Rick blinked. "Well, that's new. Yeah… we're fucked."
777 exhaled sharply. "Don't piss your pants, mate."
Rick smirked. "You first."
A tense silence settled like fog.
777 adjusted his scope. "We're in for something biological."
Rick's grip tightened on his pistol. "Just pray to god. First time dealing with a bio-mess this direct."
777 tilted his head. "What if they're just... normal animals?"
Rick shook his head. "Normal animals don't scream like that. We stay low until they pass—or until we know they've seen us."
777 nodded once. "Fair."
Then—
A sound echoed from deep within the trees.
A voice. Familiar. Too familiar.
"Tobey…?"
Rick's breath hitched. He was moving before he realized it.
"TOBEY?!"
He tore out of the hut at full sprint, gun drawn, eyes wild.
"Shit," 777 muttered, bolting after him with sniper in hand. "Goddammit, Rick."
The woods warped around them—no longer trees and moss, but a jagged labyrinth. The fog had teeth. The roots pulled like hands. This wasn't nature. It was a trap.
More screams followed—sharp, high-pitched, wrong.
"Wait, Rick!" 777 called out.
Rick didn't slow. "Talk while we move!"
"We need to climb. Get off the ground. Go branch to branch."
Rick pivoted, his foot slamming into a low trunk. "Right. Go!"
They scrambled upward, branches creaking underfoot but holding firm. These trees were ancient—bark gnarled, limbs thick like bones.
From branch to branch, they moved like ghosts from a forgotten war.
Above the ground, their boots barely whispered.
Below them…
Something stirred.
And then they saw it.
A creature of shifting flesh—a twisted echo of humanity, draped in wrongness.
Its body wore the skin of animals like a costume it didn't understand.
Too loose here. Too tight there. The stitching of nature—ripped and resentfully resewn.
Its movements were erratic. Jerky. Like it hadn't figured out how to live in the body it stole.
Joints bent the wrong way for just a second—then snapped back with a bone-popping jolt.
A glitch in reality, learning to walk.
The air bent around it. Silent. Pressurized. Like the forest was holding its breath.
Its eyes didn't blink. Didn't move. Just watched. Like there was something behind them. Something borrowing the sockets.
And then it spoke.
But the voice—
It wasn't one.
It layered. It stuttered. A grandma's croon laced with a dog's growl.
Your own voice, echoed back, but… off. Like someone was trying to remember how it sounded. Like something was inside it, wearing your throat as a disguise.
Every instinct in Rick's body screamed.
Because once you noticed it—
—it noticed you back.
The creature's mouth opened—wide. Too wide.
But no sound came.
Just the crushing silence.
Then—
SCREAMS.
They didn't come from it.
They came from everywhere else.
All at once.
Echoing through the forest in different tones, different volumes, as if the world had been holding its breath and now exhaled in terror.
Rick and 777 snapped to a stop, skin crawling.
"What the fuck—" they said together.
Rick's breath came shallow. "That's not Tobey…"
777 didn't answer.
He was already scanning the treeline—because the silence was gone.
And the forest wasn't empty anymore.
Rick and 777 stood frozen on the high branches, their breath fogging in the cold air, hearts thudding loud enough to feel in their teeth. The screams had stopped—but the woods didn't go quiet.
They went still.
Like the moment before a predator pounces.
Rick's ears rang. His grip on the pistol was tight enough to ache.
Then—
A voice.
Small.
Shaking.
"D-Dad?"
Rick spun around so fast the branch beneath him cracked. His gaze shot into the woods, scanning the darkness—
—but the voice didn't come from below.
It came from above.
777's blood ran cold. "Rick…" he said carefully. "You heard that too, right?"
Rick's mouth moved but didn't answer. His eyes were locked on the canopy.
The branches stretched high into the dark like ribs in a chest cavity. And somewhere up there, in the web of shadow and fog, something shifted.
Another voice.
Clearer this time.
"Help me."
Tobey's voice. But… not quite.
Like a recording that had been played too many times. Warped. Dragged at the edges.
Rick raised his gun slowly. "Jennifer. Scan vertical axis. Anything above us?"
No response.
Only static.
777's comm hissed once, then died.
Rick's jaw clenched. "Fuck."
Then—
A crack overhead.
Leaves trembled. A branch moved—but nothing fell.
Rick and 777 aimed their weapons upward, scanning for a shape, a blur, anything.
A pause.
Then that voice again, whispering now, closer.
"Please… help me, Dad."
But it didn't come from one direction.
It came from all of them.
Rick's grip tightened, finger trembling against the trigger.
777 muttered low. "Rick, eyes on me. That's not your kid."
But Rick didn't answer. He was staring upward—beyond the canopy, past the fog, into something he couldn't see but felt. Like his own name was being pulled apart up there. Whispered and reassembled wrong.
"Help me, Dad…"
This time, it was perfect. Tobey's voice. Pitch, tone, cadence. Flawless.
Too flawless.
777 could feel the spiral tightening around Rick. The way his breathing shifted. The subtle lean forward. That haunted look in his eyes.
"Rick," he said sharply. "Don't listen to it. You taught me what mimic-tech can do. This thing's running a loop—it's trying to hijack your brain."
But Rick's mind had already cracked.
He saw a flash—Tobey as a toddler, arms reaching out.
Then another—Tobey, bleeding, mouthing something in a silent scream—
Then static.
Rick screamed, "TOBEY?!"
And jumped.
Off the branch.
Straight into the dark.
"Rick—fuck!" 777 scrambled after him, heart slamming into his ribs.
Below, the forest tore open. Trees bent as if recoiling from Rick's descent. Fog swallowed him whole.
777 dropped from branch to branch, fast and silent, his sniper slung and sidearm drawn. The fog below thickened, swallowing trees and time.
Shapes moved in the mist—but not clearly. Shadows flinched and twisted at the edge of vision.
And then… sound.
Tobey's voice.
Soft. Echoed. Wrong.
"Dad."
"Help."
"Why didn't you come sooner?"
Rick charged blindly through the mist. Gun up. Breathing ragged.
His mind a wreck of half-memories and fear. He couldn't tell where the voice came from—only that it was his son's.
Or sounded like it.
Then a new voice crackled in his ear:
"YOU'RE CHASING A LOOP! SNAP OUT OF IT!"
But Rick froze. Not because of what it said—but how it said it.
Because it wasn't the comm.
The voice wasn't real.
It was the mimic.
It had taken 777's voice now—tone, panic, urgency. Flawless.
Rick's boots skidded in wet earth. He spun around, disoriented. Chest rising too fast. Palms slick with sweat.
The air shifted—like lungs exhaling behind him.
Something moved again.
Too close.
A sound: low clicking. Like bones grinding or teeth clenching in anticipation.
Rick turned.
And there it was.
The mimic.
A biological mess standing inches away. A mockery of life itself—stitched together from stolen skins and bad memories. It towered over him, limbs twitching with static energy. Its form shifted constantly—like it couldn't decide which shape to hold.
And its eyes…
Not glowing.
Not blank.
But mirroring his.
For just a second, Rick saw himself staring back.
And the mimic opened its mouth.
Not to scream.
…but to smile.
A warped, stretched smile—too wide, too wrong. The kind that looked like it practiced in front of a broken mirror and never quite got it right.
Then—
CRACK.
A gunshot tore through the air.
Sharp. Echoing. Close.
The mimic's body jerked as the bullet punched through its side, splattering something dark and too thick to be blood. It staggered backward, twitching violently.
Then it screamed.
"H-help meee—"
The voice was almost human.
Almost Tobey.
But not.
Not even close.
It twisted once more, then vanished back into the fog—slipping through the mist like a bad dream that refused to die.
Silence.
Then heavy footsteps approached from behind.
777 emerged from the dark, gun still smoking. His face unreadable, breath even.
"You okay?" he asked.
Rick didn't look back at first. He just exhaled—long and slow.
"Yeah."
777 lowered the weapon. "Good."
They stood there for a beat—two men surrounded by ghosts and questions.
"Let's get back to the hut," 777 muttered.
Rick finally turned, his face pale, jaw tight. "Yeah."
And together, they walked back into the fog.
The woods didn't follow them.
The mimic didn't either.
They reached the hut in silence. No new screams. No false voices. Just the sound of boots against damp ground and the low buzz of their shaken nerves.
Inside, the air was still thick with old smoke and that faint metallic scent of fear.
777 guided Rick toward the lone chair and gestured for him to sit.
Rick didn't argue.
He dropped into the seat like his bones had finally noticed how much adrenaline they'd burned.
777 leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Well… now we know why 9 was marked."
Rick didn't answer immediately. He stared at the broken clock like it might whisper back.
777 continued, a half-smirk tugging at his face. "Kinda weird seeing you rattled. That's my thing, y'know."
Rick blinked slowly. "Oh yeah?"
777 shrugged. "At least we've got cover now. No tree demons, no screaming fake Tobeys."
Rick finally nodded. "Yeah… for now."
But even as he said it, he kept glancing at the door.
Because whatever that thing was—it smiled first.
And smiled things usually came back.