Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I start feeling sick just looking at this place. Mount Massive Asylum, shut down amid scandal and government secrecy in 1971, reopened by Murkoff Psychiatric Systems in 2009 under the guise of a charitable organization. Cell phone reception cut off abruptly a mile out, more like a jammer than lost signal. The Murkoff Corporation has a long track record of disguising profit as charity. But never on American soil. Whatever they thought could get out of this place has to be big. Might finally be the story that breaks the bastards.

It starts with an email from an anonymous source. A whistleblower. It’s urgent, panicked, and written in haste.

“You don’t know me. Have to make this quick. . .Terrible things happening there. Don’t understand it. Don’t believe half the things I saw. Doctors talking about dream therapy going too deep, finding something that had been waiting for them in the mountain. People are being hurt and Murkoff is making money.”

And, “It needs to be exposed.”

His eyes trace every word once. Then twice.

By the third time he’s read through the email, Miles Upshur is holding his breath.

The cursor blinks beneath the final sentence like a heartbeat—It needs to be exposed. The consternation in its words, the slant of desperation palpable in each line, sticks in his throat like razor blades.

Something waiting in the mountain haunts him like a foreshadow.

He wastes no time.

The desk chair scrapes back against the hardwood floor of his apartment, nearly toppled over and long forgotten. Miles is already grabbing the essentials—camcorder, batteries, his notebook, the rust-red press badge he hasn’t used since they tried to muzzle his last exposé. Everything else is noise.

He’s gone before his computer can go into sleep mode.

The drive is long and quiet.

It’s the kind of silence that suffocates, the only sound the rush of wind outside of Miles’s Jeep. Just headlights carving out the darkened road like scripture, mile after mile of asphalt and storm clouds. He doesn’t bother with the radio. Nothing will help the noise tangling in his ribs.

The further he gets from the city, the more the air feels wrong—like the road is turning to spine beneath his tires.

When the signal dies, he doesn’t flinch, almost like he’d expected it to.

And when Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane crests the horizon, hulking and haloed in lightning, he doesn’t stop.

He parks at the edge of the world, camera in hand, heart mirroring the thunder overhead.

No promise of rescue. No saints left to pray to. Hope as frail as candlelight.

The front doors are locked. Of course they are.

Miles circles the perimeter, past chain-link fences and rusted scaffolding that rises like a crooked altar into a gray sky. The camera in his hand hums, blinking red—recording, always recording. He grips it tighter, sizes up the scaffolding, and starts to climb.

The metal creaks under his weight, slick with rain and reeking of petrichor. One rung at a time, breath ragged in his throat. The window above him gapes open like a mouth.

He slips through it like a shadow, drops straight into Hell itself.

The room inside is a wreck—upended chairs, papers scattered like feathers after a slaughter. Cabinets overturned. Paint peeled raw from the walls. The air is heavy with mildew, copper, and something else—something sharp, like rot.

But it’s the glow that stills him, just for a moment. Flickering, pale and unreal, like a light bleeding from an open wound.

A television on one end of the room. Static hisses across the screen; no picture, no sound.

Just a handful of men—patients—in straitjackets huddled around it like worshippers. Murmuring. Rocking.

Their eyes are vacant. Lips twitching, muttering things Miles doesn’t quite catch. So he keeps low, silent. The camera in his hand whirs softly as he pans across them—capturing, cataloguing, bearing witness.

They don’t look at him, don’t acknowledge him. They’re lost in the pale light of the TV static. Lost in whatever sermon plays beyond the white noise.

Miles moves carefully, boots silent against the wreckage. Step by step, past broken furniture and shattered glass.

A man’s head lolls as he passes, whispers something to him, but his voice is swallowed by the static.

Miles doesn’t look back. He creeps out of the room, deeper into Mount Massive.

The corridor yawns ahead of him like a throat. The air is colder now, heavy with something Miles can’t name, only feel—like dread wearing the scent of old blood. He grips his camcorder tighter, whether out of nerves or something else, he can’t tell.

He moves through the admin block with measured steps, every noise making his skin crawl. Past cubicles gutted of anything useful, though he does occasionally find and pick up folders labeled ‘CONFIDENTIAL.’ Phone receivers dangle like nooses. Every door he presses on creaks, every corner demands his breath be held. The silence is alive.

A sign catches his eye—Library. He pushes open the door.

A body swings down from the ceiling, suspended by its ankles. The face—what’s left of it—is slack, mouth parted in a perpetual gasp. It thuds against him as it swings, and he stumbles back, heart lodging in his throat. Then it snaps loose from whatever held it, crashing to the floor with a sickening, wet crack.

Another body hangs nearby. Also inverted. Headless. Blood pools beneath it, soaking scattered pages and books long forgotten.

His camera’s light flickers. And while he may feel like he can’t look (fearing he might vomit if he does), it continues rolling, still recording.

He pushes forward, deeper into the library’s ruined belly, squeezing past the hanging body. Bookshelves lean like fallen giants, some collapsed entirely. Paper rustles beneath him. His light sweeps across torn bindings, ink-stained walls, spines split open like ribs. A history of mania archived in blood.

Then, at the far end of the room, he sees it.

A uniform.

A security guard impaled on a broken beam of wood, driven through his torso like a stake.

He approaches slowly. Carefully. The man’s head is tilted back, mouth slack, blood trailing down his chest like paint. Miles raises the camera—

The guard gasps.

Miles reels, nearly dropping his camcorder.

“They killed us,” the man chokes, voice wet and broken. “They got out. The Variants.”

His eyes lock with Miles’s—wild, pleading.

“You can’t fight them. You have to hide. . .” He coughs. Wheezes. Blood splatters across his uniform. “. . .can unlock the main doors from security control.”

The breath rattles from his lungs. He claws at the beam impaling him as if he can still escape his fate. “You have to get the fuck out of this terrible place.”

Then his hands fall limp at his sides. And he is still.

Miles’s camera lowers slowly. Behind the guard, the shelves hold more than just books.

Heads.

Security guards—or other employees, he can only assume—mouths agape, eyes staring glassy and sightless where they’ve been arranged like trophies on the shelves.

He turns, bile rising in his throat and makes a beeline for the door.

Then—

A voice.

Female. Crackling over the intercom above, low and urgent. Hushed like she’s also hiding from something.

“Don’t open that door.”

He freezes.

“There’s a Variant waiting on the other side. Tall. Fast. I’ve seen what he does to people—just. . .wait.”

Silence.

Not static. Not glitching.

Just the sound of someone watching on bated breath.

Then—soft, almost reluctant:

“. . .okay. It’s safe. Go now.”

Another pause. Then she mutters, “Shit. . .I’ve gotta hide—”

The intercom cuts out.

Miles slips out of the library like prey from a den, every step measured, every sound he makes too loud in the stillness, like more than he can afford.

The hallway beyond stretches out wide and dim, only the faint flickering of emergency lights to guide him. He hugs the wall, grateful for the warning, not yet wanting to admit how badly he needed to hear another human voice—even one delivered through static.

Then—he sees it.

The Variant. Just like she said.

Tall, lanky but clearly fast. His outline barely human. The thing’s breathing is audible even from down the hall, like a bellows soaked in blood and rage. It lumbers, stalking with terrifying precision. Each step is deliberate, heavy. Its head turns slowly, scanning the corridor—then vanishes around the far corner.

Miles presses his back to the wall and shuts his eyes for a breath. Only now does he feel his chest moving. He didn’t even realize he’d stopped breathing.

He waits a moment longer, then moves. Quiet. Careful.

The corridor ahead bends left, then splits in two. One path is completely collapsed—all rubble and twisted metal. The other is narrow, nearly impassable, a blockade of overturned furniture, broken chairs, and a heavy shelf pressed between the walls like it was shoved there in panic.

He slips into the gap between the shelf and the cracked drywall, moving sideways, shoulders and chest brushing the wood, footfalls muffled by soaked carpet and crumpled paper.

Halfway through, the air thickens.

Then—

“Little pig.”

Miles freezes.

The voice is gravel dragged across concrete—low, mocking, and close. Too close.

Before he can turn, a hand the size of a bear traps fists into the back of his jacket. Then everything becomes motion.

He’s ripped from the barricade like a rag doll. Every breath feels stolen, everything moving at one-hundred miles a minute. He gets one glimpse of the face—scarred, monstrous—before the Variant launches him.

Through a window. Glass shatters around him.

The world spins.

Then—impact.

Miles crashes through the upper window of the lobby, the air seized from his lungs as his body careens through the open space and hits the polished wood below with a thud.

The camcorder clatters across the floor, landing on its side, recording at an angle.

Silence.

Blood spreads beneath him—where he’s injured, he’s unsure, because everything hurts—like ink across a page.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t wake.

Chapter Text

I’m inside. Bodies everywhere. Blood. Burn marks. Heads lined up like bottles behind a bar. Dead Murkoff scientists hung from the ceiling; their badges say ‘Murkoff Advances Research Systems.’ Murkoff’s longtime M.O. has been to profit off the exploitation of charity. Fuck the third world and bankroll another billion. How did Murkoff think they would make money off a building full of crazy people?

The monitors ahead of you flicker in soft grayscale—shadows crawling over walls, pixels swimming in static. Most of the feeds are long dead. Only a few still pulse with ghostly movement, grainy footage that you’ve come to know better than your own reflection.

You saw him before he ever saw you.

A flicker across one of the dead monitors. A figure—lean, fast, moving with purpose. Not lurching, not shambling. Human.

Your breath catches.

You hadn’t seen another sane face in. . .weeks? Months? Time had lost all meaning beneath the fluorescent flicker of Mount Massive.

You’d been presumed dead early on—your wing collapsed during the first breakout, and anyone left behind had written you off as a casualty when they stumbled across your bloodied badge. They didn’t look for survivors, and you remained hidden in a locker, your frame trembling between the temporary sanctuary of sheet metal.

No one had come back. Not until now.

You blink, brows furrowing, and lean closer to the grainy feed. He was filming. Filming? The hell was he doing? A reporter? If he was, he was suicidal. Or too righteous for his own good.

Still. He moved differently than the others who had come and screamed and died.

And worse—he was alone.

You curse, dragging a hand through your hair. For weeks you’ve been cataloguing patterns—charting the routines of the Variants like dance steps from hell: where they roamed, what they hunted, how to avoid their gaze and when to run. The Variants were creatures of impulse and repetition, but not without strange instincts. Some stalked by sound. Others by heat. One—just one—never stopped looking for you.

You didn’t even know if it had a name. You didn’t care to learn it.

You should have let the reporter die. It would have been safer. Cleaner.

But something in his face—tired but sharp, stubborn and desperate—stopped you. Maybe it was the same ugly, burning part of you that hadn’t let you give up when the door locked on the last of the evacuees.

Maybe you didn’t want to be the last shred of normalcy in this godforsaken place.

You watch him navigate through the admin block, camera raised, stopping every few steps to examine abandoned paperwork and folders undoubtedly labeled CONFIDENTIAL. You watch him slip through doors like a ghost, though him going undetected could generally be attributed to the lack of awareness from the remaining patients, not the Variants.

He makes it to the library and you lose sight of him for a moment until he rounds the corner and sees the security guard that’s impaled on a wooden beam. He stands there for a few seconds and you think you can see the guard talking, but you’re not sure. It isn’t until you see him walk to the door that your heart lodges in your throat.

There’s a Variant on the other side. One that you’d been tracking since you found the security monitors. It’s not a particularly strong one—not by any means—but it is fast, and violent.

So your finger finds the intercom button.

“Don’t open that door,” you warn as quickly as possible. You watch him freeze, hand hovering over the handle.

“There’s a Variant on the other side. Tall. Fast. I’ve seen what he does to people—just. . .wait.”

You watch, breath bated and eyes flickering between the two grainy footage feeds. Watch the Variant pause at the library door, like it knows the outsider is in there.

Then it stalks away. Leaving the stranger and shambling down the corridor.

“. . .okay,” You start, throat finally easing. “It’s safe. Go now.”

You watch him a moment longer, fully intent on continuing to guide him through Mount Massive when—

The softest creak of a door nearby. Before this you would have missed it, but your ears have since been fine tuned to hear even the most diminutive bumps in the night.

“God damn it,” you hiss under your breath. You falter for only a second, hesitating as you debate leaving the stranger. You should tell him. Tell him you can’t help him. At least for now.

Another creak nearby makes your heart skip a beat. “Shit. . .” You press the intercom button again. “I’ve gotta hide—”

You don’t get time to finish your sentence before someone—no doubt your Variant stalker—is at the door, tugging at it. You duck from the chair you’d been occupying, stilling it to leave no evidence that you’d been there.

Your voice is cut off by static as your scramble for the loose floor panel you’d used as a hiding place more than once. Crawling inside, you let it fall into place just as the door slams open.

Heavy steps. Sniffing. Breathing. A low growl.

You clutch your mouth with your hands and demand yourself to be still. Don’t breathe. Don’t exist.

The stranger better be worth it.

You knew when your Variant stalker left.

They all had tells—patterns. Habits and quirks in their rhythm; rhythm that became law.

This one—the one that was hunting you, for whatever reason—snorted like a bull when it turned back. Deep and wet, like it was clearing its throat out of frustration that its prey had eluded it yet again. Its claws scraped the wall before retreating.

You waited anyway.

Even after the clawing ebbed, echoing into silence, you counted a full minute in your head. Sixty seconds. You’d made the mistake of trusting the silence before.

Never again.

Only when your breath doesn’t fog the slats in the floor panel do you push it open, slow and careful, like a grave creaking.

The air was colder now. Or maybe you’re just shaking.

You crawl out and get to your feet, back aching from being folded into a crawlspace coffin. Your hands hover over the edge of the desk before you settle back into the chair. Monitors flicker dim and gray, the crackling breath of static still buzzing low on one screen where Miles had been active.

You lean in closer.

There.

The main lobby feed.

Miles was down—sprawled at the foot of shattered glass, his limbs awkward and heavy. But moving. Barely.

Hovering above him, however, was something else.

You freeze.

Father Martin.

God’s mad prophet himself. Draped in a cassock, borrowed robes. Eyes half-closed, mouth moving. You can’t hear the words—no mic in that wing—but you can see him speaking. Preaching. Whispering to Miles like he was the second coming.

He touches Miles’s face and you wince.

Then, reverently, he picks up the camera. Studies it. Cradles it like a relic. Something about the way his fingers move—gentle, doting, trembling with awe—makes your stomach turn.

You don’t blink until Father Martin finally rises and steps away. His shadow disappearing down the corridor, taking whatever sermon he’d been whispering with him.

Only then do you flip on the west intercom.

Your voice crackles to life in the corridor around Miles, soft and quick.

“Hey. You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you—helping you. I can’t hear you, but I can see you, so listen close.”

You take a shaky breath, eyes glued to his motionless form.

“You need to get to the west security office. You’re closest to it—it should be just ahead through the admin corridor. You can unlock the main doors from there. Then we both get out. Together.”

You hesitate.

“I’m on the east side. I’ll meet you there. Just follow my instructions.”

For a moment, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.

Then—slowly, wincing—he nods once.

You exhale, chest sinking like someone had lifted a cinderblock from your ribs.

For the first time in what felt like forever, you don’t feel alone.

For the first time since the doors locked and you were abandoned, you let yourself believe—just a little, anymore would be naïve—that you might survive this.

Chapter Text

I’m already beat to all hell, picking broken glass out of my scalp, couple cracked ribs. Nearly killed by a deformed giant, looks like somebody tried to fuck-start his head with a cheese grater. He throws me through a wall, knocks me unconscious. I wake up to some doughy old man with a face like an alcoholic kiddy fiddler in a homemade priest outfit. Calls me his Apostle. Not a job I asked for. There are words scrawled in blood everywhere. I’m getting an ugly feeling in my gut that the “Priest” is writing them, and for my benefit—but the only thing I trust so far is the voice over the intercoms that’s guiding me through admin right now. Hopefully she’s actually on my side.

He came back slowly.

Pain first—sick, dull, and crawling like insects under his skin. Then the weight. Every inch of him hurt. His ribs screamed, his back throbbed, and something sharp had dug into the side of his leg. But he was alive.

He blinked blearily.

Above him: shattered glass. The remnants of a second-story window. Farther up, shadows danced against flickering lights, already retreating down some hallway he couldn’t see.

He’d been thrown. No—launched. The kind of throw meant to kill.

He shifted, groaning. His vision doubled for a second, stars dancing on the edge of it. Blood—his?—ran warm down the side of his face.

“Hey. You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you—helping you.”

The voice crackles to life from the overhead speaker. The same one as before. Female. Calm, but breathless, like she’d been holding it too long.

“You need to get to the west security office. You’re closest to it—it should be just ahead through the admin corridor. You can unlock the main doors from there. Then we both get out. Together.”

Her voice pulls him out of the haze like a tether.

He blinks again. His camera.

Still there. Still intact.

He reaches for it with fingers stiff from the fall, the familiar weight of it comforting in a way that nothing else was. Scratched, a little dented on the side, but functional. Its night vision light blinked green. Recording.

Always recording.

He forced himself upright, one knee at a time, breath hissing through his teeth. The lobby stretched out in front of him—dimly lit, torn up, papers scattered like confetti.

The admin block loomed ahead once more.

“I’m on the east side. I’ll meet you there. Just follow my instructions.”

He gave a shaky nod out of habit. She couldn’t see him down here, probably. But it helped to do something.

He limps forward.

The admin wing was quieter than it had any right to be. A chair sat overturned at the hallway’s mouth. Phones hanging off their hooks. Blood splattered the walls like artwork. But the lights were on—some of them. The hum of power remained—a distant whine that somehow only made the silence worse.

“Left hallway. Past the second door. There’s a safer path around the open lounge.”

He followed.

She guided him like she’d walked it a hundred times. Her voice—crackling and distant—echoed off the walls Once or twice, he passed by figures slumped in corners. Patients. Broken, still breathing. One rocked back and forth, whispering under his breath to someone who wasn’t there.

None of them looked at Miles.

None of them moved.

He kept the camera up, documenting. A hallway littered with shredded files. A bloody handprint smeared across a keyboard. A desk that looked like it had been gnawed through with teeth.

He stopped there once—only briefly—to snatch up a folder near an open office door, pausing for a recording of the half-torn document pinned to the wall. Something about hypnotherapy. Something about brain patterns spiking into seizure-like bursts. He didn’t read all of it. Not now.

“Slow down. There’s someone near the elevator—no, not him. He doesn’t see you. Just keep moving.”

He did.

Not quickly. Quietly. He moved.

And with every step forward, every flicker of that soft voice in his ear, he started to feel something impossible taking root in his chest.

Hope.

After a few minutes of walking, he rounds a corner. The security office is just visible at the end of the hallway—a glass door with a flickering light above it. His heart kicked up in his chest. Almost there.

“You’re close,” the voice came through again. “That’s it. Straight ahead.”

Then her voice cut off. A second passed. Then:

“Shit. Shit. Don’t go through that door. Turn around. Now.”

He froze.

“He’s there. Chris Walker—the big guy who threw you through the window. He’s coming right down the hall. You need to move, now!”

The name sent ice through his veins.

A low, rhythmic thud echoed down the corridor. Heavy. The sound of bare feet slapping the tile.

Miles turned.

There—just at the other end—Chris Walker emerged from the shadows like something dragged from a nightmare. Shirtless, built like a wall of flesh and rage, blood smearing his skin, mouth, chest, hands. Feral eyes lock onto him.

“Little pig—”

Fuck.

Miles didn’t wait.

He ran.

“Left! Go left, past the records room!”

He bolted, skidding around the corner, camera jostling in his grip. He heard the roar—deep and guttural—and the crash of a desk being flung aside like cardboard. Weightless.

“Don’t stop! Don’t look back. Take the second hallway on your right—go, go, go!”

Miles darted into the hallway she described, nearly slipping on a smear of something too dark to be water. Chris was hot on his heels, close enough now that he could feel the tremor of his footsteps through the floor.

“There’s a maintenance crawlspace ahead—metal grate on the floor. Pull it up. Get inside. Now!”

He spotted it. Just barely.

A square hatch of steel, slightly ajar.

He dove, fingers scrabbling for the edge. It stuck.

Another crash behind him. Chris was close.

He screamed and ripped it open with all the strength his battered body would allow, throwing himself down into the inky darkness as Chris Walker’s snarl shook the walls.

The hatch clanged shut above him.

Darkness.

Cramped, filthy, reeking.

But alive.

“Okay. Okay. . .you’re good. He can’t get in there. Too big.”

“Keep following the tunnel. It’ll spit you out near the back entrance to security.”

A pause.

“. . .you okay?”

He nodded, searching for the camera she’s watching him through. Eyes find it, his nod becomes more assured—whether it’s for her or for himself, he can’t say.

He gives a small thumbs up to the camera in the corner pointed at him.

Another pause on the intercom—then, the faintest breath of a laugh.

“Good. You’re doing good. Just a little farther.”

And he kept going.

The duct spat him out behind a rusted set of lockers near the security office in the west wing. He pushed the grate aside, crawled out, and pressed his bruised body against the cool tile for a moment before dragging himself to his feet.

The security office rested dead ahead—glass-paned, humming with a soft blue light. His reflection looked ghostly in the glass: scraped, pale, wide-eyed. He pushed inside.

Two monitors flickered. Several more were offline. And on the wall: a beige landline phone, suddenly ringing.

He stared at it, breath catching in his throat.

“Pick it up,” the voice—her voice—came through the overhead speaker. “It’s me.”

He grabbed the receiver.

Her voice was clearer now, not filtered through old intercom wiring—just her. Wry. Warm.

Human.

“You’re tougher than you look, camcorder.”

“. . .Thanks,” he muttered, rubbing at his temple. “You watched all that? Start to finish?”

“From five different angles. Not your most flattering shots, by the way.”

He huffed a tired laugh despite himself.

“Okay. Walkie-talkies are charging on the wall. In case this line dies—and with this place, it probably will.”

He glanced over. Sure enough: two chunky radios blinked red, half-charged. He took one and clipped it to his belt. “Got it.”

“Now—onto the fun part.” She rattled off a series of instructions—key commands, override sequences, passwords—while he sat down at the security terminal, fingers flying over the worn keys.

Despite the situation, the tension between them gave way to something lighter. Their banter came easily.

“So. . .you work here?”

“Unfortunately.”

“And you’re not insane.”

“Not yet.”

He cracked a grin, tapping in the final command. “Starting override.”

A loading bar bloomed on the screen.

SECURITY SYSTEMS OVERRIDE — 0% . . . 25% . . . 60% . . . 85% . . . 95% . . .

Then—

“No. No, no no no no—” Her voice came through the landline, panicked before the call dropped. No dial tone. Nothing but dead air.

Then, her voice came through the walkie. It crackled to life. She sounded distant and for some reason that made his chest ache.

“I saw him.” She groans, voice tight with frustration. “Father Martin,” she continued, the name slipping like a curse. “He was at the main power relay—he just shut everything down.”

He stood up, too fast, knocking over the chair.

“Fuck,” she hissed. “Okay. No time to whine about it. We have to get to the backup generator. There’s one on my side. East Wing sublevel—maintenance hallway in the basement.”

Miles glanced toward the hallway outside, heart rate climbing again. “Meet you there?”

“Yeah. We’ll need both of us to restart it. Meet me in the East Maintenance Corridor. I’ll ping a beacon from that hallway’s panel—follow the blinking exit signs. I’ll light the path.”

“How are they still on?”

“Backup power. In case of emergencies.”

Miles nodded, more for himself. “I’ll find you.”

“You better.”

The walkie clicked off.

And Miles stepped out of the security office, into the dark again—drawn forward by the blinking lights and the promise of putting a face to the voice.

Chapter Text

Fuck this place. Seriously, just fuck this place. Dying keeps moving lower on the list of the worst things that could happen to me here.

The facility had gone silent again.

No overhead hum of cameras. No buzz from flickering lights. No voice over the intercom.

Only the sound of his own ragged breathing, the soft scuff of shoes on tile, the static fizz from the walkie at his belt.

Miles pressed his back to the wall just outside the security office, peering around the corner into the corridor. Dim emergency lights cast a red hue across the floor, and head, one of the exit signs blinked weakly—just like she said it would.

He started moving.

His body protested with every step. His ribs ached from the fall, shoulder tender from where it had hit the edge of a filing cabinet. But the adrenaline kept him upright. That—and the promise of someone else alive in this nightmare.

Someone who wouldn’t try to kill him or carve him open.

Miles followed the blinking exit signs, winding through abandoned halls. The flickering red glow threw his own shadow against the walls, monstrous and shaky. Occasionally, he’d stop—lift his camcorder, record signs of blood, paperwork, strange drawings painted onto walls in feces and bile. This place was more than a psychiatric facility. It was a crucible.

Eventually, the path narrowed. A side door marked BLOCK C — PRISON WING was slightly ajar. The light above it was out. No camera. No sound. Just black beyond the doorframe.

He swallowed, hesitating for a second.

“This is where she led you,” he assured himself shakily. “This is the way.”

The door creaked open when he nudged it with his foot. He raised the camcorder, switching it to night vision. Immediately, the green hue painted bars, concrete, and shadows—deep shadows that twitched when he moved. His imagination, he tried to tell himself.

The air in the prison was colder. Staler. He moved through it like a ghost, each breath visible in front of him.

Low voices echoed down the corridor. Disquietingly calm.

He froze immediately.

“Take his tongue and liver,” one said—deep, serene, like he was talking about what to pick up from the store.

“No,” the other replied. “Father Martin said not yet.”

Miles swallowed and pressed himself into the inky black shadows between a wall and a column.

He dared to peek.

Two men. Same build. Same faces. They stood down the corridor, near a busted cell door. Naked, pallid, identical. They moved slowly, lazily, like they had all the time in the world and every intention to enjoy it. Their disposition was a rigid dichotomy between their words. Serenity versus violence.

“Still,” the first said, “he’s right here. It wouldn’t take much.”

“No,” the other repeated, a slow grin stretching his cracked lips. “Let’s wait. He’ll come to us when the time is right.”

They turned and vanished around the corner like wraiths, barefoot steps silent against the concrete floor.

Miles didn’t move until he was sure they were completely gone.

Even then, he waited a moment longer, forcing his breath to slow. His hands were shaking. He flexed them around the camcorder.

Not yet, they’d said. Not yet.

His feet barely made a sound as he moved again, eyes scanning for movement, shadows, anything.

At the far end of the prison wing, the hallway turned sharply—exposed pipework, crumbled brick, and a faded sign above reading EAST MAINTENANCE CORRIDOR. One emergency light flickered in and out of existence nearby, casting long, erratic shadows on the floor.

Without hesitating, Miles glanced over his shoulder before ducking through the threshold and disappearing into the corridor beyond—swallowed by the dark.

Your flashlight was dying.

You smack it twice against the palm of your hand as you creep through the narrow hallway, the weak beam flickering like it was barely clinging to life. You felt the same way—like something frayed at the edges, held together with scraps of adrenaline and bitter resolve.

But you kept moving. You had to.

After Father Martin pulled the main power, you’d bolted from the security room, clutching the walkie and whispering directions until your voice was ragged. You hadn’t heard from Camcorder since he entered the prison wing. The silence gnawed at you.

God, please don’t be dead.

You stuck to the walls, moving low, quiet. Every twist in the corridor was a gamble. The cameras were all dead now—your eyes, your advantage, stripped away. You were blind again, like you’d been when they left you for dead.

You listened more than you looked, not trusting your eyes. Listened for the dragging sound of heavy chains, the pant of hot breath, the telltale rasp of skin against concrete.

And then—there it was.

A deep, gurgling inhale. Wet and animalistic.

Shit.

You flatten yourself against a rusted filing cabinet, breath caught in your throat.

Heavy footfalls. A sound like labored breathing forced through broken lungs.

You didn’t need to see him. You knew. You knew every note of that sound.

Your variant stalker.

He’d found you.

You duck into a storage room, silently pulling the door closed. You turn off your flashlight entirely, standing in pitch black, heart thundering in your chest. You held your breath, counting the seconds as the sound grew nearer.

Then—as quickly as it had come—it passed.

You waited another thirty seconds—counted them all—before you cracked the door open, slid out, and kept moving.

It took another two halls before you realized you couldn’t go the way you planned. Chris Walker’s trail was fresh—ripped doors, blood smears, broken glass.

Reroute. You’ve done it before.

You didn’t think. Just moved. Your body knew these corridors better than your mind now. They were muscle memory stitched together with survival instinct

You kept the flashlight low to the ground, sweeping only when necessary. The batteries were giving out, flickering like a heartbeat.

Eventually, you found the corridor.

EAST MAINTENANCE.

The air changed here. More damp. Metallic. The basement wasn’t far.

You picked up the pace, rounding the corner toward the old access door—and slammed hard into something warm and solid.

Your breath caught as you staggered back, flashlight wobbling wildly across the walls.

A man.

Not a variant. Not a hallucination.

Him.

He looked just as startled—wide eyes, cuts fresh on his cheek, holding that damned camcorder like it was a weapon. He hadn’t expected you either.

You stared at each other for a long moment. Just breathing.

“You’re real,” you whisper, almost laughing. “Holy shit—you’re actually real.”

The camcorder in his hand lowered, just slightly. His voice was rough from disuse, barely above a murmur.

“You’re the one on the intercom,” he said, hoarse but steady. “The guide.”

You nod, heart still hammering. “I didn’t think I’d literally run into you.”

Miles let out a quiet breath—part disbelief, part exhaustion. “Didn’t think anyone normal was still alive.”

“Surprise,” you respond, breathless. “Not dead yet.”

He huffed something that might have been a laugh, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You always make a habit of dragging strangers out of hell?”

“Only the ones who look like they might make it.”

His mouth quirked at that—just slightly. “Lucky me.”

Without another word, you step past him toward the old steel door and reach for the latch. A rusted staircase disappeared into the black below.

The backup generator waited in the dark. You spare a glance at each other before slowly making your way down.

Chapter Text

The big fucker is stalking us. Found a patient file for a CHRIS WALKER, ex-military police, several tours in Afghanistan. A lot of blood in this place is on his hands. But not all of it.

The stairs groaned beneath their weight as they crept down into the dark.

Miles kept the camcorder trained on the base of the stairwell, his thumb hovering near the night vision switch. The dim beam of her flashlight had finally sputtered and died somewhere around the third landing, and now the only thing separating the from total blindness was the dying battery of his camera.

She was right behind him, breathing soft and shallow, her footsteps deliberate. When the door at the top finally creaked closed, a heavy silence settled oer the stairwell like a tomb.

The air grew cold. Damp. Foul with mildew and rust.

And then—

Splash.

His foot met frigid water at the final step.

“How bad is it?” She whispered behind him, voice barely audible.

He tilted the camera down and flicked on the night vision. Monochrome green flooded the screen, a grainy field of vision.

Water. Everywhere.

It sloshed up to his waist, black and thick with debris. The floor must have caved somewhere or flooded when hell broke loose—either way, they had no choice.

He turned his head. “You sure it’s down here?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Dead center. Slightly raised platform. We used to haul fuel tanks through here during outages.”

Miles nodded once and offered his hand to her. She took it without question, her fingers cold as they slid into his.

“Just don’t lose me,” she said.

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

They moved together.

The camera swept side to side as they waded through the black water. Broken shelves floated past them. Books. A boot. A hand—severed and bloated—bumped against his leg, but he didn’t react. Couldn’t afford to. Her grip tightened slightly.

They didn’t speak. The only sounds were the sloshing of water and the quiet whine of the camera’s night vision.

Then he saw it. A platform, maybe two feet above the water, metal grating corroded by time and rot. The generator loomed above it like a metal monolith—hulking and dormant, wrapped in wires and decay.

And right next to it. . .

“Fuck.”

There was a variant.

Naked save for the remnants of tattered robes. He stood ankle-deep in the water beside the generator, back to them, a lead pipe in one fist and his head slowly rolling side to side like he was scanning the room.

Miles swallowed hard.

She leaned in. “He wasn’t here last time.”

Miles lifted the camera again, zooming in on the variant. “Doesn’t matter. I can’t get to it with him there.”

A beat.

Then her voice, low and unwavering: “I’ll distract him.”

“What?”

“I’ll lead him out. You go in, get it running. As soon as the lights come on, I’ll circle back.”

He turned to her, still holding her hand, whispering sharply. “If he catches you—”

“He won’t.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You forget that I’ve been stuck here since everything fell apart. I know how to outmaneuver them.”

Miles stared at her. She stared right back.

Then, slowly, he let go of her hand.

“Be careful.”

She gave a small nod, already moving. He felt unease settle over him like a blanket as soon as she left his side.

“Don’t wait,” she whispered. “As soon as I pull him, run.”

Miles watched as she slinked off into the shadows, her form quickly swallowed by the dark. A moment passed. Then another. He could barely breathe.

And then—

A splash. A taunt.

“Hey! Over here!”

The variant turned with a grunt, pipe raised. More splashing followed, then running, then silence.

Miles surged forward, wading through the water. His shoes dragged through the floor, the generator growing closer with every step. His breathing came out hard. He half-climbed, half-stumbled onto the platform and got to work.

His fingers moved on instinct—switches, dials, connections. Nothing happened at first, then a whir. The generator sputtered, then roared to life.

Lights.

Harsh fluorescents flickered overhead, flooding the room in pale, sterile illumination.

Water glinted beneath him. Blood on the walls. A broken cross nailed sideways to a support beam.

Miles sucked in a breath. They had power. But they weren’t safe yet.

And she was still out there.

You don’t look back.

The moment the pipe-wielding psycho let out a guttural roar and started splashing after you, you ran like hell.

The water slowed you down, turning every step into a desperate drag through molasses. You darted around submerged desks and broken shelving, catching glimpses of his pale shape in your periphery—always just a few paces behind.

You could hear him breathing. That ragged, wheezing snarl they all seemed to share. It never faltered, never slowed. He was enjoying this.

“C’mon, c’mon—” you hiss, whipping around a corner, heart thundering.

There—an old maintenance hatch, just barely cracked open.

You threw yourself at it, your shoulder slamming the rusted door the rest of the way. It groaned loud enough to wake the dead, but you couldn’t afford to dwell on it.

You scramble through it into a crawlspace, ducking just as something heavy—a pipe—crashed against the wall behind you, narrowly missing your head by inches.

“Shit!”

The variant howled. You could hear him sloshing around on the other side of the hatch, trying to wedge himself through.

But it was too narrow. Still, you don’t stop to celebrate.

You crawl, knees scraping raw against the wet concrete, breath coming fast and shallow. Your fingers tremble as you flicked your dead flashlight off and clip it to your belt. The only thing guiding you now was memory and desperation.

You weren’t sure how long you’d crawled. Time bled into incoherence in the dark.

Finally—drop-off.

The floor vanished beneath you. You think you gasp, or scream, you’re not sure.

Your hands scramble for something to grab, anything to—

Crash.

You land hard. Your elbow cracked against something metal, sending lightning through your arm. Your ribs flare white-hot with pain, the air rushing out of your lungs.

You lay there for a second, dazed, water trickling over your face as the pain slowly started to pulse in again.

The variant’s snarls had faded. He must have given up—or gotten lost. Either way, she wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

“. . .fuck.”

Your hands fumbled for the walkie clipped to your hip. You click the side, praying it hadn’t drowned in the fall.

“Hey,” you whisper into the receiver, voice hoarse. “Hey—camcorder, you there?”

Static. Then—

“Yeah. I’m here.”

His voice.

Relief crashes over you. You close your eyes for half a second. He sounded breathless—probably just got the power going.

“I’m okay. I’m. . .I fell,” you admit. “I tried to double back but the damn floor caved. I’m in a lower access crawl. South sublevel maybe?”

“Can you get back up?”

“I think so. Gonna have to reroute. Might take a minute. Basement’s a mess down here.”

A beat. You could picture him checking over his shoulder.

“Where should I meet you?”

“West security office,” you answer immediately. “You remember where it is?”

“I remember. I’ll head that way now.”

“Good.” Your voice cracks, soft. “Just. . .don’t take any detours, alright?”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

You pause. Swallow. Then you click the walkie again, quieter this time. “And hey. . .thanks. For trusting me.”

“. . .likewise.”

Your walkie goes silent. You shove it back onto your belt, brace yourself against the wall, and start limping toward the dim glow of emergency lights flickering in the distance.

The familiar hum of machines coming back to life was almost comforting.

The monitors flickered—some still snowed out, others now glowing with grainy footage. Miles adjusted the walkie on his hip as he settled back in front of the console. The power from the generator was finally rerouted. It hummed deep below where the girl had just barely managed to escape. They were both alive. Against all odds.

Time to finish this.

He rolled his bruised shoulder, fingers flying across the keyboard. The override sequence had reset after the last interruption. He had to start from scratch.

SYSTEM OVERRIDE

UNLOCKING MAIN DOORS — PROGRESS:

4%

Static murmured through the walkie, but no voices. She must’ve been rerouting. He focused back on the screen.

19%

23%

The servers clicked and buzzed around him, cooling fans whirring. Somewhere deep in the building, a door mechanism groaned as if responding to the sequence.

37%

45%

“C’mon,” he muttered under his breath. “Almost there. . .”

His head jerked slightly at the faintest sound behind him—too soft to register fully, just a whisper of movement in the periphery. He turned his head to look.

Nothing.

61%

74%

And then—

“I’m sorry, my son.”

Miles jolted. But before he could spin fully around, a needle drove deep into his neck.

His body stiffened. Pain flared. He choked out a ragged sound, muscles spasming as whatever was in the syringe burned through his veins like fire and frost.

His vision wavered. He stumbled sideways, catching himself on the edge of the desk as the screens blurred in front of him.

83%

87%

“You must understand,” Father Martin’s voice murmured from behind him, gentle. Sorrowful. “I’m not your enemy. I only wish to save you.”

Miles tried to turn, but his limbs weren’t listening. His breath came fast and shallow, chest tightening.

“You were chosen,” Father Martin went on, crouching beside him now. “But the devil—she—clouds your judgment. Leads you astray. You can’t see the miracle yet.

He reached forward, pressed a button on the console.

One of the monitors switched feeds. The timestamp was from earlier that night.

The screen came to life with a blur of movement—four guards, all armed, storming a room with rifles raised. Grayscale caught it all in stark contrast.

A black shape, barely human, tore through them with inhuman speed. Limbs twisted. Blood splattered. Bones crunched. Screams were drowned in static.

It lasted seconds.

When it was over, the room looked like a slaughterhouse.

Father Martin’s eyes glowed with fervor. “This is God’s will. This is purity. You were spared for a reason, son. You must witness His glory.”

The override had stopped at 95%.

The screen went dark.

Miles tried to reach for the walkie, fingers twitching—but it slipped from his grasp, clattering to the floor.

Martin’s hand pressed to his forehead in mock benediction.

“Sleep now. When you wake, you’ll see the path.”

The last thing Miles saw before blacking out was the image of the shadow, still lingering in the ghostly afterglow of the monitor.

Then his consciousness fled him again. Nothing.

Chapter Text

The priest, FATHER MARTIN brought me here to show me something. Thinks I’m going to be a witness for whatever batshit crazy he’s trying to sell me. This DR. WERNICKE is at the center of whatever went wrong here. But he died more than ten years ago. “Rest in Peace,” says the blood on the wall.

Miles — Prison Block

Consciousness came back slowly, like dragging himself out from beneath wet, heavy earth. Miles groaned, his throat parched, head pounding. His fingers twitched against fabric. No—not fabric.

Padding.

The walls around him were soft. Cushioned. Once white.

They weren’t white anymore.

Crimson scrawl covered every surface in jagged, manic strokes. Crosses. So many crosses—smeared with what looked like dried blood. Scripture fragments written and rewritten, layered on top of one another. Names he didn’t recognize. Numbers. Tally marks.

Dozens. Maybe hundreds.

His gaze locked on the words above the door.

“Rest in Peace.”

Miles pushed himself upright, groaning at the stiffness in his limbs. His camera was tucked into his side—thank God—but the battery light blinked red. He checked the walkie. Still there, but painfully silent. No sign of her.

A low hum echoed in the air—distant whispers, erratic breathing. The overhead light flickered with a tired, mechanical rhythm. He stepped to the door, peering through the small, reinforced glass window.

A variant stood on the other side.

Gaunt. Pale. In prison uniform, smeared in dried something—blood, probably. He stared directly at Miles, unmoving.

Miles instinctively stepped back.

The lock clicked. The door creaked open a few inches. By the time Miles padded his way to the threshold—

The man was gone. Just gone. Like he’d vanished into smoke.

Miles stepped into the corridor, wary.

The entire block was chaos in slow motion. Cells were open. Some doors hung crooked on their hinges. A few were sealed tight. Variants wandered the hall, aimless—muttering to themselves, scratching the walls, pacing like caged animals in a broken zoo.

No one touched him.

Eyes flickered toward him, lingered, then drifted away. Like they saw something wrong with him. Like he glowed with some invisible mark.

He passed a cell. The inmate inside looked normal at first glance—sitting, rocking back and forth—but the moment Miles passed, the man screamed and lunged at the glass, fist slamming into it with startling force.

“No! Not you! Not you!” the man shrieked, hand smearing blood on the reinforced pane. “He said you’re his! You’re his!”

Miles jolted back. The man beat the glass again, shrieking, “Martin warned us!”

He stumbled away, breath caught in his throat. The corridor twisted, lined with identical rooms, some padded, some concrete cells with barred doors. Red graffiti bled across the tile, across the walls. A gate came into view at the far end, rusted shut but not sealed.

He stopped.

On the other side—them. The twins.

Identical. Towering. Naked but for blood-slicked skin and the glint of metal in their hands—blades, sharp and still wet. They stood shoulder to shoulder, watching him with animal patience.

Miles’s pulse spiked.

“Father’s favorite,” one of them rasped, voice silken with patience that stood a stark juxtaposition to the carnage they bore.

“Touched by prophecy,” said the other. “Blessed. Protected.” He smiled. “For now.”

Miles didn’t move. He knew better.

“We’ll give him a head start,” said the first, pressing his face against the bars. “A long one. Makes it more fun.”

“And when we do catch you. . .” the second whispered, mirroring his brother, “. . .we’ll kill you slow. Nice and slow.”

The gate stood between them, but it didn’t feel like a wall. It felt like a countdown.

Miles turned and walked on, the twins’ murmuring echoing down the corridor behind him like a psalm sung in reverse.

You — Admin Block

Your boots hit the tile harder than you meant them to as you round the final corner. The familiar cracked door of the security office where you were supposed to rendezvous with Miles comes into view, and your heart stutters with something like relief.

Please be here. Please be here.

You slip inside. The room was just as you remembered it: blood-streaked monitors, cold metal filing cabinets, a few lockers lining the walls, the hum of an old desktop trying its best to boot up.

And it’s empty.

The walkie crackles against your hip. Silent.

“. . .shit.”

You turn in a slow circle, eyes scanning the corners like he might have crouched somewhere, waiting for you. Like he might still be close. But the silence was oppressive. Damning and certain.

Your hands shook as you crossed to the monitor array and powered up the system again, fingers dancing across the interface like second nature. The cameras buzzed to life, one feed after another stuttering back into motion.

Then you saw him.

You froze.

He was moving through the prison block, his camera out, sweeping through the cell-lined corridor like a man walking blindfolded through a minefield.

Your throat tightened. “Goddammit,” you hiss, voice tight with frustration and anxiety.

Of course, you suspected Father Martin had gotten to him. That bastard had a grip on half the damn asylum—

Bang.

You stiffen. The sound was heavy. Like something—chains, metal—being dragged across the worn concrete.

Then came the low growl. A guttural breath that vibrated through the floor. Your heart stops beating in your chest.

Chris Walker. No doubt about it.

The lights above you flicker, as if they knew of his impending arrival.

“Shit, shit—” you hiss, scrambling back from the console before diving for the nearest locker.

You barely got the door closed before his hulking silhouette passed through the hallway outside. The sound of his breathing filled the room. A slow, monstrous rasp. Like a furnace struggling to stay lit. You held your breath, one hand pressed against your mouth as heavy boots thudded inches from where you hid.

A pause.

Then another deep inhale.

Your heart slammed against your ribs now, wild and helpless. Then his footsteps retreated.

You waited. One second. Two. Ten.

Only once silence settled back over the room did you push open the locker door, breath catching as you stepped out. You darted back to the monitors.

The feed still showed Miles—carefully moving down the prison block hallway, just past where you’d last seen him. You hovered there for a moment, eyes glued to the monitor.

You leaned in, squinting. You could see Chris making his way to the prison block, hauling ass in a way only a lumbering giant can. Your stomach sinks.

“. . .no,” you breathe, horror threading into your voice. “No, no, no—don’t tell me you saw him.”

Your eyes dart across the feeds, searching the hallways outside the block, your breathing coming faster. Chris wasn’t in the west wing anymore. You lose sight of him just like that.

You grit your teeth and press closer to the monitor.

“. . .come on, camcorder. Don’t stop moving,” you murmur, watching Miles’s figure navigate through a minefield of monsters.

Miles — Prison Block

The flicker of overhead lights cast shadows like nooses down the length of the prison corridor. Miles moved slowly, his camera pressed to his face, night vision active. It bathed the cells in washed-out green and pale gray, giving the world an unsettling palo.

The cell doors hung ajar, some wide open, others splintered at the hinges. Blood trailed across the floor like crude arrows. The walls groaned. So did the men in the cells.

“Shh. . .they’re listening. . .”

Miles stopped dead in his tracks. A variant crouched inside a cell to his right, eyes wide, mouth hanging open like it wanted to scream but forgot how.

Another one sat rocking in a darkened corner, smearing something on the wall. Incoherent nonsense.

“You can’t stop it. Can’t stop it. . .”

“We’re putting our faith in the wrong thing. . .”

The static hum of his walkie crackled. His breath caught.

“You’re alive.” Her voice. A flood of grounding relief hit him all at once.

He lowered the camera, eyes scanning the block. His hand went to the walkie at his hip, tore it off, and raised it to his lips. “Barely. I woke up in a padded room. . .I think Martin drugged me. Said something about a ‘greater purpose’.”

A sharp exhale through the walkie. “That tracks.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t put me there.”

“No. I was watching you. He put you in the prison block now. I can see you on the feeds.”

“I figured. Half the psychos here are giving me a free pass because of him.”

“Good. We’re gonna use it.”

Miles kept walking.

She came back on: “You should see an opening in the wall coming up. Crawl through it—yeah, that one—and you’ll hit a stairwell. You can climb up from there to the upper level. One of the doors should be unlocked.”

He spotted it. A ragged hole beside a collapsed section of brick.

“Got it.”

He ducked through, keeping the camera up. The narrow passage reeked of mold and piss. Something rustled behind him. He didn’t look back.

He emerged onto a metal stairwell, just like she said. From up here, the prison looked even more like a crypt. Cells stacked on cells, decaying steel coffins.

Then he saw it. A crude message smeared in red on the opposite wall:

FOLLOW THE BLOOD.

He brought the walkie to his lips again. “He’s leaving me notes now.”

There was a pause, as if she were trying to read it herself. “What does it say?”

“Follow the blood.”

“. . .of course it does.” Another pause. “Fine. Follow it. For some reason, Martin wants you alive. Right now, we need all the help we can get.”

He pressed forward. Another message just around the bend:

DOWN THE DRAIN.

He hesitated. It pointed toward another corridor. Narrow. Choked in shadow.

But it wasn’t a trap. Because when he voiced his hesitation into the walkie again, her response was immediate.

“That’s where I was going to send you. There are holding cells through there. It’s a little safer. Keep moving.”

The alignment of their paths sent a chill down his spine. As if Father Martin wasn’t just manipulating him, but her, too.

He moved down the corridor. The sound of dripping water echoed like a heartbeat. Like the asylum was alive.

He saw a shape in the shadows. Miles paused, camera trained ahead.

A man—barefoot, blood-soaked—stood over a twitching body. Correction: not moving. The guard was long dead. The variant was beating him anyway, a length of pipe rising and falling with wet, hollow cracks.

Miles didn’t breathe.

The man didn’t even look at him. Just muttered, rhythmic and detached:

“He screamed when I told him. He saw the light. He shouldn’t have screamed. I had to make him stop.”

The variant turned slightly, pipe dragging behind him.

“Keep quiet,” he said to Miles. Calm. Almost gentle.

The walkie buzzed again, barely above a whisper. “Don’t talk to him. Don’t stop. Just walk. Nice and slow.”

Miles obeyed. Step-by-step. The beating continued behind him. He never once looked back.

You — Security Office

You exhaled shakily, watching through the grainy lens of the security camera as Miles edged past the man with the bloodied pipe. Your finger hovered over the walkie button, pulse fluttering like it wanted out of your throat.

“Good,” you murmur. “You’re past him.”

You clicked on the mic.

“Alright. Keep heading forward. You should see a corridor leading to the right—yeah. That one. You’re heading for a decontamination hallway. One end’s sealed, but the emergency override should still be working. You’ll have to hit the switch from the security office.”

The cameras flipped as you typed, locating the office tucked inside the block’s east wing. You switched views rapidly until you saw him enter—cautious, always scanning, always watching. Good. He was learning well.

“There’s a panel by the monitors. You should see it—flip the override.”

You lean forward, watching as he crosses the room toward the switch.

Then your blood runs cold.

Movement. Behind a row of overturned lockers. A shape. A variant.

You slam your hand on the mic.

“No—turn around! Don’t open that door. Run. Now!”

You watch the variant erupt from hiding, lunging forward as Miles whipped around, bolting from the room. You clicked through cameras fast enough to blur your vision, tracking him as he sprinted down the corridor he’d just come from.

“Go left—holding cells! You’ll see them—door’s open! Hide!”

You could barely breathe as he vanished into the cell block. A second later, the variant barreled after him, humming softly.

“Where’d you go. . .? Come on out, little rat. . .you hide, I seek. . .”

You clicked into the camera and saw Miles slip into a locker.

The variant walked into the room. Slow. Calm. He swung a pipe at his side like it was an extension of his arm.

“Mmm. . .I’ll give you time,” he said softly. “Time to think. Time to marinate.”

The man turned. Walked in a slow loop. Then, after a long, painful pause, he left.

You waited five more seconds before pressing the walkie.

“You’re good. He’s gone.”

You watch the locker crack open. Miles stepped out, breath shallow but steady.

“Go back,” you instruct. “Same route. It’s clear.”

This time, no interruptions.

You watch as Miles made it to the security office again, this time unchallenged. He hit the override. A green light flickered above the decontamination door on the feed.

“You’re good. That’s your exit. Get moving.”

But then your gut twisted again. There—outside the room. Another figure approached.

“Shit—shit, hide.” You hiss, voice tight. Panicked. The variants were getting bolder, more of them aware of your existence and his. “Don’t ask questions, just hide. Now.”

He ducked behind a desk just before the door creaked open.

The variant wandered in, muttering nonsense, dragging a piece of rebar. He knocked over a chair, paused—distracted.

You seized the moment. If he didn’t move now, he’d be discovered. Cornered.

“Go. Run now. While he’s facing the monitors—GO.”

Miles burst from hiding and ran.

The variant shouted, furious, but too slow.

You watch Miles sprint out, bolt into the corridor, and disappear through the newly opened door.

The decontamination hallway swallowed him whole.

You slump back into the chair and let yourself breathe again.

“Keep following the blood, camcorder,” you whisper. “We’ll get through this. One step at a time.”

Miles — Prison Block

The path ahead reeked of copper and rot.

Miles crept along the corridor. The air was frigid, humming with something that felt like being watched. His shoes squelched faintly over dried blood and something thicker.

That’s when he heard them again.

The twins.

On the other side of another gate, just visible through the bars. They were taunting him, stalking him. Taking their time.

Still naked. Still holding their crude blades with the same slow, reverent poise.

“We’ve been so patient,” one of them said, voice low and silken.

“Paragons of it,” the other concurred, eyes glinting like polished glass in the dark.

“We deserve to indulge. . .”

“. . and take our time.”

Miles didn’t wait for more.

The walkie crackled to life. “Don’t stop. Don’t talk to them. There’s a ledge just ahead—you can climb along it and reach the other side of the gate. I’m watching them—they’re not moving yet. You’ve got time. Go.”

He’d learned not to question her judgment. Just move when she told him to.

The ledge was narrow and slick. The drop beneath him was concrete, stained and littered with broken pieces and furniture and God knew what else. But he kept going, kept snaking along, kept his eyes forward and breath silent.

The twins watched.

But they didn’t follow.

Once across, the walkie clicked again. “They’re gone. You’re clear.”

He didn’t relax. Couldn’t. He just moved faster.

The next room was an office, tucked away and half-looted already. Drawers hung open like broken jaws. But there were documents. Notes. Papers stamped with the Murkoff logo and laced with redacted lines. He pocketed what he could, always gathering, always archiving—just in case none of this made it out with him.

The trail of blood led onward, smeared into a line that turned down another hall. He followed.

Eventually, it stopped at a locked door. Showers. The handle buzzed uselessly beneath his grip.

“I need a keycard,” he muttered.

“There’s a body nearby,” she said. “Security guard. I saw him earlier. Should still have his card. Turn around from where you came.”

Miles turned and started toward the hall, knowing which body she was referring to.

But as he reached the body, his eyes caught movement on a lower floor. Large. Familiar. He froze.

A thud. A drag. Another thud.

Chris Walker. Again.

Miles stiffened. He didn’t need to see him clearly to know. It was the way the air shifted—the way the silence became oppressive and suffocating.

He turned slightly, wide-eyed.

And there he was. Lumbering across the cell block floor like some reanimated titan, skin stretched over muscle and rage. A mountain of a man, dragging a dismembered leg like it was a toy.

The walkie whispered, urgent: “Don’t look. Don’t engage. Just keep moving. It’s better if he doesn’t see you.”

Miles obeyed.

He turned back to the guard, who was slumped in a pool of cooling blood near the next corridor. He rifled the keycard from his pocket with shaking hands.

Another breath. Another step.

He didn’t look back again.

Chapter Text

I can’t shake Chris Walker, the big ugly fucker who likes ripping off peoples’ heads. I hear him muttering about security protocols, containment. What if he’s not the problem? What if he’s trying to fix it?

The keycard clicked in the reader. The light blinked green. Miles barely had time to register the sound when a familiar voice slithered through the darkened corridor.

“Ah. . .there he is.”

The twins stood at the end of the hallway like symmetrical phantoms, blades in hand, nude and glistening like cultish idols under flashes of lightning.

Miles spun and bolted. He caught sight of a window in his peripheral, shattered, the frame jagged, rain battering through the open void beyond.

Without a second thought, he climbed through.

The ledge outside was barely wide enough for his shoes, slick with rain, the concrete drop below stretching into a yawning abyss. Wind whipped at his coat, thunder cracked like a warning shot overhead.

He looked down.

He could jump. Break both legs. Maybe worse.

He looked out into the storm, heart pounding like a drumline in his throat.

He could leave. He could run. Cut his losses, take what information he had—good information at that—and never look back.

But the thought curdled in his chest, fast and bitter. The idea of leaving her behind—of leaving anyone to this—left a sour weight in his stomach.

He let out a breath. Shaky. Cold.

Then he climbed back through the window.

The hallway was empty now. The twins had vanished like ghosts.

He stepped forward and found the camera in the upper corner of the corridor. Looked up. Held a thumb up toward the lens.

The walkie crackled with her voice a second later—relieved and amused. “You actually came back? Huh. I was half-expecting you to make a break for it.”

“Thought about it,” he muttered, breathless. “Didn’t.”

“Idiot,” she teased gently. “You should’ve bailed.”

He couldn’t tell if she meant it. Didn’t ask. Just kept going.

She guided him through the dim, dripping showers—rusted drains, body-sized shadows, the awful smell—until he reached another security office tucked behind warped steel and reeking concrete.

“This one’s got another decontamination chamber,” her voice came through. “Button should be just beside the monitors. Hit it and we’ll be clear to link up.”

Miles reached for the button. Pressed it.

The lights in the chamber flared to life behind the viewing window. And there, in the haze of the fluorescent glow waited Chris Walker.

Lurking. Waiting. Breathing like an angry furnace.

“TURN AROUND—GO! VENT, VENT, NOW!” her voice snapped through the walkie.

Miles stumbled backward as the glass shattered—Walker’s roar ripping through the wall like a warhorn. Miles dove for the nearby vent, clambering over boxes and pulling himself up just as the monster came crashing through.

The crawlspace rattled with every footfall from below. The vent spit him into a corridor that tilted too sharply downward.

It was too much. Too close.

Disoriented. Blind. He ran.

“No—no, not that way!—”

He blew past a decontamination hall just as the whole corridor detonated behind him—heat, force, and concrete swallowing him whole.

The ground vanished beneath his feet.

He plummeted.

Down, down, down—

—into nothing.

You — Security Office

You watch in horror as the screen erupted in a burst of static and smoke.

One second, Miles was sprinting through the hall. You watch him flee in the wrong direction, try to stop him—

But within the next second, a flash, a roar. The blast forces him backward and through a hole in the floor.

“No—” you breathe, barely audible.

Without thinking, you shove away from the console and bolt out the door, shoes slamming the tile. Your lungs burned. You didn’t care. He had fallen. And you hadn’t seen him move. Hadn’t seen him get up. No movement. Nothing.

Your pulse thundered in your ears.

Only once you were behind a sealed door did you stop You braced yourself against the wall, checked the corners, made sure nothing—no one—had followed her. Only then did you press the walkie back to your lips.

“. . .hello?” you breathe, voice edged with panic. “Do you copy? Come on, talk to me, camcorder.”

Silence.

You bit your lip hard enough to draw blood.

Again, this time firmer. “Do you copy? Can you hear me?” Nothing.

“Hey—hey—you good?”

Stillness. No idea what happened to him. The journalist with the camera. The one who could have left you but came back in anyway.

Your chest ached with anxiety—tight, suffocating.

“Shit—come on, answer me, damn it.”

No response. Not even static. Your heart pounded in your ears, frantic and loud.

“. . .c’mon, please. . .”

You grit your teeth and take a shaky breath before pushing forward—slowly, carefully—toward the scorched hole where you’d seen him go down. And you prayed to whatever god still haunted this place that he wasn’t dead.

Miles — Prison Block Sublevel

His eyes blink open, a low groan escaping him.

There was a voice in his ear, fuzzy and broken. “Hey. . .hey—camcorder, you copy?”

He flinched and instinctively reached for the source of the sound, hand brushing over the walkie clipped to his waistband. His other hand sank into something soft as he tried to push himself up.

Too soft.

The smell hit him next.

Rot. Iron. Human waste.

He sat up with a choked breath and immediately gagged, bile rising in his throat.

He’d landed on bodies. Limbs. Ribcages. Skin half-peeled from muscle. He was lying in a heap of corpses, slick with decay and blood gone black. Flies buzzed around his face, fat and slow and heavy with death.

“Camcorder—!” her voice snapped in his ear, sharp, real. “Are you okay? You’re not dead, right?”

He didn’t answer right away, just shoved himself up, trembling. HIs legs nearly buckled beneath him as he stumbled out of the pile.

“I’m alive.” He responded finally.

He could hear her let out a shaky breath, half-laugh, half-relieved sigh.

“You’re alive,” she repeated. “Thank God. Okay. Don’t move. I’m coming to you. I had to leave the office—I couldn’t see where you landed. Just stay put.”

But he couldn’t. Not there.

He staggered a few feet away from the bodies, dragging in shallow breaths, trying not to vomit. His hands were shaking. He didn’t wipe the blood off them.

From ahead, he heard footsteps. Then a dim light cutting through the dark.

“Hey,” she said.

She looked tired. Drenched. Still breathing hard from running. But she looked relieved.

“You look like shit,” she muttered.

“And you don’t?”

She snorted, barely. “Charming.”

He nodded to the hallway. “Let’s keep moving.”

They moved quietly, sticking to the shadows, breathing as little as possible. Somewhere nearby, heavy boots thudded. Combined with the sound of chains rattling, and they knew who was stalking the halls once more.

They pressed themselves against a wall, ducking beneath a collapsed support beam. He loomed past, blind in the dark snorting and growling to himself.

She pointed at a narrow crawlspace, barely wide enough for one person. They slipped through it one at a time, Walker’s growls fading behind them. Miles swore his heartbeat was loud enough to get them both killed.

As they crept into another corridor, soft catcalls echoed from the cells above and below. Voices murmuring. Laughter. One of them shouted, “She’s pretty! Can I have her next?”

She didn’t react. Neither did Miles.

They passed a man in a wheelchair, staring blankly at the wall. Harmless, Miles thought.

But the second they stepped past, the man lunged.

A grunt escaped Miles as fingers closed around his neck. He stumbled back, fists beating at the man’s arms. It was too sudden for him to scream, too fast for him to react—

But not her. She shoved the attacker hard, sending him toppling over the railing and onto the concrete below with a sickening crack. Miles spared a glance—his spine was bent wrong, skull cracked open and blood pooling beneath him.

He looked back to her. She was pale.

But she grabbed his hand and tugged, kept moving.

They didn’t speak.

Martin’s blood trail—still fresh, impossibly—led them to a cell near the far end. Inside, a hole in the floor. Rust-streaked. Black with water and rot.

It dropped into the showers.

The followed.

When they landed, they came face to face with blood. Everywhere. Walls smeared with it, floor caked in it, drains clogged and overflowing. And scrawled on every surface, the same word again and again:

WALRIDER.

Miles lifted his camera. The lens trembled.

She just stared at the wall. She’d heard rumors about it—sure she had. But she was a receptionist. Most of that information was beyond her clearance.

“It’s not real,” she said under her breath. “He’s not real.”

The lack of conviction in her voice left him unsettled—almost like she was trying to convince herself. But he didn’t say anything. Didn’t pry.

Another arrow in blood, dragging along the wall like a finger had painted it fresh. It pointed toward the exit.

“C’mon,” she said. “Martin’s trail goes to the sewers.”

Miles hesitated. But she was already moving, eyes focused, hand white-knuckled around the flashlight as she tucked it away.

Her hand shook in his.

And so he followed, awaiting the following descent.

Chapter Text

The Patients know Dr. Wernicke is dead. One asks me, ‘what kind of experiments does a dead doctor perform on living patients?’ What is PROJECT WALRIDER?

The first thing Miles noticed was the smell.

Thick. Wet. Rotting.

It clung to the walls and the water and the back of his throat. The sewers were a tunnel of decay, narrow and oppressive, the ceiling pressing low overhead like the earth itself wanted to collapse on them.

For a while, they depended on his camera’s night vision, which bathed everything ahead in a ghostly hue. Without it, they’d be blind in the dark.

She stayed close. Closer than before.

Her fingers slipped into his without a word, small and cold, and he didn’t resist. His grip was firm in return. Grounding them both.

“This way,” she whispered, leading him forward through the murk.

For now, it was quiet. No footsteps echoing in the distance, no unhinged laughter or slamming doors. Only the steady drip of water from rusted pipes, the low hum of air pushing through ancient vents, the occasional distant groan of the asylum shifting on its foundations.

He let her guide him. He had always been more of a loner, but right now her presence felt like the only thing tethering him to something human. Something sane.

They moved carefully, ducking beneath hanging wires and stepping over ankle-deep sludge. The brick and mortar walls sweated filth. A rat skittered by, half-bald and blind.

Eventually, they reached a pipeline—a wide, rusted tube barely large enough to crouch through.

She ducked, stepping in first. “Head down.”

He followed, the curve of the tunnel pressing against his back as they crept forward. Each step echoed hollowly beneath them, metal groaning with every shift of their weight. There was a light at the end.

Then—a shadow. Not from a human. No. This one was tangible. Three dimensional. It flitted past the tunnel’s end. Fast. Unnatural.

She halted suddenly, slamming on the brakes. Miles froze right after.

She inhaled sharply. “I didn’t think it was real.”

“What?” he asked, voice low.

But she shook her head and kept moving. Her grip on his hand tightened marginally.

At the end of the tunnel, they found the ladder they needed—half-rusted, snapped, fragmented. A ten-foot stretch of metal hanging limp against the wall like a broken spine.

She stared up at it almost incredulously, then laughed bitterly. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Of course,” she muttered.

He looked around—no crates, no loose piping, nothing to climb on. Just more waste. More stink. And below them, the water ran deeper.

“We’ll have to go further down,” she said. “Loop around. Get into the male ward from a lower level.”

He didn’t like that. But he nodded.

There was no other choice.

They kept moving, and though it was still quiet, the bodies were a different kind of warning. Torn limbs floating in the sludge. A ribcage wedged into the grates. Intestines strung like garland across a pipe overhead.

Something had been here. Something was here. That much was certain.

They didn’t speak again. Not yet.

The quiet was disorienting.

After the chaos upstairs—the screaming, the alarms, the blood—being down in the sewers felt wrong in a different way. Like the silence had teeth. It bit at the edges of his mind, made him hyper-aware of every little sound. The drip of water. The squelch of each footstep. The creak of his arm as he adjusted the camera.

But her presence was a lighthouse among the endless sea. She made the silence even fractionally better, if such a word could exist in a place like Mount Massive. In a strange way, though, in the sewers with her was the most peace he’d felt all night.

It let them talk.

“I was a receptionist,” she says suddenly, her voice low as they walk hand-in-hand. Her eyes sweep every crevice. “Ground floor. Low-level clearance. Didn’t know anything. Didn’t see anything.”

Miles glanced over at her, studying her for a moment. Her face was set with something like fierce determination. “How’d you get stuck here?”

“I got trapped. Like everyone else. Thought I’d wait—hide, survive. . .whatever. It’s been days now. No one’s coming.”

Her laugh was humorless before she added, “honestly? If I make it out, I’m quitting the moment I get signal.”

Miles couldn’t help a quiet laugh. “Assuming we make it out.”

“You’ll make it.” She assures. “You’ve got the camcorder. Makes you the protagonist.”

He let out a short, dry breath—almost a laugh. “Fantastic. Protagonists have a terrible survival rate in horror stories.”

“Yeah, but you’re with the final girl.” She quipped. “Improves your odds.”

They moved forward, squeezing through a narrow, rust-caked pipe that forced them into single file. It spit them out into a larger chamber, and the smell hit first—stagnant water, rot, mildew. Ahead of them, the tunnel lead to an open hatch. It was flooded to the top, reeking.

She stepped forward, peering into the murky water as if she could make it disappear through willpower alone. “Shit,” she muttered. “This is the junction to the male ward. We have to go down.”

Miles leaned past her, staring down at the murky, motionless water below. “We’re not swimming through that, right?”

“Nope,” she said, already turning back to a stained, peeling map bolted to the wall. “Not unless you want sepsis.”

A pause as she studied the map. “We have to flush it. There’s two valves, one for the male ward, one for the female.”

“Of course. Why not make it easy?”

She didn’t smile, but she looked like she might have under different circumstances. “Come on. The map says the female valve is this way.”

They didn’t make it ten feet before a sound stopped them cold.

A thump. Then another. Measured. Heavy.

Then the screech of something massive squeezing through a gap and joining them on their lower level.

Walker.

She grabbed him without a word, yanking him down behind a pile of rusted metal crates slick with mold. They crouched, pressed side by side, barely breathing.

Miles angled his camcorder over the edge. Chris Walker lumbered into view—ever towering, massive, his breathing ragged. His footfalls echoed off the sewer walls like war drums.

They waited. Seconds ticked like hours.

When Walker passed by, she mouthed “go.”

They slinked through shadows and ankle-deep filth, ducking beneath hanging pipes and hugging walls until they found the valve tucked behind a maintenance hatch—faintly marked FEMALE WARD.

She pointed. “There. That’s one.”

Miles lowered his camera and turned it, the valve groaning in protest.

“One down,” she said. “Now we just need the male ward valve.”

He killed the night vision and let himself breathe. But even as they stepped away, the nearby echo of Walker’s footsteps rolled through the tunnels again.

You — The Sewers

The second valve was close—closer than you’d expected.

The path curved hard to the left, and tucked behind a chain-link gate and some busted shelves was a door, barely clinging to its hinges. You and Miles slip inside, and sure enough, mounted to the wall with faded paint above it: MALE WARD — MAIN DRAIN VALVE.

You almost smile. Almost.

“Bingo,” you whisper.

You watch Miles turn the valve before returning your attention to the door. The old metal screeched and groaned with effort, then gave way with a hard thunk. Somewhere down the tunnels, you could hear the rush of water being forced out—clearing the flooded junction.

You two had done it.

You turn and give Miles a triumphant look, just as the sound hit your ears.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Then the familiar clink and rattle of metal.

Your stomach turns to ice. You reach for Miles’s arm and whisper urgently, “back. Now.”

You spun him around and dove into a row of lockers just as the door behind you open with a metallic shriek. You barely had time to shut the locker door.

You and Miles were cramped between two walls of sheet metal. Chest to chest and peering through the openings in the locker door.

You don’t even breathe.

Chris Walker’s snorting breath filled the small space, heavy and close. The locker groaned under the weight of both of your bodies pressed into it, your fingers clutching the fabric of Miles’s jacket. You could feel his breath too, shaky and silent against your skin.

Walker stomped through the room.

Something crashed just out of sight. A shelf, maybe. A pipe clanging against the wall.

Then—finally—you saw him exit the room, thundering steps receding.

The moment the silence returned, you and Miles stumble out of the locker, breathless.

“He knows we’re here,” you mutter. “Or close.”

Miles didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. You could see the look on his face—frustration, fear, exhaustion. It was written all over him.

You straighten, pulling yourself together even though your hands still shook with lingering adrenaline. “We can’t sneak past him again. He’s waiting for us. I’ll distract him. You go.”

Miles looks at you like you’ve lost your damn mind. He’d seen what Walker could do—the thought of it happening to youmade him want to vomit.

“Again?” He’s incredulous, then, “no.” He responds almost immediately.

“You have the camera. You have to document this, right? Someone has to. You get out, you show the world what’s happening here.”

“Would be nice if we both got out,” he bargained.

You touch his shoulder. “We will. You first. I’ll find you.”

His jaw clenched. “That’s not a great plan.”

“None of our plans have been great so far,” you say, half-laughing. “It’s all improv. But they’ve gotten us this far, right?”

He hesitated. You knew he wanted to argue more, but there wasn’t time.

You give him quick directions for how to get back to the junction, and—once in the junction—how to find the ladder to the upper level. “You’ll see a light,” you explain. “It’s faint, but it’s there.”

You look him dead in the eye. “I’ll find you, camcorder. I always do.”

Before he could respond, you slip past the door and into the tunnel.

Chris Walker loomed nearby.

You pick up a loose pipe and slam it against the wall. “Hey!” You shout.

The sound makes you flinch, echoing like a gunshot.

You turn just in time to see Miles slipping away, his silhouette swallowed by the dark.

Then you run.

Heavy footsteps thunder behind you.

You sprint blindly, heart hammering against your ribs. You duck haphazardly into corridors and dart around corners. The air is thick with rot and rust and your own adrenaline. You could hear him behind you—snarling, growling, crashing into things too small for his frame.

Finally—blessedly—you find a narrow tunnel. It’s barely wide enough for your shoulders, let alone his.

You throw yourself into it, scraping your arms and your sides, but you don’t stop until you crawl halfway through.

Walker’s footsteps stop at the edge. Then silence.

You stay still, barely daring to breathe despite your protesting lungs, and wait.

He couldn’t follow.

When you were sure he was gone, you kept going. The tunnel dipped down, cold and slick beneath your palms, and it throws you out into the lower junction. Dark. Wet. Empty.

You stand, wipe grime from your face and let out a breath.

“Coming, camcorder.”

Miles — Lower Junction

He followed the directions she’d given him, counting turns by memory and watching for cues she’d mentioned.

The water drained, but the floor was still slick, and his shoes echoed in the tunnel louder than he liked. He kept glancing over his shoulder, half-expecting to see a massive shape lurching after him, but there was only dark. The only light came from his camcorder, cutting the black with grainy vision.

Ahead—a ladder.

He didn’t let himself hesitate as he reached for the rusted rungs, not until he was halfway up. A noise above him made him freeze. Heavy breathing.

Then, from the dimly-lit opening, the pale face of a variant appeared. It watched him.

It didn’t speak. Just stared.

Miles’s hands white-knuckled the rungs. He looked down, debating if he should wait for her. But he had to trust that she was coming. He had to keep moving.

So he did.

By the time he reached the top, the variant was gone.

He stepped into the next section of the tunnel, heart pounding like it was trying to claw out of his chest. He turned in a slow circle, camcorder raised. Nothing but dripping concrete and rusted pipework. No variant. No movement.

And no her.

He waited.

Every second dragged. Every drop of water echoed, mimicking footsteps and making him hope he’d see her.

He gripped the camera tighter, scanned the area again and again. The idea that she might have died was just starting to fester in his mind when he finally—finally—heard the soft shuffle of footfall behind him.

She emerged from the tunnel, breathless, grimy, but intact. Mud smeared her arms. Her hair stuck to her cheeks.

“You’re late,” he muttered, more relief than sarcasm.

“Got a little held up,” she said, voice dry.

He didn’t ask questions, just nodded.

There was a gate to their immediate left. Its bars were rusted, but intact. And behind it—out of nowhere—screaming. Miles flinched, startling.

It sounded like hell had opened up just beyond the grate—screeching, manic laughter, words that weren’t really words.

“Don’t look,” she told him, not even glancing at the source. “Don’t listen, either. Your sanity will go with theirs if you do.”

He swallowed and kept his head down. They moved on.

The tunnel narrowed, winding again, and the smell grew worse. Miles didn’t want to know why. A foul mixture of mold, sewage, and something biohazardous coated the walls and his throat.

“We’re almost out of here,” she told him quietly. “The exit is nearby. It’ll take us up into the male ward.”

“Bummer,” he muttered, “because this place was starting to feel cozy.”

She gave a soft, humorless laugh, but stopped abruptly as the opened the door to the next chamber.

A figure stood in the room. Dead center.

Miles’s camera caught him before his eyes did—his face twisted, eyes wide but oddly clear. A variant, sure, but not like the others. He didn’t lunge, didn’t scream. Didn’t murmur incoherencies.

She cursed under her breath, hand twitching toward Miles’s sleeve.

But the man didn’t flinch.

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” he said. “I can tell we’re all the same. You still know what’s real.”

His voice was hoarse, ragged, but lucid. Like someone who hadn’t spoken in years, but still remembered how.

“The doctor’s dead, you know that, right? Dr. Wernicke. Died before he even started working here.”

Miles focused his camera, recording.

“We should go,” she whispered lowly, tugging at his arm.

He didn’t move. Couldn’t. If they made it out alive, this was prime material for his exposé.

The variant tilted his head. “What kind of experiments does a dead doctor perform on living patients?” His eyes locked onto the lens.

“That’s the question.”

The variant’s words hung in the air even after he went still, retreating back into the darkness like a shadow tucking itself away.

They didn’t linger.

She pulled him through an open hatch that led down—again—further into the bowels of Mount Massive. The path to the female ward was blocked, collapsed in on itself with bent pipework and old debris. Water still flowed through the grates beneath them, but it wasn’t clean. It ran red.

Miles learned better than to ask, so they press on.

He tried not to think about what could dye that much water the color of blood—but the idea that it was indeed blood didn’t seem so farfetched after everything he’d witnessed. He tried not to slip as they crossed the narrow walkway, her hand catching his elbow whenever he stumbled.

Then something hit the ground in front of them. Hard.

A body. It made a sick, wet sound when it landed—dumped unceremoniously from one of the large drainage openings above. A variant. Miles didn’t need to check if he was alive. No one landed like that and walked away.

They both froze, startled, breath caught.

But nothing followed: no footsteps. No laughter.

Stillness and the sound of running water.

She moved first, jaw tight. “Come on.”

He followed.

There was a door on the left, but when he tried the handle, it rattled—locked from the other side. Of course.

Instead, they crawled through another narrow pipeline, this one more claustrophobic than the rest. It bent sharply in places, a winding metal artery deeper into the dark. He led with the camcorder again, its night vision the only way to see.

She kept close behind, offering soft directions. Left. Right.

The pipe spit them out into a rusted maintenance chamber. The grates creaked below them as they landed, protesting beneath their weight.

She gave him her name a few seconds into their new path. No pretense or preamble. He didn’t say much, but he repeated it in his head.

He told her his. “Miles.”

Just something to fill the quiet. Something to keep the dark and silence form swallowing them whole.

But something had shifted. The air felt charged. Dense.

Inhuman.

There were no footsteps, no echoes of breath—but they weren’t alone, that much was obvious.

Miles could feel it. It was tangible, domineering.

The water had risen again. Waist-deep now, slowing their movement. They waded through the corridor hand in hand, the sound of sloshing water too loud, too exposed.

Every gate rattle. Every splash that wasn’t theirs. It all pulled tight in their chests.

They didn’t speak about it—couldn’t, not with the tightness in their throats—but they both felt the demanding presence of something watching.

The word Walrider repeated in his brain. Haunting.

They couldn’t see it. Couldn’t name it. He wasn’t sure if it was the Walrider—whatever it was—or if he was finally losing whatever shred of sanity he’d managed to hold onto thus far.

It was down there with them, though. Miles could picture it creeping up onto them and tearing them apart like it had the guards in the footage Father Martin had shown him.

But it didn’t.

Finally, they found a ladder. Rusted, but in one piece. A faint draft from above promised something other than the stench of the sewers. They climbed with her leading.

At the top, an open hatch led them into a tighter space. Pipes lined the walls and a flickering light buzzed overhead.

There were signs. Bent, corroded, but legible.

Male Ward →

They may as well have ran, relief bleeding from them in beads of sweat and steadier breathing.

A staircase led them up. The air changed again—dryer, if not cleaner. Not exactly safer, but further from whatever burdened the dark below.

They don’t look back, because they know the only way out is through.

Chapter Text

The harder I try to escape, the further I get into this god awful place. Like fighting a tar pit. They’ve been torturing people in the basement, and by method. Written on the wall - “FINGERS FIRST. THEN BALLS. THEN TONGUE.” Somebody’s managing the torture, instructing them.

The main entrance to the male ward is a mess of overturned bed frames, shelves, and steel IV poles twisted like bones snapped under pressure. Miles doesn’t waste his breath complaining—he knows better by now—but she lets out a low groan beside him, scanning the barricade like she’s trying to will it into shifting into an opening for them.

“Hold on,” she mutters, eyes flicking to a half-obscured hole in the wall just to their right. A rusted metal cabinet blocks the opening, but beyond it, light flickers dimly. “We can crawl through that. Maybe.”

She looks back at Miles and jerks her head toward the cabinet. He nods, and together they brace their hands against it. It squeals against the floor, revealing a jagged square just big enough to crawl through. The light inside strobes on and off, bathing the blood smeared floor in a sickly rhythm.

They hesitate—just for a breath—before climbing through.

The blood trail leads to a room that’s quiet and clinical in the worst way possible. A variant sits slumped in a chair in the center of the room, unmoving. Blood pools beneath him, thick and congealed, but it’s impossible to tell whose it is. The variant doesn’t acknowledge them.

“Don’t engage,” she whispers. “Just go.”

He does. They leave the room in silence, the only sound the soft whir of his camcorder switching to night vision.

The male ward is suffocating. Every corner looks the same—tight hallways, old brick mortared into uneven walls, a haze of grime and iron. Writing smears the stone in someone’s dried blood:

FINGERS FIRST. THEN BALLS. THEN TONGUE.

Miles feels his breath catch. She notices—of course she does—and takes his hand in hers, tugging him gently toward a hallway lit in low amber.

“Don’t look at that,” she says. “We’re gonna get out. I’ll get us out.”

They move like ghosts through the corridors, avoiding the occasional twitching silhouette. The silence is deceptive. It carries something.

A noise starts, faint at first. Rhythmic. Pounding.

They freeze. It’s coming from a heavy door, half-covered by another rusted cabinet. Neither of them says it, but they’re both thinking the same thing: Walker. The twins. Or worse—whatever unseen entity was following them through the sewers.

She glances at him, and—without another word—drops his hand, plants her feet, and shoves the cabinet aside. It grates loudly. She gives him a small, tense smile and a thumbs up before opening the door and slowly stepping through.

Nothing jumps out. No bloodcurdling screams. Just another hallway, empty. Haunted.

They move forward, eventually tumbling into a wide, clinical space that stinks of old blood and antiseptic. Blood stains drag across the floor. Cots stand at crooked angles. Wheelchairs are overturned. Curtain partitions flutter slightly, even with no wind.

Her hand finds his again. She grips it tightly.

“Don’t look at anything too long,” she warns him. “You’ll lose your mind trying to make sense of it.”

He nods mutely, camcorder raised, every nerve on fire.

A low voice murmurs just beyond a curtain.

“Can’t sleep,” it says. “Wernicke is waiting for me there.”

Miles inches closer, capturing the footage. The variant doesn’t emerge. Doesn’t scream. Just rocks in place, repeating his quiet terror to no one.

She hops onto a nearby cot, ignoring the noise. Eventually, Miles glances over at her and she points upward, toward an exposed vent.

“There. That’s our way through.”

Miles moves to help her up, boosting her until she can grip the edge and scramble in. Then she turns, reaching down for him. Her grip is firm. Warm.

He takes it, letting her anchor him. His body is sore and shaking as he hauls himself up into the thin sheet metal of the vent. It’s narrow and hot, their knees scraping metal. She leads, moving with practiced efficiency, though even she’s slowly than usual—fatigue clings to her like a second skin.

They drop into the next room one by one, landing softly on the blood-specked linoleum. Miles’s night vision flickers—the battery is low, so he lowers it for the moment, deciding to save it. When he does, he lifts his gaze, finding a silhouette in the middle of the room.

It’s a variant. Slumped in a chair like the last one. Silent.

At first.

Then—crack.

Her shoe hits a stray IV pole. The metal clang bounces off the walls like a gunshot, Miles’s eyes widen.

The variant’s head jerks up.

“Meat!” he shrieks, straining against leather straps pinning his wrists to the armrests. His voice scrapes against Miles’s skull like nails. “Wants meat! Wants meat! Meat!”

“Shit,” she hisses, already backing away, posture low and tense.

Miles glances around. No windows. Two exits. One is barricaded. The other—the one they dropped in front of—is double-doored, and beginning to rattle. Silhouettes loom on the other side, slamming their shoulders into the wood that won’t hold for long.

“Get that open,” she snaps, pointing to the blocked door.

Miles scrambles to the cabinet wedged against it, pushing hard with his shoulder. It groans slowly, like it doesn’t want to move. Like it knows.

She moves to help—but freezes. The wood creaks in protest beneath the weight of the variants on the other side.

“Shit. Shit—!”

She bolts for the doors and jams a nearby two-by-four through the handles, adding a very fragile buffer for them. But it’s enough.

“Go!” she yells at Miles.

He slams his shoulder against the cabinet. It lurches. Gives.

The door creaks open just enough. He shoves through. She follows. Within seconds, the two-by-four splinters behind them. She slams the door shut behind them.

“We’ll flank them! Pieces of shit!” one of the variant roars. “Take the other hall.”

She and Miles don’t wait to see if they mean it. They run.

Hallways blur past in broken light. Miles’s camera bobbles in his hands, vision grainy and warped, but he doesn’t stop recording now. She knocks over furniture as they go to slow their pursuers—a gurney, a metal cart of bloodied tools, a tipped-over IV stand that crashes hard against the floor.

The noise doesn’t matter anymore. The male ward is awake.

They don’t look back. Don’t need to. The screech of rage behind them is all the confirmation they need that they’re being hunted.

They skid into a surgical room, empty but still reeking of antiseptic and old meat. She slams the door behind them again, glancing wildly around.

“Vent,” she says breathlessly, spotting the grate above.

Miles doesn’t wait—he crouches and cups his hands. She plants a foot, climbs, pulls herself halfway in.

“Come on,” she grits.

He leaps. She catches his forearm, grunts with effort, and hauls him up and through. They scramble, metal clanging beneath their palms, and drop into the adjacent hallway with a thud.

They sprint down another hallway, lungs burning, shoes slapping the slick tile. Miles doesn’t know where he’s going anymore—he’s just following her, her grip tight around his wrist, anchoring him to his mad spiral.

Then the floor vanishes.

It’s a sudden yawning drop—open space where solid ground should be. The hallway ends in a shattered ruin, and across the gap, another hallway continues like nothing’s wrong, but it causes them both to slam on the brakes or risk falling into the inky dark below.

“Jump!” she gasps, voice strained and desperate. “Miles, jump!”

There’s no time to think. He runs. Leaps.

Impact. His hands scrape tile. He barely catches the lip of the opposite side, scrambling forward just as she launches after him.

She lands—badly. Her foot slips on the edge and she slides, a flash of panic crossing her face as her hands fail to find purchase. She tips backward.

“Shit—!” Miles lunges, catching her wrist in a vice grip, the same way she caught his in the vent. His other hand grabs at the fabric of her sleeve as her shoes dangle over the abyss.

She doesn’t scream—but the sharp inhale she makes is worse. Fear held tight behind her teeth.

With a grunt, he hauls her up, both of them collapsing against the wall, breathing like they’ve been underwater.

Across the gap, voices echo.

“Slippery little whores!”

“Get back here!”

One of the variants lets out a bestial screech that turns Miles’s stomach. But the fall has bought them a second, maybe two.

Just enough to hear another variant shout from somewhere nearby: “There’s another door over here! This way!”

“Damn it,” she curses, already standing. “Come on.”

She yanks him onto his feet and forward, running again, vaulting over a busted gurney, ducking beneath a low beam, kicking aside a plastic bin soaked in blood. They tear through the remnants of a classroom—chalkboard, desks, papers scattered about the room. The floor is sticky with god knows what.

They don’t stop.

Not until they’re in a hallway that leads into an adjacent classroom. That’s when she falters.

“They’re too close,” she breathes, eyes flicking behind them.

Miles hears it now too—the slapping of bare feet against the tile, the snarling breath, and a voice he doesn’t recognize, but she clearly does. Low and raspy, familiar in a sickening her.

“There you are. . .”

She stops, grabs the handle of a door halfway open and shoves it shut, bracing herself against it. She looks at Miles, wide-eyed.

“Go,” she practically pleads. “Go, I’ll hold them back.”

Miles hesitates, stumbling a step closer. “No, we stay together—”

“Go!” she shouts, voice sharp enough to cut. Her hands are slipping on the knob already. “It’s him. Just go, Miles. I’ll find you—I always do. You know that.”

There’s movement beyond the door. The knob jerks in her hand.

“Miles!” she begs, terrified.

He nods. Just once.

Then runs.

He tears through a side door, shoulder-first, into a laundry room—linoleum tiles, slop sinks, hanging uniforms. He barrels forward, shoving a laundry bin aside, but when he glances back—

Someone’s followed him. Not all of them chased her.

One variant is still on his tail

“Shit—fuck—shit—”

A voice draws his attention. “Who’s down there?”

It comes from a speaker beside a dumbwaiter set into the wall. It’s calm. Smooth. Male.

“You’re not one of them, are you? Quick! Get in the dumbwaiter if you want to live!”

Miles doesn’t have time to hesitate.

The variant bursts through the door behind him just as Miles throws open the dumbwaiter gate and dives in, dragging it shut with a loud metallic clang.

The lift jerks violently. Rises.

Miles presses himself against the corner, breath ragged, hands trembling, blood pounding in his ears.

But as the dumbwaiter is lifted, Miles realizes something.

There was no fear in the voice. No breathless panic like her’s the first time she called to him through the intercoms. No frantic edge.

Just composure. Control.

His gut twists, but he can’t place why. It was too convenient. Too easy. The rescue feels wrong.

He swallows hard, eyes darting around the cramped dumbwaiter and wonders bitterly if he should have taken his chances with the variant.

You — Male Ward

You watch him go, your eyes blurring with unshed tears that you quickly blink away. Miles disappears from your sight, and then you turn back, shoving all your weight against the door.

Something slams into the other side a second later.

You nearly lose your footing.

A snarl echoes through the crack. “Open the fucking door!”

You bite down on a scream, pressing harder, shoulder digging into the wood. They’re so close you can hear them breathing. One of them—the one who’s been following you from the start—calls your name. He shouldn’t know it. But he does.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he croons with that same, animalistic, bullish snort. “It’s me. You remember me, don’t you?”

You grit your teeth, panic clawing at your throat.

One. Two—wait.

Three.

There are three variants. You can hear it now—their feet hitting the tile, rerouting to the direction Miles ran.

Your breath catches, but there’s no time to think.

You let go of the door and bolt.

You book it in the opposite direction, past a wall of overturned desks and broken chairs. You leap over a toppled gurney, skidding around a corner, nearly wiping out. Every beat of your heart is a thunderclap. Every step they gain behind you is a promise of pain

A wrong turn. A dead end. Your stomach lurches.

But then—a narrow gap, a rusted supply closet door hanging off its hinges. You dive in and yank the door shut.

You clamp a hand over your mouth, heart slamming wildly against your ribs, trying not to breathe too loud as their footsteps stagger past. One slows near the closet, and you hear breathing—his breathing—right on the other side.

Your variant.

He stands there for a moment, muttering something to himself, something low and hungry, before moving on.

You wait. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two.

Only when the silence grows unbearable do you dare to exhale.

You don’t know how long you run after you escape the closet.

You don’t know how you find a staff bathroom, either—only that it’s dark, damp, and the flickering fluorescent lights above buzz like flies trapped in amber. The walls are coated in grime and blood. The sinks are cracked. A puddle of something pools beneath one of the stalls.

You stumble inside, breath hitching, chest aching, legs burning—but moving.

You’re halfway across the floor when your foot snaps down into something.

Snap. Clank.

Pain.

Pain.

It is immediate as something springs shut around your ankle with a sick, metallic crunch, barbed teeth digging through skin and bone.

A scream rips out of your throat before you even know you’re making it.

It echoes against the tile. Down the halls.

Too loud. You know it’s too loud.

You look down—freezing. It’s a trap, crude and homemade.

A rusted bear trap, but crude. Homemade. Wires torn from old bed frames serve as springs. The teeth are jagged shards of metal hammered into shape, bolted into a half-metal frame that might have once been part of a wheelchair. Bits of barbed wire are wrapped around the jaws—there’s no function. It’s for fun. As if hurting you wasn’t bad enough. Whoever made it wanted to maim you.

Your ankle is caught between the jaws, punctured deep on either side. Blood pours into your shoe, soaking through the laces.

And it hurts. God, it hurts.

You drop, clawing at the rusted trap with blood-slicked fingers, trying to pry it open, your heart racing so hard you can’t think. Your breath comes in ragged, panicked gasps. The pain is white-hot, blinding. Your blood begins to smear across the filthy floor.

“I knew you’d come this way.”

Your heart drops into your stomach, your hands stilling against the trap.

Footsteps enter the bathroom. Slow, deliberate, and heavy.

“I watched you drag him around like a little lost dog. Thought I’d never get my turn with you again.”

He steps into view from the shadows—grinning, wild-eyed. One hand bandaged, the other clutching a sharpened pipe like it’s a gift meant just for you.

“I missed you, sweetness.” He says before swinging the pipe down onto your head.

It connects with your skull—a hearty crack. It’s not hard enough to knock you out, but hard enough to hurt, to make you cry out, vision bursting with stars.

You crumple back against the tile, dazed, and then he’s on you. Straddling you. Knees placed on either side of your body.

You immediately feel hands around your throat.

“You don’t get to leave me again,” he growls, tightening his grip.

You paw at the tile, eyes wide, mouth opening and closing around empty gasps. The pressure on your throat builds. You kick—useless, your ankle is still caught in the trap You can feel your consciousness start to slip, vision tunneling.

Then your hands feel it. Cold, sharp, and jagged.

Your fingertips brush against something just out of reach—a shard of ceramic, broken from a sink. It gives you second wind as you grab it.

Without thinking, you swing it blindly.

CRACK.

It catches him in the temple. Blood splatters across your face.

He snarls. Falters. Tries to get the upper hand and lean back in, so you swing again, this time knocking him onto his back beside you.

You don’t know where you find the strength to do it, but you push yourself up and straddle him now before driving the ceramic down onto his face, ignoring his groans.

You let out a scream before driving it down again. And again. And again. And again.

You don’t stop. Not until his chest stops rising and falling. Until your hands are coated in your blood in his. Until the gurgling stops. Until there’s no face left to scream with.

Your hands tremble. Your arms go numb.

The shard clatters to the floor and you follow it.

You let out a breathless sob—shaking, ragged, breaking.

You don’t stop crying. You can’t.

With your ankle still in the trap, you curl sideways onto the cold tile, cheek pressed to blood and filth, gasping like you’ve just surfaced from drowning.

Your crying turns into sobbing. Raw and unfiltered.

You hadn’t cried when the doors locked behind you. Not when you realized you were trapped. Not when you saw what they did to the patients. But the weight of it all caught up to you and you break.

And somewhere, above or beyond the walls, Miles Upshur is alone.

Miles — Location Unknown

The dumbwaiter clunks to a stop after a few seconds. The door slides open, and Miles is immediately face-to-face with a man who looks like a walking nightmare.

He should have taken his chances in the laundry room.

The man’s skin is stretched tight, wrinkled and scarred—not naturally ages, but like the remnants of some experiment. The man’s balding scalp reveals patchy, brittle strands of coarse hair, and his thing, wiry frame is covered only by a stained apron, hanging loosely, barely concealing his lower half.

He wears bifocals—or some sort of clinical eyewear—except one lens is shattered, jagged edges reflecting the warm, dim light. A torn, tattered mask hangs loosely over the bottom half of his face, barely revealing a cruel smile underneath.

“You made the right choice here, buddy,” the man says, voice smooth and unsettling.

Before Miles can react, the man punches hm square in the face with startling strength for someone so lean.

The world spins wildly. Miles stumbles out of the dumbwaiter, only to be struck again.

He lands on his back, blinking through the haze, his vision swimming beneath the warm lights. The man leans over him, eyes cold.

“Hey, you’re that little shit priest’s guy, aren’t you? His. . .witness, or whatever. Must be exhausted. Let’s take a break, huh, buddy? The old two-martini lunch, have a little confab.”

Too well-spoken, too calm to be a variant, but every bit as terrifying—if not more.

Miles feels limp and helpless as the man hoists him onto his shoulder, unceremoniously dumping him into a wheelchair.

“Heavier than you look,” the man grunts. “A little cardio wouldn’t kill you.”

Leather belt-like restraints wind tight around his wrists first, then his ankles. “Okay. Here we go—arms and legs inside the car at all times.”

The man rolls the wheelchair forward, ferrying Miles down the twisted corridors of the male ward. His thoughts are a jumbled mess of pain, fear, and one desperate question: Is she okay? And is it stupid to hope she’ll be his Hail Mary yet again.

They stop in front of an elevator. Across the hall, the doors stand open, a red exit sign glowing faintly. Outside, thunder rumbles and rain lashes the darkened world.

“I love the mountain air up here at night,” the man says, amusement flickering in his eyes. “You want to head out? Take a stroll? Go ahead, I’ll wait here.”

Miles swallows bile. The exit is right there. Escape is so close he can taste it—but it’s impossible. Not like this.

And not without her.

When Miles doesn’t move—not because he doesn’t want to, because he can’t—the man laughs, low and menacing. Taunting.

“Go on, run free. I’m in no hurry.”

Still no response.

“No? Alright. Nose to the grindstone, I like that. Okay, then. Right this way.”

He pulls Miles backwards into the elevator, pressing the button to ascend. The exit slips further from reach, swallowed by the walls of Mount Massive. The man stands in front of him, arms behind his back, not looking at him.

The elevator hums as it ascends, the weight of Miles’s own silence pressing on his chest.

The man speaks again. “Where’s your little friend?” he asks, too casual, too smooth. “I’ve been dying to get my hands on her for a while.”

Miles doesn’t dignify it with a response.

The man shrugs, unfazed. “She’ll get what’s coming to her soon, anyway.”

Miles’s stomach twists. The rest of the ride is silent.

When the elevator doors finally open, they spill out into another section of the ward—clinical, cold. Too clean in a way that makes the blood on the floor stand out sharper. A trail. A direction.

The wheels squeak as Miles is pushed forward, following the trail.

They pass a variant sitting hunched on the floor, rocking back and forth with wide, glassy eyes. He’s muttering something unintelligible under his breath over and over—until, clear as day, he begs, “Please kill me. Please just kill me.”

Miles clenches his eyes shut.

When he opens them again, they’re gliding past another door. Inside, a variant thrashes violently against his restraints, strapped down to a rusted bed. He snarls and spits, feral.

The man shushes him like a child.

“You weren’t putting that tongue to use anyway,” he says cheerfully. A beat. “Truth be told, I was just tired of licking my own stamps.”

Miles flinches against the bindings, bile rising in his throat again. Burning.

Still, the man wheels him forward, the corridor tilting into deeper shadow until they reach a pitch-black room.

“Here we are then,” the man says pleasantly, letting go of the chair. “Thanks so much for coming by. We’ll begin your consultation in a moment. I’ll just need a second to wash up, and. . .”

The lights flicker on with a sickly buzz.

The room is tiled, the kind of tile that used to gleam in a public shower or decontamination zone. Now it’s cracked and stained. The sink in front of Miles is white ceramic, making the blood splattering its basin even more stark. The air smells of bleach, rot, and something metallic.

This was never meant to be a lab. But someone turned it into one.

The man walks back into view, his voice trailing off as his gaze lands on Miles’s camera.

“Oh. . .home movies!” he grins, reaching forward and plucking it from Miles’s body. “And it’ll give us a chance to talk.”

He props it on the edge of the sink with cinematic flair, adjusting the angle with care—like a director setting up a shot. Miles grimaces, his heart hammering as his eyes scan the room: the instruments, the blood-soaked floor, a dismembered hand on the floor, its fingers curled.

He shakes the wheelchair violently, trying to get free. Leather straps dig into his wrists.

The man watches him for a moment, then turns away, casually strolling to a nearby medical cart. His fingers glide over scalpels, bone saws, pliers. Choosing.

“You know,” he says conversationally, “I’m a bit worried how much time you’ve been spending with Father Martin. I know—” he pauses, hands skimming over the instruments with reverence, “. . .I hope—you haven’t been letting him confuse you with all his holier-than-thou Bible thumping.”

Miles twists against the leather, teeth grit.

“No offense to the man,” the man continues, finally settling on a knife from the tray, “but I sometimes worry he might just be a little. . .crazy.”

He returns to Miles, dragging the blade along his jawline—not deep enough to draw blood, but enough that Miles feels every jagged notch of the edge. A warning. A prelude.

Miles’s breathing hitches as the man pulls the knife away without using it. It was a test, just a taste—like he was checking the weight of it in his hand. Seeing how it felt.

He goes back to the cart, fingers brushing along tools that gleam under the fluorescent lights. “It’s understandable,” the man muses as if they’re having a casual discussion over coffee. “People get scared. They’re as likely to turn to God as anything else.”

He picks up something new. A scalpel. Puts it back.

“God died with the gold standard,” he continues, plucking up a pair of scissors and holding them like he’s about to cut wrapping paper. “We’re on to more concrete faiths now.”

Miles tugs at the restraints, heart in his throat.

“You have to rob Peter to pay Paul. There’s no other way. Murder in its simplest form.” He sets the scissors down, picks up a hacksaw next. “But what happens when the money is gone?”

Miles swallows, tasting bile. The air is thick, humid with blood and antiseptic.

The man holds the saw up to Miles’s fingers like he’s sizing a wedding band. Like he’s dressing him for an occasion.

“Well money becomes a matter of faith,” the man whispers, smiling. “And that’s what I’m here for. To make you believe.”

Miles begins to hyperventilate, chest heaving, the bindings tight and unrelenting as the man turns back to the tray. He picks up the bone shears—huge, rusted, and horrifying. A single glance at them and Miles knows what’s coming.

Fingers first.

“No,” he gasps, voice trembling. “Please—don’t. Don’t—”

But it doesn’t matter. His cries fall on deaf ears.

The man grabs Miles’s right hand with clinical confidence, positioning it on the arm rest.

The shears close in around his index finger.

Miles thrashes uselessly, head shaking desperately. “Please, no, don’t—”

The man doesn’t stop. The shears come down.

Miles screams.

White-hot pain detonates up his arm, flaring through his skull until his vision flashes out at the edges. The room spins, his scream tearing from his throat in a hoarse burst of agony. The pain is unlike anything—blinding, pure, suffocating.

“You paying attention?” the man snarls, his tone suddenly sharp. Angry.

Miles can’t even respond. He’s going to pass out. He feels it rising—thick, heavy darkness curling in.

A slap across the face drag him back.

“Don’t pass out on me. There’s still a lot for you to absorb.”

A headache dances along his skull, but Miles barely notices it over the feeling of the shears again.

The man grabs his left hand. The shears close in.

He takes the ring finger.

Miles screams again, the sound more like a sob, choked and dying as it rips from his throat. His stomach heaves and empties, sour bile sliding over his tongue. He can’t breathe as the world tilts and wavers.

Blood splatters the cuffs of his sleeves. His hands shake in their bindings, slick and mangled. His vision swims again, watery and unfocused.

When he dares to spare a glance down, he sees the damage. Two fingers—gone. A mangled mess of flesh and bone.

The man lets out a satisfied sigh, standing tall like he’s finished a good day’s work.

“There. Better now, right?” he says cheerfully. “Do you understand what we achieved here? We made the consumer into the means of production.”

He grins.

“This thing is going to sell itself.”

He grabs the cart, metal clattering. Miles can barely hold his head up.

The man walks to the door and opens it with a squeal of rusted hinges. His voice drifts back as he leaves.

The door clicks shut.

Miles is left alone withe sound of his breathing and the blood still dripping from his hands.

But Miles can’t waste time.

As soon as the door clicks shut behind the man, he thrashes violently in the wheelchair. The pain makes him want to scream, or cry, or vomit, but he bites it all down, jaw clenched so tight it might crack. He rocks left and right, yanking against the wrist restraints. Blood makes his hands slick, but maybe that helps—after a few grueling seconds, one of the bindings gives with a snap of tension.

He rips his other hand free, grunting, and works at the ankle straps next. His fingers—what’s left of them—tremble with effort, coated in blood. Finally the last restraint gives.

He stands.

Immediately, the world tilts. His legs buckle, and he catches himself on the edge of the sink—just barely. The nausea that follows hits him like a truck.

Miles doubles over and vomits violently, the sound of retching echoing through the sterile, gore-streaked room. He coughs, bile burning in his throat, dry-heaving long after there’s nothing left.

When he’s done, he wipes his mouth with his sleeve and grabs his camera. He mutters a string of curses—spitting them through his teeth like venom—and raises it to record the room.

He stumbles to the door, legs unsteady and every movement dragging pain up his arms. Blood drips from his mangled hands.

He follows the blood trail the man had followed to lead them into the makeshift lab, dragging one foot after the other.

Somewhere ahead, a hoarse voice calls:

“Who’s there? Is somebody there? Come closer.”

Miles hesitates, but tracks the voice to a man on a bed.

The man is bare, battered, and strapped to the bloodstained mattress. At first, Miles thinks he’s just another variant. But then, the man continues.

“I’m not a patient. I’m an executive,” he insists, words slurred and half-wild. “Like him. Like Trager. But he got the treatment. He’s too alive. Filled with Wernicke’s nightmares.”

Miles brings his camera up, recording.

The man is cut open in several places, eyes glassy. Naked, skin stretched and waxy, he trembles against the mattress.

“It worked too well,” he whispers. “They couldn’t control it. . .”

Miles inches back a step.

“. . .and you can’t control it. Nobody. Nobody! NOBODY!”

The man’s voice rises to a fever pitch.

Miles’s stomach plummets.

Trager.

Panic floods his limbs. He turns to move, but the man’s shouts continue: “He’ll find you! He’ll kill you! He’s coming now! Trager!”

Miles dives beneath the nearest bed, camera still in hand. Through the narrow slit between floor and frame, he can still see the man—the light catching his wild eyes, his mouth stretched in manic warning.

Footsteps echo. Then Trager appears.

He’s still holding the shears.

He hums—an amused, condescending little sound—as he approaches the restrains man. “I see what’s happening here,” he says lightly, “you’re bored. You want a little attention. Perfectly understandable.”

He pauses beside the bed.

“Well I’m here for you. I’ll give you very special attention.”

And then he plunges the shears into the man’s side.

The man screams—an awful, warbling, dying sound. Trager twists the blades like he’s cranking open a bottle of wine.

Miles stares, recording.

Blood splatters the mattress, and the man goes limp.

Trager pulls the shears free, wipes them casually on the sheets, and strolls off, his back to the carnage.

The room falls silent again—except for the buzz of the lights and the sound of Miles’s heart pounding in his ears.

He slides out from under the bed, not even glancing at the mangled body as he stumbles forward.

Miles moves as fast as he can without making too much noise, following the blood trail. His breath catches when a voice bellows from the makeshift lab behind him:

“FUCK. FUCK, REALLY?!”

Trager.

“You’re gonna walk on me?”

Miles’s heartbeat spikes. He glances around frantically—he needs a way out, now. But he doesn’t have her. She always knew where to go. Without her, he’s as good as blind—stumbling around in the dark with no direction.

Behind him, Trager crashes around the hall, like a child mid-tantrum, screaming. “If there is one thing I cannot GOD DAMN stand—it’s a quitter!”

Mile does the only thing he can: he runs. Fast as he can manage.

He passes the tongueless man again, who immediately begins screaming and thrashing, limbs jerking violently as if to cry out without a warning.

The blood trail leads him back to the elevator. Miles presses the button with frantic hands—but nothing happens.

His heart sinks.

A key.

He needs a goddamn key.

For a split second, he wants to scream. But instead, he exits the elevator and glances around. Finally, he looks up. The above—she would have told him that’s the safest shot.

Teeth clenched, ignoring the agony in his hands, he jumps up. The metal scrapes under his weight as he pulls himself up, crawling as quietly as he can through the shaft. His breth is ragged. Blood smears the metal below him.

He drops out into another hallway: locked doors. Gates. No clear path.

And then, from the far end of the corridor, Trager’s voice, sing-song and cold:

“Aww, buddy. What are you trying to do?”

Miles drops low and crawls behind an overturned bed, switching on the night vision. The green glow catches Trager’s silhouette as he patrols the hallway, dragging the shears along the walls with a screeching rasp. Opening and closing them like he’s testing him.

Snip. Snip.

Miles doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.

Eventually, Trager’s footsteps fade.

Miles seizes the chance. Still crouched, he crawls slow, measured—but the moment he touches a gate that will lead him back to the elevator, it creaks. Loudly.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me—” Miles hisses.

Footsteps pound after him. He dives through the door, slams it shut, and scrambles back into the same vent as before, this time staying hidden.

Trager storms through the room, past him.

Miles waits. Waits longer than he needs to. Then he drops down, breath hitching in his throat. He moves quick, ducking and weaving through the male ward aimlessly, hiding wherever he can, dodging Trager’s looming presence.

He finds a new vent—one he hadn’t noticed before. It spits him out into what looks like executive offices. Fancy carpet. Mahogany desks. Miles stumbles in, eyes scanning everything.

And there, like salvation, is a body slumped in a chair. A uniform. Dead.

But the keys he needs are still on the man’s belt.

Miles almost sobs. He bends, fingers trembling, and snatches them.

He turns to leave—

CLANG. Shears stab through the wooden door like a monster in a nightmare. Miles yelps, doubles back, hurling himself through a nearby window before making a beeline for the elevator.

Footsteps chase, a blur behind him, but he doesn’t dare look back.

He makes it.

Hands shaking, he fumbles with the keys, trying each one until—click—the panel lights up. He slams down the button and collapses against the wall as the elevator groans to life and descends.

But he doesn’t even make it down a full floor.

Metal screeches.

Trager is there, prying open the gate. “I’m not giving up on you!”

Trager pries open the elevator gate, lunging at Miles with the same damn shears in his hand. Miles lunges as Trager does. The two struggle in the cramped space.

Trager swings with the shears, but Miles pushes—shoves—until Trager loses his grip. His torso catches on the edge of the floor.

And the elevator had never stoped moving.

Crunch.

Trager thrashes wildly, screaming, the pressure building until—

He goes limp; caught between the floor and the top of the elevator doorframe. The shears slip from his hand and clatter into the shaft, swallowed by the dark.

Miles doesn’t move. He just sits there, staring, blinking.

And then—

He laughs.

A quiet, broken, exhausted little sound.

He lifts his camera. Records the mangled corpse. Then scribbles into his notebook:

“How to make Trager juice. Step 1: Squeeze.”

Through the small grate in the elevator door, he can see it again—the storm, the rain. The promise of escape on the precipice that is the glowing red exit sign.

But the elevator’s jammed. Trager’s corpse blocks its descent.

Miles stares through the gate before looking at the hatch above him.

He wasn’t leaving anyway. Hadn’t even considered it.

Not without her.

So he climbs. Out through the hatch. Back into the shadows of Mount Massive.

Intent on finding her.

Chapter Text

TRAGER. Sick fucker cut my fingers off. Has tortured and mangled dozens of patients. I watch him murder another one, nothing I can do about it. Talks like a white collar business school douchebag, probably has a set of golf clubs in the trunk of his Audi. I’d bet the rest of my fingers he was Murkoff brass before whatever’s infected this place changed him.

I want out of this place. I want my fucking fingers back. I want to see Trager die.

You — Male Ward, Employee Bathroom

You don’t remember when the sobbing stopped.

Only that at some point, your body gave out before your mind did—too hollow to cry, too shattered to scream. Your arms are wrapped around yourself, knuckles scraped, trembling like the rest of you. Your cheeks are wet, and your throat burns from the strain, but the air around you is silent now. Still.

Only the thunder remains, rumbling faintly above you like some distant, disinterested god.

Minutes pass. Maybe longer. But eventually, the silence becomes unbearable.

You blink, lashes sticky. You swallow hard and force yourself upright with a quiet, shuddering breath, the pain biting down your spine like the teeth on the trap. Your breath stutters, but you don’t let yourself fall again. Not now. Not when Miles could be—

You don’t let yourself finish the thought. Just clench your jaw and pull your knee up to your chest. Your fingers ache as you wedge them between the angry teeth of the trap, nails broken and palms bruised, but you get it. You force the jaws apart with a grunt and haul yourself up, bracing against the broken sink that saved you.

Your knees buckle almost as soon as you try to stand independently. The pain is dizzying, sharp, and hot. Despite this, you push forward.

You lean against the wall for support, following it until it turns into the sterile tile of what could be a clinic or infirmary. It presses cold against your skin. It smells like antiseptic. Iron.

You don’t let yourself linger anywhere too long. Your hands tremble as you stumble toward a set of cabinets and desks. Your hands rifle through drawers, half-blind with exhaustion, until you find bandages. Gauze. A half-used roll of medical tape. You mutter under your breath—encouragement, maybe, or just to keep yourself sane—and press the gauze to the worst of your wounds, flinching at the dull pain.

You’re no nurse. But you don’t need to be. You just need to move.

The muffled crash that echoes through the walls makes you flinch and instinctively dive for cover. A voice follows—furious, snarling:

“FUCK. FUCK, REALLY?!”

Your blood runs cold.

You know that voice. You’ve heard it. Laughing. Cutting. Mocking its prey like they’re old friends.

Your heart jumps.

Miles. Miles must have gotten away and bumped into Richard Trager, of all people.

You stumble toward the sound, adrenaline overriding pain now. You follow the echo of Trager’s tantrum through the halls. You can’t stop shaking, can’t stop picturing Miles’s face, what that man might have done to him—but you force your legs to carry you forward anyway.

If you can just find him—

The thunder above is little more than a growl now—distant and muffled by the concrete bones of the asylum—but it still rumbles through the floor beneath your feet like an echo of God’s disapproval.

You follow the sound of his voice.

Trager’s.

It’s like navigating the aftermath of a storm: overturned gurneys, papers stuck to bloodstains, doors cracked on broken hinges. The light flickers overhead with each step, casting you in and out of shadow, in and out of existence.

Your ankle is screaming.

The bandage is already soaked through with your blood, but you can’t stop now. Your breathing comes fast, ragged, every inhale a stab beneath your ribs.

Hurry.

Hurry, you idiot. He could be dying.

He could already be—

You swallow that thought like a pill with no water.

The halls bend around you, cruel and endless, and every turn brings you nowhere closer to him. You limp faster, ignoring the pulsing ache deep in your bones. When you find a staircase, you take it clumsily, using the rail to ascend one step at a time, trembling with effort.

You can’t hear him anymore.

You can’t hear anything.

And that silence is somehow worse than the screams. The screams tell you there’s a pursuit. There’s life.

There’s finality in the silence.

When you finally stumble onto the right floor, it greets you with stillness so thick it clings to your skin. No movement. No shouting. No footsteps. Just the hum of broken lights and the wet squeak of your shoes.

Too late, whispers the part of you that always prepares for the worst. You’re too late.

You find the lab by smell before sight. That coppery tang that’s become all too familiar. And when you step in—dragging yourself through the busted threshold like your legs might give out any second—your breath catches.

The room is lit. Bright, fluorescent panels buzz overhead, bathing everything in pale light.

There’s blood everywhere. Pooled by the sink, painted on the tiles, smeared across the floor in thick handprints and a trail you dare not follow with your eyes.

And on the floor. . .

You don’t want to look. But you do.

Two fingers. Torn from the hand like discarded meat. Your stomach lurches violently as you try to reconcile that they’re not his. They’re not Miles’s. But the thought festers before you can stop it, spreading like a disease.

You spin, staggered, back pressed to the wall as you try not to be sick. But it’s too late—your throat contracts and you double over, heaving until nothing but bile hits the floor. You gasp, trying to steady your breath, the taste sharp and acid on your tongue.

When you stand again, your legs barely hold.

You find a man strapped to a bed next. His jaw is slack, eyes fixed on nothing. His wounds are too many to count, but none of them matter now. His mouth is frozen in a silent scream.

And Miles is nowhere to be found.

Your heart stumbles in your chest, hands going to your hair, tugging at it out of desperation.

No. No, no, no. Please—

You wipe your mouth with a shaking hand, trying to focus, trying to think. He has to be somewhere. You shuffle forward again, following a trail of blood and hoping it doesn’t lead you to his body. The silence is so loud it roars in your ears.

And that’s when you see it.

The elevator.

Its metal doors pried open, jammed mid-floor.

And sticking out of the threshold, torn at the waist—

Trager.

His waist is crushed, muscles in his legs twitching like the nerves haven’t gotten the message yet. Blood is smeared down the wall, the floor beneath him a ruin of red and pulp.

You stare for a long moment, hand over your mouth.

And then—then you let yourself hope.

A dangerous thing. But if Trager’s dead, if someone killed him. . .

Please. Please, let it have been Miles.

You turn from the elevator and start limping back—retracing your steps toward the hall where you first separated. You don’t know if he’ll be there, or even close, but it’s the only place you can think to look.

You trust he wouldn’t leave you behind. Because you wouldn’t leave him, either.

Miles — Male Ward, Upper Floor

The elevator hatch groans shut above him as Miles drops down onto the next landing, the impact sending fresh pain skittering through his hands. What’s left of them.

His fingers throb in rhythm with his pulse—dull, angry, ever-present. But he doesn’t stop.

Can’t.

He pushes forward down the stairwell, hugging the wall for balance, the darkness swallowing him in waves. The lights overhead are few and far between, and most flicker uselessly. Some stutter like they’re on their last breath. He clicks on the night vision again, and the world turns green and grainy. Familiar.

Every step is a prayer that the stairs beneath him won’t give out. Every creak a quiet threat. The walls are damp, the concrete sweating under pressure and time and rot. Somewhere above, the thunder is still rolling. Or maybe it’s not thunder at all. Maybe it’s the building groaning beneath the weight of its sins.

He finds himself on the next floor. A hallway he doesn’t recognize—sterile and wide. A faint hum of electricity buzzes in the air. Miles pushes a door open and finds himself in what must have once been executive offices. Desks. Filing cabinets. Glass walls shattered in places, paper strewn like fallen snow. A monitor in the far corner is still flickering—no image, just static. The noise scratches at his ears, making the ache behind his eyes worse.

He moves to the desk, fingers trembling as he picks up another folder. Another confidential Murkoff document.

More proof. Another piece of the machine. Another nail in the coffin.

But it all feels so useless if she’s not alive to help him get out.

He presses forward, skirting through the maze of hallways and ruined offices, slowly descending into the part of the ward where he thinks they were separated. It’s hard to say. Everything in Mount Massive starts to look the same after a while—identical halls, identical bloodstains.

He curses quietly under his breath. Where is she?

He thinks he’s gotten turned around when he stumbles past an emergency exit door—sealed, chained shut. Another cruel joke. But then—

A figure. Limping.

He freezes.

Her silhouette is unmistakable, even in the dim, flickering lights of the hall. She’s hunched slightly, favoring one leg, her hand braced flat against the wall to keep her upright. Her hair is a mess. Her face is pale, damp with sweat. Her ankle is wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage that’s leaking through, red to her shoe.

“Hey—” he breathes, before even thinking.

She turns at the sound of his voice—and her expression crumples.

Relief hits her so hard it almost knocks her down. Before she can speak again, she stumbles toward him, and he rushes the rest of the way to catch her. She folds into him—clinging tight, arms around his waist, her face burying against his chest.

“I thought you died,” she whispers, voice trembling, breath shuddering like she’s trying to hold in a sob. “Jesus—fuck—I thought he killed you.”

Miles swallows. Hesitates.

Then wraps his arms around her in return. Slowly. Carefully. But he holds her, anchoring her there as her whole body trembles.

“I thought you died too,” he murmurs. “I didn’t—shit, I didn’t know what happened to you.”

She pulls back just enough to look at him, blinking through the mess of blood and tears. Then her gaze drops to his hand, and she falters.

“Miles—” her voice catches. “What happened to your—?”

He doesn’t look at them. Doesn’t want to.

“Trager,” he mutters. “Bone shears. I think he wanted to make a point.”

Her face crumples at that—rage and guilt and something else too raw to name. Her grip on his arm tightens.

“What happened to your ankle?”

She looks away. “Stupid variant fuck found me. Set a trap. I. . .” she shakes her head. “I’ll explain later. I’m fine. I’m okay.”

Neither of them are okay. Not by a long shot. But they’re here. Together. And for now, that has to be enough.

They stand there for a moment, breath still uneven and skin clammy, a little stunned by the sheer miracle of reunion.

But then she goes still. Completely still.

Miles notices it immediately—the sudden tension in her shoulders, the way her eyes widen, locking on something behind him. Her fingers curl tighter around his sleeve, grip like iron.

He follows her gaze and turns slowly—then sees it.

Through a narrow, dust-streaked window, just beside a door that’s been completely barricaded with wooden boards and a heavy steel cabinet, stands Father Martin. His face is dimly lit, the hallway behind him dark. The light casts deep shadows across the hollows of his cheeks and under his eyes, making him look ghostly.

Despite his better judgment, Miles tucks her behind him, approaching the window.

“Thank God you survived,” Martin says when they’re close enough to hear. His voice is muffled slightly through the reinforced glass, but still too calm for the state they’re in. His focus is on Miles—like he doesn’t even seem to see her there. “I feared that secular maniac would carve you up like the others. Meet me outside. We’re close now.”

The moment lingers too long. She slowly turns her gaze up to Miles, lips parting like she might argue.

“I’m not sure,” she murmurs. Her voice is hushed. Careful. “I don’t trust him.”

Miles shifts, adjusting his grip on the camera, casting a glance toward her, then back toward the window where Martin lingers just a moment before stepping away, disappearing into whatever lies beyond the door.

“He helped us get down into the sewers,” Miles says quietly. “Could’ve left us to fumble around. He didn’t. If there’s a chance he can get us out. . .”

She doesn’t argue. Not outright. But her hesitation shows in the way she bites down on her bottom lip. She’s thinking, calculating. She glances once more at the boarded door, then away. And finally, reluctantly, she nods.

It’s not like she had a better plan anyway.

“Alright. But if he screws us over like he did with the power, I’m throwing him to Walker myself.”

Miles can’t help the faint, exhausted laugh that leaves him. “Fair.”

They study the barricaded door for a moment, but it’s clear there’s no chance of getting it open. The boards are nailed deep into the frame, layers of furniture pushed up against the other side like whoever blocked it had no intention of letting anything back in.

She steps forward, steadying herself against the wall, scanning the space around them. Her eyes land on a hallway to the left of the barricaded door—narrow and dark.

“There,” she says, nodding toward it. Her voice is firmer now. “Only way through.”

They start toward it. Miles lifts the camera, flicking back into night vision. The world glows green. Grainy shadows swim at the edges of the lens.

She takes a step forward and wobbles.

Without a word, Miles shifts beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her upright.

“I’m fine,” she says automatically, still trying to limp forward.

“I know,” he says, voice low. “But I’ve got you anyway.”

She doesn’t answer. Just swallows hard and leans into him as they press into the dark.

The hallway is cramped and suffocating—like everything else in the asylum. The air is heavy and hot, stale with the scent of blood and something he can’t quite place. Debris clutters the carpeted floor, and what little light there is comes in flickers. Bulbs pop in and out of life above them.

They make it to an upended employee locker room. The floor is scattered with overturned benches and metal locker doors, some hanging open like gaping mouths. A dead security guard is crumpled in one corner, his uniform scorched and tacky with dried blood. Neither of them slows down.

Miles glances at the corpse but doesn’t react. That in itself startles him. He should react. He should feel something. But all he feels is the familiar wave of nausea that comes with the realization that he’s desensitized now. The horror of Mount Massive isn’t sharp anymore—it’s a dull, consistent ache under his skin.

She pushes forward, favoring her good ankle as she limps toward the next hallway, using the lockers for support. Miles follows her without a word, hand hovering nearby in case she needs balance.

Ahead of them, into another hallway, smoke begins to roll. It’s thick and slow at first, then steadily worsens. They round the corner, and Miles lifts the camera instinctively, the growing haze causing the lens to flare and blur.

On their left are a series of high, narrow windows—too tall to reach without help. Beyond them, the glow of fire pulses against the smoke, casting frantic, dancing shadows across the walls. Orange licks of flame rise in sudden, greedy bursts against the far wall.

She curses under her breath, grimacing. “That lunatic priest has got to be behind this.”

Miles doesn’t answer, but the unease in his gut tells him she might be right.

She looks up toward one of the high windows. “Help me up,” she murmurs, voice tight.

He nods, gripping her carefully around the waist and boosting her until she can hoist herself up onto a nearby table. Her shoes scrape against the metal, wobbling as she steadies herself with one hand on the wall. Once upright, she reaches a hand back down for him. He follows her up, climbing onto the table beside her. From this new height, they can just barely reach one of the window ledges.

She jumps first, gripping the frame with her hands and pulling herself up until she can peer through. Her breath catches audibly.

Miles stretches up on his toes and follows, peeking over the edge.

It’s a fucking inferno.

The room beyond is a lunchroom—or it was once. Now it looks like a sacrificial altar. The tables and benches are engulfed in flames, molten plastic dripping from the ends of metal chairs. Everything inside is burning.

And yet there’s a path. A narrow corridor between two longer tables that haven’t quite been overtaken by fire.

“That’s our way out,” she says grimly. “Only way.”

Miles doesn’t argue. He braces himself against the window ledge and helps her climb through first, careful not to touch any of the heated metal framing. She stumbles onto the other side, shoes skidding against the scorched tile. He follows, vaulting over and catching himself with one good hand. She reaches for him as he lands, and he wraps his arm around her again—less out of necessity, more out of the need to keep her close.

The heat is suffocating.

Flames crackle around them, loud as snapping bones. The air is dry enough to burn their lungs. She grimaces, raising one hand to shield her face from the worst of the heat as they inch forward through the smoldering space.

Furniture groans and collapses behind them until they reach a variant. He’s half-shrouded in the smoke, sitting calmly among the ruin, perched on the edge of a table. He’s surrounded by fire. His face is blistered and wet with sweat, but he doesn’t seem to feel the heat at all.

“I had to burn it,” he murmurs, voice hoarse. “All of it. Murkoff took so much from us. Used us.”

Miles raises the camera, aiming it carefully. The recording light flickers to life.

“They turned us into these things. . .because nobody cares about a few forgotten lunatics.”

His voice is cracked but strangely even, like he’s just recounting an unfortunate fact of life. She swallows hard beside Miles, her hand still lifted against the heat, eyes locked on the man.

“So let it burn,” the variant says softly, almost wistfully. “Burn the whole god damned thing down. Get out if you want to live. You can get out through the kitchen.”

They both look toward the far wall, but the path is blocked. A wall of flame and overturned tables, burning with the rage of something intentionally lit.

She groans lowly. “God. Things can’t ever be easy, can they?”

Miles shakes his head, vision blurry with sweat.

She takes a breath, steadying herself, brow furrowed deep in thought. “We have to put it out. The fire. There’s no way around it.”

“How?”

Her lips press into a thin line, eyes flicking up toward the darkened ceiling. “Maybe. . .overhead sprinklers. We activate the system. It’s a long shot. But if the system’s still active, we might be able to get them working.”

Miles doesn’t hesitate. “I trust you.”

Her expression softens for the briefest moment—a flicker of warmth through the heat and horror—and she offers a wary smile. “Okay. Then let’s go.”

They turn back toward the window they came from, retreating from the burning room. The variant doesn’t move. He just watches the fire, unmoving as ash falls gently around him like gray snow.

Back in the hallway, the smoke is thicker now. Miles guides her carefully, one arm looped tightly around her back, the other holding the camera steady. Each step is cautious, quiet. There’s nothing but the hiss of flame and the distant groan of collapsing structures.

No mutants. No screams. No footsteps.

Just silence. And it feels wrong.

But they keep moving.

She guides him, limping forward with determination etched deep into her features. The corridors they traverse are lined with cracked tile and water-stained walls. Mount Massive continues to groan around them in the distance. The sounds surround them, the distant screams of the room fracturing the silence like a knife through flesh.

They pass through another set of administration offices, each one tousled. Filing cabinets are overturned, their contents spilled like entrails across the ground. Desks are broken, phones hang useless off their cradles, and overhead, the lights buzz with a sickly hum.

Miles slows for a moment, raising his camera toward a workstation where a monitor glows on a desktop showing the Murkoff logo. Beside it, a blood-slicked folder lies half-open. He flips through it with trembling fingers—half from the pain, half from adrenaline—and catches a glimpse of names, subject IDs, psych evals, and heavy redactions.

More proof.

He flips the folder shut and tucks it away, lifting his camera to document the surrounding wreckage. She glances back at him, raising a brow.

“Seriously?” she mutters, dry but not unkind. “We’re a few steps away from being barbecue, and you’re still playing investigative journalist?”

He looks up at her, blinking. “You know me,” he mutters, gesturing to the camera. “If I don’t document it, did it even happen?”

She snorts, the corners of her mouth twitching up despite everything. “Well, when you win the Pulitzer for this shit, don’t forget to credit your co-star.”

Miles huffs a breath through his nose. “Top billing, I swear.”

They keep going.

Down a narrow hall and around a collapsed beam, ducking beneath hanging wires. Somewhere in the distance, wood collapses with a deafening crash, and both of them flinch.

Finally, they reach the sprinkler valve.

It’s tucked away in a room, bolted to the wall above a maintenance panel—old and rusted. Miles studies the gauge beside it. The needle hovers firmly in the red. Low pressure.

She moves forward, staring at it. She doesn’t speak for a moment, just stares at the gauge with her jaw tight and her eyes dull with exhaustion. Then, slowly, her shoulders drop. She bows her head, dragging a hand over her face, smudging the flecks of blood that occupied her cheekbones.

“Shit,” she mutters under her breath.

Miles already knows what it means.

“We drained the lines,” she says finally, voice tight. “When we were down in the sewers. I should’ve figured.”

Miles clenches his jaw, staring at the useless valve. He doesn’t want to tread further into this section, distancing themselves from the kitchen. But they’re not going to get through the fire without water.

“So. . .” he says, studying her.

She lifts her head, eyes meeting his. “The main valves have to be around here somewhere. Probably maintenance.”

Miles nods. “Then we do what we have to.”

Her lips press into a thin, grim line. Another sigh through her nose—this one isn’t weary, but resigned. She nods, stepping back from the valve and gesturing for him to follow. They turn away from the dead sprinkler system and back down the corridor—heading toward maintenance.

They keep low as they move, careful to tread only where the floorboards don’t creak and glass doesn’t crunch beneath their shoes. The air is heavy and wet with smoke and mildew—stagnant, like rot left to fester.

Miles keeps his camera up. Not just to document, but because it’s their only pair of eyes in the dark.

They think they’re in the clear when they hear snorting and chains.

The sound is unmistakable. Heavy, labored breathing that scrapes the edges of sanity. Chains dragging like anchors across the floor.

She freezes mid-step, hand flying out to grip Miles’s jacket and yank him behind a busted doorframe. The wood is rotted, warped from years of steam and decay. She presses her back flat against the peeling wall and peers out just enough to see the hulking silhouette move across the adjacent corridor.

“Shit,” she breathes. “Walker.”

Miles goes cold.

Chris Walker. Ex-military brute turned monstrous warden of Mount Massive’s halls. Nearly seven feet of blind rage and bone-snapping strength. His massive frame disappears around a corner, but the sound of his dragging chains stays with them like a curse.

“As if we didn’t have enough on our fucking plates,” she mutters bitterly. She crouches, clutching her injured ankle. She winces before looking at Miles. “I can’t outrun him like this. If he catches us—”

“I’ll distract him,” Miles says without hesitation. “If it comes to that.”

Her eyes search his, something unreadable behind them. She doesn’t answer right away. Then, slowly, she nods.

Walker’s chains grow quieter, clinking down another hallway.

“That’s our window. Come on.”

They move like shadows, step by step, breath by breath. No one speaks. Miles swears he can hear his heartbeat over the faint rattle of chains.

Eventually, they find a metal utility door, half-open. Inside—a pump room. Water pipes twist like veins across the ceiling, all leading to a rust-caked valve affixed to the wall.

She limps over, hands braced on her thighs as she catches her breath. Miles steps forward and grabs the valve, muscles taut, pulling down hard.

The valve squeals like a dying animal. A grinding, metallic shriek that echoes down the halls.

Too loud.

They both freeze.

Snorting. Chains. Getting louder.

She grabs Miles’s arm and shoves open a tall utility locker in the corner. Without a word, they squeeze in, chest to chest. The cramped darkness is stifling, breath mingling in the stale air. It’s reminiscent of the sewers. Same hiding spot. Same hunter.

They barely get the door shut before—

CRASH.

The pump room door breaks open.

Walker’s hulking silhouette lumbers in.

They don’t breathe.

Through a thin crack in the locker’s door, Miles catches a glimpse of him. His hulking chest, blood-stained skin, wild eyes scanning the room. He growls low in his throat, snorts, then lumbers past the locker. Chains trail behind him like the promise of a violent death.

He leaves.

It’s only after a full minute of silence that she exhales shakily, hand bracing against Miles’s chest. They look at each other and nod, silently slipping out.

Everything feels tighter now. Claustrophobic. Every corner could be Walker. Every creak could be a death sentence.

They move carefully, tracking the network of pipes toward the second valve. It leads them into an old shower room—but unlike the others, this one is lined with deep bathtubs, the kind you’d expect in an asylum from a century ago.

And one of them is full.

She tenses beside Miles.

A variant crouches beside the tub, giggling. The water is deep red. A body—nude, bloated, and purple—is slumped in it. Anything below its chest is obscured beneath the crimson surface.

The variant glances up at them. His eyes gleam.

“You have a dirty little ducky that needs cleaning?” he whispers, cocking his head.

Miles lowers the camera immediately, repulsed. He grabs her hand and pulls her away quickly around the edge of the room, bypassing the grinning man and heading straight toward the next valve at the far end.

This one is smaller, rusted nearly shut. Miles wrenches on it, jaw clenches, and after a few seconds of resistance, it creaks into place.

“That should be good,” she breathes. “We just need to get back.”

They turn around. Snorting and chains again. Somewhere close.

They don’t speak. They can’t. They duck into an empty office adjacent to the corridor, backing themselves against the underside of a desk, knees pressed to their chests. It’s barely enough space for them both.

Walker passes by the door.

They can hear him.

Breathing. Wet and snarling.

He pauses.

She reaches blindly and finds Miles’s hand.

He squeezes hers in return.

A moment passes. Then another. Then, finally, the sound of chains fades again.

They don’t waste time. They double back, taking the long way around to avoid Walker’s path. When they reach the pump room, Miles grabs the sprinkler valve with bloodied hands and turns it.

Water explodes from the overhead pipes.

Cold, cleansing, blessed water.

It drenches them both instantly—soaking clothes, skin, and blood. She sighs as if the shock of it momentarily numbs the pain in her ankle.

But they don’t linger.

The hallway back to the cafeteria smells of smoke and scorched wood, and plastic. When they push open a door, they see him—the variant from before, the one who lit the fire. He’s dead now. Charred to the bone, collapsed against one of the burned benches.

She doesn’t speak. Neither does Miles. They keep moving.

The flames are gone. The path to the kitchen is clear.

They move fast, weaving between melted tables and destroyed shelving. One stainless steel prep table is occupied—what’s left of a dissected body, partially skinned and splayed open. Tools lie beside it, no longer surgical, just savage. She looks away, and Miles pulls her gently past it.

The kitchen spits them out into a small lobby area. And there—on the far wall, illuminated in the red flicker of an emergency light—is an exit.

Metal gate. Open.

Beyond it: the courtyard.

They would have run through it if they could.

The first thing that hits them is the rain—sharp, cold, and relentless. It pelts against their skin, seeping through clothes that were already damp with sweat and blood before they were soaked through with water from the sprinklers, but neither of them flinches. The smell follows immediately after: petrichor, earth, the metallic bite of rusted pipes, and scorched plaster washed clean.

But beneath all of that—air. Fresh, alive, and real. After so long wading through rot and recycled breath, it feels like stepping into another world.

A freezing breeze cuts across the courtyard, rushing beneath torn fabric and bloodied sleeves. She shivers, but doesn’t complain. Miles breathes in through his nose, like he needs to remind himself it’s not a hallucination. That this—this sliver of outside—is real.

Lightning cracks across the sky, illuminating the gothic stone of Mount Massive’s exterior, casting sharp, jagged shadows across the lawn. Thunder follows like a war drum in the clouds.

They’re not out yet. Not even close. But it feels like a breath after nearly drowning.

Her hand—chilled and trembling—slips into his. It fits easily. Without words.

She turns her face toward him, rain tracing the curve of her cheek, eyes gleaming faintly in the storm’s light.

“Let’s find that priest.”

Chapter Text

We’re not the only victims here, not by a long shot. We watch a man wait to burn to death, the most painful death imaginable, rather than stay in this place.

—

I’ve said it before, but fuck this place. I’ve still got those fingers left.

The rain hammered down on them in sheets, relentless and cold, soaking everything in the courtyard to a slick, glistening sheen. The night was thick with shadows, broken only by the warm, goldenrod glow from asylum windows and the occasional, electric stab of lightning tearing across the sky. Miles adjusted his camera, its night vision humming softly in the dark.

Beside him, she moved forward with grim determination, her steps labored but steady despite the slick pavement and her injured ankle. They followed a narrow, winding path deeper into the courtyard, past a cracked stone fountain filled with dirty rainwater. A dead security guard sat on a nearby bench, body slumped sideways, hands resting lifeless in his lap like he’d simply dozed off and never woke up.

Up ahead, a set of concrete steps led up toward an old brick wall. There, scrawled in blood that ran like tears down the soaked surface, were the words: How alive are you. The rain blurred the letters, making them appear as if they were melting.

She scanned the surface for a moment before bending down at the top of the stairs, retrieving something tucked into a crevice near the wall—a small plastic bag, taped shut to keep the contents dry. She peeled it open, eyes narrowing at the piece of paper inside before wordlessly handing it to Miles.

He pointed the camera at it, scanning the jagged handwriting.

“I don’t even know your name. But I’ve come to think of you as one of my blood, my Paul, I hope you don’t mind. And I hope you don’t let her encourage you to indulge the vanity of self-pity, the fear that your suffering is more than others. Or that you let her lead you astray. We all must endure this, and you are nearly done. There’s no way to heaven but by the cross. And every man needs another to help drive the nails in. I am here for you. I am waiting ahead.”

She let out a scoff, the sound more bitter than amused.

“Oh, fuck this guy,” she muttered, shoving wet hair out of her face. “What, he thinks he’s Jesus now?”

Miles folded the note without another word and tucked it away into his pocket, the chill in the air not entirely from the rain. Not anymore.

She rolled her eyes beside him before testing the gates that flanked the top of the stairs. Both were padlocked, immovable. No choice but to turn around and find another path.

As they made their way back down, the world burst open again—another sudden flash of lightning. In that instant, ahead of them, barely ten feet away, something hovered above the courtyard’s cracked pavement.

A shadow. Tangible. Almost human.

But not quite.

Its form shimmered like heat on asphalt, flickering in and out of existence. It had no shape—just limbs that shouldn’t bend the way they did, a body that pulsed with darkness like a living, writhing ghost. And eyes—if they could even be called that—glowed dim and lidless, focused entirely on them.

The air dropped. The cold turned cutting. Miles could see his breath now.

It circled them slowly, its edges flickering like static on an old television screen. Its body wasn’t tethered to the ground, weightless and full of silent, crashing fury. A million voices whispered all at once, not from around them—but inside them. Words they couldn’t make out. Whispers, pleas.

She stepped back instinctively, gluing herself to Miles’s side. Her hand found his, trembling. She clung to him like he was the last real thing in the world.

And then, as suddenly as it came—it vanished, flickering out like a faulty lightbulb. Gone. The whispering died in its absence, but the weight of it lingered.

She sucked in a shaky breath, shaking her head like she could shake the moment off entirely.

“Don’t think about it,” she said tightly, her voice raw and fast. “Ignore it. Just—ignore it. It’s not real.”

But it didn’t sound like she believed it. It sounded like she was trying not to fall apart.

She dragged Miles forward again, limping faster now, toward the far end of the courtyard. After what felt like an eternity navigating through trees, hedges, and concrete paths turned into rivers by the storm, they finally found it—a side gate, half-open, leading to a narrow corridor,

She pointed. “We can cut through here.”

Miles nodded silently, casting one last glance at the courtyard behind them before following her.

The rain showed no sign of relenting. It poured like the sky was trying to drown the earth itself, drenching them through to the bone. The wind howled between the crumbling walls and cyclone fences of the courtyard, and thunder rolled somewhere just above the clouds, impossibly close.

They stopped in front of the chain-link gate just beside the outer wall. There—built squat and solid into the corner of the asylum’s crumbling perimeter—stood a maintenance shed. It looked like it had been there for decades, brick-lined and windowless, rust creeping up its hinges. The door was locked tight, a heavy padlock anchoring it shut.

She pressed her forehead against it for a beat, rain dripping down her nose and cheeks. Then, without a word, she turned her head. “There,” she said, nodding to another smaller shed a few yards away. This one was less official-looking—more like a tool shack—with a door hanging limply off its hinges.

She limped toward it, one hand braced on her side, the other outstretched in front of her, fingers splayed like she expected something to grab her from the dark at any moment. Miles stayed close, sweeping the area with his camera’s night vision. Rain blurred the lens and added a soft hiss to the audio, but it still worked.

Inside the smaller shed, the light was nonexistent. Just shadows and metal tools on the wall, gleaming wet in the flickers of lightning. She shuffled through them until her hand landed on a cold iron key ring—just one key. She snatched and turned to go, but then—

A flash.

The shadow again. Miles caught it first—hovering just beyond the trees, half-melded with the rain, an impossible blur of limbs and black mist, shifting in ways that made no anatomical sense. It didn’t advance. Just. . .watched. Circling. Like a vulture with patience to spare.

They didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.

She quickened her pace as much as her injury would allow, her eyes darting behind them. Her breath came fast and shallow. At the gate, her fingers trembled so hard she fumbled the key twice before it clicked into the padlock. She twisted it, the metal groaning in protest before snapping open. They yanked the door together, stepping into the shed—

And the shadow rushed them.

It came like a tidal wave of static and shadow, breaking from the trees with a high metallic whine that sounded like a thousand voices screaming all at once. The rain blew sideways with its momentum. Miles felt it before he saw it—an electric, bone-deep chill. The camera lens distorted, flickering with white noise. She screamed, not out of fear but instinct, slamming the interior door shut just as the shadow slammed into it with an unseen force that shook the entire surface.

She reeled back from the impact and collapsed, hitting the cold floor hard and curling inward as if bracing for more. Her chest rose and fell with labored breaths, water dripping from soaked clothes, hair clinging to her cheeks like vines.

Miles crouched beside her, grabbing her shoulders. “What was that? What the fuck is that thing?”

She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were still locked on the door, wide and distant. Her voice, when it came, was thin and raw. “I think. . .I think it’s the Walrider.”

Miles’s stomach turned. He’d heard the name—muttered endlessly by the patients, scrawled in blood on the walls, etched into bodies. Always in whispers. Either reverent or terrified.

She swallowed hard, finally glancing at him. “I don’t know what it is, Miles. But it’s not human. It has to be what they’ve all been talking about.” Her voice faltered. “It’s like a ghost. Or a demon. Or something else—I don’t know.”

Miles stared at her, blinking water out of his lashes. She wasn’t prone to dramatics. If she was this shaken, it was real. It wasn’t good.

But there was no time to unravel it. Whatever the Walrider was, they couldn’t afford to let it break them now.

“Come on,” he said softly, standing and offering her a hand. “We can’t stop here.”

She nodded once, jaw tight, and let him help her up. She swayed a little, but didn’t fall. Her grip on him steadied her.

Behind them, the shed creaked in the wind. But the chill came only from the rain. The Walrider was gone. For now.

They didn’t speak again. There was only the sound of the storm as they pressed forward—deeper into the maintenance shed.

The storm hadn’t let up, but the further they pushed, the more light there was.

Faint orange lamps buzzed to life around the edge of the courtyard, casting warped shadows on the slick concrete and wet brick. The maintenance shed creaked behind them as they stepped out into the open again. No need for Miles’s camera now—the lamps gave them just enough visibility to see, though it did little to make the place feel less haunted.

That was when they spotted the ladder.

It was propped precariously against the side of a nearby structure—rusted, old, but still intact. She pointed to it with a nod, rain streaking down her temple. “We should go up.”

Miles didn’t question it. He helped her first, hands braced at her hips to steady her injured ankle as she climbed. She hissed through her teeth, but didn’t complain. Once she cleared the top, he scrambled up behind her.

The roof was narrow, corrugated metal beneath their feet, slick from the rainwater and rust. They moved slowly, her weight leaning slightly into Miles’s side as they crossed it. He kept a firm hold on her arm, grounding her while she guided them.

When they reached the edge, there was a narrow ledge—barely the width of a boot. Below: a steep drop into the darkness. She hesitated, breath fogging, then moved, clutching the wall. Miles followed, chest tight.

They jumped together—over a gap between rooftops—and landed hard on the adjoining building. She cursed, hands going to her ankle, but recovered quickly. Another crash of thunder above.

Scaffolding loomed ahead.

It wound up the side of the next building like a skeletal staircase. They took it slow, rain pinging off the metal pipes and wood platforms, climbing higher and higher. More rooftops, more scaffolding. Miles’s legs burned, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Not when she was moving so surely on an injured ankle.

Eventually, they reached a roof with a narrow alleyway on the other side. A fence stood between them and it.

She looked at it, then up at Miles. “Help me over?”

He nodded, crouched, laced his fingers together, and boosted her up. She grunted softly as she pulled herself over the wet chain-link, landing on the other side with a wince.

He climbed over after her, dropping down with a wet slap of shoes on pavement.

They stood in silence for a moment, catching their breath, rainwater dripping from their clothes and hair, eyes scanning the empty corridor.

Then she took his hand again.

She didn’t say anything. Just laced her trembling fingers between his. Tight. Like she needed it. Like she somehow knew he did too.

They moved together, quiet and slow.

On this side of the gates, the rain soaked everything in silver. The air felt heavier. Too still.

They passed a handful of variants.

A man curled up against a bench, arms folded over his face, whispering, “Have to get out of here. . .have to. . .”

A second stumbled across their path, eyes hollow. He paused mid-step, stared past them like he saw something else. “I can see his ghost,” he murmured.

They kept walking.

Then a third—this one kneeling in a puddle, head bowed like in prayer—lifted his chin just enough to rasp, “How do you know you’re not a patient?”

That one made them stop.

Her fingers twitched in Miles’s. He didn’t say anything. Just kept walking, this time pulling her along with him. Behind them, the variant started laughing.

They ignore the variant, continue walking hand in hand through the endless tangle of overgrown paths and broken stone. The deeper into the courtyard they pushed, the quieter the world seemed to get. The storm didn’t relent, but even the thunder felt distant now, like it was echoing off the mountain, muffled by the weight of the asylum pressing in from all sides.

Still no sign of Martin.

The priest remained elusive. A flicker in the corner of their eyes. A shadow behind windows just out of reach, but never there.

They rounded a corner, soaked to the bone and shivering, when she caught a light ahead—just a faint orange glow leaking out from beneath a pair of heavy metal doors. A tunnel.

It looked like an artery into the guts of the building.

“Come on,” she said, her voice barely above the rain.

Together, they pushed through the doors, stepping into a long, dim tunnel that sloped downward before rising again. At the far end, a gate waited—massive, rusted, flanked by security lights flickering sporadically overhead. On the other side: another courtyard, but this one was different. Tighter. Enclosed by tall, cracked walls.

And looming beyond it—

The female ward.

Her steps slowed. Hesitant.

In the center of the courtyard was a fountain. Or it had been. Now, it was an overflowing basin of blood, the waterline eclipsed by bloated bodies slumped over its edge. Some of the corpses were missing limbs. Some were face down. Her hand twitched—barely—but neither of them moved to help. They just stared.

Rain struck the blood like ink on wet paper.

She finally looked away first. “Jesus. . .”

Miles didn’t say anything. He recorded it.

Inside the female ward, the light was sickly yellow, buzzing fluorescents humming in the ceiling above. The air was colder than it had any right to be. The hall ahead was lined with broken doors, and red arrows had been drawn across the walls, looping and twisting through like veins under skin. More directions. More signs.

Martin.

“He’s been here,” Miles murmured.

She nodded, but didn’t look relieved. She looked haunted.

“I don’t like this,” she whispered, voice tighter than usual. She didn’t let go of his hand. “This place. . .this wing. It’s worse than the rest.”

She paused, eyes fixed on a cracked window across from them where shadows seemed to shift just beyond the glass.

“When I first got here, I heard things. Things the male nurses said when they thought no one was listening.” Her voice was low. Measured. “They moved all the women in the female ward out right before everything went to hell. Patients and employees. Transferred them to another facility.”

“Why?”

“The engine,” her voice trembled on the word. “The. . .morphogenic thing. I don’t understand how it works or what it is, but it started causing phantom pregnancies. Like—false symptoms. Pain. Bleeding. It was like their bodies were reacting to something that wasn’t there. Every woman in this ward was affected. Some of them went crazy. Violent. Some just. . .stopped talking.”

Miles’s jaw clenched, eyes sweeping the corridor ahead.

“I don’t think any of them survived the ‘pregnancies,’” she finished quietly. “And I don’t want to be here. But. . .”

She looked at him, eyes searching.

“This is where he led us. I think he actually wants to help. I don’t know why, but I do know we’re out of options.”