So, while looking through fanfiction archives of old fandoms, I realized that Outlast has a criminally low number of crossovers, and an even more criminally low number of crossovers that center around our favorite dead reporter.
So, I decided to change that.
It had been just a few months.
A few months of wandering his self-imposed prison, of learning the ins and outs of all the levels of Hell, of cutting down and tearing apart each and every Murkoff team that came, no matter the reason.
At the very least, he had one victory, one major victory, over Murkoff, over the company that saw demons that should never have been meddled with and people who just wanted to get better and only saw money.
That one day, that one morning, the sunrise on his rebirth, when he walked outside of Hell and saw the man, the one dressed as much in his own blood as his prison jumpsuit, the one who he vaguely recognized as the Whistleblower, Waylon Park. That day, that morning, he had shoved the one who brought him to Hell out of it, Dante trapped and Virgil free.
A few days later, he had been typing on one of the still-functional computers down in the lowest level, down in the labs. Eight fingers had been skittering over the keys in front of the blood-filled orb that was Billy Hope's final resting place, and when he had seen the videos upon videos pop up, the forums immediately burst into frantic activity, well.
For the first time since the death and rebirth of Miles Upshur, bloodied, thin lips curved upwards.
But it had been two months since then, and only now, only after the press had ripped into the poor man, after each and every second of those videos had been aired over and over and over, after Murkoff had been ripped into and eviscerated (just like the people it had shoved into the Engine, just like the victims of its greedy, capitalist agenda that was so far down the trash can it no longer existed). Only now was Mount Massive being taken back, the people freed, the blood and guts and gore cleaned and (fruitlessly) counted.
Miles Upshur hovered just off the ground, just within the treeline, the black mist of the Walrider swirling up and around him, and watched the police cars roll in, watched the men (or women, he couldn't tell under the hazmat suits they wore) go in and come out with more blood, more gore, more guts held in their arms, on stretchers. Every now and then, the occasional still-alive Variant was rolled out, a few of the mangled faces familiar (there were those twins again), many of them not.
For the first time since Miles Upshur had died, light shone into Hell.
And he didn't know what to do.
A laptop tucked under one arm, a journal tucked under his jacket, a camcorder tucked into a pocket. That was all he had, now, aside from the bloody clothes on his back and the constant, neverending buzzing in his head.
And so, he watched, unnoticed, as the men/women/were they even human? cleaned out Mount Massive
He didn't even flinch when a crack sounded from behind him, and an old, old, old man stepped up besides the dead Apostle.
He had found forums, found webpages, discovered a whole world separate from his, a world of magic and dictatorship and corruption and the Dark Ages. He knew who this man was, and he had a suspicion of why he was here.
After a minute of silence (except it wasn't, there was that buzz, the Swarm making noise except it wasn't really there, it was only in his head, but what was the difference?), the old man spoke up.
"I'm a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and I have a tip for you."
The conversation faded into the night.
It had been just a few months.
Time for another story.
After all, a journalist's work was never done.
Not even after death.
