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“Hello—?” His laugh died in his throat, leaving the word hanging.
Where was he? No—how was he here? He had gotten out. They had gotten out. He’d even helped them—technically.
Sure, he was the one who’d thrown them into the backrooms in the first place, but he’d gotten them out, hadn’t he?
And yet here he was again. Alone. Sent back.
Maybe it was fair, payback for what he’d done… but still.
His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting at his palms. He hated the silence here—the buzzing lights overhead, the endless yellow halls. It all felt heavier now that he was alone again.
They didn’t even look back at me.
Wylan laughed, a shaky little sound, as if saying it aloud might make it less true. “I helped, didn’t I? I made it fun.” His voice cracked, bouncing down the hallway like it was mocking him.
He started walking, fast, too fast, like if he moved quick enough the loneliness wouldn’t catch him. That’s all it was. Entertainment. A little scare. A little game. And games need players, don’t they?
His chest ached at the thought. He wasn’t a monster, not really. He didn’t want to hurt them—he just wanted someone to stay. Someone to play.
But now they were gone, and he was back where he’d started.
The humming light above him flickered. Wylan smiled at it, like it was the only thing listening. “Guess it’s just me again, huh?”
His shoes scuffed against the carpet, damp and sour with that smell he could never name. The buzzing above seemed to crawl into his skull, a constant reminder that he was back.
“They’ll come looking,” he muttered, as if the walls might argue. “They have to. We’re friends now. We laughed—remember? We laughed.”
He stopped, pressing his palm against the wallpaper. The cheap yellow pattern blurred beneath his fingers. His throat tightened. What if they don’t? What if they never wanted to?
The thought burned, and for a moment the grin slipped. He slammed his hand flat against the wall, hard enough to sting, and hissed through his teeth. “That’s not fair. I was funny. I made it fun.”
His laugh returned, brittle and too loud, echoing off the endless corners. “They’ll miss me. They will. They always do. And when they do…” His voice dropped, almost conspiratorial. “…I’ll be waiting.”
The hallway stretched ahead, forever the same, forever empty. Wylan started walking again, humming tunelessly under his breath, the sound wavering but determined. Anything to drown out the silence.
. . .
“Well, we’ll be off now. Doubt we’re gonna do any actual archaeology out here anyway—” Shob said with a grin, though his voice trailed as Sneeze darted off toward the mesa, already chasing some distraction.
“Oh—uh, okay. We’ll see you later, then.” Zelder lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave, watching them go until the dust settled back into stillness.
Silence pressed in, heavier than it should’ve been.
Kat shifted her weight, arms crossed. “Should we… bring him back?”
Zelder froze. Animated’s head snapped toward her.
“By going there again? Not happening, Kat.”
Kat’s mouth opened like she wanted to argue, but Animated barrelled on, cutting her short. “He’s the reason we were trapped in there to begin with!”
“But we all did get out…” Zelder’s voice was quiet, uncertain. He didn’t meet their eyes. His chest felt tight just thinking about those walls, those endless yellow halls. He didn’t want to go back—not after what they’d seen. Absolutely not. But still…
Zelder’s words hung there, brittle as glass.
Animated’s jaw tightened. “Don’t do that. Don’t defend him.” His tone was sharp, but his eyes flickered—somewhere between anger and something rawer. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but every mention of back there brought the weight of memories crashing in. The buzzing lights. The drowning silence. Zelder’s blank stare. The way it had all slipped out of control.
Zelder’s throat felt dry. He could still see Animated’s face from before—relief shining in his eyes when they’d found each other again. “I can’t lose you again. It was terrible.” The words looped in his head like a curse. Animated hadn’t meant for him to remember them now, but he did. Too vividly.
Kat broke the silence, her voice steadier than she felt. “Maybe he deserves another chance. Maybe we deserve another chance. You saw him—he wasn’t trying to… to hurt us. Not really. He just—”
“He just got us stuck there,” Animated snapped. His voice cracked around the edges, frustration mixing with something far more fragile. “He played with us like we were toys. And you want to drag us back into that?”
Zelder shut his eyes. For a second, he swore he could feel the phantom weight of the possession pressing against his mind again, smothering him. Wylan’s laugh echoing. Animated’s voice breaking. Kat’s footsteps retreating.
The silence that followed now was almost worse than the humming lights had been.
Kat’s arms crossed tighter. “Look, I’m not saying we dive right back in. I’m not stupid. But leaving him there, alone? That’s not any better than what he did to us.”
Animated gave a sharp laugh, but there was no humour in it. “Not better? Kat, he abandoned you every other second. He left you wandering those halls alone while he went off messing with me and Zelder, or Shob and Sneeze. And now you want to act like he deserves saving?”
Kat flinched—because he wasn’t wrong. She remembered the sting of it too clearly: endless stretches of damp carpet, the ceiling buzzing overhead, no footsteps but her own. Waiting for someone—anyone—to circle back. But no one did. Not even Wylan. Especially not Wylan.
“He’s an idiot,” she admitted, voice low. “But he’s our idiot. If we don’t go back for him, who will?”
Animated’s expression softened just a fraction, though his jaw stayed tight. “Kat… I can’t. Not again. I can’t go back there. I won’t.” His voice dropped, barely above a whisper. “You don’t know what it was like, thinking I’d lost Zelder again. Being alone like that. I can’t…”
Zelder swallowed hard, staring at the ground. The weight of both their voices pressed down on him, dragging him back into flickers of memory—Kat’s frustration, Wylan’s laughter, Animated’s desperate grip on his wrist. He didn’t want to choose. Couldn’t.
And yet, some small, traitorous part of him whispered: maybe they shouldn’t let him stay there alone.
The silence that followed felt brittle, like if anyone breathed too hard it would all shatter.
. . .
The hum of the lights followed him no matter how far he walked, a low static that filled every gap between his thoughts. Wylan pressed his palms over his ears for a moment, but it didn’t help. The sound was in the walls. In the floor. In him.
He tried to laugh—he always tried to laugh—but it came out broken, thin. “Archaeology trip,” he muttered to himself. “Yeah. Real funny.”
Kat’s face flickered in his mind, the flat look she’d given him when he’d first pitched the lie. He thought she’d forgive him eventually. She always did. But then he’d left her—again and again—slipping away to check on the others, teleporting from group to group, chasing the next bit of chaos. He never stayed. Not with her. And maybe she noticed more than he thought.
Then there was Animated. Animated, who’d looked him in the eye in the poolrooms, water lapping at their ankles, and answered without hesitation: “Not really.” Wylan laughed again, but it cut sharp this time. He’d wanted to say it didn’t matter, that it was just a game, but the words had stung deeper than he expected.
Zelder, too—haunted, half-lost in his own head, a friend Wylan couldn’t save no matter how he twisted the rules. And still Wylan had pushed and pushed, like he could make it entertaining enough to cover the cracks.
And Shob and Sneeze—of all people—had somehow been fine. Laughing in the dark, bouncing off each other like it wasn’t the end of the world. They hadn’t needed him at all.
The buzzing grew louder, or maybe it was just his own thoughts pressing harder.
“Maybe…” he whispered, slowing to a stop, staring down another endless stretch of yellow hallway. “Maybe I do deserve this. Alone again. No players left.”
Wylan stayed there for a long moment, forehead pressed against the wall, the buzz digging into his skull. His chest hurt with the weight of it, the knowing that no one was coming.
But then—slowly, a smile crept back onto his face. Small at first, then wider, sharper.
“If you don’t come to get me…” he whispered, the sound almost swallowed by the hum, “…I’ll find a way to bring you back here.”
He leaned back, eyes glinting in the fluorescent light. “And then you’ll have to help. You won’t have a choice.”
The laughter bubbled out of him again, echoing down the endless yellow hallways. This time, it didn’t sound nervous at all.
Rexus776 Wed 03 Sep 2025 08:58PM UTC
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