Sasha lay sprawled across her rented condo bed, blinds half-closed, the TV muttering static nonsense in the background. The world had gone on after Gallagher Street's near-destruction, but not without obsession. The story had morphed into a myth, a meme, a mystery—dissected by millions of strangers online.
Her fingers scrolled through TikTok. Videos flashed by: blurry footage of Gallagher Street, edits of "the boy," AI-generated recreations of Wrath, and eerie musical overlays of news clips. Then she saw it—one video stood out.
"My full theory on the Gallagher Street disappearances—unfiltered. Trust me, you haven't heard this version."
The username read @venicewell. Sasha sat up, her stomach dropping.
Venice's face filled the screen—she was young, early 20s maybe, with ink-black eyeliner, spiky hair dyed a deep crimson, and a voice like she was whispering into your brain.
"The 'Boy' isn't dead. He never was. Something was taken from that morgue. And if you look closely at the seismic activity logs from Gallagher Street last week—there was movement. Underground."
Sasha clicked her profile—hundreds of videos, all deep-dives, all sharp, paranoid, scarily accurate. This girl knew everything.
She messaged her instantly.
Sasha: hey. we need to talk. in person.
Venice responded in under five minutes.
Venice: is this real?? you're THE Sasha?Sasha: come to Greenland. I'll explain.Venice: I'm packing right now.
Venice sat rigidly in the plane's window seat, fingers clutching the armrest. Through the oval glass, the clouds below parted to reveal the endless white of Greenland.
Then she saw it.
A dark swirl far below the horizon—an unnatural tornado building over what looked like a desert in the middle of a frozen landscape. Her skin crawled.
She dialed Sasha on WhatsApp, hands trembling.
"There's… there's a tornado building near Gallagher Street. In a desert. Sasha, do you hear me? This isn't normal—"
Before she could say more, turbulence rattled the cabin violently. The plane dipped. Screams erupted around her. The engines whined. It felt like something was pulling the aircraft downward, like gravity had shifted.
But then it steadied.
They landed safely. Just barely.
Venice ran out, hailed the first taxi she saw, and gave Sasha's address.
Sasha's condo was small and cluttered. Toff and Sheriff Jasper Wood were already there. As Venice walked in, Sasha rushed up and hugged her.
"You're real," Venice said. "You're really her."
"You too. Thanks for coming."
They sat together, coffee steaming between them as Sasha poured truth after truth: about Lukas. Michael Harrington. Wrath. Marque. The machine. Hush-Mama. The cursed shop. Every horror.
Jasper added what he knew from the morgue break-in. "Two staff members gone. Lukas's body disappeared. No leads. But we know... someone wanted him back."
Toff frowned, his gold-plated Desert Eagle peeking slightly from beneath his jacket, gleaming like a silent promise of violence. He adjusted his belt, eagle medallion catching the light. "We need to find that bunker. Whatever they were trying to do... they're in over their heads."
Venice was silent for a moment. Then she stood.
"Let's go."
The three of them—Sasha, Venice, and Toff—crept toward the abandoned Gallagher complex by foot. The snow had melted unnaturally fast around it. There was no security.
The restricted zone was empty. Structures warped and scorched. Vegetation was dead or twisted. The ground was cracked as if something beneath had clawed its way up.
They found the bunker—a heavy steel hatch with no external power.
Locked tight.
Toff tried shooting it.
Nothing.
Then came the sounds.
From beneath them—screams.Bangs. Metal snapping.
They froze. Someone—or something—was still down there.
Below, inside the bunker:
Bryan Madrigal slammed his fists against the security panel. "Come on, come on! Open the damn door!"
The remaining scientists gathered behind him. Ephraein, Herbert, and Bleu were drenched in sweat and fear, bloodied from the earlier explosion. The pipes overhead hissed. The lights were dead. Emergency solar nodes flickered on and off.
Then Lukas appeared.
At first, just a shadow in the hallway.
Then a face—bloated, pale, eyes glossed over, veins black and pulsing.
He slammed his head into the glass partition.
Once.
Twice.
Each hit cracked it more.
Bleu screamed. Ephraein backed away.
CRASH.
The glass gave in.
Lukas lunged forward with a jaw unhinged like a serpent, mouth gaping and filled with hundreds of uneven, jagged, childlike teeth—as if ripped from other victims.
Bryan tried to run.
Too slow.
Lukas grabbed him by the wrist, skin melting beneath the touch. Bryan screamed, begging for help.
"HELP ME! HELP—"
Lukas dragged him into the dark. The hallway echoed with Bryan's shrieking. Then—
CRUNCH.
His head was twisted backward, spine snapping like a branch. Lukas gnawed at his skull, peeling layers like an onion.
Blood soaked the floor.
Herbert, gagging, slammed a broken computer terminal into Lukas. Ephraein threw a keyboard, a toolbox, even a severed cable. Bleu screamed and kicked at a machine in desperation—and it clicked open.
A secret passage.
"Here!" she screamed. "GO!"
They dove inside, just as Lukas turned his bleeding face toward them again.
Pierro stalked the corridors alone. Panic rising. He didn't expect this. He just wanted to ruin the experiment, not awaken... that thing.
Then a metallic clang.
A vent opened.
Herbert fell out first, landing with a grunt. Ephraein and Bleu followed, gasping.
"You," Herbert snarled, pointing at Pierro. "You sabotaged it. YOU—"
Before Pierro could deny it, a new sound stopped them cold.
THUMP.
A heavy dragging noise.
Followed by another.
And then—
Emerging from the dark—Dr. Aaron Finn.
But not him.
Something had changed him.
He was swollen, corrupted, twisted by some internal force. His skin had split in places, veins blackened and crawling with rot. His eyes bled thick tar. He no longer walked—he dragged himself forward with grotesquely long, veined arms, like a spider-human hybrid.
He groaned.
"...b-brother… they broke me…"
They screamed.
"RUN!" Ephraein shouted.
They bolted down a side hall, heartbeats pounding like drums.
They burst into a side bathroom, slamming the door shut. The walls flickered with dying backup lights.
Bleu shivered. Herbert pressed a scalpel to the door in case anything came through.
Ephraein curled in the corner, muttering to himself.
"Not real. Not real. Not me. Not him. Who am I? Who am I…?"
Pierro looked at all of them and whispered:
"...We're all going to die here."