Delusions of Safety | Little Nightmares | Mono x Six

Prologue

        Six crawled through the slimy tunnels, her bare feet barely making a noise as she trudged along. Her trusty lighter rested in her raincoat pocket, but she didn't dare to use it. Not here.

Down here, the endless maze of pipes and passages were kind to no one.

Six, however, had mastered their twists and turns and knew exactly where she was in the vast irrigation web, a unique talent as far as she was concerned. Her small frame moved swiftly from pipe to pipe, avoiding the puddles of black ink that slithered with unseen foes.

As she crept, she suddenly came to the revelation that she could now see the glint of the sludge below her, indicating a light not far ahead.

She slowed when she heard whispering voices, and a second later she rounded a corner and saw them.

Nestled in an intersection where several pipes met, a group of children were huddled around a campfire fueled by damp paper and rotten flesh. They all whipped around at the sound of her footsteps.

There were five of them, all wrapped in cloaks with their eyes covered much like Six herself.

Finally, some allies. A foolish part of her whispered. She promptly corrected herself.

Not allies, casualties.

She shook her head slightly. Recently her thoughts had been louder than usual. It seemed that the deeper she traveled into the heart of the Maw, the harder it was to stop herself from bringing back memories that she had sought so hard to bury.

She slowly stepped into the firelight. It flickered and danced around the room, dimly bringing to life the metal walls and the Eye etched into the ceiling.

Six hated the Eye, it had followed her everywhere ever since she had been born in this wretched reality. She sometimes wondered if it was worth all the trouble to come here, just as she wondered if the figures before her remembered who she once was.

You're weak, you shouldn't be here. Her inner monologue warned her, but she justified her presence by the need for warmth.

One of the figures, a girl in an orange shawl, gestured at Six to come and join them. Six took her place silently.

"What's your name?" A child in a shredded green hood asked. There was no time for greetings or pleasantries. The room echoed with the drip, drip of the blackness.

"Six."

Green asked again, "What do you remember?"

Six was silent. It wasn't an uncommon question. Many of the remaining children had lost their memories or at least buried them from the trauma and chaos of the world. Hope fades like memories, slipping through your fingers until you are left with nothing. Nothing but stories, because stories can't hurt you.

You were small and weak before. She heard herself say. They should be grateful they don't know what you've done to be strong.

"It's okay, maybe we can help you remember." They offered, but she stayed quiet

Six kept her mouth shut, and eventually the other children moved on to another conversion about their own memories, and of the horrors that they had separately witnessed. Six couldn't seem to listen.

What had she seen? Things that others miss, their chests bulging with rotten little secrets that make you want to run. And she did run, because she had been a coward.

You still are a coward, a coward who killed their only friend.

And just like that, all the memories came flooding back, and Six could do nothing to stop them.