"Okay on three." Solbird says. "One... two..." Steel takes off towards the miasma. "Hey! That's cheating!" Solbird yells, racing after him. They run in with their breaths held and scoop up the remainder of the loot. They bring it out and drop it on the ground.

"You... cheated..." Solbird gasps at Steel. Steel throws himself to the ground.

"I did... what I had... to do..." He responds. "What's in... the pile?"

Solbird catches her breath and sits next to the pile.

"His handgun... cannons! Wow, these are big." She says, holding them up.

"Jeez, good thing we didn't get shot." Steel says. "Those things could probably take a whole arm off. Here, I'll hold on to them." He says, sitting up and taking them from Solbird. She continues sifting through the gleaming pile.

"Hmm... it's mostly cash. Oh, is this a key?" Solbird fishes a key out of the pile and holds it out in front of her.

"Huh, yeah." Steel says, observing the key. "So... maybe he was more like some kind of miniboss. In which case, we should leave and let a stronger, and fuller, team deal with it."

Solbird moves the key closer to her face. "E."

The man straightens. "E?"

The woman nods and holds the key out to his face. "E!"

The key, a dull multicolored thing rusted orange and brown, shows a raised letter embedded on it.

"Oh." Steel says. "E." Solbird nods and tucks the key into her pants pocket. The two put the rest of the loot into their backpacks.

"What do you think E stands for?" Steel asks. The pair gather their spears and head back the way they came from.

"Eep! Danger!" Solbird replies. "It must stand for eep, danger. As in, whoever found this key has made a terrible mistake." The pair enter the apartment they had previously walked up into.

"Funny how there seems to be less presence of the corruption up here, yet, there was the most powerful monster we've ever encountered, in any of our adventures-"

"You mean our one other adventure?" Solbird asks.

"Yeah," Steel laughs, "okay, the most powerful monster we've ever encountered in our two adventures was here. I mean, it's such a paradox. The strongest monster should be where the corruption is manifesting the worst, right? And most of our path seems to have been determined for us as well."

The pair takes turns sliding down the rough rubble ramp down to the apartment below.

"See?" Solbird says. "I knew something was wrong."

Steel follows Solbird through the wall and into the first apartment.

"Yeah... I guess you were right. Either way, it's weird." Steel rambles on. "Not only was the scouting assessment very wrong, not only did we almost get absolutely murdered by just one solo enemy, when we've fought groups at a time before, but the freakin' monster appeared in the least likely place it could have appeared! Why? Why are the weaker enemies closer to the corruption and the stronger enemies further from it?"

The pair make their way into the hallway and towards the stairs. As Steel rants, Solbird drags a bit further behind. She raises her forearm up. Blood is starting to show through the bandages. "Well... that's probably not good." She says to herself. Steel, lost in his ramblings, nods.

"I agree. It isn't good. I know I wasn't really agreeing before but now? I'm totally on board now. You were definitely on to something. You are definitely on to something."

The woman pulls her bandaged arm closer into herself and lightly cradles it, handling her spear with her other hand.

"You know, maybe this is some kind of trap." Steel continues on. "At first it's like, whoa! Nothing weird here. Just some low level easy experience and loot. But then all of a sudden it's like, "Death has been waiting here the whole time... waiting for your soul!" you know? It's just not right. It's like it was set up to lure people in and not let them out. At least, not alive. How could a Zone end up like this?"

The pair reach the stairway. Steel immediately starts on his way down, continuing his thoughts. Solbird follows him.

"But why would this happen? Is it the government? Did they set this up? Is it the corruption? Did it somehow manifest it's own plan? Corruption isn't sentient, is it? It's nothing but an energy, right? It grows like fire, devouring things and transforming them... like roots. Tendrils of evil searching for nutrients to sustain a tree of evil."

The pair reach the bottom of the stairs. As Steel marches on, rambling, Solbird glances at the elevator's cage door.

"Oh. E!" She says, stopping. Steel keeps walking.

"So, if the corruption itself can't plan things... and the government would totally never be involved in something like this... ugh. It just doesn't make any sense! There's no way this happened by coincidence, randomly. It's too... purposeful! The random isn't random enough! Okay okay, maybe this place is special somehow? I mean... all of the Zones are special in some way, aren't they?"

"Ahem!" Solbird shouts. "Oh! E! Hey, jackass! Can you pay more attention while walking through a murder house full of ghosts?!" Steel stops. Wildly, he looks side to side, then spins around.

"Huh? That was meaner than usual." He squints his eyes and leans his head forward. "Hey, what are you doing over there? Aren't we leaving?" Steel walks back over to Solbird. Her lips are pursed and her arms are crossed, spear tapping on the elevator.

"They way you were so out of it in your thoughts just now, even one of those skeletons could have taken you out. Don't be so stupid, yeah? These are not the places for solving puzzles or daydreaming, tonto. But since you like puzzles so much, figure out what E stands for yet?"

"Uhh..." Steel glances up at the elevator. "Oh!" Solbird nods slowly.

"Yes." She says. "Bet you one hundred dollars that this leads to the Heart." Steel scoffs.

"I'm not betting you anything. You'd win! And get all my money, too." He turns towards the elevator, putting his free hand in his pocket and balancing his spear against his shoulder. "I'm not the one who got stabbed. If you want to keep going, I'll keep going. But if the Heart is through there, I doubt it gets any easier." He starts tilting his head from side to side, cracking his neck. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and continues. "You know, we could leave. Give the key to the government. Or, bring it to the guild and put in a request for a higher level Purifier team to take care of it. You know what I mean... let an actual team, a four person, fully kitted group, purify this place safely."

Solbird pulls her bandaged arm closer into herself. "We could... but if anything goes wrong... there might not be enough time for that. We can't let it keep growing. It has to be purified... and probably soon. Besides, if someone is trying to hide something, can we really go giving away what might be the only way in?"

Steel shrugs, still peering into the elevator. "Maybe not, but is it really worth our lives? We can live to purify other places for sure. If we leave now. If not..." Steel's eyes narrow. Shadows seem to wrap around his face.

"Open it." Solbird commands. Steel nods. He steps forward and grabs the cage with his free hand. He groans and pulls on it, sliding it open, noisily, with a strong grating, scraping sound on the ground. CREEEEE.

Solbird, still holding her bandaged arm against herself, steps into the elevator. She looks around, headlight swiveling everywhere, until she finds a control panel.

"Looks like we were almost at the top." She says, observing the panel. Steel steps in behind her and slides the cage door shut. Her headlight slides down the panel until she sees a button with the letter B, with a keyhole next to it.

"Of course." She says. "Secret basement?"

"Very thrilling." Steel says, watching the hallway from the elevator.

Solbird, still holding her bandaged arm against herself, rests her spear against the elevator wall. She takes a stand in front of the elevator console and slides the key in. She turns it and presses her palm against the large B button. The elevator shakes and makes a large, grinding, rumbling sound. It begins a slow descent.

=========================================================================

Steel squeezes his spear tight, knuckles changing colors.

"Okay." Solbird slides the key into her pocket. She walks to the wall and grabs her spear. The concrete wall in front of them is slowly rising as the elevator descends. The bottom of the wall comes into view and the elevator crawls down. Underneath it, an unlit room floored with sterile white tiles comes into focus. A few tables sit organized about. Everything in the room is covered in these black, sooty tendrils that seem like they're pulsating out of the corner of your eye but don't seem to move at all when you look at them. Shadows hang from the ceiling like cobwebs.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The elevator lurches to a stop. It grinds, loudly, as it forces itself to halt. Suddenly, lights blink on. Doof. Doof. Doof. Doof. Every row of lights makes a deep, reverberating sound as they power up. They flicker slightly.

"Let's leave our headlights on." Steel suggests, grabbing the cage door. "We should still have more than enough battery." He tugs on the door and slides it open. It creaks and grinds until it clatters into the wall.

"Agreed." Solbird responds. "I don't trust this place one bit." She steps closer to the door and peers up into the space between the elevator and the wall. Her headlight pierces the darkness. Yet, it only reveals more darkness further up. "We no longer have an easy escape route." She looks back down, forward and into the room beyond her. "This feels worse than the revenant. I'm so anxious right now." She reaches her hand across her stomach and rubs her forearm.

"Anxious?" Steel says. "We're only sort of trapped in a secret basement in what government scouts misidentified as an easy, beginners, haunted house of evil and torment where we almost got murdered to death by one opponent. What's there to be anxious about?" He readies his spear and steps out of the elevator, crossing his legs, step by step. Quietly, Solbird follows behind him.

"Wow." Steel says, scanning the area with his eyes. "This must be some kind of hospital's break room. It even smells like a hospital. So sterile and clean."

"Besides the corruption clinging to it." Solbird adds.

"Yeah, besides that." Steel says. "Look, there's even a fridge and a sink counter in the back." Solbird glances to the back of the room.

"Huh." She says. "A microwave... A sink... A fridge... even a coffee pot."

Steel looks from one side of the room to the other. "Yeah... I've worked a couple jobs that had similar break rooms. This one is much more sterile." Solbird gazes up at the shadows hanging down, coating the lights.

"There must be a generator here. It doesn't seem to be connected to the apartment above. Suspicious."

Steel looks at the end of one wall, where a door is, and then across from that door, where another is. They both line up with the counter and the sink and the fridge, etc. Both doors are plain and colored in a dull green but their paint is splitting off of it.

"The heart is definitely nearby." Steel says. Solbird walks past Steel and heads to the door on the left.

"Yeah, I remember this. I remember that this is how it looked near the other Heart, too. Maybe not quite as corrupted, but it was a lot like this." Steel nods.

"So, we've got two doors." Steel points his spear at one, and then the other. "Which-"

"Let's go left." Solbird interrupts. Steel scratches the back of his head.

"Uhh... why left?" He asks. Regardless, he follows Solbird to the door.

"Because, left isn't right. And going the wrong way is always good. Don't you play video games?"

Steel shrugs. "Yeah, I guess. If you're a completionist, sure. You can find hidden items, secrets, extra enemies and experience and stuff. But there's no actual way to determine left and right as being wrong or right. They're only directions, and a little play on words like that will only make your decision making process easier. Left could be right, or it could be wrong."

The pair approach the door. Steel looks at Solbird, but keeps his gaze on her shoulder so his light doesn't hit her eyes. Solbird readies her spear and widens her stance. Steel sees this and takes a step closer to the door. He grabs the door's knob, turns it and pulls the door open towards himself. Solbird's light stabs into the darkness as she creeps forward.

Solbird's light illuminates a dimly lit electronics room. She looks around.

"I don't see any threats. Instead there's..." she moves her gaze and light across the room, "a row of monitors, desks and chairs plus two tables. It looks like the table has some kind of scrap on it. I can't really tell. Also, there's a couple cabinets on the other side of the room."

Solbird slowly pushes further into the room, sweeping her light up to the ceiling and back across the ground. Steel slides in behind her and slows the door's closing with his shoulder. He has it close softly. He stalks in behind Solbird.

"The room seems clear. It also seems like a dead end." Solbird says, positioning her spear back into one hand and using it like a walking stick. She raises her arm and takes another look at her bandage. The blood has increased in noticeability since she last looked at it up above. She winces and lowers her arm.

Behind her, Steel also turns his spear into a temporary walking stick.

Solbird strides down the room and gets a closer look at the tables. Steel moves to the desks and computers. He props his spear against a desk and squats down. He runs his hands over a computer tower. He finds the power button and jams it in.

Solbird gazes down at the table below her. She reaches down and grabs one of the pieces of scrap.

"A camera..." she says under her breath as the computer screen in front of Steel lights up. She turns to face him. "All that stuff you found in the walls? There's more of it here."

Steel gazes into a locked computer screen. "It's locked. If they've got cameras in here then I know these computers must have something important on them." He starts typing in some random passwords, keys clattering. "Probably some kind of clue to a mystery we aren't here to solve." Steel taps on the computer screen. "Notice this? These idiots left their symbol on the screen. What is that, mandatory or something?"

Solbird places the camera back on the desk. "Cameras... microphones... small speakers..." She reaches down and grabs another gadget. "This one's like a little clicker box. I guess all it does is make clicking sounds? I swear I've seen this in some junk shop before." She turns to look at Steel again. He gets up from the computer seat and grabs his spear. With his spear, he marches to the cabinets.

"Makes me wonder..." Solbird says, placing the box back on the table. "Steel, you seem pretty nervous right now." Steel glances at Solbird then back at the cabinets.

"Aren't you?" He turns back towards the cabinets. He grabs a curved handle and slides a drawer out, revealing files and folders lined up. He reaches in and at random, pulls a folder out. He shuts the drawer with a clunk and slaps the file down on the table.

"Shh!" The woman rushes to him. "Let's not aler-" The woman freezes. The man looks at her.

"What?"

She looks past him towards the door behind him.

"Well... I was going to warn you not to be so loud and wake anything that shouldn't be able to wake but... I started to remember how loud the elevator was. So, if there was anything to wake, we probably already woke it."

Steel sighs. "So why are you staring at the door behind me?"

The woman shakes her head. "Sorry, I'm just spacing out in my memories."

Steel shakes his head. "That's not spacing out, that's thinking. Don't be an idiot, there's an obvious difference. Anyway," Steel opens the file he threw down on the table. He shuffles through the contents.

"Whoa. This is crazy."

The lights suddenly flicker above them. They both pause and peer up at the lights for a moment. Nothing happens and they look back down.

"Is this what higher level Zones are always like?" Solbird asks. Steel shrugs.

"Anyway, look here." He puts a couple pages down in front of Solbird. "Photos of people, scientific thesis, reports written up. Here, look at this one too." He puts another page down on top of the others. Solbird picks it up.

"Subjects subjected to mental prodding. Almost none of the subjects are able to ignore the noise related stimulation. Of those, only a small percentage have the observational abilities necessary to grasp awareness of the source. Yadda yadda... Energy and temperature stimulus used. Timing of harassment is crucial.

A few subjects were brought in for more detailed observation. Yadda... influence has become easier to apply in most cases. However, there also seems to be some type of degradation occurring in all of the subjects. All of them. Even the aware ones can be pushed to a breaking point.

Many of the subjects now respond to commands as if it were their own desires and thoughts. Lobotomy has not revealed much of use. Note that implanted individuals and the more tormented individuals respond most readily to commands. Implanted individuals are even able to "lose" words. What I mean is, we can choose to block a word from their memory. They know they are missing a word, but they can't "find" it.

Much easier to interfere with implanted individuals that have commands played directly into their skulls. Commands broadcasted externally have a lower suggestive success rate of obedience.

The broken ones have been disposed of."

Solbird looks up from the report. Steel puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Who in the world do we report this too?"

The lights above them flicker.

Solbird places the paper back on the table. Steel collects the papers and tucks them back into a folder. Solbird narrows her eyes, peering at a wall.

"I'm not sure. The only thing the Purifier guild deals with is the corruption itself."

"Like we're supposed to." Steel cuts in. Solbird closes her eyes.

"The government should be dealing with stuff like this. The government should be dealing with this. Not causing it." Solbird sighs. "If only this was just a story in a book or something. Like some kind of supernatural fiction or science fiction."

Steel drops his backpack on the table. "You're telling me there's no one else we can report this too?" Solbird shakes her head and opens her eyes.

"Besides revealing it to the general public itself... no. There's no special group dedicated solely to stopping the government from doing whatever they want. I mean, they're like the top of the food chain, aren't they? The government, the military, politicians. They are the checks and balances, so when they fall out of balance and go unchecked, who else remains?

"What about the Unified Nations?" Steel asks, scooping files into his backpack.

"Maybe." Solbird says, pushing herself away from the table. "The problem is, the Unified Nations is made up of what are basically politicians. The governments of many nations. All going to the Unified Nations means is that we hope that another government hates our government enough to use it against them. Unfortunately, they might just find the research beneficial to themselves and end up supporting it instead of fighting it."

"So... what?" Steel asks, zipping the backpack up.

"I already told you what." Solbird says, fiddling with her spear.

"We just tell people?" Steel slings the backpack back on. Solbird walks around the perimeter of the table.

"Well, unlike the people being experimented on, who probably get called crazy any time they speak up, we now have proof. This Zone of Corruption was caused by the crimes against humanity that took place here. This report details that. All we can do is share what we've found with everyone. I mean... I think so. How am I supposed to know? It's not like I've ever done this before. You've been in as many Zones as I have!"

Steel peers around the room. "So, whatever happens, we still have to purify this place."

"Yes." Solbird stops at the other end of the table, near the door. "Because if we don't, that corruption will grow and more people will end up suffering. It has to be stopped. The larger a Zone grows, the more potent the corruption becomes. If the Zone grows large enough, true monsters will manifest. Those monsters will be able to roam to any place that the corruption touches. It only makes the corruption more dangerous and more difficult to purify."

Steel shakes his head. He takes another look around then walks around the table towards Solbird. "Why would they leave this place like this? What are they thinking? They know how bad the corruption gets, they have an entire branch dedicated to fighting it! I don't understand what could drive them to hurt people like this... then to completely ignore it? Pawn it off on some low levels, bait them in and let them die?"

Steel reaches the end of the table. Solbird turns towards the door.

"Sounds like there are monsters all over the place." She says. "We've still got another room to check. It's probably not going to be so pretty."

The two trade uneasy glances, taking care not to stab light into each other's eyes. They ready their spears and Solbird moves to the door. She turns the knob and uses her shoulder to push the door open as she creeps outside of the room. She peeks her head into the next room as she does so.