The sudden impact with the ground caught him by surprise. The fall had been short. His legs wobbled beneath his weight, causing him to stumble before giving in and slamming his knees into the concrete. His eyes adjusted to the dim orange glow, revealing the faded remnants of tire treads and an oil saturated surface. A security booth, whose white paint was chipped and heavily rusted with age, windows smashed, sat nestled in the darkness.

Above him, patches of bound wires hung, supported by steal graders, too high up to reach even with jumping. He couldn’t make out the gap from which he had fallen, let alone glimpse the light that had protected him from the shadows. He rose to his feet and moved to the security booth for closer inspection.

Panels were torn from the desk. Electronic surfaces had wires cut, and tools strewn about on the desk and floor. A corpse, dead so long it lacked the stench of decay, had settled in a corner, hunched over. His grey uniform was pristine, untouched by the odd neglected state of everything that surrounded him. Next to the guard, a metal blue door hung ajar, promising enough room to allow for one person to squeeze through to claim its hidden stores. It all looked familiar.

A large orange B2 was painted on the wall. Like the security guard, it too lacked the neglected state that saturated the area. Something was slowly eating away at the program. Was it losing power? Oh god, did Astral find the source? Is she fighting it now? Even in his panic, those questions rang hallow. His worry ran deeper as though he recognized the signs of something far worse, but lacked the experience to understand its implications.

B2. He assumed that he had fallen from B1. He couldn’t decide if traveling downward was a setback. Progress measured in floors set in a digital platform was an arbitrary pursuit. His target was real. Everything else was an illusion designed to keep him from stopping her.

She had claimed that the program had some form of self-awareness. “She’s trying to kill you!” He shouted. “Let me help you!”

Blinking red light whirled as yellow and black stripped barriers rose to bar the path behind and ahead of him. Was the program trying to communicate with him?

On one side, the red light bounced off the wall behind it, its metal panels lining up flush to the security booth. Hundreds of little holes speckled across the lower panels of the wall barrier. He realized then that he was standing in the park garage scenario that Astral had commandeered and corrupted.

He covered his mouth while straining his hearing. Where there anymore of those spawn? He regarded the corpse basked in shadows, did he have to worry about the body? He forced the sound of his panicked breathing and racing heart from his mind. He needed to focus, he need to listen to the world around him before it swallowed him whole.

Why hadn’t the scenario reset after they had finished with the challenge? Why would it pick up where they left off? Although, he had the impression that a significant amount of time had passed in the game. It was possible that the program’s keeper perceived time differently. Or he was exploring an alternate branching scenario.

A white light flickered on in the distance, revealing a red door beyond a large gap of raw darkness. He narrowed his eyes, challenging the authenticity of the exit that beckoned him forward. It was the same door from the chamber above. The gleam of the metal handle assured him of the absence of the rust mites, promising to open at his command. His subconscious nagged him.

In the space between the lights, something shifted like a lazy beast rolling over in a quiet dream, resisting the call of the light to rise. Would rushing through be enough? He had to make a decision. He knew something was there, waiting. He needed something to light his path, flares maybe. A flashlight might help even if it turned out to be a temporary fix. Would it dissuade the predator from making its move?

What was he thinking, he didn’t even have access to flares, and he wasn’t about to rummage around in the security booth. After Astral’s first harsh lesson on survival against the demons, he wasn’t keen on reliving the ordeal one last time. Besides, there was something about that body that didn’t sit well with him and he didn’t want to be caught in the same room with it. Maybe his imagination was getting the best of him.

He shut his eyes, wallowing in his fatigue while brushing his hair from his face. He groaned, accepting his new found resolve to risk the short stint in the dark. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small sick green box wedged between the wall barrier and the first of the stripped pillars. What a weird place to stash something. He pulled the box from its hiding place, and opened it to find a flash light and a hand full of flares. He held the gifted package in disbelief. He glanced to the stripped barriers as though they were the physical manifestation of the program’s essence of the ghost that saturated the scenarios.

“Thank you,” he said while feeling foolish for talking to the inanimate objects.