Read Novel Full Chapter 212: Mark Addams
Chapter 212: Mark Addams
A moment earlier
The instant Maria and Diane stepped into the lift, the lights flickered violently before going out altogether.
The floor shook beneath their feet, the metal walls groaning as if the cables had snapped, and Maria instinctively grabbed the railing.
Something was wrong and she could feel it crawling up her spine even before the lift finally steadied itself.
When the lights came back on, her breath caught.
Diane was gone.
"Diane...?" Maria whispered, her voice small and unsteady as she spun around.
Panic surged as her eyes scanned every corner of the lift, searching for any sign of her.
"Diane?! Where are you?!"
There was no answer. The space felt weird as if Diane had never been there at all, as though the lift itself had separated them and dropped them into different places.
DING.
The doors slid open, revealing a long hallway bathed in red light. Maria stepped out slowly, her grip tightening around her gun as her pulse raced.
"Diane!" she shouted again, her voice echoing uselessly down the corridor. "Answer me!"
Two figures emerged from the red haze ahead of her. They wore security uniforms, rifles resting in their hands, their name tags catching the dull light.
Despite the weapons, they showed no hostility and did not raise them or even shift their stance.
They spoke at the same time, their voices flat and identical.
"The doctor has been waiting for you."
Maria scoffed, lifting her gun higher as her finger tightened on the trigger. "Right. And you think I’m just going to walk along with that?"
"Please follow us without resistance," they continued calmly. "We mean no harm."
She laughed bitterly and fired.
The bullets tore through them with full force, flesh bursting apart as blood splattered against the walls.
Their bodies collapsed, torn and broken, but Maria barely had time to register it before something happened.
Bones twisted back into place, muscle crawled and reformed, and torn flesh sealed itself as if it had never been damaged at all.
Within seconds, they were standing again, completely unfazed.
They didn’t attack her. They didn’t even react. They simply repeated the same words over and over, their voices never changing.
Maria slowly lowered her gun, her jaw tightening as realization set in. Shooting them was pointless.
She forced herself to steady her breathing and narrowed her eyes, focusing past what she was being shown.
The moment she did, the scene shifted. The guards dissolved into shapeless lumps of meat barely holding together, and the hallway lost its unnatural look, becoming plain and empty, nothing like the sterile hallway she saw the first time she entered the red zone.
Everything she had seen before had been a lie.
Slow clapping echoed behind her.
Maria turned sharply, gun raised again, and saw an old man sitting in a wheelchair. Behind him, a grotesque mass of flesh moved on its own, pushing him forward as if it were alive.
The man’s smile was relaxed, amused, as though he had been watching a performance.
"I knew you could see through illusions. But to this extent? That’s impressive."
His gaze sharpened slightly. "Even Seamus struggled or perhaps he didn’t and only tried to deceive me. He seemed to be able to surprise everyone."
Maria kept her gun trained on him, refusing to lower it. "Who are you?"
"Mark Adams," the man replied. "Though your friends know me as Mark Latros."
Her expression hardened. "Latros."
"Why don’t we speak somewhere more comfortable? A drink, perhaps. You look tense."
"No," Maria shot back without hesitation. "You’re wasting my time. Show me where my friends are, or I’ll fight my way through."
"You wanted to defeat me?" He laughed openly, the sound echoing through the hallway.
"You know that’s impossible, right? The only thing you truly have are those precious eyes."
"You don’t know me." Maria refused to step back, even though a part of her knew he was right.
"Oh, I do." His smile widened, unsettling in its calm.
"I know far more than you think. The moment you entered the Red Zone, I already knew everything you’ve been through."
His voice dropped, turning eerily soft. "Those eyes you carry were born from watching your parents die. The way you blamed yourself for surviving. The things you never said out loud."
Maria froze. Her breath caught in her throat as his smile turned triumphant, like someone who had finally found the last piece of a puzzle.
"So stop wasting your strength," he continued. "Come with me, and I’ll show you where your friend is."
The lump of flesh rotated the wheelchair smoothly, turning toward the corridor. Maria hesitated only a second before following, her grip tight around her gun.
The two masses behind them dragged themselves forward as well. She knew this might be a trap, but letting him walk freely felt worse, so she raised her weapon and fired at the lump pushing him.
The creature reacted instantly, swelling and hardening as it wrapped itself around Mark, absorbing the impact completely. The bullets did nothing. Mark didn’t even flinch.
He glanced back at her calmly. "If you kill me, you do realize your friends will die too, don’t you?"
Her eyes widened, confusion mixing with anger, but before she could demand an answer, the floor beneath her moved.
Thick, wet tentacles burst upward, wrapping tightly around her wrists and ankles. Maria struggled, her teeth clenched, but it was useless.
Unlike the others, she had no combat skill. Her strength had always been in her eyes, in seeing what others could not.
"Let go of me!" she shouted. "What do you mean they’ll die if you die?! What are you planning?!"
He sighed lightly. "You’re very impatient. I told you already. We’ll talk properly, over tea."
Moments later, Maria found herself strapped to a chair inside a sterile room. A massive glass window stretched across the wall in front of her, and beyond it she could see everything.
Diane was fighting desperately, their movements frantic and strained, and even with Seamus there, she could tell how close she was to being overwhelmed.
She slammed against the restraints uselessly. "Let them go!"
Mark rolled closer to the window, watching as if it were a performance. "You see, this domain is just a stage. Your friends must clear it themselves."
His lips curved faintly. "Though that boy, Seamus, always insists on breaking the entire set."
"Why..." Maria’s voice shook despite her effort to stay composed. "Why did you do all of this?"
He looked almost disappointed. "You still don’t understand?"
He shook his head slowly. "I am the leader of Caduceus. My entire life has been dedicated to researching vampires. Their origins, their strengths, their weaknesses."
His eyes followed the scene behind the glass as if lost in memory. "At some point, research became an obsession."
The room around them faded as his voice continued, and the scene in front of him shifted into a long time ago.