Chapter 101: Chapter-101. (This Is Not Josh).
The crawlspace seemed to go on forever. Pipes pressed into my back, and Emma’s little elbow kept bumping my ribs as she crawled in front of me.
Grit and dust filled my mouth, making me want to gag. Every breath felt heavy, and the dust scratched at my throat. My ankle throbbed where the chain had cut me raw, but I refused to think about turning back.
Pain was nothing compared to the hope of getting free from that snake’s chains.
Then Emma’s whisper broke the silence. "Door."
Her hand scraped against something metal. I pushed forward until my fingers touched it, too. It was a slab of iron, hidden in the wall.
The hinges were rusted, stiff like they had not been moved in years. It felt more like a secret door shown in those thriller movies than an ordinary exit.
I jerked my head, scolding myself to not think such idiotic thoughts. This was a real situation, and we were not some undercover agent discovering a dark secret.
This neither seemed like a cellar door, nor was it a way to the outside area. It felt too odd for that.
I pushed hard, and the hinges squealed. The sound made my heart pound so loud I thought Josh might hear it from the other side. Though he was out this whole time, luck will not support us every time.
For a moment, I froze, waiting for his footsteps, waiting for him to drag us back, but fortunately, nothing happened. The silence filled in, making it harder to breathe, so I pushed harder with all my remaining strength.
Finally, the door opened with a long groan, and we crawled out. My hands landed on cracked concrete. I looked up as my gaze roamed around the surroundings.
We were standing in a narrow alley-like passage, walled in on both sides with stone.
There was no sky above us, only thick wooden beams and pipes dripping water, like black veins running overhead. The air was damp and sour, but at least it did not choke us like the crawlspace.
Emma pressed close to me, clutching my arm. Her eyes darted around nervously. The passage gave us no choice, as there was only one way to go. A corridor stretched ahead into darkness, ending at a wooden door.
The wood looked old and unused, but a thin line of light glowed beneath it.
My whole body wanted to turn back. Every instinct screamed to not open the door, that the light wasn’t a good sign, but if there was light, there had to be a chance. Moreover, we definitely cannot go back to that place.
Taking a long, deep breath, I forced myself to step forward.
The door was not locked. That fact alone made me uneasy. In a place like this, doors were never left open by mistake.
I eased it open slowly, bracing myself for a basement or maybe a storage cellar, but what I saw froze me in place.
As expected, it is neither a cellar nor a store room.
The room beyond was filled with machines. Not new ones, but covered in all the dust and dirt. A desk sat near the center, stacked with yellow papers. Rusted filing cabinets leaned against the walls.
And above them, stretching across one side of the room, was a row of screens. Black, dead screens, staring like lifeless eyes.
Emma slipped past me before I could stop her, her shoes tapping lightly on the floor. She went straight toward the desk, curiosity pulling her forward. Her fear was smaller than her curiosity about knowing everything.
Her little hand reached out toward the buttons below the monitors.
"Emma, don’t..." I wanted to warn against touching anything carelessly, but it was too late.
She pressed a big red button.
A low hum filled the room. Then one screen flickered. Then another. And another.
The dust in the air seemed to shrink away from the glow. Slowly, the images started to form grainy, black-and-white footage.
Hallways, stairwells, and the kitchen. When I looked closely, I realized that it was none other than the house where we were living, or should I say surviving.
Even the door we had walked past dozens of times without noticing the tiny black cameras fixed above it.
Hidden cameras.
My stomach dropped. There were cameras everywhere. The room we had been locked in. The corridor outside. Even the corner of the bathroom.
Emma clapped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were huge, guilt written across her face, as if she had done something terrible, but my thoughts were not on her.
My mind was racing. If Josh had known about this room, if he had been watching us the whole time, these machines would not have been in such condition. The screens would be clean. The buttons would not stick.
The place felt older than a mansion shown in horror movies.
Emma tugged on my sleeve, pointing at papers scattered on the desk. They were stained with water, the ink smudged, but words still stood out. Names. Dates. Strange symbols I did not understand.
I picked them up with trembling hands. My eyes caught phrases that made my skin crawl...movement cycles.
Compliance testing.
Subject conditioning.
My mouth went dry. Whoever had worked here had not just been watching people. They had been experimenting on them.
"This is not Josh," I whispered to myself. Even I could feel shaking in my voice. "This is somebody else."
The evidence was everywhere. Josh was cruel, but he was not clever enough for this. His house was broken, his locks rusty, but these machines? This system? It was too big.
Too ancient. Something we had stumbled into by mistake.
I looked back at the screens. My fear grew with each breath. If the cameras still worked, if the system still ran, then someone might still be watching right now.
Emma, without thinking much, began pressing more buttons. I hissed for her to stop, but her small fingers moved too fast. With a sharp click, one of the monitors switched.