Chapter 40 Still Forgetting to Check for Traps
Still Forgetting to Check for Traps
“Wait,” Levi gasped, pulling against Asher’s grip. “Stop. I need to... catch my breath.”
Asher paused, allowing Levi to lean against a wall. “They’re not following anymore,” he said, head tilted as he listened to the distant sounds. “They’ve chosen different prey.”
As if to confirm his assessment, a scream echoed through the corridors—a man’s voice, though whether it was Tyler, Jasper, or Elliot was impossible to determine. Levi pushed away from the wall, instinctively moving toward the sound, but Asher blocked his path.
“Don’t,” he said, his hand flat against Levi’s chest. “You can’t help them.”
“We don’t know that,” Levi protested, though the words rang hollow even to his own ears. “We can’t just abandon them.”
“Like they abandoned us?” Asher countered, his fingers curling against Levi’s sternum. “They ran, Levi. They made their choice. Now we make ours.”
Levi wanted to argue, to insist they try to find the others, but exhaustion and pragmatism won out. “Fine,” he conceded. “But we need to find our way back. Those offices are still our objective.”
Asher’s hand relaxed, sliding up to rest at the junction of Levi’s neck and shoulder—a touch that managed to be both possessive and oddly comforting. “Okay. Let’s go.”
They continued forward, the corridor gradually widening until it opened into another chamber, this one even larger than the first. Massive industrial equipment filled the space—hydraulic presses, industrial lathes, stamping machines, and other devices Levi couldn’t identify.
All were in motion, processing invisible materials with relentless efficiency.
“A manufacturing center,” Asher said, surveying the machinery. “Where the building creates new components for itself?”
“How? Are there more things that just do repairs?” Levi wondered aloud.
“It would make sense that not everything in here is meant to kill us, there has to be something maintaining the machines.”
They picked their way through the forest of machines, mindful of the moving parts that could easily crush, slice, or impale an unwary intruder. The elevator Asher mentioned was visible on the far side, its doors gleaming like a promise of escape.
A sound from their left drew Levi’s attention—a low moan, barely audible above the noise. He turned, flashlight beam cutting through the shadows between machines, and froze at what it revealed.
Zoe.
What was left of her, at least.
She was strapped to a workbench, her body partially disassembled and surrounded by bloody tools. Components had been grafted to her, metal plates bolted to flesh, wires threaded through skin, a crude assembly replacing one arm entirely. Her eyes were open, aware, filled with unimaginable pain.
“No,” Levi breathed, moving toward her before conscious thought could intervene. “Zoe...”
Her head turned at the sound of his voice, movements jerky and uncoordinated. Recognition flickered in her eyes, followed by something worse—hope.
“Le...vi,” she managed, her voice distorted by the apparatus attached to her throat. “Help... me...”
Levi knelt beside the workbench, horror and grief competing for dominance. Was this what happened to Owen, too? What happened to anyone the building captured? They weren’t just killed—they were harvested, converted, integrated into the sanitarium’s systems.
“I’m here,” he said, reaching for her remaining hand. “I’m going to get you out of this.”
But even as he spoke the words, doubt crept in.
The metal plates weren’t just attached to her skin—they seemed embedded into her flesh, wires disappearing beneath the surface like artificial veins.
Blood and oil mingled where components met tissue.
He had no medical training, no way to know if what had been done could be undone.
Zoe seemed to read the uncertainty in his face. “Too... late,” she rasped, fingers weakly squeezing his. “Please... end it.”
“I can’t,” he admitted, his voice cracking. “Zoe, I—”
“I got this.” Asher’s hand appeared on his shoulder, warm and comforting. He gently pulled Levi to his feet and pushed him a few steps back.
Before Levi could protest, Asher leaned forward and whispered something in Zoe’s ear—too low for Levi to catch. Whatever he said made her eyes widen briefly, then close. Asher grabbed what looked like a discarded ice pick from beside her and plunged it into her skull with a sickening crack.
Her body spasmed once, then went still.
“She’s dead now,” Asher said simply.
“What did you say to her?” Levi asked, his voice hollow as he stared at her mutilated corpse. “At the end.”
Asher’s voice softened fractionally. “That death isn’t the end,” he replied. “Just a transition. I think she understood.”
It was such an unexpected answer from someone like Asher that Levi found himself speechless. Before he could recover, grinding from above caught their attention as the sound of massive gears engaged.
“We need to move,” Asher urged. “Now.”
They’d barely taken three steps when warning klaxons began blaring throughout the chamber.
Red emergency lights activated, bathing the machinery in a hellish glow.
The floor beneath them shuddered, then began to tilt at a slight angle, the incline directed toward one of the massive industrial presses.
“What’s happening?” Levi shouted above the cacophony.
“I don’t think the building likes what I did,” Asher replied, grabbing Levi’s arm to steady him as the floor’s angle increased.
They struggled against the growing incline as the floor’s tilt increased, making each step a battle against gravity.
The elevator was still visible ahead, but reaching it meant climbing what was rapidly becoming a steep slope.
An unsecured table saw slid past them, crashing into the machinery below.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Levi gritted out as he grabbed onto a table that was bolted to the tilting floor.
Asher grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward. “We’ll make it.”
A massive tool cabinet broke free from its moorings and hurtled toward them. Asher shoved Levi aside just in time, the cabinet missing them by inches before smashing into a lathe below.
The floor kept tilting, transforming their path into a treacherous climb rather than a run. Levi’s fingers scrabbled for purchase on the smooth metal floor, finding a maintenance grate that provided a momentary handhold.
“Almost there,” Asher called back, the veins in his neck and face straining as he pulled Levi with him. “Just a little further—”
Inch by painful inch, he dragged them toward the elevator, which remained strangely level despite the room’s extreme tilt as if it operated on its own internal physics, independent of the chamber’s manipulation.
They reached the elevator just as the floor approached a full ninety-degree angle, the chamber transforming into a vertical shaft with the machinery waiting at the bottom like hungry metal mouths.
Asher slammed his palm against the call button, the doors sliding open with agonizing slowness.
They pulled themselves inside, collapsing onto the level floor as the doors closed behind them.
The doors sealed, and the elevator began to ascend. Levi sagged against the wall, adrenaline ebbing. “We made it,” he gasped, more to convince himself than as a statement of fact.
Asher’s silence drew his attention, his brow furrowed as he stared at the buttons inside the elevator.
“What?” Levi asked, straightening. “What’s wrong?”
“Look at the indicator.”
Levi followed his gaze and felt his stomach drop. The elevator wasn’t ascending—it was descending.
“Where are we going?”
“Good question.”
The elevator continued its descent, passing levels Levi hadn't even known existed. The indicator finally stopped at a designation that was simply a triangle.
“What do we do?” Levi asked, tension rebuilding in his muscles as he prepared for whatever might await them.
Asher turned to face him, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “Whatever happens when these doors open, stay close to me. If we get separated...,” he hesitated, something vulnerable flickering across his face, “I’ll find you again. I always do.”
The elevator shuddered to a stop, metal groaning around them as if the very structure was under immense strain, and the doors slid open to reveal another circular chamber dominated by enormous presses.
The walls were lined with industrial crushing mechanisms, all oriented toward the center of the room where a small platform stood isolated like a sacrificial altar.
They had nowhere to go except forward. The elevator doors closed behind them as soon as they stepped out, sealing their only obvious escape route. The platform in the center seemed to be the only safe space—for the moment.
“There has to be a way out,” Levi insisted, scanning the chamber desperately. “Another maintenance passage, a ventilation shaft, something.”
He spotted what might have been an access panel near the ceiling, possibly large enough for a person to crawl through. “There. If we can reach that panel—”
A deafening klaxon cut him off, followed by the sound of massive hydraulics engaging. The floor beneath them lurched, beginning to tilt toward one of the wall-mounted crushing mechanisms.
“This shit again?” Asher groaned, grabbing Levi’s arm as they made their way towards the platform.
The tilt increased rapidly. Levi and Asher struggled to maintain their footing, bracing against the growing incline. The metal grating they stood on began to separate into segments, breaking apart to eliminate any stable ground.
Levi spotted a control lever on one of the still-level platform segments and lunged for it, hoping it might stop the room’s movement. The lever resisted his pull, seemingly locked in position.
“Help me!” he shouted to Asher, who added his strength to Levi’s.
Together, they managed to move the lever a few inches before it snapped off in their hands.
“The walls are closing in,” Levi said, unable to keep the tremor from his voice.
Levi and Asher retreated to what little flat surface remained at the center of the room, backs pressed together as they surveyed the approaching threat from all sides. There was no weakness in the advance, no gap to exploit or mechanism to disable.
“The access panel,” Levi gasped, pointing to the ceiling again. “If you boost me up, I might be able to reach it.”
Asher assessed the distance with a quick glance. “It’s too far.”
He’s right. The platform tilted with the rest of the room, and they began to slide in earnest toward the waiting press.
“Asher!” Levi gasped as Asher’s grip on his arm faltered.
Asher fought against the pull of gravity, twisting his body to stay with Levi. Their hands found each other amid the tumult, fingers interlocking with desperate strength.
The plates moved inward around them. Levi felt the cold metal against his back and chest, pressure building as the space continued to shrink.
Asher’s grip on his hand remained firm even as their bodies were compressed. There was a quiet acceptance in his expression, the fear replaced by something like peace.
“I’ll find you again,” Asher said, voice steady despite the grinding metal closing in around them. “I always do.”
The plates continued their advance, the pressure becoming unbearable as they compressed the space smaller and smaller. Levi’s vision began to dim at the edges, his body screaming in protest against the crushing force.
His last conscious thought was of Asher’s hand in his, the one point of warmth and connection in a world of cold, impersonal metal. The one constant in this nightmare of death and rebirth.
Then the plates snapped shut, and darkness claimed him once more.