Chapter Eighty: Climbing Tension

It was like I was watching a scene from a movie. The camera angles and lighting were the same. Everything had a slight green tint to it like movies in the early 2000s often did. If it wasn’t my friends on the screen, I would have thought I was watching a real horror movie.

They were on the floor directly below ground level. Just one more set of stairs and they would be home-free. They stood in front of the elevator doors.

“We need to pry open the elevator and climb up,” Camden said. “That’s the only way out we know of for sure.”+

“Are you kidding?” Kimberly asked. “That elevator shaft is hundreds of feet deep.”

“Then we don’t fall. We have one person go up with a rope and then the rest of us climb the rope after he ties it off.”

Climbing out? Was that really the best option?

I wasn’t sure whether climbing used Hustle or Mettle, but either way, Camden had the least of both stats of my friends.

“One person? You mean me,” Antoine said.

“We could break through the ceiling,” Kimberly suggested.

“We have no idea how long that would take,” Camden said. “There could be concrete between the floors.”

If climbing the elevator shaft and digging up through the ceiling were the only options, we really were in trouble.

“We can keep looking,” Anna said. “There has to be a way out somewhere around here.”

“Look,” Camden said. “The underground portion of the facility is far larger than the above ground. I don’t just mean square footage I mean at least half of the width of this floor has no building above it. If we start searching too far out, we could be searching for hours and find nothing.”

“We can’t just give up,” Antoine said. “There have to be other ways out of this facility. Are you telling me that they brought all of this lab equipment and furniture down here on one elevator?”

“No. I’m saying that we could get lost down here searching for so long that KRSL HQ shows up and we never get to leave.”

This brought a hush over the group.

I hoped that this wasn’t a real argument. Like many of our on-screen conversations, I hoped it was part of the show, that they were explaining why they were no longer searching for a new way up.

Truthfully, there likely were other escape routes originally. Freight elevators, tunnels, air vents, any number of ways out. The problem was that discovering an alternative exit needed to be done before the Finale. That was one of the basic rules. Important plot information—the kind that can make success a lot easier—cannot be found after Second Blood. That was one thing the Vets had drilled into our heads.

“Frankly, we’re lucky they haven’t shown up already,” Camden said.

“Then we climb?” Anna said.

“We climb,” Antoine repeated, eyeing the elevator in front of them.

“It’s funny,” Kimberly said. “Once KRSL comes down to get us, at least then we’ll know where the exits are.”

The Mercers began picking themselves up off the ground. I hadn’t seen why they had fallen, but as they stood, they grasped their heads in pain. Some were more affected than others.

They were injured. But how?

One of the women had a nosebleed. The new addition, the teenager I had seen brought into the facility days before, was throwing up in the corner. He looked pale and sickly.

They were still on floor 3B.

“Paul, Paul, please get up,” the Oldest Mercer woman said. It was the woman who spent her time knitting. She was wearing several scarves of her own design. “Come on,” she said as tears streamed down her face.

She was kneeling over the man that I had referred to as Old Guy. She tried to pull him up into a sitting position, but his body was limp and his eyes were blank. His face was covered in blood that had apparently come from his left eye socket.

“What’s wrong with him?” The woman asked desperately.

“He’s dead,” one of the middle-aged twins responded. “He didn’t make it.”

“What just happened to us?” the other twin asked. “Did we get electrocuted or something?”

“My head hurts,” the teen boy said.

“No. No,” the old woman said. “We were supposed to escape together.”

“I’m sorry Sherry, but we have to go.”

The old woman, Sherry, was beyond listening. She continued to try to rouse life from the body of her slain kin.

“I can’t leave him,” she said. “He’s been my only friend for so long.”

The women Mercers all gathered around Sherry and attempted to comfort her.

“If we don’t leave now, we may not make it out,” one of them said.

They stood and pulled Sherry off of the deceased man’s body.

“It isn’t fair,” she said. “He was so… close.”

As they pulled her away and began walking down the halls together, the camera panned back to show the body of the old man, Paul. I couldn’t think of what might have killed him at first, but then soon enough I realized exactly what had done it.

I had.

When I fought back against the Mercer Poltergeist, they had been the ones to take the damage. Paul took it worse than the others apparently. His left eye was bleeding. That was the same eye I had hit the Poltergeist in when I fought it.

I didn’t have long to reflect on that. Soon, the scene changed again.

Dina and her family walked down the halls of Floor 3B with her NPC family. Her husband carried their daughter and their son walked behind them with a mop hand he had found and was carrying around like it was some sort of bo staff.

Her husband had evidence of a nosebleed too, but none of Dina’s family looked as affected as the other Mercers had.

“Room 347 should be ahead,” Dina said. “No telling how long it will take to get there with the way this place is designed.”

“How did you even make it in here?” her husband asked, massaging his right temple with his free hand.

“Snuck in. Got caught immediately. They locked me up and then I escaped after… the attack.”

“It was the ghost,” her daughter said. “I saw it in my dreams.”

“There is no ghost,” Dina’s husband said. “We don’t know what that man was screaming about over the intercom. He was craz—”

He stopped talking as they passed a splatter of blood on the wall. The victim was not nearby. They had likely continued on to find shelter in an attempt to escape the entity.

“There is a ghost,” the little boy said as he swung his mop handle around. “Or a demon. The guy said so. He said our last name too.”

Her husband wasn’t convinced. “Kids, this isn’t the time.”

Dina stopped. She looked over at her husband like she was going to say something, but they thought better of it.

“What?” he asked.

“What do you think happened here?” Dina asked. “You’re so sure of what didn’t happen. What do you think did happen?”

“I think the kids have overactive imaginations and whatever it was we heard over the speaker was… I don’t know. This scares them.”

Dina didn’t respond. She was not talkative. Not to NPCs, not to players.

The family continued walking down the hall.

Suddenly, the shot shifted to a view of the security monitors. The Mercers wound about aimlessly on a top left monitor. Dina and her family were on a monitor in the middle. My friends were on the top right, visible as the camera panned over.

And then one of the monitors distorted. It was in the center. Right next to Dina and her family.

The camera closed in on the screen with Dina just as the Distortion moved onto it.

Suddenly, the shot was no longer on the security monitors. Dina was moving forward, investigating the next path they should take.

Her daughter started crying.

Dina fell back onto the ground as her leg was lifted up into the air. An invisible barb had pierced her Achilles tendon, hooking her in one side and out the other.

The entity was in one of its weaker forms, either its Disturbance or Potent form. I wasn’t sure. It had tethered onto Dina.

It began dragging her down the hallway as her children screamed on.

Her husband practically dropped their daughter and ran down the hall to catch up. He grabbed onto her and pulled against the force of the entity. Dina screamed out in pain as the psychokinetic barb in her ankle ripped at her flesh.

Suddenly, there was an unsettling sound as the invisible barb was pulled right through her Achilles tendon, freeing her but leaving her Hobbled.

Objects in the room started to shake as the creature’s anger grew.

Dina continued to cry out in pain but still beckoned her husband to help her stand on her good leg. They started to run back in the other direction, slowed by her injury.

The objects in the room started to fly at a much harder and faster rate. The creature’s frustration grew.

It grabbed onto Dina and flung her against the wall so hard that she was ripped from her husband’s arms.

Then it flung her against the opposite wall of the hallway.

I had believed that this creature was attacking the staff because they worked for KRSL, the Mercers’ captors, but I had credited it too much. It was a being of pure anger at this point. It was attacking anyone who wasn’t part of the Mercer bloodline, including Dina.

As she fell to the ground, the hallway started to shake, the walls themselves unable to resist the raw power of even the weakened form of the Poltergeist.

It lifted Dina up into the air. It was about to throw her back down again when Dina’s daughter ran forward and embraced her mother’s limp arm.

“No!” the little girl screamed. “Don’t hurt her!”

The entity suddenly stopped its attack.

It dropped Dina and her husband managed to grab her before she fell to the ground.

The Poltergeist hadn’t given up yet. It had merely slowed its attack out of a desire not to harm Dina’s daughter.

It grabbed onto Dina’s injured leg again and began pulling.

“Stop!” The little girl yelled. Her brother joined in with her, yelling at the invisible entity, swinging his mop handle in the air in a desperate hope that he might be able to save his mother.

The entity let go of Dina’s leg.

Her family surrounded her, lying on the ground of the hallway, hugging her and protecting her.

“What the hell?” Her husband screamed. His character was in full denial, but I don’t think that was his fault.

“I told you, Daddy,” the little girl said through tears. “It was the ghost.”

“But…” He was at a loss for words. As Dina started to regain consciousness, “Dina, Dina, are you okay? What the hell is going on here? Please say something.”

Dina opened her eyes.

For some reason, Dina had put off telling her husband what was going on in the facility. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though Carousel was punishing her for that. Carousel wanted a scene of one of the Mercers having everything explained to them. Dina was probably the only character who could do so. She had listened to the audio recordings the same as us.

Dina sat up and examined her ankle. “We need to talk,” she said.

Meanwhile, the other Mercers were still trying to find their way up through the maze of floor 3B.

“We used to be on this floor a few years ago,” Sherry said as she rewrapped her scarves. “Only for a few months.”

“Do you remember the way up?” one of the other women asked.

“I’m afraid our captors never showed me the way out,” Sherry responded. “I know where the cells were. I know where Dr. Barret’s office used to be before his passing. That’s it.”

They hadn’t made much progress as far as I could tell. From this vantage, I couldn’t even guess where they were or how far from the exit they were.

“I’ve been passed around from one facility to another ever since I was mugged. Well, he tried to mug me,” Sherry said solemnly. “Paul had already been here for a decade then.”

“Poor guy,” one of the middle-aged twins said. “I couldn’t imagine being in a place like this for most of my life.”

“Neither could I when I was your age,” Sherry said. “I still can’t fathom it. My life wasted… Sometimes I dream of escaping this place, but I never can. I try as hard as possible, but I cannot make it out before I wake up.”

“Because the doors won’t open?” the teenage boy asked.

Sherry nodded.

“I had the same dream the night I got here,” the boy said.

“No need to worry about it now,” the youngest woman said. “We’ll make it out soon. I have a place on Lake Dyer. We can go there.”

They continued walking, looking inside every room and corridor.

“Shh,” the teenage boy said. “Can you hear that?”

The Mercers stopped short and listened.

A soft, repetitive banging could be heard.

“It’s the pipes,” one of the twins said.

“No,” the boy said. “My mother said we should listen to knocks. They are there to help us.”

“By god, I believe my mother said the same thing,” Sherry said. “How many years has it been? It was before we lost our family manor…”

“We should follow it,” the boy said.

“You’re saying that this thing is our fault?” Dina’s husband asked.

“I’m saying that the scientist in charge brought you in because you are a Mercer,” Dina said.

She was sitting on a countertop. They had found a first aid kit hanging on a wall and her husband was wrapping her injury.

“The monster won’t hurt Mercers,” Dina explained. “It hurts everyone else.”

“But you’re a Mercer,” her daughter said.

Dina put her hand on the kid’s head and said, “I know. But I married in. Apparently, the monster doesn’t count that.”

“So, we’ve got to protect you?” her son said, still holding his mop handle staff.

Looking at him, Dina’s eyes grew wet with tears, perhaps thinking of her real son. She nodded without saying anything.

“I won’t let it hurt you,” he said.

“Me neither,” her daughter agreed.

Dina looked at her husband. He looked at her and said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Antoine finished tying a firehose around his waist.

“I got this. I got this,” he said, psyching himself up. He jumped up and down and breathed in and out several quick breaths.

They had pried open the elevator doors and found one of those emergency firehoses rolled up on a red spool.

Antoine would be making the climb. He had his baseball bat handle affixed to the holder that used to house his baton. It hung down behind him, ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

“Do you think he’ll be able to get the doors upstairs pried open?” Anna asked.

“Oh, I’ll get them open,” Antoine said.

He approached the open darkness of the elevator shaft and gently moved his hand upward, feeling for something to grab onto on the inside of the shaft.

He found it.

In moments, he had lifted his whole body up and began scaling the inside of the shaft. I’m not sure if real elevator shafts were climbable, but it was Camden’s plan. Between his high Savvy and how well it fit the narrative, it worked. Antoine was making progress.

“I can see light coming from the doors upstairs,” he called down to the others below.

He continued to climb.

One hand after the other found purchase and he was really starting to get some distance. Once he could use both his hands and feet to climb, his speed started to increase. He was making it.

By my estimate, the distance between these floors was about three times what you would normally expect, maybe thirty-six feet. To me, it looked impossible. My fear of heights would have really hurt me with this one.

Antoine continued.

He was making it. I feared for him and the others. Any moment, the Poltergeist could arrive and ruin everything.

He climbed.

Only a few more feet and he would be on ground level.

One handhold after another.

He made it. He reached into one of his pockets for a metal implement that looked like it was from inside a filing cabinet and reached over to start prying the doors open.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

There was noise coming from the other side.

I listened closely. Soon, I heard it too…

They were voices. I recognized one of them.

It was Nancy Cartwright.

The camera moved through the elevator and suddenly I could see the other side.

Nancy, the woman who had greeted us on the way inside the facility, was giving orders to around two dozen or so men outfitted in all manner of military gear.

The men were called KRSL Agents on the red wallpaper. One of them, a man with a red helmet, was called KRSL Commander. They were Plot Armor 18 and 20 respectively. Enemies.

I couldn’t see their tropes.

It made sense. Trope Master is proximity-based, but I had hoped this would be an exception. I guess it didn’t matter. I couldn’t tell anyone what I saw even if I knew.

I just wished I could help my friends.

The Poltergeist on one side.

A room full of killers on the other.

How could they possibly survive?

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