NOVEL NEXT For a moment, a calm silence flowed through the room.
What rolled across the floor came from someone’s mouth, and it was a familiar voice, one that Eleanor felt she had heard somewhere before.
Where the flashlight lit, there lay someone who she thought had already died here.
The figure of her superior, the last person she had seen, was collapsed there.
“…Captain?”
From her lips, which had momentarily frozen, came a voice that seemed to disbelieve.
Since being trapped in this place, she had thought she had experienced far too much confusion, even considering she belonged to the Abnormal Phenomena Management Office.
But a reunion with the dead, that was especially something she hadn’t expected among all those confusing events.
“Eleanor, is that really you? Are you alive?!”
“Senpai? How—”
“How could I not react?! You’re the one who suddenly disappeared! We’ve been stuck thinking you were dead!”
From beside her superior, another familiar voice chimed in her ear.
They were grappling with her companions on the floor.
Their voices were so similar to those of the people who had come to this facility with her.
Due to the joy of reunion, she almost rushed toward them—
“D-Don’t you dare lie!”
Suddenly, she recalled what had happened at the shelter just moments ago.
With renewed strength in her increasingly weak grip, she readjusted her slackened firearm.
“It’s useless to try to fool me! You all are already dead!”
She remembered the first time she had opened her eyes in this place.
That thing beside her, bound.
It was calling her name with exactly the same voice as her senior’s.
But after being struck by a bullet, hadn’t it vanished like it evaporated into the air?
A phenomenon far beyond ordinary reasoning, something she could not understand.
However, having seen that phenomenon with her own eyes.
Even if she were to see her comrades here again, she could tell it wouldn’t be normal.
Given the current situation, she could only see it as unknown entities pretending to be her superiors.
Suppressing feelings of joy from the reunion swelling in her heart, she again aimed the barrel at them.
“What are you talking about? We’re not dead!”
“Don’t be stupid! If that’s the case, then why did everyone disappear, leaving just me behind?!”
“Of course you would disappear out of nowhere! Why do you think we thought we were dead?!”
“That’s obvious! I’ve heard that…”
They spoke to her with incredulous voices, as if they couldn’t believe her words.
But to avoid being swayed by that, she aimed her gun at their heads, ready to fire at any moment.
She opened her mouth naturally to refute the nonsense they were spewing, all the while thinking—
“I heard that… I heard that…”
Suddenly, a certain fact popped into her head.
She kept repeating the same words over and over, and before she knew it, she had let her strength drain from her arms and hands.
“…Huh?”
The question they had asked dug deeper into her thoughts.
Why did she think they were dead?
Of course, it was because she hadn’t found a single corpse in this facility.
All that remained were countless signs of someone making an effort to get out of this building and into the Launch Control Room.
But wasn’t it an overreach to think they were all dead just because there were no corpses?
No, rather the absence of bodies should focus more on the aspect of being alive.
Yet why had she so easily thought they were dead?
Who had imprinted such a perception onto her?
“….”
The questions swirling endlessly.
Questions became doubts, and doubts turned into suspicions.
Eleanor’s eyes began to tremble in unease.
The confidence she had just moments ago vanished, and she could only look back and forth between her superior and her comrades whom she met here.
Caught in confusion, she found herself at a loss as to what actions to take.
“Hey! What are you hesitating for?! Just shoot already!”
As a frustrated shout burst out, Eleanor flinched and turned to the source of the sound.
It was Cooper, grappling with her superior on the ground.
“Didn’t you see at the shelter? They’re pretending to be your dead comrades! Are you really going to fall for this again in a stupid manner?!”
Just like when she first opened her eyes, he was still showing the same behavior.
Rough and irritable, yet somehow hard to hate.
Having gone through all kinds of life-and-death situations together here, a sense of camaraderie had grown.
If that appearance was a ruse, then why go through such troublesome methods just to trick her?
Perhaps she had been overthinking things unnecessarily?
“Damn it, this guy…!”
A stream of curses erupted from someone Cooper was subduing.
It was justifiable; what he had said was practically a promise to kill them all.
Regardless of whether they were human or monster, no one would just accept they were going to be killed.
They began to struggle even more to free themselves from their oppressors.
“Eleanor! Have you experienced anything weird while hanging out with them?! Haven’t you encountered all sorts of strange phenomena and formed a bond with these guys?!”
Her superior shouted.
His words were precisely pinpointing her suspicions from earlier.
“If that’s the case, then you’re becoming one of them! They’re confusing you! They’re creating something that resembles us, making you one of them!”
Hearing his words, it began to feel like all her previous questions were finally being answered.
The one who looked oddly similar to her captain, and the one who resembled her troublesome senior.
For two people she met in this mysterious space, they looked too much like the individuals she knew.
It couldn’t simply be brushed off as coincidence.
“Can you see their faces right now?! They’re all wearing masks! If you see their true faces, then you’re under mental contamination!”
“Hey! You diagnosed as mentally contaminated earlier! Everything these guys are saying is full of holes!”
“Remember, self-diagnosis is useless in the presence of a certain level of mental contamination!”
The struggle began escalating further.
As they rolled across the floor, kicking up dirt, Eleanor’s gaze remained shaking.
Finally, as the hold on them slowly began to loosen—
“Eleanor!”
After someone called her name, she raised her hand like lightning, aiming ahead—
—Bang!
In an instant, the sound of two gunshots filled the space.
“―――”
Silence enveloped.
Not even the sound of an ant crawling could be heard in the quiet room.
Just a moment ago, this space was a mix of struggles, insults, and screams, but now it echoed with no sounds whatsoever.
As if everyone had died simultaneously, only chilling silence lingered.
“….”
White smoke drifted from the barrel.
What it was aimed at were those who had been rolling on the floor.
At the end of the barrel lay Cooper and Elijah, lying still as if they were dead, and—
“…What? I’ve got at least this much discernment.”
After being shot, vanishing without a trace, only clothes and weaponry left behind by the unidentified beings masquerading as her seniors rolled on the floor.
“Well, that’s a relief… I really thought I was screwed.”
With a stumbling posture, Cooper sighed as he stood up.
As he said, things had been genuinely dangerous just now.
While she had become accustomed to it, the way they dug into a person’s heart was anything but ordinary.
In such a critical situation, people’s judgment tends to be clouded, and they could only believe what they wanted to.
“…Isn’t there a bit too little trust in me?”
“To be honest, I was a bit startled too.”
“Even you, Elijah?!”
Eleanor’s expression showed a hint of shock.
Well, she couldn’t help that. It was true that she had shown herself to be rather untrustworthy.
Thinking back to her demeanor, glancing about uncertainly at them, it would be unreasonable to claim she had inspired much trust.
“Well, considering you shot without hesitation, it must have meant you had some degree of certainty in the end.”
“…Yeah. When I thought about what Cooper said earlier, there was indeed something strange.”
“That’s good. If you realize that, it means there’s no longer a chance to be confused by them.”
Picking up a firearm scattered on the floor and checking the magazine, Cooper replied as if it was a good thing.
In truth, half the reasons why people had been dying in this facility was due to those deceptions.
Since Eleanor had learned how to distinguish them clearly, one could say that the danger had effectively halved.
In a way, it could be seen that they had increased their survival chances by half by making such a fuss.
However, one issue remained.
The fact that the other half of the reason would not be as easy as what they had faced so far—
“…It seems like they don’t plan to use such troublesome methods anymore.”
From now on, it was only that other half of the danger that awaited them.
—Thud, thud, thud, thud!
From across the hallway came the sound of many footsteps growing nearer.
Upon confirming the footsteps, Cooper let out a weary sigh and—
He placed the magazine he had pulled out back into the firearm, preparing for yet another trial to come.