[Panel/Text Concept: The screen flashes violently between pure black and a glitched, red static light.]

The steel security shutter didn't just bend. It tore.

With a screech of groaning metal, the heavy barrier burst inward. But it wasn't the Warden standing in the wreckage.

It was Lisa.

Her limbs were impossibly long, her segmented joints snapping as she pulled her warped, translucent gray body through the gap. She was still weeping thick, gray filth, but her jaw remained stretched into that hollow, terrifying void.

She let out a broken, screeching laugh that vibrated the floorboards.

"Lisa..." David choked out.

He didn't drop his weapon. With trembling hands, he swung the rusted pipe forward, his vision blurring with tears as he saw the agonizing sorrow beneath her monstrous facade. "Lisa, please! It's me!"

SLASH.

Lisa didn't hear him. Her elongated, blade-like arm whipped through the air with terrifying speed. The jagged claws caught David across his chest and shoulder, tearing straight through his clothes and leaving deep, burning gashes.

David stumbled backward into a cubicle wall, coughing up blood. "We're... we're going to die here."

"Damn it, David! Not me!" Garcia shouted.

Garcia didn't look back at the monster. His eyes scanned the room until they locked onto a narrow, damaged structural seam in the concrete foundation—a tiny gap just wide enough for a human body to squeeze through.

Garcia grabbed David by his uninjured arm, violently pulling his dead weight across the linoleum. "Move your legs, boy! Squeeze through! Now!"

David screamed as Garcia shoved him headfirst into the tight, jagged gap. Behind them, Lisa’s distorted, weeping face slammed into the concrete opening, her long arms clawing wildly at their boots, missing David’s heels by fractions of an inch.

------------------------------

[Vertical Space: A tight, claustrophobic scroll to simulate crawling through solid concrete walls]

------------------------------

They tumbled out of the other side of the wall, collapsing onto a high, open industrial catwalk.

The cold draft here was deafening. Looking down, there was nothing but an infinite, pitch-black void stretching into the lower levels of the Backrooms.

David gripped his bleeding shoulder, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He couldn't stand. The poison from Lisa's claws was already making his vision turn gray.

"Well, well. Look at the rats," a voice echoed from the far end of the catwalk.

Dr. Bunik stepped out from a heavy metal door. His white lab coat was stained with grease, and his sharp, calculating face was twisted into a mask of pure, unbridled rage. He held a small, empty glass containment cell in his hand.

"The Guide's artifact," Bunik hissed, his voice trembling with fury as he marched toward them. "The core chamber is empty. Where is it? What did you filthy church fanatics do with it?!"

Garcia backed up until his heels hit the rusted guardrail of the catwalk. He looked over the edge into the endless drop, then back at the approaching scientist.

"Bunik looks mad, David," Garcia whispered, a sudden, desperate edge cutting through his voice. "We only have two choices here. We stay here and get torn apart by your girlfriend and the doctor... or we take our chances with the floor."

"Garcia, wait—" David tried to gasp out, his hand reaching for the railing.

Garcia didn't wait for him to finish. He lunged forward, his hands clamping onto David's jacket.

With a brutal, desperate heave, Garcia threw both of them over the rusted guardrail.

------------------------------

[Vertical Space: A massive, dizzying vertical drop down the screen]

------------------------------

They fell into the pitch-black abyss.

Dr. Bunik’s enraged screams faded into the rushing wind above them. David’s heart slammed against his ribs as gravity took hold, the absolute darkness swallowing them whole.

This is it. We're dead.

But as they plunged deeper into the void, a blinding, ethereal light suddenly erupted from beneath Garcia’s coat.

The stolen artifact—the ancient relic of the Church of the Guide—was reacting to the fall. Pulsing lines of soft, golden code began to bleed through the fabric of Garcia's pockets, wrapping around both of them like a glowing, protective cocoon against the dark.