"Are you ready? Once we're in there, there's no stopping or turning back. If push comes to worst… don't think twice about leaving me behind."
My hand tightened around the pipe — the improvised weapon slick with sweat. It wasn't much honestly. Just a broken piece of an office chair, edges bent and ugly. But right now, it was all that stood between us and whatever waited in that staircase.
"Yeah. Don't focus on covering me either," Abby said. Her voice was steady — too steady. "Just run."
I almost laughed. The calm in her tone made me feel smaller somehow, like I was the one experiencing a mental breakdown, and not her.
I reached for the door handle — and froze. It wasn't just warm. It was breathing.
"Ugh— fuck!" I yanked my hand back, skin burning. The metal pulsed like a heartbeat under the paint, veins of heat crawling through the steel.
"You okay?"
"I— think so?" I muttered, forcing the words through gritted teeth. "Let's go."
I shoved the door open, the sound echoing down the stairwell like a gunshot.
For a second, I turned back — just long enough to see the empty floor we were leaving behind.
'I'm sorry, Louis. I hope you'll manage.'
Then came the descent.
The stairwell was a vertical throat of red and black, every flickering light a pulse of warning. The air smelled like metal and rot. The first scream we heard didn't sound human. Neither did the second.
We ran until our lungs burned, the sound of boots and machinery echoing above and below. On the 77th floor landing, a guard appeared — its head snapping toward us in a broken angle, eyes glowing faintly blue. I don't know why, but Instinct took over before thought could. I jumped, boots slamming down on its head and shoulder.
For a heartbeat, I felt powerful.
Then gravity reminded me where I stood. Reminded me that i should probably watch less Action Movies. I crashed down the stairs, the guard tumbling with me, both of us a mess of limbs and metal until I hit the landing below with a sickening thud.
"Ugh— shit!"
'Yeah I'm Never trying that again'" I groaned, rolling onto my side.
"Yuwon!"
"Keep running!"
And she did. Without looking back. Without hesitation. Like she'd already decided she would survive — with or without me.
'I know I told her to run but this kind of hurts regardless...'
I pushed myself up. The guard twitched once, its frame sparking. I kicked it hard enough to make sure it stayed down.
'These things are fast, strong… but terrible at taking a hit... or maybe Josh's mimic was just too good at it.'
I caught up to Abby on the 74th floor. Her breathing had turned sharp, ragged — every inhale like glass scraping through her throat. We kept going anyway. The next guard was climbing down the stairwell wall, like a spider made of human parts and metal joints. It hadn't noticed us.
—Smack!
My pipe connected with the back of its head. The impact jolted up my arm, teeth rattling. It fell hard, limbs twisting. We ran past as its fingers began twitching again.
'Not enough to knock it out this time huh?'
And then, finally — the door. [72]
"God, I hope this is the right version."
We exchanged a quick look — the kind that didn't need words — and sprinted. The door burst open, and the light died instantly.
Dust, stale air, silence.
"That was… surprisingly easy," Abby said between gasps, her face flushed and pale.
"Yeah, easy for someone who didn't have to fight." I wiped sweat from my temple. "Now all we have to do is find the exit."
The darkness pressed closer as our eyes adjusted. Shapes started to emerge — uneven shadows, vaguely human. Abby stumbled into one of them and froze.
"Huh—?"
I slapped a hand over her mouth. "Quiet."
Now that I could see, I realized what surrounded us — figures. Dozens of them. I didnt count. I didnt want to. But i could tell atleast 20 had surrounded us-- Motionless, rigid, facing the ground. Their posture was still and controlled.
"I think…" I whispered, "…they're asleep. Or unconscious. We're fine. Just don't touch them."
The silence was suffocating. Even our breathing sounded too loud.
We moved carefully, every step deliberate, my pipe held low. The figures didn't move — but I could feel them. The same way you feel static before a lightning strike.
Then Abby whispered, barely audible:
"Yuwon… look at their feet."
I did.
And that's when I saw it — the faintest shimmer running beneath the floorboards, connecting each of them like veins. A dim pulse of light, spreading from somewhere deeper in the building.
"They're not asleep," I said, voice trembling. "They're charging."
'And these guards arent separate anomalies. They are the building itself.'
At first, it was just a hum — low and steady, like the vibration of an engine waking from slumber. Then it grew, crawling into the walls, the floor, my chest.
The light under the boards began to pulse faster, the glow spreading up their legs like infection.
"Run," I breathed.
"Wha—"
"RUN!"
We sprinted just as the first one moved — a hand snapping up, head jerking back in a seizure of motion. The sound that followed wasn't human. A chorus of mechanical screams filled the floor, echoing through the dark like feedback from a dying machine.
My boots pounded against the floorboards. Abby was just ahead, limping slightly, clutching her broken arm. The air around us shifted, heavy with heat and static.
Behind us came the thunder of pursuit. Dozens of feet hammering in rhythm.
"Left!" Abby shouted, ducking behind a collapsed wall of filing cabinets. Sparks flew as a metal shard scraped my cheek. We cut through what looked like an old break room — overturned tables, mold on the walls, a coffee machine bleeding rust.
"Exit— where's the god damn exit?!" I gasped.
"Lets go This way!"
But the corridor she pointed to was collapsing — concrete splitting like paper as something massive tore its way through. One of the anomalies — taller than the rest, its limbs longer, face stretched into something wrong — forced itself out of the wall, dragging concrete and rebar with it.
"Shit—"
I swung my pipe, connecting with its jaw. The hit didn't slow it; it snapped its head back into place with a wet click and lunged.
We dove aside. Its arm crashed through the wall where we'd been a heartbeat earlier, debris exploding outward.
Abby grabbed my wrist. "Move, damn it!"
We ran again, this time through a maintenance hallway — narrow, lined with humming pipes. My breath came in sharp bursts. My arms were shaking so hard the pipe clanged against the walls as I ran.
Something crashed behind us. One of them had dropped from the ceiling, landing on all fours like an animal. Its hands tore grooves into the tiles as it crawled after us.
"Don't look back!" I shouted.
"Didn't plan to!"
We burst through another doorway — into what looked like an unfinished section of the building. Scaffolding everywhere. Exposed concrete, yet shimmering with light with seemingly no source. The air reeked of rust and dampness.
For a second, I thought we'd lost them.
Then the lights flickered — once, twice — and I saw the shadows crawling along the walls. They were coming from above this time.
"Go!" I shoved Abby forward just as something slammed down between us. A guard. It hit the ground so hard the floor cracked. I raised my pipe, swung with everything I had—
—It caught it mid-swing.
Its grip was ice-cold and unyielding. fixed on me as it spoke in a distorted echo of human speech:
"Leave immediately."
Then it threw me — like I weighed nothing. I slammed into a wall, I dropped the metal pipe as pain began detonating through my ribs. My ears rang.
Abby screamed my name somewhere in the chaos, but I couldn't see. The world was just sound and dust and red flashes.
"Yuwon— MOVE!"
I forced myself up, disoriented lookingfor the pipe. The thing lunged, and this time Abby intercepted it — swinging my metal pipe like a baseball bat with just one hand. She hit the creature right into the chin, hard enough for the metal pipe bent until it was practically useless. The guard dropped to one knee, but I knew we only had a few seconds before it got back up.
"Go!" she shouted.
I didn't argue. We sprinted again, dodging falling debris, alarms now blaring overhead. The entire floor was waking up — every single anomaly rising from the dark, their steps syncing like a drumbeat.
We found another door at the far end of the corridor, half-buried under rubble. [72-B] — scratched into the metal.
"Please, please work…" I muttered, shoving it open.
A wave of cold air hit us. Beyond it — a long descent. A spiral staircase leading down.
Abby looked at me, panting, eyes wide. "You think that's it?"
"I'm not sure. But it'll be damned if its not.
Behind us, the sound came again — the metallic chorus of the horde.
So we ran.
Down the stairs, through the shaking corridors, until the screams of the anomalies were replaced by the pounding of our own hearts. The air grew thinner, darker, colder.
And somewhere far below, just barely audible, came the sound of something else — not metal, not machinery — cold air.
Fresh air.
My vision blurred.