AN: For those who know Worm, yes, I wrote one of those scenes. It is a bit like a rite of passage, is it not? Writing that at least once...
Chapter 1
As I stepped into the run down school that was Winslow High, I did not notice the warning signs. In my defense, my three bullies had kept pulling back their hateful attention shortly before the winter break.
My guess was that they were busy planning parties, shopping for new clothes and planning out how to use their vacation time in the 'best' way possible.
So poor little Taylor Hebert – that is me by the way – got some room to breathe after over a year of constant harassment.
Nothing I had done or tried to do helped me to escape the abuse, so of course they held all the power still. But since that meant that they themselves reduced the pranks they kept playing on me, I had the foolish idea that maybe Emma, my former best friend, had finally moved on with her obsession over hurting me.
Maybe I could finally talk to other people again, walk without looking over my shoulder every step, hand in assignments without them going missing or being handed in under one of their fucking names.
Sophia Hess, Madison Clements and, of course, Emma Barnes.
Those were the names of the members of the Trio, the people responsible for making my life hell. Each of them was specialized for a specific type of abuse – sorry, I mean a type of 'prank' of course.
Sophia was on the Trackteam, strong and fit. She was black and yet none of the more or less obvious Nazis at the school fucked with her.
Yes, we had those. Nazis, I mean. One of the villain gangs in town, the 'Empire 88' - well do I really need to explain more? The name is clue enough.
Back to Sophia: Her philosophy was simple. She tried hard to be the meanest bitch in the school, aggressive and belligerent. I am talking about physical violence here.
Why is distinguishing that important? You will see.
She shoved me around, punched me, tripped me, all the classic prank stuff.
Moving on to Madison. She was small, cute, and just simple an angel that could do no wrong. She mostly did superficial things, childish and simple.
Fitting for such a shallow doll of a person.
She put glue on my seat, ruined my work with a multitude of ways. If she had to empty her pencil sharpener of shavings, I could be sure she would walk by my table and accidentally drop some right on my paper. Or my pencil case. Or my back.
She also stole my homework when I was not looking, emptied juice into my bag (always just enough to do damage but not enough for me to be able to call her out to a teacher) and was a nuisance in general.
Honestly, she was kind of pathetic, but she still did her part in making things harder for me.
And then there was Emma Barnes.
The ringleader. The head bitch. My former best friend.
The one that hurt the most, emotionally.
She used all of my secrets against me, scratched at wounds that I tried to hide, humiliated and stabbed me in the back as much as she could. Sophia was her enforcer, Madison was her minion, but she was the only one that could truly hurt me.
And why did she do those things to me, her former best friend?
I do not know.
The moment we entered high school, she abandoned me. But she did not stop there, she completely turned tracks. Instead of a best friend, I suddenly had a hated enemy.
I had done nothing, I was not even in town before – I was in some summer camp.
She did not explain herself to me either, just started the abuse the next time we met.
I was not one of the popular girls. I was awkward, thin. My mouth was too wide, I had no curves like Emma did. The stress and despair made me put on some weight, so I had a small belly. And everything I did do, or anything I did not do was used as ammunition to hurt me.
It had been hell.
So my first mistake was daring to hope.
I should have known that they had something horrible planned for me. I even told myself countless times not to let my guard down, no matter what – a lesson learned in the ugliest of ways, by failing again and again to see the specific angle of abuse coming. And yet I had still relaxed, without noticing it, and these Harpies took advantage of that, like so many times before. But this time something was different.
For this time, the cruel 'prank' was so much worse than anything they had done to me before. I was screaming, crying begging, in hysterics.
They had filled my locker with disgusting filth, without breaking the lock or leaving a mark. Used tampons, the filth that had been in the girls bathroom trashcan, it all had been emptied inside. Nobody had emptied them out in a while, they had been overflowing and disgusting.
And as I opened my locker, already fearing the worst because of the smell, I could not help but puke as I saw bugs skittering trough the filthy mess that had been prepared for me.
It did not end there, they never stopped.
As I was still bend over, vomit dripping off my chin, a powerful hand grabbed me from behind – Sophia, it had to be – and shoved me in my own locker.
And then they closed the door and locked me inside.
I had cried before. Of course I had. Some remarks were just too hurtful, some secrets just too strong when poised against me.
But I had never begged.
They had never broken me.
This time?
This time I shattered.
I would have done anything to get out.
I offered any favor.
I would pay them with the meager savings I had.
I would drop out of school.
I would have done anything.
Of course nobody listened or stepped in.
I didn't really expect them to either, but I just couldn't stop myself. Panic is a powerful emotion, and I wasn't able to form a coherent thought. Or rather, I was only able to have one single thought:
I
needed
to
get
out.
OUT.
Please.
Please.
Please let me out.
And then suddenly I WAS out. Filth spilling from me, bugs gnawing on my skin, falling out of my vomit and blood stained clothes.
I scratched them off me with bloody hands and jerky movements.
A desperate hope to GET CLEAN, to separate myself from the filth.
Shivers racked my body, uncontrolled sobs forced themselves out of my mouth.
The sheer relief, pared with the fresh horror I had just went through, it made me a blubbering mess.
It took me minutes to regain any semblance of sanity, to calm down enough to take more than panicked gasps. To slow down the violent shivers.
And then, finally calmer, I noticed just how strange my situation was. My first thought was that finally somebody had helped me, that maybe the cruel prank was over for now, and I readied myself for more verbal abuse.
Anything but the locker again.
But my locker had not been opened.
At least not in the way it was SUPPOSED to open.
Instead I found myself in an unfamiliar room, made of reddish stone. It was a strange mix of technology and rustic: strange torches lighted the room, but tables and shelves of clean steel lined some of the walls. The door looked like a heavy stone construct out of a fantasy novel – which I stopped reading in my free time early on, when the abuse had just started.
I turned around and realized I, myself, had fallen out of one of the big shelves, which was definitely not the backside of my locker. It resembled one, sure, but I just had a very intimate experience with my locker, and that was not my former prison turned torture chamber.
But just to make sure I walked next to it, and looked between shelf and wall – and there was a little bit of space, the two objects not lining up perfectly. I could see through to the other side.
There was no way to get into this metal container, but the side I fell out from.
What was going on? Was I in shock and hallucinating? Was I in something of a fever dream, and my body was still in the disgusting filth inside the locker?
Was I dying?
Touching the cool metal, and the even colder, coarse wall, I doubted my very senses.
But it felt so real.
My limbs ached, the stench made my stomach roll again, the bugs still littered the room and were slowly spreading out from me, a wave of disgusting insects.
I was still in pain from my bloody fists and the tiny wounds the critters had gnawed into me.
If this was a nightmare, then I had no way to make myself wake up.
And if it wasn't a nightmare?
That would be a nightmare just by itself.
I carefully let my eyes scan the room, through the filthy mess my glasses were.
I had cleaned them as well as I could, but everything I had was so disgusting.
There was one thing in the room of course, that stood out from the rest.
I had noticed it nearly immediately, but my disbelieving eyes stopped my brain from truly understanding just what was in front of me.
A suit of Power Armor.
It was mostly in a dull green, with orange and steel colored highlights.
I say steel colored, because it looked subtly wrong and a part of me knew, that this was not made of steel at all.
I couldn't see any tools lying around, or parts that seemed unfinished, which meant that this suit looked finished, ready to be used.
It was obviously in storage here.
That could mean, that whoever owned this facility may come back rather sooner than later.
It probably was in a Tinker lair deep underground or in a mountain. That would explain both the rocky walls and the other stuff in the room.
Tinkers were Parahumans – people with superpowers – that could create wondrous machines and technology. Physics rejecting objects, flying cars, laser rifles.
You can think of it, some Tinker can probably make it.
But how did I get here? And should I stay here? I had no idea if I was supposed to appear here, but I doubted it.
Why summon a random girl, and drop her in a room devoid of anything else alive, filled with storage containers and a probably very, very, expensive suit of Power Armor?
If they came back and noticed me, would I have a chance to explain myself, or would I just instantly get shot or erased or something?
But was leaving not also a bad idea?
Tinker Lairs were notorious for being filled with uncountable traps, kill switches, cameras, automated defenses and so on, that only people in "the know" could traverse without getting at the very least gravely injured in the process.
So staying AND leaving seemed to be very risky choices.
But maybe there was a hidden camera in this room anyways?
So they may have sent someone to pick me up already.
In that case it was probably wise to appear as non-threateningly and cooperative as possible.
I had wished for a mask on reflex, but on closer inspection, a mask would have been very stupid – Capes, Parahumans and their goons, those wore masks. Me not having a mask should make me seem even more harmless.
Or it could make me look like a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, but I really, really hoped they had no member that resembled my appearance.
Being confused with a member of one of the most notorious, horrible and simply evil Parahuman-group would doom me no matter what.
So I resigned myself to waiting in the room for someone to pick me up.
I picked a spot without any bugs, and sat down on one of the empty tables. I was kind of curious about the other shelves and containers – if I got teleported to one of them by something inside (probably), then what could be in the other ones?
But I was scared off a hidden camera, and if I was not supposed to appear here, the Tinker would probably be even more annoyed if I start rummaging through his stuff. So I restrained myself and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And after what felt like hours – actually was hours, judging by my growling stomach and because my shivering with my wet clothes in the cold air had started to include the occasional sneeze – the door started rumbling as something heavy seemed to press against it.
I looked up, and prepared myself mentally (or tried to at least) for a confrontation with a pissed of, protective Tinker.
Said Tinker was, in fact, not what knocked the door down.
Instead it was a hulking, ugly beast. It looked like some people said Satan would look like, before the Endbringers created a much more real and direct threat to humanity than some religious figure.
He (?) was easily over two meters tall, with black horns giving him even more height. Red skin and muscled limbs ended in cruel claws and hooves. In that short moment It (?) gave me the impression of a tank made of flesh, not an animal, but a biological weapon.
I didn't get more than those few seconds. Before I truly realized what was happening, before panic could grab me in its iron fist again, the creature resembling a Minotaur noticed me with a bellowing roar.
And simply ripped me to shreds.
It hurt, it hurt so much, but at the same time it was over so quickly, that the pain was not able to really register.
The experience did not break me simply because it was so short.
Why do I mention this? Why can I even talk about this?
Because after blackness took me for a brief moment, after the blinding pain had been abruptly cut off...
I fell out of a very, very familiar locker, made of metal, standing in a cave of reddish stone.
With bugs again biting me, crawling over me, and me trying to shake them off as fast as possible.
I died, a real, true death, of that I was sure. The pain, the sensations, my memories, those had been too real to fake.
If somebody could fake them and used that to torture me, I was doomed anyways.
What was happening to me?
What was this Nightmare I found myself in, again?
And where, in the fucking hell was I?
After the shock had mostly passed, I started to get a little hysterical again. Now that I realized what me being back here meant for me.
This thing was out there, and this room wasn't save at all. If it was a creature, created by the Tinker, then they definitely didn't care if I lived or died, or wanted me dead to begin with. Maybe it was some sick experiment? How could I get through this? What could I even do?
For a moment I eyed the Suit.
But as I tried to move it, it wouldn't budge at all. It was so heavy. It felt like it was one solid block of stone, maybe even heavier. A thin, weak 15 year old with a frog belly was no match for that.
Giving that venture up as impossible, I started looking through the shelves, boxes and whatever else there was that I could use.
Maybe I was supposed to somehow find a weapon to kill that creature? No. I shuddered just about the memory. There was nothing, no weapon or tool in this room that would be enough for me to kill it. Maybe the idea was for me to STOP it, not kill it? To survive long enough until I was teleported away again?
The locker had scarred me, and the memory of my terror was still fresh. But so was the memory of this red monster slaughtering me and ripping me to pieces. The locker was a cruel place of Terror, but at least they wouldn't let me die in there, right? (Right?! Please, please tell me they are not trying to kill me and will let me out if I make it back.)
The end result of my efforts was... sobering. Nearly everything was locked. The things that were not locked, seemed completely useless.
If I even understood what they were supposed to do or be to begin with.
I now had one small Hand-drill, a few Screwdrivers of different sizes, some tape. Some screws, nails and a Hammer. Some paper. A dull knife, that was more like a pointy slice of metal (It didn't even really cut the paper). And that was it.
I half heartily tried to force one of the drawers open, but had no success in doing so.
I hadn't really expected it to, the drill was nearly out of Power anyways, and those containers seemed to be of quite a good quality.
Which was a bit strange, now that I thought about it, why have such good storage units, and then have such shitty tools? They looked like nobody had taken care of them ever, and just used them until they didn't work anymore.
The stuff we had at home, that Dad used when we really needed to fix something, was better quality than the things I had here. And we were really not well off. But that's why we took care of our stuff. Maybe that was the reason why? They had so many good tools, that losing them to misuse didn't really matter?
Thinking about Dad and our house made me so homesick.
We were not really talking, hadn't been for quite a while, ever since Mom died.
But he was still my Dad and I loved him. And I missed him. Would I ever got out of here? Would I ever see them again?
I was so caught up in my emotional distress, that the door being smashed down behind me caught me completely off guard.
Not that it mattered, I once again fell to the claws of the red Minotaur.
And once again I woke up, falling into the room.
This time I was faster, the pain still fresh in my mind. I purged thoughts about home as much from my mind as possible and collected my meager findings with quick steps and sure hands.
I knew which drawers would open with a bit of work and which were a lost cause.
After I had done that, I started trying to open the door, with no success at all.
There was no keyhole or something, it was just a slab of stone with strange red markings. I had seen some metal bits on the backside in my previous death, but opening the door from this side was seemingly impossible.
There was no space to look through to the other side either. If not for the fact that it reached a bit in the room, and that the big hinges of stone where on my side of the door, I probably would only have realized that it was in fact, a door, when the Monster smashed it down the first time.
But that knowledge was kind off pointless for me. I was trapped here, waiting for a creature coming to kill me, a foe I could not defeat.
Was this my fate? Getting killed, just to be reborn in the place I would get killed in later? No way of escape?
I had to suppress my desire to break down in tears.
Maybe I could run by the creature right when it smashed the door?
That could work. That had to work.
Please work.
I clung to that faint hope while I was waiting directly next to the door.
Just to get knocked down by a shower of stone, the Monster squashing my body into a red paste after it noticed me lying stunned on the ground.
The second time, I stood further away, which didn't help me much either, because I was not fast enough to escape the claws once it noticed me.
Neither was I the third time.
Or the fourth.
Or the fifth.
And on the tenth try, terrified of the pain that would come, close to abandoning hope, I ducked beneath the first swipe and made it out of the door.
I could see into a big corridor, leading straight for quite a while, which I was at the end of.
The shock that I actually did it, the elation and the unfamiliar environment made me hesitate for just a split second, but that was enough for the beast behind me to turn around and skewer me from the back.
But as I was once again embracing the pain and the blackness that would follow, I was still in good spirits.
It was possible.
I could do it.
I would do it.
No matter how many tries it would take me to get to this point again.
I would not be trapped here.
I would not.
Die.
Here.
I can do this.
I stopped counting tries after a while.
Dodging the first attack was not the only problem. The Minotaur didn't attack in the same way every time. It didn't spot me in exactly the same time frame either, or always attacked at the same speed.
With every smash of the door, the stone splinters would be slightly different. Spots that were save a try ago suddenly got hit by rubble.
Finding my footing was not easy. Sometimes I got unlucky and got knocked down, or I tripped and stumbled. Depending on the spot I chose and the flying rubble, I had more or less time to react aswell.
Every mistake was punished by pain and darkness.
But with every mistake I learned.
With stubborn determination I kept at it.
I didn't take one of the 'resets' to take a break.
I refused to stop until I had done it.
I changed my strategies, tried which way of sprinting gave me the most secure way to move.
I started to recognize the tensing of the muscles of my opponent.
What attack would follow?
Would the Monster roar first? Just charge? Charge while bellowing at me?
How would it position before every action?
What did it react to, what ignored it?
After a while I was usually able to survive more than one attack.
I got further and further in the corridor before I got caught and gutted.
The beast was fast in a straight line, but it was not agile at all. Turning took it a lot more time than attacking me did.
Charging in a straight line it could do very well, but turning while sprinting?
I was better at that than the Minotaur.
I started to use the room and the door to my advantage, making it miss as many charges as I could before it got me.
How many charges were too greedy?
When should I stop baiting it and flee?
Had it more stamina than me, if it kept running at full speed while I just had to jump, duck, roll and slide awkwardly out of the way?
While I was trying to tire it out, I started to realize something.
I was getting faster.
At first I explained it with my growing knowledge and reflexes.
But that latter thought made me stop in confusion (and get killed once again).
Why could I even train my reflexes?
As far as I understood these resets, everything was changed back to how it was when I first appeared. That's why I started calling them resets to begin with.
Which meant, that I shouldn't be able to train reflexes at all. Neither should I be able to keep my knowledge of my deaths. And yet there were obvious results, strong differences between my first few tries and now.
And then I noticed something that really shocked me.
It was in a 'run' where I tried to use my clothes to obscure the vision of my enemy.
I had no time to worry about nudity, freezing to death or other things like shame.
It was not like I survived even close to half a day anyways (a few hours till the Creature came knocking, and then minutes after that, if I was really lucky).
So while I was preparing to make something I could throw at the beast out of my disgusting, stinking clothes, that's when I noticed it.
I had no frog belly anymore.
It was gone.
Gone.
I actually had subtle muscles on my limbs instead now.
I didn't look like Sophia did, not even close, but I looked at least kind of fit.
How?
The last time I had eaten something was at home, before the Locker.
That had to be SO many hours away now, weeks at least.
How could I become more fit when everything else reset? Where did my body take the energy from?
If I was able to adapt between resets, did the monster too?
I discarded that thought as quickly as I came up with it. If it was learning too, then there wouldn't be such a stark difference to notice between tries. It would adapt too, my ideas would be countered sooner or later.
But that didn't happen.
So it was something that was happening to me specifically.
I had so many questions, but I doubted that anybody would answer me if I just asked the air.
I tried it anyways of course – what did I have to lose after all – but silence was all I got in return.
But this discovery made me even more motivated. I could become better, would become better, until I was good enough to make it out.
It was at worst a game of chance, but a game I could influence.
I felt like time was on my side now.
And I had time.
As much time as I would need.
And then, then came the run where I made it further than ever before in the corridor.
Everything had fallen into place this time. The rubble didn't hit me, the Monster had seen me late and was turned a little bit away from me. It had charged, missed, and lost Its footing on the rocks, crashing into the shelves.
And I was running, running for freedom.
Behind me, I could hear heavy steps, I was of course getting chased, but I had a headstart.
And my stamina was a lot better than it had ever been before in my life.
The walls were not all stone.
The further I came, the more red rock was replaced by walls of steel and cement, by man made walls.
Torches stopped appearing. and instead the unpleasant shine of industrial lights filled the space.
It felt a bit like I imagined a government facility would look, that had been strictly build by regulated standards. No personal touch, just everything clinical and impersonal.
And then, because of my excitement to have finally done it, also because I had never made it as far, well...
I got lost.
The single corridor met an intersection, and now there were two paths I could follow, left and right. I chose left, and after only a hundred meters, there was another intersection. I could again go left or right.
But I also could keep following the path I was on already.
I chose right this time, fearing that walking a straight line would make it easier for the monster to catch up to me.
And then there was another intersection.
And another.
I had lost track of where I was completely.
It was a gigantic maze. Whoever had build this facility had not intended for anybody to find their way anywhere, unless they already had a map or something. But the strangest thing was, that there was nothing.
The few rooms I could enter all had a similar look to them, the same layout, everything cleaned down, nothing lying around.
Other times I spied through the windows or security glass. Those rooms all looked like things got stuffed away in a hurry. Paper squeezed through gaps of drawers, typical office equipment like pens, markers and other small objects were scattered around the place.
Giant storage racks had been mostly emptied out, computers to control the machines with seemed to be running still.
The further I came from the room with the suit (I think at least, it was really hard to have even a tiny idea of where I was in relation to my starting point), the less organized things were.
It was how things looked in apocalypse movies, where people only had a small amount of time after the warning before the danger got to their place.
There were no bodies though.
There was nothing.
But if the computers where still running, when there was not too much dust, then it couldn't have been too long since they left the stuff here, right? What had happened here? A Tinker Experiment gone horribly wrong?
Well not that horribly wrong, or someone had cleaned away the dead.
Even though I had died so many times, in such brutal ways, I still had to suppress a shudder.
The thought that I was walking through a place where everybody – or at least some people – had died, and the most someone did was cleaning up the bodies, not even shutting down the computers and equipment?
It seemed wrong in some primal way, like that just made no sense.
If you had the time and means to clean up bodies in a way, that there was no hint left of there ever being some in the first place, then you should also be able to take the seemingly valuable equipment with you.
If you did not have time and means to clean up bodies – then where were they?
I carefully made my way through the seemingly endless halls. My limbs were hurting, my stomach was growling every few steps and I was starting to feel a bit dizzy.
How long had I been alive (and awake) this run? A day? Two? Could I starve still? What would happen then, would I still reset?
Or would a death, that was not by the hand of someone else, be enough to truly kill me?
Like the Butcher?
He was a Villain that would invade the mind of his killer, pressure them and drive them insane, until they too became the Butcher. And the next time someone killed the new Butcher, he too would (together with the old one) invade his killers mind. There had to be dozens of people screaming, shouting and hollering in the Head of the current Butcher.
I really did not envy him, even though he also got the powers of all previous Butchers.
Someone invading my mind? The last and only thing the Trio could not take from me? I think I would rather die.
But now I was truly afraid of a permanent death by starvation.
I had a chance to get out of this place, the hope of escape being possible.
Maybe as I was about to give into despair, I would have embraced a way out of the endless loop of pain and terror, but not anymore.
I would show this fucking Minotaur-thing that it could not break me.
I would get back Home and hug my Dad with all my strength.
I would show it.
I would show them.
The fire that thought had lit in me sustained me for a few more hours, but my stamina was truly flagging now.
My throat was raw and parched, but I did not dare speak loud in fear of something hearing me.
I had to take more and more frequent breaks, lean against the walls and fight the desire to just take a short rest. The fear of the demonic creature somehow catching up to me did motivate me a bit, but I got killed so many times that it was no real terror anymore.
The exhaustion I felt was more real right now.
My looming death in the near future was more like a test you had to take. One that you didn't study for and kinda forgot. But it was mandatory and now you realized that it would be pretty unpleasant, but there was no real way to truly avoid it.
I had become numb to it.
What kept me going afterwards was the desire to use as much as possible from this run, to get as far as I somehow could.
And I really did not want to starve and maybe truly die, but I was pretty sure I still had quite a bit of time before that became reality. Dehydration was also a danger of course, a bigger one than starving actually, but that too still took some time.
I pushed myself to my very limit, maybe even beyond that, until my strength left me and I stumbled and fell down.
This time without getting up.
While I was cursing my stupid, weak, frail, useless body, I let my gaze wander over everything I could make out, just to see if there was anything that could help me somehow.
And then I realized how close I was!
At the end of the corridor, there seemed to be an exit!
I wasn't sure, because of the distance and my still dirty glasses, but beyond the door was something that seemed like the outside.
I could only make out red stone, no metal walls or ceiling.
And I was lying here and couldn't get my stupid body to move.
While I was hoarsely cursing, eyes watering with frustrated anger, my eyes closed for just a moment.
I somehow passed out without really noticing it.
I did notice the wake up call I got very well though.
This red ugly fucker.
Killed.
ME.
AGAIN.
SO CLOSE TO THE FUCKING EXIT.
