“This can’t be real,” Joel muttered, his voice barely audible over the hum of his heart. He was trying to cool himself down, his body was coated in sweat. “Sarah’s not... she’s not some kind of... snake lady.” His words hung in the air, hollow and brittle. He longed for the familiar thrum of the rig, the comforting hum of machinery, anything to break the suffocating silence and the echoes of his despair.
He wiped his face with a gauntleted hand, the metal cool against his sweat-dampened skin. “I’ve lost it. That’s it. Maybe I’m in a coma back on the rig,” he continued, his voice rising with the frantic need to make sense of it all. “Or maybe this is hell. That would explain the monsters and... everything.” He let out a bitter laugh that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Each step sent a jolt of pain through his bruised ribs, a stark contrast to the chilling silence that enveloped him.
But the memories wouldn’t let him go. The face beneath the mask—what he thought he saw—clung to him like a shadow, refusing to dissolve. It was her face, wasn’t it? The slope of her cheekbones, the line of her jaw. The voice that wasn’t hers but somehow felt like it. His stomach churned. The thought of Sarah, not as the vibrant, fiery woman he knew, but as... that, sent a wave of nausea crashing over him.
He stopped mid-step, shaking his head violently as if the motion could dislodge the thought. “No. It’s not her. It can’t be her. I’m just reaching at straws.” His hands clenched into fists, the metal joints of his armour groaning in protest. “Sarah’s gone. Long gone.” His vision swam, the edges of his vision blurring with the heat haze rising from the scorched ground.
Yet the sickening doubt wormed its way deeper into his mind, like an infection he couldn’t fight off. “But what if...?” He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the thought away. “No. Stop it. You’re losing it, Joel.” He felt a cold sweat beading on his brow, despite the chill that seemed to permeate the very air.
He looked up again, the glow of the console closer now, a beacon in the darkness. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. “This is some kind of horror story,” he muttered, the words catching in his throat. “It’s like I’m stuck in one of those bad movies Darren used to make us watch. Monsters, crazy experiments... what’s next? A mad scientist popping out of a closet?”
The console flickered, casting pale light over the blood-slick floor and twisted wreckage surrounding it. Joel’s steps faltered. “Just get it over with,” he said aloud as if speaking to the void itself. “Whatever fresh nightmare this thing’s about to throw at me, just... let’s do it already.” His breath hitched in his throat, a strangled sob threatening to escape.
He closed the final steps to the console, the glow illuminating his worn face. His hands hovered over the interface, hesitation gripping him. He gripped the edge of the console, his knuckles white, the metal cold and unforgiving against his skin. He was losing control, slipping further into the abyss of this nightmarish reality. A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “And now I’m talking to myself. Great. Real stable, Joel.”
He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, his fingers lowering toward the console. “Okay,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “Let’s see what kind of nightmare you’ve got for me this time.”
Joel’s fingers brushed against the edge of his tool belt, now scuffed and stained from years of dedicated use. He rebuckled it around his waist, the familiar weight settling against his hips. It was heavier than usual, laden with spare parts and salvaged scraps crammed into every pocket, but somehow, it still felt comforting—a lifeline in a world gone mad.
As his hand grazed the worn leather, a vivid memory surfaced, unbidden, like a scene projected onto the darkness of his mind. He was seven years old, sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor of his father's workshop, the air thick with the aroma of oil and sawdust. Joel watched as his father bent over an old carburetor, his hands moving with practiced precision, strong yet gentle as if made for mending broken things.
“Here,” his father said, straightening up and handing Joel a wrench that was almost too big for his small hands. “Hold this steady for me.”
Joel's chest swelled with pride as he gripped the wrench, his small arms straining to keep it in place. His father chuckled, ruffling his hair with a grease-stained hand. “Good job, kiddo. You've got the makings of a fine mechanic.”
“Like you, Dad?” Joel had asked, his voice tinged with awe.
“It is better than pushing textbooks on kids who don’t want to learn in the first place.” His father smiled, the kind of smile that made Joel feel like he could accomplish anything. “But. You will be better than me if you keep at it. Remember, tools are just like people. Treat 'em right, and they'll get you through the toughest jobs.”
The memory faded, leaving Joel staring down at the belt in his hands. His father's words echoed in his mind, their warmth tinged with the ache of loss. The workshop was long gone, swallowed by the rising tides, and his father... well, he hadn't lived to see the world descend into this nightmare.
Joel tightened the belt an extra hole, his jaw set. “You'd probably laugh at all this, wouldn't you, Dad?” he muttered under his breath, glancing at the wats that surrounded him. “Monsters, heart cards, void energy... nothing in your toolbox could've prepared me for this.”
But then he looked at his hands—calloused, steady, just like his father's had been—and he felt a flicker of something that wasn't quite hope, but wasn't despair either.
“I'll figure it out,” he said softly, more to himself than to the empty room. “Like you taught me.”
“But…” he paused for a moment. Joel adjusted his grip on the hammer clipped to his tool belt, the weight of it grounding him as his mind began to wander down darker paths. He thought of Ben. His brother's easy grin, the way he'd crack jokes in the middle of chaos just to lighten the mood. Joel could almost hear his voice, teasing him like they were back on the job site when they both worked for The Company.
“Take it easy, little bro,” Ben would say, leaning against the railing with that maddening confidence. “You think too much. Just fix what's broken, one bolt at a time.”
But Ben wasn't here. Joel clenched his fists, his knuckles whitening. Ben was gone—had been for years. And yet...
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Joel could still see the distorted, skeletal face of the creature he'd fought earlier, the way its twisted features echoed his brother's. He shook his head sharply, trying to dislodge the memory. “It wasn't him,” Joel muttered, his voice strained. “It wasn't him.”
The rational part of him knew it couldn't be true. The woman he'd just fought wasn't Sarah, either. He was grasping at straws, letting his mind play tricks on him. The system, the void energy, the creatures—they were all part of this warped, horrifying game.
“Sarah isn't some... some snake lady,” Joel whispered again, his breath catching as the words left his lips. He pressed his palm against his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart card as if it might anchor him to reality. “And Ben... he's not here. He's not anywhere.”
The truth was as bitter as the acrid smoke still curling in the air around him. These creatures weren't his family. They weren't even people anymore, not truly. They were echoes—fragments of lives ripped apart and twisted into something unrecognizable. Like the dungeon, Joel reminded himself. The dungeon with the...
He laughed a short, humourless bark that startled even him. “Talking rabbit people,” he muttered, the absurdity of it cutting through the grim weight in his chest. “I am literally in a dungeon with talking rabbit people.”
The memory of their high-pitched voices and absurd little weapons brought a faint, fleeting smile to his lips, but it quickly faded. Even they had been victims of whatever nightmare this system had unleashed.
Joel's gaze shifted toward the console in front of him. If anyone had answers, it was Dr. Carr. He had to figure out what had happened here—to these people, to this world. Because if he didn't, he might lose himself in the madness too.
With a deep breath, Joel steadied himself and took a step forward, his boots squelching in the slick, red fluid pooling on the floor. “They're not real,” he said quietly, as if saying it out loud would make it true. “Not Ben. Not Sarah. Just echoes. Just fragments.”
The words settled like a fragile shield around his thoughts, and he clung to them as he worked on the console, each breath feeling heavier than the last. Finally, with a deep breath, Joel adjusted the belt one last time and turned back to work on the console, his resolve hardening. Whatever horrors lay ahead, he'd face them armed with the lessons his father had imparted—and a wrench or two, or hammer, just in case.
Joel started clicking away on the console, its surface cold and slick with condensation. He didn’t have a ton of experience with computers; however, everything nowadays had something to do with them, so he wasn’t fishing in the dark. The screen flickered erratically, casting jagged shadows across the room as its dim glow struggled against the oppressive gloom. The interface was rudimentary, like something pulled from a bygone era of technology.
The computer reminded him of something you might find in a universe with a major fallout in the 1950s or 60s. The relic of a machine seemed to be a retro-futuristic age creation which was a combination of mid-20th-century design with the decay of a post-apocalyptic world. The machine was a bulky, angular unit encased in heavy metal, its surface worn and rusted with scratches and peeling paint.
The CRT-style monitors were rounded and convex, with thick grooves that ring the grimy frame, with a few small cracks in the glass. The display was a monochromatic text—green on black. It reminded Joel of the old radar screens he saw in the old Cold War movies his dad liked to watch.
To top off the old machine was the clunky mechanical keyboards with mismatched, worn-smooth keys sitting in front. Joel could tell it had been hastily repaired a few times. “Crappy workmanship,” he joked to himself, trying to lighten his mood. He looked around the monitor and found a few additional features like toggle switches, rotary dials, and levers. The whole thing screamed at a bygone era of analog technology, while tangled cables and exposed wiring sprawl like the veins of a long-dead giant. There were even a few machines adorned with blinking indicator lights or tape drives, their hums and whirs punctuating the eerie silence of their decayed surroundings.
“How cold such old and odd technology make such advanced weaponized creatures,” Joel thought out loud. He clicked enter on the old keyboard. “Great,” Joel muttered, wiping the red smears from his gloves onto his pants. “Now I get to play hacker.”
The system responded sluggishly to his touch. Every press of a key was met with a faint delay, as though the machine itself was reluctant to share its secrets. Lines of text scrolled across the screen, a blend of cryptic file names and outdated system prompts.
Joel’s heart sank at the sight of several folders labelled with nothing more than strings of numbers. He frowned, muttering to himself, “This is like trying to read a mechanic’s notes after a 12-hour shift.”
One folder caught his eye. It was marked "SUBJECT ARCHIVE 01-EX." Beneath the name, a progress bar blinked faintly, as though waiting for input. Joel hesitated, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” he said, grimacing as he keyed in the simplest prompt he could think of: OPEN.
The screen stuttered, then responded with a line of garbled text: ACCESS RESTRICTED. ENTER OVERRIDE CODE.
Joel groaned, raking a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. “Of course, it’s locked. Why wouldn’t it be locked?”
He navigated back to the main menu, clicking through folders at random, hoping to stumble on something useful. Most were encrypted, but one—a folder labelled "PROJECT CARRION"—opened without resistance. The screen is populated with a series of subfiles:
- Lab Notes – Dr. Carr
- Transfer Logs
- Experimental Results
- Omega Directive
“Now we’re talking,” Joel whispered, his pulse quickening. He selected the first file, Lab Notes – Dr. Carr, and waited as the screen loaded line by agonizing line.
A block of text appeared:
"Preliminary results promising. Subjects show increased resistance to system stressors post-integration. Behavioral deviations were noted but manageable. Subject 17 exhibited advanced neural adaptation before failure—recovery unlikely. Further testing required on harvested specimens from failed dungeons."
Joel’s stomach churned. “Harvested specimens,” he repeated under his breath. His hand instinctively moved to the hammer at his side, gripping it as though it might ward off the rising unease in his chest.
He moved to the next file, Transfer Logs. The document was long and dense, but certain entries jumped out at him:
Subject 09 – Status: Failed
Subject 11 – Status: In Progress
Subject 12 – Transfer from Dungeon 834 Complete
Subject 12 – Status: Converted
Joel’s breathing quickened. The numbers and terms blurred together, but the implications were clear. These weren’t experiments—they were people. People dragged out of dungeons and turned into...
He looked over his shoulder at the remains of the snake-woman lying crumpled on the floor.
The last file was labeled Omega Directive. Something about it set his teeth on edge. He hesitated for only a second before clicking on it.
The screen froze. Then, a message flashed in bold, ominous letters:
"WARNING: ACCESSING RESTRICTED FILE WILL INITIATE LOCKDOWN. PROCEED? Y/N"
Joel stared at the screen, his hand trembling over the keyboard.
“What the hell is this place?” he whispered.
Before he could make a decision, the console let out a loud beep, and the screen abruptly shifted to display a countdown:
LOCKDOWN SEQUENCE INITIATED. 10... 9... 8...
Joel’s heart dropped. He slammed his fist against the console, cursing under his breath. “Not good. Not good at all!”
The lights in the room began to dim, one by one, casting the space into deepening shadows. From somewhere far below, a deep, mechanical groan rumbled through the floor, shaking the walls.