Chapter 8
“What the fuck?” Derek screamed, his voice cracking as he stumbled back a step.
Mads peered inside, his eyes narrowing. “What on earth…?”
Lionel stood frozen in the doorway, heart hammering painfully against his ribs. “How are they dead?” he whispered. His voice low, scraped raw by confusion. “We… we were only gone for a couple of hours. How… how could this have happened?”
He forced himself to step forward, feet dragging as if he were moving through water.
Squatting down, he stared at two skeletons slumped together in a corner, their bones tangled in what looked like a desperate final embrace.
Tattered scraps of dirty clothing still clung to their ribs and hips.
The bones were already yellowed, dark brown patches blossoming across them like mold.
Lionel’s stomach twisted violently. Based on the remains of long skirts and thin blouses, he guessed these were the two women they’d left behind. He reached out, almost touching one of the skeletal hands before thinking better of it and pulling back.
Behind him, Mads stepped further into the room, boots crunching over debris and crusted dust. “There are only three skeletons,” he called, voice carefully steady. “This one here is definitely an adult male.”
Lionel nodded numbly. “Then these two… they must be the women.”
“So where the hell is Amir?” Mads muttered, turning in a slow circle as his eyes swept the dim room.
Outside the doorway, Derek was pale and trembling, fists clenched at his sides. “How are they already skeletons?” he shouted. His voice echoed harshly through the apartment. “Doesn’t it take years for a body to look like that? Doesn’t it—”
“Sometimes only a few weeks, under the right conditions,” Mads said, though his usual calm was strained, almost distracted. He crouched beside Lionel, studying the bones with a furrowed brow. “But I agree… these look like they’ve been here for decades. That’s not natural.”
“That’s not possible,” Lionel insisted, shaking his head. Panic crawled up his throat, sour and choking. As though he needed proof that time hadn’t unraveled beneath them, he fumbled out his phone. The screen lit up obediently: same date, just two and a half hours since they’d left.
He looked over at Mads, who was already watching him with a guarded expression.
Lionel swallowed hard. “It’s the building,” he whispered. “It has to be the building. It’s… It’s wrong. It’s messing with everything.”
“The building?” Mads questioned.
“Like you said—maybe the building was what was messing with us before,” Lionel said slowly. “But now I’m thinking that the building is… wrong.” Lionel stepped past him, scooting past the skeleton and Derek’s sound equipment to the window, moving to tug the curtains away to gaze outside.
For a long moment, the three of them just stood there, surrounded by the brittle remains of people who shouldn’t have been dead—the silence pressing in until it felt like the apartment itself was listening.
He’d caught glimpses out the windows before, when they had been in other apartments, but Lionel hadn’t let himself truly look.
Not since they’d first tried to break through the glass, early on—back when they still believed that outside meant safety.
But now, drawn by a morbid need for something normal, he stepped over to the window and peered down.
The streets below were shockingly ordinary.
Sunshine gleamed off windshields, throwing small flashes of light across cracked asphalt.
A woman strolled by with her dog, the little creature wagging its tail furiously at a pigeon that flapped by.
Cars idled at a light, and bicycles went by leisurely.
No one was screaming. No one was fleeing from horrors.
For a heartbeat, Lionel could almost pretend none of this was real. Almost.
Because deep down, he knew if he tried to wave or shout, they wouldn’t hear him. They wouldn’t see him. The building might as well be sealed off in its own private hell.
“This building is the only thing being affected by… whatever this is,” Lionel said finally, voice low, almost reluctant to break the fragile scene.
He tore his gaze away from the window and looked back at the room. At the skeletons huddled together on the floor, their clothes tattered, bones stained with dark rot that shouldn’t have formed in mere hours.
“So maybe…” He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to scrub away the exhaustion clouding his thoughts, then glanced between the skeletal remains.
“Maybe time works differently here. We already know gravity doesn’t always matter.
Or distance. Or the order things happen.
Everything’s screwed up in ways we can’t see.
” He realized he was rambling slightly, trying to make sense of it out loud, and fell silent.
Derek had been unusually quiet through it all. He stood near the doorway, arms folded tight across his chest, shoulders hunched like he was trying to fold himself in half. His eyes darted around—at the skeletons, at Lionel, at Mads, then back to the window as if hoping for rescue.
“Okay, but… if time’s messed up…” Derek started, his voice rough. He licked his lips, glanced at the bones again, and swallowed hard. “If we stay here too long… are we gonna end up like them?” He motioned weakly toward the skeletons, his hand trembling as it dropped back to his side.
Then it was like something snapped inside him.
Derek ran both hands over his hair, clutching the strands for a second, eyes going wide and glassy.
“We can’t stay here,” he blurted, voice climbing in pitch.
“We’ve gotta get out. We have to do something.
We can’t just sit here waiting to die. These people were alive just a few hours ago—oh fuck, I can’t believe they’re dead! ”
His breathing quickened, bordering on hyperventilation. He paced a few short steps, hands flexing open and closed. It wasn’t quite full-blown panic—yet—but Lionel could see the frayed edge in his eyes, like he was teetering on the verge.
Mads stepped closer, hand ghosting near Derek’s shoulder without actually touching him, as though gauging whether physical comfort would help or make him bolt.
Lionel walked over to him, reaching out to pull Derek’s hands away from where he was about to pull his hair right out of his skull. “Calm down,” Lionel said, “freaking out right now isn’t going to help—”
“I knew them, Lionel,” Derek said, voice rising in volume as he pulled his wrists out of Lionel’s grip. “They were my neighbors—we were all meant to stick together and take care of each other, and now they’re dead.”
Derek’s eyes were slightly wet, making Lionel pause the words on his tongue. He swallowed them down and instead reached out to pat Derek on the back. “I know, it’s hard, I can’t imagine—”
Lionel’s words were cut off with a soft ‘oof’ as he was suddenly bear-hugged by the larger man.
Lionel stood there awkwardly, hands raised slightly, wondering where they should go as Derek’s arms wrapped around him and squeezed him so hard he could hardly breathe.
Lionel sighed and reached up to pat his back again as Derek buried his face in his neck.
He could feel a warm wetness staining the collar of his shirt.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, shutting his eyes. “It’s okay—we’ll figure out how to get out of here.” He didn’t think he was very good at comforting people, but Derek stayed holding him for far longer than Lionel thought any man had hugged him for.
When Derek finally pulled away, the whites of his eyes were red, and he was still sniffling.
Lionel smiled tightly at him and patted his shoulder a few more times for good measure, ignoring how wet his neck was.
When he turned back to look at where Mads was, he was still standing right where he was before, watching them.
He had a small frown on his lips that Lionel couldn’t read the meaning of.
“I think we all need to take a break,” Lionel announced to the silence that had grown. “I think we all need some rest—I’m absolutely beat physically, Derek needs a mental break, and I’m sure you need some rest too, Mads. So let’s just… rest for a while before we try figuring anything else out.”
“I’m not going in there,” Derek shook his head, gaze flicking to the skeletons.
“This is the only confirmed safe place in the building,” Mads spoke up. “Let’s just move the skeletons.”
Derek gasped. “You’re not supposed to move the dead—their ghosts will haunt us.”
“Alright.” Mads shrugged. “Then either you need to get over it and come in here, or you can stay out there and also become a skeleton.”
Derek stood back as Lionel and Mads moved the skeletons. Lionel wasn’t incredibly happy to be touching them either, but it was easy enough to move everything into the apartment just outside. Once they were out, they shut the door and barricaded it just as they had done before.
There was a couch, a computer chair, and two regular chairs in the room. They all glanced at each other until Lionel sighed and waved a hand. “Mads, you can take the couch—you should rest.”
“Why me?” He asked, tilting his head to one side. “You’ve done far more physical exertion—you should try to sleep for a while.”
“I’m fine,” Lionel shook his head and took a seat on the floor to lean up against the wall. “I prefer the floor.”
Mads didn’t look entirely convinced, but took a seat on the couch. He had to shuffle around a bit to find a comfortable lying position with his long legs on the loveseat. But once he was settled, eyes shut, Derek released a long breath before sitting heavily in the computer chair.
Lionel knew he wouldn’t actually be able to sleep, but tried to rest his eyes and not let his mind spiral on too many subjects. If he thought about any one thing for too long, he felt like he was going to throw up.