Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been a normal morning in the beginning of October when a crisp white envelope with your first and last name written on it in neat cursive lay resting on the welcome mat in front of your door. It wasn’t unusual for you to receive such pristine mail but the lack of either stamp or sender may have made the letter ominously creepy to say the least. Taking it inside and placing it on the counter in the kitchen it lay forgotten for almost a week until a sleepless night had you obsessively cleaning the whole apartment like a wild tornado. You hesitated for a moment as you looked over the creepy envelope before opening it after cursing yourself for thinking a letter could be scary.

You pulled out the sheet of paper and placed the envelope back on your counter as you leaned back and unfolded the piece of paper. Words written in a familiar handwriting you hadn’t seen in a long time crossed the paper.

“In my restless dreams,
I see that town.

Silent Hill.

I promised I’d take you there
again someday.
But I never did.

Well I’m there now…
in your “special place”…
Waiting for you…”

It couldn’t be. There was no mistaking that handwriting but that didn’t make it any less impossible. You’d been there— at the funeral as they sunk his coffin six feet under. You’d visited his headstone and placed the white bouquet of lilies on the soil in front of it— there was no mistaking it. Brock Rumlow was dead. Your late fiance. He’d died at the hands of a robber, stabbed 7 times in the chest and left to bleed out in an alleyway until someone discovered his body at the crack of dawn.

You don’t remember much of that day except that you’d been the one who sent him out that night to grab your favorite ice cream since you were experiencing cravings. You had been three and half months pregnant when he died and the stress had caused you to lose not only your fiance but your baby too. You’d broke down, had the worst mental and physical breakdown the doctors had ever seen. You’d been sent to live with your older sister— no one trusted you to live by yourself. It took you almost two years for you to be able to move back into your old apartment and live a life of solitude.

But the question still remained— was this a joke? Or was it all just set up. You knew Brock worked in a military task branch, perhaps something had happened and he had to go undercover, you’d seen that happen many times in spy movies. People faking their own deaths to protect their loved ones. That had to be it right? He couldn’t be dead, he had to be alive. And he was waiting for you— in your special place in the town of Silent Hill. There was no way it could be anything else, no one except him knew of that special place. It was a getaway for just the two of you. A place of memories almost long forgotten.

Silent Hill was a town you knew like the back of your hand, you’d spent every summer and a little more there. It was a place where your grandmother lived, your best friend.
before your aunt had to move for work so instead of leaving you and your sister with your grandmother who was just getting older and older she took you with her to the city.

But that didn’t stop you from coming back. Every summer the two of you spent your time in Silent Hill with your grandmother whilst your aunt was busy working. You remember the park with all the roses along Toluca lake, the bowling alley where the three of you would eat your heart out on greasy pizzas, the Historical society where you’d look at all the creepy artifacts and pictures of all the old people.

And then the Brookhaven Hospital. When you had reached the age of 13 and your sister was starting her life as a young adult your grandmother had fallen ill. She’d been admitted to Brookhaven. Instead of summers filled with smells of rose water and cheesy pizza you’d spent the last two summers there smelling antiseptics and cotton sheets. The last summer you’d spent in Silent Hill your sister hadn’t come with you, she had instead worked the whole summer as you sat in that hospital and watched your grandmother wither away like a rose, and just like a rose— at the end of the summer she wilted. Lost all her petals and color, nothing more than a dry stem with no life.
You’d been there when she took her last breath, held her hand through it and refused to let go despite the doctors and nurses begging you to as they rolled her out of the room. The words she whispered to you still fresh in your mind— ❛You've always been my pride and joy, the only one who loved me unconditionally and wholeheartedly. You’ve given me so much, that’s why I want you to live for yourself now. Do what’s best for you. I want you to know, my darling. You made me happy.❜
The words had brought tears to your eyes, a suffocating feeling like someone clenching your heart between their fingers.

That was years ago, eleven years ago to be exact. That was the last weeks you’d spent in the town of Silent Hill, your grandma’s house and the home of your summer memories. You don’t remember much of what happened after that but later that year you met Brock and it only took a few months for the two of you to begin your relationship. Now Brock was there, in the place you’d told him about– in a special place that you can’t remember no matter how much you wring your mind to. No matter the authenticity you had to make sure if it’s real or not. Like a flash of wind you zoom around your apartment to look for your keys and your phone, making sure to take the key to your grandmother’s house and attaching it to your keychain. Your aunt had bought the place and handed out a key to you. You wanted to move there with Brock before you had your baby but after everything…It never happened.

You look towards the coat-rack, seeing the familiar military green jacket you’d gotten Brock on his twenty-third birthday. Picking it up you can still smell his cologne on the collar, it sends a chill down your spine and you shudder. You pull it over your shoulders and up your arms, stuffing the letter and your keys into the pockets– hands wringing around your key for a second as you stare out over your apartment, with a small sigh you left out the door. Leaving a piece of you behind.

In the hall you stumble into your neighbor, an old blind woman named Althea, who'd pleaded you to refer to her as Al. "Long time no see," she jokes with a smile, lifting her cane to tap the side of the handle to her large black sunglasses. You sigh and shake your head, a small smile threatening to pull at your lips. "Hello there, Al." She hums as she fumbles with her keys, you'd offer to help her but you knew that would only upset her. 'I'm blind goddammit, not incompetent!' she had shouted at you once for helping her pick up her cane before thwacking it against your leg. "You sound like you're in a rush." For being blind she was probably the most attentive person you'd ever met. "Uhm I'm going away for a few days.." You trail off leaving a pause as you try your best to come up with an excuse, around Al you always have to choose your words carefully. "On vacation, I'm gonna visit my grandma's old house."

She turns to you with a small smile, raising an eyebrow behind those large spectacles. "That sounds like a great plan, you've been a bit uptight for a while. Some fresh air will do you good." She speaks as she unlocks her door, pulling down the handle to her door and opening it slowly. "Take care, ya hear! Don't go fooling around with any mountain men, unless they plan to marry ya!" She cackles before stepping into her apartment and closing the door behind her, you hear the lock turn and you puff out a breath of air.

You shake your head, that old hag never missed a chance to tease. Despite that she’s extremely loyal and a good friend, even if she had a habit of whacking you with that damn cane of hers. You step out of the apartment complex and make your way towards the parking lot on the left side of the building, you find the old pontiac easily amidst the newer fresher cars. Brock had passed down to you after his death, his old classic car that had seen better days. You didn’t bother taking care of it as well as Brock had, back when you’d met he said the only thing he’d die for was that car. Another thing that outlived him.

You’d put car fresheners the moment he’d die, tired of the car smelling like him– you didn’t know why but it awoke a strange feeling in you so you’d rather the car smell like cheap fake watermelon candy than him. It was the trauma of his sudden passing, your therapist said but a gnawing feeling at the back of your mind said that something else was amiss. Enough counseling had taught you to let things go and not hold on to however way your brain decided to grieve.

Driving out of the city was a hassle, other cars passing you by and honking– it was loud. Sometimes you wished you hadn’t stayed in the city at all, there was no meaning here anymore. Your sister, your aunt, they had all figured out pretty quickly that living in a big city wasn’t all that it was made up to be. Your sister settled down with her then boyfriend in a smaller town thirty minutes away from the city in a big house with a large backyard and even a small barn in the corner of the yard. Your aunt had moved there as well, a ten minute walk from her place– so she could be closer to your sister’s children.

You hadn’t told them about the letter or your plans of going to Silent Hill, they were probably too busy to care anyways. Too much going on in their lives, your sister and her five children and not to mention two dogs on top of that. Your aunt was busy with her firm and babysitting the kids whenever she could. You weren’t mad at your sister but it was hard watching her live out the dream you always wanted– one you weren’t sure was ever possible now. So you stopped calling her, only talking once the call of the monthly checkup came around but the topic was always about you and how your progress was looking– That was all.

The city road and high buildings quickly changed to tall forests and green trees. You drive silently for what feels like hours, the trees growing with each passing hour. When your eyes start feeling heavy you see it– the familiar sign you remember passing all those summers ago.

“Welcome to Silent Hill”

Chapter Text

The sign you'd passed by so many times looked almost intimidating with the fog surrounding it, the lamps lighting up the words in an ominous way. You pull into the parking lot of the observation deck, maybe a quick bathroom stop wouldn’t hurt. As you walk into the women’s bathroom stalls you notice a strange smell and the messy floors. This place hadn’t been cleaned in a while. You quickly wiped off the toilet and did your business before washing your hands. Your own reflection catches your eye– your eyes heavy with darkened bags underneath them and your skin paler than usual. You hadn’t gotten much sleep, driving the whole night and only stopping to buy a coffee and an energy drink once.

You make your way out of the bathroom area and look out at the water, Toluca lake. You remember fishing there once with your grandpa in his dingy old boat, you caught a pretty big fish but refused to touch the icky slimy thing. He’d laughed at you and given you a pat on the back.

Despite the melancholy memories, the lake shone in the morning light– it looked peaceful, pretty even. The fog was light across the surface of the lake, you could almost see the dark silhouettes of the fish underneath the surface. You walk back to your car, grabbing the map you’d brought before closing and locking it up.

The entrance to the town seemed to be blocked by some construction wall, strange. However you knew of another way around through the forest and the graveyard. The scenic route it is then!

As you walk along the path leading to the cemetery you hear water from a nearby stream. Fog had started to grow and the closer you got the quieter it became, no more chirping birds could be heard. The church in the graveyard was old and the brick had started to chip away, the graves overgrown with vines and moss, cracks and pieces of them were missing but you could still somehow make out the names engraved on them.

The gate creaked as you pushed it open and entered the cemetery, the fog was so thick now you could barely make out the way in front of you, with a gust it seemed to clear ever so slightly and a shape of a person could be seen hovering over a tombstone. You approached the figure and cleared your throat, “Uhm excuse me?” You spoke lightly and the figure turned its head. A young boy that looked to be a teenager with brown fluffy hair met your gaze, his big brown eyes framed by dark bruising of bags underneath. “Hm, yes?” He spoke softly and quietly, his words almost blown away by the wind. “I’m looking for my fiancé, dark hair and green eyes?” The boy pondered for a moment before shaking his head. “Haven’t seen anyone fitting that description. Haven’t really seen anyone around here..” his words die out on his tongue.

You frown before nodding, taking a step to continue on your way before he speaks again. “If you’re heading into town you should be careful. Something strange is going on here.” You raise an eyebrow at him and tilt your head, “Strange how?”

“The fog, the figures. I’m not sure but it’s not right.” He turns to the grave and zones out for a second. “I’m Peter, I’m also looking for someone. My uncle,” he says and looks back over at you, there's something like a haze in his eyes. You tell him your name and he nods slowly before taking a step away from you. “I have to find my uncle, he’s around here somewhere,” he speaks before walking towards the church. The fog grows heavy and Peter’s figure dissolves into the fog—his footsteps growing further and further away.

You walk down the path, passing by a farm and a car repair shop that looks abandoned, you push through the gate leading into the city and continue down the road. The fog is thick and everything looks abandoned and overgrown, like no one had been here in years. Strange, you’d never seen the town like this, the times you’d spent here people had been all over the streets greeting each other and making their way across the walkway.

Maybe people had moved on when the season changed, perhaps they’d gone back to the city before winter came along. Still an eerie feeling hangs around the air.

Entering the town made it even worse. Cars were parked on the street but no one was around, stores locked and from the displays in the window dust had settled a while ago. You hadn’t stumbled on a single soul as you traversed down the main road. It seems the fog grows heavier the further you get, you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you now.

This side of Silent Hill wasn’t one you were much used to, you’d mostly been in the east side of the town.

You pull up your map after running into two more of those large sheet covered walls, the only way you hadn’t gone was Lindsey street so you make your way down and further into the town. On your left side you see a bunch of dirty rundown looking houses and another large wall. The fog suddenly grows unbearably thick and you hear a gurgling noise up ahead and see the faint outline of a figure wobbling into the fog and down the street.

“Hello?” you call out and follow the figure. As you run down the road you notice red splotches on the concrete, almost like blood had been spilled and dried out. Continuing forward you see that the road has caved in leaving a large gap and you can’t see the bottom of the hole. “What the hell happened here?” you backtrack and follow the trail of blood between two houses. The mud sticks to your white sneakers as you walk through it. You run through the backyard and into another through a gap in the fence. Another gurgle fills the air and the gate leading back to the streets swing roughly on its hinges. More blood. A louder gurgle like someone is choking on water.

The blood trail leads to a garage through a small gap. “Oh fuck no,” you mutter as you peek through the hole and into the darkness. “´Fuck it,” you get down on your stomach and crawl through the hole with a small groan. "Ah!" you yelp as the ground underneath your feet stutters. “Great, another goddamn gap,” you squeeze through the gap in the brick wall and you find yourself in a bedroom. It looks just as rundown as the outside, the wind blows through the cracked window making a chill run down your spine. You exit the room and hear a small buzzing noise.

You follow the noise and it leads you to what looks like a small radio device. It crackles in your hands and the static grows. You turn your head and watch in absolute shock as a figure rises from across the room, it has no arms and no face. It wobbles on its legs, bare feet slapping against the ground. A rumbled gurgle escapes it as it wobbles its way towards you, you turn your head and grab a hold of a wooden plank from the widow and pull it loose, holding it like a bat. “What the fuck.”

It comes towards you and you dodge to the left, the creature hits the wall and you slam the piece of wood hard into its back. It spins around and launches again but before it can reach you you raise the wood and with all your strength you wack it across what looks like its head.

It falls to the ground, the gurgling dying out. You hit it again just to be sure, yeah you’ve seen zombie land. Rule #2 Double tap. “What the hell are you?” you poke at it with your plank and shudder. Standing up you basically run out of the house and lean against the wall, trying to make sense of this fucked up situation. As you're catching your breath your radio starts to stutter.

You pull it out and that's when you hear it. “He–y– com–e to–” The voice is too choppy to hear what they’re trying to say. You hear half of your name being said before the radio goes silent. You put it back in your pocket with a sigh and walk back into the street. A few meters up you see a body lying on the ground, human-like covered in some type of goop, obscuring their face. You see a glint on the ground and reach for it, a stain covered matchbook that reads Neely’s bar. You pull up your map and make a mental note to go there. A few meters away you find a bloody letter.
“IF YOU’RE READING THIS, LEAVE! THIS PLACE IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS. SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LOOK BEHIND.” You flip the paper and raise an eyebrow as the words ‘RUN AWAY’ are scribbled multiple times across it.

You make your way to the bar, trying most of the doors you find on your way but they all seem to be locked, the handle won’t even turn most of the time. Inside the bar you could smell old wood and cheap whiskey, the red carpet stained and the dust on the shelves told you this place hadn’t been touched in a long time. You find a note on the side of the bar-counter. It gives you another clue as to where to go, the jukebox had something lodged in it and you had to go to Apartment 9 down the street by the pharmacy and the record store called Groovy. You walk towards the jukebox and notice the newspaper covering the windows of the bar, someone had written something on it. “THERE WAS A HOLE HERE, IT’S GONE NOW.”

You pull the sheet covering the jukebox off and notice the broken record and one of the buttons missing on it, you take the record and the holder slams back into the stack and fires off a spark of electricity making you take a step back. The note said to find the other piece of the record and mayhaps the missing button.
A wild goose chase was not what you came here for but whatever.
You decide to go to the apartment first to check up on the mysterious man.

The pharmacy was locked tight but the door next to it reading 16 was not, you made your way inside and started looking for the right number on the doors.You find the key to an apartment 5 after finding yourself inside the reception area and a note that read something about a leak in said apartment. You pick up the key nonetheless, never knowing if it’ll come in handy. You walk up the stairs and hear something skitter across the floorboards, your radio starts to make noise again and the grip on your plank tightens.

Whilst trying to open apartment door 7 you hear the skitter grow closer and the radio static grow louder, looking down at the ground you notice a BIG bug crawl its way towards you. “Ew!” it looked like a cockroach fused with a beetle and you quickly slammed your plank into it, shattering it into a thousand small pieces. “First armless monsters and now big bugs! Yuck!”

Just your luck, the way to the apartment you needed to reach had collapsed leaving a huge array of planks and pieces of wood in your way. You unlock apartment 5 that’s just a few doors down and enter it, a gap in the wall takes you to apartment 6 and as you squeeze through it you hear loud thumping on the floor above you. You reach the third floor via the fire escape, it creeks as you jump through an open window and falls off its hinges, hanging in the air. There goes the way back. You find an ominous book that has most words obscured by what looks like dried blood, as you take another step you jump as you hear a sharp inhale that isn’t your own.

In the bathroom you find a hole in the wall that you stick your hand into, let’s not talk about it. You pull out a button with the number two on it that looks to fit the jukebox you found earlier.

Trying to open the door beside the bathroom you find the chain on the other side attached and as you pull your hand away you notice it’s covered in something dark and sticky. Next thing you know you find yourself on the roof with a ladder leading back down to the street.

Now to the record store. You follow the map straight down the road and inside the store you find another one of those armless monsters and half of a record and some glue.

Back in the bar you take out the glue and put the record back together, you let it dry for a bit before trying your best to get the button back in its place. You pull the lever and place the record back on the holder, it slides into the pile on number 2 in blue. You push the buttons and nothing happens, realizing you don’t have any coins on you. “Well fuck.”

The doors to the bar are pushed open, you spin around and watch as a man steps through. He has a gun raised in his hands as he takes in the place before his eyes settle on you, he points his gun and you raise your hands. “Woah! Man, relax.” His eyes shift to the plank in your raised hands and lowers the gun ever so slightly. “Are you real? Or just another figment of my imaginations.” He speaks gruffly, taking a step closer to you. “I’m just as real as those monsters outside,” you say and he lowers his gun completely. “You see them too?” he asks as he crosses the bar to approach you and you nod your head. You take in his appearance.
Brown hair pulled into a bun, blue eyes that seem just as circled with darkness as your own, lips chapped and an unmaintained stubble on his cheeks and chin. “I thought I was going crazy, that I’d somehow died and ended up in this hellhole.”

You tilt your head and watch as he places his gun back into the holster on his thigh. He seemed too equipped to be in a place like this, or maybe just enough equipped. A similar jacket to the one you’re wearing but his was a darker green, a pair of black pants with two pockets on each leg, one on the upper thigh and one on the side of his knees. Combat boots tied neatly and a holster for his handgun and another one that looked like a little pouch on the other side of his hips.You notice the insignia on his jacket, it looked like something from the military but could just be a fake copy. “If you’re crazy I must be crazy too.” You look back at the jukebox and purse your lips. “I'm Bucky. I’m here looking for someone…” He trails off looking towards the bar area. Your head snaps back towards him, raising your eyebrows in confusion, you tell him your name. “I.. I’m also looking for someone actually. It seems like this place is some kind of gathering of missing and or lost people.” You hum out, you turn your body towards the jukebox and it catches Bucky’s attention. “Wow! Is that a jukebox, haven’t seen one of those in a while,” he walks up to it with a small smile.

“I’m trying to get it to work but I need some sort of coin, which I don’t have.” Bucky hums and reaches inside his inner pocket pulling out a small silver object. “Like this?” He holds it up between his thumb and pointer finger. A coin with the words ‘Bar’ and ‘Neely’s’ is written on it. “I found it a few blocks away, that's why I came here actually. Thought it would be a good place to start. Must be fate then.” He speaks before pushing the coin into the slot, you walk up and press the blue C button and the number 2 and watch as the holder picks up the record you’d repaired not too long ago.

A familiar tune starts to play on the jukebox. A tune you’d long forgotten, the sound of piano fills the silence and you feel your eyes starting to tear up. You played this song for your grandmother all the time when you visited her, it was the reason you wanted to play the piano in the first place. Why did you ever stop? You can’t remember “This-this is ‘Moonlight Sonata’.” You hear Bucky whisper out beside you, breaking you away from your own mind. You look up at him and take in the similar expressions across his face, his eyes glassy. “He played this song for a school show, said it was Beethoven’s best piece.” He mutters to himself quietly.

A memory flickers inside your mind, a day many years ago when you played this song for your grandmother and she loved it so much she took you to Rosewater park to watch the swans. The record flickers and the song becomes obscured before sparks start to fly and the record breaks into pieces, the silence greets you once again. A strange key falls from the jukebox and you pick it up, it looks like the symbol on the locked door behind the bar-counter. “That was intense,” Bucky says as he follows you towards the door, the key fits perfectly in the lock and you open the door. The front door is locked and the only way out seems to be through a window that's way too high to reach. “I got this,” Bucky pushes a cart in front of the window and steps up on it. “I’ll go first and make sure it’s safe,” he climbs through the window and you can hear his feet land on the other side. A few seconds pass before he tells you it’s clear. You make your way through the window and Bucky's helps you to the ground. “There’s a note here, something about a green car with a 6 on the plate. We should check it out.” You two make your way outside again. You find the car and there seems to be some sort of energy drink inside it that Bucky pockets, ‘just in case’.

The two of you stumble through an open door and find a bloody jacket on the ground, you look towards Bucky who sighs before lifting the sleeve up and finding a key. “Wood side apartments,” he reads out the note on the key and pockets it. A slam makes you both jump before the air is filled with gurgle sounds and radio static. Three creatures have stumbled through the gate, Bucky draws his gun and you raise your plank. One lunges at you and Bucky pushes you to the side before firing a few rounds into it, you slam your plank into one that’s crawling across the ground. Bucky shoots the last one in the side making it stumble before you run up to it and slam your plank into its leg, it falls on the ground with a loud gurgle and Bucky finishes it life with a last bullet to the head. The static stop, you wipe your brow and heave out a sigh. “Not bad,” Bucky says before reloading his gun. You rest the plank on your shoulder with a small smirk. “I can handle myself just fine, thanks.” You say before pulling out your map, he peers at the map from behind your shoulders. “It’s not far.” On the street you notice the wind pick up like crazy, it almost hurts the way the wind hits your cheeks. “Come on, let’s hurry!” The two of you sprint down the street, avoiding the monsters that stumble around in the wind. The apartment complex comes into view and Bucky quickly shoves the key into the lock and throws the doors open, ushering you inside.

The double doors slam shut with a heavy bang, leaving the two of you in darkness.

Chapter Text

You stumbled into Bucky in the darkness, he yelps as you step on his foot. "Ow?" You huff out a breath with a small glare in your eyes that he can't see. "I'm sorry but if you didn't know I can't see in the dark!" As the words echo inside the empty halls a light flickers at the top of the stairs, the reception light comes on and both of you take a step back in fright. "Okay that was freaky," Bucky says as he grips your elbow.

You two make your way to the now lit reception and walk through the door, inside you find another small room connected to the one you’re in. It seemed to be some type of break room, in the corner you notice something big covered by a sheet. You point towards it and Bucky moves to remove the sheet– a weird looking cupboard with a beautiful design of a tree and the sun and the moon– hole-like slots were placed underneath the drawings.

“Three bright coins, three actors in play, and under the tree, the Maiden dared lay. And behind the Maiden, where she would not know, with no one nearby, a flower would grow. And then came the Man, so gallant and fine, in the pale moonlight did his golden eyes shine.” Bucky reads out the text above the coin shaped holes. “We’re looking for more coins, lucky for you, I seem to be an expert at finding those,” he smiles cheekily at you and nudges your arm. You find a map inside the reception and grab it quickly before the two of you leave. The left side of the hall was locked by a metal gate and the only way to go was up the stairs to the next floor. As you traverse the steps and reach the second floor you hear a loud noise that makes you jump and Bucky stops in his tracks in front of you. “What the hell was that?” You whisper out as you grab the back of his jacket. “Hello? Anyone there?” He calls out into the silence but no one replies. “Must be the wind..”He trails off with an unsure look on his face. “If the wind was an elephant maybe! That was loud!” You push on his back and he keeps moving and you follow behind. You enter the second floor hall and the doors to your left are locked tight, the hall is dark except for the open door at the end of the hall that emits a white light.

“Oh fuck that, if that doesn’t look like your typical horror flick I don’t know what does,” you swear out as you watch the ominous sight. Bucky nods his head at your statement. The two of you start walking towards the door and more loud noises, like someone dragging a chair across the floor mixed with banging, fills the air. You enter the room and almost jump out of your skin at the sight of the white mannequin in the doorway. “Shit!” You and Bucky swear at the same time, the room is filled with mannequins and the light seems to be coming from further into the room. You approach it and notice it’s attached to a headless mannequin wearing a dark blue sweatshirt with a red symbol on it that reminds you of a snake. Familiar, your brain feels like it’s being squeezed inside your head for a second as you stare at the clothes. “Hey, you okay?” a hand is placed on your shoulder and you meet Bucky’s blue eyes, his eyebrows are scrunched up. “Uh yeah, just a little tired.”

As you look away from the mannequin you see another headless mannequin lunging towards you. You pull Bucky out of the way and the both of you stumble into the couch. The creature recovers and gets down on all fours, getting ready to pounce again but is quickly shut down by a bullet to the foot, Bucky grabs your plank and kills the monster with one single powerful hit. The two of you look at the dead creature and Bucky sighs loudly. “Great another fucked up monster in this fucked up place.” He hands you back your plank and walks over to the other mannequin.

He takes the flashlight and places it in the chest pocket of his jacket, he grabs something else from the vanity before making his way towards you. He holds up the item and it’s a key to the courtyard chute. You make your way back down the stairs and past the reception to the other side of the building and out the newly unlocked courtyard. The fog falls across the ground like clouds and the courtyard looks empty of monsters. You decide to try the door up the stairs but it doesn’t budge, you hear a whistle and turn. Bucky had pushed a cart in front of an open window. “Great, more window crawling,” You huff as you approach him. “Ladies first?” He bows at you and you cross your arms. “You wish, up you go.” He climbs up on the cart and puts one leg through the window before he turns and offers you his hand. You take it and he helps you up on the cart and through the window, as you take in the room you notice he still hadn’t let go of your hand.

The loud static from your radio breaks the two of you apart. You walk through the room and towards the front door, he pushes it open carefully and the two of you exit. Skittering of a damn bug can be heard and you sigh as you watch the thing approach you. “It’s just a bug,” you say and Bucky grimaces as he stomps his foot on it. “Gross.” You watch as the underside of his boots gets covered in bug guts. Bleh. You make your way down the narrow hall, a few locked doors later you stumble upon a dropped gate, through the light on Bucky’s torch you notice a key on the ground and Bucky gets down on his knee to reach for it. Just as his fingers grace the key it’s kicked out of view. “What the hell!” You exclaim and watch as a child laughs and stomps her foot on Bucky’s hand. He pulls it back and shakes it from the pain and she runs down the hall and around a corner. “What is a kid doing in a place like this?” You mutter as the two of you unlock the door that leads back to the courtyard. “I don’t know but whoever her parents are– they must be batshit crazy,” Bucky speaks as the two of you make your way back towards the reception area.

You hear more laughter as you enter the building again, the door leading to the right wing was wide open, the kid must have come through here. You hear static again and the two of you enter an open door. In the room you find a wardrobe with two hands for handles, one is holding something and as you twist it, it drops the item and the doors slide open revealing a white wedding dress. Bucky picks up the dropped item and turns it in his hand, it looks like a golden apple. Down the hall you find yourself on the other side of the metal gate, you pick up the key the little girl kicked away and Bucky enters the door behind you leading into apartment 107. You follow him in and inside the room you find drawings on the walls, some made with crayons in the shape of bunnies, suns and flowers. Must have been the kid that did this. “Isn’t she quite the artist,” Bucky mutters as the two of you make your way back outside the hallway.

An armless creature has stumbled out of one of the locked rooms and Bucky wastes no time at all to shoot it down. You enter the room and find a note that says to deliver something to Mrs. Milley in room 102. Before you exit you start opening the cabinets in the kitchen, you pull open a drawer and find some handgun ammo. “Hey, Bucky.” You call out and he turns towards you, you throw the box of ammo and he catches it swiftly. “Thanks,” He smiles and puts them in the pouch on his hip. Passing by the reception the two of you notice that the metal gate on the left side has been opened.

An armless creature can be seen stumbling around down the long hallway through the dim stream of the flashlight. You decide to leave that area alone for now and walk up the stairs to find double doors you can now unlock that leads to the rest of the rooms. It takes you down another hallway with locked doors and broken windows either covered by planks or taped plastic. From one of the windows you can see the pool area, the pool itself looks devoid of water but you see something red standing in the middle of it. Further down the hall is another locked door and the hall continues to the right. Your radio starts to go off as you walk down the dark hallway.

You and Bucky gasp as you see a big creature behind a metal gate. It’s taller than the both of you and has a large mask covering its face, it wraps around its head and you can’t tell where the mask ends and the flesh begins. The mask looks like a warped skull, and you swear you can see a piece of bone sticking out of its neck. It’s wearing a bloody black cloth that’s ripped at some places and heavy boots stained in rust colors. You can feel it staring into your soul– but it doesn’t move, it stands completely still behind the gate. “What is that..” Bucky reaches for his gun but you place your hand over his. “It can’t get us from here, let’s not waste our ammo.”

You both walk back, still facing the creature as you find an open door and quickly disappear into it. Bucky rummages through some of the drawers in the kitchen whilst you take a look around the room. Inside you find another gap that takes you to a hallway. There’s a door with a padlock on it and a construction note that informs that the third floor is under renovation. Down the hall you find an open door with a red shopping cart, in the cart there’s a handgun. “Have you ever shot one of these before?” Bucky asks as he reloads the newfound gun. You nod your head, Brock had taught you some of the basics after enlisting. “A little, I know my way around one but I haven’t shot one in a long time.”

“Alright, let’s use it in case of an emergency then. I’d much rather know that you’re armed with this than that flimsy plank of yours.” Bucky checks the safety and hands you the gun which you pocket where it’s easily attainable. “Hey, that plank has saved both my life and yours, don't diss it,” he laughs at your statement before giving you a wink. The two of you exit the door in which you came and a not so distant screech enters your ears. You make your way back through the gap and notice that the TV is on and that someone appears to be sitting in a chair facing it. White static lights up the body as the two of you approach, it looks like a person and they’re covered in a bloody bed sheet. They’re wearing black pants and white shoes covered in blood. On the table beside them there’s a key with the number 212 on it. That’s just across the hall by the gate where you saw the skull monster.

When you reach the door and the gate, the creature is not there anymore. Must have moved on somewhere else. Room 212 is barren except for the open balcony with a fire escape that’s connected to the room beside it, 210. There is no furniture in room 210, the only thing inside it is another one of those headless mannequins that you easily take care of with a powerful hit, and Bucky finishes it with a stomp to the chest. Now you’re on the other side of that metal gate can proceed forward. You find the fire escape leading to the outside courtyard and with the flick of a lever the stairs descend down so it's possible to go back down. However the two of you decide to keep following the hallway to explore it. In room 207 you find letter shaped balloons spelling out “welcome home" and an old moldy cake on a table beneath the balloons. “That’s depressing,” Bucky says as he looks towards the sight. The two of you exit the room filled with dread and continue to the next.

At the end of this hall you find another closet with hands in room 208 and an ominous note. As Bucky places the apple in the closet’s hand you read out the note. “You must think I’m cruel. But this prison is of your own making. The choice was yours, I watched you make it. Over and over and over again. This time’s not gonna be any different. And I’ll be here watching.” The closet doors slide open, there’s something that looks like a peephole in the back of the closet.

You walk over to it and look through it, on the other side you see a room with a box in the middle of it. The room has white chalk drawing across the roof, walls and floor. You move away and Bucky takes your place to have a look. “That’s creepy.” He moves away and walks to the side of the closet, he leans against it and it moves slightly. “Huh, this thing’s not very sturdy.” He starts pushing it to the right and behind there’s a gap into the room you saw. As the two of you squeeze through the gap the closet moves back, locking the two of you inside the room. “What the-!” Bucky starts pushing against the back of the closet but it won’t move an inch. “Guess we’re stuck here.”

You read the words scribbled on the wall. “The river flowed right, serene and so clean. The viper zigzagged left, so cruel and so mean. And so right I went, my steps short and tense. Into darkness, so deep and so dense.”

“A riddle,” he says as he rubs his chin, looking back at the rest of the scribbles. You walk over to the box and see that it’s a safe. “So we’re looking for numbers, we have all the clues as to which side and order, we just need to find the numbers. I’ll look for the river and the viper, you look for the other footsteps.” You and Bucky wander to different sides of the room. You find wavy lines and a number 15, that must be the river. You find the snake beside the locked exit door, it has 11 written beside it. “I found the river and the viper, any luck over there?” Bucky turns to you and points towards the ground. “Here’s the steps, it’s 13. Let’s put the numbers into the safe.” Bucky puts the correct number in order and the safe slides open, inside there's a key and a coin, the coin has the face of a man on it and a sword on the back.

You exit and enter yet another apartment room, there’s a chair with another key on it. It’s the key to the staircase with the padlock, the one with the note that said there were renovations on the third floor. You open a door that loops around to the hallway that leads you straight to the padlocked door.

The staircase is covered in white plastic, Bucky leads you down to the first floor after insisting it’s better to clear each one before moving on to the next. As you enter the hall with the apartments 114-117 you hear heaving, as if someone is puking their guts out. “You hear that too right?” You turn to Bucky who nods his head with a disturbed look on his face. “I swear if that’s a puking monster I’m out of here.”

The door to 116 is open and you both enter it, the noise becomes louder as you step through. Inside you find the fridge light illuminating the kitchen, two feet can be seen in front of the fridge door that is wide open. When you approach you almost gag at the sight, a body is shoved into the fridge, mangled and broken- it’s surrounded by what looks like organs. You swear that one is a brain and that some are intestines. Disgusting. “Don’t look,” Bucky turns your whole body to the side, obscuring the gruesome sight as he checks the corpse. The vomiting is louder and more defined and a stench is filling the apartment.

The two of you approach the bathroom and Bucky opens the door, in there you find a person who’s vomiting into the toilet bowl. Bucky’s light blinds the man and he quickly shoves his hand in front of his eyes with a panicked look on his face.“I-it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it I swear!” He looks sweaty and his light brown hair sticks to his forehead and his blue eyes look bloodshot. He’s wearing a leather jacket on top of a grey hoodie, the front of the hoodie is stained with unknown substance. “Are you okay?” Bucky asks the man and he shakes his head lightly. “I didn’t do anything! He was like that when I got here!” Bucky tilts his head as he casts a glance at you. “You mean that man in the fridge?”

“I didn’t kill him, it wasn’t me.” The man's voice stutters again and he looks almost pathetic on his knees, tears in his eyes, almost like he’s cowering in fear at the look of you both. “We’re not saying you did,” you say as Bucky lowers the flashlight from the man’s face. “Look– I’m Bucky,” He places his hand on his chest before placing a hand on your shoulder and telling the man your name as well. The man on the floor looks up at the both of you. “I-I’m Eddie.”

“Uh do you live here, Eddie?” You ask the man and he looks towards you with a raised eyebrow. “No, I’m not from this town. I just–” he stops with a grimace on his lips. “Something brought you here, didn’t it?” You say and his head immediately snaps up with widened eyes. “Yeah, you could say that,” he stops for a second before raising his hands slightly. “They came at me and I didn’t know what to do– so I ran. I ended up here. Thought it was gonna be safe but then I found that guy in the fridge,” he heaves and Bucky raises his hands. “Easy there, fella. Take a breath and calm down. It’s not safe here, man. This whole town, these things. There’s something wrong with it. It might be best if you just get out of here.”

Eddie nods his head as he raises it from the toilet again. “Yeah, you’re right. You wanna come with me?” He looks at the two of you with hopeful eyes. “Maybe together we can find a way out of this town.”

“I’m sorry but I can’t leave. I’m looking for someone, I can’t leave them here,” you say and take a step back. “Yeah me too,” Bucky nods his head towards you and looks at Eddie. “And I can’t leave this one here alone, we stick together.” You meet his gaze and he smiles at you. You look towards Eddie who looks sad and lost. “Eddie, be careful out there.” He looks towards the ground, not meeting your eyes. “Yeah… you too,” he says solemnly and you turn away to exit the apartment, Eddie’s heaving continues and you close the door. As you jump through an open window leading to the pool area you saw earlier Bucky speaks up. “What a strange character.”

You nod your head at that statement but you don’t share the weird feeling that man gave off. Hopefully you won’t see him again. Inside the pool you see that the red item is a worn out baby stroller. “Please don’t be a baby in there,” you mutter as you approach it, inside there’s another coin laying on a neat blue blanket. On the blanket you see a pair of initials printed into the side, BJR. The coin is orange in color with a snake on the front and flower on the other side.

You unlock the door that leads to the reception before heading back into the apartment you met Eddie in. From there you make your way to the staircase again and head up to the third floor. The fourth floor is inaccessible behind another locked metal gate. The door to the third floor is nonexistent and you can see a little bit down the hall thanks to the flashlight, plastic covers some of the walls and floors, wooden ladders and paint cans can be seen and some boxes as well– leaving the hallway narrow. Straight is a dead end so you follow the hallway left, a gap takes you into room 311. In there you almost jump through the ceiling as a headless creature comes jumping from around a doorway. You kill it and Bucky laughs at your reaction. “That’s not funny! The radio didn’t even give me a warning.” You find a strange note and shudder as you read it.

‘I know there is something here, I know, I can feel it. It all looks normal, but it’s not. It’s underneath, INSIDE, pulsing, breathing. Trying to get out.. Is it trying to get out? Or should I get in? I have to uncover it.. rip it to the surface.’ You flip the note. ‘Peel it off! Layer by layer, so I can see it. I KNOW IT’S THERE!’ You feel chills creeping up your spine, a small thudding ache inside your head. You place the note back down and follow Bucky through another gap leading to room 310. The room takes you out onto another balcony that leads into 312.

The pain in your head starts to thump and you can’t help but stagger a little, Bucky the ever so observant man that he is– notices and stops to look at you. “Are you okay?” You close your eyes and give away a little nod which he clicks his teeth at. “That’s not an answer,” He reaches a hand to check your forehead and you swat a little at the gesture but let him nonetheless. “You feel a little warm. Do you need to rest?” You shake your head violently, making your vision almost go black. “No! Not here. This place gives me the creeps. It’s just a headache. I’ll get over it.” He frowns but nods his head, his hands reaching for the plank in yours and gently pries it from your grip. “Hang behind me, I’ll get us out of here, alright?” You hum and the two of you continue. A note is pinned to the wall by the door leading out of the room, Bucky takes it and reads it out. “I was wrong, wrong, wrong. No! I wasn’t But I wasn’t entirely right. I need to peel off more! Something more blood-close. I was looking outside but it is IN ME. THERE IS SOMEONE INSIDE ME!”

“Whoever wrote this note can’t have all the chickens in the chickencoop if you know what I mean,” Bucky whistles and drops the note. “Maybe it’s this place, it drives people insane.” You try the door but it won’t open “Yeah it’s about to drive me insane.” In the bedroom you find a gap and crawl through it, after Bucky. It takes you into a washing room? in there you find a six pack of canned juice. “Bloody apple? Gross.” Bucky looks down into the garbagechute. “There’s something stuck in there, hand me those cans!” You hand them over and he drops them into the chute. You hear the thumping of the garbage falling, back to the courtyard you go. You move to unlock the door and the washing machine beside you makes a loud noise, scaring the crap out of you. “I hate this place!” You throw the door open and stomp into the hall. Bucky leads the way downstairs and towards the courtyard.

Down there you find the last coin, the one with a woman on the front and cross on the other. You head to the back of the reception, towards the cupboard with the tree and the coin slots. “Okay so the maiden is under the tree, and the flower is where she cannot see and the man is in the moonlight.” Bucky places the man underneath the moon and you place the woman in the middle and the flower behind her. A click is heard. “The text changed! ‘The man drew his blade, and she froze in fear for she did not know the serpent drew near. I got this!” Bucky flips the man to the other side, displaying the sword and the flower into the snake. Another click.”’The venomous beast is now lost to the night. the grand chevaliers' grand despair in daylight, and under the tree where the maiden dared lay, a memory now lies confined to a grave.’That’s sad.” You flip the maid coin on its back, the grave now upwards. Bucky flips the blade coin back to the man and switches spots with the man and the snake. The text changes again. “The beast who its teeth in her flesh doth bore, he who has failed, she who is no more. Now you pass the judgement on figures of play, where here is the sinner, which carries the blame.’ Wait, what?”

“Who’s to blame?” You look at Bucky in confusion. “I mean the snake killed her but that’s also its nature. The man tried to help but was too slow and the woman didn’t acknowledge the snake until it was too late.. Can we really blame anyone?”

“The man.” Bucky says with a haze in his eyes.”Huh?” You look up at him in confusion. “The man was too slow, he was supposed to protect but he failed his duty. So it’s his fault.” Bucky moves the man’s coin without further discussion, a compartment below the slots slides open, revealing a key. You pick it up, 201. You turn towards Bucky who has turned away from the cupboard, his back facing you. “Uhm, are you okay?” He throws a quick, “I’m fine.” Before disappearing out the door. What the– what was that all about. You follow him out and find him down the hall, his back still to you and you can see him gripping the wooden plank tightly. “We have to go back up the stairs to the second floor.” He murmurs and starts to walk briskly, you try to keep up as best you can– having to almost jog to keep up with his long strides. You enter room 201 and you hear that sharp intake of breath again, you quickly scoot your way closer to Bucky who continues his way further into the room. On a desk next to a tv you find what looks like a piece of cloth, a handkerchief with blue flowers embroidered on it. You hold it up and you hear Bucky’s footsteps approach you. “What is it?” He peeks around you. “A handkerchief, it feels familiar,” you say honestly. “Do you-” he’s cut off by a headless mannequin falling to the floor behind you, it struggles on the floor, pressing its chest into the ground as it twists its legs.

You hear more struggle and you both peek around the corner to see the skull monster opening another mannequin's legs roughly before stepping between them. It manhandles the creature who wails around, sounds coming out of it despite the lack of mouth. You feel panic rise inside you as you watch the act, your breathing grows shallow and you can’t manage to get any air inside your lungs despite how many times you try. You feel Bucky’s hand between your shoulder blades, you can hear the vibrations of his voice but his words can’t reach your ears. You close your eyes and feel yourself being pulled by a pair of warm hands, when you open them again you're in a closet, Bucky’s body shielding yours as he peeks out from cracks in the door. You hear the heavy footsteps coming your way and the panic grows even larger, you try your best to silence the sounds that are threatening to escape you. You shoves a knuckle into your mouth, digging your teeth into it until you can taste your own blood. The creature is right outside the doors and its shadow is casting the two of you in darkness, it feels like it’s staring straight at you. Bucky grips his pistol tightly, readying it with a steady grip . The creature twitches and he fires a round into its head, it doesn’t flinch; he shoots one more time but the bullets seem to be bouncing off of it, the wood on the door breaking but the creature doesn’t even move, it just stares.

It turns around, walking back the way it came, grabbing hold of the now lifeless mannequin’s leg, dragging it behind as it stalks away– disappearing from sight. You exit the closet and you almost fall to your knees if Bucky hadn’t caught you by the waist. “H-hey! It’s alright.” He holds you and you feel like crying. The emotions are starting to swim to the surface, this place wasn’t at all like the one in your foggy memories. “This place is so wrong. I don’t like this. I can’t-” you push the tears away as you try to breathe again. “It’s alright, it’s gone.” You shake your head. “It’s not just that thing, it’s– everything. I..” You sigh as you take another large air full breath. Shaking your head you push yourself back up on your feet, bringing Bucky with you. You can't let this place break you, you won't. “Never mind, we have people to find. We can’t afford to lose more time here.” Bucky frowns as he follows you towards the red door across from you. You push it open, on the other side is a gap– almost like between two buildings. You can’t see the bottom of the gap, it’s like a black gaping hole. The red door across looks like the one you just opened. “I’ll go first and help you across,” Bucky says as you step aside to leave him more space. With a long step he makes it to the other door and holds out his hand for you to take. He pulls you over with a hand in yours and the other grabbing onto your waist.

The door shuts behind you and you’re in the same room as before but different and mirrored. There’s rusty cage-like walls behind the chipping wallpaper. The atmosphere feels different, heavier. It’s almost like you stepped into another world.

Chapter Text

The aura of the room felt strange, the air heavier and the pungent smell of rust sticks to the inside of your nose. You look out the window in the kitchen but cannot see anything but darkness, the metal grates that have replaced the wall and are seen under the chipping wallpaper is followed by the same abyss of the lack of sight. Behind them there seems to be nothing, as if the world behind is no longer there. You can Bucky walk closer to the end of the room and you can see inside the bathroom which is covered in rust, all of it colored in a reddish tint of orange. In the room that lacks colors the front door is a bright blue, it leads into a hallway that is in the same shape as that room. Rust, metal grates. “What happened here?” Bucky says as the two of you approach a pinboard that seems to have the three pieces of a map, must be of this place. You pick them up and start scanning each piece of them, each floor of this building. “Blue Creek apartments?” You read out to him and he tilts his head. “So we’ve gone from one apartment building to another? Why does this one look so rough then..”

The two of you seem to be on the 2nd floor and have just left room 208. “Where do we even go from here? We have no idea where to even begin..” You frown and Bucky puts a hand on your shoulder, giving you a careful squeeze and a big smile as you meet his eyes. “Let’s start with trying all the doors on this floor and then try and find the way to the 1st floor and check the front door. Knowing this town though, it’s not gonna be that easy.”

Door 207 is boarded up heavily. As you continue down the hall your radio stutters and an armless creature comes walking around the corner. “Of course these guys had to follow us,” Bucky mutters and goes sprinting at them with your plank that he is still holding onto. He takes it down and you notice it looks different from the other ones, it’s darker and coated in a black substance, a substance you think you’ve seen before but not sure where. The door around the corner that reads ‘Utility room’ is also locked and the hall that continues to the rooms is blocked by a some sort of makeshift wall? “Great, where to know?”

“Hey, look over here!” Bucky is standing in front of what looks to be a wall with multiple cracks in it, almost as if someone had done a shitty job in covering up a hole. “I think I can break through here.” You look around the room and see a loose pipe coming out of the wall, it looks like you can bend it off and free it. You grab hold of it and with all your strength you pull it off the wall and almost fly into Bucky if he hadn’t caught you. “Here do it with this one, I don’t think that plank is strong enough for that,” you hand him the pipe and he slams it into the wall, it takes four hits before the wall breaks and crumbles at his feet. “We should keep that pipe, might come in handy,” you pick up your plank that he’d leaned against the wall off to the side and the two of you slide through the gap. Your radio makes noises again and you see a mannequin scurry off somewhere into the dark.

Now you’re in room 206, which doesn’t have much wallpaper left, all of it replaced with the gratewalls and some of the carpet is gone and replaced with that same grate material, the room morphs into 204 as the wall is missing between the rooms. You find the mannequin hiding behind a wall and Bucky swings the pipe, killing it instantly. “Oh I like this pipe!” Another blue door leads you into that blocked hallway. You walk down the hallway, passing by 203 which is locked, and as you walk by room 202 you notice the moths lying in front of it, a large M is carved into the door underneath the number and a bunch of small m’s surround it. You reach for the handle but it doesn’t turn. “This door seems important, let’s add that to memory.” You continue down the hall and find a blue door wide open at the end of the hallway. As you approach you notice the silhouette behind the door from the light of the torch, figures seem to be standing on the other side of a metal grate, they’re covered in sheets and all of them are facing towards you, they don’t move but they make you very uncomfortable.

You enter the room, the number reading 212, on the other side of the room you see a doorway leading to what looks like the outside and beside it is something covered in a grey sheet. You pull the sheet off and underneath it is a grandfather clock, it’s missing its hands and beside it carved into the wall it looks like the shape of what could be clock hands pointing in different directions with names beside them. “We’re looking for clock handles, it seems like.”

“But what are those names?” Bucky asks as he leans closer. You hum and scratch your cheek. “I don’t know, but we’ll probably find out soon.” You walk out on the balcony and notice that the area underneath looks almost like some type of courtyard, it’s filled with cages and boxes. The sky is completely black and you can see particles flying in the air. “Look, there’s an H on that door! Wasn’t there a name Henry on that wall back there?” Bucky points towards an orange brown door to your right. “Yeah, Henry, Mildred and Scott were the names.” The door is locked and you walk into an open room on the left, inside there’s only a bed and some empty frames hanging on the wall, room 203. You walk through another door and it takes you to the rest of room 203. Inside you find a TV on and a mannequin sitting in front of it watching, as you take another step the tv shuts off and the mannequin runs off, Bucky’s flashlight shutting off as well.

The light flickers and you can make out the form of the mannequin sprinting towards you, you and Bucky lift your weapons and hit at the same time, sending it flying backwards and bending in an awkward position. “Nice!” He holds out his hand and you slap your palm into his, a perfect high five. You find another breakable wall, this one oozing that black substance and Bucky breaks it just as easily as the last. On the other side you find room 205, there’s a baby crib in it, it has a blue blanket draped across the back with those same initials as you saw in the stroller at the pool, BJR. Your head thumps and you push forwards, exiting the room quickly, Bucky following close behind. The living room of 205 has children’s toys scattered around the floor and you can’t help but feel nauseous, you want out of this room now.

An open window takes you onto a fire escape with a staircase leading up, now you’re on the 3rd floor. Bucky climbs onto some cages stacked together and climbs through a window, you wait for him to say clear as you follow him, he catches you as the drop was higher than you expected. You pull up the map and you can see that you’re now standing in room 305 that seems to be connected to 303, the one you climbed into. As you walk into the living area you notice multiple bodies of armless creatures scattered across the floor. A hole in the wall leads out into the hallways that also have bodies lying everywhere on the ground.

Room 306 requires a key and as you make your way towards the other side of the floor you hear one of the monster on the ground shake and gurgle, with a quick slam to the chest with your plank it stops gurgling but continues to shake, Bucky manages to pull you aside just in time as the corpse of the monster sputters out liquid that makes a hissing noise as it falls on the ground, acid. “Gross.”

Room 307 is open and as you push through the door you hear it, the familiar tune of a piano, it’s coming from the center of the room. A large radio is hanging from the ceiling encased in a rusty metal cage. The light on the radio glows a yellow hue and you approach it like in a trance. You’re so out of it as you listen to the keys being graced that you almost miss the hand of a clock attached to the radio. “Hey, there’s one of the hands we’re looking for.” Bucky, who had been watching you since you entered the room looked up at the radio and noticed it. Different chains are attached to the cage, one is leading towards the door behind it and the others into a room to the right, attached to a handle that’s missing a valve.

An orange door inside the valve room leads out to the balcony into room 305 where more chains appear from a hole in the wall. In there you find a valve and as Bucky turns it monsters appear from behind a pair of doors that slam open, you take out one each and as you walk back towards Bucky you see the glint of a key on the table. It has a blue keychain attached to it with the numbers 306 on it.

You make your way to room 306 but not before being jumpscared by a mannequin hiding behind a pillar, Bucky makes sure to hit an extra time just for that. In room 306 you find some handgun ammo and another gap you can crawl through, it takes you into the bathroom that connects 306 and 304. Inside room 304 there must be at least twenty mirrors, some broken and some too dark for you to see your own reflection in, not that you would want to anyways. There’s another valve that Bucky turns and it opens the door behind you, Bucky picks up the valve. “Best take this with us to that empty one back in the radio room.”

Back in the hallway you notice that the ‘dead’ monsters have now started wandering around, Bucky pulls out his handgun and you both fight your way back to room 307. He attaches the valve and turns it with a grunt, you hear the cage with the radio drop, the piano now silent and you reach forward to take the clock hand. The backdoor onto the fire escape now open, there you find a lever that sends the stairs down, right in front of the door with the H on it. As you walk down the stairs close to the door you hear violent knocks on it and the whole door stutters from the force.

You and Bucky walk towards the clock and place the hand on it. “So if door H is meant to be the name on the wall you should move the hand onto the 9.” Bucky says as he stands to the side, you push the hand towards the number 9 and the clock makes a whirring around before it lets out a loud ding. The H door is now ajar and you both enter through it. The room inside looks neat and does not match the rest of the building– no metal grates, no rust. It looks normal. The door beside a TV has a lock on it with two birds. There’s pictures of birds on the wall and even some stuffed one’s on a table. There’s something that looks like a scale or a seesaw on a small table, it looks like a log. The front door of the apartment room is locked but there’s another cracked wall in the kitchen that Bucky breaks through with his pipe.

It takes you into a bathroom, you notice that the toilet it’s filled with brown liquid. “Oh no,” you say as you unlock the bathroom door. “What?” Bucky turns towards you as you gesture towards the disgusting sight. “Oh hell no, I touched that bloody jacket, it’s your turn now.” He walks out of the bathroom and leaves you there with your fate. “That’s not the same! This is way worse!” You turn towards the toilet with a frown, this fucking sucks. “Fuck it!” You kneel down beside the toilet and try your best not to gag, just as you're about to shove your hand in there Bucky bursts through the door. “I found the second hand!” He stops at the sight of you. “Tell me you weren't just about to put your hand in there?” He laughs and you stand so quickly back up your vision blurs. Speed Walk out the room and you can hear him still laughing his ass off and it annoys you even further. You pick up some type of bird and notice you’re in that same room as before but this time it looks rundown and dirty, how is that possible you were just here…

You place the bird on the seesaw and hear Bucky walk towards you, you don’t acknowledge him and instead lead the way out the front door that is now unlocked. You walk down the hallway leading left and enter room 303, inside you jump when you hear loud whispering of incoherent words. Through a door you find a way that leads to the bathroom and before you can enter the light flickers and through crack reflecting light from the ceiling it almost looks like someone is standing behind the curtain in the bathtub. You can see something hanging from a rope inside the tub and upon further inspection the shape you see is a regular mannequin standing in the tub, Bucky breaks the glass and you reach towards the item tied to the rope, it’s a piece of another bird, the body, but it looks strange and not as neat as the other one, it’s disfigured and covered in gunk.

Room 211 holds another piece of the bird statue, the head looks completely different from the rest of its body. The head is clean and looks like a swan, you attach the body and the head to complete it before going back to place it on the seesaw. As you fiddle with the birds to make them weigh the same Bucky speaks up. “Look I’m sorry for before, I didn’t mean to laugh at you like that. It’s just…” He trails off and looks down at the pipe in his hands. “This place feels like it’s sucking all the happiness out of me, I don’t wanna lose that. And you’re making this experience a little easier and not as heavy. I’m just glad I’m not alone in this.” As you place the bird on the first slot it weighs out balanced and the middle part cracks, revealing a key with wings on it.

“I get it. I’m also glad I’m not in this alone. I was just embarrassed about what I almost had to do, I’m relieved I didn’t have to, though,” you sigh and unlock the door with the bird lock. Bucky chuckles as the two of you enter the room, inside you can hear something dripping from the ceiling and a mud covers the floor, there’s a huge hole in the floor that leads to the room below. “Guess we’re going down,” Bucky calls out as he drops down the hole. “Wait–” He lands perfectly with bent knees and you can see him look around the room below. “Come on, I’ll catch you,” He puts down the pipe and holds out his arms. “A-are you sure?” You call out hesitantly and he just nods with a wide grin on his lips. “A-alright, I’m coming down, don’t you dare drop me!” You crouch down before going off the ledge, falling into Bucky’s arms, literally. He catches you with no problem at all and lets you back down to your feet again. “I’d never dream of dropping you.”

You pull out your map to deduce where the two of you are and learn that you're inside room 110 if you’re reading the map correctly, which you most likely are– after all you were the captain of the track team in your school days.You squeeze through a gap that leads to the hallway, deciding to head to the left first you find a room that looks normal as well, there’s a white door and the two of you open it and step through.

Inside you find a large mirror, in front of the mirror you see a person laying down on the ground, familiar messy brown hair. “Peter?” You call out, the boy meets your eyes in the mirror with a sad smile. “Oh– it’s you.” He says solemnly, you notice he’s holding a knife in his hand. You say your name and he closes his eyes briefly, his looks towards the man behind you with a little frown. “This is Bucky.” He looks at you through the reflection of the knife. “Peter, I don’t know what you’re planning but there’s always another way,” Bucky says as you crouch down behind the lying boy. “Really? How would you know..” Peter mumbles as he sways the knife slowly back and forth. “What’s even the point, it’s always easier to just run. Maybe this is what we deserve.” You tilt your head at his words. “We?” You question and Peter sighs. “Me, you, him and the others. We’re all the same.”

“I’m not like you,” you quickly say and Peter looks at you and sits up. “Are you afraid?” When neither of you answer Peter looks away whilst biting a lip. “I-I’m Sorry..” You meet Bucky’s eyes and he looks concerned, he holds onto the back of your shirt, stopping you from moving closer to the teenage boy. “It’s okay, Peter. Did you find your uncle?” He shakes his head with closed eyes. “No, not yet.”

“Did your uncle live here, in this building?” Bucky speaks out and Peter opens his eyes. “I don’t know.” Bucky hums and looks towards the large kitchen knife in Peter’s hand. “So all you know is he used to live in this town?” Peter snaps towards you two, his movements rash. “How did you know that?!” He looks at the two of you with big eyes and Bucky pulls you into a stand and further away from the boy. “Well I figured since you’re looking for him here. How else would we know?” Peter apologies again and looks towards the mirror, he shakes his head and traces the knife with his fingertips. He looks back at you and meets your eyes. “Did you find who you were looking for?” He asks you and you shake your head at his question. “No, not yet.” You pull out the picture from the pocket inside the jacket, crouching down and holding it out in front of him. “His name is Brock, he is my fiance.” Peter looks at the picture and you catch the way his lips raise before he looks away and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I haven't seen him.” Bucky peeks around and tries to catch a glimpse of the picture as well, but you quickly shove it back into your pocket. “I don’t know why I think he’s here, he died 3 years ago.” Peter looks at you with confusion. “He-he’s dead?”

“I’m not crazy! At least I don’t think I am..” you mutter and Peter starts to panic, moving around on the ground and looking around frantically. “I need to find my uncle!” He stands up, holding the knife out a little. “Should we go with you, the town really is dangerous.” Bucky says and you agree with a nod of the head. “Yeah, I now understand what you meant at the cemetery.” You speak up but Peter takes a step back and holds out his hands. “No, it’s okay! Besides, I'd just slow you guys down.” He starts to walk away but Bucky stops him and points at the knife. “What about that?” Peter holds the knife out towards you. “Will you hold it for me?” You nod your head and agree. Peter looks at the knife as in trance, like he’s studying it. “If I kept it, I’m not sure what I would do..” Bucky reaches for it and Peter immediately points the knife towards him and yells out. “No! I’m sorry, I’ve been bad. Please don’t.”

The act triggers something inside you and you can hear yourself screaming in your head. ‘Please don’t hurt me! I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to!’ A flash of white and all you can hear is your own screaming inside your mind. Two hands enter your vision and you flinch away so hard you make contact with the large mirror on the wall, your elbow hits it and it cracks, you can feel a piece of it embed itself inside your flesh. “Whoa! Hey, hey! It’s okay, it’s just me.” You hear Bucky’s soothing voice and he pulls you from whatever vision you’d just experienced.

You look around the room and you can see the knife Peter had lying on the table but he’s nowhere to be seen. “The kid ran off,” he says as he notices you looking around. “Are you okay, you just zoned out.” You breathe out heavily, flinching again when Bucky helps you to your feet, he looks down at the red blood gathering on the sleeve of your jacket. He pushes you down in a chair before helping you remove the jacket from your injured arm, he whistles as he takes in the sight of a piece of the mirror sticking out from below your elbow. “Lucky for you I was trained in the medical field.” He pulls out a gauze from his pouch and some tape, also bringing out the health drink you both had picked up earlier. He’s careful in removing the mirror piece before wrapping your wound perfectly tight and finishing it with some tape to keep it in place. “That’ll have to do until we get better stuff.” He inspects his work before helping you back into the sleeve of your jacket. “Thank you,” you murmur and he pats your head.

The both of you look down at the knife Peter held not too long ago, specks of red coats, the tip of the blade and a key is laying in front of it. Bucky pockets the knife and you pick up the key. You exit the room and continue on your way. Down the other end of the hall you find more doors and then you hear the loud thumping of heavy footsteps and a screeching sound like metal being dragged, it pierces your ears. You put the key you found in the room into a pair of white double doors, they lead to a hall with small steps and a door with an S. It's probably connected to that clock puzzle. You go through another pair of white doors across from the ones you entered, you find some connected room and your eyes immediately find a piano with a white music sheet on top of it, VERS LA FLAMME. Through a door in the back you find a staircase leading up, they lead to a pair of double doors that are not far from the clock room.

You make your way into the clock room and approach the clock, you place the hands on it to make yourself ready to move the hands. “Okay so the big one on 2.” It clicks and whirrs again as you place the big one on 2, it makes another ear piercing ding. You make your way towards the moth door you saw earlier with the M on it. Inside there’s hundreds of moths flying around, it makes your skin crawl. In the kitchen there’s a hole in the wall and you can see a frame with a moth on the other side, there’s a door in the living room with a lock that has an eye, a moon and a skull beside it. Bucky breaks through a breakable wall and you take it the big moths lying around the room, you see one on the wall with a skull on it and another lying on the ground with an eye.

“Ah I see,” Bucky says from the other room. “We have to count them, some moths have different patterns. I found one with a skull in here and also half of a moon, one that has two moons on its wing.” You walk around the living area counting each cluster of symbols. You find two other halves of moths hanging on the wall, one is with eyes and the other with moons. Those add up to 5 eyes, 8 moons and 2 skulls. 582. The lock clicks open and the door is now unlocked. The room behind the door is covered in a red light and a hole leaking green is in front of you. “Well well well, since you almost forced me to stick my hand into a shitty toilet I think you should do the honours, as a form of apology.” Bucky’s eyes widened. “B-But you didn’t even do it!” His voice is pitched and he looks at the hole in the wall. “I was 1 second away from doing it though, and besides you laughed at me.” He grumbles as he shoves his hand into the hole, the noise you hear is so gross you have to leave the room. When he comes back out he’s holding the third and last hand to the clock, the look on his face is hilarious but you hold in the laughter. You hear more of that dragging noise and thumping, and it sounds closer this time.

When you exit the M door you can see large gashes on the wall that definitely weren't there before, they continue all the way towards the clock room. And as you enter the clock room you see a gash in the floor leading out the balcony door that is now closed and locked. You quickly place the last handle on its place and move it to three like Bucky told you to, not wanting to meet whatever made those gashes. You go back down through the double doors and see a body of an armless creature lying dead on the floor.

You enter the door with the S on it and enter the courtyard area you saw earlier, you see the cages and the boxes that fill the area. At the end of the room you see him, the big skull creature you saw in Wood Side apartment, it’s holding a mannequin and this time in its other hand it's holding a large knife, it almost looks like one blade of a scissor. It throws the dead creature and turns towards you and Bucky. “What the fuck!” You scream out as it starts to walk quickly towards you, dragging the large knife behind it with a screech. Bucky pulls out his gun and starts loading it with bullets, it does little to slow it down as it staggers a bit but doesn’t seem affected by them at all. “Can it even feel pain at all?!” He yells out as he drags you around a line of cages. The Skull headed creature thrusts its knife through the wooden cages, breaking them and almost piercing the two of you in the process. “What do we do?!” You follow Bucky as he loops around it and behind another pair of boxes. “I don’t know, I’ll distract it, try that exit down there,” He yells out and pushes you towards the double doors before he shoots at it again.

The doors don’t even budge as you slam your palms into them. "Watch out!” You hear Bucky scream at the top of his lungs before you're pulled to the floor, his body shielding yours as the knife is plunged into the wall you were just standing in front of. Bucky pulls you up and drags you further into the room as the creature recovers and yanks the knife out of the wall. “Maybe if we avoid it it’ll grow bored.” Bucky pulls you behind more cages and you run around them as the creature walks behind you, it groans in annoyance before slamming its knife into them sending wooden pieces flying everywhere, as it’s standing back up to recover Bucky slams his pipe into its back, it stumbles a little before gripping its knife again. Something shakes the ground and the creature is suddenly moving a bit faster. “What the hell did you do?!” You call out as the two of you run behind cover. “I’m trying to save our asses!” The creature slams the knife heavily into the ground and the two of you dodge away to the side, Bucky reacts quickly again and hits it in the back before it can recover. It spins around and grabs him around the neck and you spring into action, slamming your plank hard into the back of its skull. It drops Bucky who coughs and rolls away. You both hide behind the last two cages and get ready to fight but the creature stops and you can hear sirens blaring in the distance.

The creature walks towards the double doors breaking them open with immense strength and with one hand sends them flying open. It walks off, disappearing into the fog and you can hear the screeching of metal growing fainter and fainter. You can Bucky breath out heavily, resting your hands on your knees you bend over, feeling your lungs burning inside you. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” You follow the way the creature had disappeared and the sirens grow louder and louder. Through the doors you're now back onto the streets of Silent Hill, the sound of sirens no longer ringing in your ear as the doors close behind you.

You never thought you’d find comfort in this fog but you’re glad you're out of that place. “So where do we go from here?” Bucky asks as you step out on the road. “Rosewater park,” you say with a determination brighter than a thousand stars.

Chapter Text

You take a fresh breath of the cool air, letting it simmer in your lungs before releasing it. The sudden calmness of being back outside fills you, you don’t feel as trapped anymore as you did in those apartment buildings– despite still being in this crazy place of a town. You look around the street, further down the road you see a gate that reads Wood Side on it, on the other side you see the pool area you had once been in. You can Bucky walk down the road and into the thickness of the fog– you hear humming coming from further down the road.

The little girl you’d seen in Wood Side is sitting atop of a large stone wall, in her hands she’s holding what looks like an envelope, she’s kicking her feet back and forth as she continues to hum. She stops when the two of you approach but she does not look up from the envelope in her hands. “Hey!” Bucky calls out and her head snaps up to meet his gaze. “You’re the one who stomped on my foot, aren’t you,” he says as he furrows his eyebrows at the little girl. The girl chuckles and smiles. “Maybe I did,” she says calmly before looking back to the paper envelope. “What is a little girl like you doing here anyways?” You ask with a frown. She looks back up and swings her feet back and forth again. “I don’t know, what’s two big dummies like you doing here anyways?” She mocks the two of you and half smiles. Bucky meets your eyes– his mouth falling open in shock. “Well that’s not very nice. Did your parents not teach you any manners?”

The little girl folds in on herself but doesn’t answer. You take a step closer to her. “What do you have there?” You mention the envelope in her tightly gripped hands. “That’s none of your business!” She calls out and pulls it towards her body, trying to shield it from your curious gaze. She pulls her legs from the edge and turns her body away from the two of you. “You never loved Brock anyways!” She screams out before dropping down on the other side of the wall. “Wait!” You call out, running up to the wall. You can hear her footsteps fading away in the distance. “How did you know his name..” You whisper as you place a palm against the stone wall, this little girl was a mystery to you.

“What was that about?” Bucky asks and you shake your head lightly, pushing away from the wall you step back onto the road. “Let’s just focus on getting to Rosewater Park– it’s just up ahead,” you say, leading the way down the street. On your way through the tunnel, you hear it again, this time louder. That sharp intake of a breath, almost in your ear this time and you can’t help but spin around. No one’s there. “Hey, you okay?” Bucky notices you’ve stopped, you’re looking around frantically. You nod and hum, pushing through the gate in front of you, leading into the park.

The park is filled with fog, just as the rest of the town, you can’t see the garden of greens from afar. From what you remember this place is like a maze, you decide to continue straight, leading the way. “Follow me, I think I remember the way,” you tell Bucky who falls into steps with you. Up ahead you find another gate that says Rosewater Park. It leads you to a path that turns into a wooden deck with binoculars you can use to watch the lake.

The fog grows heavier as you walk along the deck, you can’t see more than a meter out on the water. “This place is much prettier without this damn fog,” you say as you pass by some headless statues shaking hands. “I bet, this place looks like the perfect spot for a date.” Bucky says with a wink. There’s a pier that leads further into the water and the two of you walk down that path. You can see the outline of a figure in the distance, their shape becoming more noticeable the closer you get. They’re standing underneath a gazebo, you can see a head of blond hair through the fog, a dark blue flannel shirt wrapped around their torso and light blue jeans shapely fitted the lower half of their body.

Bucky’s steps grow quicker as he notices the figure, you have a hard time keeping up with him. You’re no more than 3 meters away when Bucky speaks. “Steve?” His voice stutters, the name heavy on his lips. The man slowly turns around and you can see a pair of blue eyes gazing upon the both of you, Bucky’s half smile drops at the sight of the man. “No, you’re not..” He speaks as he takes a step back from the unknown man. “Do I look like a friend of yours?” The man speaks out with a half smirk pulling at his lips. Bucky doesn’t answer, simply stares at the man– trying to comprehend the situation. “My name is John, I don’t look like a ghost do I?” The man, John, says as he approaches the two of you. “Sorry I got confused, I’m Bucky and this is...” Bucky says your name before he takes two steps back from John. He turns to leave, pulling at your sleeve but you hear John’s footsteps behind you. “Hey! Where are the two of you going?” He asks and Bucky turns towards him. “We’re gonna continue our search.”

“Maybe I can help you guys search for whoever it is you’re looking for. Steve, right?” John says as he rubs his chin. “I know a place where we can start this search of ours, it’s not too far from here,” he continues, watching you and Bucky as you look at one another. “Fine but after that, we’re going our separate ways,” Bucky says with a stern look, keeping his arm close to you. “Alright! It’s this way,” John rubs his hands together before walking back down the pier. Bucky meets your eye, pulling you with him– keeping you behind himself between John and yourself. “I don’t trust this guy,” you hear him whisper with a turned head towards you. “Let’s keep our distance.”

You and Bucky follow behind John as he leads the way through the park, you pass by a little caffé stand that sells coffee and waffles– your stomach growls at the thought of some food right now. You pass through a gate into a garden, you walk straight and pass over a small bridge over a pond, you continue down the right and walk up a pair of stairs, finding the main entrance to the park which you exit through. Across the Park you see a motel that says, Jack’s inn. “We can cut through the motel,” John says as he runs across the street towards the inn. In the reception of the inn you find a locked safe that needs a combination, on the pinboard to your right there’s a note. “If anyone needs anything, I’m fixing the pipes at 107,” you read out to Bucky before exiting the reception, trying to find your way to room 107.

You find room 107 up a pair of stairs, the door is blocked by a large heavy mattress. Bucky breaks the window to 108, making John jump from the loud noise, he jumps through and flips the lock on the door– letting the two of you inside the room. Inside you find a breakable wall that Bucky breaks through with his pipe, he slides through the gap and you follow, not wanting to be alone with John. On the desk in room 107 you find a note that says ‘Gotta remember, No money, Four the fifth, onesie’.

When you enter 107 again John is holding up a blue t-shirt with a white and blue shield on it, in the middle of the shield there is a star. “Do you think I could pull this off?” Bucky scoffs, leaving the room and you give him a hesitant half smile and a nod, following behind Bucky. You walk down the stairs and John comes stumbling down behind the two of you, you walk back into the reception and approach the safe. “0451?” Bucky puts in the numbers and the safe clicks open. Inside there’s a key with a boot on it. As you pick up the key you hear John call out. “Bucky!”

The two of you spin around and see that John is grappling with a headless mannequin, Bucky grabs his pipe and swings it at the monster, knocking it down. He hits it with the pipe again and the groans from the creature grow silent. You find a gate with a green lock and use the key to open it, you push it open and the rusty hinges screech. “Yay,” John says with little enthusiasm.

Down the road leading to the left is another gaping hole in the concrete, the whole is nothing but an abyss of darkness, standing too close to the edge makes you feel nauseous. The road leading straight down is blocked by a large construction wall you saw earlier, you follow the right path and it’s a neighbourhood of houses on each side of the road. They’re all white with american flags hanging off the porch, you enter through a white gate leading into a backyard, the gate has a symbol of a paw print on it. In there you find a dog house, there’s a glint of a piece of a broken key inside– the key resembles a bone. “Weird looking key,” John breaks the silence as he rolls back and forth on his feet. You cast him a glance but he’s busy looking around the backyard.

All the houses are locked shut, the knob won’t turn at all. A bit further down you hear what sounds like a broken car from the other side of a fence gate, it’s smoking and there’s something sticking out of the hood of the car. Further down the road you all notice that there’s a tree that has fallen into the road, another large gaping hole dividing the road from the other side. “Strange, this shouldn’t be here.” John speaks as he looks down the hole. Bucky looks at him with an emotionless face. “Well, it is. So what now?” John looks around the street, gesturing to the houses. “We find another way, cut through some houses and backyards, I guess.”

You walk back to the gate with the smoking car, Bucky grabs ahold of the fence and pushes– nothing happens. You hear feet dragging across pavement and turn around, armless creatures are stumbling towards you through the fog. “Uh, Bucky?” You call out as John pushes himself into the fence, him and Bucky laying all their weight into it, making it slide open slowly. John is the first to slip his way through, whilst Bucky pushes you in before him. He shuts the gate quickly and takes your plank, placing it through the handles of the gate. You all back up from the gate, Bucky makes his way to the car– pulling a metal pipe from the hood of it. He hands you it with a small smile before the three of you jog down the foggy path in front of you, the wind starts picking up again– your hair smacking into your face. “Guys?” John speaks as he follows behind you. “Stay close to us,” Bucky barks back as he holds up his own pipe.

The road is filled with armless creatures stumbling about, some even crawling across the ground, Bucky stays ahead of you, slamming his pipe into a monster in your path. “Come on, come on!” You run past a house, a monster crawling through an open window, landing right at your feet. You slam your new weapon into it before jumping over it, you turn and see John frown and take a large step over it– following behind you. You run past a bunch of houses and garages, coming up on a hole in a fence covered by a large wardrobe. “Cover me!” Bucky calls out as he starts to push the wardrobe out of the way. “Woah!” You hear, turning your head as you watch as a creature crawls its way towards John with inhumane speed, you grab his arm and pull him out of the way. The creature leaps up, throwing its body into you, taking you down with it– the force sends your pipe flying to the side.

You struggle with the monster on top of you, you hear the large gurgles making its way through its body. In the corner of your vision you can see John standing there, watching you– not making any movement in assisting you. Just as the gurgle grows louder a pipe is slammed into its face, it flies backwards and sprays acid liquid into the air before it lands on its back. Bucky pulls you up and out of the way of the projectile acid rain. He picks up your pipe and shoves it into your hands before pushing you in front of him and through the now open hole in the fence. John follows silently behind you. At the back of the yard you find a shed with a large wooden panel covering a gap between the fence, Bucky pulls it up and you slide through, John following and lastly Bucky– the panel drops as he steps through.

On the other side the fog appears lighter and the wind has calmed down. No more groans of monsters are heard. “I think we’re safe,” John says as he bends over and catches his breath, as he stands back again his back meets the wall behind him. Bucky holds him up by the collar of his jacket. “What the fuck was that back there?!” John sputters and coughs, his face turning a little red. “You didn’t even try and help her!” Bucky is furious, his face is almost as red as John’s and you can see his eyes are feral. “I-I’m sorry! I was scared, okay?!” John yelps out while he grabs onto Bucky’s hands holding him up. “I didn’t know what to do! I froze up!” You can almost see the welling of tears in his eyes. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re scared or not! We’re all scared! We can’t afford to lose anyone here! Pull yourself together, damn it!” Bucky drops him and John falls to his knees.

You approach Bucky who is shaking from the anger coursing through him, you place a hand on his back. “I’m alright now,” you say quietly but he hears you just as well. “Still, you could have died…” he trails off, his fist clenching at the thought. “But I didn’t. You saved me. Thank you,” he looks over at you, your words make him warm but does little to quench the anger he’s feeling towards the blond man behind him. “Yeah.. you’re welcome. Now let’s keep moving.”

You’re behind a building that looks old and almost like it used to be a factory of some sort, there’s heavy pipes and large vents on the back of the building. John pulls out a key from his pocket as you approach a red door. He pushes the door open and you walk inside, you’re standing in a kitchen. John walks through and pushes open the next door, you follow behind and John steps through another room and the door slams shut behind him. “John?” You call out but he doesn't answer. You look at Bucky and he lifts his hand to know on the door but still no answer.

You walk through another room that looks like some type of VIP area, what is this place? The room leads you into a lounge area and as you walk further you see John standing behind a bar, he’s mixing drinks with a big smile on his face. “Come,” he waves you over. You and Bucky approach with confused looks on your faces. “What are we doing here?” Bucky asks and John laughs, filling a glass with some type of liquid, he pushes it across the bar counter and Bucky catches it before it slides off the edge. “Having a drink, of course!” He fills another glass for you and slides places it down in front of you. “What are you doing, John…” Bucky shakes his head at the man who downs a glass of what looks like whiskey. “Come on, just one drink! After what we’ve been through we need something strong to take the edge off.” He fills his glass up again and holds it out, as if to toast with the brown haired man. Bucky gives him a bored glare and John tutes and sticks his tongue out, lifting the cup to his mouth and downing it with one swoop.

“Is this the place where you wanted to show us?” You ask as you push your glass, of whatever alcohol John had poured, back towards him. “Don’t be silly, we’re just passing through and out the front. Just thought we may as well while we’re here. Can’t we just take a little break, relax here for a bit.” You frown at his words, eyebrows falling. “We don’t have time for a break! We’re still looking for..” Your words die out on your tongue, you shake your head before continuing. “Besides if you didn’t notice there’s monsters roaming around all over!” You slam your hand into the counter, taking a step away from the bar. “We should get going now.” You say before walking away towards the exit.

You walk out the front door and down the metal stairs, waiting for John and Bucky outside– in the meantime you take out your map. It doesn’t take long for the other two to join you outside. You’re not far away from the Brookhaven hospital, the words on the map send a shiver down your spine. You all start walking again, the main road to the hospital is blocked by a construction wall but you notice that there's a small brown door attached to it. Unfortunately it's locked shut. So you continue down through the smaller path between the buildings.

When you reach the main road again you notice you’re on the other side of that hole in the road with the big tree. “There it is!” John points towards an overgrown gate, he sprints up to it. Moonlight grove, you recognize the name but you don’t think you’ve been here before. The gate is heavy but for Bucky it’s a cakewalk, he pulls it open and you walk through. It’s another garden, there’s large hedges that haven’t been maintained for a while, willow trees with their leaves hanging low. “Come on, she’s just around the corner!” He walks further ahead, you see a statue peeking over a hedge. “She?” you ask as you follow behind. He takes you to a large statue of a woman, she’s surrounded by pink flowers, the statue has vines with flowers growing across her body– she looks ethereal in the fog. “Who was she?”

“It’s something of a local legend. It’s about a tragic story that dates back to the old times where witches were believed to walk among us. This woman was a healer in town, she cured many people and helped them live long lives. There was a man who fell madly in love with her, so madly he had to have her. But the woman was already in love with someone else, someone who she had loved since childhood. The man grew jealous of her lover, if he couldn’t have her no one could. So he did the one thing that was a death sentence for young women like her, he accused her of being a witch. The rumors spread like wildfire through the town and soon she was said to be burnt at the stake. On a full moon she was brought to the square of the town, hung up on a wooden cross, her lover watched as she was burnt to a crisp right in front of his eyes. Later it was confirmed that she died at the hands of a jealous man, she was given a burial and a statue of remorse and a thank you for all those she saved before she was betrayed. Not sure how much truth there is to it, it's probably just a fairytale. Men do crazy things for love..”

The story brings an anger to your chest. Looking upon the statue you can see the smile displayed on her stone lips, despite what happened to her she looked happy– at peace. “Hence this place,” John speaks out and gestures to the rest of the garden. “There’s multiple herbs growing in here that she used to help people. They have paid immense tribute to her.”

“They’re not here,” You speak after a moment of silence, John looks up confused. “Huh?” You sit down on a bench, head bent. “He’s not here, I don’t remember ever being here. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here,” You feel a warm hand on your back. “We’ll find him,” Bucky’s voice enters your ear and you turn your head to look at him. He looks sincere, like he believes the words he's saying. “There’s plenty of other places we can look, we can-” A distant scream cuts him off. Your head perks up, it sounded familiar. “Come on!” You stand up and follow the two men out of the grove.

You run through a pair of gates and towards the back of a building. “It sounded like it came from this theater,” John says as he runs up to a container in front of a cracked window. “Uhm, I’ll stay out here. I’m not much of a movie fan..” John says as Bucky starts to climb through the window. You enter the building after Bucky who catches you as you fall down from the window. “Be careful in there, guys,” you hear John’s voice outside.

“Eugh, this is boring!” You hear a familiar little girl say as you walk through the room you landed inside. “You didn’t seem bored a minute ago. You screamed your little head off, didn’t you!” Another familiar voice replies. “You should have seen your face!” The man’s voice says, you recognize it as Eddie’s. “I told you it was a big rat! It jumped at me from under the seat,” the little girl speaks again. Through a square hole in the wall you can see the two sitting in the front seats of the auditorium. “You would have screamed too if you saw it, you dummy!” The girl snaps at him. “Hey! Whaddya' say that for!” Eddie says. “Anyway, why are you sitting here? I thought you said the cops were after you,” the girl says again and you frown as you meet Bucky’s eyes. “Nah, I don’t think they followed me,” Eddie replies. Bucky pushes the closet in front of the door away and you can hear the little girl gasp. “Did you hear that too?” You hear Eddie say.

When you walk into the auditorium the little girl is gone, only Eddie is sitting there, he’s stuffing his face with a pizza. “Eddie?” He turns towards you both. “Oh uhm, you’re..” he trails off. “Bucky and…” Bucky gestures to you both and Eddie nods slowly. “We met back at the apartment building,” you say and Eddie turns his head back towards the front. “Yeah, I remember.” He takes a bit out of a slice of pizza.

“I see you haven’t made it out yet,” Bucky says as the two of you look around the room. “Yeah I just haven't gotten around to it, yet.” He continues to munch on the pizza. “Well at least you got your appetite back,” Bucky jokes as he mentions towards the family sized pizza box. Eddie frowns, wiping his hand on his shirt, you notice the substance on his shirt has grown since you last saw him, the large black spot reaching below his collarbones. “Are you alone here, Eddie?” You ask and suddenly the projector shuts off, leaving you in darkness. “Uhm, no?” he forms it like a question and you both look up towards the projector room above the seats. “That’s probably just Laura, messing around.”

“Laura? Is that her name?” you ask and Eddie nods. “That’s what she said, at least.” You can see the sweat coating Eddie’s face through the light of Bucky’s torch, his skin glistening and his eyes are bloodshot and pupils small. “We’re gonna go find her,” Bucky says as he walks down the steps. You turn towards Eddie. “You coming?” He frowns deeply as he takes another bite of his pizza. “So, now you want me to come with you?” He says with a weird tone. “Or you can just sit here and eat your damn pizza,” You roll your eyes and follow Bucky through a pair of double doors.

The projector in the next room turns on and you see the dark haired girl through the window of the projector room. “Laura!” You and Bucky call out as you make your way to the stairs leading up and enter the projector room. You find the room with the projector she just turned on, through a window you enter the film room that’s filled with shelves stacked with rolls of film. You enter a gap in the shelves and you find the girl hiding inside a room with another projector. She gasps as you see her and runs away, you enter the projector room through a window and you can see down into the auditorium below, Eddie is still sitting down there.

You follow her down the stairs and see her in the lobby. “Laura, stop! It’s dangerous!” She ignores you and sprints through the main doors. You follow behind but as you find yourself outside she’s nowhere to be seen. You see John in front of the building. “John?” You call out and he looks towards the two of you. “Did you see a little girl?” Bucky asks and John nods towards the road ahead. “Yeah! I tried to stop her but.. She went that way, maybe we can still catch her.”

You run down the streets, chasing the shape of Laura through the fog. She runs through a parking lot and up a pair of stairs leading up to a building. “Over there!” You see John pointing towards a big building. Your eyes widen as you take in the familiarity in front of you, Laura is standing in front of Brookhaven Hospital. She runs into the hospital, the double doors slamming shut behind her.

This was the place you remember most from Silent Hill, the times when your little safe haven in the form of a lakeside town became a nightmare.

Chapter Text

You follow Laura into the hospital, you see a security office with an ammo box of shotgun shells, the gun locker is open wide and empty. “Something is missing in there,” John comments. “Someone must have taken it,” Bucky says as he opens another pair of double doors leading into the lobby. A splitting headache makes your eyes fall shut.

You can hear a voice echoing inside your head, the figment of a memory flashes behind your closed eyes, it’s of you. Sitting in this lobby sipping a juice box and a faceless nurse beside you.

‘Do you have a number for your mother so we can tell her to come pick you up?’ her voice is muffled, almost like she’s talking under water. ‘I don’t have one,’ you can hear the voice of your child self say. From the view of a silent watcher you can see the frown on the nurse’s lips, you hadn’t noticed it at the time. ‘I have my aunt though,’ you give the nurse the number to your aunt's cell phone and she pats you on the shoulder and places a bag of chips in your lap. ‘I’ll give her a call, just wait here,’ you watch as the nurse walks into the reception area and as the child version of yourself grip your juice-box tightly.

A loud slam brings your and the younger you’s attention towards the double doors leading outside, through a blinding light a person comes running into the lobby– carrying the shape of a smaller person in its arms. Their faces, like nurse’s, are blurred out. You can hear the loud voice of the larger frame, a man yells at the poor faceless receptionist, she points down a set of doors and the man wastes no time in sprinting through, you can see the smaller frame in his hold bob and shake at the violent steps. Another bright light obscures your vision, it's so bright you hardly notice the next figure that steps into the lobby.

“Hey!” the memory clears like a fog and evaporates from behind your eyes, leaving you in darkness. You open them and see Bucky standing in front of you, John a few paces away. “You zoned out for almost four minutes, I thought you fell asleep for a second,” you hear John’s voice joke from behind Bucky. “You alright, John’s right. I tried calling out for you but you didn’t budge, it was like you couldn’t hear me at all.” You shake your head and look around the room you’d seen just a moment ago inside your head. It looks different here– dirtier and messier, the bench you’d sat on is covered in dust. “I’m fine, I just got a little tired. We’ve been walking around for a while.” Bucky looks at you with a little frown on his lips, he follows your gaze towards the bench, he looks like he’s in deep thoughts. “Well if you need a break, just tell me, okay?” You nod your head and push forward once more, filing the memory into a folder inside your mind, to be brought back at another time.

You find a map stand beside the door, you grab a pamphlet and scan it, there’s multiple floors and a lot of doors. You follow Bucky and John into what looks like a reception area that has an office behind it, when you enter the office the wind blows through an open window and sends pieces of paper flying around the room.

“This place is huge,” you note towards the two men and Bucky licks his dry lips, he’s standing in front of a locked key cabinet, a padlock that requires three numbers. You take notice of the desks around the room, dust has settled a long time ago. “We should look for that combination, it must be around here somewhere,” John says as you exit the office. The double doors leading to the south wing and the cafeteria are locked, so are the doors leading into the inner ward. You walk to the right side of the building and find a sign that says staircase and elevator with an arrow pointing down the hallway.

You pass by a pinboard with a dark poster that says REMEMBER, it has a picture of a dark silhouette of a woman standing in front of a window with some text on the bottom. ‘If you experience: poor appetite or significant weight loss, insomnia or hypersomnia, loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, diminished abilities to think or concentrate, CONTACT YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY!’. You approach the doors to the staircase and see Laura standing on top of the first set of stairs, she’s drawing on the wall. She hears the doors creak and you hear her gasp, she drops her crayon and starts to sprint up the rest of the stairs. “Laura, wait!” Bucky calls out but she doesn’t listen.

“It’s okay, we don’t wanna hurt you!” John follows as the two of you run up after her, she sprints through the double doors upstairs and you can hear the lock clicking behind her as the doors slam shut. You see the drawing she had been busy with, it’s a bunny smelling a flower and the beginning stage of a wolf head growling behind it. “Why does she keep running?” John says as you walk past the drawing. “I don’t think she likes us very much,” you walk back down the staircase. “But why?” John asks and Bucky shrugs his shoulders. “I-I don’t know..”

You exit the room with the staircase and turn immediately right through a pair of other doors, it takes you down a long hallway with lots of rooms on the right side, there’s an elevator on the left but the button does not do anything as you press it. “The power must be out, there’s no lights either.” A metal gate door separates the hall, from what you can see on the map the rest of the hallway has rooms marked with S1 through S6. Another pair of double doors are on the left side of the hallway but they’re locked, they seem to lead to the pool and shower area of the hospital.

Exam room 3 is locked with a sign on the door that says ‘KEEP THE DOOR CLOSED’, there’s a glass window beside the door and Bucky wastes no time in smashing it with his pipe. John yelps, “Give a guy a warning next time!” He exclaims as you climb through the window, being careful of the cracked glass. A small noise startles him again. “What was that?” Bucky raises his pipe as do you. “I don’t know but be on your guard.” Through exam room 3 you enter a door that is connected to exam room 2. You find a note in a desk drawer and read it outloud. “The combination for the key locker is 2, 8, the total numbers of the nurses in the lobby.”

You make your way back towards the lobby and the reception. You look around the wall trying to find the picture of the nurses the note was talking about. “Here, I found it. And I count 7 nurses in this photograph,” Bucky says before entering the office to put in the combination. It opens and he pulls out a key that has a tag with the word basement on it. “Great, down we go I guess,” you mutter as you three make your way towards the staircase again.

Through the basement door you find a map attached to the brick wall, you pull it down and start to read it. There’s a pump room, a generator room, some laundry spaces and storages, also a boiler room and one that says old boiler room, kitchen disposal room, maintenance room, a tech room and the familiar e for elevator which there seems to be 2 of. John walks towards the elevator and tries to open it, it makes Bucky sigh loudly. “I thought we established there was no power, what were you gonna do even if you got it open?” John scoff, his lips forming a scowl. “There’s no harm in trying!”

The place is dark and you stick closely to Bucky and you find the generator. It looks empty. “Do you think you can get this running again? Then we might be able to use the elevator.” As you exit the room through another pair of doors you see a mannequin walk down the hall and away from sight, your radio starts making noise and the two of you lift up your weapons, getting ready for an inevitable fight. As you enter the laundry room a hard body of a headless mannequin slams into you almost throwing you to the ground, it makes you cough from the impact.

Bucky spins around and slams his pipe into it as you recover. “You hurt?” He asks and you shake your head. “Just a little winded,” you laugh. In the outside light coming in through a window down the hall you can see another headless monster creeping its way behind him. You grab a hold of his hand and pull him into you, making the mannequin miss its attack, you slam your pipe twice into the monster and it goes down. Bucky looks shocked and lets out a little chuckle. “Thanks.” You return the smile with one of your own. “No problem.”

Inside the laundry storage you find a cart that Bucky pushes up against a wall with a window. He jumps through and tells you to wait, as he checks the room you find an empty canister sitting by a wooden pallet. You grab it and you hear Bucky unlocking the door into the storage room, inside you find a fuel tank you can use to fill up the canister. “Nice,” Bucky says as you hand him the red canister. You make your way to the generator and fill it back up, hitting the switch and turning the lights and power on. “Let there be light!” John exclaims and raises his hands towards the ceiling.

The elevator doors are open when you enter the basement hall again, you step through and John raises his finger to press a button. “2nd floor here we come!” You feel the elevator move and almost laugh at the normalcy of the situation, even in this hell there’s the simpleness of working technology that brings a certain hopefulness.

The elevator doors slide open and you step through into a hallway of doors. To the right you see a shattered window, the darkness of the night outside being on display. The light wind blows your hair and you can see the leaves of a tree outside. Rain starts to pour and you find a strange comfort in it. You turn towards the other end of the hall and see John leaning against a wall, his palms and fingers stretched out on the surface.

You share a glance with Bucky who shrugs his shoulders and calls out to the man. “John?” John doesn’t answer and instead pushes open the door beside him and stumbles through, the two of you follow and see him sitting on a bed breathing heavily. “You okay there, John?” You ask and he looks at the floor underneath his feet, head hanging low. “I don’t feel so good. I think the alcohol is messing with me,” he brings his feet up on the bed and lays down. “We’ll look for Laura while you rest here, we’ll be back as soon as we can,” Bucky says as he holds the door open for you. Before you exit the room you hear John say, “I’m just gonna close my eyes for a little bit, don’t you two dare leave me in this hospital.”

When the door closes behind you, you look back towards the window on the other end of the hall. “Hey, Bucky?” The man turns towards you. “Yeah?” You gnaw on your bottom lip, pulling it between your teeth, with such force you can almost taste blood. “What if we can’t find them? If I can’t find Brock, and you can’t find.. Steve?” Bucky’s eyes widen, he turns his face away from you at the mention of that name. “I don’t know, I haven’t thought that far ahead.” You don’t like that answer, it does nothing to bring you comfort. “Let’s not focus on that, we’re looking for Laura.”

You follow Bucky through a pair of double doors, your radio starts to stutter and you hear a squelching sound. In the torch light you see a figure of a woman stumble around the corner, she is clad in a nurses uniform in bright colors of dark blue, her face is obscured by a dark blob, you can see pieces of brown hair through the black guck.

Her body is twisted in a strange way and she moves almost like a zombie, in her hand she holds a pipe. She makes a gurgle squelch as she sees the two of you and starts to hobble her way down the hall. “Goddamnit!” She lunges with the pipe almost hitting you square in the face if you hadn’t taken a huge step back, Bucky raises his pipe and swings it at her. She takes the hit like a wall and raises her own pipe again and swings it, Bucky dodges it but is not ready for the second swing she follows up with and stumbles back. “This one is not like the others!”

She raises her pipe in a slow powerful attack, leaving a huge window for the two of you to combo attack her with your pipes on each side. She goes down and shakes violently on the floor. You both hit her a few more times and she grows silent. “This one is a lot tougher than some of the others we’ve seen. She attacks in a chain pattern, this is gonna make it a lot more difficult to attack her, even more so if we encounter more at once.”

The doors she came stumbling through are open but you decide to continue investing in this area first. You find a locked combination door with a note on it, ‘the code has been reset to what we agreed on during yesterday’s meeting in the doctor’s lounge. Like I said, I don’t want anyone writing it down on little pieces of paper for me to find. Be responsible, people!’. Another elevator seems to be stuck halfway through the floor above and the doors are emitting small sparks as they try to close.

Going through the doors the nurse had stumbled through you find yourself in another hallway with a pair of dark wooden doors that stick out from the rest. Inside there’s an office with a desk in the middle and two other connecting rooms. On the desk is a hand from a mannequin, it’s holding a key. On a side table you find an old voice recorder and when you press it a dark voice speaks through. “They are beyond hope– that’s what they keep telling me. My three patients, my ‘three hopeless cases’. But I do not believe it to be a matter of hope. It is a matter of diligence, discipline, trial and error. Of being as bold as one can be.To go as far as one needs to. I WILL find what it is that truly ails them. And I WILL cure them.” The message ends. “Three patients, does that have something to do with the hand on that desk?” Bucky asks out loud.

In one of the connected rooms you find it covered in red sheets, you pull them apart and see a strange looking wooden safe. Symbols are replacing the numbers on the buttons and one button with a symbol seems to be missing. You move back into the room and to the other side of it, you find a table with three files laying on top of it. There’s one file for a patient number 0090 that needs to be experiencing sensory delusions, the doctors have given the patient a diagnosis of insomnia. The recommendations are to be fed and hydrated since they refuse to eat or drink, they’re also recommended sleep medicine, constant surveillance and a bathing in the treatment room.

Another file reads patient 0130, they’re symptom is intense anxiety, they’re diagnosis is paranoia and visual hallucinations. The recommendations for this one is increased medications and that they can not be left alone and has thus been moved to L1 for closer monitoring. The last file reads patient 0050, symptoms are sudden outbursts of aggression, visual and auditory hallucinations. The diagnosis has been marked off and instead someone has written ‘WHAT DID I MISS?!’ in ink underneath it. The recommendations are to continue with the current therapy and the last one has been crossed out, it says water has a calming effect but instead someone has written ‘IT USED TO’ beside it.

You pocket all the three files and pick up a pen from the desks to mark off all the rooms and places of interest. “So we’re looking for those patients?” Bucky asks as you walk through the last connecting room. It’s small and there’s only a door with a lock on it that has two wings on the side and a star in the middle. “I don’t know yet,” you reply as you exit the office. Room c1, beside the office, has a poster with red coming out from underneath it, Bucky rips it off and an eye is on the other side. There you find a crumpled note, it's a patient interview transcript.

The name or the patient number is blacked out. It refers to an incident #071. ‘I remember lying in the water, empty. And then I felt him, felt him stare. He was close, very close. I had to get out, had to get away- But he followed, he kept staring, so I made him stop. Now I’m empty again. Can we go back to the pool?’

“That’s terrifying,” Bucky breaths out. You exit the room and unlock a pair of double doors that lead back to the hallway where John is resting. You walk back down the other end of the hallway outside of the office and enter the different rooms. In room M5 you find some handgun bullets for Bucky, M4 is locked and so is M3. In M1 you find a bed with chains attached to it, you and Bucky decide not to comment on it and instead exit the room. You follow another hallway and see a ceiling sign that has a nurse's lounge and staircase written on it. Room L1 is locked and seems to need a key.

The women’s locker room door is ajar and you step through, Bucky awkwardly hangs around in the doorway, you can see an open locker with a shotgun inside it! “Bucky, look!” His head peeks inside and he gasps loudly. He walks over to it and lifts it out of the locker, he weighs it in his hands and you have never seen him smile that large before, you don’t think you've ever seen someone’s smile that large.

On a chair you find a teddy bear, you pick quickly drop it with a yelp as you feel something prick your finger. There’s a crooked needle sticking out of it, you place the bear back down and pocket the needle, you’re not sure why. As you exit the radio whirrs to life and a nurse wearing bright pink comes stumbling your way, Bucky lifts his new toy and expertly aims it before firing into the monster, sending it flying backwards, hitting the wall with a loud smack.

The TV is blaring white static inside the nurse’s lounge, you find the key to L1 on the desk beside the TV. You unlock another door that loops back to the stuck elevator before making your way back to L1. Room L1 is covered in sheets, all the furniture covered in white as well. You see another high window you can crawl through and Bucky starts looking for something to roll in front of it. He finds a big food cart and pushes it underneath the gap, you both make your way through.

There’s a desk in the small room you’ve entered and an open window you can jump through, on the desk there’s a notebook wide open. You read the words on the page. “They brought in the girl today. Poor thing hasn’t said a word. She just sits there, head in her hands. Shaking, sobbing and quivering. I moved her to the corner bed, it seemed to have calmed her down. She even smiled at me, I think.”

You exit and enter a utility room that’s wide open, in the light of the flashlight you see a hole in the wall and two pearly white feet sticking out of it, as you enter your radio blares and the feet crawl down into the hole. With no other choice you and Bucky bend down by the hole side by side and stare down, it seems to be a gap between the two walls, big enough for the two of you to crawl down. “Of all the things we’ve done so far, this has to be the dumbest,” Bucky speaks as he starts to go down first. “I agree,” You follow him.

Your foot slips and you fall back into Bucky, his head landing between your thighs and your thighs over his shoulders, the force sends the two of you down a few meters before he catches himself. “Fucking shit,” he breaths out. “You should feel lucky I went first, I would have crushed you if this was the other way around,” you pull his hair at the comment and he yelps. Through the light you see that there’s a hole in the fall in front of Bucky but it's covered by something made of metal. “I think it’s a locker or something,” he looks up at you from his place between your thighs and the action almost makes you blush from embarrassment, his face is literally in between your thighs...

He turns back and pushes his hands against the metal. You can feel the tensity of his shoulders underneath your legs as he uses all of his strength to push the locker out of the way, with a heavy grunt it falls over and you can now exit. He bends down a bit to make sure you don’t hit your head, once outside you feel him grab a hold of your waist and like a weightless feather he lifts you off his shoulders and back down to the ground.

Your legs shake as they meet the ground, they feel like jelly and you don’t know if it’s because of the fact that you almost just died or because you can still feel the warmth of his hands burning through your shirt. “Where are we now?” You pull out your map and see that it’s an unnamed room between the medical records and a restroom on the first floor.

Crawling through another gap it takes you into the record room, the shelves are tipped and some are laying on the floor with paper scattered around. A crunch under your feet makes you look and you find a note that you pick up. Through shaky handwriting and smudged words you read, ‘Why won’t they help me, why do they keep me in here with him’. On a red book in the corner of the room you find a wrist bracelet that is marked with symbols and scribbles. A piece of the ceiling falls further away and the two of you jump, you unlock the door and now you’re back in the lobby.

You make your way back into the elevator and up to the third floor, you crawl through a gap and into room L3, there’s armless monsters in there that you and Bucky clear through like a breeze, they really were no match compared to the nurses. In the observation room attached to L3 you hear the speaker inside the room start to stutter, it sounds like muffled talking mixed with crying. It makes a shiver travel down your spine. There seems to be nothing of use in this room.

You remember seeing another staircase that led up another pair of stars, maybe up to a roof. You see more drawing on the staircase wall, another bunny but this time it’s running from a big bird. You hear humming as you traverse the steps, there’s a huge metal door that says ‘restricted area’ on it, it even has a peephole you can slide open to look through. As you slide the metal away to look inside you see Laura drawing on the wall. “Hey, are you okay?” She looks towards you. “Go away!” She sprints out of sight and you call after her. “Don’t run away, I just wanna talk!” But she’s already gone.

You find an open room that reads D3, inside there’s nothing but a nurse who Bucky shoots down with his gun. In D2 you find a typewriter with a paper sticking out of it, you read it, it seems to be incomplete. You immediately notice the patient number on it is 0090, its one from those files, the one that required bathing from what you remember. The note has days with updates of the patient but the last day the sentence ends abruptly, ‘Something is very wro–’. Like someone left in a hurry or died in the middle of writing it...

Room D1 had a padlock on it that needed combinations. You enter exam room 5 by Bucky breaking through another window. In there you find a key to the first floor, the inner ward. You also find an open door into a room with x-ray photos and a note that speaks of missing pictures. There’s another set of stairs made of metal that leads to a door out to the roof but it’s locked.

You make your way back down the stairs towards the inner ward. You see the door to the exam room 1 ajar, it had been locked before,and you hear a gurgle and see a nurse stumble around the lobby. You unlock the inner ward after taking down the nurse with four hits with the pipe. In the doctor’s lounge you find a note on a board with 9 circles and a red line going through them, like a number pad. You enter through a pair of ajar doors taped with white sheets, everything inside is covered with sheets, the walls, the furniture, even a singular wheelchair is wrapped up in one. On the map you can see that you’re in the dayroom and a gap through the wall connects it to the pharmacy beside it.

In the pharmacy you find a drain in the ground, green paint seems to be surrounding it, inside you can see a key but you can’t reach it with your fingers. You find an open wide book with blood inside it, even a bloody hand-print stains one of the pages. ‘Another incident with 0050. She got out of the pool, and made a break for the garden. Cutting herself wide open in the process. Thank God I was still here. She was completely manic, screaming. Had the orderlies hold her down, barely managed to stitch her up. She’s back in her room now, sedated’.

“This place feels sinister, the more notes we find the more wrong this place feels,” Bucky says, he had been reading the page from behind your shoulders. You can hear the rain through the open window leading into the garden. The two of you jump through and you can see an armless creature stumble about. It doesn’t seem to hear you through the heavy rain. You sneak your way past and enter the pool area through an open window. The pool is filled with green looking water, a lone life buoy sits in the dirty water.

There’s blood on the doors leading into the showers and you find a headless mannequin on the ground that starts to switch when you step over it. You kill it and find a medical tube on top of a sink. Your brain clicks and you attach the tube to the needle you found earlier. Now you have something akin to a fishing rope so you can fish the key out of the drain. You fish the key out but it takes a little bit, you can hear Bucky laugh at you in the background. Nonetheless you acquire the pool maintenance key, suck it Bucky!

Back in the pool room you open the maintenance hatch on the floor. There's a drainage lever that Bucky pulls, the pump drains the dirty water from the pool. On the pool floor you see bodies of armless creatures, the two of you drop down onto the pool floor. “I swear if one of you comes back to life, you’re gonna regret it!” On the wall of the pool there’s an eye, the same one as in the room you saw before, it’s leaking black liquid. Bucky breaks through it and there’s a valve behind it and another one of those bracelets, this one is stained with blood.

You pull out the note with the 9 circles, you think you might have a clue as to where this goes. So you make your way back up to floor 2. Across L3 where the door with the number pad you enter the numbers the line goes through, 3, 5, 7 and 8. The door opens revealing a nurse’s station, in the treatment room attached to it there’s hundred of cockroaches crawling around.

There’s three tubs and two are filled with a black liquid and the other there’s an x-ray picture but it’s moldy. Once you pick it up the cockroaches start crawling down a drain, disappearing from the room. You find a note that says the hospital has just received some mold remover and that they'll be storing it in the kitchen. You go back down the stairs and past the pool area and the pharmacy, towards the kitchen. You find the mold remover in the kitchen and there’s more cockroaches who again disappear once you pick the item up.

You spray it on the picture and can now see the x–ray of a hand and some scratches in the corner of the picture. In the cafeteria you find two nurses who seem to be busy looking at the static on the tv. You walk around them to unlock the doors to the lobby, again you and Bucky take the elevator up the 2nd floor before finding the other staircase and make your way to the 3rd one before finding the room with all the x-ray pictures.

You pick up the x-ray from the table and place it together with the one in your pocket on the board with the other two. “Look, there’s scratches on all of them, these two almost aligne do you see that?” Bucky says as he moves the pictures around. “There’s also black pen marks on the board that we can align with the ones on the pictures, see?” Bucky places one that completes an x and the other that makes two lines, in the scratches connecting the pictures you see the number 12.

”Woah! Look!” Bucky continues to rearrange the pictures. Soon enough you have three sets of numbers. 4, 37 and 12. “They must be for that door right outside! Come on!” Bucky pulls you out of the room and across the hall to D1. He puts in the numbers and the padlock clicks open and falls down the floor. “Good Job!” Bucky smiles sheepishly at your compliment.

There’s more of those bugs inside D1 on the bed that is covered by a thin sheet, you grab it and pull it off. You’re hit by a disgusting scent and view, in the middle of the bed there’s bloody organs piled up and in the middle of that pile is the last bracelet you need. “Oh god,” you heave, holding a hand over your nose and mouth. Bucky spares you by reaching out and taking the bracelet, this one is covered in green blackish guck.

Past the dark wooden double doors you enter the office, you place the bracelets onto the mannequin arm, nothing happens. “What?” You say confused as you try to pry the key from its fingers, Bucky stops you. “Wait–wait. Look at the bracelets, there’s numbers on them.” You see the numbers as he rotates the bracelet, on the scribbled one there is a 45, on the bloody one there is 92 and on the filthy one there is 71. “But how do we know which order they are in?”

“Look at the marks on the hand, I think we have to match it with the bracelets, just like those x-ray pictures,” Bucky once again starts to figure out and moves the bloody bracelet to the top followed by the scribbled and lastly the filthy. The hand opens up and the key can now be grabbed from its hands.

The key is marked with the same symbol as the lock in the right room, wings and star. Inside the director’s storage, you find the missing button to the safe and a bookshelf with books out of place. The backside of the books once you move them form a picture of a chimera breathing out fire. The same symbols on the safe are on the bottom of each book and there’s numbers under them. You write them down on the other side of the map and move back to the safe.

You attach the missing button and look down at the symbols, you start with 92 and that’s the circle with the triangle and the weird h. Next is 45 which is the man symbol and the circle with a dot. Lastly it’s 71, which is a woman symbol with horns and the circle with two lines inside it. The safe slides open and inside there is the key to the rooftop and a note, “Their images became blurry, melting together. I could no longer tell, not sure if I can do it. But maybe you can. This will take you to where you need to be, though probably not the way you want to,” you tilt your head as you read it out. “What does that even mean?” You flip the paper and there’s some words written there as well. “And there’s bound to be pain involved, there always is.”

“That sounds ominous..” Bucky hums out as you pocket the note. The two of you make your way up to the rooftop. You unlock the door and step through, it’s still pouring rain. Mist rises from the ground, and there’s pipes and railings on the roof, there’s a pair of double doors that lead into a room with a rope going through the floorboard, there’s a note that you bend down to pick up. You read it.

“May 9, Rain. Stared out the window all day. Peaceful here– nothing to do. Still not allowed to go outside. May 10, it is still raining. Talked with the doctors a little. Would they have saved me if I didn’t have another mouth to feed? I know I’m pathetic and weak. Not everyone can be strong. May 11, rain again. The meds made me feel sick today. If I’m only better when I’m drugged, then who even am I anyway? May 12, Rain as usual. I don’t want to cause any more trouble for anyone, but I’m a bother either way. Can it really be such a sin to run instead of fight? Some people may say so but they don’t have to live in my shoes. It may be selfish but it’s what I want. It’s too hard like this, it’s just too hard.. May 13, the doctor came in today. He said that I’ll be released soon. That it’s time to go home. I should be happy but I’m afraid, so afraid. It feels like something’s about to happen. Like the last gasp of air before the plunge. But deep down, I know it’s too late to turn back.”

The letter leaves a heavy air behind as you finish it. It felt hopeless, like all the hope you’d felt had suddenly been sucked out. “There’s nothing else here, let’s go.” As Bucky pushes the doors open you scream, on the other side the skull monster stands, grabbing Bucky around the throat. You fumble with your pipe, it slips through your fingers and as you try and catch it you watch the creature throws Bucky into the rain outside. You hear him cough and spit as he lies on the ground, the creature turns towards you, loud and slow thumping footsteps as it makes its way towards you.

You hear your own heartbeat inside your ears, with a strength like no man it grabs you with one hand around your shirt, lifting you into the air. You feel the shirt on your back choke you from the hold it has on you. It holds you in front of its face, you can’t see its eyes, there’s only a blackness where they should be but you can feel it looking at you, studying you. With a force it throws you through the doors and into the room, the force and raw strength from the monster makes you collide so hard with the wooden floor it breaks underneath you— you plunge through.

The last thing you hear is Bucky screaming your name before the world turns black and crushing pain erupts inside your body as you make impact with the fast approaching ground. There's nothing but darkness.

Chapter Text

Ice cold panic courses through his veins, he watches you being thrown so hard you fall through the wooden floor. He feels a scratching sensation as he screams your name in utter fright, it leaves a raw soreness behind– he can almost taste the metal of blood afterwards. He can see the creature peer down into the hole you’ve fallen through. Bucky scrambled for the shotgun that had been flung out of his hands from the impact of him hitting the ground. As the creature turns he lies back and cocks the gun and fires a bullet straight into its kneecap. It moans but doesn’t seem to be too affected by the wound, it stares at him before walking away, through a door on the other end of the rooftop– seemingly disinterested in him. Like it had done what it was set out to do.

When the creature is gone Bucky springs back up onto his feet, he picks up his pipe and slings the shotgun onto his back. Inside the room he peers down into the hall, through the light of his torch he can see you lying inside what looks like an elevator, you’re not moving. He calls out to you but you remain still, the drop doesn’t look that high, crouching down he grabs onto the ledge of the broken floorboards and sinks his body into the hole. When he lands on his feet the elevator shakes a bit, he reaches down quickly to check your pulse which is still beating. Bucky shakes you lightly but you don’t stir, he can see your eyes move from behind the lids, almost like you’re dreaming. When he reaches to turn your head to the side, sticky red liquid covers his fingers. “Damnit,” he mutters, you must have gone down head first and split the back open. It doesn’t seem to be bleeding too bad but without a proper cleaning it could end in a bad infection. Lucky for you, you're in a hospital.

Bucky kneels down and picks your limp body off the floor, he sits down on the edge of the elevator and slides out through the open doors. He notices you’re now on the other side of that big metal door you’d seen Laura through. When he walks down the hall, he can hear that same humming from before, it’s Laura. More drawings of bunnies falling prey to a big wolf are drawn on the walls. There’s a few isolation cells down the hall, one with blood painted on the walls. Through a pair of double doors he hears the humming louder, in a room with stacked up chairs Laura is sitting on the floor. She’s playing with a dark red teddy bear. “Laura?” Bucky says and Laura stops humming. “How do you know my name?” She says as she casts a glance at the man, her eyes furrowing at the person in his arms. “Eddie told us,” he continues, moving to lie your limp body down on a bed in the corner of the room. “That idiot blabbermouth!” She yells out angrily. “Why do you keep running away from us?” He crouches down on the ground beside her. “And how do you know about..” he casts a glance at you. “Brock?”

Laura turns to your still figure with a frown. “I just do! What’s the big deal anyways!” She grips the teddy bear tightly, looking sad as she takes in your state. “Is she okay?” Bucky looks at the little girl in confusion. “She’s hurt, she’s just sleeping to get better.” Laura scoffs at him, sneering. “I’m not stupid! I know what being unconscious means.” She stands up and walks towards the bed you're lying in, she places the teddy bear at your side. “He never loved her..he never deserved her..” Bucky can hear her whisper out. “What do you mean by that?” Laura shakes her head. “Why can’t you just tell us what you know?” She looks over with a glare. “You’re gonna yell at me if I don’t?” Bucky’s taken back, his eyebrows scrunching up. “No, of course not, just tell us.” Laura looks a little sad as she looks back at you, she opens her mouth as if she’s going to speak before she closes it and the sadness is replaced by anger. “I don’t believe you!” She yells as she sprints out of the door, Bucky moves to chase her but you stir on the bed and instead he runs over to you.

You’re back inside the memory you saw when you stepped into the lobby. The figure that had stepped into the room through the blinding white light, shortly after the man carrying what you assume to be a boy had sprinted off down the hall. It was a figure of a boy, not much older than yourself in this memory, the faces are still blurred out, so heavily you cannot even see the color of their hair. The boy approaches the reception, you can’t hear what they’re saying but soon after he comes over towards where you’re sitting, taking a seat on the bench beside yours.

You don’t speak for what feels like minutes, only sipping your juice slowly from the box. “Hey,” the silence is broken by the boy sitting not too far away from you. You turn your head and his head is turned towards you but you can’t tell if he’s looking at you. “Are you gonna eat those?” he points towards the chips you had moved to the side of you. You shake your head, you take them and hold them out towards him. “Nice, thanks!” He wastes no time in ripping the bag open and shoving fists of chips into his blurry mouth. You grimace from the loud crunchy chewing as he eats the chips rather loudly.

When he’s done he crumbles the plastic bag into a ball and turns his head back towards you. “Wanna see me hit that trashcan over there?” With nothing better to do you suppose you could humour him. “Sure but if you lose you have to go up to that nurse over there and tell her the worst joke you know,” you points towards nurse Grace who is standing at the end of the hallway, despite her name she is a grumpy old hag who hates children more than anything on this planet. “Alright but if I win I get your phone number and your name.”

You scoff at his advances but nod anyways, the trashcan he’s aiming for is across the room and there’s no way he’s gonna make that shot. You look back at him and for a second the blurred face stutters and you can see a smirk playing on his heart shaped lips. Stunned you almost miss when he winds up and tosses the plastic ball perfectly into the center of the trash can. “H-how?” You yelp out and the boy hoots and does a little victory dance, you pout. “So how about that number and name?” You begrudgingly tell him your name and the phone number to the phone that is currently laying on your bedside table at your grandma’s house. “Beautiful name for a beautiful girl,” He says cheekily, another glitch and you can see a pair of hauntingly blue eyes staring into yours.
“I’m James.”

When your eyes fly open you can see Bucky leaning over you. “Hey,” you say drowsily, your eyes heavy. “How are you feeling, doll?” Bucky reaches for you as you try your best to sit up, almost falling over from the heaviness of your limbs. “Doll?” you say with a small smile, you can see the skin of his cheeks grow a shade darker. “Sorry, it slipped out.” You laugh a little, moaning as a pain settles in your body. “It’s okay, I like it.” You move your legs over the edge and just as you’re about to stand up you notice the bear sitting by your side. “Wa-wait.” You pick the bear up and look at it closely, a spark of familiarity shoots through your mind. “I used to carry this thing around me everywhere, how did it end up here?”

Bucky takes in the bear, now that he looks at it– it looks worn and old, as if it's been through a lifetime of memories. “It’s probably this place, it’s trying to break us.” You hum at him before he stalks off to the other side of the room, rummaging through a pair of drawers of a cabinet. He comes back with a clean rag in his hands and a bottle of what looks like rubbing alcohol. “I noticed earlier you’ve got a gash on the back of your head, do you mind letting me have a look?” You shake your head and turn it away, giving him a better look. He lifts pieces of your ear, parting it down the middle, the wound is not big and looks just like a small cut– but he cleans it anyways. It doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. He makes sure to take care of all the other small injuries as well, since you’re not sure how long until you’ll find supplies like this again.

When you’re done you exit the room, you can see Laura standing by a pair of double doors. You both stop in your tracks, “Laura?” you call out and she looks at you in surprise. “I’m sorry,” she says, pursing her lips and looks over at Bucky. “I hid something in that room for you, a letter from Brock,” she points towards the double rooms. You look at her with surprise and move to open the doors, Bucky pulls on your arm–stopping you in your tracks. “Why would you do that?” He asks suspiciously and Laura only shrugs her shoulders. “At first I didn’t want you to find it but now… I want to help you.” Laura pushes the door open for you both, holding it and letting some of the light into the room. “It’s in the corner over there,” she points further into the room. Bucky feels a chill run up his spine, this doesn’t feel right. You walk further into the room though, looking for an envelope. “I can’t see it,” you call back and as you do the double doors slam shut, Bucky throws himself into them but before he can reach them he hears the click of a lock being turned. “Laura!”

“I’m sorry, I really am!” You hear Laura call out from behind the door, Bucky slams his hands into the door but it does not budge. “I’m just trying to help you.” She continues, and it’s Bucky’s turn to scoff. “By locking us into a room?!” Bucky looks through the window on the door, he can see the dark haired girl staring him down. “This is for your own good.”

A growling noise erupts inside the room. “Laura, open this damn door, there’s something in here!” Bucky slams a fist into the window but it doesn’t break. “Yeah, two idiots who need to remember!” Laura’s voice turns gravely half way through her sentence and then she starts to sprint down the hall, disappearing from view. Another sound appears from somewhere inside the room, it sounds like chains rattling, you and Bucky back up towards the corner of the room as the noise grows louder.

From the center of the room something drops from the ceiling, sending a rain of drywall falling down. A mutilated body covered in a sheet dangles from rusty chains attached to the ceiling, the monster’s feet that are sticking out from underneath the sheet are covered in that black liquid you’ve seen all over the town, it drips down onto the floor underneath it. It swings its feet out to kick towards you but Bucky pulls you a step back, the foot swishing past your face, a drop of black liquid landing on your cheek. You wipe it off and watch as the monster descends up into the ceiling again. “This is starting to get fucking annoying!”

The boards of the ceiling move as the creature does, you can clearly see where it’s going as particles fall from the roof. You make sure to stay out of its reach as it descends down and kicks out its feet in an attack, when it’s recovering from its attack Bucky sends a bullet into it and you hit it with your pipe from the side. Wait the attack out and fire into it twice before it drops onto the ground, detaching from the ceiling and the chains turn sharp and almost tentacle-like. It walks on the back tentacles and throws out the front ones forwards in a piercing attack, you and Bucky dive to the side– You going right and Bucky left. “Woah!” You gasp out, barely missing the sharp end of the chain. It’s focus turns to Bucky who just fired a round of shotgun shells into its center, he dodges a chain but yelps out as it grabs a hold of his leg. It drags him towards it and dangles him upside down in the air, he drops the shotgun. His hands grapple with another chain that’s trying to pierce his face.

You run for the gun, sliding down as a chain flies above your head. You grab a hold of it, cocking it before raising it to aim down the sight. You fire straight into what you guessed was the creature's head, the pellets hit it straight on, leaving nothing but a black gooey mess of where its head once was. It drops Bucky onto the floor, its chains grow limp and it falls back onto the floor with a loud thud. Bucky groans as he makes contact with the ground. He stands up and walks towards you, you hold out the gun and he takes it and slings it onto his back. “That was a nice shot,” he smirks and claps your back lightly. “First time I’ve ever shot one of those.” You laugh. Before you can react, another one of those creatures comes falling through the ceiling, its chains grab a hold of you and Bucky and pull you up into the darkness of the ceiling.

You hear that siren growing louder and as you come to from the darkness you notice the rustic smell in the air. The same one from Blue Creek. The room you’re in is small and the glass doors in front of you are wide open, you can see into the next room and a single wheelchair is in the center. You stand up from the ground and hold your hand out towards Bucky who is lying on your left, he takes it and you help him up with a small grunt. “Not this again,” he speaks ase he notices the way this place has changed, the walls are back to being grates and everything smells rusty and metallic.

On the wheelchair in the other room you find a note, it's a patience file. “Patient No.3141. Initial symptoms- hyperfocus. Current diagnosis- they can be fixed. Recommendations: STOP AT NOTHING.” When you turn the paper you can see the four words on the other side. “NO TURNING BACK NOW.” When you look at the room more closely you can see you’re inside the dayroom on the 1st floor but instead of white pristine sheets covering the furniture it has now turned yellow with black spots covering the bottom. The path to the lobby is hindered by the large gap in the metal floor, the pharmacy is locked and your only option is the elevator. It’s missing the buttons to the 3rd floor and the basement. So you push the ‘2’ button and make your way to the 2nd floor.

In the center of the hall there you find chains attached to something small that’s covered by a sheet, pulling off the sheet you can see that it’s some sort of box. It has a numpad on the right and a combination lock on the left. “Seems like we’re looking for two different codes then.” The walls of the room are completely covered by plastic like sheets, light brown in color with spots of dirt. You follow the chain into a hall. You hear gurgling and static from monsters close by but you don’t see them, a hole in the wall to room L2 is covered by a metal cabinet, another small crawl space towards the ceiling can be used to get inside L3, if you can find something to stand on. The chain is going through the crawl space. “Maybe one of the codes is in there?”

A nurse comes walking out of the restroom but instead of being clad in colorful scrubs it’s not in a tanned old beige one, their head is oozing blackness and it drips onto the floor in a trail. The noises it makes sound more squish-like, as if the blackness is constantly traveling down its throat. It’s holding a pipe covered in rust, it doesn’t see you so with a powerful hit in the back of the end sends it down towards the ground, Bucky finishes it with a single pistol bullet to the head.

You find a mannequin spasming as the hallway bends to the right, a shotgun bullet makes it fall over and stop. The director’s door is locked and needs a key but you find a cracked wall leading to the laundry room– Bucky breaks through it with the pipe. Inside there’s a nurse wandering around and an armless creature crawling across the ground. Bucky takes care of the nurse with his shotgun while you run around chasing the armless monster with your pipe raised high. It takes a little bit to catch up to it but you manage to slam your pipe into its leg, stopping it from moving before landing another hit in its back. Bucky pushes the metal cabinet covering the doorway out of the way before he finds a cart and starts pushing it through and towards the crawl space you saw earlier.

You make your way through and on the other side you find two more nurses hobbling about, one manages to slam its pipe into yours and you drop from the force. You can hear Bucky shooting down one of them and with some quick thinking you grab a hold of a small cart and push it into the nurse, trapping it between the cart and the wall. Bucky comes running your way and chuckles at the sight, the nurse is flinging its pipe trying to hit you as you keep your weight on the cart to keep it pinned. “What are you laughing at?! Kill it!” Bucky touches the barrel of the gun to the nurse's head and fires, black ooze splatters like a popped balloon and the nurse’s body falls forward and over the cart.

You find a note on a bed that reads, “He’s here again, looking, staring. He says he’ll drag me there. I don’t want to. I WON’T LET HIM TAKE ME”. You find the key to the directors office in front of a static tv, through the static you think you can hear voices talking. “I–HA-T-Y!” The screen goes black with a loud pop as the screen shatters into pieces. “Whoa!” As you unlock the door out you hear loud thumping, almost like someone’s heart is beating out of their chest.

You make your way towards the director’s office and Bucky unlocks the door, inside there’s a ladder where the mannequin hand once stood. The place doesn’t look as pristine as it had once done, bloody sheets cover almost everything inside the room and there’s litter all over the floor. You can see the voice recorder still on the table though. As you press it you hear maniacal laughter playing though. You find it beside the recorder. “There’ll be no pain anymore” and as you flip it the whole backside is black from the words ‘no pain’ being written over and over. As you climb the ladder you can hear the pitter pattern of the rain outside.

You continue to follow the chain and it leads what looks like an operating table with cuffs attached for the hands and the feet. At the top there seems to be some type of headgear that looks almost like an electric shock helmet. The table is attached to a machine that seems to be out of power, a red wire connected to it leads through a pair of double doors and you two walk through them.

You follow the red wire and it leads to through a gate which you find a way around through another room and a window you can hop through, you enter a gap in the wall and find that the red wire is connected to a generator. Bucky turns it on by pushing a button and the two of you make your way back to the room with the shock table. You push the button to the machine and sparks fly all over the room, on the table there’s now a burning set of numbers, 9659.

You go back down the ladder and towards the box. You put in the number on the numpad and it goes green and one of the chains falls off the box. You follow another set of chains that take you towards another restroom that has a cart you can use to get into another hallway. You run through a bunch of rooms and find that the chain is going through a broken door, you find a way inside the room through a breakable wall.

Inside the room you find a notebook that has a drawing of the combination lock on the box, it also has drawings of a clock, a lamp and a sink. There’s text in it that says ‘1 year they’ve been watching me. The numbers of the pills in the sink And the hour the clock makes a sound. All make me count the times the light goes out.’ Bucky watches the words, listening to the light flutter with a clink. “I’ll find the clock and you can count the pills in the sink,” Bucky says as he makes his way out of the crack in the wall and towards the clock he’d seen earlier. In the sink you can see a total of 6 pills. On the wall you see a hole and the text ‘watch it go dark’ underneath, you look through it and you can perfectly see the light outside the room. It goes out 2 times. You can still see from the broken door’s window as Bucky is turning the clock on the other side. As he reaches 2 the clock starts to ring loudly and you can hear distant moans grow closer.

A nurse completely covered in black liquid comes sprinting around a corner, a knife held high in her hands. She is taken down by Bucky firing his gun before following up with a heavy hit from his pipe. You squeeze through the gap to join him in this fight and quickly approach to slam your own pipe into a mannequin that had been slowly approaching him from behind. You take it down with a powerful slam. “You owe me twice now!” You call out as he continues to fire rounds into another nurse. With the last monster down for the count the two of you make your way back to the box.

You put in the numbers onto the box and the only thing you need now is a key, so you walk down the last doorway to search. You enter the nurse’s lounge and through a crawl space you make yourself into the women’s locker room. You make your way up the stairs to the 3rd floor. There you see the big metal door you had seen Laura through– that seems like hours ago now. To the right is an open gap that leads to the x-ray room, in there you find a note. ‘Oh, how we danced. arms flailing, our bodies in perfect synchrony and the music played, but in any dance there comes a time one must take the lead. and the music gets louder and louder, pounding and piercing and then.. silence.’ You can see the x-ray pictures you had placed up before and now they’re different.

There seems to be chains covering their bodies and the one with the cranium has something buried inside it’s skull. In exam room 4 you find a lifeless mannequin with its hands covering its face, it’s sitting in a wheelchair and there’s a small hammer covered in blood on a table beside it. You move its hands away from its face, one of the arms seems breakable and you use the hammer to break it off at the elbow. As you move the other hand you can see holes where the eyes are supposed to be. “Hm, I’m guessing we need something to get whatever is inside its eyes.” The two of you continue looking around.

You see the chain going into room D1 and find a breakable wall leading into D2. The wall between D1 and D2 is gone and you can now enter the locked room through the gap Bucky had made. You find a ladder inside D2 and climb down it. You’re now inside the kitchen on the 1st floor. You find a scalpel inside the storage room.

Back at the mannequin you look at Bucky who nods his head as you shove the scalpel into the hole, you bend it and pieces break off and you can now see the key inside its head. You pocket it and walk back down the stairs and to the box. You push the key into the lock– the last chain falling away and Bucky meets your eyes as you lift the lid of the box. “What the fuck!” Bucky curses as you two stare into the empty box.

There is absolutely nothing inside. “What was the point of this?” You close your eyes as Bucky continues to curse and a whoosh makes the both of you turn around, a sheet has fallen off the wall and behind it there’s a door with a woman sculpted into it, the wall beside the door has more women painted onto it. You see something inside the woman’s mouth and you approach the door, it's an elevator button with -1 on it. The basement button. On the wall beside the door there’s a text.

‘She is an angel no one knows only
I can see the lady of the door
they cannot walk along her Bridge of Thread
they fall from the weight of their crimes.
Like bloated ugly corpses, their sins she devours them
sin and sinner alike, she saves me she is an angel’

Back in the elevator you put the button back in its place. You press the button and the elevator starts going down. Inside the maintenance room in the basement you find more ammo for Bucky and you hand them over to him. A gap in the wall takes you into the generator room, the hall outside the room seems to have more missing pieces of the floor, the left side is cut off and so is the path forward. You have to walk through the laundry rooms and the storage to make your way around. Inside the boiler room you find an armless monster crawling across the ground, Bucky shoots it dead not wanting to chase it around. As you enter the second part of the boiler room a nurse who’s completely drenched in black comes crashing into you from around the corner. It shoves its knife into the ground beside your head and you kick your feet against its lower half, it’s dragged off of you as Bucky takes a hold of the back of its scrubs and throws it across the room. It goes slamming against a shelf and you both run through the room. You climb up on some boxes and through a window.

On the other side there’s a gap that takes you to the pump room, you find a copper ring on top of a bloody sheet in front of a gap in the wall. As Bucky picks it up you hear footsteps approaching from behind you, you both jump and spin around. John comes walking through the darkness. “Guys, there you are.”

“Oh, glad to see you’re alive,” Bucky speaks with a neutral tone, it makes John snap at him. “I almost died back there! You both just left me! I’ve never been so scared in my life!” You can see John’s face is pale and he looks shaken up. He walks up to the two of you. “You don’t care about me! All you care about is those dead friends of yours!” Bucky looks shocked at John’s sudden outburst and you can feel a shiver running up your spine. “Look we were gonna get back to you, but-” John interrupts him. “Just don’t leave me all by myself again, please?”

You sigh as Bucky just nods his head. “So what happened to Laura? Did you find her?” John asks as he turns away for a second. “Yeah, but she ran away,” Bucky says as the three of you walk down the hall. “Come on, let’s find her,” John says as he follows the two of you. You find the stairs and walk up them to the first floor. When you’re in a hallway you look up and notice that the ceiling is missing and rain is pouring out from within the darkness of the emptiness above you. When you’re in the pool area you gasp, the pool is a bottomless pit where you can’t see the bottom no matter how hard you try. In the doctor’s lounge you find a tipped over fridge, you open it with the help of Bucky and inside there’s another ring– this one is made of lead. “Not very cute is it,” you hear John say as he looks at the ring in your hand from behind your shoulder. “Come on, I know what to do with these rings,” Bucky says as he pulls you out of the room.

With both the rings you take the elevator back upstairs to the door with the woman. “H-hey guys. Let’s get out of here, forget about that door and let’s go,” John says as Bucky places the rings on each hand. The door slides open and reveals a long dark hallway. Bucky steps through and you’re not too far behind, John stands behind you and looks terrified. “What’s wrong? I thought you wanted to get out of here,” You say to him and he looks off into the room with a big frown. “I know.. but this room.. something doesn’t feel right.”

Bucky looks back with a small comforting smile. “Come on, it’ll be fine. We’ll get through this– all of us.” John takes a hesitant step into the room, following you both further in. The door closes behind you. You walk down a pair of stairs and find a note with the words ‘it is done, sick no more’ on it. You continue down and down until you get to a long staircase going straight down towards a rusty door. The door leads into a long hallway with pipes on the wall. As you jog down the hall it curves to the left, you can hear screeching sound echo throughout the silence followed by a loud thud of the door being slammed open.

From the other side of the grate you can see the skull monster making its way towards you. “Everybody run!” You yell as you take off. John is in front of you and Bucky is in the back. You all sprint through the long hall– the floor breaking as you dodge the falling of the ceiling as well. Then you see an elevator. “There!” You scream as you point forwards, Bucky picks up his pace and suddenly John is falling behind. “Come on!” Bucky is the first to enter the elevator and he pulls you through with strong hands. You can see that John has tripped and is now trying to get back on his feet, the monster is approaching fast behind him. “John! Run!” You scream and he starts sprinting again, he reaches the elevator and Bucky tries his best to hold the doors open.

John tries to squeeze through the gap but it's too small, his hands trying to pry the doors open and you can see the monster approaching from behind his shoulders. You try to help Bucky with holding the doors but a piercing sound enters your ears and blood comes splattering against your face. A spear is impaled through John’s chest, blood has splattered up onto his face as well and jaw falls slack as more blood comes pouring out of his mouth.

Then he’s yanked back and the elevator doors slide closed, leaving the two of you in shock.

Chapter Text

When the elevator doors open you don’t get off, too paralyzed with fear to even move a muscle. You can feel Bucky moving around the elevator, picking up the pipe you had dropped, he throws both of the pipes in his hands out of the elevator before grabbing a hold of your arms. “Look at me,” you don’t answer, you don’t even blink as he tries to speak to you. “Goddammit, doll! Look at me!” He raises his voice and it makes your eyes move from the spot they had locked onto and instead you meet his blue gentle ones. “It’s gonna be okay,” he’s speaking to you in a soft calm voice, reaching a hand up to wipe the blood off your face. “H-how do you know, John just died…”

Bucky shakes his head, drying a tear that’s escaped your eye with his thumb. “I won’t let anything happen to you, do you hear me? I’ll fight that fucking thing with my bare hands if I have to,” his words bring more tears to your eyes, you don’t think you’ve ever heard such protective words ever in your entire life. Was Brock this protective? You can’t recall. “I’m sorry but we can’t stop here, we have to keep moving. It’s what John would have wanted.” You can’t say you were close to John but he was still a person trapped in this place, a survivor just like yourself. He just wanted to go home..

Bucky intertwines your fingers with his as he pulls you out of the elevator. He picks up both of the pipes and hands one out to you, with your hands interlocked you take in the state of the still metallic and rust filled hospital. The lobby is just around the corner and as you exit Brookhaven you feel sadness wash over you, you were almost out of this building when he was killed. The front door is locked but you find the key in the room behind the reception, it’s laying inside a notebook with its pages filled with words.

“The potential for this illness exists in all people and, under the right circumstances, any man or woman would be driven, like her, to the ‘other side’
The ‘other side’ perhaps may not be the best way to phrase it. After all, there is no wall between here and there. It lies on the borders of where reality and unreality intersect. It is a place both close and distant.
Some may say it isn’t even an illness. I cannot agree with them. I’m a doctor, not a philosopher or even a psychiatrist, unlike the director.
But sometimes I have to ask myself this question. It’s true that to us her imaginings are nothing but the inventions of a busy mind. But to her, there simply is no other reality. Furthermore, she is happy there.
So why, I ask myself, why in the name of healing her must we drag her painfully into the world of our own reality?”

Out the open window to your left it's raining heavily, you hear fast footsteps and see Laura sprinting away from the hospital and down the street. You both walk over to the front door and unlock it, walking out into the rain falling from the dark sky. A street lamp in front of you crackles and before you know it the lightbulb explodes, leaving the ground underneath it in darkness. The hospital building from the outside is covered in sheets much like the inside, pieces of the ground are replaced with grates and the rest of the street looks empty.

You make your way towards another streetlamp that is shining brightly, following the way you saw Laura run just a few minutes ago. You find yourselves in front of a wall covered in a sheet and a door at the bottom of it is ajar. You push your way through the door and on the other side you see rusty buildings. You approach a light you see in the distance and the closer you get you can tell it’s a car shining its headlight into an open garage. Inside you find a breakable wall, Bucky busts through it quickly and helps you squeeze through.

Once on the other side you both jump when the rusty metal cabinet on the other side falls over the gap, trapping you both inside. You walk through a door in front of you and see Laura standing a few feet away, looking at you both. “Laura!” As you call out she starts running into the darkness. You both pick up your pace to follow her. She leads you to a main street and you can see the bright neon sign of a diner. Monsters are crawling all over the street and Bucky takes a hold of your hand to pull you into a run. You run through the diner and end up in a parking lot beside it, you pass by a yellow school bus when a monster crawls out from underneath it. You don’t have time to stop and fight since there’s way too many of them.

You get back on the street through a door in the fence and Bucky pulls you along as you follow the light of the street lamps. A sharp turn to the left takes you to another wall with a door, you see Laura standing in the doorway. “Stop!” Bucky yells out but once she hears you she runs through the door, it slams shut behind her. You both follow through the door and take you into a tall dark hallway with metal grates for flooring. You hear moaning and feel the floor under you shake, in the dim light of the torch you see something walking on the other side of the floor. “Watch out!” Bucky pulls you to the left as you dodge the creature underneath you, continuing to pull you through the hall and into another door.

Then you’re back on the street again, beside a rusty motor home. Inside the motor home you find a map with something written on it.

“He who is not bold enough to be stared at from across the abyss is not bold enough to stare into it himself. The truth can only be learned by marching forwards. Follow the map, there’s a letter and a wrench.” There’s an arrow pointed towards a spot on the map, you place the map in your pocket.

You take the lead with the map in your hands, the spot on the map where the letter and the wrench should be is between the American Cafe and Big Jay’s. “This version of the town is a lot worse than the one with the fog, everything is so dark and gloomy.” Bucky says as you’re walking towards Neely Street. There’s a large gap in the ground so you have to cut through Happy Burger, inside there’s two nurses twitching in the kitchen– they don’t see you so you quietly sneak past. Now you’re outside the bar with the jukebox, it looks a lot more rundown in this ‘other world’, however the jukebox looks alive with its brightly colored lights. Through it you can hear what sounds like ragged breathing and as you approach you can see that someone has written something on the wall behind it, with what looks like blood.

“If you ReaLly wAnt to sEE your ‘Friends’, you shOUld just DiE. But You mIght be hEadiNg to A diffErent place than THEM,” at the end of the sentence you can see both your and Bucky’s name scribbled with large letters. You look over at Bucky and he’s frowning at the floor, his shoulders look tense– you grab his hand and he is pulled out of whatever was going on inside his head. The backdoor is ajar and you make your way towards it. Another ajar door takes you to the alleyway behind with a bunch of garages on each side. You cut through another alley as the way to the main street is missing the ground, you find a window you can jump through attached to one of the buildings.

Now you’re inside the laundromat beside the American Cafe, you can vaguely hear a phone ringing, you squeeze through another gap in the wall that takes you to the front of the laundromat and you exit through the front doors. Outside you can hear the ringing more clearly and as you follow it, it takes you to a lit up payphone. You hesitantly reach for the phone and press it to your ear, Bucky presses his own to the other side of the phone, trying to hear as well.

“H-hello?” You call into the silence and hear small static through the line. “Is anyone there?” No one answers. You wait for a second before you place the phone back, something clicks and a folded paper has slid out of the coin slot. You pick it up and unfold it.
“Or perhaps you are a fool. The truth usually betrays people. You should know. The key is in the park, at the feet of the praying woman. The wrench will open the gate. The key will let loose the abyss.”

“Wow, couldn't just have told us that before?” Bucky rolls his eyes dramatically. He takes the wrench as you pull up the map again. Back to Rosewater park you go. It’s silent as you run down the street, all you can hear is the fluttering of the sheets being moved in the wind. The street lights glow red and the night sky is darker than anything you’ve ever seen– almost nonexistent. “The stillness is making me anxious..” You say as you continue to walk beside Bucky. He hums as he looks around the street. “Maybe it’s like that letter said, maybe the stillness is because soon we’ll let loose the abyss.”

Past the music store you find the door with the red text ajar. “The door that wakes in darkness, opening into nightmares,” you read it out loud, shivering from the cold wind and the suspense of what is on the other side. “That’s not creepy at all.” The door leads into a small area with a gate at the front, as you make your way there you once again hear that loud intake of a breath in your ear. You pull on Bucky’s sleeve and he stops for a second. “D-did you hear that?” Bucky raises an eyebrow as he looks around. “Hear what?”

“Nothing..” You say before making your way towards the gate. Bucky looks after you in confusion, he notices the tension is your body as you’re walking rigid with your shoulder held high. Bucky uses the wrench on the metal gate and it leads into what looks like a tunnel. It’s a long walkway with that same metal flooring. There’s some groaning and thumping and you see the same creature as before walking underneath you, now you can see that it’s using its hands to grip the grates as it swings across from under. You run through the hall, dodge it as it follows after.

You run down a pair of stairs and suddenly you’re entering through a metal door, the light flickers above your heads. It leads to the tunnel right outside the park, how convenient. You enter the park and feel a sudden heaviness on your chest. If you thought the park was scary in daylight it was even worse now that night has fallen. The gate leading to the pier is locked so you lead the way through the greenery towards another gate that takes you into the second part of the garden area. The silent suspense is killing you as you walk towards the statue. When you approach you see the brown hair belonging to Peter as he stands in front of the statue. You both walk towards him and he’s fully immersed with staring at the sculpture. “Hey, are you feeling better?” Bucky’s the first to speak as he takes another step closer. You don’t remember much of what happened last time you saw him, except the glint of a kitchen knife being pointed towards Bucky and Peter screaming those words.

“This place is different from what I remember…” Peter speaks as he continues to look at the sculpture in front of him. The sag in his shoulder becomes more prominent with each word spoken. “I guess.. things never really stay the same, do they?”

Bucky rubs the back of his neck as his lips pull up a little. “I guess not..” You watch as Peter starts to shake his head a little, turning it towards you. “I don’t.. I don’t think he’s here anymore. My uncle.. I don’t think he wants to see me anymore..” Peter’s facial expression grows sad, his gaze turns towards the ground underneath his feet. “Why would you think that?” You take a step closer to him as you ask. Peter doesn’t answer. “Well we’re happy to see you alive.” You can see that Peter looks shocked at the confession. You can see his eyes moving back and forth and the shock is replaced by a sense of discomfort. “I-I better get going,” Peter says as he starts to take a step away from the two of you. “You still don’t want us to go with you, if we stick together we might have a chance at getting out of here,” Bucky says as he takes a step with Peter. “Out of where?” Peter looks confused.

“This town, Silent Hill,” you say and you can see that Peter’s body is folding in on itself, it looks like he’s trying to make himself look smaller. An act you find familiar in a strange way, like you’ve witnessed it many times before. “N-no, it’s okay.” With a few quick steps Peter is out the gate and fading into the darkness. “What is going on with that boy?” Bucky huffs out a breath and you bite your tongue, you think back on all the times you’ve encountered Peter and there’s a pattern to his body language. Bucky gets on his knees and starts to dig in the dirt in front of the statue. “Found it!” He pulls out a tin box and inside there is the silver key. There’s a note taped to the top of the box.

“My patient buried it here. I knew, but did nothing. It made me uneasy to have such a thing near. I wasn’t looking for the truth, I was looking for tranquility. I also saw that thing. I fled, but the old society was sealed. No one dares to approach that place. Now, I offer you the key. If you still do not wish to stop. I pray to the Lord to have mercy on your eternal soul.” Once again two names are scribbled at the bottom of the note, Bucky and yours.

“It’s a key to the Historical society..” You say as you pick it up, examining it from between your fingertips. “Come on, I know the way there.” You walk out the gates behind you and Bucky follows through. “I haven’t asked you because I value your privacy but.. How come you know so much about this place?” Bucky asks as you walk down the quiet street. “I used to visit this town all the time..” Bucky tilts his head as he listens to you speak. “My grandmother used to live in this town, just across the lake from here.. I used to visit over the summer.”

You notice the town has turned back to normal as you pass by a gas station. “She fell ill, then one summer she was gone. I was the only one by her side as she passed away. That’s why I know so much about this town and how to get around.. I’ve spent so much time here,” you tell him and you can see that he’s closely watching you, taking in every word that’s falling off your tongue. “I forgot about this place for a long time. The more time I spend here the more I seem to recall from that last summer. When I passed out at the hospital.. I had this vision, a memory– of one of the times she got really sick. I had to call the hospital and they came with an ambulance. They took her in and I had to wait in the lobby, the nurse’s wouldn’t tell me if she was okay..”

“That sounds awful..” Bucky says as you’re approaching the Historical society. “You know, I’ve also visited this place before. I was here one summer with my parents and Steve...” His words fall short, he clears his throat and continues to speak. “We were on a fishing trip. Steve… the friend I’m looking for got a really bad asthma attack as we were making our way ashore. He had reached for his inhaler when the boat shook and he dropped it into the water. My dad was freaking out so badly..” Bucky chuckles lightly, you can see in his eyes that he’s reminiscing back towards that time. “He pretty much threw me and my ma’ into the car and sped off. Steve wasn’t a strong kid.. his, uhm, immune system wasn’t the best and he would often get sick. I don’t know how many summers he’d spent in bed watching the days go by.”

“I don’t think there’s a coincidence we were brought here. We both have history in this town..” You speak as Bucky unlocks the door to the society. You step through the familiar smell of old stuff entering your nose. “I remember this place, my grandma loved it here. I always thought the pictures in here were creepy though..” Speaking of creepy, straight ahead you can see a picture of the skull monster that has been chasing you around the town, there’s cages filled with people behind him, the small label at the bottom of the picture frame reads; “Summer day, Judgement remains.”

“That’s scary..” You find more pictures on the wall, a group photo of the founders of the society, one of a coal mine, another of the former director of Brookhaven Hospital. The man in the picture is wearing a suit, his hair is shaggy and dark, fitting the same color as his beard. You also find a really strange framed photo of a room with a door and a square hole in the middle of the floor, the photo has no label or name.

The wall at the back of the room is broken, leaving a large gap that’s leading into a dark staircase descending down. As you travel down the stairs you hear a horn blaring. “Are these stairs infinite? Are we gonna end up at the center of the earth or in hell?!”

“My feet are starting to hurt!” It takes 15 minutes of traveling down the stairs for you to reach the end, it’s a metal door. Through the door you find a small room with two pillars in the center and an old desk next to the door. On it you find a note. On the note you see the words Toluca Prison at the top… “Well, it certainly is one type of hell..” You speak as the two of you enter the door on the other side of the room, it takes you into a hall that leads to the left, and through another door you find a familiar sight. You’re in that room from the picture up in the Historical Society, the one with the square hole in the floor. “Well great, what now?” Bucky says as you peer down the hole, you cannot see the bottom but you know what you must do. “We take a plunge..”

Bucky’s head snaps to you and he looks at you like you’re crazy. “What?! No way.. If we jump we’ll die. We don’t know how far that thing goes!” You walk towards him, taking his hand in yours. “It’ll be okay. We haven’t died yet, right?” You half smile at him but you can still see the hesitance on his face, he looks frightened. “You trust me, don’t you?” You tilt your head and Bucky searches your eyes, the moment feels intimate and he intertwines your fingers in his through the hold– squeezing your palm with his. “I do, more than anyone.”

You smile as you pull him with you to the edge of the hole, you don’t break eye contact the two of you are sharing. “We’ll be fine, I know it. Besides I’ll catch you.” Bucky laughs, a smile pulling at his lips and he scratches the stub on his chin. “You couldn’t catch me even if you tried, not with those noodle arms of yours, doll.”

With a shared nod of your heads you pull him close as you take a step off the ledge, the two of you plunging into the darkness. You can feel the wind of the fall blowing your hair but all you can focus on is Bucky’s bright blue eyes.

Chapter Text

When you come to– you’re laying on the ground, Bucky’s hand is still clutched in yours. You can see you’re in a square room, Bucky pulls you up to stand with him. “See, I told you we’d be fine,” you say with a small smile and Bucky spares a glance towards you. “Tell that to my back, I think I landed on it.” He stretches and makes a hissing groan as he places his hands on his back.

There’s a breakable wall in front of the two of you and Bucky makes quick work to get through it. The gap leads to a metal door that takes you into a hallway with knee-high water, you trudge through the water until you reach another metal door. Inside the room you can see a metal gate underneath your feet, it needs something for it to open so you instead walk through a door on the right. It’s a small room and as you step through you can see a strange key lying on the ground, you pick it up and move back towards the door. You turn the handle but the door does not budge. “What the–”

Suddenly the lights go out and you can hear a pitter pattern all around you, when the lights turn on you can see bugs crawling all over the room– the floor, the ceiling and even the walls. You can see a keypad next to the door, there’s blood spots on all of the numbers except 3. “We need to get this door open fast,” Bucky says and you yelp as a bug bites into your foot. Bucky begins pressing different combinations of the 3 buttons that are clean, you slam your foot and pipe into the bugs that are approaching. Finally the lock clicks open and you both slam the door shut as you exit. A shiver runs down your spine. “Ugh I hate bugs..”

You unlock the gate and look down into the hole, there’s lamps on one side of the walls and you can sort of see the way down. “Well further down the rabbit hole we go,” Bucky takes a hold of your hand again and with less hesitation this time you both walk off the ledge. You really do feel like Alice as you fall down the hole.

This time when you’re waking up you’re lying in what looks like a canteen, down on the other end of the room you can see a familiar face sitting with his back against the wall– It’s Eddie and a body slumped over a table in front of him. There’s blood all over the table and it looks like the person has been shot in the head. “Ain’t no big deal,” you hear Eddie speak from his place on the ground. “Just put the gun to their head and.. pow!” He’s holding a revolver in his hand and he lifts it to push it against the side of his head.

“Eddie?” Bucky calls out as the two of you approach him, he looks up from the daze he’d been stuck in. “Oh, uh… Hi guys,” He pushes himself into a stand. “Who was that, what happened?” Bucky asks and you can see Eddie’s eyes scan over the slumped over corpse. “I don’t know, he just came at me.”

Bucky meets your eye, the two of you sharing a glance before Bucky nods his head lightly. “Okay, so he attacked you? And you shot him?” Bucky’s gaze lands on the gun in Eddie’s hands. “Yeah..” Eddie nods his head. “Yeah, that’s right! He made me do it!” Eddie points at the person with the gun in his hand, his voice growing more aggressive. “Let’s calm down, Eddie..” You say, growing weary at his sudden change. “Do you know why he would do that?” You ask him and Eddie takes a step back. “I don’t know, he came out of nowhere. Tried sneaking up on me in the dark, I heard footsteps so I turned my back and then he was right there!”

“And you could tell he wanted to hurt you?” Bucky tilts his head as he asks, you can see Eddie starting to sweat. You notice the dark spot on his shirt is growing bigger each time you see him, now it’s going all the way down to his stomach. “Well, yeah. I mean.. The way he looked at me… I just had to do it.” Bucky narrows his eyes at the man. “He looked at you? You just said he came at you..”

“Well, yeah.. I mean.. I could see it in his eyes.” The more Eddie speaks the less sense it’s making. He shot someone for looking at him? This does not feel right, you grab a hold of Bucky’s arm to discreetly pull him back a little, out of Eddie’s reach if he decided to try something. “He kept looking at me. Making fun of me. I told him not to look, but.. he didn’t listen,” Eddie shrugs his shoulders as he finishes, waving his gun around. “You can’t–” Eddie raises his gun, pointing it towards Bucky’s chest and Bucky raises his hands. “You can’t just kill someone ‘cause of the way they looked at you..”

Eddie stares silently into Bucky’s eyes for a minute, then the corners of his lips raise as a chuckle leaves his mouth, then a small laughter. He lowers his gun as he continues to laugh lightly. “You should've seen your face, Bucky. I was just joking,” He points towards the man again. “That guy was dead when I got here.”

Somehow you don’t believe that. Twice is not a coincidence, something is wrong with this man and you don’t trust him. “I got you, didn’t I?” Neither of you say anything and an uncomfortable silence falls over the room. Then Eddie speaks again, turning around towards the door. “Well, anyway. I better get going,” he reaches for the door and pushes it open. “Wait.” He stops at Bucky’s word.

“You’re gonna go out there alone?” Eddie smiles wickedly and the two of you stare. “Yeah,” is all he says before he walks out, the heavy metal door slamming shut behind him. You stand there for a minute, Bucky’s arm clutched between yours. You turn and look at the corpse next to you, it’s so cold in this room the body has started to go grey. “I don’t trust him,” you speak into the silence. “Yeah, I don’t either,” Bucky answers. “Come on, let’s go.” You walk out the same door Eddie had just a moment ago, he seems to be nowhere insight.

Across from you there is an open door with a light coming out of it. Inside you find a map and from it you seem to be standing in the armory. Bucky starts rummaging through some drawers and you decide to do the same. “Wow! Look at this!” You pull out an ammo box with a new kind of bullets, they look longer and probably fits into a rifle of some sort. “Hm, those look like rounds for a hunting rifle,” Bucky takes them out of your hand as you hold them out for him. “We should be on the lookout for one.” You take a glance around the room and laugh. “Well we don’t have to look very far,” You point towards the back of the room that has a gun cabinet with a rifle hanging inside it, Bucky follows your finger and walks up to it with stars in his eyes.

You find a note beside it and read it silently. ‘They still haven’t found him. Since he had the cabinet key, we should assume one of the prisoners got his hands on it. Get the spare from the witness checkpoint and secure the rifle before it falls into the wrong hands.’

“Oh man, this is a SL6! Haven’t shot one of these since I went out hunting with my pa’,” Bucky says excitedly, he’s staring at the gun like it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen and it makes you pout. He notices the lock keeping the cabinet closed. “Damn, we need to find that key!” He looks over at you and looks confused as he takes in the pout on your lips. “What?” You don’t say anything as you walk out of the room. “What?!” You can hear his footsteps as he chases after you.

Down the hall you find small steps leading into a chapel, there’s confession booths to your immediate right and benches to the left leading up to a podium. On the podium you see a weight, it’s heavy in your hands and Bucky takes it and pockets it. As he does you hear a slam across the room and gurgling sounds, your radio sparks and an armless creature comes stumbling out of the confession booth. Bucky fires a round into it and it drops dead on the floor, fizzling out acidic liquid. There’s a room to the right with a desk and bookshelves, it’s a vestry. You find an open book with something written inside it, beside the book there's a rosary.

‘The prisoners do not feel remorse. In fact, they do not feel themselves to be sinful at all. Even the simplest of them will try to shield themselves from the Lord’s gaze with what little words they know. And so, they dream blissfully, the sinners that they are. For no matter how foul and loathsome one’s existence may be, human nature abides.’

You walk back into the chapel and down the line of benches. “I used to go to church with my parents every sunday…” Bucky says as you exit the doors. “When did you stop?” Bucky bites his bottom lip as you ask him. “When I enrolled in the military.” Your mouth opens in a gape, you shouldn’t have been surprised. He is the picture perfect resemblance to man in the army, strong and not to mention his knowledge when it came to weaponry. “Didn’t feel right going anymore,” he speaks solemnly. “Not after what I’ve done..” the last part he says so quietly you almost don’t hear him. You open your mouth to comfort him but he pushes his way through a pair of double doors ahead, probably wanting to leave this conversation behind.

The doors take you to cell block A, there’s rows of metal gated cells. Beside the door there’s a lever and as you pull it light floods through the row of cells, you can see a headless mannequin crawl its way up the wall and away from sight. The lever is slowly rising with a ticking noise and as it shifts back into place the light goes out again. “It’s timed.”

The short hallway to the left takes you to cell block B and there’s another lever there on the wall. There’s only cells on the right on this block and there’s a door on the left side with a red light above it, on the door there’s a picture of a boar with its eye crossed out. Down the hall you can see a pair of double doors and from the map you can see that it leads into a yard. In the middle of the yar there’s something large covered by a sheet, you and Bucky approach it and each take a hold of the sheet and pull it off.
Underneath is a statue of a woman, she’s holding something and in front of her is a scale.. There’s two sides that can be tipped and this is probably where the weight you found in the chapel comes into play. There’s already the smallest weight placed so you place the largest one on the other end and the scale tips to the symbol of a snake, you hear something click.

Behind the statue of the woman is a something that looks like a stage, there’s a holder on the ground that looks like it needs a lever of some kind and at the back of the stage there is a plaque of two skull monsters standing with spears and in the middle of the two there’s a figure hanging from a noose. There’s writing above the figures. ‘Pull ye but once on a rope’s frayed end. Choose the one justified from among the damned. Seek out their tales, think upon each sin, or let blind fate choose. Let the judgement begin.’
This wasn’t a stage, it's a large gallows, there’s 6 frames where nooses should be and metal frames underneath each one that probably opens with the flick of the missing lever. From out of nowhere you and Bucky hear the approaching sound of what sounds like a galloping horse, you both jump and Bucky spins in a circle– shining his flashlight around the yard. But there’s nothing there. “What the hell was that sound…” You carefully walk down the stairs of the gallows. “I don’t know but I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.” You both walk out of the yard and back into the cell prison.

You circle back to cell block A and find the door with the snake symbol on it at the back, you enter into a long hallway. The right side extends a little and you can see through a pair of metal grate windows into a room with a chair, it’s a death chamber. “This place must be pretty old if they still used this torture device..” You look at the map and can see that you’re in the Death row section.. If you continue down this hall you’ll make it to the guards room. You find a note in the room, pinned to a board. ‘A reminder to all guards. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, it is ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY for EVERYONE to familiarize themselves with the revised generator maintenance manual. We all remember what happened last time there was a spike, though I’m sure most of us would very much want to forget. WE WILL NOT HAVE ANOTHER INCIDENT.’

There’s a locked door that leads into a cellblock with cells numbered through E, there seems to be a few headless mannequins crawling around inside the block, some stay sitting on the wall and some crawl up into the darkness of the ceiling. You can see that there’s a breakable wall inside the cell in front of the guards room, it leads to the other side of the cellblock but the gate is locked shut. In another cell you can see light coming out of a gap in the wall but there’s an armless creature stumbling about inside and the gate is locked shut as well.

Most of the other cells are locked as well but you find an open door that leads into the witness room. Inside there’s chairs lined up in front of a window with the perfect view of the electric chair you saw before– on the chair you can see one of the weights. There’s a generator beside the door leading into the death chamber. There is a message at the top. Green- maintenance level, use to test before each use. Yellow- optimal level, maintained for safe operation. Red- danger level, DO NOT operate. Can result in power spike and system overload. “We need this door open, they run on an electric locking system. We gotta blow out the fuse. Bucky flips all the switches, the meter landing on red, before he pulls the lever.

The generator sparks and the door to the death room opens up, the lights go out and a loud blaring fills the silence. As you exit the death chamber room back into the cellblock you can see that the monsters have been let loose out of the cells. You can now make your way through the breakable wall inside the cell in front of the guards room as the metal door leading into it you had used before has locked from the power shutdown. You make your way through the crack in the wall after dodging multiple monsters in the process. Inside there’s metal cabinets and desks in front of a window, it looks like a reception area. On the desk you find a report of an execution.

“Prisoner: E-662. Age: 23. Sex: Male. Method: Electrocution. Witnesses: 0. Note to medical staff. During last night’s execution, the prisoner, assumed to have been disabled, simply stood up and approached the chair without any assistance. From now on, take utmost care when reviewing the prisoner’s medical history. Guards need to be made aware of how capable the prisoners are in order to avoid any accidents.”

In the room to the left you can see a key cabinet lit up from a small light, inside there’s a key to the armory, most likely for that rifle. Bucky is quick to grab it with a large smile. “Let’s go grab that beauty!” You exit the room into a witness checkpoint and unlock a door that takes you straight to the armory, just down to the left. You wait outside whilst Bucky goes in to collect the weapon.

You make your way back to the cellblock and you notice a door you’d missed before, there’s a door to your immediate right with an ox on it, it seems to be missing its horns. You run through the block into the yard again to place down the weight you found, you switch the heavy weight onto the platform with the smallest one and place the medium onto the now empty one. The meter lands on the hornless ox and another click is heard. You make your way to the hornless ox door and walk through. It takes you into a stairwell with the steps going up, you follow them and make your way up to cellblock c. Cell C4 is locked shut but you can see a small gap in the wall with a stream of light coming through. The guardroom is open and inside you find a book on the table.

“SUNDAY. MORNING ROUTINE:Disruption reported. C-140 yelling about C-777 ‘haunting’ him, claims the ‘bars can’t hold him’. Administered sedative to c-140. NOON LOCKUP: Performed precautionary search of C-777’s cell (D5). No traces found of the prisoner leaving his cell unsupervised. Recommend further psychiatric evolution of C-140. AFTERNOON ROUTE: C-140 AND C-777 MISSING FROM THEIR CELLS. ALARM RAISED. SEARCH IN EFFECT. UPDATE: Bathroom door barred from inside. Effort made to get them open. We don’t hear anything from the other side… EVENING LOCKUP..” There’s nothing else on the page. “We should check out cell D5. There must be some sort of escape route that C-777 made.” Bucky rummages through a drawer whilst you were reading, in his hands he’s holding a key with the tag CELL BLOCK D on it.

You make your way towards the locked door of the D cellblock, you step through and run past all the other empty cells until you get to cell D5, it's isolated and the walls are thicker and not made of bars. You find a hole in the wall and there’s a box beside it, inside it is a shiv key. On the wall there’s a note stuck to a bloody patch on the wall. “Shame you didn’t find it. Shouldn’t you know this place better than I do? Now it’s too late. I’m going for a walk.” You flip the note around and the message continues. “Clever girl! Here’s your reward: I’m gonna pay a visit to my friend. We could both use a bath.”

“Well let’s get to the showers, maybe this key can fit into the lock on C4.” You can Bucky exit the cell and make your way towards cell C4. You unlock the door with the shiv knife which breaks apart as soon as the lock clicks open. Bucky opens the door with a heavy pull and he lets you step in first– you crawl through the gap in the wall. There’s another note laying on the big pipes in front of you. “he’s coming i know he is, the bars, the walls, i can’t hold him. he’ll get in, he’ll get in… i still have time.. i can make it. almost through but he’s close. i can feel it, he’s coming to finish it..” On the backside of the note the words seems to have been traced multiple times as the lines are thick and jagged. “LET HIM COME”.

Through a gap between the pipe there’s another crawlspace you can make your way through. It takes you into the toilets, down the hall and past the changing rooms is the shower area. On the wall by the hanger you can see that someone has carved some words into the wall, ‘they can’t save you’. Inside the changing rooms you find a third note. “I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU. DIDN’T LISTEN. HE’S HERE!”

The radio starts buzzing again with static, a nurse comes stumbling in through the slam of the door. You drop the note and Bucky reaches for his gun, the nurse waves her knife around and you hit it out of her hands with your pipe. Bucky’s holding the rifle in his hand and with a single shot the nurse flies back out through the open door and hits the wall with a splat.

The shower room is big, there must be at least 30 showers in here. There’s bodies of multiple monsters scattered across the floor, they’re completely still. You make your way to the back of the showers and find a hole in the wall, bugs are crawling all over the floor but as you approach they scatter up towards the ceiling. You look at Bucky before you step forward and hesitantly stick your hand into the hole, you push more of your arm inside until you feel something against the tip of your fingers, you reach for it and grab a hold of the item. It’s another weight.

Monster groans are heard and you can see from the flashlight that the bodies are starting to move. “Come on!” Bucky grabs hold of your hand and drags you towards the exit. There’s way too many of them and as you dodge knives and fists being flung towards you, you run down towards the toilet area and a nurse with a pipe steps into view. You slam your pipe into it and it staggers. “Go! I’ll cover you!” Bucky pushes you towards the crawlspace and you can hear him firing rounds into flesh and bodies hitting the floor. You stay on the ground and watch as he gets down on his stomach to crawl through, when he’s almost through he’s yanked back a little. A mannequin is holding onto his leg.

You reach for the gun in your pocket, switching the safety off before you aim it, with a steady breath you fire. The gun hit it straight into its center. It lets go and Bucky crawls all the way through and stands up. “Thanks!” You both exit the cell and are now back inside the cellblock. You run down the stairs and towards the yard. When there you place down the weight You place two of the heavy weights onto the right side of the scale and then the medium as well, placing only the light one on the left. The meter is now on the eyeless boar symbol, it clicks open.

The boar door leads into the administrative section of the prison. There is a desk down a checkpoint and there’s a notebook laying open on it. It’s another planner. “SUNDAY. MORNING ROUTE: Incident at the infirmary. D-183 assaulted medical staff, attempted to steal medication. Situation under control. NOON LOCKUP: rumors of disease spreading among the prisoners. Reported to administration. AFTERNOON ROUTE: E-130 had a coughing fit. Reported to medical staff.”

You follow the hallway to the visitation area, one of the windows to the other side is broken so you make your way through. There's a women's and men’s bathroom to the left, down the hall there’s a break-room and an infirmary even further down. You can also see a stairwell but it needs a key to open, the wall beside it there’s something written in white dripping paint. “REAP WHAT YOU SOW”. There’s also a note beside the painted message.

‘He locked himself in. Took the key. None of the COs got a spare, but I know there is one. He was going nuts over the “disease”, see if the head nurse doesn’t have it. Think he’s safe up there. He’ll get what’s comin’.

You head through the break room which has the static of a tv screen lighting up half of the room. There’s a nurse standing in front of it, watching it as she twitches. She’s too preoccupied with noticing the two of you approach, you slam your pipe into its back and Bucky finishes it with two hits to the face. You make your way into the infirmary, inside the backroom of the infirmary you find some handgun ammo and the key to the stairwell. You run back towards it and unlock the gate, Bucky pulls it open and you walk up the stairs, there’s a ledge which you can peer over and you can see you’re above the chapel.

You continue on your path and find more stairs going up, it leads to the warden’s office. On the desk inside the warden’s office there’s a typewriter, there’s a piece of paper sticking out of it with words, like they’d been writing and then been cut off. The same word is written over and over and over again. ‘Sick, sick,sick, sick.’

You reach for the buttons and type it out. S. I. C. K. The drawer on the desk beneath the typewriter opens with a clink, inside there's another weight. You walk back down the stairs and find a pair of double doors that take you back to cellblock C, you make your way towards a stairwell leading down and you’re now in front of the door leading to the yard. The last animal symbol is one of a dove, one you haven’t seen yet. You move the heaviest of weights to the left platform and leave the lightest on the right. The meter lands on the dove symbol and clicks open.

“I think I saw a staircase leading down, right to our when we exit this yard, come on.” Bucky speaks and leads the way towards the stairs he saw. You follow the stairs down and there is the door with the dove on it, you can see that the dove is missing its wings. You squeeze through a gap in the bars and as you step through after Bucky a cabinet falls over the gap, seconds away from crushing you. There’s water dripping from the ceiling here, the cells are rusty and there’s puddles of water all over the ground.

In a cell you find lots of artworks scattered across, one is of a woman flying, another looks like a recital and the last is of a burning building. You peer through the gaps in the heavy metal of cell F7 and F6, the weight can be seen lying on a cloth inside F6 but the door is locked. There’s spikes on the floor, ceiling and walls of those two rooms– they look torture rooms that are gonna close in at any minute. At room F15 you see books littering the floor and the bed, there’s a strange symbol painted on the wall as you step out of it you hear a looming voice speak. You and Bucky jump in fright, it sounds almost demonic but you can’t understand the word it’s saying.

You turn around and crawl through a gap that takes you into a room with a control panel that opens the doors to F5 and F6, you unlock the door and make your way back to the cells. As you pick up the weight the door slams shut, there’s a note on the wall. ‘I am sorry. I am so sorry. I couldn’t let them take you. And now you’re… You’re still there, aren’t you.’ Something slams into the door on the other side, dust falls from the ceiling at the force. You hear the sound of crying as it continues to bash into the door, suddenly Bucky’s flashlight grows dark. More crying before it flickers back on and then there’s nothing but silence. The door clicks open and you can now step back out. There’s no one there.

Inside cell F9 there’s a breakable wall to F10 that has a ladder going up, Bucky breaks through and the two of you start to climb the ladder. You’re back in cellblock B but.. There’s bloody corpses of monsters all over the ground. They’re not moving and some are even torn apart. What could have done this?...

“Come on, let’s just get this weight onto that scale..” Bucky pulls you towards the yard. The very last symbol on the scale is a sword at the top, you’ll have to balance the scale perfectly to meter onto it. You place the heaviest and the lightest weight onto the right platform, then Bucky picks up a medium one and places it there as well, it reaches slightly over so he switches it with the smaller medium one and the meter lands on the sword. The woman statue’s hand rotates and the item in her hand falls, Bucky picks it up and looks it over. “This probably fits into that spot up on the gallows. You walk up the stairs and Bucky places the metal lever into the holder. He pulls it and the plaque opens up where the skull monsters are, there’s text inside.

There’s greek numbers from 1 to 6. Each has a piece of a story attached to it and a missing slot underneath said text, there 6 metal pieces with more text that can fit inside those slots. You’re supposed to match the rest of the story to the ones attached to the numbers.
I: Hallowed was the place, this one set ablaze. II: This one took from others, t'was a sinful deed.
III: This one, he did kidnap. His beloved daughter.
IV: This one broke the lock, to steal, I’ll tell you plain.
V: This one dared to take his own mother’s life.
VI: This one clenched his fist, and had pulled no punch.

You read the first one at the bottom to figure out where it should go. “Preying on one’s weakness, made the man’s bones crunch”. You pick it up and Bucky takes it from your hand, he places it on the VI. “The original text mentions a fist and this one is about a broken bone.” You read the next one. “A monster’s life it was, ended with a knife.” You scratch your chin, looking the first texts of each number. You place it on the V one. The next one is, “Stealing not to eat, but to feed his own greed.” Bucky picks it up and places it on the II one before picking up the next to read. “In a fit of anger, bloody end he brought her.” You point towards the III one about the daughter and he places it into the slot. The next of the last two reads, “One more place to plunder, one more wrongful gain.” You place it on the IV one and pick up the last piece and place it on the I.

Something clicks and when you turn around nooses have appeared at each frame, there’s numbers on the top of the frames. You both read through the texts again, taking in all the information you need before you have to pull one. “The first on.. It says that the place was home of evil. The rest are about murder and stealing, so this one feels out of place.” Bucky nods with your statement, approaches the noose hanging from the frame with the large I on the top.
He reaches his hands up towards it, readjusting the hold as he flexes his fingers. He looks towards you and you stand right behind him, he pulls the noose slowly down towards him. You don’t hear anything but before you can react the hatch underneath your feet opens up– the two of you falling through the floorboards and into the darkness below.

When you come to you're in a hallway with cells on each side of the walls, a pair of double doors are at the end and as you push through them you enter a room with holes in the walls that have bodies inside them. There's an autopsy table with a sheet covered body on top of it. And through the next set of double doors is another square hole in the floor. “Just great, you fall through one hole and it’s time to jump down another..” Bucky grumbles but does not hesitate to take your hand in his. You both jump off the edge with no signs of worry, after all this wasn’t the first time or even the second time you’ve had to jump into bottomless pits.

You stand up and look around, it almost looks like you’re in a mine-shaft this time, the walls are cut out stone and there’s pillars attached that are holding the walls up. Further down the long walkway there’s ANOTHER SQUARE HOLE. “You’ve got to be kidding me..” Down the third hole you go.

This time when you wake you’re definitely inside a mine of some sort, the elevator in front of you is rusty and the walls are all stone, even the hole you came from is just stone as far as you can see. There’s a set of double doors beside you but they’re locked. You step into the elevator, there’s no button for you to press but just as you’re both on it starts to go down. It’s creaking loudly and there’s rust falling off it, you grab onto Bucky– scared it’s gonna fall apart before you can make it onto safe ground. The sparks loudly and starts to go faster, your hold tightens and soon it stops, letting you off into a room with yellow wallpaper. There’s a door and as you open it you see a long hallway of yellow, there’s multiple doors on each side of the wall. A loud static sound of a voice can be heard further down the hall, there’s newspapers all over the floor and it almost looks like someone’s home.

There’s a bloody newspaper on the ground, obscuring some words but it’s talking about a man named Richard Pa– who was found dead, killed by multiple stab wounds to the torso. The police suspect a homicide, the money was still left inside the room and since Richard had a history of drunkenness they don’t suspect it to be a robbery. You continue down the hall and then you hear Peter screaming inside the room to your left. “Daddy, please! No!” The door is covered in newspaper, inside there’s an apartment room that looks old. There’s another door that doesn’t open Bucky smashes his shoulder into it sending the door flying open.

Inside you can see Peter sitting on the ground. “Please, I’ll be good. I promise.” He speaks with a shaking voice. He looks at the two of you. “Please, tell him I’ll be good!”

“Peter, who are you talking about?” You speak out. He drags his bottom against the floor as he scoots away from you. His back lands against the wall. “It’s just us, Peter.” But Peter is not listening. He is looking at something else. “Please..”

Something pushes you aside and slams Bucky up against the wall. The monster looks like a bed frame with a flesh creature being mounted by another, there’s no faces on them, only mouths that chatter. “Daddy, no!” The monster pushes Bucky hard into the wall, making it break open, as it’s recovering you crawl through the open gap, Bucky stands up and you follow. “Run!” You both go sprinting down the yellow hallway.

The ground shakes with its loud footsteps. You run through a blue door that leads to an identically yellow hall. You see Peter running down another hall and you follow. A door takes you into a square room with a couch, an open doorway leads into a hallway with green wallpaper. Running through a bunch of hallways you see Peter in front of you, he squeezed through a gap leading into a closet. The light flickers and as you go inside after him, he’s gone. There’s only a red and blue blanket on the ground as well as a teddy bear.
You continue running through the maze of hallways, the whole ground and walls shake, picture frames falling off and hitting the ground. “L-Look at,” you hear a static voice. “ke- are you sick?” It’s a static tv in the corner. “--Take care of you– all the-” The sentences are cut off, you can only hear some words. But the tone in the man’s voice leaves an eerie feeling behind. Bucky slams his pipe into the tv and it shatters with a large noise, you both grab your ears. “Ahh, feels like I've been hit with a flashbang.”

The light flickers and pieces of the wall and ceiling fall, the monster comes crashing through the wall. A gap between a wall takes you to a window and you can see the closet again. You run down the hall and the walls are falling, they’re being replaced with flesh like ones that are stitched on. You can hear the monster stumbling about and as you squeeze through another gap you hear the static voice of the tv. “I–CARE OF YOU. –WHERE WOULD– U GO?!” The voice is yelling, the man sounds angry. Bucky breaks it and the same loud bang is fired off.

The whole place is falling down and you run down a hall and until you find the room with the closet again, the light inside is bright compared to the dark skin walls surrounding it. Before you can take a step the ceiling in front of it goes crumbling, blocking off the safe space. You squeeze through another gap and hear another tv. “You– ink you’re special?! I– DON’T LO–” It cuts out. “-URTING ME! S-OP!”

The walls are now completely made of flesh, there’s no yellow wallpaper to be seen at all. The ground that was once wooden is now matching the skin walls. The walls are moving, breathing. There’s machinery up ahead, a steam machine that is working overtime, it’s rusty but still pumping. You find a turned off rusty fan that you step through. Then you’re in a square room made of flesh. The monster comes busting through the wall. There’s no way to go. You have to fight your way through.

It comes sprinting at you two and you step out of the way, its hands that are coming out from underneath the bed frame are reaching out towards you. You grab your pistol and start to load bullets into it, Bucky does the same with his rifle. It stumbles and screams, shaking the ground and making the both of you clutch your ears. As you’re vulnerable it sprints towards you again, its hands reaching out and it grabs a hold of you, it pulls you in and squeezes you against the frame. Like it’s trying to crush you. A shot in the back makes it stumble and drop you.

Bucky is standing behind it with his rifle pointed towards it, he fires at it again. It screams and charges at him but he rolls to the left, dodging it. It hits the wall and stops to recover, whilst it's recovering the two of you raise your guns and shoot it down. It falls to the ground with its hands folding in on itself, the light flashes and you're back inside the room you first found Peter in. Just then Peter comes sprinting in from nowhere, screaming whilst kicking it in its side. He grabs a hold of the static tv and throws it onto the limp monster. “Peter, hey. Peter, it’s gonna be okay.” You speak, reaching a hand out to the boy. “It’s never over!”

“I’ll always be stuck here.. With him!” He points towards the monster. “Stuck in this place whilst he forces me to…” Tears are gathering in his eyes, he falls to the ground and sobs lightly. “I hate him, I hate him!” He slams a fist into the ground. “Peter..” You call but he doesn’t hear you. Then like the flip of a lever he switches, rising up on his feet and brushing the tears away. “I need to find my uncle..” He says before walking out of the door.

“What was that all about?..” Bucky looks at the door Peter has disappeared through. “He..” You can’t finish the sentence, you’re not sure if Bucky get’s what just happened but you do.. and it brings a horrible memory to the front of your mind. It’s of you, in bed screaming as someone climbs their way on top of your body, the only thing you can see is green eyes haunting you in the darkness of your bedroom. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

When you exit the apartment area of the labyrinth you find yourselves in a hall with tall towering walls, through a turn going left the hallway opens up– you can see something moving up ahead. It’s a part of the hall that is covered in limbs coming out of the walls, you can see legs, arms and even torsos covered in rust moving like the body of a snake– back and forth, back and forth. When you approach the limbs they reach out to you, Bucky grabs a hold of your arm and pulls you back, the piece of the sleeve of your jacket that one of the hands has graced turns into the same rust color and starts to chip away from your arm. “Let’s find another way around, that cannot be safe..” Bucky says as he looks at the part of your sleeve that is now missing and instead laying in chipped away shambles on the floor.

The hall continues to the right and opens up into a large room with a pit on the left side and a locked metal door on the right– straight ahead there’s a light and you make your way towards it. It’s hanging above a pair of stairs that spirals downwards, at the bottom you find another metal door. You grab the handle and push it open, inside there’s iron bars separating the room. On the other side John is sitting in a chair, there’s a bed behind him and an IV-bag hanging off its stand. “J-John?!” You say as you watch the blond man smile lightly from behind the bars. “John! We thought you were killed by that thing! Are you okay?!”

The smile that now appears on John’s lips is one of mock humor, it shows off the apples of his cheeks and the pearly white teeth inside his mouth. “Not at all, silly.” You can see Bucky grip the bars in shock, they’re rusty and starting to turn red. “But…that thing. It stabbed you. There was so much blood..” You say, recalling the way it had splattered onto you and seeped into the door of the elevator. “Stabbed me? Whatever do you mean?” John raises an eyebrow, the ominous smile still present. You and Bucky look at each other with mouths agape. “It chased us to the elevator and then..”

“Bucky, what are you talking about?” John tilts his head as he looks towards the brown haired man. “Bucky, bud..Did something happen to you?” John crosses a leg over the other. “After we got separated in that.. long hallway? Or are you perhaps confusing me with someone else…” John laughs, his face scrunches up sinisterly as he does. “You were always so forgetful.. Remember that time at the pier by the hotel?”

“John..?” Bucky looks uncertain. “You forgot the videotape from that summer.. I wonder if it’s still there,” John looks to the side, the grin falling off his lips and instead he looks cold, empty. “How do you know about that?” Bucky looks at him with narrowed eyes. “Aren’t you John?” John turns his head towards the two of you, staring coldly into Bucky’s eyes. “I am not your Steve.”

“So you are John?” Bucky looks confused, pieces of his hair falling in front of his face. “I can be, if you want me to.” John speaks slowly, his posture doesn’t change and neither does the expression on his face. “What I want from you is an answer,” Bucky’s starting to get agitated, his eyes narrowing and he glares at the man on the other side of the bars. “It doesn’t really matter who I am.”

John stands up from the chair he’s sitting in, he approaches the bars– standing in front of Bucky. He crosses his arms across his chest. “I’m real..” John reaches a hand out through the iron bars, neither you nor Bucky dares to touch him. “Well.. If you happen to make up your mind. I’ll be here.” He turns and sits back down in the chair. “Waiting.”

You look towards Bucky and he’s frowning, staring at John. His face looks paler and somehow the bags underneath his eyes look more defined than ever before. You notice the way his eyes seem to have darkened– gone from an ocean blue to a cobalt blue. “We’ll… come back.” He speaks before he turns and exits the door, holding it open for you with one hand and you step out as well. The last thing you see is John’s ice cold eyes as the door falls shut.

When you walk up the stairs you can feel the tension radiating off of Bucky, his steps are heavier and he’s moving with a sluggish rhythm. “Are you okay?” You tug at the jacket on his back and he stops moving all together. “I don’t know..” The answer feels heavy in the air, like he really can’t tell anymore. John is doing something to him, you’re not quite sure as you don’t really understand– except that he seems to be similar to Steve, Bucky’s childhood and seemingly best friend. “Would I be overstepping if I asked you about Steve?”

“He is.. was my best friend,” Bucky speaks slowly, every word sounds like a burden on his lips. “We were even more than that– we were brothers. I already told you he was a frail child.. But as he grew up he became stronger, at one point even stronger than me.” Bucky sits down on the steps and you join beside him, your knee touching his. “He was so adamant on joining the military. I had other plans but… I just couldn’t let him do it alone so I signed up with him. ‘Til the end of the line, he’d always say. I just never thought this is what it meant.”

“What happened to him?” The question hangs heavy in the air, the silence that follows should be enough of a clue but somehow Bucky stills looks at you when he opens his mouth to speak. “He died.. because of me. At least that’s what I thought. Until I got this letter.” His hand reaches into his jacket, pulling out an envelope. It looks the same as the one you got except the front seems to have three names written on it. “James Buchanan Barnes?” You say the name with confusion lacing your tone. “That’s my name.. Bucky is just a nickname but somehow it feels more like a name than James ever did.”

James..James..James.

“I’m James.” The face of a brown haired boy flashes inside your mind, his blue eyes clearer than ever and those heart shaped lips plastered with a smile. His face is finally clear, no longer covered by a large spot of liquid black. The locked gate inside your mind overflowing until all the memories escape through it like a flood. You remember all of it. All that happened that fateful summer in Silent Hill, the summer your grandma died but also the same summer you met James.

“James…” you say it so softly he barely hears it. “Yes?” He takes in the expression on your face, it’s filled to the brim with all the different emotions flowing through you. “I remember… we met at the hospital,” you close your eyes, recalling the memory that has dug its way out when you fell from the rooftop into the elevator. “I was sitting in the lobby when your dad came running in with Steve in his arms.. I was sipping on my juice box when you came in through the doors. You made a bet with me that if you could get the chips bag into the trashcan I had to give you my number..” Bucky eyes go wide, his mouth falling open in surprise. “You made it somehow, I still can’t understand how.”

Bucky swallows before he licks his dry lips. “Do you remember what happened after?” You nod your head and look up at Bucky through your lashes. “We texted that whole summer, met up everyday until you were leaving back to your home town. You met me outside the hospital the day she passed. You said that you’d help me through it, that you knew exactly how to make things better.” Bucky nods his head, his fingers twitching as he gazes at yours that is resting on top of your knee. Your eyes cast downwards, lip twitching before your determined eyes meet his. “Did you know?” He tilts his head. “Did you know who I was when you met me at the bar?”

He breathes out a large breath of air, reaches a hand up to push a stray lock behind his ear. “No.. Not at first. I only realized before we got to the hospital…” He says with a small voice, he covers his mouth with his hand. “Why didn’t you say anything?” You ask and he shakes his head. “You didn’t seem to remember me. I didn’t want to make this whole experience worse. Besides… I wasn’t sure if you hated me for what I did…” Your head tilts at his words, you don’t quite understand why you would ever hate him.

“When the summer was over we texted the whole fall and even through winter. Then as the new year was born I was ready to meet up with you again.. To finally see you once more but… Steve had found one of your friend’s social media, apparently you’d started dating this guy.. And I don’t know, since I was sort of interested I felt.. angry. So blocked your number and started focusing on my studies instead and then I enrolled... life came in between, you know...”

“Oh…” Your mouth is similar to the shape of an o. Bucky scratches his neck and chuckles in embarrassment. “Childish, I know… I was the heart-breaker and I guess I wasn't used to being the one heartbroken. And this place... It has a way of making you forget once you leave it... I didn't remember until I stepped foot in this town again.”

“Wow, I don’t know what to say…” Bucky laughs at your stunned expression, he waves his hand a little before reaching into the pocket of his jacket. He pulls out a picture, it’s of him and a blond man standing next to each other, they’re clad in military clothing and they’re smiling brightly, the blond man is holding a gun while Bucky is the one holding the camera and taking the picture. “Is that Steve?” Bucky nods as he traces the picture with the tips of his fingers. “It’s the last picture I took with him…” At this moment Bucky looks vulnerable, like even the smallest of winds could blow him away. You reach out your hand and take his, the gesture is small but the smile that graces his lips is big.

You reach your other hand into the pocket of your own jacket and pull out the picture you have of Brock. Bucky sneaks a glance and you don’t fail to notice the grimace he pulls as he looks at it. When your own eyes graces down you can see the familiar face of Brock greeting you, the smile on his lips is not as big as you swear it once was– his green eyes are piercing and almost glowing through the photo. “Is that Brock?” You nod, placing the picture back into the pocket. “He’s the one I met when I went back to the city. He was a friend of a friend, at first he wasn’t the nicest but that changed after a few weeks. I guess he started to like me and wanted to change.” Bucky hums as he stands up on his feet.

“We should continue moving, we’ll talk more about this later..” You nod and follow him up as he reaches out for you to take. He pulls you up and the two of you continue up the stairs. In the area with the pit there’s now something standing in the middle of the room, it’s covered by a grey sheet. You notice that there’s something hovering over the pit now, it looks like a room with doors. Bucky pulls off the sheet and underneath is a square block, there’s faces engraved in the black and symbols on each side. You can see that the cube is rateable and as you turn it the room above the pit turns with it. A few turns and a doorway appears, a small bridge rolls out and you can now go inside the other room across.

Inside there’s multiple staircases that are flipped and doors you can’t get to because they're higher up on the wall or there’s a gap in the floor. You go up two sets of stairs and through an open doorway, it takes you into a long dark hallway with chipped wallpaper. At the end of the hall there’s three different doors, the one straight ahead is brown and looks to be leaking, the one to the right is bright red with cracks all over it, the left one is green and there’s bubbles underneath the paint. The left one is the only one that is unlocked so you step through it.

It leads to a tall hallway with blood spots running down the walls, up ahead you see bugs crawling across the wall as it shifts to the right, when you come around the corner the whole floor is also covered in scattering bugs. Your radio goes crazy as you run through, the bugs scattering around you as the light from the torch reaches them.

You find another door with a big splotch of red liquid dripping from the corners of the door. The first thing that hits you as you enter the room is the smell of rotting flesh, it’s so overwhelming tears are forming in your waterline, the second thing you notice is the cage hanging in the middle of the room inside it there’s a cocoon of sheets, there’s multiple large stains of blood dripping down from the sheets. It’s hanging above a pool of red, it must have been dripping for a long time to produce this mass. A rope made of sheets is tied to the cage, it’s attached to the wall put too thick for you to break. There’s a map on the floor in front of the puddle.

There’s three doors inside this room, one at the front wall, one to the left and the other to the right. The left one is ajar so you walk through it first, it leads to another hallway but with shorter walls, there’s a locked door on the left and another ajar door on the right. Through the ajar door you enter a hall with gratings for floorboards, you see one of those creatures that are walking on the other side, the ones you saw in the tunnel before Rosewater park. You run around it and sprint down the hall.

It looks to be a maze with plenty of dead ends but you follow a traced line made out of blood until you reach another door. You enter a rotten looking apartment, there’s stains on the wall and everything is oozing a weird scent. You enter the room next door through a crawl space and as you do the light flickers, you can see the fridge inside the kitchen shake violently as the light turns on again. Both you and Bucky approach it and open it carefully, once you do you take a huge step back as black liquid comes spilling out. A horrible smell enters your nose, there’s organs inside the fridge that have long since rotten into nothing.

You see something inside the fridge on the higher shelf, without further hesitation you step into the black liquid to reach into the fridge. “Whoa! What’re you doing!” Bucky reaches out to pull you back just as your hand finds the item you saw. As you’re pulled back you look down at what’s inside your palm, it’s lighter fuel, Bucky looks down and sees it as well. “Nice, but give a guy a heads up before you reach into a rotten, organ filled fridge first, thanks.”

Beside the kitchen there’s something on the wall, it looks like someone has drawn a door using blood. You exit through another door and it leads to a cabinet, Bucky pushes it out of the way and there’s a crack you can squeeze through that takes you back into the hall with the grated floor. It’s right beside the door leading the way back towards the cage room. Once inside you go through the door in front of the cage. Another hall with metal grates for floors, you follow the blood as you did before and come upon a set of double doors, inside there’s a room with a gap in the wall, through the gap there’s a room with a king sized bed that’s been split down the middle. In between the two pieces of the bed there’s a hole in the wall, it’s leaking blood all the way down to the floor.
You look towards Bucky and raise your hand to reach inside it, he stops you. “Let me do it this time..” He takes your palace and reaches his hand through the hole, his hand comes out covered in blood, between his fingertips he’s holding a lighter wick. You exit the room and run through the hall into another door, it leads into a hallway with carpet covering the ground. The door to your right is unlocked and as you push your way through you find a room with a single office cubicle in the middle, there’s a computer, papers scatter around it and inside a drawer in the desk there’s a big key.

You make your way back to the cage, passing by that locked door you saw before, it unlocks and inside there’s a bathroom. There’s a tub with acid in it but you can see something at the bottom of the tub, you follow the pipe that drips the acid into the tub and it goes through a crack in the wall. You follow it through a tight hallway until it reaches a room with a red valve and bugs all over. Bucky turns the valve, a small shake of the pipe makes the bugs all scatter into a vent, disappearing from sight.

As you run through the tight hallway back to the tub you see water flooding through the gap, thankfully it’s not much. The tub is not broken but you can reach out and take the item you saw before. It's a lighter. You combine all the three items you’ve found and now possess a functional lighter for that rope to that cage. You follow the hall back and enter the room.

The rope is right in front of you and you take out the lighter and set the rope on fire. It sets afire quickly and burns incredibly fast, before you know it the whole thing is on fire. Then the cage drops down and through the floor, leaving a hole in the ground. The hole is completely black, you can only see the specs of dust flying in the air as you gaze down into it. You routinely reach for Bucky’s hand and he does the same, then you jump.

When you land on the ground with a thump you find yourselves in a square room with a metal door. You both stand up and exit and it takes you back into the room with the rotatable cube. The bridge is gone and the door you’d walked through is now locked with a metal gate. You spin the cube and another doorway appears, the bridge goes out and you walk into it and find the three doors again.

The green one is locked and so is the red, so you enter the brown one straight ahead. Now you’re in a hall with a hole in the ground to the left and a locked door on the right. On the locked door there’s a map, the hole has a ladder on the other end and there’s iron bars behind it as well as a door to the right of the hole. Straight ahead there’s a crawl space that is blocked by something but there’s an open door nearby that you both go through. Once you step inside you see the same long gashes on the walls that you saw at the apartment building, right before you encountered the skull monster. A walk-in closet is wide open and there’s a gap in the wall that you squeeze through, you find another door leading to a room with a ladder going down into a hole in the floor.
Once you climb down the ladder you’re in a hall made of stone with water reaching just above your ankles, soon enough you find another ladder going up, as you approach it you hear shrieking metal. You climb it and notice you’re on the other side of that hole with the iron bars behind it, you notice there’s a red valve next to the bars and it’s handcuffed with a red lock, you enter the door beside the hole. It takes you into another hall with a ladder going down, once down said ladder, there’s cages covering the path but you’re able to squeeze through. Down the passage you find a red key on a box between, there’s two doors one on the right you can unlock that leads back to the first ladder and to the left that is locked.

You backtrack to the ladder with the gate, to unlock the valve, you notice the large gash on the wall beside the valve, you’re not sure if it was there before. You unlock the valve and Bucky starts turning it, it raises the bars up letting you through. It’s a corridor with two headless mannequins crawling on the walls, they don’t seem to pay you any mind so you run past them and find a door. Now you’re in the room with the blocked crawlspace, it’s a cart that’s blocking it so Bucky moves it out of the way towards a window that you can now get through.

You find a fourth ladder going down, down there you find the locked door leading into the room you find the key in and forward you find a crawl space. As you’re crawling through the walls starts to shake, Bucky takes a hold of your hands and drags you through before the wall collapses behind you. “That was close..” You huff out, trying to catch your breath. “You were almost turned into a sandwich,” he laughs a little as he jokes. You roll your eyes and shove him in the chest.

In front of you there’s a metal fence and on the other side of that fence you can see a fifth ladder going down. You go down the right passage and stumble upon an open room that seems to go in a circle, there’s bugs all over the floor. As you start to go down the left path you yelp as you almost run into the red skull monster, he’s standing in the hallway and as he sees you he starts to walk towards you. “Come on!” Bucky pulls you with him as you run to the left, you pass by a pair of iron bars and behind them is a ladder, a few more steps and you push into a room through a pair of double doors.

The room is covered in a red light, there’s a rusty bed in the corner and a big fan in the middle of the center wall. There’s a table with dried blood and other tools, behind the bed there’s a breakable wall and Bucky starts to slam away at it. As he breaks it open the monster comes barreling in through the door, Bucky pushes you towards the gap. “Go!” He pulls out his rifle and shots the creature. He squeezes through after you just barely missing the edge of the monster’s blade as he throws it towards him.
You’re now on the other side of those iron bars with the ladder, you can hear the creature moving with its blade dragging against the ground. It grows closer and closer until it stops in front of the bars, the monster watches you as it stands idly. Even as you both climb up the ladder you can see it standing there from the hole in the floor. You continue through the hallways and end up in front of a power box with a pair of wire cutters sticking out of it. You take it and then you hear the sound of metal shrieking again. “We have to go back down through that ladder again.. The wall collapsed by that crawl space..” You say as you walk back towards the ladder with the monster. “Yeah.. You’re right.” He sighs but goes down the ladder first.

When you make it down the monster is no longer there, instead there’s regular monsters that you both run around and avoid. You make it back to the metal fence and cut your way through with the wire cutters, you both squeeze through and as you look over your shoulder you gasp loudly. The skull monster is standing on the other side of the fence. Once Bucky turns towards it, it moves and walks away. The setting changes and instead of stone walls you’re now back inside wallpaper and wooden panels, on the right there’s a black hole in the floor and you can tell Bucky knows exactly what to do as he grabs a hold of your hand. This time though he pulls you towards him and he circles his arms around you, you’re standing in front of him and he looks at you with a small smile before you take a step off and he follows.

Back inside the cube room you turn it until it leads you to the corridor with the doors, you step through the only door you haven’t been in yet– the red one. Another tall hallway but as you walk through the lights flicker off then start to flicker with a red tone before all the lights are toned with a red color. You find an apartment room with motionless monsters lying all over the floor, there’s a red door at the back of the room and as you try to open it all the monsters start to move. You pull out your gun and Bucky pulls out his rifle, you fire at the monsters until none is left standing, the red door clicks and slides open.

You run through another corridor with tall walls, and then they shake and a loud vibrating noise enters your ears. You both stumbled back as pieces of drywall fall from the walls. At the end of the hall there’s another door and as you walk through it, the same room you were in before is in front of you but it’s more barren– no furniture and the walls and flooring looks like it's falling apart– revealing the rusty steel underneath it. You enter the red door once more and… “Are we going in circles?” You’re back in the corridor you were just in, more drywall fall and the same sound pierces your ears. There’s not much left of the wall, rusty steel is poking out from underneath the holes in the drywall.

The whole floor of the apartment room is now grates, there’s bugs everywhere. You walk through and towards the red door, it falls flat on the ground with a heavy thud. The hallway is now ruined, only rusty metal and no longer the off white drywall that was once there, it makes the whole corridor look more off-putting. You start to walk down it and through turn to the left there’s arms and legs sticking out of the wall, blocking your path. The way back shuts and you’re trapped. Then something busts down the wall at the other end, it’s the skull monster. He walks sluggishly towards you, dragging his great sword with shrieking metal following, as he grows closer the arms and legs from the walls start to draw back, leaving a path. You jog, trying not to run too fast as to stumble into them. When you reach the end the light turns off and something falls, blocking you off from the hall with the limbs.

You run down the long corridor until you follow it to the left and find a white door, 208 says the number on it. You enter and inside you find John lying on the bed inside the room you’d seen him in before. “John?” There’s blood and bruises covering his body, his face is completely beaten up, you can barely tell it’s even him. You reach out to touch him and his body is ice cold, there’s no beating of a pulse and he’s not even breathing. You look towards Bucky and he’s biting his lips so hard you can see blood running down towards his chin, you take his hand and he lets go of his lip, wiping his chin with the back of his sleeve. “We can’t do anything for him now.. Let’s just go..” Bucky says as he looks towards the iron bars that are now busted down.

You exit the door and walk back upstairs towards the room with the rotating cube, the cube is broken and in its place there’s a large blade. The same blade the skull monster drags behind it. Bucky walks up to it, pulling it from the remains of the cube, it’s incredibly heavy like a burden. How the monster carries it with one hand he does not understand. He drags it towards the hall with the limbs and they all pull back when he approaches, you follow slowly behind until you’re finally through. Bucky drops the blade with a heavy breath, stretching his back. “Man, that thing was heavy.”

There’s a ladder going up at the end of the corridor, you make your way towards it. You run through a corridor with green wallpaper until you stumble upon a small graveyard. There’s tombstones lined up in the back. You find three headstones, one with the name Peter Parker, another with the name Edward Brock.

The last one you find has both your and Bucky’s name on it. The name James Buchanan Barnes underneath your own. In front of each headstone there’s a rectangle shaped hole, like it’s ready for a casket to be buried. “How nice of them to bury us together…” Bucky speaks as he lightly shoves his shoulder into yours. “Stuck with you even in the afterlife,” you joke and he looks offended– it makes you laugh. “I’m kidding, it would be my honour.” In front of your and Bucky’s headstone the hole is larger, made for two caskets instead of one. The hole in front of yours is also deeper, deep enough you cannot see the bottom. “Down we go?” Bucky asks as he leans forward to peek down into the abyss underneath. “Down we go..” You take a hold of each other and jump into your own graves.

Another long and dark hallway greets you at the bottom. “I’m really getting sick of this..” You speak as you run down a pair of stairs, you can see at the end there’s a door. As you grow closer you almost stop, the hall turns from a green color into red as blood is splatter all across the walls, floor and even the door just barely a few meters in front of you. You can hear it dripping as you walk closer to the door. On the other side of the door you find Eddie hovering above another dead body. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone, huh..” He speaks as you both enter. “You just had to follow me all the way out here. How many times do I have to kill you.” You notice he’s not speaking to you, he’s speaking to the corpse in front of him.

“Eddie?” Bucky speaks and Eddie whirls around, gun raised. “Woah! Eddie, it’s us.” You both raise your hands and you can see the glare on Eddie’s face soften. “Oh, uh.. Hi Bucky..” He says and then turns towards you and greets you as well. You look around the room and notice you’re in some type of cold room, there’s pipes and wires, frost on the walls and the breath you breathe is cold and fogs up in front of you as you breathe out. “Eddie, what are you doing?” Bucky speaks as you lower your hands.
Eddie looks over his shoulder, towards the corpse hunches over against the wall. “What’s it look like I’m doing? You fat disgusting piece of shit! You make me sick! You gonna cry fatass?! You gonna run to your mama?! Waste of skin! Why don’t you just kill yourself!” Eddie walks closer to Bucky as he screams, pointing the gun towards his own head. “That’s what they all say.. and.. maybe he was right..” He lowers the gun and sadness flickers across his face. “Maybe I am nothing but a fat disgusting piece of shit. But you know what– it doesn’t matter if you’re smart, dumb, ugly pretty…It’s all the same once you’re dead!” He spins around and raises his gun towards the corpse.

“And,” Bang. “A corpse” Bang. “Can’t” Bang. “Laugh” Bang. He breathes heavily, Bucky approaches him. “Eddie?” Eddie spins around with his eyebrows narrowed. “What’s that? You wanna talk down to me some more? Tell me to relax?! You’re just like the rest of them,” he gazes at Bucky before he switches to you. “Both of you.” You notice the black spot on his shirt has traveled up towards his chin. Black liquid seems to be seeping from his ears.“No, we’re not–”

“Shut up!” He screams out. “You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t see it? You’ve been laughing at me all along. Ever since we first met,” He raises the gun, pointing it a few centimeters from Bucky’s face, it startles you so much so you almost start crying. You’ve never been this scared, not even of those monsters.

“But you ain’t laughing now, are you?” Bucky dodges his head away and raises a fist, hitting Eddie straight across his cheek. He falls like a lumber, straight on his back. “You need help, Eddie,” Bucky breathes out, swallowing his fear. “Don’t get all holy on me, Bucky..” He speaks on his place on the ground, the gun is laying a meter away from him. “This town called you, too.” He looks at Bucky with a small smirk, then turns his attention to you. “You as well. You and me, we’re the same. We’re not like other people. Don’t you know that?!” He screams at you, it feels like he’s looking into your soul.

Eddie reaches for his gun, taking it in his hands again. “Well..” He stands up, walks towards a door. “You’re about to find out!” He runs through it, disappearing from your sight. You both follow him into a meat locker, there’s corpses of animals hanging off of hooks. “Do you know what it does to you?” You can hear Eddie’s voice echo throughout the room, it’s dark and foggy and you can’t see very far. “When you’re hated, picked on, spit on…Just ‘cause of the way you look? Yeah I ran away after I killed that dog. But you know what? It was fun! It tried to chew its own guts up, finally died all curled up in a ball.” His voice grows rougher, deeper, like he’s turning into something else. Like it’s not even Eddie anymore. “Then he came after me, I shot him too, right in the leg. He cried more than the dog, hah, hah, hah, hah! And now it’s your turn!”

You see something sprinting towards you from the corner of your eye, you manage to jump behind a meat piece hanging off the ceiling before Eddie raises his gun to shoot. Bucky is quick to lodge a bullet into his shoulder, he stumbles and raises his gun, shooting at a vent that starts to spew out air, it fogs up the room and you can see a devilish smile cross Eddie’s face, his lips tainted with red and black. He runs behind some hanging meat and disappears from sight. “You’ll both die here! You’ll squirm and squeal and cry like little girls! And then you’ll just curl up and die!” He screams into the room. The next few words are barely recognized as his voice turns into a throaty growl. “And it’s gonna feel great!”

You see a piece of meat swinging further up a head but you don’t see him, instead you hear his footsteps approaching quickly from behind you. When you turn around he hits his gun into yours, sending it flying across the room. “I’ll kill you right here, maybe I’ll even tear you apart before I do.” His mouth is gurgling up black and as he laughs it comes flying out in drops. He doesn’t expect Bucky to be behind him but he stumbles forward as a bullet is sent into his other shoulder.

The hanging meat starts moving and Eddie follows, again disappearing into the room. The noise of the rotating meat is loud, you can barely hear him running around now, you try to look around on the floor for your gun but it’s way too dark. You see a flash of him in Bucky’s torch and he sees you, raising his gun but before he can shoot a piece of meat is slammed into his side and he stumbles, dropping his gun. You run towards it and so does he but you make it first, he shoulders you and sends you sprawled out on the floor, he towers over you and just as he’s about to sit down on your chest a body collides with his. It’s Bucky and he’s pummeling Eddie's face, Eddie reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife, he slashes at Bucky and catches onto his arm, leaving a gash. He takes a hold of Bucky’s pistol that is resting on his thigh and just as he switches off the safety and raises it a shot echoes around the room. Blood is spilling onto the floor, leaving a puddle, lifeless eyes stare at the ceiling.

There’s a gaping wound right between Eddie’s eyes, Bucky is reaching for his chest but his hands come back clean. The gun you’re holding in your hand is still smoking and as Bucky looks over at you he can see your eyes are just as cold and lifeless as Eddie’s corpse. It’s like you’re not even there anymore, like you’re running on instincts and all your emotions are stored away. You place your gun back into the pocket of your jacket and Bucky pries his away from Eddie’s cold fingers. When he stands up he can see you staring at your hands, you look towards the corpse– you hold your own hand and Bucky can see that familiar look on your face.

Like you couldn’t believe what you had just done. That you just killed someone and it wasn't even a monster...