“Wait.” Yashin stammered between gasps. “A holding door here doesn't make any sense. “
“A washroom would make sense, but this would be at the back or exits of the mansion. And it’s appearance, the walls, we didn’t come here but some bends over, I guess, would be roughly as far as we went. “ Yashin continued. “ The general area, a–um. As far as we went.”
It all clicked for Waylen and Kayla looked certain. A thought that he couldn't breath away appeared. This wasn't some government experiment gone wrong.
The mansion was a maw, every ten minutes if not fifteen or so, a coin flip with chaos put up for it.
It was insanity, it shouldn’t– But then how would they survive that fucking monster, they couldn’t—
Waylen’s mind sprinted in circles.
This was their own personal Hell, picked off in a maze of cries and chaos, at best one person would survive until the end, everyone else? Prey. Dead.
Breath.
His heart quickened regardless.
He looked away from the rest, almost about to fall over but the barest glimmer in his hands and weight in his pocket held his movements back.
There was more to this place than that. Now was not a time to bend, the work's not finished.
He looked at Yashin, still keeling over and wiping the snot from his nose. He eyed Maria clutching her side, angered between seething with pain and crying over Dean. What he was to her, Waylen didn’t know. Regardless, the stakes weren't just tomorrow’s dinner money bet on a Ball game parley. The consequences wouldn’t just be his hunger to keep up with his mom’s medical bill futures..
“This place is changing on us. My best guess is every 10 minutes, if not 30. Any mental or scribbled maps are shit all in a half hour,” Waylen rasped. Maybe there were preset configurations it switched between, or it was steadily shifting to a final blueprint. Testing either or wasn’t an option with fangs to their necks, so he’d play it off as another fucking variable to work around.
Kayla had already put the situation together and nodded, Alan’s eyes lidded but then snapped still.
“But wouldn't that mean… Where the fuck did they send us?” He tapered off.
Waylen collected his thoughts, the dull ache in his body and strain on his brain aside.
They looked to the two entrances of the current barricade room, both were simple doors, impossible to secure with the wooden boards unlike their entryway. No normal room was planned like this, not even an eccentric landlord’s fancy? How did they find it at the perfect moment?
He couldn’t stay, but his heart didn’t run from that fact, his calm found a cool focus.
“It doesn't matter, its fucked up to say, but we got lucky, that thing could have dashed us down at anytime, but it was carrying … a victim, while too starved of sense and— blood to focus on the next target.” Waylen measured.
“It took Dean, killed a man.” Waylen soothed, Maria recoiled at the words, she was struck with sweat now.
“But it isn't in control of the manor shifts either, that or it really loves to ‘play’.” Waylen breathed, “Best guess is, uh, this being a prison for it, and maybe for us.”
Alan seemed to want to cut him off, but Waylen kept speaking. “We have to pool everything we know, all the shit we’ve picked up and odd things we’ve noticed.”
Waylen added, cooled. Telling personal details didn’t flow easy, or run in the family. “Before I got sent here it was a Sunday night at home, before work tomorrow. I was trying to relax with some Hennesy and, uh, sports betting. I seriously doubt my job or anything else justified the snatch. “
The words came out hitched but Waylen continued “and I live in an apartment, so the kidnapping wouldn't be quiet. Probably.” Waylen finished as he brought out the canister, note, and iron cross.
“Got these from a bedroom, that and decades aged silverware, Yashin will confirm.” He nodded at the teen.
He read the note and passed it around.
Mein liebster Klaus,
The ink trembles as I write, for my heart is heavy. It summons me back to Germania. Yet in the shadows of my sorrow, it is you who lingers, your voice a melody that lifts my strained heartbeats.
Oh, Klaus, if only fate were kinder. If only we could flee this shattered world, hand in hand, as we dreamed. But I cannot ask you to follow, not into the abyss awaiting me. You must live, mein Geliebter, though my heart shatters to imagine you far from me, and no doubt yours.
May time remember us, not for what we bore, but for what we dared to feel. If the stars grant mercy, perhaps we shall meet once more—beyond justice, beyond judgment.
Deine Anneliese, ewig in Liebe.
It couldn't be fake, it wasn't a prop.
“This isn’t a nightmare, this is a tragedy, and we’re living the aftershow.” Kayla uttered.
No one spoke until a grunt from Maria and a distant screech rang out.
“I have some silverware I’ve been picking up, a half empty sewing kit.” Alan stated, blinking between thoughts. “There were claw marks on the floor, also a music room, we found after a turn. Oh and, before all this, I was driving through a patch of hellish afternoon traffic. It was suffocating in gridlock but it was becoming the much uncalled for norm on my way home from work.” Alan turned it to Kayla.
Kayla added on. “I also have some silverware” She said, palming a dented fork.”And this cigar cutter. It's a sharp blade, maybe we can bust it open. And this, it's some paper that was in my apron.” The pages were semi-soaked through with blood, Maria’s blood. “That and, I was out smoking outside my studio, when I appeared here, but I don’t have my fucking lighter, only these darts,” She unpocketed some cigarettes. “Nothing too unusual, same as everyone else.”
Yashin shrugged, “I was in class.” He thumbed out a pencil in his pocket and nothing else.
“At work. Construction field. Normal.” Maria gasped with a shooing motion. Only her right hand moved.
“The white room we were in. The look was weird. “Alan started, eyes lidded in recall. “My Kid listens to conspiracy theories for fun, Youtube on the living room TV, a phase, of sorts? They mention something called Mkultra a lot, subliminal messaging? Maybe this is a mind game.” Alan didn't sound like he believed his own words, but he stated it regardless.
“Right. The composition was weird, and that white room shift was in no way natural.” Kayla peppered, her head pendulumed back and forth, until it centred. ”I’ve been skydiving, and base jumping, the shift wasn’t that. My friend is a fighter jet pilot and I doubt any G force feels like that.“
Kayla turned to Waylen, “Another crazy thing going on here, connected to the mansion shifting maybe? Give me the canister, to open. I’ve worked with old school leaded paints, I’ll throw it if it's trouble.” Kayla said.
Alan handed the canister off to her, who inspected the lack of markings, went to a corner, opposite the doorway, and corked it open.
The container hissed open, and a sickly sweet smell pulsed throughout the room. It was like a refined flower, mixed with — human bile undertones and a whiff of goat meat? Waylen couldn't parse the smell that drafted his way more than that.
The contents didn’t seem dangerous, but they had to do with the creature surely. A weakness?
While they were inspecting the note and canister, Yashin was muttering in the corner.
“This is real.” The teen said. “ … I tried commands, uh, phrases, and prompts. Like some VR games: augmented reality, AR. But nothing works, we know we’re being clocked but not why or how.” His voice gained a surprisingly steadier pace, eyes wide open.
Waylen, Alan, & Kayla listened in.
“This can’t be a hostage situation, I think. It doesn't make sense to be. What might is, well, entertainment or ex—experiments.” Yashin added.
“Either way we’re the rats, huh.” Waylen added.
“Y-yes, but no. In situations like this.” His elbows trembled, but voice stayed steady “The test is either how long we survive or how long it takes to win, and I… I think we can win.” He added.
“Oh course this isn’t a game kid what are you saying?” Alan snided.
“Whether it's making a game, filming a show, or pranking people for clicks. There's usually a win condition, as weird as that is,” His fingers fluttered.
“With no winners a show isn't fun, someone has to get the million dollar prize, right, eventually. Ken Jennings and all that; and they gave us one, remember. Escape. I think we need to find a door, and maybe the key is.” Yashin breathed “Hidden, or–or the monster,” He quieted back down.
“Theseus,” Alan said, looking at them. “What, they don’t teach the real classics anymore. “ Alans eyes scanned the rest of them, unsettled, “Where’s the country gone?” He sighed.
“Oh, yeah, the Greek hero?” Yashin added. His eyes brightened. “Umm and the string he used to retrace his steps in the labyrinth, but uhh, things are changing here and marking the walls wouldn't help either?”
Fuck, Waylen should have thought of that. He had to use his damn brain. But yeah, the mansion's changes might make that moot, but they could try no?
“There's a cellar. Locked.” Maria said, surging from a whisper. The pressure in the air, this mansion, weighed on them all, but Maria’s back resolved taller, straighter than before.
Her clothes were even more damp now.
Waylen, who was holding her, adjusted her weight.
“Down the right hallway past a library, a bedroom, and a study is the kitchen, there's a cellar there locked with an old chamber lock.” Maria’s voice gained in energy.
“That's most of what me and Dean saw, but…” Despite clutching her side, she stood on her own.
“He told me this ‘mission’ was ‘abnormal’ for newcomers. That with 3-4 people it would have been easier, less dangerous. He told me it was too confidential for a staff sergeant to be told anything more, despite his spec ops clearance, “ She looked across the three of them, and then to Yashin, sighing with a wince.
“Go on.” Kayla whispered, eyeing her like a hawk, she came to support Maria's right side.
“I knew Dean before all this. When we all woke up he was the first on his feet and motioned me to stay silent," She put a finger to her lips, wearily. “So I did. I’m his sister in law, and he never mentioned this stuff to anyone, my sister, Silvia, would’ve told me like she does almost everything else.” She rasped to unsubtle eyes.
“You stupid bitch! You could have stopped all this!” Alan yelled.
Kayla glared at him and Waylen put a blocking hand, but Maria continued speaking, pointedly not at Alan this time.
“Even when we were going around alone, he only told me to not panic, that he would protect me.” She trailed off, her bandaged side was leaking. “That we would get through this.”
She summoned strength to her voice “Even if he kept secrets, that man loved— loves his family; so much. Two kids, little Gabriel and Rafael.” She had a distant look to her eyes, like the pain was so far away, opposite the road of her memory.
Noone interrupted her, Waylen putting a warning hand to Alan’s heated shoulder.
“When I visited we would all have supper together and they would play football in the yard, he was good, you know. Dean and Silvia met at an Arsenal match, she was celebrating a goal and he lifted her up, just like that.” Maria said, hand fluttering up.
Maria gained a sudden surge of strength, rising to her feet.
Alone.
“Dean. Dean Brownsmith and Silvia Suarez-Brownsmith. They were finally gonna stop the constant moves, bring the kids back to where Silvia was born. To Colonia, our neighbourhood, to be with family.“ Then she shook her head, snarling. ”And that fucking monster killed him!”
Unsubtle sanguine started draining from her side like heavy rain, humid, hateful.
Maria sputtered up more fire, everyone else with rapt attention. “I didn’t think it was real, what little he told me, a secretive operation into the return of a formerly missing person, but…”
“ You. All of you might not know me; and me of you. But we’re people in this fucked up place and some crazy fucker locks us here. Please, please kill that thing, for Gabriel, for Rafael, for my sister.” Maria blasts out, ”Whatever must be done. Let it be done.”
“Anything else to say?” Alan remarks.
Maria breathes. “No. Nothing else”
Waylen ran things through his head, eyebrows scrunched, and stress settling on. Layer after layer of absurdity to come to terms with. Fuck the question of how many boulder heavy doors he’d have to push, or the pain shooting through his knee and still pierced left foot, he wouldn’t let himself get eaten.
Not today.
Not ever.
“We go on the attack.” He declared. “This mansion is changing and we don’t know how or why. We have over an hour left and that thing knows where we are.” Waylen pointed towards the far wall, the two doors. “If that thing comes at us and corners us, another person will get hurt.”
Waylen surprised himself with the resolve, a boulder had settled on his shoulders, and despite his leg breaking down his back straightened up.
“Fuck you, and fuck that” Alan hissed, “I wanted to just wait and be rescued,” his glasses had cracked, Waylen hadn’t noticed. “We could have just stayed there, “ Alan’s hands cradled his head. ”I just wanted to just stay there.”
His hands pleaded with a spectre.
“I.. I” As he moved, Alan’s other shoe broke on itself. Waylen moved to stop the fall, Yashin from behind, but Alan let himself fall; hand on head, heart in a hole.
Kayla didn’t react, somehow steeled, furious even, but not at him or any of them.
Yashin looked shaken, his eyes searching.
“Can we even survive this?” Yashin petered out, his knees were weak, and hands constantly picking at his elbows.
“We can make it, we all will.” Waylen said, unable to look straight.
The time was 1:06:56, to the sound of clanging metal and paced breaths they moved.
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