Chapter 258
Another day, Josephine Wong took another visit into the buildings of Clearwater Municipal Hospital, just this time, she was entering from a different wing.
Before coming in, Josephine Wong did not expect to learn much from this visit. This was mostly because she didn’t hear much about anything different from anyone about its West Wing - not from her previous teams that got into it, and not from the team of “influencers” who can’t remember much if anything from their visit anyway. The main site of concern was still room 3-5-13, in which some kind of inhumane paranormality related experiments were done.
Yet, when Josephine Wong set foot in the West Wing of the hospital, something already felt different - and not because of there being more dark energy here or the difference in energy signature or quality manifested by it; instead, it was because there was hardly any noticeable traces of dark energy in the air, when compared to the North Wing.
For any other normal place, this would be a really good sign, as it would be an indication that there was almost no dark energy at all. But for a place that was heavily contaminated and even was made of pure dark energy, it was a terrible sign - because it indicated that the dark energy was concentrated and solidified, that every little portion of it escaped into the air and space around.
Josephine Wong took a look at a broken window nearby, and instantly caught something wrong with the reflection - the reflection was abnormally bright, and she saw a vague shadowy figure standing behind her.
Josephine Wong stood where she was and thought for a short moment - she remembered something said by the “influencers” on their broken and chaotic footage while they were in the West Wing, thinking they were live streaming but in fact their recordings never made it onto the internet and were only stored on their devices as temporary files that would have been deleted if not for the team from the Division making copies of them after the rescue operation.
She took out a small stone tablet from her pocket and started infusing her power into it - it was a simple note taking artifact, where she could record her notes just by using a small amount of effort, without her having to write or speak. And with just a small touch, she recorded some notes about the reflections in the windows.
Gently rubbing on the bracelet from Jianmen with one hand, Josephine Wong tapped her forehead with fingers from the other, her eyes lit up in a silvery purple light, while the power of the bracelet concealed the escape energy released from the spell.
This was a complicated version of the True Sight Spell, which would grant her the ability to see past deep illusions and powerful obscuration spells, without causing the observed entities to be on alert about being probed into. It was a spell still with room for improvement, because it was a mash of several different spells and with stealth casting taken as a priority, yet it still required the caster to use extra concealing spells to obscure its energy signature. What was more, was that this spell tended to reveal too much detail and not enough of the general picture - it was a common flaw amongst true sight spells - it was like looking at a person through their nostrils and pores, but not through their facial structure, height and body shape.
Under the effects of the spell, Josephine Wong was able to see a totally different picture from what it appeared on the surface: shadows of people seemed to be lurking, wandering and banging their heads on various things in the reflections on the windows in the hallway. These “reflections” did not have their real-life sources, and were like as if something was projecting video footage onto their respective reflecting surface.
The walls, pillars and floor seemed to be vibrating and shaking and squirming, with small “waves” rippling through the surface.
There was a watermark up on the ceiling right in front of Josephine Wong, and it was dripping some kind of clear but thick and sticky liquid onto the ground. Whenever a droplet of liquid hit the ground, some kind of low and faint cry was raised and sent through the air.
When Josephine Wong got close to a window that was the least broken, she saw that all the shadows of people seemed to be wearing some sort of restraining clothing, some were wearing straight jackets, and some were even chained to a wall with hands and thighs all tied up and mouth covered and could only walk around. These shadows seemed to be locked inside of some rooms with padded walls.
As she looked closer, some of the shadows in the “reflection” seemed to have noticed the presence of Josephine Wong somehow, and they rushed to the position of the “camera” and acted like they were trying to yell at whoever’s watching them or at least to gain the attention of the observer. Their eyes were hollowed out, their teeth all gone, and their faces were covered with cracks and scars.
This immediately made Josephine Wong back off - though she was unclear how those shadows sensed her, where they were or who they were, it was a really bad idea to draw any sort of attention to herself at this moment.
She stayed where she was for a short moment to make sure her actions did not awaken anything in this hospital, and when she felt certain that she was safe, she took down some more notes and floated to the staircase, heading towards the upper floors.
The first thing she saw when she floated to the second floor, with her True Sight Spell still active, was the shadow of a young girl sitting on the corner of a hallway with her back facing Josephine Wong, playing with something.
As Josephine Wong carefully and slowly floated over, she noticed that the second floor was quite messy, unlike the first floor, with dirty shoes, blankets, pieces of paper, broken coffee mugs and broken and discarded medical tools and supplies on the ground.
The young girl was playing some kind of tiny wooden sticks - she was rubbing heads of the sticks against a small box, and watched them burst into flames.
She was playing with matches.