A/N: Thanks for your patience in the month since I last updated. After a lengthy battle with some holiday season writer's block (that I finally won by sitting down, listening to creepy music to get in the Backrooms spirit, and just forcing my fingers to start typing words), I'm finally back with the next chapter. Please read, review, and enjoy!

I do not own Marvel or the Backrooms.

"Run."

"Wait, wait, just hold on," Jessica said. "'It's not human.' What the hell is that supposed to mean? We're being chased by a…a mouse? A tiger? A dragon? What?" Even after the events that unfolded under Midland Circle, she still didn't entirely believe that dragons were real, yet the way Matt had said "not human," she figured the thing following them wasn't some run-of-the-mill creature.

"I can't tell what it is, but the way it's running…I've never heard a creature move like that before," Matt replied. "It's like – it's not on the floor anymore."

"What, it's flying?"

"No, it's crawling up the walls. We need to go, now."

There wasn't really anywhere for them to go. There was still no end in sight to the nauseatingly yellow hell, and at the same time, the place was so open that, however this thing was tracking them, there was really no way for them to hide.

"Come on, whatever this thing is, we can take it," she said. "It can't be worse than those goddamn ninjas." Damn, she'd hated those ninjas.

Suddenly, at the far end of her vision, back the way she and Matt had come, something scuttled across the ceiling. She only saw it for a second before it vanished behind a wall, but that glimpse was enough – she didn't doubt that it was inhuman, like Matt had said. It was all black, and no human could crawl across a ceiling as fast as this thing had – or at all, for that matter. Well, except maybe that European Spider-Man knockoff with the black suit, whatever the hell its name had been…Monkey Knight or something?

"You saw it, didn't you?" Matt asked.

She blinked. "How the hell-?"

"Your gasped, your heartrate increased, and you took a step back," Matt said.

Had she?

"It's getting closer," he continued. "Come on, let's go."

Matt took off in the direction they had been heading, and she followed him.

"What did it look like?" Matt asked.

"It looked like a giant, black insect crawling on the ceiling," she said. "I don't suppose you keep an oversized flyswatter in that suit of yours?"

"Sorry."

"Well, then I don't suppose it's one of these new Avengers that keep popping up out of freaking nowhere?" Seriously; a new Black Widow, the guy with those magic rings, the guy in the white suit who was at that big kaiju fight in Egypt, female Thor, and that wasn't even counting the whole new group of superheroes that had showed up to petrify that giant man in the Indian Ocean.

"It's not She-Hulk, I can say that much."

He couldn't be serious. "There's another Hulk now too?"

"Two more, actually. The original Hulk has a son."

"Of course he does." What happened to the good old days when it was just the six main Avengers and a handful of other enhanced people that stayed off the radar for the most part?

Matt grabbed her arm and pulled her behind a wall. He crouched down and put his finger to his lips; she crouched next to him.

Jessica spread her arms; what were they trying to do here? They still had no idea how this thing was tracking them, and in that case, hiding behind a wall seemed pretty damn low on the list of tactics they could use to try to hide. Hell, had hiding behind a wall ever worked for anyone in the history of hiding?

"There's some sort of strange energy coming from the far side of the wall," Matt whispered, so quietly she could barely hear him from a foot away. "However that thing's finding us, maybe it'll help hide us."

It was really sad that hearing a sentence as absurd as "There's some sort of strange energy coming from the far side of the wall" hardly surprised her anymore. Whether she bought it or not was another matter entirely, but after the war with the Hand and hearing some wizard blurt out crap like "If I tell you what happens, it won't happen" during the Battle of Earth, apparently she'd gotten used to a certain level of absurdity in her life.

A faint scuttling coming from the hall they had been in snapped her out of her thoughts. It sounded like someone was running towards them, but their legs weren't able to bend, so their feet were hitting the ground at sharp angles. But that didn't sound like something a human should be capable of doing. Like Matt had said, it wasn't-

A blood-curdling scream came from the far side of the wall. She clamped her hands over her ears; the wail felt like someone was twisting a knife into her ears. It sounded like a shrill cry from a wounded animal, but like everything else in this place, something about it was…wrong, was the only way she could describe it. Next to her, Matt was hunched over with his ears covered too, his teeth gritted.

She couldn't imagine what it must sound like for him.

The creature entered the sliver of the hallway Jessica could see through the doorway from where she was sitting. It had a wiry body made of two strands of…something coiled around each other. Its legs were just as thin; they were able to bend after all, but only at one point close to the thing's waist. Its arms were freakishly long, reaching almost to the floor, and its head was disproportionately large compared to the rest of its body, with some sort of snout-like protrusion on its front.

The thing stopped howling and stood still. Jessica held her breath. The thing turned from side to side like it was trying to follow their scent. After a few seconds, it shook its head and continued down the hallway. It resumed its distorted howling, but the unsettling sound grew fainter by the second. Matt tapped Jessica on the arm with one hand and pointed to the far corner of the room with the other. It was heading that way, away from them. The room didn't have any additional entrances in that direction. Hopefully their trick had worked.

In about a minute, she could hardly hear the sound anymore. She glanced over at Matt. He nodded, and they slowly stood. He pointed through another doorway across the hall. "That way," he whispered.

Made sense. The last direction they wanted to go was the same one that creature had taken, and they probably had a higher chance of finding an exit if they didn't go back the way they had come.

Or maybe the way out was staring them in the face.

She tapped the wall and whispered, "The other side of this, you said there was some sort of energy coming from it? Could it be some sort of disguised portal, like the ones that wizard used to bring everyone to that battle with Thanos?"

"I don't like the feel of it," Matt said. "It's like it's…corrupted. The other portals didn't feel like that."

They hesitantly stepped into the hallway. Jessica looked up and down the hall, but saw no sign of the creature. "I don't hear it," Matt said. "It's gone."

They dashed out of the room, but as soon as they did, the creature lunged around a corner further down the hall and scrambled towards them.

Jessica leapt behind the wall on the far side of the hall, while Matt somersaulted back the way they had come. What the hell happened to the thing supposedly being gone?

Matt grabbed his batons and swung them into one of the thing's legs. They cut off the bottom of the leg, but several fuzzy tendrils erupted from the stump and wound themselves around one baton. Matt yanked on it, but the tendrils ripped the baton from his grasp and spread over it. The baton slowly dissolved into the same black substance as the rest of the creature as it formed a new leg. "Damn," Matt muttered.

Jessica kicked the creature in the side, snapping one of the coiled tendrils comprising its body in half, while the other stayed intact. It turned and swung one of its long arms towards her, but she ducked under it. Matt leapt up and grabbed it around the neck, pulling it backwards. The creature grabbed him with both arms and threw him over its head. He spun in midair so he landed on his feet. The scrawny monster rushed towards them, the half-dissolved baton lodged in its leg thudding against the carpet.

"We'll take it together," Jessica said. "I'll go left, you go right." Matt nodded, and they each headed in a different direction.

The creature turned to follow Matt, who grabbed its left arm and pulled on it. The creature staggered around, and Jessica leapt to deal a blow to its head. Her hand sunk into its flesh for a fraction of a second. Its insides were disjointed and slimy, like it wasn't actually one creature but a conglomeration of smaller creatures writhing about. She shook off her hand as soon as it left the creature. Its head spun around, but it still managed to shove Matt into the wall surprisingly hard with its free arm. He pushed himself back off the wall and into the creature, knocking it across the hall. Jessica dropped to the floor and slid underneath the creature, then aimed an upward kick at its abdomen. The creature stumbled towards the wall they had been hiding behind, and at the last second extended tendrils from its fingertips that wound around Matt's arm.

The thing vanished through the wall Matt had gotten that strange feeling about, and pulled him through behind it.

"No!" Jessica grabbed for him, but her fingers closed on air, a fraction of a second too late. She thrust her arm at the wall, but the only result was the sound of crunching drywall. What the hell had happened? The wall had been a portal just a second before, and now it was solid again?

Jessica pounded on it. "Come on, open, goddamn it! Shit!" Her fist broke through the wall, but all that was waiting on the other side was the room they had hidden in. She sat on the floor and stared into the hole. Loose flaps of tattered wallpaper swung back and forth until they finally hung still.

She was alone again. All by herself in this nightmare. Then again, wasn't this how she'd always been? Alone? She'd gotten used to it, liked it, worked better on her own.

But if that was the case, then why was she still staring at the wall, wishing Matt would come back out of it?