Willie’s jaw stretched wide and monochrome light gathered in its throat, swirling into the kind of attack that would erase me without missing a beat.
I fumbled for the Trump Card I’d received from the Gashapon machine, but I was too slow, my hands numb and useless.
The beam exploded from its throat, and I watched, helplessly, as death approached, sudden and unstoppable—
Then Croc blinked into view directly in front of me, materializing from thin air like a guardian angel, hellbent on keeping me safe no matter what it cost.
Willie’s beam slammed into Croc, bathing the rubble in flickering static, tearing away rubbery chunks of meat and shredding tentacles like a cartoon chainsaw as it unmade my best friend.
But Croc was made of sterner stuff than my Horrors.
When the light finally faded, the mimic was lying on the rubble directly in front of me—alive but barely. Croc’s body had reverted to a puddle of blue, gelatinous goop covered with a vast horde of eyes and gasping mouths. Smoke rose in thin ribbons, and tendrils of black and white light slithered across the mimic’s body, erasing the dog bit by bit.
Croc had used Lethal Injection to save me, absorbing the death blow that should’ve been mine.
“Croc,” I said, crawling forward on hands and knees, broken glass and bits of stone scraping against my palms and gouging into my knees. “Why did you do that?” I asked, tears running down my cheeks. With trembling hands, I pulled out several Regen cards and pressed them against the mimic’s side. I activated them all at once, stabilizing the mimic’s dropping Health bar. Still, even with my efforts, Croc was only at 16% health—no doubt due to the Diabetes Affliction we all still had.
“Because…” the puddle of goop wheezed, “because we’re best friends, Dan.” A trembling tentacle curled up and touched the charred dog collar fixed around a bulge of meat. “And best friends would take a bullet for one another.”
The hydra reared again, gathering power for another strike, this one aimed straight at the mimic. Croc braced for impact, but I knew the mimic wouldn’t survive a second attack.
That’s when Pooh shuffled into view, climbing over the rocks with delicate care.
The little bear, singed and battered, waddled in front of Croc and raised its arms, his eyes blazing brighter than I’d ever seen, holding that damned Polaroid up like it was a shield.
“No,” Pooh said simply, voice calm but iron-hard. “Croc is my friend. And if you want to kill him, you’ll have to kill me first.”
Everything went still.
The hydra hesitated, Willie’s head weaving, his teeth pulled back into a snarl. Oz’s giant mechanical face, undamaged by the cave-in, turned curious eyes on the bear.
“You would do this?” Oz asked. “Sacrifice yourself for these people you hardly know?”
“Always,” the bear replied, voice firm with resolve. “Because that’s what friends do. They are willing to die for each other. Croc just proved it. I may have forgotten most things, Christopher Robin, but I haven’t forgotten that. This place can take my memories, but I’ll never let it take the good inside of me.”
Gears whirled as the machine carefully considered Pooh’s words.
“Friends are willing to die for each other,” the mechanical voice groaned. “Yes, I see now,” he said. “Then let me do the same for you.”
The monkeys overhead spun in unison, their machetes flashing as they dove at the hydra, shrieking, stabbing, tearing through his face and neck. Dozens of blades hacked into scales and severed tendons. The hydra shrieked, twisting, blasting them apart with black and white beams of power, but for every monkey that perished, two more took its place.
In seconds, Willie was buried under a crushing tide of furry bodies and flapping raven wings, the last of its health draining away as the neck toppled like a felled timber.
[Level Up! x 1]
For a second, silence settled over the cathedral.
A hollow hiss followed, and Oz’s massive mask cracked down the middle, gears stuttering, pneumatics whining in protest. The halves curled back to reveal what was left of the man inside.
Oz the Terrible. Franchisor of the Kiosk Network. James Graham. Christopher Robin.
He was more machine than flesh now—his skin parchment-thin, sunken eyes barely visible beneath nests of tubing. Hundreds of cables slithered in and out of him, vanishing beneath his skin in puckered, angry wounds. Each breath rattled like an empty can, his HP bar leaking steadily downward, already flashing red in warning.
Pooh shuffled forward.
His steps were soft, deliberate, like he was afraid the whole world might break apart if he walked too hard. He closed the distance, not in anger but in loving reverence, before climbing into the mask and snuggling in the desiccated man’s frail arms.
“Thank you,” Pooh said, resting his head against Christopher Robin’s sunken chest.
“No,” the man wheezed, “thank you. For reminding me who I am. Of why I did all this in the first place…” He faltered, his breathing labored and wet. “All I ever wanted was to protect you, but I hurt so many innocent people along the way. And now, the end is here, and I’m scared, Pooh. So terribly, terribly scared.”
The little bear looked into his face. “It’s okay to be scared, Christopher Robin. Sometimes fear makes us do strange things. But you’re not alone. Not anymore.”
The man shuddered, the faintest ghost of a smile creasing his lips. “No… I suppose I’m not. And neither are you.” His gaze shifted to me. “I know you don’t owe me anything,” he said, “but please promise me you’ll take care of him? He’s a good bear. He deserves to be happy. To have friends who would die for him.”
I swallowed hard, throat raw, but nodded. “I will. He’ll never be alone.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Good,” the man rasped, wheezing through the tubes. “That’s good.” His chest hitched, the cables flexing like parasites, feeding on his last moments. “Now please, put me out of my misery.”
“We might be able to heal you,” I said, the words spilling out before I could stop them. “There’s got to be something—Relics, elixirs—it doesn’t have to end like this.”
His cracked lips peeled back in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Too late for that... Without my phylacteries… I can’t be healed. It’s the price of immortality. Besides”—his breath hitched, chest rattling—“I deserve this end.
“I lost my faith in God long ago, but there’s one thing I’ve never forgotten. ‘Those who live by the sword shall die by it.’ This is a fitting way to go. And if you’re going to stand a chance against the Monarch, you’ll need every scrap of experience you can get. You’ll need the Kiosk Network, too… Killing me… will grant you both.” He closed his eyes, a tremor running through his body. “Now do it.”
I looked at Pooh, who only nodded before snuggling closer to his boy. “I’m here, Christopher. I’ll always be here. You are not alone.”
We’d come here to kill this man, but I felt no satisfaction in victory. All I saw was someone who’d started with good intentions, before trading himself away, one piece at a time, until nothing remained but a hollow shell.
It was like looking into a mirror.
I thought about the Aspirants I’d hunted down and murdered in cold blood while my friends protested. About the choices I’d justified, because survival demanded it. Because getting power was more important than how I got power. It was too easy to picture myself in that mask a year from now. Maybe even less.
This was what the Backrooms did, I reminded myself. This was the price it demanded.
I wasn’t like Jakob. I knew there would be more death before this was all over—that was an unavoidable reality—but I could be more thoughtful in the choices I made moving forward. Before long, I would have the power of a god at my disposal, and I didn’t want to end up a devil instead.
My guts twisted. My jaw locked. And then I did what had to be done.
“Goodbye, Christopher,” I whispered, triggering Hydro Fracking Blast.
A jet of superheated water blasted through his skull, tearing tubes and cables free in a spray of blood and steam. His body convulsed once, then went limp, the cables slithering back into the wreckage like worms retreating from the light.
[Level Up! x 2]
Research Achievement Unlocked!
The Final Mercy
Some victories are loud. Bloody. Measured in rubble and corpses and the kind of trauma that even cracking open a cold one with the boys won’t wash away.
This was definitely that.
But it was also quiet. Tender in a place that only knows how to tenderize.
You didn’t just kill the Franchisor of the Kiosk Network. You didn’t just bury his Enforcer Hydra under a mountain of stone and steel. You stood before what was left of an utterly broken man—eaten alive by moral compromise and hard choices—and gave him something infinitely rarer than victory.
You gave him peace.
Christopher Robin. James Graham. The Franchisor. Whatever name he went by, he was already gone long before you raised your hand for the killing blow. But in his last moments, you reminded him of what it meant to be human. Of what it meant to care, even in a broken place designed to grind kindness into ash. That is by far the harder fight—one that doesn’t end with pomp or fanfare, but with a lonely man taking his final breath and a bear that still remembers what friendship means.
Anyone can swing a hammer. Not everyone can offer hope when everything else is bleak. That is uniquely and extraordinarily human.
Reward: 20,000 Experience Points, 5 x Gold Delver Loot Tokens, 1 x Platinum Kiosk Franchise Binding Totem.
Title: The Final Mercy (E) – Whenever you choose to spare a hostile Delver with less than 10% remaining Health, you gain the Experience equal to what you would have earned for killing them.
I skimmed the prompt and dismissed it with a wave, caught somewhere between conflicted and grateful. Usually, the prompts were belittling or downright insulting, but this one was different. Killing the hydra had been a feat worthy of Hercules himself, yet it was the small act of mercy that my Administrator chose to highlight.
Sometimes I got the sense that the Researcher and the Localized Administrators were assholes just for the sport of it—and maybe they were. But maybe they were also just… tired. Burned out, the same as the rest of us. Maybe, once upon a time, they’d been hopeful. Optimistic. And then centuries of death and butchery had ground them down until all that was left was dark cynicism and barbed commentary.
I wasn’t sure, but it was a good reminder that even when things were terrible, hope was still on the table—and that mercy could be its own kind of weapon.
I shoved the thought aside as a hiss of hydraulics drew my attention.
A hatch, no larger than an air vent, had popped open beside Christopher Robins’s corpse, light spilling out in a tight rectangle. Even half-dead and aching everywhere, curiosity got the better of me. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled forward. A few feet later, the narrow duct widened, and I spilled out into a hidden chamber.
It was a circular room, lit by a faint golden glow that hummed with mechanical life. The walls were plastered with displays, screens flickering with endless data feeds. At the center sat a squat kiosk, black metal polished to a sterile sheen. Floating above it was a holographic map that stopped me in my tracks.
It looked almost like a constellation. A vast web of glimmering nodes, each one linked by strands of vibrating energy.
I’d seen this before, or at least a crude version—the map the Director had gifted me what felt like a lifetime ago. But this wasn’t a pocket model. This was the real deal, sprawling, alive, and virtually endless. Each glowing point represented a kiosk. Entry and exit nodes, portals that together formed a sprawling network connecting hundreds of floors.
I reached out, fingertips lightly brushing one of the lights.
The display nearest me flared to life, painting the wall with an image of the location: topography, floor designation, Dweller details, hazards, and resource notes. Everything I could ever want to know about that node, all laid bare in crystal clear detail.
And more than that, I realized with a chill, I had access to the master Variant Kiosk Network Mainframe itself.
Menus unfolded before me, sterile and innocuous in presentation but humming with dangerous potential. I scrolled through the options, heartbeat spiking. The Auction House was the crown jewel. Although I couldn’t just pull items at will—the interface was locked down against outright theft—I could see everything.
There were thousands of Relics. Countless Artifacts. Elixirs of every type and variety. Weapons that could start or end wars. Whole treasuries catalogued and cross-listed in a system that stretched farther than my mind could comprehend.
A spiderweb of wealth and power, hung on invisible, interconnecting threads.
And somehow, standing there half-broken, my hands still raw and bleeding, I had my fingers on the strands. I’d still need money—or rather Loot Tokens—and some of the listed prices were well beyond what I could afford, but that wouldn’t last for long. Not since the owner of the Network could take a cut of every single transaction.
My hand drifted instinctively to my inventory, and I pulled free the prize I’d nearly died to earn. The Platinum Kiosk Franchise Binding Totem. It was warm in my palm, humming faintly with potential.
I stepped up to the kiosk, hesitated just long enough to realize how insane this was, and pressed the totem against the black metal surface.
The air shivered. A deep rumble echoed through the chamber and a prompt blinked into existence.
Would you like to transfer ownership of the Variant Kiosk Network from Steamboat Studios? Yes/No
“Oh, hell yeah,” I muttered, jabbing the glowing “Yes.”
The map above the kiosk flickered, strands of energy rippling outward as though the entire constellation had been rewired. The rumble built to a crescendo, then snapped off with a flash that left me momentarily blinded. When I could finally see again, a new prompt had appeared.
Congratulations! You have claimed ownership of the Variant Kiosk Network. The Network is now a subsidiary of Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains.
Franchisor Privileges Unlocked. While you cannot directly change prices for individual items, as the current Franchisor you may:
- Set the Franchisor Fee—determining the cut you take from each transaction.
- List items for sale or trade.
- Approve or reject current Franchisees.
- Access Network-wide transaction data and analytics.
- Open the Brand Expansion Interface.
I let out a low whistle. “Looks like Discount Dan’s is headed to the big leagues,” I murmured. In the span of a heartbeat, I’d just become the single biggest retail empire in the Backrooms.