Chapter Eighty: Climbing Tension

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.Ñøv€lRapture marked the initial hosting of this chapter on Ñôv€lß¡n.

“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.

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?