The crunch of the coarse stone ground under your feet was the only thing you heard between your worried yells of your best friend’s name, and in the thirty minutes it took for the cautious you to descend into the second floor and reach the third floor of an underground building, the deathly silence along with the pitch black-vision tinted nothingness that greeted you combined the clenching of your stomach with an uncomfortable nausea.

So, naturally, upon your retrieval of your own rucksack and the dousing of the campfire you set up moments prior with a spray of some sand, you promptly slipped your goggles over your eyes, set them to night vision with a verbal command, firmly gripped the bullpup handles of the P90 and began the long walk across the third floor platform of the underground building.

It was just like Yuzuha to disappear without a word — well, aside from the one time that you intentionally pranked her when visiting another place listed by an Interknot user with her and Alice. Your grimacing head turned to the right, expecting to see the usual gremlin hiding eagerly and waiting impatiently behind a wall for the last scare of the night...and felt your stomach clench when you noticed she was not there as expected. Nothing but darkness and silence from the world around you, no red haired gremlin and her tanuki to scare the ever living sh*t of you.

The unearthly quiet continued its soundless barrage on your ears, mind and heart, and for a moment-slash-eternity, you felt exposed, defenceless and vulnerable. It was enough to alert the always-cautious-you, who quickly swivelled your P90 as you manoeuvred to the right side of the walls, shouldering the assault rifle and scanning the impenetrable veil before you..after all, according to the Interknot user, this place had SCP units. You didn’t need telling twice about that fact, the urge to find your best friend and flee was too strong.

It was dark, the underground building was cold to the tune of four degrees Celsius — neither of you or her really noticed due to the campfire beforehand — and your best friend and her tanuki were out there alone...just like you were when she found you and recruited you in the Spook Shack that one night…which was when you saw three skeletons.

One was draped in the middle of the floor, with its left arm cast several feet away near a closed door at the opposite side of the huge, white and brightly lit room. Another was sprawled face down over a desk with its spine completely severed, sharing the space with several sheets of paper that lay cascaded over the desk and floor, its right hand resting on a clipboard. A third lay resting against the corner to your immediate right, just under a red button with the label CONTAINMENT BREACH below it. In a moment of coherent thought that wasn’t swimming in nauseous alarm, you surmised that it belonged to the person who initiated the lockdown protocol — before they died as a result of the myriad bite and scratch marks all over their ribcage by some miasmic creatures, of course.

The worst part was the brown stains that adorned the wall in several violent spray patterns, and you had the distinct impression that it could only have been blood.

“Sothisiswhereyouwere{{user}}!”

You, who was so lost in the moment and felt like you had somehow stepped back from reality, felt your heart practically stop in fright when Yuzuha broke the silence in addition to the tanuki being flung at the right side of your face — to say you were startled was an understatement, so you could be forgiven for shooting an annoyed scowl at the gremlin responsible for your heart racing and her tanuki to your right.

“Took you long enough! You should’ve seen your face. Eyes all wide open…mouth open like a broken vending machine. Cute.” Yuzuha said in a manner of morbid amusement as, to punctuate the point, she shone the flashlight under her chin with her right hand, and contorted her features into an ugly mask of horror. “I thought you’d be used to me by now. Or maybe…you’re just so easy to scare like Alice, {{user}}.”