"Slowly, Adrien. Slowly. You're turning the wheel too fast. Match the safety knob's alignment, and then synchronise them, or the pressure will blow."Professor Lovegrove's voice drifted like cold steam from the pitch-black space just over Adrien's shoulder.
Adrien's avatar was wedged awkwardly into the narrow, grease-slicked gap beneath the console. His arms ached, fingers straining to bridge the distance between the frozen iron wheel and the brass pressure knob. Every muscle in his body felt wound like a spring. He wanted to scream at the old ghost to shut up. He knew the mechanics; he knew a single rushed input would reset the entire calibration sequence, but the clock was bleeding out.
A good distance away on the upper floor, Vera sat completely blind; until Adrien successfully restarted the Reaktor, she couldn't patch into the main grid to bring the facility online. If the things hunting them in the sectors found her in the dark before the power snapped back on, the run was over, and in the situation they were in, it was more like permadeath.
"I know the rules, Professor," Adrien hissed, his voice tight as he forced the rusted iron wheel half an inch to the left. "But Vera is a sitting duck down there. If those things catch her scent, we're both finished. If she goes down, the grid stays dead, and—"
A sharp, violent spasm jerked his vision upward.
Cough.
Cough-cough.
The ragged sound tore from his avatar's throat, echoing horribly through the Reaktor control room. Adrien cursed inwardly as an intrusive system notification cut across his screen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💀 [ DEBUFF STATUS DETECTED ] 💀 ━━━━━━━━━━━━
AILMENT: Pulmonary Distress (Stage I - Acute)
SOURCE: Airborne Bio-Contaminants & Heavy Toxins
--
EFFECTS:
• Random 4-5 second coughing fits.
• Periodic, heavy wheezing. (Stealth rating compromised by 60%).
• 5% chance of temporary stagger/stun. Movement speed reduced by 20%.
• Weapon handling decreased. Aim-shake increased.
--
PROGNOSIS & DURATION:
• Status: Temporary (Will slowly degrade upon leaving the contaminated zone).
• Critical Warning: Continuous exposure will accelerate the condition to Permanent.
• System Note: The permanent version of this condition cannot be removed without resorting to rare treatment.
--
RECOMMENDATION: Evacuate the polluted area immediately.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
'God damn it,' Adrien grumbled inwardly, his chest tightening in sync with his character's status. 'The air in this filthy hole is eating away at my lungs.'
The wet, rattling breath that followed the cough lingered in a low, whistling rasp that sounded terrifyingly loud in the dead silence of the engine room.
Lovegrove let out a long, hollow sigh that sounded like wind rushing through an empty crypt. "I understand your worries, boy. But we are already pushing the machinery past its threshold, and one bad turn, and the Reaktor will malfunction. We are truly trapped between a rock and a hard place."
The phantom drifted an inch closer, his form flickering against the dim green glow of the control panel. "Now... ease off your left hand. Just a notch."Adrien swallowed hard, adjusting his physical grip. His fingers were slick with sweat, twitching slightly as he micro-managed the heavy metal dial.
"GROOOOOWWWWWWW—!!!"
A deafening, guttural roar tore through the subterranean levels. The sheer acoustic force hit like a physical wave, violently rattling Adrien's inner ear and throwing his balance off. Dust, rust flakes, and chunks of ancient insulation rained down from the ceiling grid, stinging his exposed skin and rattling against the metal console.
Lovegrove went dead silent for a fraction of a second, then his voice returned—shorn of its academic calm, spiked with a frantic, hurried edge. "Do not pay any mind to it! Focus on the alignment!"
Adrien gave a sharp nod, but Lovegrove's panic wasn't helping his racing pulse. Just because the old ghost told him to focus didn't mean he could turn off his audio cues.
The frantic, chaotic skittering of dozens of legs that had been trying to break into the room for some time suddenly scrambled away in a mad panic. They weren't hunting anymore, but were fleeing.
In their place came something infinitely worse.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Dull, heavy impacts reverberated through the iron flooring, sending jarring vibrations right up through Adrien's boots. It grew louder and closer with every agonising second, sounding like massive, armour-plated pillars slamming into the concrete.
'Is that the head honcho?' Adrien thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, as his mind flashed back to a certain creature. 'God damn it. If it's that specific bastard, a single strike will breach the door.'
"Okay, calibration locked!" Lovegrove suddenly announced, the sudden change in his tone bringing a wave of sheer relief. "Now, quickly! Rotate the main bypass wheel and pull the secondary breaker lever! We are almost through!"
Adrien didn't waste a single frame. He lunged forward, throwing his entire body weight toward the massive, multi-spoked emergency valve.He wrapped both hands around the frozen iron wheel, planting his feet and pulling with everything he had.But the wheel barely budged. Centuries of industrial rust and dried grease had practically welded the mechanism shut. Adrien gritted his teeth, his muscles burning under the agonising resistance of the heavy machinery.
BOOOOM!
The entire control room violently pitched to the side as something massive slammed into the reinforced steel blast doors outside. Metal groaned, and the heavy rivets holding the door frame to the concrete wall began to pop, whistling through the air like bullets.
Adrien didn't flinch, nor did he look back. He locked his jaw, ignored the screaming fatigue in his muscles, and threw his weight against the wheel once more. Step by step, he forced the rusted iron to turn as the heavy door behind him began to buckle inward.
The heavy valve finally clicked into its final position with a dull, mechanical clunk.Adrien collapsed against the console, his chest heaving. The sheer physical strain of the VR feedback loop made his real-world muscles ache, but before he could catch his breath, his avatar violently spasmed.
Cough!
Cough-cough!
The debuff triggered again, jerking his vision up and down, and a wet, pathetic wheeze rattled in his throat as he clung to the base of the secondary breaker lever.Outside, the assault intensified.
BOOM!
The reinforced blast door didn't just dent this time—it warped. The concrete wall framing the steel structure fractured, spiderwebs of dust and grey debris exploding outward. The entire room groaned under the structural failure, and it was going to collapse.Adrien wrapped both hands around the long iron handle of the breaker lever. He planted his boots, locked his jaw, and shoved with everything he had.It didn't budge.
Swearing under his breath, he shifted his stance, digging his heels into the metal floor grating to pull the lever toward his chest instead, while his arms trembled under the strain.
'Come on, you piece of junk,' Adrien snarled inwardly. 'Just move!'
"It's stuck!" Adrien yelled, his voice cracking from the strain and the airborne toxins.
"Keep pulling, Adrien! Put your weight into—"Lovegrove's words were cut off instantly, as the reinforced steel blast door violently tore off its hinges. The weighted slab of metal was flung across the room like a discarded toy, hurtling directly along the trajectory where Adrien stood, straining against the jammed lever.
Adrien's survival instincts took over, and he released the lever and threw his body backwards into a desperate, uncoordinated dive.
CRASH!
The flying door slammed dead-centre into the console, obliterating the dials and shattering the glass displays in a violent shower of blinding sparks and thick, black smoke. The impact was cataclysmic, but by pure mechanical fluke, the crushing door weight smashed the iron lever straight down into its socket.
Adrien scrambled backwards through the choking smoke, coughing violently as he dragged himself toward a faraway auxiliary console. He used the edge of the panel to haul himself to his feet, his legs shaking beneath him.Beside him, Professor Lovegrove's ghostly form began to flicker violently, his composure completely shattering into raw terror.
The smoke parted, and a nightmare stalked into the control room, and if it had been a standard arachnid mob, Adrien wouldn't have blinked. But this thing was a grotesque, towering anomaly that defied the game's usual creature design. It was colossal, its massive frame filling the breached doorway.
Its legs were the first horror, and unlike the rest of its brethren, they looked like a jagged, fused amalgamation of broken bones and severed limbs torn from a dozen different beast classes and humanoid beings. A viscous, tar-like darkness dripped continuously from the joints, dissolving into its own shifting shadow the moment it struck the iron floor.Then came its face; it was an erratic cluster of overlapping humanoid faces, dotted with an uneven arrangement of twitching, mismatched eyes. Every eye pulsed with a different, vivid emotion—fury, cold indifference, manic joy, and pure, concentrated malice. Jutting directly out of one ruined, weeping eye socket was a jagged, broken steel blade, weeping that same tar-like fluid.
The creature's abdomen was the crowning obscenity. It wasn't covered in bristling hairs, but stitched-together flesh. Countless human faces had been torn off and sewn into a patchwork cloak over its bulbous body. Their mouths and eyes were tightly sewed shut, yet the stretched skin twisted in perpetual agony, as if the souls trapped beneath were screaming silently to their hearts' content. A vast patch of the stitched flesh along its flank was charred to a blackened, melted crisp.
"Adrien... it seems I have led you to your execution," Lovegrove spoke, his holographic voice trembling with heartbreak. "I... this old fool can only apologise."
Meanwhile, Adrien remained leaning heavily against the auxiliary console. Behind his back, his fingers wrapped around a secondary mechanical lever. With a steady, deliberate calmness, he began to push it downward, centimetre by centimetre. Beside his hip, a physical pressure gauge began its slow, agonising crawl into the green sector.
Adrien stared directly into the cluster of the monster's twitching eyes, and then he raised a hand and offered a casual wave.
"Yo," Adrien said, his tone entirely devoid of fear. "We meet again."
The incredibly casual greeting froze the entire room. Even Lovegrove was shocked in sheer disbelief. "You... you know this aberration?"
Adrien gave a brief, tight nod, keeping his eyes locked on the boss. "Professor, remember when I told you how I originally ended up trapped in this sector of the ruins?"
Lovegrove gave a hesitant nod.
"Well, I accidentally fell right onto its back," Adrien continued, a small, dangerous smirk tugging at his lips. "And after it provided me with such amazing hospitality, I made sure to apologise by leaving some souvenirs and custom decorations stuck in its body."
Lovegrove's ghostly jaw dropped comically, and the creature let out a piercing, multi-toned shriek—a chorus of agonising voices speaking in a guttural, corrupted tongue as it recognised the player who had blinded its eye and scorched its hide.
"Khr'aak… Gzhor'akt ukh… Kzhul'th!" The creature spoke, and the sound tore simultaneously from the throats of the stitched humanoid faces lining its torso and head. It was a chaotic, overlapping chorus of dozens of stolen voices, the high-pitched wail of a young girl, the gravelly rasp of an old man, and the frantic screams of grown men and women, all forced to articulate the same impossible words in a sickening, unified cadence.
As those words spouted from its maw, the room's temperature seemed to dip, and shadows wriggled.