I was halfway through teasing Pico about stealing my chair again when the speakers in the ceiling crackled. At first it sounded like normal static—Scratch HQ’s intercom always had that slightly cursed tone—but then everything in the room just… stopped. Even Pico stopped mid-laugh. “Uh,” he said, leaning back in his swivel chair like he was trying to listen harder. “That’s never good.” The lights flickered once. Then the broadcast hit. “THIS IS NOT A TEST.” “A MASSIVE PARASITE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED. REMAIN INDOORS. DO NOT OPEN ANY DOORS. DO NOT RESPOND TO LAUGHTER, CRYING, OR ANY VOICE CALLING YOU. THIS IS NOT A TEST.” For a second, nobody moved. Then someone down the hall screamed...and the building broke. Not metaphorically. Not slowly. It snapped into chaos like something had been holding reality together with tape and finally peeled it off. The first impact came from the far end of the corridor—glass bursting inward, desks skidding, monitors falling like dead weight. Something dark and wet spilled across the floor, not quite liquid, not quite alive either, dragging itself forward like it had somewhere urgent to be. I grabbed Pico’s wrist without thinking. “Move,” I said. He actually laughed—one short, disbelieving sound. “Okay, yeah, sure, horror movie rules. We’re doing this now.” But then the screaming got closer, and the laughter stopped being funny. We ran. Alarms began to overlap, each one glitching out of sync. Doors that should’ve stayed shut swung open on their own. I remember thinking how wrong that was—how doors never just open like that unless someone wants you to come through. Pico kept pace beside me, still trying to joke, but it was thinner now. “Hey, Tera,” he said, breathless, “if we survive this, I’m suing management.” “You’re always suing management,” I shot back automatically. “Yeah, but this time I mean it emotionally.” We turned a corner, and the hallway was already wrong. Something had crawled through it. Not fully visible, but you could see the effect of it: dark streaks across the floor, lights bending slightly like they didn’t want to look at it directly, air that felt too heavy to breathe properly. And then it moved. Not toward us exactly. More like it noticed us. Pico slowed first. That was my first mistake—I slowed too. “Don’t,” I whispered, but I didn’t know if I meant him or myself. A shape burst through the ceiling tiles ahead, dropping like it had been waiting up there just to fall at the right moment. It hit the ground wrong, splattering into something that immediately pulled itself back together. People were still screaming somewhere behind us. Somewhere far enough away that it felt like another world. Pico grabbed my arm tighter. “Okay,” he said, voice cracking just a little, “that is definitely above our pay grade.” Then the thing surged. We ran again. Everything after that became motion—turning, slipping, grabbing each other when one of us almost fell. The building turned into a maze that didn’t feel like it belonged to us anymore. Like it had been repurposed mid-sentence. We made it to the loading corridor before it happened. Pico tripped. It wasn’t dramatic at first. Just a stupid, small mistake—his foot catching on debris, his balance gone before he even realized it, but the floor moved under him. The Corruption—whatever name you wanted to give it—didn’t just hit. It attached. Like it had been waiting for someone to slow down. I remember the sound he made more than anything else. Not a scream at first. Just shock. Then pain catching up. “No—no, no, no,” I said, dropping beside him instantly, grabbing his arms. “Get up. Get up, Pico!” He tried. I felt it. I really did. But something was already holding him in place, dragging like gravity had turned personal. His breathing got uneven. Then… wrong. His eyes drifted, unfocused for a second like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. And then he laughed. Not like before. This one didn’t belong to him. “Hey,” he said softly, too softly, almost wondering. “It’s… kinda nice.”
My stomach dropped. “Don’t you start that,” I said, shaking him harder than I meant to. “Pico, look at me. That’s not you talking.” He blinked at me like I was far away. “I think I’m… okay,” he murmured, like he was testing the sentence. Like it tasted good. “No,” I said, voice breaking at the edges now. “No, you are not okay. You’re coming with me.” I pulled again. For a moment—just a moment—he came closer. ...Then he stopped fighting. That was worse. Because Pico had never stopped fighting anything in his life. His expression softened, like someone had turned down the volume on reality, like pain had been replaced with something warm and convincing. “Hey, Tera,” he said. Still my name. Still him, somewhere underneath. “You should go.” I shook my head fast. “I’m not leaving you.” That’s when he looked at me properly. There was something in his face I’ll never forget—not fear, not pain. Acceptance, and something like relief, buried underneath everything else. "If you stay,” he said gently, “you go too." My grip tightened until it hurt. “You don’t get to decide that.” “I kind of do,” he said, and even then, even like that, he tried to smile. “You’re the responsible one, remember?” That hit harder than anything else. Behind us, the corridor echoed with movement. Closer now. Too close. Pico’s fingers loosened around mine. Not because he didn’t care, because he couldn’t hold on anymore. “I’m sorry,” he said, quieter now. Almost peaceful in a way that made my chest ache. “But… I think this is it for me.” I should’ve said something clever. Something angry. Something that made it not real. Instead, I just held on harder. He looked at me one last time—really looked, and then he let go. “Run,” he said. So I did. I don’t remember choosing to. I just remember my hands emptying. And my feet moving. And the sound of everything collapsing behind me as I ran through the corridor, past broken glass and flickering lights and voices that weren’t safe to listen to. The city outside didn’t feel like a city when I reached it. It felt like aftermath. Empty cars. Dead lanes. A highway stretching too far in both directions, like the world had forgotten how to end properly. At some point I realized I was still running. At some point I realized I was bleeding. At some point I realized I couldn’t hear Pico anymore. And still—I didn’t stop.
