Chapter Text
Round killers... John Doe and 1x1x1x1.
The announcement had barely finished echoing through the map before the pressure in the air changed.
007n7 felt it instantly.
Not a sound. Not a shadow. Just that awful, immediate sensation that the world had tilted sideways and decided it did not care whether he survived the next thirty seconds.
He had been running before the round even fully settled into place, boots slapping against the cold floor as he cut through a narrow corridor lined with broken walls and flickering lights. The place looked like it had been built out of memory and bad intentions. Every hallway seemed a little too long. Every corner seemed to bend in the wrong direction. The environment itself felt aware of him, as if the map had taken a personal interest in seeing him fail.
Behind him, somewhere in the maze of metal and darkness, John Doe was moving.
007n7 did not need to see him to know. He could hear the low, distorted bursts of movement, the warped scrape of something unnervingly fast closing in and then fading again, like a glitch in reality had learned how to hunt. John Doe did not run like a normal player. Nothing about him was normal. His presence warped the space around him, and every time 007n7 heard that horrible proximity, his stomach dropped all over again.
He rounded a corner too hard and nearly clipped the wall.
“Okay,” he muttered under his breath, trying not to sound as scared as he felt. “Okay, okay, okay—”
The words barely had time to leave his mouth before the floor behind him erupted with spikes.
He threw himself forward on instinct, narrowly avoiding the burst of jagged traps that snapped up from the ground where he had been standing a second ago. The air behind him seemed to shudder with the impact, and he could practically feel John Doe smiling without seeing him.
007n7 skidded into another hallway and caught himself against the wall. His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to escape his ribcage. He glanced back once.
John Doe was there.
Not fully. Not cleanly. Just enough to make 007n7 wish he had never turned around at all.
A blur of pale distortion. A shape that did not behave like a normal body. The kind of enemy that felt more like an error message given form than a person. And beneath all that strangeness, the spikes remained, ready to tear the path apart if 007n7 hesitated even a little.
He turned and bolted again.
The map opened into a wider area ahead, a broken chamber with scattered platforms and dead, flickering lights overhead. There were gaps in the floor, walls with exposed wiring, and corridors branching out in directions that looked equally bad. 007n7 didn’t have time to choose carefully. He just needed distance. Space. A second to think.
A medkit bumped against his side as he ran.
He grabbed it automatically, almost yanking it free from his inventory interface by reflex. His health had already dropped from a prior hit—nothing serious yet, but enough to make the red bar too visible for comfort. He needed to heal. He needed breathing room. He needed John Doe to stop being John Doe for five seconds, which was a ridiculous thought, but at this point his brain had stopped offering him sane options.
He darted behind a ruined pillar and crouched, forcing himself to listen.
No footsteps.
No direct movement.
That was worse.
John Doe had gone quiet, which meant one of two things. Either he’d lost him for the moment, or he was waiting.
007n7 pressed the medkit to his side and started healing as quickly as he dared, fingers trembling just enough to make the process feel longer than it was. The soft glow from the item lit his hands for an instant. In the silence, the sound was almost obscene.
His breathing came rough and shallow.
“Come on,” he whispered to himself. “Come on, come on…”
A pulse of dread rolled through him, so strong that his head snapped up before he knew why.
He had seen nothing.
And yet something in the room had changed.
The kind of silence that came before a knife.
He shoved himself upright.
Too late.
The spikes burst from the floor behind the pillar, tearing through the spot he had just been crouching in. He stumbled back, narrowly avoiding the first spike by inches, and the medkit slipped from his hand. It clattered across the floor and vanished into shadow.
John Doe stepped into view through the smoke of the attack.
007n7’s stomach dropped so hard he felt sick.
John Doe tilted his head, almost amused, as if this entire chase had been entertainment for him. The effect was wrong in the way nightmare things were wrong—too calm, too precise, too aware of the panic he was feeding on.
007n7 backed away.
John Doe advanced.
“Nope,” 007n7 breathed, and then he turned and ran again.
This time he didn’t go for the obvious routes. He cut sharply left, then right, then vaulted over a broken ledge into a lower passage that smelled like dust and static. He had no map in his head now, just instinct and terror. Every turn looked the same. Every hall was a trap. Every shadow had teeth.
He could hear John Doe behind him still.
Not close enough to strike. Not far enough to relax.
Just enough to keep the fear alive.
The chase dragged on through what felt like forever, and 007n7’s mind started pulling away from the present, the way it always did when survival pushed past panic and into that strange, cold numbness that came after. He had been in rounds like this before. He knew the shape of them. The beginning always felt impossible. The middle felt worse. The end… the end depended on who made the first mistake.
Today, the first mistake had been his.
He should not have gotten cornered.
He should not have burned his teleport too early.
He should not have assumed John Doe would lose him in the chaos of the opening chase.
But assumptions were expensive, and he was running out of currency.
Another turn.
A dead end.
No—not dead. Not exactly. A narrow space, boxed in by two tall walls and a gap in the center that led to a lower floor. A risk, but also an opportunity. He could drop down, maybe break line of sight, maybe—
A sound behind him.
007n7 spun around.
John Doe wasn’t there.
Instead, the air itself flickered.
That was all.
Just a shimmer, like the world had been edited and the update had not gone through properly. 007n7’s pulse hit a new, unpleasant register. He knew that effect. He had seen it in other rounds, in other impossible moments. It was the kind of split-second disturbance that usually meant one thing.
Someone else was nearby.
His mind barely had time to register the thought before fear made it worse.
Not another survivor.
Not help.
No.
Something far more dangerous.
He had one option left.
He activated his teleport.
The world snapped.
The hallway dissolved into a streak of light and broken geometry, his body pulled through a violent, disorienting blink of space. For a brief moment he was nothing but motion and static and the sensation of being yanked sideways through the bones of reality. It always felt wrong. Always. Like jumping off a ledge and finding out the sky was much farther down than expected.
Then—
He landed.
Hard.
He staggered forward, catching himself on his hands and knees, breath ripped from his lungs. The surface beneath him was cold and solid. A different room. A different section of the map, maybe. He could hear distant ambient noise now, the soft electric hum of the place shifting around him.
Relief crashed into him so fast it almost made him dizzy.
He had escaped.
For a second, he let himself believe it.
He was breathing too hard to notice where he was at first. His body had landed facing away from whatever had pulled him through, and all he could process was that John Doe was gone and he was alive for the moment. His fingers found the medkit again in a frantic scramble, and he activated it before his brain could catch up.
A small burst of healing energy flickered around him.
007n7 lowered his head and exhaled shakily, almost laughing from pure, cracked exhaustion.
That was when a voice spoke behind him.
“Well… hello there, 007n7."
The words were soft.
Calm.
And absolutely lethal.
His blood went cold.
“Long time no see?”
007n7 froze so completely that for one impossible second he forgot how to breathe.
No.
No, no, no—
He knew that voice.
Slowly, dreadfully, he turned around.
And there he was.
1x1x1x1 stood behind him like he had always belonged there, tall and still, the dim light catching in a way that made him look less like a player and more like a warning. The smirk on his face was small, almost lazy, but there was nothing relaxed about the way he watched 007n7. It was the look of someone who had already decided how the next few seconds would end.
007n7’s chest tightened.
Of all the places. Of all the people.
He had teleported directly in front of him.
Not just in the same room. Not just near him.
In front of him.
Like the universe itself had set him up for a joke and forgotten to make it funny.
The realization hit all at once, sharp enough to make him feel hollow.
He had escaped John Doe only to land in front of 1x1x1x1.
Lowkey, he was cooked.
The thought would have been almost funny under any other circumstances. Almost.
1x1x1x1’s expression shifted slightly, just enough for the smirk to sharpen. “That was a poor landing.”
007n7 took one step backward.
Then another.
His mind was trying to catch up to the disaster his body had already made. His teleport cooldown was gone. His health was still low. The medkit had bought him a tiny margin, but not enough. Not here. Not with him standing between him and any possible escape route.
And then, as if the situation had not already become cruel enough, a spike trap detonated somewhere nearby.
The sound cracked through the chamber like a gunshot.
007n7 flinched violently.
1x1x1x1 glanced past him, then back, one eyebrow lifting with the faintest suggestion of amusement. “Still running from John Doe, I see.”
007n7 swallowed hard. “You— you knew I was here?”
1x1x1x1’s smile widened by a fraction. “You were loud.”
That was not comforting.
At all.
Behind 007n7, he could feel the cold presence of the room, the emptiness of the path he had taken, and the awful certainty that another hunter might still be somewhere nearby. Ahead of him stood 1x1x1x1, calm and composed and very clearly capable of ending him before John Doe even caught up. He was boxed in by two killers, one behind and one in front, and for the first time that round, panic fully overtook him.
This was the kind of situation that made bad decisions look smart.
He had no room. No items. No time.
“Look,” 007n7 said, trying for defiance and landing somewhere closer to desperate, “I can explain—”
“You can?” 1x1x1x1 asked.
The tone was light. Almost conversational.
That somehow made it worse.
007n7’s gaze flicked to the sides, searching for an opening. Any opening. There had to be something. A wall he could vault. A gap. A trick. A distraction. He just needed a second to think, but the room felt like it was closing around him by degrees.
1x1x1x1 noticed the movement, of course. Nothing escaped him for long.
“You should stop looking for exits,” he said softly. “It makes you easier to predict.”
007n7’s skin prickled.
He hated that. Hated how composed 1x1x1x1 sounded. Hated that he was clearly enjoying this on some level. Hated even more that part of him had once thought 1x1x1x1’s presence was weirdly reassuring, back before the round turned into a nightmare. Back before the game state had narrowed into pure survival.
He took another slow step back.
His heel hit something.
A wall.
His heart sank.
The chamber he’d landed in was smaller than he’d thought. Not a room, really. More like a dead-end pocket in the map, with one entrance, one thin route out, and 1x1x1x1 standing directly in the way. He was fully trapped now—unless he wanted to sprint past him and pray his timing was good enough to survive whatever happened next.
He didn’t like those odds.
1x1x1x1 looked at him for a long second, the smirk fading just enough to become something harder to read. Not kinder. Never kinder. But more attentive, in a way that somehow made 007n7 even more uneasy.
“John Doe is still looking for you,” he said. “And you chose to run straight into me.”
007n7’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t exactly have a choice.”
“No?” 1x1x1x1 stepped forward. “You always have a choice.”
There was something wrong in that statement. Not false. Just too clean. Too certain. The kind of thing a person said when they had never once believed they were the one who could be cornered.
007n7 forced himself to keep his voice steady. “You’re enjoying this.”
1x1x1x1’s eyes lifted to his with a faint glint. “A little.”
The honesty was almost worse than a lie.
Another spike burst somewhere deeper in the map. Closer now.
007n7’s pulse kicked again.
He knew that sound. John Doe was still moving. Still hunting. And if he reached this room before 007n7 figured out how to escape 1x1x1x1, then all this dread would have been for nothing because the round would end exactly where it had been heading the whole time—him dead on the floor, both killers standing over the result like they had planned it.
He couldn’t let that happen.
His mind raced.
Teleport was spent.
Medkit was active, but not enough.
He had one defensive item left.
Maybe.
He reached for it with shaking fingers.
1x1x1x1’s expression changed instantly.
Not alarm. Not panic.
Interest.
“Oh,” he said, “there it is.”
007n7’s stomach dropped. “Don’t—”
Too late.
He activated the item.
A flash of movement, a sudden burst of space between them—
He lunged sideways and managed to slip past 1x1x1x1’s shoulder by a hair, the move so close it practically shaved the air between them. For one tiny, glorious second, he believed he’d made it. The exit was ahead. His feet hit the floor and carried him forward.
Then 1x1x1x1 moved.
Fast.
So fast it felt unfair.
The hand that caught him wasn’t violent. That was the worst part. It was precise. Controlled. Almost gentle, if one ignored the absolute certainty of the grip. 007n7 was yanked off balance and slammed back just enough to break his momentum. The world spun.
He stumbled, trying to recover.
A spike trap detonated at his feet.
He barely avoided the worst of it, but the shock sent him sideways into the wall, and the item he’d tried to use fizzled out uselessly in his inventory. The opening was gone. The chance vanished in the span of a heartbeat.
1x1x1x1 stood in front of him again, unhurried as ever, as though he had simply reached out and plucked the outcome he wanted from the air.
“You’re going to keep making this difficult,” he said.
007n7, breathing hard, stared at him in raw disbelief. “You’re the one standing in my way.”
“Of course I am.”
The answer was immediate.
Too immediate.
Another sound echoed from the corridor behind them—wet, glitching, wrong.
John Doe.
007n7’s entire body went rigid.
He heard it too, and something like amusement flickered through 1x1x1x1’s face. Not because the situation was funny, exactly. More because it confirmed something he had already known. The round was narrowing. The hunter was coming. And 007n7 had placed himself in the worst possible position at the worst possible time.
John Doe entered the outer edge of the room in a shimmer of distortion, spikes half-raised beneath him like a warning. His posture changed the instant he saw 007n7 trapped between them. If 1x1x1x1 noticed the rival killer’s presence, he gave no indication. He simply kept his attention fixed on 007n7, like the rest of the room had become background noise.
That was when 007n7 understood.
This was not a temporary inconvenience.
This was a kill box.
John Doe from behind.
1x1x1x1 in front.
No teleport. No item. No room to dodge.
Just him, trapped in the middle of a closing net.
He could feel the panic trying to tear its way out of his throat. He swallowed it hard enough to hurt.
John Doe’s head tilted.
1x1x1x1’s smirk returned.
And 007n7 realized, with a horrifying jolt, that neither of them were in a hurry anymore.
They knew.
They knew he had nowhere left to go.
“No,” 007n7 whispered, though he was not sure who he was saying it to.
1x1x1x1 took one slow step closer. “You were always going to end here eventually.”
Behind him, John Doe’s spikes lowered and rose in a restless, predatory rhythm.
007n7’s fingers clenched into fists at his sides. He looked from one to the other, trying to find any expression that suggested hesitation, any flaw in the pattern, any crack in the nightmare.
There wasn’t one.
Only the awful certainty of the trap closing.
And then, in the middle of all that silence, 1x1x1x1 spoke again.
“Turn around.”
007n7 blinked.
“What?”
“Turn around,” 1x1x1x1 repeated, voice even, almost bored. “Slowly.”
His pulse thundered in his ears. Every instinct screamed not to obey. Every survival signal in his body told him that the worst possible thing he could do was turn his back on anyone in this room.
But John Doe was behind him already.
And 1x1x1x1 was in front of him.
There was nowhere safe.
With his stomach twisting, 007n7 turned.
John Doe stood there in the dim light, distortion rippling around him, his posture almost casual in the way only a killer’s could be. The spikes along the floor surrounding him looked like a closing cage. There was no mercy in the geometry of it.
007n7 could feel the round ending before it happened.
He turned back toward 1x1x1x1, desperate, breathing hard.
The smirk on 1x1x1x1’s face was gone now.
What replaced it was worse.
A look of quiet focus.
Like he had already chosen the exact angle of the blow.
“Any last words?” 1x1x1x1 asked.
007n7 stared at him for a beat, trapped and furious and exhausted and still somehow trying not to give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.
Then, because panic made idiots of everyone, he said the first thing that came to mind.
“Yeah.”
1x1x1x1’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “And what’s that?”
007n7 swallowed once.
Then he glanced at the two killers, one after the other, and said, “This is unfair.”
For half a second, nothing moved.
Then 1x1x1x1 actually laughed.
It was short. Quiet. Almost surprised.
John Doe, for his part, did not react at all.
And that small, absurd sound of amusement—thin and sharp in the middle of certain death—somehow made the whole situation feel even more unreal.
007n7’s eyes widened.
“That’s your last word?” 1x1x1x1 asked, sounding almost offended by the lack of drama.
“I was kind of hoping to survive long enough to have a better one,” 007n7 snapped back, because apparently his survival instincts had been replaced by spite.
The moment the words left him, John Doe moved.
The room exploded into motion.
Spikes erupted from the ground in a ring.
007n7 threw himself backward, but there was nowhere to go. He hit the wall, stumbled, and the world became a blur of motion and threat and impossible angles. 1x1x1x1 lunged forward at the same time, not in panic, but with the clean, efficient precision of someone who had waited for exactly this opening.
007n7 tried to dodge.
There was nowhere left to dodge to.
The first strike landed hard enough to knock the breath from him. The second finished the job. The screen of the world seemed to fracture around the impact, his vision flashing, his body going numb with the familiar finality of defeat.
He stumbled once, then fell.
The floor rushed up to meet him.
Everything blurred.
The last thing he saw clearly was 1x1x1x1 standing over him, expression unreadable again, and John Doe’s shifting shape beyond him like a glitch in the dark.
Then the round ended.
For a few seconds after, there was nothing but silence.
No footsteps.
No spikes.
No breath.
Just the cold, empty hush that followed a loss.
007n7 lay still in the dim aftermath of the match, staring up at the ceiling as the game prepared whatever came next. His chest still burned. His hands still trembled. The adrenaline had not gone away so much as it had been cut off midstream, leaving behind a hollow ache in its place.
He should have been angry.
He was angry.
But underneath the anger was something else, something quieter and more dangerous.
The memory of 1x1x1x1’s voice.
Well… hello there, 007n7.
Long time no see?
007n7 shut his eyes for a second and groaned.
Of course it had been him.
Of course he had been the one waiting on the other side of the teleport.
Of course the one place in the entire map he could have landed was directly in front of the one person he absolutely did not want to see in that exact moment.
He opened his eyes again and stared at the ceiling like it had personally betrayed him.
“Never doing that again,” he muttered.
Somewhere in the shifting dark of the lobby, the match reset.
And somewhere else, in whatever strange corner of the game held killers like John Doe and 1x1x1x1, the memory of 007n7’s mistake lingered like a joke the universe would be telling for a long time.
Because if there was one thing worse than being hunted by one impossible enemy…
…it was being hunted by two.