The hallway beyond the team-building room stretched ahead like a throat lined with motivational slogans. Each slogan etched deep into rust-eaten metal: "Efficiency is Fear Perfected." "Pain is the Currency of Progress." Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

  Christian's legs moved like someone else was controlling them. His leaden steps dragged not from physical exhaustion but from the suffocating burden of what they'd witnessed. Jimmy walked ahead, his gait mechanical and practiced. The boy's mask-like face betrayed nothing, but his fingers twitched ceaselessly, calculating invisible numbers.

  Silence pressed down until Rebecca's voice pierced it like a scalpel. "Department of what now?"

  "Nightmare Acquisitions," Linda answered, each word dropping like a coin into an empty well. "They harvest experiences. Distill fear into quantifiable metrics. Repackage raw trauma as marketable memories."

  She watched their faces with scientific curiosity. "It's the most stable career path this hellmouth offers."

  Christian's laugh emerged broken, more rasp than humor. "What do they do with the... packages?"

  Linda stopped walking, her pause stretching long enough to make skin crawl. "Consumer research."

  The corridor opened into a colossal chamber of ever-shifting transparent surfaces. Each panel reflected fragments of other torments, death spirals that never ended, drowning chambers where screams became bubbles, agony tunnels that echoed forever.

  Below, visible through the maze of reflections, a man expelled streams of multicolored glitter.

  They traversed a thread-thin walkway, iron suspension cables groaning beneath their weight. The void beneath them pulsed with countless neon pupils. The park's machinery hummed incessantly, a chorus of grinding gears, hissing pneumatics, and scraping metal. The building itself seemed resentful of their passage.

  Ted maintained his station at the far door, electrically charged baton still throwing sparks into the stale air.

  「JOB START: SHADOW CATALOG TECHNICIAN - LEVEL F」

  「Department: Nightmare Acquisitions」

  「Objectives: Scan, Identify, Survive」

  The workspace assembly line awaited. Endless rows of workstations beneath monitors that blinked like infected eyes. Each setup included: headset, barcode scanner, bucket marked "VOMIT BIN - PROPERTY OF [USER]."

  The atmosphere reeked of melted circuitry and industrial citrus cleanser failing to mask decomposition. Display screens pulsed with sickly rhythms.

  Another Ted stood at attention, this one sporting a stained necktie draped over mangy fur.

  "Welcome aboard, Associates!" His falsetto scraped against their eardrums. "Time to harvest premium existential terror!"

  Jimmy approached without hesitation, securing a headset with practiced motions.

  Rebecca's eyes widened. "This isn't your first time?"

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Twice monthly minimum," he recited. "They rotate personnel. Psychological erosion through repetition."

  Christian reached for equipment, the scanner's contact sending static electricity coursing through his neural pathways.

  「Welcome, Guest Christian. Horror Thread Assignment: 'Botched Medical Procedure'」

  Grainy footage flooded his vision. A surgical nightmare featuring mismatched marionette appendages and repurposed icepicks. Green pulses registered each rapid blink. His scanner activated with every tagged response: terror, disgust, surrender.

  Felix retched beside him, violently ripping his headset free.

  Linda maintained professional boredom. Her collection receptacle already measured halfway.

  "Accelerate production," commanded the supervising Ted. "Departmental performance metrics depend entirely on quota achievement."

  Christian adjusted for another scan.

  「Thread Logged: "Buried Alive While Conscious"」

  「Emotion Tag: Claustrophobia (85%), Panic (60%), Hopelessness (90%)」

  His gut twisted. "Why does the Park require this data?"

  "Manufacturing development," Linda stated flatly. "Our inputs create future attractions."

  Realization crystallized into ice in his veins. "We're constructing instruments of our destruction."

  "Incorrect," Jimmy murmured. "We're engineering everyone else's."

  His words resonated in the humid air.

  Fresh horrors cycled across monitors. A woman dissolving from carnivorous sand. A man trapped in eternal family dinners, consuming his childhood companions. Children laughing while liquefying at glacial speed.

  Christian's device chimed.

  「Thread Logged: "Playdate Dismemberment"」

  「Emotion Tag: Numbness (40%), Absurdity (70%), Concealed Guilt (60%)」

  A alarm went off. .

  「Break Time: 300 Seconds」

  A wall segment slid back, exposing a counterfeit breakroom. Contents included: malfunctioning vending apparatus, solitary bathroom facility, six humanoid beanbags.

  Each sack bore a silk-screened grin and the phrase "Let Me Hold You." The ambiguity struck Christian as either comfort or menace.

  "Is it strange that this feels normal?" Felix collapsed onto a chair that wheezed in response.

  The beanbag exhaled audibly when compressed.

  Christian faced the vending display as options blurred past: actual blood-soaked protein bars, bottled caffeine extracted from tears, containers marked "SALIVA - SOUR EXTRACT."

  He selected an anonymous cylinder.

  The container released pressure but yielded nothing. His armband illuminated harshly.

  「YOU HAVE BEEN CHARGED ONE TOKEN FOR EMPTY EXPERIENCE」

  「THANK YOU FOR ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION」

  Rebecca attacked the machine with her boot. The structure remained immovable. "This place parodies corporate dystopia."

  Jimmy extracted blank evaluation forms from a drawer. "They expect satisfaction ratings afterward."

  Christian's throat tightened with bitter amusement. "I'll document my displeasure in every field."

  "Exercise caution," Linda warned. "Management processes these forms."

  The respite terminated abruptly. Illumination decreased.

  Fresh content populated the displays. Christian's headset revealed new footage.

  A test subject secured to an infinite loop apparatus. The mechanism inverted endlessly while Hemlock's voice performed accelerated lullabies. The victim's features gradually transformed into Ted's.

  Christian tore away the equipment.

  "No further compliance."

  Environmental lighting stuttered.

  "Dissent acknowledged," declared the supervising Ted. "Corrective measures initiating."

  From storage emerged another worker. Definitively non-human. Waterlogged textile construction stitched into permanent smile, elongated appendages dragging a clipboard across tile.

  Its identification badge proclaimed: MORALE SPECIALIST.

  「PENALTY: ASSIGNMENT ELEVATION」

  「UNLOCKED MISSION: FIELD RETRIEVAL - DEVIANT TEST SUBJECT」

  The monitor populated with distorted visuals: a Lost Guest saturated in clown pigmentation, vocalizing at recording devices. His armband displayed "DECOMMISSIONED."

  "This specimen failed proper categorization," the being clarified. "Retrieval mandatory."

  Felix massaged pressure points. "Waste management duties now."

  Linda selected an energy weapon from the arsenal. It ignited with cerulean luminescence and vibrated like predatory insects.

  "Deploy immediately."

  Jimmy secured a scanning device and verified power levels. "Five minutes to trace his final signal. Beyond that timeframe, we're reclassified as 'compromised assets.'"

  "Clarify," Rebecca interjected. "Compromised personnel undergo what procedures?"

  Ted's optics flickered unstably. "Eligibility for reconditioning. Complete dermal replacement."

  No one requested elaboration.