Discount Dan

I spent the next several hours wandering through a seemingly endless series of twisting, turning, and interconnected corridors that didn’t go anywhere or have a discernable purpose.

It was a mind-numbingly dull labyrinth of gray carpet and yellow wallpaper, augmented by the occasional set of brown double doors that also went nowhere. I opened one set to find a solid wall with more wallpaper. Another let out into a short hallway, which ended after twenty feet. All of the hallways meandered without any real rhyme or reason, randomly connecting to wide conference halls, smaller meeting rooms, cozy alcoves, and more pointless corridors.

Other than that, there was just nothing.

No chairs. No tables. None of the inoffensive and utterly forgettable corporate art that usually decorated the walls in these kinds of places. There were also no signs—Pool This Way, Fitness Center on 4th Floor, Rooftop Access—with one extremely notable exception. I ran across six different Exit signs, all lit up in blazing red neon. Like the brown doors, they never went anywhere either. They were all positioned in dead-end hallways, just like the one I’d woken up in.

I was starting to think they existed solely to mock any poor schmuck unlucky enough to get stuck in here. It was enough to drive a guy batshit.

Especially a guy like me.

This entire place was a contractor’s worst nightmare. Nothing was up to code. There were no egress windows or smoke detectors. The constantly flickering lights pointed to botched wiring, and I hadn’t seen a single electrical outlet. Right hand to the good Lord, the lack of proper ventilation would haunt me far more than the skinless monster with far too many limbs.

Even more concerning, however, was the lack of drinking fountains or bathrooms. Having a place to take a dump was high on my list of priorities, but I could make do with a corner. But no water? Yeah, that was trouble. I could go a good long while without food, but water was one of those small amenities necessary for human survival. I had a day, maybe two at the outside, to figure out how to get out of the Lobby before I passed out from dehydration and died in one of a thousand unmarked corridors.

And the truth was, I probably didn’t even have that long.

Although the Monarch hadn’t found me yet, there was something else in here with me.

I wasn’t sure what, exactly, and I never got a good look at it. It was always a flash of movement just on the edge of my peripheries or the scritch-scratch of claws rustling against carpet. It was the sense of eyes watching me from the dark, waiting ever so patiently for an opportune moment to strike. And whenever I sat down or even stopped moving for a little too long, I felt the noxious presence of the watchers draw nearer.

Closing in around me on every side.

If I lay down for a bit of shut-eye, I was certain I wouldn’t ever wake up again. Why these things hadn’t eaten me while I was passed out for five hours, I couldn’t say, but they were actively hunting me now.

So, even though I was tired and thirsty, I kept moving.

Kept searching for a way out.

The lack of distinguishing features made it incredibly hard to navigate with any sort of confidence or certainty, but I was a former Marine and I had the benefit of my tool belt. The first thing I tried was the ol’ Hansel and Gretel method. Using the fat-tipped Sharpie, I systematically left symbols at each intersection and juncture, noting which way I’d come from and which pathway I’d chosen, so I would know if I was doubling back or walking in circles.

It was a solid plan.

The Backrooms was having none of it. This place had several countermeasures to make sure visitors couldn’t game the system quite so easily.

Turned out, the wallpaper was lightly corrosive—almost like the digestive juices of some giant stomach. I figured that out when I took a short break, sat down, and leaned up against one of the walls. I’d been sitting for ten minutes, tops, when I noticed a strange heat radiating through my stupid, ass-ugly bathrobe. When I scrambled away, I found that the wall had eaten a dime-sized hole through the fabric.

That same acidic quality also dissolved the Sharpie in a matter of minutes, which I learned after hitting a dead-end, then backtracking to a large, circular conference room with a series of corridors branching off like the spokes of a wheel. It didn’t take long to locate one of the trail markers I’d left behind—except the arrow I’d drawn was faded to a ghostly gray line, so faint it was nearly invisible. If I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve said the mark had been exposed to the sun and the elements for months or even years.

Curious, I milled around for a bit longer, watching as the arrow eventually faded completely and disappeared, leaving only unmarked yellow wallpaper behind.

I wasn’t out of options, though.

Improvise, adapt, and overcome was the unofficial Marine Corps motto for a reason. It also doubled for contractors working on an unfamiliar job site.

I stowed the Sharpie and pulled out my demolition screwdriver. In the past eight years, I’d never once used the screwdriver to turn a screw. It had a blunt, flat head and I often used it like a chisel—that or as a spike to punch holes in walls or even pry boards apart.

Instead of delicately scribbling arrows onto the walls, I started leaving behind deep, nasty puncture wounds to mark my route. I knew from experience that this place would heal those injuries over time, but based on what I’d observed after the battle between the gunslinger and the Monarch, that could take hours instead of minutes. Not exactly an elegant solution, but it got the job done and that was all that mattered.

Unfortunately, that plan had a few unexpected kinks as well.

As with the Sharpie, the Backrooms didn’t appreciate my creative interior decoration. The lights blinked manically in annoyance after the first couple of stabs, and things got progressively worse from there. By the time I’d marked the fifth intersection, an angry tremor rattled through the floor, which made me sweat. Still, the holes stayed put, so I was hesitant to stop. When I punched the sixth hole, there was a long groan followed by the sound of thudding footfalls, rapidly closing in on me.

The watcher was back, and it was closer than ever.

That was enough to convince me to try something else.

At the next intersection, instead of just punching a hole in the wall, I took out my utility knife and carved out a square of wallpaper, approximately two feet by two feet. The material was thin, flexible, and surprisingly durable. The texture also felt like human skin, which was extremely disturbing. But the back side of the wallpaper was plain white in color and didn’t seem to have the same acidic qualities as the yellow front side. I used my Sharpie to sketch out a rough map of the area, and even after ten minutes, the ink didn’t fade.

That made me think the wallpaper might have some other beneficial uses.

It was easy to imagine crafting a pair of crude gloves, which would deal acid damage to anything I punched.

But when I decided to push my luck and attempted to harvest a second section of wallpaper, the Backrooms pushed back a bit more aggressively than before.

A tremor as strong as an earthquake knocked me from my feet and several of the lights blinked off entirely, plunging huge swaths of the corridor behind me into a thick shroud of oppressive darkness.

When I fished out my flashlight and turned the beam toward the sudden patch of gloom, I found something waiting within. The watcher. The spear of light bounced off a creature made of inky black shadows with a protruding potbelly, gangly arms, bulbous white eyes, stringy gray hair, and a too-wide mouth filled with a legion of jagged, needle-like teeth. It wore a tattered blue vest with a yellow smiley face pinned to the left breast.

A tag briefly fluttered above the creature.

Dweller 0.052C – Lobby Greeter [Level 2]

It tilted its head to one side, raised a spidery hand, and waved at me in welcome.

There wasn’t anything even remotely friendly in the gesture, and it sent shivers racing along my spine. Especially when a second and third pair of bright, bulbous eyes blinked at me from the murk.

The first Greeter flinched away from the light, but the second I moved the beam away, the creature cautiously crept forward—right to the very edge of the darkness. At this point, I was reasonably certain the building itself was a living thing, but I still wasn’t sure whether or not it was sentient. Had the Lobby sent these things as an overt threat? Or was it possible that this was just some sort of automated response—like a body releasing white blood cells to deal with an invasive infection?

I wasn’t sure, but either way, it felt like a warning shot.

Fuck around and find out.

Me? I had no desire to find out, so I dismissed ideas of acid-dealing gloves and put as much distance between myself and the encroaching trio of nightmare Lobby Greeters as possible.

Working under the theory that this place—whatever it was—was, in fact, alive and sentient, I decided to forgo smashing any more holes into the walls as well. Better to be safe than sorry, especially when maniacal, flesh-eating ghouls were the possible consequence. I mean, I didn’t know for a fact that they were flesh-eating, but since the walls were literally low-grade digestive acid, I felt like that was a safe bet.

For the next hour, I used the wallpaper parchment to sketch out a crude map as I wandered through the twists and turns, but eventually that failed too. I ran out of parchment space long before I ran out of corridors. This place was just too big to map with any degree of accuracy. The process did yield one unexpected result, however. With a bird’s-eye view of the Lobby, I realized there were some repeatable patterns and that things weren’t quite as random as they seemed at first glance.

The Researcher had mentioned quadrants and sectors, and now I knew why.

I was currently stranded inside of a giant, self-contained box, comprised of a series of smaller interconnected boxes. In essence, a grid. Most of the hallways and corridors were designed to drive traffic back toward the middle of the sector and into an area I’d deemed the Lobby Hub, which wasn’t far from where I’d first woken up.

There was one corridor, though, in one of the outlying sectors, that seemed to break the pattern. Instead of eventually looping back around toward the Hub, it cut through the outer edge of the perimeter and went… elsewhere.

Likely to another quadrant, though it was impossible to say for sure.

It took the better part of another hour to get back over to the hallway—reading the map was tricky at best—but when I did, I immediately noticed one small, but important difference.

A vent.

The hallway looked identical to the others, but near the bottom of the wall, just above the baseboard, was a beige air duct vent cover. It wasn’t big enough to climb into, and even if it had been, there was no way I would have. Who knew what in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph would be waiting for me inside?

Probably a pulsating, demonic gullet, eager to turn me into “meat slurry.”

Even though the vent shaft was small, I still managed to unscrew the plate cover and poke my head inside. The beam of my Maglite illuminated a long metal duct that went straight as an arrow before eventually being swallowed up by the darkness.

This was the first corridor I’d seen with no turns. No bends. No intersections.

Not having any other leads or ideas, I opted to follow it.

Plain, beige ventilation covers appeared every fifteen minutes or so, always in the same place—low down on the wall, just above the white crown molding—and always identical to the last. I kept the Slammer in my hand as I moved, compulsively checking the time.

It was 2:17 AM Newfoundland Standard Time, and the Super Slammer of Shielding had officially reset, by the time I came to a door.

This was different than the brown wooden double doors I’d happened across a few times before. It had a black plastic sign affixed to the front that read, Bathroom, Employees Only.

I didn’t go in. Not right away.

I was exhausted and thirsty, and finding a bathroom was an answer to my prayers. Assuming it wasn’t out of order, there would be a sink inside, which meant water. I also knew I couldn’t just keep walking forever. I’d have to stop eventually. Unlike the creatures that called this place home, I was only human, and I’d need to sleep. So far, the thought of the potbellied Lobby Greeters had kept me moving steadily forward, but it wouldn’t be hard to jam the door and barricade myself inside.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but that had to be better than sleeping out in the open.

Still, I hesitated. It was perfect. Too perfect. In my gut, it felt like a trap.

The hallway, studded with ventilation covers, continued to the right. I could always keep following it in hopes that it would take me to another quadrant—and to a way out of the Lobby. But, begrudgingly, I had to admit there was no guarantee that I would find a way out at all. Even if this hallway did connect to another quadrant, there was an equally good chance that the quadrant would be an endlessly frustrating maze, just like the area I was leaving behind.

Taking a pit stop in the restroom was the best option. The only option, really.

I slipped the Slammer into my left palm, then pulled out my hammer. I took a few deep breaths to steady my fraying nerves, then awkwardly cranked the silver door lever down and kicked the door inward with a booted foot. The metal slab squawked and groaned as it opened, revealing a rectangular room with white-tiled floors and lime green walls. The restroom looked like it had been plucked out of an ’80s shopping mall.

A rectangular ceiling fixture painted the room in harsh white light.

Against the left wall was a sink situated below a small mirror with a large crack running up its face. Directly opposite the sink was a solitary toilet. An unholy stink emanated from it, but a black lid covered up whatever rectal carnage had been inflicted upon the poor porcelain bowl.

Perched in the far corner of the room, for reasons I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, was a padded red sitting chair with metal legs.

The breath caught in my throat…

Not far from the chair was a second door, set into the far wall. This one wasn’t wood, but matte gray metal with the words Stairwell – Lobby Exit spray-painted across the front in blocky white letters.

I’d just hit the jackpot.

Except…

Except, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a trap.

I glanced left and right, searching for any sign of the Lobby Greeters, but there was nothing. I was utterly alone. And the bathroom itself was relatively small with nowhere for a potential assailant to hide.

The Researcher had told me in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to survive, I needed to get to Howlers Hold on floor seven. I also had at least one item that I couldn’t use until I descended and found a Progenitor Monolith.

Sure, this could be a trap. Or…

Or it could be my only chance.

Despite my mounting hesitation, I stepped into the bathroom, then pushed the door shut behind me with my heel, never taking my eyes off the exit to the stairwell. The bathroom door closed with an audible click, and I let out a soft sigh of relief when the whole room didn’t go up in a fiery explosion. Had I really expected to find an IED, wired to the bathroom door? No. At this point, though, there wasn’t anything that would truly surprise me.

I sidestepped over to the sink and wiggled the faucet handle.

There was a rumble, followed by a gurgle, then a stream of brown water sputtered out, quickly turning clear. That was common enough for plumbing that had sat unused for a while. Even if the stairwell turned out to be a bust, finding a source of drinking water was a huge win.

I killed the tap, and ominous silence filled the room once again.

Gripping my hammer even more tightly, I padded across the tiled floor and tried the door. There was a metal push bar running across the front.

I gave it a good, solid kick, but the door didn’t budge.

Locked. Because of course it was.

Set into the metal push bar was a small, circular hole that would accommodate a key. I wasn’t a locksmith by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d dealt with doors like these more times than I could count on commercial worksites. Jimmying them open could be tricky, but with a little patience and the Irwin 9-in-1 multi-bit screwdriver in my belt, I figured I could get ’er done with a little patience and elbow grease.

I turned, taking one last sweep of the room to ensure I was alone.

Still nothing.

Dropping to one knee, I set my hammer down on the tile floor and began to work at the lock with my screwdriver, prodding around inside the hole—searching for the release mechanism.

I didn’t hear the soft scrape of porcelain on tile until something heavy slammed into my side like an NFL linebacker and sent me tumbling away from the door.