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.