Death

by tmb1112

Death is a Quirk that can only kill. A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough when all your Quirk can do is kill people. Follow Zach Sazaki from his first day in Class A on a story that spans years, as he learns to be a hero, finds out more about his Quirk, and too much to summarize!

106. Chapter 106

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 106:

"Hello?"

Nope. Nope nope nope. Wreck'd started shaking his head. He leaned farther into the elevator and looked towards Titan, saw his finger had come off of the button that allowed them to speak to the other side, then he finally felt comfortable saying aloud, "Nope."

"Yeah, let's not unlock the elevator," Yuri agreed. Then he shook his head and repeated his sentence only in English instead of Russian.

"There are other people down there," Titan began, looking to the buttons below the red one. He stared specifically at the arrow buttons he now knew to hold in order to unlock this elevator. "People who need our help-"

"People who have been experimenting on humans," Sandlot offered from outside the elevator.

Dryout darted a look out to him. He was just about to say something about how these Army of Death guys they had been hearing so much about were acting like cowards. He could not do that anymore though with Sandlot sounding like he was agreeing with them. Dryout responded in a low voice to his comrade and best friend, "And the test subjects? Do we leave all of them, to whatever- whoever just-"

"Hello? The doctor was speaking to someone up there. Hello? Hello?"

There was a pause for a few seconds, then the voice asked again, "Hello? Are you ignoring me?"

Zach walked to the speaker and he pushed Titan out of the way, a rougher shove than the hero gave him before though it was necessary considering how much larger the hero was than him. Zach pressed the button and he said in his modulated voice, "Who is this?"

"Oh? So you were ignoring me? That's not nice-"

"What is your name?"

"Cutting me off? Oh, now that's really not-"

Zach pulled his finger off the button and he stared at the blinking red light for a few seconds as the other voice had cut off. Apparently the man on the other side knew when he had let go of the button, and he started quickly again, "Wait. Don't go."

"Alright," Zach pressed the button and replied. "Who are you? One of the test subjects?"

"Your voice is scary. Are you here to kill us all? One of the doctors told me that's what's coming now. As soon as they find out-"

"Who are 'they?'" Zach asked.

"They are the ones who watch. The ones who buy. The reason. The cause."

Titan reached out and lowered Death's arm from the button. "This man is insane," Titan said once the man in question could not hear him.

"Obviously," Zach said, and he tugged his arm out of Titan's grip and pressed the button again without turning to the hero. "The cause for what? Why did they do this to you?"

"The cause for our suffering. But it was all part of His plan. He could not save us if we did not first need to be saved."

Pastor reached up and he pulled his cross on his necklace out from beneath his body armor. He clenched it tightly in his right hand, and he closed his eyes as he muttered prayers in his helmet. The others thought about the writing they had seen on the window in blood, what the dying test subject outside had said before his eyes exploded, it chilled each of them.

"Your suffering," Zach started, bringing his helmet closer to the speaker. He reached up and he tapped a button on the bottom right side of his helmet, and he continued in a softer voice no longer modulated at all. "It wasn't your fault. But the people down there shouldn't be massacred for it. The ones who did this to you-"

"All must die." The voice on the other side finished. "All must die. The doctors, the ITs, the guards, the company men. All of them. The others. Who God freed-"

"God, he's down there?" Zach asked. The others around him looked towards Death wondering what he was talking about.

"Yes," the voice responded, and the others who turned to Death all spun back in surprise at the answer to that question.

So he's not being metaphorical or anything. I thought it was weird. That furry guy didn't seem very stable at all, but he was still able to speak a little. Write a message in the glass. Is it brainwashing? The doctors and people who worked here don't seem affected. Only the test subjects? "What about the other experiments?" Zach asked, keeping his voice soft and understanding.

Gentle stared over at the back of Zach's head as he asked that question in a soft way. Some of the others thought he was asking to see if all of them were crazy, or if they could save some of them, but Gentle could see through the fake tone the teen just used. Trying to figure out the enemy's numbers. He wants to go down there. What is the point? I, do not wish to go. As many secrets as this place may hold… They are secrets I could do without. I believe, I will never see the world the same. If I come to know what goes on below this floor…

"All must die," the voice repeated. "All must die. Sacrifices. Necessary, to His will."

"How do you know it's what he wants?" Zach asked. "Maybe he freed you all, so you could be free-"

"That's not what he said."

Titan pulled back and stared down at the top of Death's head with his eyes wide. The man is clearly insane, but this is still information. Information gathering. Is he thinking of going down there? Is there a difference now than before? If we call in for backup now- who are "they?" Is it really a government force that runs this place? What for? Why are there subjects down there?

"So you're just going to kill everyone for him?"

"He frees us, both from our physical and mental binds. He is the coming. The storm."

"AHHHH!"

A scream in the background echoed out into the elevator. "Ah," the voice speaking to them said. Clank. Shhhhh… Something heavy and metal hit the floor and started dragging away on it. "Another sacrifice. Please come down, and join us. You can all help Him rise." The voice got quieter as the dragging sound of metal on metal continued getting farther away too.

Still never got a name, "Who are you?" Zach called into the speaker while keeping his finger pressed on the button. "So we can find you to become sacrifices! God will be more pleased with you if you get more!" The others around Zach gawked towards the boy shouting that out without hesitation.

"Thank you," the voice called over from a distance back to the speaker. "I am known as 23-"

"Not the number they gave you! God freed you! So what was your name before?" Zach shouted.

There was a short pause, and then the voice responded, "Miles. Miles W- W- Wilson." He sounded to struggle getting out his last name, as if he did not recall it or was just having trouble saying it aloud. Then the dragging started again but faded after a second as it was already almost at the edge of their range.

"Rebel, Access, look up Miles Wilson's. Any missing persons' reports matching that name?" Zach stepped out of the elevator and walked over to a desk near it that he sat on the edge of. He bowed his head and stared down at his lap, thinking a thousand thoughts per minute as his heart raced. He heard typing over his headset as both of his support guys typed as fast as they could onto their keyboards.

"I've got nothing," Rebel began.

"I've got something!" Access called out a second later. "It's not a missing person, but three years ago a Miles Wilson got hit by a car in London. He died on the operating table. Oh," he sounded a bit more disappointed and stopped speaking in his rushed excited voice that he got something before Rebel. "He had an open casket funeral. They had his body-"

"Could have been faked. Rebel, you crack that transfer drive I sent you?" Zach asked, mentioning the USB he had plugged in when he had found a computer intact upstairs.

"Not yet," Rebel replied, and he flipped back to the windows cracking the firewalls surrounding the encrypted files Zach had taken directly from a source computer. "It's a lot of security for getting it straight from those-"

"I don't need to hear the how," Zach said. "Just go into them once you've got them open, and match up subject 23. That's subject Two Three. Match his picture up with the Miles Wilson from that car crash."

Who are "they?" Could be anyone. Fraux could have just assumed they were government too. Or maybe he was covering for other villains, a no-snitching code taking effect even for the fucks who experimented on him. I shouldn't feel bad for that doctor. He admitted they were experimenting on people, and he didn't sound regretful. Like the Chemist. Yet, yet hearing him die like that. Screaming in agony, just like Jenny! No one deserves to die that way. So afraid. Wishing someone would come save him. And how many people down there need help? He sounded terrified when I started speaking in the beginning. He thought there was a clean-up crew coming to take care of him and the others. Why take the hard-drives? Unless it's, to have leverage? They thought I was here to kill them. If they escaped with sensitive information, they could have blackmailed the government- or whoever's running this place into leaving them alone. If they thought their employers were going to hunt them down anyway. Who runs this place? Will the computer I plugged into actually have information like that? Even if it is super protected, some things are probably kept much more secretive.

Titan stood in the elevator alone with Dryout and Sandlot. The other Army of Death members gathered around the desk Death was sitting on the edge of. They stared at their leader whose head was bowed and who looked deep in thought. Exodus was awaiting orders, but he questioned during the silence, "If we do find that it is the same Miles Wilson as the one who was supposedly killed three years ago, what does that tell us?"

"That whoever runs this place has a very large amount of resources," Zach replied. "That they were able to abduct him from the hospital and plant a fake body. I don't know what for. They must have had to bribe doctors, or maybe doctors at the hospital work for them, or maybe they just posed as doctors and snuck in to get him. Maybe he never even made it to the hospital, and they had two ambulances that switched midway to the hospital from the crash. One took off with the real Miles Wilson, a perfect test subject. Maybe even the car that hit him- no, almost definitely the car that hit him if they had a fake body ready. And they did it with witnesses around most likely, so no one would ever question that it was what really happened. No one would ever be looking for him." Zach said all this with his head down looking into his lap, more coming up with the ideas off the top of his head than saying what he had been thinking about.

"That's, insane," Wreck'd started in a soft voice. Zach lifted his helmet a bit and looked at the British man, and Wreck'd started shaking his head before getting a scrunched-up look on his face covered in anger. There was fear behind his anger too though, and he said, "Who's powerful enough to do that? It has to be-"

"It could be anyone," Zach cut him off. Wreck'd's eyes opened wide as he did not expect Death to start arguing with him over this. Zach continued, "A big company. A villain group that's secret and kept that way by bribing government officials. It may still be involved with the government a bit, but it's crazy to say just from what we know that the British government is running this place."

"Yeah," Gentle agreed, and he nodded once but not in a very enthusiastic way. "Death, listen. I've agreed to follow you this far." Zach's eyes widened a bit and he and all the others turned to the man with some dark purple on his black costume. "But this, is the extent. More than Mongoloid, whose forces we had information on, or SISIS, the Rioting Kazans, or the Syndicate which we are gaining ground against. You understand, this is not what we set out to do. This is beyond-"

"What I set out to do, Gentle," Zach started to counter. "Is to stop villains. It's always been to stop villains," Zach said it and then pushed off the desk he was sitting on. "And no matter who runs this place. No matter how big they are. They're villains. This is the most fucked up things get." Gentle grimaced deeply behind his purple visor while staring back into Zach's. "I didn't want this place to exist," Zach continued. He turned his head a bit and looked around at his other comrades who he knew were scared. He turned to Wreck'd and added, "I wanted Fraux to have been lying. When he said though, that we were going after the wrong people while stuff like this was happening, he might've been right. Because this, isn't alright. No matter who's in charge of it. No matter what their reasons for making this place…"

"I agree," Pastor said, lifting his bowed head a bit and staring into Death's visor. "With your judgement. This place is evil."

"Both sides are fucked though," Yuri started. Death turned to him and Yuri looked in an afraid way into his helmet's visor, "The guys who test on people, and the people getting tested on-"

"We don't know," Zach began. He stopped himself, but then he grit his teeth and continued in a low voice, "We don't know that all of the subjects are out of their minds. Some may have been twisted by the experiments. Others might just be trying to escape after being ripped out of their lives by this mysterious, powerful force. Dragged off the street one day for no reason at all," Zach's comrades started staring at him with wider eyes at the pained tone in his voice as he continued. "Brought to a facility you know nothing about, maybe told that your family thinks your dead, and then tortured… Fraux said he wasn't here for long, but if Miles Wilson has been here for three years undergoing human experiments, it doesn't surprise me that he went crazy. Killing the ones who tortured him I could understand even, but what he was saying about sacrifices and God, something else is down there. Something turning the prisoners who should be trying to escape together, against each other. I think," Zach added at the end as he was still not too confident about all of this.

"What do you want to do?" Gentle asked. He hated that he just asked the question, but hearing how Zach described what happened to Miles Wilson like it could have happened to anyone had him grinding his teeth in anger. He thought about the videos he and La Brava had watched of Sazaki's torture. He recalled how the boy had believed that everyone thought he was dead because the villains told him they had created a fake body for him. And Gentle realized in his anger why it was so easy for Zach to come up with all those theories in seconds.

"Take out everyone," Zach replied. "Sort them out afterwards," he offered, looking around at the others to see how they felt about that idea. "They're already killing each other. There are already, less than sixteen floors worth of people down there. And the ones remaining are probably injured from fighting each other. This is just going on today-"

"And we just had to come today," Wreck'd muttered under his breath. Pastor turned to his right towards the man, and he heard Wreck'd whisper nervously, "What are the odds?"

Zach had stared at Wreck'd as he spoke too. He had stopped talking to listen to his comrade, and then he said, "The odds were low. But if we had come at any other time, we probably would have seen inside a normal building with normal workers disguised… Or even if we did move in, I doubt we would have known…" Zach took a deep breath, then he said in a low voice, "But we do know. We know there are people down there who could use our help. People who will die if we don't go down to help them. And there are probably some hard-drives down there, with information as to what this group is. How they operate as they do, without anyone knowing who they are. How they manage to stay in the shadows. How they manage their resources." Zach paused and then said in a deeper voice, "And we can figure out how to destroy them. Yeah, I want to know those things, because maybe we could use some of it ourselves, but it's mainly because I want to stop them. Stop them from wiping this place out and starting it up somewhere else. Stop them from wiping out everyone involved and getting away with stuff like this. No one should be able to get away with this."

"And I know what's down there is scary. It's fucking terrifying." Zach did not notice, but three men behind Exodus had turned his way as he was speaking and were staring in silence at him with their eyes huge. He kept going while looking around at his comrades, "But as scary as it is for us, there are people down there living in what must be Hell. We are strong. We can save some of them. And some of them probably are good people. Good people trapped underground with monsters, God-crazed lunatics, crushing skulls and massacring each other. It's horrible. It's evil. Someone's responsible for this. People down there know who made this place real. A paper trail that can link us to the ones who need to face justice, who might not be down there. Before they send someone to come here and clean up everything. Before they wipe this place off the face of the Earth, we have to find out who they are. We have to stop them. Because they could do it to more people. And just for the sakes of those people down there right now, no matter how disturbed, or evil as they are. Not one of them deserves to be stuck down there for another minute."

Zach paused again, this time a long pause as he took a couple of slow breaths. He had riled himself up as much during that as he was attempting to rile up the others with him. His eyes narrowed behind his visor and he said in a soft, lower voice, "None of us deserve to be stuck down there either. We shouldn't even have to see what's happening there. It's going to be horrible. The worst… So if anyone wants to stay up here, and keep watch at the top of the elevator in case anyone below tries to escape," he paused and took a deep breath, then he finished, "I won't blame you. I'm going down there though."

"Death," Yuri began. He opened his mouth to continue, then he reached up and grabbed his helmet. Yuri pulled it off and revealed his light-skinned face with a messed-up right ear all bumpy from years of wrestling when he was younger. His blond hair was messy because of his helmet, and he took a breath of fresher air once his helmet was off. "You're right," he said, and his English was laced with a thick Russian accent. "Fuck them. Fuck this place. Let's tear it down and everyone involved with it."

"I will always follow you," Exodus agreed after letting Yuri speak. He nodded his head at Death when the teen turned to him, and Zach nodded back in appreciation.

Pastor started in a low voice, "And say to those with fearful hearts, 'Be strong, do not fear; your God will come. He will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." Pastor tucked his golden cross back into his black body armor and then said in a serious tone, "I wish to save those who have strayed from the path, and to punish the false God who leads them to evil."

Wreck'd stared next to him at Pastor with his eyes huge for a few seconds. "Holy shit," he finally said. "Was that- Is that in the bible?"

"The first part was Isaiah, 35:4," Pastor replied. "The second is my desire to save those down below."

Wreck'd nodded his head, and he lowered his gaze to the floor when Pastor mentioned 'down below.' He lifted his head and stared at Death through his brown eyes. "This place doesn't represent us. If I let a couple Yanks head down there without doing a thing myself, we'd be a bunch of cowards. And I don't like it. People in my home at risk of getting yanked off the streets for no God damned- no fucking reason. It's sick. I'm in."

Zach nodded at him. He turned to Gentle, and Gentle sighed as he was the last one remaining. "This is foolhardy," Gentle reminded Zach.

"I know," Zach replied. "It's dangerous, and stupid," he paused and then finished, "but isn't everything we do?"

"No," Gentle replied. Zach's eyes widened behind his visor, and Gentle continued sternly, "Most of the time, we do things smart. Plans. Looking ahead. We have no knowledge of what is below, only that it wants to kill us." The others around Gentle and those behind him all looked at the man in purple and black, wondering if he was not going to go after saying that. "However," Gentle continued. "Only acting when we have detailed plans would mean that we act purely on logic. I am an emotional man, and I too," his voice got harsher and his fists tightened at his sides. "Hate the idea of this place."

"Then we're in agreement," Zach said. He stepped towards the elevator and Exodus moved out of his way so Zach could see the three men standing behind him. "How about you?" Zach asked them. He stared at Titan in the middle of the three, "We could use your help."

"After hearing all that," Titan started. The two on his sides had intense expressions on their faces just like their team leader's, and Titan was no longer giving Death an angry look. He just stared at the teen seriously and nodded while finishing, "There is nothing that would keep us from going down there with you."

The shift in tone from the last conversation Zach had been having with Titan in the elevator shocked the teen who did not realize just how motivational he had sounded to the terrified people around him. As scared as he had said that he was too, all of them were feeling it. Even Exodus had felt unease at the idea of going down below, but all unease was gone from his body. He walked with Zach towards the elevator in a calm, and confident way. The others all walked with him, and Sandlot took in a deep breath before following after his fellow heroes back into the elevator themselves.

"Are y'all sure you want to do this?" Rebel asked, after staying silent for most of what he just listened to.

"Going that far down," Access began afterwards, having been too shocked silent by all Zach had said to speak for a minute there. "I doubt I'll be able to keep in contact with you."

"Just keep the helicopter safe," Zach said. "And help Rebel decrypt any files if you can. Rebel, I want you to…" Zach paused and he took a deep breath while turning around in the elevator to face the open doors. Everyone piled into the small box, and Zach took a deep breath before continuing in a loud enough voice for everyone around him to hear, "I want you to call up the others from Wales. Get them here, we might need reinforcements."

"You got it," Rebel replied.

"Why mention Wales?" Gentle asked with a shake of his head in annoyance.

"They're coming with us," Zach said, looking to his left instead of his right. He turned to Titan instead of Gentle, and he spoke directly to the man, "So I'll trust them right now. Besides, Titan was mad I was going to bring more terrorists here, so now he knows that I'm not calling anyone else into the country. They're already here." Zach looked back forward and then stepped to the front right corner of the elevator that Yuri pulled away from a bit to let Zach do this. "What do you guys think?" Zach asked, looking down at the buttons while the elevator doors closed in front of him. It was the first time they closed since it was the first time no one had a foot in the door or part of their body to keep them open.

"Start on B1, sweep straight down from there," Titan said. Some of Death's comrades were surprised that he was over the previous comment so quickly, but Titan agreed as soon as he stepped in that elevator that whatever problems they had with each other were on hold for now. "We'll block up the shaft with the elevator. It might be the only way up and down, so if we go too far at first they could sneak out."

"Might actually be a good idea to leave someone up here," Sandlot joked. No one laughed, and he quickly said, "Not me though. I'm not saying-"

"First basement it is then," Zach concurred with Titan. He pressed the button, then he nodded to himself as he remembered what he had to do first. Zach reached up and he pressed two fingers into the side by side buttons with arrows on them. "Ten seconds to unlock the elevator," he said.

"Should be able to keep speaking with you down there," Access began. "At least for a couple floors down. You should-"

Clank Zach started taking his hand off of the buttons to reach to B1, but the clanking noise he just heard repeated and the whole elevator jolted. CLANK! Everyone wobbled around, and Zach stared at the buttons of the shaft with his eyes wide as B13 lit up immediately and flashed bright yellow. CLANK! "Grab hold!" Zach shouted as this time the jolt was followed with a very fast spinning sound.

The elevator dropped. Through the hole on the ceiling, sparks could be seen flying while the wires holding up the elevator let it drop so fast that they were speeding down the floors shown on a digital reader above the closed elevator doors. Access was shouting at them but his voice cut off as they dropped too deep into the ground. Titan slammed his hands to his left and into the side of the elevator, and the elevator enlarged. The walls of the elevator slammed into the outsides of the shaft and started grinding down the wall so much harder that the whole shaft above them was full of sparks. The elevator jolted but started slowing down, gradually instead of all at once which would have smashed all of them into the floor. Finally there was a second jolt where Titan stopped enlarging the elevator at the perfect size to stop it.

Yuri was grabbing hold of the railing above his head while crouched down and pressed as hard as he could into the wall. The blond man was breathing fast, glad he had taken off his helmet as he would have been hyperventilating inside it. "Fuck!" He shouted, and he pushed himself back up to his legs he needed to smack to get steady.

Gentle and Exodus steadied themselves on their feet, then Dryout and Sandlot recovered pretty quickly too. Sandlot glanced down to his left where Wreck'd was pressed into the wall with a scared look on his face, his life having just flashed in front of his eyes. Wreck'd looked back at him, then he looked over Sandlot's head and to the digital reader over the door. Then Wreck'd's head slowly lifted and he stared through the hole in the ceiling and up into the darkness rising so high above them that it was just pitch black up there. "Why?" He whispered in frustration at the darkness above.

"Everyone alright?" Zach asked after steadying himself and his own expression. He looked around, but all the others seemed to be fine. He turned to the doors in front of him again and then above them at the red B11 he saw on the digital reader. "Either something just tried getting us down to B13 fast, or it could have been the doctor who was down there before. He might've done something to try and get the elevator down, and it was just it being locked that stopped him."

"Yeah, yeah the elevator wasn't trying to kill us," Yuri agreed with a nod. A few of the others looked towards the man who frowned at those looks. "What?" He asked, darting Dryout a pissed-off look at his gaze.

"Didn't think you were so jumpy," Dryout just said to the man, surprising Yuri with his tone that was actually pretty friendly as much as it was serious and taunting too.

It made Yuri grin and the Russian just said with a cool run of his right hand up through his hair, "Didn't even faze me."

"Let's get out of here," Zach pressed the open doors button on the elevator, and he frowned as the doors did not respond.

"Allow me," Exodus said while moving forward in the cramped space. He pulled out a short sword from the right side of his waist and he jammed the point into the crack of the doors. He pushed out to one side a bit, then he snapped his left hand off the hilt and slipped his fingers into the crack. Exodus put his blade away and then grabbed the other door curling his fingers around the inside. He pulled apart and spread the doors wide enough that he could fit through, which meant all the others would be able to fit through as well. Exodus rose his right hand with a sphere of white light forming in it, and he let it float off his palm with his eyes flashing white behind his visor.

The hallway outside of the elevator illuminated brighter from the dim red tint it had. Exodus stepped out of the elevator fearlessly, unfazed by how far they had dropped or how far beneath the surface of the Earth he was now. None of them could remember ever being this far below the surface before. It was a bit unnerving, on top of all the other reasons to be scared already. The eleventh basement's floor was a bit above the floor of the elevator, and each of them had to take a big step to get out of the elevator onto the floor above. Yuri was slow to do it, glancing back at Titan before stepping up like he was afraid the elevator would fall when he was halfway out and bisect him. Titan nodded at him in a serious way to show he had it, and Yuri nodded back before stepping out of the elevator after Wreck'd.

Nine members of their team stepped out into the hallway brightly illuminated by Exodus' floating light sphere. Yuri kept the flashlight on his assault rifle on anyway as he rose it up in his hands and started scanning down the hall to his right. He aimed the flashlight a bit towards a cracked-open door down the way, then he pointed it the other direction and at a broken glass window covering half the hallway. Wreck'd coughed a couple of times to make sure his throat was cleared. Dryout pulled tightly down on the ends of his gray gloves over his wrists to make sure they were tight to his hands, then he curled his four fingers in on each hand a couple times and cracked his knuckles.

Titan pulled his right hand out of his pocket with some loose blunt debris that was actually very specifically made which one could see if they stared close enough. The thin grooves in each piece and bumps that he could feel in his clenched hand told him what kind of pieces he had just pulled out of his pouch, and he took in a deep breath while stepping down the hallway that went straight out from the elevator instead of the horizontal one that the team spread out a bit in after exiting. Sandlot looked at the solid ground and he tapped his boots down a couple times to check its hardness, and he grimaced as it did not seem his Quirk would be very useful down there. On his sand-colored gloves were thin metal plates over his knuckles though, imbedded into the material with shock absorbers on the insides so his fists would not feel it as much as whatever he hit would. He stepped after Titan just as Death did a few feet to his right. Sandlot glanced over at the shorter figure who moved forward with one hand free and a knife in his other. "Now what?" He asked in a semi-nervous voice, looking from Death back forward to Titan.

Exodus pulled the light sphere floating in the air of the hallway crossing in front of the elevator to the one that Death just started down after Titan. He floated it forward while moving after Death to stay close. Yuri backed up after first moving to the right in that hallway, and he kept scanning his flashlight around as the hall started to get darker. He rose the gun a bit to point his powerful light to the end of the hall and a set of double doors down there. The hallway had white walls and doors, and if not for the dim lighting and red emergency lights it would seem a lot like a normal hallway of a hospital or laboratory.

"We have to move up," Titan said. "I don't like the idea of anything down here getting out without us knowing what it is."

"Agreed," Zach said, though then he stopped walking. He looked down the hall a bit that was getting more illuminated as Exodus floated his sphere up over Death's head a couple feet so it was just below the ceiling panels.

"Stairs are that way," Wreck'd started, looking at a sign on the wall to his right that he pointed his rifle up at with his flashlight on now. He looked down the hall after Titan who was already on the right path, and he wondered if the hero had saw the sign already and started that way intentionally. "We should-" Wreck'd became quiet as he looked down the hallway. There was a metal cart dragged almost all the way out of a room, propping a door open with some medical equipment on it splayed about. There were some scalpels on the floor and a couple papers too next to the cart. Just past that cart, at the edge of the range of their illumination, the ceiling was missing one of its panels.

The missing rectangular white panel made a gap of blackness on the ceiling, but there was something hanging out of that hole dropping down a foot and a half and not moving. It was black, and it got thinner down towards the bottom. Gentle looked towards the panel and he could not help it. "Tako?" He muttered.

"'Taco?'" Dryout repeated in response, looking out the corners of his eyes at the man on his side like he was crazy.

Gentle shook his head as the word had just come out without him thinking. He stared towards what looked like the end of a black tentacle to him, and he leaned his head to the side to look closer into that panel. I do not know why I assume it is an octopus. Please, be an octopus though. I would very much appreciate it. Gentle took a step forward, and everyone else in the hall started moving again after staring at the unmoving tentacle for a few seconds.

"Careful," Zach said while walking forward, looking up towards the open panel that clearly had something stuffed inside it.

Titan nodded his head, and then he called out while continuing forward at the front of the group, "If anyone is here, we have come to save you." Half of the people behind him held their breaths and wished Titan would just shut his mouth instead of announcing their presence there. A couple of them remembered how loud the elevator skidding down the shaft was though, and they tried calming themselves with the unnerving thought that everyone here already knew where they were. Titan continued while looking straight at the panel he was stepping closer towards now, "But any hostile actions will be met by force. I am Titan, a pro hero. We have come to get you out of here."

Zach started lifting the knife in his right hand, and he took another step forward while darting his eyes from Titan back to the missing ceiling panel. He looked farther down the hall as Exodus moved their light source forward, then he shifted his gaze back to the hole in the ceiling that he hoped would be a bit more illuminated too. The others back in the hallway outside of the elevator had all stepped into the intersecting hall at this point. Yuri took up the far rear with Pastor on his left side, and Pastor pulled out a pair of sharp black crosses as his hearts both raced faster in this ominous situation. He kept his head on a slow swivel, though Yuri was mostly focused behind them already keeping guard in case anything tried running up on their backs.

THUD Crash! Back in the hallway they just left, and to the left of the hallway they all spun around in, something smashed down the double doors Yuri had pointed his rifle at before heading to the next hall. He called out, "Something's coming!" He took steps back while yelling it too, as he heard that loud noise and some breaking glass that sounded like it was the perfect distance as those two doors at the end of that hall. He figured they had a couple of seconds, and he backed up faster and started turning his head to see the rest of the members in the hall had all spun his direction after hearing those noises. Yuri dropped his gun as he spun around.

Zach's eyes shot open huge as he saw the pure terror cross Yuri's face in an instant. Zach's eyes flashed red. His head started spinning around while Yuri's gun was slipping out of his fingers. The gun was halfway down and some others started turning, while Zach had already finished spinning around to look back ahead of him. Vrrvrvrvrv! The knife he was lifting in his right hand trembled and his red eyes lost that shade as fear overtook his intense urge to act. He stared in front of him at the black tentacle that Yuri had seen dropping out of the ceiling and curving menacingly around Titan's head. He stared at it in terror, because the tentacle snapped over Titan's face and yanked him straight up into the ceiling in an instant. Half of Titan's body went straight through the dark hole in the ceiling before it slowed at all, but at the same time that the bottom half of his body slowed its rise into the ceiling, a spray of red shot out of the hole. It slammed all over the floor violently splashing onto the front of Zach's costume too, some blood hitting him in the front of his helmet's visor.

The bottom half of Titan's body started pulling up too which shook Zach from his terror enough to pull his knife back, only for the body jolting about with waving legs to get sucked up into the roof and a huge spray of blood and guts to blast down onto the floor. It was like he got sucked into a woodchipper in the ceiling, and the noises coming from through that hole that sounded like someone revving a chainsaw and the crunching of bones combined was the most horrifying sound Zach had ever heard. Until a voice roared from the end of the hallway behind him, "RRAAAAGGAA!" It was high-pitched and rabid, and the group who just spun towards where blood sprayed out of the ceiling spun around to see a ten foot tall creature with shoulders eight feet broad, red fur sticking out of his body all over, and claws beneath his four feet that he skid into the intersection of the hallways on shredding through the floor with his slide that showed he had been moving too fast.

"TITAN!" Dryout shouted towards the ceiling panel he started running towards.

Sandlot was staring in horror towards the red floor that got dimmer as the white sphere in the air disappeared to leave only the emergency lights left. What- "Focus!" Wreck'd shouted, grabbing Sandlot and yanking him backwards which was closer to the red pool he was staring at. Wreck'd stepped the other way and dropped down to his right knee while raising his rifle still with a white beam of light sticking out the end. "Yuri grab your fucking gun!"

Yuri dropped down fast, snapping his head backwards as he saw where Wreck'd was looking while shouting in that much fear. Pastor threw both of his cross shurikens towards the beast that almost skid past their hallway but scraped its legs down on the ground over and over to pull itself back to the spot it could see them. It looked their ways with eyes that looked pitch black, and it snarled at them with its face twitching about and snapping back and forth. It leaned its head back and started roaring again, and its head started splitting apart into three, then snapped back together, then it vibrated like its head was trying to break apart just like its legs and body. It vibrated in a way that it looked like a blurry demon and its roar came out broken and agonized.

A form dropped out of the ceiling. It was pitch black and slender over its whole slim body. It had long lanky arms and legs and a thin sharp tail sticking out behind its slender body. Its head was flat and smooth with no features on it at all, and Exodus ran forward and slammed his shield down in front of Zach who just threw a knife at the creature. The creature's back opened up, the smooth surface peeling apart and eight long tentacles shooting up in the air and waving forward all at once. The shield Exodus slammed down glowed on the top and outsides, and a translucent wall of white spread out from the shield all the way to the walls and ceiling. Three tentacles shooting forward with the tips of them covered in small suction cups slammed into the shield, and from the tips to halfway down their lengths they incinerated. The tentacles pulled back, still searing and burning farther down them, and the smooth head of the creature before them opened up. It opened outwards and upwards and downwards, a dozen flaps of face pulling apart and revealing that each was covered in blades that started spinning around violently so much louder than when they came from the ceiling.

Blood splashed out of the sharp spinning mouth of the creature that charged at the shield Exodus had up, and Exodus lowered his head to look to the right at his leader who spun back and forth and then slammed his right hand into his chest. His knife had slid right off of the monster's body, It's worse than a Nomu. This thing is fucked! It's a monster! But- Zach's body erupted in darkness, and Exodus stopped using his Quirk while pulling his shield away. The monster was heading straight for his black shield instead of the walls of clear white spreading off of it, and its front claws it reached out on its long arms went through air as Exodus pulled his shield away too fast. Zach grabbed the monster's arms and then spun and threw the beast towards the wall on his left. Darkness spread from his hands onto the monster he was grabbing, and by the time it hit the wall its flaps were drooping and the blades inside them were no longer spinning. The tentacles whipping towards Zach missed or were knocked away by Gentle who raced forward and bounced one away with his Elasticity.

"Titan," Dryout whispered again, looking past the three in front of him and reaching one of his big shaky hands out.

"Death!" Yuri shouted out, while stumbling backwards and firing his assault rifle towards the beast that started charging them.

Death spun and he shot down the hall. He swerved out of the way of Dryout, and he yelled, "Focus! No one else is allowed to die!" Zach lifted his right hand as he ran down the hallway, and he threw his hand forward and shouted, "Death Grenade!"

The massive beast covered in red fur that was running down the hallway was flinching with each bullet that slammed into it, but it just kept running while looking like it was glitching about inside a video game. Its face looked to be pulling apart from itself, its eyes multiplying and pulling away on its face, and each foot that was coming down would occasionally miss the floor beneath it and hit down a few feet to the side as the leg faded and reappeared there in an instant. Yet Zach threw his sphere of Death straight down the hall while wrapped in the black aura of Nightmare form. And he crushed his right hand into a fist when the Death Grenade was a few feet in front of the charging monster, and all the shrapnel and the explosion of Death blew away filling the hall and slamming into the monster running their way.

Yuri let out a deep breath on Zach's left, lowering his gun a bit. Pastor stopped backing up behind Zach on his right, and Wreck'd let out a couple more breaths before starting to lower his rifle. And then a hole blew open in the middle of the Death explosion in the middle of the hall, and thuds slammed down on the ground, and the monster's front claws dragged backwards while it sprinted out of the explosion of Darkness only six meters in front of them. "Impossible," Zach whispered, taking a step back as the monster covered in red fur sprinted straight at him. His arms shook at his sides and his red eyes were enormous inside his visor, "That's-"

"Death move!" Yuri yelled, while pushing back into a cracked doorway himself and falling into the next room. Pastor jumped backwards farther from Death, and Gentle and Exodus lost their shocked looks and started running the other direction towards him.

Zach's red eyes opened even wider as his mind was shaken from what just happened to the fact that hundreds of pounds of monster was sprinting at him from a couple meters away and lifting its right claw to try and swing into him. "Move!" A voice yelled on his right, and Zach's red eyes darted to the side right as two hands reached into his aura and pushed him. Zach fell, a claw flew over his falling body only inches over his black aura so more of it even covered that claw for a second. The fact that it covered the claw did not make the monster's claw slow down at all before it slammed into Wreck'd and slammed the man back into the wall behind him so hard that his skull cracked on it and blood splattered out all over.

"Wreck'd!" Yuri shouted while standing up inside the room he had dove into. He fired out at the monster, then he snapped his head down as he felt something grab him by the ankle. "AH! FUCK!" Bang-bang-bang… Yuri pointed his gun down and sprayed at the red arm covered in bumps, then he dragged his rifle to the side and lit up the arm all the way to the body of a thin man in a torn white coat who made Yuri open his eyes huge as he suddenly realized what he was shooting at. He still only realized it once his gun started clicking to show he had run out of ammo in his magazine, and then he started stumbling backwards as he stared at the horrified face covered in bullet holes with one going through his left eye. Yuri tripped as he still felt a hand grabbing him by the ankle, even though he ripped the end of the arm off when he stumbled back after shredding through it with so many bullets.

"What's going on in there?!" Gentle shouted to his left, before spinning back down to the hall to look where he and Exodus just sent their huge monster rolling. Exodus had his shield risen on his right arm and his spear in his left, and both were covered in white light just as there was white light shining through Exodus' visor. He turned his head to the right for a second to the splat of red on the wall around where Wreck'd collided, and then he threw his spear forward down the hallway. The spear flew like a missile straight at the monster that just pushed itself back up on all fours. The spear was about to slam straight into the face of the beast, when the beast's black eyes opened wider, and then its head started pulling apart as the spear was about to hit it. The spear went between the gap of the splitting heads, then it went between the gap in the bodies as the beast completely ripped in two and split apart from itself.

"Everyone run!" Zach shouted, scrambling backwards and yelling to both sides of the hallway. He stopped and then sprinted forward towards Wreck'd body. "Get to the stairs and regroup! Exodus put up a shield!" Zach slid up to Wreck'd and grabbed his body, and he picked him up and started running again inside his Nightmare form. "Come on," Zach whispered, and as he ran he looked down at the man he was carrying. "Come on! Work!" He yelled it, and he forced as much of the Death surrounding his body to fill into the man he was running with. Is it because he touched me before- I didn't feel a power boost though! It should work! I didn't kill him! "Wreck'd God damn it! Come back!"

"Death!" Pastor shouted at the boy running ahead of him carrying Wreck'd and running without paying attention behind him.

Zach spun expecting Pastor to be shouting about the monster chasing them, but Exodus had thrown a shield up farther down the hall. What Pastor was looking at was a trail of blood following Zach all the way back to where he picked Wreck'd up, where there were chunks of skull and a whole lot of brain scattered about and still sliding down the wall. Zach looked towards Wreck'd's face. It looked horrifying, worse than the monster that had died so horribly up outside of the building. He lifted his right hand on Wreck'd's back up towards his head, and he clenched his eyes tightly for a second, Why'd you take off your fucking helmet? Zach's hands slipped off of Wreck'd's back and the inside of his skull that his right hand just slid straight into. They slipped off, because he could not hold Wreck'd anymore. He let go instead of carrying his comrade's body with him anymore, because up ahead he saw Dryout, Sandlot, and Yuri all stop as a couple of figures just ran out of another intersection.

"More sacrifices!" One of them called out, and he rose up a broken metal pipe that was sharp at the end and covered in blood. The three who just ran out were followed by another two, and Zach sped forward and leapt over the heads of the heroes and his comrade who did not know what to do. Yuri started fumbling with a magazine for ammo, while the people who were about to charge at the three lifted their heads instead to the dark form rising through the red air of the hallway.

Zach swept his right hand towards the figures, and his red eyes opened huge as they all started falling inside the Death Wind. He swept his Death away as he was afraid he used too much for a second, because he was trying to see if it would work at all. He landed in front of the others and stared at the men and women he just took down, then he looked past them and down the hallway where he saw blood splattered on the walls and bodies splayed about all over the place. It was a stark contrast to the white hallway they had entered in, and Zach stared down that hall with flickering red lights all the way to the end where he saw a woman pinned upside-down to the wall with her arms spread out like she was on an upside-down cross, crucified. She was surrounded in sharp wire tying up her bare skin, and the floors were completely red through the entire hallway. And Zach saw a couple of other figures down at the end of the hallway, turning their direction.

"Get to the stairs!" Zach yelled, his deep voice cracking as he backed away from the hallway he just looked down. After shouting it though, he spotted a sign on his left side on the wall that had 'Stairwell —' pointing right down the hallway he just backed off from. He grit his teeth and then yelled again, "FOLLOW ME!" Zach shot down the hallway, his feet squishing on the bloody floor, and he was breathing faster and faster as he charged the two men who went from pointing his way to backing away with terrified looks on their faces covered in boils. Zach shot faster towards them once they turned their backs to him for a moment, and he slammed fists of darkness into their backs and knocked them out.

Why are they getting knocked out? Why didn't that- WHY DIDN'T THAT THING?!

"Death!" Gentle's voice filled Zach's helmet. "Something came up behind us. It's on fire!"

Zach spun around and he looked back down the hallway all the way to where he saw a flaring orange light. "I'm coming-"

"We'll deal with it," Gentle snapped. "But that thing we were facing that split apart ran different directions back in the hallway outside the elevator. And the elevator just started down the shaft again!"

Titan's power! Zach realized with his eyes huge. If the hero team's leader's power cut off, returning the elevator to its original size, it was no longer stuck in place in the shaft. Is it on B13? What's down- is it Miles Wilson trying to escape? Or, or could it even be… God? Fuck! "Everyone back to the surface!" Zach yelled at the top of his lungs. Everyone in the hallway with him and back in the last one listened as the shout carried around the hallway. "The new priority mission, is to survive! But we also cannot let anyone escape! Get to the stairs and get up as fast as possible!" Zach looked around at the group of four behind him, "Let's move. Gentle and Exodus will follow right behind us!"

Zach turned off Nightmare as the hallway was empty except for his comrades. Don't waste Death. Basement 11. I'm so fucked. We're so fucked. Why did I bring us down here?! As Zach shouted it at himself, he started running down the hall towards the woman upside-down on the cross again. He ran towards her, and he slid his fingers out of his right glove with the most horrified look on his face, as he saw her chest heave. The sharp wires wrapped around her were wrapped in places to cut her but not kill her, and the spikes in her wrists and hands and feet were not bleeding enough either. He slammed his right hand into the woman as fast as he could, not caring that he would not be able to bring her back after he did it. The instant kill filled him with power, and it also filled him with a confidence that fueled his rage. Why is this happening? Why does this exist?! WHO DID THIS?! HOW DID DEATH NOT WORK ON HIM!?

"Death!" Yuri yelled to his left. Zach turned and saw Yuri and the heroes all moving to his right at the end of the hall Zach just ran into with the woman pinned to the wall in the intersection. All three of the people Zach just turned to had scared and nervous looks on their faces, but Yuri had his gun grabbed and reloaded, and the heroes were handling their team leader's death for the moment after hearing Zach's orders. "This way!" Yuri shouted, and he turned and started running where the sign motioned and where he could see an open doorway up ahead with stairs on the other side. The heroes ran behind Yuri and started talking to each other about how what they've seen was already means for calling in every hero to assist.

Zach started after them, and Pastor ran up to his side as Zach no longer had Death surrounding him. "There was nothing you could do for Wreck'd," Pastor began, and Zach darted his eyes to his right side for a second while continuing to run. "But that does not mean there is nothing you can do for the rest of these people." Pastor turned his head more and Zach's eyes opened wider at the former priest who did not sound as afraid as Zach felt.

"What can we do for them?" Zach asked. "The experimenters who did this? The monsters? The religious fanatics?!"

"We can save them," Pastor said. Zach bit down hard, and he clenched his eyes shut as he knew he was contradicting everything he had said upstairs solely in his own fear. "Lead us through this, please," Pastor said, and Zach's eyes snapped open wide as he finally heard the fear in the man's voice. Pastor looked back forward himself towards the stairwell that Yuri, Sandlot, and Dryout were waiting for them inside of. "Only you can guide us though-"

Zach and Pastor spun their heads to the right of the door they were sprinting at. They looked down the hallway and watched as something skid out of a different hall and started running right away. It did not have as much mass as before to need to shift its momentum as much, and the beast covered in red fur that was only eight feet tall now barreled down the hall and slammed a claw to the side into a woman with long black hair that she started waving up in the air with a mad smirk on her face. She let out a scream of pain as she was thrown to the side and through a cracked glass window into the room next to her. "It was a fluke," Zach snarled, and he slammed his right hand into his chest again. "Pastor, get in the stairwell and shut the door!"

Pastor did so without question. He sprinted into the doorway and Dryout slammed the door shut as fast as he could. Yuri ran past Dryout and slammed his back into the door, trying to hold it shut only for the man in front of him with big hands to pull him back. "You can't get touched by that," he started. Dryout looked at the door and beneath it where the red glow he could see got completely dark, and black wisps started sliding under the door to where Yuri's feet would have been. "Death, he's Zach Sazaki, right?" Dryout asked, looking at Yuri who turned and stared back into his eyes from a few feet away.

"No," Yuri replied with a shake of his head. He turned to the door himself and took a step farther back while tightening his grip on his assault rifle. His expression hardened more and he said in a low voice thick with a Russian accent, "He's just Death."

Pastor looked at the stairs down that were blocked up by furniture that seemed to be piled there intentionally to either keep stuff from going up or going down. He lifted his head and looked up the stairs though, and he was glad there was no blockage in that direction. He turned his head as he heard a loud roar through the doorway again, and he spoke into his helmet, "Death, do you need assistance?"

Zach was panting as he faced off ten meters away from the monster of red fur. It was still standing, even as black flames and wisps sizzled or faded away around it. Zach ground his teeth in fury, even as sweat covered his face through his black veil. His power was stronger now after taking the life of the crucified woman, and he was sure this time he had surrounded the monster in his Quirk. The beast was smaller now too having split itself in half, and though it was not half its original size, Zach had hoped it was significantly weaker. It stood there and took all of his Death only shaking its head in annoyance at the hits, then its head started breaking apart again and it split into three slightly smaller versions of itself while Zach was glaring at it.

Zach pulled out a pair of knives and flicked them around in his hands. He shot forward inside his black aura, and he growled, "You're not real. You don't make sense," he was speaking quieter than could be heard in his helmet, intentionally as he knew he had to lead his comrades right now. His face was covered in rage though, his skeletal jaw twisted behind his helmet's visor. "What are you?!" Zach yelled, and he slid forward to slide under the swipe of a claw of the one on the left. Another jumped up on the wall on Zach's right, and he threw a knife at it only for the beast right in front of him to jump up towards the other on the wall that bounced towards it. The two of them merged into a bigger one that slammed both claws down towards where Zach was finishing his slide. Zach barrel-rolled to his left and barely dodged the beast's right claw, then he flipped his legs up over his head to dodge the smaller of the two that tried slamming on his body.

Zach bounced off the ground as he flipped over himself, and he flicked his blackened knives forward into the faces of the creatures. He hit the smaller of the two in its right eye and it stumbled back with blood spurting out of its face. The other got slashed in its left cheek, blood splashing away from its face which had the thinnest cover of red fur as anywhere on its body. I can hurt it, Zach realized, flipping onto his feet and then stepping away. I can, hurt it? How? If- if it can be hurt, if it can bleed!

The creatures charged, and then a voice yelled, "GENTLY SANDWICH!" The air vibrated near the ceiling, and below it, and below that, and in five different points where Elastic barriers formed and started bouncing off each other powerfully squishing the beasts below them down into the floor. Gentle had come from down the other side of the hall, and he shot past his squished enemies and to the dark form that he yelled at, "Let's go!"

"Where's Exodus?!" Zach shouted, snapping out of his shock with a panicked yell.

"We were separated," Exodus replied into their helmets. "But I am alright. Keep on without me. I will meet you above."

"He's fine, now let's go," Gentle sped towards the staircase that he threw the door of open. "Upstairs. Now!" He shouted at the four on the other side who all rose weapons or fists at him. They all nodded and started running up the stairs while the man with a purple visor on his helmet spun back the other way. "Death! Let's go!"

Zach turned to Gentle, and then he looked back at the creatures trying to drag themselves out from beneath the Gently Sandwich pushing them into the floor. "They aren't affected by Death," Zach said. He turned off Nightmare and looked closer at the face of the smaller one that started sliding into the bigger one, only for the faces to start pulling apart again like it was unstable and breaking apart. And as that happened, and the bloody eye no longer had his knife in it but was still bloodshot, and only a scar remained from the gash on the bigger one's face once it merged, Zach saw pain on that face. "It's alive though-"

Gentle grabbed him by the shoulder and shouted down at him, "Don't think about it too hard! Let's go!" He spun Zach and started running for the stairs, and Zach's feet picked up and followed after him.

Zach's eyes were pointed down at the ground as he ran, then they trembled and started lifting up. Zach was shook. He stared at Gentle's back while the man with a purple cape glanced back towards him, and Zach pulled his head back right as he entered the stairwell. "You know!" Zach yelled.

"I don't know anything!" Gentle yelled right back. He spun after getting in the stairs, then he slammed his hand into the outside of the pulled-in doorway, before slamming the Elasticized door shut. If anything tried smashing it down now they would be bounced back the other way, and he took in a deep breath as they got off that Hell-like floor. He glanced to the stairs down, then to the ones up where Pastor was waiting at the midway point for them to enter the stairwell. Once they got inside, Pastor looked up and nodded and started running up again. Gentle started up the stairs too, only for Zach to grab him by his purple cloak. "Let go of me," Gentle began a warning.

"Death kills everything," Zach said. He let go of Gentle's cloak and the man kept facing away from him. "It always kills-"

"Well this time it didn't. Whatever they did-"

"Always!" Zach shouted. The men up the stairwell stopped on B10's floor and glanced down as they heard that shout. Pastor and Yuri listened in their headsets too in confusion at what their leader was shouting about right now. "Since I was a kid, everything I- It's always worked! On anything alive that is!"

"So you're saying," Gentle began. "That what we were just facing isn't alive at all-"

"NO!" Zach roared at him. "You know, that it was! It was alive!" Zach clenched his eyes shut, and then he yelled, "Any animal, or plant, or human! Death always works against them, except in one instance!" Zach snapped his head forward and his eyes opened wide, and Gentle ground his teeth in anger while turning back more towards the teen shouting at him. "It's why I can't bring someone back to life a second time!" Zach yelled, his hands shaking at his sides and his breath speeding up.

"Don't do this to yourself," Gentle started warning.

"Because Death doesn't work on people I've brought back before!" Zach finished shouting anyway. "Why didn't it work on him!? It worked on the others here! Even on other monsters!" Zach's fists clenched so hard and then trembled and opened up as he let out a gasp, his heart pounding so violently as the thoughts he was trying to form kept making him scream internally to stop. "You know why-"

"Get a grip!" Gentle shouted in Japanese, stepping back down the stairs and glaring at the boy who froze with his mouth open during his last shout. "We are dying down here! Think about that later, and think about getting us out of this shit hole right now." Gentle reached forward both hands and grabbed the sides of Zach's helmet. "Listen to me," he started in a lower voice. "We can still figure out what is going on here. If we can calm down, prepare ourselves for what we know is down here better than we were last time! And we need you for that. Understand me?"

"We." Not "they." Zach closed his mouth and he started nodding at Gentle. He had sweat on his face he wanted to wipe off but was actually glad he could not as he did not want to make such a nervous action in front of his comrade. Usually you talk about it like you're not one of them. One of my Army of Death. Maybe it's because we're all in this together. Maybe it's because we could die right now. But it doesn't matter how old you are. How old anyone is. I created the Army of Death. I led you all down here. I can't lose my shit. Zach started jogging up the stairs, and he turned the corner and sprinted up to B10 where the others were gathered.

Gentle watched Zach run ahead for a moment and then chased after him. He took a deep breath and cooled down a bit himself. He glanced over his shoulder as he heard a roar come from the floor below, and he found himself speeding up to catch up with the others. Zach stopped at the tenth floor's platform and stared up the stairs with a dark look, seeing on the next in-between of the floors a bit splash of red on the walls and steps, and an arm sticking out from beneath the broken steps above that had collapsed down on someone.

"Can we clear this?" Sandlot asked, glancing to his side at Dryout.

Dryout stepped up in front of the group and turned his head to try and see above the collapsed rubble in the steps. "If I dry out the base and there's too much weight above pushing down, it'll come crashing down."

"I could slip through," Yuri said, then he grimaced while turning back to Death. "I really don't want to head up on my own though-"

"We'll stick together," Zach told him with a nod. "We don't lose anyone else," he stated firmly, looking around at the men with him.

"Onto the tenth then," Gentle said. He stepped up to the door with B10 labeled next to it, and he opened the door up with his other hand lifted ready to attack. "We must move quickly back to the elevator across the basement," he said as he stepped through into a hallway.

"The elevator?" Sandlot asked while walking out with his fellow hero behind him.

"Gentle can get us up the elevator shaft," Zach said, and he nodded as that seemed like the best idea to him. "And the elevator might not actually be broken," he added in a lower voice.

"Might not be any other way up too," Yuri added. He rose up his rifle and aimed down the hall in one direction, pointing his flashlight through the red-tinted hallway all the way to the end. He turned the other way and pointed the flashlight to the other end, and he said in a soft tone, "Anyone see another hallway we could take from here?"

Gentle had been the first into the hallway, and he responded since he had already checked, "I do not. It must be through the door," he turned to his left and looked towards a thick steel door that was cracked open a bit across the hall from the stairwell's exit. The group started over towards the door, each of them staying on guard with weapons or fists raised.

"Exodus, check in," Zach said. He continued towards the steel door with a grappling gun in his left hand and his right free for now. He slowed though and he lifted a hand to his helmet to tap a button on the side a couple of times. "Exodus?"

"Well that's not good," Yuri said.

"What?" Dryout asked the man on his side who did not hear Death speaking into the comm link. Yuri relayed what they were not hearing, and Zach just asked one more time before tightening his grip on his grappling gun. "We should go back for him," Dryout replied after hearing Yuri's explanation.

"No," Zach said. He stepped forward to the metal door Gentle was waiting at while looking back at him. "We have to assume it's the comms. Exodus is strong, he'll meet us up there."

"And if he doesn't?" Dryout asked ahead of him.

"He will," Zach replied. He grabbed the steel door and pushed it forward. Zach stepped inside, and he stopped just inside the next room that split the hallway they were in from the elevator they knew to be across the basement. I don't know what I was expecting, Zach started thinking to himself. He stared around the bright room, strong white lights on the ceiling illuminating it and actually feeling hot down on him through his black costume. He started forward while trying to ignore the grass below his feet and the trees around him on his sides. Is this a courtyard? What the- Zach tried not to stare, but his feet stopped moving with his head pointed to the right and a tree with some green foliage on the branches and canopy. He stared at the brown bark that had black lines cutting through it like veins, just like the leaves that he stared at a bit closer when he noticed black lines on them too.

"Oh man," Yuri whispered under his breath, his tone shaky and higher-pitched than usual. He pointed his rifle towards trees, flicking off his flashlight for now so as to save the battery for rooms that would not be as lit up. "If the power's out everywhere else, why do they have this room all lit up still? And, and why is that tree bleeding?"

"This is weird man," Sandlot whispered.

"Stay frosty," Zach said. He did not mean it as a joke at all, and he started speeding up towards the opposite side of the room. A glance over his shoulder showed him the wall around the steel door and the inside of the door they just entered itself was painted to look like a beautiful scenery. There were rolling green hills and lush foliage that looked healthier than the trees and grass in this room. Yet as Zach looked around at the walls behind him that matched the ones up ahead, he ground his teeth in anger to try and quash his fear. "And everyone move!" Zach called out, and he started running, because there were black lines moving up the walls.

Yuri started blathering in Russian which mostly sounded like he was cursing. He lowered his rifle and just sprinted forward with the others, and Sandlot snapped his head to the side as he saw a thick black line carving through a tree started getting dark red instead, drips of liquid coming out of them. The red dripping down the bark started to drip down in a way that defied gravity, spreading across the tree in an arc instead that made it look like a twisted smile. "Something's in here!" Sandlot shouted.

"Dryout!" Zach yelled, snapping his head towards the man with big hands inside gray gloves. "Make us a hole!"

Zach could not see where the door on the wall was that just looked like the room kept going. Dryout sprinted forward and pressed his hands into the wall, and Zach slammed his right hand into his chest. He swung his right arm to the side and swept black Death across a few trees. He turned them completely black, and black lines started shirking down from the walls. Zach turned one way where the lines shrank down slowest, and he yelled, "Stay back or die! Your choice!" He rose his left palm and pointed his grappling gun that looked scary surrounded in swirling Death, and leaves started getting more green, trunks turned brown again, and darkness pulled all towards one corner of the room farthest from the team of six.

Pastor turned his head towards the dark figure covered in swirling wisps. "Death," Pastor began.

Zach turned to the man, then he slowly lowered his gun and attached it back to his waist. Shit, Zach thought, and he turned off his Nightmare form. Something's afraid of me. Someone! These aren't things. They aren't monsters. They're people. Zach stepped farther back into the room, and he called out in the direction all the dark lines had retreated to. "Is someone over there, who wants to get out of here?"

Yuri started picking back up his rifle, but Pastor put his hand on the top of the barrel and pushed it down. The Russian with a terrified look on his face started panting as he looked into Pastor's visor, then he slowed his breathing and gripped his gun tighter though lowering it. Sandlot turned to those two, then to his comrade who was turning the wall in front of him into sand quickly. The wall was falling apart in a rectangle with rough edges, and though it was thick, Dryout mentioned that he was almost through.

"Come out slowly," Zach said over towards a tree he saw some darkness behind. The tree itself started to get deformed, black lines cutting through it and then around the grass and floor on the sides of the tree. Zach kept his breathing steadier, and he said, "What's your name?"

Black lines on the floor next to the tree started shaking, then some of them pushed closer to Zach. Gentle stepped back closer to the shorter figure behind him, "Death."

"Wait," Zach said, as the dark lines stopped approaching him. They twisted around from the main mass that started decomposing the tree it was wrapped around. Zach stared at the black lines farthest forward that created a number in the floor. "Fourteen," Zach said. "23!" It's an experiment. He, or she, is an experiment. The others behind Zach turned even as Dryout finished breaking through the wall. Dryout turned too after hearing Death say that number, and he stepped farther back into the strange courtyard to look towards the black mass.

"It's a person," Sandlot whispered in shock.

"Are they sane though?" Gentle asked.

Zach darted a look at him, then he shifted it back to the darkness that fully decayed the tree and then swirled around like black snakes all over the ground over there. It was so thick and dense and yet it still spread wide, but Zach thought about how far those black lines had risen up every wall around them before. It has a consciousness. Its body… "Do you know who you were?" Zach asked.

The black lines swirling around on the floor shifted forward a bit towards him again. Some split off, and they created the word 'YES' in the ground. Then the lines started breaking apart and reforming without being asked another question. They split apart and then pushed together into a thick black line in the ground. It was getting thicker and thicker, the end of it extending towards the group in front while more black lines from behind pushed into the line. And then the figures looking towards it started stepping back, because some of the black lines near the center-top of the line started breaking apart horizontally. The lines pushed away, creating a cross in the ground while the end of it started speeding up towards them.

"Oh fuck!" Yuri stumbled backwards and spun, sprinting towards the hole in the wall all of the others started running towards too.

"Is that God?!" Sandlot yelled.

"It could just be one of the followers," Zach shouted, as he ran behind all the others. He grit his teeth and then spun while almost at the hole in the wall, and he slammed his right hand into his chest again to erupt Death around him. "I gave you a chance!" Zach yelled towards the black mass that rose up like a wave behind him. Zach lifted his right arm and started swinging forward, and the wave froze. It froze, then it broke apart with dark lines shooting down into the ground and racing away like snakes. They shot up trees, and over to the walls, all breaking apart from each other individually and then rotting the walls they clung to and started moving along. Zach snapped his head left and right and watched as black lines started cutting through the walls, floors, and even over the lights on the ceiling to shadow over the room.

He stepped back in Nightmare, and he formed a Death Grenade in his hand and threw it down in the floor in the hole in the wall. He turned off Nightmare while turning and running into the red-lit hallway, screaming in his head a hope that the Death he just threw would slow that thing behind him. Is this Hell?! Zach snapped his head to the left as he saw the wall start rotting, but when he looked that way through his visor instead of out his peripheral vision, the wall was its normal white state. FUCK! He could not tell if his mind was playing tricks on him or if it was the experiment who he really did want to save. Pastor is running too though! That shouldn't matter- I wasn't just doing it because he expected me to! Why am I down here?!

"The elevator!" Yuri called out, pointing down the hall and to an intersection with a black sign on it barely lit up by the red emergency lights. The sign had an arrow pointing to the left where the elevator was, and the group of six sped up more before spinning and seeing closed doors for where the elevator shaft was.

"Let's get those doors open!" Zach called out.

They all started running towards the elevator, Ding. All six of them stopped. They stared past the elevator doors as that ding rang out, because a door opened down the hallway after that noise, and a couple of figures with horns on their heads and disgusting bumps and boils on their skin started running towards them. The elevator doors opened, and Clank. Sshhh… They all recognized the sound, and most of them backed up as a large figure stepped out of the elevator, dragging a huge steel pipe with him that made sparks on the ground. Yuri bared his teeth and his face covered in fear, because just above the bottom of the pipe were four heads impaled and still spilling blood so there was a line of it dragging after the thick heavy weapon.

The man who stepped out of the elevator was facing straight forward, but he turned his head to the left after exiting so the six of them could see that the right side of his face was completely covered in burns. He had no eyelid, and no lips covering the right side of his mouth, yet he smiled in a horrifically disfigured way as he looked towards them. "More sacrifices," a voice they all recognized started.

"Miles," Zach began right back. He stepped towards the man with the long pipe who smiled more towards him after hearing that.

"You really came," Miles Wilson said in a happy tone. "To become my sacrifices," he started towards them, and Zach noticed the two figures running down the hall start slowing down. On his left side, he realized that the wall was starting to rot and cover in black lines like veins, and then the walls started bleeding around him.

"That's not why I'm here," Zach countered, and Miles' expression dropped. Experiment 23 froze and his teeth bared, very visibly on the right side of his face that started bleeding as he tensed it up that much.

Two men sprinted into the elevator behind Miles. "Hey!" Yuri yelled towards them.

Miles turned around too, and he charged back into the elevator himself while his face was twisted in rage. The doors of the elevator that were closing opened back up for him, and the group of six in the hallway started running for the elevator too as the walls around them got darker and more menacing. Black lines cutting through them started making crosses all along the wall, bloody crosses with the horizontal part closer to the bottom, and then dark lines on the wall to their left shot down onto the floor and cut them off from the elevator. Gentle was stepping forward his right foot when a black line cut off the wall and below him, and he accidentally stepped down on one of them.

The line sped out from beneath his foot and towards the elevator, then it cut back and shot to his foot. The ground below Gentle turned bouncy and he flew up into the air, and a coil of black snarled up off the floor like it was trying to wrap around him. Yuri leapt backwards and then dove to the left in a roll, and the others all looked towards the closing elevator that did not stop closing even as all those black lines shot into the box full of screams. It was as if the motion sensor did not pick up anything, and the elevator doors closed muffling the screams that came from within.

All the remaining black lines on the walls shot to the crack in the elevator doors and slid through it, leaving the walls behind looking decrepit and half-rotted. A light above the elevator doors showed the elevator on the other side started going up, and the group of six looked around at each other with panicked expressions. "We can't let that thing get out," Dryout said with his eyes opened wide.

"We can't let anything down here escape," Pastor agreed in a dark tone his comrades could not remember hearing him use before. "I will not allow this evil into the world."

"Dryout," Zach said.

"If I keep drying everything," the hero began in a warning tone.

"Your hands, they strong enough to pry the doors open then?" Zach asked, switching tactics immediately. It'll be faster than him drying out steel into dust anyway. "Let's all do it," he said, then glanced to Yuri and said, "Keep watch. Let's open the elevator shaft."

Gentle took a deep breath and he stepped to the door with Zach, Sandlot, and Dryout. They all grabbed one half of the door or the other and started pulling away from each other, then Pastor slipped in too and slid his fingers into the crack to help out. Once it was wide enough, Dryout shoved his bigger hands inside and gripped the doors on both their side and the inside of the shaft. They heaved away and ripped open the elevator, then they leaned in and looked up. Gentle was ready to drop a Gently Trampoline into the elevator shaft to bounce them up towards the first floor, but two floors above them there was something in the way preventing them from continuing up.

"Why'd the elevator stop?" Sandlot asked nervously.

"Maybe," Zach began slowly, "someone's trying to take it up from there."

"Or maybe that maniac you keep talking to decided he wanted some more sacrifices," Gentle added.

"Which one?" Yuri muttered, thinking about both the scary black lines and the guy dragging a head-kebob steel pipe.

"Grrrrr…" The group spun back towards the courtyard behind them, where a familiar roar growled.

"Up to B9 it is then," Gentle said, and he leapt into the elevator shaft and across it to a metal pipe he had seen while looking for a good way up. He jumped up to the next bar, then he swung a hand down into the air in front of him and bounced himself to the inside ledge of the floor above the basement they were just in.

"Yeah, don't wait up," Yuri muttered, though he just stepped back to get a running start. He slung his rifle back onto his back, and then he sprinted forward and leapt up to where Gentle had jumped before. Gentle mentioned back to him that his Gently Trampoline was still pointed towards the ledge, but not to jump on it too hard or he would slam into the elevator doors. Yuri tried listening, but he still slammed face-first into the doors and almost fell backwards off the small ledge. Gentle grabbed him by the front of his costume and yanked him back, and Yuri said in a soft voice, "Thanks." The Russian glanced behind him and down the shaft that was dark all the way down another five or six basements to a floor he could not see.

"Get that door open," Zach said, while moving closer to the elevator himself. Others leapt across the shaft but were hesitant to jump on Gentle's bouncy air only to almost fall down the shaft, but the two already on the inner ledge of B9 were opening the door faster this time. "Pastor, aim through the crack," Zach added to a man who just leapt across the shaft and was staring towards B9. Pastor nodded in understanding, though Yuri and Gentle both slowed down pulling the doors apart as they realized there might be enemies waiting for them just on the other side.

Zach looked back towards the hole in the wall Dryout opened, and he ground his teeth in so much fury as he spotted a red claw stepping forward out of the hole. How? Why? I, I need to- Zach turned and he leapt into the elevator, and he had to grab onto a metal pipe with both hands and then do a pull up onto it before jumping to Gentle's Elastic air. He bounced himself through the open elevator doors of B9, and he and the other five lifted up fists and weapons while preparing themselves. Yuri turned next to him and he pressed a button next to the elevator.

Zach and Pastor turned to him, and Yuri looked back before saying, "We need to get up somehow, right?"

"Perhaps they have gotten off on the floor above too," Gentle added in a more hopeful tone. Hearing that hopeful tone in his voice told Zach that the man was feeling fear in the first place, but he could not blame him considering how afraid of all this he was too.

"H-Hey!"

The six gathered at the elevator of B9 spun to the right of the doors. Yuri reached up for his rifle to get a light down there, as everything was still dark despite the red lights so he couldn't see a thing or whoever just called out to them. "Don't move!" Another voice called out, sounding steadier than the other but still nervous. Yuri froze with his hands up near his rifle butt, and Gentle calmly lifted up his hands in front of him with his palms out. Once Gentle had his palms out, Zach lowered his hand from the sheath he had snapped it to immediately upon hearing that shout.

"This is Dryout," Dryout called towards those two voices that sounded more sane than any they had met since descending into the basements. He lifted up his large gray hands defensively and stepped down the hallway from the pitch black elevator shaft they just came out of. "Are you alright?"

"Dryout?" The first voice asked, a man whose shaky but relieved tone exemplified how they all felt at that moment.

Pastor let out a low breath inside his helmet and he focused on steadying his hands. "Are you alright?" Sandlot asked quietly, and the older man in a dark helmet glanced to his side at the British hero in all tan clothes. "Father?"

"I'm not…" Pastor began. He slowed and then stopped himself as he stared at the look in Sandlot's eyes. His own hands stopped shaking, and he took in a deep breath while nodding at the younger man. "Yes. I am fine."

"Damn," Yuri started lowering his hands from his rifle slowly. He let them drop to his sides, and he peered closer down the hall towards a turned-over desk lying partly out of a doorway. A man's head just lifted up over that desk, and another leaned out of a door farther back where he held up a rifle and turned a flashlight on at the end of it. "We're friendlies," Yuri called out, as he did not feel great about having a rifle pointed at him while his was on his back.

"Dryout, who, who are they?" The man just peeking out from behind the desk called over.

"We are all here to get you out of this place," Dryout replied. He lowered his big gray hands and then said in a firmer tone, "Now lower your weapons." His voice was intense and the man pointing his rifle and flashlight up at them lowered it right away. "Who are you two? What are you doing down here?"

"Can we get out of the hallway?" The guy behind the desk who pushed himself up to his feet asked. "Let's get back to the security room."

"Agreed," Zach said, glancing back towards the elevator behind him. His eyes opened wider as he stared at the elevator, because he saw the illuminated number above it flipping from B8 up to to B7. It stopped at B7, and Zach's eyes narrowed, then they darted down to the open shaft where he swore he heard growling coming from. "Let's move," Zach said, spinning around and moving towards the two men in dark blue uniforms who each held an assault rifle with them.

The group moved up after the two soldier-looking people who kept glancing back nervously at their team. "So what are you two doing down here?" Gentle asked, moving past Dryout and leaning his head closer to the less jumpy of the two men who confronted them in the hallway.

"Question of the day," the man replied without looking back. His comrade spun to him and then gulped while looking at the man in a dark purple and black helmet who shifted his head a bit as if looking his way this time. The man Gentle questioned first had a thick black beard wrapping around his face, he was bulkier than his comrade, and his eyes darted around in a more focused way as they ran down the hall. He pointed his rifle up when turning the corner, then he motioned for everyone to follow him down the next hall. He continued as he jogged down the next hallway, "My name's Hue, this here on my left is Richie. We work upstairs on guard duty. Today something goes down which requires all the guards to come help out, and we find out there're twenty damn basements in this-"

"Twenty?" Sandlot asked in a nervous gasp. "I thought-"

"Yeah, sixteen," the guard corrected himself. "Exaggerating," he added in a low, annoyed voice.

"So you had no idea what was going on down here?" Gentle said with is tone lifting in the end questioningly. "Convenient."

"We still have no clue," the bearded man muttered in response. Gentle lifted his eyebrows behind his visor, and the guy next to him said, "We got sent to this station by our shift commander. Ms. Isabel told us to patrol the floor, and now it's down to us two. We retreated back to the security room with the others left on the floor when the power cut off, ran into a couple psychopaths-"

"Shouting about God!" His partner called out, turning and looking at the group behind him as if letting them know how crazy it was.

"Yeah," Zach muttered, his tone dark and making the man who just looked back feel his entire face cover in sweat. "Well, let's get you two out of here. That's why we came down after all."

Gentle glanced back towards Zach, and he frowned inside his helmet at the tone of the boy behind him he was having trouble reading. I suppose we are here to rescue people like them. As long as these two are not lying to save their own skins. Which is very possible.

"Right in there," the bearded guard said, motioning down the hall with the end of his barrel. There was a long glass window against the hallway on the right side with light coming out of it still. It was brighter light like what they saw in the courtyard downstairs, though there was also a hum coming from that room like the generators powering it were just inside. They jogged down the hallway, and the guard slammed the butt of his rifle against the steel door a couple of times. "Ms. Isabel. Open up."

"Who are those men with you!?" A shrill female voice called back in anger. "I will not go quietly-"

"What are you talking about?" The guard snapped. "They're heroes."

"Bullshit!"

"I don't have time for this," Gentle began, and he stepped forward readying to break through the glass. He walked past the door and up to the glass he could see through into the next room, and his eyes widened behind his helmet at the sight of the three figures inside the room. One was a man laying out on a table near the back just in front of the steel door, blood all over the table around him and his head tilted to the side with his eyes still open. Another was a woman with her hands down on her table, glaring at television screens and then spinning to the left when she realized where one of those men on them was. She had short purple hair combed to the right side of her head and had big earrings in her ears that stretched her earlobes down. Behind her sitting on the floor was another man whose hair was white and had a pair of glasses on with the right lens cracked.

As the woman yelling at the microphone in front of the screens turned her head, Gentle saw a look of terror flash over her face for a second before twisting in rage. "I can release it all from in here!" She yelled. Her teeth bared and her purple-painted fingernails started extending while she screamed, "I'll tear this whole operation-"

"We aren't here to kill you," Zach snapped, stepping forward to the box the confused bearded guard was speaking into. "We aren't a clean-up crew. We're just here to help."

Isabel's eyes opened wide on the other side of the glass, and she looked back at the computer screens for her eyes to open wider. "Dryout, Sandlot," she whispered, recognizing heroes among the group out in the dim hall her guards had brought over. "Are you sure they're-"

"They aren't here to kill you," Dryout assured. "Though you have made it very clear, you know exactly what is going on down here."

"I don't know anything!" She snapped straight back into her microphone, while loud clanking sounds came out of the steel doorway in front of the group of eight out in the hall. She typed into her keyboards fast, and she shouted, "Get inside and close the door. We need to-"

Zach opened up the door, and he walked in first followed by most of the others behind him. "We're not staying in here," Zach said. He cut off the woman who spun around towards him with wide eyes as he said that. "We're leaving now and heading farther up. You're coming with us."

"You want to move through this place?!" Isabel shouted. She motioned at the security cameras behind her, the dozen tv's constantly switching angles to different places and revealing the different basements of the lab. "Look at this. Look!"

"Holy shit," the younger of the two guards who had been more jumpy when the group met him opened his eyes wide.

"You two get back out there-" Isabel started.

"Fuck you," the bearded man growled, lowering his gun and glaring at the woman whose eyes opened huge and then started twisting in rage.

"What did you just say?" She asked, raising her tone and glaring down her nose at the guard.

"We're not taking orders from you anymore," Hue said. Richie spun to his bearded comrade and then gulped but nodded in agreement. He turned back to the screens and looked at them in terror. Most of them were scratchy and others were cutting off, but some showed the most horrific sights most of them had ever seen before.

Zach ignored the screens. No one could see his eyes through his visor, but they were full of sheer hatred. His voice was calm though, "The elevator's moving up. We pressed the button though so it should come back down as long as no one locks it again. How are the stairs on this floor?" Zach asked while turning to Hue.

"I- I don't know. We've been stationed here-"

"Pastor, go with them and check it out," Zach said. He glanced at the man on his back right who nodded after a second at him and then turned and headed back out of the room.

Hue nodded too after a moment, and the older man on the ground who started getting up snapped at the guard, "You'll listen to this man?"

"He's trying to get us out of here, not cowering and waiting to die," Hue responded in a pissed-off way. He glanced at the table where someone they had brought back here injured earlier lay motionless with his eyes half-closed. "Richie, let's move."

"Yeah," Richie said, glancing once at the older man and glaring at him through his broken glasses. Then he turned and headed off after the other two.

"Everyone else patrol the floor in teams of two," Zach said. He looked behind him at Gentle, Yuri, Sandlot, and Dryout. "We'll find out what's going on, and decide what to do about it, once we're all out of here."

Dryout frowned but he nodded his head after a few seconds. He glared back towards Isabel, then he turned to Sandlot. He froze before telling Sandlot to come with him, and he turned to Yuri instead. "Your comms are still working with each other, correct?"

"Yeah," Yuri replied. "It's only our support that's been cut off."

As Yuri said it, Zach heard some scratching noises in his helmet's headset. He squinted his eyes and listened closer but he could not hear anything coming through for a few seconds, then he continued hearing Yuri's voice as he and Dryout started out of the room.

Gentle stared at Zach's back hesitantly, but Zach turned back to him and motioned out of the room. Sandlot turned to Gentle who looked at him and nodded, and the two of them headed away too. "Trying to escape is suicide," Isabel whispered, shaking her head as she watched them start leaving.

"But staying, and waiting for the clean-up crew isn't?" Zach asked, turning back to the woman who frowned at him and narrowed her purple eyebrows in towards her nose.

"You don't know what you're talking about," she replied snidely.

"Yeah, I suppose neither of you knew what was going down here, right?" Zach asked. He turned to his right and the older man who shook his head fast then darted his eyes over at the woman who had a more convincing annoyed expression on her face at his question.

"I am solely in logistics," Isabel began. "And I-"

"Yet you were going to release 'it all' from in here, weren't you?" Zach asked. His voice started raising, and he asked in a louder voice, "What is, 'it all?'"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, leaning towards him and narrowing her eyes more. Then the right corner of her lip twisted up the smallest amount. "So why don't you do your job, and get me out of-"

Zach slammed his right fist out to the side and punched the older man straight in his glasses. Zach shattered his glasses and pushed glass into the man's eyes, and he let out a scream of pain while Isabel's face lost its half-smirk and filled with panic. Zach turned his body and he grabbed the older man by the front of his white shirt with both hands, and Zach dragged him over to the doorway and threw him out it and across the hall into the opposite wall. He turned his head to the left and saw Sandlot and Gentle sprinting back his way, and Zach slammed the door shut which caused a loud clanking locking noise. Right after that noise, fists slammed into the metal door.

"Open this door Death!" Gentle yelled. "You don't want to do this!"

"What is he doing?!" Sandlot yelled out. Gentle stopped slamming his fists into the door, and he ran down the hall a bit more to the long glass window. Sandlot ran there too, and Dryout and Yuri came running back down from the other side of the hall.

"Y-You can't do this!" Isabel shouted at the dark figure in front of her. "You're here to save me!"

"FUCK YOU!" Zach roared. "What were-" he calmed himself as much as he could after stomping halfway across the room to the woman pushing back against the security desk with terror in her eyes. "What was your job down here?!"

"Logistics! I'm, I'm just in-"

"You're lying!" Zach roared. "You were experimenting on people! Say it!" Zach stomped forward and he started reaching for his belt with his right hand.

"Alright! Alright alright, I was," Isabel held up her hands defensively in front of her and the scary figure stopped marching closer. He was the same height as her, and he looked menacing, but her expression calmed down a bit as she lowered her hands. "I did take part, in some bad things. But it was all for the advancement of medicine. Science research. It, we were doing important work. For the sake of the world!" She called it out at him and Zach stood still where he was. His motionless figure started to unnerve her, and she swung an arm in front of her and yelled, "Things were never supposed to get like this. We did this for the advancement of society and-"

"I don't care about any of that," Zach growled. He glared so much harder at the woman, and the reason he was doing this flooded his mind as he yelled, "Why didn't Death work on that test subject?!" He yelled it, and the woman with purple hair pulled her head back with her eyes full of confusion.

"I don't know what you-"

Zach reached his hands to his helmet and ripped it off, and he threw it to the side while storming forward across the room. "DON'T LIE TO ME!" He slammed his forehead into hers, and he glared into her eyes that were snapped down underneath his right eye and trembling. "What did you do?" Zach asked, his voice shaky while fists started slamming on the glass outside. "What did you do?!"

"It was all for science-"

"TELL ME!" Zach yelled, reaching up his right hand and bringing it close to the woman's face.

"We-" she began, and she bit down on her bottom lip in terror as he just brought his hand closer. "Please, I wasn't directly involved. I, I just know-"

"What did you do?" Zach snarled, pulling back but leaving his hand there ready to grab her at any second. "And don't you lie to me."

Isabel pursed her lips and she saw an unhinged look in the boy's eyes telling her not to try lying again. "We," she began. She recognized who it was in front of her. She had tried feigning innocence, but it did not work. Isabel started breathing heavier, and the fists pounding on the bulletproof glass stopped as the four outside kept staring in at them. "We know all about you, Zach Sazaki," she started. Zach lowered his hand a bit and he stared at the woman in front of him with pain filling his eyes. She continued as he did that, "The power to kill instantly, and the power to bring someone back to life. They're remarkable. Yet there are so many unknowns, things we can still discover." Her eyes shifted from his face down to his body and then over to his right hand that had scared her so much a minute ago but that she only looked intrigued over now.

"What kinds of things?" Zach asked, his voice dark while his lowered eyes lifted slowly back into Isabel's.

She gulped and looked hesitant to answer, but Zach's left hand pulled a knife off his belt as he glared at the woman. "And why, can't I kill that test subject? The one with red fur, hunting us down? Why isn't it affected by Death?" The purple-haired scientist looked even more hesitant, and Zach started grinding his teeth. "If you don't tell me-"

Before he could finish his threat, she started, "You know why." Zach ground his teeth even harder, though he forced himself to lower his knife in his left hand so that she would continue instead of getting afraid of answering his questions. Isabel continued as she saw the knife lowering from her after she responded, "We know about Death. Not that you were, Death, though I had my own-" she cut herself off at Zach's dark glare. "But your Quirk! We knew, from a report at VTS, that people you brought back to life before were not affected by Death. Something, changed, inside them." Zach's heart fell, but he kept his gaze as hateful as he could to force the woman to keep talking. As he glared at her, he heard a scratchy noise in his earpiece he still had in even though he had thrown his helmet aside.

"How could a power that kills instantly just no longer work, just because someone had been brought back to life? It implied, that something had changed genetically about them. Unless it is a singularity where only your Quirk does not work against them anymore, then there was clearly something else at play." Isabel sounded interested, and knowledgeable enough that it did not seem like it was as she said with her not being directly involved in the project. She continued to the boy she was secretly so glad to be meeting, though she wished they were in different positions in this questioning, "When people are brought back, their diseases, their former injuries, they're all gone. Back pain, cancer, AIDS, and maybe even mental illness, PTSD, what about a concussion?" She went from talking about things she had seen to starting to ask the boy before her if he had seen any of these things before.

"You," Zach began slowly. "What did you do?" He whispered, shaking his head at the woman.

"We had to find out," she said. "If we could harness, whatever it is inside someone you've brought back that can cure those things. We could have created a drug that-"

"Would make you millions," Zach whispered.

"And would save millions," she finished as a counter.

The four standing outside the window stared through the glass with their eyes huge. Gentle turned to the right after a second though as he saw an older man sliding up the wall grabbing at his nose and eyes he had been bemoaning about for the past minute and a half. He glared at that man who Zach had clearly done that to, but Gentle's eyes were cold and did not have pity in them for him. He shifted them back into the room, and he said in a low voice, "Sazaki. Open the door. I know you said it to trick us, but we really don't have time for this right now."

"Hey, hey hey," Yuri looked past Zach and the woman he was questioning, and the two who looked towards the window wondering what he was doing turned the other way and stared at the video screens that were cutting out one by one. "Look!" Yuri called out, and he pointed at the top left screen.

"It's Miles," Zach muttered, looking at an angle of an open elevator that Miles was walking back into. He had many more heads on his metal pipe than before, and Zach's eyes narrowed at the test subject. What happened to the courtyard monster? Did Miles kill it, or were they working together as "God's" subjects?

"23," Isabel whispered. "He's been amplified in all aspects. One of our most perfect test subjects, and now with the…"

"What?" Zach asked. Isabel turned to him, and Zach stomped forward and grabbed her by the front of her shirt with his left that still had a knife in it too. The knife was close to her throat, and he snapped, "What happened to them? What is this God they're all hung up on?!"

"I-" Isabel started. She shook her head without answering, and Zach glared furiously at her. He let go of her shirt and then grabbed her right arm with his right hand. He grabbed her hand and slammed it down into the desk, then he stabbed down his knife through her hand and straight into the table. "AHHH!" She screamed in pain.

Zach slammed his right elbow into her open mouth as she screamed, and he roared at her, "Answer the question!"

"Fuck this," Dryout reached his hands forward to the glass in front of him. Gentle grabbed him by his right shoulder, and Dryout glared towards the man on his right. "He's torturing her right in front of me. I can't just-"

"Guys!" Yuri shouted, while he was still looking at the screens in the room that no one else seemed to be focusing enough on.

Zach glared so angrily at the woman with blood coming out of the corners of her mouth. He turned his head to the screens for a moment though, watching more of them cut off so that only two were still showing anything besides static. His eyes opened wide, because the camera angle was of the first floor of the building on the surface. And in that angle Zach spotted a group of ten figures in the Army of Death's black costumes sprinting down the halls and towards the elevator shaft. They all had rifles in their hands, and Zach let out a deep breath because he was rushed for time after seeing Miles getting back in… Zach's eyes snapped open wide. "Shit! Miles is heading up to the first floor!"

"We have to warn them!" Yuri called back, and he turned and started running down the hallway.

The other screens cut off on Zach's right, and he ripped his knife out of Isabel's hand. He wiped the blood on his blade off on his costume, then he snarled at the woman in front of him, "Unlock the door, and then tell me what happened here. Or I'll leave you behind to deal with your monsters on your own."

Isabel's eyes opened wide as she heard him completely serious right there. She turned to her keyboard and bit through the pain before typing as fast as she could despite the hole in her right hand. "I've been looking into it myself, nnn," she pursed her lips and moaned out the pain. Isabel bit down as she continued to type using only her left hand now, and she kept speaking to the boy behind her who reached down for his helmet, "At first, everyone thought Dr. Jones had gone crazy. Suddenly releasing the K6 Gas-"

"What is that?" Dryout asked from outside the window, calling in at the woman who glanced his way for a moment before continuing to unlock the door.

A loud clank came from the door of the security room, and Isabel replied while turning from her computer, "A failed experiment. Down here we test to bring Quirks out to their full potentials. Not using drugs like Trigger, but methods that would last. Ways which would keep a subject's Quirk at its increased strength for eternity. A 'level-up' for any person."

"And you could sell it to the highest bidder," Gentle started. The woman spun to the man in a purple and black costume who stepped back into the security room. "Be they heroes, villains, another government perhaps."

"We wouldn't-" Isabel began.

"Why did he release the failed gas?" Zach asked, cutting off this conversation as he knew the woman was just going to lie through her teeth at every opportunity. "And you said you thought it was him, so it wasn't?"

"It was Dr. Jones' body," Isabel started while walking to the door. She turned to the boy who was waiting for her to go past him, then she leaned towards him as he rose his helmet so she would have one last close look at his face. "But it wasn't his soul."

Zach's face twitched, and then he put his helmet on and immediately pulled his head back as the static noise in his head just got louder. "…ch it's-" Chh CHH! Zach hit the side of his helmet a few times, then he turned to Gentle on his side who was glaring at him through his purple visor. "What is that?" Zach asked.

Gentle started staring in confusion at the boy who just hit his helmet for some reason. "You can't hear it?" Zach asked, though the static interference cut off in his own helmet anyway a second later. It sounded a bit like, Rebel? We have moved a couple floors up, but I doubted he'd be able to speak with us this far down. Maybe if he's only focusing on my earpiece though… that makes sense. Plus he's the best, so I shouldn't be surprised. "I think Rebel's getting in touch."

"I haven't heard," Gentle said flatly. Zach glanced at him, and Gentle glared down at the boy who just went off on his own mini-rampage. "Is it out of your system?"

"They tortured him," Zach replied. "Because I brought him back to life. They tortured, and experimented on him, and now he's a fucking monster." Gentle opened his eyes wider behind his helmet, and Zach growled while turning back forward, "No, it's not out of my system. I'm fucking livid." Should I bring people back to life? Why? Why did that have to happen?

"Did you hear me?" Isabel asked, looking over her shoulder in an exasperated way at the two who were not shocked or anything by what she just said. "I said-"

"Yes yes, his soul was not his own-" Gentle began in a sarcastic way.

"Who was he?" Zach asked.

"I looked in the old videos of Dr. Jones' recent experiments. One of his recent failures, in the end puked a black liquid that-"

"Not him," Zach growled. Isabel turned more and Zach pushed on her back before snarling at the back of the woman's head, "The person I brought back. Who were they? Did you go to Japan, and abduct someone? Are you bastards that fucking powerful?"

"They are powerful," she began, and Zach and Gentle both picked up on how she considered them "they" now. She continued, "But no, they didn't get him from Japan. Luckily," she paused after saying it, cursing under her breath for speaking in that tone about it with how angry the boy behind her was over all this. She paused, then she continued in a lower more regretful voice, "An Englishman, was visiting Musutafu for the Sports Festival. He suffered a fatal injury, but he was kept alive for some time after the attack. When he died…"

Zach closed his eyes as he listened to Isabel talk about the man, who she named in a sad way as "Richard Hawkins." An Englishman. I, I do remember him. I remember bringing him back after the Sports Festival. It wasn't Monoma… I did it. I saved him. I brought him back, for what?! Isabel started explaining how they had staged his car wreck, and Zach clenched his teeth in anger as he considered how the past half a year must have been for the man he thought he was giving a second chance at life. Why? Why did this happen?

"A lot of gunfire coming from up the shaft," Yuri reported into the team's headsets.

"The stairs are all clear if we still need to take them," Pastor added. "Up until the sixth floor at least, which is where Hue, Richie, and I turned back.

"Get moving," Gentle pushed the old man with a bloody face forward, and Dryout glared towards him for a second before turning back and glaring at Death too.

Titan, Dryout thought. He looked back forward and narrowed his eyes as he thought about that whole team of terrorists he saw arriving on the cameras. You were right. We need to work with them right now, in a situation like this, but they are not heroes. They're brutal. And, I'll need to reveal Death's identity as Zach Sazaki once I am out of this. More importantly though, I need to figure out the identity of whoever runs this place. So for now, since I don't have control over the situation, if Death were to figure out who Isabel works for and I were to hear it… Dryout's eyes darkened as he had the thought to allow the torture to continue, but as much as it disturbed him what he was considering, the look he had seen when Death threw his helmet aside was plaguing him much more. He brings people back to life for a second chance, and they experimented on him for it. Not just that the person he saved wound up having a worse life afterwards, but it was because he was saved that it happened.

Chh chhh "…nt, ch… ach!"

"Rebel?" Zach put a hand to his helmet and asked.

"The elevator's coming back down!" Yuri called out, his voice overtaking the staticky one in Zach's head again.

Zach shook his head around, I'll get better connection in a second. "Pastor, head back to the elevator. Everyone, we're heading up. We'll regroup and hopefully meet with Exodus, and-" Zach's voice cut out of their helmets, and Zach pulled his head to the side as a voice yelled in his ear.

"-ACH!" CHHH

Zach ground his teeth in pain and he snapped loudly, "What?!"

"You can… me?!"

"Barely," Zach said, figuring out what Rebel just shouted from the context alone.

"Who is he talking to?" Yuri asked from the elevator shaft he stood in front of looking up through the darkness. "Are the others tapping into our comms?" He looked over his shoulder to his left as he heard movement behind him, and he saw Zach, Gentle, Dryout, Sandlot, and the two scientists heading his way. He turned back forward though as he heard the elevator coming down and saw wires moving fast in the shaft's darkness.

"I'm in contact with Rebel again it seems like," Zach said. "Though he's coming out patchy, he's probably in contact with the others-"

"…en to me! Zach! It's not… You have… cess is dead!"

Zach froze where he was. "What did you just say?" Zach asked. Gentle turned to his right, and Isabel looked over her shoulder.

"Access is dead!" Rebel yelled, his voice coming through the clearest it had been the whole time. Zach's eyes started opening wider, and he stared past everyone in front of him and straight towards the elevator lowering down to their level. "It's not reinforcements! It's the clean-up crew!"

"YURI RUN!" Zach screamed towards the elevator.

Yuri started turning his head back to the elevator after spinning to his leader. He turned to the elevator, and he looked inside where a group of ten figures were gathered visibly through the elevator doors already opened. They had their rifles raised already, and Yuri's eyes started opening wide as all those gun barrels pointed at him. BANG Dt-dt-dt CHHHHHH…

Zach saw blood spurting out of Yuri's back, out his shoulders and his arms and his legs, and out of his head that was ripped apart by the hail of gunfire flying at the man in a dark costume. The spray was loud, as were the clanks of bullets slamming into the walls and the sound of glass breaking from the emergency lights that cut off and plunged the place into even more darkness. Muzzle flashes continued though, and Zach reached out forward only for a hand to grab him and then yank him away in the opposite direction. "Scatter!" Gentle shouted, while swinging a Gently Rebound across the hall in front of them and then jumping into it with Zach lifted in his hand.

Zach's face twisted as he stared back down the dark hallway past the heroes, past the scientists, to the elevator where a bunch of dark silhouettes sprinted out and over the body of his comrade. His teeth clenched in rage, and even as tears spilled out of his eyes, he screamed back down that way, "Yuri!"

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A/N Well, this just turned into a horror movie. Conspiracies, religious fanatics, monsters, a team of commandos, mad scientists, crucifixion and demons and oh man this chapter had a lot. Zach's trapped deep below the surface with dwindling allies and an increasing number of enemies. He's got monsters around him including one he can't hurt with Death, and a mysterious "God" somewhere in the depths... Who is in charge of this place? Will Zach and his team escape? What about everyone else trapped down there? Had some fun writing this as a bit of a psychological thriller as much as straight up horror, but anyway let me know what you think of the chapter in a review below and any predictions you have for the mysteries or who might survive/kick it in the rest of the arc! Thanks for reading!

Big fan of Death chapter 105 . Oct 29

This was a very scary chapter xD, alot different from the other ones I felt like, but I liked it... Kinda scary though

Well if that one scared you...XD Lol glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the review!