Linus looked up, another man was clinging to the same rope, higher up. The guy was panicking, jerking back and forth, sending the rope into a wild sway.
Not good.
Linus's arms strained as he tried to steady himself, eyes darting for something, anything,to grab onto. A pipe, a bar, a miracle. The rope twisted, and his stomach dropped.
Up above, the pulley holding them groaned. The screws holding it to the wall were shifting, tiny, metallic whines barely audible over the man's terrified gasps. One screw popped loose. Then another.
Linus spotted a bent bar jutting out nearby. His gut screamed now or never. The man above was losing it completely, shouting nonsense, thrashing like a trapped animal.
Linus didn't think, he swung. His fingers caught the bent bar, the metal shrieking under his weight. His shoulders burned, but he held on.
Then it happened.
The pulley snapped free with a deafening CRACK. The man's scream ripped through the silo as he fell, bouncing off the steel walls. He hit a platform on the way down, a dull, wet sound, before tumbling into the black void below. A splatter of red marked where his head had struck.
Linus stared, breath caught in his throat, the echo of that scream still vibrating in his chest. A hollow heaviness spread through him, numb understanding.
This place doesn't let mistakes live long.
Linus pressed his forehead against the cold metal, forcing a breath in. His pulse was skipping with the aftershock of what he'd just witnessed. Despair nipped at him like a cold draft from the void below, but he shoved it back. He didn't climb this far to freeze.
Survive. That was the only command left in his brain.
He pushed upward,with shaking hands, until he finally reached the first ring platform. He collapsed onto it, chest rising like a broken bellows. For a moment, he just sat there, feeling the metal vibrate faintly beneath him as others climbed.
When he looked up, a few people were already pulling themselves onto the second platform, quicker, smoother, like they'd been training for this their whole lives.
"Guess those are the athletic ones," Linus muttered, dry sarcasm barely covering the bitterness in his throat.
A timer blinked on the wall beside him: 25 minutes.
"What's this countdown even for?" he whispered.
He wasn't dumb. Whatever waited at zero wasn't mercy.
He glanced down. Some were still climbing, slow and trembling.
Others… weren't trying anymore. They just sat on the starting platform, empty-eyed, as if the void below had already claimed them.
Linus exhaled through his nose.
"At least they've accepted what's coming," he said quietly, though the thought made his stomach twist.
Four more platforms to go.
He gritted his teeth, pulled himself back to his feet, and reached for the next bar.
The climb wasn't over.
Not even close.
__
Maya climbed like she'd done this before. Steady, quick, controlled. Her hands moved from bar to bar, adjusting instantly for the crooked ones, the bent ones, the ones that shook like they were welded by a drunk child. She cleared each obstacle with a quiet, focused aggression, and soon she hauled herself onto the third platform.
A few others were already there, panting, trembling, clinging to the metal like it was their last tether to life.
Survival really did push people beyond what they believed they could do, she thought.
The timer on the wall blinked at her: 12 minutes.
She scanned downward, eyes tracking the scattered climbers struggling between the platforms. Some were barely hanging on. Some were frozen in fear. Some were slipping, screaming, and vanishing before anyone could reach them.
Then her gaze locked onto Linus.
He was a full level below, fingers slipping on a bar slicked with grease. Every attempt to grab it made him jolt, his grip faltering as his body swung dangerously over the void.
Maya sighed through her nose.
"Yeah… he's not lasting much longer," she murmured. "What a shame."
And with zero hesitation, she turned away and kept climbing.
__
Linus kept moving, but every pull felt like dragging a dead version of himself up with him. He was never fast to begin with, but now he was crawling compared to the others. His breaths came out in sharp, ragged bursts. His arms and shoulders felt like they'd been dipped in fire.
Around him, people were falling.
Some screamed the whole way down.
Some didn't make a sound.
Each fall carved another crack in his sanity.
He climbed past the third platform, the timer blinking down to 7 minutes.
Seven minutes left until… something. He didn't know what. He didn't want to know.
His hands were covered in blood now, smeared across the metal like he was leaving signatures of desperation behind him. Part of him wanted to let go, to save himself from the slow torture and just drop into the dark.
But he didn't.
Something inside him refused to quit.
Even when his shoulders popped with sickening little snaps… even when every misstep nearly sent him plunging… he kept going.
Then a shadow dropped from above.
Someone had finally lost their grip.
They plummeted straight toward him.
There were no bars near him, no pipes, no handholds.
Nothing to dodge with.
Nothing to grab.
Linus could only brace.
The falling man slammed into him like a wrecking ball.
The force ripped Linus off the wall, sent him tumbling downward.
He crashed onto the third platform, the impact knocking the breath out of him. His bones rattled. His stomach twisted. His vision pulsed in and out like a flickering bulb.
The other man wasn't as lucky.
He bounced off the edge and vanished into the void, his scream disappearing into the endless black.
Linus pushed himself upright, head spinning in a nauseating whirl. Something stung sharply at the back of his skull. He reached back, touched it, hissed.
When he pulled his hand into view…
it was red.
Warm.
Fresh.
"This… isn't good," he muttered, voice trembling.
__
Maya hauled herself onto the fifth platform, chest rising and falling like she'd sprinted through a furnace. Sweat clung to her skin in thin, salty rivers, but she'd made it. A handful of others had too, scattered across the metal surface like the last survivors of a sinking ship.
Her eyes snapped to the thing waiting on one end of the platform.
A door.
Not just any door.
A massive, circular vault door, the kind you'd expect to guard nuclear codes or generational family secrets. It sat embedded in the metal wall, silent and immovable. Someone had already tried to pull it open; the heavy locking wheel didn't budge even a millimeter.
Above it, a digital timer pulsed in red.
10:41
Maya's brows knitted. "That's… weird."
She turned to the platform's own timer.
02:33
Her stomach tightened. "Why are they different?" she muttered. "What kind of game is this?"
"Two different things," a voice answered behind her.
She jolted slightly and turned. A tall man stood there. Athletic build. Early thirties. The type who did morning runs for fun instead of self-loathing. His face was streaked with sweat but calm, analyzing, like he was solving an equation made of metal and death.
"Two different consequences," he said. "One for this platform. One for that door."
Maya crossed her arms, trying to ignore the thin thread of dread creeping up her spine. "Any idea what they might be?"
He exhaled slowly through his nose. "No clue. But whatever the second timer does, we do not want to be here when it hits zero."
He nodded toward the vault door.
"If we're lucky, that one opens before this one kills us."
Maya swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling tight.
She glanced down through the bars below. She could faintly see Linus, a tiny, struggling figure far below, blood on his hands, moving like gravity wanted him dead.
"Yeah," she murmured.
__
Linus dragged himself upward like a machine running on cracked gears, every movement a rebellion against his own body. His breath came in ragged bursts, chest feeling tight, skull hammering so hard it felt like someone was knocking from the inside, asking to be let out. His fingers slipped on a rung slick with someone else's blood, but he forced them to latch again. His vision jittered at the edges, but still he climbed.
The timer behind him blinked a furious red.
00:30
But he didn't see it.
Didn't hear the dull electronic beeps ticking down like a countdown to judgment day.
All he knew was forward. Upward. Survive or die.
Far above, voices of those at the top echoed faintly through the metal chambers, but it was swallowed by the groans, the screams, the thunder of bodies dropping into the abyss.
His shoulders felt wrong now, like the bones didn't understand the assignment anymore. Every reach sent a fresh ripple of agony crawling down his arms. He tasted metal in his mouth. His grip trembled.
00:22
A woman beside him missed her footing and fell shrieking past him, disappearing into the dark like a stone tossed into a well with no bottom.
Linus flinched, heart skidding in his chest.
00:15
Finally, he looked up. The next platform felt impossibly far… but still reachable if he rushed.
He wiped his bloody hand on his shirt, flexed his fingers, and prepared to make the final desperate climb.
He didn't see the timer.
But the timer saw him.
00:10.
__
00:00
The void answered the timer with silence… then something ancient and mechanical woke up in the dark.
A distant clang.
A metallic latch sliding.
A deep, throat-like groan that didn't sound like any machine built by sane people.
Those still stranded on the lowest platform froze mid-breath.
"Did you hear that…?"
"What now…?"
"Hello? Is someone down there messing with us?"
Then came the release: a wet, cavernous churning, like a reservoir vomiting its contents after years of being sealed. A rush of liquid echoed upward, growing louder, closer, hungrier.
A few leaned over the edge and squinted into the black.
"Wait… is that water?"
"Bro… we're saved!" someone laughed, almost hysterical. "We'll float up! HA! We actually made the right call staying down—"
But someone interrupted, nose wrinkling hard.
"Ei. Why does it smell like that? This no be water smell oo."
The rising liquid glimmered faintly in the dim lights, an oily sheen riding its surface.
Then it touched the platform.
And the world fell apart.
Boots began to hiss like hot iron plunged in ice.
One man stared down in confusion.
"Huh? Why's it—"
The hissing turned to bubbling. Then steam.
Then screaming.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH! IT'S BURNING! IT'S BURNING ME!"
All around him, voices erupted in ragged chorus. Boots softened, peeled, melted, revealing skin that reddened and blistered before splitting open. The smell hit them next. Acrid. Sharp. Chemical. Like burning hair mixed with industrial cleaner.
The water, wasn't water at all.
Someone slipped backwards into the rising pool and vanished up to their waist. The scream that came out of him twisted everyone's stomachs. Flesh sloughed off in strips. Muscle fibers snapped. The liquid turned cloudy pink, then red.
People tried to climb, but their legs were cooked and mangled, slipping uselessly on the metal rails. Others crawled, dragging themselves, leaving streaks of blood behind as the acid crept higher.
The platform turned into a nightmare,skin dissolving, bones peeking through, screams echoing off the steel walls.
The void wasn't filling.
It was devouring.
Above, Linus climbed without knowing death was rising beneath him, hungry and fast.