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.