The next part is here, mostly because I felt the need to just sit down and write for a little bit. I've been feeling a loss of creative spark the past several days, and amid trying to find a job and plan out my immediate future, stuff's been crazy. In any case, I present the next piece of this story to you, and as I mentioned before, this story will soon become "M" rated, because Outlast is not for the faint of heart nor the weak willed. It is intense through and through, and I don't plan on holding back as it goes on...

Reviews are appreciated more than scooby snacks here :) Enjoy. (oh, yeah, I still don't own squat, but I reserve the right to be a shameless shmuck.

As the door to the basement creaked open, Shaggy's heart stopped. The asylum was already driving him a little insane, and each shadow threatened more than its predecessor to jump out at him, and every pool of blood on the floor held a more crisp face. The smell of dank, rotten water assaulted his nose, but he could tell it wasn't all water.

He descended the small staircase and found a pathway leading into an even more ominous darkness, so he opted to squeeze through the hole in the wall, where a flickering light offered minimal comfort.

A fresh corpse was laying face down in the water, and the flashlight flickered for a second. A repulsive odor clung in the air down the way, where the generators were. He poked out his head, and immediately flung it back inside, clinging to the wall for dear life as an inmate slowly walked towards him.

Shaggy prayed silently that the man did not see him, and he felt a cold sweat overtake him as the man's pace got slower as he approached the hole in the wall where Shaggy was hiding. The inmate stopped altogether, peering around the darkness, like a cat on the hunt for blood. His deranged figure stood like a statue for a moment, gazing out in the eternal blackness, and then, at long last, he began walking back the way he came.

A patrol? Shaggy nearly fell to his knees when the inmate got far enough away.

…

Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Scooby Doo wandered the halls, cautious of any life that was poking around and looking for someone to torture, kill, or eat.

They passed by a bathroom with three stalls, the middle one opened and covered in blood, the right and left stalls, closed, and somehow, more ominous. They continued down the hall until they reached a barricade they could not get through. The only way around took them into a room where a television was playing static feedback.

Several inmates were "watching" it, staring into it like addicts longing for their next fix. Fred shielded the girls and prepared for them to attack, but they just kept staring, not even flinching as the gang crept in behind them and found the door.

They exited and found the hall again, and another folder stapled to the wall. Fred picked it off and read it aloud.

Tests with Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Morgan have proved the validity of morphogenic engine research. Of course, they both received minimal exposure and though the test was successful, the real world applications of the engine will have to be conducted on a much larger scale. At least corporate will enjoy the news.

Dr. Wernicke was kind enough to lend me the notes I requested, and based off his earlier research, we've lined up several candidates for prisoner testing of our next generation design. With the improvements, I'm sure we will find greater success. In any case, it won't hurt us. The inmates, well...there's plenty of them to go around, right?

"Jeepers...it's hard to believe people like that exist in this world," Daphne muttered.

"Come on, we've got to find the generators, not to mention Shaggy and my friend Waylon," Velma said, pushing farther down the hall. The others followed, and a brief moment of calm was granted as they turned the corner and found that nobody had been killed here.

The walls were clean and white, the floor was barely cluttered at all, hardly a picture frame was out of place. It almost brought a smile to their collective face.

Amidst all the chaos and havoc of the asylum's breakdown, small wins like this meant a lot. There was some place, even in this wretched facility, where the danger could not reach. The psychopaths could not spoil everything, nor could the menacing will of the corporation infect every crevice of the establishment. It was a very small win, but a win none the less.

But like everything else that went right that night, it was short lived, and soon forgotten.

"GAH!" Velma screamed at the top of her lungs as a hand dashed out of the darkness, and a deranged patient strapped into a wheelchair within the shadows pulled her away.

"Pretty...pretty...stay away…" the man told himself, dragging Velma closer to his lap.

"Stop right there!" Fred demanded, punching the patient in the face and knocking him out. Velma was shaking, and gladly rejoined her friends.

"Thanks…" Velam breathed out, clinging to Daphne's side.

"Let's keep moving, we shouldn't be far from the secondary stairwell now, and generators are right down in the basement," Fred told them.

…

"Who's there?" Someone demanded as Shaggy crept through the water filled hall, closer to the generators, and possibly, his own demise.

The water splashed in the distance as someone, presumably the inmate from before, ran out to where the gas pump controls were. The door Shaggy closed and locked behind him rattled as someone on the other side rammed into it. The lock was fine, but the door itself was old and weak, and could break apart at any moment.

Shaggy took cover in an empty crate, sliding the top over himself to hide. The door continued to shake and groan as the force on the other side was ever violently applied to it. He clutched the flashlight tensely as the door broke open and the inmate looked around with a deranged expression on his burned, disfigured face.

He was a tall, somewhat slender man, but he held in his hands a 2x4, and poked around with it a little bit before turning back into the hall from which he came. He set down the weapon and hauled a corpse in over his shoulder, using a chain to suspend it from the ceiling and hang it to dry. The blood did not stop raining down from the body even after he left once again, content that his abode remained undisturbed.

Shaggy slid the lid off the crate and crept up a few stairs into a generator room. He felt the relief of smelling oil and machinery more than the repugnant odor of blood and devastation that hung over most of the asylum by now. He pressed the button to restart the generator and it whirred back to life. Unfortunately, it also brought the inmate back, screaming with his 2x4 in hand.

Shaggy jumped behind the generator and pressed himself down into the shadows, trying to blend in with the dark world around him. The patrolling inmate looked around, and fixed his eyes on the generator, making Shaggy's heart skip several beats.

His eyes widened as the inmate crept closer, leaning in to better examine the suddenly sparked to life piece of industry. He licked his lips and stared, stared deep into the face of the button. Shaggy almost jumped out when a noise from outside the generator room broke the quiet. The corpse plunged into the water and the chain fell with it, drawing the inmate away. Shaggy couldn't stop the tears as the man left him alone once more. One more...just one more generator.

…

The rain pelted down on the roof even harder than it had when the gang entered, and the thunder practically shook the whole building. Fred led the girls and Scooby through the hall until they found the stairwell.

It was within reach, but at the final moment, it was taken away. The next time the lightning struck, it crashed down in front of the stairs, and a fire began kindling to life. Fred jumped back to avoid electrocution, and Scooby began bolting for the emergency exit door.

"Oh no, the sprinklers won't work, we haven't fixed the power yet!" Daphne exclaimed.

"And this fire is spreading way too fast, there's probably gas in the floor!" Fred added, turning back and running from the scorching blaze that was ever growing and consuming the devastation in the asylum.

Scooby held the door open as the gang rushed out, running into the rain and gladly escaping the horrors of the administration block. The door slammed shut and the gang put a fair distance between themselves and the door, but to their shock, the alarms blared out at that moment.

"What? Someone else turned the power on…" Daphne said as the fences regained electricity.

"We just got locked out...and I don't know if that's a bad thing or not," Fred told the gang as he began looking around.

"Maybe we can find another way in," Daphne replied.

"Or maybe it would be better to search somewhere else," Velma countered, "there's no way of knowing where Shaggy is, and we haven't seen or heard anything about Waylon yet. There's a whole lot more to this place than just the administration block."

"Let's try and think like Shaggy for a second...where would he go if he was all alone in here?" Fred asked.

"The Rexit!" Scooby chimed in.

"Right, but we know there's a monster...or something...lurking in there, and it's probably guarding the exit. Where would he go then?"

"...Anywhere," Velma answered.

"Yes, so we've got to contact him...somehow. I figure there's a couple places we could go to find the asylum speaker controls. Maybe we'll even find a radio, be able to contact someone...we can only guess right now, but we've got to at least find somewhere where the intercom links to."

"How about there?" Daphne asked, pointing to a sign on a nearby building.

Operating Rooms 11-20, Crematory, Pharmacy, Guard Stations 5-6

"It's worth a shot," Fred said as he trudged through the rain towards that section of the facility with the others close behind him.

…

"Zoinks!" Shaggy called as he ran out of the flooded basement, being chased wildly by the maniac with the 2x4.

He rounded the stairwell and threw down an overturned walker, giving himself perhaps an extra two or three seconds advantage. He'd gladly take it.

The security room wasn't all that far, and he'd outran plenty of monsters, ghouls, and villains in his time. And yet, throughout all that time, nothing had prepared him for the torment of this asylum. This place was beyond anything he'd ever experienced, and he never wanted it to begin with.

He hurdled over another small barricade and kept running on.

"Come back here! Varmint! I'll kill your face!"

The patient with the 2x4 was still close behind, and nothing much was slowing him down. Shaggy pushed himself into overdrive and sprinted through the halls, almost fast enough for the corpses, the blood, the gaping wounds in the building to pass by him unnoticed.

The teen rounded the next corner and shouted in horror as the burly man, former soldier Chris Walker, was waiting on the other side. They shocked each other, but Shaggy was already half way down the hall as Walker gave chase, calling out in his own sick fashion to Shaggy.

"Little piggie come back! Little piggie go away forever!"

"Hey! I'm still gonna get you!" The other inmate shouted, and in doing so, ensuring his own demise.

"Little piggie bring friend!" Walker said as he swiped his massive fist into the patient's chest.

The inmate dropped the 2x4 and broke the wall open with his back before Walker picked him up again and slammed him into the ground.

"No! No! No! No! No!"

Chris Walker's fist crushed half of the man's skull into pieces and, he stopped mumbling after the second punch killed him indefinitely.

Shaggy, having heard these events as he opened the security room door and shut himself inside, breathed in and out heavily, staying hidden in the shadows of the room as the screens flickered with images and text, reporting everything that was happening in the asylum, except for a few areas where the feed had been cut.

He held himself tightly and tried to endure the flash of images that ran through his mind as he replayed the sounds of the man being killed by the behemoth that had no remorse or any comprehension of emotion outside of rage and violence. Shaggy double checked to make sure the door was locked, and was pleased to see it was.

He went over to the monitors and browsed around, then finally found the controls for the main exit. He swiftly unlocked them and smiled, his first true triumph of the night. He checked several different feeds for his friends, but before he found them, a hand reached out from behind him and dragged him away from the console.

He struggled and tried to break free, but a sedative was injected into his neck and he quickly felt the adrenaline being overtaken and pushed away. He fumbled around and continued in vain to try and break free, until he was let down on the floor by his attacker.

Father Martin smiled as he set the shot to the side.

"Not yet, my son...not yet. There is work to be done yet."

Shaggy may have dreamed it, but as he slipped into unconsciousness he felt the terrible presence of something sinister, and whether or not it was real, the fear he felt pulsating inside him from the vision was.

He swore a presence was lurking through the asylum. He swore a vengeful entity was haunting the grounds, killing indiscriminately like Chris Walker and the other psychopaths. He swore he heard the awful name, the calling sign of the arbiter of doom. He swore the Walrider was there with them.