The suffocating stench of rot and blood forced its way into John Daniels’ sleeping mind. A crushing weight pressed down on his body, stealing the air from his lungs. Something slick, wet, and revolting pinned him to the ground with unnatural force. A warm, sticky liquid flooded his nose and throat. He jerked violently, unsure if he was still dreaming or already awake. Something fell beside him with a sickening splash. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t see. It felt like being buried alive, like waking up underground after being declared dead too soon. The substance poured over his face, into his eyes, into his mouth. The metallic taste hit him hard and dragged him fully into reality.

He struggled with everything he had as panic surged through him. Objects collapsed off his body, sliding away into darkness. Thin beams of orange light pierced through the suffocating black. Gasping for air, he focused on one of them and pushed upward. The mass above him shifted. A pile of human bodies, easily over a meter high, slid down with a wet, heavy sound. The entire room was filled with them. Throats slit, organs spilling out, bodies torn open and twisted like broken dolls. Some were riddled with bullet holes. Others looked like every bone had been shattered. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the unbearable stench.

He stood up, realizing he had been lying inside one of the corpses. Its torso had been split wide open. The others had covered him completely, like a blanket of rotting flesh. His scream caught in his throat as the reality hit him. He stepped forward and immediately sank into the pile up to his chest. Something moved beneath him. Something that should not move. It tugged gently at his leg. He screamed and tried to pull himself free. His hands slipped on blood and exposed tissue. Then he felt it again. Fingers brushing his ankle.

“Help me!” he shouted, no longer caring who might hear. He forced himself upward, grabbing onto a rib bone sticking out of someone’s chest. With a desperate pull, he dragged himself free and leapt toward the door. He grabbed the handle and pulled. It barely moved. Something was blocking it from the other side. He pushed harder. Nothing. His strength gave out and he collapsed onto the corpse-covered floor. Tears streamed down his face. He was done. He couldn’t keep doing this. He didn’t want to. Let it end.

He searched his blood-soaked jacket pocket, but it wasn’t there. The timer. Gone. Probably lost somewhere in that mass of bodies. He wouldn’t go back for it. He’d rather die than dig through that. He stared at the ceiling, where a single lamp flickered weakly. That’s when he saw it. The ventilation shaft. Emily’s head hung from it, twisted at an impossible angle. Her neck was broken. Her eyes were empty. Her lips were gone, stretched into a grotesque grin. Something glowed inside her mouth. A faint golden light.

Her jaw started vibrating like a phone on silent. He approached slowly, terrified of falling back into the pile. He needed to know how much time he had left. His hand trembled as he reached inside her mouth. Her eyes stared at him without anything behind them. No anger. No accusation. Just emptiness. He almost broke down. He closed his eyes and pulled the object out. A small square device. Covered in blood. He wiped it with his sleeve. The screen lit up.

57 minutes. The number blinked. In the corner: 181. He froze. He had never been this close. Every time he got closer, it got worse. The world became more twisted. More hostile. He couldn’t even imagine what waited at zero. He had to reset it. Get another 24 hours. He had to. He stumbled back to the door and tried again. Still nothing. Then another idea hit him. The shaft. Emily fit through it. Maybe he could too.

He turned back. Her body was gone. Completely gone. Only torn corpses remained. Panic rose again, but something inside him screamed louder. Hurry. He climbed into the shaft. It was tight. Barely enough space to move. He crawled forward into complete darkness. He had no idea where it led. It didn’t matter. He just needed to get out. The tunnel stretched endlessly. His thoughts turned against him. What if time was already gone? What if he died here? What if this was the end?

Something hit the metal behind him. Then another sound. Scraping. Then silence. He froze. Whatever it was, it was inside the shaft now. Close. Too close. He didn’t dare look back. He pushed forward as fast as he could. The scraping followed. Louder. Faster. He screamed and lunged ahead blindly. Then suddenly the ground vanished beneath him. He fell.

He hit the walls on the way down before crashing into freezing water. He surfaced, gasping. In the distance, a shoreline. He swam toward it with everything he had. Halfway there, something splashed behind him. He didn’t turn around. More splashes followed. Closer. Faster. The water grew warmer. Then hot. Then burning. He tasted metal again. Looked down. It was turning red.

He reached the shore just as the water began to boil. He collapsed onto the sand, then forced himself to stand. The entire lake was blood. Bodies floated on its surface. The same bodies. The same ones from the room. They were everywhere. The liquid poured endlessly from a pipe above like a waterfall of flesh and death. He stepped back as the lake began to bubble violently.

He checked the device again. 1 hour 20 minutes. Impossible. That shouldn’t happen. He stared at it. Then saw it. A tiny line before the number. A minus. It grew slowly, spreading across the digits. His mind broke trying to process it. He dropped the device. Above him, the sky was red. No sun. Only a suffocating glow.

The bodies stopped floating. They started rising. Burned, twisted shapes emerged from the boiling blood. He ran. The ground cracked under his feet. Bones shattered beneath him. The air burned his lungs. Voices screamed around him. Emily’s voice. Others. Begging. Accusing. Hating.

Far above, something watched. Smiling. And with a simple snap of fingers, it brought everything closer again.