"13/5/xx
To those who are concerned,
Which I would assume is all of you. You wouldn't be reading this letter otherwise. Either that, or my brain has finally given in and made me send this to the wrong address. If so, please do not read this letter any further. It does not concern you, and you have no reason to be concerned. Thank you very much.

Now, for those of you who are supposed to be reading this. For once, I regret to inform you of another passing. Subject 2, who was formerly known to all of you as Paintbrush. I can't say that their death was painless, nor can I say it was quick. They all had to watch. I had to watch. I always watch. I'm quite sure that they died of shock rather than anything else. How else doesn't matter. They're dead and that's all you need to know.

You should know my orders by now. There's no reason to revive them, but if you do there's not much I can do about it. I've given up trying to control the outside world. I'm perfectly in control here.

Sincerely, TMK"

I stared down at the letter in disgust as I finished reading. The shocked faces around me only seemed to mirror my internalized horror and rage. Enough was enough, especially when you were faced with that. No one wants to read these stupid letters, but it feels like we get sent one almost every three months. There's no reason for it. We've figured out who she is at this point, she knows who we are, it's stupid. Especially how she still tries to be dignified in her writing. The high and mighty crap got tiring very quickly.

No one said anything for awhile. How could you? You thought you were used to it and then suddenly there's another letter. It's.. horrifying. God I can't imagine how the others are doing down there.. who knows if more are dead and she's just not telling us..? My thoughts were interrupted by Mic hitting herself in the face with one of the clipboards.

"God.. god I'm so stupid! I saw her! I saw her and didn't do a thing! I could've stopped this and I didn't!"
"...Mic please."
"She's not wrong."

My gaze quickly snapped over to Nickel, who had chimed after Suitcase's pleading attempt to try and make her feel better. As far as I knew, it was just us, the Grand Slams, and Taco whenever she felt like showing up. Asking another Bright Light to join us had become extremely difficult to do after Apple became a midnight snack. Nickel's gaze was unapologetic as he sat on top of Baseball, rolling his eyes at Suitcase's remark.

"She had a chance and blew it. She deserves to feel stupid over being stupid."
"We didn't know it was her! We thought it was Taco!"
"And? She's been Buddy Buddy with her for months! She had a cut on our lead and didn't say anything!"
"It's not like she was the only one!"

I heard an agitated interjection begin to start from across the table, before the room remained to tense silence. I'd.. missed a lot, but apparently Knife had known about the whole Mic-Taco alliance for awhile. Which threw off the theory of Taco being behind the whole thing because of her history with everyone else. I wouldn't be against suspecting her, but obviously we knew our culprit now. Tent searching comes in handy when people go missing. We all just sat and stared at the table before Baseball swallowed.

"..so what are we gonna do?"
"What can we do? We tried sending somebody down there and they died! She came up here, and people died anyways! The only answer so far is to just leave them down there to die!"
"Dont you dare fucking suggest that."

I growled, narrowing my gaze at the rooms loudmouth. Nickel only met my gaze with a challenging glare, raising an eyebrow at my response.

"What, you got a better idea?"
"How would you feel if you were stuck down there? For as long as we were? Thinking that help was going to come? Hope is the absolute worst thing you could have. Because then you're crushed again, and again, and again as you watch the life fade from your friends eyes. It happens long before they really die. Having to sit in complete isolation? You really want to leave them down there?"

I watched his jaw fidget before finally giving in to defeat. I sat back in my chair from where I had been leaning forwards, before sighing and staring at the ceiling. As much as I wanted to fight him on it, I really couldn't. There was very little we could actually do to try and fix all of this, other than storm the place and get all of us trapped down there. We had already agreed to try and use that as a last resort, because only some of us could actually fit down the tube and we could only go one at a time. I mean who was I to come down here and act like I had all the solutions? I couldn't even save the right people. When I glanced back down I noticed Suitcases face strained in thought

"...do we.. know where that slide leads-? Like, does it lead all the way down, or just the entrance-?"
"Just the entrance if I remember it right-
It's an elevator, a massive shelf, a desk, sink.. Yknow, the usual."

Mic's tone read as slightly sarcastic considering the situation, but we understood what she meant. Suitcase sat in silence, her face reflecting the gears turning in her head. She blinked a few times before sighing, whatever she had been planning obviously falling out. A put a hand against my face to rest my arm against the groups table before giving my final thought.

"Mic, I want you to come with me back to that thing and tell me everything you know."
"What? You really think that's going to help anything?"
"Well unless we're gonna play the dynamite card or end up mad scientists ourselves figuring this thing out, it's our only option."

She gave a sigh of defeat before getting up, waving a dismissive hand to the others in the room. Meeting was over. Everyone knew that. They probably would've left on their own accord anyways, knowing the people we're stuck working with.

——
There was a slight change of plans. I stared down at Mic as she rustled through Test Tubes long abandoned tent, trying to find as much evidence or useful items as she could. On the dreaded walk to the hidden murder machine she was somehow struck with the idea that she could've been hiding something useful in her tent. Which, while not a wrong assumption, would rub just about anyone the wrong way.

"You're pretty good at going through people's stuff, aren't you?"
"Oh shut up, it's not like you have any better ideas."

Mic looked up at me over her shoulder and I rolled my eyes, holding a slight smirk. She was checking all the places you'd think to find things in a room. Bed, books, cabinet, everywhere. All she has actually found was a few tranquilizer darts, some shoddy smoke bombs, the manifesto for the horror show that sat infront of us, and a half eaten granola bar. The results of her search made me want to smack my head through a wall.

"...this was a waste of time."
"No, it wasn't! You of all people should know how fire alarms work!"
"Excuse me?"

I glared back at her, only to be met with a bored disappointed glance. I watched her pick up the smoke bomb and look it over in her hands, before tossing it up and down like a beanbag.

"When the smoke goes off, it'll set off the smoke detectors. Smoke detectors trigger sprinklers after a long enough amount of time. If the lab is in as bad a condition as she is-"
"Right."
"The sprinklers should short circuit whatever is left of her system!"
"...by god, your creepy hobbies chalk up to something."
"Shut up."

I scooped up the rest of the bombs in my arms, before pausing to think about what these were really meant for in the context of everything else. The snack meant nothing but.. that journal haunts me. Whatever's in it.. god. No one wants to think about that. I shook my head and began to walk out of the tent, Mic following close behind.

Walking back to that machine felt like walking to death row. I shivered and tried to swallow my fear, but that dread in the pit of my stomach continued to threaten to rise. Mic put a hand to my arm and gave me an anxious smile of support, which I only gave a half effort shrug. Sometimes silence was needed. But god how much that silence could hurt. As she approached the front of the machine to enter the code, she turned back to me.

"...do you wanna do it, or do you wanna roll them in?"
"...I'm burning that hell to the ground."

Mic nodded, swallowing slightly before inputting the code once. And then again. And again. And again. Getting more aggressive each time and only furthering my nerves. She then looked back to me with a face I could read from a mile away, seeming too scared to actually say it.

She reset the code.

I took a breath to try and calm the rage that thought had sparked in me. It was exactly what I said before. Hope ripped straight out of your arms, and then slapping you in the face. That breath quickly turned into a series of breaths, to the point where I was hyperventilating. Then it stopped, and I screamed. Punching that stupid machine as hard as I could. As hard I wanted to punch her. As hard as she needed to die.

And with the searing pain that ripples through my knuckles and arm, came a thud of something hitting the floor. A broken tube out of the side of the machine. I turned to Mic, and we looked at eachother in that blissful kind of silence, and then began to laugh. We laughed together, in both distress and joy. The kind of laugh that was deceptively comforting. A laugh I had heard before. We took a second, both grabbing a bomb, before setting them at the entrance of the tube. It needed straightening out before I could fully estimate that it would reach the bottom. I pressed my fingers against one of the fuses to light it and then looked over to Mic as I rolled the bomb down the tunnel

"...we finally did it."

God were we in for a treat