Jin's breath was uneven. His arms ached, his ribs throbbed, and the steel pipe in his hand felt twice as heavy as before.
His body wasn't used to this.
Not the running. Not the fighting. Not the sheer, relentless terror pressing against his skull like a vice.
And yet—it wasn't over.
The ground rumbled beneath his feet.
The ceiling above them groaned, cracked, buckled.
The next one was coming.
Jin forced his legs to move.
"We're not fighting the next one," he said, voice tight. "We run."
The others didn't argue. They ran.
Their footsteps pounded against the stairs, frantic, reckless, desperate.
Jin's lungs burned. His body screamed at him to stop, but stopping meant dying.
The air felt heavier now. Like something massive was pressing down on them.
A deep, guttural snarl crawled through the stairwell, vibrating against the walls.
Jin glanced up.
And his stomach dropped.
A massive clawed hand tore through the upper landing, jagged nails carving through steel and stone like paper.
It wasn't the same as the last one.
It was bigger.
The wall buckled under its weight.
Another snarl, deep and hungry.
Jin clenched his jaw. Too fast. Too close.
And then—the woman beside him tripped.
Jin's body moved before his mind did. He caught her arm, yanked her forward.
"Don't stop," he said, breathless. "Move!"
She limped forward. The others kept running.
But the monster wasn't in a rush.
It was still coming down.
It knew.
It knew they had nowhere to go.
Jin's eyes locked onto the third-floor landing.
A door. Slightly open.
The exit sign above it flickered weakly, barely giving off light.
It was their only way out.
Jin shoved himself forward, ignoring the pain in his ribs. He reached the door first, grabbed the handle, and threw it open.
"Inside!" he barked.
The others pushed through.
Jin was the last one in.
And just as he slammed the door shut behind him—
The stairwell collapsed.
The impact shook the floor.
Jin turned just in time to see the stairwell cave in completely.
Concrete crumbled. Steel twisted and snapped. Dust and debris filled the air, thick and choking.
For a moment, no one moved.
No one spoke.
Jin's chest rose and fell sharply. His arms felt like lead. His legs threatened to give out.
But they had made it.
Barely.
Jin's ears were still ringing from the collapse, his breath ragged as the dust settled around them. The others were just as shaken—coughing, panting, their bodies tense from the sprint.
But it wasn't just the aftermath of the stairwell that froze them in place.
It was a voice.
Weak. Strained. Coming from somewhere deeper inside the floor.
"…Is someone there?"
Jin's grip on the steel pipe tightened. It didn't feel right.
The words were normal, but the way they echoed through the dark wasn't.
No one spoke. The only sounds were the flickering emergency lights above and the survivors' slow, uneven breaths.
Jin pushed himself off the wall, wincing as the ache in his ribs flared again. "We need to move," he muttered. His voice was low, controlled.
No one argued.
They stepped forward, moving slowly, carefully.
The office floor stretched into the dim light, rows of overturned desks and shattered monitors casting long, jagged shadows. Papers were scattered everywhere, stained with footprints and something darker.
The air was stale. Wrong. The kind of wrong that made Jin's skin crawl.
His instincts screamed at him to turn back. But there was nowhere to go.
As they walked, the voice came again—closer this time.
"…Please… help me."
Jin stopped.
The others did too.
Jin stood still, gripping his pipe as the others hovered near the doorway. Dust still clung to the air from the stairwell's collapse, but none of them were focused on that anymore.
The voice came again from deeper inside the room.
"…Please… help me."
It sounded wrong.
The words reached them a second too late, like someone playing back a recording right after speaking. The distortion was subtle, but now that Jin had heard it once, he couldn't unhear it.
His pulse slowly picked up.
The others heard it too. The woman he had saved took an uneasy step back. The man with the metal rod exhaled sharply. "That… doesn't sound normal."
Jin's jaw tightened. He wasn't sure if it was just exhaustion or if the air in the office felt thicker now.
"We don't have a choice; we have to leave the building, and this is the only way forward," he muttered.
He moved first.
The group followed, stepping carefully over shattered glass and scattered papers, their movements tense, hesitant. The flickering emergency lights weren't helping. They stretched the shadows long, twisting them unnaturally.
Jin's breath felt too loud.
Then—they saw him.
Slumped against a cubicle wall.
A man.
His dress shirt was soaked in sweat and blood, his face pale, drawn, eyes slightly unfocused. He was sitting upright, but barely, one shaking hand clutching his chest.
At the sound of their footsteps, his eyes flickered open.
"…You made it," he rasped.
His voice glitched.
Jin's blood ran cold.
It was faint, but unmistakable—his lips had moved first.
The sound had followed afterward.
Jin froze.
The others did too.
The woman he had saved stepped forward slightly. "Are you hurt?"
The man exhaled sharply. A short, dry, brittle sound.
"I think…"
Then, his own voice repeated itself.
"I think… I think…"
Then—the woman's words played back too.
"Are you hurt?"
Spoken in her exact voice.
The air in the room changed.
Jin's fingers curled tighter around the pipe. His heartbeat slammed against his ribs.
The man twitched. His fingernails dug into his palm, his body shaking.
Jin took a slow step forward. "What's your skill?"
The man's eyes flickered to him. Too wide. Too unfocused.
Then—he let out a soft, cracked laugh. It glitched mid-sound.
"…[Echo.]"
Jin didn't speak.
The others stood frozen.
The man shifted slightly, his breath ragged. His gaze flickered not at them, but to the empty space behind them.
"My skill… lets me copy things in the area around me," he muttered. "Things I've heard. Things I've seen. As long as its happened around me I can copy it"
Jin's stomach twisted.
"…You must be suffering."
The man twitched violently.
Then—he screamed.
Not just one scream.
Dozens.
Echoing all at once.
A woman's panicked sob.
A man's choked, ragged breath.
The gut-wrenching shriek of someone being torn apart.
It all came from him.
Jin staggered back.
The others reeled away in horror. The woman he had saved covered her mouth, eyes wide.
The man's whole body convulsed, his fingers curling against his chest like he was trying to hold himself together. His breath came out in ragged, broken gasps.
"I hear them," he rasped. "I feel their pain."
Jin swallowed. His throat was dry.
"…That's why you're like this."
The man let out a choked laugh. "The system let me copy them," he muttered. "But it didn't say I had to choose what I take."
His body twitched violently.
"And now I have too much."
Jin didn't move.
This guy wasn't going to last.
Then—his breath hitched. His shaking, dilated eyes snapped to Jin.
"…You need to run."
Jin's pulse spiked.
The man's lips moved again, but this time, his words didn't come immediately.
The delay was longer.
Like his voice was struggling to reach them at all.
The lights flickered.
Then they went out.
Followed by a split second of total silence.
Then—a sound.
Low. Wet. Dragging.
Jin's pulse spiked. He couldn't see. The office was swallowed in black, only the dim red glow of an emergency exit sign flickering weakly in the distance.
The others were frozen.
Then—the man groaned.
His breath stuttered. "It's… here."
A choked, rattling wheeze crawled through the air.
Not from him.
From somewhere close.
Jin's fingers tightened around the pipe. His body tensed, adjusting his stance automatically—but his mind was racing. They couldn't fight what they couldn't see.
A sudden, sharp scraping sound echoed across the floor.
Metal dragging against tile.
Jin's breath hitched.
The man on the ground tensed violently. His voice crackled, distorting.
"…It's listening."
Jin didn't move.
He felt the air shift. The thing was moving. Slowly. Carefully.
Like it was searching.
Like it hadn't locked onto them yet.
Jin's heart slammed against his ribs. No one dared to breathe.
A faint click.
Then—a muffled sob somewhere in the room.
Jin's stomach dropped.
Someone had made a sound.
The air shifted violently.
The thing lunged.
A sharp, inhuman screech tore through the room.
A desk exploded outward, crashing against the wall.
Then—a scream.
A woman's voice, piercing, raw, filled with sheer terror.
Jin's body moved before his mind. He spun toward the sound—but he couldn't see her.
A choked gasp. Something wet and sharp.
The scream cut off.
Jin's grip tightened on the pipe. Gone.
Someone was just taken.
The air was suffocating now.
He forced his voice through clenched teeth. "We need to move now"