The First One - A Changed Story

/ RECORD 9 /

My walk back to the room with the wolf drawing as deadly silent, not even a single soul on view. Nobody, nowhere. The room with the drawing, when I had finally arrived, had a big puddle of white goo where the corpse had attacked me, the rotting smell was nowhere to be found, but instead, I could hear a faint voice past the room, Mizuko's voice. I didn't want to subject myself to more of that Knight's torture, I didn't want to be reminded of the fact that I lost Mizuko forever, but sheer denial made me take a step into the room, hammer and gun equipped, were this to be a trap, I'd get this gunshot to count.

I opened the door and took a few silent steps downstairs, hearing the voice of Mizuko speak as I walked.

"...now, don't worry, there's usually plenty of people in the library. Most of them are just test subjects chilling around, and if you're lucky enough, there will usually be staff along them! Just try not to-"

When got closer to the source of the noise, it abruptly cut off with a click. I could hear something hurry somewhere as I heard the loud bang of a thin metal door.

In the 5x5 small room on the bottom of the staircase was a glass door, different than those metal doors I've been going through for the past hours or so, some boxes, and lockers, all located in the cramped corner below the staircase. The well-lit staircase stopped being well-lit in this floor for some reason, only being illuminated by the lights past the glass door.

Before I looted the boxes, I looked around in search of the cassette player, it wasn't at sight, and knowing something had just toyed with it, I didn't want to spend too much looking with it before addressing the main problem.

{ "Hello?" } I said quietly from a distance away from the metal lockers.

{ "...My name is Ken Jones. I'm a human, but I'm not gonna harm you, alright?" } I said holding the gun firmly in my hand. I know I just said I wasn't gonna harm them, but I had the hunch that it could have possibly been Knight making a fake cassette player record using Mizuko's voice, it was a really long stretch, but I couldn't expect anything less of this guy.

( "...English?" ) Said the voice inside of the lockers, soft, quiet, and with a slight Japanese accent. It had to be a boy.

{ "Yes, I speak english. Who are you? Can you come out?"

And so... The figure walked out of the dark locker and walked towards the light, it was a boy a few years younger than me. He looked tired, weak, or something the lines of such.

( "...Sato... Sato Colin."
{ "Your name is Sato?"
( "My surname is Sato..."
{ "Right. Japanese names... Alright. My name is Ken Jones if you didn't pick it up before."
( "Your first name is Jonzu?"
{ "Eugh- first name Ken, surname Jones."
( "Ken?"
{ "There we go."

To quickly brief the reason as to why the confusion, Japanese name format is Surname > Name instead of the usual Name > Surname.

{ "What are you doing here?" } I said as Colin turned on a lightswitch, bringing light to the small room. I suppose he had shut the lights off in hopes to fool these monsters.
( "...I woke up in a lab room, some white goo thing tried to attack me... Then... a dog...
{ "Dog? How did it look like?"
( "Long arms... Whi-"
{ "Ah, shit... Wait- how'd you get past the warehouse?" } In case you forgot, I had locked the warehouse door to avoid Knight from going in.
( "71421... It was written on the floor, I placed it on a machine and the door unlocked."
{ "I suppose I'm glad that you're okay."
( "I'm not... A big wolf set me in a puzzle, and... I blacked out from the exhaustion after escaping. I just woke up here, I really don't know how long I've been knocked out..."
{ "Ah... Fuck. Isn't that just lovely..." } I sighed and walked towards the boxes to loot whatever was inside of them. { "...I suppose I can't leave you here."
( "Yeah, let's go together. It's been tough outrunning these kidnappers' pets by myself..."

{ "...Kidnappers?"

( "Last thing I remember before waking up was getting ganged up by a bunch of people. Weren't you dragged here as well?"
{ "No. It's really complicated."
( "Oh?"
{ "I'll tell you later, for now... Let's focus on getting out of here, alright?"

And so, I escorted the guy into the next room, a small, beige-colored room with some sort of miniature tree in the center, positioned above of a grass rug, bookshelves in the corners of the room, and a checkered floor to add on to it. There were some oranges in the tree, Colin stopping for a while to eat some up, he tried to share some with me, but I really couldn't get myself to feel hunger, not with all of this chaos going on.

From the boxes earlier, I had obtained yet another jar of "Beast Fodder" and yet another gun case, I ditched the gun and took the four darts inside of it, 3 being ZZZ Darts, and the fourth being a brown-colored "Wither Dart", the dart having a tag with instructions to go along with it reading "DANGER. USE IN INFECTED AREA FLOOR TO DISINFECT."

Our small break was interrupted when a loud glitched TTS voice blasted through the building, the message once again playing out both in Japanese and English:

"WARNING: UNEXPECTED SAMPLE BEHAVIOR. ALL PERSONEL, EVACUATE THE FACILITY. REPEAT. UNEXPECTED SAMPLE BEHAVIOR, ALL PERSSSNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN-"

And with yet another loud glitchy earrape, the audio cut off and I heard a click from one of the doors. I walked to them and gestured it to open: Locked. Colin tried to open the other one, the glass making it clear that it was some sort of balcony. Thankfully, it was opened. From the locked door I could see three guys with guns running away from... Something. It wasn't clear as to what it was, because in fact, there was nothing following after them, at least that was my conclusion until I saw for a small glimpse how something white fell from the ceiling and covered one of the persons' top body. One of them dropped something into the floor, which conveniently landed near the door: A bottle of pills, purple pills.

After witnessing whatever had just happened, there was nothing much for me and Colin to do than to find a way into said room. Using his experiences with the previous locked doors he's been encountered (most of which I closed) is that there had to be a password somewhere which we would have to introduce into the device controlling the door, which was located in plain sight in a side of one of the bookshelves.

Those three guys I saw... They were clearly wearing more than just shorts. They had to be workers here, if I get to talk with them or not would mark the difference between learning if it's truly possible to revive Mizuko or not.

My friend once again helped me making Colin's art. Keep note that this is not a journal; I'm writing about things that happened a long time ago.