"Wake up. C'mon, Five-O! Let's go!"

Leon groaned, thoughts clouded in groggy confusion. He blinked rapidly to focus his eyes and found himself staring up at a brown and gray stained concrete ceiling. With another grunt of effort, he rubbed his temple and pushed himself off the floor. As his vision adjusted to the darkness, he realized he had woken in a dark hallway with peeling, graffitied plaster covering the walls and doors that lined one side. Tiny rectangular windows on the other wall allowed small strips of light to reveal heavy dust in the air. The only indication that he wasn't finally waking up somewhere in Raccoon City, free from his lasting, looping nightmare, was the athletic redhead staring down at him with an expression he thought could be frustration. "Where.. are we?" Leon murmured.

Meg tapped her foot nervously as she looked around them, hands tucked under her arms. "Up, up. I don't know."

Leon stood, hand instinctively going for his holster before remembering where he was. That habit wasn't quite stripped from him yet. "We should find the others." Meg sighed in response, flipping hair out of her face. She seemed irritated at his comment, though he wasn't sure why. He brushed off his uniform and tried to continue the conversation by asking "Any telltale signs for the killers? No harpoon guns firing, choked screams, Russian lullabies being hummed?"

She didn't smile as she shook her head. "Nothing. We need to move; new places always mean trouble. Always."

He felt his brow knot together as he followed her hurried steps down the hall. "This is...an apartment complex."

Meg didn't turn back to acknowledge him as she answered "No shit, Sherlock."

"We had apartments like this in Raccoon City. On the edges."

"Every city has apartments like this," she hissed. "But I don't know why it brought us here, now."

With a blink, Leon nodded, hand sliding along the wall as he followed her around a corner. Wherever they were, it was eerily quiet. Not even wind or screams from the crows alerting them to other survivors. The pair walked several yards before reaching another corner, then another, when Meg let out a surprised yelp.

"Shit!"

Leon gripped the flashlight on his hip, heart racing at the sight of two shadowy figures looming in the darkness. He clicked the light on to reveal another light shining back at him and Meg's dirty, fearful face staring back. He sighed quietly and her reflection's expression changed to annoyance.

"It's a mirror."

"I see that," she muttered, stepping forward slowly but clinging to the edges of the wall. The reflective surface looked out of place on the brown, heavily graffitied cement, only framed by the dark corrosion on the sides. "It's just that, though. We should keep moving."

He clicked his flashlight off and tried to walk a little ahead of his teammate, only for her to take a few steps forward to remain in her position.

"You don't need to do that."

He frowned. "I know, but..."

"You don't have to play cop here. I'm fine."

"I'm not," he insisted, the creases on the corners of his lips deepening. "I'm just..." He trailed off, not sure what he was trying to do. "I'm trying to help."

"It's not helpful." Her words were sharp and clipped, even though her volume remained low.

They went left and moved forward without a word between them for a minute before Leon nearly bumped into Meg's back.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"There's something on the ground. There."

In the dim ambient light, something glistened on the floor. "Is it blood?" Leon clicked his flashlight on. Whatever it was, it glowed amber-gold, smeared into a perfect circle.

"It looks like a trap." Meg pressed her shoulder closer to the wall, away from the circle.

Leon nodded with a frown.

Meg peered into the darkness and lifted her arm in a wave and a dark figure on the wall mimicked her perfectly. "Another mirror."

"Another one?" He stepped forward, shining his light near the surface. "...isn't it the same one?"

"This one has writing."

Leon followed her eyes. She was right; there was clear text above the mirror in fluorescent yellow paint.

SAY MY NAME.

"'Say my name?'" She shifted her weight nervously as she watched him quietly mouth the words inscribed on the wall. "What the hell does that mean?"

He looked at Meg, brows knit together. "Do we know a name?"

She appeared to hesitate before tentatively moving past the mirror. "L-let's keep going."

"What if that's important?"

"It's not," she snapped.

Leon kept quiet for a few moments as he followed her, trying to get a glimpse of her face. "Hey."

"What?"

"Are you scared?"

A frustrated exhale came from her nose as she looked back at him. Her face was pale and her eyes were stretched so wide it gave the appearance of her pupils shrinking. "Can you shut up?"

"Meg, I'm just - "

"You can't do anything! I need to make sure we don't get killed, so just...shut up and follow me! God, the hero act is fucking insufferable!"

Several moments of tense silence passed as they walked. Leon silently berated himself for the sinking feeling that began in his chest and drifted to his stomach as he watched her braids sway in front of him. It didn't make sense, after everything that had happened to him, that he would still worry about what others thought. But he couldn't help it.

She sighed quietly as they went right and turned her head just enough for him to see her face in profile. Her eyes were still nervous as she chewed her lip. "Sorry."

"It's okay."

"It's not...I don't want to bitch at you." She exhaled slowly.

He gave her a small smile of understanding. "Let's just find the gens and get out of here. Okay?"

"We should've seen one by now," she said, a shake of the fear she tried to hide beneath aggression coming through in her words. "This doesn't make any goddamn sense."

"They're just well hidden. You know, like in RPD," he tried to sound sure of himself. "You told us that. At the beginning of all this. Right?"

Her lips pursed. "Right."

"You know what you're talking about. So...let's keep looking."

The hallway narrowed slightly as they turned another corner, only to see their uncertain faces staring back at them once more.

"H-hey." Meg stopped, finally allowing Leon to go just a few steps ahead of her to approach the mirror. "This... isn't right. We didn't go in a circle. Right?"

"I don't think so. It says something else, now." Leon squinted his eyes to make out the words scrawled onto the surface of the mirror. "It's a word, or a name. Candyman? That's all it says. I can't make out the rest of this." He indicated the surrounding graffiti with his light. "That name isn't familiar to you?"

"No." She grimaced. "Not a fan that you just said what it tells you to say, though."

"I was just reading out loud," he mumbled, but didn't argue with her. If he was honest, the moment he said it he felt a sick lurch in his stomach.

She swayed on her heels in agitated nervousness as she followed his eyes. "It's...it's probably nothing."

Leon frowned. "But we've been going in circles for a while now. This might be the only way to move forward. Like a puzzle?"

Meg gave him a weary look. "A puzzle?"

"Yeah, I mean..." He indicated a set of complete tally marks scratched into the frame of the mirror. "Maybe this is how many times we're meant to say it?"

"Or," she shot back, "how many idiots tried it and were killed because of it?"

Leon turned back to the mirror. "I guess. Still worth a shot."

Meg shivered, a sudden cold gust blowing through the hallway.

Leon swallowed. "Candyman."

Meg wrapped her arms around herself, teeth starting to chatter. Why was it so cold?

"Candyman."

"I don't like this," Meg whispered through her shaking teeth, staring behind them in both directions with a wild look.

"Candyman."

They held their breath, not daring to say anything as they counted over in their heads.

"...Candyman."
The silence hovered between them for a moment before Leon turned to face Meg again. "Well. That was uneventful. I didn't hear any secret passages open up or anything."
She sighed shakily before pinching the bridge of her nose. "Now that you've got it out of your system, can we get going?"

Leon opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. His glance drifted from Meg's gaze to just over her shoulder, looking off into the distance. "Did you hear that?"

Meg's nose scrunched up, but a fearful glaze ran over her eyes as she looked around. "What did you hear? One of us?" She whispered. When he shook his head, she clenched her fist and looked away. "Maybe… maybe it's someone new. Confused about what's going on," she tried to soothe herself.

Leon steadied his heart rate as her anxiety rose, only for it to speed up as the sound echoed in his mind. "No, it's like a… a buzzing? It's getting louder."

"Shit," she hissed, motioning to him to move. She pointed at an apartment door on one side of the hall that appeared to be stuck open part way. "There. Go, go!"

Leon dashed ahead, tugging at the door until it screeched open just enough for them to enter. "Get in!"

Meg darted inside, looking behind her nervously. Her momentary lapse in attention resulted in her slipping forward and collapsing into a heap, sputtering and grunting as something sticky clung to her bare hands and lips. A sharp, acidic sweetness hit her tongue as she tried to wipe it off. "Shit! Shit!"

Leon shone his light toward where he'd heard Meg fall. "You okay? What is it?" His temple creased. She had fallen into another orange-gold pool of slime. Meg growled in frustration, trying uselessly to wipe the substance off of her.

"It's fucking honey," she spat, struggling to stand and only taking Leon's offered hand after several failed attempts. When she finally did manage to get up, she shook her hands in the air and flung the remaining syrup onto the floor in disgust. "That's so gross, what - ow, son of a bitch!"

She slapped the back of her neck with a wince. When she retracted it, the broken, crumpled body of an insect lay in the honey on her palm. "...wh-what the hell?"

"It's a... bee?" Leon craned his neck to see. "I've never seen bees here. Does new wildlife usually just… show up randomly?"

Meg ignored him as a soft buzzing came from the small body in her hand.

"Is it still alive?"

"No, it...it couldn't be..." Meg's voice faltered as the wings of the creature fluttered. Her brows knit together in confusion before she cried out again, clenching her fist as the insect stabbed into her with its stinger and flew upward. "Goddammit - shit!"

With her unstung hand, she smacked her arm as the buzz of one insect became a low drone descending on them.

"Christ!" Leon shouted, swatting the air as a swarm of small, yellow-and-black bodies descended. Yet, even though he was hitting them and knocking some into each other and the walls, they seemed to pay him no mind. They were all swarming straight for Meg.

Meg shrieked, arms flailing around her as she desperately tried to fend them off, mouth screwed up in pain as they stung her face and hands. She ran out of the room and back into the hallway, trying to get as far away from the honey trap as possible. "Don't fucking touch it!" Meg slammed her back against the wall with a sickening crunch as dozens of bees were crushed under her weight. She screamed over the buzzing with her fingers shielding her eyes, "Go! I'll meet you when I get these things off!" Her form disappeared out of the doorframe as she broke into a sprint.

Leon felt a wave of uncertain nausea in his stomach as he carefully avoided triggering the trap and stepped into the hallway. "Meg?" She was gone. He allowed a few seconds to pass, listening for any sign of her. "Call out! Where'd you end up?"

Another voice came from the other end of the hall, and Leon froze. Was it one of the others? He whipped his head back with his flashlight, only to find Jonathan, the hand that wasn't holding a medkit covering his eyes.

"Watch it," he grunted, moving his head out of the glow. "Hey. Are the others with you? I heard screaming."

Leon aimed the flashlight down and sighed. "Meg was, but she stepped in...honey, we think? She got swarmed by bees and came out here, and I haven't seen her since. She has to be close by though. Jonathan, do you recognize this place? Meg didn't, and that worries me."

"No," he admitted with a sullen frown. "I mean, it kind of looks like some of the buildings in Indianapolis, if you ask me...but I don't think it is." He looked over his shoulder. "I haven't seen a killer yet. No crows, either. Did you say honey?"

Leon nodded and gestured with his head back to the spot in the room, holding his arm up as Jonathan approached. "Don't touch it," he warned.

"Wasn't planning on it." Jonathan's eyes narrowed as he looked at the illuminated honey trap and shook his head.

"Let's go find her," Leon said softly, creeping down the hall with Jonathan close behind.

"Okay. How long have you been down here?"

"Only a few minutes. Why?"

"I've been wandering for a while. More than a few minutes. This place doesn't have a gate."

Leon's pace slowed. "...Sorry, say that again?"

"No gate. No generators. No pallets. Nothing. I haven't even seen a hook. It's like we aren't meant to win this."

"Don't say that," Leon muttered, giving the boy behind him a concerned glance. "We always have at least a chance, right?"

Jonathan's lips pressed together. "You didn't hear about what happened to David and Kate, did you?" When Leon shook his head in confusion, Jonathan continued, "I heard him talking to Steve. They were in a trial without any tasks. The killer just hung around them until enough time passed. Then they came back."

Leon shuffled uncomfortably, looking from side to side. "Maybe that's happening now. We would just wait it out, right?"

"I'd rather we had somewhere to hide in the meantime."

Before Leon could respond, they heard a soft, pained whimpering from a nearby hall.

"Meg?" Leon called out, flicking the flashlight up to illuminate the hall as they turned the corner.

The bright circle landed on a prone figure on the floor, curled up with their arms over their head.

Jonathan ran ahead, ignoring Leon's warnings to stop, and reached the body with skidding steps. "Hey," he said urgently, crouching down. "It's her," he called back to Leon, opening the medkit up beside her.

Leon huffed as he caught up to him and shined a light on Meg, kneeling with one leg on the ground in case he needed to break into a sprint at a moment's notice. Her face and arm were swollen, covered in red pustules that seemed to throb and pulse clear, syrupy fluid that escaped one burst cyst on her cheek. She whimpered as her eyes remained open, the only indication of her consciousness the fact that her gaze flicked around from Jonathan's eyes to his hands. She managed to get out a noise that sounded like a warning.

"I have to heal you," Jonathan insisted with an anxious shake of his head before looking at Leon for support.

"Get the gloves on. I don't know if we can touch her."

Meg's eyes darted back to Leon's voice and back to Jonathan, blinking twice. Air blew through Jonathan's nose with a frustrated huff as he pulled the gloves over his hands, in a hurry to stop the obvious pain she was in.

Leon kept the light on Meg as Jonathan slowly pulled her arm away from her face. The scabbed crusts of irritated skin around the swollen stings crackled under the motion, making his stomach turn. He glanced back over his shoulder as much to keep surveillance as to avoid staring as she cried in pain. Thankfully, touching her didn't seem to alert anything nearby or transfer the irritation.

"Jonathan?" Leon asked as the boy wiped an alcohol pad over the stings on Meg's arm.

"Mmm?" He replied, not paying attention to anything except his patient.

"You didn't see anyone else on your way in, right? Meg and I haven't seen our fourth yet."

Jonathan lanced some of the pustules, wiping away the sticky pus with a sanitary cloth. Meg whimpered as he did, but already seemed to be faring much better than she'd been when they found her. "No. You two are the first people I've seen." He pulled out a needle that Leon thought must contain morphine. Meg winced as Jonathan injected her, a sigh escaping as she was pacified for the moment.

"...Right. I was just wondering," Leon murmured. "We'll find them. Help me get her up when you're done."

Kate rubbed her arms as she walked slowly and carefully, wishing she had a light of some kind to guide her. She was starting to get the feeling she was going in circles.

It seemed like she was in an apartment complex of some kind, the sort she would've seen in Pittsburgh, but she didn't recognize it as anywhere she'd been in a trial before. That usually meant there was an unfamiliar killer around, though she didn't feel the latent unease that seemed to permeate the trials. That almost disturbed her more.

She had yet to find a single generator or locker. The few vaults available to her were small and cramped and easier to be grabbed on than to try to jump over. It reminded her of the worst parts of the school they first met Cheryl in - not a comforting thought, considering they'd also first encountered the Executioner there.

Not wanting to be caught delaying, she crept down the hall and up a flight of dimly lit stairs in the hopes of finding something that would progress them closer to opening a gate, wherever one was. She needed to do something before the crows found her and pecked at her hair and eyes.

But the hall at the top of the stairs, too, lay bare of anything for her to do. No sign of her friends, and no crows, either, even though she was usually the first to disturb them in her hurried attempts to get away from their pursuers. Kate pulled at the tight blonde curls the Entity had given her for this trial and twirled them nervously. If this was like the beach "trial," maybe whoever the killer was felt just as confused and lost as her. She almost had to hope it was true, as the only options she had before her were a door to her left and another at the end of the dark hall. If something came up the stairs…

A whisper blew across her cheek, soft and deep and low, but the meaning of the words eluded her as goosebumps appeared on her skin.

Kate spun around, startled at the unfamiliar voice, and darted her eyes down either side of the hallway to locate the source.

Nobody there. Just imposing graffiti decorating the walls. She quieted her breathing and crouched low, hoping the darkness where the walls met would shield her momentarily while she regained her composure.

Kate stared at the first door, then the cell-like window beside it. It would be wise to check for any possible exits before she was mid-chase. But a feeling of deep foreboding tingled in her fingers and toes as she reached out for the doorknob, only to retract her hand quickly as the door creaked open, as if it knew she wanted to look. With a shiver, she pushed the rotting wood inward.

A cacophony of colors assaulted her eyes as they adjusted to the bright, fluorescent light that flickered on in the room. Pinks, greens, oranges, a barrage of happy colors that indicated whoever lived here intentionally chose the palette. Kate nearly slipped as she stepped onto the linoleum and looked down, quickly removing her foot from the gruesome puddle of dark red blood that followed a trail into the living area. She muffled a scream with her palm as she saw where the streaks of blood ended: a small wooden crib, the mattress inside drenched in scarlet that splattered across the walls.

Her horror muted her rational thinking - there was no reason to believe there was a baby here, that such an awful scene ever happened in real life, no reason to believe this wasn't just one of the Entity's tricks to scare her -

A voice, not one she recognized as her own internal thoughts, seemed to murmur her worst fears. Something ghastly happened here. But the voice didn't seem to find it displeasing. Rather, it sounded...satisfied.

She fell to her knees, slamming her hands over her ears to block a piercing wail that hurt her head. Kate had heard so many screams since she was taken, but this...this held agonized pain and grief that made her want to burst into tears, herself. Her hands couldn't muffle the sound, as if it were coming from within her own mind. She stared around the room with wild, fearful eyes. No one was there with her. Was this the killer's power? Sometimes they could hear the Spirit's ghostly gasps and sighs before she appeared - was something like that happening, now? She scrambled to her feet and dashed out of the room, the light flickering off as she left it behind.

She didn't bother going back the way she came; maybe she could find something, anything, in the room at the end of the hall. The door was already open.

Kate tried to catch her breath as she squinted in the darkness. The graffiti was messier and indecipherable here, as if it had been scrambled out of order.

She closed her eyes, asking the Entity to show her where she could go. There was somewhere she could crawl through in the next room.

When she entered the room, however, she saw that the area the Entity had marked for her was above a sink. A mirror.

Kate stared at the woman in the glass, her expressions mirroring her own as her eyebrows knit together. Kate's hand reached up to her face as the reflection did the same, feeling around the full lips she didn't recognize as her own thin shape. It had been a while since she took a proper look at herself, but...no, she didn't look quite right. It was as if her features had been smeared into a slightly different face, framed by tight blonde curls that piled on her head. She parted her lips as she tilted her head, confused. She supposed it wasn't outside the realm of possibility for the Entity to change her appearance. Her hair changed often enough, as did her clothes. But the way she looked like herself, but not herself… frankly, it made her nervous.

The glow remained around the edges of the mirror and she gave it a confused glare. "That's not an opening," she mumbled. She looked behind her nervously. Nothing else gave her another way to go. And Lord knew she didn't want to be anywhere near that awful room again if she could help it.

Bewildered, Kate hesitantly pulled the edge of the mirror, only for it to gently swing open and reveal itself as a door to a cobweb-infested medicine cabinet. The light remained, however, and appeared to glow at a specific edge with a hole she could fit her finger in. She closed her fists in mild frustration before carefullypulling around the edge from the hole. To her surprise, the cabinet began to give and pull away from the wall. With a sudden clank, the box dropped from its position and into her hands, and she carefully placed it into the filthy tub beside her. The revealed entrance was a tight affair that Kate wasn't sure she could fit.

Sighing, she clambered up onto the small sink, twisting her shoulders around as she squeezed through. The area beyond the hole looked much like the previous room; it had clearly once been a bathroom, but was now stripped of any furnishings. Kate pulled herself out of the hole and fell with a grunt, landing on her side on the cracked, yellow linoleum. Biting her tongue, she stood. God, this place was horrible. Kate shivered and rubbed her shoulder, partly from pain and partly from fear; she noticed another large hole in one of the walls, nearly a perfect oval and clearly not intentional in whatever floorplans the place originally had. The Entity had highlighted it.

"Alright, fine. You want me to go through, I'll go through," she muttered.

She ducked her head, even though the hole was nearly big enough to accommodate her full height, and swung her legs over the lip of the broken wall. Something about the way she was guided unsettled her, but Kate knew that in cases like this, the Entity knew best. Sometimes she only survived tight loops around the killers because she knew where she could run.

Taking a few steps in, she looked around the derelict room, empty and vandalized. Whatever furnishings once sat in the space were long removed, leaving only brown, molded floor and walls covered in garish paint. Worryingly, no exits. Why was she brought here?

She turned, half-hoping she could just go back the way she came, only to take a few steps back in shock. A pair of eyes stared back at her from the wall, larger than her head, arching over the hole she came through. No, not just eyes... an entire face. A man's face, his mouth agape and teeth clinging to the edges of the entrance, gazing down at her as if she were a creature he vomited up.

Kate tried to look away, but found herself practically stuck to the spot. The face staring down at her seemed to be screaming, stuck in some kind of perpetual terror or pain. Whatever it was, it made her eyes water, and she rubbed them to clear away the stinging. Was she just that moved by the emotions of the artist, or the subject of the image? She didn't know him… did she?

Shaking her head, Kate moved to climb back through the hole, when something glinted in the corner of her eye, giving her enough pause to turn back. A little glass bauble hung on a stack of items she hadn't previously noticed in the corner; chests and dressers and chairs, forming a sort of makeshift staircase. They led up to a hole in the ceiling that seemed to loom above her, daring her to climb up. She didn't want to, she knew she didn't, and yet... she was so drawn to it.

Kate chewed her lip as she stared up the rickety structure. There wasn't anywhere else for her to go. Old memories of the swing-down stairs that led to her Grampy's attic, and how when Christmas rolled around, he'd take Kate up there to help him bring the boxes of decorations down. Kate never liked traversing the stairs; they always felt wobbly and steep, and Kate often thought about how if either of them slipped, they'd fall down them and over the bannister, all the way down to the first floor. She shivered at the thought.

Slowly, uncertainly, she took a few steps up the stairs. Surely a gate wouldn't appear here. Nor the hatch, if that was even an option. A lonely, fearful tug in her heart made her think of David, an ache that rang hollowly in her chest as the image of the screaming man repeated itself in her mind over and over again. There was so much pain here. Pain she couldn't soothe. She couldn't escape soon enough.

With a bit of a struggle, Kate steadied herself on the makeshift staircase, grasping for the lip of the hole above her. She pulled herself up and over, a grunt of effort echoing in the nearly-empty room she found herself in.

She was in what might have been a penthouse suite apartment, but any luxury or even basic amenities that could've been there at one time were long gone. The space was now run-down and decrepit, covered in graffiti and dripping wet. The stench of mildew and musk stung at Kate's nose. Grimacing, she stood and moved away from the hole to a nearby wall.

There was a drawing on this wall, too. The intricate details and purposeful composition made her wonder if someone had been commissioned to depict the scene before her. A black man in what appeared to be 19th-century clothing, held down by a group of white men. Red bursts of stylized blood and gore erupted where his hand should've been, beneath the grip of white hands on a bone saw. A terror in her chest registered that the victim's agonized expression matched the face she'd seen on the lower level. She covered her mouth and looked away. Why was this here? Why did the Entity need to show it to her?

She clung her fist to her chest, rubbing her thumb against her index in a nervous motion as she tried to determine her next move, closing her eyes in concentration. She needed to find her teammates, but she wasn't entirely convinced she wouldn't find the killer first, if there was one. Shaking her curls, Kate looked around the room. It was large enough she could run someone around it. There was only one exit. She could manage...probably.

"Hello?" she called into the darkness, turning her back to the wall so she wouldn't be ambushed. "Is anyone here?"

Nothing. "If there's another survivor here, can you say something?" Kate waited, holding her breath for so long that she started shaking. Still no response. She released the breath, her chest aching. Maybe this was a waiting game, like the beach. Maybe she could find her teammates if she went back where she came. She didn't have any other options.

She heard a whisper from behind her.

"Helen."

Leon sucked air between his teeth as he straightened up, looking in every direction with an expression he hoped masked the thrill of terror that ran down into his intestines.

Jonathan came to a sudden stop, readjusting Meg's arm around his shoulder. "What? What is it?"

"Someone screamed," Leon replied as softly as possible.

Meg's eyes narrowed as she pulled her arm off of the teen helping her, attempting to stand in case she needed to run. "Someone real?"

Jonathan gave Meg a look. "Uh...someone real?"

"Shh. Listen." Leon held a finger to his lips.

The three of them fell silent. Nothing. A quiet, grim expression passed across each of their faces. If they heard screaming that cut off suddenly, it meant a killer had found them.

"Who was it?" Jonathan's voice shook slightly at the end of the question.

Leon shushed him again, holding a fist up.

"I heard something else. Besides the scream. A word. Quieter," he whispered.

Meg placed a hand on the wall to steady herself and hobbled over next to Leon. "What did they say?"

"A name," Leon replied. "Meg... who's Helen?"

A look of confusion crossed her face, eyes darting to the sides as she wracked her brain for any relevant memory. Her gaze froze suddenly beyond Leon as she stumbled back, thrusting her arm out in front of Jonathan. "Run. Run!"

Leon whipped around as a buzzing sound mounted at the end of the hallway. "Fuck! Did anyone step in a trap?"

Jonathan turned on his heel with one hand on Meg's forearm, ready to drag her along if he had to, but the athlete dashed ahead and broke away from his grasp.

"Go! I'm fine! Just g-" She looked back, hoping to see her teammates follow her lead, when she stumbled over her foot and let out a scream.

"Jonathan! Help her up!" Leon shouted over his shoulder, eyes still trained at the end of the hall.

A swarm of bees buzzed lazily around the corner. Leon watched, the cloud dissipating partially to reveal the form of a man. A long brown coat covered what Leon could see of him, his feet floating just inches off the ground. The swarm still buzzed around his face, but Leon noted with a sick twist in his gut that he seemed to be wielding a wicked-looking hook.

Meg flipped onto her back, pushing away at the ground with her palms as the foreboding figure approached Leon steadily. Her eyes fixed on the fog of insects as her mouth remained open in a horrified shriek, barely noticing Jonathan was helping her off the ground as Leon stood frozen.

Jonathan pulled at her to get her moving, but he, too, stared in terror as he realized their teammate wasn't running. "Leon!"

"We have to go," Meg pleaded, the sick pounding in her chest overwhelming her altruism. "We - Leon!" His name came out instinctively as the thick, sharp iron of the hook glinted over the killer's head.

Leon turned, locking eyes with Meg, and gagged as he felt blood rise in his throat. His legs slacked and numbed with a sharp, splitting burst of fire below his tailbone. He had time for one thought.

The hook. The hook is in my spine.

Terror overwhelmed his thoughts as the sharp point moved upwards. Mercifully, his brain stopped processing signals from his legs once the killer tore through his torso.

Meg watched in horror as blood erupted up the middle of the young cop, following the path of the hook. Dark red pooled out of his mouth as he made a gargled, uncontrolled sound that silenced itself as the metal point ripped through the soft center of his throat. The killer lifted his body into the air, swinging limply on the hook, before he slammed him onto his stomach on the ground. Bits of Leon's spine were visible through the gore poking out of his blue uniform.

Hyperventilating, Meg scrambled, willing her body to obey her movements. No, no, it shouldn't be that easy - he couldn't die that fast - no one had even been hooked yet -

The bile rising from her stomach and her already-tortured arms and face brutally reminded her of how easy she would be broken apart. How agonizing her last moments would be when she was caught. How sharp his hook would be in her abdomen. With a flip of her innards, she realized Jonathan had run ahead, and the thought of relief at his potential survival was quickly destroyed by the crushing fear of abandonment. "Jonathan!"

He stopped, panting heavily and looking back and forth between her and Leon's body on the ground, viscera strewn around the young cop. Gritting his teeth, he ran back to Meg and grabbed her hand.

"We have to go! Come on!" But when he tried to run again, he was glued to the spot. He felt suddenly tired, like he didn't really want to run, like he wanted to just lie down and let whatever happened, happen. There was a buzzing, louder than before, right nearby him, and he felt something flit across his face.

"Meg?" He tried to call out to her, but his tongue felt thick and slow, and the words didn't come out right. Jonathan felt something dribbling from his mouth. He looked down, a golden syrup leaking from his open jaw. Was this... honey?

His eyes snapped open as his gut lurched, his hands clasped onto his knees as he vomited bile and sap in quantities he knew his stomach couldn't be capable of holding. Jonathan collapsed, the viscous material coating the front of his jacket and jeans as he felt himself heave. With a gag, he tried to breathe through his nose as syrup flowed freely from every orifice, stinging his eyes and clouding his vision as he suffocated. Vaguely, he was aware of small, insectoid bodies mingling with the honey vomit on the floor. He thought he registered Meg's scream as she turned and ran down the hallway the hook-handed monster had arrived through, but only a sharp buzzing pushed through to his muffled eardrums. The buzzing was so loud. His body fell with a thud as his skull cracked open. The agonizing pain erupting from every nerve ending lasted less than a minute, but each second broke him in ways he didn't think was still possible.

Meg turned her head in time to see his body seize, white foam mixing with the honey still erupting from his throat, and choked back a sob as she ran forward. The swarm-headed figure pursued.

Kate's fingers trembled over her mouth as she backed away from the man who appeared behind her. Tall and imposing, he seemed to stare directly into her mind as he stepped slowly towards her. Her eyes flicked to the mural behind him, then back to his face as her heart thudded in her ribs. It was him. The art so closely resembled him, and sure enough, an angry, gorey hook erupted from a stump at the end of his arm. It had to be him.

But his features were so...normal. Attractive, even. His expression was calm and almost hopeful as he looked her over.

"My dear. Is it truly you?"

His voice was deep and rich, so sensual that Kate's knees weakened to hear him. His eyes didn't betray any hint of emotion, but a smile appeared on his face nonetheless.

"My Helen. You've come back to me, at last. Here, now, nothing will keep us from each other. We shall be together forever, live and die again and again in an unending cycle. Be my victim for eternity, my love."

Kate pulled her hands away from her lips with wide eyes, a strange daze overtaking her thoughts as she stared up at him. "I-I'm not..."

It frightened her to hear one of them speak to her so directly, so intentionally. With such familiarity. He reached his hand out to her with his palm upward, a request rather than a demand.

A memory of being a child surfaced in her mind, holding her breath as long as she could in the river by her family's home. She recalled the fuzziness of her conscious thoughts as her lungs screamed for oxygen. The strange floating feeling as her body sank lower into the water. The quiet, alien sensation of limiting her body into darkness.

She barely kept herself awake enough to recognize the similar feeling as he stared into her. Something warm dripped down her cheek. "I can't come with you," she thought she whispered, although her tongue felt slow and heavy.

A low rumble of a laugh. It sounded so strange to her, as if she was hearing it from another room.

"You can. You shall."

His hand was at her back, then, and Kate felt herself relaxing into his touch rather than recoiling. As she sank, she felt him scoop her up with the length of his arm, and she was suddenly being carried bridal-style, unable to even process what had just happened.

Strange faces echoed in her mind, faces once familiar to her, faces she perhaps even loved. "You're not…"

She couldn't understand her own words or why her body hung so limply, but she also couldn't bring herself to struggle out of his grasp. All she was aware of, other than the deep, quiet suffocation of her mind, was the feeling that she wasn't the only one in danger. "The others." Her unfinished plea was barely coherent in her mouth, but she knew what it meant in her heart.

"I cannot allow them to interfere. They shall experience pain exquisite, and then be silent."

Kate's mind tried to panic, but fought a losing battle against an increasing sluggishness.

His posture suddenly stiffened, and from the rush of air across her cheeks, she felt him turn back. A clattering sound echoed from somewhere, maybe below them.

She heard a low, growled sound of frustration as her ear pressed against his chest.

"No!"

A familiar voice. Not one that echoed the comfort of home, but one that once gave her hushed advice in the face of impossible terror. A voice that reminded her that she was in danger..

The sound of panting, panicked breathing cut through the silence as the sound of flesh slapping against concrete came from nearby. Kate managed to roll her head over, unable to fully piece together what she was looking at but recognizing a splotch of red hair on the person who had clambered up from the stairs. Her heart thudded in her chest, her face unable to make the expression of fear and despair that was dulled by the darkness around her thoughts, but managed to speak a single word. "R-run..."

Meg stared at the killer with abject terror, sure that she'd had him behind her, not in front. The curiosity rolling in her stomach as to who was in his arms was answered with terrible certainty as the woman spoke, her voice still melodic and warm even as she desperately warned her. Meg coughed, her lungs on fire from running. "Kate!"

The tall man scowled and set Kate down on what looked like some kind of altar, before turning back to face Meg.

"Who are you speaking to? There's nobody here with that name. Leave, before I gut you."

"Get away from her!" Meg's fingers shook as she fiddled with the flashlight in her hands - the flashlight Leon used - the flashlight she had to pry from his cold fingers as she looped the killer - and attempted to blind him. She couldn't save her other teammates, but maybe there was a chance for her to save the last one.

The killer's arm went up in front of his eyes, shielding his vision with his cruel hook. "No matter," he growled, a buzzing swelling behind his words, "One more obstacle in the way before my love and I are reunited."

The drone grew louder, and Meg watched in horror as he parted his jacket with his hand to reveal a chest of exposed ribs swarming with bees.

She grit her teeth, willing herself to stop screaming as the sound pierced her eardrums with its volume, and readied herself to run as best she could with her injuries. The vibration of the insects rattled the sore abscesses in her face and hands. Her eyes flicked over to her teammate on the terrible concrete altar and called out with a pained grunt of effort. "Kate! Wake up!"

The blonde's head lolled to one side, and her eyes opened a bit as she looked to where Meg was.

"Meg... be-behind..."

A loud crack interrupted the widening of Meg's eyes as the warning registered, and she flew up, then forward, splitting pain erupting from the base of her neck up to her head and nowhere else. Hot redness obscured her vision as she struggled to move anything, but she felt nothing below her. She screamed as two hooks entered her field of view.

Kate was vaguely aware of Meg's scream, and registered that there now seemed to be two or more killers in the room. Just like Legion, she thought slowly. But no, this was something else, more like a... a hive. The word had come to her mind without needing to look for it.

A cry of terror. Crunching. Wet splattering.

The first killer was beside her, now, standing at the altar with an almost reverent expression.

If she were more conscious, Kate would've focused on the promise of the campfire. She would've squeezed her eyes shut, hoping and praying that she would be reunited with her teammates. Her friends. David.

Instead, she felt a strange, blissful quiet. She was going to die. Yet, somehow, there was a strange reassurance from the man's movements that it was done in love.

His hand moved against her cheek, brushing away the tears that she hadn't known were there.

"My love, why do you weep?" He crooned, eyes soft and full of adoration.

"I'm scared," she whispered.

"There is nothing to fear. Rest, and feel only the bliss of our love." His face was approaching hers, his eyes closed. He gave a soft sigh as he inhaled her scent.

Sharp buzzing. Stinging at her cheeks. Her hands. Her chest. Kate cried out, but her body remained motionless as stingers and legs itched and pierced her skin.

"Come with me, my love, and live forever."

Kate's consciousness faded as the swarm overtook her body.

"Oh, god. She's over here!"

The voice above her rang familiarly in her ears, even as muffled as it was. Itching deep within the tissue of her muscles burned her nerves as she stared up into the moonless, starless sky, wreathed by dark treetops.

A face was there, too, glasses slipping down his nose as he stared at her with anxious eyes. "Kate. Can you hear me?"

She heard him, but she couldn't respond. Something had wired her jaw shut. Or swollen it shut.

With a whimper of fear, she saw a glimpse of her pus-riddled reflection in his lenses.

"Hold on," a gentle voice responded close by. "We're still working on the others. Keep her awake."

"Just hang on, okay?" Dwight tried to keep his tone steady and failed. "You're safe. You're back." He turned to where the other voice came from, not visible to her. "Is Meg stable? Jonathan? ...okay. Leon, too?" A muttered reply she couldn't quite make out, from a different voice. "Ask her when she's awake." He grimaced. "Christ. I don't want to meet whoever they did."

His face was suddenly knocked out of her field of view with a startled grunt.

Arms came behind her and lifted her slowly off the ground as several voices erupted in protest.

"King, don't move her -"

"Hey," David's voice cut through everything else, even though it was uncharacteristically soft. "Hey."

She cried out as she felt something burst around her side. Small, firm fingers pressed something against it, staunching whatever liquid leaked from her body.

"David, please put her down."

His arms pulled her closer to his chest for a moment, but he slowly acquiesced, placing her back down on the ground with only a huff of frustration.

"Claudette's here, songbird," he whispered. "She'll fix you. Alright? ...right?"

"We'll take care of her." Quentin's voice, a little more annoyed than Claudette's soft reassurance.

Kate could feel David's hands pressing down the grass near her body as the other two slowly worked on her heavily stung body, lancing the cysts with careful precision and wiping them down. Memories of the trial began to rush into her mind as her thoughts became more coherent.

Her frame shook.

"Love, don't cry," David's voice pleaded nearby as fingertips touched hers.

But Kate couldn't stop the tears that fell down her cheeks as the deep, agonizing pain and longing of the monsters she faced burned into her thoughts. Despite everything, the idea of the tall, terrifying man standing alone at the altar made her heart ache.

END ACT 1