JELLYFISH

DOOR 021

Something raw and unfiltered left [name]'s throat. They grabbed at their head, scratching and clawing at their hair, trying to remove the noise from their mind and the ache that followed after.

It was going so well. It was going so well!

Someone grabbed at [name]'s shoulder and [name] would've usually tried to push them away, but they knew it was Emil, and Emil never did [name] any wrong. Their breath grew heavy, but their screaming stopped and so did their tears. Oz moved to the front, peering out, then moving outside the side room. He wouldn't have been able to see anything from where he was.

[name] wiped more at their face, brushing back at their hair that clung to their skin, and stood up. They turned their head back, finding Emil's closeness and Evelyn's fright to be much more grounding than they would've thought.

Who were they missing?

[name] stepped close to the door, Emil's hand leaving their shoulder as they stepped out in the dark and sucked in a ragged breath as they peered over the hard corner that overlooked the door. It wasn't open, but there was a splatter of fresh blood across the ground that signified someone indeed had been killed and taken away. The faint music still drowned the silence that they were accustomed to.

Oz came running back from the darkness, startling [name], "Kei's fine," he spoke not to them specifically, but to the three of them that remained alive.

"Ezekiel? Vanessa?" [name] questioned quickly, eyes darting back to the blood that was illuminated only once every few seconds due to the poor lighting in the area. Oz followed their gaze and his face soured.

One of the two was dead.

[name] didn't know if they could handle knowing who was dead, but they stepped away from the room, and Oz completely now, right hand sliding against the wall to their right with their hand-crank flashlight in their left. The blood on the ground they moved closer to now looked more like a smear than a splatter, spats of droplets finding their way onto the door ahead, where the Angler disappeared into.

Then, [name] heard a small series of beeps. There was one—beep, slow, then another—beep, still slow, but faster than before. It didn't come from near [name], but more off to their right, toward the door that the group had come from. Then came a quick shuffle of feet and the sound of Kei cursing. He stumbled out of the shadow and into the middle of the room, moving quick to [name].

"That noise messes with my suit!" He spat, hand coming up to grab at his PDG, but then he stopped upon instinct and lowered his hand, "fuck. Fuck! How are we supposed to find the keycard over there?!"

[name] looked back over to where Kei had come from, shining their light. It was a curve, a path opening up just out of view just like the one [name] had followed to the left of the room. [name] turned their light and attention to the place directly to their left, it opened up on this side too. The noise came from the other side of the thick wall.

"It's probably over there," [name] murmured, narrowing their eyes in the dark as they turned off their light and began to wind it up again.

"I'm not getting my brains blown out just for a damn keycard," Kei sank back, his shoulders bunching up.

They understood the part about not wanting to be killed over a keycard, but it went beyond finding one keycard when there could be who knows how many desks and drawers over there. Since Kei's PDG stopped beeping the moment he stepped out from the right side of the room, there must've been a certain range in which the sound could affect them.

[name]'s neck and skull ached.

"Was Ezekiel over there?" They still hadn't seen him since they entered this room. Vanessa too.