The facility had become a nightmare of red lights and screaming klaxons. The pristine halls flickered between states—sometimes solid, sometimes translucent, showing the raw stone of the canyon beyond. Reality couldn't decide which version to believe.
They ran through corridors that kept trying to loop back on themselves. Elanil led, her warrior instincts navigating the maze while Mayfell muttered counterspells to keep the walls from phasing.
"Left," Ren shouted, reading signs the others couldn't understand. "実験室への近道—shortcut to labs."
They burst through a door to find chaos. The corrupted humans—the uploaded consciousnesses—were fighting something that defied description. Not void spawn like before. This was older, hungrier, more fundamental. The Neither itself given form and intent.
It moved like oil, flowed like shadow, existed like a hole in existence shaped vaguely like a person. Where it touched, things simply ceased. Not destroyed—erased, as if they'd never been.
Their guide from before stood directly in its path, no longer maintaining any pretense of humanity. Its form shifted wildly—sometimes human, sometimes machine, sometimes pure information crackling through the air.
"You brought it here," it screamed at them, voice multiplying into harmonics. "Ten thousand years of safety, ended for one pure sample!"
The Neither thing turned toward them. It had no eyes, but Ren felt its attention like ice in his veins. When it spoke, the words came from everywhere and nowhere:
"𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℙ𝕌ℝ𝔼 𝕆ℕ𝔼. 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕌ℕℂℍ𝔸ℕ𝔾𝔼𝔻. 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕂𝔼𝕐."
"It knows you," Mayfell whispered. "It's been looking for you."
"Great. Cosmic stalker. That's not terrifying at all."
The thing flowed toward them, and the corrupted humans scattered. Even their inhuman forms recognized a predator beyond their understanding. Dr. Sato tried to block its path and was unmade between one moment and the next, ten thousand years of existence ending with barely a whisper.
"Run!" Elanil grabbed Ren, pulling him back the way they'd come.
But the Neither thing didn't chase. It flowed through the walls, taking shortcuts through dimensions they couldn't follow. Every turn they made, it was there, waiting.
"The void!" it spoke in tongues that predated language. "The hunger! The first ones who dared break through! Their sin lives in your blood, pure one. Their crime beats in your heart."
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Ren shouted. "I just wanted cup noodles!"
It laughed—or made a sound that might have been laughter if laughter could cause nosebleeds. "Your grandmother knew. Knew what her parents had done. What they'd awakened. What they'd become."
They reached the checkpoint where the guards waited. Varos already had his sword drawn, the others in defensive positions. They'd heard the alarms, seen the lights flickering between real and not.
"What is that thing?" Lysara demanded, staring at the Neither creature seeping through the walls.
"Questions later, running now," Ren said. "It wants me for some ancestral crime I don't understand."
"Then we give it what it wants," Tyrael said.
Everyone turned to stare. The elder stood with a squad of his own guards, having somehow followed them to the facility. His expression held triumph poorly disguised as duty.
"You followed us?" Mayfell's voice could have frozen flame.
"Of course. The human was always going to lead us to answers. And now we have them." He gestured to the Neither thing. "It wants him. Give it what it wants, and perhaps it will return to sleep."
"You're insane," Elanil snarled, stepping in front of Ren. "We don't sacrifice people to monsters."
"We do if it saves the world." Tyrael's guards moved to flanking positions. "The needs of the many, Princess. Surely you understand mathematics."
The Neither thing watched with the patience of something that existed outside time. It could afford to wait while they argued. Every second meant more of the facility ceased to exist around it.
"You want to talk mathematics?" Ren stepped forward, surprising everyone including himself. "Let's talk. One human life against your world. Seems logical. Except for one thing."
"What?"
"I'm the only one who can read the instructions to stop this." He held up the device Dr. Yamazaki had given him. "Kill me, and you're all dead anyway. So maybe—just maybe—we try the novel approach of not feeding people to cosmic horrors?"
"He's right," Mayfell said quietly. "Tyrael, whatever grievance you hold, this isn't the time."
"There's never a time!" The elder's composure cracked. "Do you know what I've sacrificed to maintain the lie? To keep our people from knowing the truth? That we're all mongrels, all tainted with human blood?"
"So that's it," Varos said slowly. "You know about the bloodlines."
"I've always known. My family has guarded the secret for millennia. Edited the histories. Removed the references. Let our people believe in their purity." He laughed bitterly. "And now the last pure human arrives to make mockery of it all."
The Neither thing made that not-laugh sound again. "Secrets within secrets. Lies breeding lies. How perfectly human. How beautifully flawed."
It flowed closer, and reality rippled. The guards tried to attack it—swords, arrows, magic—but everything passed through like attacking absence itself. Where it moved, existence simply opted out.
"Enough," Dr. Yamazaki's voice echoed through the facility's speakers. "I'm activating Protocol Seven."
"No!" Ren shouted. "That's what caused this!"
"Not activation. Termination." Her voice held infinite weariness. "Shutting down all dimensional anchors simultaneously. It will cause a cascade, yes. But a controlled one. The facilities will phase out of existence, taking the Neither back where it belongs."
"Taking us with it," Mayfell realized.
"Ten minutes. That's all I can give you. Run. Reach the surface. Find the bunker. Save what can be saved."
The facility shuddered. Not an earthquake—reality having a seizure. The walls became translucent, showing not stone but vistas of other worlds bleeding through. Purple skies, inverted oceans, cities of living glass. All the might-have-beens pressing close.
"Move!" Varos commanded, and even Tyrael's guards obeyed.
Rating: 0/10 for survival odds, 10/10 for dramatic timing, why-is-it-always-running/10 for cardio requirements.