The screams ripped through the space, jagged and sharp. Those still climbing snapped their heads downward and instantly regretted it. Below them, that rising water-thing surged upward, devouring the lower platform. People caught in it twisted, clawed, melted in ways the human mind wasn't built to process. Flesh sloughed. Boots dissolved. Limbs thrashed in pure, primal terror.
Panic hit the climbers like electricity. Everyone scrambled faster. Some climbed with new, animal fury. Others? Too far below. Too tired. Too slow. One slip, one mis-grip, one tiny hesitation, and they dropped straight into the boiling nightmare below.
"Oh shit, this is bad. This is really bad. Some f*cked up shit fr!" Linus rasped out as he rolled onto the fourth platform, hands shaking, heart beating like it was trying to punch through his ribs. He didn't even breathe. He didn't dare. The acid was rising too fast. He dragged himself back onto the bars and climbed like someone had hit the sprint button on a dying battery.
Up above on the 5th platform, the survivors stared down at the horror unfolding. Relief and dread intertwined in their faces, both fighting for dominance.
Maya's eyes flicked between the chaos below and the vault-like door beside them. The timer above it glared down at them: 2:09. She swallowed. The acid was already halfway to the fourth platform. Too fast. Far too fast.
"Hurry up and open, dammit!" someone shouted, voice cracking like glass.
A couple of people were pacing, shaking their heads, muttering to themselves. Some hugged their knees. Some prayed. Even up here, they all felt the shadow of the rising death below, like a heat they couldn't escape.
Hands suddenly gripped the ledge. Some more climbers scrambled up, and the group yanked them onto the platform. One collapsed instantly. Another sobbed uncontrollably. But the door remained sealed. Silent. Unmoving.
1:30.
The number glowed like a cruel joke.
And the sound of rising acid was getting louder.
The acid surged onto the 4th platform, eating it alive with vicious cracks and hissing steam. Linus was only halfway to the 5th. His arms screamed, his shoulders felt like unraveling rope, but none of that mattered. Survival had hijacked every cell in his body. He climbed like the world was collapsing beneath him. Because it was.
The bars here were mercifully straight, stable, lined upward in a long metallic ascent. But they stretched forever, a cruel staircase to heaven with hell chewing at his shoes. He could feel the heat below him, a rising presence, a promise of death.
Up on the 5th platform, the timer finally hit zero.
Silence.
Then a heavy, mechanical clack echoed from inside the vault door. A whir. A grind. Gears shifting. Locks withdrawing. The door slowly lurched open.
The survivors didn't wait for instructions. They shoved, stumbled, pushed, cried, laughed, collapsed into the chamber beyond. It looked like the previous resting rooms but bigger, metallic walls broken by bands of black stripes.
"Why isn't the door closing?!" someone shouted as panic spiked again.
A handle stuck out of the inside. Manual. Of course it was. Nothing in this place wanted to help them.
A guy sprinted to it, grabbed the handle and pulled with everything in him. The door creaked, but it didn't budge. "I need help here!" he yelled, voice breaking.
More rushed over. Fingers gripped the cold metal. Bodies leaned in. Muscles strained. Fear did the rest.
Outside on the platform, Maya's eyes snapped to a movement. A bloody hand gripping the ledge.
"It can't be…" she whispered.
But it was. Linus hauled himself up, battered, shaking, looking half-dead but far from done.
Inside, the door was halfway closed now.
"WAIT! There's one more!" Maya shouted.
"What!? We don't have time!" someone barked back, red-faced and wild-eyed. "If we wait, we DIE!"
"We can't just leave him!" Maya yelled.
"Look around! It's either him or us! You wanna die for one guy?! He's DONE!" another shrieked from the back, trembling so hard the words nearly fell apart.
"CLOSE THE DAMN DOOR!"
Linus saw the shrinking opening. "HEY—WAIT! Don't close it! Ah f*ck!" he screamed as he sprinted toward it, legs wobbling but moving like they had a mind of their own.
Then everything stopped.
The door froze in place.
A muscular hand held it back.
The tall athletic man stepped forward, arms braced, refusing to let the others shut it.
"WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU DOING!?"
"ARE YOU INSANE?!"
"LET GO OR WE ALL DIE!"
Their voices spiraled into a frenzy of fear and fury.
The man didn't flinch. "Cowards. You see someone alive and choose to kill him yourselves? Look at what you've turned into." His voice was low, calm, cutting sharper than the panic around him.
"HE'S DEAD ANYWAY! DON'T DRAG US DOWN WITH HIM!" someone screamed.
"If any of you were thinking clearly," Maya snapped, "you'd see he CAN make it. So shut up and hold on!"
She leaned out through the opening. "LINUS! Hurry UP!"
Linus dug deep, whatever deep meant at this point. He sprinted, leapt, and crashed through the opening. He hit the floor hard, rolled twice, gasping, alive.
The man released the door.
The survivors slammed it shut with a deafening metallic boom.
A few stepped back, panting, muttering, ashamed but too proud to admit it.
Linus lay on the cold floor, chest rising and falling like distant waves, and thought only one thing:
He made it.
Silence hit the room like a hammer dropped in velvet.
No one spoke. No one even breathed right. The air felt thick, like the walls themselves were holding their breath, listening. The clang of the door still echoed somewhere in the metal, fading slow, like the last heartbeat of the world outside.
Linus stayed on the floor for a moment, letting the cold cool his burning back. His lungs dragged in air in sharp, ugly pulls. The copper taste of panic stuck to his tongue.
Everyone else just… stared.
Some with guilt.
Some with relief so fierce it looked like grief.
Some with that blank hollow look people get when their minds shut down to survive.
"You're alive, didnt think you had it in you." Maya said.
Linus let out a shaky laugh that sounded more like a cough. "Barely."
The tall athletic man-the one who held the door-stood a few feet away, arms crossed, expression unreadable. A few glared at him from the back. Others looked away, ashamed of themselves for yelling, for panicking, for choosing the easy cruelty.
No one said thank you.
Of course they didn't.
A guy in the corner suddenly cracked. He slid down to sit on the floor, hands shaking violently. "I… I can't do this," he whispered. "I can't do this anymore…"
No one comforted him. Everyone was too broken to lend spare pieces of themselves.
The room's lights flickered once,just once,but it was enough to make everyone's heads snap up like prey hearing a twig break in the dark.
Then the voice returned.
Cold. Smooth. Unbothered.
"Trial completed. Resting period initiated."
___
Honestly,if it were real life, Linus and the rest will be long gone lol