The silence of the Memory Isolation Corridor felt like a vacuum that seemed to swallow sound itself.
While walking forward, Aether said. "From what I can recall, this place was used to erase memories."
Lyria nodded with a hint of envy. "It was built to cleanse people of unwanted memories. But the damage from long ago and decay has made it unstable."
"But unfortunately for us, the Nightmare Zone had warped and twisted it into something terrifying." Mila says with a sigh.
For the first fifty meters, nothing happened and then the air began to taste of copper and smoke.
Before Aether saw the stained white walls beside beginning to dissolve into a chaotic, overlapping translucency.
They were no longer just in a corridor.
He was standing in a white room that was crowded with screaming people. It had pristine walls lined with shattered emergency lights. Figures in tattered white lab coats ran past him, their faces were displaying terror.
A woman in a white coat passed by. She walked with purpose, like someone who knew where she was going. She held files against her chest, her face calm.
Then she froze.
Her fingers went limp and the papers fell to the floor. She didn't move, except to tilt her head like she heard something no one else could. Her lips formed a perfect circle, as if she might scream, but no sound came out. Her whole body shook slightly, like a guitar string that had just been plucked.
Five seconds later, she started walking again, leaving her scattered papers behind.
Lyria kept her gaze locked straight ahead. "Their eyes will pull you in if you stare too long."
"But they don't even register our presence," Aether said in surprise.
"They don't register anything," she replied. "Not anymore."
To his left, a man sat against the wall. He looked relaxed but his hands kept pulling at his hair and clumps were falling out. Then the man studied each handful like it was interesting, then set them down in a neat pile. His face showed no pain, but instead he had a grin on his face as if he was happy.
"When the Nightmare Zone changes the room, they also bring previous events from the past into reality." Lyria explained while sidestepping a weeping figure without looking down. "These events are usually the greatest traumas or issues."
Then the previous room issue was the gravity machine failing and the researchers breaking down? Aether thought with a hum.
Aether saw a researcher hit a wall by walking into it. When he hit the wall, his legs kept moving for three more steps. Then he turned sharply and walked down the hall, passing right through another person.
Neither one seemed to notice the other.
These ghosts couldn't see the real world or notice each other.
They just existed, stuck in their own moments.
"What happens if they touch us?" Aether asked.
A phantom scientist ran directly at Mila. She flinched before she inhaled sharply, hissing through her teeth as the man passed through the space she occupied.
In that instant, her golden eyes went dull and a strangled gasp escaped her. "He… He just remembered his daughter's birthday… He had forgotten her name, and what she had looked like before, as if his memory was deleted." She shuddered and rubbed her arms.
So, if they touch us, we don't just see their memory. We feel what they felt in that moment, and get a flash of their worst experience.
The hallway got longer, still showing people losing their minds.
Some crowded a locked door, hitting it with bloody hands, their faces twisted in silent screams. One person just sat still, drawing the same shape on the floor again and again with a shaking finger.
Then Aether felt something grab him.
A cold pulled deep in his brain.
For a moment, he felt himself falling from high up. But in someone else's body, wearing strange clothes, and watching unfamiliar ground rush toward him.
Then it stopped.
The feeling only lasted a second before it was gone, but it left him sweating and feeling sick to his stomach.
"It not only shows their memories but makes us feel like it's our own… And that we personally experience that." Aether said as he rubbed his forehead.
Lyria replied, still marching forward. "Even if you can't avoid it, try to stay focused, Chief."
Mila nodded with a grin and said. "Your mind is your own Chief, don't let the nightmare break you!"
Aether laughed and said. "With guides like you two, how can I be tempted?" He then moved closed, grasping their hands with a grin. "If any of us get distracted or wonder, the other will pull them back."
Mila grinned before saying. "Are you sure that isn't an excuse to hold our hands Cheif~"
"Of course, not. This is absolutely needed for our safety and progress." Aether says with a faint smile.
Mila laughed while Lyria's lips twitched but they both still held his hand. All three pushed ahead, helping keep each grounded through the madness as they closed in on the end of the first loop.
Slowly, the screaming spirits faded, the walls returned to normal, things got silent, and the pressure lifted.
They had passed through the first loop and then the second loop began.
This time, there was no warning, as instantly the dirty white walls vanished from around them. And it was replaced by a hallway illuminated by a deep crimson light with the smell of burnt metal and rotten food.
Aether furrowed his brows as he saw the scientists here weren't running. But laying on the ground, dying slowly as they cradle their body.
One man trembled at Aether's feet, clawing at his own throat. His eyes were blood red, bulging from their sockets while making a gurgling sound as if he was choking on something.
Black liquid flowed down his lips.
"He looked like he was drowning." Aether muttered with the others grimacing.
"Then maybe this place was flooded in the past." Mila says softly.
Another woman was on her hands and knees, smashing her forehead against a metal door.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
"Not real, not real, make it stop, make it stop." She mumbled with each hit.
"Her mind has broken." Lyria said, her voice tight. "She's trying to physically knock the information out of her own head."
Aether watched a man in a corner, curled into a fetal position. He was shaking violently, his fingers scrabbling at the floor as if trying to dig through it. He was whispering, a rapid, endless stream of numbers and coordinates.
Aether felt a sudden, intense dryness in his own throat and a faint constriction. He coughed, but no air seemed to come as for a terrifying second, he felt the same black fluid moving through his mouth.
He clenched his fists, focusing on the solid feel of the etheric pistol in his grip, using its reality as an anchor.
"Look at me, Chief." Lyria had stopped, her eyes staring into his. "Breathe In. and then Breathe out. What is your name?"
"Aether." He forced out, the constriction loosening.
"Where are you from?"
Earth.
"The Vault." Aether said, feeling the familiar grounding resentment pushed back the terror.
"Why are you here?"
He looked at the hellscape around them, at the choking, breaking figures around and his smile returned. "To tear the script apart."
Lyria's eyes widened but then she slightly nodded. "Then walk."
Mila chuckled before she began humming louder and more. Each note seemed to cut through the hold the place had over them, and relaxing them.
They moved forward, stepping over and around the convulsing, choking, self-harming phantoms.
The second loop was longer, the horrors more disgusting, as if the corridor itself was sinking deeper into the memory of its own corruption.