David stared at Garcia, his eyes wide and bloodshot from a mixture of raw terror, heat exhaustion, and mounting panic. He felt like his heart was about to burst right through his ribs. Garcia’s face, usually masked by a manic, unhinged smirk, had turned completely pale and rigid. The cult leader leaned in until his lips brushed against David's ear, his breath trembling.

"This is the absolute worst situation that could possibly happen," Garcia whispered, his voice laced with an unnatural, hollow dread. "The Syndicate is here. If they are here... your friend is already dead."

David’s vision blurred with white-hot rage and grief. He clenched his fists until his knuckles popped, the mud squelching beneath his fingernails.

"I am going to let go of your mouth," Garcia hissed, his fingers digging into David’s jaw like iron clamps. "But if I let go, you whisper. Not a single sound above a breath. This is life or death."

David nodded his head frantically. Garcia slowly, meticulously pulled his hand away.

"We have to figure out if Lisa is in that room first," David breathed, his throat burning with dryness. "There is a window on the opposite side of the camp door, right behind where I barricaded her. Hopefully, if I can just get around there, I can see inside."

Garcia’s eyes darted toward the perimeter of the camp, where the black-suited, faceless mercenaries were loading heavy metal crates into the armored transport. "We move. We dodge the soldiers, secretly and silently. One mistake, and we are both corpses."

They dropped flat onto their stomachs, slithering through the rotting, warm ferns like snakes. The cloying stench of decayed vegetation and burnt copper from the Syndicate's plasma-cutters filled their noses, making it hard to breathe.

Suddenly, a blood-curdling shriek shattered the heavy silence of the jungle.

David and Garcia froze, pressing their faces directly into the wet dirt. Just twenty feet away, through a gap in the brush, a soldier in pitch-black tactical gear brutally kicked a human woman down into the mud. She was completely emaciated, her clothes shredded by the thorns, her face streaked with tears and gray filth.

"Please! Save me! I beg you!" she sobbed, clutching the soldier's heavy combat boots. "I'll do anything! Just get me out of here!"

The heavy steel door of the armored transport hissed open. A man stepped down into the mud. He wore a pristine, clinical white lab coat over a dark tactical vest, his face twisted into a sharp, deeply unsettling smile.

"Oh, you poor thing," the man murmured, walking over to her with a slow, exaggerated stride. He knelt down, his fingers lightly tracing the gashes on her arms. "It must have been so hard for you out here in the dark. But it’s okay now. Everything is going to be just fine."

The woman looked up, her breathing ragged, a fragile spark of hope in her eyes. "Who... who are you?"

"Oh, where are my manners?" The man chuckled, a cold, metallic sound. "I am the great mind, Lance Bunik. I am a scientist, my dear." He tilted his head, his eyes widening with a sudden, predatory curiosity. "Tell me... were you alone?"

"No..." she stammered, pulling back as she finally noticed the absolute, sadistic emptiness in his gaze. "I was... I was with a group."

Lance Bunik’s grin stretched impossibly wide, his teeth gleaming under the sunless glare of the sky. "A group, you say? Fascinating."

The woman gasped, her survival instincts finally screaming at her to run. "What... what are you going to do to me?"

"Oh, don't worry," Dr. Bunik whispered, pulling a heavy, pneumatic injector syringe from his lab coat. "I know exactly what will ease your pain."

Before she could scream, he slammed the nozzle directly into the side of her neck. A loud, mechanical hiss echoed through the clearing as a thick, glowing yellowish fluid—raw, concentrated entity essence mixed with corrupted Backrooms code—was forced into her bloodstream.

"What... what was that?" she whimpered, collapsing sideways into the mud, clutching her throat.

"Just something to fix you right up," Bunik smiled, stepping back and folding his arms.

What happened next was pure, unadulterated nightmare. The woman’s eyes instantly rolled back into her head, the capillaries in her eyeballs bursting until her eyes ran completely black. She let out a choking, wet scream that didn't sound human—it sounded like a corrupted, screeching audio file playing at maximum volume.

Snap. Crunch.

Her spine violently buckled backward at an impossible, rubbery angle. Her arms twisted completely around in their sockets, the bones shattering and piercing straight through her skin as her body desperately tried to reject the unnatural code. Her flesh began to violently flicker and glitch, shifting between solid muscle and a translucent, grey static. She clawed at her own face as her jaw unzipped down the middle, transforming into a hollow, dark void before her entire nervous system collapsed. Within seconds, her body gave one final, violent shudder and went completely still, melting into a heap of gray, rotted ash on the grass.

David watched the horror unfold from the bushes, his teeth chattering so hard he had to bite his own lip to stop from crying out.

"That is the Syndicate," Garcia whispered, his voice completely devoid of his usual madness, replaced by a cold, hard reality. "They only see people as livestock. Raw materials for their experiments."

Dr. Bunik sighed deeply, tapping the tip of his boot against the pile of ash. "Ah, damn it. I stopped myself. I forgot to ask her where the others are. We could have had so many more rats for the labs." He shrugged, turning back toward the transport vehicle. "Oh well. It was fun. Let's pack it up and head back to Base Shalot."

The faceless soldiers immediately saluted and began marching back toward the heavy vehicles, their boots clicking against the metal ramps.

David’s chest heaved. Ignoring Garcia's warnings, he began to slowly crawl toward the back window of the ruined office cubicle, his heart hammering in his throat. He reached the edge of the shattered frame and peeked through the grime-crusted glass.

Inside the room, two soldiers were lifting a heavy, specialized iron stretcher. Strapped down to the metal frame, completely unconscious and pale as a ghost, was Lisa. A thick plastic tube was taped over her mouth, and her wrists were bound in heavy electronic restraints.

"No..." David choked out, a wave of cold, paralyzing anger washing over him. "I was too late. They already got her."

Through the open window, the muffled voice of Dr. Bunik echoed from the front of the transport. "We got a new test subject, boys! Lock her down. We're heading straight back to Base Shalot."

The heavy steel doors of the vehicle slammed shut with a definitive, pressurized hiss. The massive engine roared to life, a deep, mechanical vibration that shook the mud beneath David’s knees.

As the armored transport began to slowly roll away, crashing through the dense jungle trees and disappearing into the suffocating fog, David slumped against the concrete foundation of the wall. The water bottles in his bag felt completely useless now. The light of hope he had felt just minutes ago was utterly snuffed out.

"I was late," David whispered, tears finally spilling over his cheeks as he stared at the empty space where the truck had been. "I didn't get here on time. She's gone."

The dense, rotting ferns abruptly stopped against a massive border of lifeless, grey gravel. A brutalist concrete wall rose out of the gravel, stretching vertically into the sunless sky until it disappeared into the fog. Heavy iron fences topped with razor wire lined the perimeter.

Suddenly, a blinding, artificial white searchlight snapped directly onto David and Garcia, pinning them against the base wall.

"Intruders!" a voice boomed. Two faceless, black-suited Syndicate guards stepped out from the fog, their plasma-rifles aimed directly at David’s chest.

But they weren't alone. From the dark jungle fringe, three mutated, glitching hounds with rusted Syndicate tracking collars burst through the ferns. The starved creatures ignored the commands from their collars, lunging directly at the nearest guard and tearing him to the mud. The metallic screech of tearing iron echoed right above David’s head as another hound jammed its face violently into a narrow ventilation opening nearby, its teeth scraping against the rusted frame.

As the second guard turned his rifle toward the rampaging beasts, David stepped forward. Gripping a rusted, heavy industrial metal rod he had scavenged from the ruins, he swung it with all his remaining strength. The rod connected with a sickening, metallic crunch against the guard’s helmet, shattering his faceless visor and dropping him instantly.

"The vent! Move!" Garcia screamed in panic as the remaining hounds finished off the first soldier and turned their pitch-black, hollow eyes toward them.

David jammed the flat end of the metal rod into the rusted, unbolted ventilation grate low on the concrete wall, prying it open with a loud pop. He shoveled Garcia through the opening first and tumbles backward into the pitch-black vent just as jaws snapped shut on the metal bars behind him.

They plummeted down a near-vertical chute, screaming into the dark until they slammed onto a hard, wet concrete floor of a subterranean maintenance corridor. David rolled over, coughing up dust, his fingers instantly searching the floor until they wrapped around the reassuring weight of his rusted metal rod.

Garcia sat up, rubbing his bruised shoulder. The manic, terrifying smirk had slowly crawled back onto his pale face. "Incredible," Garcia breathed, staring at David. "A basic civilian. And you shattered a Syndicate visor with a piece of scrap metal. The Order of the Hollow Eye needs men like you. Join me."

"Shut up," David hissed, standing up. "We need to find Lisa."

Before Garcia could answer, a piercing klaxon wailed. The dim yellow bulbs flipped to a flashing, blood-red emergency cycle. Dr. Lance Bunik’s voice echoed over the intercom: "Attention all perimeter units, we have a localized containment failure at Sector Four. Lock down the lower levels. We are under attack."

"We move now while they're busy," David whispered.

They sprinted down the corridor, avoiding the main elevator banks. David shoved his shoulder against a heavy, unbolted metal door at the end of a dead-end hallway. It gave way, dumping them into a frozen, silent observation office.

In the center, a single CRT monitor flickered, casting a pale blue light. David stepped forward, his eyes drawing to a highly classified file on the screen.

"No... that's a myth," Garcia whispered, leaning over his shoulder.

But David’s eyes were drawn away by a low, rhythmic clicking sound coming from the back corner of the room. Resting inside a shattered glass containment chamber was an object that defied physics. It was a multi-layered mechanical cube made of polished obsidian and brass. Every few seconds, a corner would phase out of existence, leaving a trail of glowing, neon-green data strings floating in the air.

"The Tether..." Garcia breathed, his eyes widening in pure fanatical awe. "The Guide leaves pieces of its own spatial matrix behind. David, this is the item we need! This cube holds a fraction of The Guide’s code. If we take it, we can bend the geometry of this facility. We can force doors to appear where there are only solid concrete walls."

The heavy steel door of the office rattled violently. "Sector Seven door is unbolted! Breach team, move in!"

"We're out of time," David said. Raising the heavy industrial metal rod, he brought it down with a shattering crunch onto the pedestal. The black-and-brass cube dropped into the air, spinning rapidly. David lunged forward and snatched the artifact out of the air.

A violent, icy shockwave surged up his arm. For a split second, his vision completely glitched into an infinite hallway of golden-wallpapered doors stretching out into a bright void. He snapped back to reality, gasping for breath as he shoved the vibrating cube deep into his backpack.

The heavy steel door behind them blew off its hinges. Three Syndicate soldiers stepped into the room, plasma-rifles raised. "Drop the weapon!"

Before they could fire, the backpack on David's shoulders violently vibrated. A blinding, neon-green grid pattern projected outward, casting sharp geometric lines across the room.

Click. Whir.

A solid concrete structural pillar in the center of the room violently split down the middle. The heavy stone pixelated and slid open like an automated elevator door, revealing a hidden, unmapped maintenance shaft.

"The matrix is resetting!" Garcia shouted, pointing into the newly formed opening. "There! Move!"

They dove through the shifting doorway just as the soldiers opened fire. As David scrambled to his feet inside the shaft, the artifact in his bag hummed a deep bass note. The concrete partitions snapped back together with a pressurized hiss, cutting off the gunfire and pulling them into an eerie silence.

"Not away, David. Around," Garcia corrected, pointing down the long, humming corridor. "Look. The Guide just gave us a straight shot to the lower containment labs."

They followed the corridor, emerging from the shifting server conduit directly into the sterile, blinding light of Dr. Bunik’s primary containment laboratory. In the center of the room sat a massive glass medical pod filled with bubbling, yellow-tinted entity essence fluid.

David ran to the glass, his breath catching in his throat.

Inside the pod was Lisa. But the corrupted Backrooms code had already taken hold. Her skin was partially flickering into a translucent, pixelated gray static. One of her eyes had run completely, hollowly black, and fine geometric fractures ran up her neck and face, pulsing with an unnatural yellow light. She was half changed.

Suddenly, Lisa’s human eye snapped open, locking onto David through the glass. Her lips moved to form his name, but the audio that escaped her throat was nothing more than a distorted, glitched whisper.