Book One Chapter Eight

# **Chapter VIII:**

## Seamark, Ironhall, IZ 144/6/76 (M), Monday, April 12, 2059, Gemenii Anzhani - *The knight returns* -

I'm not one who usually remembers their dreams. To me, it's only once a year or so where even just a fragment will come through unless its something really odd, which was what happened tonight. Calling it very odd is a slight understatement in my mind, but I can't think of a better descriptor for it. The start of the dream was odd to begin with, as it started with me falling through the floor of the hospital and down into a nearly identical room, though there were some differences.

Only the lights in the hallway were on, illuminating the dim and empty room with a singular light from my left. The room looked frozen in time, yet in an advanced state of disrepair. Paint was peeling off the walls, the bedding and foam ceiling tiles were torn, and the window pane was completely missing. Black water damage leaked down the discolored walls from below the windowsill and in other places around the room where pipes had seemingly burst long ago.

The night sky outside was bright and overcast, and a steady stream of snowfall fell to the ground. There seemed to be a lot more tall trees and wildlife around the building, suggesting a more sprawling abandonment. The air was frigid and sharp like winter's breath. I got up from the bed and looked around a bit more. The thin tiles on the ground were cracked, broken, and covered in dust and dirt. The ground made a lot of noise when I walked on it.

Down the hall, I saw more cracked tiles and peeling walls. Somehow, the hanging ceiling lights were still relatively intact. Although they were covered in dust and grime, they still worked for the most part. Occasionally, some of the lights flickered casting the room in brief darkness. I walked around the bed and continued down the hall which seemed much longer than it was supposed to be. All the doors in the hall were closed and presumably locked except for one at the very end of the hall.

As I approached the room, the first thing I noticed was that there was a man sitting on the bed. I cautiously approached the room, noticing it was in the same state of disarray as the one I woke up in, complete with water damage, cracked walls, and fallen ceiling tiles. The window faced to the north, allowing a bitter wind to blow through the building. The man didn't seem phased by the wind or the cold, or even my approach. When I got into the room, he started to speak to me.

"Welcome, Gemenii."

"How do you know my name?" As we talked I walked over to the bed, where he gestured for me to sit beside him with a smile. I complied.

"You told me, remember?"

"I don't even know who you are. I've never seen you before." The man was of above average height, with short brown hair and glasses that sat forwards on his face. His clothes were in a bit of an eclectic style.

"You didn't recognize me I'm sure. Let me explain who I am. I was the first one they took into that basement to create the angel."

"Really? So am I talking to some kind of ghost?"

"Not exactly, I'm merely a soul, or the memory of a soul. Once the souls were removed from our bodies, they were used to create the angel. Although these were held in the basement, a part lingered on and watched from the shadows. It was very lonely for a couple weeks, but then there were more, and more."

"Wow."

"When you watch it all unfold over time, you get a good perspective of everything. I'm sure it's far more than you ever thought."

"Yeah. I never expected it to be even close to what it is, well I got some parts right but that's it. I think the most unbelievable part is the fact that I managed to actually do what I set out to do though."

"About that, I wanted to thank you for it."

"You're welcome I guess, I was just doing what I thought was right,"

"Not only that, for walking into all those rooms. You committed it to your memory, and you remembered us my extension. Because you remembered, that little fragment can live on outside the cold walls of the basement and apart from the makeup of an enigmatic creature. We live on through you, and in the great beyond because of it."

"We? All of you?"

"Yes, all 180 of us. There are others that weren't so lucky though."

"What do you mean?"

"All will be discovered in due-time, my friend. For now, I believe this is farewell."

The man got up from the bed and started walking forwards towards the wall, phasing right through it and walking on thin air out into the cold snowstorm. I started at him for what felt like a couple of minutes as I watched him slowly vanish into the night. I turned around and saw that the hallway looked a bit different now. On the opposite end where the room I woke up in once was, there were stairs instead.

I walked down the stairs, greeted by a different smell of air as I descended. The staircase looked a lot more new than anything else in the building, and the walls were free of peeling or cracks. At the bottom there was just a blank wall instead of a door, but I was able to walk through it as if there was a wide open entrance. The room I walked into was much brighter than where I was before, but once my eyes adjusted to the light I was very surprised.

Before me was one of those telephone rooms you see in prisons, and behind the glass was none other than Lurio. The room was small, containing only three telephones on one long desk with plexiglass between them. Other than chairs, there wasn't anything else in the room. I stared at Lurio who was seated in the middle of the three phones, staring at the wall behind me. I didn't realize there was a door there until it opened through me and Ash walked through.

"Well well well, here he comes. Kept me waiting."

"I'm at the mercy of the guards here and you know it." Ash spoke with scorn as he sat down in the chair, staring daggers at Lurio.

"Do you want to explain to me why everything went so wrong, or do I have to tell you?"

"We both know what went wrong. Why are you like this?"

"If we both know then why is it so hard to explain?"

"You sly bastard. Why are we even doing this? Can't we just get right to the useful shit?"

"Last chance, Ash. If you tell me why you fumbled, I'll give you a chance to get out of here." Ash took a long pause.

"Fine, I'll bite. It was the kid. We just *had* to go and pick the most resilient little shit out there and-" Lurio started laughing for what couldn't have been less than 30 seconds, and the moment he stopped his tone switched to deadpan serious.

"A child? Really? That's your excuse? He wasn't even armed most of the time."

"I wasn't even the one who picked him to be last! It was Chester, go find his sorry ass and blow up at him why don't you?"

"It was you who was in charge no? It was you who was 'the strongest' and all that talk no? It was YOU who told me you'd get me an angel by the eighth day no latter. What was it you said, oh right it was 'even if I have to cast that spell on my own that kid's gonna be our angel'. You said all that and here we are. The kid you told me was going to be our angel is biding his time who knows where, probably plotting with Chester. I can't believe you."

"Look, hear me out for a second. He told you what happened, I know that much from a little someone who's out of the picture overheard. You know he resurrected him which essentially led to everything falling apart, and I don't think I need to explain why."

"No, go ahead. I want a detailed explanation on how you fucked up so spectacularly, so royally, so awfully that you only laid hold on him the THIRD TIME HE WAS HERE! I had a feeling you'd fuck up at the very end, I had a feeling I'd have to step in at some point."

"He called the police. It was him, not some fluke like everybody else seems to think it was. Oh and I should mention if there weren't a total of 3 *traitors* it would have been so easy! Why can't you see that? Why can't you see that if I had a full team the ritual would have been complete in time?"

"I can see, I just don't care. Again, you said it yourself that you could do it on your own, so why didn't you? Was all the hope too much for you?"

"No. I told you, but you don't want to listen. You didn't listen to anything I said the other time we met which I suppose makes sense. I was telling you all these outlandish things in a fit of emotions that first hour in prison and I get why you'd look at me like a fucking idiot, why you'd ignore me, but I don't understand why you still don't care."

"You put your trust in Maverick, correct?"

"Yes,"

"You put your trust in Claire, correct?"

"Yes,"

"You put your trust in Chester, correct?"

"Yes, regrettably,"

"Then you understand how I feel."

"I guess no matter how many times I try to explain it, you're just a brick wall. I'm out of here." He walked towards me angrily but I saw something appear in his mind like a lightbulb above his head. He turned around, sat back down, and continued to speak.

"One more thing, Kiff."

"What is it now?"

"About that angel. I don't care what you do with it, whether you stick with our plan or not, whether you do something completely different. When you go back tomorrow with your fucking goons to do whatever it is you need, I want you to know that it's not your angel."

"You didn't finish it." He said smugly.

"You didn't start it, it wasn't your idea. In fact, you were originally pretty opposed to it. What was it you said? Oh right it was 'why would you build this entire place just for a waste of time and resources?'. You're only acting like it was yours now that you decided to change your mind and come to finish it off."

"So what? I changed my mind."

"You really are a hypocrite, huh? Or you're just plotting something else now that you have such a weapon at your disposal. What are you going to use it for, huh?"

"..."

"Are you going to use it to take out your enemies? I'm sure you'd *love* that. You never want to do the dirty work unless it's something personal or you're feeling extra murderous that day. It's so much more than that, but you don't get it. We're the ones who get it."

"I don't see your point."

"Of fucking COURSE you don't see it because you didn't make the angel! You didn't take an innocent man away from his job, you didn't strangle him in the basement, you didn't see what happens to them after the ritual is complete because you ran out in your little fit of rage, and you didn't go back and do it again, and again, and again. You're a poser, and it's unfortunate only a few people know just how much of a phony you are."

"I hope you know that isn't getting you anywhere. You aren't going to change my mind, and as long as you're behind those bars there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"I had a feeling you'd say that. Anything else you want to rub in?"

"Other that I'm not in prison, that I'm stealing your angel, and that I did what you couldn't, I'll be the one to finish what you started in a different sense."

"I see. Anyways, I'll leave you and your men to do whatever you need with our angel. Ours as in us not you." His tone was mocking at first, but as he continued his final speech, it got more and more serious. He spoke on, staring deep into Lurio's eyes.

"Whatever you do, you'll always be in our shadow. Wherever you go, you'll always be a poser, a liar, a fraud. It doesn't take someone particularly smart to notice it, just someone observant. How many lies do you have to build up before it all comes crashing down? How long before they catch up to you? How long until your sons finds out? I bet *he's* still alive isn't he? I bet you know which one I'm talking about, do you still recognize him? I bet he'll be the one to do you in. Anyways, see you later."

Lurio didn't respond, he watched silently as Ash walked towards the door and threw it open, letting it slam shut behind him. Once it was closed, he slammed his hand down on the table in rage. Ash seemed to get to him pretty good. His hand rejoined the other in a triangle in front of his scorned face. He was sitting on an angle until he visibly noticed something, and that's when his hate-filled gaze turned to me.

There was a long pause for a moment, and then he got up. His eyes were trained on me like a predator as he got up from the chair and walked right through the glass barriers and desk, just like I had done through the wall and the door. I took a couple of steps forwards and met him in the middle, staring up into his eyes with the same scorn as he had shown to Ash, though with a bit more of the smugness Lurio had shown. He seemed a lot taller now that I was so close to him at standing height.

"How much did you hear? You were here the whole time weren't you? Just sitting there and watching from beyond."

"Yup, and I'm gonna beat you and your friends to that angel tomorrow."

"You don't even know what we're gonna do with it, you don't even know how to interact with it yourself."

"I don't, I just want to be the first to see it. I know you haven't seen it."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I know where it was, and I know you weren't there."

"If you know, then tell me where it is, or was."

"No, you seem to know. I'll give you a hint though. It's near one of those small office-type rooms." He looked stumped for a second, but then he responded.

"There's none of those in the basement? Or at least not below the maze,"

"Haha, you really don't know? I knew it."

"If you know where it is, why do you want to see it so badly? Seems like you already have."

"I saw it before it was fully formed."

"I can't imagine it was very pretty at that point,"

"Not at all, but that's besides the point. See you later, Kiff!"

A smug grin spread across my face as I bid him farewell. I could tell he thought I wasn't going to beat him there, but I thought that deep down we both knew I would. It seemed to me as if he was trying to deflect a lot of Ash's words about me, but whether he just didn't care about me or saw me as a threat was unclear. I stared back at him, spread my arms out, and fell backwards onto the ground. I felt myself hit the ground, but then I started to go through it.

I fell through the floors of the abandoned version of the hospital all the way through to the bottom and below, where I fell into a dark void full of small, distant lights. I couldn't tell if they were stars or not because of how far out they were. I continued to fall, but something about it felt so peaceful rather than alarming. I knew I was falling, but at this point it felt more like flying, or swimming in air than a rapid descent.

Shortly after I started to get used to it, I felt myself get yanked back, and now I was falling up. I turned myself around midair and stared out into nothing, until the floors of the hospital started flying past me again. From the small glimpses I could gather, I knew I was in the real one again. I kept falling up for what felt like minutes, getting faster and faster. It didn't stop until I finally fell into my bed from below and silently woke up.

The clock beside me flashed 8:22 which told me to hurry my ass up and get going. Chester was asleep in a chair by the door, seemingly intending to make sure I stay in the room. I got up from the bed quietly and slowly walked across the room. The chair was positioned angled towards my bed, so I just had to make it into his blind spot. It was pretty easy because he was fast asleep, but just as I opened the door, he briefly woke up.

"Hey you can't leave here," He said in a tired and muffled voice before falling back asleep.

I stood still for a second, anticipating him getting up but he just fell back asleep in the chair. Once I was sure he was out, I quietly opened the door and slowly closed it behind me. I exited the hospital and ran through the streets towards the complex. Surprisingly, it wasn't as far as I initially thought. The door to Basement 2 was still locked, and judging by the caution tape around the front door, I assumed it was locked as well.

With one option left, I got in the back door. I checked the time as soon as it got in, and it read 9 O'clock on the dot. I decided to get straight to work. I walked out of the room and into the dim hallways again, the chalk circles still visible over the carpeting. I tried to go straight down to the basement, but for some reason every room on the first floor was locked. Luckily though, the second floor was fully unlocked.

After a familiar process that only took a couple minutes, I got everything unlocked. I walked down to the first floor and then all the way down and through the maze. Back down to the end of the room, back into that stairwell. I paused before I entered the second level, thinking of everything that came up to this point. With it all in mind, I decided that I wanted to push through. I couldn't come all this way to just give up before I saw the angel, and so I walked through the door.

The basement didn't seem all too different that morning, other than it was far less dusty or foggy. I begun to slowly make my way through the mech bay, passing open boxes and all of the tatter I had been used to. I felt so lonely coming here completely alone, especially now after everything had some to pass. I kept walking down and started coming up to the wide wall. I passed by the entrance to the tube room, and the second I turned to look into it, the power went out.

My heart sank as the room was plunged into darkness. I made my way through the darkness back into the same corner I found myself stuck in on that second morning, finding it the safest nearby place I could hide. It started out being completely silent, but slowly I heard the same two noises. *Poom, sssh.* The limping and dragging continued to approach. It reminded me of someone dragging a body.

Here it came, a beast unseen. The thoughts of what this thing could be terrified me as it approached. Some kind of lumbering beast made of an amalgamation of flesh and bone not too far off from the horrors in those rooms was what I pictured this thing being. The fact that it was still here after the angel was made seemed to suggest that it was something else; unrelated to the creation of the angel which seemed to throw my thoughts of it out the window.

Whatever this thing was seemed like something of a force of nature to me. Completely unknown, hidden in shadows and mysterious to all who it comes to. Everything I thought about it as it approached was so horrific. Every little idea, every picture and image of what this beast could be. Every idea of what it might do to me now that I came back to it like a fool, everything it might say to me. It all came crashing down.

"I know why you're here. I know why you've come back." The beast spoke in Chester's voice again. It continued to speak to me, its voice slowly morphing into a deep voice. This one sounded like its real voice, more than anything else. When you hear how it speaks, you can tell it's fake and it has an artificial quality. This was the one voice where that quality was not present and it sounded natural, or organic.

"You came here to abandon me, to leave me alone. You wanted to get away from me, just like that second night. You're cold, so cold. You make me shiver."

"..."

"I know why you're *really* here though, not what your subconscious tells me, the reason you're really here. You want to see the third son, what you know as the angel. There is just one thing that we want to ask you first."

Before I could even process the word 'we', two things happened. The lights flickered on for a second, revealing two beady white eyes and the outline of a skull. The eyes were all I saw before the darkness returned. Just after the lights went out again, I heard another voice out of the darkness. It sounded just as close as the other beast, but it was also just as real as the first beast's voice. There were *two of them*.

"Are you afraid of the dark?" The second voice spoke. It was a more high pitched voice, with some of the same cartoonish and slightly fruity inflections in Chester's. "What are you afraid of? There's gotta be something you're afraid of. Is it me? Is it *us*?"

"You're not the talkative type, huh? I know what'll get you talking."

"If you want to see your angel, you'll have to give us something in return now that you've come into our home." The first one said.

"We're giving you an ultimatum, two choices. You can let us out of this prison, or you can feed us."

"..."

"Well, pick one."

"What do I get in return?" I said.

"You get to leave. You get to see your angel." The first one said.

"So you're just going to keep me down here if I refuse to take your offer?"

"I think you know what we'll do to you." It's words made my heart sink.

"Alright then, w-what do you two eat?"

"Souls." They both said in unison. "Did your little friend not tell you?" The second voice spoke.

"Chester? What do you mean?"

"You're so much like him now that I think about it. I guess he never told you that he made the same deal we're giving you. Which is it?"

"So he's more cagey than I thought, huh. Alright, I'll take your deal."

It felt like I had been coerced into it, like I was being held at gunpoint. While their threat was pretty vague and unseen, it still felt like a very credible one. It didn't feel like I had another choice other than to take their deal. The revelation that Chester had made a deal with them previously also held other implications, because he clearly didn't decide to let them free. He clearly knew more about them than I did when he took the ultimatum.

"Are you sure you've made up your mind?"

"Yes."

As soon as I spoke, I heard the two of them begin to laugh. I couldn't believe I'd made the deal, and all they seemed to want to do was mock me as I sat there in the dark. I heard a faint low ringing which seemed to come out of nowhere. I thought it was just my emotions coming to a crescendo, but then the tone started to rise in pitch and become more clear. It started to sound like an electrical hum and once it got to a familiar high buzz of fluorescent lights, the blinding lights came on.

Before me was a copy of Chester on the left and a copy of Lurio on the right. I stared deep into the eyes of both copies and noticed something strange behind them. It wasn't something I could place at the time, but I think it was some strange kind of pity, or relief. They stood there and stared at me in silence for a couple of moments, silently grinning before one of them made a move to speak to me, both in the voices of the people they were pretending to be.

"You're really so much like him, huh?" The Chester duplicate spoke.

"What do you mean by that?" I said.

"You both came crawling back to me after you were *so* scared. I'm sure he never told you did he?"

"That'd be another thing."

"He was always so cagey, so mysterious. He always wanted to do things on his own, just like you."

"Except we didn't pick the same option." The Chester duplicate started to grin.

"The same one *he* made." The duplicate of Lurio spoke.

"I'm sure he did, though I thought he never came down here." I spoke with the same swagger and smugness as they did.

"Oh he did, he never went too far though; he was probably too worried we would catch up to him. You see, I made a deal with him first. He stumbled upon us by accident. He decided that he didn't want to feed us anymore, so we lured someone else to where we were hidden away, and in a feat of compassion he let us out of that tomb. It was so small, so dark, so *cold*, oh so cold. Just like you."

"..."

"He only wanted to do the right thing, but he quickly learned you can't trust everybody. I don't even know if he told the others or if they found out on their own. I assume the former, I know how he behaves. I have been watching him. We have been watching all of them over time, noticing patterns, perfecting speech and gestures, all to kid ourselves with the possibility that we'll trick them into letting us walk out that door, all until you came along." It continued in Kiff's strained and 'gritty' speech.

"So you weren't planning on using me at first? That's a nice surprise,"

"Correct. At first, I only wanted to let things play out, see if they would make their angel or not. All that changed when you came to me that night. I saw him in you, I felt his cold, dead, lifeless stare look into me back through your scared little eyes. I saw that I had a way out, and it looks like you pulled through." It said with a smug tone.

"Well, at least if I got here too late it would be Lurio down here and not me,"

"He's coming here? Today?" It seemed very intrigued in that sentence.

"I'm pretty sure, he taunted me about it in my dream."

"This changes a lot, thank you."

"I never expected those two words from either of you."

"That reminds me of our little deal." It looked to the Chester duplicate, smiled and nodded its head. Suddenly, a flash of light filled the room.

Two beasts stood before me in the room in the settling light. The one on the right was what I assumed to be the first voice, and one on the left is what I assumed to be the second. The first beast is what I could only describe as an 'overgrown wendigo'. It looked like what the typical description for a wendigo is, but far more distorted and grizzly. It's right leg was an entangled mess of flesh and what seemed to be plant matter. Plant matter, moss, and what appeared to be various types of mold and fungi peppered its body.

Some other parts of its body were distorted like its leg, overgrown with flesh or exposed bone, similar to the amalgamations beyond the wide wall. It looked like there was an attempt to make the structure of the spiny bones extending from its arms symmetrical, but something went horribly wrong. There were segmented lines of yellowish bones which stopped at the elbow points on its arms and legs. All of these segments had two or three spines reaching out of them, at the sides of the arms and behind the legs.

Patches of growth and fur entangle with the cracked bones and spines. Its bare chest was the cleanest part of its body in terms of it not having much plants growing off of it and not too many remnants of decay in the area. It held four large deep gashes across its chest from a fight long ago. The most grizzly detail about it were the three metal poles that impaled it. One short one in its abdomen, one long one wrapped up in the gore of its right leg, and a slightly longer one piercing through its jaw and coming out through its left eye.

Other than those, there were some less noticeable detailed which seemed to give hints of how old it was. Its right arm and both of its leg had old shackles at the wrists and ankles, and its left arm had the scars left by where they used to be. The chains were all but gone or weren't visible, except for on its right arm where a couple of the rusted chains still hung down, covered in the remnants of overgrowth and decay that blanketed the creature. It had a long, thick tail and a couple of spines protruding from its back. All it wore were a similar pair of black shorts as the ones Chester always wore.

The other beast was completely different. It didn't look nearly as old, but it was itself rather strange. This one seemed to be an odd cross between a pandorian and a lagomorph-like coronian. It seemed a lot more stable in a sense of its makeup being mostly made up of these two beings like some horrible amalgamation. Patches of fur seemed to spread over skin, forming scars at the boundaries between them.

Its body seemed to be a lot more meticulously made, the legs, lower back, and head all being mostly lagomorph-like with most of the rest being pandorian-like. Just like the wendigo, the jackrabbit had plenty of scars all across its body. Old wounds and scars cut up and down its entire body. It also had the same scars of old chains on its wrists and ankles, but there weren't any present. Above the faint scars, there were thin shackles on its forearms, but the chains had been removed long ago.

As well as the shackles which it seemed to wear like arm bands, there were signs of other ways this thing was restrained. There were holes in its hand and feet, and scars of old chains. Just like the poles sticking into the wendigo's body, there was part of what seemed to be two ends of a bow jutting out from its shoulders. Both ends of the bow were broken and seemingly sharpened to a point where they could easily cut through flesh.

Compared to the wendigo, it wasn't initially as menacing. As I started to study the beast though, the mystery of it started to set itself in my mind. I begun to notice that what I thought were dark patches in its white fur were stains of old blood. Mixes of browned-out variants of different colors stained the skin on its hands and various patches of fur around its maw and all over its chest. As I stared at its maw, it bore its sharp teeth at me.

Horns tall protruded from between its long shaggy hair and tall, floppy ears. Two thin strands of hair formed an upside-down U shape over its face while the rest was loosely pulled back in a pony tail, leaving some strands to fall to the side of its head. The horns had a slight bend in them, curving away from each other. I couldn't tell exactly what colors they were as they seemed to change with differences in light.

Something about the amalgamation's eyes looked so much more hurt yet lively than the wendigo's. The wendigo had beady little white eyes which stared out from the skull seemingly placed over the upper portion of its head, while the jackrabbit had real eyes, living eyes, scared eyes. It was some awful kind of beast which I couldn't even begin to understand, but something in its eyes shared a strange type of pity and remorse that only a real person could show, or someone who was real. I couldn't tell if it was a trick or not. It was a weird mix of emotions, as there was clearly life but hidden away behind a cold and desolate stare.

The two beasts were obviously very old, though just how old was unclear. It seemed that someone had found them far before the Unsung nebulas did, possibly multiple people. It seemed that these two were extremely powerful, and that multiple people had tried to contain them. The disarray of both of their restraints seemed to reflect something about their personality as well, even though I didn't have much of a clue about either one.

Even their accessories, or lack thereof seemed to portray something of a personality. The jackrabbit wore arm bands and had a couple of ornate patterns in its fur, the most notable being a red and blue line under each eye which reminded me of warpaint. The wendigo only had black fur without markings. Even though the wendigo seemed more wild than the jackrabbit, it was the latter who didn't wear any clothes other than the old shackles, and a couple of ribbons tied around its legs and a thicker one it used as a headband.

Now that they had both shown themselves to me in the light, it felt a lot more menacing now that I knew what was facing me. It felt like now that they knew I was sure I was going to take their deal, they wanted me to see who they were working with. Seeing them made their earlier remark of what would happen to me if I didn't take their deal much more threatening. I'm sure they could tell I spent some time studying them, and it was clear they wanted to hurry things along.

"Well, make up your mind." The wendigo said.

I started to run through thoughts in my head at a rapid pace, trying to find loopholes in both sides of the agreement. I searched for anything I could try to get out of this situation. The most obvious situation in my mind was to let them go, because that provided the most loopholes, and put the least blame onto me. I didn't want to stoop as low as all of the others, and I sure as hell didn't want to be responsible for murder. I couldn't live with that on my conscious with it.

"Oh, and I already know you're looking for a loophole. You have to feed us, until we're satisfied." The jackrabbit spoke.

"Fine. I'll set you free from this prison they call Basement 2." I said.

I shook both of their hands to seal the deal. It surprised me that there wasn't some kind of written contract, but I don't think either of them cared about that. Once I shook both their hands, the two of them transformed into a set of accessories they told me to put on. Before me on the ground were two red and gold sashes, what appeared to be some kind of skirt in the same colors, and a golden crown. It reminded me of the getup Chester wore when he was revived.

Though it seemed rather outlandish, the voice of the wendigo told me that they can not only mimic other's voices, but that they can also shapeshift for a limited amount of time. All of it felt so surreal, like something straight out of a dream. I put on the getup, and once I did they were both seemingly able to still talk somehow. The wendigo explained to me how each of the 'sons' as they referred to themselves as have different gifts which they reward certain people with.

As I started to walk to the wide wall, it continued to explain these things to me. Their 'gifts' consist of a weapon and an accessory, of which I was wearing. The two sashes were the creatures themselves and seem to be the only inanimate object they could transform into, while the skirt and crown are just the gifts they left me with for whatever reason. They also told me about the weaponry they gift, being a spear from the wendigo and a bow from the jackrabbit, both of which could be 'used unlimitedly'.

Surprisingly, the gate at the wide wall was completely open. I hesitated for a moment before continuing, having everything that just happened hit me all at once. The true gravity of the deal I had just made and all of the lives I could have potentially put in danger smacked me in the face. I felt so sick I couldn't move, and somehow it seemed like the two of them knew what I was thinking. I felt like they always knew what I was thinking, at some level at least.

"What are you waiting for? Keep going." The jackrabbit said.

"I'm getting my bearings." I said.

"I thought you knew the way out of this place."

"And neither of you do? Both of you have spent ages down here I assume."

"You assume that they want us to escape." As I turned down the hallway with all of the rooms, I could spot the angel at the end of the hallway in the far room, just sitting there. The two beasts started to whisper to each other.

"What does he think he's doing?" The jackrabbit said.

"He's either really smart, or really ignorant."

"I doubt he knows anything about us, so it's definitely the latter."

"Well, it's not like there's anything we can do to stop it, might as well let it happen."

"We're always just along for the ride, huh? Always stuck on someone else's back until we're thrown into another dark room. What a miserable existence."

"It's relieving to have finally found someone who's not willing to feed us; someone without a need to keep us around. In fact, he's *terrified* of us."

"Maybe the 'deal' idea wasn't such a good idea, but it's not up to any of us. Let's just ride it out until we're out of here. Maybe if we complain too much he won't let us out."

I pretended not to hear them. It seemed like they thought I had a choice either way of letting them escape or not. I could tell they were used to communing with more powerful people than I was; people who had the means of containing these beasts; people who had the want to contain them. It seemed to me like these were mystical beasts with powers far greater than I could imagine, but their restraint had seemingly kept them weak and content.

As I started to get closer to the angel, I started to make out more of its figure. It resembled a young man with mid-length shaggy hair. It sat with its back turned away from me which allowed me to see its large white wings. I also noticed what appeared to be a halo or some kind of circular ring that floated and slowly spun atop its head, placed above its hair. Once I was across the room from it, I tried to talk to it.

"Hello?" When I spoke it got up and turned around to face me.

"Greetings. I have been expecting you." It spoke in a soft yet booming voice. Whenever it spoke, it sound like it was coming from all around.

"I guess that makes sense. One of the souls I assume makes up your being came to me in my dreams. If they can hear me, I want them to know I got their message and I thank them for everything that they said to me."

"Though I am not entirely sure as the barrier between my conscious and theirs is still opaque, I am not entirely sure, though I think they want to thank you. All of them."

"All of the souls?"

"All of them. You have released the one-hundred seventy nine of them. The remnants of the last one wanted to stay here a bit longer."

"Huh, interesting. I guess I'll see more of those souls in my dreams then,"

"It is very likely that they would want to reach out to you through dreams, but they are not the only ones."

"I'm assuming that means the other creatures from this tomb. I'll also guess that this won't be the last time I see you either, in the waking world or in my dreams." I reached my hand out for it to shake with a smile, though it seemed to hesitate.

"If it is your wish, I suppose we proceed then."

I wasn't sure what it meant until it reached out its hand. Right as we made contact, I saw a series of images flash through my mind, and then in a flash of light both beasts and the angel stood before me in the same room. I felt like I had ran a marathon and my head was spinning. Once I was able to get up off my knees and look them all in their eyes, all three of them started to speak to me. All of them spoke at once, the angel's voice slightly overpowering the other two with its odd 'echo'.

"You have been brought here because you have asked to be gifted by us, whether directly or indirectly. You will be judged by all three of us with three questions we have for you. Answer truthfully and honestly or face your death."

"Go ahead." I said, my voice coming out shaky.

"First question. Would you say that your moral compass points north? Would you say that you have a good soul?" The wendigo spoke first. It was on the far left, the jackrabbit was on the right, and the angel stood in between the two.

"Though I have committed a crime against nature, though I've essentially continued to break into here, though I left my best friend behind multiple times, and though I'm about to put an unknown number of lives in danger, I would say that I have a good soul. I have made a vow to uncover the dark secrets, I have made it a point to commit all the horrors to my memory which indirectly set them free from this hell.

Though I experienced horrors beyond my comprehension, I still came back to dig deeper for days until it was all uncovered. I pulled a woman on the brink of death out of the bowels of this place all because I was curious about what happened here after I left. I think that my moral compass points north, more so than anyone else I know. My actions speak this better than I ever could with words." The wendigo nodded its head. The jackrabbit spoke.

"Second question. What do you attempt or wish to do with these gifts, and why have you requested them?"

"I didn't intend to get them, but now that I'm here I might as well attempt to answer the best I can. Now that I'm being offered these 'gifts', whatever they are I only intend to use them for good. I have vowed myself to uncover the ugly, ugly truth wherever I go ever since I came here, and I intend to make good on that promise. I intend to enact revenge where it's warranted, and I intend to avenge the fallen, both here and elsewhere." The jackrabbit nodded. The angel spoke.

"Final question. Why did you come here this morning?" Its voice echoed all around me.

"Partially two reasons. One, I wanted to come back to make sure there wasn't anything I had missed the day before, and two to see you. They kept teasing me about it on that third day, and when I saw Lurio Kiff in my dream he thought I wouldn't be able to beat me here. I didn't even intend to ask for anything like this."

"There's another part to the question. Why do you think we should let you out of here?"

"I made a deal with the other two that I'd let them out of here, and I think I've shown you enough about myself to prove that I can be trusted with this."

"Very well. When you need them, the gifts will come to you. Set my brothers free and go forth."

In a flash of light, the two brothers disappeared. The angel stared deep into my eyes, and then sat back down facing me as I walked back down the hallway. I could still feel their presence around me, so I decided to go back up the hallway and up to the main floor. As I walked back through the basement, I felt a sense of accomplishment for the first time in a long while. I felt like I had actually found a proper resolution to this story, but that resolution wouldn't last for long.

As I opened the door of the stairwell and walked out into the main hall, and there stood Lurio with 6 men alongside him. There was a man with a white beard and a fancy coat like Kiff's who I assumed to be somewhat important, and a coronian resembling a cyan-colored rabbit. The rabbit was also wearing a similar type of coat to Kiff. The other four men around him were in some kind of uniform which is what I assumed Ash meant by his goons.

"Look what we have here," He said. He seemed somewhat surprised that I was here before him.

"Hello, Lurio." We both stared at each other, echoing the smug looks that we both gave the other.

"Looks like you really did beat me here, huh? I'm guessing you managed to find the angel."

"Maybe,"

"If you know what's good for you, you'd tell me where it is." His tone changed from smug to serious.

"It's below us, somewhere. I'm not sure if it's even there anymore. All of them know you're coming anyways,"

"All of them?"

"Yup, your little friends were there too."

A bit of a shocked look spread across Lurio's face. He turned around and formed a huddle with the other men. I could feel my smug grin grow across my face. I didn't really know what to do while he was in his huddle, so I stretched a bit. I arched my back up, but once my eyes opened with my head towards the ceiling, something caught my eye. I was surprised to see two faint lights and a familiar outline against the ceiling.

"You came back for me" I mouthed.

I was really surprised that he would want to come back after I left him at the hospital like that. All that showed me was more proof that behind a wall of lies and mystique, there is a heart of gold. I'd like to believe that he's not as bad as the others say, that he didn't do all that they said he did, but it's too hard for me to believe he's innocent or at the very least complacent. If he really didn't do anything he wouldn't have been so willing to help me out.

"Alright, tell me where that angel is." Kiff said, his voice a lot more angry.

"I told you, it's in the basement. It was just sitting there when I found it. It was probably waiting for you."

"You told them we were coming, didn't you?"

"That topic did come up in our conversation, yes."

"I should have known you'd try to throw a wrench in things."

"It's not a fight I'm looking for, Lurio. I just wanted to see the angel first." I started to realize that he was very angry and tried to reason with him.

"That's a fight, is it not?"

"Not a physical one,"

"I can make it one."

When those words left his mouth, a couple of things happened. The five pandorians moved forwards across the hall in my direction. As they did, Chester swung down from the ceiling and landed hard on his feet behind me. I could feel the impact in my lungs. He handed me a metal pipe from the ceiling to use against the men, just like on that fateful night. The first one got to me before I could react though, and I got kicked down the hall.

Chester stayed to the sidelines for some reason while I held my ground. I screamed a battle cry and rushed back at the man. I ran and then slid along the carpet right into the bearded man's legs which tripped him, and then smacked another one across the face with the pole. The other man started to get back up behind me and I readied myself to attack again. I missed the first swing but hit the second time, smacking his chest. I turned around to the other man who had seemingly backed down. That's when I saw the rabbit creep into the stairwell door and out of sight. Before I could react though, I was kicked to the ground again.

He knelt over me and grabbed my head, forcing me to stare at Lurio who was holding down a tied-up Chester. I screamed for the man to let me go but he didn't relent. The two men continued to mock me as the other four stood around. All their words started to fade out slowly as I started to lose oxygen; or at least that wasn't all of it. Slowly, it clicked that something else was brewing. I realized it and started to shout to them to get them to see it too, using my last breaths.

"GET OFF ME! THE'RE COMING, THEY'RE COMING!" Kiff's smug grin dropped to a sense of shock immediately. Before he could do anything though, all of the lights turned off and the room fell silent. I felt like I was going to pass out, until the silence was broken.

"You fools never learn." The wendigo's voice echoed throughout the room.

I felt the weight of the man get off of my body, allowing me to breathe. I started to take long gasps. I realized my entire body was shaking as I pulled myself off of the ground. I could hear the men moving into some kind of position, preparing for the real fight. The same sinking feeling that I felt earlier today and on that second night when the wendigo first came to me. I started to back up until I felt another body meet mine. I jumped back in fear, realizing it was Lurio.

Even though it was Lurio, any protection was good protection. I backed up against him again, this time without flinching. I heard him chuckle a bit when our backs made contact again. I grasped the pole tighter as we slowly walked around in a circle. I was basing my movements completely off of sound due to how long it was taking for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. The only sounds I could make out were breathing and slight footsteps, though I could never tell if all of them were ours or not.

"Come on out, Kiff,"

The Jackrabbit spoke loudly. The voice was right beside me. I flinched, nearly smacking Kiff in the face with the pole as I moved. We started pacing in a circle a bit faster. I felt that rising crescendo again. I stopped in my tracks and Lurio bumped into me. He stopped too once he realized I did. We seemingly stopped at the same position we started in. I was facing the right side, while he faced the left. Suddenly, the lights flashed on. The wendigo stood down the hall on my side, while the jackrabbit stood on Lurio's side. In front of the two of us were the five men. The bearded man stood in between the four others.

"We meet again, all of us. Lurio, Chester, and you. You're really good at reunions, huh?" The wendigo spoke, its low voice sounding a bit more gravelly.

"Hope you didn't miss us too much," The jackrabbit said.

"I'm not scared of you, either of you. Just because that little idiot decided he wanted to let you out doesn't mean you're a threat to me." Kiff said.

"You can't hide behind your lies here, Lurio. Not anymore." The wendigo stared dead into my eyes.

"We saw your reactions, your expressions. We know you're still scared of us." The jackrabbit spoke with the same smugness as Kiff did earlier.

"Both of you don't know what you're talking about. I'm not scared of ANY of you! I'll KILL YOU! I'll kill you like nobody else could, and then I'll deal with this little brat later!" Kiff seemed to be pretty damn angry, but it was clear to all of us that really he was scared. I think all of us were.

"Bad move, Lurio. If that's what you want than that's what we can give you."

"Not if I get you first!" Lurio spoke.

He turned towards the jackrabbit and started sprinting towards it. It stared into his eyes, preparing itself for him to come at it. It slowly lifted one hand to rest on the bow that stuck out of its shoulder blade with a large grin spread across its face. I could feel the rage coming off of Lurio. On his way towards the jackrabbit though, he turned at the last minute and ran right into Chester. He grabbed him and disappeared into a puff of spoke, taking Chester with him.

"NOOOOOO!" Both I and the jackrabbit screamed. I screamed in anguish, and it screamed in anger.

"I can't believe I let him get away!" The jackrabbit yelled.

"I knew we should have gotten to him first," The wendigo spoke.

"Anyways, let's carry on,"

Both the wendigo and the jackrabbit ran towards the group of men in the room, not too far in front of me. As they sprinted towards them, they started to transform. The wendigo seemed to transform into a more 'pure' version of itself. Its muscles grew larger, the deformities and moss all over its body disappeared, and the bone structures and spines on its arms, legs, and back became properly formed as if they were pieces of armor. Two of the poles stuck through its body disappeared, and some of its scars vanished.

The discoloration and slight cracks on the bones did not change though. Its claws extended from its hands and feet, it pulled out the remaining large iron pole it was impaled with, causing it to glow with golden light. It charged into one of the men with it, impaling them with it. With the pole still in its grasp, it tossed the pole into the wall and pulled it out of his body. It turned to the other man and grabbed him. Before the man could strike the beast with a knife, the wendigo bit into its neck. The knife cut into the upper arm of the beast, but it dropped to the floor with the man when the wendigo dropped him.

All of this happened before the jackrabbit even reached the other two men. It started to transform into a more 'pure' version of itself as well. It seemed to lose all of its more pandorian-esque elements, only keeping the horns. The bow still stuck out of his body, but it seemed to be repaired this time. It still had a very sharp edge which resembled a large dagger sticking out of its body. The other end of the bow was curved out and didn't connect to the string of the bow.

Like the wendigo, the jackrabbit's muscles also grew but not as much. Two large blade-like appendages extended from its forearms at about the wrists. The blades extended back towards its elbows. The edges were shaped somewhat similarly to lightning bolts. Its hair was straightened out, and its tail transformed into one resembling that of a dragon. It kept the several bands across its body and the headband, and it even had some new ones on the blade on its left arm and on its tail.

It ran in a much more graceful way than the wendigo. The wendigo ran on all fours like a beast while the jackrabbit ran far more gracefully. It jumped into the air and tackled one of the men, attacking him with its arm blades. The other man reached for his gun as the jackrabbit moved towards him. It body-checked the other man, stabbing him with the sharp end of the bow. It grabbed onto the handle before the sharp edge, and pulled it forwards through its body, leaving behind what looked like a thin cut in its fur. It smacked the thick string of the bow on the ground like a whip. It glowed in the same way the wendigo's spear did.

There was one man left standing over all the carnage, being the bearded man. He stared at all of the carnage of his fallen comrades and stared into the eyes of the jackrabbit. He threw his weapons on the ground, in a foolish bid for a fair fight. Surprisingly, the jackrabbit threw down his whip and retracted the blades in its arms. It was clear to me at least that he had underestimated the power of the angel.

All I could do was look on in horror as the two started to fight. At first, it looked like the man was winning. He had gotten a couple of good hits on the jackrabbit, but the tide slowly turned. It became a beatdown after a couple of minutes, the jackrabbit laying into the man. Eventually, it stopped and the man was left bleeding on the ground. It gazed down at the man, and then looked back up to me. It wiped a slow stream of blood that came down from its nose and smiled a crooked smile.

Both of the beasts turned up to look at me, both of their maws drenched in fresh blood. I was frozen in fear as I stared at the two of them. They stood still for a second and then they looked to each other and nodded. The two slowly made their way across the hallway and towards me. All I could do was sit there and stare on in horror as they stepped over all of the carnage that they had left behind. Both of them came up to me and spoke to me for a final time.

"What do you think we should do with him?" The jackrabbit said.

"How about we tear him apart?"

"How about we feast on his organs like all of the others?"

"His fear is far more delicious."

"You're just t-trying to scare me." I said in a shrill voice.

"And it's working." The wendigo said.

"Not only did you let us out, but you also fed us. Congratulations."

"You'll be seeing us again sometime. For now, farewell."

The two of them walked towards the door and picked up the four mangled bodies they left behind and exited the building into the morning light. They left bloody footprints as they walked down the hallway. I felt such a hollow dread knowing what I just did, knowing that I just put countless people in danger, knowing I was now on my own, and knowing they would be back for me. I was so stunned, but I knew I had to press onwards. I waited a time for them to get far enough away before I made my exit. I stepped carefully around broken glass and caution tape, and disappeared into the early morning light.

## Seamark, Ironhall, IZ 144/6/76 (K), Saturday, April 8, 2059, Gemenii Anzhani - *Perspective* -

There are multiple sides to every story, no matter how straightforward or linear it may seem to be. There's always someone else's side, another account, a new perspective that can be gained to make things more clear in some areas. My story is no different, and now that you've been told one series of events, it's time the other perspectives are given. Three perspectives, three days, three levels, three basements, three hallways, three sons, three pieces.

The messenger, the queen, the knight. These three are one of the constants in every story, one of the anchors. You'll come to find there are many of these 'anchors' and many similarities between this story and the last, though there are just as many differences to match. The blueprints to Starworld haven't changed, and if they did I wouldn't be here telling you my story. For those who ran and worked at the place however, things are different.

Who you know as Chester, I know as Archie. Who you know as Claire, I know as Juliette. All the others are relatively the same, however in each reflection, there are many changes which occur even when people can seem to be the same on the surface. For the purposes of this story, there aren't many of these changes which are important to note before I continue with it, as most of them will present themself as I continue on.

Our story continues with the sound of my feet hitting the cold metal floor of the office in Basement 3. We had just dug a hole to get into it and tied a rope down from the ceiling to climb down into it. The room below was a little office-like room with black walls and fogged out windows, not too different from the others all around the complex, however this one was clearly one of the old ones. Even the desk appeared older than the ones in the mail levels of the facility.

Folders and loose papers blanketed the desk and filled the drawers inside. They appeared to be files on a lot of random things at first. Billing records, construction logs, finances, everything you would find in a secretary's desk, which made it all the more odd and suspicious that it was in what seemed to be the least accessible place in this entire complex. As Archie and I started to look a bit more closely though, we came across some other records which I'm sure were intentionally hidden away.

Buried under a bunch of random papers bundled by an old elastic band was a thick file folder without a label. It contained papers on seemingly every single victim that this place claimed. The level of detail of the information listed varied from person to person, implying that they stalked a great number of these people before they lured them down here. They contained an image and fields where information could be typed out, some pages having enough information to cover over to the back side.

I flipped through the unsorted pages for a bit, reading the names while Archie grabbed everything that could be used as evidence and shoved them in his pocket dimension. I continued counting the pages, keeping a count of the number until something caught my eye. It was a picture of *me.* It was from last year, and it showed me sitting alone on a park bench with a tiny old digital camera, presumably taking in the Winter scenery. Archive looked over as I saw it, and I read the page aloud to him.

"Child is homeless and is aware of StarWorld and seems to be fan of UN, but has never been recorded to have visited. Easy Target." The last two words sent a bitter chill down my spine and tears down my cheeks.

Never did I truly realize how isolated I was to them. Never did I realize how much of a specter I appeared to be due to me not having a trace of background for them to see. It made me really think about the past which only existed in my mind, the name that only existed in my head. All the foggy memories of the parents who abandoned me started to come back, though only tiny fragments of distant images and powerful, vivid emotions that accompanied the events were all I could see.

Just a silhouette with blonde highlights and two blue dots were all that remained about my father, and the words he spoke to me the day he tossed me out on the street. Why did it all have to come back *now*? There wasn't a place to hide, there wasn't anything I could wipe the tears away with. I felt so exposed, so cold, so embarrassed as I sat there crying my eyes out in the empty room, until Archie put his hand on my shoulder and wrapped me into a warm hug.

"Archie, there's something I have to tell you." My voice was muffled by his body.

"What is it?"

"I have a name. It's Gemenii, Gemenii Anzhani. Please don't forget me, please. I don't want to be forgotten again."

"I won't forget you, Gemenii. They won't either." I could tell he was tearing up by his voice.

He pulled away from the hug, leaving me stunned in the cold for a second. I snapped back to what I was doing, and we returned to going through and keeping all of the shady records and papers connecting this band to all of their crimes. From my best guesses and the little information Archie let on, it seemed like they had connections in high places. When you have something like that, you're essentially untouchable. Even though we got back to work, the mood wasn't the same.

As Archie showed me some weird redacted papers tying them to some mysterious people and groups, I continued to count the pages. I wasn't completely sure of my count by the end of it, but I knew where had to have been at least twenty over the magic number of 180. I supposed that just meant they created a large pool of victims to choose from, but something told me that wasn't the full truth.

These archives held a lot of weird and interesting discoveries. It didn't take long to go through everything inside the little room, most of which Archie held onto. These discoveries gave me a much better understanding of how they functioned, but it didn't tell me everything I wanted to know. Archie was rather cagey about what the purpose of these sacrifices was, and what they were 'building' as was written in the books.

Once the desk was cleared, I was able to look through the large window into the empty room beyond. I peered back through the foggy window into the blank space beyond it, finally able to make out *something* in the distance, but all I could see were bright lights and vague colors. I think he noticed me staring out the window, and so he told me to stay there while he opened the bottom drawer and pressed a large red button.

A surge of power came over the room, the lights flickering and the right door opening up. I walked out into the empty, dark room which extended out in front of me, Archie following slowly behind. The floor was made of the same grate-like connected sheets which was in the mech bay, raised above black ground. It looked like a gaping black void below my feet. It seemed like some kind of drainage system, which I assumed was where runoff was directed.

Sure enough, I would shortly notice water dripping from the ceiling all throughout the room, a lot more than I thought I would see, even in the April melt. After some hesitation, Archie led me around the corner and further into the room. In the middle of the room there laid a giant mound of biomatter, flesh, tissues, and a variety of colors of congealed blood. Below it were three circles drawn in chalk on the black ground the mound was sitting on, like an island over an open sea. It looked like the black ground was a mound placed over the grates by the way they seemed to fade into the dirt. The chalk circles themselves were written in what appeared to be Latin, or some other odd script, and were adorned with several weird symbols and phrases I didn't understand.

I was in complete shock when I saw it, and I slowly started to realize what this might be. As he led me closer, I begin to notice it was *breathing*, or at least was moving a bit. The thing had to be alive because although there was wind down here, it wasn't nearly enough to make something that big move. The ceilings were roughly between 3 or 4 meters, and this thing nearly reached the top.

Other than the movement, it also seemed to be making some noises. I could make out low rumbling noises which it seemed to emit occasionally, accompanied what sounded like a distorted, sustained choral bass note. It seemed to rise and fall at the same time the rumbling did. I wasn't fully sure, but I assumed it came from this lump. As well as the rumbling, there was a distant hum. It was distinctly different from electrical hum, not too far off. It was clearly coming from somewhere else in the room.

"I know what this is." Archie said in a low voice.

"You do? W-what the hell could this *thing* even be?"

"It's a collection of all of the souls harvested, notice the circles around it. Do you recognize them? They're in all of those rooms full of carnage and bloodshed and decay. I think it's finally time I told you what they were for, what their purpose is."

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"There wasn't time, and I'd rather you see it with your own eyes before I told you."

"Alright,"

"They're building an angel, and this is it. It's not fully formed yet though, that's why it looks so horrible. They need one more soul to complete it."

"Is this the part where you finally turn on me?"

"I would never hurt you, you know that."

"Anyways, what do you mean by an angel."

"I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that the source, or trigger wanted us to build one, though its influence on some was stronger than others. I was the only one who could free myself from its hold."

"So you were driven by it too? How did that happen?"

"Exposure to the source is how it happened. See those blue lights down there? That's it." He walked to the right of the deformed angel and pointed out into the distance, and sure enough there was a distant blue light behind the angel.

"Wow,"

"We were all called down here by the source, having discovered this third basement level during the construction of this hellhole. One by one, we were all called to the blue light, and I think that's the only reason they've kept me alive. Most of them I don't consider friends anymore, only Maverick, but she's too unstable to know for sure."

"Do you think they would spare me if I touched it as well?"

Archie made no comment. I walked on the grates around the angel and walked out into the darkness, towards the blue nights in the distance. I watched the flickering light get closer and closer, but I ran into a barrier. It was like an invisible wall blocking me from the source; a hope for salvation. I kicked it, punched it, and I even threw myself at it, but there was no moment. Bursts of blue light flashed as I hit the barrier. I kept going until I decided to give up. Before I walked away though, I noticed a tiny crack.

Even though it was something, it didn't mean enough to me. I decided to go back to Archie who was waiting for me on the other side of the room. We went back into the room and then back up the rope. When we got back up into Basement 2, I checked my watch and realized the time. Just like the previous day, we were cutting it close. Archie led me back to the machine bay, but when we got to the wide wall we found out that it was locked. I started to panic, but then he remind me about the maintenance stairwell.

On the way up, he calmly informed me that the others knew we were here. He followed me as I ran up the maintenance stairs to the second floor, located the computer room and sent the power back to the gate at the wide wall. It didn't take as much time to send the power back, and I was on my way out shortly. At some point, the two of us got separated from each other briefly. Seconds felt like an eternity as I waited in the darkness outside the computer room. He came from behind and startled me, though I was only happy to see him. We pressed on without pause. Just as we thought the end was in sight, Maverick spotted us from around the hallway.

We both ran to the third floor and then back down to the first to evade Maverik, and Mila and Luna who had followed him during the scuffle. We stopped at the first floor to take a breath, not too far from the stairwell that would lead directly to Basement 2. I made sure it was unlocked earlier with this plan in mind. My throat was so dry from all of the running we had been doing. Archie knelt beside me and put a hand on my shoulder, just as I checked my watch to make out 6:16 AM.

I brought it up to him, and he gave me another minute. Archie told me that if I ran fast enough, I could make it out through the tube room with a couple of minutes to spare. I picked myself up off of the ground and readied myself to get out of this place. We both knew that we'd have to go back later that day and I was already looking forward to ending it. I gave him a smile and a hug but before I went down, but before I ran off he wanted to tell me something.

"You've done great work today, Gemenii. You did what I couldn't bring myself to do. You're the bravest per-" His speech was cut off by a blade going through his chest.

The knife swung upwards, cutting a straight hole in his back. I looked up to see Juliette pulling the knife out, staring a cold and serious stare down at me. I was frozen in fear and shock, too horrified to do anything in the moment. We both stared coldly at each other, her lack of emotion in heavy contrast to my overflow of emotions. In the moment, it took me a second to realize the silhouette of Ash behind her as she mocked me. The two of them kept attacking him, but all I could do was look on in horror.

Juliette stepped to the side, leaving Ash standing tall and menacingly over me. Mila came out from behind a nearby bench and walked over to Ash, the two of them casting evil looks towards me. I looked up at their faces, and then back down to Archie's body laying limp on the ground. There was still a pulse, but it was weak and slow. He laid face down on the carpet, and then turned his head towards me, giving me an off-putting smile.

"I-I'll be fine. Run."

I didn't waste another second and I ran off towards the door to the basement down the hall. The last thing I could make out was Luna coming out of nowhere and looking back to the stairwell to see Easton running down. Everything else was a blur of tears, sorrow, and running. The flurry of emotions didn't stop until I opened my eyes and realized I was halfway through the mech bay towards the tube room and wide wall.

When the realization that I was now completely alone in the dim lights of the basement, I stopped dead in my tracks. This was the first time I was down here all on my own without a clear threat of immediate danger or any company. It felt so hollow and lonely down here, yet I started to get the sinking feeling that I wasn't entirely alone. I walked to catch my breath for a couple of minutes and continued down the way.

Then I begun to realize that there wasn't even that much down here aside from boxes and the distant sounds of some kind of machinery. Some of the boxes lined up against the wall were moved around, and one part of the wall that was previously covered by a shelf of boxes was cleared out, revealing an open door. I stopped to peer inside, and it was just a bunch of mangled robot parts, a bitter reminder of what had just transpired upstairs. There had to have been at least twenty in here of various types which were all decimated in a fit of rage. The mechanical gore unsettled me and sent me back on track to the tube room.

On my way into the room, I nearly tripped and walked to the corner wall of the room. I slammed my back against the wall and slid down into a seated position. I started to sob uncontrollably, all alone on the concrete floor. The only thing that snapped me out of it was my inner voice telling me to check the time. A jolt went through my body and I raised my watch to see it was 6:30. I didn't know what was about to happen, but I would soon find out. I knew I would be too late or powerless to do anything about it anyways. All those thoughts did was send me further down into a spiral of emotions, until I snapped.

"WHY? WHY? WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN ME?" I shouted into the blinding lights, as if I expected a reply.

Just after the last word escaped my mouth, the power went out. The descending tone of all of the machines cutting power sent a wave of fear through my body. Everything was suddenly pitch black and dead silent. The thought of running to the tube and hiding in there crossed my mind, but I thought it was too far. In my mind, I was the safest curled up in a ball in a corner between two concrete walls where I had been sitting and crying the whole time.

There was no sound for a little while. The absence of all the chaos, stress, and emotions became somewhat peaceful. A thought crossed my mind that this is what Archie was seeing and I let out a low cry. I thought nothing of it until I thought I heard something else. At first I assumed it was just the echo of some distant noise far off, but this was something else entirely. I slowly raised my hands over my mouth and slowed my breathing to keep quiet as I heard something approach.

It started out as a distant sliding noise and then a stomp. As it got closer I could feel the vibrations of whatever this thing was taking a step. It took slow and deliberate paces, and judging by sound direction it was coming from my left which to me, didn't make sense because that's where the wide wall was, and to my knowledge the wide wall was still locked. It didn't make sense unless there were other rooms or hallways around here that Archie didn't tell me about, places that led in and out of these rooms. The questions of what this thing was and where it could have come from slowly begun to drown as I kept telling myself to stay silent.

Poom, sssh, poom, sssh, poom, sssh. Step, slide, step, slide, step, slide. My guess was that was either hurt or deformed judging by the sound of it walking, as well as an occasional sound of metal on metal. As it got closer I could also make out a low breathy noise. It sounded like a pained cry for help, and the way it walked reminded me of a wounded animal. I could feel my entire body shake as it got close to the entrance, and right about where the entrance should be it stopped dead in its tracks.

"Hello?" It said. Its voice was strained at first and sounded vaguely familiar. "Hello? Is anyone there?" To my horror, with every word it got closer and closer to sounding like an exact copy of my voice. It nailed it down within 6 or so words. I kept silent even though I was horrified on the inside.

"Someone, is anyone out there? Please. I'm so alone. I'm scared. I'm *horrified."* The accuracy to my voice it spoke in was horrifying. It spoke as if I was crying out.

"Archie? Is that you? Is that you I can *smell*? Is it your fear I can taste? Was it something I did? Was it because I ran away from you? I'd forgive you if you told me the truth, if you told me that it was *all my fault.* I'd forgive you if you told me you weren't in control. I'd forgive you if you used me to build your angel."

"..." I could taste the salty tears running down my face. It seemed like it wanted to try another tactic, so it changed voices.

"... I know you're there." It said, this time in Archie's voice. "I know why you're here. You're scared, scared of me. You're a coward. Don't you know that you can't keep running all your life? Someone's gonna catch you eventually. I can feel your fear, I can read your thoughts. I can see you through the darkness, I'm merely part of it. What is it your afraid of? Is it me? Or me? Or how about me?" It started cycling through voices asking the same question. Ashton's, Easton's, Luna's, Juliette's, and then an unfamiliar one. It was higher pitched and a bit playful and fruity, though it had a taunting inflection. It spoke expressively, and I assumed this was its natural voice, but it too sounded somewhat artificial.

"What is it you're scared of? Is it me? I'm sure I'm not \*that\* bad if you saw me in the light. If you could see my face." It let out a horrible laugh afterwards. I could feel it in my bones. It shook me to the core, but I tried to stay as silent as possible. I wasn't sure how long I could keep it up.

"It's losing yourself isn't it? I know I'm afraid of losing myself. Fading into obscurity, becoming forgotten. We're not too different after all, we've both been forgotten, abandoned. All of them moved on, all of them seemed to forget, all but one. He's not who you think, but he's the one who didn't forget me. And who could I be? That all depends on your perspective. Am I the one who I sound like, or am I the one staring at you through the darkness?

And that darkness, the endless sea of darkness. Open your eyes, embrace it, let it consume you. If you stop hiding, if you come out, I can give you whatever you want. I can give you happiness, I can give you what you seek; the truth." It stopped talking in its whiny voice and slowly transitioned into a mix of the previous one and my voice, and then from there to a mix of the previous and Archie's.

"I can be *you*. I can be a better version of you. I can be what you love, *who* you love. I can be Archie. I can be whatever you want if you would just OPEN YOUR EYES!" The voice was much closer this time, but somehow the sudden change in volume didn't cause me to flinch or even move at all. I felt a sinking feeling knowing that it could somehow see where I was, or I was simply too loud. The uncertainty of it was eating me up inside. It continued to talk in the mix of the higher voice and Archie's, but it sounded more distorted this time, as if it were an imitation of the two were speaking over each other.

"You only have everything to fear. You're all alone. You're in the dark. You're in a tomb. Think about how many lives they claimed down here, and how you might not even be the last, haha. Doesn't it just TEAR YOU APART? ANSWER ME, COWARD! .. oh. you're cold. What have they done to you? I'm sure it's nothing I can't fix. I'll see you soon." As it finished speaking, I felt a hand reach out and touch mine just before the power kicked back in.

The room in front of me was empty. No sign of anything even being inside here was present. The floor was still coated in the same layer of dust that had been present before, and the old twin chalk circles were seemingly untouched. Now that the lights were back on, I felt more safe, but just a tiny bit more safe. I still felt so vulnerable and alone, unable to process what happened over all this time. It felt like hours sitting alone in the corner, but it couldn't have been more than minutes.

All I felt like I could do was just stay there and cry. It felt like the only thing I could do after all of that. It was almost like everything couldn't be processed; couldn't sit still inside my restless mind. Everything still felt so unreal to me. I thought about what happened to Archie, I thought about that *thing* that came up to me, and I thought of where the hell I could even go from this point. All of these thoughts and questions were drowned out by another set of distant footsteps.

"Hello?" The voice was only vaguely familiar at first, but as it got closer I recognized it to be Maverick's. "Are you still down here?" I didn't respond. I wanted to trust him but I thought I couldn't. The time I wasted trying to weigh whether or not I could trust him forced me to stay silent until he came into the tube room.

"Are you in here?" He called out. I didn't respond. He walked up to the machines and inspected them, saying something to himself while he did and then he turned around. He looked stunned to see me sitting in the corner, covered in Archie's blue blood and my own tears. He was stunned but not surprised, as if he expected me to be here. I was able to get a good look at him and saw that he was covered in his blood as well, silently acknowledging my previous theory that he had a deep connection with Archie.

"Get up. You have to go before it comes back."

"How can I trust you?" My voice came out broken and horrified.

"... It came to you didn't it."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry but you need to go. You're going to have to trust me. I know how to hold back the influence of the source, even just for a little while. Please, listen to me before it comes back. I don't want it to become more angry."

"The creature or the influence?"

"Both!" He spoke sternly. I got up and turned around to look at the wall behind me. There was a message written just above where I was sitting in what looked like Archies' blood. I nearly fell back once I read it. *What a tragedy, all alone. Not for long :).* I knew exactly what wrote it, and even such innocuous words sent me shivers. Maverick didn't seem to notice the message, or maybe he didn't even care.

I got up and walked into the tube. I peered at him through the glass as he typed some words on the nearby computer. I saw a look of shame and sadness wash over his face before it was replaced my anger. He quickly turned away and took a few steps back, trying to hold himself back. I couldn't make out what he was trying to say while his back was turned, but if I had to guess it was an apology to me.

That same familiar rushing noise came up all around me and there I was in the small exit room. I could hear a soft rainstorm starting outside. I walked through the doors and screamed into the rain, the falling water mixing with the tears scarring my face and washing my hands clean of Archie's deep blue blood. I sat there in the wet grass for minutes, maybe even hours in my own regret and despair until I had a moment of clarity.

"There might be a way to bring him back..."

Images of the ritual circles and chalk outlines filled my mind, and the one place where I thought I'd find answers was the nearby library. I had remembered seeing lots of books on the occult so it didn't seem too far out of the question. Although there were only a few, it was enough information to do what I needed to. Most of that day was a blur, due to the mix of two traumatic incidents and how tired I had been. I hadn't slept the previous day, and obviously not at night, so I fell asleep during my research.

Unlike many, I'm one who usually can recall their dreams really well. Tonight was no different in that I could recall my dream with almost perfect accuracy, but it was very different from any dream I had before. I woke up in an empty room, not too different from the room in Basement 3, however there were no light sources, and only a small circle of tile floor seemed to exist in the empty void all around me. I called out into nothingness, hearing my voice echo, until someone responded.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

"I'm here." It was Archie's voice, but there was something slightly different about it. Not in the artificial way, just different. All I could see were two eyes in the darkness, and a familiar silhouette made of a slightly darker shade of void than the rest of the darkness.

"I thought I'd never see you again,"

"Wait a moment, you're not *my* Gemenii, are you?"

"And you're not *my* Archie, right?"

"Archie? I'm Chester, at least where I'm from."

"Well isn't that an unfortunate twist?"

"Yes, anyways if you're feeling lonely, just call me. I'll be there, or some version of me."

"I'll be sure to, even if it does seem rather absurd."

"I suppose so. Anyways, now that you're here I may as well tell you something I've been meaning to tell my Gemenii about, something that I assume the other Chester-or Archie didn't tell you. There was a man in my dreams, and he told me about you. not my Gemenii, but *you.*"

"What?"

"Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but it couldn't have been my Gemenii. Everything was ever so slightly but noticeably off. And what he said,"

"... What did he say?"

"He said you saw him too." After that, the eyes disappeared and I was plunged into darkness once more. All I could was wait. Normally, I'm all alone in these dreams, but usually there's something else that happens. It's never just been one thing and nothing else, and it sure as hell has never been anyone I knew coming to me in my dreams. I had been so accustomed to the patterns that when it deviates even just a bit, it sticks out a lot. I decided to call out into the dark instead of wait in silence.

"Hello? Someone? Anyone?"

"..."

"Is someone out there? Anyone? Anything?" The silence was broken by another familiar voice, this one far more chilling.

"Gemenii. Why have you called me here?" The voice sounded like Archie's, but at the same time it was different. It somewhat similar to the artificial imitation of it, but it was unsettling and wrong in a different way. It was like a Capgras delusion of Archie.

"Who are you? *What* are you? Why are you here and why are you-"

"Answer my question first. One at a time."

"Fine. I didn't even mean to call you here, I just wanted *someone*, not specifically you, but now that you're here I'm not sure how to feel."

"I see. Your perseverance amazes me. Your motivations confuse me. Ask your first question."

"I have several, but I'll pick one. Who, or what are you?"

"I think you already know what I am. As for who, that is a trickier question. I've been around for a long time, and thus I go by many names. The most common, and the one your *friend* would know me as is 'The man in your dreams'. What that means is up to you, as it is a rather arbitrary name thought up by someone who is long dead. It is not my true name, nor does it tell that much about me. If only they stuck with something more helpful."

"Just as I thought. You're probably related to that *thing*. Are you going to mock me like- nevermind I'm not going to finish that sentence. I already know you're going to count it as a question or something like that."

"You are a fast learner, huh?"

"Exactly, and that's your second question." Its voice sounded so eerie. The way he spoke reminded me about how Archie spoke when he told me to run after he was attacked.

"Indeed it is. Ask away."

"What do you want from me? Whether I called you here intentionally or not, there's got to be a reason you answered."

"I will answer that with my third and last question. Do you think you are ready for tonight?"

"You seem to know a lot about me. I'm guessing it's because you're a part of my dreams which gives you some connection to my thoughts."

"Maybe." I couldn't tell if it was being sarcastic or not.

"I guess I think I'll do well. I'm sure the odds are gonna be far worse tonight, so honestly I'm not sure. All I know for sure is that I'm not going down without a fight. Even if it comes to it, it's something I'm willing to die for. I can't let any of this go on any longer. Tonight, I'm going to end it."

"Very well. I see you are ready. Ask your final question."

"I have so many that it's impossible to cover them all, but I'll ask one of the few I've had on mind. Are you even real or do you just exist in my imagination?"

"That all depends on your perspective."

"I see."

"Before you leave here, I have one final thing to tell you. I'll be watching you tonight. If you ever feel lonely, just call me. I won't be too far off."

"Alright. I don't know why I would do that, but I guess I'll keep it in mind if I ever get desperate."

"Oh come on, I'm not that bad."

"Whatever, I'll take all the help I can get."

"All you have to do is believe. Through will, anything is possible. Believe. Not for me, but for *me*." After he finished speaking, I felt myself be pulled upwards.

I woke up in a cold sweat, my nose in one of the books on ritual circles I had taken out earlier. I hadn't realized that it was close to midnight, nor did I know how how long I had been asleep. The odd and vivid dream took up my focus until I put back the books and headed back to Starworld. I took out a long red ribbon I had found in the basement earlier and wrapped it around my forehead under my hair like a bandanna, and stared down the building before I went in.

By now, the storm that had been brewing all day had become a downpour. I stood in the wind and the rain, knowing what I came here to do and how I indented to do it. I silently crept into the building and snuck through to the basement, surprised by all of the doors being open. As I ran through Basement 1, I noticed the concrete floor was covered in chalk circles drawn all over the floor, reminiscent of those on the far side of Basement 2. Looks like they really wanted to finish this, just as much as I did.

Just like I had previously guessed, these were used in the creation of the angel. What the spell did was rip the soul from the body and transfer it into the angel, through a process of unimaginable pain. They have to be living in order for it to work, which made me know the real reason they kept me alive. Although the victims need to be alive, they don't need to be unharmed and it was easy to assume that their victims weren't in the best state before their 'ascension'.

Down in the tube room, I saw a large pool of deep blue blood. He must have waited there for me for god knows how long. Seeing that his body was gone gave me a sliver of hope that he could be still alive, still hiding away somewhere and waiting for me to come and save him. It made me wonder why he would come down here, and where he could have gone. Alongside the hope, I also got a sinking feeling that he wasn't just waiting down here.

I started to roam the complex to look for Archie. I went out to the service stairs past the wide wall and took them to the second floor. I exited the stairs into a pool area. I found it weird that it didn't lead to the main hallways, but I suppose it makes some sense for a maintenance stairwell to just have been plopped right into the middle of the complex. The room looked frozen in time. The air was misty and full of a chlorine smell, the particles floating all around illuminated by the moonlight spilling out from the skylight.

Reflections of the water were cast all around the room on every surface. It was such a surreal sight to see this all in the darkness. I was surprised there was even this much moonlight during a storm, and even though I could see and hear the rain falling onto the glass, the moonlight persisted. I figured it was just a break in the clouds, which seemed to make sense once the room fell back to darkness and the aurora relented. I exited the room and headed for one of the security rooms.

Even though I was doing the same thing I had been for two days, things felt so much different. Maybe it was the absence of Archie that made things feel so much more dire and lonely. As I snuck around the hall, I heard a faint shuffling sound from behind one of the nearby benches. I approached it and when I peered over, it was *Archie!* I felt tears of joy flood my eyes and I jumped onto him, enveloping him in a hug. He was clearly very surprised to see me just as much as I was to see him.

"Why did you come back for me? There's nothing else to do here,"

"I thought you died. I was going to bring you back."

"Woah really? I-I didn't think you cared that much, or even had the knowledge." I could see him start to tear up.

We talked quietly for a bit, and although my research was seemingly in vein, I didn't mind anymore. I had a bad feeling that it was going to come to use in some way, and no matter how much I tried to brush it off it never went away. He seemed really set on cutting power to Basement 3 just to see what would happen, and I was on board with it. We stopped talking for a moment and I thought I heard a faint ringing somewhere nearby.

"Do you hear that ringing or is it just me?"

"Ringing?"

"Oh fuck,"

Before I turned to look down the hall, I already knew what was about to happen. The bandmates surrounded the both of us, and the both of us stood up to fight them off. I spotted a jagged piece of metal pipe underneath the nearby bench, and I grabbed it to defend myself with. We stood back to back with three on either side. I stared down Luna, Easton, and Ash who all stood on my side. The others were on his side. Some of them appeared slightly hesitant, but it didn't look like they were going to stop themselves.

Ash jumped forwards at me and I tried to fight him off, but he was far too strong. I managed to smack him with the pipe but he grabbed it from my hands and threw me across the room. I ran back and grabbed his legs as he was about to lunge towards Archie, bringing him onto the ground. Maverick came across the fight between Archie, Mila, and Juliette and came up behind me. He picked me up off the ground, and I looked deep into his eyes. Past his blank and enraged expression I saw his regret, I saw his guilt, I saw his trauma, I saw his love. He knew what he was doing was horrible, and he was trying to hold it back.

"You don't have to do this," Archie said.

"Yes we do, you betrayed us!" Luna shouted.

"There was betrayal, but not from me. Don't think I've forgotten what you've done. All of you." As Archie spoke, I could see something changing in Maverick's eyes. It looked like a horrified realization. Maybe he saw that it was too late as well.

"You know damn well why he did! Was 179 too low for you? Not enough bloodshed? Not enough death? Not enough decay? Not enough horror?" I shouted. They all stared at me, and I swear I saw the humanity return to their faces, even just for a brief moment.

"Don't do this, let me handle it. I can't stay *trapped* like this anymore." Archie spoke.

"I can't. I can't leave you."

"Leave me, I'll see you on the other side, don't worry. Whether I make it or not." He smiled at me, his face covered in tears.

"NO!" I screamed in protest, but it was far too late to do anything about it. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. He punched Mila to the ground, and stared to face Juliette.

"I'm ready to either escape or die trying. I can't bear to see any of this anymore. The trigger has driven you all to the ground but you clearly can't see that, or you can't control yourself. This was inevitable. Thanks for everything, I'll see you soon," Archie's speech moved me to tears. "and to all the rest of you, save yourselves if you can. I'll forgive you if you can change somehow." Archie looked deep into Maverick's eyes. Something changed within him.

"DON'T DO IT!" Maverick shouted. Archie looked shocked. He dropped me on the ground and stood as if he was about to take a leap of faith.

"You don't want to do this Maverick. Don't let *him* drag you back! Fight it! All you know how to do is get in our way, the both of you." Easton said.

"Never. Never again. I don't want to turn back again, no matter how much you try to pull me back, no matter how much the trigger tries to pull me back. I can't let you hurt him." He was nearly in tears as he spoke.

"Good thing it's not up to you." Luna said coldly. Juliette laughed chillingly as she said it. Everything happened in slow motion again, but this time I was moving slowly too. Slower than all of them, the most powerless to stop anything out of all of us. We were all too late.

Before Maverick and I could react, Luna and Ash pulled him away from us. I screamed and cried nothing came out, as if I was in a nightmare. I wished it was a bad dream, I wished so hard I almost believed it, but cold reality gripped me so tight I couldn't breathe. Maverick screamed out in pain. I could feel the agony in his voice because I felt the exact same thing. I tried to close my eyes, but Maverick held them open and forced me to look; to stare at the carnage before me.

"I'm sorry Gemenii, you have to look. You have to see it if you even want a chance to bring him back." They tore into him like wild animals

"..."

"Look at what they've done. Stare at it, embrace it, commit it to memory. This is the trigger, this is what it does. This is the effect of it. A curse, a horrible, horrible curse. Destruction breathes creation, and his destruction breathes the creation of fear, despair, loss, hope. You don't want to be part of it. I know you went down there, I know you tried to see it. Stay away." Maverick spoke to me amidst the violence.

"I don't understand it." I said.

"It's nature at its most raw. Tunnel vision to the end of the road. The angel's light shines from within you. If I can turn my head and vomit at the sight then I have not shielded myself from its grasp, I have merely played into my own cowardice." He continued.

Maverick brought me over to his corpse and set me to the ground beside it. I stared deep into his dead eyes, one of them closed as if he was winking to me. It felt like all of them knew of my plan, as if it would be some sort of test. I had thoughts of going against it though. I loved him deeply, and seeing his corpse made me feel like a piece of my being was dead as well. Despite my hesitance, I couldn't stop my emotions.

"Why? All for nothing. Take me instead, please! Take me. KILL ME! FUCKING KILL ME!" My voice broke as I shouted into the night.

It felt like my mind was breaking. They didn't answer my pleas. Some of them laughed at me, the only ones who didn't were Maverick and Easton. Maverick stared down in disgust and Easton stared down without expression. I laid there atop his corpse in a daze, the same nightmarish texture enveloping reality. My life had been horrible up until this point, but I never could have imagined a pain like this, a feeling this deep and horrible.

Ash kicked me in the back and they left me there, laying on top of his mutilated body. I hugged him one last time, sharing in his embrace. I felt some horrible emotions was over me, but I ignored them all. I shut everything out. All of them left, all of them except for Maverick. I thought he was going to continue his speech, but he just stared down at me. He knelt beside me, his heavy body making a large thud as it hit the ground beside me.

"He was my best friend. I never told anyone that I loved him. I'm sorry, Gemenii. I didn't mean to hurt you. It took me so fucking long to snap out of this trance and to see that you were just like me, one who loved Archie more than anything in the world, which is why I wanted you to watch. Use it. Channel that. I heard you talking with him just before we came in, we were waiting around the corner. Bring him back."

"Thanks Maverick. It means a lot that you came to me like this, especially in the morning."

"I'm glad you forgave me. I've done so much horrible shit, the least I can do is help you. The power of the source makes spells easier to cast in the way of their physical affect on the castor, but be warned that this is going to be hard to cast, many don't even survive."

"Right. Thank you."

"One moment please, don't take him away just yet." He laid over his body and kissed him, one final time. His eyes were filled with tears as he pulled away from the cold embrace.

"I'm so sorry."

He nodded and I started getting to work. With tears in my eyes, I picked him up in my arms and limped all the way down to Basement 2. He was very heavy but I managed to carry him back down the service stairs and into the mech bay through the gate at the wide wall. I laid him on the ground of the ejection tube room and pulled out one of the books from the library. I found a piece of chalk resting on one of the weird concrete shelves that jutted out from the walls and used it to draw the circle over the old one.

I followed the instructions written in the old book, painting the symbols as accurately to the diagram as possible. There were two side-by-side double-ringed circles, somewhat reminiscent of the three-ring circle around the angel. I learned from the book that three-ring circles were the most powerful, then two-ring, then single-ring. The outer rings went around the old circle which had no rings, signifying it was a much weaker spell. I was about to find out what that meant.

Once it was finished, I laid Archie's body off-center in the middle of the circle, his blue blood covering my body. I had remembered seeing a robot double of him somewhere in the basement, so I went to retrieve that. The thing was now mangled and broken, but I gathered the mostly intact pieces and laid it right beside the corpse with its feet where the other's head was and prayed it would work. If the spell would be successful, the two non-living bodies would be fused and the soul and the mind and all of their facets would still remain alive and intact inside the newly created vessel. I held the book with blood on my hands and read out the incantation with tears in my eyes.

"Though the body has been destroyed, the soul is blazing and live. Lift up the soul, rip it from the dead and fuse these two vessels. Create a new vessel of the ashes of two discarded ones, rise up from the flames. Give them live again!" I smacked my hands to the ground in a kneeling position, placing them with one hand on the side of each body.

The spell wasn't even finished yet but I could already start to feel the burning energy begin to surge through my body. It started as a tingling pain but it begun to feel like a constant stinging in my arms, as if a thousand angry bees were swarming my body, judging me for all of my crimes. The last part of the incantation would be an addition the book did not mention was required, merely a final rite that I wanted to add myself because my soul told me to.

"YOU CAN TAKE MY ARMS, YOU CAN TAKE MY LEGS, YOU CAN TAKE MY EYES, YOU CAN TAKE MY HEART OR ANYTHING ELSE, BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE HIM FROM ME!"

As I finished the spell, flashes of white light flew up from the outline of the circle, and then everything went white and a wall of noise embodied me. I could tell it was working because the pain was increasing. It flooded from my arms to every inch of by body, growing in a crescendo. I kept screaming, the shouts coming out strong and broken over the constant loud drone of energy that came up from the ground and flooded the entire room.

Images begun to fade in over everything, approaching like a swarm of hornets out of the white blinding lights. At first, the images were faded and distant, but they became more and more clear. They were memories, but not mine. They were Archie's. I saw random moments of his life rush by, and then Basement 2. Images of everything that happened whirled around me, horrible, horrible images. I felt like I was drowning in an infinitely deep ocean of pure terror.

Everything remained constant, and it felt like my entire body was on fire. The pain was almost impossible, but I had to hold on. I held on for dear life; I held on for him, I held on for everything that this journey hinged on. The world started to fade but I kept pushing through, as if I was running through a valley of light up a hill. I kept pushing and pushing, tearing my vocal chords in a primordial yell. Everything became more and more intense, far more than I could bear, and then nothing.

Impossibly bright and bathed in light to darkness. Impossibly loud to deathly silent. I was in the room again, but it looked like the power was off. I wasn't sure how long it took to complete, and though it felt like hours it couldn't have been more than minutes. It took my eyes a while to adjust from the blinding white to darkness. When they did adjust, I saw a body laying on the ground. The body laying in front of me appeared to be him, although something was awfully wrong.

There laid a body, a fusion of his mangled body and the metallic one. He wasn't conscious, but he seemed to be slowly breathing. Parts of the destroyed metallic being had become infused with his body which appeared to be somewhat patched together by stitches. Something felt so off about it, and I started to panic that I had just murdered or disabled him. Other than the horrible mess of jagged robot gore that stuck out in odd places, it was still mostly him.

His shorts were still resting where they should be, and the tattoos on his arms were intact. He was adorned with some other accessories too. He wore a necklace with a bright blue gemstone inside that seemed to flicker. I wasn't completely sure, but it looked a lot like the trigger in the basement. On top of his head there was an ornate crown with a halo sticking out from the back, seemingly being an indicator of his ascension. The crown as made of gold, the same as a small belt he had which had a short red cape coming down from it. Symbols from the ritual circles were tattooed on his fists as well.

I tried to shake him awake, but he didn't budge and I had a good hunch of why. Archie's new body was likely connected to StarWorld's computer systems just as all of the robots are. I remember him mentioning it when he first brought up the robots to me on the first day. I scrambled through the basement to find the blueprints he pointed out on that first night. It didn't take too long and with them, I found instructions on how to separate their power supply from the building's systems.

. . .

I kicked out the grate and jumped down to the ground, landing right in front of the main entrance. As I got up, I heard the doors opening. A boy walked through, noticing me right as he came in. He walked towards me, and I told him everything that happened prior, and he agreed to help me get back to Basement 2, as well as agreeing to help me escape with Archie afterwards. I poured my feelings out without a second thought.

He seemed pretty nice, and I could tell he was uncorrupted for sure, unlike with the others here. I even had a small doubt about Archie initially, but I've since trusted him due to everything that happened between us over the last two nights. He followed me as I led him through the nearby staircase and down into the machine bay where Archie was laying on the ground. He seemed somewhat disturbed by the ritual circles everywhere.

We got down to Archie, and I propped him up as if he was sitting and found a small flip-up window just above the base of his neck. I opened it and found a switch, flipping it on and closing the window. Just underneath this was the memory storage in another window, though I wasn't sure how this fusion even functioned internally with all of these colliding pieces doing different things. At first it didn't seem to do anything, but there was another button just below the memory cards.

Pressing it caused a loud click. I closed the bottom window and then turned him off and back on again, and then he started to move. His eyes flicked open and dull for a second, though they grew wide when they met mine staring into them. He was ecstatic to see me, and we wrapped each other up in a giant hug. We were reunited! Even though we had only been apart for an hour and a half or so, it felt like years.

"I can't believe you did it! You saved my life, I don't think there's any way I can properly thank you Gemenii," He said, his speech slightly muffled by my shoulder being beside his face and the tears coming down from the both of us. It felt awkward with the other man with me, but I felt like it gave him some understanding of the relationship between me and Archie. After a while, the boy pointed out that we should probably get the hell out of here.

We ran to the main stairway at the front of the machine bay and up to the main area, but the doors were locked. We went to Basement 1 to open up the doors, but then Archie said he had a bad feeling. He decided to hide in the maze, and he said he could monitor us remotely via the cameras, and he noted that he'd come and help us if we needed. I didn't want the others to know I revived him, so it worked out well for the both of us.

I asked the boy his name, and though he mentioned how he doesn't tell ppl his name often, I pointed out I told him my full name earlier at the doors. He relented and told me his name was Corrie. As we continued to the center of the maze, I told him some more personal details, just incase I died here. He looked at me with sadness, but to me it was a normal thought. My life was so dangerous I never thought about these thoughts being just as wrong as they are.

Once we got there I unlocked all of the doors, and we went on our way back up to the first floor. As we walked through, I begun to hear a deep thumping noise. I looked behind us, and I saw Easton coming up behind us. He ran at us and we managed to only barely escape the basement. He kept slamming on the door, and he managed to break the doors down. To my surprise, he started to talk to me through the door with his back against it.

"You know, I didn't think I would ever find myself telling you this," He said, seemingly reminiscing. "You remind me of my little brother."

"..."

"His name was Cherry and he was one of the most positive people you'd ever meet. Hope, hope, hope that's all he'd go on about. You'd think nothing could hurt the guy because of how hopeful he was that nothing would go wrong. And then he went missing." His tone shifted from positive recollection to bitterness and shame.

"They never found him again. It was like someone picked him up and took him off the earth. Why do you have to remind me so much of him? Why do I have to stand there and pretend it doesn't bother me? Fuck, here I am sitting beside you talking about it to your face. What have we all become?" His voice was shaky by this point, almost as if he was on the verge of tears.

"Monsters." I replied.

"You're damn right. You better leave me before it comes back. Run."

We ran up the stairs to the second level right as he finished speaking. As we got out though, Juliette was waiting for us. We managed to evade her and we ran around the circle up to the third floor. We went for the main staircase first, but Mila and Maverik were waiting at the top. We ran all the way to the other staircase. He ran through the floor to go hide in a computer room, and I decided to go through the vents. I shortly realized how dumb of an idea separating from each other was.

I slowly made my way through the vents, and made my way down to the second level. As I pressed on I could feel the air slowly grow warmer and warmer. They must have turned the heat on, and I knew for sure when everything got brighter. I kept pushing on but it got progressively harder as the metal got more and more hot. Once I reached a part with grates, I came to realize they were all sealed off. I thought I was going to die there, but I made it to the computer room on the second floor where I had first found the ladder.

The metal plate slammed onto the floor before me as I dropped into the room. I felt like shit and there were some heat rashes on my arms and legs. I tried to get some water from my pocket dimension, but when I tried, nothing happened. I tried to get other things from my pocket dimension, but I realized I couldn't. I must have lost my pocket dimension when I performed the ritual. I worried about the documents for a second, but then I remembered the files were with Archie.

According to the books I read earlier, pocket dimensions are tied to the soul, and even if the soul was put into a different body, their pocket dimension would still be accessible. They can only be destroyed when the soul itself is killed, which is usually around nine hours or so after the body dies, unless the soul is destroyed before the body. As far as I knew, it was relatively to do such unless one used an extremely powerful and precise attack. Doing such would require a lot of energy as well.

Dead silence rung out in the halls once I walked out. I could feel something approaching, but once I turned around it was just Archie. He looked a little bit different though. All of the scars were still there, but there were no more bits of the mangled machinery that I had fused him with. He didn't have the belt anymore either, though the little crown still sat firm on his head nestled in his hair. When I spoke to him, he didn't seem to have a clear answer either.

"What happened to all of the robot bits?" I said intrigued.

"I'm not sure, I just managed to get rid of them somehow. Maybe it was the power of my ascension that allowed me to semi-shapeshift."

"Interesting. Anyways, I just have to find Corrie so we can get out of here."

"He's the boy you were with, right?"

"Exactly."

"Alright. I'm going to look around to see if I can find where he ended up, you should probably just lay low for a while. I'll see you soon."

Something about the way he spoke started to set me off. It sounded *off.* I realized it while we walked separately from each other, and I turned around to look at him. He heard me stop and he stopped as well. He turned around with his typical smile on his face and asked me what was wrong. I listened closely, and for a split second I heard it. It was that same tone, that chilling one. I saw his expression change slightly to react to my shock.

"It can't be." I said shakily. His face shifted from a smile to some form of realization.

"What's wrong? Was it something I said?" He asked, forcing a smile.

"Something's wrong." I said, taking a step back from him.

"Are you afraid?" I could see his expression slowly change as he realized what was happening.

"You're not the real Archie, are you?"

"Gemenii. Please, it's not what you think,"

I didn't let him speak, I only ran away. I felt tears stream down my face as I ran around the level and up to the third floor. It was a lot quieter up here, and though I felt a lot safer in the loneliness, it didn't make me feel any sort of comfort. In the distance, I could make out a banging somewhere on the level. I walked down the hall trying to pinpoint the noise until I came to a dark jade colored steel door which seemed very out of place. It reminded me of the ones in the basement, but with a slight difference. The door was being banged on by something on the inside. I reached my hand out towards the handle, but it flew open before I could get to it.

Archie flew out of the room with a battle cry, landing majestically in a lunge. He looked a lot more rugged and dirty than I expected. He wore the same pair of shorts I recognized, but they seemed a bit older. There were scars on his body but they didn't match the ones I saw inflicted. He looked a lot more muscular yet thin, and he sported a dirty bandana across his forehead, partially covered by hair that was longer than I remember. I stood there stunned for a second before I spoke.

"Archie? What did they do to you?"

"Who are you?" He said in a grave tone. I was very confused.

"How do you not remember me? I told you my name yesterday." A shocked expression washed over his face as I spoke.

"No. You didn't tell *me* your name." All the realization hit me at once.

"What the fuck?"

"I don't know how long I've been in here, but things felt different tonight. I decided that was a sign, and so I broke out. I had been waiting for this moment, training for it. They kept me locked up in here, keeping me until they needed me again. They feed me at least, and so I used that to build up muscle. They always thought I was the weak one, well not anymore. Why are you even here?"

"To uncover the secrets."

"I see. All the things we've done, well both Archies. They told me they perfectly replaced me, and though they didn't tell me how, I already know it's off of the back of that deal I should have just turned down. None of this would have happened if I refused the angels."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's not important, I'm sure you don't have much time, correct?"

"Well yes, but how do I know you're the *real* Archie?"

"If you trust me enough, then I'm the real Archie. If you trust that damned jackrabbit Zarael more than you trust me, you can go run back to that impostor."

"I'll see you soon, I'm going to find someone else who got roped into all of this, and then we leave."

Archie went towards the large stairwell while I went the opposite way to take a more discrete route down. I stopped for a second to collect my thoughts outside the stairwell. I couldn't fully process everything that I had witnessed, especially because it all happened so fast. I was so confused and distraught knowing that the Archie I loved, the one I put my trust in, the one I loved wasn't the original, he was merely a fake. Just as I opened the door to the stairwell, the fake Archie came out of it.

"Gemenii." I stepped backwards with an idea in mind.

"What are you? What did you do to the real Archie?" I spoke with the same scorn and hatred that the others did to me.

"It's not my fault, let me exp-"

"How can I trust you? You lied to me." I started to walk back towards the room the original Archie came out of.

"You just have to *listen* to me."

"I can't trust you anymore."

"Please. You have to trust me this one time. I need-" I was close enough to the door Archie kicked open to go through it. There was a short hallway with another door at the end of it. I ran down the short room and when he came up to me, I turned around and pushed him into the room and closed and locked the door behind me.

"LET ME OUT! PLEASE!" I stepped back as he kept pounding on the door.

"..."

"Gemenii. I don't know if you're still listening, though you've probably ran away from me. I know you don't care about me, and I know you hate me. After all of my lies, after everything I've done, after seeing you run away from me, I want to know you that I still love you, I always have. I know I've never been the original, but I don't care. I still love you after all they've done to me, after all that's happened."

The pounding on the door ceased, and I heard the other Archie's bodyweight collapse against it. I started to quietly cry as I stood there stunned for a minute before I ran off back into the darkness. I heard a small chuckle as I ran away, which let me knew he heard me. It all still felt so surreal to me as I ran back out of the room and through the halls, back to look for either the original Archie or Corrie. Seeing as the third floor was this empty, I had to start working my way down.

I ran back to the second floor and looked around for Corrie, but he wasn't anywhere to be found. The last room I entered was the pool room I had come up into hours earlier. I took a break to catch my breath and realized how little time we had left. The rain was pounding on the glass, echoing the anger and confusion, and the flurry of emotions I was feeling in the moment. Before I could get my bearings right though, the door swung open. I turned around in shock to see Juliette in the doorway. She kicked me to the ground and pulled out an old wooden baseball bat. Before I could even cry out I was knocked out cold.

When I woke up, I was in a strange room I hadn't been in before. It was pretty small and very dark. I looked down and saw multiple stab wounds in my chest. Cyan rivers ran down my body and onto the concrete ground. Juliette stood over me, glaring down at me with an evil green as I woke up. I felt a rush of anger flow over me as I laid there on the ground below her, only becoming worse as she started to taunt me.

"Well, well, well. Looks like I finally got you. I can't start the ritual yet, but I'll keep you here for now." As she spoke, she took a remote. When she pressed a button, two lights were turned on, illuminating two glass tubes like the ones in the mech bay on either side of the room. Behind the tubes were Corrie and Archie. They looked distraught and they banged on the glass, but it didn't budge. Juliette laughed at me.

"..."

"Look at them. Look at how *pathetic* they are. Crying over a loser like you." I didn't think her words would ever hurt as much as they did. I felt tears running down my cheek, though there was a numbness lingering along with the pain.

I could feel it getting hot in the room again, and I saw that the heat rashes had turned into scorch marks. I felt so exhausted and tired I couldn't even cry in pain anymore. I felt sweat drip down my shirt as she continued to mock me. I didn't know if they were cool in there or not, though they didn't appear to be visibly hot. She got up and left the room for a moment, and I looked up towards the ceiling.

"It's hopeless, isn't it? I'm gonna die here, am I not?" I said, not expecting a response, but both of them tried to encourage me. I felt tears stream down my face again. I felt uplifted, but I was still so horribly hopeless. I could barely move my body it was so hot. After a while, I noticed I was smiling. I didn't know what I was feeling, but I thought it was happiness. It was a hopeless situation, but they did their best to help me, they did their best to push me on.

The doors opened up and Juliette came back into the room. When she did, I felt the smile drain from my face. I felt my heart sinking. She looked me dead in the eyes, with her knife in hand. She dragged it across my body and though it didn't break skin, it still hurt. She licked her blade like a maniac, trying to taunt me again. She held up my arm, and when she did I felt the soul drain from my body.

She didn't cut my arm off like I thought she was about to, she only dragged the knife across it. She turned her back towards me, and I thought she was going to leave the room. For what felt like ages she stood there in the doorway. I could make a silhouette cross the hallway and briefly stop to give her a fire axe. I braced myself for what was about to happen once I saw the look on her face. She brought it above her head, and in slow motion it fell down on me like a guillotine.

I cried out in agony, but she only laughed at me and walked out of the room. As soon as she was out of earshot of the room, Archie started punching the glass. I couldn't tell just then if it was the real Archie or not, but his reactions seemed hard to fake. At first I thought it was hopeless, but he broke through it pretty quickly. He broke the other tube too, letting Corrie out of his prison. They both came up to me, and tried to tie up my leg. I could feel my mind racing as they headed for the exit downstairs.

As we ran through the building, I had a really bad feeling in my gut, and it wasn't the stab wounds. I had a feeling we shouldn't proceed and find another way out, but the two of them assured me that we'd be fine. He said that he needed to get me out of there, but I still had a really bad gut feeling. He carried me through the building with Corrie following behind. Other than the noise we made, it seemed far too quiet. When we got to the front, Juliette jumped out of a stairwell. Corrie ran for the doors, but they were all locked. She walked towards Archie and I, but he stood his ground. All of a sudden, I got the same gut feeling again.

"Archie this isn't good, it's the same feeling. She's gonna do som-" I couldn't even finish what I was saying before I fell to the ground. When I looked up, Corrie and Archie were on either sides of me. The two of them were launched back by some invisible force.

They tried to run towards me, but they couldn't. They were held back by some spell. Seeing it all play out in front of me made me recall the book. I remember reading about this spell and how powerful it is, though that didn't matter now. All of the others except for Maverick crept in from either side of the hallway to watch the ritual be completed. All I could do was stare up at her. She stabbed me repeatedly, over and over.

I felt like this was the end, but even still I tried to hold onto everything I had. A golden light started to envelop me, but that didn't stop her. That only seemed to motivate her further to dig deeper and deeper. There was a clear point where the hope and adrenaline ran out, and I could see the end. It started to become unbearable In my last moments of life, I felt an impossible pain. After what felt like an eternity, everything started to go dark.

"I-I'm sorry, Archie, we lost," I said in my dying breaths, and then everything died out.

. . .

And there it was, yet another thing I fucked up. I was powerless to stop Gemenii from being killed. I watched helplessly as he was torn apart by that girl. After she stopped, there was a pause. Everything fell silent as my cries were carried away on the dead air through the building. I looked across to Archie who was trying to break through the barrier, throwing all his might at it, but in the end it was hopeless. We both stopped at the same time. The silence hung in the air for what felt like an eternity, and just as Maverick came around the corner and looked on in horror, Lights shone up from the floor in a circle around where he laid on the floor, shining all the way up to the sky.

Everything lit up in a flash of white. All I could hear was Juliette laughing and a loud whooshing sound. It was deafening and it was all I could hear for at least a minute, then the light subsided and the room fell back into darkness. Gemenii was still there and Juliette sat on the ground stunned for a moment. I watched her pull out an old book and start to look through it, though my focus got shifted to the conversation playing out in front of me.

"Dear God." Maverick looked to Gemenii's body in shock, Archie noticed he was here and walked over to him.

"Maverick. How do I even explain this?"

"You're not the real Archie, are you?" He said with scorn.

"Yes I am! You have to trust me. They locked me up because I knew too much and replaced me. Please trust me."

"Prove it."

"It was Zarael, or 'azzy zazzy' as he likes to call himself. Your birthday is the 32th of April. It's me, Maverick." I could see the doubt wash out of his eyes with a few tears. He ran up to Archie and hugged and kissed him.

"What did they do to you? How long have you been in there?" He said, looking towards the tattered headband and his old clothes.

"I don't know for sure to be honest. I can't really remember much about what happened in there other than me being fed and all the training I did to break out." Maverick turned to the others and looked at them with scorn. They all looked shocked and angered, probably angered that Archie had gotten out.

"How did he get out?" I heard Luna whisper to Ash.

"Not sure, but it's a big fuckin problem," He said quietly. Maverick and Archie pretended not to hear them.

"Look, Maverick. We have to get out of here. You know what they're gonna do to us." Archie said.

"I know. You don't need to remind me about that, but I don't know just how possible that is."

"Why? The exit is right there? If anyone can come in why can't we go out?"

"I think we both know why, babe." I could make out Archie blush a little bit when Maverick called him that.

"HEY! Sweet talk, but I have a spell to cast."

Juliette shouted. She snapped her fingers. Luna grabbed Maverick and Ash tried to grab Archie, but he didn't immediately let him. Archie punched him square in the face, and then Ash tackled him onto the floor. He tied some rope around his arms and picked him up again. That didn't take the fight out of him though, it only seemed to make it worse. Maverick looked on with a somber expression on his face.

Easton glared at me and I slowly shook my head, not looking for any type of conflict. Seeing what they did to Gemenii and hearing about what they did to Archie made me avoid any type of negative confrontation at all costs. Admittedly, playing it so safe was probably what made them trust me to some extent. I was surprised that at that point, they hadn't even spoke to me. Perhaps they were too wrapped up with the angel.

Once the room fell silent again, Juliette opened the old book again and moved a red ribbon out of the way. She slowly read the incantation written on the page. The language it was spoken and written in sounded like Latin to me, which seemed to align with my preconceived notions of spells and the occult. All of us stared at her as she spoke, in silent shock to contained excitement. I can't lie, I was feeling something between the two.

As Juliette spoke the incantation, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Everything seemed to slow down for a moment as Juliette finished the second spell and the other Archie, the one I had seen with Gemenii when I came in here earlier. I could see tears running down his face as he ran towards us. From the angle I was sitting, I could see him approaching but the others could not. There's a possibility Juliette could but she never acknowledged him.

For a second, it looked like he would be able to stop her from casting it, but he smacked into an invisible wall. He was running so fast he bounced back when he collided with the wall. As he got up, I saw a wave of sadness and realization flow over his face. He started to throw himself at the barrier, glints of blue night flashing with every hit. He started punching and kicking at it, and even made two scythe-like appendages extend from its forearms and used them to cut through, although it didn't seem to do anything.

He kept attacking the barrier as Juliette finished the spell, but once he stopped speaking he seemingly gave up. He leaned against the barrier with his hands against it and watched in horror, like the other Archie, Maverick, and I did as Gemenii's corpse was engulfed in blue fire until it turned to a pile of ashes. I looked over and saw him slide down the invisible wall and go onto his hands and knees, pounding the ground and shouting. I could barely make out his muffled screams. It seemed that even though there wasn't really a physical barrier, at least for us, it seemed like there definitely was for him.

As we all stared at the ashes on the ground waiting for something to happen, he looked up at me. His eyes looked so tired as he stared at me, his eyes flowing with tears and a thin stream of blue blood running down from his nose and down his chin, smudging across his fur. He reached out his hand and motioned for me to come over. I slowly nodded as he did. Just as I nodded, both of our heads turned towards Juliette as she cried out in excitement.

Everyone looked on in shock and wonder as the angel ascended through the floor, stopping with its feet just above the carpet, and gracefully landing. It held its head up and its eyes closed before opening them and turning to face Juliette who was staring at it in excitement. The angel was clearly built in Gemenii's likeness, though it wasn't entirely him, as if it were some kind of alternate version of him. I could tell the appearance caused a sense of distraught in both Archies, Maverick, and Easton judging by their expressions.

"What is it this strange place you have brought me? Why have you brought me up here?" The angel spoke. It spoke softly, yet it due to how loud it was it sounded so much more harsh. Its voice echoed all around and sounded like it was speaking from every direction.

"We've built you for a reason. You'll find out shortly. Until now, we're waiting." She said.

"Elaborate. My purpose is not to be merely an instrument to be played. My purpose will be given to me once my time comes." The other Archie looked on in interest, trying to piece together what Juliette could be talking about; what they were planning.

"Again, you'll see. I'm waiting on some of my, let's say *friends* who are going to come and help me with a few things first."

The other archie looked stunned and looked me in the eye. He transformed into what appeared to be a small jackrabbit. As the others talked, I slowly shuffled over to the barrier. Slow enough to not be noticed, but fast enough to get there in a good amount of time. I was wearing some old surplus uniform pants so they had pretty big pockets, and I opened one of the larger ones on the legs and it jumped inside.

Within the minute, a group of six people walked through the doors. Four men in uniform, one important looking man with short white hair and a beard, and an aquamarine colored rabbit coronian. The latter two were both wearing the same type of snazzy blue coats that important looking people like Lurio Kiff would wear. They came in and talked to both Ash and Juliette excitedly and kept looking between the two of them at the angel.

Shortly afterwards, the man with the beard, the four men in uniform, Ash, and Juliette took the angel up to the third floor, telling the rabbit to meet them on the fourth floor in fifteen minutes, specifically addressing him as Lashalo. Realizing a rare opportunity for the purposes of journalism, I decided to approach him on his way up. Surprisingly, he was pretty open to talk to me about all the ins and outs of his work.

"Hey would you mind talking to me about exactly what it is you do here? I'm trying to learn more about the occult and this would be a very helpful start."

"I'm glad you've approached me, I don't get to talk about it a lot. My work mainly consists of working with creatures of the occult, or what some would consider fantastical and mythological. Most of this 'work' is contracting in a weird way where I go in with a team and I help either contain, tame, or exterminates these creatures." He talked to me as if he was reminiscing about something.

"Interesting. Would you mind telling me how you got here?" We were on the third floor by this point, and he stopped when I commented on that. He looked up at the ceiling, flipping through his memories and piecing together story.

"Well, it's rather complicated. I started out as just an engineer making odd types of prosthetics and similar things which assist the disabled. Robotic arms, new working eyes, advanced hearing aids, the like. Some time years ago I got roped up into this.. "company" and somehow due to a past interest in the occult I managed to climb the ranks and now I get my own teams to assist me "on the ground" doing all the hard work of following the research I've studied for years and building onto it."

"So essentially you're researching "cryptids" as some would call them?"

"That's the gist of it, though there's a lot more nuance to it though. Generally this is a pretty prestigious and secretive position that I don't get to share information about often. They never said I can't though, so I share it to curious people like you. Also, just like tradesman, which is something I liken this position to often, it's on an as-needed basis so in my free time I still do engineering work."

"I wouldn't expect it gives you a lot of leeway or free time, but I suppose you don't get called very often huh?"

"Not really, no. It's probably around three times a month or so, though usually these usually take a while. It's not usually a short process. Also, may I ask what you're asking this for? Usually there's a reason people are curious."

"Well, I want to gain a better understanding of what I've witnessed, as well as for my own personal journalistic purposes." As soon as I said that, his tone changed.

"A journalist, eh? I'm sure you know how dangerous that is. I'd suggest you get out of here before the others find out, I'm sure they wouldn't want publication."

"I've taken the dangers into account, and I've decided it worth the risk every time, but I'll still head your advice. Thank you very much for everything you've shared, I really appreciate it." And with that, I got the hell out of there. On the way down to the first floor, I passed Maverick and Archie together by the stairs. Archie was laying on the ground quietly sobbing while Maverick sat on the stairs beside him.

"What are you still doing here?" Maverick said.

"Getting more answers."

"You're just like him, huh? Always a constant reminder of my failure; what I could have prevented. Just go."

"You can't possibly blame it on yourself. It's not like any of us could have done anything to prevent it."

"I could have tried. I could have but I didn't because I wasn't there. Your presence is just a constant reminder of that."

"Maverick. Stop. Remember what you said earlier about how grief makes monsters? Can't you see what it's done to you?" Archie said.

"Shit. Fuck I'm sorry. I think you should go before the others realize you're here."

"Thanks. I didn't plan to stick around much longer, but now that I've ran into the both of you I may as well give you my thanks and wish you the best of luck. I'm guessing you'll need it depending on what may happen."

"Thanks."

I took off down the hall, passing the barrier where the other Archie couldn't. I didn't feel any tug on my pocket either, so I suppose they just need someone to bring them past it or at least break whatever seal or spell causes it in the first place. Once I got to the front area again, I stood next to the ritual circle and stopped in front of the glass doors, basking in the morning sun. The moment was spoiled by the rabbit in my pocket biting my leg, signaling me to let him out.

Once I picked him out and set him down on the ground, he transformed into what I assumed its true form to be. It appeared to be some combination of a rabbit coronian and a human. Tired eyes peered down at me, framed with two parted strands pulled down from its hair which was pulled back into a loose pony tail. It had floppy ears and two tall horns which curved slightly from each other. Its fur had several ornate markings across it, the first one I noticed being a blue and red strip underneath its eyes.

Unlike anything else I had seen before, the torso seemed to be a fusion of fur and humanoid tissues. It was as if some parts lacked fur, or were merely in the transition of fur to skin. Its body was also covered in a multitude of scars, some of them stemming from where the odd bits of fur met with the skin. Its fur bore various dark stains which reminded me a lot of dried blood. Maybe this thing wasn't as friendly as I initially assumed.

Though its torso was a mesh, its arms were entirely humanoid and its legs were entirely lagomorphic. On the wrists and ankles I could make out faint signs of where metal shackles must have been at some point in time. It wore a different type of shackle on its forearms, likely as an accessory combined with arm bands, ribbons tied about the middle of the forearm and lower leg, and a headband.

By far its most striking feature was an old wooden bow which was seemingly fused into its body, both sharp ends jutting out of its body at an odd angle. It seemed to notice me studying it, as well as my lack of fear towards it. Perhaps it was because I had humanized and connected with the creature that I felt no need to fear it, and although its appearance was unsettling, it didn't outright scare me, in fact it was really fascinating to me.

"You can quit staring at me now." It said, bearing its sharp teeth. I took note of the stains around its maw.

"Right. We have to get out of here." I said.

The two of us walked through the doors and into the cold morning air. The parted clouds of the passing storm rested around the blue lights of the morning sky. I wasn't keeping track of the time, but it couldn't have been less than half an hour since 6:30, the approximate time of sunrise. I noticed that he took a lot of heavy deep breaths a lot, as if he was taking in the fresh air. I had correctly assumed that he had been down there for a long time.

"How long did they keep you there?" I asked.

"As their replacement Archie or before that?"

"Both actually."

"Well, I've been their archie replacement for around six months or so, but before that, who knows. Years, decades even. That place I was hidden away in was built before StarWorld, before a lot of this stuff. This area has history but it's all been long forgotten or buried deep underground. If I had to guess they built the basements on top of it on purpose. They had to have known about all of this or they wouldn't have this plan. I'm sure of it."

"Wow. How does it taste?"

"Fresh and moist. I can tell it's a sweet April day isn't it?"

"Indeed it is."

"I've missed this."

"I can't even imagine what it's like to be free after so long,"

"To tell you the truth, I don't *feel* free. I don't feel like I've truly escaped all of this, and I think I know why. It's because they still need me." I saw something flash in his eyes.

"That's why they kept you around, isn't it?"

"It's probably the main reason they did. I don't think I can tell you what they need me for though."

"Whatever, lets go somewhere far, somewhere they won't find."

"I'd love that, Corrie."

## Seamark, Ironhall, IZ 144/6/76 (T), Saturday, April 8, 2059, Gemenii Anzhani - *Until the bitter end* -

The clouds roll over a grimy city on a gloomy April night. On the streets, the city sleeps. The light rainfall pours down every window of the west facing walls on the dead street as they call it. On the right side of the road, stands a row of apartment buildings, offices, and everything else you'd imagine in a dying city. The left side, the west facing side looks out into the countryside, broken only by a series of odd buildings.

A night like this wasn't anything out of the ordinary, on the surface. Below the surface, below the air, the streets, the dirt, there I was. Deep into the belly of the beast. I'm sure you know the story by now, yet with the differences of each reflection. A reflection of a reflection, each more distorted than the last. Always the same semblance, but each with their own unique set of flaws that makes things play out differently to one another.

Who you know as Chester, I know as Pepper. Who you know as Claire, I know as Vivian. All of the others are relatively the same, though in each reflection, there are both big and small changes, some which aren't visible to the naked eye. For the purposes of this story, there aren't enough of these changes to be noted before continuing, as most of them present themselves as the story moves on.

It doesn't start at the beginning, it starts at the point of convergence, roughly. After we dug into the sub level he called "Basement 3", after we saw the angel, after we got out, after I watched him die, but before I could get out of there. His voice rang out in my head, those last words to me that night as I ran into the basement. The flurry of emotions didn't stop until I opened my eyes and realized I was halfway through the mech bay towards the tube room and wide wall.

When it hit me that I was completely alone, I stopped dead in my tracks. This was the first time I was down in the basement all on my own without a clear threat of immediate danger, or any sort company for that matter. It felt so hollow and lonely down here, yet I started to get the sinking feeling that I wasn't entirely alone; that something was going to jump out of the darkness and attack me. I walked to catch my breath for a couple of minutes and continued down the way.

The basement looked different then. At first I thought it was just the different perspective, but I saw that things had been moved. It wasn't anything major though, but there were a couple of doorways that had been revealed, the jade metal doors hanging slightly ajar. The dust in the air looking like an odd mist flowing out from the dark rooms. I wanted to peer inside, but something was telling me not to. Ever since I stared into that blue orb in Basement 3, I felt like I had gained a sixth sense.

On my way into the tube room, I almost tripped as I stumbled inside and towards the corner of the room. I slammed my back against the wall and slid down into a seated position. I started to sob uncontrollably, all alone on the concrete floor. The only thing that snapped me out of it was my inner voice telling me to check the time. I felt a shiver rack my body as I stared at the time. 6:30 AM. Thoughts of every possibility ran through my head in that moment, too many to keep track of. The only thing I was certain of was that if something did happen, I'd probably be powerless to stop it. It all bottled up inside me, until I couldn't let it go.

"WHY HIM? WHY PEPPER? WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN ME?" I shouted into the harsh light of the room, the last breath of my scream plunging the room into darkness.

As if it were on cue, the power went out right then and there. The descending tone of all of the machines cutting power sent a wave of fear through my body. Everything was suddenly pitch black and dead silent. The thought of running to the tube and hiding in there crossed my mind, but it felt so far away. I felt safe curled up in a ball in a corner between two concrete walls, though even in my fortress, I wouldn't feel safe for long.

For a while, the silence grew. The absence of all the chaos, stress, and emotions became somewhat peaceful in a sense. My mind started to run though, and I thought that this is what Pepper was seeing. I let out a quiet whimper in response to it. My heart jumped when I realized what I'd done. It was completely silent for a moment, then it wasn't. I thought I heard something off in the distance. I assumed it was an echo from whatever was happening above me, but then I could feel a presence. I slowly raised my hands over my mouth and slowed my breathing to keep quiet as I heard something approach.

The noise started out as a distant sliding noise, followed by a stomp. As it got closer I could feel the vibrations of whatever this thing was taking a step. Its paces were slow and deliberate. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from my left, which is where the wide wall was. It should have been still locked, but that wouldn't make sense because that was where it was coming from. Maybe there were other rooms or hallways around here that Pepper didn't tell me about, places that led in and out of these rooms. All of these questions slowly became drowned out by the imminent threat.

Poom, sssh, poom, sssh, poom, sssh. Step, slide, step, slide, step, slide. It moved around like an injured animal. I had trouble picturing it. An occasional scrape of metal on metal seemed to accompany it, which made me think it was carrying a weapon. As it got closer I could also make out a low breathy noise, like a cry for help. I could feel my entire body shake as it got close to the entrance to the room, and right about where the entrance should be it stopped dead in its tracks.

"Hello?" It spoke out, breaking the silence. Its voice sounded strained, but hauntingly familiar. "Hello? Is anyone there?" To my horror, with every word it got closer and closer to sounding like an exact copy of my voice, sounding indistinguishable in 5 or 6 words. It was hard to keep silent. I was screaming on the inside.

"Someone, is anyone out there? Please. I'm so alone. I'm scared. I'm *horrified."* The accuracy to my voice it spoke in was horrifying. It spoke as if I was crying out in fear. In the pause between its phrases, I heard a set of footsteps. I thought I was imagining them, but then I felt another presence in the room. The beast took another moment to pause, as if waiting for me to respond, and then it continued on.

"So I'm not alone here. Archie? Is that you? Is that you I can *smell*? Is it your fear I can taste? Are those your eyes I'm staring at through the black? Was it something I did? Was it because I ran away from you? I'd forgive you if you told me the truth, the real truth, if you told me that it was *all my fault.* I'd forgive you if you told me you weren't in control. I'd forgive you if you used me to build your angel. I'd forgive you if you killed me."

"..." I could taste the salty tears running down my face. The other one in the room started to speak this time. I could tell because it wasn't from in front of me, it was in my left ear.

"... I know you're there." It spoke in a mimic of Pepper's voice. "I know why you're here, why you ran away. You're scared, scared of me. You're a coward. Don't you know that you can't keep running? Someone's gonna catch you eventually. You're gonna run out of road soon enough. I can feel your fear, I can read your thoughts. I can see you through the darkness, I'm merely part of it. What is it your afraid of? Is it me? Or me? Or how about me?" It started cycling through voices asking the same question. Ashton's, Easton's, Luna's, Vivian's, and then one I hadn't heard before. It was higher pitched and a bit playful and fruity, though it had a taunting inflection. It spoke expressively, and I assumed this was its natural voice, but it too sounded somewhat artificial.

"What is it you're scared of?" The first beast continued on, speaking in the same voice the other was mimicking. It continued on. "Is it me? I'm sure I'm not \*that\* bad if you saw me in the light. If you could see my face." It let out an awful laugh afterwards. I could feel it in my bones. It shook me to the core, but I tried to stay as silent as possible, though I wasn't sure how long I could keep quiet.

"Losing yourself, that's what your afraid of. I know I'm afraid of losing myself. Fading into the night, becoming merely a memory. We're not too different after all, we've been forgotten, abandoned. All of them moved on, all of them seemed to forget, all but one. He's not who you think, but he's the one who didn't forget me. And who could I be? That all depends on your perspective. Am I the one who I sound like, or am I the one staring at you through the darkness?" The second one went on, the two of them mimicking the same voice. It was hard to stay quiet hearing the same voice coming from two sides. The first continued on.

"In that endless sea of darkness, in the void of the night, of this tomb, Open your eyes, embrace it, let it consume you. If you stop hiding, if you come out, I can give you whatever you want. I can give you happiness, I can give you what you seek; the truth." Its previous voice slowly transitioned into a mix of the previous one and mine, and then from a mix of the previous and Pepper's as the other one joined in, the two voices slightly offset. Their words wrapped around me as the tears streamed down my face.

"I can be *you*. I can be a better version of you. I can be what you love, *who* you love. I can be Pepper, I can be whatever you want. I can be your *dream* if you would only OPEN YOUR EYES!" Both voices were much closer this time, but the sudden change in volume didn't cause me to flinch somehow. I wasn't sure if it could see where I was, or if I had been too loud. The uncertainty was killing me. They continued to talk in that same mix in unison, but it sounded much more distorted this time, as if it were an imitation of the two were speaking over each other, as if the voices were fighting for control, the one to the left echoing the one dead center.

"You only have everything to fear. You're not alone here in the dark, in these concrete walls, in this tomb. Think about all the lives they claimed here, think about all the blood on their hands, the death, the destruction. Think how you might not even be the last, heh heh. Doesn't it just TEAR YOU APART INSIDE? Doesn't it EAT YOU UP? ANSWER US COWARD! .. oh, you're cold. You're hurt. What have they done to you? I'm sure we can fix you either way. We'll see you soon." As soon as the two voices finished speaking, I felt a hand reach out and touch mine just before the power kicked back in.

The room before me was empty, not a single sign of life. The floor was still coated in the same layer of dust that had been present before, and the old twin chalk circles were seemingly untouched. I felt more safe with the power back on, but just a little bit more. I still felt so vulnerable, so alone. It was impossible for me to process everything that had just happened, so I didn't. It felt like hours sitting alone in the corner, but it couldn't have been more than minutes.

All I wanted to do in that moment was sit there and cry in that corner. It felt like the only thing I *could* do after all of that. It was almost like everything couldn't be processed; couldn't sit still inside my restless mind. Everything still felt so unreal to me. I thought about what happened to Pepper, the thoughts starting to race again. Everything started bubbling up again; swirling around me, only to be drowned out by a set of distant footsteps, this one a bit more familiar.

"Hello?" The voice was only vaguely familiar at first, but as it got closer I recognized it to be Maverick's. "Are you still down here?" I didn't respond. I wanted to trust him but I thought I couldn't. The time I wasted trying to weigh whether or not I could trust him forced me to stay silent until he came into the tube room.

"Are you in here?" He called out. I didn't respond. He walked up to the machines and inspected them, speaking under his breath as he did, and then he turned around. He looked stunned to see me sitting in the corner, covered in blood and tears. Stunned, but not surprised, as if he expected to find me here. I was able to get a good look at him in the harsh light, and I saw that he was covered in blue blood as well. It was as if he was silently telling me I was right about his relationship to Pepper.

"Get up. You have to go before it comes back."

"How can I trust you?" My voice came out broken and horrified.

"... It came to you didn't it."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry but you need to go. You're going to have to trust me. I know how to hold back the influence of the source, even just for a little while. Please, listen to me before it comes back. I don't want it to become more angry."

"The beast or the influence?"

"Both." He spoke sternly. I got up and turned around to look at the wall behind me. There was a message written just above where I was sitting in what looked like Pepper's blood. I nearly fell back once I read it. *What a tragedy, all alone. Not for long:).* I knew exactly what wrote it, and even such innocuous words sent me shivers. Maverick didn't seem to notice the message, or maybe he didn't even care.

I got up and walked into the tube. I peered at him through the glass as he typed some words on the nearby computer. I saw a look of shame and sadness wash over his face before it was replaced my anger. He quickly turned away and took a few steps back, trying to hold himself back. I couldn't make out what he was trying to say while his back was turned, but if I had to guess it was an apology to me.

That same familiar rushing noise came up all around me and there I was in the small exit room. I could hear the rain pouring outside the little room. I walked out the doors to the outside and screamed into the rain. The rainwater mixed with the tears streaming down my face, washing me clear of Pepper's blood. I sat there in the grass and the mud for minutes, maybe even hours in my own regret and despair, until a thought came up above the rest.

"There might be a way to bring him back..."

Out of a sea of rushing chaos was born a thought that brought me to the library. Through my research, I found answers, and respite. I took out a bunch of books and started to take it all in. I recognized the circles, the symbols, and eventually I figured out a way to bring him back. I copied down all of the notes and diagrams carefully, but eventually I grew too tired to work. So much had happened that I couldn't go without sleep, and against my will I drifted to sleep.

I woke up and saw the basement again. It was as if I were looking through Maverick's eyes though. He leaned against the wall on his way out of the tube room, pausing for a moment before continuing down the hall. As he backtracked, I noticed that other things looked slightly out of place down here, though I couldn't tell if that was from the dream or not. He made it down the hall without issue, but as I saw his red feathery hand reach for the handle, the power cut out.

Darkness enveloped me once again, to the point where I could only see his hands and what was very close to his eyes. He shook the door handle aggressively and banged on it, but it didn't budge. He turned around and wiped his face. I could feel what he was feeling too. Not just the emotions, but everything he touched. I felt the hands across his face and beak, I felt his back hit the door pressing up his tail feathers. He pulled out a rifle and pointed it down the hallway. I could see him shaking.

At first, it was silence. I couldn't even hear his breathing. After a moment though, I could hear it. The same march of the beast, slide, stomp, slide, stomp. I could see the rifle tremble in his hands before he decided to put away. He cupped his hands to his mouth and waited, hoping it would pass him by. It only grew closer though, until it stopped abruptly right in front of him. Though I couldn't see it, I could *feel* it. And then it spoke, mimicking my voice.

"Hello? Is anyone there? Please. Someone."

"..."

"It's so cold down here. I can feel the fitter wind, I can feel them screaming at me from beyond. I can sense it all." The way it managed to perfectly recreate the inflections of fear and anguish in my voice was both impressive and horrifying. It paused for a moment awaiting a reply, but none came. It continued. "I thought I heard someone down here. I thought I heard the door handle shaking. I thought I smelt something, fear? Regret? Loss?"

"..." I could feel his heart skip a beat at the last word.

"There it is, that smell again. It's you isn't it? I know why you left me down here. I know why you *abandoned* me down here. You hate me. You hate me and you fear me. That's why you locked me away, isn't it? That's why you left me behind, left me in the dark, isn't it?" It sounded as if I was screaming and crying at him. "Your silence is deafening. I can hear your heartbeat, I can feel it. I know who it beats for, I know you're afraid of it, as you're afraid of me. I know you. I know you're a coward, I know you're a-"

"What do you want from me? What is it I've done?" Maverick's pained voice echoed through the room.

"I want you to see. I want you to understand. I want you to remember." Its voice changed back to the unfamiliar one from before as it replied to Maverick.

"That voice. Where do I know it from?"

"Your past. You've forgotten, they all have. Except for him."

"..." Maverick paused for a moment. "You spoke to him didn't you?"

"Me?" His voice changed back to the mimic of mine. "Yes. I talked to him."

"Did he respond to you? How do you sound so much like him?"

"He didn't say a word. He was good at keeping quiet, almost too good. I'd heard his voice before when he came down here with Pepper. I watched, I listened, all from the shadows. It gets so lonely down here."

"..." I could sense that Maverick was about to move. He took a couple steps back, but ran into something else behind him. Startled, he jumped forwards and ran right into the larger beast, the older beast. I could feel the dread rise up in his voice even before he spoke. "What? B-but that's impossible!"

"Nothing's impossible." The voice behind him echoed the unfamiliar voice, prompting the other to do the same.

"But he's not down here anymore! Who-you're not from around here are you? You feel.. different."

"Perhaps you could say I'm a wanderer."

"What the h-"

"You. The real you. I can never tell if I'm talking to the real you or not, so let me make this clear."

"..." The two of them started to speak in unison. As they continued, I could feel the larger one place two large, shadow-black paws on his shoulders. I could feel the other place a hand on the top of his head and his back, but I couldn't see them. They both spoke in the same voice, just as they did to me.

"Wake up, wake up." They continued to repeat it, growing louder and louder, until the final line. "SNAP OUT OF IT!" And then, the power went back on. He stood there stunned for a moment, shaking in horror. He looked behind his back and around to make sure he was alone, and then he ran out the door and out of the room, but my point of view didn't follow him, it stayed facing the door as it slammed. I was still in the basement, and the power cut again once I heard the door slam up the steps.

"Finally, alone." The first creature said, in its own voice. It was a deep and menacing one, far louder than the other.

"I thought they would never leave." The second one said, in its own voice. It was more bright, young, and softspoken.

"Now that we can talk to each other, who are you? I do not recognize your presence."

"To be honest, I'm not quite sure who I am as of yet, that is still yet to be discovered. I know who I was though; the two that completed me."

"Two?"

"Two. At once. Their bond was so strong, so powerful that it broke all the rules."

"So you are an angel then?"

"Yes, but not just that. I'm like you too. A mix you could say. In death, the two formed something similar to what you are, and what the one above is, though similar to them."

"I see. So that is why you felt so odd. Familiar, yet unfamiliar. You are not of Sagittarius I assume?"

"I am not, but I can sense three in here are, or what exists of the third."

"Correct."

"Why are you brothers in one place? Shouldn't you all be separated?"

"I could ask you the same question; why here of all places? If you could go anywhere, why to the place you're in the most danger?"

"Danger?"

"Yes. Stay a while, I'm sure you'll find out."

"I was planning on it. I want to see what happens tonight. I can feel it, though I can't see it."

"You're a peculiar one, huh?"

"That's one way to put it."

"You don't say a lot. Why is that?"

"Because someone's listening." Once the words broke its mouth, I woke up. I realized I'd slept too long, and with a final look over of all the books, I prepared myself for the final trip. Whether it be the finale because I would end it that night, or because they would end me that night I didn't care. I was prepared to die, but not just for the cause, not just for Pepper, but for all the victims. Maybe it'd make the fight pointless if the angel was born anyways I thought, or maybe it'd be of benefit.

The angel both as a being and as a concept sparked my curiosity a lot. I thought a lot about it that day, nearly as much as I thought about losing Pepper and bringing him back. I wondered what it'd look like, what it'd do, and whether or not it'd be like the other odd beings trapped down there. The words it spoke to me lingering in my head as I walked through the rain and back to the complex, the words about the tomb. I wasn't going to let those become truthful to me.

Out of the wind and the rain, I crept into the building, a little bit earlier than the first two days. As I made my way inside, I noticed there were chalk circles all over the floors. They looked similar to the ones on the far side of Basement 2. Like I had guessed earlier, these were used to create the angel. What the spell did was rip the soul from the body and transfer it into the angel, through a process of unimaginable pain. The victim has to be living in order for the spell to work; the only reason they kept me alive. The victim doesn't need to be unharmed though. It seemed that either way, this whole mess was going to end tonight.

Starworld was quiet, too quiet. I quickly found out all the doors on the first floor were locked too. I went up cautiously to the second level, expecting there to be an ambush of some kind. The doors on that level were locked too, even the security room, so I had to go all the way up to the third floor in order to start looking for Pepper. Luckily, the computer room was open, and I managed to open all the doors in no time.

I went back down to the second floor and went into one of the side rooms. I ended up in one of the pool areas, the place looking frozen in time. The air was misty and full of a chlorine smell, the particles floating all around illuminated by the moonlight spilling out from the skylight, cast down through a break in the clouds. The reflections of the water's surface were cast all around the room, falling on every surface. It was such a surreal sight to see places like this in the shimmering moonlight.

Rain slowly fell down onto the skylight, the room getting darker as the dark clouds rolled back over the break in the clouds. I watched the aurora of the water on the tile walls slowly fade, reminding me of how fleeting moments of reflection and peace are in this place. Once the room was plunged into darkness, I exited the room and walked back into the hallway. Things felt very different that night. Maybe it was the absence of Pepper that made me feel so much more alone, so much smaller.

From around the second floor and back down to the main level, it seemed like Pepper had just vanished into thin air. I knew he had to be here *somewhere*, either dead or alive. I'm sure they wouldn't let him leave this place. As I neared one of the maintenance stairwells though, I heard a faint shuffling noise from behind one of the nearby benches. I cautiously walked up to it and looked over it, and there he was. I jumped onto him in a giant hug as tears of joy filled my eyes. We were both very surprised to see each other.

"Why did you come back here? There's nothing else to do here," He said, his voice filled with excitement.

"I thought you died. I was going to bring you back."

"Woah really? I-I didn't think you cared that much, or even had that knowledge." I could see him start to tear up.

The two of us talked to each other quietly for a while. I didn't care that all that research was in vein now that we'd been reunited. I had a bad feeling that it was going to come to use in some way though, and no matter how much I tried to brush it off it never went away. He continued on about cutting power to Basement 3, but before I could respond, the thought of the darkness rolling over the pool room came back into mind. As he stopped talking for a moment, I thought I heard a ringing coming from nearby.

"Do you hear that ringing or is it just me? It's really quiet,"

"I don't hear anything,"

"Oh fuck."

Before I turned to look down the hall, I already knew what was about to happen. The others surrounded the both of us, the two of us standing up to fight them off. I noticed a jagged piece of a broken pipe laying underneath the bench by my feet, a suitable weapon. We stood back to back with three on either side. I stared down Vivian, Mila, and Ash who all stood on my side, my hands clenched around the pipe in my hands. The other three were on his side.

Ash jumped towards me and though I tried to fight him off, he was far too strong. I smacked him in the face with the pipe, but as I went for another swing he grabbed it from my hands and tossed me down the hall. I ran back towards him and grabbed his legs as he was about to lunge at Pepper, effectively tripping him. Maverick came upon the fight between Vivian, Mila, and Pepper, and came up behind me and picked me up off the ground. I looked up at him, into his eyes. Past his enraged expression, I saw regret, I saw guilt, I saw trauma, I saw love. I think he was trying to keep me safe, expecting what was to come.

"You don't have to do this," Pepper said.

"Yes we do, you betrayed us!" Luna shouted.

"There was a betrayal, but not from me. Don't think I've forgotten what you've done. All of you." I could see Maverick slowly realize what was about to happen.

"You know damn well why he did! Was 179 too low for you? Not enough bloodshed? Not enough death? Not enough decay? Not enough horror?" I shouted. They all stared at me, and I swear I saw the humanity return to their faces, even just for a brief moment.

"Don't do this please, let me handle it. I can't stay *trapped* like this anymore." Pepper spoke, his tone assuring and calm.

"I can't. I can't leave you. Not after all we've done, after all we've fought for." Something changed in his eyes, something returning.

"Gemenii, there's something I want to tell you. Maybe not now, but once I'm free." He said, the fight in his eyes burning stronger than ever. A lot happened very quickly.

"Do it!" Maverick shouted. He turned across the hall and stared at Ash who was about to come at him. A long knife was clutched in Ash's hands as he looked in disbelief, almost as if he was daring Pepper to come at him. Pepper stood as if he was reading himself for something, and in a moment he started running at him, two blade-like appendages shooting out of his forearms as he glided through the air, landing gracefully behind Ash.

"Believe it or not, I don't want to do this." Pepper spoke.

"Good thing I want to," Ash spoke coldly. The two begun to fight, and although it looked like Ash was quicker on the first hit, but it quickly became apparent that Pepper was faster. He kicked Ash across the hall, Mila lunging towards him. He grabbed her wrist and flipped her on her back. He lowered the blade end of his arm for a moment, but he pulled it back up to a rested position. He looked around the room at the others, then back to me and Maverick.

He didn't notice Ash coming up from behind him though, now holding some kind of modified taser. I tried to warn him of it, but it was in vein. Pepper managed to turn around in time to see what Ash was about to do, but by the time he realized what it was, the two barbs had already left their chamber. Both of them hit him on the right torso, sending a current through his body. He yelped in pain, but it didn't seem to stop him too much.

"Shit," Ash said. Pepper stood up and glared at him. Before he could move though, Luna and Easton fired theirs in unison, hitting him in two points on his back. It sent him to the ground. He laid there for a moment, and then he got onto one knee. In a swift movement, he pulled the two tasers behind his back out of their hands and brought them towards him, cutting the wires of all six barbs in a flash. His breathing was heavy, and he was staring down Ash, likely not noticing Vivian helping Mila to her feet.

"Why can't you just stay down?" Ash said.

"Stay down? I've *stayed down* for too long. This ends tonight. I'm not going to go down so easily." Pepper's voice was pained and full of rage, but now it was clear this rage was untamed. He wasn't holding back anymore.

"It's life or death, Pepper." Ash replied.

"Don't call me that." He replied. Pepper leaped towards Ash, and as he did, Ash shouted "NOW!". Mila, Ash, Easton, and Luna all readied themselves as Pepper ran down the hall towards Ash and Vivian. It all happened in slow motion. Luna and Easton ran behind him as Vivian shot her taser, hitting him right between the eyes. All the others shot theirs in unison, Mila shooting both of hers at once. The hallway filled with light and screams, until a loud thud cleared the air.

It was really quiet for a moment, a long moment. I felt Maverick's arms tighten around me as he moved in closer to where Pepper laid on the ground. He twitched for a bit, and then nothing for about 10 seconds. Everyone was holding their breath. His arms slowly begun to move though, sweeping underneath his torso and pushing him off the ground onto one knee. Ash was also on kneeling on the ground, and Pepper stared deep into his eyes, his breathing becoming heavy and labored.

"Is.. that.. your best shot?" Pepper said, pausing through deep shaky breaths.

"How the hell did you get so resilient? That should have killed you!" Ash said in disbelief.

"Have you forgotten who I am?" Pepper replied.

"No, these things are meant for.. anomalies like you." Ash continued. "Good thing we have a lot of these," Pepper cut the wires in his front side, but before he could swing his arm backwards, the others had a taser in each hand, each firing in sync as if on cue to his movements. He stayed standing for a moment. crying out in pain before collapsing again. This time he stayed down for a bit longer. He was still breathing, but his breaths were shallow and sparse. For a moment, I thought he was in a coma, but then he started to get up again. Everyone looked on in shock, especially Ash.

"How. . ." Luna said softly.

"Hate.. is strong. . . Hate is very strong. . . But love, love is stronger." He spoke shakily, staring up at me and Maverick.

"But not strong enough." Ash spoke coldly. He lunged towards Pepper. As he did, Pepper turned around and slashed his chest, but he got caught my his blade. He turned around at me and Maverick, sensing what was about to happen. "This is the end, I can't keep fighting like this. It's not worth it. Leave me, I'll see you on the other side." He smiled at us, his face covered in blood and tears. I felt my heart drop.

"NO!" I screamed in protest, but it was far too late to do anything about it. We were too late. Everything started to happen in slow motion again, but this time I was moving slowly too, far slower than all of them. I was the most powerless to stop it. Before either of us could react, Mila, Ash, and Vivian pulled their wires towards them and pulled him across the hall, and then it all played out. I screamed and cried nothing came out, as if I was in a nightmare. I wished so hard that it could just be a bad dream; I wished so hard I almost believed it, but the cold reality gripped me tight. Maverick cried out in pain. I could hear the agony and helplessness in his voice. I knew exactly how it felt because I was feeling the same thing. I tried to close my eyes to get away from it, but Maverick held them open and forced me to stare at the carnage before me.

"I'm so sorry. You have to look. You have to see it if you even want a chance to bring him back." He spoke coldly.

"..." I couldn't say anything as I watched them tear into him like wild animals.

"Look at what they've done, stare at it. Embrace it. Commit it to memory. This is the trigger, this is what it does. This is the effect of it. A curse, a horrible, horrible curse. Rage, hatred, destruction. Destruction breathes creation, the creation of fear, despair, loss, indignation, rage, hope. You don't want to be a part of this. I know you went down there, I know you tried to see it. Stay away." His tone was still grim.

"I don't understand it." I replied.

"It's nature at its most raw. Tunnel vision to the end of the road. The angel's light shines from within you. If I can turn my head and vomit at the sight then I have not shielded myself from its grasp, I have merely played into my own cowardice. If I can do something about it, I've won, but I can't. Maybe I'm being held back from acting, maybe I can't. It works in mysterious ways, like everything."

The room fell quiet, eerily quiet. Vivian looked at the blood on her hands and ran off somewhere sobbing. She'd realized what she had done, and all the others were too, but not in the same way. I could feel the tone changing in the room, and a thought popped into my head. If they hated him this much, why did they keep him alive all this time? I was starting to feel the rage come on, but I didn't want to be heard, so I quietly asked Maverick, who said it out loud.

"He's right, why were we keeping him alive?" Maverick shouted. The room fell silent.

"We needed him." Ash replied coldly.

"I thought you were saving him for your angel?" Maverick replied.

"I don't even know if that'd work! Why would we ever do that?" Ash said. Sensing the oncoming fight, I knew I had to act fast while they were all distracted yelling at each other. All the wires had been cut in the carnage so I was able to lift up his body and run down into the basement. The adrenaline of the moment gave me the strength to pick him up, far more than I'd normally be able to muster. I kicked down the door to the stairwell and ran into Basement 2, hearing the door slam shut behind me.

Once I got to the tube room, I laid him on the ground and took out my books. I noticed there was a piece of chalk resting on the concrete shelf on the right side of the room, and I grabbed it and started to replicate one of the circles in one of the books as accurately as possible. I had initially planned to do a two-ring spell which required another object to revive a recently deceased soul, but I couldn't find anything so I had to settle with a normal revival spell. Surprisingly, it seemed to be very similar in most attributes.

After it was completed, I laid his body in the center of the circle. His blue blood covered my body as if it were mine. If the spell were to be successful, it described that the victim would be unconscious for a time, but they would eventually wake up. I didn't want to think about what would happen if it wasn't, but I knew too well. I held the book with blood on my hands and read out the incantation with tears in my eyes.

"Though the body has been destroyed, the soul is blazing and live. Lift up the soul, repair this vessel. Of the ashes of decay, bring new life, rise up from the flames. From destruction, breathe creation, mend this broken body with these ashes, Give them life again!" I smacked my hands to the ground in a kneeling position, placing them with one hand in front of both of Pepper's feet.

I could start to feel the burning energy beginning to surge through my body, even before the spell was complete. It started as a small tingling sensation in my hands, then to a constant stinging in both of my arms as I kept them planted on the ground. It felt like a thousand needles were swarming my body; the force of a thousand angry bees judging my every action. The last part of the incantation wasn't written as essential, but it is said to give the spells more power. It was a final rite that I would add on myself, out of book.

"YOU CAN TAKE MY ARMS, YOU CAN TAKE MY LEGS, YOU CAN TAKE MY EYES, YOU CAN TAKE MY HEART OR ANYTHING ELSE, BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE HIM FROM ME!"

As I finished the incantation, a white light swelled from the outline of the chalk circle, and then everything went white as a wall of noise embodied me. I knew it was working because the pain was increasing. Like a cancer it spread from my arms to the entirety of my body, growing and growing. I kept screaming, each gasp coming out a broken shriek over the constant drone of noise and energy that emerged from the floor and flooded the room.

Pictures and memories started to fade in over the chaos. The constant flashing of images approached like a swarm of hornets through the white field. At first, they were all distant and faded flashes, but in time they became more clear. These were Pepper's memories. I saw random moments flash by, moments of darkness, stillness, and then the atrocities of Basement 2. Images of everything that happened whirled around me, flashing in my face. I felt like I was drowning in an ocean of terror. Amidst the flashing images, I saw two people I didn't recognize. They kept appearing after every couple of images, but I had no clue who they were or why I was seeing them.

Everything remained constant, the visions of everything flying by and the feeling that my body was on fire. The pain was almost impossible, but I knew I had to held on. I held on for dear life; for him, for them, for everyone, for everything. The world started to fade, but I tried to push through it. It felt as if I were running up a hill through a valley of light. I kept pushing and pushing, nearly tearing my vocal cords in a primordial yell. Everything grew into a crescendo more intense than anything I could bear, and then nothing.

Impossibly bright and bathed in light to complete darkness. Impossibly loud to deathly silent. I was in the room again, but it looked like the power had cut out again. I wasn't sure how long it all took. Though it felt like hours, it couldn't have been more than minuets. It took my eyes a while to adjust to the darkness from the blinding white. Once they did adjust, I saw a bloody body laying on the ground.

There he was, laying on the ground unconscious. He looked roughly the same as he did before, his body seemingly mostly intact. His shorts were still resting where they should be, and the tattoos on his arms were intact. He was wearing other accessories too. He was wearing a necklace with a bright blue gemstone inside of it that seemed to flicker. It reminded me of the trigger in the basement. There was an ornate crown atop his head with a halo sticking out from the back. There was also a belt with a short cape coming down from behind it. All three were made of gold. Symbols from the ritual circles were tattooed on his fists as well.

He didn't seem to budge, no matter how hard I tried to shake him awake. I thought that maybe I'd need to wake him up with something, and then I remembered the pool on the second floor. Using water to wake him up seemed like a good idea, but I decided to use water from one of the bathrooms instead of pool water which would probably have germs and chemicals in it. Now that I had a plan, I hesitated for a moment and then ran off into the dark to get some water.

Once I got to the first floor washroom, I realized it was locked, and so were all the other doors on that floor. I breathed a heavy sigh and ran up the main stairwell back up to the third floor. I don't know why they didn't lock that one this time, maybe they didn't know the door would lock as it's closed? It didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I didn't dwell on it. I knew they'd be looking for me, so I knew I had to be very cautious.

Just like before, I went through the motions of unlocking all the doors and the one at the wide wall which had all been locked. After that, I remembered what he said about Basement 3. I had to reboot the power to the first two basement levels first in order for it to work for some reason. It took a while to figure it out, but I got the hang of it and restored power to all three basements. I thought I heard someone outside, so I decided to use the maintenance vents to travel.

Luckily for me, there was a screwdriver nearby which allowed be to open the grate easily. I made my way around the level to the closest washroom, and kicked the grate open. The opening was right over a shelf so there was an easy way down. There were some bottles under the sink, so I grabbed one and filled it up with water. I tried to put it in my pocket dimension, but I realized it wasn't working for some reason. I didn't have enough time to dwell on that though, so I shoved it in my back pocket, sealed the lid, and made my through the maintenance tunnels until I got down to the first floor.

I kicked out the grate and swung down from it, landing on the soft carpet just before the doors of the main entrance. I could hear the storm brewing outside as it pounded on the glass. As I got up, I heard the doors swing open behind me. A man walked through, noticing me right as he came in. He walked towards me, and I told him everything that happened prior. Although he agreed to help me, I couldn't shake the fact that something was off about him, *really* off.

He spoke nicely towards me, but I had a really, really bad feeling about him. He seemed to emit a really dark energy that I only noticed when he stopped talking to me. It was as if there was a large dark cloud that followed him everywhere he went. There seemed to be no sign of corruption, but that only made him feel so much stranger to me. It was some kind of unreal quality about him that I couldn't quite place at the time.

"Well, I'm sorry that happened to you," He said in a strange tone. "But it's not the worst yet I'm sure," Once he finished, I ran back down to the basement.

As I got to the stairwell though, I heard another voice. I looked back from behind one of the long benches and plants and saw another man talking to the one who just came in. He was seemingly a friend of the man, and I assumed they came here together for some reason. I couldn't really make out what they were saying because their voices were quiet, but when I really paid attention, I could piece it together enough to make sense.

"You really didn't have to come with me, you know?"

"There are two reasons I decided to tag along. One of them is because I'm rather interested to see what Kiff's up to. I know you two work together, I just want to see what it is he's making you do *this* time."

"Didn't I already tell you?"

"You talked it over to me before we left, but I want to see it for myself."

"I see. What's the other reason if you don't mind telling me?"

"...Revenge."

Before I could continue eavesdropping, I remembered about Pepper in the basement. I crept towards the door, opened it and slowly closed it behind me. Once I got into the stairwell I sprinted all the way back down to the mech bay and ran through the empty hallway once again. I swung through the doorway into the tube room to see him still laying there, cold on the bloodstained concrete floor. I ran over to him, lifted his head and poured the cold water on it, hoping for something to happen.

I waited one.. two.. three.. and nothing. His body was limp, but I could tell me was still breathing, though very slowly and in shallow breaths. I was worried he might be in a coma or something worse, so I started to panic a bit. My mind started racing again, and I couldn't think of anything else that wouldn't be too dangerous. I felt so useless in the moment. All I could do was hug him and cry into his shoulder. "Wake up, please," I repeated. I fell silent for a moment, feeling the tears stream down my face and into his body. It fell quiet for a moment, and then I started to feel something.

He started *moving* again. His eyes flickered open, dull and confused at first but coming to life and attention as they tracked onto mine. He was ecstatic to see me, and we wrapped each other up in a giant hug. Reunited at last, I was worried the spell wouldn't work. Even though it had only been a short while, after everything that happened, it felt like years. After a moment, he placed two arms on my shoulders and spoke into my eyes.

"I can't believe you did it! You saved my life, I don't think there's any way I can properly thank you Gemenii," He said, his speech was interrupted by sniffling. We shared a nice moment together, despite everything. It's strange how after so much pain, a moment can still be shared. It's strange how even in a concrete room I can feel at peace, even though I'm covered in the blood of my best friend. Though I didn't want the moment to end, it was gone too soon. I knew we had to get out of here.

We walked up to the stairwell at the entrance to the machine bay, but it was locked. Luckily, the maintenance stairwell at the wide wall was not locked, which seemed to suggest it wasn't connected to the building's security system. The current objective was to get to Basement 1 to open the doors so we could get out of here. As we walked towards the center though, I started to get that sinking feeling again as I remembered the two men who came in. I didn't know why, but I felt like Pepper was in danger.

Once I brought it up to him, he seemed more concerned about me being able to find a way out. I told him I'd be fine and that I'd come back for him, and he in return said once the coast was clear he'd watch me on the cameras from the security room. He spotted a good hiding place near the computer room, and with a final hug, I went ahead and unlocked all the doors. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do other than try to secure a way out, but fate would have other plans.

As I made my way through the maze towards the stairwell, I came to the long straight path that led to one of the doors to the upper levels. As I made my way down the path, I heard footsteps running behind me. I turned around to see Easton turning the corner. He tried to jump onto me but I crouched and he landed just behind me. He got up, panting like dog on the hunt. He punched me to the ground before I could react and stood over me with an odd look on his face.

He was about to say something, but then he looked up. I craned my head back to see what it was, and there was the man from earlier. He made a quiet thump as he landed gracefully having climbed over one of the panels of the maze walls. He wore an eerie smile on his face as he approached. Easton stood still and watched him walk over to me. I couldn't tell if he was surprised, scared, or both.

"You wanna get the first shot?" Easton said, holding his knife out to him.

"I've got my own," He said, the eerie grin fading away for a moment as he stared down at me.

I thought he was going to kill me, but then he looked back at Easton. I could see the fear in Easton's eyes as he realized what was going on. The man threw the knife and out of the handle came a rope that he used to pull himself towards him. He landed on top of Easton, the rope making a loud hiss and snap as it returned to its chamber in the knife he pulled out of Easton's shoulder. He pinned Easton against the panel wall, but before he stabbed again, he saw I was covering my eyes.

"KEEP LOOKING!" He shouted.

Easton punched him in the face and tried to fight him off, but it was in vein. I tried to look away from the carnage when he continued, but I couldn't. It felt as if someone was holding my eyes open; forcing my head to stare at the scene unfolding before me. He didn't stop when I told him to, only when he was finished. He turned to look at me again, and then entered the stairwell, splattered in Easton's bright orange blood. Once he slammed the door, the room was plunged into silence.

"I'm sorry. . ." A weak voice called out. It was Easton. I walked over to him and held his hand. They were so much larger than mine.

"I'm so s-sorry, Gemenii." His voice was weak.

"It's not your fault, you couldn't control it." I replied.

"I tried to fight it, but I couldn't. I-I'll never be like them. I failed." He started to cry a bit.

"Easton, listen to me. I know if you could help it, you would have tried to prevent this mess. You can't blame yourself for everything,"

"You're just like him, huh?" He said, his brilliant blue eyes wavering with tears.

"Like who?" I said. I noticed he looked up again. There was someone else here, someone I hadn't seen before.

"Cherry." He could barely lift his right arm to gesture to the ghost standing in the hall. It was another deer, just like Easton. The two looked similar, the same blue eyes and bright red hair, though Easton wore it longer and wasn't styled. I assumed that this was Easton's younger brother. "Are you real?" He said.

"As long as there's hope, I'm alive in the heart." He smiled at us.

"Will we meet out there, wherever it is?" Easton spoke quietly.

"Yes. Kept you waiting, huh?" He said with a cheeky smile on his face.

"It's been too long, Cherry. I miss you." He said.

"Do not weep. You won't feel this for too long." He walked over to the two of us and gave Easton a hug. I saw a smile envelop Easton's face for the first time in these past three days, and then I felt his pulse go away. I didn't expect to get as emotional as I did. He'd tried to kill me, but he was still a person. I still held onto his left hand, even as it went limp. Cherry let go of him and then looked me in the eyes.

"Do not give up. There is always hope." He said. I turned to Easton and laid him gently on the concrete. I gently closed his eyes and then stood up. The ghost gave me a nod and then slowly floated up into the ceiling, waving goodbye as he did. I'll never forget the smile he had on his face. I recognized that smile, the look of being reunited. I couldn't hold back the tears, and I sat there for a moment, still grasping Easton's hand.

The silence was broken by the thought that I had to warn the others. I ran to the stairwell, but not before picking up the knife and holster belt that Easton had left behind. It felt wrong to steal them off of a corpse, but I felt like it's what he would have wanted me to do. I attached it and headed up the stairs cautiously. I expected to see someone when I entered back to the main part of the building, but it was eerily silent.

I held my left hand over the knife in case someone was ready to come up on me. I continued slowly down the hall, carefully placing each step to be as quiet as possible, and then I heard a door closing. Someone else was here. By now I was able to recognize the footstep patterns of mostly everyone else, and I was able to somewhat guess who was approaching just by their footsteps. It wasn't accurate sometimes, but it worked well enough in most situations.

Before she turned the corner, I knew it was Mila coming down the hall. Instead of trying to hide from the others like I was used to, I wanted to try and warn her about the man that came in. She clearly came after hearing the door close judging by how she walked with a purpose. She must have spotted me behind the bench before I could try and talk to her though. She grabbed me by the arm and threw me on the ground.

"WAIT! Before you kill me, you have to know there's someone else here, and he's mad!" I saw her face turn from anger to realization and shock as she saw the orange stains on my clothes and face.

"What?"

"He was in the basement. I couldn't save Easton." I could feel my voice breaking from desperation.

"I pretty much gathered that. Where is he now?" She said. Her voice sounded more angered than shocked.

"I'm not sure, he went up stairs before me. You have to get out though, it's too dangerous here."

"I can't leave the others behind. I'll kill him myself if Easton couldn't. Like I trust your judgement anyways."

"Please you have to bel-" My words were cut off by another's.

"You're going to do what now?" It was Him. He approached from the left of us, wearing the same eerie grin on his face as he did in the basement. We both turned to look at him, Mila looking him up and down. She chuckled a bit, and then replied.

"I remember you. I'm sure you remember this place enough to want to come back, huh?" She spoke in a sarcastic tone.

"I didn't expect any of you to remember me, but I suppose it's a good thing."

"I've got the memory of an elephant. I wouldn't forget someone like *you* anyways, both of you." She said glancing back to me for a moment before continuing. "Did you think none of us would pick up on that?" She spoke like she was interrogating him.

"I guess I underestimated how easy it was to pick up on," He said. I wasn't exactly sure what they were talking about, but I had a feeling it was his aura, or whatever was causing that aura of his. As they talked about it, I realized it wasn't too different from that of the others.

"Maybe we're not so different after all, huh?" Mila said.

"Let's cut the crap. I'm sure you can tell I came here for a reason." He said, glaring at me. "If you want to kill me, then go ahead." The grin on his face had gone away; his tone was dead serious now.

"Before I do, I wanna ask one question." She spoke through gritted teeth.

"Ask away."

"Why? Why come back? Why kill Easton?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" He spoke with what sounded like genuine confusion.

"No. I'm curious."

"Vengeance." As soon as he spoke, they both pulled out their knives and started to fight. The two went at it for a bit, and even though it was a stalemate for a while, it was clear Mila was getting pretty tired. She moved pretty fast, but it was clear to me she was looking for a way out. She managed to kick him which restored the distance between them, and in an instant she pulled out the same kind of taser they all used on Chester earlier. Seeing it gave me a shiver.

"That's all you've got? Not even a gun? Just a taser? You think that-" His taunts were cut off by the two barbs hitting his body. They both hit him in the torso, one hitting higher than the other. It seemed to stun him for a second, and then he started shouting. He fell forwards and onto his hands and knees and continued shouting bloody murder. It didn't continue for much longer though, and he started to seethe in anger.

Mila sneered at him as he stared up at her. He shakily pulled his right arm towards one of the covered wires, but before he could grasp one of them, she put both hands on the taser and yanked then towards her, pulling him along with them but freeing the barbs from his torso in the process. It brought him close enough to her for her to kick him in the face. He got up pretty quickly though and in the time it took her to ready another one, he grabbed her arm.

He stared her dead in the eyes and broke her arm at the wrist. She let go of the taser and he snatched it from her hands and turned it towards her. He hesitated for a moment and then dropped it. I was kind of surprised he didn't shoot her, but he probably had his own way of doing things. He grabbed her by the neck and pinned her against the wall. He brought up his knife but by his reaction, it didn't land where he wanted it to. He killed her a bit too quickly than he'd like to, but that didn't stop him from tearing into her like he did to Easton. Again, I couldn't look away. It felt worse now that I knew what was coming.

All of it he did holding her by the neck with his left hand. He worked with the technique and efficiency of a slaughterhouse worker, all with the same stone-cold focus. He didn't even say a word while he did it, the silence and tension only being broken by the loud and slightly wet thump of him letting her corpse fall. He turned around and stared at me, but before he could fully bend down and say something to me, Luna walked down the hall. She took one look at the scene and immediately knew what was up. She didn't take any time to mourn her friend, she only prepared herself for a fight.

"Well, look who decided to join the party." He said. His voice was a mix of snark and seriousness.

"I see you've come with a purpose, huh? You two are not so different it seems," She spoke, gesturing to me with the hand she held her knife in.

"You're not the first to make that comparison." He said.

"Probably won't be the last, Ash loves to talk big, but I won't let that happen. I'm guessing you're here for revenge, so why don't I take some revenge too. You think I wouldn't notice my boyfriend's blood on the kid? You think I'm just gonna let two murders slide?" She said, her tone rising.

"Seems like you let plenty of other murders slide, how much exactly?"

"That information's classified, you'll never know." She spoke snarkily.

"Not for long," I said quietly. He heard but she didn't. He glanced back to be for a second and then fixed his eyes back onto Luna.

"I've heard about your secrecy. That's one of the reasons I came, to see it for myself. I won't have enough time to enjoy it while I'm giving your floors a knew paint job though." His voice was a bit deeper than before when he was speaking.

"Well you're going to either let them die or try to pull them from my bloody hands." The two pulled out their weapons and begun to fight, Luna lunged at him first. The two were an even match, just like him and Mila. She wasn't as fast as Mila, but they were going on for a stalemate. For about a minute they stayed silent, each locked onto the other and countering the other's movements perfectly. After that though, they started to talk in between swings at each other.

"Do you have regrets?" He said in a cold tone.

"What could I regret?" She said. "All of that stuff I did for a reason. It's not your fight anyways, so I don't know why you want to force yourself into it."

"It's innocent blood on your hands! All to build your angel."

"That's not the only thing, but that's not important."

"I take you wouldn't tell me your other reasons, not even in a deathbed confession like Easton's. I know your type, you've let the darkness fully control you."

"We're not as different as you think. I can almost *smell* it off you. I recognize that aura." She seemed to hit a nerve. He went silent for moment and the two of them pulled apart from each other, each waiting for the other to catch their breath. It was weird seeing how they were giving the other a fair chance, but I assumed he was just drawing things out. During the intermission, Luna decided to change her weapon of choice to something else.

"This is taking too long." She said as she slowly pulled out a fire axe. The man got an odd look on his face as if he was trying to remember something, then it shifted to anger.

"That axe. . ." She looked at him confused. "I've seen you use it before. It wasn't *you* but it was you. I saw it in my dream last night."

"Dream? Why would you care so much about dreams?" She said, almost sarcastically.

"I'm very in-tune with my dreams, most people aren't. They tell me everything." He spoke with earnest.

"And what was I doing in this dream?" She asked in a sassy tone.

"I'll show you." He said in a grave tone. He jumped onto her and tackled her to the ground before she could even react. As she fell, she let go of the axe and in a split second realized her error. He snatched it up and held it in his hands with one foot on her chest and the other planted on the ground just beneath her right arm. "Grab her arm." He commanded. At first I didn't move, but then he shouted at me again to do it.

I came over to him and knelt beside her. It felt like I was being dragged along against my will. I held her hand, but in a reassuring way rather than the way of pulling her arm. It held it in place enough though. He repositioned himself and stared down at Luna while bringing the axe far above his head. He didn't say a single word, but his look was enough to tell a thousand. He brought it down hard onto her arm, freeing it from her body.

The action of it sent be back against the bench where I continued to watch in horror at the events unfolding before me. The sky blue blood was all over my clothes, covering some of the bits of deep red and bright orange from Mila and Easton. Even after all that, Luna continued to taunt him. I wasn't sure why she would continue to taunt him, unless she wanted to die. All the taunting did was give him more of a reason to continue.

Luna pulled out a knife with her left hand but he grabbed her arm and forced it into her torso. She fell back a bit from the impact, but he slammed her against the wall and pulled it out and pushed it back in a couple more times. He let go of her and she slid down, but then she got up again. He kicked her in the stomach and she hit the ground on her back. She laughed and stared up at him as he slowly walked over to her.

"I'll ask you one more time, do you have any regrets?" He said in a cold tone.

"Maybe a few, but I can stay true to myself with what I've done. My only regret is that I couldn't finish that angel in time. I wanted to see the anguish on his face-" Before she could finish her sentence, he brought up his leg and stomped on her head. The light blue blood sprayed out in all directions like a paint bomb. I sat there horrified as he slowly walked up to me. I thought he was going to kill me, but he just wanted to talk.

"You remind me a lot of myself. When I was younger, before I realized how harsh this world is. You're like a beacon of hope in a barren sky, but as much as you remind me of myself, you remind me of someone else too. Someone I despise." He stared me dead in the eyes, and then walked to the right. I heard a door slam shut behind him and then silence for a moment. Right as I got up though, I heard a nearby sound.

"Hello?" I called into the darkness. I heard it again and I looked to the right to see the lid coming off of a large garbage bin that was standing beside the wall next to a bench. I watched as Maverick cautiously popped his head out. He looked very relieved to see me. He motioned for me to come over, and I quietly walked over to him. I never would have guessed that he was so close by listening to all of it unfold just as I had.

"Hey. I heard your warning, and I'm going to get the fuck out of here, but before I do I have one request." He spoke in a hushed tone.

"What is it?" I replied in a similar tone.

"Can you be my ears?" He said, producing what looked like an odd bracelet.

"Is that a wire?" I asked.

"Yes." He said, helping me attach it to my upper bicep to a point where it wasn't noticeable. We thanked each other and I watched as he exited the bin and walked towards the basement to go through the far exit. I hesitated for a minute and then I decided to go upstairs to try and find the other two to warn them. Seeing how one

Jackrabbit cameo woooooo