"How are you feeeling?" Zero-Nine asked.

Petre did not notice the question at first. His eyes darted around at every shadow. They had left the befouled bathroom and entered into a large cafeteria. Or at least he thought it was a cafeteria. The room was full of long tables, many shattered in half and others pushed against the fading walls. There were a thousand places for ghouls and fiends to hide. Not just once Petre thought he could see the white of a blind iris watching him from underneath some rubble. Each time the phantom disappeared when he looked back in panic.

"I saaaaaiiiiid," Zero-Nine grabbed him by the cheeks. She puuuulled with enough force that Petre worried his lips would split open. "How are you- "

"Fine!" Petre said as his head bulged with a constant ache. "Or... Or not."

"Big meanie let go!" Blurb hissed from his shoulder. She slapped Zero-Nine's human hands with her tentacles in a pathetic barrage. The strikes looked as though they had all the strength of a wet noodle.

Zero-Nine let go of his face with a mischievous whine, and Petre rubbed his swollen cheeks. She stared at him expectantly.

"My... head," Petre said, and with the words said aloud the dull pressure seemed to deepen. It felt as though someone had pressed their foot against his brain and squished its sloppy meat against the inside of his skull. "It... throbs. And I see... Well, I'm nervous, but I keep... seeing things."

"Mmm, mmm," Zero-Nine said with an emphatic nod. "Sounds like them."

"Peterey need looots of hug," Blurb said, and she wrapped one of her tentacles around his face. As if having her ȑ̷̰ỏ̸̘t̷̖͠t̵̻͛ĕ̴̹n̸̬̋ slime draped over his lips would help with his horror.

"T-thank you," Petre said, stunned at the venom that had filled him. Blurb was only trying to help, but it had started to feel... so fake. He did not want hugs. He wanted claws that could tear and teeth that could devour.

"It'll only get worse," Zero-Nine said, and she continued her playful trot through the deserted and destroyed canteen. "When you notice... If you notice things are off, give a shout."

"What are we doing here?" Petre asked, the words a rush of emotion. He stifled a hysterical laugh that seemed to bubble out of nowhere. "Why am I here?"

Zero-Nine looked over her shoulder. He stared at her, pleading.

"Come along," she said, without a smile.

Petre had almost forgotten about the humans. He had almost allowed himself to think the creature in the bathroom had been just that, a creature. Lonesome. An anomaly. An exception to the rule.

"Looks kind of like... a statue?" Zero-Nine said with a tilt of her head.

Petre wanted to vomit.

In the middle of the dilapidated hallway was a small spire of bone. At first glance it brought to mind a university art project. Very avant-garde. The tiled floor around the totem had been dug up, deepening the feral air of the object. Petre could make out the distinct shape of bone, but the frills that adorned it...

Meat. Ropes of meat. Slabs of meat. Intestine wrapped around the small tower of fused bone like tinsel on a tree. Chunks of meat were impaled on the spiked edges of bone like grisly clown-noses.

"Why...?" Petre looked away, but the smell was everywhere. The worst part was this horror had to be new. This was something the creatures that lived down here had prepared recently. The wet meat dripped and trickled onto the floor around the bestial totem.

"Zero-Zero has an odd effect on humans," Zero-Nine said, her voice distant. "But even I'm a little surprised. I had a few humans... Ooooh... Two hundred years ago? A few humans made a little fan club for me. They got up to some whaaacky stuff, but nothing like this."

Petre's stomach churned as he stared, his arms trembled. A fan club. The people who had been locked down here had formed a fan club. And this is what Zero-Zero asked of them.

"I can't," he said as a white heat started to rise within his throat.

"Gonna let it alllll out?" Zero-Nine asked as Petre started to pace back and forth.

The hallway seemed to shrink and close in around him as the bile boiled from within his stomach. His distress earned a hearty chuckle from Zero-Nine. He wanted to g̵͇̍o̸̲͐u̵̯͗ǵ̸͕e out her eyes. He wanted to pull on her tongue and s̶̨̔n̶͙͠i̷͓͌p̶̫͒ ̵̜̚i̶̙͗t̶̰̿ in two.

"Peterey...?" Blurb said, the wet of her putrid slime wrapped around his throat.

"I can't!" Petre shouted as her wet sludge seemed to soak into his skin.

He pulled at Blurb with trembling fingernails, his hands sinking into her black goo like a rancid carcass.

"Just... get o̴f̴f̶!" Petre shouted.

His eyes bulged as his stomach performed a violent somersault, and Blurb's clammy touch only served to further frustrate his stomach. He tried to sweep her from his shoulders with a manic frantic gesture.

She made an excited noise as she slid from his shoulder, and Petre reached his limit. He walked over to the nearest wall, bent over, and wreeeetched.

His throat burned. His stomach collapsed with a want to travel up and out his throat. He could not breathe as his mouth filled with a rancid acid.

Petre's eyes were full of tears, his lips marred with a lingering taste of death.

He spat, deflated. He felt so weak. He did not understand why he was here. He did not understand why Blurb was here. She was like an accessory. She offered a word here or there, always empty and-

"Stop it," Petre said through gritted teeth. She was the only one here who did not want to torture him. She had... regressed. That was the best word for it.

He turned away from the mess he had made. Not only did his stomach burn, and his throat with it, but he had thrown Blurb onto the floor like some kind of pest. All she wanted to do was help him, and he had... he had...

"Blurb?"

The hallway was empty.

"Zero-Nine?"

His eyes darted around, but only the spire filled the way.

And it had changed.

Petre staggered away from the red glow of the totem. It had been adorned with ropes of flesh and chunks of meat. It had been cast in the shadow of this lightless hell.

A broken body, its skin beset with bloody rashes and hives, remained impaled on the jutting spire of bone. Their emaciated face contorted in a silent, breathless horror. The red that fled them glowed like embers, illuminating their agony like the twisted Christmas lights of a serial killer.

"Zero-Nine!" Petre shouted. Because this was not real. This was another hallucination. "Zero-Nine! Help! I-I'm... Zero-Nine!"

Another shout died on his lips as the impaled body turned its rotted head towards Petre, its cracked and bloody lips squirming in an endless screech of death.

The twisted form did not have eyes to stare. Two black holes peered out at Petre, and the abyss within seemed to beckon him. A thousand smiles full of twisted and misshapen teeth danced behind their veil of black.

The creature's broken lips twisted into the false impression of a smile. Its mouth opened, and opened, and opened until its face was filled with a gaping maw of black. Their torment had been silent and breathless, but the emaciated form looked down at Petre, and said...

Petre ran.

His mind was blank with fear.

He ran, and ran, and ran.

The hallway walls were covered in white unblinking eyes, and he ran.

He was not afraid. He was not aware. He simply ran.

Some primitive survival instinct had clicked, and he ran.

But then he could not run, and he started to scream. He looked down and found that his legs had disappeared. They ended in two bloody stumps, and their red wet swelled in his mouth, their cloying iron tainting his tongue with the colour of death.

His mouth filled with blood, and he was forced to swallow.

"You don't listen, do you?"

Petre stared up into Zero-Nine's face. She was not wearing her usual smile.

"I told you to holler if you felt... something," she said, but Petre scarcely heard her words.

His eyes filled with tears, and he threw his arms around her. This powerful creature. Another of his tormentors, but now he realized how delightful she was.

"W-what?" Petre heard the surprise in her human voice, but he did not care. "Awfully a-affectionate all of a sudden."

He squeezed her as tight as he dared, relishing her closeness.

"P-Peterey should... should hug Blurb..."

Petre winced as he looked to his side and found the small black blob of Blurb rolling over the befouled hallway floor.

"No need to get jealous, runt," Zero-Nine said, her voice positively victorious. She pushed Petre into her inflated cleavage.

"GrrRrRRr," Blurb cooed as Petre struggled for breath. His manic excitement had abated, and he tried to push away from Zero-Nine's embrace.

"Finished already?" Zero-Nine asked as he managed to extract himself from the softness of her massive breasts. "Is it the crowd?"

Petre titled his head in confusion, and then he looked around.

In his hysteria he had entered an enormous hall like a gymnasium. It was full of tents and other makeshift structures.

They were not alone.

Petre looked around in a mad sweep. Dozens of blank faces stared at their small party, their forms and faces distorted and monstrous.