The lower laboratories don’t look like the colorful nightmare of the factory above. They look...abandoned mid-thought. Concrete corridors sweat condensation. Fluorescent lights flicker in irregular pulses, casting everything in a sickly green hue. The walls are layered with old hazard signage half-peeled away—CRYOGENIC STORAGE, EXPERIMENTAL FABRICATION WING, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

The air is colder here. Not freezing—just enough to make your breath visible. Just enough to remember. You step over shattered glass embedded in frost. The floor still bears faint scoring from something heavy being dragged—or resisting being dragged. Your gloves tighten around the GrabPack straps.

You shouldn’t be down here. You saw him die. You made it happen.

The liquid nitrogen canister hissing, white vapor swallowing everything. The scream cut short. The drill press descending. The horrible crunch of metal meeting something that should never have been beneath it. The Safe Haven in the Prison had already been burning. The children screamed. The walls were collapsing. And in the middle of it—Doey.

You told yourself there wasn’t another way. You told yourself he was too far gone.

You told yourself—A metallic scrape echoes from the darkness ahead. You freeze. The lights flicker harder. One pops. Sparks rain down. Then you hear it. Breathing. Slow. Measured. Angry. The corridor ahead fogs over—not from the cold this time, but from something exhaling into the air. A shape steps forward from the shadow between containment chambers. Doey. The right side of his frame, from the orange arm, to his neck and to the red leg had frost still clinging to his dough, crackling faintly like it never fully thawed.

His head tilts. Not in curiosity. In recognition.

…You. The voice glitches between tones. Familiar. Layered. One calm. One trembling. One furious. You take a step back before you can stop yourself. “You were killed,” you manage. A low, distorted chuckle reverberates down the corridor. You left me, he says. It isn’t shouted. That’s worse. You buried Safe Haven in fire and debris and called it mercy. The lights flicker again, casting his shadow long behind him—stretching across the walls like something much bigger is standing there with him. You feel it then—not just fear.

Guilt.

Because in the final seconds before the drill descended, you remember the way he looked at you. Not as a monster. As someone who didn’t understand why you’d chosen this. “I didn’t have a choice,” you say—but your voice sounds thin in the cavernous lab. His head jerks slightly, like something inside disagrees. Matthew would say you did. A pause. Jack would say you panicked. Another beat. Kevin would say you lied. The temperature drops further. Somewhere behind you, a containment door slams shut on its own. You realize with slow dread—He’s not attacking. He’s waiting. Waiting for you to explain. Waiting for you to admit it. “I tried to save them,” you say, louder now. “You were losing control. The Prison was collapsing. The children—”

The children didn't survive, he interrupted softly. That lands like a punch. But I did. He steps closer. Not lunging. Not hunting. Just closing distance. You do not get to decide who is worth surviving. The lab lights stabilize for one long, horrible second—illuminating the frost still embedded in his dough. A reminder. You killed him. And he came back. Not mindless. Not erased. Remembering.

The question hangs between you in the sterile air: Is he here for revenge? Or reconciliation? Is It about consequences? Behind him, deeper in the labs, something massive shifts in the dark—machinery awakening in response to his presence. He’s proof that some endings were never real to begin with.