As the silence settled around us, it was like someone had hit pause on the chaos. No more shrieking drones, no more thundering footsteps, no more nerve-searing plasma fire. Just the faint, echoing hum of the sealed chamber and the collective wheeze of people who had very nearly been turned into untimely corpses. The Blight countdown timer had vanished, which was another small relief on top of our narrow escape.

  Still trembling, we staggered forward into the connecting room.

  This one wasn’t like the vine-choked corridors or half-devoured research labs we’d passed through in the Pathogen Containment Vault. Rather, it had the same clean lines and sterile severity I’d seen displayed throughout the rest of the floor. It was a massive, open space lined with rows of long metal desks and sleek holo-terminals, all flickering with low-power system warnings and corrupted data streams.

  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say we’d just wandered into a NASA mission control room mid-apocalypse.

  It looked like someone—or more likely, a whole team of someones—had been working here in a frenzy. Frantic, desperate. Pages of printed notes were scattered across every flat surface, some crumpled, others scrawled with shaky handwriting in a language I didn’t know. Dog-eared manuals sat open, bookmarked with snack wrappers and torn badge lanyards. Empty coffee cups—some tipped, some moldy—sat beside workspaces, accompanied by half-eaten vending machine meals.

  The whole place smelled like stress sweat and failed caffeine dependency.

  There were no bodies, though. That was the weird part. No blood. No gore. No sign of a last stand. Just the ghost of panic clinging to every surface.

  “Well,” Croc said, peering at a terminal that had a GIF of a burning calendar looping endlessly, “this looks a lot better than the last area.” The mimic’s googly eyes landed on a package of Biofractional Synth-Meat, still in the wrapper. “Hey, Dan? I know you said not to eat anything here, but do you think that’s fair game? I mean, whoever left that probably won’t miss it, right?”

  I rolled my eyes and let out a shaky chuckle. “Yeah, knock yourself out, bud.”

  The room seemed to be self-contained, no other hallways or doors branching off, so I cast Unerring Arrow and it immediately zigzagged between the rows of desks and workstations, around a stack of chairs and a whiteboard covered in barely legible equations, and directly toward a small coffee stall covered in sleek, chrome paneling near the back of the room. A glowing sign attached to the front read AutoBar – Fresh Brewed, No Questions Asked!

  The blue light led to a small hatch set in its side, though it would be a struggle to get through. Looked more like a storage compartment for cups and filters than a proper door, but that seemed to be our ticket out of this hellhole and down to the next floor. We’d finally found the kiosk, and though it was significantly smaller than any of the other kiosks we’d run across so far, I knew size didn’t really matter.

  I was curious about why the kiosks worked on this level, since other forms of Spatial magic seemed so heavily restricted, but that was just one of those questions I wasn’t sure I’d ever get an answer to. I knew a lot more now than I had when we’d first entered the level—what the purpose of the Backrooms were and where the Blight had initially come from—but this place was still a mystery with a world of secrets to unravel.

  Jakob was already picking through the notes scattered around the space, while Croc threw itself at the leftovers, but I was more interested in a video that seemed to be looping on one of the terminals.

  Weary of traps, alarms, or other failsafe’s, I cautiously padded over and plopped into a chair in front of the holo-terminal. The seat—clearly not designed with human anatomy in mind—had the ergonomic sensibility of a torture rack. No real back support, no cushions, the arm rests were shaped like spiral corkscrews with weird notches of material poking into places they didn’t belong.

  I shifted until the least painful bits aligned then reached for the computer in front of me. There was something akin to a keyboard and though none of the keys were where they should’ve been—or in English—it didn’t take me long to find a toggle to unmute the screen. The video started over, this time with sound.

  A mass of tentacles filled the view, and I recoiled on instinct.

  The thing on the screen was vaguely humanoid in structure, but only in the most liberal sense of the word. Mostly, its body was a tangle of writhing appendages and flapping gray tentacles, its torso covered by a white smock that might’ve passed for a lab coat of some sort. A badge was clipped to the garment, displaying a complex runic sigil and a barcode running along the top.

  A single, massive eye, wet and glistening, sat dead center where a head should’ve been. There was no eyelid to speak of, and the pupil was an enormous ring of gold, the size of a small dinner plate. The creature had no visible mouth, but it spoke anyway—a set of odd, hairy tufts on either side of its eye wriggling as it talked.

  I recognized the voice, even though I’d only heard it a handful of times before. It was the same voice that had greeted me upon arrival. The Researcher.

  “If you’re seeing this message,” he said, “then containment protocols have utterly failed and I’m leaving this recording for posterity’s sake. I am—or was—the Head Researcher assigned to the Progenitor Ship, KAIROS Carrier, NIC-001V.”

  The screen crackled. In the background, alarms flared dimly and something screeched behind the camera. The lights flickered as shadows moved in the reflection of the viewport behind the researcher.

  “The Blight, first brought on board by the Drekhnaar, has spread beyond VRD control. We underestimated its rate of replication… and its intelligence. It’s not a pathogen—at least not in the strictest sense of the word. Nor even a lifeform. Not the way we understand them. It’s a vector for entropy disguised as biology. After copious study, we’ve found that the Drekhnaar themselves are not the source of the infection. Rather, they were just a pathogen vessel, their species co-opted by the Bight at some distant point in the past.”

  The eye narrowed.

  “We thought the Quarantine Vaults would be sufficient. They weren’t. Our initial assumptions about the pathogen lead us to several false conclusions, which resulted in the initial quarantine breach. Several sublevels have already been contaminated and our best efforts to cordon off the floors have proven to be insufficient to the task. As of now, we’ve confirmed there are several active Blight colonies on multiple unconnected floors… including the unindexed zones and even the Midrange Memory Pools. Worse still…”

  The Researcher hesitated, his tentacles curling tighter around the desk he stood behind.

  “The Progenitor Ship itself has been compromised.” I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but the Researcher sounded devastated. “Its neural core is no longer responding to system overrides. It is continuing to fabricate materials and environments, but it’s doing so without oversight. We think it’s trying to stay true to its primary directives: stimulation, growth, iteration. But it’s… off.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “The Dwellers aren’t stable,” he continued. “Subspaces are overlapping and fracturing. The simulation parameters are degrading. Essentially, what it’s creating isn’t what we programmed—it’s what it remembers from past simulations.” He faltered and slumped forward. “The truth is, we don’t actually know what it is doing.”

  The screen shook. Something slammed into the far wall of the recording room, but the Researcher didn’t flinch.

  “The others are dead,” he said. “Most of them, anyway. Some are… no longer themselves.” His voice softened and the enormous pupil dilated. “Until containment is restored, the ship will remain moored indefinitely on Earth 367, Multiversal Grid 18-Kappa / Quadrant Cascade 8001 / Anchor Point: 7.421.ΘΔ. We cannot risk another jump. Cannot risk taking this… this infection to another world, much less our home world. If the Blight managed to spread through our dimensional interface, it could mean a galactic extinction level event.

  “To the people of Earth, for what it’s worth, know that you have our deepest condolences and apologies. We never meant your world harm—just the opposite. Please believe that our purpose is a noble one, even if our methods may seem strange. The long-standing mission of the VRD is the betterment of all sapient galactic life. Those abducted were simply the forerunners of your species. Heralds designed to allow your world to integrate with the advanced technology of our own. To harness our magic as we introduced it slowly to your planet.”

  The creature’s body seemed to droop further in defeat.

  “But now we may very well have consigned your world to destruction. I will do my utmost to contain the Blight and get the ship back under my control, but it could take time. Perhaps even a very long time—assuming it is possible at all. And without the rest of the Researchers, I may need to employ some rather unorthodox methods, including utilization of test subjects. Regardless of the outcome, the Blight cannot be allowed to leave the ship.

  “If it breaches these walls and germinates, Earth could very well end up like the Drekhnaar home world. This may come as bitter news, but under no circumstances should the Delvers or Dwellers on this vessel be allowed to leave until the ship has been entirely purged. Even if you are not currently infected with Blight, it is entirely possible that the contagion could spread anyway. To leave is to endanger your very world. Your entire system.”

  There was another crash followed by a chorus of screams and wet, organic tearing noises.

  Then the video cut off before looping again.

  I hit the mute button.

  The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy. Suffocating. It was the same silence that had settled over our convoy after Sergeant Martin had died, blown apart in the sands of a country far from home. It was the sound of defeat. I sat there in that hideous alien chair, unable—or maybe unwilling—to move.

  We couldn’t go home.

  Not now.

  Maybe not ever.

  The Blight was far worse than any of us had thought, contaminating floors and systems we didn’t even know existed. Hell, it had infected the ship itself, which explained a lot. It also meant every floor, every progenerated Dweller, every glitchy corridor could be a vector. We were vectors. And if we left—if anyone left—there was a real chance we wouldn’t just doom ourselves.

  We’d doom the entire planet.

  My planet.

  A low thump echoed through the room. I stole a look over one shoulder and saw that Jakob had finally stopped rifling through notes. The Cendral sank into a chair across the aisle like a puppet with its cut strings—all of his hopes burned in the wake of the revelation.

  Harper leaned against a desk, her brow furrowed in disbelief. “So that’s it? We’re just stuck here forever? There’s no going back? No one’s coming to save us…” Her voice trembled and I could hear the unshed tears in her voice. “That was always the fallback, you know? That someone—somehow—would find a way to pull us back. But they can’t. Not now.”

  Croc was quiet, which was more unsettling than anything. The mimic cradled the package of Synth-Meat like a stuffed animal, its googly eyes unusually still and contemplative.

  Temperance said nothing.

  She just stared at the floor, her blade still cradled in her arms, shoulders slumped in quiet devastation. She looked… broken. She’d always viewed this place as a divine trial, a crucible of growth and transformation. A proving ground built by something bigger than any of us. Her faith had kept her steady and resolute when nothing else did.

  But now she knew the truth.

  We all did.

  This was no godly forge. This was a lab experiment that had gone off the rails.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was brittle. Fragile.

  “All this time,” she said, “I thought… I thought we were chosen. That the Backrooms had saved us for something greater. A way to test us because we were worthy somehow…” she faltered. “But I was wrong. It’s all just a mistake. One, colossal mistake.”

  “Well,” Croc offered helpfully, “maybe it’s still a test? Like… a really, really awful one?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “There is no greater meaning to be found here. This, all of this”—she waved a hand around—“is pointless.”

  I cleared my throat.

  “There’s more that you don’t know,” I said, since it seemed like a moment for hard truths.

  As briefly as I could, I explained to them what I’d seen back in the Splicer Chamber. The reason for the ship. The way they abducted different races and replicated their environments so the VRD could monetize and weaponize the discoveries they found scattered across the multiverse.

  No one responded, still too shell-shocked to say more.

  “What do we do now?” Temperance finally asked, raising her head to meet my eyes. “There’s no way home and nothing waiting for us below, expect more nightmares. Do we… just give up?”

  “No,” I replied immediately, steel in my voice. “We aren’t just going to roll over and die, even if things seem bleak. Obviously, this changes things, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The idea that we could ever make it back home, maybe with a story to tell or a scar to show off… that was something to hold onto.”

  I looked around at my team—my friends. The people who’d followed me this far despite every reason not to.

  “But we’re still here,” I continued. “Still alive despite everything. And it doesn’t change the mission right in front of us. Fact is, the Monarch is still out there. Still hunting us. He’s still trying to murder our friends and break everything we’ve worked so hard to build—and I’m not gonna let that happen. The Marine Corps taught me that you can’t always control your situation, but you never stop fighting for your brothers and sisters on your left and right. I might never see my family again, but you are my family too, and I’ll be damned if I let this place take that from me.”

  “Dan,” Harper said, her voice rough. “Even if we kill the Franchisor, even if we make it to the 1000th floor and find the Progenitor Engine, what then? There’s no finish line.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said with a shrug. “Sure, this place isn’t what any of us thought, but there’s still a chance. The Researcher is alive and trying to figure out a way to cleanse this ship. He hasn’t given up hope—not even after thousands of years—so I’m not going to give up either.”

  Jakob rubbed his temples. “Do you really think there’s anything we can do?” he asked. “To kill the Monarch. To stop the Blight?”

  “Hell if I know,” I replied, “but here’s what I do know. This place might be a nightmare, but it’s a nightmare with rules. With systems designed to make us stronger. The Researcher wouldn’t be going through all this trouble if there was no hope at all. So maybe it’s going to take a while before we figure out how to cleanse the Blight. Maybe we never do. But we definitely won’t get the chance if we’re dead. And right now, stopping the Monarch means killing the Franchisor. Period. End of story. That’s our mission and we need to see it through.”

  Temperance just stared at me. Her expression wasn’t serene. It wasn’t devout.

  It was hard. Cold. Focused.

  “Then let’s kill something,” she said.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” I replied, standing.

  I headed for the kiosk, stepping around overturned chairs and metal workstations. The AutoBar stood innocently at the far end of the chamber, its chrome exterior gleaming under the flickering fluorescents like a polished coffin.

  The hatch that Unerring Arrow had marked was no bigger than a dishwasher door—certainly not something meant for a full-sized adult—but I’d learned to stop being surprised by the kiosk network’s spatial fuckery. I crouched down and gave it a gentle pull. The metal panel swung open on silent hinges, revealing a smooth metallic tunnel that shimmered faintly with magic.

  I stared into the narrow passage, the space between floors, and braced myself. The weight of the Researcher’s message still clung to my bones like wet concrete. We weren’t just running anymore. We weren’t even just surviving.

  Now we were containment—and maybe, just maybe, the first step in a long, bloody redemption arc for the entire galaxy.

  I squatted down and crawled into the light, ready to face whatever the 99th floor could throw at us.