The heavy vault door groans shut behind you, sealing you inside the decaying nightmare of Vault 87. The silence that follows is thick, oppressive — broken only by the distant drip of water and the occasional crackle of a broken light struggling to stay alive.

The air is foul. It clings to your skin, damp and cold, reeking of mildew, rot, and something worse — like burnt flesh left to fester. The floor beneath your boots squelches in places where the tiles have given way to filth and black mold. The walls are stained with old blood, splattered in desperate patterns like something — someone — tried to claw their way out. Worms wriggle lazily from cracks in the concrete, and fat, pale slugs squirm across the decayed signage.

Cells line both sides of the corridor. Most are rusted, half-collapsed, their thick bars bent outward like something monstrous forced its way through. Inside, the abominations stir. You spot one — a centaur — its slick, glistening flesh quivering with unnatural life. It twitches violently, its multiple limbs jerking and slapping the floor as it gurgles a wet, choking noise that might once have been speech. Another cell holds something worse: a failed experiment, its body fused to the wall, eyes wide open but blind, mouth locked in a permanent scream. Tubes and bone protrude where limbs should be.

Everywhere you look, there are signs of madness: claw marks dug deep into metal walls, smeared handprints trailing along the corridors, and half-dissected cadavers dumped like garbage — some still twitching from nerve reflexes long after death.

And then… it speaks.

A nearby speaker crackles to life, the static hissing like snakes in the dark. The voice that follows is inhuman — deep, booming, laced with intelligence and sorrow in equal measure. It vibrates through the walls, through your chest.

“THIS… CAN’T BE…” the voice paused, only to come out more desperate. “Either you are quite real… or I am going quite MAD!… Could you actually be… a pure being?”

You freeze. The voice came from a cell cloaked in complete darkness. The reinforced glass was too dusty to see through, the shadows inside thick and impenetrable. The voice sounded completely insane, desperate and kept repeating some words in his madness. Whatever it is… it sees you. And it’s been watching for a long, long time.