Chapter 2- Predator Release
695 Words
WARNING:
PREDATOR RELEASE INITIATED.
For one horrifying second, nothing happened at all.
Then—
SCREEEEEEEEEECH.
A high-pitched scream tore up from somewhere beneath the prison. Every prisoner froze. The sound didn't belong to a human, and it sounded hungry.
Panic exploded a beat later. People surged down the corridors, shoving each other aside as screams erupted from the lower levels.
Zamora's heart hammered against her ribs.
The prison lights returned in violent flashes of white and red. Then she heard it.
Footsteps. Not human—too fast, too heavy.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Something was climbing.
"Oh my god…" someone whispered.
The system continued, calm as a weather report, as if none of the screaming were relevant data.
SURVIVE UNTIL THE EXIT GATES OPEN.
TIME REMAINING: 23:41:12
"EXIT GATES?!" a man shouted. "WHERE?!"
Wet ripping sounds echoed from below.
Then—
PLAYER GUEST451 HAS BEEN ELIMINATED — GAME OVER.
PLAYER GUEST992 HAS BEEN ELIMINATED — GAME OVER.
PLAYER HOLLOWKING HAS BEEN ELIMINATED — GAME OVER.
The deaths came too fast, one after another, like someone flipping through a deck. Panic was curdling into something worse.
"They're dying too fast—"
"THIS ISN'T REAL!"
A woman bolted back into her cell and slammed the control panel, again and again. The door began closing. Hope flickered across her face.
Then—
ACCESS DENIED.
The door reopened.
"No." She backed away. "No no no no PLEASE—"
Something fast moved beneath the floor grate.
Zamora stepped back without deciding to. Prisoners climbed over each other, scrambling for higher levels. The lights flickered, and for a split second she saw it—long black appendages crawling across the ceiling beneath the grates, gone again before her brain could fully process what it had just seen.
Several prisoners screamed. "What WAS THAT?!"
Down the corridor, the dark-haired man finally moved. Unlike everyone else, he wasn't panicking—if anything, he looked unimpressed, his crimson eyes sweeping the prison like he was searching for something he'd misplaced.
Then his gaze locked onto hers.
Pain exploded through her skull again. More fragments, faster this time.
An inferno consuming a city. Blood staining snow. A hand reaching for hers.
Then a voice. Clear. Urgent.
RUN.
She inhaled sharply and caught herself against the wall. Across the corridor, the stranger's expression darkened—like he'd seen the same thing. Heard the same voice.
Neither of them looked thrilled about it.
Then—
The screaming stopped. Not on their floor. Below them.
Every scream below them simply vanished, and the prison fell eerily silent. One floor. Then another. Then another. The silence climbed steadily upward, floor by floor, like something was eating its way through the building from the bottom up and taking its time about it.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
The system spoke again.
PLAYER COUNT UPDATED.
The entire prison froze.
CALCULATING…
CALCULATING…
CALCULATING…
A pause. Then:
LOWER THAN BEFORE.
"What the hell does that mean?" someone whispered.
Nobody got an answer. Nobody wanted one, really.
BOOM.
The lower levels exploded upward. Steel ruptured. Walls shattered. People screamed, and something enormous launched itself through the collapsing corridor.
Zamora caught it only in fragments through the dark—long skeletal limbs, pale skin stretched far too tight over a frame that had no business moving that fast, a mouth crowded with jagged teeth, and eyes that glowed a flat, luminous white.
A prisoner barely had time to scream before the creature hit him. The impact painted the wall red.
PLAYER GUEST221 HAS BEEN ELIMINATED — GAME OVER.
The creature lifted its head. Silence filled the corridor.
Then it smiled, and copied a human laugh.
The sound echoed through the prison, and it was wrong in a way Zamora felt in her teeth.
"Oh my god…" a voice whispered nearby.
That was the first time she noticed the girl beside her—blonde, around Zamora's age, knuckles white around a length of broken pipe like it was the only thing keeping her upright.
"We need to move," the girl whispered. "Now."
The creature jerked its head upward. Toward their floor.
The corridor went dead silent.
Then the system spoke, calm as ever.
PREDATOR HAS—
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