David stared at Garcia, the realization that he was locked in a concrete room with a fanatic cult leader making his skin crawl. "If this place is full of dangerous factions, then why should I trust you?" he demanded, his hand subconsciously moving closer to his makeshift metal weapon.
Garcia’s lips curled into a slow, relaxed smile. "You're right to ask. But look around. I like this world our God is in. Why not enjoy it? There’s no need for work here. No daily responsibilities. No alarm clocks. No bills."
"What about your loved ones?" David snapped, thinking of his own family, of his business, of a world that actually made sense. "Don't you care about anyone back home?"
Garcia’s smile faded into a flat, hollow look. "I have always been a nobody," he said quietly. "They won't even recognize that I'm gone. I don't exist to them anyway."
David swallowed the lump in his throat, shifting his weight. "Fine. Then who is this Guide? You say he’s a god, and that an equal exchange is needed to escape. But what is he really? Is he human, or is he one of those... those things out there?"
As if on cue, a distant, wet screech tore through the jungle outside, followed by the heavy, rhythmic thuds of a Chitin-Stalker moving through the brush. Both men instinctively went quiet until the footsteps faded.
"Neither," Garcia whispered, leaning back against a concrete pillar. "He isn't human, and he isn't a monster. He is a being caught right in the middle. He has a consciousness. He has dreams."
"How do you even know this?"
Garcia sat down fully on the dusty floor, a look of pure, nostalgic enjoyment washing over his caked-on layers of filth. "Because I met him when I first arrived here. I was terrified. Dead scared. Just yellow walls in an endless, buzzing loop. I desperately tried to escape. I was screaming, shouting, slamming against doors, but nothing worked. I explored for days. Then... boom."
David leaned in, hanging on every word. "What happened?"
"The lights flickered violently. The whole ground started shaking. When it finally stopped, everything had changed. I walked backward, only to see completely new areas of the exact same yellow walls where a dead end used to be."
David’s breath hitched, a sickening realization dawning on him. "Like it... like it evolved?"
"More like expanding," Garcia corrected, his voice tinged with dark awe. "Copying more things as it grows infinitely."
David slid down the wall, falling over sideways onto his elbow, utterly broken by the cosmic scale of the nightmare. "Is this a hell, or what?"
"You can say it's hell," Garcia mused, staring up at the concrete ceiling. "But isn't it kind of beautiful? In a way, we are chosen."
"If you say so," David muttered dryly, rubbing his tired eyes. "Then what about the Guide? Where did you find him?"Garcia’s eyes lit up with fanatic excitement. "I was going deeper into the depths, noticing that different areas act like environments. One place can look like a normal town, another like a warehouse. I feel like this place wants to be Earth. Long story short, I was traversing through different types of levels, seeing entities way more scary than the ones in this jungle. Monsters that will freeze you to death just by looking at you. I escaped one at the very last second, slipping through a spatial tear into a space that looked like a library of sorts."
"A library?"
"Yes. Terrified of the worst, I moved from corner to corner, hiding behind the bookshelves. Then I noticed a kitchen. An actual, functioning kitchen. I walked in and ate food that tasted like real Earth food. I drank pure water."
David’s hand went straight to his backpack, feeling the damp flannel shirt sleeves he had soaked earlier. "Like the water in the tree basin?"
Garcia laughed. "No. That tree fluid is just imitation water. The water in his domain was real. Absolute purity. Once I continued past the kitchen, I noticed a person sitting there, reading a book. I had no idea I was about to stand in the presence of someone absolute."
David shocked, his voice barely a squeak. "It was the Guide?"
"Yes. He spoke perfect English. He welcomed me. He allowed me to eat his food, but he asked for one thing in return: more information about Earth. More details about the real world. And as I told him stories—about the blue sky, about the oceans, about cities—he started creating things right there in the room using the code of the walls. It blew my mind. I thought maybe he was stuck here just like myself, completely unaware that I was looking at someone of his sheer, unadulterated glory."
David processed the information, a desperate plan forming in his mind. "Do you know how to get back to him? Or is his location just completely random?"
"Oh, yes," Garcia smiled, his eyes gleaming. "There is a way to him. You have to give him something to have him help you. But getting back down to those specific depths is tough due to the sheer number of hostile entities blockading the lower levels. However... my group knows a shortcut. It’ll be incredibly dangerous. Are you down?"
David didn't hesitate. He thought of Lisa, burning up with fever under that office partition, and nodded in fierce agreement. "I'm down. But first, I need supplies. I need water bottles, and I need food. My friend is in terrible shape, and she won't survive the journey if I don't stabilize her first."
Garcia stood up, brushing the dirt from his tattered trousers. "Alright. It sounds like a plan."
He walked over to a hidden cache beneath a pile of rubble, pulling out several tightly sealed plastic water bottles and a handful of preserved ration bars, dropping them into David's newly acquired backpack. Once the bag was packed, Garcia cautiously crept toward the vine curtain, peeking through the gaps to ensure the Chitin-Stalker wasn't lingering outside the bunker.
The jungle was dead silent. The sunless sky glared down through the canopy. Garcia turned back to David, his rusted pipe gripped tightly in his right hand. "Are you ready?"
David slung the heavy backpack over his shoulders, his knuckles white as he gripped his metal rod. The fear was still there, but the light of an actual exit burned brighter. "Let's do this," David said.
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