A/N: Aaaaaand... we're back. The madness continues, ladies and gentlemen and variations on that theme.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter:

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

And...

WARNING: EXTREMELY DISTURBING CONTENT AND REMARKABLY FUCKED-UP SHIT WILL BE FOUND BELOW. YES, EVEN BY MY STANDARDS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

"I've been listening to you ramble on for no less than nine minutes, Dithers, and I'm still waiting for you to get to the point: why should I be wasting my time with your endless parade of refusals and misgivings when I have a much more acceptable replacement on hand?"

Tessa cringed and did her best to meet Braun's gaze. It was shameful to find herself so nervous around him now, especially when she'd been able to answer back to him during previous confrontations, even knowing the power he wielded. But back then, she'd been in too much pain and too much misery to react with anything other than anger; besides, she'd known that she would suffer no matter what she said, so it had been easy to be defiant in those early days of her second life in the simulation.

Now, though… well, she already knew how badly she'd warped after months of punishment and God only knew how long she'd spent in the isolation of her own home… but even if she'd had a year to recover from everything she'd experienced, she still would have been crawling with nerves – because this time, she had something to lose other than dignity and pride. This time, she had a faint, glimmering ember of hope for the future, and hope was terrifyingly fragile, especially with the stakes as high as they were.

Matty was depending on her.

Everyone was depending on her.

If Braun noticed that his new toy wasn't following orders, if he actually realized that someone had broken into his precious inner sanctum, then their plan would officially be scuppered. Matty would either be killed on the sport – permanently – or trapped in Tranquillity Lane for all eternity and remade into something more to Braun's liking. Tessa would almost certainly be eliminated as a potential threat, especially now that she'd tried to exploit the Overseer's efforts to recruit her… but even if he didn't have her put down for good, he'd probably leave her in a suitably torturous body incapable of endangering the simulation until such time as her brain started dribbling out of her ears. And worse still, everyone on Tranquillity Lane would suffer for the attempted revolution in the ensuing temper-tantrum.

She had to keep him talking, had to keep him busy, had to keep him amused with her fawning displays of sycophancy and desperation. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate in detail.

"Because," she said loudly, "You know where you stand with me: you know how to motivate me, you know how to discourage me, you know how to keep me under control. What I'm saying is that I'm more reliable than M… than the newcomer."

Braun's eyes narrowed, and Tessa realized with a thrill of horror that he'd just noticed her last-second self-correction.

"Where's Matty?" he said quietly.

Tessa froze. Immediately, she knew this was a horrible mistake: the sensible thing would have been to look blank and plead ignorance, but she couldn't help it. Her already-tattered nerves were shot to hell, her mind had been run ragged from trying to keep Braun preoccupied, and she was officially out of ideas to improvise.

In desperation, she blurted out "Who?" but Braun had clearly heard enough: he was already scanning the neighbourhood, looking for any sign of his missing plaything.

And then, just as Tessa was starting to think it was impossible for things to get any worse, he noticed something on the abandoned house's front doorstep. Matty had covered his tracks effectively enough, approaching from over the fence, making sure the neighbours couldn't see him, even making certain the door was properly latched behind him. But alas, he'd made one tiny mistake: in his haste to get inside before Braun noticed him, he'd stumbled and accidentally kicked the doormat out of place on his way in.

It was a small thing, almost infinitesimal, but that was all Braun needed. After all, he knew full well that nobody in the neighbourhood would go anywhere near his house except for Tessa, and since she was now wilting in the spotlight, there was only one place where Matty could possibly be.

"I'll deal with you later, Therese," Braun hissed.

The next thing Tessa knew, she was back inside her own house, watching impotently from the front windows as Braun vanished from the park – and she didn't need to see where he was headed next. With her door once again locked and the windows unbreakable, all she could do was sit helplessly on the sofa and hope that Matty was already enacting the failsafe…

Matty had all but given up on trying to find an alternate method.

As it turned out, most of the options available on this control terminal were there because they would have normally been accessed through system administrator privileges, often through much simpler and easier processes. Braun could use these functions with a wave of his hand, while anyone trying to activate them through the terminal would have to wade through literally thousands of menus within menus within menus. About the only thing that didn't look as if would take hours to activate was the version control, and that was completely pointless because all previous versions of the simulation had been deleted.

Still, Matty went on looking for anything: there had to be another way of stopping Braun; there had to be something better than a mercy kill on offer for the innocent people held captive here. There had to be some way of getting Tessa and the others out of this nightmare.

But what if there is no other way?

And all the while, his mind was all but blank except for the thought of Harold, paralysed at the very heart of Oasis, his one eye staring pleadingly out at the world from the depths of the tree that he had become.

What if there really is no other way?

Almost imperceptibly, Matty found himself backing out through the menus, drifting inexorably towards the Chinese Invasion Failsafe option. Sweat beading his brow, he made his way back to the fateful page that would decide the fate of everyone in Tranquillity Lane, trying to convince himself that he was just considering his options – even as his hand hovered above the enter key.

Then, with an agonized groan, he screwed his eyes shut and brought his hand down…

And hit nothing but air.

Matty opened his eyes just in time to see the failsafe terminal was now a good three feet out of reach, having apparently retracted into the wall. Puzzled, he reached out to try again, only for the entire wall to suddenly accelerate away from him at an incredible speed, leaving a long corridor stretching behind it in its wake – complete with wallpaper, overhead lights, carpet and even windows.

For the next few seconds, he could only watch impotently as the terminal thundered off into the distance like trains had once been said to do, too startled to do anything but stare at the hallway sprouting before his eyes… but even if he'd taken to his heels and tried to catch up with the fleeing terminal, he wouldn't have had much luck: it was already fifty feet away and he didn't know when the wall was due to stop moving – if it was going to stop at all. So all he could do was stand there, gawping like an idiot as his best hope of escape vanished into the distance.

"I'm disappointed in you, Matty," hissed a little girl's voice.

By now, Matty's heart had already gone cold and dead in his chest, so it wouldn't have been possible for it to skip a beat, even the virtual world. He already knew what had happened, and by now, he was already bracing himself for the killing strike. After all, barring some improbable automated defence system, there was only one man in the simulation who could do what he'd just witnessed.

"Very disappointed," said a much deeper, adult voice.

And then gravity scooped him up and flung Matty to the left, slamming him sidelong into the wall with an impact that left entire galaxies of stars flashing behind his eyelids.

Matty had been in more than his fair share of fights over the last few weeks, and he'd gotten close enough to take a battering every now and again. Chief Hannon had smacked him about the shoulders with his riot baton, left him bruised for days; a lucky raider armed with a baseball bat had just managed to clobber him in the left knee before Matty had blown his brains out; a mob of feral ghouls had pummelled and clawed him so badly that he'd barely been able to hobble back to Megaton in search of medical attention. And once, a pissed-off super-mutant had actually grabbed Matty by the collar and catapulted him across the Mall like a javelin. By sheer luck, he'd survived by virtue of a very well-placed heap of corpses and recovered quickly enough to empty his combat shotgun into the mutant's brainpan.

This time there was no lucky escape: as soon as he hit the wall, Matty felt a white-hot lance of pain erupt from his right shoulder as the joint crumpled beneath him. Something in his side crunched, sending another jolt of pain rippling through his chest – probably his ribs breaking if not shattering entirely. Finally, he felt something in his mouth let out a sharp jab of hurt, as if someone had just driven a drillbit squarely into his lower jaw. He opened his mouth to scream, only for something to tumble out of his mouth and land with a clatter on the floor beneath him.

That's at least three teeth, he thought blearily. Damn. I was hoping I'd get to keep more of those until I got out of the simulation.

Something grabbed his foot and swung him around, wrenching him out of the crater he'd left in the wall and flinging him to the ground – right on top of his broken ribs. Matty didn't want to scream or cry or do anything that give Braun the satisfaction of knowing that he was inflicting pain, but he couldn't help it: it was like someone had ground a handful of broken glass into his belly. In the end, the one bit of dignity he maintained lay in the fact that he screamed instead of crying.

In spite of himself, he actually tried to get to his feet, though he had no idea what he'd do once he got there: there was no escaping Braun within the simulation, hiding would only offer him a brief respite, and fighting would be suicide… but he struggled upright all the same. Once he'd managed to get the hang og moving with only one working arm, it wasn't that hard, if only because the torture so far hadn't touched anything below his waist; eventually, he was on his feet and looking around for any sign of a weapon – only to find himself transfixed by the heart-freezing sight directly above him.

Braun glared down at him from the upstairs landing; the gleeful smirk was still locked in place, but his eyes were aglitter with hate and rage.

"I truly hoped you'd be willing to play along with my little game," Braun sighed. "I was even willing to let you and your father go if only you'd cooperated." His voice warped again, shifting effortlessly into Betty's childish tones. "But no, you just had to be a spoilsport, didn't you?"

"Liar," coughed Matty.

"Excuse me?"

"You were never going to give me anything, Braun. You were toying with me right from the start; you really expect me to believe that you'd actually keep your word after all your headgames?"

"Perceptive as ever," Braun conceded in his own voice. "But perhaps you'd care to see it from my perspective, Matthias: you're the only new company I've had in over two hundred years. Can you really blame me for being reluctant to part with something so fresh and entertaining? Besides, you assume your residence among us would have every bit as torturous as it has been for the others: if you'd only have cooperated, I'd have been happy to make your stay as luxurious as you pleased… but as I said, you disappointed me. You refused to complete your objectives, betrayed my trust, tried to sabotage the simulation – and that is something I don't forgive readily, Matthias."

Braun was creeping closer now, slowly edging down the staircase towards him at a languid, almost leisurely pace. He was enjoying every minute of this, of course, taking every opportunity to savour Matty's fear and pain – and why wouldn't he? Matty had denied him a show, so he was going to guarantee one this time.

"It'd be easy to kill you, of course: a simple command issued to your Tranquillity Lounger's life support system, and your heart stops beating. Or perhaps I should boost your blood pressure, let your brain rupture and die; properly administered, an aneurysm can be a very painful way to die, you know."

As Braun droned on, Matty frantically scanned the room for any kind of advantage available to him, an instinct learned after months of surviving in the Capital Wasteland. Of course, he could see several potential weapons in the mounds of debris littering the front room, most prominently the broken leg of a smashed coffee table lying in the dirt at his feet, but he doubted that any of them would work on Braun for long – if at all.

But then he saw the failsafe terminal lurking at the end of the corridor and realized that it had finally stopped at a little over a hundred yards away… or perhaps the corridor was beginning to retract, drawing the wall back towards them. Maybe, assuming this theory wasn't just wishful thinking, Matty could reach it if he could get a decent enough headstart. It might not work… but he couldn't just let Braun win. And if it did work out, he'd use the Chinese Invasion Failsafe and hate himself later.

Right now, this was the only sane choice available to him.

"Or perhaps there are other ways I can kill you in the real world? The life support systems also help regulate your liver and kidneys; perhaps, if I were to turn a few functions against you, let you feel your body gradually shutting down in reality-"

In his current form, Matty wasn't exactly a combat specialist: his body simply didn't have the strength or the agility to fight effectively as it did in the real world… but if nothing else, he still had speed on his side, and thanks to Braun's endless monologuing, he at least had the advantage of surprise. Before his target could react, Matty darted to the floor, snatched up the broken table leg, and brought it swinging upwards on a collision course with Braun's unsuspecting face.

It caught the demented sadist square in the chin, snapping the table leg in half and sending a cloud of splinters flying into the air as the wood shattered against Braun's skull. Of course, it didn't even hurt him – and very likely couldn't hurt him thanks to all the administrator privileges at his command – but it sure as hell surprised him, and that was all Matty needed.

Shoving Braun aside, he took off at a breakneck sprint, propelling himself down the corridor and towards the distant shape of the failsafe terminal as if he were bullet hurtling down the barrel of a gun.

Behind him, he heard Braun laughing, his voice swinging wildly from one voice to the next in mingled anger and amusement. "Oh, so you to make this a race, do you? You want to turn this into a game? Fine by me! If you can make it to my auxiliary control terminal without me catching up, you win!"

Matty ignored him. He was tired of listening to Braun, tired of putting up with his inane chatter, tired of playing along with his endless games, and tired of dreaming his fantasy; so on he went, pushing himself faster and faster until he thought the muscles of his legs might snap like ancient violin strings. He knew that Braun was likely hot on his tail already, but he also knew that the old bastard was probably going to make a game out of this as well, and that gave him one last chance to outfox him.

After all, if he wanted a challenge, Braun would let his favourite toy take a headstart before pursuing, lag behind just for the sake a thrill… and if Matty moved quickly enough, he might be able to outpace him in the final stretch. It couldn't be too hard, he told himself as he sped onwards; he'd outrun bigger threats in his lifetime, and most of them weren't toying with him as excessively as Braun.

As long as the Sorcerer-Scientist of Vault-Tec still wanted fun, he still had a chance.

He was still thinking this when Braun slammed headlong him at just shy of eighty miles an hour, dealing a brutal sledgehammer blow to his undefended back. The pain was immediate, a wrenching, crumpling wave of agony that shorted out all sensation below his shoulders with a low, flat crunch of splintering bones; it was as if someone had driven a giant chisel right through the middle of his body, pulping everything in its path. Even if Braun hadn't hit him with the force of a derailing train, the jolt to his nerves would have probably been enough to send him crashing to the ground.

As it was, Matty went flying, tumbling end over end down the corridor until he finally landed chin-first on the paltry carpet a good ten feet away. Groaning, he tried to get to his feet, to haul himself upright, to get a look at where Braun was now… but Matty's body refused to respond: his legs didn't move, nor did his arms. More worryingly, the pain of the impact was rapidly fading – even his broken arm wasn't hurting anymore; in fact, he couldn't feel anything below his neck.

Oh Christ, Matty thought. He's fucking paralysed me.

A moment later, Braun dipped into view, a wolfish grin carved across his monochrome features.

"What a shame," he purred smugly. "And you were so close to the finish line! If you'd only moved a little faster, you might have seen the little joke I just added."

Fortunately, Matty was directly facing the far end of the hallway, so he could clearly see what Braun did next: striding off into the distance, he stopped at about thirty feet away, and reached out through the air towards the distant shape of the failsafe terminal – only to be met by what Matty realized could only be a near-invisible pane of glass.

"You see? You wouldn't have won even if you'd started running the moment I moved the terminal."

Suddenly, Braun was standing over him again. With one foot, he flipped Matty over onto his back, leaving him staring helplessly up at his tormentor like an upended tortoise.

"I mean, really, what did you think you were doing? What did you think you could possibly achieve by striking me – me, the god of this world?" Braun tutted, now in Betty's voice. "You broke the rules, Matty. Now you have to pay the price."

There was an ominous pause, as Matty braced himself for the very worst and tried desperately not to imagine how painful it'd be to suffer a major aneurysm under the influence of the Tranquillity Lounger, failing, failing all the while.

"And unfortunately for you," Braun continued in his own voice, "I've decided to be merciful, if only for the sake of my entertainment. Since you've refused to play along with my little games, I have to recoup my losses somehow, and it occurs to me that you'll be far more amusing if you continue to entertain me as a permanent resident of this virtual realm. So, allow me to formally welcome you to Tranquillity Lane: enjoy your stay!"

Matty very slowly closed his eyes.

"But now I have another matter to consider: what precisely should I do to you now that you've become one of my flock? How best to punish you, apart from letting you live? I can't very well just leave you as helpless, immobile vegetable dependent on machines for the rest of your days – after all, that's a little too close to your predicament in the real world!"

He giggled uproariously at his own joke.

"Besides, I've crippled and paralysed so many residents over the years that there's honestly not much entertainment potential left. Even watching you cry and soil yourself after days spent alone holds little appeal; the same goes for leaving you to starve to death over and over again. So, what should I do to you? Oh, I've tried so many different methods of torture and execution over the years – and I'll have to find something very unique just for you? Perhaps abyssopelagic pressure? Flesh-eating bacteria? A life spent as an Ortolan songbird, ready to be drowned in Armagnac and devoured? Infestation by parasitoid wasps? Drowning in a lake of honey? A month-long vivisection without anaesthesia? Mayfly transformation? Perhaps I could make you eat molten lava, even render you invulnerable until you'd finished your meal…"

God almighty, just get it over with! Matty wanted to scream. Don't stand around talking about everything you want to do to me, just do it! Stop keeping me in suspense!

"But wait!" Braun exclaimed. "You're not the only one that should be punished, are you? Theresa Dithers helped you, even tried to keep me from noticing your little infiltration; she should share you punishment… and it'll have be something very special, then. Perhaps mutual cannibalism? No, no, that's been done before. Maybe I could melt you down to slag and make her drink you, give you enough life to wriggle and writhe inside her as you're digested? Yes, that would hurt both of you… but it's not quite graphic enough. Perhaps I could make you and Dithers into the parasitic twins of another resident, leave you clinging barely-conscious to life before you're finally cut away? Hrmmm, doesn't quite have the same sense of immediacy to it as the other punishments…"

But then Betty's eyes widened in enlightenment, and the impish features suddenly resolved into a horrific rictus of sadistic delight. "I know!" Braun cackled triumphantly. "I know exactly what I can do now! You two got very close during your little collusion, didn't you? Thick as thieves, as the saying goes. Well, let's see just how close you two can get…"

And suddenly Matty felt his body begin to shift and warp. He couldn't work out what was happening at first, but all of a sudden, his shoes were now at least a size too big for his feet. He knew at once that this wasn't because Braun had randomly decided to give him clown shoes, because the waistband of his shorts was beginning to loosen as well, and his shirt was starting to creep steadily over his thighs.

It took a moment to work out what was happening, given that he was currently lying down and couldn't see his own body with his spine still broken, but as the change continued, it became slightly easier to move until he was finally able to peer down at his metamorphosing body – and like a punch in the gut, the answer hit him at once.

He was getting even younger, casting off years of his simulated existence with every passing moment. Before Matty's horrified eyes, his spindly hands shrivelled and withered away, the long fingers withdrawing into his now-chubby palms and reverting to the plump, stubby fingers of a much younger child; his limbs contracted into his torso, the scrawny muscles melting into puppy fat as they tucked themselves ever closer to his dwindling body; his torso thickened and fattened as he reverted to a build he hadn't possessed in in roughly seventeen years.

In less than twenty seconds, he was nothing more than a baby swaddled in a shirt meant for a ten-year-old.

Then-

Hey, what happened? Where am I?

Why's everything gotten so dark all of a sudden?

Why can't I move?

And why does it feel like I'm upside down?

…uh-oh.

Tessa was still trapped indoors, anxiously peering out the window and beginning to wonder if she'd ever see Matty again, when a strange chill ran through her body. Immediately alarmed, she looked down at herself, half expecting to see the flesh go flying off her bones as Braun's punishment took effect.

Instead, she saw her body undergo a sudden and amazingly painless transformation: before Tessa's stunned eyes, each swollen knuckle on her arthritis-ravaged hands began to deflate, her palms casting off layer after layer of wrinkles until she found herself looking down at the smooth, healthy hands of a woman in her fifties… if not younger. Her back straightened and unhunched itself as decades of spinal complaints vanished, and she found herself standing tall for the first time in over a year – aided in part by legs that could now stand without the assistance of a cane. Beneath her tatty old dress, her sagging body became taut and young again, her belly withdrawing into her torso, her skin practically glowing with health as it cast off wrinkles one layer at a time.

Hurrying to the bathroom, she looked into the mirror and found the face of a much younger woman staring back at her: her hair was a glossy jet-black once again, her dark eyes sparkling with life, her mouth now filled by her own pearly-white teeth… and to her astonishment, the dark bags hanging under her eyes were gone, as were the bloodshot eyes and the nascent hangdog jowls she'd been sporting on the morning she'd arrived at the Vault.

She hadn't reverted to her arrival age of fifty at all; she'd instead regressed to her mid-twenties at the very least. And though she hardly would have described herself as a beauty worthy of Hollywood at that age, she had to admit that – all modesty aside – she looked pretty damn good.

But assuming her mind hadn't snapped after months of torture and this was actually happening, why was Braun being so charitable all of a sudden? He probably hadn't suffered a change of heart, and he wasn't likely to have accepted her offer now that he'd found out that she'd been helping Matty, so what purpose could making her young again possibly serve? Or perhaps this was something to do with the failsafe terminal: maybe Matty now had control over the simulation and had decided to turn back the clock so she wouldn't suffer anymore. But if that was the case, then why hadn't he unsealed the door first?

And as she stood there, mulling over possibilities and admiring herself in the mirror, Tessa suddenly noticed that something about her had changed again: beneath the dress, her now-flat stomach was starting to look just a tiny bit on the swollen side.

Whatever had happened, it wasn't sagging off her hips as it had back when Braun had first aged her up, so she probably wasn't being forced back into senescence, but what could it mean? She hadn't had weight problems at this age; come to think of it, she'd spent most of her twenties forgetting to eat and having to be reminded to have lunch by professors and irritated family members. So maybe-

A sharp jab of pain rippled through her stomach.

Was it her imagination, or was her stomach beginning to expand?

Another jolt of pain tore through her middle, and now there could be no doubt: Tessa's stomach was indeed growing, inflating into a round, swollen belly pressed tight against her dress. It hadn't stopped growing yet, either – before her very eyes, it was ballooning outwards, bulging and rippling as it grew until it threatened to tear through her clothing entirely.

Groaning in horror, she just about managed to get the dress off and struggle into her bathrobe, but not before her belly grew even further. Tessa hadn't had much experience with pregnancy beyond a few basic classes in high school, but she could plainly recognize the all-too-distinctive ways her body was changing. Of course, given her tastes, she'd never had to worry about getting pregnant at any point in her life before Vault 112, and she and Marcie had yet to make up their minds about starting a family by the time of her dismissal… but it appeared that Braun had decided to make the choice for her.

The pain in her belly seemed to reach a crescendo, at once a garotte and a knife – a noose fastening itself around her middle tighter and tighter until it threatened to squeeze her in half, a white-hot blade of pain tearing right through to her core, cutting and cutting and cutting until there was nothing left of her. Groaning, she staggered over to the front door, hoping against hope that she'd at least be allowed to seek help from the rest of the neighbourhood, for though she had no idea how badly this accelerated pregnancy would go, she knew for a fact that didn't want to endure it alone. But no: not only was the door still sealed firmly shut, but there wasn't even a door handle attached to it anymore.

Seeing a few stray residents wafting about the streets, Tessa began to scream as loudly as she could, at first only to get their attention but then at the growing pain welling up from her middle, threatening to tear her in half. But if anyone could hear her agonized howls, the neighbours showed no sign of it. Either Braun had soundproofed the entire building, or he'd altered their perceptions so that they simply couldn't notice her anymore.

The noose tightened around her belly even further, accompanied by a bevy of other, lesser pains rippling out across her body. She was now experiencing all the minor aches of pregnancy, now accelerated into a blurred patchwork of discomforts – nausea, churning bowels, back pain, and a whole host of other things that Tessa hadn't read about since sex education. By now barely able to whimper, she staggered into the kitchen with one hand clasped over her belly (as if she might explode if she didn't hold herself in), praying that Braun had somehow forgotten about the back door.

Of course, it was sealed like the others.

But to her surprise, there was a gift basket waiting for her on the benchtop, complete with a gift card; in spite of herself, she tore open the envelop and read as quickly as possible, gripped by the desperate hope that there might be something within that could spare her any further pain, or at the very least allow her to seek help among the residents.

Dear Ms Dithers, it read.

I trust you're feeling the full effects of the punishment by now, so I won't keep you long. Rest assured, Matty's punishment now incorporates the highest possible degree of confusion, fear, embarrassment, and pain; I'm afraid you'll have to share it with him over the course of your labour. After all, you tried so hard to help him sabotage the program, so it's only fitting that you share in the punishment I chose for him, though each of you will suffer in your own way.

Of course, you might be wondering how our young friend could possibly be in any pain in his current predicament, especially compared to you. Well, as it happens, I made sure that your labour will be… difficult; rest assured you will die over the course of the next few hours, as will Matty, and both of you will be made to suffer through this process over and over again until I no longer find it amusing.

A tad gauche, I know, but I thought it was appropriate for Matty's first brush with simulated death.

As you probably know well enough by now, I can't permit you to seek any help from the other residents – but fear not: I have provided special equipment to help speed the labour and ease your pain. You'll find them in the gift basket.

And if all else fails, just imagine that you and Marcie have finally started the family you always wanted. Just imagine that your dear sweet dead girlfriend will be home soon, ready to welcome your new son into your family. Imagine the picket fence, the gardens, the joys of seeing your child flourish and thrive. Imagine growing old with Marcie. Imagine everything you will never have.

Have fun!

Sincerely,

Stanislaus Braun

Already dreading what she might find, Tessa opened the basket to find a small assortment of grisly-looking surgical instruments, including saws, scalpels, forceps, birthing stirrups, scissors, and even the occasional misplaced steak knife. Also, a reel of fishing twine, some towels, and small bottle of vodka. Less reassuring was the fact that almost all of the official instruments were coated in a crusty layer of dried blood, and several items were rusted to the point of uselessness.

In fact, apart from the steak knives, the one thing that wasn't covered in rust or filth was the loaded revolver at the bottom of the basket.

Taped to the barrel was a note: I bet you'll suffer through at least five deaths before you think of using this one, it said smugly.

And now Tessa began to scream with renewed vigour, not merely because she was in agonizing pain, but because Braun had finally done the impossible. Just when she truly believed that he couldn't possibly sink any lower, just when she thought she had plunged to the absolute nadir of her torment, he'd managed to prove her wrong. She screamed because she knew that Braun would never allow them anywhere near the abandoned house ever again, because he'd move the failsafe terminal where none of them would ever find it and increase the tortures tenfold from here on. She screamed because she hadn't been quick or clever enough to stop Braun from noticing the intruder in his home, and thanks to her incompetence, she'd managed to drag another innocent victim into their endless nightmare.

Most of all, she screamed because the tiny ember of hope she'd been nurturing had just been smothered and nothing remained of it but ashes.

She'd failed.

Now all that was left to her – and Matty – was suffering.

A/N: Yeah, you're probably wondering what the hell is wrong with me. Well, your guess is as good as mine; even I'm not sure what exactly inspired this particular punishment.

However, overall inspiration for this chapter was Braun's complacency in the original game: nothing you did would ever make Braun actually stop you from entering the abandoned house, nor was there any way of him trying to stop you from activating the failsafe. In fact, he doesn't do anything unless you opt to play along, or you make the mistake of attacking him. So, I wanted to make things a bit more complicated - and hand Matty a major loss for the first time in his story.

As for the actual... act... well, it occurred to me after I fell asleep on a very long and tiring train trip, so I suppose we can only blame the things public transport does to my brain.

Rest assured: Matty's story is not over yet. We've well and truly diverged from canon, we're off the edge of the map: here there be monsters.