Chapter 276: Hospital (10)

In the new map, what awaited the actors was, of course, nothing warm or pleasant.

The elevator, after being restarted, still followed the operating logic that had been tampered with by the livestream team.

No matter which floor the actors selected inside the elevator, when it stopped, the floor display would always show “13th Floor.”

Upon reaching this level, the elevator lights would go out again and come to a suspended stop, forcing the actors to step out and enter the current floor.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, Hopkins Hospital did not actually have a 13th floor—so in reality, the actors were arriving on the 18th floor.

Since the hospital had only recently been put into use, everything above the 16th floor had not yet been officially opened. This gave the livestream team room to operate.

They had already altered all the floor signage on the 18th floor, changing the number “8” into “3,” and—following the corresponding plot of the urban legend about “the 13th floor you can never leave”—they rearranged the interior layout accordingly. Their goal was to create locations inside the 18th floor that would match elements of the story for anyone familiar with it.

In this way, once the actors stepped out of the elevator, the combination of the floor signs and the urban legend would easily mislead them into believing they had “entered the 13th floor described in the story.”

The livestream team had stationed an employee named Renier on the 18th floor in advance.

During the actors’ exploration, Renier would make strange noises to draw them toward one side of the corridor, and at the end of the hallway he would throw a bouncing red ball—this was tied to another hospital urban legend, also fabricated by the livestream team specifically to scare people, just like the 13th floor and the “pregnant ghost.”

After using the ball and various technical tricks to thoroughly scare the actors and make them embarrass themselves, Renier would finally force them into the left-side emergency stairwell and lock the stairwell door behind them.

The livestream stage would then smoothly shift from the 18th floor to the left stairwell.

From this point on, the elevator is completely “freed.” Staff members who were previously hiding in the morgue on the basement level and in the corridors will take the elevator up to the upper floors to join Renier and complete the final performance together.

The left-side corridor had also been pre-arranged.

The livestream team tampered with the floor labels from the top floor down to the ground floor, making every level display “13th Floor,” while also removing small details that might give the trick away, ensuring that each floor looked nearly identical. In this way, no matter whether the actors went up or down, the number they saw would always be 13.

The stairwell was equipped with motion-activated lights that stayed on for only one minute per floor before turning off. If someone stood by the railing and looked up or down beyond the lit area, all they would see was darkness. In addition, the stairwell had no windows, and the doors leading to the corridors were locked, making it impossible for anyone inside to accurately determine which floor they were on.

Since the 18th floor was located in the middle of the building, there were many “buffer floors” both above and below. If the actors went too far up or down, the staff would use special sound effects, rolling severed heads, sudden bloody handprints, and other horror elements to scare them, restricting their movement.

—As a side note, the security doors between the stairwell and each floor’s corridor were also locked, to prevent actors from accidentally opening them and stepping into the hallways outside. After all, the livestream team did not have the manpower or resources to modify the signage and layout of every floor in the hospital building.

After a few attempts, the actors would likely become convinced that they were trapped in a loop, falling into intense panic.

At that point, the final scare would make its grand entrance—

A patient-dressed Renier would quietly enter the stairwell at the moment the actors were at their most panicked, creating an unexpected “chance encounter” with them.

Renier had undergone special effects makeup. He looked pale and gaunt, as if a skeleton had been draped in a layer of human skin. His movements were heavy and exhausted; upon his first appearance, he kept his head lowered and shuffled slowly through the seemingly endless corridor, like a wandering ghost.

When he saw the actors suddenly appear, Renier’s expression changed dramatically. His eyes instantly lit up with an intense, almost blinding fervor.

“The door! The door has appeared again? I’ve waited so long—finally, the door is open!”

Shouting with a trembling voice, Renier staggered toward the stairwell door and pushed at it with all his strength.

But the emergency door was locked. It was impossible to open.

After slamming into it more than a dozen times, Renier collapsed onto the floor in despair. He looked up at the actors who had suddenly appeared in the corridor and asked cautiously, “Today… what date is it today?”

The actor: “blah blah.”

“So that’s how it is… I’ve already been wandering here for half a year… haha… hahahaha…”

After dramatically acting out the role for a while and perfectly connecting with the protagonist of the “never-ending 13th floor” urban legend, Renier raised a prop knife. In front of the actor, he stabbed himself and fake blood sprayed all over the actor.

“I’m sorry… I’m truly too desperate…”

That was Renier’s final line.

……

The above was the livestream team’s original script.

After hearing Tom’s recounting of it, Everly’s temples throbbed. She felt this prank livestream was vicious to an absurd degree.

If she hadn’t been experienced and noticed the cameras in advance, she had no idea which stage would have made her jump in fright.

What a damned group of people—so focused on entertainment value that they didn’t care at all about how the participants would feel.

In that case, Everly naturally had no need to consider them either.

“Those who harm others will themselves be harmed; those who scare others will themselves be scared. The wheel of fortune turns, and now it’s their turn to experience what it feels like to be pranked and frightened!”

The livestream team consisted of 11 people in total. Seven were on the basement level: one responsible for playing the “ghost,” four hiding in the morgue, and two stationed behind the emergency doors. One was on the 18th floor—that was Renier, the patient role. The remaining three were in the first-floor control room, including the two main operators of the livestream account: Dr. J and Richard.

Among the two operators, Dr. J handled funding and public appearances, while Richard stayed behind the scenes to provide ideas. Neither of them was a good person.

Everly had already KO’d seven of them. The remaining four fugitives—she had no intention of letting any of them go.

In order, she would start with the control room on the first floor.

She walked all the way down the stairwell, calculating the actual floor count as she went.

When she reached the number six, Everly stopped at a security door and knocked.

Knock, knock.

A clear sound echoed from the other side. A moment later, the locked metal door was pulled open slightly.

Behind the crack in the door stood Misha, leaning on a cane, a pried-open chain lock still in her hand.

“Wow, that’s quite a setup,” Misha said upon seeing Everly, now covered in blood. A gleeful, chaos-loving excitement spread across her face. “Orff has already hacked the activation permissions for the surgical elevator. You can just take it directly. He’ll black out all the cameras along your route. Go give them a proper lesson!”

“Thanks. I’m heading there now!”

Everly patted her friend’s shoulder and, while the corridor was clear, quickly ran toward the elevator hall with a folding knife in hand.

Meanwhile, in the control room, Dr. J and Lip Ring Richard, after a round of mutual persuasion, had already returned to the surveillance monitors and were closely watching Everly’s movements.

In the United States, surveillance cameras were not widely deployed everywhere. However, hospitals were public facilities, so in non-private areas such as corridors, stairwells, and reception desks—places not involving patient privacy—cameras were still installed.

When Everly reached the platform on the 6th floor, the surveillance feed flickered for a moment, experiencing a brief stutter. When it returned to normal, Everly had already shifted slightly forward, crossed the landing, and stepped onto the stairs leading down to the 5th floor.

“All the emergency stairwell doors are locked, right?”

“Yes, they’re all locked, and warning signs for maintenance have been placed at each entrance… No—wait, the basement level door isn’t locked!” the lip-ringed man suddenly widened his eyes.

The basement emergency door was being guarded by Tom and Edron, because they were responsible for the “blood-splashing prank on the pulling-door actors,” so that particular door had not been locked.

“What do we do if that crazy woman—”

Before Dr. J could finish speaking, a series of knock-knock sounds suddenly echoed.

The two men inside tensed instantly and instinctively looked at the monitors. Seeing that the “mad woman” was still moving between the 4th and 5th floors in the stairwell, they let out a small sigh of relief.

Dr. J kicked the mohawked man’s leg, ordering the underling to go check who was at the door, while he turned back to discuss the basement door issue with the lip-ringed man.

But then a familiar voice came from outside.

“It—it’s me, Edron. Open the door…”

“It’s Edron—he’s still alive!”

“Wait, if that’s the case, then doesn’t that mean the basement door—”

The two men inside exchanged a glance and quickly formulated a plan.

So when Edron finally made it to the control room, trembling and exhausted after walking the entire way in constant fear, what he received from his so-called companions was not comfort or relief—but an extremely difficult assignment.

“You take this chain lock right now and go through the right-side emergency passage to the basement. Lock the emergency door down there.”

Dr. J stood behind the door and forced a heavy chain lock into Edron’s hands.

“W-what…?”

“Do I need to repeat myself?” Dr. J said coldly. “Take this and lock the basement’s right-side emergency door. That woman is currently moving down the left stairwell and should already be on the 3rd floor. You know very well the basement emergency door isn’t locked. If she reaches the basement, crosses the corridor, and enters the right-side stairwell, she’ll be able to take the stairs all the way up to the first floor and find the control room. Then all of us will be in danger!”

Edron’s hands flailed as if he had been burned.

“No, no, no—impossible! I can’t do it! I’ll die! That woman is basically a demon—I can’t do it!”

Dr. J’s voice turned ice-cold.

“No, you can. And you must. Otherwise, what you did to Tom and the others will be on the front page tomorrow.”

“W-what…?”

“I don’t have time to persuade you slowly,” Dr. J continued sharply. “Let me put it simply: you know my influence. If I want to, I can make all the deaths tonight fall on you. Do you really want your elderly grandmother to be unable to hold her head up in front of the neighbors because her grandson is labeled a murderer?”

“You—y-you…” Edron’s chest heaved violently. Shock, anger, fear, regret—his emotions flickered rapidly across his face.

At last, as if everything had finally clicked into place, his hesitation and retreat vanished. His pale, deathlike face settled into resignation.

“…I understand. I’ll do it.”

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