Chapter 5: Rage Against the Dark

Chapter 5: Rage Against the Dark

[OBJECTIVE FAILED. PLAYER TWO HAS DISCONNECTED.]

The words hung in the darkness, glowing with a serene, green poison. Disconnected. Not dead. Not murdered. Not dragged screaming into the bowels of the earth. Disconnected. As if Thomas had simply been a player in a game who had logged off. A peripheral unplugged.

The sheer, sterile banality of the message was a thousand times more cruel than any monster’s snarl. It stripped his brother’s life of its meaning, reducing his terror, his fight for survival, his very existence, to a single, passionless line of code.

Something inside Leo, a fragile part of him that had been holding on to grief and terror, finally snapped. The cold dread that had encased his heart didn't just break; it detonated. Grief, white-hot and absolute, burned away every last shred of fear. What was left was a pure, incandescent rage that was as vast and as empty as the darkness surrounding him.

He was no longer a scientist. He was no longer a victim. He was a monument to his own arrogance, standing on the grave of his brother.

A sound, low and guttural, tore its way from his throat. It started as a sob but twisted into a snarl. He looked from the bloody flashlight in his hand to the mocking green text in his vision.

“Is that what he was to you?” Leo whispered, his voice a ragged, broken thing. “A player? A fucking objective?”

The chittering started again, cautiously at first, from the shadows at the edge of his light. The whispers slithered back into his mind, tasting his new emotional state.

…angry now… …the unbeliever is broken… …tastes so much better…

Leo slowly, deliberately, got to his feet. His body screamed in protest, a symphony of pain from a dozen cuts and bruises, but the inferno in his soul was a powerful anesthetic. He held Thomas’s ruined flashlight in one hand, his knuckles white.

“You want to play a game?” he roared, the sound echoing through the dead stone. He spun, his headlamp beam cutting a wild swath through the darkness, catching fleeting glimpses of gaunt, skittering shapes that recoiled from the light. “Alright! Let’s play! Come on, you cowardly little shits! Come and get me!”

He was laughing now, a wild, unhinged sound that was more terrifying than any scream. He was a cornered animal that had forgotten how to be afraid and remembered only how to bite.

…he challenges us… …foolish… …we will unmake him…

The chittering grew louder, a thousand clicking, scraping sounds that filled the chamber, the sound of a hive awakening. The cold intensified, pressing in on him, a tangible presence that sought to leech the very heat from his body. He could feel their eyes on him, dozens of them, hundreds of them, all watching from the impenetrable dark just beyond his light.

“You took him!” Leo screamed, tears of pure fury carving hot tracks through the grime on his face. “You think I’m afraid to die in here with him? You think I’m afraid of you?”

He raised a trembling hand to his head, his fingers finding the switch on his headlamp.

This was his final act of defiance. His last piece of science, his last connection to the world of logic and light. He had come into their world with it, arrogant and proud. He would leave it on his own terms. He would face them in their own element, not as a cowering researcher, but as a man with nothing left to lose.

He would give them the dark they craved.

“Let’s see how you like it when the prey turns off the light,” he snarled.

And he flicked the switch.

Total blackness crashed down on him. The only light remaining was the faint, hateful green glow of the System, which now simply read: [STATUS: HOSTILE.]

For a single, heartbeat-long moment, there was silence. The silence of predators momentarily confused by the prey’s suicidal move.

Then, the cacophony erupted.

The chittering exploded into a wave of shrieks and high-pitched, manic giggles that came from every direction at once. The whispers in his head were no longer whispers; they were a legion, a roaring torrent of malice and hunger. The air became a solid wall of freezing cold. He could smell the damp earth and rot, overpowering and close.

He felt them brush against him. Icy, sharp touches on his arms, his legs, the back of his neck. They were a swarm, a tide of living darkness, and he was the stone they were breaking against. He flinched, but held his ground, his fists clenched, Thomas’s flashlight a useless club in his hand. He was ready. He would swing until his arms were torn from their sockets. He would go down fighting, a final, bloody tribute to the brother he had failed.

The shrieking reached a fever pitch. He felt a dozen needle-sharp points press against his skin, the prelude to being torn apart. He braced himself for the pain, a final, defiant roar building in his chest—

BOOM.

The world became light and sound.

A section of the cave wall to his left didn't just collapse; it exploded inward in a shower of pulverized rock and dust. A deafening, high-frequency scream of metal grinding against stone filled the cavern, a sound so alien, so industrial, it felt like a violation of reality.

Blinding, artificial light flooded the chamber. It wasn't the weak, focused beam of a headlamp, but a massive, overwhelming glare from huge floodlights. It was the light of the sun, weaponized and angry.

The Chatterlings shrieked, a sound of pure agony now. The icy cold vanished, blasted away by the sudden intrusion. The whispers in Leo’s head were cut off, replaced by the mechanical roar. He saw them for a split second, caught in the brutal, unforgiving light—not as fleeting shadows, but as solid things. Twisted, gaunt bodies of root and stone, their featureless faces contorting as they scrambled away from the light, melting back into cracks in the rock he hadn't even known were there.

Through the breach, he saw it. The source of the destruction. The colossal, diamond-toothed head of a tunnel-boring machine, its metal face caked in the earth it had just devoured. The pipeline. They had drilled right into the side of the mountain, right into the heart of his nightmare.

The rage that had sustained him, that had been his shield and his sword, guttered and died. The adrenaline fled his body, leaving behind a wreck of pain and exhaustion. His legs gave out. The sounds of the machine, the blinding light, the impossible reality of his rescue—it was too much.

His world tilted, the brilliant white light fracturing into a kaleidoscope of stars. The last thing he saw before consciousness deserted him was the shadow of a figure in a hard hat, silhouetted against the light in the breach. The last thing he thought was a single, broken word.

Thomas.

And then, nothing.