You're still inside the Signal.

  This one?

  You'll think it's about escape.

  But that's not what moved first.

  Visitors, no blinking.

  The head came first.

  A sharp stench hit the air—sharp, acrid. Elias Vance caught the twitch in the driver's face a moment too late. The man had pissed himself.

  This one had the nerve to run a body down, but none to face what followed. Whatever this was—it wasn't imagined. And that made it worse.

  The driver reached for the door. It didn't open. Locked. He didn't try again. Just curled downward, shoving himself under the wheel like the space could hold him.

  The girl on the windshield hadn't moved. Still smiling. Still wrong.

  Elias felt it then—a cold pressure grazing the back of his neck. He looked down.

  The woman wasn't in the back seat anymore. She crouched low between the front and back, her arms wrapped tight around his throat. The same way he'd held hers. In the club restroom. Moments ago.

  His blade came out clean. It sliced into her wrist. And stopped. Stuck inside her. Refusing to leave.

  Her hands didn't slow. They tightened—until his vision blurred and the sound in his ears snapped like wires.

  Breath wouldn't hold. Every inhale dragged something sharp along the edges—a pull too deep, a tear just about to happen. Something inside his chest twitched like it wanted out.

  He could feel the pressure. Knew it should've meant panic. Didn't. His fingers stayed loose. Shoulders steady. No shakes.

  If anything—he felt... right.

  He wanted to smile.

  Not out of comfort. Out of recognition.

  This weight—it didn't frighten him. It belonged.

  Like something in him had snapped into place. The same fit he remembered when his hands moved without asking. When the air smelled like metal. And the floor caught the body after.

  His skull started to hum. The sound wasn't steady. It came like breath on the inside of bone. Hard to place. Too real to name.

  A lift beneath the skin—too slow to be real. Like his whole body was losing gravity one nerve at a time.

  But he knew. This wasn't some rush. Wasn't joy. It was his brain running out of air.

  And still, that thing inside him didn't pull back.

  He never tried to pry her hands off. Not once.

  One hand had gone for the knife. It slid in—wrist, deep. But she didn't flinch. She wasn't supposed to. That part only worked on the living.

  The other hand moved without hesitation, sliding along the seat's side.

  Click.

  The adjustment lever dropped. Weight shifted. The entire seat jerked backward under his momentum, collapsing flat.

  The woman was pulled down with it—pinned hard between the seat and frame. Her grip faltered. Then broke.

  He inhaled. Sharp, quick. The world spun once, like the air had lost shape—but he didn't let it take him.

  He twisted toward the door. Reached along the inside panel. His fingers found the switch. Pressed.

  A soft snap. The lock gave. He shoved himself out through the door, boots scraping the frame as he landed on the pavement.

  The car kept rolling.

  It didn't lurch or veer. Just moved forward at a slow, steady pace—as if no one had noticed they were supposed to stop. Elias had. His body hit the ground hard, chin-first, and bounced once before gravity finished the rest. He rolled twice, maybe three times, before friction scraped him to a stop.

  Rough pavement clawed at his skin. Elbows, cheek, knees—all raw now. But his arms had locked tight around his legs in time, curling him into something that took the brunt. The important parts stayed protected. Everything else burned.

  Behind him, tires finally screeched. The car jolted, staggered, and came to a halt. The engine didn't cut. Nothing shifted. Just that sudden stillness.

  The driver pushed open the door. Not fully—just enough for his upper body to lean out, breath catching like he'd only now remembered what braking meant.

  Then he froze.

  Something blocked the opening.

  Half of a girl's face leaned against the edge of the door. The intact eye stared at him, glassy and bright. Her ruined cheek rested flat on the metal frame, soft like a rag thrown over a hook.

  One leg hung outside the car. It wasn't connected right. Skin barely held it up. Flesh hung loose, barely held together, like something botched in a rush. The foot twitched once, slow and light, as if the whole thing was waiting to fall.

  The driver didn't scream right away. He stared, blinked, then drew in a sharp, broken breath and fell backward into the car. Hands scrambled against the door. His feet kicked against the pedals.

  She moved in with him.

  No shift in air. No new sound. One moment she was leaning on the door. The next, her body was slipping past it—low, wrong, too smooth for bones.

  The car swallowed both of them.

  Elias pushed off the pavement and ran.

  No time to check for blood. No chance to count bruises. His feet were already moving, limbs pumping like they'd decided before he had. The pain stayed behind. So did the car.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The rear door swung open. Something dropped out of it—heels striking concrete, too fast, too hard.

  Laughter followed.

  Not behind her lips—beneath them.

  The sound came raw, wet, uneven.

  Elias kept running.

  The storefronts blurred past him. Glass doors, shuttered banks, dim signs from closed convenience stores—he could still see the familiar layout. Then something shifted.

  The windows vanished first.

  Then the buildings stopped making sense.

  Walls gave way to broken scaffold frames. Exposed rebar jutted from half-poured pillars. Concrete slabs hung without ceiling or floor. Dead weeds spilled out through cracked asphalt, tall enough to brush against his arms as he ran.

  These weren't city blocks. They didn't belong.

  Velvet East sat in the heart of the district—no construction zones, no abandoned projects, no place for this kind of sprawl.

  The ground gave next.

  What had been pavement turned patchy, soft. His shoes landed on grit, then mud. Loose stones shifted underfoot, biting up into the soles. He staggered once, caught himself, but the road no longer held the same direction—or the same rules.

  Elias's foot slipped.

  The ground wasn't just wet—it moved beneath him, loose with mud and oil-slick runoff. He fell forward, landing chest-first into a shallow pool of rank water. The stench climbed up his throat, thick and chemical. He barely had time to push up before a sound whipped through the air behind him.

  Something punched into his back—ten sharp points, driving fast and deep. His breath caught.

  Pain bloomed hard across his shoulder blades. His arms, halfway through lifting his weight, collapsed under the impact, and he slammed back into the water.

  She landed on top of him.

  Her hands dragged downward, not to pin but to carve. Each finger raked across his back, nails cutting lines like razors. Ten slashes opened across his back—burning, clean. The surface peeled like heat had lifted it, wrong and raw.

  He screamed into the mud—not loud, but torn through his teeth. His right hand caught something—cold, solid. A length of rusted rebar stuck out from the side of a half-formed wall.

  He gripped it. Yanked.

  The rod tore free with a metallic scrape. Elias twisted, catching just enough angle to wedge the bar beneath her throat.

  She was still pressing down.

  Not with fury—just weight. Purpose. She wasn't trying to fight. She was trying to crush.

  But the bar held.

  The force sank into steel, not into him. Her balance tipped. A jolt ran through the bar as her body rolled off to the side, landing heavy in the mire beside them.

  "Fuck."

  He spat the word and rolled up fast, catching a chunk of concrete near the edge of the path. She had started to rise again, elbows digging into the sludge like she didn't need knees.

  He didn't wait.

  Mud shifted behind him, slow and circular, like something dragging thoughtlessly.

  The concrete came down on the back of her head. Once. Twice.

  She made no sound. Not even then.

  Elias climbed onto her back, knees digging into her spine. He raised the stone again and brought it down.

  Again. And again.

  Her skull didn't break. It took the hits like molded stone—silent, sinking, refusing to give. Each strike jolted up his arms but didn't shatter anything.

  Somewhere under the impact, her face scraped into gravel. The back of her head began to give—slow, soft, like a shape losing memory.

  He wanted it to end.

  And then she moved.

  Her feet curled upward. Not a kick—an inversion.

  She rose like a hinge reversing itself. Dirt smeared across what was left of her jaw. Her arms didn't push. Her legs did.

  Head in the mud. Feet above the spine. Back arched into a human impossibility.

  He froze.

  This wasn't panic. It was clarity.

  That thing wasn't her anymore.

  It wasn't anyone.

  Just movement in a body that had forgotten how to stay dead.

  A word surfaced. Not from memory. From instinct. From revulsion.

  Shellbody.

  He didn't know if saying it, even silently, had done something. But the word stayed. It followed.

  Elias landed hard on his side, gravel biting through his shirt. The slab of concrete flew from his hand, tumbling into the dark. For a second, the weight was gone. The pressure lifted.

  But the momentum was wrong now.

  He wasn't on top of her anymore. He wasn't in control. That brief shift had passed like a misstep in a fight—one second too late.

  Up above, on the second floor of a skeletal building frame, someone leaned out. A woman in an apron, flashlight in hand. She pointed it directly at him, the beam hitting him in the eyes.

  "Up here! Get inside!"

  He flinched. The light caught him raw, but the voice came through sharp and direct.

  Behind him, the shellbody was moving again.

  She wasn't crawling. She was adjusting—like bones realigning inside the skin. Her elbows bent backward. One shoulder twitched. Her jaw didn't move, but the rest of her did.

  He turned and ran.

  The stairwell opened at the corner of the lot, bare concrete with no railing. His feet hit the first step without counting. He didn't look back.

  By the time he reached the second floor, the woman shoved the flashlight into his hands.

  "In there," she said. "Under the bed. She can't find you if you're under the bed."

  Then she turned and bolted down the stairs. Her steps hit the concrete hard—quick, precise. Not hesitation. Just urgency.

  He stood for a second, blinking under the jittering beam. The light danced across the exposed cement, catching wires, broken bricks, and the edge of a doorless frame.

  She looked familiar. That apron. The voice.

  But the light was shaking too much to be sure.

  He tightened his grip and stepped inside.

  Elias stepped through the frame of the room, flashlight low. The beam shook across bare concrete, catching the edge of a half-split chair, a broken shelving unit, and then—a bed. Metal frame. Thin, stained mattress. No sheets. It didn't belong there—not really—but it was real. And under it, shadows thickened.

  He dropped to a crouch.

  The woman's voice replayed in his mind, as clear as if it had just left her lips.

  "Get under the bed. She can't find you if you're under the bed."

  The logic cracked on contact. Corners didn't meet. The air echoed wrong. Whatever made sense outside didn't reach here. This place had other rules—and they'd already begun rewriting him.

  Maybe it was Marrin Lot. Half-built condos, east of Sycamore. Drowned during the flood. Left standing, incomplete. A district sealed mid-sentence.

  He didn't believe her.

  But belief was a luxury. This wasn't.

  Behind him, the stairs groaned.

  One step.

  Then another.

  Slow, deliberate weight. Too heavy for her frame. Too rhythmic to be uncertain.

  The air changed. The cold wasn't a breeze—it was pressure. Like the building itself was exhaling frost.

  He dropped fully to the ground and slid sideways, shoulder-first, into the dark beneath the bedframe.

  Dust coated everything. It stung his throat instantly. Something sharp jabbed his hip—a loose nail, or a corner of the frame. He winced, shifting just enough to keep still.

  His hand hit fabric. Banner vinyl—creased, thick with mildew. Another layer beneath it—softer, cotton-like, but sticky from water rot. Red block letters sprawled across it, hand-painted and half-erased. He didn't read the words, just felt the shape of them. Angled phrases. Slashed lines. Ink strokes heavy with something like fury.

  More strips folded underneath. Cardboard backs. Plastic laminates curling at the corners. Faint slogans in paint-thinned black. All of it stuffed under a bed that shouldn't exist.

  The footsteps were closer now. A fourth. A fifth. Then silence. Elias clicked the flashlight off. Darkness rushed in.

  The only sound was his own breath, pulling shallow and dry. He froze. Then pulled it tighter. Held it.

  He didn't know if it would help, but some part of him remembered the old logic. The movie scenes. The thing that couldn't find you if you stopped breathing.

  It sounded stupid now. But he tried. Because nothing else made more sense.

  The steps were clearer now. Elias could count them without trying. The shellbody was inside—closer, across the floor, pulling something heavy with each impact.

  One of the thuds landed sharper than the others. He felt it push through the concrete, subtle but definite. His fingers locked, breath drawn in and held flat.

  Maybe the woman was right. Maybe.

  He thought he heard another tap—above, below, or just inside his head.

  The rhythm changed. Not louder—denser. Every strike seemed to carry more weight, like her body was gathering gravity as it moved. Something brushed across his face—cold, damp, thick with the wrong kind of air.

  She stopped.

  Right above him. Stillness coiled in the floorboards like pressure held mid-drop. Elias didn't dare shift. Relief nudged the edge of his chest, enough to make him hope—until his gaze lifted.

  Barely a shift—enough to change everything.

  Ten centimeters beyond the mattress frame, a face. Inverted. Crushed. Pressed too close.

  She hadn't leaned. Hadn't looked.

  There was no bending. No crouch. No lowering herself down.

  She hadn't walked to the bed.

  She'd climbed.

  The rhythm from the stairwell hadn't been footsteps. It had been something else entirely.

  Every thud. Not a step. A skull. Hitting each stair. One at a time. It didn't want to stop.

  And now that thing was inches from his face.

  It wasn't looking.

  It was there.

  He thought it was over.

  It hadn't even turned yet.