We gave Jessica, or Jess, as she asked to be called some of our healing potions, mana potions, and rations. Siva stayed with her, getting her up to speed on what we’d been through, while Shawn and I studied the screens again.

  Shawn: Something’s not right.

  Chris: The fuck? How are you able to message only me and not the group?

  Shawn: Right-click over a name, then select.

  I… did not know that existed.

  How the hell do you even right-click in your head?

  Shawn: Anyway, something’s off.

  Chris: About Jess? I know she’s scared and all, but she seems...

  Shawn: Nooo… not the good doctor. The zombies. When I was cutting through them, it was weird. My class gets bonuses for killing undead. It’s in my description. Remember how I’d finish off the creatures I raised after fights?

  I nodded instead of replying in chat. Shawn had done that plenty of times during our grinding sessions. If we faced a big mob, he’d raise a few as minions and let them tear through the rest. When the fight was over, he’d decapitate whatever was left standing. Creepy the first few times, but like everything else in this world, we got used to it.

  Shawn: I do that because if I don’t, they stay “alive” and get corrupted. There’s no timer. I get additional, I dunno, XP when I kill them. It’s physical. I can feel their souls enter me when they die.

  I didn’t feel anything when I killed the ones below.

  That… was messed up. He’d been harvesting souls this whole time.

  I turned from the screens to face him. His expression was grim. I’d never seen Shawn so serious before. We’d been through hell together, but he always had a grin or at least a badly-timed quip.

  I was about to ask what he meant when it hit me.

  Chris: There’s another necromancer.

  He met my gaze and nodded slowly.

  Shawn: I think every undead we kill is feeding whoever’s controlling them, if these were his creations.

  Chris: What do we do? This is your wheelhouse.

  Shawn: Not a fucking clue. For now, we stick to the plan and find another way out.

  We’d been trying to fight our way free. But what if every swing of the sword was just making him stronger?

  We weren’t clearing the zone. We were feeding it.

  “Hey… uh…” We turned as Jess approached us.

  “I just wanted to thank you, for saving me and for getting me up here,” she said, offering her hand.

  Shawn immediately took it, shaking firmly and flashing his usual grin.

  “Ah, don’t mention it.”

  How… was she clean?

  She’d been grimy and covered in blood, my blood just minutes ago, but now she looked like she’d stepped out of a salon. The shell shock was still there in her eyes, but her expression had softened. She looked a hell of a lot friendlier. I half-expected Shawn to start flirting. Thankfully, he didn’t. Siva was grinning behind her like he was waiting for it.

  I gestured toward Jess’s spotless coat. “How...?”

  “Oh.” She smiled and raised her hand over our heads.

  A shimmer of light washed over us, soft and golden, sparkling like a shower of embers. It lasted barely a second, but when it faded, I realized my clothes were spotless. Even the blood on my arm was gone.

  “It’s a spell called Purify,” she explained. “It’s meant for cleansing food or water, but I found it works for dirt and stains too.”

  Huh. I was quite sure that was not what the spell was designed for.

  “Would you marry me?” Shawn said instantly, already dropping to one knee.

  I smacked him on the shoulder before he could finish the gesture. Jess and Siva burst out laughing.

  The laughter faded, but it left a lighter note in the air.

  Now cleaned, I stepped back and gestured toward the monitors. “Alright. Back to work. We’re still boxed in and outnumbered a few thousand to one. Unless someone’s hiding a ‘clear-horde’ scroll or spell, we need a new way out.”

  Jess’s smile faded. She nodded, folding her arms.

  I brought up the building layout on my HUD, the crude minimap still mostly greyed out. The sixth floor was a maze of offices, corridors, and storage rooms, like reading a half-loaded blueprint. Below us were three more levels of the checkpoint complex, stretching from immigration counters to administrative wings. I should’ve done this sooner. The place was massive, and we’d only explored one corner of it.

  “We sweep the lower floors. Split up. Keep comms open. We’ll explore levels five and four. Meetup at level three.”

  I glanced up. “Siva, you’re with me on level four. Shawn, you’re with Jess on level five.”

  He nodded silently.

  We hadn’t been a party for long, but daily fights and near-death runs forged trust faster than years of friendship ever could. Despite his earlier burst of humor, I knew Shawn was still thinking about the other necromancer. As was I. I just hoped it was something we wouldn’t have to deal with. There was no boss fight in this zone. Just escape.

  “Remember, this is recon. Fight if you have to, run if you need to,” I reminded them.

  “C’mon, Doc,” Shawn said, motioning for Jess to follow as they moved into the stairwell.

  I turned to Siva. “Ready?”

  He nodded and readied his katana.

  We headed into the stairwell behind them, descending toward level four.

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  Levels Five and Four -

  - were a bust.

  We spent about an hour, carefully combing through every corner of our assigned floors, testing doors, checking every corridor, even ducking into toilets in case some hidden passage or secret opening was tucked away. We found nothing.

  Each level was the same, made up of rows of dusty, derelict offices. Our footsteps sank into the carpet, soft and soundless. The only noise came from the faint hum of the ceiling lights.

  The silence hung heavy and eerie. It felt like we’d stepped into a different building entirely.

  Level Three

  We regrouped on level three and took a short break. The exhaustion wasn’t from the climb but was the kind that came from staying on edge for too long, waiting for something to jump out of the dark.

  As we caught our breath, that same sense of wrongness gnawed at me. I kept thinking back to when Shawn and I realized Jess’s entry point was different. At Sungei Buloh, both Andy’s party and ours had entered through the same portal. Here, though, hers had been a different location.

  I pulled up the objective notification again.

  [Objective: Escape the Checkpoint]

  That was it. No details or other markers. Just escape.

  “She’s agreed to do it,” Shawn said, cutting through my thoughts.

  “What? Really? Why?” I fired back, rapid-fire, just as a notification pinged across my HUD.

  [Party Invite Initiated: Jessica Tu]

  I blinked, then realized my mistake. “Wait. That’s what you meant?”

  Siva started laughing before Shawn could even reply. Jess looked confused until I explained what I’d thought he meant, that she’d agreed to marry him.

  By the time I finished, even she was laughing.

  [Party Invite: Accepted]

  “Ready for level three?” Siva asked as we prepared to move out.

  I held up a hand, signaling for them to wait as I activated [Pathfinder].

  The last time I’d used it, it had shown me the way home, that first night, when I’d nearly died and Siva had saved me. The memory sent a shiver down my spine.

  Now I was hoping it could show me the way out instead.

  A faint blue line began to form on my map, starting from our current position and snaking across the third floor, crossing through corridors, past sealed rooms, before veering into an unusually long hallway. I had to scroll the map several times to trace its route.

  Huh. It was leading us to the far end of the complex. That couldn’t be right. The main exit was supposed to be below us.

  “Can you share your map with us?” Jess asked, breaking my focus.

  We all stared at her, confused.

  She sighed and shook her head, walking me through the steps to share my HUD-Map view with the rest of the party. Apparently, it was a built-in party function. Huh, who knew?

  Once synced, the glowing path appeared in everyone’s maps.

  Jess was the first to speak.

  “Fuck…” she said quietly.

  “What is it?” Shawn asked.

  “We’re in the Departure Hall, right?” she said, continuing before anyone could answer. “When you go through immigration, you leave Singapore. But we can’t do that now. We’re landlocked for some reason. So, if the system’s telling us to escape… then we need to leave the immigration complex. What do travelers do when they enter Singapore?”

  The realization hit me like a punch in the gut. How was I so slow to realize this?

  The blue trail wasn’t leading us toward the exit below, it was pointing across the building, toward the Arrival Zone. The place where you’d re-enter Singapore.

  Genius. And horrifying.

  This whole zone was a trap. The “exit” everyone saw on the departure side was a death funnel. The real way out was across the complex.

  We would’ve died if we’d tried to go through the horde below.

  How many had already tried? How many parties had followed the fake exit and never made it back? I thought of the zombies in business attire with the half-torn shirts and the ID lanyards.

  They were all former survivors.

  We didn’t need to say anything as we moved in unison toward the stairs.

  The glowing path from [Pathfinder] led us through a side door at the far end of level three, a fire exit that hadn’t been on any of the map layouts. The stairwell was narrow and dusty, but it opened into a long, glass-walled corridor.

  The air inside was cold and still.

  Outside the corridor and below us, the Departure Hall stretched out like a battlefield on pause.

  Thousands of zombies shuffled in endless circles, their broken forms dragging across the polished floor. From up here, they looked like ants wandering aimlessly, twitching, but never still. A few had collapsed, only to jerk upright again minutes later. None looked up or noticed us.

  Jess slowed as we crossed. “This is the same hall we were in,” she whispered. “We’re walking right over them.”

  “Yeah… fuck ’em,” Shawn muttered as we picked up the pace.

  The corridor ended at another security door, this one sealed but old-school. There were no digital locks, just a latch and a rusted sign that read:

  ARRIVAL: STAFF ACCESS ONLY

  Siva pushed the door open. Beyond it, another stairwell descended into darkness.

  We went down a floor and stepped into a corridor unlike the rest.

  The lighting here was dimmer, tinged yellow, the overhead bulbs flickering like frames from an old film reel. There were signs on the walls now, printed in bold black letters on white backgrounds:

  ARRIVAL HALL

  DECLARE ALL CIGARETTES

  My chest tightened.

  We were close.

  We followed the signs down the hallway, our boots echoing softly on tile. No enemies. No system prompts. Just the creak of pipes and the low hum of the lights.

  The final glass doors slid open soundlessly as we approached.

  Arrival Hall.

  It was the mirror of the Departure Hall — broken counters, toppled gates, shattered monitors strewn across the floor. Above it all, hanging crooked on one side, a familiar LED screen blinked weakly:

  WELCOME TO SINGAPORE

  WELCOME TO SINGA

  WELCOME

  Jess let out a shaky breath. “This… this is it. This is the exit.”

  I nodded, scanning the space. There were no monsters or traps I could see.

  Siva pointed out the neon green EXIT signs. Two of them were glowing above a pair of wide double doors, easily the width of a four-lane highway. I knew beyond those doors, were the stairs leading down to the bus lanes.

  The real way out.

  We made our way towards it till Siva suddenly stopped walking.

  “You hear that?”

  We froze.

  I heard footsteps, distant and deliberate, echoing from the direction of the exit.

  Someone was coming up the stairs.

  We backed up instinctively, spreading out.

  He emerged from the shadows a moment later.

  A tall, pale man stepped into the Arrival Hall without breaking stride. A hood hid most of his face, his bone pale hands adjusting the clasps of a long, rune-stitched coat. He looked like he’d walked straight out of a gothic RPG. He walked in calmly, almost… casual.

  Then came the other footsteps.

  A few dozen zombies followed him into the hall.

  They weren’t snarling or moaning but they were marching with their heads bowed, moving in eerie unison.

  Shawn’s voice dropped an octave. “That’s a necromancer.”

  He stepped forward.

  “Shawn, where the fuck are you going?” I hissed, but he didn’t stop. He walked a few steps ahead, his scythe materializing in his hands.

  “Those are bound,” he said, low and tense. “To him. Controlled. These… are different. I can feel it.”

  Siva raised his katana. I realized I’d already drawn my bow and nocked an arrow.

  Jess, meanwhile, had retreated. Hands clamped over her ears, her head down and shaking. She was backing toward the stairwell.

  Chris: Keep it together, Jess. We need you!

  The figure stopped halfway across the hall as he looked up and smiled.

  “Congratulations,” he said, voice echoing across the empty chamber. “You found the way out. Surprised you figured it out. Most... didn't.”

  His tone was calm. Pleasant, even.

  Then he spread his arms.

  “But I can’t let you leave just yet.”

  The zombies stirred.

  At first, just a few stepped forward, filling the floor between us and the exit.

  Then more appeared, filing in through the doors like commuters off a train.

  We were hopelessly outnumbered.

  “Back!” I snapped. “Jess! We need you in here!”

  Shawn didn’t move. His eyes were locked on the necromancer.

  Behind me, Jess whimpered.

  The necromancer’s smile widened.

  “I’m rather curious,” he said softly. “How long will you last?”

  Then he raised one hand.

  And the zombies charged.