In a flooded side room, half the floor had given way. Water cascaded down into consuming blackness, no lower level visible. I stepped carefully past the open door and the current rushing in, water sucking at my shins like it was hungry for them. I sloshed away fast up the hall, shuddering at the thought of that black pit. You fell into that thing, God knows where you’d land.

Soon after, the hall began sloping gently up. The carpet went from wet to damp, and then, between one step and the next, dry.

Up ahead glimmered a tiny spark of green, and as I got closer I realized it was a night-light, plugged into an outlet at the base of the wall. Something about it spoke achingly of lightning bugs and sleepy summer nights, and all at once I felt immensely weary. I fell to my knees when I reached the weak light and sloughed off my waterlogged pack, then curled up around the tiny green glow as if it was a campfire. My face snuggled into the brown whorls of the carpet like the fur of some huge friendly beast. I slept.

My body did, anyway. My mind kept marching.

I dreamed endless waterlogged halls. I trudged. I can’t say I explored, because I no longer made any attempt to mark my way or track my position. I searched for nothing, found nothing: only wandered. When I realized I was dreaming I tried to break free of the nightmare, think of anything else, but lucidity was slippery, fumbled away between heartbeats, and I kept losing it. I walked halls lit only by my flickering blood-red light and thought of nothing that wasn’t them.

Once, in a long, straight hall of waist-deep water that never seemed to end, the surface ahead of me shifted, swirled.

Something was moving underneath.

I stopped short, squinting, and held my glowstick high. The ripples distorted and threw back its dim red light. But I could just make out something person-shaped under the surface, swimming towards me.

The gun was in my hand: in this dream, I’d forgotten I lost it. Gripped by fear, I pointed it at the thing under the surface and pulled the trigger. But the shots went wide, from the angle of the water or some grim nightmare-logic. Whatever it was kept coming.

I pressed back against the wall. The thing beneath the water was doing the breaststroke with smooth, efficient moves. It didn’t break the surface and it never came up for air. Through the rippled distortions I could see no face.

But as it swam past, I could see it was wearing my clothes.

It didn’t slow down. I cringed back against the wall, cold sweat prickling my face, helpless to stop my head turning to watch it pass.

It swam to the end of the hall and around a corner, never stopping for breath, leaving a wake of dark whorls and eddies.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

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I woke with a parched, sticky mouth. My face was glued to the carpet with dried blood from where the piece of phone had cut my cheek. I tugged myself free, which reopened the cut. Wincing, I sat up and rummaged in my waterlogged pack for something to staunch the bleeding, still half-asleep. I’d left my soaked shoes on and my feet felt like they’d swelled to twice their normal size inside them.

My glowstick had long since burnt out. The nightlight’s weak green glow reduced the world to a dim circle of carpet, a few feet across. And I was groggy, still shaking dream-remnants from my head. So I didn’t realize until I started digging for a fresh glowstick that someone was sitting a few feet away.

I gasped and leapt up and back, scrabbling against the wall behind me. I could see only tennis shoes, catching the green of the nightlight, and the faintest hint of a body in the shadows behind them, knees pulled up with clasping hands. Someone sitting with their back against the wall, faint green glints in two eyes. Watching.

I stayed there trembling for a moment, too afraid to either come closer or flee into the blackness back the way I’d come. I’d left my pack in the circle of light, between me and whoever was sitting on the other side.

I realized I recognized the shoes.

Hesitant, I cleared my throat. “Niko?”

The face was so shadowed I could barely make it out, but I thought it smiled. “Hey, man.”

The voice was cracked, weak. But familiar. Unmistakable.

I stepped back toward the light. “Shit, dude, you scared me.” He made no move to get up. “What happened to you? We got separated and I didn’t know what to do. Did you find the key marks I left? Jesus, I’m glad you found me.”

I knelt and pulled a new glowstick from my pack, but he held up a hand.

“Okay if we just talk for a minute first, like this?” he said. “I’ve been in the dark for fucking ever and that thing will murder my eyes.” He lowered the hand. “Cool?”

It was such a relief to hear his voice again I shoved the glowstick back down, along with a vague sense of unease. “Fine. So what happened?”

“Rather hear what happened to you. Tell me everything.”

So I did. How I’d waited at the bottom of the shaft, explored the water-soaked hallways. I told him about the call at the bank of payphones. But I left out the part with the gun, because in hindsight it felt stupid, and because I remembered he didn’t know about the gun, and I didn’t want to mar our reunion by revealing I’d kept something from him. Something else, anyway.

He didn’t say much. The green glints in his eyes sometimes bobbed like he was nodding or cocking his head. But the darkness was fierce. All I could really make out were his shoes, and the hands clasped around his knees. In the pale green of the night-light they looked skeletal, emaciated.

Disquiet crept into me, rising through the floor into my feet and up my bones. I couldn’t see his face. I wanted to see his face.

“Hey,” I finally said, “this dark is kind of freaking me out. You can shield your eyes or whatever, but I’ve got to have some light. Okay?”

He sighed, as if resigned. “If you have to.”

I reached carefully for a glowstick the same way I used to walk deliberately towards the light switch in my childhood basement, shepherding growing panic with a forced front of calm. I pulled one out, snapped it, shook it, blinked at the surge of blue light from mingling chemicals, and held it up, anxious, as the light crept toward him.

The electric blue was shockingly bright, and he’d winced and held up a hand to block it out. He kept it there for a long moment as I squinted, pupils squirming. Finally, almost reluctantly, he dropped the hand and met my gaze, defiant.

Something was wrong with him.