Everly took Markâs phone and tried it a few times, only to find that it was already blacked out and broken. There was no way to tell what he had been trying to do with it before he died.
She tossed the brick-like phone aside, still hopeful, and searched Markâs body again. In the end, aside from a set of keys, she found nothing.
âIâve entered Markâs house now. The power is out, so itâs pretty dark inside. Iâm about to start searching the basement. Everything is normal so far,â she reported to the group through her Bluetooth earpiece.
Considering that in American horror movies, nine out of ten villains do their dirty work in basements or underground facilities, the first thing Everly did after examining the body was to explore the basement.
She searched very carefullyâtapping on the walls, looking for hidden mechanisms, even closely inspecting the floorâafraid there might be some concealed space hidden within. But after a thorough search, she found absolutely nothing.
It was just an ordinary basement, filled with all sorts of clutter, with nothing suspicious at all.
Just as Everly was focused on her search, Misha, who was monitoring from outside the police station, suddenly spoke up:
âEverly, somethingâs happened at the station! The Dumpsy you told me to watch suddenly acted like he was possessed while workingâhe stood up, started shouting, even drew his gun and fired a few shots into the air. Then his head exploded, and he dropped dead.â
âAfter Dumpsy died, more screams quickly came from inside the station. I heard several people shouting Charlieâs nameâI think Charlie may have also been attacked by a monster.â
âUnderstood.â
Everly glanced at the time: 17:05. There were 14 minutes left until 17:19.
No time to waste in the basementâshe needed to check other areas.
17:09
âIâve returned to the first floor. No useful items or information found.â
17:13
âIâve reached the second floor. Thereâs nothing here either.â
As the time drew closer and closer to 17:19, Everlyâs breathing became increasingly rapid.
17:14
âIâve entered the attic now. ItâsâŠâ Everly looked around the dust-covered attic. There was no need to even begin searchingâthe thick layer of dust on the floor made it clear that no one had been here for a long time. âEverything here is normal as wellâŠâ
âOh, damn it!â On the other end of the call, Orff slammed his fist against a chair and let out a cry of despair.
Everly ignored him.
She quickly exited the attic, running downstairs while thinking at the same time.
Donât panic. Stay calm. Thinkâwhat did I missâŠ?
Mark was the one in the group responsible for handling corpses. When he was at home, he wore a lab coat, which meant he must have been secretly conducting some kind of research on those bodies. There had to be a place in his house used for research, somewhere containing evidenceâŠ
Thatâs itâthe car!
An old man like Mark wouldnât be able to move corpses from the rangerâs cabin to here on his own. He must have used some kind of vehicle. She hadnât checked his garage yet!
Because Markâs body was found in the detached house, Everly had been completely misled, focusing her search on the house itself. For a moment, she had forgotten that behind the house, there was also a separate garage!
Wasnât Old Johnâs shelter the same? There had been a separate passage to the shelter inside the garage.
Everly broke into a run and reached Markâs garage through the back door.
17:15
The rolling shutter door of the garage was pulled down. Everly tried several keys before finally finding the right one and getting inside.
17:17
âI used the key with the triangular rust mark on the handle to enter Markâs garage⊠I found a hidden door at the very back of the garage. Itâs concealed beneath a storage cabinetâmove the cabinet and lift the carpet, and you can see it. Iâm about to enter the hidden passage.â
âBzz⊠bzzzâŠâ
âŠ
In the twenty-fifth cycle, Orffâs voice began to tremble as he spoke:
âAfter entering the basement, we quickly lost contact because there was no signal. I didnât know what you, Everly, were seeing down there. I was completely panicked. Watching time jump backward again and again, I prayed in my heart that the monster would only go after those harmful people and would never appear in front of me⊠but clearly, my prayers didnât work. At 17:19:23, I heard a familiar scream coming from the nearby walkwayâŠâ
Just like in the previous cycle, Abel was killed by the monster.
After Abel, it was Orffâs turn.
The monster, as in the previous cycle, hovered over Abelâs body for a while. Only when the school security officer arrived, dispersing the students who were watching and filming, did it finally make a âzzzzâ sound, snowflake patterns appearing on its body as it teleported right in front of Orff.
Before dying, the previously severed communication finally reconnected. Orff heard Everly on the phone, sounding extremely anxious:
âListen, the monster is afraid ofââ
And then the words abruptly stopped.
Amid the explosive pain, Orff experienced the twenty-fifth cycleâthis very cycle.
âŠ
âUh, thatâs awful,â Everly couldnât help but sigh after listening to the full twenty-four previous cycles.
âWaaahâŠâ If she hadnât said anything, it might have been fine, but this small comfort suddenly made Orff feel a sharp pang of grief.
He covered his face with his hands, tears streaming, sniffling miserably like a complete mess.
âHey, donât be so down. Look, in the previous cycles, we actually did pretty well. Just after three cycles, we almost figured everything out. I have a feeling that maybe this cycle we can finally put an end to it all,â Everly reassured him.
âReally?â
âOf course. Everly never exaggerates,â Misha said confidently, jumping in to answer for her.
Everly smiled helplessly, grabbed her notebook, and began sketching and jotting notes:
âAlmost there. In the previous cycles, weâve already gathered a lot of intelligence. First, we can confirm that no matter whether Orff hacks into the newly built dark web today, the monster will target him. At the same time, we now know the location of Markâs secret basementâit likely holds clues related to the monster. What we need to do next is use this cycle to investigate everything thoroughly.â
âBut you only have twenty minutes. Even if we figure out why the monster appears, we might not have enough time to find a solution. Does that mean Iâm going to die againâŠâ
âWho said itâs only twenty minutes? Do you remember the cycle where you survived the longest? How long did you live that time?â
âMy longestâŠ?â Orff rarely survived past the afternoon in the first twenty-one cycles, so it didnât take long for him to recall. His longest survival had been the time he escaped to a neighboring city by taxi. He had stayed in the cab all the way until 18:03, when a truck crashed him into the river, freezing him to death.
âThat⊠thatâsâŠâ
âThatâs right. See, the monsterâs attack timing changes based on your actions. In the twenty-second cycle, it killed you around 17:00. In the following cycles, it only appeared after 17:19. I suspect this difference is related to your location. Lookââ
As she spoke, Everly pulled out the map of Dalami City she had bought earlier, placed it on the front passenger seat of the Grand Cherokee, and spread it out. Using a pen, she circled four locations: the rangerâs cabin in Birchwood Forest, the city police station, Markâs house on Tombstone Alley, and the university.
On the map, their positions looked like this: if the police station is the center point, the rangerâs cabin lies to the northeast, Markâs house on Tombstone Alley to the southeast, and the state university roughly 15 degrees west of south.
âThe flesh-and-blood monster doesnât take much time to kill its victims, but between killing Mark and then you and Abel at the school, thereâs nearly a twenty-minute gap. Could we assume that it canât teleport infinitely and actually needs time to travel?â
As she spoke, Everly took out a black pen and drew straight lines connecting the four locations.
âLook at the map. Suppose the monster first appears at Markâs house. The nearest point from there is the police station in the old city, about 20 kilometers away in a straight line. The school and the rangerâs cabin are both farther than the station. At 16:58, the monster finished attacking Markâs dog and left the house. By 17:05, it appeared at the city police station, killing Dumpsy and Charlie in sequence.â
Everly, a college student with an obsession for stationery, swapped for a red pen and quickly drew a line between the two locations she had just mentioned.
âConsidering that the monster has no physical body and can pass through walls, letâs assume it moves at a uniform speed in a straight line. Covering 20 kilometers in 7 minutes means the monsterâs speed is just under 3 kilometers per minute.â
âThe police station is old, located in the historic district. Itâs 13 kilometers from the rangerâs cabin in the suburbs. The university is in the newly expanded city area, 17 kilometers from the station. If the monster went straight to the university after the station without delay, it would take at most 6 minutesâarriving by 17:11. But in reality, it didnât get there until 17:19, which clearly means it visited somewhere else in between. We can assume it first went to the rangerâs cabinâŠâ
Everly grabbed a blue pen, traced the route from the police station to the cabin, and then drew the straight-line route from the cabin to the university in blue as well.
âThe trip from the police station to the cabin takes a little over 4 minutes, so that would be around 17:09. The straight-line distance from the cabin to the university is about 29 kilometers, which would take roughly 10 minutes. See? That brings us exactly to 17:19âthe timing fits perfectly!â
âSo⊠so what does that mean?â Misha, not very good at math, had her eyes practically sparkling with confusion. âThe monster went to the cabin first and then the schoolâwhatâs the point of knowing that?â
Everly pinched Mishaâs cheek affectionately. âOf course itâs useful. Havenât you noticed? The monsterâs attacks actually follow two rules: first, its targets are people who have watched the torture videos or directly participated in filming them; second, it chooses the order of attack based on distance.â
Orffâs expression brightened with understanding. âI get it! You mean, if I stay somewhere far away from all the targets when the monster appears, and keep moving in a direction away from where it is, I can delay the time it takes to catch me!â
Everly snapped her fingers. âExactly.â
In fact, if they were even more precise, they could constantly adjust the positions of the three operators and Ronald, further delaying when the monster appears.
For example, after the monster kills Mark, they could immediately alert Sawitt to move Charlie further north in the city. As long as Charlie remains the closest target to the monster among the remaining people, it would have to travel a much longer distance to reach him.
Once the monster kills Charlie, they could then move the âButcherâ and Abel (and Ronald) each farther away in opposite corners of the city. No matter whether the monster kills the Butcher or Abel next, it would have to traverse a long diagonal to reach the next targetâŠ
With enough people and a carefully planned strategy, this method could buy a lot of time.
But after working in the horror movie world for so long, Everly knew one truth very wellââNo plan survives contact with reality.â
The more complex the plan, and the more people involved, the higher the chance that something would go wrong during execution.
These âsomething-goes-wrongâ scenarios could include, but werenât limited to: accidentally dragging hatred onto someone else, causing the monster to change targets to unlucky Orff; a human decoy suddenly waking up and wreaking havoc on everyone; a helper of the human decoy (if there was one) intervening and ruining the plan; or bumping into a new dark web user mid-transport, drawing the monsterâs attention away and causing the team to lose sightâŠ
The possibilities were endless, and just thinking about them gave her goosebumps.
After considering all this, Everly abandoned the plan of âusing a few operators as human decoys to buy time for Orffâ and instead went with the simpler, more direct approach: get Orff to start driving southwest as early as possible.