Chapter Text
007n7 did not like variables he could not control.
That had always been one of the few constants in his existence—something rigid, something dependable in a life otherwise defined by instability and shifting ground—whether it was back when he still exploited systems for sport, when reality itself had felt malleable beneath his hands, like a fragile construct waiting to be rewritten, or now, trapped inside this distorted, cyclical hell where rules existed but were never fully explained, where consequences were absolute yet motivations remained obscured behind something vast and unknowable.
He had always thrived in environments where chaos could be studied, dissected, reduced into patterns that could be understood, manipulated, and eventually mastered.
He could adapt to danger with precision. He could calculate probabilities with cold efficiency.
He could predict behavior patterns with an accuracy that bordered on instinct, on something almost inhuman in its consistency.
But this—this was something else entirely.
This was not a system he could break down into components.
This was not a threat he could measure or outmaneuver through logic alone.
This was exposure. This was vulnerability dragged violently into the open in a way he had never allowed, not even at his lowest, not even when he had been desperate enough to tear himself apart just to feel like he still had control over something.
Because this wasn’t about survival. This wasn’t about outplaying an killer or finding the most efficient path through a hostile environment.
This was about being seen—truly seen—in a way that stripped him of every layer he had so carefully constructed over time.
And that—being seen without control, without the ability to filter or redirect perception, without the chance to rewrite the narrative before anyone else could interpret it—was infinitely worse than any physical threat this place could throw at him. It was invasive in a way that made his skin feel too tight, like it didn’t belong to him anymore, like it had become something transparent, something that revealed far more than it concealed.
He sat in the corner of the main cabin before the round began, his posture slightly hunched—not enough to draw attention, not enough to look weak, but enough to make himself smaller, less noticeable, less likely to become the center of anyone’s focus.
His fingers were loosely interlocked, resting against his knees as if the gesture alone could anchor him, could keep the subtle tremors from spreading outward into something visible, though the tension still crept through his muscles in quiet, uncontrollable ways.
It manifested in the faint tightening of his shoulders, the almost imperceptible shift of his leg against the floor, the slow, measured breaths that felt just a little too deliberate to be natural. Everything about him was controlled—but the effort it took to maintain that control was beginning to show, even if only to himself.
Around him, the others were scattered in uneasy clusters, their voices low but constant, overlapping in a murmur that refused to settle into anything coherent. It wasn’t conversation in the normal sense. It wasn’t structured or purposeful. It was noise filled with edges, with fragments of thought colliding against one another without resolution.
Speculation tangled with frustration. Denial clashed with forced rationality. People spoke over each other, interrupted, corrected, dismissed.
And beneath all of it, something sharper pulsed like a second heartbeat threading through the room—something unspoken yet undeniably present. Suspicion. Raw, unfiltered, and rapidly evolving into something far more dangerous.
No one trusted anyone anymore. Not fully. Not after what had been revealed.
Not after something so deeply personal had been dragged into the open and handed to everyone like evidence without a clear perpetrator, without a clear motive beyond disruption itself.
The pages had done their job perfectly.
They had not needed to accuse.
They had not needed to explain.
They had simply existed—and that had been enough. Their presence alone had been sufficient to fracture whatever fragile sense of unity had existed before, to introduce doubt in a way that no direct confrontation ever could.
They had planted it carefully, efficiently, embedding it into every interaction, every glance, every hesitation. And doubt, in a place like this, was not just an emotion—it was a weapon. A silent one. A patient one. The kind that did not need to strike immediately because it would do its damage slowly, from the inside, until whatever structure held the group together collapsed under its own weight.
007n7 kept his gaze lowered, not out of submission but out of necessity. Eye contact meant attention, and attention meant risk, and risk was something he could not afford—not now, not when the situation was already spiraling beyond anything he could neatly categorize or contain.
He could feel it anyway, though—the weight of glances lingering just a fraction too long, the subtle recalculations happening behind eyes that no longer saw each other as allies by default. The atmosphere had shifted in a way that couldn’t be undone easily.
Something had been broken. Not loudly, not dramatically—but deeply. The kind of fracture that spread quietly until everything eventually gave way.
And he hated it.
He hated the lack of control. He hated the uncertainty. He hated the way his own thoughts refused to settle into anything useful, instead circling the same question over and over again, grinding against it like a blade against stone, trying to shape it into something actionable, something that could give him direction instead of leaving him suspended in this suffocating in-between.
How the fuck was he going to get out of this?
Not just the situation unfolding around him. Not just the suspicion that had begun to take root in the group, growing stronger with every passing second.
But the truth itself.
Because the truth was the real problem. The truth was not something he could outrun or outmaneuver—not when it existed independently of perception, not when it remained unchanged regardless of whether anyone acknowledged it or not.
The truth was that the pages were real.
The truth was that the writing was his.
The truth was that something had taken pieces of him that were never meant to exist outside the confines of a private space and scattered them like bait in front of people who would never understand them, people who would only see the surface, only see the explicit, the uncomfortable, the grotesque, without ever grasping the intention beneath it, the context, the desperation that had shaped those words in the first place.
And the worst part was that they weren’t wrong to react the way they did.
That realization settled heavily in his chest, cold and suffocating, spreading outward in slow, deliberate waves that made it difficult to hold onto anything solid.
He could argue that it had been private.
He could argue that it had never been meant for them.
He could argue that context changed everything, that intention mattered, that the words had been an outlet rather than a declaration.
But none of that erased the reality of what was written. The content existed. The thoughts existed. And now they were out there, stripped of control, stripped of nuance, exposed in the worst possible way—detached from him and yet undeniably tied to him at the same time.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, forcing the air out in a controlled motion, trying to steady himself, trying to force his thoughts back into something resembling order. Panic would only make things worse. Panic would make him sloppy. And being sloppy here meant death—not metaphorically, not emotionally, but literally.
And as if the world itself had been waiting for that exact moment of internal fracture, the shift came.
It started subtly—a flicker at the edges of perception, a distortion that twisted light just enough to feel wrong without immediately being identifiable.
Then it spread. The familiar, nauseating warping crawled across reality like a crack forming in glass, bending sound, stretching space, pulling everything out of alignment until nothing felt stable anymore.
The cabin didn’t disappear physically, but it ceased to matter. It dissolved perceptually, replaced piece by piece by something colder, something more open, something that stripped away the illusion of safety the enclosed space had provided.
The trial ground.
The round had begun.
007n7 felt it immediately—the shift in atmosphere, the tightening of invisible rules snapping into place like a trap being armed. Conversations died mid-sentence, cut off not by agreement but by instinct. Movements slowed, then sharpened, as everyone recalibrated without needing to be told. Survival mode. It wasn’t a choice. It was automatic.
And then—
The presence.
Heavy. Immediate. Oppressive.
1x.
007n7 didn’t need to look up to know. He felt it in the way the air itself seemed to constrict, in the way silence stretched just a fraction too long, in the way every instinct screamed danger before his mind could even process it logically. But he looked anyway, because not looking didn’t change anything—it only delayed the inevitable.
1x stood at a distance, posture straight, expression unreadable, eyes scanning the group with a precision that felt less like observation and more like dissection. There was no hesitation there. No confusion. No uncertainty. Just intent—cold, focused, unwavering intent that didn’t need to announce itself because it was already understood.
Of course.
Of all people.
007n7’s jaw tightened slightly, a small, controlled reaction that barely registered externally but echoed loudly in his own awareness.
The situation had already been bad, already unstable in a way that made every second unpredictable—but this made it worse. Because 1x didn’t operate on uncertainty. 1x didn’t tolerate loose ends. And right now, the entire situation was nothing but loose ends, threads that had been cut and scattered in every direction without any clear point of origin.
They didn’t attack immediately.
Instead, they spoke.
And somehow, that was worse.
“3xpl41n. $t0r13$.”
The words were simple. Flat. Devoid of unnecessary emphasis. But they carried weight—the kind that pressed down on everyone equally, demanding an answer that no one had, demanding clarity where none existed. It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even a question. It was a command shaped like one.
There was a moment of hesitation, brief but palpable, before voices started again—careful at first, measured, as if testing the ground before stepping forward.
Then they overlapped, collided, tangled together as each person tried to clarify, to defend, to distance themselves from whatever blame might be assigned. They explained the pages.
They explained how everyone had received them. They explained that no one knew who had written them, that no one understood how they had appeared, that it had to be external—something beyond their control, something imposed upon them rather than created within the group.
007n7 listened.
He didn’t speak.
He couldn’t.
Every explanation felt like a blade twisting deeper—not because it was wrong, but because it was incomplete in a way that made it more dangerous. Because the truth was sitting there, buried just beneath their words, and he was the only one who could feel how close they were to touching it, how dangerously close they were to dragging it into the open.
1x listened too. Silently. Completely.
And when the explanations ended—when the last voice fell quiet and the tension reached that fragile, unbearable peak where something had to give—
They moved.
Fast.
Decisive.
Violent.
The first kill happened so quickly it barely registered as an action, more like a sudden absence where a person had been moments before. The second followed almost immediately, the gap between realization and reaction collapsing into nothing. The third shattered whatever remained of order, reducing everything to chaos as survival instincts took over and replaced thought entirely.
007n7 moved on instinct. Not toward confrontation.
Away. Always away.
He didn’t try to fight. That wasn’t his role. That had never been his strength here.
He calculated paths, distances, timing, using the environment as it formed around him, mapping escape routes in real time, adjusting with each shift, each movement, each sound that could signal proximity. He stayed just out of reach, just out of sight when possible, his mind working relentlessly to predict movement patterns, to anticipate where 1x would go next, to create space where none should exist.
But it didn’t matter.
Because this wasn’t about logic anymore.
This wasn’t something that could be solved through prediction alone.
This was inevitability.
And somewhere, deep down, beneath all the calculations, beneath the desperate attempts to maintain control, he knew it.
—
Everyone had died.
Not dramatically, not meaningfully—just one after another, reduced to the same inevitable outcome that every round seemed determined to enforce. The last to fall had been Shedletsky.
Now they were all back in the lobby, standing in that strange, in-between space where nothing quite felt real but everything still mattered more than it should.
The atmosphere was heavy.
Not loud. Not chaotic.
Heavy.
There was no immediate outburst, no yelling, no accusations flying across the room like they might have earlier. Instead, there was a kind of quiet disappointment that settled over everyone like dust, clinging to their expressions, dulling their reactions.
Chance tried to joke—of course he did. It was almost instinctual at this point, throwing out something light, something unserious, something that might crack the tension just enough to make it bearable. But it fell flat. Completely. No one picked it up. No one laughed. No one even pretended to.
They were too tired.
Too mentally worn down.
Too aware of everything that had been left unsaid.
And then something shifted.
A sudden gust of wind tore through the room—not natural, not subtle, but sharp and deliberate, cutting through the stillness with enough force to make heads turn and bodies tense. It didn’t belong there. Nothing in this place ever truly followed rules, but even then, this felt intentional in a way that made the air itself feel hostile.
And with it—
A piece of paper.
It drifted down slowly, almost mockingly gentle compared to the force that had carried it, spinning once before landing directly on the winners’ table as if placed there with purpose.
No.
007n7 felt something inside him drop instantly, his entire body going rigid in a way he couldn’t control.
No.
Nonononononononono—
His thoughts spiraled before he could stop them, panic creeping in fast and suffocating, clawing its way up his throat before he could force it back down. What if it was him? What if this was it? What if whatever had been scattered before wasn’t enough, and now this—this was the part that exposed everything?
His heart slammed violently against his ribs.
Too loud.
Too fast.
There was no way out of this.
Please—just let this be something else.
Anything else.
He watched—he couldn’t not watch—as the administrators moved first, naturally gravitating toward the table with the same quiet authority they always carried. Of course they would be the ones to check. Of course they would be the ones to read it first.
Thump.
Dusekkar reached for the page.
Thump.
His fingers closed around it, lifting it carefully, unfolding it just enough to see the contents.
Thump.
007n7’s pulse echoed in his ears so loudly it almost drowned everything else out, each beat sharper than the last, each second stretching longer than it should have.
Thump.
Builderman and Shedletsky stepped closer, positioning themselves at either side, their attention narrowing completely onto the page as if nothing else in the room existed anymore.
Thump.
Dusekkar’s eyes moved.
Reading.
Processing.
Thump.
Every second felt unbearable.
And then—
“The page is incomplete,” Shedletsky said, his voice cutting cleanly through the silence, steady but laced with something that made people pay attention immediately. “It contains a poem. It looks like the other half was torn off.”
A pause.
A shift.
Interest.
Suspicion.
“A poem?”
The word alone made something twist violently inside 007n7’s chest.
Oh.
Oh no.
The Spectre wasn’t done.
Of course it wasn’t.
It was never going to be that simple.
This wasn’t just about exposing surface-level things. This wasn’t just about throwing out fragments and watching them react. No—this was something else. Something deeper. Something crueler.
It was going to open 007n7 up and show them everything.
Not by choice.
Not because he trusted them.
Not because he wanted to be understood.
But because something else had decided it for him, something that had taken what little control he had left and twisted it into this—into exposure, into vulnerability, into something he had spent so long avoiding.
And the worst part was that there was nothing inside him worth showing.
Nothing clean.
Nothing redeemable.
His insides were twisted. Not just flawed—twisted in a way that felt fundamental, like something had been built wrong from the very beginning. Rotten, too, in a way that went deeper than surface-level decay.
It wasn’t something that could be fixed with time or effort. It wasn’t something that could be explained away or reframed into something acceptable. It was just there, festering quietly beneath everything else, waiting for the moment it would be seen.
And now that moment had come.
Once exposed, there would be no interpretation generous enough to soften it. No context strong enough to protect it. They would see it exactly as it was—or worse, they would see only fragments of it, stripped of meaning, stripped of the parts that made it make sense, leaving behind something even uglier, something incomplete but unmistakably wrong.
And all they would be able to do… was look at him with disgust.
It was going to let them see his thoughts.
Every hidden corner.
Every quiet confession.
Every ugly impulse that had never been meant to exist anywhere outside his own mind.
Things that had felt manageable when they stayed contained, when they lived only as words on a page no one else was supposed to read. Things that had almost made sense, in isolation.
But his thoughts were not something human.
Not in the way people liked to pretend thoughts should be.
They were warped—bent out of shape by things he didn’t fully understand himself, by loneliness, by guilt, by something deeper that had settled into him and refused to leave.
They were filthy, not just in content but in feeling, in the way they lingered, in the way they clung to him long after they had formed.
They weren’t fleeting.
They weren’t harmless.
They were suffocating.
The kind of thoughts that made his own skin feel wrong.
The kind that made silence feel too loud.
The kind that, if spoken aloud, would turn the air heavy and unbearable.
Everyone would hate him.
That wasn’t fear speaking.
That wasn’t insecurity exaggerating the outcome.
That was simply the most logical conclusion.
And he wouldn’t blame them.
He couldn’t.
Because what else were they supposed to feel?
What else were they supposed to see when presented with something like that—something so openly wrong, so undeniably uncomfortable, something that didn’t even try to hide what it was?
There was no defense that could justify it.
No explanation that could make it better.
And deep down, in that quiet, inescapable place where denial had no space to exist, where excuses fell apart before they could even form, he already knew the truth.
As the kind of creature he was…
Pure looks of hatred would be the bare minimum of what he deserved.
He moved.
Slowly, almost without realizing it, his body pulling him closer to the table despite everything screaming at him not to, despite every instinct telling him to turn away, to leave, to pretend he didn’t care.
He needed to see.
Needed to know.
Needed to confirm which part of him had just been dragged into the light.
His gaze dropped to the page.
And the moment he recognized the text—
Something inside him went completely still.
Not panic.
Not fear.
Something colder.
Something heavier.
His expression didn’t change much, but his eyes darkened in a way that made it obvious—at least to anyone paying close enough attention—that this wasn’t just any piece of writing.
This was his.
Yet, at the same time, I’m not.
I crave your touch, I crave your attention, I crave the pain you bring my way.
I crave your sweet words, I crave your hatred, I crave your love.
I don’t care if it's fake, I don’t care if it isn’t true, I just want something warm to hold onto.
I want to be loved, I want to be wanted.
Stab me in the chest, fuck me with your gun, just love me until I’m gone.
I want to be included, I want to be useful, I want to be lovable.
I want validation, I want to feel like I belong.
Is that so wrong?...
I hate my body, I hate my skin.
I hate that I feel like this.
I feel dirty, I feel ashamed.
What did I do to feel this way?
The world has abandoned me, and left me with nothing.
Everything I write is filth disguised as longing.
Every word is a confession, pages filled with sin.
It's horrible, disgusting, and yet I never learn my lesson.
Hidden beneath the floorboards is a diary filled with my desires.
I’m a being stitched together from regret and misery.
I’m filled to the brim with grief, always suffering in silence.
I’m filled to the brim with the guilt of what I’ve done.
I’m filled to the brim with sorrow and fear.
I’m filled to the brim with blood and tears.
I plead to the dark, my voice filled with despair.
Yet the dark never responds, we’re never getting out of here.
I’m sorry for all that I’ve done.
I’m sorry for using your name in such a way.
I deserve all the hate, the pain, the rage.
I deserve your glares filled with resentment and disgust.
I deserve to hurt for everything I’ve done.
I’m disgusting, a parasite, a worthless human being.
I’m sorry for being so pathetic and useless.
I’m sorry for everything…
— ■■■■■
“It’s obviously the ending of a poem,” Veeronica said after a moment, her tone thoughtful, analytical, already moving past the emotional weight of it and into something more practical. “The beginning must be somewhere else.”
All eyes shifted to her.
She continued without hesitation.
“Maybe the Spectre is pushing us to find the other half. This poem contains information about the author. For example—it mentions a diary. A place where all their writings are kept. Hidden beneath floorboards.”
007n7 felt something snap tight inside his chest.
The diary.
His diary.
For a split second, everything else disappeared, replaced by a single, overwhelming urge—
He needed to get to his cabin.
Now.
Burn it.
Destroy it.
Erase every trace before anyone could even think about looking.
“But it could also be metaphorical,” Noob’s voice cut in, softer, but firm enough to interrupt the momentum that had begun to build.
007n7 froze.
He hadn’t expected that.
He turned his head slightly, just enough to look at them from the corner of his eye.
Their expression was… complicated.
Unreadable in a way that made his stomach twist.
“Maybe there isn’t a literal diary,” Noob continued, their tone careful, measured, like they were choosing each word with intention. “Or if there is, it might not be hidden physically. It could just mean the author hides themselves. Keeps everything internal. Doesn’t want to be seen.”
Silence followed.
Then voices again.
Discussion.
Theories.
Speculation branching in different directions as people tried to piece things together, some still focused on the physical interpretation, others considering Noob’s perspective.
At some point, someone suggested searching for the other half.
Someone else agreed.
Plans started forming.
007n7 barely processed any of it.
He felt—
distant.
Detached.
Like he was no longer fully present in his own body, like he was watching everything unfold from somewhere just slightly removed, where the sounds were muted and the edges of reality felt just a little too soft.
Like none of this was real.
Like it couldn’t be real.
Until—
Warmth.
A hand.
Gentle.
Resting on his shoulder.
It grounded him instantly.
Pulled him back into his body whether he wanted it or not.
He turned.
Slowly.
Noob stood there.
Close.
Closer than they had been in a long time.
Their eyes held something conflicted, something tight and uncertain, brows drawn slightly together, lips pressed into a thin line as if they were holding something back.
They hadn’t spoken to him much before this.
Not really.
There had always been distance.
Fear.
Hesitation.
007n7 opened his mouth slightly, about to ask—
But Noob spoke first.
“Could we talk… in private?”
And just like that—
Everything inside him dropped.
Shi