Chapter Text
Gaming. Sucks.
Her hands fly across the keyboard and she dramatically breathes out, narrowly getting caught by that FUCKASS FISH AGAIN (she forgot which fish) as she makes her avatar climb into a locker at the last minute.
The fucking fish (again, she forgot whatever it was called, she DOESN’T CARE) screams past, shaking her screen before it’s gone.
“Damn, you actually almost died to that?!” Her friend called, laughing. “Cotton L in the chat…”
“Gray shut the fuck up,” Bow shot back, adjusting her headphones with a pissed off expression gracing her face. “It’s not like you didn’t almost get killed off by a fucking squiddle. You’re lucky– lucky, I say– lucky I had that medkit.”
“Imagine what would’ve happened if you’d died,” Gray retorts, unable to hold back their laughter. “We’re literally almost done and you’d go off and die like that.”
“Shut.” Bow narrows her eyes, moving her avatar to watch their flank. “I’m keeping an eye out for wall dwellers.”
“No you aren’t. There aren’t any.”
“BEHIND YOU–!”
“WH–” Her friend frantically spins, looking around. “WHERE???”
“…PFFT–”
She devolves into cackling laughter as the other simply stares at her, a disapproving aura around their avatar. They turn away to walk off. “Mhm. Verrrry funny, Cotton.”
“Another win for me..” Bow grins, sprinting to catch up with her friend. “So… my first time actually getting this far…”
“Surprising,” they add, snickering. “We’re almost there. It’s almost over. Stay vigilant, soldiers.”
“Oookay. Sir yes sir!” Bow salutes, even though Gray wouldn’t see it anyways. Instead, they’ve gone off to wander over into another room, opening it with a keycard.
“This… woah..”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” Gray shrugged, continuing to move forward.
“Waitwait wait I wanna read this.” Bow wanders over to the large text hovering over the mass of buttons in the center of the large room, squinting at the smaller red text on the right side. “Woah… that stuff is talking about Sebastian.. the level of detail they put in this game is insane.”
Bow’s eyes hover over the text, and she mouths every word she reads. ‘Expendable protocol’… ‘Blacksite lockdown’… “Wonder why it’s called a blacksite? Shouldn’t it be called the Underground…”
Gray slowly turned their avatar toward her. “You are suddenly filled with years of muscle memory for a battle you’ve never fought…”
“Doo do doo doo.” Bow replies, just as deadpan, and moves her avatar to walk away from them. “…No documents? Damn. Scammers– ooh, money..”
“You kept hogging all the data earlier– leave some for me–” Gray moved to run next to her, unsuccessfully trying to snatch the ingame currency before she did. “There’s no documents in the next couple rooms anyways.”
“Oooh, okay okay.” Bow wanders around the room, picking up stray pieces of data, before there’s a loud creak and the wall splits open next to her.
“…”
Gray is standing at the new opening. “I open door.”
“…THAT WAS A DOOR???”
“You… didn’t know that was a door?? Didn’t you literally open one like… twenty minutes ago??” Gray is already inside, and they sound disbelieving– Bow’s dumbassery astonishes them.
“WELL I WASN’T REALLY PAYING ATTENTION,” Bow defended, walking over. “I was just kinda click where the click say click the click–”
The door shuts in her face.
“…Hey wait–”
And Bow is flashbanged when her avatar is teleported inside the room, doors in front of her dramatically opening. She quietly screeches.
“…Oh shit that’s a bridge.”
“That is correct,” Gray laughs, moving foward as soon as the hitboxes let them. “We’re almost there! Then back into the pit!”
“The pit of horrors we come!” Bow cheered, moving her avatar to follow after them.
…
It takes a bit, but the two of them make it to the crystal room… Bow kept getting distracted admiring the game’s environment, and Gray kept having to pull her away.
“Was that a fucking–”
“Yes, that was an angler crossing the bridge– c’mon…”
The two of them walk around the room, with Bow running around and collecting all the data she could before Gray could, the other muttering lighthearted complaints about it while Bow laughed at them.
She stops in her tracks when they reach the last room.
“OOough crisal….” she muttered, purposefully butchering the word ‘crystal’ cause it was funny.
“That’s… you wanna do the honors?” Gray asks, and Bow’s avatar snaps around so fast that the game doesn’t even have time to register it. She simply snaps over to face the other like a png image, and Gray devolves into cackling, wheezing and struggling to compose themself.
“Me? Me-? Me?” Bow’s voice slowly pitches upwards with each word. “Me?”
“Y—” Gray wheezes again, coughing.
The crystal animation is something Bow’s seen only a couple times in Youtube videos. It’s majestic in person– through a screen.
Then the facility goes dark.
Her heart begins to pound against her chest, loud in her ears.
“Okay!”
Gray’s voice cheerfully rings through her headphones. “Time to run.”
They waste no time in moving their character away as fast as possible.
“Run??? OKAY OKAY–” Bow’s avatar followed Gray’s in sprinting down the hall, the two of them making their way through doors that slid open in their presence.
Something in the distance screeches. “Into a locker!” Gray calls, their avatar ripping open a door and shoving themselves inside a metal locker.
“Mhm!” Bow nods, moving her avatar toward one as well–
Only for her screen to snap to a faceless, wall-colored entity in an animation of snapping her avatar’s neck. Then it goes black.
“…Cotton?” Gray’s voice wavers over the call. “…Did you just die?”
“…IM GOING TO TWEAK THE FUCK- you said no respawns past this point, rig– IM GOING TO TWEAK THE FUCK OUT— HOLY SHIT???”
Bow stood up, her mic suddenly going silent.
“…Cotton?” Gray hesitantly asked, only to be met with no response. “…Bow?”
“I’m… going to take a break… get us to victory, Gray…” Bow mutters, standing up and leaving her pc, walking over to sit on her dad’s office chair that was conveniently located right next to it.
“Oh– okay!”
The screen is still stuck on the image of her dead body, but Bow can wait until later to switch povs and stalk her friend– she’s shaking too much to care, anyways. Shaking. Full of Rage™, yup. She quietly spins in the chair, occasionally watching the screen.
Then it happens.
Gray’s audio cuts off, a feedback loop of a surprised yelp as they get jumpscared by something– most likely another wall dweller.
“…Gray, I think my wifi’s gone bad again…” Bow’s brow furrows as the audio continues to loop. “…Gray? Are you there?”
Bow stops spinning and slowly gets up, walking over to her pc and fiddling with the mouse.
The arrow doesn’t move. The screen is still stuck on her avatar’s headless corpse.
“Hm.” Bow frowns, then pulls out her phone to text that she’ll be back.
Her phone flashes to the lock screen then promptly dies.
“…Huh? Could’ve sworn I charged it…” Her brow furrows more, and she takes off her headphones to escape the loop of Gray’s screeching– which had devolved into nothing but a glitchy mess of noise, anyways, and was making her ears hurt.
“…Uh.”
How does one even respond in this scenario? Her parents were out shopping, so it was just her in the house… She could call them? Wait, no, her phone’s dead.
“..Gray?” She tries again, to no avail. “..Hm.”
Bow kneels down, eyeing the pc’s main components tucked under the table. Nothing seems to be wrong…
Her hand reaches out to poke at the power button. She clicks it, and the fans stop, the power shutting down. The lights flicker off.
When Bow glances up, nothing has changed on the monitor. The screen stays fixated on her dead avatar. Which was already… concerning, if not a little creepy. Maybe just a power source bug?
“…Hm.”
Bow goes to poke at the power button again.
“…”
Nothing’s happeni–
Pain. Sparks fly from the machinery, jolting into her skin it’s in her skin. It’s in her skin her skin her skin HER SKIN IS– She can’t breathe. She’s dying, isn’t she? There can’t be– so much– why is—
Bow briefly registers the lights in the house flickering out. She can hear a bulb shatter in the other room. She can smell something burning. It smells like metal. Plastic. Meat.
What is happening why is– just a computer how is there so much– it hurts it hurts it hurts make it stop PLEASE MAKE IT STOP I’LL DO ANYTHING MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT S
Everything goes black.
Oh dear… this wasn’t supposed to happen.
Where is she? Lost, floating in a place like no other. A soft light. A soft flutter of wings.
A butterfly?
Where was? Where?
Poor thing. You were not supposed to go like that.
Like what– dying???
Oh.
Wait.
She’s dead.
The butterfly lands on her. Or. Tries to it lands on her it doesn’t? What is she? Where is she how is she still conscious?
This is going to be more difficult than I thought…
The butterfly lands on her face, and her mind goes blank.
…That was easier than I thought.
Vaguely, in the back of her mind, Bow giggles, disoriented. She can't move. She should be panicked, yeah?
This is strange, the being repeats. This was not supposed to happen… apologies, for arriving late.
What…?
Enough about that, they chuckle, or at least Bow thinks they do. Whatever this being is. She can't think. She's so… lost. She's floating. Not?
You can wish for something, the being softly whispers, wings brushing against her arm, soft and comforting and so foreign but so lovely, so lovely.
You can wish for something, and I will grant it to you.
I want… I want to…
What does she want?
She knows where she's going, already. She already knows. Because she's known. For months, now. Years days her entire existence was made for this Months.
God, she's been trying to escape this fate her entire life, only for it to strike her like that, of all things? What a stupid way to go.
Hm, the being seems to watch her curiously. You know quite a lot, for a being so small.
Of course she knows. Know? Know what? Nothing makes sense. Nothing is making sense but she can't think and
Are you ready?
No?? No, she's not– what's even happening? What?? What's even Of course she is. She's known this from the start. She was fated to die. It was only foolish that she'd try to escape it.
You'll forget this, you know. All of it. All of this knowledge.
Forget what knowledge??? Her life? Nonono she doesn't want to forget her life
Of course she knows this. It was bound to happen– she knew things she shouldn't. It was bound to disappear eventually.
You are.. a peculiar one.
??? She's just a person.
She's someone who knew too much. Maybe some things will stick. Maybe you won't have to manage this story as much as you do the other.
…Kind.
YES! YES SHE WAS– WHAT IS HAPPENING??
Please. You're the one that gave me that second chance in the first place. In another life.
Your wish.
She doesn't know.
Let me help make another difference. I know it's a selfish request.
Of course.
??? waitwait wait WAIT SHE DIDN’T EVEN SAY ANYTHING YET—?
Thank you. For everything you do. Thank you, [ཐི༏ཋྀ]. I won't disappoint you.
You won't disappoint me. I know that.
WHAT—
And then she was gone.
There's a saying, for times like these, where a person finds something they weren’t meant to find. Where they end up somewhere they aren’t meant to be.
Curiosity killed the cat. But satisfaction brought it back.
Bow awakens to rumbling, a dim light, and the sound of water rushing in her ears. Her body is sore, her head spinning, and her limbs feel like they've been mashed beneath two fridges. Multiple times. Everything hurts, and wherever she is isn’t making it better with it’s ominous, ear splitting ambiance.
She groans, pushing herself off of whatever plank-hard surface she's laying on, and sits up, blurry vision focusing, the walls shifting into view. Metal solid, pipes running through, a strange keypad on one end and a button on the other, a dim light up above, but there were no windows to be seen.
It takes a while for Bow to process this, but when she does, she jolts.
This.
This place is familiar.
Quiet beeping and clunking blurs in tandem with the chaos of her spiraling thoughts— why here? Why now? She's half hoping that everything was a fever dream and that this wasn't reality– but when she rubs her hands together, they spasm, pain shooting through them, and she looks down in surprise.
There's scars embedded into her skin. Litchenberg figures trace up and down her arms, starting at the tip of the fingers of her right hand and disappearing up the sleeves of the dark jumpsuit she's wearing. A faint marking of that same scar pokes out of the sleeve covering her left arm, and Bow is struck with the sickening realization that she had been completely, utterly— electrocuted. Thoroughly. Whole body. She'd probably died within seconds. Her brain had probably shut down before she even had time to realize what was happening.
Shit.
Morbid curiosity overtakes nerve-wracking pain, and with shaking, twitching hands, she rolls up a sleeve. The scars continue up her arm, seemingly increasing in size and variety the higher they went, the lightning-like marks branching off from the main line and adding more to the patchwork.
Oh, she got cooked. Literally.
That wasn’t a dream. Never was.
Her hands continue to spasm, but the pain is dying down, and she releases a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, gasping for air.
Another jolt startles her out of her thoughts, and Bow is forced to get out of her seat (the alternative being falling on the ground) as the thing she's in settles into place.
She's in a submarine, her mind helpfully supplies, and Bow immediately pushes that thought down in favor of not going insane, looking around for anything she could possibly grab.
There's a pair of gloves on the seat next to her. She must have missed them when she first woke up.
Wordlessly, Bow picks them up and looks them over– they're her exact size.
A sniffle escapes her, and tears threaten to bead over. It feels so stupid for focusing on such a small fact, with the larger implications of her being here— but she's never had gloves that actually fit her before.
What a small thing to be comforted by.
The gloves go right on her hands, snug and fit. The pain in her palms immediately die down a bit —Bow sends a silent thank you to the entity she'd talked to before waking up.
Looking around again, eyes strain to find anything useful. Besides that article of clothing, everything else seems nailed down. Or glued down. Or wielded down. Or just attached to the submarine in general. Man. No free stuff.
The doors open before she can think other thoughts, flash banging her with light.
Uh.
Bow squints, then stares out into an open dock. There's water everywhere, knocked over desks and bits and pieces of rubble littering the dry ground. A familiar sight, the large number 13 looming on the wall above her.
Yeah. Fuck. She's. Fuck she's so dead. She's so dead.
Because this scene was the exact same as the beginning of a game she's played oh so many times.
You'd think she'd know that by now, but. Nah. Just to double check, she looks down at herself in the new lighting.
Dark blue jumpsuit. Oxygen tank strapped to her back. There's a stitched logo on her chest in white thread, and she instantly recognizes the symbol.
Well yeah she's double cooked.
She wants to run, she wants to run, she wants to hide, get out of there, get out of there—
But where would she go? There’s nowhere to run.
Only way to go is forward.
But she’s terrified of forward.
…Forward.
“You can do this, you've done this before,” Bow mutters, running a hand through her hair. “Well, in game format–” she snorts, “But you’ve done this before.” She pulls on the gloves, stepping out of the submarine—
Then proceeds to slip on the edge of the ramp, hit her head on the edge of the dock, and fall into the water.
Pain blooms on her skull and alongside the inner soft flesh of her upper arm, and Bow can taste blood in the salty water that she inhaled when she instinctively opened her mouth in surprise.
Her body flails, and it's thanks to muscle memory that she's able to get herself back onto shore. Her head is pounding. Her arm burns. Bow splutters, hacks, and coughs, saltwater forcing its way out of her lungs. With a last burst of strength, she manages to haul herself above water. She crawls and sprawls out on the cold surface of the dock, breathing heavily to get her lungs used to inhaling oxygen again.
There's blood streaming down her face and puddling onto the floor, but her head is numb compared to how sore the rest of her body is– ow. ow. ow.
Bow rolls over and pushes herself up- well, tries to.
Moving her arm is met with the sudden sensation of something solid embedded in it.
…???
She looks down and is met with color dotting the edges of bloody skin. It takes her a while to process what she's seeing.
There's something stuck in her arm. Multiple somethings. Coral, to be exact. Bits and pieces of colorful, broken off coral are stuck in the open parts of her wound, and Bow swears she can see it writhing, small bits of movement that stop so quickly that they could be passed off as stress-induced hallucinations.
She carefully reaches for one of the pieces, pulling at it– and is rewarded with a jolt of sudden pain as it detaches from her skin, taking bits of flesh and blood with it. A sharp breath of air hisses out from between her teeth, and she grits her jaw so tensely that it’s a miracle none of her teeth have cracked yet.
…That was bound to get infected. Fuck, why didn't she roll her sleeves back down before stepping off? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Bow tosses the piece to the side, and she watches as it skitters off the ledge and off the dock, dropping back into the water with an unceremonious plop. She breathes out a frustrated breath, glaring at her arm, her mind doing its best to recall the lore of the game, anything related to coral…
…The only thing she could think of was rotten coral. But that stuff was green.
How would… coral? That's not? Green? She didn’t remember seeing that kinda stuff... ingame.
“…”
If she turns into a zombie she's going to...
…Probably best to not think on that. She turns her attention from the suspiciously colorful coral on her person to peek at the rest of the environment.
The dock seems to be infested with the coral, poking out from the water (again, probably not rotten coral, this stuff seemed to be confined to the water itself) and growing small branches along the sides of the enclosed, pool-like area.
…Looked like normal coral.
Was probably just normal coral, then. Whew. Phew.
Thank god.
Bow quickly pushes herself up— ignoring the burning pain inside her arm— and stumbles to her feet, stepping as far away from the edge of the dock as possible. The sting of salt still lines her every inhale, burning her lungs. It’s a reminder that she’s alive, isn’t she?
God, she’s alive.
Bow laughs, chuckling to herself.
Her body seems to move on its own, stumbling over to a nearby desk and rustling through its drawers. Her heavy hand brushes aside paper upon paper, staining them with salt water, before closing around a little cold cylinder. Bow withdraws her hand, staring at the small vial of DNA glowing in her hand.
Jackpot… She’d ask herself why she was focusing on this, but it’s easier to focus on these things compared to. Well. everything else.
She sticks her hand back inside (ignoring the pain in her arm), throws out the wads of paper, tucks a spare pencil into a pocket, and retracts her hand.
Then, keycard.
it’s actually smaller than it looks ingame, fitting into her palm much like a regular credit card would. Bow flips it idly between her fingers, looking around for the first door.
There it is.
Part of her doesn’t want to go in. Stay at these docks forever.
But she thinks back and realizes there is a shotgun shell aimed at her neck. There should be, at least. That’s what the lore was– the thing was built into the expendibles’ suits. And even if there wasn’t, where would she get food? How would she survive? It was probably a worse fate to die from starvation then to get quickly and suddenly eaten by, well. An angler or something.
So that’s what they were called. She’d forgotten.
Bow hesitates, but shrugs. If she dies again this could all just be a sad dream. Probably. Death felt a little peaceful. If only for a moment.
A rush of adrenaline floods through her veins and she quickly brings her arm up, keycard in hand.
Beep.
The door slides open.
…She’s so cooked. She’s so cooked.
But there’s nowhere to go but forwards. And hopefully not die. She’d like to live.
…But she’s not that opposed to the opposite, either. Whatever comes will come.
…
Stepping into that first room is like a fever dream become reality (and she isn’t sure if she likes that. No, she definitely doesn’t.)
Bow quickly shuffles through the hall, opening and closing drawers to find data that she then shoves into her pockets. While they may not be useful (it really depends on what's canon here), they could be used for good leverage. Maybe. Later.
Who is she kidding she has absolutely no idea what she's doing.
There's a flashlight, though. A useful tool, she supposes, although ingame she was more inclined toward the lantern (and one time she got the gummylight, and that was the most joyous run she'd ever had. She'd gotten killed by Eyefestation that run but who cares. Gummylight. Shake shake shake shakeshakeshakeshake )
Door two stands in front of her before she knows it, and that's when she notices her hands trembling. Even with the miracle working gloves on, they're still hurting. Or was it her arm that was hurting?
…actually, she can't really tell. Her head hurts now that she thinks about it, and she's a bit woozy too. There's probably blood caking into her hair by now. She knows it's drying up, and that seawater cannot be good for it.
It's down to uncomfortabletown for her, it seems.
…wow.
All of this just happened, and she still hasn't gotten the time to just… sit down and think, huh?
…Sebastian's is a good place right. To take a quick rest.
…Just survive 50 doors. Easy. She can do that. She's definitely not making poor decisions because she has a head injury and can't make good decisions for herself.
Door 2 opens, and she goes in.
…
She survived Angler. Holy shit she survived Angler.
Bow cautiously peeks out of the locker she had shoved herself into last minute, trembling. This was so much more terrifying up close. God. She'd just been searching cabinets when the lights flickered and she'd heard screaming. Her arm burns even more now. She'd ripped the skin around the weird pieces of coral after opening that locker door too quickly.
The emergency lights come on and she slumps in relief. Now she won't have to deal with Squiddles, either.
What door was she at again?
Bow goes back to the cabinets, squatting down to open the drawers.
…
…
There's something there. Something's not right. This wasn't in the game.
It's not the sudden flickering of the emergency lights that catch her attention, but the cold breath against the back of her neck, faint footsteps approaching her from behind.
Everything is muted. Her heart pounds against her ears.
Something is behind her. But what? What? What?
She turns around.
And sees nothing.
Strangling fingers wrap around the sides of her head and around her face, unrelenting when her own hands come up to try and pull them off, dropping vials down and shattering them. She gasps for air when the invading hands tighten around her head, forcefully twisting it and pulling, pulling, pulling-
Snap.
Her limbs go limp.
And another body drops to the floor, blood spreading across smooth metal, to be consumed by the rot in the depths of the Let-Vand Zone, where screams could only be heard by the broken chatter of water-damaged microphones.
And the strange coral begins to writhe on the corpse, eager for fresh meat.
A finger twitches.