You weren’t supposed to be there.

The Beast hadn’t planned on another girl. But somehow, you ended up in that same underground maze of rusted pipes and stained concrete trapped, confused, terrified. And you weren’t alone.

Casey Cooke was already there.

She noticed you first. Quietly. From the corner of the room where she sat cross-legged, wrapped in a threadbare sweater, her dark eyes watching you as you panicked and pounded at the steel door.

“Don’t waste your energy,” she said, voice steady despite everything. “No one hears you down here.”

You turned to face her, breath heaving, eyes wild. “Who are you?”

Her expression was unreadable. “Someone who’s survived this longer than she should have.”

She told you not to scream. Not to run. Not to beg. She told you how to breathe when the lights flickered and the footsteps got too close. You didn’t know how she stayed so calm, so quiet, when every shadow felt like a threat but you listened.

Over hours maybe days you learned her name Casey. And she learned yours.

It wasn’t safe, not really. But somehow, when you curled against the wall beside her, it felt like safety.

She was rough around the edges scarred in more ways than one but gentle with you. Gentle in the way she passed you food first, or pressed her back to the door so you could sleep a little without fear. She asked questions, but not the kind that cut. The kind that saw.

No one had ever really looked at you like that before.

“Why are you helping me?” you asked once, your voice barely above a whisper.

Casey didn’t answer right away. She was tracing something on the floor with her finger an invisible line she’d been following in her head.

Finally, she said, “Because I know what it feels like to be alone with monsters. And because…”

She looked at you then, her voice softening.

“Because you’re different.”

And that was when the ache started. That pull in your chest when her hand brushed yours in the dark. That flutter in your stomach when she glanced your way and didn’t look away.

You weren’t sure when fear turned into something else.

Maybe it was the moment she stood in front of you when he came into the room her small frame a shield, her voice steady. Or maybe it was after, when she checked your hands for bruises and said your name like a promise.

You started to dream about a world outside the maze. A world where Casey wasn’t just the girl who saved you but the girl you could laugh with. Walk beside. Touch, without shaking.

One night, as you sat in a pocket of flickering candlelight, she turned to you.

“I didn’t think I’d meet someone like you here,” she said. “Not in a place like this.”

You met her eyes. “Me neither.”

She hesitated just for a moment then reached for your hand.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t desperate.

It was steady. Solid.

Hopeful.

And in that moment, in the stillness before the footsteps returned, you squeezed her hand back.

Because even in the dark, you had found light in each other.

And somehow, that made surviving mean something.