There was no light.Not even the memory of it.
Only sound.
Breathing… but not theirs.Slow. Wet. Heavy.Like something enormous was crouched inches from their faces.
Sophie whimpered softly. "I… I can't see… Alex? Evelyn? Leo?"
Silence.
Then—
"Shhh."
Her own voice answered her from the dark.
Sophie froze.Her heartbeat thundered in her skull.
"S–Sophie?" Leo's voice trembled. "Don't move. Don't trust anything. Don't even trust what you hear."
The air shifted—cold, thick, and sticky, brushing across their skin like hands made of oil.
Evelyn whispered, "The mimics… they're multiplying."
Something crawled past her, brushing her shoulder.Its skin felt like damp fabric stretched over bone.
Then she heard a whisper right behind her ear:
"EvElyN… WiThOuT tHe LiGhT… YoU lOoK jUsT liKe uS."
She swung the lantern instinctively—But nothing was there.
The darkness moved.
A dim pulse—like a heartbeat—flared deep in the black.A sick, crimson glow… widening… stretching… opening.
Leo's voice cracked. "That's not a light… that's—"
Evelyn finished for him, trembling:
"An eye."
A massive, single eye blinked open inside the darkness.Its sclera was pitch black.Its iris was a spiraling vortex.Its pupil was a vertical slit that pulsed like a living wound.
Then another eye opened.And another.And another.
A whole face began to form in the void, impossibly large, too close, too real.Skinless.Veins exposed.Teeth emerging from places teeth should never be.
Alex grabbed Sophie's hand. "Run. Don't look back."
But the darkness laughed.
A horrible, layered laugh that sounded like:
Alex.Sophie.Leo.Evelyn.And dozens more voices they had never heard — all speaking at once.
"YoU FoRgEt… tHiS iS mY bOdY."
The train tilted violently.Floor became ceiling.Ceiling became a mouth — no, multiple mouths — opening, stretching, exhaling hot, rotten air.
Leo slipped and screamed as something wrapped around his ankle.A hand.A wrong hand.Too long. Too thin.With fingers jointed in too many places.
Alex lunged and grabbed him, pulling hard.
The hand tightened around Leo's leg, bones creaking.
Leo's scream ripped out of his throat."GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!!!"
Evelyn raised the lantern, forcing the flame to spark—
A tiny blue flicker.Weak. But real.
All the eyes jerked toward it.
The darkness recoiled, hissing like a thousand snakes.
Evelyn shouted, "THEY DON'T LIKE THE LIGHT! ALEX, SOPHIE—MOVE!"
They dragged Leo free as the hand dissolved into smoke.
The blue flame grew brighter, spreading a thin, trembling sphere of light.
And in that faint glow…
They saw the true shape of the train car.
Ceilings covered in eyes.Walls layered with crawling limbs.The floor breathing.And hundreds of half-formed mimics clinging to every surface like larvae waiting to hatch.
Sophie covered her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
Leo whispered, shaking violently, "This… this isn't a train car anymore…"
Evelyn stepped backward, lantern shaking.
"No," she whispered.
"It's a stomach."
The laughter returned, shaking the air.
"AnD yOu ArE dInNeR."