My brain had officially stopped processing reality in any meaningful way.
Madison wasn't a scientist. She was a vivisectionist. And my friends were the lab rats she'd brought to slaughter.
I lunged for the door.
She didn't stop me. Didn't even flinch. Just stepped aside with this graceful little sidestep, like a matador letting the bull pass. That horrible smile was gone now, replaced by something worse. Placid observation.
"Go on, then."
Her voice was calm. Clinical. The tone you'd use to narrate a nature documentary about prey animals.
"The final data point is the interaction between the catalyst and the primary subject." She wasn't even looking at me anymore. Her gaze had drifted upward, toward the shadowed ceiling, like she was reporting to some invisible supervisor. "I've done my part. The rest is for... him."
A pause. That smile returned, small and satisfied.
"My work is done. He should be pleased."
I didn't wait to find out who 'him' was. My shoulder hit the doorframe as I stumbled through, knocked one of her precious sensors off the table in my haste. The plastic casing shattered. Madison's expression didn't change. She just stood there, that modified EMF reader held up like she was taking my temperature, calmly collecting readings as I bolted into the dark hallway.
The second-floor corridor was no longer empty.
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god.
The walls were crawling.
That's the only way to describe it. Shadowy smudges clung to the ceiling and peeling wallpaper, writhing like oil slicks given half-life. They had vaguely humanoid shapes if you squinted and tilted your head and were already having a full-blown psychotic break. No faces. No features. Just shifting, oily darkness that recoiled from my flashlight beam like cockroaches scattering when you flip on the kitchen light at 2 AM.
My entire worldview, seventeen years of carefully maintained normalcy, shattered like Madison's sensor casing.
They were real.
The weird shit that followed me. The unexplained accidents. The feeling of being watched by something just outside my peripheral vision. All of it condensed into these writhing shadow-things that defied every law of physics I'd ever learned in community college.
I couldn't breathe. The hallway tilted sideways. My back hit the wall and I slid down it, hyperventilating, the flashlight beam cutting wild arcs across the ceiling as my hand shook.
The walkie-talkie on my belt crackled.
"So... cold, Rome."
Bree's voice. Wet. Gurgling. Like someone talking with their mouth full of blood and standing at the bottom of a well.
"Why did you leave me?"
"No. No no no—"
"DUDE!"
Jake's voice cut in, manic and cheerful in that uniquely wrong way that made my spine try to crawl out through my throat.
"You gotta see this! It's amazing! It's so amazing! It's..."
The sound of bones crunching. Wet snapping, like someone folding a chicken wing backwards.
"...amazing!"
I threw the walkie-talkie. It hit the far wall and the battery compartment popped open, scattering double-As across the floor. The voices stopped.
The shadow-things kept writhing.
My body moved on pure animal panic. I scrambled upright, boots slipping on debris, and ran for the stairs. The metal grating rang like bells under my feet. Too loud. Everything was too loud. My breathing, my heartbeat, the distant dripping water, all of it amplified into this horrible cacophony that made it impossible to think.
I hit the processing floor at a dead sprint.
My flashlight beam swept across the space where Base Camp had been. The monitors were dark. The equipment scattered. And standing right where Chloe had set up her spirit box and Jake had done his little YouTube intro was something new.
Something solid.
Nearly seven feet tall, hunched, with skin the color of old bruises stretched over a frame that suggested anatomy as a loose guideline rather than a rule. Its arms had too many joints, elbows bending in places that made my brain scream. And its face.
There was no face.
Just a smooth plane of mottled flesh split down the middle by a vertical gash. The gash opened. No teeth. No tongue. Just a dark void that pulled at the edges of my vision like a black hole made of meat.
It let out a sound somewhere between a shriek and a moan.
Then it saw me.
"Shit shit shit SHIT—"
I ran left. It followed. Of course it followed. Why wouldn't the nightmare monster follow the panicking college kid? That's just good horror movie economics.
My hand found a rusted pipe leaning against one of the defunct machines. Heavy. Solid. The kind of improvised weapon that works great in movies and video games. I spun around, planted my feet like Jake had shown me during that one ill-advised self-defense phase, and swung with everything I had.
The pipe connected with a meaty thud.
The thing stumbled back one step.
The pipe was bent.
"Are you KIDDING me?!"
It came at me again. I threw the pipe at its head. Bounced off. I grabbed a chunk of broken brick, hurled it. Might as well have been throwing marshmallows at a tank. A piece of rebar. Same result. I was screaming now, just incoherent rage and terror as I pelted this unkillable horror with every piece of debris within reach.
It didn't care.
It just kept coming.
My heel caught on something. I went down hard, tailbone connecting with concrete in a way that sent stars across my vision. I scrambled backward on my ass, hands slipping in god-knows-what, until my spine hit something unyielding.
One of the massive processing machines. Dead end.
The creature loomed over me. Up close, I could see details I really didn't want to know. The way its skin moved independent of its muscles. The faint shimmer of something underneath, like it was wearing reality as a cheap costume.
Its multi-jointed arm raised up. The vertical mouth-gash widened.
This was it.
Seventeen years of survival, of bouncing between foster homes, of keeping my head down and my walls up, and it was all going to end because I let Jake talk me into a ghost hunt.
I shut my eyes.
A sound like fabric tearing.
Then silence.
I cracked one eye open.
The monster was gone. Not collapsed, not bleeding out, just gone. In its place was a girl who absolutely did not belong in this slaughterhouse nightmare.
She stood maybe five-six in her combat boots, all lean muscle wrapped in ripped jeans and a black tank top. Shaggy raven hair framed a face that would've been striking if not for the complete absence of anything resembling warmth. Her eyes caught the dim light and threw it back in bloody rubies, glowing faintly in the industrial gloom.
In her right hand, she held a katana. The blade was clean. Perfect. Like it had just finished cutting smoke instead of bisecting a seven-foot horror.
Those ruby eyes slid from the empty space where the monster had been to me.
"Tch."
She made this little disgusted sound in the back of her throat, the audio equivalent of stepping in dog shit.
"Are you done screaming? You were drawing more of them."