Chapter Text
Silas had curled up on the floor of the submarine, letting the minutes tick by until he was “dropped off” at the Blacksite.
Earlier in the trip, the kid had poked at the little red console built into the wall of the submarine. A condescending, feminine voice rang out, warning him of an "internal defense system." Silas jolted backwards at the unexpected noise, glaring at it as he considered punching it for startling him. But the words “internal defense system” didn't sit right with him, so he sat back down and drifted back into his mind.
He already knew he was going to die at the Blacksite; after all, that was the only reason Urbanshade wanted him down there. Silas was dreading his arrival, scared of the horrors he knew he'd meet, but also somewhat comforted by the idea of knowing the end result of the trip.
It'll be over before I know it, he thought morbidly, burying his head in his hands.
He hadn’t been told how long the trip would take. Not that it mattered, since there was no way of telling the time. Or doing anything other than thinking. Sure, he hated being trapped with his thoughts- but that was better than being stuck with a bunch of monsters, which he soon would be.
A bunch of other monsters, Silas added to himself with a curious tilt of his head. Technically I'm one of them.
At least, he was pretty sure there'd be monsters. A couple days back, Silas had overheard some lab staff talking about rumors that he'd be getting sent to the Blacksite. It’d caught his attention partially because it was about him, and partially because he’d never heard of a “Blacksite” before. One of the staff had mentioned a containment breach from a few years ago that had let a bunch of creatures loose, and then the other said something along the lines of "Mr. Shade is dumb if he thinks sending that thing down there is a good idea." That remark had only made Silas more anxious, because he couldn't tell if that was supposed to be a good or bad thing for him.
He started to ask himself questions about the things down there. What would the creatures look like? Silas tried to visualize something, anything, but came up blank. Would they be small or big? That was a stupid question- probably some of both. Then, what was the largest thing down there? Probably something scary.
Silas shook his head. One of his claws absentmindedly yanked at the collar of the jacket that Urbanshade had left him with, then let it go so it snapped back to his chest. How much longer would this ride take? In a poor attempt at finding something else to do, Silas leaned over to try and see through one of the windows. Obviously, all he saw outside was black. Nothing had been visible earlier, and the submarine had only gotten deeper since then, so nothing would've changed anyway. He tapped his claws against the metal beneath him, starting to hum a tune that'd been in the back of his mind.
Then the voice from earlier rang through again, startling Silas, and the door began to unfold.
“Submarine has arrived. Please stand a minimum of 3 feet away from the hatch until it’s fully opened.”
He sat up, cautiously looking out the open submarine door and at the surprisingly normal docking bay outside. He surveyed the room as he ducked through the exit; there were gray crates, gray tables, gray lockers, gray-blue walls: nothing he hadn't seen before. The lights were on, which he hadn't expected, but that didn’t make the situation feel any brighter. Hey, he hadn't seen any eldritch horrors yet! That was a good thing. So he made his way over to the first door he saw. Where there might've been a handle, there was a keycard reader.
Aaaand it requires a keycard.
Silas looked around. After a bit of looking and crawling over some boxes, the keycard had been obtained, as well as a notebook and pen. He made his way back up to the door and took a deep breath. A tiny part of him wanted to curl up in a corner and stay in the dock forever, but the rest of him deemed that fate too depressing. So, Silas swiped the card through the reader and started his journey into the Blacksite.
The first few halls weren't much different from the dock. Still scary, of course, simply because Silas didn't know what to expect. The only things he could count on were the sounds of his breathing, his tail, and the faint movement of ocean water just beyond the concrete walls.
A bit further in, he heard a whale call.
Are there even whales this deep in the ocean? How deep down is this place, anyway?
A few halls later, it was a door opening from somewhere deeper in the facility. Silas wanted to believe they were echoes, but he knew better than that.
With each new, unfamiliar sound, Silas jumped and checked his surroundings. The coast was clear every time. As he wandered deeper into the Blacksite, his jumpiness waned a bit, but he still kept an eye out.
One sound he heard while going through a particularly long hallway was comparable only to the wails of the damned wafting up from hell: far away, high-pitched shrieking. Another one sounded like it'd come straight from Minecraft's cave systems. Silas hadn't expected to be reminded of Minecraft of all things, and decided to use it as an excuse to take a small break from all the traveling. He sat down in a side hall that lead to a dead end, and spent a couple minutes digging through his older, fuzzier memories.
Silas remembered walking his character through the dark caves, scared of running into Herobrine—what or who that was, he couldn't remember—only to be jumpscared by a mob rounding a corner. The Blacksite instilled within him a similar, yet much deeper, sense of fear and dread. However, this time, there was no way of knowing what might round that corner.
Silas shuddered and got back up so he could keep going. As he moved out of the dead-ended hallway, he noticed glowing eyes in one of the lockers next to him. He scrambled forward and looked back at them once he'd gotten far enough. There were multiple of them, each glowing a deep purple, staring through the slits in the door. He turned back around, scared of the potential consequences of looking at them for too long—or looking at them at all—and continued through the next door.
Best case scenario, I don't see more. Worst case scenario… I encounter my first full eldritch horror. It's bound to happen eventually, he thought dreadfully.
If he came across any more, it wouldn't be hard to keep his distance. From then on, he made sure to pay a little extra attention to the lockers he passed.
A few more bleak, anticipation-filled turns and eerie sounds later, something caught Silas’ eye. There was a strange object, containing actual colors, perched on one of the racks. He slithered up to it, looked around as if to make sure nobody had been guarding it, then carefully picked it up. It was a glass vial with a bicolored liquid in it, purple on one side and light blue on the other. Where the two main tubes met in the middle, the colors faded together.
This vial felt out of place, for a reason Silas couldn’t put into words. He gently tapped his claws on it, smiling as it made a little clinking sound, and continued to the end of the hall with it still in his hand.
He was about to open the next door, only for his attention to fall on the screen beside it. Every door he'd gone through had a blank screen by it, but it had only just occurred to him that they might do something. He sat down by it, curiously tapping at the glass with his free hand, thinking that it might be a touchscreen.
Nothing happened. It really was just a blank screen. Maybe it stopped working when the breach happened? Silas tapped at it again, noticing his reflection in the glass and smiling. Except, his reflection didn’t look quite right. Urbanshade’s logo was smack dab on the front of his jacket, so small yet so big. Admittedly, he'd always kind of liked how the logo looked, but his hatred for Urbanshade overrode his love for the design. Taking the jacket off wasn't an option, that would make him feel too vulnerable. And cutting out that patch would create a hole, which was stupid and in no way worth it. Silas shook his head, looking around. Why was he thinking about this? He stood up and opened the next door, his fear slowly giving way into curiosity.
In the newest hallway, the only thing that stood out to Silas was a door off to the side. Upon opening the door, he was met with a... cozy office space? It was nothing like the clinical gray atmosphere of the rest of the Blacksite. The room's lighting was warm and inviting, the desks looked more wooden than plastic, and there were a few potted plants around the room. Silas wasn't really sure of anything at the moment, other than that knew he needed a place to rest eventually and there was no knowing when he'd come across another room like this. Before resting, though, he tried to force the door shut. About halfway through, it occurred to him that forcing the door shut could end in him being locked in this room.
Oh well. Better than getting torn apart limb by limb, right? Might as well go out comfortable.
After failing to force the door shut, Silas sighed and coiled up behind one of the desks. He looked back up at the door, to make sure there was nobody there- only to notice a camera in the upper corner of the room.
I wonder how long it's been since anyone’s used-
Hold up. What was that noise? It sounded like faint screaming, except… it wasn't fading away, it was getting closer. Silas’ sense of danger flared up again, and he instinctively lowered his head. The lights outside of the room flickered as the noise grew closer. Silas tensed up and held his breath. He would have moved to cover his ears, but he wasn't going to risk increasing his chance of getting found in case whatever was out there could sense movement.
As it got closer, he tensed up more. The thing passed through with a mind-shattering screech that left Silas disoriented. All he could tell was that he probably wasn't dead.
Eventually, he lifted his head a bit, tiredly blinking a few times as he peered outside the doorway. The lights were shattered, leaving the hall dark. Silas shuddered, feeling prickly all over after whatever just happened. He debated leaving, but couldn't build up the courage to get up and venture into the darkness where anything could be waiting. If something was going to find him, there was nothing he could do. He’d gotten pretty used to that feeling by now. So why try?