"YES!!! WE WO- Mmmm!" Tommy clamped his hand over my mouth to shut me up. "We can't be found out!" Tommy said, whispering. I nodded. I knew we couldn't be in here forever and I had a feeling listening to Tommy will help the both of us a lot. We were crawling around the vent when something started to happen. I heard a voice. "Stay calm, my child. I promise that you won't be taken. After all, you're special." I saw a glimpse of a room full of antiques and a man with a mask on. He had a knife and was walking towards me.
....
"Melody?"
"Are you okay? You passed out." I jolted awake, drool dripping from my mouth, confused about what happened. "What? Where am I?" I said, sitting up in the process. "The safe room. Now tell me, what happened?" Tommy asked. "N-Nothing," I said, lying through my teeth. "Okay, well then let's get moving." He said, clearly suspicious. "Yeah, let's go," I said, laughing awkwardly. We were crawling through the vast landscape of tangled vents. It was... kinda tiring, to be honest. I wasn't going to slow down, much less stop to catch my fleeting breaths. I was not stopping because I was hearing actual people.
Faint voices behind us, like someone was there but hidden in the darkness. "H-Hello? Please just stop crawling, we won't hurt you. You seem like you can hear us. We're just like you." The voices pleaded. Tommy was keeping up pretty well, surprisingly. I was pretty freaked out, after all. After a few minutes, Tommy got suspicious. "Why are you going so fast? What, can you sense something?" Tommy said, looking at me suspiciously. "N-No! It's fine! Really, don't worry at all!" I said, laughing a bit. Then he gave me the stank eye for obviously lying. Just great. I just focused forward and started crawling faster.
There was a nail in the vent, but I didn't know until it was through my hand. I muffled my scream the best I could with my unharmed hand. Tommy rushed over in a panic, probably for 2 reasons. The first being the realization that the thick smell in the air is blood, and the terrifying fact that we'd gone this way before and there were no nails. I thought that our only problem was Them but then I figured out that was not the case. Those... souls(?) were flying everywhere, some even going through Tommy. How could he not notice, when all that changed about him was that he was Changed?
"Actually, what is being Changed? I've been thinking about this, but never got an answer. Why was I so heavily guarded? And why was I so... so different from the others? Even before they were changed, everyone called me 'special.' Why is that?" I thought. My breathing was heavy, the blood wasn't just gushing from my hand anymore, now it's from the middle of my stomach. Poles were coming from everywhere. There's utter confusion and despair on Tommy's face was extremely painful, so I was worried about him even as the voices were echoing, giggling...
"Why are you so afraid? We are only here to help so if you let us join you we'll help you." "Why?! Y'know what? Fine. You can come with us if you promise to never hurt us." I said, struggling to breathe as my face contorted from the pain. "Fine, we promise to never hurt you, ever again." The voices chanted, obviously disappointed. The poles retreated back and the vent was normal again. They started circling me. "I-I'm getting healed!" I said, startled. Tommy started to crawl away, clearly bewildered by the site he's seeing in front of him. "Ohoho, I see that there's a scaredy-cat here! I'd be pretty confused too if I saw this. Don't worry, he'll see us if he eats this fruit!" The voices chanted, clearly delighted to let their presence be known to someone else. A fruit appeared in my hand, and I offered it to Tommy. "Y-You're trusting this?" Tommy said, scared. I paused, then nodded. "F-Fine. I'll try it." He said reluctantly, before taking a bite.