Greetings. This story was born when I started looking into the lore behind Dead by Daylight. I don't often get hit by a train of inspiration, but when I got to thinking about all the clever ways the survivors might be able to communicate and find a way out of the Entity, I just had to write it down. Especially after learning about the Wraith's backstory. He was a good guy before he was abducted.

I wrote this a few years ago, so this is before all the new characters were introduced.

XXX

Chapter 1 Finding a Way Out

The Wraith cornered Kate among broken stones and dead grass at the edge of the infernal map. No help in sight. Her bleeding head was shoved against artificial stones and weeds. Her matted hair caught onto sharp crevices in the rock. She looked up at him with blurred vision when he grabbed his bone staff and raised it over her.

Kate stared up at the creature, breath caught in her lungs, and she expected an unforgiving strike, but… He hesitated. She saw it in his celestial eyes—maybe a flicker of pain?

The hesitation was brief, but it allowed her body to take advantage. Months of enduring this evil world had given the survivors the strength they needed. Survival was automatic at this point. She snapped to her feet on instinct and fled. She ran as far and as fast as she could, blindly ducking behind walls, waiting a couple of seconds, and then running again. If it wasn't for his invisibility, she wouldn't have to push past her limits. Eventually, she made it to the exit, and he got blocked by the spikes.

They'd won that day again. They'd all made it out alive.

Kate shuffled to the artificial fireplace, holding her stomach and feeling like throwing up. Her body hurt. It ached deeply. Trying to relax, she sat down slowly and willed herself to recover. She was Kate, the eternal optimist. She was Kate, the local hippie. She would survive, and she would thrive.

Her thoughts led her back to escape.

Was the Entity really invulnerable, or was it simply portraying itself as such?

The question haunted the survivors every minute of every day. Kate stared up at the chasm with tired eyes. A void of brown fog stared back at her. Her eye twitched. Their enemy was good at creating synthetic, dead environments, but it could never make the sky. She smiled. The Entity had no concept of what beauty was.

Kate raked her hands through the fake grass; the blades felt like strips of cardboard. She licked her chapped lips and remembered a book she used to know. In 1984, Winston Smith endured a world where his government had corrupted into the purest form of evil. It had even become virtually omnipotent, and anyone with the ability to think for themselves would certainly be found, tortured, and killed.

It was only a matter of when they got you, not if. Like the situation the survivors were in now. Each time they won, it was really only a temporary victory that delayed the inevitable.

Kate read 1984 back in high school, and its pages stuck with her long after. She started gravitating even more to her sweet life. Every time she strummed her guitar, she gave thanks for the beautiful life she lived. She breathed out a light giggle. She was glad she played when she'd had the chance because now she was yearning for her guitar again.

The Entity must have thought itself so clever, creating this world. But its plants were stilted and lifeless, void of the fresh smell of nature. The entire world was filled with a dreariness that permeated. A person couldn't live like this for long without going insane.

Winston had held on to a shred of hope—the possibility that a group called the Brotherhood might be able to overthrow this evil government. It was never disclosed if they were real or not. They were nothing more than a rumor, but he followed it regardless. This was the same shred of hope that Kate followed. She thought there was a way out—a real way out—and, like Winston, she only needed to find it.

She only hoped things ended better for her and the others than they did for Winston.

But just like in the dystopia, the survivors faced an enemy that could see everything that happened and everything they did. It could see everything, minus the thoughts in their head and maybe a few whispers. But that didn't do them any good if they could barely communicate, and the Entity knew this, and the monster was well-rehearsed at restricting their communication. Just like Big Brother.

The Entity was also pure evil like Big Brother. Her skin crawled. She didn't want to fathom exactly what she was living on.

One step at a time, she reminded herself. She'd solve one problem at a time.

They survivors found that if they whispered to each other in a way that was barely above a hushed moaning noise, and if they move their lips in a way that disguised their words, it seemed like they were successful at keeping their conversations from the Entity. Other than that, they still couldn't talk to each other whenever an enemy was hunting them.

Kate rubbed a thumb over her brow, feeling the synthetic grit. Even the dirt felt different, more like powder. She leaned against a fake tree, letting the artificial warmth from the campfire wash over her the best she could. Her eyelids drooped, and she breathed in. Somehow, someway they survived again. The only thing that kept them going was hope. Hope that they'd find a way completely out of the Entity.

Actually, that wasn't true. Fear was keeping them alive, too. Fear of whatever happened to them if they got caught by the Entity. Whatever happened to David King, Feng Min, and Quentin must have been a fate worse than death. Kate mourned their loss just like the others mourned their loss.

"Think about it," Dwight, their nervous leader, said one night in a tiny whisper. "What's the purpose of these generators? Why give us chances to escape the killers?" Some of the others were close but barely acknowledged him. "There is no purpose… unless there is a purpose!"

This comment earned a cough followed by weird looks. Adam shook his head like Dwight had finally lost it. Dwight's smile fell as he scrambled to get his train of thought back.

"The killers just enjoy playing with their food," Meg sneered. "We're their play things."

"Don't say that, Meg," Kate said quickly, the hippie within her coming alive. "Don't allow yourself to dip into a depression—you'll never make it out of there. We have each other, and we will survive."

Meg fought from rolling her eyes. Even Kate's never-ending optimism could get annoying sometimes. Meg's red hair fell into her pained eyes. Maybe Kate would need to mentor the girl. She had plenty of joy to spare. She could go a long time before she despaired, but Meg…

"But why?" Dwight continued. "Always ask why. This situation doesn't make any sense… unless it does make sense! Somewhere along the lines, it makes sense. I just know it does."

Kate offered him a smile. Then she sniffled and pointed to a spot by the fire. "You're gonna need some rest."

XXX

Kate hadn't realized it immediately, but Dwight had been on to something. A purpose. There was a purpose of some kind.

She started noticing something weird about the environment. There was flickering amongst the fake trees and grass. Kind of like a computer program and kind of like a magic veil being lifted. And it had been a while since anybody had died. Could that mean… could that mean that the Entity needed the sacrifice? It wasn't just a sick game to amuse itself?

Then Dwight noticed the flickering by the campfire. He rushed to his teammates. "I saw the other side," he whispered into Kate's ear first. "I saw real dirt! Can you imagine? Real dirt?" Then he went to whisper to the others.

The survivors felt hope swell up in their bellies. They acted like Dwight just told them he struck gold, and they'd all be rich. Kate never thought she'd be so hopeful about something as mundane as real dirt.

But then they didn't see flickering appear again for a while.

Interesting.

They whispered about the idea of hope to each other. It would help to explain the existence of the generators rather than simply having the killers kill them immediately. Did it really feed off of hope, and was the flickering a sign of it weakening? If the Entity needed to eat, then could it be starved?

Kate also started noticing something about her enemies when she'd face them. It was hard to be observant while running for her life, but she tried. And one day she noticed that they were real. Real as in not created by this disgusting world. There was much about them that wasn't really real—their appearance was a purely hideous fantasy, but she saw the real person underneath it all. She could see it in their eyes—the only part of their bodies that hadn't been fully corrupted by this disgusting world. She especially saw this in the Wraith. Somewhere past their bloodthirsty nature, she saw that they were real.

She shared this information.

"I can see it in their eyes," she told Dwight. "I think there are other things going on that we can't necessarily see right away. I think that the killers were brought here, too. I think that they used to be real people."

Dwight stared at her slack-jawed. "Great. So, what do we do with this?"

Kate looked at him intently. "What if we were able to communicate with them? We could recruit one to help us."

Dwight's eyes grew wide. "Are you serious? How would we convince one to help us? The Entity would either hear you, or they would report it to the Entity."

Kate feared that the thing could hear them now, even though they were barely speaking above a whisper. She swallowed at the possibility. It was a chance she had to take. Communication was key. There was no other way out. They needed help. They needed a Brotherhood. And a killer would have to be it.

"If we continue playing by the Entity's rules, we're going to die. We need to try something else."

He looked so confused. "But a killer?"

"We could at least try. And be careful with your facial expressions."

He appeared hopeless. "But how?"

"I think I have a plan. A way to communicate in a way that the killer could understand, but maybe in a way that the Entity won't notice. If they used to be real people, they'll understand. The next time we encounter the Wraith, I'll know what to do."

"Why him?"

"I can see it in his eyes," she said.

Dwight gave a mirthless chuckle, which was unusual for his character. "I've never seen anything in any of them."

XXX

I hope you liked this introduction. The rest of the story is written and I plan on updating soon.