Work Text:
08
The faintly glowing screen taunted you with its algae-like hue, the light of it faintly flickering in the dark.
You squint at it. Then turn around, your gaze shifting to the other glow of the second door, listing that same, even number.
It wasn’t improbable to get a fake door and dark room this early, but, by god, was it annoying. Especially after having just dealt with a rough run ending in disaster (thank you, Pandemonium and Eyefestation, what a mighty performance), it wasn’t very appealing to know your streak of bad luck carried on to the next life.
Judging by the way you’ve heard almost nothing despite being so near to this wall, and the inability to care for walking all the way to the opposite side of the room to listen, you turn to face the door you’re currently next to.
You have no time to react to the faint growl your ears suddenly picked up until the door opens, and consequently, you’re being lunged at by a freaky flesh-mass obscured by a mask.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!!!
You step back the moment you recognize the creature, but it’s perhaps too late, as it’s already made it to the doorway, slicing at you and causing a sharp wave of pain across your chest area. You topple over, back hitting the metal of the facility with a loud thud , and you’re almost ready to face your demise before the door begins to mechanically close in on itself, the creature clawing past it and eventually back to the hell it came from.
You let out an exasperated gasp, groaning and throwing your head back, letting it hit the floor. You lie there for a little while.
i’m sorry.
The message remaining on the screen doesn’t reassure you in any way. You almost feel bad for whatever that means, but you’re not sure how much energy you have left in you to care. Maybe another run.
You feel pathetic. And annoyed. And exhausted.
There’s nothing more you want than to grab that stupid crystal and leave. In fact, maybe you’d even bargain for going back to prison!
But nooo, Urbanshade waggled their little finger at you once you signed that butchered little contract and practically said “no takesies backsies~!”
You chuckle a bit at the mental image of the worker you met, talking like that. Unlikely, but amusing nonetheless. Stupid entertainments like that kept you going in this hellhole of a Blacksite.
You sigh, knowing you’ll have to get up eventually, lest an angler get you, and plant your palms on the cold, metallic floor underneath you.
With a strained groan, you lift yourself to sit up, then to stand, and suddenly the world around you spins for half a second before returning back to normal.
Man, you really underestimated how… miserable, you felt, to put it lightly.
Not just from the ‘Good People’, or whatever they were called, you’d gotten used to their surprise appearances behind rooms and prompt lowering of your vitals; but that interaction on top of the constant unlucky runs you’ve had lately..? All of it just piled up.
You felt exhausted.
You sighed, making steps to the other door. You thanked everything above that there weren’t any squiddles in here.
The familiar sound of the door opening echoed through the hallway; and you sighed a sigh of relief that there weren’t some third secret door you’d missed in the previous room. The passageway is illuminated, this time.
Your footsteps become just a little lighter; stepping on the elevated platform in the upcoming room, the wire underneath holding it up as sturdy as it can.
You stepped to the first passageway to the right you could find; a small opening filled with pipes and valves and accompanied by the glory of a drawer: atop it a crisp, classified file.
Your train of thoughts is reminding you of how you think Sebastian would describe this stuff.
Oh also, there’s a locker in there, too. So that’s good.
As you go to collect the file, you neatly place it in a designated compartment in your diving gear, hoping you could buy yourself a medkit at some point through this run. If Sebastian was kind enough to be selling one, this time.
You turn to look at the locker. You felt it was always important to scout out safe routes, hiding places just in case basically anything were to come your way.
This was not one of them.
There, peeping through the slots of the locker doors, a faint violet glow made itself apparent, the tentacle’s suction points almost akin to eyes piercing their stare into you. You hear a low rumbling from the compartment.
You felt a shiver go down your spine, but shrugged it off, you know these… void puddles? Yeah. Something like that. You know they didn’t get aggressive unless you tried to open the doors of their dwelling, which, if you were any bit clever, you wouldn’t be doing in a million years. Especially not alone.
You look around the little hollowed out room you’re standing in. Standing still for as long as you were is causing your exhaustion to slowly creep up on you once again.
These… These rooms are safe, right? It wouldn’t hurt to take a break.
…For safe measure, you shuffle to the left of the occupied locker, hiding your body behind its stature, away from the main path. That way, you’d have some possibility of surviving, as any potential angler family member could zip right past you hopefully without a notice.
For Pandemonium was another story. But you knew for sure they didn’t come around this early.
At least you hope.
You lean your back against the wall and slowly slide down, comfortably seating yourself between the slightly wet floor and sturdy concrete of the facility.
Comfortable. There’s a sarcastic tone lacing your own thoughts.
It’s as best as you can get it, really. Unless you wanna go up to Sebastian and ask if the guy’s got anything akin to a pillow.
The moment you lean your head back, just a little, a second wave of fatigue hits you, and you let out the deepest sigh you’ve ever expressed.
You almost wanted to sleep here. All the constant runs and the revivals and on and on; it was just so much. You felt so tired of it all. It felt nice to just sit here. Not be on your feet for a second.
…Hm, well, scratch that. Maybe you do want to sleep here.
Maybe it’s idiotic, but you feel you wouldn’t have the energy to even sit up now if you tried. You let your eyes trace the ceiling; staring at the buzzing lights up ahead, it’s hum causing bugs in your mind and unsettling you. You always hated the sound they made.
You drift your attention from the light, letting your head lean a little to the left. Before you know it, you’ve accidentally let it lean on the locker your little void-friend is currently occupying, and you flinched just a little at the realization.
A moment passes.
Nothing happens.
You feel relieved. Guess they don’t entirely mind being touched, it might just be about being compromised. Or something. Or finding the right moment to strike.
That last statement scared you, actually.
But you figure you don’t care all too much. You’ve died a few times before, already.
And if you’re being completely honest with yourself? You think Puddles of Void-Mass might be the most painless way to die.
Right! That was the name. You silently commend yourself for remembering.
If you’d wanna die to anything in your sleep, you’d much rather it be them than any of the other monsters roaming the halls.
Sleep… is that really the smartest idea right now?
You’re not really sure. You don’t really have the energy to care, either, as your eyelids begin to feel heavy, and your shoulders relax.
Maybe… maybe if you do end up dying, you can just nap in the drop-off submarine before you start. But, for now? You’ll avoid death how you can.
The constant adrenaline high you’ve been on since you’ve gotten here, the repeated re-runs, going on for hours at a time with no luck, it could’ve been enough to kill someone with all that physical exhaustion. You’re lucky that it never really mattered any time you reset. You’d come back, your body feeling almost as good as new.
Almost. Sometimes your mental state caught up with your physical state and ended up with situations like this.
With the noise and the chaos around you finally feeling like it’s starting to settle, you do feel the sting of your injury again, biting at you like a piranha. All it does is compel you a little more to drift off into the world of nothingness and dreams. Where you won’t feel it.
Dreams…
Those are nice.
You wish you could have one of those again.
You remember the many times as a kid, how, right when you’d wake up, you’d go running to your momma, tugging on her blanket at the side of the bed, happily chittering her ear off about whatever wacky shenanigans occurred during your fit of slumber.
How many villains you’d slain, how you protested against the wrath of evil and promised you’d always stick to the good side of things. How you’d always be the hero in your imaginary stories.
Your mother, through grumpy, sleepy rumbles, would assure you, that’s lovely sweetie, but it’s early. Let’s go back to bed.
And you’d frown, just a moment, before giggling and climbing up into your parent’s bed. You’d go next to your momma and lay your head on her stomach, listening to the morning birds chirp and the steady thump of her heartbeat, the rumbling of her empty stomach, until you’d next wake up, by your mother’s insistence, this time. Readying for breakfast.
You can almost hear that same heartbeat now. Through the other side of the locker, the living creature’s heartbeat inside matched hers, and its idle rumbling resembled the same ever so lightly.
You could almost feel it again. You could feel as though you were in your mother’s arms.
The comfort of home.
You let your eyes close.
You take in the heat emanating from the creature’s dwelling. A stark contrast to the cold, humid air of the Hadal Blacksite, previously sending shivers down your spine.
For just a moment, you feel safe.
And you are so, so tired.
Through the hum of the lights and the creaking of pipes and the gusts of air through the vents of the halls; through the sparks of snapped wires and the cracking of concrete and the endless rush of water through the glass, it all fades out, and all you can hear anymore is the morning birds outside and the rustling of your own hair.
It’s time to get up.
…
..
.
The familiar sound of the power cutting out momentarily flutters your eyes awake. You see the lights flicker on and off.
You’re not sure how long you slept.
You don’t have much time to think about that, though, as instinct kicks you up on your feet and sends you circling around to the first locker you recognize.
You almost reach to open its doors, but… you spot familiar tentacles past the opening once more, you hear the creature’s rumbling, it piercing that same violet glow at you, expectant. You remember where you were.
Deadly.
You hesitate.
Nothing but an obstacle.
You turn on your heel and begin to run to the other end of the hall, where you would soon find a much safer locker, unaccompanied by nothing but the still air of the Blacksite to keep you safe.
Leaving the Void-Mass alone in its own shell.