The Night That Never Ends*

** Chapter 6: The Clone and the Prisoner **

*(POV AYMAN AL-SARAAVWI)*

The darkness of the cell was damp, stinking into dry blood and fear. Ayman al-saraavwi woke up with his face glued to the cold floor, wrists marked by scars of handcuffs. His ears still burst with the shouts that pursued him in the nightmares -*Molly's screams*. But something was different. The black liquid that Vorstaan had injected it for weeks ... I didn't burn anymore. His body was intact, human.

* "How…?"* He touched his own face, hoping to find tentacles or bones exposed. Nothing. Just meat.

It was then he heard.

*"Ayman!"**

Molly's voice echoed from the distant and distorted corridor, followed by a crash. * She is here.* Ayman dragged on to the cell door, her eyes adjusting to the weak red light of an emergency. On the opposite wall, a nail scratched message:

** "He created one of you. You are the real. Escape before the core wakes up." **

*A clone.*Ayman has now remembered-*"DNA collection"**Vorstaan sessions extracting his blood, hair, even bone fragments. The doctor had laughed as he did it: *"You are special, Ayman. Your body rejects the devouring… but your *clone *... He will be perfect." *

Molly's screams have become clearer. *She was fighting.*Ayman knocked on the door, and to her surprise, the lock gave way -*someone left her unlocked*. Narrow corridors wrapped around as intestines, illuminated by flashing lights. On the walls, pictures of your face in stages of transformation… *but it wasn't him *. It was the clone, his body falling into tentalules, the eyes replaced by black holes.

* "Molly, I'm here!"* He shouted, following the struggle sounds. An explosion shook the hospital, and the ceiling began to crumble. Ayman diverted his flame beams until he found the source of the screams:

In the central laboratory, Ayman's*clone***a monstrous parody of his body* - he was chained to a machine, vomiting black liquid while Vorstaan (or what remains of it, a mass of bright worms) monitored screens. And there it was Molly, stuck on a metallic device, his arm transformed into an organic blade that tried to reach the devourer's pulsating nucleus.

* "Stop, Molly! It's me, the real -"* ayman started, but Vorstaan interrupted him:

*"Too late, Ayman. She's already*infected*. But you… you resisted. So the clone was necessary."*

Molly turned her head, her green eyes recognizing Ayman for a moment. *"I ... I knew ... that you were not… he,"*she whispered, before screaming:*"Fug! The hospital goes -"*

An underground explosion interrupted it. The floor cracked, swallowing the clone and vorstaan. Ayman ran to Molly, but she pushed him away.

* "There is no time,"* She said, the monstrous arm holding the devourer's core, now cracking like a rotten egg. *"Take it."*She ripped a USB stick from her neck -*all the recordings, including those the clone did.*

The nucleus exploded in a wave of energy. Ayman was thrown against the wall, Molly disappearing in the vortex of flesh and light. He ran, following routes that had memorized during captivity -*the service tunnel, the generator room, the emergency exit*.

Anomalous pursued him, but they were slow, defining without the core. Ayman jumped from a broken window, rolled into the mud and ran to the surrounding forest. When Ravencroft Hospital exploded behind him, pieces of bones and cables fell like acid rain.

In the rubble, something moved-*Molly*, or what was left of it, dragging on into the smoke. His green eyes shone for a second before they disappeared.

Ayman, bloody but are, squeezed the pendrive in his hand. In it, a video message from Clone:

*"If you are seeing this, I failed. Vorstaan created*other hospitals*. They are alive. And Molly… she is still there. Find her. Destroy everything."*

While the camera turned off, Ayman swore he heard Molly's voice whispering between Statica's lines:

*"Search for*project Phoenix*."**

** End of Chapter 6. **

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** Note: ** This chapter redefines the narrative, revealing that "Ayman" seen earlier was a clone created to support the devourer, while the real one was kept as control. Ayman's escape opens a new arc: the search for Molly (now partially merged with the devourer) and the global network of hospitals linked to the Phoenix project, where new parasite nuclei are being cultivated.