The Serpent

Azra pressed the snake button, and the elevator went down. "For once it actually moves like an elevator," he said softly to himself. After a few seconds of descending, he heard snapping as if the nonexistent elevator cables were cut, and the hunk of metal fell. As it gathered speed, Azra felt himself lift off of its floor in free-fall. He half-hoped that it would stop quickly enough to kill him with the impact. He and the elevator were moving at seemingly impossible speeds, likely falling in an area almost devoid of air resistance, when the floor suddenly fell out from under him. The elevator stopped as Azra kept falling into some sort of abyss, eventually being surrounded in darkness. Still falling, he felt the air get thicker and slow his descent as he saw a light below him. 

The air became thicker and thicker still, slowing his fall to something around 40 miles an hour by his estimate, by the time he was able to see where the light was coming from. A window. Or rather, a wall of glass. He barely had time to see it entirely before smashing through it and flying sideways into an abandoned office building, sliding across a desk and sending an old computer hurling against the wall to smash into tiny pieces. He barely had time to hit the floor before sliding against it into the wall, making a person-shaped hole in the drywall. 

Once he got his bearings, he got up to see that the building, despite still having its lights on, looked like some sort of abandoned skyscraper from the 90s. He peered out through the window, looking down at an empty city street about 20 stories below him. "I've seen some crazy shit, but I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever fallen sideways," he thought. 

He pulled the revolver from his waistline and yanked the tanto out of the wall. The lights in the building switched off.

Footsteps. 

"Whoever that is had to have heard me," he thought, unnerved by the calm and slow pacing of the steps accompanied by jovial whistling. They got louder and louder until whoever it was sounded as though he was right in front of Azra, and the whistling stopped. 

"Hey there," a figure said with a grimace as it appeared out of nowhere, inches from Azra's face, before disappearing again. 

It seemed as though it was just a face, bloodshot eyes, sunken in cheeks, and skin painted white with streaking tears drawn in black from the eyes. Its eyelids were cut off. It had shoulder length hair that looked as though it was permanently blown back by extremely fast winds. 

Azra, startled, scrambled backwards as the light turned on again with his gun and blade ready, only to bump into someone as he backpedaled. Without skipping a beat, he thrust the blade into the figure and turned, placing the gun to his head. It was a boy, probably 18 or 19, with dirt smeared on his face. He looked half-starved and his clothes were ragged. The look on his face was more surprise than fear, but both were shown in spades.

"What? Why?" the kid groaned, seeing the long blade that punched through his gut. 

"Holy fuck, who the hell are you?" exclaimed Azra, frantically checking the corners of the room while keeping an eye on the boy.

"I've been trapped here since I was a kid," he said as Azra laid him down against the wall. "I'm fuckin' bleedin', man! Are you gonna be able to help me?" he asked. If this boy says he was trapped here since childhood, either he's lying, Paz is lying, or time is severely warped in this building.

"All I know is, that knife's gonna have to stay in you, buddy. I pull it out, and you'll bleed real bad. Try not to move too much, okay?"

"Okay. Why the hell you gonna stab someone 'fore you even look at 'em?" 

Azra was still checking corners every other second, listening for footsteps.

"Just calm down, okay? Can you do that for me? I need you to slow your breathing. In, out. Real slow, you hear?"

"I… I hear you," the kid groaned as he tried to obey Azra's instructions. "Why you keep lookin' around?"

"You didn't fuckin see that thing?"

"What thing? I just saw you and you stabbed me, that's all."

Azra became suspicious. How was this kid able to appear out of nowhere like the elevator or the face? Or did he just sneak up on him, and if so, why?

Azra grabbed the handle of the tanto. 

"I thought, I thought you told me you wasn't gonna take it out! You bastard!" 

"Yeah fuckin' right kid, who the hell sent you, huh?"

"What? Why are you hurting me? I thought you were gonna help!"

"I'll help just soon as you answer me some questions, boy. When did you get here?"

"I was five or six, I think. I never did learn how to read, I know that," the kid said in pained breaths. "Let go o' the damn knife, please!"

"You'd be in shock right about now if you were real. Who else you seen in here, huh?" Azra obliged the kid despite his suspicions, letting go of the handle and pointing his gun to his head.

"You gonna kill me now?"

"Only if you give me a reason. No who else have you seen, boy?"

"Some Mexican lady and an old man. And someone lookin kinda like you, but not as angry. And he had black hair instead of blonde hair." Whoever this boy was, he's seen the rest of the group. But it was unlikely, in Azra's mind, that he was actually a boy instead of another creature.

"How long ago was that?"

"I dunno, I never got me a watch or a calendar or nothin'. I just had this whole buildin' to myself. I's about half the height I am now back then, though."

Anywhere from 8 to 12 years, by Azra's estimate.

"You know the way out?" 

"There's an elevator down the hall that gets you up an' down, but the doors outside is locked an' I ain't seen no one on the streets since I got here." 

That was about all the information Azra would be getting from the boy. If he was real, he'd bleed out without medical attention - Azra didn't have the time, and the boy wouldn't have the know how if he's been trapped here since childhood. If he was an illusion, it was best to kill him before he came back to take revenge on Azra.

With a sigh, Azra yanked the tanto out of the boy's belly, and before he could ask why, the boy's throat was slit in one swift motion. He couldn't scream with his severed trachea as the blood soaked the floor in front of him, so he just stared in confusion at Azra, wondering what he did wrong.  Azra wiped the blade on his own shirt, because the boy's was already soaked. 

He turned a corner and followed the hall down to where the boy said an elevator would be, and he was right. There it stood, this one just as fancy as the last. The doors opened to reveal the face from before, now with a body to match, much like the body of the last creature. Azra fired a round right between its eyes as the thing ran at him with an unsettling smile, only to see it vanish into smoke. He looked around to see if it had somehow rematerialized, then proceeded into the elevator cautiously. Sure enough, there was an alligator button. It was the only one there. Azra pressed it. The doors closed, the elevator flipped upside down, and Azra's back broke his fall as he landed on the ceiling, jamming glass shards deeper into him. The left wall of the elevator fell away, just as before, revealing the chess room.

Paz sat there playing chess by herself, and upon noticing Azra, ran towards him. "The hell happened to you?" she asked worriedly, seeing the bloodstains and various cuts and bruises from the glass. 

"Fuck. This. Place. And fuck you too, Paz!"

"Woah, look, I know you just now saw some shit, but that's no reason to -"

"It's been years, dammit! Like a whole goddamn decade or some shit! Maybe longer!" 

"What the hell are you on about?" 

Azra trudged forward, exhausted. "I met someone," he said, chuckling nervously. "He told me all sorts of stuff. And he knows you, oh yes he does."

"Who? Who did you see?"

"Never gave me a name. Pour me a drink. Now."

"Don't you need bandages or-" 

"Pour me a damn drink, Paz, and we're gonna have a talk."

Willem opened the door, asking "Is there a problem, Azra?"

"Stay the fuck outta this, old man," said Azra, frightening Paz as she poured his drink. No one talked down to Willem like that, not even him.

"Now look, Azra-" Willem was cut off as he walked towards Azra by a revolver being pointed in his face.

"You're the most expendable one here, Willem. You and I have a pretty similar skillset. Sure, you might know a bit more number theory than me, but we both know all the tensor calculus and complex analysis necessary to make the little lady's project work. So don't think for a second that I'm scared of puttin' one right between your eyes. Go back through that door, and give me some fuckin' privacy."

Willem did as he was told, a sight Paz wasn't used to seeing. 

"There was a boy," Azra began. "You probably saw him when he was about 10 or so. Just you, Willem, and Henryk were around at that point. The other 3 must've died off quick, huh? What were you doing in that office building? The abandoned skyscraper?"

Paz knew what he had seen. "The snake floor," she started. "Didn't expect you to find it so quick. Explains a lot, though."

"Answers. Now."

"You're bleeding, Az-"

"Answers!" he screamed, getting up from his chair. She was struck silent. He let out a soft, worried laugh as he slowly sat back down. "How long have we been here, really?" he asked with an unnerving grin.

Paz sighed. "Fifteen years. Give or take a few months."

"Why did you lie to me?"

"Every time we told you how long it had been, you freaked out. And your sanity is important for this place."

"I'm freakin' out right now, if you couldn't tell. And what the hell do you mean about my sanity? I ain't crazy - just really, really fuckin' angry."

"Your state of mind affects the structure of the facility. The more unstable you are, the more unstable it gets. This room, and the labs annexed to it, are the only parts that don't shift. As for the rest, well, you've been known to have breakdowns from time to time. See stuff that ain't there. That's when the facility gets the most dangerous, and the most unpredictable."

"What kind of sick game is this?" asked Azra, frustrated. "As I get more terrified, the place gets more terrifying?"

"Not exactly. It only gets worse as you lose touch with what's real and what isn't."

"I know what I saw, Paz. I know what's real. You weren't there."

"What happened to the boy, Az?"

He paused, and glared at her. "Don't you dare."

"What happened to the boy?"

"Now you better shut the fuck up right now. You know just as well as I do he was one of those things."

"Did you see one of those 'things', Az? Did it physically attack you, or just appear?"

"Shut. Up. I mean it, Paz. You ain't seen shit. You don't know what's out there."

"I know what's out there, dammit Az! I fuckin' know because I had to go out there to find you! How do you think the boy in the skyscraper saw us, huh? Why do you think there are only four of us left now?"

"Wait, wait, what do you mean about the four of us?"

"Only one of the group died to an experimental creature. The other two, well… they were like that boy."

"Don't try to pin this shit on me unless you know damn good and well what happened, Paz."

"Oh, I know. I know what it looked like to see Oscar's skull get beaten in with a hammer, and I still remember the look on Paula's face when you shot her. I remember that because I'm the one who found you. Because the boy helped me find you. The boy you killed. So do you really want me to talk about what I know, or do you wanna accept that you don't have all the facts?"

Azra stayed silent for a while. It wasn't even a minute, but it felt like forever. "No more lies. If you don't wanna tell me something yet, fine, but no more lies."

"Deal."

"Who am I kidding, I don't even remember if I can trust you."

Paz put her hand on his arm. "You never gave a shit about someone you couldn't trust. But you cared about me once. You trusted me."

For the first time since the most recent memory wipe, she saw something resembling remorse in his eyes. This time had been worse than the last few. They did a number on him.