The Backrooms Level 2 Novels & Stories

We descended deeper into the mountain, the air growing colder, heavier, reeking of ozone and strong chemical antiseptics. "The main server room is on sub-level four," Vance’s voice crackled in our earpieces. "If Silas downloaded the first half of the sequence from your parents' backup servers, that's where he’s keeping it." Lucien kicked open the door to sub-level four. We stepped into a massive, cavernous space, but it wasn't a server room. My breath caught violently in my throat, my weapon lowering slightly as a wave of nauseating, paralyzing horror washed over me.

sand ashes The incline leveled again and the corridor once more angled sharply left and upward. On this level another dim rectangle beckoned. He didn’t want to go through it, didn’t want to see, wanting to keep running, but he heard something shambling up behind him, so he plunged through the doorway into another room whose walls depicted more scenes of ancient Egyptian pharaohs with cruel faces. In the middle of the room, waving snaky arms, wailing from mouths ringed with needle-point teeth, things shambled and swayed. Their naked, gray rubbery skin glistened in the torchlight. They bore only a passing resemblance to humanity but still he recognized them all.

Then I stood and looked around the blackened room. I wouldn’t let this go unanswered. Fenrath snarled in the back of my mind, claws scraping against the walls of my skin. ‘Burn them. Rip them apart.’ Not yet. But soon. “Liora,” I called out, stepping into the hallway. “Once you finish with that drive, we need to check the hidden sublevels. If they were doing long-term testing, there might be a secondary power grid. Backup servers.” “On it, Alpha,” she called back.

"The Bone Orchard is three levels down." We descended. We passed a barracks on the second level. The door was ajar. Inside, hundreds of human followers were sleeping on cots. I paused, looking in. They looked... wrong. Their skin was grey. Their breathing was shallow and synchronized. Thin tendrils of purple mist were drifting up from their mouths, pooling on the ceiling, and flowing upward through the ventilation. "They aren't sleeping," I murmured. "They're being harvested." "We should kill them," Daxon murmured, his hand on his knife. "Put them out of their misery."

I needed to know if they were dead, or if they were still down there—frozen in the basalt. I walked back to the console. My fingers shook as I bypassed the biometric lock again. I didn't look at the schematics this time. I looked at the security feed for the sub-levels. The screen flickered to life. It was a long hallway, lined with the same basalt slabs I had seen in the diagram. But these weren't empty. Small, circular windows in the stone revealed faces. My face. Some looked younger. Some looked older. Some had scars I didn't recognize.

I followed, my gown flowing behind me like a trail of ink, with Kaelen bringing up the rear, his emerald frequency acting as a beacon in the dust. The descent into the ruins was a journey back into the hell I had just escaped. The walls were weeping violet mercury, and the "Null-Ache" in my head was growing into a full-blown roar. Every step closer to the vault made the twins’ conflict more violent. The obsidian pulse was now a physical heat, a burning coal in my gut. Thirty minutes left. We reached the entrance to the Sub-Level 3. The massive vault door—the one I had opened with my blood just chapters ago—was partially melted. Standing in front of it, surrounded by a dozen Scrappers in rust

A deep, heavy rumble moved toward them, sounding less like a floor-cleaning drone and more like the shifting, tectonic plates of the world. The Suture Point hadn't been defeated; it had just decided to move its borders. "Arga," Anji croaked into his comms, his voice small in the face of the encroaching silence. "The parasite knows. It’s moving the entire floor. We’re in a trap." "Yeah, I see that," Arga answered, his voice barely holding it together. "The entire layout of Level 22 is changing in real-time, Anji. I think we just made it mad."

When Lola woke the second time, she was lying in a small, dark room. No machines. No lights. Just a faint hum in the walls. A single red LED blinked at the far end of the room. Her throat was dry when she whispered, “Eli…?” No answer. The LED blinked again, slower this time. She crawled toward it and saw three words flicker onto the wall in faint light. LEVEL TWO INITIATED. Her heart stopped. He wasn’t gone. He’d upgraded.

The man moaned softly, his head lolling. **<< No time. Noise draws flies. Reynolds’s hidey-hole is close. Level 2, northwest quadrant, janitorial. We loop back, grab him, find another way down. >>** Harlan was already moving back up a flight, scanning the stairwell door they’d passed moments before. **<< This one. >>** He eased the door open a crack, peering into the corridor beyond. **<< Clear. For now. Move fast. >>** They slipped back into the bright, sterile hell of Level 2. The silence was oppressive, pregnant with threat. Distant alarms began a low, insistent whooping – power backups coming online, systems rebooting. The Aerie was stirring.

“the room where they don’t stop until you use the word twice.” I didn’t reply to anyone. Just lurked. Absorbed. Let the words sink into me like ink under skin. On the eighth day, the itch became unbearable. I texted the number. Initiate E. I want darker than level 2. Tonight if possible. Reply came in under two minutes. 22:00. Same door. Tell the greeter: Level 3. Bring nothing. Wear what makes you feel exposed.