CONTAINMENT ZERO: PROJECT SHADOW CODE

Chapter 18: Respawn: First Death

Darkness, complete and utter darkness, not the same darkness when it's night or closing your eyes either.

It's like a void swallowing you whole, where no light could escape, and it felt completely endless, as if time didn't exist at all.

Zamora couldn't breathe anymore, and her body felt weightless, drifting somewhere cold and silent while distant static echoed around her endlessly.

At first, she thought she was still alive somehow.

Then she realized she couldn't feel her heartbeat anymore either, and then all of a sudden the silence broke completely.

She then heard thousands of distorted, broken whispers overlapping one another.

Some sounded human, and others did not. She also could hear faint fragments of system alerts somewhere far away within the void.

WARNING:

MEMORY CORRUPTION DETECTED—

PLAYER REASSIGNMENT IN PROGRESS—

RE-S—

SSSKKKKRRRRRR—-

Static overtook the voices again.

She tried moving, but her body wouldn't budge, and then sheer panic began clawing through her chest harder and harder.

Then, out of nowhere, she saw light, and for one split second, she saw flashes around her.

She saw bright white hallways, people running, doors opening and closing hurriedly as people were scrambling around, and a woman screaming.

The woman was wearing a medical mask covering her face, and her voice was distorted.

But in that moment, she also noticed her wrists were being restrained.

"Sedation levels dropping."

Then another flash.

A man was standing behind thick glass, and he looked familiar, somehow.

But the weirdest part was that he was just watching her, while beside him, two people were arguing.

"She's not stable enough"—

"She was paid for already."

Paid?

The word echoed through her mind, painfully, and then, suddenly, all the visions vanished.

The darkness swallowed everything once again, and her breathing became ragged.

"No…" Zamora whispered weakly.

But her own voice sounded distant and wrong here.

Then she heard slow, dragging footsteps moving nearby inside the void, and the whispers immediately stopped.

Every instinct inside her screamed at once, and something else was here.

A tall and motionless shape slowly emerged far ahead through the darkness, and it was watching her, the same entity, as its face remained hidden beneath black static.

She tried forcing herself backward, but her body still wouldn't move properly, and then the entity spoke into her mind, but not very loudly at all.

"YOU REMEMBER MORE THAN THE OTHERS."

Pain exploded wildly behind her eyes instantly, and more flashes appeared.

A little girl standing beside massive ocean windows, in what looked to be a hospital, with beautiful golden lights.

A woman gently brushed crimson brown strands of hair away from Zamora's face.

"You'll understand someday."

Then another flash came, and she saw her father refusing to look at her as he signed a digital document.

"I'm sorry…." He whispered.

CONTAINMENT TRANSFER APPROVED.

Then she heard screaming, smelled blood and felt a needle pierce her neck. She gasped harshly in pain.

"No—!"

The entity suddenly stepped closer, and reality started to distort around it.

"You were never meant to survive this long."

The darkness began breaking apart afterward, and system alerts grew louder and louder.

RESPAWN IN PROGRESS.

WARNING:

PSYCHOLOGICAL INSTABILITY DETECTED.

MEMORY BLEED ACTIVE.

Then, suddenly, she felt warmth and a tingling sensation as her body came back into itself, and she could smell the rain.

Her eyes snapped open harshly as she gasped for air inside her apartment.

PLAYER ARNOLD3 HAS BEEN ROBBED AND ELIMINATED BY XYRETHIAN. LEVEL ONE REASSIGNMENT INITIATED.

"What the…?" She whispered

PLAYER XYRETHIAN HAS RECEIVED: 50,000 CREDITS

She immediately fell forward off the bed, coughing uncontrollably while her entire body trembled in fear.

Her chest hurt badly enough that she thought her heart might stop again.

The apartment lights slowly turned on by themselves.

WELCOME BACK, ZAMORA.

Soft music quietly began playing somewhere nearby, and her phone rested peacefully on the table beside her bed as if nothing had happened.

She also noticed, which terrified her most of all, that she was still live-streaming.

VIEWERS: 1,882,441

The chat moved so fast it looked almost unreadable.

[GhostSignal]: SHE'S BACK

[FoolsGold]: damn, what a rush

PLAYER ZAMORA RECEIVED A DONATION: 100,000 CREDITS.

DONATION MESSAGE: do that again, wooOOO…

[JokerFool]: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!

[VOIDWATCHER88]: DID ANYONE ELSE SEE THE VOID?!

PLAYER ZAMORA RECEIVED A DONATION: 50,000 CREDITS.

[DistrictEyes]: It followed her back.

[Xyrethian-Ashveil]: I'm coming for you…

Her blood sent chills down her spine instantly.

Very slowly, she looked toward the dark hallway leading deeper into her apartment.

She saw a figure standing there, smiling demonically…