn, the mind, is like any other organ, it can be manipulated if you know what you’re doing.”

The doll slowly nodded its head but seemed to calm down, as if satisfied with the doctor’s claims. It climbed off the doctor’s head and sat on the patient’s shoulder, pointing to where the man needed to go.

It didn’t take long for both of the escaped patients to be brought into order after that, the poor woman never suspected that her friend would betray her like that, and the doll ensured that she could not use her abilities to flee a second time. However, although the doctor and his staff were able to contain this set of escape attempts, more were reported hourly, and Dr. Walter was kept busy until his shift was finally over.

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