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At first, there was darkness and searing heat. Seven had known what he’d done would hurt, even if he had hoped he’d die quickly, but the single moment of agony he was expecting was dragging out, longer and longer, seemingly into eternity. He had no sense of body, but all the same, he felt on fire. He was experiencing sounds, smells, sensations with no source, but at the same time he grasped for things he felt he should know and came up with nothing.
He was lost, drifting in a sea of disorientation for a while, the velvety darkness he couldn’t pay attention to less a color and more a distinct absence of anything. He didn’t even notice when the body he was previously missing started to become more vivid, and the darkness surrounding him grew cloudy with miasmic blood-red, shifting and swirling around him. Slowly, though, the pain faded to a dull ache, and the random sensations petered away into nothing. Seven opened his eyes, peering through cracked glasses at the nothing he was suspended in, with no sense of gravity or temperature. The dark and red swirled around him, coiling into shapes that could resemble eyes and unkind smiles, gone as soon as he’d picked them out.
There was a rumbling that wasn’t quite sound and wasn’t quite thought, rhythmic and slow. Seven’s head whipped around, looking for a source, but all he achieved was setting himself adrift. Without an up or down, he was growing nauseous, his inner ears unable to be a proper gyroscope. The not-noise grew… not louder, but more present, and Seven realized it was a laugh.
The laugh ended with a pleased sigh that rang in Seven’s chest, before turning into something like a voice, still not noise, but not coming from within Seven’s own head.
“I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to come to me. You lasted longer than I thought you would!”
Seven tried to speak, but abruptly realized he hadn’t been breathing, and had no air in his lungs to force out. His eyes widened, and his hands started twitching, his diaphragm pulsed, pushing his chest in and out, but there was no air to hyperventilate. The not-voice laughed again, making Seven’s head spin.
“Oh, you’re hilarious. You only ever panic when you notice something is wrong! Don’t worry, I’ll let you go soon.” A presence pressed in on Seven from all sides, the red drifting though the dark curling and twining around his limbs. “Just remember, 007n7. I’ll always be watching you.”
With a final laugh that felt like a tuning fork struck in the center of Seven’s skull, the darkness engulfed him, enveloping him in heat and pain, making him squeeze his eyes shut until his consciousness slipped away.
It had been what felt like weeks. One couldn't be sure, out here in this infinite black and starless night, punctuated only by the occasional tumultuous red sky that reminded Seven of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. How funny, that something Seven thought was trapped in the realm of practical effects could now be his real life.
He'd really like some aliens to pick him up and take him away, he thought, staring at the table. He was tucked into one of the booths in the kitchen, away from the fire where everyone else was talking and fostering team morale. He drew circles in the dust on the table. It was rare for anyone to eat in the kitchen, they all had their spots they would take up by the fire to eat and talk. Seven sat alone, in his booth, instead.
It was miserable, here. He didn't have anyone he was close with before, but now it was like he was public enemy number one. The hatred and the fear he would have thrived on, would have turned into a source of power when he was young, now only served to isolate him. Stories circulated, about the pizzaria, about his old work with Noli, about all the hurt he caused and felt awful for now.
No one would hear his apologies. No one would see that he'd changed, all they saw was an exploiter with too much power and a child he raised to be just as bad as him. It was… understandable. It was fair. If he was any of them, why would he believe that he'd really changed? A few years and a wardrobe overhaul was no real reason to believe someone was a better person than they'd been before.
Not wanting to be useless, seven stood up and walked to the sink. He could clean the dust off the tables. It'd be good to keep this place clean in case anyone had allergies or asthma or something. Taking the dishrag, he wet it in the sink, before beginning to wipe down the tables.
He wasn't half way done when Elli walked into the room. He looked up, and saw her smile, the happy squint in her eyes, disappear the moment she set them upon him. She stared, for a moment, and Seven nervously went back to wiping down the table.
“What are you doing?”
Elli didn't sound curious, just exhausted. (Seven was exhausted with himself too. He didn't hold it against her.)
“O-oh, I was just… getting the dust off the tables. I wanted to be helpful–”
“That's not what I mean.” She sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose. “What I mean to say is, why are you cleaning off the tables? It's not like we use the tables to eat at, all we need is to be able to sleep in the booths.”
Seven winced. “Uh, well, I do?”
“You do what, Seven?” Elli just sounded flat, like Seven was speaking another language and she was trying to figure out what he was saying.
“I eat in here. A-at the booth in the corner. I only get food after everyone else has theirs, a-and by then you're all in the other room, so no one normally… sees me eat,” Seven explained, hunching his shoulders. Elli’s face just twisted as if she was tasting something sour. He couldn't bear to look her in the eyes, so his gaze never drifted higher than her mouth.
“You're cleaning more than just your booth, then, aren't you? Awfully generous of you,” She snarked, the sarcasm hitting Seven like throwing knives, making his hunch in on himself. Why was he being criticized for doing more than he absolutely needed to?
“Well, it seemed like it was getting pretty dusty, and I don't know if anyone here has asthma, so I thought it would be a good idea to clean them all off?” his voice turned up at the end, as if he was questioning his own actions. He knew why he did it, there was just something about Elli’s glare that made him feel like he was being vivisected. If there was anyone whose criticisms of Seven were the most valid, it was her.
“Well, don't sound so confused about it. Either you're doing something genuinely nice-” she let the statement hang in the air, as if it in itself was unbelievable, “or you're doing something to try to manipulate people into liking you. Well, bud, it's not gonna work.” She marched over to Seven, grabbed the Rag out of his hand. He flinched, but stepped back, letting her take it. “So I'll finish this here, and you can go sulk off to wherever it is you go when you disappear. Probably off to the killer's cabin, I bet. Go say hi to your little friends for us.”
Seven knew there was no arguing with that steel in her voice, she had made up her mind about what to think. Nodding, quietly, he fled the kitchen and skirted the outside of the living room to dash outside. He was barely a shadow on the wall, and none of the other survivors looked his way long enough to see him leave.
Seven hurried off the balcony, down the path, to the water. The beach was a quiet place to go where he didn't run into other people often. The endless black sky and water reflecting back that nothing scared the others, but felt calming to him. Something about it brought him back to a moment he shouldn't have felt comfort in but now did- the moments in his after-death floating in that void with no up or down, after things stopped hurting, before they began to hurt more.
He sat down on the rough sand and drew his knees to his chest. He didn't know how long he could take it here. He'd finally found his son, twisted into some abhorrent monster making a mockery of a child's game of tag, but all the other killers, each presenting their own horror for him to face. He was powerless, his GUI’s functions disabled except for a few bare essentials that helped him run for his life and nothing more. He regretted it, the first time he died, and he hated the feeling more with every brutal death. He was somehow losing more weight. He was barely eating, working himself to the bone, miserable and terrified and searching for comfort he would not find.
He finally let the tears stinging his eyes fall, his sobs quickly growing out of control and painful as he struggled to suck in air. It wasn't fair. Nothing that had happened to him and his son in the last decade was fair. He could stand in front of Elli and the Admins and kill himself again just to give them the satisfaction of seeing him die and they still wouldn't see he was sorry.
Seven crumbled to the ground, curled into a fetal position, and just kept crying. He couldn't stop himself, it was the first time he'd let himself break down since his first round against his poor son. For weeks, he'd been bottling up every interaction, every look of fear and hatred leveled in his direction, and now he had to let it out.
It ripped out of his chest in painful screaming sobs, eyes squeezed shut so hard they hurt while the tears continued to flow, his throat scratched after a while, growing raw from the overuse of his voice. He felt like he had to throw up, his gut was clenched so hard, but he just barely hung on to the contents of his stomach. His head pounded, the pain invading every inch of his skull. Eventually, though, he was too exhausted to continue. His breath came in heaves as it slowed, the tears eventually stopped, and his voice stopped scraping. He didn't know how long he had been there, as there was no way to pass the time.
As he opened his eyes, hesitantly, he saw the shifting red and black miasma he'd come to recognize as being watched. He didn't want to feel better about it, but some part of him felt comforted by being witnessed, even if it was by that unnamed force that had trapped him here.
He stared at it, for a while. It swirled like eddies of water, dipped and moved as if affected by some current. He knew he should be afraid, his brain was telling him to be afraid, but his nervous system was completely shot and he was too exhausted to feel anything. Now, it was just… calming.
The water reflected back the sky, perfect and still, the windless air turning it into a mirror. It was like some dark aurora, offgas from an alien sun come to dance in the electromagnetic currents of this new planet Seven found himself on. He sat, entranced by it, for a long while.
He almost didn't notice when a particular whorl of clouds started dipping lower to the earth, but his eye caught the reflection in the water reaching up to meet its mirror in the sky drew his eye up to the real thing. It was coming down, slowly at first, and then quickly, pooling over the water and obfuscating the reflection.
Soon, the swirling red and black was hanging over the water like a deep fog. It rolled in like one, too, a sudden chill wind dragging it up to land and enveloping Seven.
It was strange. In that odd nothing-place after death, Seven hadn't noticed the particular low thrumming sensation he was feeling now. It hummed over his skin, he heard it, low enough it could be mistaken for just vibration without noise, if your ears weren't as sharp as Seven’s.
He could only guess that he hadn't felt it before because there was no air to carry vibration in the nothing-place. Here, the fog surrounded him, and so did the sound, buzzing against every one of his limbs.
A familiar not-sound began again in Seven’s mind, spiking his headache with its intrusion. He grabbed at his skull, pressing the heels of his hands into his temple, but it did nothing to stop the searing feeling that the thing's laugh forced upon him.
“You really know how to make a girl feel special. Coming out here for your lowest moment, so no one sees it but me… Wow, Sev, I appreciate the vulnerability.”
It still wasn't voice, there was no vibration, it wasn't printed words in seven's mind but it was still just words, genderless, without pitch, without character. He could still tell the emotion, though, stuffed into his nervous system and forced to feel it for the thing against his will, its amusement and its appreciation from the thing quickly turning to fear all Seven’s own.
Seven pushed himself up and demanded, voice shaking, “Why did you do this to me? Why are you doing this to anyone here?” He got to his knees, staring up to the now-black sky. The mist swirled around him, near opaque as it collected around him. He could barely see his legs when he looked down.
“You Robloxians need to eat, don't you? I gave you the one in red, so you could eat. You'd all be no good to me if you starved.” It was in the air that he breathed, tasting of smoke and sea water. He choked. If he had tears left, he would cry, but all his eyes could do was ache. It slipped down his throat. “But you, you're my favorite, Seven. Do you know why?”
Seven shook his head, trying to stand, but his limbs just trembled in their places. Some feeling was spreading from his lungs out to his extremities, tingling already in his head. A fuzzy coldness, easing his pain, bringing him nothingness in return. All he was breathing was smoke and salt. His body and his mind emptied of pain, and then he went slack, collapsing to the sandy ground, as the black-and-red poured back out of his mouth in an almost liquid stream of vapor.
He distantly noticed he should be moving, as his body sprawled on the ground, but he couldn't bring himself to. The not-voice occupied his head again, but the pain was lesser now, like his entire body had taken a numbing shot.
“You're delicious. My kind are lucky enough to subsist on the miasmic misery of large population centers , drifting invisible in air, in nothing, but I found you and felt full for the first time in my life. You changed me, Seven, and all of this, now? It's for you.” Its chuckle reverberated in his body, the humming of the fog singing him a low melody. “I want to keep tasting you every day until you die. That's what you're here for. The rest…? Just other snacks I want to keep around. Don't feel too jealous.” Seven didn't have the presence of mind to feel jealous. He just laid there, sprawled on the ground, limbs askew and sand in his hair.
Then, the fog began to retreat. It washed back onto the lake, slowly wisping off into the empty sky. The humming grew less, and less, until Seven was once again alone on the beach with an empty world around him.
The thing laughed. He'd thought it was gone.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I'm always right here with you, whether you can see me or not. Take a good nap, now, Seven. I have another big day planned for you tomorrow.”
Seven, too tired to protest, did what he was told, and drifted off to sleep.