Chapter Text
Zarina tugs her minty suede jacket tighter over her body, a chill sweeping through the chatty windows of Lérys Memorial Institute. It bit right into her button up despite her covering it up, and the buttons on her suit jacket had long fallen off in this constant loop of blood and death. Usually, Lérys is entirely suffocating because of how cramped every room is, because of the way the halls seem to shrink when the monster is right behind you, but with Zarina and Zarina alone it feels barren, empty. Like the true abandoned building it was supposed to be. If she were more herself—less, whatever she is now—she would want to find the history of this place. Back when she was keener, she’d dug through the papers in some of the rooms to scrounge up some information. It was all nothing but medical drivel, and now she’s learned that any second not spent on edge is a second wasted.
This match was not an easy one. A rough start meant that David went down quickly and saving him had been tough. The entire team had to desperately claw at the back of the Ghostface to get him to step away from that hook, and by the time they’d gotten David off it wasn’t hard for Ghostface to get him again, and then the Entity’s claws brought him into the sky. Recently, the Ghostface has been crueler to David, but David’ll never give her a straight answer as to why. It ate at her the entire time. She hopes her mild distraction hadn’t cost his life.
Next to go was Mikaela. She was always very alone, very independent, and as admirable as it was, it's very stupid against the Ghostface. If he finds you alone, you’re as good as dead. He wasn’t even near her hook either time, and Zarina even went down for her, but she was dead in a matter of minutes. There were still five generators left, and it had been just Zarina and Jane.
Zarina can say that she quite likes Jane. A take charge attitude is just perfect in a place like this, where nearly everything lacks a proper order. She doesn’t think that any two matches are ever the same. But Jane, as good as she is, can’t evade a killer for long.
And now it’s just Zarina. She knows the Ghostface has found the hatch by now, there’s not a doubt in her mind, but something primal in her still searches for it. She walks slowly and carefully over the linoleum to helplessly try and muffle her footsteps, but there’s not much she can truly do as soft whimpers can’t help but dribble from her lips due to the deep gauge in her shoulder. Between being hooked and trying to keep everyone else alive, she’d yet to see a medkit. Perhaps in a normal place she’d be dead from blood loss. Instead, Zarina just feels pitiful and weak.
As Zarina nears the next room, she hears it—the hatch.
The sound oozes toward her, melodic and haunting. Instantly, she’s relieved at an avenue of escape, but her rationale crushes that with a far more logical thought: he’s surely sitting on top of it, waiting for her.
Still, part of her has to hope, has to not give up. She has sacrificed herself so many times to try and keep that fire in her alive, the part of her spirit that pulled her to mysteries and to stories and may as well have taken her into this place, but it is the only thing in hell that she can call her own. So Zarina edges herself to the doorway of one of Lérys' many bathrooms and peeks through.
She sees him before she sees the hatch; her eyes are trained to spot the near supernatural way the tresses of his garb float around him. The hatch itself is wedged between the wall and a row of showers. The Ghostface is near-consumed by the cubicle he sits in, besides for one singular strap. He doesn’t see her.
Zarina takes one step into the bathroom, putting her foot frontal first to try and stifle the noise. She is mostly successful. The tile in Lérys tends to creak and shudder on its own, something that creeps her out more times than not, but today it works in her advantage. The Ghostface doesn’t stir. She adds a few more paces to her trek until she’s standing at the end of the row of showers, and only then does she trust herself to crouch without falling over; her weak knees shudder while she braces her back against the tile, sliding down to a stealthier position. She can practically taste both the smoke of the campfire—the only thing she can really call home—and the iron in her blood.
She scoots forward, and then slips into a shower stall, mocking the Ghostface’s positioning. He has yet to move a muscle, from what she can see. Even if he had spotted her, there’s no way for her to know, so she holds onto the vague hope that she’s sneaky enough for even him not to notice. For a brief second, she’s in a prison somewhere, trying not to cough as the dust resettles under an old rickety bed while security waddles on by. The memory tastes bittersweet. She’s quick to discard it, like any useless thought she’s had in this place.
Repeating the same routine, Zarina finds herself in the stall right next to the Ghostface. With only about half a foot of distance between them, she focuses in and hears his slow, steady breathing. Her own breathing is so shallow and quiet that her lungs must be dilapidated by now, and the fear has cinched her pained whimpers to nothing but extra breaths. Being so close to the monster, so close to the hatch, and so very close to uncertainty makes her entire body drench itself with sweat, and the chilliness of an abandoned Lérys dissipates into the thick, tense air.
Finding courage, or perhaps something more akin to stupidity, Zarina boldly dashes forward to the hatch. She closes her eyes, expecting to feel her stomach flip out as she falls into open air and then suddenly, miraculously, wake up standing at the edge of the campfire with a pounding in her head and a weight in her chest—or, more rationally, she expects to feel the blade impale her chest, to hear the hatch slam closed as the monster chuckles at her stupidity and brings her her untimely demise on a silver fucking platter. What she doesn’t expect, however, is for rough hands to grab her by the shoulders—she cries out as he manhandles her wound—pulling her from the hatch, and for no blade to enter her body after she’s pinned to the wall of the shower stall.
Zarina’s eyes are still closed. What she can’t see won’t hurt her.
“A little birdie told me that you’re a journalist,” comes his voice—the sound nearly shocks her to death itself. It’s gravelly, like he hasn’t spoken for a long, long time. She is still not opening her eyes.
“What?”
“Maybe a documentarian is a better way to put it,” he adds, an eerie, playful lilt wedging itself between his words. He’s teasing her. By sheer offense, Zarina forces her eyes open. Her gut flips when she meets the gaping, blank eyes of the Ghostface’s mask. His pseudo jaw is slack with horror or maybe something meaner. The way his voice sounds grinds at her ears like a blade against a chalkboard. She wants to grab his throat and twist him like a screw, she wants to spit in his face, she wants to curl into a ball and cry, she wants to close her eyes again. “Which do you prefer, Zarina Kassir?”
“How do you know my name?” she demands, though she is in no position to do so.
“My little birdie told me so.”
It’s fruitless, entirely useless, to talk to the monsters. She’d tried, her first couple of times, to plead for her life. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she was scared, she wanted her old life back—it was full of risk, but there was reward, too, and now the risk is heightened but the reward is next to zero. She tries to find good in this world but finds that there is only dust and bad memories. And now, an unsavory taste worms itself into her mouth like it belongs there, because the monster is talking to her, and she can’t help but talk back.
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re a journalist,” he says, near giddy, “and I’m a journalist, too. Isn’t that wonderful? That we have something in common? Look.” The Ghostface takes one hand off of her, and slides the other around her throat—a silent threat of don’t move—as he pulls out his silver camera and brandishes it in her face. “You’ve seen my camera before. I have many lovely pictures of you on here. I had a much better one for my work, though, but surely you’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to make do, than to complain?”
Zarina looks at the Ghostface with an expression of contempt, incredulousness, and fear. He’s a ticking time bomb who blocks her only avenue of escape; he’s talking nonsense to her and she doesn’t know what to do. It’s perhaps the first time in Zarina’s life that she’s coming up empty on what to say.
“My camera, unfortunately, doesn’t record. It’s very primitive, see, or else I’d be sure to keep track of every beautiful noise your body makes when I find all the perfect spots to make it bleed,” he continues on, at times perfectly monotone and at others wickedly playful, “but now that I know you’re a journalist, I was hoping for a collaboration…you know, between brothers in arms.”
“Your perverted photographs aren’t journalism,” she fires back, unable to keep her mouth in check the longer he talks to her like this. The more he goes on, the more her gut sinks—it’s like the feeling she gets when she knows she’s about to die. The feeling of all your blood leaving your body and your heart slowing to a stop. Each time he adds more to his tangent, her death tolls louder and louder.
“Aw, don’t be like that. I’m throwing you a bone here.” His voice drops, “It would be wise of you to take it.”
“What story are you telling? Where’s your journalistic integrity? Don’t tell me you’re a journalist because you take photos of us dying. That’s not a story. That’s fucked up.”
“Of course I’m telling a story, Zarina.” The grip on her neck tightens; she is choking on her choice of words. “I’m telling the story of all the ways I’ve ended triumphant. I’ve got a bit of a streak going on, see, and isn’t it a journalist’s job to keep a record of things?”
Zarina finds herself plucking at his words to find the hidden meaning. She’s never had a conversation with any of the killers before. While some do speak, it’s never directly to her, really. And blame it on that fire in her spirit, or her lack of air due to asphyxiation, but she can't help but continue the conversation further. She’s unabashedly curious. There must be a double meaning to his words; it’s been so long since she’s had a plausibly solvable mystery.
“But what is the point, besides to fuel your ego?”
“The point?”
Zarina scoffs, a strangled noise beneath his thumb. “All media has a point. A moral, a lesson. The reason why you’re reading or watching it. Even if just to inform, but usually to persuade or convince. What point does your project serve, besides fulfilling your twisted vanity?”
The Ghostface tilts his head to one side, like an inquisitive bird. His display of confusion, or perhaps disbelief, she believes is entirely performative. She doubts he is shocked at all by her reactions, though she has no reason to be so—call that her intuition, or something more concrete, but the longer she talks the more she realizes this is getting nowhere she’d want it to be. Zarina is reminded, once more, of how utterly powerless she is in her situation. Not a single thing she does serves more purpose than maybe causing others less pain, and while it is noble, it does nothing in the long run. This cycle of hell, of purgatory, changes naught, even as she so desperately searches for answers that do not come easy.
“You’re a feisty one,” he finally says, loosening slightly the grip on her neck as he positions his camera at the end of her nose, taunting her. “I’m glad. I don’t like pushover journalists. I’m sure you had many interesting stories to tell way back when. And now you don’t do anything, do you?” He snaps a photo of her face; the flash blinding her temporarily as she instinctively flinches away from the noise and bright light. “I’m offering you a chance to flex your skills out of the kindness of my heart, and you’re just insulting my work instead of accepting my generous offer.”
“I have no interest in engaging in anything with you.”
“This isn’t about interest, Zarina. Haven’t you ever worked for exposure?”
Zarina frowns. The way he says her name sends chills down her spine, the same feeling she gets when she feels eyes on her but not a single indication of the presence of the monster. He talks in a way that stalks her mind, says her name like she’s going to remember the way his tongue stabs at it for the rest of her days.
Her hair is getting damp from being pressed into the cool, moist tiles of the shower room. Her legs are threatening to give out from the terror. She, all at once, begs for him to end this conversation with his blade and begs for him to toss her into the hatch and begs for him to keep talking because it’s the first time in what feels like years anyone has talked to her without being afraid. All at once, Zarina is filled with liquid fire in her veins and she wants to cry out.
Instead, the Ghostface keeps talking. “See, see, you can’t find anything wrong with my offer.”
“That’s not it.”
The Ghostface chuckles, the sort of chuckle that, instead of making things funny, makes her feel very, very small. “Either way, you’re too afraid to say no.”
Her breath catches. She’s caught.
“So how about it, Zarina? A collaboration between you and me. We can tell a story with a point, just like you want. Isn’t that nice?”
“What’s our story?” she caves—he isn’t saying anything groundbreaking, isn’t offering her anything she can’t refuse, and still she caves. Maybe it’s her lack of breath and blood, maybe it’s the knife he’s concealed somewhere on his person. Whatever the reason is, she caves.
“That’s for you to find out. I’ve heard it’s your specialty.”
Zarina blinks, but makes no moves to refute his statement. He’s right—she was always going out, finding stories, shedding light on all the ruinous things that were usually shrouded in darkness. She wants to ask how he knows all of this, why he’s chosen her, why he hasn’t shredded her guts by now, but her mouth is coming up empty. She’s missed the feeling that is starting to bloom in her chest. A fire has sparked—a hunger begs to be satiated. She wants to write a story, she wants to tell a tale and change the small circle of hell she’s found to be her world. With or without the Ghostface, she wants to.
When he’s sure she isn’t going to speak more, the Ghostface removes his hands from her body. He shoves her towards the hatch, and her weak legs cause her to stumble right into it.
“See you soon, Zarina,” is the last thing she hears before she starts free falling.