—Amanda
Step Step Step
Twenty-two. Twenty-three.
I was counting footsteps. For the same reason I count reps—numbers stay real when everything else doesn't. The fog had eaten everything except the floor under my feet and Evelyn's hand gripping mind and the sound of the others moving through the gray fog ahead of me.
Twenty-six.
I still felt guilty. I knew Cael said no use crying over spilt milk. I knew he meant it. I also knew that the spilt milk in question had turned the entire Silentium facility into a concrete forest, so—
Twenty-nine.
"The pages won't be in the middle of corridors." My voice came out quieter than I meant but steadier than I expected. Everyone looked at me. "In the game they spawned in set locations. But they all had something in common"
"They're placed in disorienting places, to make us fear it more." Jeremy said.
"Yes."
"In the original story, Slenderman is strongest when against someone individually, he becomes stronger."
"Then we check walls in pairs," Jeremy said immediately. "One looks, one watches. Nobody turns their back alone."
""
That's useful. His words from before, still ringing inside my head, I'd named the thing that started all of this and he'd called it useful. Not forgiven. Not dismissed. Just—
Thirty-one.
At some point—I stopped counting.
—Cael Lucian
"Eve with Amanda. Randy with me and Jeremy."
Nobody argued. The groupings made sense the way most things make sense in emergencies — not because anyone reasoned it out loud, but because everyone reached the same answer simultaneously and that consensus felt like evidence.
Step Step
"Radio check every ten minutes," Jeremy said, his notebook already open. "If someone doesn't respond in thirty seconds, we move toward them."
"Tsk."
"That means you too Old Man."
Tsk.
Step Step Step
The fog swallowed Eve and Amanda within twenty meters. Not dramatically—they just became shapes, then suggestions, then the sound of footsteps going a different direction. The radio crackled once confirming connection.
It was now just the three of us.
—
"Is it this?" Jeremy asked as he took a piece of paper and showed it to my face, a single piece of paper, weird scribbles, with the face blurred and countless scratches saying DON'T LOOK
Step Step Step
The research wing was wrong in the way everything was wrong—surfaces looking too rough, distances slightly elastic, the smell of cold coffee from a mug that would never be finished. And without any hesitation. Randy took the door.
Crrcckkkk Fwooosh.
Jeremy went straight to the filing system, one hand pulling drawers, notebook open in the other, and I worked the middle row. The first three folders were standard incident logs. Equipment failures, minor containment anomalies and the kind.
The bureaucratic residue of an organization that documented everything and understood very little of what it documented. Typical management. I thought to myself as I still searched through the folders.
"Is it this one?" Jeremy suddenly mutter, I stopped searching and glance at his way, a single piece of paper came to view, in it one could see a tall stickman it's head marked with a cross, with what seemed to be trees everywhere, it was crudely drawn but—
"That's definitely one of the pages" I muttered
Crackle
"Eve, Amanda, how are things at your side" With a professional voice Jeremy asked
[Bzzzzt Heyyy~ I think we found 2 pagesss, at least Amanda said soo] Eve's voice could be heard
[I-I-I'm sure they are…] Amanda's voice crackled from the radio
"What's written in the pages you guys found?"
[Bzzzt Well one of them has the words 'HELP ME' and the other has the words 'CAN'T RUN' on it]
"Yep those are definitely it" I talked through the radio.
[Bzzzzt How bout you guys~?]
"We found one page right now, "
[Bzzzzt Ohhh, that's great, shall we meet up at our quarters again?]
"Alright, remember to radio check every 10 minutes"
[Bzzzzt Rog—BZZZZZZTZTTZTZ] Yet before Eve could finish the sentence, the radio went silent.
"Scheisse" Almost instantly those words came out from Jeremy's mouth
"Tsk. It's starting, stick together kids" Old Man Randy's voice sounded calm, different from the usual snarky voice you'd hear from an Old man.
Step Step Step
—
Step Step Step
It had been 15 minutes since we had lost contact with Eve and Amanda and—
"Scheisse. What the fucks wrong with this entire place?!?! It's like a fucking Maze. Every wall looks the same , I CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME" Jeremy's voice was no longer calm, that much was obvious.
The corridor was wrong in a new way now. Before it had been slightly wrong—textures off, distances elastic. Now it was wrong the way a room is wrong when something large is very close to it. The fog had thickened from gray to something closer to white, the kind of white that has no source.
The fluorescent panels above us were cycling rather than flickering—on, half-brightness, off, on—like something was using them to count.
BZZZT
Jeremy's radio. Static. He tried Eve's frequency. Nothing. Amanda's. Nothing. Base channel. Nothing, he could only put it away.
Step Step
"Don't run," Randy said without looking back. "Running means panic. Panic means he's eating." He was right. I knew he was right. My body however it wanted to disagree.
"Nothing remarkable," I said into the fog. "Routine sweep. East wing." I muttered to no one in particular, trying my best to feign ignorance. Jeremy's hands stayed loose at his sides. Randy's pace stayed even. The performance held. I think.
The fog shifted near the wall to our left—not moving exactly, just different, the way a shadow is different from the thing casting it. Something tall. Present without approaching. I didn't look directly. Didn't need to
Step Step Step
The corridor, it was longer than it should have been. Not by much—the kind of longer that you'd think your mind was playing tricsk on you if you weren't already counting tiles to keep yourself grounded. I was counting tiles. The count was wrong.
"Jeremy."
"Saw it."
We didn't stop. Didn't acknowledge it further. Just noted it in our heads and kept moving.
Step Step Step
"Stop." Old Man Randy out of no where muttered
"What? That's-"
The wall to my right had something on it. Not a folder, not a report—a single sheet of paper, rough torn edges, the kind that comes from a notebook. Fixed to the wall with what looked like a standard Silentium memo pin, except nobody had put it there. It read:
DON'T LOOK OR IT TAKES YOU
I took the page off the wall without stopping. Four.
Step Step Step
Then out of no where—The radio crackled.
[Bzzzzt—Cael?] Eve's voice. Thinner than normal. Exhaustion was kicking in
"We're moving toward you. Five minutes out."
[Bzzzzt—Okay. We're—] A pause that lasted exactly one second too long. [We're fine. Amanda's fine. We're already at our quarters.] She was still performing. Good. That meant she understood the rules nicely.
"Copy. Moving now."
Step Step Step
The corridor seemed like it materialized out of the white fog at exactly the wrong distance—too close, then suddenly correct, the spatial wrongness snapping into place like an eye adjusting to dark. Eve and Amanda were there.
Eve's jacket had a tear in the left sleeve that hadn't been there before. Amanda was holding both pages in both hands, pressing them flat, like she was doing reps. Nobody asked about the sleeve.
"Four pages," I said. "You have two, they have two. That's four."
"Four more," Jeremy said.
"Four more," Randy confirmed. His voice exactly as it always was. Flat. Certain. The old man who had survived every shift and would survive this one too, He is Old Man Randy after all.
"Let's move" he said, as we prepared to move as a team, as we usually do.
—Evelyn
The tear in my sleeve was from the third corridor.
I hadn't mentioned it because there was nothing useful to say about it—it had been there, briefly, at the edge of the fog, and then it hadn't been, and my jacket had a four-inch tear where something had passed too close
I kept walking, it was the correct decision and I wasn't going to think about it anymore.
Amanda was still holding the pages. Both hands, pressing them flat the way she pressed a barbell to her chest on the last rep of a heavy set — controlled, deliberate, the thing that keeps you from dropping it.
She's doing better than she thinks, I thought. She always does.
"Four more," Cael said as we regrouped.
"Together this time," I said.
"Together," he replied
Step Step Step Step Step
Five people. All bunched together. The fog still present but passive—whatever the page collection was doing to him, it was doing something. The corridors felt less elastic than they had twenty minutes ago.
The fluorescent cycling had slowed to an irregular rather than constant. Small signs. I catalogued them the way I catalogued air supply on a dive—not reassuringly, just accurately. One wrong calculation and you could find yourself dead out of suffocation
We have enough. Keep moving.
"Oh?" I murmured as I looked at a random page found in one of the women's toilet, it read, ALWAYS WATCHES NO EYES, without hesitation I grabbed it before continuing to walk as usual
Step Step Step Step
At some point Cael suddenly asked a question.
"How many pages have we collected?"
"Five, three more to go." Jeremy muttered as he lead the way into the cafeteria once more. It was the only remaining place we haven't reached, but as soon as got close to what used to be the cafeteria door, something was wrong.
The cafeteria doors were open.
That was the first wrong thing. They were always sealed during lockdown—magnetic locks, backup bolts, the chances of both to fail simultaneously before they'd work was
The second wrong thing was what was inside.
I'd eaten in this cafeteria every day for over a year. I knew where every table was, every chair, the specific squeak of the third refrigeration unit on the left, the angle the morning light came through the frosted panels. I knew this room.
This room was not that room anymore.
Tables overturned. Trays on the floor. Cold food still on them—meals abandoned mid-bite, on the walls, covering every surface from floor to ceiling in handwriting that ranged from careful to frantic to something that barely qualified as writing anymore:
DON'T LOOK
DON'T LOOK
DON'T LOOK
"They were here," Jeremy said quietly. Not a question. Not horror exactly. Just the observation, filed and noted, the way he filed everything, and one wouldn't even need his inhuman observation skills to make a conclusion
Paid holiday. Except this time the phrase didn't feel like euphemism. It felt like evidence.
BZZZT FLICKER BZZZT
The lights dropped to nothing.
One second. Two. Three—
When they returned, the formation was gone. Not gradually. Not because anyone moved. Just — three seconds of dark and the five of us were no longer the same five of us in the same place.
Eve. Jeremy. Myself.
Amanda—gone. Radio silence. Her frequency returned nothing but static.
Randy—
"Old Man." Jeremy's voice. Flat but not calm. The difference between the two was something you learned after enough time with him.
"Tsk." Old Man Randy went, and without hesitation. He moved.
Step Step
"Old man???" Jeremy's voice was unsure, small even yet there was no longer any reply.
"Damn it." Cael could only curse with the disappearance of the Old man, but it should be fine… he is Old Man Randy after all.
"It's fine, he's Old Man Randy. He always comes back~"
Both Cael and Jeremy had a look of mistrust, but that's because they've never seen the Old Man in action. There's a reason he's still working here even after all those years. Most retire young in this line of work after all.
"Trust me~"