Petre looked around the cluttered kitchen in a nervous hustle. Every surface was coated in some kind of vile muck. And then there was the small child...

"H-hello...?"

She looked human, which meant it had to be some kind of deceit. Trepe had looked human, as well, but he had disappeared with a poof as soon as he had stepped foot inside this hellish room of rotten meat and rusted metal.

"D-did you p-per... Hear m-me...?"

The child's voice was a reluctant whisper. She hunched over, her body covered in a blanket of black hair. It fell in messy strands around her like a coat. He could make out the starved nubs of her knuckles as she rubbed her hands together uncomfortably.

"What?" Petre said, the words harsh and nervous.

The child recoiled, and Petre cringed. It was hard to believe. It was impossible to believe that this child was a child. He had followed a hallucination into this place, and so it only made sense another hallucination would meet him here.

"H-h-h-h-human...?" the small child asked. The words reached the air in such a pathetic tremble of breath that Petre forgot his suspicion for a moment. And even if she were a figment of his corkscrew imagination, did he really need to scream and shout?

Petre tried to settle his face into a pleasant smile, but his teeth would not stop chattering. Human. He opened his mouth to offer her comfort. But human.

He could still taste the invasive wet Zero-Nine had forced down his throat. Whenever his blind panic faded (Which was as rare as the kind of steak he would have ordered out) he could feel the dull ache from his missing eye. The scientists had filled it with paste and a metal ball. No doubt full of explosives. But still. How human could he claim to be after all he had been through?

"Yes," Petre said suddenly, and he was surprised by the strength of his voice. "I am h-human."

He had been changed. He had been violated. But he was still human.

"W-w-woooooow..." the small child said in rapt amazement.

She took a step forward, and her dress of black hair parted to revealed an emaciated nakedness. She stared at him through wide eyes, the irises white with blindness.

"Th-that's so, so... T-this is a... I've ne-never... Well, n-n-n-never with a, a hu-human like... You're di... different..."

The small child spoke in such a broken sputter that it was a little hard to follow what she said, but the different part was easy enough to understand. He only needed to close his eyes to conjure up the twisted horror of the creatures in the other rooms.

And his heart once more beat with a mad panic. The girlchild was normal enough, but who knew what else lay down here. But he did know what lay down here! This facility was a veritable hellscape, and he had fled from his protector. He was lost. He was doomed.

"Y-y-you look... The fa... face..." The small child scuttled a little closer, still bent over and nervous. "Icanhelp! You... Y-you... A-are y-you hun... hungry? F-f-f-f-f-ood...?"

The very word made Petre blanch. He was not sure how he would ever eat again after all that he had seen down here. But the child continued to stare up at him expectantly.

"N-no thank you," Petre said with a weak smile. What he wanted was to flee. What he wanted was to hide. And this child was not nearly as deformed as the other humans. Perhaps there was somewhere safe. Perhaps she could help. "But perhaps you can..."

"N-no!" the small child said forcefully, stamping her small feet. The noise sent a lance of red fear through his chest. They had been speaking so loudly, as well. How could they be so careless in a place so dangerous?

"Y-you look s-sad... unw-well..." the small child continued, and Petre brought a finger to his lips. She continued to speak, and he remembered her blind white eyes. "I w-w-want to... to help...?"

"That's fine," Petre said in a whisper. He meant to say more, but the small child's voice became suddenly forceful.

"N-no! I ca-can't... can't do much... b-but... Food!" The wall of black hair parted and offered a glimpse of the small child's open mouth. The teeth that ringed her mouth were jagged like daggers. "I f-feed ever... everyone d-d-d-down here..."

"I am not hungry!" Petre insisted in another whisper. He looked around the room, studying the doors and the gaping black that existed beyond them. He could hear no scuttling feet, but still his heart pounded with fear.

And then he frowned. Because the child had said something strange. Because the child was strange.

"E-everyone rea... really l-likes w-w-w-what... what I make..."

Petre looked back at the small child with a tremble in his hollow chest. A plate had appeared in her small hands, its edges unchipped and unbroken. A steaming slab of steak covered in cream and speckled with spices taunted his appetite.

He tried to speak, but his throat was so dry. It had been Zero-Nine who had said Zero-Zero sustained the deformed humans in this twisted sunless sanctuary. Zero-Nine, who was so monstrous and who appeared so human. Just like Blurb. Just like Mayna. Perhaps even...

"Is s-something... some... something w-wrong...?" the small child asked in a pitiful whimper. "Did I... I do... do some... something w-w-w-w-wrong...?"

Tears filled her enormous blind eyes, but somehow she still saw. Petre tried to walk away, to creep towards the closest door, but the room was so much smaller than he remembered. There was scarcely space for the two of them in the diminutive kitchen.

"The o-o-o-o-others...? Did they... The o-others... I can... G-g-gone!" The steak was gone. The small child's emaciated hands exploded out from the curtain of black hair and grabbed Petre. Their strength was inhuman. "I d-d-don't need them! G-g-gone! Now that... that... t-that you... you a-are here..."

He was dizzy with fear as he shoved the child away. This was another hallucination, and Petre was fucked. It had to be because the doors were gone. The cramped kitchen had become a cramped closet, and the small child pressed herself against Petre in an embrace of cold wet rot.

"I h-have b-b-been... been so... s-so lonely..." the small child said from behind her curtain of black hair. He could see flakes of skin fall from the rotting totem of her flesh. "T-the others... o-others all... b-break so... break so... q̷̥̆u̴̮͋i̷̙͌c̵͚̐k̷̮̄l̷̮̀y̷̠͠..."

"But you!"

[ But ỳ̷̯o̶͆͜ō̶̜ô̵̟o! ]

"Just take a b̵i̸i̵i̴i̵i̵i̸t̴e̴!"

[ Let ̵̤̽m̸͚̕ȇ̸̘e̸̼͗e̷̩̓e̴̫͛e̸̹͌ inside! ]

Amidst the cloying black of the closest, the small child loosed a high-pitched whine that scratched at the eardrums and tickled the squishy wet meat between his eyes.

Petre loosed his own scream as a distinct red hot started to tickle and then buuuurn. He felt a familiar wet invade his mouth, pushing deeper and deeper down his throat in a relentless invasion. His stomach was pumped full of Zero-Nine's colour as his left leg filled with white lightning.

"Thaaaank you very much," Zero-Nine said as she tore away from her slobbering kiss. She revealed row after row of shark-like teeth in her wide smile. "Sister can be soooo shy."

The same kitchen from before had reappeared, but a monster lurked in one of its befouled corners. In a place made foul with the deformed and diseased, the creature's twisted form filled Petre's chest with hot nausea. Rolls of putrid flesh layered the monster's body, interrupted only by the jut of misshapen appendages. From amidst the inflated flaps of fat, empty eye sockets bulged the size of human heads. Some of the eye sockets were filled with oozing lumps of decay.

And yet despite the horror that lurked and writhed in the corner of the room, Petre could scarcely focus his terror on its monstrosity.

Because of the pain.

Because of the fire.

Because of the familiar leg that Zero-Nine clutched in her inflated hand. She pushed the bloody appendage into her mouth, and Petre looked down at his own legs.

One of them ended in a stump above the knee, and the blood would not stop.

"I diiiid ask you not to wander off," Zero-Nine said with a playful pout as Petre added his own screams to the room. "All you need to do now is sit riiiiiight there."