Ephraein didn't believe his eyes.
"Toff?" he whispered, voice dry like gravel.
Toff nodded, raising a brow. "You look like shit, professor."
Jasper stepped into view next, flashlight casting long shadows. His face was dirt-smudged and tired, but it was him. Real. Alive.
"I thought you were—" Ephraein began.
"Dead? We thought the same about you," Jasper said. "What the hell happened down here?"
Before Ephraein could answer, Venice turned, face lit only by the emergency strobes above. "Wait, wait. You're saying he was down here the entire time? Then that confirms it. The timelines don't line up. They're bleeding together—people vanish, then reappear, as if rewound."
Her voice accelerated, hands gesturing wildly.
"It's Lukas. He's not just back. He's manipulating sequence. There's no linearity anymore. The infection isn't biological—it's narrative. It's rewriting us."
"Venice," Sasha said, clutching her forehead, "shut up for a second. I—"
She didn't finish.
Sasha's knees buckled.
She collapsed onto the cold, rusted floor, limbs splayed. Her body began to tremble.
"Sasha!" Toff dropped beside her, but as he reached out—he recoiled.
Her eyes were fully black. Not rolled back—gone. Glossy and depthless, like looking into a sealed void.
Then—
She rose.
No sound.
No motion.
Just levitation—her body upright, arms stretched into a T-shape, as if crucified by invisible strings. Her hair floated like she was submerged in water. The lights strobed harder. Emergency klaxons whined in the distance, too far to help.
"Grab her!" Venice shouted, panicking.
They all dove toward her, fingers gripping her boots, her arms, her coat—trying to anchor her down. But she didn't move. She didn't struggle. She just hovered, a marionette in a dead air current. Then the lights died.
Darkness swallowed the room whole. No power. No pulse. No sound, except their breathing and the low hum of something... distant. Alive.
"Split up," Jasper said hoarsely. "We need light. We'll find the others. We come back. Together."
"I'm not leaving her," Toff said, digging his heels in.
"I'll stay," Herbert muttered. He was still bleeding. Still trembling. "You go."
Jasper nodded. "Let's move."
He grabbed Ephraein's wrist. Ephraein grabbed Bleu's arm. They pushed into the dark.
The hallway beyond still had flickers of light—weak red strips lining the floor like veins. They used them. Step by step.
Everything reeked of metal and dampness. The air was warmer here, unnaturally humid, like breathing the inside of a sealed mouth.
They turned a corner. And stopped.
Something moved at the end of the hall. Crawling.
A shadow—large, lumbering. Wet.
"Shit" Jasper whispered. "Finn."
He was almost unrecognizable now. Dr. Aaron Finn's body was bulbous, like he'd swollen with wrongness. Arms like overgrown tendrils dragged across the floor, his spine arched, bones cracked. His face—his head—was massive, drooping like a bloated fruit ready to burst. Veins pulsed across his skin, bulging like snakes under plastic.
And his mouth opened.
Not in a scream.
In invitation.
From the void within, another hand slithered out. Human-sized. Wet. Reaching.
"RUN!" Jasper barked.
They turned and bolted. The hallway twisted.
Metal screeched as Finn pulled himself faster. His arms dented the walls as he clawed forward, each motion like a dying creature trying to remember how to live.
Behind them, a slap. A yelp.
Ephraein turned.
Bleu was gone.
Dragged through a shattered doorframe by the hand that had erupted from Finn's throat. It tossed her like a toy into a dark room. Her body hit the far wall and crumpled.
She didn't move.
"No!" Ephraein tried to stop.
Jasper held him back. "We can't—if we go back, we die."
"I can't just leave her—"
"She's not dead, we'll come back! MOVE!"
Their boots pounded the ground, lungs heaving.
Ephraein stared at Jasper's hand gripping his. Too tight. As if Jasper was scared that letting go would mean disappearing.
They didn't stop running until the groans of Finn faded behind layers of concrete and steel.
Then silence.
Ephraein dropped to his knees. He couldn't catch his breath. "This place… this place is hell."
Jasper scanned the dark, then leaned against the wall, pistol in his other hand. "We need light. Weapons. Reinforcements."
"We need a goddamn bomb," Ephraein whispered.
Herbert stared at Sasha's floating body.
She wasn't moving anymore.
Just glowing, faintly. A soft green pulse from under her skin. Her hair drifted. Her breath was gone.
Venice was crying. Not loud. Quiet and trembling, like a fan spinning down in a room with no heat.
"Do you see it?" she whispered.
Toff turned. "What?"
Venice pointed at Sasha's chest.
And now Toff saw it too.
Under the skin—a silhouette.
Small.
Twisting.
A child.
Like a fetus trapped in her chest cavity, curling and moving with fluid unnaturalness.
"I think… I think Lukas is inside her," Venice said, barely audible. "Or… something trying to be him."
Bleu blinked. Her ears rang. Her shoulder was shattered. Her leg refused to move.
But she heard something.
Something breathing.
Not Finn.
Something smaller.
She turned her head.
And saw a figure sitting in the corner.
Not standing.
Sitting. Like a child in time-out.
Its hands covered in blood, legs swinging off the table like it had nowhere else to be.
Its head cocked.
Bleu didn't scream.
She just whispered.
"...Lukas?"
The child turned its head.
And it smiled.
Bleu staggered to her feet, barely holding her balance. Her shoulder burned with every movement. The thing in the corner—Lukas—just kept smiling, swinging his legs like a bored child.
Then he spoke.
"You selfish bitch, you shouldn't have died in that Fall."
His voice cracked—high-pitched, hollow, young. But as he stepped forward, his eyes darkened. His smile faded.
"You deserve this."
Bleu stepped back, breath shallow. "Shut the fuck up!"
"I will," he said.
And then his voice changed.
Lower. Graveled. Older.
"Actually," the voice growled, "he's not here anymore."
The body twitched.
The bones snapped inward.
The smile turned cruel.
"Hello, Bleu," said Michael, speaking from within Lukas's stolen frame.
Her scream never finished.
He lunged.
She turned and ran—blind, injured, frantic.
The metal hallways blurred. Sirens whined again in the distance. Her own breath was louder than anything else.
Behind her, Michael's voice followed, still wearing Lukas's tone like a costume. "It's funny how you all thought you were surviving. That you'd just move on. After what you did to him?"
She screamed back: "You did this! You built it! You started all of it!"
"And yet here I am," he sang. "Still walking. Still talking. Still your father of the year."
Ephraein and Jasper heard the screaming before they saw her.
"Bleu?" Ephraein barked.
Jasper held out a hand. "Wait."
At the far end of the hallway—another shape.
It moved slow. Crooked. It wasn't Lukas.
It wasn't human.
It was peeking.
A single, broken head leaned just far enough to look around the corner. Metal claw first. Then its eye. A red, half-blinking lens embedded in a face split with rusted cracks.
"Led," Jasper whispered. "Shit. He's still alive."
"No. He's not," Ephraein said. "He's still functioning. Not the same."
Led didn't walk. He crawled, dragging twisted legs. But his claws were perfect. Shimmering. Surgical. The same claws that had gutted six men in seconds.
He was watching. Choosing.
Jasper pushed Ephraein hard. "RUN. Split. Don't stop."
They both bolted—opposite directions. Led screeched like static inside a dying speaker and rushed after them, rattling the corridor like a hungry, broken freight train.
As they ran, Ephraein caught a blur—Bleu—sprinting past the opposite hallway, Lukas's possessed body sprinting after her, arms outstretched, lips whispering nothing but "mine, mine, mine."
Two nightmares now prowled the corridors. And both were wearing faces the survivors once loved.
Back in the emergency chamber, Sasha's body twitched mid-air.
Venice backed away, still trembling, hands stained with dust and dried blood. Toff was pacing, watching the lights on the floor flicker.
"Sasha—please," Venice whimpered.
And then Sasha screamed.
A deep, guttural screech that wasn't Sasha's voice at all.
Her mouth opened wide—and light poured from it.
A pure beam.
Not white.
Not gold.
But alive.
It spilled across the walls like liquid fire. The entire chamber glowed like a cathedral on fire.
Then, as fast as it came—gone.
The lights flickered out again. Sasha fell, body limp and gasping.
"Move," Toff said, grabbing Venice's arm. "We find the others. Now."
"I can't die this early." Herbert murmured
But nothing looked the same anymore. The hallways twisted. Doors had moved. The entire layout had shifted like a living maze.
"We're lost," Venice whispered. "This wasn't here. This isn't where we came from."
Toff didn't answer. His flashlight caught motion—two figures crouched under a broken stairwell. Lab coats. Pale faces. One had a bandaged arm, the other held a metal pipe like it was the only thing keeping her sane.
"Hey!" Toff shouted. "You're scientists, right?"
They flinched. The woman raised the pipe but then dropped it when she saw Venice.
"Oh, god," she said. "People."
"Who are you?" Venice asked.
"Dr. Farah Perez," the woman said quickly. "And this is Matthew Albanon. We're with Sub-Level Biology."
"What are you doing here?" Toff asked.
They hesitated.
Then Matthew said softly, "We… we saw something. A woman. Holding a knife. Drenched in blood. She was smiling. She walked right past us and whispered something. We didn't move. We didn't breathe. We just hid."
"She wasn't human," Farah added. "Not anymore."
Venice glanced at Toff. "Could it be…?"
Toff finished the thought for her.
"Hush-Mama, from the 1925 Incident."
Bleu slammed a door shut behind her and locked it with a chain. She was hyperventilating. The room was small. Storage. Nothing but overturned desks and wet papers.
She leaned against the wall, listening for footsteps. Silence. Then—A soft tapping. Not on the door.
But inside the room. She turned. And Lukas was already standing in the corner. Smiling. His head tilted. His skin cracking. Something under it was changing.
"Why'd you run, Bleu?" he said with Michael's voice. And from under his skin—Wires squirmed.