Dave wrapped his arms tight around Caleb and Oliver in a bear hug. The guy stank, but it was somehow pleasant to smell something alive for once.

  “How are you guys handling being dead, then?”

  Caleb chuckled. “I’m not so sure we’re actually dead, Dave.”

  Dave hocked a loogie. “Well, this sure seems like hell to me.”

  “Agreed.” Oliver nodded.

  “Have you both had to fight yet?”

  “Kinda.” Oliver tapped his temple. “We got into a sticky situation, but those ghouls are stupid and slow.”

  “Good for you. As for me…” Oliver pounded at his chest. “I ripped one of those fuckers apart. Peeled him into pieces like string cheese.”

  Caleb gagged at the thought.

  Still, he thought. It’s a useful skill to have.

  “We can handle ourselves in a fight too.” Oliver said. He squeezed his own biceps and cracked his knuckles.

  “Oh yeah?” Dave smiled. “Not everyone is. What, did you find a knife or something? I know you ain’t up to mano-a-monstro.”

  “We’ve got this.” Oliver held up the M19 like it was a newborn baby.

  “Damn!” whistled Dave. “Maybe you’re going to be saving my ass then. C’mon, me and Kayleigh found a place to hide out. It’s not far.”

  Dave took point, guiding Caleb and Oliver down the long pathway until they came to a lightly shimmering door. Every few steps, the floor creaked, or the pipes lining the ceiling burbled with gases. Every time, Dave stopped, listened, then continued onwards. His caution reassured Caleb’s nervous disposition. Dave wasn’t going to let anything jumpscare him.

  “Ya see that?” Dave said, pointing at the shimmering blue door directly ahead of them. “You gotta keep an eye out for the shinies. They show you the way.”

  Caleb grumbled. “I wouldn’t get too reliant on them. They might not last forever.”

  Even if it wasn’t gleaming, Caleb thought. The fact that it’s a different colour to every other door here should have given you a little hint.

  There was a silver plaque at the centre of the special door.

  SAVE ROOM

  “Maybe you can sort out that little riddle, eggheads.” Dave tapped the sign. “It should be a safe room, shouldn’t it? Yeah, I can spell - don’t look so surprised.”

  Dave pushed open the heavy door with one hand. “There’s another puzzle inside you can help us with too.”

  The room was almost bare. A single suspended light bulb at the center of the room lit a small table with an antique typewriter placed upon it.

  Kayleigh inspected its inner workings. “Oh!” She said, breaking into a beaming smile that ran through Caleb like a lightning bolt. “You guys made it!”

  Oliver winked. “Maybe don’t look so shocked?”

  “I’m sorry.” Kayleigh replied, her cheeks turning a little red. “But this place is so horrible. I wouldn’t have fancied my chances if we hadn’t teleported together.”

  Kayleigh looked up at Dave with misty eyes, then shook her head and came back down to earth.

  “But this is freakin’ weird.” She pointed at the typewriter. “It’s gotta be here for a reason, right?”

  Dave stepped in between Caleb and Kayleigh. “So we were walking down that hallway for, it seemed like hours, when we came across one of those zombie things.”

  “With the rags and the knife hands?” Caleb asked.

  Kayleigh nodded m. “Yep. So anyway, I ran. The thing headed right into Dave, like it hadn’t even seen me.”

  Caleb thought for a moment. “It must have been targeting you when Dave stepped in the way.”

  “Either way, it wasn’t attacking me for whatever reason. I grabbed it, and it just came apart like butter. I guess ‘cause it was already dead.”

  Caleb noticed Dave’s biceps. They were always big, but it was like the guy had been mainlining steroids since he got to this survival horror world. It was as if he’d become an exaggeration of who he was, a character.

  Had we all? Caleb thought. Was that why I felt so goddamn weak?

  “I think you just got lucky. That’s good though, ‘cause now we know we can fake it out. We can replicate it when we meet another.”

  “Or more than one.” Oliver said. Everyone glared at him.

  “Okay, cool. We’re solving problems. Great teamwork, guys.” Kayleigh clapped. “But what about the typewriter?”

  Caleb sauntered over. “I think I know what this is.”

  “Don’t be so cocky, college boy.” Oliver said. “We all know it’s a freakin’ typewriter.”

  Caleb ignored the dig. He wasn’t going to rise to it. “Do you still have that metal cylinder you started with?”

  Oliver nodded, reaching into his back pocket. He produced the strange tin object and handed it to Caleb. “You see, this is an ink ribbon.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “I don’t think that’s going to fit in there,” Kayleigh said, noticing the size and shape discrepancy between the two objects. “There’s nowhere for it to go.”

  “You remember how the sign on the door says ‘save room’? Now I had my suspicions before, but now I’m almost certain. We are safe in this room, but that. isn’t its sole purpose. This place, this typewriter, this ink ribbon here.” He shook the tin cylinder. “They’re all for saving your game.”

  The trio laughed. “He’s gone crazy.” Dave said. “We’re in hell, and Caleb’s gone crazy. It literally couldn’t get any worse.”

  Oliver slowly lowered the ink ribbon down onto the typewriter. The moment it made contact, something clicked, and the world smeared away, replaced with a few typewritten lines on an ethereal menu screen.

  SAVE ROOM

  SAVE 1 - EMPTY

  SAVE 2 - EMPTY

  SAVE 3 - EMPTY

  SAVE 4 - EMPTY

  Caleb thought about selecting SAVE 1, and it shimmered. He confirmed it in his mind.

  SAVE 1 - CALEB - 13:35

  Great. Now I know the time. So only a few hours have passed since we got here.

  He considered the situation.

  Do we all need to save separately? Had I essentially stolen Oliver’s valuable ink ribbon? His life? I won’t be able to tell until we lose progress, and there’s only one way to do that…

  Caleb phased back into the room to startled faces.

  “Oh thank god,” Kayleigh cried. “You just disappeared!”

  Dave punched him on the shoulder. “Thought you were gone for good there, little man.”

  “I knew you’d be back.” Oliver muttered.

  “So tell us… ” Kayleigh grabbed Caleb by his arms and squeezed. “What happened?”

  I wonder how small my arms feel compared to Dave's, Caleb thought.

  Wait. Stop torturing yourself.

  Caleb was reluctant to relay the truth, but he wasn’t quick enough to concoct a convincing lie on the spot. “It was a menu screen. Like a video game.”

  Oliver kicked the table leg in frustration. “Again with this video game stuff.”

  Dave chewed on his cheek. “It does make sense, if you think about it.” He smiled, then turned to Caleb. “So we’ve saved our game, right? We’re safe for now.”

  Caleb nodded timidly.

  Oliver stormed for the door. “Let’s get outta here then.”

  “Let’s stick together, though.” Caleb said. Oliver glared.

  So much for the bonding session, Caleb thought. Why are you always trying to look like a big guy in front of the others?

  He knew the answer was Kayleigh, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself.

  When Oliver opened the door, he stopped, cleared his throat then slowly closed it again. He turned back to the group with an ashen face. “You’re not going to want to go back out there.”

  Kayleigh chuckled. “You clearly didn’t start off where we did.”

  “A locked room. A mahogany cabinet. A vent. Horrible noises. Need I go on?”

  She stared down at the floor and shuffled her feet. “Oh. Fair enough.”

  Dave stepped between Oliver and the group. “We’ve got no choice, bossman.” He said. “At least tell us what you saw.”

  Pretty smart, Caleb thought. Appealing to his sense of authority. Maybe Dave isn’t as much of a blockhead as he looks.

  Oliver sighed, inhaled, then opened the door again.

  The group peered into the gloom.

  Something with incredibly sharp claws or teeth had clearly burst from the pipes in the ceiling. They flailed noisily against the walls. Scraps of torn steel lay scattered at their feet.

  “What could even fit inside those pipes?” Kayleigh asked.

  Caleb scratched his chin. “Looks like were carrying steam. So, some kind of razor-sharp volcanic octopus?”

  “Sounds delicious.” Dave said.

  Oliver shook his head. “Sounds deadly.”

  Caleb checked the floor for any footprints. Nothing.

  “Looks like slime on the wall.” Kayleigh said.

  She was right. A viscous trail of green goo stretched back the way they came. It hissed - acidic.

  “Well, that settles it. Forward, not back.” Caleb pointed to the right, the group murmured their approval, and they headed into the unknown.

  Almost immediately, they came to another dead end. The door at the end of it had a single square window with a metal lattice in front of the glass. He peered inside, but couldn’t see much through the dusty glass. He doubted anyone had ever been by to clean it.

  At this point, it was clear to them all that no remnant of Squish Burger remained. The doors, hallways and mops had been familiar up until now, even if they contained new elements like the typewriter or the mahogany cabinet. But this door was 100% new, 100% alien, 100% potentially dangerous.

  It opened smoothly, and Caleb peered down a spiral staircase of corrugated metal. It was how he imagined a secret nuclear bunker or a CIA black site would look.

  “Down the rabbit hole we go…” muttered Kayleigh.

  “It’s pretty dark down there.” Dave said.

  I didn’t have ‘scared of the dark’ on your bingo card, Dave.

  “The only way is down,” Oliver pushed them all forward. “Unless we all want to meet that volcanic octopus Caleb mentioned earlier.”

  “Razor-sharp volcanic octopus.” Caleb corrected.

  “Oh, my bad.” Oliver rolled his eyes aggressively.

  Caleb peered down the shaft. Dave was right. I can’t even see the bottom.

  “No problem,” Kayleigh said, as if she had read the boys’ minds. “I found this in my pocket when we got here.”

  She produced a small torch with a hand crank. It was an ancient thing, with an oversized filament bulb. She cranked the handle and the torch crackled noisily. A dim little yellow light flickered, then stabilised as she continued to work the handle.

  “Lead the way, lady of the lamp.” Caleb bowed theatrically.

  “You dork,” she said, then carefully started down the seemingly endless staircase.

  “Hang on,” Caleb said, as he stood on the first step. He gripped the thin handrail for dear life. “Point the light at that wall there.”

  Kayleigh illuminated an array of warning signs in a language nobody recognised. The characters weren’t recognisably latin, Cyrillic or asian. In fact, they didn’t even seem like a language at all. There were no recurring characters, just random marks, like a cargo cult of written language, made by a creature who simply did not understand what it was for.

  “I can’t read it, but I know what it’s trying to say.” Kayleigh said. She shifted the torch’s beam over the accompanying pictograms, which depicted a familiar stick figure composed of a thick black line.

  In one image, he fell into a smoking vat. In another, he burnt a hole through his mouth while drinking a beaker of something Caleb could only assume was acid. In another, his arm had been shorn off by a falling blade.

  “I don’t think this place has OSHA regulations,” Oliver said.

  “We’ve gotta be in some kind of testing laboratory.” Caleb mused.

  “What are they testing?” asked Dave, his expression one of growing worry, “And who are the test subjects?”

  Caleb thought back to the Scraper. How it looked almost human, but not quite. How the skin on its head had been stapled back, clearly by human hands.

  I don't know how that wretched creature came into being, but I guess I'm about to find out…