9 Days Before
The Ninth Day

Mivel shuffles his legs within the sleeping bag from the lack of space, he sluggishly opens his eyes—waking up.

Residue of grogginess shadows him as he sits up, scanning the room around him.

Mivel notices an absence in presences—seeing empty sleeping bags littered across the floor with everyone's appliances within their spaces next to them; not a single individual within the building.

Leaving Mivel with a confused daze as he lifts further out of his sleeping bag, he turns to face Rin, feeling slight relief that she's still sleeping comfortably next to him.

Mivel rests his hand on Rin's shoulder-blade, giving it a gentle shake in order to wake her up, she doesn't budge—still sleeping soundly, he takes another look around and attempts again.

Rin wakes up muffling some-kind of gibberish language, she darts her head around with weighted eyes.

"Wake up, I think something is going on." Mivel whispers to her, giving her another shake.

Rin slurs her speech, prompting herself up right with one hand.

"What…what's the matter?" She looks at Mivel, her eyes fully focusing.

"Everyone's gone." He showcases the vacant building, leading Rin to notice that they're the only two present inside the building.

Rin scuffles, setting herself upright, peering at the devoid space—she looks at him, then looks in-front of them again, shifting her body to look behind them: confirming that everyone had seemingly vanished while they were asleep.

"Where did everybody go…?" Rin steps out of her bag, standing up to peer a glimpse around a corner, lifting her foot as she leans for the inspection.

"Maybe they're all outside doing something?" Mivel says to himself, thinking that it's unlikely, but still made the suggestion to speculate about the sudden abandonment.

"Maybe…? The hosts could've done something to lighten the tension—like a Barbecue " She does her best to bring the answer into a stand point.

"But then, why didn't they wake us up, plus I think we could've at least heard commotion happening around us." He takes a few steps forward, bringing his arms up to indicate the odds.

Rin folds her arms, looking down at her feet as she goes through possibilities inside her head, her vision tunneling; meanwhile Mivel takes a stride towards the bar where he got the waters from.

She looks up, her arms still folded in disbelief—staring at Mivel as he leans over the bar, his head skimming from left-to-right, he turns around. "Everything is still here!!" He places one hand to cuff the side of his mouth like a megaphone, and with the other pointing behind him with his thumb.

Rin softly squints in bewilderment, adding what Mivel says to the pile of oddities: No refugees, no hosts, everyone's belongings are still organized, and the host's valuables along with their appliances are stranded here.

"So where did everyone go" She murmurs to herself, taking her glance down again, her stomach turning in knots remembering the eerie stare that the person was giving them after their night terror.

"Why that now?" She murmurs again, questioning the thought.

Mivel makes his way back to their spot, standing next to Rin as he scratches his head, debating if they should explore the building to get a fair estimate.

"I think we should take a look around, maybe they're in a different part of the building or something" Mivel suggests, trying to convince himself.

Rin looks up, the feeling in her stomach weighs heavily as she can't get the person's anguishing stare out of her mind, "yeah—we can take a look around." She says stuffing down the thought that's causing turmoil to build as she bites down on her lower lip in distress.

Mivel takes his glance from the stairs leading towards the upper-section of the building and adverts it to Rin, she puts her arms down and seizes the lip biting—her distress still echoing on her face as she moves past him.

"Where do you wanna start?" She turns around to face him, asking the question, her glance shifts over to the location of the person's sleeping bag, having the thought to arise, winning her attention.

Mivel looks to where her vision is pointing, seeing the ruffled, scrunched up sleeping bag where the commotion from last night had started. "I was thinking of taking a look up stairs" he says, pointing to the flight.

She nods and heads towards the stairs, Mivel tightly follows behind her, catching up to her to walk by her side.

They pass several disorderly sleeping bags, having Mivel looking at the direction of the person's sleeping bag, remembering the screaming that they were giving off and then the unnerving gaze moments after.

The two turn the corner and walk up the flight of stairs, their shoes tapping against the marble finish.

Mivel and Rin turn to the second flight, noticing that the lights are still off. When they reach the second floor, Mivel finds the switch and flips it on.

The lights flicker before they steadily cast a monotone white across the floor, having the two already confirming that there's no sign of life to be found.

Regardless, they tread lightly down the hallway, scanning the rooms as they go by—seeing unmade beds, luggage pressed up against the walls and left over food unfinished.

Rins disturbance worsens, ramping the thought from earlier, dragging her down as they prevail forward.

Something about the individuals ghastly leer and their screams brings the belief that something is unnatural at play here, however she does her best to think logically even with the consideration of the things they both saw.

Rin wants to remain loyal to the thought that this could be easily explainable as the air around them thickens.

With their progression they noticed a pattern of people's food being barely touched, their luggage either being to the side or being ready to put into drawers.

This behavior breaks as they reach the end seeing clothes being scattered across the room, drawers fully opened with pieces of clothing hanging on the sides of them.

Mivel's gaze drifts around the room as Rin stays back, hunching herself forward bringing her arms to a fold as her brewing thoughts tug at her.

He firmly places a hand on the door seal, leaning into the room; Rin glancing behind them and into rooms towards their left.

Her glance explored inside a dark room, the glass door tightly shut, the light from the hallways only making a thick line visible having the bed that's pressed up against the glass being painted with a soft gray.

The light from inside flickers, giving her a glimpse of a kid's drawings being pinned to the walls, taking in what she thought she saw a circle with a bunch of stick figures surrounding it.

Rin leans her head over to Mivel, still eyeing the darkened room.

"Hey, I think…" Before she could finish, Mivel adds that he might have found something inside the room.

She tears her fixated gaze away and enters the room that Mivel had taken the opportunity to dig in, he picks up a dairy under the name Samantha.

"Come on, don't read someone's diary." Rin says, distress still lingers inside her chords. The light behind them flickers again, capturing the attention of Mivel, but he quickly goes back to the diary, opening it up halfway.

Rin does a defeated sigh, looking back at the room she was previously scanning, leaving the same thought pulling at her mind even more.

"Log: 121, My adopted sister has been having these strange night-terrors since we got her, it's kinda decreasing the general vibe, I asked her about it and she refuses to tell me." Mivel humphs, scanning his finger to the next section.

"Hey, do you think…that maybe" Rin looks at the dairy, then back at the other room, her same thought escalating as she ties in a connection between the four things she finds eerily similar: her night terror, this dairy, the rough drawing, and the individual who had a terror downstairs.

Mivel doesn't notice her attempt to convey and continues reading. "Log: 124: She's at it again, my little sister woke me up, screaming about a person named Korith, thankfully my mom and dad rushed into her room to comfort her; she seemed pretty shaken up about it. "

"Mivel, Do you think that maybe that person's night terror could have something to do with this?" She says a bit louder, with more haste to her tone as she squeezes her stomach, he looks at her— getting ready to tell her something, but his attention gets locked behind them.

"What the…." Mivel's jaw drops, seeing that the light is steadily on, displaying the mediocre drawings.

Rin turns around seeing them, the picture with the stick figures surrounding a circle wasn't her imagination, her eyes drift to the other drawings.

Mivel drops the dairy, walking out of the room—staring at the art that's littered across the wall. His head moved from picture to picture.

Rin sees that the art gets more detailed the closer it gets to the floor, her eyes widen, covering her mouth—wanting to puke.

Mivel sits there in silence as his vision meets the drawing Rin had seen, she races off, her panic thumping echoes out the hall, leaving him seeing an exact replica of what Rin had described in her night terror.

With a mummified expression, he steps away ripping his gaze from the pinned art and chases after Rin.

He darts down the flights of stairs, catching a glimpse of her bolting out the twin doors, the air around him stiffens as the void within the room encloses around him.

Mivel races forward, bolting out the doors—leaving the unsettling vacancy behind, seeing Rin sitting down on her legs on the padded grass, the grass scent rushes to him as he gets closer to her.

"About your dream…" He inches closer, seeing that she has her face in her palms and noticing a fresh pile of puke in-front.

Mivel takes his hand, laying it gently onto her shoulder, "I've had one too…" he looks up to the surrounding buildings, noticing a silence around them.

Rin is motionless, recalling the night terror, the portrait, the commotion from last night, and now—events that she experienced.

He feels an eerie, dead silence: hearing no dogs, hearing the devoid of children playing, and hearing the absence of bird chirping. Mivel takes a large inhale—still smelling the grass underfoot and approaching rain.

"Come on, lets get inside before the rain starts to pour down on us—we can board up the windows and doors" Mivel hoists Rin up, placing each hand under her armpits, erupting her post.

Rin continues to look down in a distant haze, he takes her hand and begins to head back into the building.

Wind picks up, blowing the Merry go-round across the street, its squeak tinges into the open field, swing-sets start to rattle, having its metals scraping against each other making a screech following the squall.

They shut the doors behind them, Mivel aids Rin to their sleeping bags and starts to pile others surrounding them—making a nest out of them.

He strolls behind the bar, grabbing several water bottles, snacks, and other appliances and brings them over to their spot.

Rin looks up, eyeing the door then to Mivel. She quickly paces towards the back end of the building grabbing some equipment.

Mivel sees her stride of determination, her face spelled with an iron focus as she goes towards the door with wooden boards, rope, a drill, and some screws.

She grabs the rope, tying loops around the metal bars then gives it a firm knot to finish the process. Rin holds it—tightening it as she moves against the wall, finding a sturdy pipe to tie the other end, sealing the door.

Mivel takes large appliances around them, sliding it to the door to barricade it for good measure.

He does a swift glance at her, shifting it to where the back section is located, then the stairs. Mivel jugs to the backroom, scanning the area—walking down aisles to find the item he's looking for.

While Mivel is searching for the item, Rin takes the boards and drill gun to board up any windows she sees.

He finds what he's looking for at the far end, grabbing a bucket of paint and a few brushes he saw next to it.

Mivel paces out—going to the flight of stairs, taking them to the second floor.

Rin looks back at him from drilling, seeing his figure vanish as he goes to the higher floor, wondering what he might be up to, but the attention cuts back to her project.

Mivel continues his fast-walk towards the room where the drawings lay, taking a moment to decide if he wants to unpin them from the walls and stuff them into the dairy he found in the room behind him.

He decides the attempt, laying down the paint bucket, but to avail the door is tightly locked—unwilling to break the glass to get the drawings.

Mivel changes his mind, peeling open the paint can, seeing sky blue. He takes the brush and does a big scoop of paint, some of the blue dripping down onto the floor as he swipes the brush on the glass.

Rin finishes her first few windows, scanning the room for any more, seeing a small window at the very top of the wall she's gazing at.

"Going to need a ladder for that.." she speaks to herself. Going to the backroom in search of the ladder.

Mivel takes a step back, seeing the entire glass door and wall painted with the sky blue, his pants and shoes patterning with the paint as well. He puts down the brush into the bucket, taking his leave.

Rin sluggishly steps out of the back rooms with the ladder, placing it against the wall where the small window is at.

"Hey Mivel, I'm going to need your help for this!!" She hollers at the ceiling, but soon sees Mivel walking down the flight of stairs, covered in paint.

Rin looks at him with a raised eyebrow as he walks towards her.

"Do I even want to know?" She says looking at the smeared paint, then back up towards the window.

"Probably not." Mivel goes over to the ladder, positioning himself to secure it.

"Okay." Rin climbs up the ladder with the drill in hand—screws in her other pocket.

"Can you hand me that board" She points to the plank sitting beside him, he grabs it—climbing the first few steps to hand the board. Mivel takes his steps down and repeats the security.

The drill guns purr echoes through the building as she screws into the wood framing the window.

"Alight, that should do it." She steps down, jumping off of the ladder as she reaches the few remaining steps.

The two take in their work, scanning the room. They head over to their nest of sleeping bags, plopping down onto them.

Rin grabs a bag of chips that Mivel stocks beside them, digging into the delicious treats, Mivel does the same taking a snack of his own.

While they're enjoying their snacks, rain starts to peddle onto the building, hitting the front boarded windows.

The two look at each other for a moment, then they go back to enjoy their treats, trying their best to ignore their inner thoughts about the events.

{●}

Strings of rain wakes up the sleeping Chandra, she gets up taking a look outside—the fireplace having remains of burnt sticks as she gazes out of the shelter.

Her vision drifts to Dealix, only to realize he isn't there, she bolts up, her thumping heart taking Chandra to fully wake up.

With a quick shuffle, she bulldozes out of the shelter—stepping into the rain to scan her surrounding area, Dealix isn't anywhere to be seen.

She races back into the shelter, her thoughts wondering if he had ditched her like Mier and her past friends had done, but taking a glance within the shelter she notes that all of his belongings are still here.

Her curious, yet panicked expression pans to outside, scanning the trees within tunnel vision from the shelter, Chandra grabs her bag, putting her arms through the straps and takes her momentum outside.

"Dealix!!" She yells for him, making her way deeper into the forest, eyeing any disturbance made from his travels.

Nothing pokes out to her as she continues north, hoping that he would at-least prevail in this direction.

"Where did you take off too?" Chandra mutters to herself, gripping onto the backpacks straps, looking down as she detaches herself from reality, feeling the pain she once felt from her past friend's abandonment.

"I don't think he would do that…" continuing to speak to herself as she spots a departure of twigs—broken from what she would imagine someone's foot had caused. With speculation she looks down, seeing a slight sliver of a shoe print.

She moves a few pieces of debris from bushes—glimpsing another portion of the print being framed on fallen, yellow-ish toned leaves. In-belief that it's luck, she straightens herself pushing onward in the direction on where the print was pointing, going diagonal to north.

Chandra hones her focus for other leads for tracks, seeing another clearing of foliage debris, she paces towards it with another crouch on arrival, the rain pelting her coat hoodie causing an ambient static to her inspection.

She places her hand within the patch, seeing what's left of the print by the rain smudging its details. Chandra looks forward, scanning the ground, spotting a trend of footprints stretching on-words.

Since she knows what to look out for, spotting the tracks will be less of a hassle during the rainfall, she gets back up treading the path of tracks who she's certain is coming from Dealix.

With a dedicated focus, she carefully makes sure she doesn't lose attention to the tracks, every few steps marking a footprint, as the rain intensifies the tracks become harder to distinguish from splotches and tracks.

"Such as my luck" she says straining her eyes to tell the difference, she takes a pause at the latest track she finds—studying it as water starts to puddle within them, Chandra looks back seeing the progress she has made, unable to see their shelter—unable to go back.

She continues to follow the harsh estimates of the tracks to a small opening where the prints vanish from her sight, not even its small pillow up from the ground can be seen throughout. Having that as the only clue.

With the opening Chandra comes across, she gets another idea to look out for any broken branches that he may have snapped during his traversal through the forest, Chandra takes a step into the opening—the rain's sound has stopped.

Everything around her becomes a dead silence, leaving the air with an unnerving thickness to it.

She could still feel the weight of the rain coming down on her, along with seeing the splashes of droplets happening around her, yet the sound is null-in-void.

Chandra stands in the opening, engulfed in the eerie silence as the air becomes increasingly dense, having a tinge of paranoia brewing inside of her—the feeling of being watched surrounds her.

Without a second thought, she bolts ahead to where the moss is growing, aiming her back into going north.

Sprinting to escape the sensation she eventually broke out of the forest and into a street—having the sign of life brought back into her eyes. The sound devoid follows her out, yet the dense thickness has been reduced—still echoing the unnerving of it all.

Chandra begins her jog across the street and strides into the small town.

Going through the town, it seems to follow the guide of silence, she darts her vision from window to window, noticing that the buildings lack the presence of people.

Chandra's questions about the absence, wondering if this is an abandoned town or that the folk here share the same underlying tone as Dealix's disappearance, considering that the unnerving feeling had followed her here.

She takes a moment to breathe it out, trying to lead to other possible scenarios other than the two she thought of on the tip of the iceberg.

Chandra resumes her tour of the town, coming across a set of buildings she believes would make a great place to rest, she travels through the parameter, placing her hands on the twined doors of one of the buildings, giving it a firm push but the door doesn't move.

"Is it locked?" She mutters, taking a step towards the windows to scan inside, however to her attempt she sees that the windows have been boarded up.

With a thought in mind, she goes around the building in search of another way into the building, her luck seems to come around after finding a door at the back.

As Chandra is exploring the building she hears muffling of people talking, she goes towards the commotion giving the muffling of the conversation a louder tone, realizing that the words spoken belong to a couple of kids.

Curious, she takes the opportunity to let herself known, thinking that it's only two kids that are in a ghost town.

They get startled with the sudden appearance of Chandra, the boy in front of her stretches out his hand between her and a girl.

Chandra raises her hands, "I mean no harm, I'm only seeking shelter when I heard you two talking to one another" she pauses scanning the room, seeing a big pile of sleeping bags, and other people's belongings pressed up against a wall, she pans her vision to the door seeing it barricaded.

"Explains why I couldn't get in." She murmurs, the girl brings her protector's hand down, she looks at the boy.

"Have you maybe seen another boy this high? " Chandra brings one of her hands down to estimate the height, she's doubtful of the two seeing Dealix, but she figures it's worth the effort.

"Wait…I've seen you before, at my brother's school." She says, her eyes meeting with Chandra's.

Chandra lifts up a brow, still having her arms raised, her question goes unanswered, but maybe the girl knows who she's talking about. "Evergaints?" She simply says in response, the girl nods.

"Do you perhaps know about a boy with brown straight hair, who wears graphic T shirts?" Chandra brings the question up again, but the girl shakes her head, to Chandra it was at least acceptable to try.

"Names Chandra, is it alright if I know yours and your friends there?" She places her hand to her chest, then points to the two of them.

"I'm Rin, and this is Mivel" Rin introduces them to her, Chandra nods and thanks them for telling her their names. With comfortably she lowers her hands, taking a moment to scan the room again seeing the flight of stairs.

"Do you know what happened to the people here by chance?" She looks at the two, the both of them settling down from being startled, Mivel notices that Chandra was staring at the flight, having thoughts linger about the room he painted up stairs.

"No, we were left here when we woke up this morning." Rin replies, nearly flinching about the remembrance of their findings and about their own theories as to why everyone had vanished.

Chandra pins to her other thoughts from earlier, starting to believe that Dealix's vanishing act is connected with the disappearance of the town as well. Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

She takes her glance from the two, tacking it back to the flight of stairs. "What's up there?"

"Just a bunch of rooms." Mivel answers her, having his expression morphed with concern.

"I see—I could make that area mine, so the two of you can have it downstairs." Chandra looks at them, noticing that Mivel's expression had changed, wondering what may be up there besides rooms.

"I'd like it if we all stayed together." Rin mentions, her expression had changed as well—giving a squeamish tone to it. Chandra complies, "fair enough" taking her stride towards the nest, with a closer approach, she sees that these two hold tons of goodies laying next to them.

"Quiet the stash you got here." She points to the pile, at first Mivel is a little wary that she might take off with their food, thinking that Chandra was only acting friendly to get closer to them, however this slightly gets diminished as she plops onto the layer of sleeping bags, bringing out her own stash from another bag and adding it to theirs.

"Now we have more." Chandra says, having a tinge of silence between them as Mivel stares at the pile becoming larger.

Rin says her thank yous, pushing Mivel to say it as well. Chandra says it's not a problem and that they should be good on food for a while.

Rin and Mivel take their set across from Chandra, Rin taking another bag of chips and tosses it to her, then grabs extra to give it to Mivel while grabbing her own.

"Thank you." Chandra replies to Rins generosity, she opens the bag and begins to chow down thinking on where Dealix could be and where to find him.

{●}

Lin rests his head on his folded raised arms, giving the ceiling a distant gaze as he thinks about Rin's return from her friends house, and ever since her return his little sister seems off in a way, which he's starting to notice in his mom.

Talking to her doesn't feel the same as previous days before he got back from school, having those thoughts that everything felt off in some sort of way return—every-time he puts the thought away, something happens bringing it back up into his frontal lobe.

He shifts up, placing his hands on his thighs as he sits in a lazy criss-cross.

Lin stares at the window, seeing a vast dark gray cloud spewing rain down upon the horizon, he shifts his weight, his legs dangle off the bed as he stares at the carpeted floor.

The sense that all this is unsettling to him doesn't fade, even with him trying to think of other topics to eradicate it.

His blank gaze drifts towards his T.V, where the character on the game stands in an idle pose doing their animation when the player is A.F.K.

Lin twists his body to look out the window again, seeing the downpour happening gives him a slight comfort—wanting to grab a nice beverage and to continue gaming.

The thought of it erupted as slow movement from the clouds inched their way closer to their neighborhood. He watches the clouds slowly roll towards their direction, seeing nearby trees being swayed from the wind.

He tears his gaze from the fixation of the weather, deciding that now is the best time to grab his beverage, prompting himself off of the bed and taking a waltz downstairs to get his drink.

Coming from upstairs, his mother and his little sister stare blankly at an unpowered television screen, he casts an upwards brow—leaving him feeling rather uncomfortable about their doll-like expressions as he walks towards their refrigerator.

Lin doesn't say a peep, rather he takes his beverage out of the fridge, turning around to see that they're still emotionless, gazing at the television screen without a single blink to be counted for.

"Okay." He quietly says to himself, his skin becoming itchy from the uneasiness.

With a quiet stroll, he moves past them and up the stairs, changing the lingering sensation of everything being off to a definite eeriness.

As he closes his bedroom door, he takes a loom outside seeing that the clouds have made a fast progression, the darkness from them bathing his room causing him to flip on the light switch— blanketing his room with a warm yellow-ish tone.

Lin flops down on his bed, trying to think that what he saw was just some sort of prank they're doing to him, yet the eeriness of it pairing with his speculations of them acting strange keeps the thought to a minimum.

Escaping to his game, he grabs the remote—pushing the thumb-stick forward to make his character move throughout the map.

However his hands become numb as he can't get the mental image of them out of his head, the feeling progressively worsening as he dwells on the thought. Lin's face squeamish, bearing his teeth from fighting it off.

Dark clouds accumulate in the sky, letting its build up of rain to be released onto the neighborhood, tapping of rain dances on their house, Lins' window becomes a portrait of rivers as the rain pours.

His face unravels for a moment as the prevailing thoughts and senses halt as he hears the pitter patter of rain.

The moment breaks as an eerie silence enters his room, causing the thoughts to twirl inside his head with a rage.

Crackling of static thunder erupts the silence, lightning strikes nearby—basking his window with its sudden flash of light.

With the bolt striking, memories from a forgotten time spew out, reliving to the moment where he was in the classroom, reliving the moments where everything had turned to the worse: the unbarring cold, the lightning, shattering of school classrooms, and students yelling.

Remembering the fist that flew at his face was Xiels, recalling to what he saw during Mr. Buer's conversation, Xiel being surrounded by the same students he made a boxing ring out of.

All of it circling back into his mind, crying out in pain as he scrunches up into the beetle position on his bed.

{●}

Eve awakens in her room, staring at the bedroom wall as she lifts up from her slumber, seeing that the date was cycled back to previous weeks right before the work binge had started, before the anomalies had piqued her interest.

She lays the covers off of her, slipping out of the bed and onto her feet.

Eves' mind constructs curiosity, remembering that she was just lying in the padded room previous from falling asleep, with the most possible explanation: she considers herself dreaming.

She knows that dreams could conjure oddities, but why her old bedroom? Eve had wondered—picking up a picture frame of herself leaning on her boyfriend, forming a soft smile on her face as she reminisces about their first dates.

They had gone out into a nice section of the woods, a vast opening filled with remarkable flowers—a meadow that was considered to be a hidden Gem by her boyfriend's standards, and even to hers after the date.

Putting up a picnic table that he had hiked over there the day before their date, they sat there alone together with a relaxing breeze, gazing at the flowers and the descending sun.

Casting a hypnotic spell of one the most beautiful sunsets Eve has seen: mixtures of golden tones bathing lower clouds, splashing against a dark-purple hue basking together, a mystical Orange spreading throughout the sky like branches of a tree.

The two lean against each other, experiencing the beauty ahead of them, Eve brings one of the flowers from the meadow to her nose, taking a whiff of a sweet honey like fragrance with an after tone of wine.

She places the flower down inside a jar that her boyfriend had given her for the occasion, the scenery changes back into the bedroom, seeing the flower within the jar, welting of old age.

"We'll have to get a new one sometime soon" Eve says with a reminiscing smile while putting down the picture, it clunks, meeting the drawer as it gently get placed upright.

Eve walks to the end of the bedroom, turning the knob to her door, awaiting to see him in the living room—this was the day that he visited.

Back then it was a regular occurrence, but now it seemed like it's been so long since the last time she saw him and Eve was giddy for it.

With a series of creeks, the door opened gently from her push, she stepped out, seeing the small hallway decorated with paintings and a vase accompanying a larger piece.

Walking through the hallway she could hear the water faucet running, with an inflation of pitches—telling her that he's doing the dishes, alongside a punch of fresh brewing coffee.

As she got closer she could hear the coffee maker sputter, "that smells good, babe." Eve says with a warm smile, meeting a small bar opening in the kitchen wall, he continues to do the dishes—ignoring her appraisal.

Eve takes it as him being focused on cleaning duty, and that he will talk to her after he's done.

She sits on the chair, tucking herself into the small round table she got from a donation shop, folding her hands on the sleek complexion of the table.

Sitting there in an ambiance of running water and flustering of him cleaning dishes, she turns her head to gaze outside expecting a nice view of scenery of the city, but it's covered in a thick, dense blanket of fog from her window.

Eve starts to feel a gradual sense of shadowy wariness, avoiding it, she turns to him.

"I hope you didn't come across any accidents on the way here." She says, looking at the back of his brown slightly curled hair, no response was given as he continued to do the dishes.

Feeling the tinge of a sharp pain racing across her chest. Wariness graduates from being a shadow to a presence, the coffee maker stops casting an awkward silence between him and Eve, she looks down diagonal to left, wondering why it's portraying the scene the way that it is.

Eve would consider that this wasn't a dream if the date wasn't pushed back to now and that she had fallen asleep inside the Tower, yet her senses want to make her believe that it is real, wanting to convince her.

She gets up, making the wooden chair croak against the floor.

Eve gently strides to her boyfriend, lending out a hand to touch his shoulder, "hey, I love you." She says trying to turn him around, Eve hasn't gotten the chance to say it since she's been at work, even if this was a dream, she still wanted to say it.

From the gentle tug, he turns around, the feeling from before quickly evaporating into sheer shock—her eyes widen, taking a step back as she sees that his face is to an extreme pale, his veins popping out with a dark purple.

"You have to make it" he says, his veins start to move like snakes around his head, then burst like popcorn, spewing black fog towards her face, she blocks the initial eruption—her vision blurred from the fog.

"You have to make it, Eve!" Her boyfriend lunges at her through the thickness of the dark fog, pinning her to the floor, her face grimacing, struggling to twist away.

Croaking begins to seep out of his throat, his blood vessels from his eyes start to spew out the same black particle mist, slowly inching its way down towards Eve's face. "Make it…" he says while his voice creaks in distortion.

He lifts her up, slamming her down onto the floor, but the floor vanishes and so does he, seeing the dark fog slowly levitating upwards, seeing her kitchen emerging into the fog.

She looks down, realizing that somehow she's standing up right in inches of black shimmering water.

Eve moves her toes, having a confused stare that she doesn't feel water beneath her feet—taking her gaze up, she sees the table that was in the padded room, shimmering with an unknown light source, with closer inspection, she sees a petri dish.

She blinks and the petri-dish changes into a vial with a small flesh-like biomass held inside of it, being swallowed by liquid, somewhat beige in color. Eve's face is in skeptical bewilderment as she examines the little glass vial, picking it up with tugging curiosity.

Eve twists it around, scanning it—the biomass jolts, sprouting thin like tendrils around itself—docile in manner, squirming and twisting around like an octopus inspecting their surroundings.

"Make it" faint whispering voices nip at her ears, she places it back down onto the silver table.

Before she could respond, a series of flashing imagery exploded into her mind with the blueprints needed to make the organism within the vial.

With seeing the ending image, she flushes her eyes open, gasping for air—looking around in a panic state.

Eve is back inside the padded room, the lights flickering around her, she pans her vision to the camera seeing it offline.

Her glance shifts towards the table, seeing ingredients to make the serum she concocted before—the same serum that will be created to aid her in the direction to conjure the living organism inside her dream.

The lights flickering steadily stops, restoring the light back into a solid beam.

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