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⚠️ Content Warnings ⤴
Info
Original concept and article written by Reddit user u/Nerdykiddo4844. Rewritten by Praetor3005 (author page) and
Nikuchan (author page).
Big thanks to Abdallah Amr for the fading block css, as well as to
DrAkimoto for the greenlight!
Thanks to Spectre48 and
Sky3 for the generel thoughts as well!
Both music tracks have been made by the awesome music composer Dapper Husky. Make sure to check his youtube channel! He made a lot of great OSTs for the Backrooms.
CW: Overall gruesome and graphic images in the offsets. Don't unblur them if you don't want to see that.
Glossary:
- Huvvat - Post-corruption Lost name for the Hive
- Mundus - Lost name for the Blue Channel, and everything within it
- Nihil - Lost name for the Grave
- Paradeos - Pre-corruption Lost name for the Hive
Chapter 3 - Salvete regina
The rage of the land kept growing, the air gradually thickening in a revulsing mist, making Olivia hyperventilate.
“I can't do this…" She clawed at her face. “Please make it stop… Justin, please…” She begged the overseer, who was just as overwhelmed as her.
Betrayed… Forgotten. But now, we will be one again.
Come to me, stop resisting at last.
You're the last piece. Come back to me.
Bring me back what you stole from me.
"I'm not an object!" Olivia shouted into the void. "I have no idea what you're talking about— just leave me alone!”
The botanist slammed her fist on the fleshy ground, unbothered by its decayed state. Immediately, however, the floor started to engulf her hand before opening into a malformed jaw, slowly pulling her down.
Justin screamed, running up to her. Before he managed to grab her, however, the rotten maw ate her whole, before closing and disappearing, leaving the overseer behind.
. . .
“No… No! No! NO!” Justin punched the floor, spilling blood and viscera around. The overseer looked around, desperately trying to find an entrance.
Yet, there was no hole to be found in the fleshy landscape.
The whole level was now back to its ominous calmness, making Justin question whether the disturbance had even happened.
Yet the absence of Olivia made the situation clear. The silence felt almost taunting to the overseer, as if the Hive was mocking him by making its contentment clear.
It was satiated. Justin stole a soul from it, yet failed to keep it away from its voracious craving.
"It’s my fault… It’s my fucking fault— I should have left her wherever she was. I made her die twice…” He lamented on the floor, letting the rot further taint his clothes.
He should have moved on. He shouldn’t have tried to defy the Backrooms, attempting to use its tools against its fate. He wanted to cheat death, the ultimate obstacle, and Olivia would now suffer the consequences of his foolishness.
No.
He was Overseer A. Back when he got separated from Kat and Andrew, he kept trying day after day because he still held the hope of finding them back. Together, they created the M.E.G., widening their hope to the potential existence of an exit.
If anything, he needed that hope more than ever now. His reasons to come here were selfish. He missed Olivia more than he ever missed anyone, but the second death felt even worse than the first.
He had to find her back and fight whatever this Hive Queen was. Not for him, but for her, so that she could live the life she unfairly lost months ago.
Justin stood up, breathing heavily.
This place was a biological mess, a twisted body that shifted from an ancient paradise to a rotten hell. It was a mockery of the hope the Backrooms could create. It was a challenge to overcome. A challenge for him, the one who gave hope to many people.
He had to stay faithful and find Olivia as soon as possible. For her sake.
. . .
Olivia opened her eyes, slowly gazing at her surroundings. The rotten environment was as revulsing as before, now far more enclosed, more akin to a flesh mockery of the Cave Systems.
Immediately, the voice came back to torment her, as a blue light from afar appeared in the distance, slowly getting closer.
Why are you fighting it?
Everything I ever did was for mankind. Every corner of this place I shifted, every child I birthed, all of this was for humanity.
Yet you refuse it, I feel it inside me. You stole part of me, yet you refuse to give back.
It’s her, isn’t it? She corrupted you, she made you forget your past.
“What are you talking about?” Olivia inquired out loud, tetanized. “I don't understand you. I don't know what you want from me! Just… what are you? I didn’t steal anything from you!”
Don't you understand?
Back when I fused with this place, I made sure no human soul could disrupt my work, yet you came.
That’s what she wants, doesn’t she? She wants to shift this place to what it used to be, removing me and my work, stopping me from destroying her and all her kin who took everything I had.
They broke me, don't you see it? They broke everything I held dear. They broke mankind for their entertainment. And there was nothing we could do about it, until I found this place.
I shaped it as I wanted. I created my perfect lineage. I did all I could as the last hope humanity holds against their reign. To allow for the age of man to unfold.
But despite this, you refuse to let me fulfill my mission. You refuse to surrender your mind back to me.
Olivia looked around, only to meet the same rotten walls of the cave gallery surrounding her. The path was tight, but seemed to stretch for miles in front and behind her, like a twisted set of intestines.
It was the belly of the beast.
“You… It was you all along.” She started to breathe more heavily as she started to put the pieces together. “This… This isn't right. This rot, this hatred within you. You disrupted this place’s cycle of life because you can't move on! You destroyed Paradeos! Look at it!”
Olivia hit the ground with her fists in frustration. “I've moved on! I don't carry that guilt and despair or that hunger for revenge anymore! I'm not like you! I won't let your hatred keep hurting others!”
Can't you see the paradise I created? The birthplace of my children against the omnipotent monsters who broke us?
Of course you cannot. Unlike me, you've been corrupted.
Something in you is holding you back. Something putrid, vile. The essence of the gods.
She saved you, did she not? You were dying, and she put a part of herself into you.
She condemned you to immortality, and you're telling me this made you forget all the pain you went through?
A claw reached out from the dark, pressing against Olivia's exposed ribcage, tracing the bones with its scrawny finger. Olivia shivered, attempting to squirm away. “How do you know all this stuff about me?! We never even met— I've never been here!”
We are two, don’t you get it?
By being reborn here, you stole a part of me.
Don't you see what you could become? You could join me, lead my brood, and vainquish them.
Yet, besides our link together, you refuse to.
Perhaps you don't realize how similar we are.
Do you want to see my pain, wretched half?
The environment around the botanist brightened, a flash of memories that weren't hers running through her mind. A child’s face, a kind man, a destroyed city. Bloodshed, war, the face of the traitor. Who is he? She doesn't know him, but she despises him. She felt emotions that weren't hers. Guilt, hatred, remorse, grief, all towards people she had never met.
All around her, the Hive mimicked the feelings overflowing her. Pure, unfathomable grief pulsated through the rotten skin and flesh surrounding the botanist.
The Hive was the Queen and the Queen was the Hive, personifying the hatred for beings long gone, twisted against the humanity it claimed to fight for.
And then she faced him, a young man, smiling, innocent, and loving.
Helios…
“PLEASE STOP!” Olivia begged on her knees, crying her heart out. “Please… Don't make me see these things— Don't make me see him… Please… It was my fault…”
Was it? She doesn't know him.
Who?…
“Helios…”
My dearest… Helios…
For a moment, only for a brief second, the beast’s voice shook, as if uttering the name of this man caused her unbearable pain. The environment all around mimicked a mix of regret and anguish, yet still cherished the memory, as if it was the last piece of humanity left in its withered body.
As the environment sighed, Olivia came back to her senses, trying to control her breath.
This past is yours as much as it is mine, Olivia Bellerose.
Just like you, I used to be a human. Just like me, you are no longer one.
We have so much in common. We both lost so many people we cared about. Despite our shared experiences, our shared grief and desire for vengeance. you refuse to accept my grasp onto this paradise. I see you refuse to accept my grasp onto you.
I must fix that. I must fix you.
The creature’s claw pierced through the flesh under her ribcage, slowly digging in her body. The air all around suddenly heated up, frustration replacing mourning. Olivia coughed and screamed in pain, the cries echoing in the flesh cavern that now seemed to mock her.
I'll get rid of her influence. All you have to do is sit still and give up. It'll hurt much less like that, Olivia.
You'll do that for a grieving mother and wife, won't you?
The woman wailed, her hair glowing unnaturally. “No… No… I won't let you- I won't let you control me!” She yelled, the adrenaline flowing.
Olivia closed her eyes, reaching into herself. She felt its own rot, her link to the very place that was hurting her. Deep within her carrion, however, she felt the light.
Her hope. Her zeal. Her patron.
Slowly, with an inhuman strength, the botanist forced the claw outside of herself, repressing cries of pain.
Wretched thing! Her essense!
The Hive choked, before petrifying itself for an instant, as if her hand and gesture wounded the Hive Mind hard enough for its entire self to be disrupted.
Seizing the opportunity, Olivia started to stagger, then run, desperately looking for Justin. Tournesol, her parents, nobody she ever lost would have wanted her to partake in something so monstrous. The Hive Queen was trying to manipulate her grief and reopen old wounds. It wanted to reshape her future just like it reshaped the Hive into this nightmare.
Olivia slowly forgot the pain flowing in her body. Many died for her, and many more were ready to endanger themselves to aid her. She needed to fight for them just as much.
“Come at me, beast— catch me if you can!” she defied with the newfound energy of a zealous woman, running away within the cave galleries as fast as she could.
. . .
The Hive seemed to go through contradictory emotions. As he wandered around, trying to find a way down, Justin felt the floor and ceiling go through anger, anguish, resolution, then an ominous stop, making him dread the response soon to come.
The overseer tried to focus on other memories, driving his senses away from the unstable emotions of the environment. Yet, everything he could think of was just as stressful as the situation he was currently in.
His work at the M.E.G hasn’t been thrilling him for a while. In fact, days were so much duller than before that good recent memories were few.
The coalition has never felt so threatened. Between the accusations of hiding data, the oversight council clashing on the group’s own ethics, and Andrew progressively growing more reckless, the faction centered around hope and collaboration never felt so dull.
Andrew… Justin wished he could put the deaths of Tournesol and Olivia on him. Yet, he knew that Donovan wasn’t the only person to progressively lose touch with their initial goal. The overseer felt it, the lack of ethics of his old friend was slowly influencing him. As the years passed, his decisions became harsher and riskier.
It had been more than eight years since they started searching for a Backrooms exit, yet to no avail. No matter how many levels they discovered, no matter how many entities they recorded, no matter how many phenomena they researched, nothing seemed to give them any lead on how to exit this place.
Was the glimmer of hope fading?
The overseer looked around. Despite looking far more organic than the liminal halls he was used to, the Hive was still an enclosed space, a twisted trap where only chaos and pain existed.
Had it always been like this? The Lost assured this place was a paradise, yet it was hard not to view it as a fleshy hell. Ironically, Justin found it to be a fitting representation of the Backrooms. Chaotic, illogical, and everlastingly aggressive. This place was deeply wrong, yet it wasn’t supposed to be.
What happened here? What kind of choices led to it becoming a husk of its former self? Was everything around him the incarnation of helplessness and hopelessness?
The overseer sighed at the thought. Eight years ago, he was the kind of person to see the glass half-full, holding on to his optimism to keep moving forward.
But it was hard to keep hope in a place that looked so hateful everywhere. And now, alone, the love of his life taken from him once more, the doubt was as invasive as ever.
Was he making the right choice?
Should he keep tiring himself out, aimlessly looking at something that hasn’t been found in millennia?
Or was he, just like the Hive, slowly turning into a living corpse, driven down by his zeal and tiredness?
Questions kept flowing into his mind as he continued to wander alone within the flesh plains and gut hills.
His zeal to find a way out created something big, something he built with many other people, a group that documented hundreds of levels and saved thousands of wanderers. Then why wasn’t this working? If the refusal to let go led to something so great, why wasn’t it yielding any results? Why did it look like the M.E.G had never been so corrupted, so useless, so far from its initial values?
Was his attempt at reviving Olivia yet another proof he, the glimmer of hope, was unable to move on from the obstacles the Backrooms set against him? Was it yet another proof that the Backrooms were corrupting him?
Despite eight years of M.E.G. breakthroughs and development, Justin River, the hopeful man who led it. To keep fighting, to keep exploring, felt like someone else. He was Overseer A, getting closer each day to a copy of Andrew, ready to resort to the most vile of solutions to deal with something he could not move on from.
He thought of Olivia. Her skin, her eyes, her voice, they all felt twisted now. As if she were now part of this rotten level. How did she feel in her new body? Was she happy to be back? Or did Justin put her in yet another endless suffering? Was she different than the Hounds and Facelings who were born here?
What would happen to everything he cherished if he kept tiring himself in the wrong direction?
Justin suddenly tripped, having missed an exposed bone shard emerging from the floor. Standing back up with difficulty, he noticed its form: it was a vertebra, next to an abrupt hole. The spinal column was going down with it, offering Justin a gruesome yet efficient ladder.
He shook his head, trying to focus back on finding Olivia. Whatever his emotions and aspirations were, whatever all of this was trying to tell him, it would be useless if his foolishness caused yet another loved one to perish.
The Hive still felt calmer than before, as if its mind was focused on something far more pressing. Grasping the opportunity, the overseer started to carefully go down, vertebra by vertebra, hoping Olivia was safe down there, whatever happened to her.
. . .
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