When I got to the end of the recording, I started it back over again on a hunch. As I had hoped, we immediately went Off-Screen when the second playthrough began. The audience wouldn't need to hear it again and we had been On-Screen for some time. I needed to process everything we had just learned.

“How are we supposed to escape something like that?” Anna asked.

I had similar questions. The entity latched onto your mind. How were you supposed to outrun something like that?

Worse, could you be Oblivious to it?

“We need to watch the tape,” I said.

“Tape?” Anna asked.

I pointed to the screens. Many of the monitors for this level depicted the dead. We needed to watch it—to see how they died. We had to learn from them.

I crossed the room over to the control panel for the system. This one was so sophisticated it made mine downstairs look like the security system for a pizza parlor. I had access to everything, all over the facility from here.

Even as I first acquainted myself with the new controls, I realized that my time downstairs had prepared me to take point from this new location. I would have to guide my friends out. That was my job here.

On-Screen.

“The attack should have happened at around 8 pm,” I said. “That’s when the Distortion appeared to get on the elevator. If the malfunction I was seeing was actually this manifestation, at least.”

I rolled back through the footage to the right timestamp and pressed play.

The footage started with a meeting of sorts being conducted in the middle of the floor. The custodian had not yet arrived with the Distortion in the elevator.

Dr. Mentes stood in front of all of them and spoke, “Experiment 17 is running swimmingly. The subjects are none-the-wiser and I feel we are set to learn a lot about the Distortion. You have all done a remarkable job and I look forward to viewing the results. Don’t forget; constant vigili—”

An alarm started to go off as the Distortion emerged from the elevator. Someone must have seen it from the control room.

Barb, the custodian whom the entity had ridden up the elevator, appeared completely unaware of what was going on, though she was rubbing her eyes with one hand as if nursing a headache.

Having been exposed, the Distortion went on the offense. The attack began as the objects began flying around the room. Paper, office equipment, and the like took flight, much to the surprise of those huddled around Dr. Mentes.

“Code 6!” one of the security guards called out.

At that moment, the Distortion must have switched hosts because the objects silently floating in the air dropped to the ground.

For a moment, nothing happened. Many employees fled. For others, escape was not feasible. They stood their ground with their heads on a swivel looking for movement.

Suddenly, a woman began screaming as she was launched into the air along with a trail of blood.

Everyone started running. Some jammed into the elevator along with a startled Barb. The doors wouldn’t close as there were too many people trying to shove their way inside.

A large group, including Dr. Mentes, made for the control room. Armed personnel closed the door behind them. Those locked outside were soon thrown away from the door.

The Distortion moved from monitor to monitor as it chased its quarry. At times, it would reach a dead end and need to double back.

It approached a group holed up in a store room. After banging on the door for a few moments, unable to force it open, the Distortion “blinked” on the monitor for a moment. Suddenly, it was inside the storeroom.

“It switched hosts,” Camden said.

The storeroom was soon massacred.

“There are too many of them,” Camden said.

“I only see one,” Kimberly said.

“Too many people,” I said.

“Right,” Camden said. “It needs hosts in order to move. There are people all over.”

I watched as the manifestation jumped from person to person. When it touched most people, objects in the room would start to fly around the room. When it tethered to a scientist or other intelligent person, everyone around them would start getting thrown around the room and cut to pieces.

Red lines would open up on them as the invisible creature rampaged.

“It isn’t killing them right away,” Antoine said. “But why?”

He was right. Their wounds were technically fatal. Their legs were breaking, their skin getting sliced open, and their intestines exposed, but as time went on a pattern emerged: most people survived their initial attack for some time afterward. They were left to bleed out.

“It’s intelligent,” Camden said. “It’s leaving them alive long enough to be able to tether to them later on.”

People lay about in agony, but as the Distortion moved from screen to screen, there were always those left breathing, struggling to escape the inevitable. It needed living people to tether to.

That was how it managed to move around the entire floor despite being dependent on a host; it left people strewn about to extend its reach.

I flipped the audio off. The sound was terrifying.

As the carnage began winding down, the Distortion jumped rapidly around the perimeter of the floor, looking for a host to ride out of the building, but none of its victims had made it that far. At first, I thought it had been too greedy, too wrathful—that it maimed its hosts too soon.

I was wrong.

The victims that fled found themselves unable to access the exits. Even as they banged on doors in order to escape death, they were trapped.

“The doors are locked,” Camden said.

I rewound the tape and turned on the audio for the control room we were standing in. After some searching, I found the order.

“Do I initiate lockdown?” Mr. Rowe asked, sitting in front of the control panel.

“Lock it down now!” Dr. Mentes yelled.

The other employees in the control room watched on in resignation as they realized that they would soon die.

"I don't understand," Rowe said, surprisingly calm moments from his death. "I thought the drugs prevented this. It's never been like... this."

"Any number of factors could explain it. I suppose we cannot rule out simple deception," Dr. Mentes said. He was in shock. His answer was almost rote, his logical mind on autopilot. "Perhaps it was biding its time... I suppose in the next experiment we ought to..."

You could almost see him realize that there would be no next experiment.

“At least they did the decent thing,” Camden said.

“They trapped us down here with it,” Kimberly said with a furious glare. “They brought us here so that it could kill us!”

“I’m just saying,” Camden replied. “If this thing got out it could kill a hundred people before it got stuck somewhere without a tether.

Dr. Mentes began recording his message as the Distortion decided to enter the room and make quick work of all of them.

As we watched, the Distortion jumped from person to person frantically trying to extend its reach, to move further.

It tried getting in the elevator with those employees who had attempted to escape by that route, but the elevator was stuck from the lockdown. The elevator was rocked so hard in the attack a buzzer started going off.

In a last-ditch effort, it tethered to Camden’s boss as he entered the private elevator we had just ridden in. It moved downward and, as soon as life left the man’s eyes, the Distortion vanished for good.

We stood there for a moment just processing the weight of what we had just seen.

“Look,” Anna said. She pointed to a monitor far from the others. In it, Dina crouched in a corner, her right wrist handcuffed to a large metal table that she had dragged and tipped over as cover.

“She was far enough away from the others that it couldn’t get to her,” Camden said.

I fast-forwarded the tape. Eventually, Dina got brave and left the room, table and all. She had to kick the door down, which took her some time. Luckily for her, it wasn’t one of the heavy-duty doors like on the important rooms. Then she had to get the table through the doorway and drag it down the hall until she found a dying security guard from whom she could retrieve a handcuff key.

She entered the control room and took Dr. Mentes’ badge, but not before listening to the very same recording we had.

At that moment she was searching floor 2B down below us. If we had waited there, she would have found us.

“We should split up,” Kimberly said. “If we’re together, we die together.”

“True but splitting up is the one thing you are never supposed to do,” I said. “Haven’t you ever even seen a movie?”

“Don’t start that,” Anna said, scolding me.

“Do you at least see that we shouldn’t let the Mercers out?” Camden asked. “Now we know for sure.”

“We don’t know that,” Kimberly said. “Leaving them there might make this thing, whatever it is, even angrier.”

Truthfully, it didn’t matter. If we released them, that would be a mistake. If we didn’t, that would also likely be a mistake. We were still in the Rebirth Phase and had plenty of movie left. We couldn’t get through Second Blood and the Finale if we weren’t attacked. The return of the Distortion was inevitable.

“There has to be a catch,” I said. “If we leave them locked up, I bet that still doesn’t solve our problem.”

“It seems like a pretty clear solution to me,” Camden said. “The Distortion has a fixed range within which it can tether. If we stay away from them, it cannot tether to us and we can find the exit in safety.”

“But it’s too obvious,” I said. “There’s something we don’t know. Look I’m not saying we march down there and unlock them. I don’t think we should. I’m just saying we shouldn’t assume that we can control the situation. That’s what got these people killed.”

“And your evidence for that conclusion is horror movies?” Anna said.

“Sure,” I said. “Also, the Mercers haven’t had their medicine in case you’ve forgotten—the medicine that weakens the manifestation. We can’t pretend to know what that thing is capable of at full power.”

“Guys,” Antoine said. “Maybe we should talk about this later. Dina, or whatever that woman’s name was, she’s getting too close to the Mercers.”

We turned to look at the monitor. The maze-like structure was hampering her, but Dina was slowly making her way around Floor 2B. Without their medicine, the Disortion could appear at any time. Soon, the manifestation would have a host if we didn’t act.

I flipped on the audio for the hallway she was walking through.

“Hello,” I said into the microphone. “You need to turn around. Take the next left. I will guide you up to the higher floor.”

“No,” Dina said. “My kids are here. My husband. I have to get to them.”

Hadn’t she listened to the same recording? Sure, her character might not care, but Dina herself should know the dangers involved.

“That area is dangerous,” I said. “If you get near your children, you could be putting all of us in danger.”

“I have to,” Dina said.

“Your name is Dina, right? We met a few days ago. Please, you have to understand, I can’t let you near the Mercers.”

“I am a Mercer,” Dina said.

Well, in this story she was. By marriage at least.

“Did you not see the carnage up here?” I asked.

“You have to trust me!” Dina screamed. "Please. They need me. I have to save them."

Did she know something we didn’t? Did she overhear useful information or was it something else?

“Lock her in the hallway,” Camden said. “Here.” He leaned over and locked all of the doors in the hallway.

“Not going to work,” I said.

Sure enough, as Dina approached the next junction, she waved Dr. Mentes' badge and the door opened. There was no stopping her. They really needed two-factor authentication in that facility.

After a few moments, we went Off-Screen.

“What is she doing?” Anna asked.

“She’s following her own plotline,” I said. "I assume it's scripted."

“If she lets them out, aren’t we pretty much dead?” Camden asked.

I couldn’t answer. It was possible she was acting foolishly. Of course, it was also possible that she was doing exactly what she should have been.

“Whatever the case,” Anna said. “We need to get out of this place. Maybe we can escape before she finishes with her plan.”

“We need to plot a course out,” Camden said.

“I’ll guide you out,” I said. “I’ve had practice with the controls and I won't hold up in a fight. I’ll guide you out, then I’ll follow. Once we’re clear of the building…”

I paused.

I didn’t know what would happen.

If we escaped before Second Blood or the Finale, that meant the story would follow us out into Carousel proper. Was that a good thing or bad? Personally, I would like to put fifty miles between myself and the Mercers. I would also like a nap. I hadn’t slept. I doubted I would sleep any time soon.

Whatever the case, we needed to figure something out fast. Dina would get to the Mercers soon and when she did, who knew what would happen?