"Aghhhhhhhh!"
Manchild's scream tore through the air like nails on glass. Dramatic, sure—but also genuinely bloodcurdling. It rattled my brain so hard I almost didn't notice the sniper standing directly in front of me. Almost.
Of course, it had to be him. The same freak who tried to take my head off back when Eyebags and I fled our original skyscraper with Overalls hot on our trail. God, Eyebags... I miss him. He didn't get a dramatic scream. Just a sickening silence after Overalls tossed him off the bridge like yesterday's trash. That silence still haunts me.
Irony? This sniper—yeah, the one now casually aiming his rifle at Manchild—was the one who took out Overalls. One clean shot from the rooftop of this very building. Then, of course, he tried to shoot me too, which is how I ended up crawling into this skyscraper like a rat looking for shelter.
And now Manchild's still on the ground, moaning, screaming... oh wait, he's cursing now. At me. And the sniper. Bro, I didn't even do anything.
The sniper steps closer. Still no clear view of his face—he's angled just enough that his shoulder blocks it, and he's glued to that scope like it's a lifeline. I can tell he's wearing some kind of mask, though. Of course. He wouldn't be a proper psycho without one.
Then a flicker of movement. Peanuts.
Where is he—? Oh. There. Slinging his slingshot up like it's a goddamn bazooka. The kid's hands are trembling, legs barely steady, but he's aiming right at the sniper with more courage than I've mustered all day. Peanuts. Always a legend.
We lock eyes. He gives me a quick nod—move. So I do. I crawl out of the line of fire like the useless sidekick I've apparently become.
"Who are you?" Peanuts says. His voice is firm, but I catch the quiver under it. He's scared. He should be.
The sniper slowly lowers his rifle.
And my stomach drops.
That mask. That stupid, unnerving, ever-grinning mask. Of course. It's him.
Mr. Smiley Face.
The same lunatic who warned me about my shed exploding the day I stumbled into this nightmare. The one I followed to escape this hell.
And somehow, that led me here—sucked into this psychotic game.
"You—" he says, locking eyes with me through that creepy, ever-smiling mask.
"Hey! Answer the question," Peanuts snaps, cutting in.
"Do you know him, Light?" Peanuts asks me directly.
Oh. My. God. I hate this development.
Yeah, he's the unhinged maniac who saved me twice—once from my exploding shed, once from Overalls—but let's not forget the tiny detail where he also tried to kill me on the bridge. And now, thanks to that charming detour, I'm trapped in this lovely skyscraper death trap. Fantastic.
That's not exactly something I'm ready to unpack in front of a scared kid holding a slingshot.
"I don't know him," I say, firm, cold, lying through my teeth.
Peanuts flicks his eyes toward me—just for a second.
Bang!
The slingshot is blasted clean out of Peanuts' hand. The bullet grazes his fingers. He stumbles back, gasping, eyes wide, hands trembling.
"Peanuts!" I shout, already moving. I rush at Mr. Smiley, chainsaw revving like a banshee, but he turns the gun on me so fast I freeze. The barrel stares me down, daring me to test my luck.
Behind me, I hear Peanuts sniffling. Kid's holding back tears. He doesn't deserve this—none of this.
"Let the kid go," I growl, trying to sound dangerous.
It comes out like a whisper.
Pathetic.
Then—out of nowhere—Manchild, who had been moaning on the floor this whole time, grabs the axe with his one good hand and lets out a guttural scream as he charges.
Mr. Smiley doesn't hesitate.
The gun swings from me to him.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Six shots. Rapid. Precise. Brutal.
Manchild's body hits the floor before the echo even fades. He's dead. No doubt. Dead in under three seconds.
Mr. Smiley walks over and kneels beside the body, tilting his head like he's inspecting a piece of broken furniture. Just making sure the job's done.
I start backing away—toward Peanuts. My eyes lock on the staircase to my right. Ten feet. That's it.But with a smiling maniac and a loaded gun in the way?
Yeah. Easier said than done.
"Move, and I will shoot you," Mr. Smiley Face said—voice calm, collected, like he was offering me tea, not a bullet. He stood right in front of us now, close enough that I could smell the metal off his gun and the sweat under his mask.
Peanuts wasn't crying anymore. As soon as the lunatic got close, the sniffling shut off like someone flipped a switch. Now he's glaring up at him—tiny fists clenched, jaw tight. Good. Anger was better than fear.
As for me, I wasn't planning on letting some gun-waving lunatic write the last chapter of my story. If I was going down, I was taking the pen with me.
The guy tilted his head at Peanuts, then back at me. The creepy smile on that mask didn't move, but somehow it felt like it got wider.
"Your kid?" he asked, like we were chatting in a grocery store line.
"No," I spat, eyes locked on him. I wasn't looking away. I had this irrational fear that if I blinked, he'd vanish—or worse, move.
"You heading to the ninth floor?"
Oh sure. Why not just ask for my social security number while you're at it?
"No," I said flatly. The less he knew, the better.
"I am," he said, like he was casually updating me on the weather. "You should go too. Before more people show up."
How thoughtful.
"The bridges blew up, remember," I snapped back, daring him to argue.
"Not the one that connects to the skyscraper behind this one."
My heart hiccupped.
Wait. What?
"There were two bridges?" I asked, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it out loud. My brain short-circuited for a solid ten seconds, just buffering on that revelation.
"You should get moving," he added, like this was just a friendly PSA. "Before this building goes down."
"But all bridges blew up-"
"Nothing is fair in this game," he cut in, like he was quoting the bird freak, only with more contempt. " That bridge behind us? Still standing. East side. Go look if you don't believe me. But I'm out of here."
And with that, he turned and walked straight into the stairwell. No drama. No bullets. Just… gone.
My brain was still lagging, stuck on his words when Peanuts grabbed my hand.
Yanked.
"Come on!" he shouted, urgency cutting through his voice like glass.
We tore down the hallway toward the east side. Every breath scraped like glass, every step jarring, like the floor could collapse any second.
Peanuts skidded to a stop by a paneless window, wind slamming into his face. He leaned out, eyes wide.
"It's here," he breathed.
And just like that, it all clicked. Bird-Freak never said the bridges were all blown. He just blew up every bridge that faced the front of this skyscraper. A neat little trick of the eye—make it look like leaving and finding another skyscraper preferably empty was no longer an option.
He probably did the same thing with every building in the area. Smoke, mirrors, and a few well-placed explosives. Just enough to keep us penned in our respective skyscrapers. Controlled. Scared.
Only the people stuck on the backside of each skyscraper would've even seen the bridge—like some twisted VIP pass to survival. And out of those, just a handful might've thought to head our way. But hey, "just a handful" is still enough—because all it takes is one more person for that so-called "safety" door on the ninth floor to stay locked shut.
Mr. Smiley face was right—we need to move. Now.
I glance up to check the timer: 10 hours left. The fake sky is trying way too hard to pass for night, like it's desperate to be taken seriously.
Body count? 401 out of 500.
That's over 80% dead.
Great. Just what I needed—a sky that lies and numbers that don't. Peanuts is your hand okay? I ask out of concern. "Yeah" he says showing me his pinky finger. "Just a scratch nothing to worry about."
That's when I hear that dreaded voice, "Attention, lovely contestants!" chirped Bird Freak, sounding like a game show host instead of the psycho running this blood-soaked circus. "Current positions: two on the 15th floor, one on the 12th, and a new contestant on the 11th floor!"
Oh, fantastic. Someone slipped in while me and Mr. Smiley face were busy doing our little death dance. How considerate.
The good news? Since none of us are dead yet, that mystery guest won't be able to use the safety door—it only opens when three people are left in the skyscraper. Now we just have to hope Smiley Face handles our unexpected visitor before we get to the 9th floor. Because unless someone dies real soon, that door's staying shut.
By the time we hit the 12th floor, I'm running on adrenaline, panic, and whatever stubborn survival instinct hasn't been wrung dry yet. That's when we hear it—CRASH.
We crept down to the 11th floor landing, just above the chaos. I peek through the grimy stairwell door window, and… yep. Total mess.
Smiley Face was in the middle of a shootout—like, full-action-movie shootout. He was pressed behind a concrete pillar, unloading shots with the kind of precision that made me question his day job. And who was he trading bullets with? Oh, just two brand-new nightmares.
The first was a girl with magenta-purple hair so neon it looked like her skull was electrocuted by a unicorn. She was crouched low behind a guy while gripping a smaller firearm and shouting instructions that were mostly lost to the chaos. They had flipped a table and turned it into a makeshift barricade—DIY apocalypse edition. The guy she was behind had a gun so big I'm convinced it was built in a garage by a team of emotionally unstable engineers. The barrel alone looked like it could swallow a fire hydrant. Custom-made, probably. Compensating for something? Definitely.
Smiley face keeps firing in calculated bursts, leaning out just long enough to keep them pinned without getting his head blown off. He knows what he's doing. But so do they.
Wait—two people?
Bird Freak only said one new contestant.
I squint, trying to do the math. "Weren't there only two people other than us announced?" I whispered. "Us in fifteen, one on twelve, and one on the eleventh. That makes four. Now we've got five", I muttered. Did someone sneak past the bird freak's radar? Or did our lovely host just mess up the count on purpose to screw with us all?
Wouldn't put it past him. The guy lies for fun. Probably thinks it adds "flavor" to the game.
I glanced at Peanuts crouched beside me, his brow furrowed so hard you'd think he was calculating rocket trajectories, not plotting something in the middle of a live shootout.
Then he turns to me, eyes gleaming with the kind of reckless inspiration that usually ends in disaster—or brilliance. Honestly, with Peanuts, it's a coin toss.
"I have an idea," Peanuts whispers, and just like that, I know I'm doomed to follow him—whether it's genius or madness.
"What?" I ask, voice already climbing the panic ladder.
He doesn't answer right away. Just keeps staring ahead, calculating, jaw clenched like a miniature war strategist. Then, slowly, he turns to me with that look—the one that always means I'm about to be dragged into something questionable.
"There's a busted fire alarm on the thirteenth floor," he says quietly. "We passed it earlier, remember?"
"Barely," I reply. "We were too busy not dying."
He jabs a finger toward the chaos afront. "You see that sprinkler?"
I squint into the mess. All I see is magenta-haired mayhem ducking behind a guy wielding a gun big enough to be classified as a vehicle.
"No?" I say.
"Not them. Above them."
I follow his finger again. And there it is—just off to the side of the war zone, a sprinkler head dangling like a forgotten detail.
"If we can trigger it," he murmurs, "we might set off the system. Soak the floor. Throw them off. Smiley face finishes the job."
"Or they panic, shoot wildly, Mr. Smiley face dies and we get killed by a unicorn haired lady."
"Better than walking in and becoming peanut butter."
I blink. He's not wrong. Terrifying logic—but logic nonetheless.
"Alright," I sigh. "Let's hope Smiley face is a better shooter than he is a conversationalist."
We slipped up to the thirtieth floor. The hallway is dead silent, except for the echo of gunfire below.
Peanuts moves with purpose, heading straight to the damaged alarm box. The plastic casing is cracked, the glass already shattered like someone tried and failed before us.
"Ready?" he asks.
"If this works, I owe you a soda," I mutter. "If it doesn't, I'm haunting you for eternity."
He grins. "Deal."
He yanks the lever.
Nothing.
We both stare at it.
"You've got to be kidding me," I snapped. "The one time we want the building to do its job—"
BWEEEP. BWEEEP. BWEEEP.
The siren screams to life. Overhead, the sprinklers hiss and then unleash a freezing torrent. Within seconds, the stairwell becomes a waterfall. Water surges down from the ceiling.
From the 11th floor: yelling. Scuffling. Clattering.
Then—gunfire.
Then—silence.
I edge back down to the 11th floor landing, water soaking through everything, hair plastered to my face. I peer through the door.
Magenta Hair is down, clutching her leg and wincing. Gunzilla is slumped against the wall, out cold, blood trickling from his temple. His oversized weapon lies beside him, useless.
And Smiley face stands there, drenched and heaving like he just ran a mile underwater. Slowly, he turns to us, lowers the gun and looks straight towards the stairwell. I can't see his face behind the mask—but I swear I feel the smirk radiating off him.
"That your kid?" he calls out again, voice more amused this time.
"No," I say.
But… I hesitate.
Because at that moment?
Yeah. Kinda.
Peanuts straightens like he just got promoted, chest puffed, eyes scanning ahead like he's ready for the next level of the game.
"So," he says, completely unfazed. "Are we going to the ninth floor or what?"
I sighed. "Yeah. Let's get the hell out of here before this building pulls another surprise."
That's when I knew I jinxed it.
Because as soon as the words leave my mouth, the speakers crackle to life like they've just been waiting for their dramatic entrance.
"Time deducted. You now have ten minutes to reach the safe zone."
I freeze.
Peanuts shoots me a glare like I just personally invited the apocalypse over for snacks.
"Seriously?" he says. "You had to say something."
"I didn't mean to summon doom, okay? It just... happened."
Smiley face is already on the move, shoots the unicorn haired lady once again and shifts toward the stairwell like a bloodhound on a timer.
Ten minutes. Three floors. One safe zone. And a whole lot of corpses between us and survival.
I take a breath. "Alright. No more talking. No more ideas. No more jinxes."
Peanuts nods. "Agreed."
We bolt—straight into a new problem.
The stairwell is soaked, every step a slip 'n slide designed by Satan himself. The sprinklers turned the place into a death trap. I nearly wipe out on the second step, my feet skidding like cartoon wheels on banana peels.
Peanuts flails behind me, his arms doing windmill circles. "Wet floor warning would've been nice!"
I grit my teeth, steadying myself on the railing. "Welcome to hell. Mind your step."
Because now it's not just time trying to kill us—it's the floor, too.