Joel’s breath hitched, and he instinctively took a step back, his boots skidding slightly on the slick floor. The voice was faint but clear, distorted as if filtered through layers of static. It seemed to emanate from the leaking tube, its glass now streaked with cracks spidering outward like fragile veins.

  “You... shouldn’t... be here,” the voice repeated, faint but undeniable. The sound carried a strange resonance, more like a vibration in the air than a natural voice. Joel’s eyes darted to the source—a shadowy figure slumped in the tube, just barely visible through the foggy glass.

  His hammer felt heavier in his hands as he tightened his grip. “Who’s there?” he called out, his voice steady despite the fear gnawing at his gut.

  The figure inside the tube stirred a sluggish motion that sent ripples through the liquid. Joel’s pulse quickened as he stepped closer, wary but unable to stop himself from looking. The shape was humanoid but wrong, its proportions stretched and warped. Shreds of a jumpsuit clung to its form, and its skin had taken on a pallid, almost translucent quality.

  The voice came again, more insistent now. “Leave... before it’s too late...”

  Joel glanced at the leaking liquid pooling around the base of the tube, its dark, oily texture spreading across the floor like a creeping shadow. The acrid smell stung his nose, sharper now, almost chemical.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not leaving without answers,” Joel muttered, more to himself than the thing in the tube.

  A dry, rasping sound cut through the silence—a laugh. It was faint but unmistakable, bubbling up from the figure’s throat like an unnatural gurgle. Joel flinched, his eyes narrowing at the cracked glass.

  “You think... you can find answers here?” The voice was stronger now, each word punctuated by laboured breaths. “You’re already... too deep. It’s coming... for all of us.”

  “What’s coming?” Joel demanded, stepping closer despite the unease prickling at his skin.

  The figure lifted its head slowly, its movements jerky and uncoordinated, as though it were fighting against invisible restraints. Pale, clouded eyes locked onto Joel through the glass, their gaze piercing despite their opacity.

  “Void,” it whispered, the word barely audible but heavy with meaning. “It sees... it hungers... and it’s already inside.”

  Before Joel could respond, a loud crack split the air. The glass shattered, and the crimson liquid spilled forth in a torrent, carrying the figure with it. Joel staggered back, raising his hammer defensively as the oily substance surged across the floor.

  The figure collapsed in a heap, its distorted limbs twitching. For a moment, it lay still, lifeless, and Joel dared to hope it was over. But then it moved—slowly, unnaturally, its joints bending at impossible angles as it began to rise.

  “Too late,” it croaked, its voice now a guttural snarl. “You can’t stop it.”

  Joel took another step back, his hammer raised and ready. “We’ll see about that.”

  The creature lunged, its movements sudden and feral, and Joel braced himself for a fight.

  Joel sidestepped the lunge, the creature's claws raking a furrow in the slick floor just inches from his boot. The oily liquid made his footing treacherous, each step a gamble against slipping and becoming prey. He kept his eyes locked on the creature, its reptilian eyes burning with a malevolent intelligence. With a guttural roar that echoed through the chamber, Joel brought the hammer down in a single, brutal motion.

  The construction tool smashed into the base of the creature's spine with a sickening crunch, the sound of bone shattering a gruesome counterpoint to the creature's strangled gasp. Blood erupted from the shattered bone, staining the crimson fluid an even darker hue. The creature's body jerked violently, limbs thrashing against the glass like a trapped fish, then went limp, its lifeless form sinking slowly to the bottom of the vat. The air in the chamber, already thick with the stench of blood and decay, was now heavy with the metallic tang of freshly spilled blood. Joel stood panting, his heart hammering in his chest, the hammer slipping from his numb fingers. He stared at the lifeless form, a chilling realization dawning on him: this was just one of many.

  Joel froze, the name hitting him like a blow to the chest. His grip on the hammer faltered, lowering slightly as his mind spun. “Ben?” he whispered, the word barely escaping his lips.

  The creature tilted its head, an unnatural twitch jerking its neck at odd angles, as though trying to understand him. Its warped body shifted, the tattered remains of its jumpsuit clinging to its frame. But Joel couldn’t tear his eyes away from the patch above its chest, faded but legible:

  BEN EARTH 416.

  A cold wave of denial washed over him. “No,” Joel muttered, stepping back. His heart pounded, each beat a hammer striking a steel drum. “No. It’s not—it can’t be.”

  He tried to steady his breathing, but the air felt too thick, suffocating. He looked at the creature again, forcing himself to study it. Its body was monstrous, warped and disfigured by whatever the void had done. And yet...

  The shape of its face. The faint echo of a jawline beneath the twisted, alien contours. The eyes—cloudy, inhuman—still held something familiar. That piercing intensity.

  “No,” Joel said again, louder this time, shaking his head as if trying to rattle loose the thought. “It’s not him. It can’t be him. Ben’s gone. He’s been gone for years.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  But doubt sank its claws in deeper.

  “Joel,” the creature rasped, its voice distorted, warped, and yet Joel’s name slithered out of it like a blade sliding between ribs.

  Joel flinched, stumbling back. His hammer slipped in his sweaty grip. “It’s not him,” he told himself, his voice shaking. “It’s not Ben. This is... this is just another monster. That’s all it is.”

  The memories hit him, unbidden and cruel. Ben laughing on the riverbank, his face streaked with dirt and triumph after landing their first big catch. Ben leaning on the hood of their dad’s rusted truck, cigarette in hand, talking about leaving Fort St. John for a better future. Ben’s eyes flashing with determination when he told Joel to take care of himself.

  “Ben’s gone,” Joel said aloud, his voice breaking. He tightened his grip on the hammer, willing his arms to stop trembling. “He’s gone, and this thing—this thing is not him.”

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  The creature twitched violently, its claws scraping against the floor with a screech that set Joel’s teeth on edge. It stumbled forward a step, then another, its movements jerky and unpredictable, as though something inside it was fighting to break free.

  “Ben...” Joel whispered, his voice cracking under the weight of his own hope.

  The creature froze for a moment, its head snapping toward him, and then it snarled—a guttural, animalistic sound that shattered the fragile thread of hope Joel hadn’t realized he was holding onto.

  “It’s not him,” Joel repeated, this time with more force. His breath came in ragged gasps, his chest heaving as he raised the hammer again. “It’s not Ben. It’s not Ben!”

  But his hands shook. The hammer felt heavier than ever, the decision unbearable.

  The creature tried to lunge.

  Joel reacted on instinct, the hammer arcing downward with all the strength he could muster. The impact cracked through the air, sending vibrations up his arms as the creature’s skull gave way beneath the blow.

  It collapsed to the ground, spasming once before going still.

  Joel staggered back, the hammer slipping from his grip. His heart thundered in his ears, drowning out everything else. The creature lay crumpled at his feet, its patch still visible amidst the blood and ruin.

  BEN EARTH 416.

  The notification flashed across his vision, cold and indifferent:

  System Notification:

  [You have slain a Level 5 Void-Touched Worker.]

  Experience Gained: +350.

  Joel turned away, his stomach churning. Tears blurred his vision as he stumbled into the shadows, away from the broken body, away from the truth he didn’t want to face.

  “It wasn’t him,” he whispered to himself, clutching his chest as if he could stop the ache from spreading there. “It wasn’t him. It wasn’t.”

  But the doubt lingered, a poison that wouldn’t let go.

  Joel sat on the cold, hard ground, his back against a rusted container, the hammer resting limply at his side. His hands were stained with blood—some of it his, most of it not. The world around him was quiet now, but his mind was anything but.

  BEN EARTH 416.

  The patch burned in his memory, as vivid as the moment he first saw it. His brother’s name. But... the number didn’t make sense.

  “Earth 416,” he muttered, his voice barely audible. His brow furrowed, trying to claw his way through the haze of emotion and exhaustion to find the logic buried underneath. He squeezed his eyes shut, and the memories came rushing back. The rig. The long shifts and the endless oil-streaked hallways. Started to remember the merger and the system notifications that started everything. Name. Division. Earth code.

  Joel’s was 520. Ben’s would have been the same. He could still see it clearly. Joel’s breath hitched, and his eyes flew open. His heart thundered as the realization sank in, cutting through the fog of grief and doubt.

  “This wasn’t him,” he whispered, the words trembling on his lips. “It couldn’t have been him.”

  The hammer felt lighter now as he picked it up and stared at the blood on its head. The creature had his brother’s name, had something about it that reminded him of Ben—but it wasn’t him. It wasn’t possible.

  And yet...

  He couldn’t shake the way it had said his name.

  Joel pressed his palms to his face as if he could block out the memory. The creature’s rasping voice, the distortion that still carried something familiar. “Ben...” he murmured, the word a question, a plea.

  He forced himself to think logically, to separate the emotions clawing at his chest from the facts. The void had done something—twisted people, reshaped them into monsters. Maybe it had done more. Maybe it had reached across worlds. But why this Ben? Why Earth 416?

  He clenched his fists, the edges of his nails biting into his palms.

  “This thing wasn’t Ben,” he told himself again, more firmly this time. He glanced toward the crumpled form lying a few feet away, now little more than a heap of flesh and bone. “It couldn’t have been him.”

  The patch was a coincidence. It had to be.

  Didn’t it?

  Joel shook his head and pushed himself to his feet, the hammer in his grip once more. He couldn’t let himself spiral into what-ifs. Not now. Not with everything else going on.

  He turned away, forcing himself to walk. But as he moved, the doubt lingered, whispering in the back of his mind.

  What if the void could reach across Earths? What if it was Ben, in some twisted, horrible way?

  Joel clenched his jaw, pushing the thoughts away. They didn’t matter. The creature had been a threat whether it was or wasn’t Ben. And he’d done what he had to do. But no matter how often he repeated it, the weight in his chest refused to lift.

  Then, just as Joel began to take a cautious step back, he heard it again.

  The metal scraping sound.

  It was closer now, impossibly close, and more distinct. The rhythmic clink and scrape cut through the room’s oppressive silence like a warning bell. It wasn’t coming from the far end of the lab anymore. It came from somewhere just beyond the rows of vats, hidden in the dense shadows that seemed to breathe and shift with malice.

  Joel’s heart hammered in his chest as he turned his head toward the sound. His eyes darted over the rows of glistening tubes, their red liquid casting a supernatural glow that danced across the dark walls. He couldn’t see the source, but the sound grew louder with each passing second—clink, scrape, clink, scrape.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t in a hurry.

  Joel shifted his stance, his boots slipping slightly on the slick floor. Sweat beaded on his brow, the air thick with the stench of blood and ozone. He felt a primal fear course through him, a raw, animalistic terror that made his muscles tremble. The room seemed to tilt, the flickering lights casting grotesque shadows that danced across the walls. He felt a wave of dizziness, the stench of blood and ozone making him nauseous.

  Joel’s breath caught as silence fell, thick and suffocating. He scanned the room, gripping the hammer so tightly that his knuckles ached. The seconds stretched, each one a lifetime of dread. The only sound was the frantic hammering of his own heart against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat echoing the pounding in his ears.

  Then, without warning, the sound resumed—faster this time, more frantic. Clink-clink-scrape, clink-clink-scrape. It was moving toward him, weaving between the vats, the echoes bouncing erratically off the walls, each one a chilling reminder of the unseen horror approaching.

  “Joel...” The creature rasped his name, its voice a guttural whisper that seemed to slither through the air, cold and insidious. Joel’s breath hitched. Whatever was coming, it wasn’t good. His instincts screamed at him to run, to leave this room and never look back, to escape the clutches of whatever madness had been unleashed within these walls. But his feet stayed rooted to the ground, paralyzed by a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity.

  The scraping sound grew deafening, the echoes closing in until Joel could almost feel the vibrations beneath his boots. His hammer felt like a dead weight in his hands, the air thick with the promise of something he couldn’t yet see, something ancient and malevolent, something that had been awakened from a slumber that should never have been broken.

  And then, just beyond the faint glow of the vats, a shadow moved closer. It was impossible to make out its shape, but the sheer size of it was enough to send a jolt of terror through him. It moved with an unnatural grace, slithering through the narrow passages between the towering tubes, its presence casting long, menacing shadows that danced and writhed across the walls.

  Joel braced himself for the inevitable, his heart pounding like a trapped bird against his ribs.

  As the shadow emerged from the gloom, Joel saw…

  ...nothing.

  The creature was gone. Vanished.

  But the sound continued.

  Clink-clink-scrape.

  The sound was coming from behind him.