Even after everything that had happened thus far – dozens of deaths at the hands of 204 and the scourging of the first floor – axe maniac still instilled a sense of fear in me. I couldn’t really place it, it was something in his eyes, the way he held himself. Something primordial that couldn’t be reasoned with.
Axe maniac only wanted to kill. I didn’t think I wanted to find out what his profession had been in a previous life. Slaughterhouse operator? Sweatshop overseer? Human trafficker? Head of torture for the CIA? Accountant?
No matter, his axe was coming straight for me.
Drawing on everything I had learned the past hundred or more lives, I dodged and weaved my way backwards through the hallway. Of course, it didn’t matter if I died or not, but now was as good a time as any to learn his tell and attack patterns. It would only make it easier in the coming loops where I would undoubtedly face him again.
“Piggy, piggy, piggy,” he growled as his axe kept trying to reach me. “Stop squealing away, little piggy.” The hallway behind him showed marks in the walls from his wild swings. One chop would be enough to slice my head clean off, something that had probably happened before.
He swung again, both hands firmly on the axe’s handle. The moment the axe passed me, I jumped forward and brushed his shirt with my hand. The blood cleaned off partially and his number became visible from underneath. Before he could react with another attack, I jumped back again.
“42,” I said with a smile that should at least annoy him a bit. “Nice to meet you.”
Axe maniac’s, 42’s, eyes widened in what I could only describe as a combination of shock and pure anger. “Fucking pig!” he yelled out as he threw his axe straight for my head.
The unexpected attack took me by surprise and for a blissful moment, I experienced what a true lobotomy feels like.
Then I woke up.
“So,” I said to myself as I made my way up the second floor, axe resting on my shoulder. “Now I know how to disarm him. Time to explore the floor numero dos.”
As per usual, the others parted for me as I went against the flow of the crowd, uneasy glances thrown at my axe. I recognized a few of the faces as they passed me by. People I’d killed, people that had tried to kill me, people that had actually succeeded in killing me. I gave 341 a nasty glance as I bumped his shoulder. He had been a handful.
A few minutes later the announcement began and I started my exploring of the second floor’s hallways. Immediately, I noticed there were a lot less rooms here than on the floor below. Was the first floor the most occupied when it came to numbered rooms? Would it be less and less the higher I went? The near-emptiness of the tenth floor certainly seemed to indicate so. Floor five certainly hadn’t seemed too abundant.
The first hallway was a classic one; numbered doors on the left, blank wall on the right. The numbers here started at thirty-six and went on for at least ten more doors as far as I could see.
“Huh,” I laughed to myself while people started dying on the ground floor. “Wonder what axe maniac’s room looks like.” I quickly double checked all the other rooms before making to number forty-two. To my surprise, the bed hadn’t been turned over. It had been moved though, and the mattress and sheets were spread around the floor.
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He must have found the weapons, but decided it would be too obvious to take the axe with him. I turned over the bed and confirmed my suspicions. Only one of the knives was missing. He’d probably grab an axe from a room somewhere on the first floor before starting his rampage.
Nothing else about the room seemed off, so I made my way back into the hallway and deeper into the building. By now, more than a few people were running around frantically either in a panic or on a murderous mission. With my axe firmly on my shoulder however, none seemed keen on approaching me and I was mostly at peace while walking around the second floor.
A few were more confident and didn’t hesitate long before attacking me. I hadn’t fought these people before, but it was in those moments that the advantages of my death loop situation played out the best. In a few swings I had their attacks figured out and countered with attacks of my own that usually ended my opponent in one or two attempts. The more blood splattered on my tunic, the less people seemed to want to face me.
The more I explored the second floor, the more the layout of the building confused me. The first and the fifth floor seemed to be about equal in size while the tenth floor was quite a bit smaller. So far, that made sense somewhat.
The second floor however was significantly larger. By now, I was so deep into the building and away from the balconies that I hadn’t seen anyone else in over ten minutes nor did I hear any sound not produced by me or the buzzing LED lights. Just what did this building look like from the outside?
Or perhaps…
Something clicked.
It was just a theory of course, but it all seemed to make sense. What if all of this was underground, and the exit was on the tenth floor? It would be the best way to hide a structure like this without anyone from the outside world finding it. That would also mean that 12 and 204 had, albeit unknowingly, chosen the perfect spot to make their stand.
Now that all remained was actually finding the exit and making sure only three people were still alive at the end of all this.
This could work.
I halted as I reached another intersection. Either of the three options seemed equally exciting in their blandness. On a whim, I went left and kept walking. By now, I had long lost my sense of direction. I couldn’t find the shortest way back to the balconies for the life of me. I snickered at the thought of dying of hunger and thirst before finding my death at the wrong end of an axe.
That caused another interesting thought to pop up. Was there any food or water to be found in this building? What if these killings dragged on for several days? Would the last ones standing be the ones who could go without water the longest?
I pondered on the possibilities when I suddenly find myself passing by a door. I almost ignored it, so used I had gotten to the blandness of the hallways. I stopped in my tracks and turned to the door. I groaned as I noticed the steel frame. If this was anything like the maintenance door on the fifth floor, this would be a literal dead end.
The sign above the door however told a different story.
Storage.
There was something else that lifted my spirits. There was no padlock on the door handle and no keyhole. Did this mean…
Preparing myself to wake up again, I grabbed the handle, pushed it down and opened the door. It swung open inwards, unaccompanied by the sudden union of explosions and death. The room was dark, the LED lights from the hallway barely casting any light inside.
I stepped inside and felt the inside of the wall until my fingers touched a light switch and a bright bulb in the middle of the room covered the room in a warm glow.
“Huh,” I said to myself. “This doesn’t answer anything at all.”
It was obvious now why the door hadn’t been locked. The room was empty. Well, there were plenty of shelves, the kind you would find in a supermarket, but all of them were empty. If anything had ever been stored here, it had been taken away a long time ago judging from the small layer of dust that covered every inch.
Some frustration welling up inside, I circled the small room and made sure there was absolutely nothing at all on any of these shelves.
And then I noticed something strange. In one of the corners, hidden away in the shadows, some of the dust had been wiped away. It was small, but someone had dragged their fingers across the dust here. For how deep into the building I was, there was no way any of the others had made it here before me. No, I realized, this had been someone else.
I followed the small trail in the dust. After what seemed like an eternity, I felt something. A button that had been implemented into the wall. Impossible to see from where I stood, but the dust had betrayed whoever had been here.
Not wasting another second, I pressed down onto the button.