Chapter 20 - James Emanuel

The air was thick with dust and the scent of something long-forgotten. Their flashlights flickered against rusted steel, illuminating faded warning signs and broken consoles.

"This place shouldn't still have power," Kath muttered, running a hand along a cracked monitor.

Emma scanned the walls. "It's old, but something's still running."

Then-

A sharp beep.

The whirring of machines.

Emma froze. "That wasn't us."

A mechanical hiss echoed through the room.

CLUNK.

One by one, the steel doors slammed shut.

Kath spun. "No-"

SLAM.

The entrance they came through, locked.

The floor beneath them shuddered.

A voice crackled through unseen speakers, distorted and ancient.

"CONTAINMENT BREACH, SECURITY MEASURES ENGAGED."

Emma's stomach dropped.

Then-

The ground collapsed.

They didn't fall, they slid.

The steel beneath them tilted, forming a chute, slick and impossible to stop. The world blurred as they plummeted through the dark, twisting and turning until-

THUD.

They hit solid ground.

Emma groaned, pushing herself up. "I swear to god-"

Kath coughed, waving away dust. "This place really wants us dead."

Holloway shined his flashlight ahead. A hallway stretched before them, long, narrow, and pitch black.

No doors. No markings. Just endless darkness.

Emma's pulse quickened. "Where the hell are we?"

Kath swallowed hard. "I don't think we want to know."

They started walking.

The Endless Walk

The silence was suffocating. Their footsteps echoed against the steel floor, the only proof they weren't walking into nothingness.

They checked every inch of the walls, every crack, every panel, every door.

Locked.

Every. Single. One.

Kath gritted her teeth. "This isn't a hallway."

Emma turned to her. "Then what is it?"

Kath's eyes darted to the ceiling. "…A cage."

The thought sent a chill down Emma's spine.

This place was meant to trap people inside, but why?

Then-

A flicker of light.

At the end of the hall, a door stood slightly ajar. A faint, cold glow seeped through the crack.

Holloway adjusted his grip on his shotgun. "Stay close."

They stepped inside.

The Room of Ghosts

Shelves lined the walls, stacked with folders, tapes, and broken monitors. A thick layer of dust covered everything. The room smelled of metal and decay.

Kath rifled through a pile of documents. "Some of these are decades old."

Holloway's jaw clenched, " it means whoever they are, they've been doing this for a very long time."

Emma swept her flashlight across the room, then stopped.

A DVD player.

And beside it-

A tape.

Almost like someone had placed it there for them to find, but why?

Her chest tightened. "We need to see what's on this."

She powered the machine on.

The screen flickered.

Then, video.

The room was silent, save for the faint hum of the old DVD player. The grainy video flickered on the screen.

A group of exhausted people ran through a dimly lit hallway, their clothes tattered, their faces hollow. At the front, a young man, 21 years old.

Fair hair, pale skin, skinny. The light in his eyes was nowhere there.

His voice came through, ragged and filled with quiet fury.

"They lied to us. They told us we were being taken to safety, that we were destined for a greater fate."

The camera shook as someone stumbled, but it kept filming. The boy's expression was haunted.

"We thought the tests were over. We thought we won."

A harsh breath. The figures behind him ran, their movements erratic.

"But we were never meant to leave."

The screen glitched for a moment. The group passed by a wall, strange symbols carved into the steel, partially obscured by dried stains.

The boy's voice grew lower, almost a whisper.

"They experiment on us. On children. On infants."

The camera shifted for a bit showing a girl running, holding an infant.

Emma and Kath stiffened.

"They break you down. Strip away everything until you don't remember who you were. And then they rebuild you into something else."

His fingers dug into his temple as he kept running.

"We were just the ones who lasted long enough to understand what was happening."

Then, movement in the shadows.

The camera jostled. Someone in the group shouted.

The boy turned, his face illuminated by the dim emergency lights.

"They're still here."

The screen cut to static.

Then, black.

Emma leaned back, her mind racing through what they had just seen. The footage, the escape, the torn clothes, the desperation. It felt like a buried truth clawing its way to the surface.

Kath was the first to speak. "They were prisoners." Her voice was quiet, but heavy. "They weren't just test subjects, they were trapped here."

Emma nodded, still staring at the blank screen. "And they weren't alone." She glanced at Kath. "Did you see the woman? The one in the back?"

Kath swallowed. "Holding a baby."

A chill ran through the room.

Emma exhaled, trying to steady herself. "Who the hell were they?"

Kath shook her head. "Runaways. People who were supposed to be dead."

Emma frowned. "And that guy, the one speaking to the camera, he seemed important."

Kath nodded. "Yeah. The way he spoke… It's like he knew something. Like he wanted to expose it."

They kept talking, analyzing every second of the footage, throwing theories back and forth.

Then they noticed.

Holloway hadn't said a word.

He wasn't looking at the screen.

He was looking past it.

Staring at something only he could see.

Emma hesitated. "Walter?"

No response.

Kath frowned. "Hey, old man. You good?"

Still nothing.

His breathing was slow, too slow, like someone trying to hold back something breaking.

Emma took a step closer. "Walter, what is it?"

For a moment, he didn't move.

Then, he whispered.

"…It's him."

Emma's stomach twisted. "What?"

His jaw tightened. "The boy on the screen."

James Emanuel.

Emma, "that name sounds familiar..."

Kath blinked. "You recognize him?"

Holloway finally turned to look at them. His face was pale, his eyes distant. But when he spoke, his voice was clear. Cold. Absolute.

"I don't just recognize him."

A pause.

A breath.

Then, the words that changed everything.

"I spent years looking for that kid."

"I would recognize that face among millions of pictures."

Emma felt the air leave her lungs. "…What?"

Holloway clenched his fists.

"That's the missing boy."

A dead, suffocating silence settled in.

Kath's expression hardened. "No. That- that can't be right."

Emma's pulse pounded. "Walter, he was, he was, what, twenty? Twenty-one?"

Holloway nodded, his face grim.

"But when he disappeared… He was seventeen."

Silence.