Chapter 30: Voices That Lead Us Astray

I could feel it before I had even made it to the bottom of the stairwell. The pushing of a control effect. I knew the feeling well after coming so far, but this one felt different. It wasn’t as powerful as some of them had been, I don’t even think floor eleven’s control was this weak.

There was a feeling of something trying to drill into my skull. It was painful, but not the worst thing that I have dealt with on these floors. Injuring my small toe was definitely more painful. This effect was easy to ignore as I descended the last few steps of the concrete stairwell.

Once I saw the teeming landscape, I knew I was in trouble. There was a large open pit of rotting flesh in the center of the room, with tunnels heading off in every direction. Small larva-like creatures filled the tunnels and pit. There were a lot of them, and I could feel their gaze on me despite their lack of eyes.

The more of the creatures that look at me, the more intense the feeling of drilling was against my skull. Without waiting for it to get worse, I took a step back into the stairwell to think of a plan that I could use to get through here. Just walking through them was going to be a bad idea with how the pain got worse when they looked at me.

In the back of my mind, I knew it probably had something to do with the slight control effect I could feel. However, I wasn’t quite sure why this one had an extreme pain associated with it. Perhaps it was trying to do something more sinister than the normal control effects that just made me leave or try to fool me into staying.

I had no idea how to counter it, if I even could other than through sheer willpower like I had with every other control effect. So, with nothing to lose, I tested the waters once more by stepping out of the stairwell, it seemed to stay there again, so another floor that wasn’t randomized.

The feeling of a drill was intense, but it was bearable. It gave me a chance to keep looking around. The larva that filled the pit were very different from the ones that went in and out of the connecting tunnels. They were mining out this rotten flesh for some reason.

The pain was getting more and more intense as more of the larva in the pit began to notice me. I decided it would be better to take a slower, more strategic approach to this floor. Pushing too hard would probably mean something bad.

I was slowly going to build my resistance to this new control effect, abusing the fact that this isn’t some kind of randomized floor. I had resources for three weeks left in my bag, that was without heavy rationing. Probably five weeks if I heavily rationed.

I kept pushing myself. Trying to endure the pain for longer, and longer. It never worked for longer than five minutes. I always went back to the safety of the stairwell right before the pain becomes too much to bear. Whatever those larvae were, it wasn’t good if they could make a control effect like this.

However, I had no idea what the control effect would do once it ‘drilled’ through my head. Clearly, the drilling had a goal, otherwise it would try something different. I didn’t need to know the goal, I only had to somehow get around this drilling. Letting it through was not an option, as I didn’t know what it would do to me while I was under its effect.

I had no choice but to push through. I was going to make a sprint for one of the tunnels. I took a deep breath, and after readying myself, I started to run at top speed. The shin-height larvae were crushed beneath my feet as I ran through the large opening of the pit.

The crunching noise was completely drowned out by the ringing in my ears. Running through the pit area was making the pain become more intense, a whole lot faster. These creatures were dangerous, but I didn’t know why so many of them made a single effect stronger.

With no time to think about it, I put all of my focus into resisting the drilling pain and running towards a tunnel. I had no plan other than this, no backup. I had to make this one work no matter what, otherwise I was going to fall to the control effect.

The drilling pain was getting worse and worse. The nearest tunnel felt so far away as my pace slowed to a crawl. The pain was unbearable, I held my head as I crumbled to my knees. The drilling felt like it was inside my brain. I screamed; a scream so guttural I’m sure that I might have heard it from a different floor.

Then, the pain slowly started to fade as I stood back up on my feet. It was a surreal feeling, being controlled like this. I knew I was currently being controlled, but I couldn’t resist it. The creature… creatures(?) controlling me were letting me have my own thoughts to an extent.

This wasn’t a normal control effect by any means. Once it had taken over me, I realized it wasn’t just one, this was a collective, and they were trying to assimilate me. Well, I guess they’ve partially succeeded, because I can’t move on my own.

The collective was rummaging through my thoughts, my memories. They knew everything about me, who I was and how I got here. They made me start walking through the ranks of Larvae. The larvae now moved out of the way as I walked past them, no longer crushing them as I walked on top of them.

I wonder if I had tried to avoid them more if I would have been able to make it to the tunnel. Perhaps killing a whole bunch of them made them angry. No, I could feel the residual anger in their collective. Killing some of them definitely made it harder for me, I was doomed from the start.

I could feel a light drilling sensation in the back of my mind, and as soon as I focused on it, it stopped. What were they still trying to do? They had gained control over my body, but they left me with my mind… or did they not leave my mind to me but couldn’t take my mind in the first place.

If I still had control of my face, I am certain that I would have smiled. However, I was currently just a mind trapped inside a body. A normally horrifying concept, but I was confidant that with a bit of time, I could regain control of my body before this hive mind did something to it.

They clearly had some sort of goal, as they hadn’t killed me immediately. There was something they needed me to do for them. I was going to have to leverage that need to escape from the control effect. There had to be some way for me to communicate with them now that I was part of their collective.

It didn’t seem like it was going to be easy, as anytime I tried to talk out loud, I was reminded that I wasn’t in control of my body, and the only thing that could be conveyed over thoughts seemed to be primal emotions. No detailed way to communicate other than emotion, how has this collective survived?

Perhaps there was a way to communicate through emotion that I had yet to think of. However, when I forced an emotion through the connection, all I got back was a muddy feeling of anger. They weren’t happy I was trying to communicate with them.

I kept trying different methods to communicate while they forced my body to walk down a tunnel of rotting flesh and muscle. It was nice to see that it wasn’t just flesh this time, now it had clear muscular definition. I’d imagine that muscle rotting was really bad though.

Walking on rotting muscles seemed to be easier than just flesh though. My feet would sink into the flesh, where as the stay on top of the muscle most of the time. The deeper they took me into the tunnel, the fewer larvae there was just walking around on the ground.

“Dig.” A voice came through my connection to the collective. I was at the end of the current tunnel. Suddenly, and almost pleading feeling came through as I felt the connection waver. “Dig to escape.”

That was the last thing that came through the control effect before I regained control of myself. There was no lasting control, and I could easily just leave if I wanted to. However, its last line had me curious. ‘Dig to escape.’ I could take it for face value and start slicing away at this rotting tunnel with my ax and dig my way through.

Stolen novel; please report.

I decided to go for the most logical choice and see what would happen if I just tried to leave. I started to walk back through the tunnel, only to feel the drilling feeling again. They were going to try and control me again. With so few of the larvae here, the effect felt weak, mildly annoying at best.

I had free reign inside these tunnels, just as I had thought before, it just took a bit more work than intended, and was a lot riskier than it needed to be. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do at the end of this tunnel.

I went back to the end of the rotting tunnel and decided to try digging for a bit, I didn’t have much to lose from trying to dig through a little bit. One thing that was immediately apparent, the tunnel, or whatever I was inside was still very much alive despite being so full of rot. The amount of blood that leaked out when I cut through flesh and muscle was nearly unnatural.

Not that this haphazard layout of flesh and muscle made that much sense to begin with. There was a noticeable increase in the number of larvae arriving where I was digging to help with cleanup. There was currently no drilling feeling, as I was doing what the collective currently wanted from me.

Was the exit really beyond this wall of rotting flesh and muscle? I was skeptical, but I didn’t really have too many other options until I could find a way to resist the control effect coming from the mass of larvae in the central pit.

Whenever I ended up taking a break, the drilling effect would come back. The collective clearly didn’t want me to stop, but I really had no choice. I would probably die from exhaustion long before this collective was happy with my progress. Reminded me of some of the slave drivers that some employers were.

Real world comparisons aside, I was starting to wonder if digging really was going to be the right option for me. I was going to have to think about some kind of plan to get through the pit area. I was fairly certain that unless I spent over a year down here on this floor, I wasn’t going to be able to resist the control effect from so many targeted attacks.

I tried to think of a plan, but nothing simple seemed to come to mind. If I could just get into another tunnel without getting taken over by the control effect, I could check other paths. The problem was the tunnels were so far apart, that it was a certainty that I wouldn’t make it before they drilled into my mind again.

I could try to kill as many as the larvae in the pit as I possibly could, but that would take a long time to make any noticeable difference, even with my weapon. There were just too many in that main pit. I’d probably be able to kill about four or five of the ones in central pit before they regained control over me.

I was worried that if they knew I was going to kill them all that maybe they’d try and kill me somehow. They’ve yet to fight back in any noticeable way, but that could change if I showed signs of trying to systematically kill them.

I couldn’t risk it. It was too dangerous to try a frontal assault. That left me with very limited options from here. I could always just dig like the collective wanted, but how long could I realistically keep this up. Probably only a day or two before I became too exhausted to move.

I watched as the larvae crawled around me, collecting the blood and piles of rotting flesh and muscle that I was cutting through. I really did feel like I was working in a mine right now. Was this what some of the coal workers of the olden days felt like?

I watched the larvae as they moved the rotting material out of the tunnel. Where did they take it, was it perhaps a different tunnel? I might be able to use this somehow. Could I play dead, and have them drag me to a different tunnel?

There was a certain risk involved in this. I didn’t know where they took the rotted material, and perhaps they even took it to the central pit so that the larvae there could eat it. If they just dropped me in the center of the massive pit, I would fall under the control again without a doubt in my mind.

Although, it might actually be fin even if the control effect comes over me again. Wait, they can read my thoughts and memories when the control effect is active. If I come under the control effect again, they’ll immediately learn my plans. Then probably just try and kill me anyways.

So, I really was just going to be forced to dig until I either escaped or died trying. I could always do trials by fire. I could force myself to resist the control effect for as long as possible. See what happens when I’m pushed to an absolute breaking point.

It was an atrocious idea, literally walking in and getting myself killed was probably safer than this. I wasn’t going to get through this without trying something a little crazy. The floors were getting harder and harder while also becoming nonsensical.

A good point to the nonsensical was the lack of a light source, yet I could see perfectly fine. The previous floor as well. Thinking that I developed some sort of supernatural ability was taking it too far, even for my most recent delusions of grandeur.

The floor itself probably had some sort of ambient light level. There weren’t any shadows at all, it was like there was no light at all. There had to be some though, as I could see perfectly fine right now. Deluding myself into thinking I could see in the dark might get me killed.

I decided now was the time to put my plan into action. I was going to just walk to the next tunnel while resisting the effect from the larvae. It sounded easy on paper, but in practice, my life was on the line. I really shouldn’t try this, there was probably a better option available, I would just need to wait it out a bit more.

Regardless of any thoughts of self-preservation, I had already started walking out of the tunnel. The drilling feeling was getting bad before I even made it to the entrance of the tunnel. There were significantly more larvae here than when I had walked through earlier. The collective was trying to keep me inside this tunnel through sheer force.

I had a force of my own to counter it though. I kept walking calmly, the drilling was so intense that my vision was beginning to blur, but I kept walking while resisting it. My vision warped under the perceived pressure from the drilling. My head felt like someone was treating it like a balloon and sticking their finger deep inside without breaking it.

I made it to the pit just in time for the pain to match the level it had gotten to before the collective had taken control of my body. This time, I pushed on. I could feel the anger coming from the collective as I marched right on through the pit and into the next tunnel.

I felt something inside my head pop, making a loud noise. I was worried I had fallen for the control effect again as the drilling effect lessened, but I couldn’t feel any of my own control slipping. I felt a warm liquid drip down over my mouth. As some of this liquid made it inside my mouth, I realized it was blood.

I brought my hand up to my nose, and it was bleeding, quite severely at that. These bastards probably tried to liquefy my brain. The larvae all around the room had stopped moving. As if they all died at once.

With the amount of blood coming from my nose and the blood I had begun to cough up, I had larger problems to deal with. I was losing a lot of blood, and quite quickly at that. I knew that plugging my nose and tilting my head back wasn’t going to be good for me here.

Before I could even think of a solution, I passed out.

…

I woke up and vomited.

The taste of blood in my mouth was overwhelming. I looked around to see if I was in any immediate danger, but there was nothing moving. The larvae on the ground were as still as they were before I had passed out.

I felt light-headed. As if I had just lost a lot of blood, which I probably did. I opened my bag after taking it off my back and grabbed a few snacks and some water to refuel myself. My throat and stomach hurt, there was too much blood that went down my throat, its amazing I didn’t drown when I passed out.

I took deep breaths and felt a small amount of fluid in my lungs as I was breathing. It was most likely blood that had drained into them while I was unconscious. I forced some heavy coughs, and managed to get some coagulated blood out, but there wasn’t much else I could do other than hope it wouldn’t be too painful later on.

Over the next hour, I forced coughing, and filled myself up on food and water to replenish my energy. I felt like I had just gone to the blood bank three times in a single day. I was tired, and mentally exhausted, but I was still alive. That’s all that really mattered down here.

“What have you done?” I hear a voice ask me in my mind. It wasn’t a control effect, just a simple message sent.

“Who?” I asked in response, not finding a single thing in the entire central room moving.

“You’ve doomed us.” It responded, not answering my question. I had a feeling on what was speaking to me, but I didn’t do anything in particular.

“I didn’t hurt you guys, in fact you tried to hurt me.” I responded with a slight amount of venom in my tone.

“It will take decades to produce the numbers we had once again. We’ll die before then. Slated for replacement.” The voice had panic to it. Fear.

“What are you talking about? Show yourself.” I demanded.

From the pile of larvae in the center of the pit, a larva larger than all of the rest emerged from the among all of the presumably dead larvae. It was roughly the same height as me, but it was around four of my height long.

“You killed all of them. Look around you.”

“I only resisted the effect of your control. Whatever happened to your collective isn’t my fault.”

“Your resistance killed them. Have you ever tried to throw something at a hard wall? An immovable object against an unstoppable force. In reality, something is going to give in.”

“It bounces off or breaks, what’s your point? Wait, you aren’t saying your own takeover bounced back and harmed your collective?” I thought about it. It might have made sense. I’ve built quite a large amount of mental resistance just through sheer exposure to them throughout the floors. Having something bounce back was new to me.

“We only wanted to help you. The exit isn’t in any of these tunnels, its behind one of them.”

“Yeah. I know you’re lying to me. You see, I have some information that someone is deeper than here. Unless this floor resets every time that someone comes through, there’s no way that the exit isn’t down one of these tunnels. Perhaps you’ve even done your best to seal it off using your little larvae drones.”

“Your distrust of logic is baffling. Do you not feel remorse for killing my colony?”

“No, not particularly.” I shrugged my shoulders. I really didn’t feel bad about it. I had to do my best to survive down here, and if some collective tried to hijack my mind and body, you better believe I’ll kill them without remorse.

“Absurd. Fine, just leave then. There’s nothing I can do anymore.” The larva sinks back down into the pile of dead larvae. I hear some noises that sound almost like crunching, but I didn’t care.

Without another thought, I started walking down a random tunnel. The drilling effect in my mind was completely gone. The light-headedness was still there, but it wasn’t too bad to push through considering the pain I had gone through right before this.

I had checked most of the tunnels by now. I was almost starting to believe the giant larva’s words when I made it back to the central pit and felt the drilling effect again. Was it seriously trying again, even after it said it was just going to let me go?

I resisted it. Putting in a conscious effort to stop it from drilling deeper than it was. It stopped almost immediately after that, and there was silence once again in the pit. I tried a few more tunnels before I came to the end of one that looked rather suspicious.

There was loose flesh and muscle in a pile that blocked the tunnel. I got to digging through it. The farther it went back, the more packed in the flesh and muscle were. I was only more convinced I had to go this way as it got denser and denser. It was denser than even the surrounding walls.

After roughly a day of digging, I find the green exit sign. I had to dig for about another hour before I had enough room to open the door to the stairwell. The door looked to be one half of a doubled sided hospital security door.

I opened it carefully, as it was a pull door, I had to make sure there was space for me and my bag to sneak through. Like with any floor that was covered in rotting flesh, I tossed my clothes back into the floor and cleaned myself.

I felt good about myself. That floor could have been so much worse had I not actively fought against the control effects on previous floors. It was a close battle, but in a game of mental strength, I was more powerful than a bunch of bugs with a connected hive mind.

The next floor called for me, and I listened.