A body, thin as sticks, collapsed against him. Its weight knocked him to the floor, bones sharp under papery skin. The thing’s face was half-human, half-goat, lips stretched in a blissful grin that had not rotted, eyes sunken but alive with frozen ecstasy. Hooves jutted from its feet where shoes had once been.

Yasir screamed, shoving it away so hard it smacked against the tile with a hollow crack. He scrambled backward on hands and heels, bile rising in his throat.

Yasir’s scream didn’t stop when the body hit the tiles. It echoed, ragged and animal, bouncing off the white walls until it seemed to come from everywhere at once. He scuttled backward, eyes locked on the twisted corpse.

Andrea, still standing by the whiteboard, folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure it’s dead, Yasir,” she said dryly. “I think you got it.”

Yasir glared at her between ragged breaths, but the trembling in his hands betrayed him.

Glenn, ever steady, moved forward with the weariness of a man who’d already seen too much. He crouched by the body, one hand braced against the floor. “Enough noise,” he muttered. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

With a grunt, he pushed the figure over onto its back. The thing’s head lolled against the tile, grin still frozen in place. Glenn leaned closer, wrinkling his nose, and used two fingers to peel back the shriveled lips.

Star felt his stomach churn.

The mouth was wrong. A gross, impossible mosaic of teeth crowded the gums—human molars jumbled next to goat incisors, jagged little predator fangs jutting upward from the roof of the mouth. There was no pattern, no order, just a chaotic eruption of enamel, as though someone had stuffed mouths inside of mouths.

Glenn turned the head slightly, lifting the lips higher. The corpse’s gums cracked and flaked under his touch. “No rhyme or reason,” he said grimly. “Just hunger.”

The grin never shifted. If anything, it looked more pleased under the light.

Star couldn’t look at it for long. Something in those teeth made his skin crawl, as if they weren’t entirely still—even though he knew they were. 

Star’s eyes kept drifting away from the corpse, drawn instead to the room itself.

Something was wrong—not with the rot, but with its absence.

The doorframe behind them was spotless, not even a whisper of the oily mold that had devoured every hallway and room they’d stumbled through. The light overhead hummed faintly, clean and steady, as if it had never known power loss. The air smelled faintly of dust, of metal lockers and dry paper, not bile or decay.

It was the first room in this place that felt… untouched.

Too untouched.

“Look at this,” Star murmured, touching the wall by the door. No softness, no crawling damp. It was hard. Clean. Alive in the way the rest of the facility was not.

Andrea, noticing too, frowned. “So the filth’s just… what? Afraid to come in here?”

Yasir gave a shaky laugh, still recovering from the corpse’s fall. “Yeah, ‘cause that makes sense. Mold with boundaries.”

But the words didn’t make Star feel better. He looked back over the room—the open lockers clawed apart by desperate hands, papers scattered across the floor, the whiteboard with its spiraling madness of notes. Everything looked human here, lived in. But the normalcy was skin-deep, and that skin felt stretched too tight.

The corpse at their feet smiled with its impossible teeth, and the fluorescent light above them buzzed calmly on, like this was just another staff break room.

Glenn broke the silence with a low grunt. “No mold, no rot, no stink. This room was sealed for a reason.”

Star swallowed, the weight of the thought settling in. Or preserved.

Yasir was still muttering under his breath, brushing at his clothes like the corpse’s touch had stained him, when his eyes flicked toward the corner of the room. Something jutted from behind a heavy table tipped on its side, a strange discoloration against the otherwise sterile wall.

“Wait—help me with this.” He motioned Star over.

Together they strained against the weight of the overturned table, boots squealing on the clean floor until it scraped far enough to reveal what had been hidden.

Star froze.

Someone had drawn on the wall.

Thick, uneven lines of marker formed a crude floorplan, shaky and sprawling. It wasn’t a full map of the facility, but it was more than they’d ever seen. One wing had been sketched out in greater detail, showing a narrow chute leading away from the rest of the hallways.

At first, it was labeled in blocky letters: MAINTENANCE.

But the word had been scratched out so violently it nearly tore into the wall itself. Beside it, in a heavier hand, written in something darker—something that wasn’t ink—was another word:

BIRTH.

The silence that fell over the group was suffocating. Even Glenn stopped poking at the corpse.

“We have a way out,” Yasir whispered, eyes wide.

Andrea was the first to break the spell, shaking her head hard. “We don’t know that. This could be old. Or bait. Or just some lunatic scratching shit into the walls. You really think a goddamn doodle’s the key to salvation?”

“It’s more than we’ve had,” Yasir shot back, his voice tight. “We follow this and maybe we’re outside by dawn.”

Andrea folded her arms. “Or we’re walking into another nightmare chamber. We don’t know what this is, or how it’s spreading, or even why.” She jabbed a finger toward the smiling corpse. “Look at that. Look at its face. Tell me this isn’t a curse, something… beyond.”

Star’s throat felt dry, but he forced words out. “Even if it is, that doesn’t mean we just… run. We had a plan. Burn it. Contain it. Make sure it doesn’t spread past these walls.”

Yasir turned on him, desperation sharpening his tone. “And why the hell should we be martyrs? We’re not soldiers, we’re not exorcists—we’re just stuck. You really think you can contain this?” He jabbed a thumb at the door. “If we die here, it’s only a matter of time before this rot finds a crack and leaks out anyway. Then what? At least if we live, we can warn people.”

Star flinched, heat rising to his face. His chest felt tight. He wanted to argue, but the words faltered.

Then Glenn’s voice cut through, loud and raw:

“Yes—got it, motherfucker!”

Everyone spun around. Glenn stood at an upturned locker, grinning wild-eyed, holding a small metal can aloft like a trophy. Butane.

His grin faltered under their stares, and he cleared his throat, tucking the can against his chest like it was precious. “Well. It’s… something.”

The sudden spark of hope lit a fire in Star’s gut. He turned back to the map, eyes scanning the crude scrawl again. Just ahead from the staff room was another chamber, marked simply: SUPPLIES. And beyond that—looming larger on the sketch—the BIRTHING WARD.

Star pointed. “Here. We don’t have to choose right this second. There’s a supplies room nearby. We stock up, find a way to actually use this—” he nodded to Glenn’s canister, “—and then head for the chute. One last stop. Then we go.”

No one looked satisfied. But no one argued either.