Management office, Facility 1F, Ibis island

10:32pm

Finally returning, Kyungwon entered the management office, which was literally one hallway away from the control room.

She hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary in her way to the bathrooms. No dinosaurs, no people, no nothing. She had kept her distance from the front entrance though, even if it was hard to believe the dinosaur thingy she didn’t really want to enter a room littered with corpses.

Now a little less hurried, she took her time to examine her surroundings.

The management office was exactly what anyone would expect a management office to be; cardboard boxes and file papers were scattered along the desks and flor. There was also an old looking computer, though it appeared to be disconnected. More files and duty rosters covered the keyboard and mouse, apparently, the last person that had been here had not bothered to tidy up before they rushed outside.

Besides all that, there was a door and a few windows with roller blinds half raised. They allowed Kyungwon to peer inside. A bunch of lockers could be seen from her side, they looked like they belonged to the guards as some of them were open, revealing the characteristic blue uniform.

Bored already, Kyungwon was about to turn and leave for the control room when she noticed something. There was a bright green light coming from one of the lockers, which shone right near a keypad.

“A safe?”- She muttered out loud, that had piqued her interest.

It was her opportunity to get on Nayoung’s good side and gain advantage over Siyeon, who knows? Maybe the two DDK discs for the door Minkyung went through were there.

She could already imagine Nayoung constant appraisal.

Smirking, Kyungwon moved towards the door that divided the two halves of the management office. She tried the lock, it opened easily but immediately pushed her back. Confused, Kyungwon tried again, this time with more force.

The door moved, offering the same resistance as before, yet this time Kyungwon managed to create an opening large enough for her to fit. She rushed into the room before the door closed itself again. Unstable from the leap, Kyungwon tripped over something, falling on her quite painfully.

With a groan, she directed her gaze towards the door again, searching for whatever it was that made her trip and fall.

And, sitting by the door, was the “object”. A human body.

With a dry pool of blood underneath it, the bald man that sat against the door had a revolver on his right hand and a bullet hole on his temple.

Kyungwon held back the urgent need to vomit. There was no odor since the death appeared to be recent enough, but that didn’t save Kyungwon’s impressionable self from the bizarre mental image.

She gathered the stomach to look again after a few seconds and took a closer look at the deceased. Besides the bullet holes there appeared to be a few more wounds, scratch marks, on the guy’s legs and torso.

But something else caught Kyungwon’s attention, from his left hand – which was tightly shut, probably thanks to the rigor mortis setting in – poked a small card. Moving her hands closer, with the irrational fear of the dead moving still plaguing her, she took his hand in hers, prying it open after a few attempts, revealing the rectangular key card.

On one end, the letters LEO glowed faintly on a small LED screen, right underneath it was the shape of a diamond.

Forgetting already about the safe behind her, Kyungwon took the keycard before hesitantly moving the body off of the door.

Maybe there was something in the control room’s databases that could tell her what exactly that was.

With that final thought, Kyungwon marched towards the exit of the room.

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Hallway to control room, Facility 1F, Ibis island

10:32pm

Exiting the control room, Siyeon checked her gun.

It was loaded, ready to shoot, the only problem was that SHE wasn’t ready.

Her heart was racing already, utterly scared of the prospect of fighting living, honest-to-god dinosaurs, something she had only see happening in movies. She had left her radio back in the control room, the least thing she wanted was for Kyungwon to radio her in the middle of a room full of meat eating dinosaurs.

Focusing, Siyeon tried to entertain her mind with something else. She tried remembering the map she had seen back in the briefing room. If she wasn’t mistaken, then her only route towards the second floor was through the front entrance. She was currently in one of the multiple hallways the facility had. Her left path would take her to the stairs that led towards the first subfloor, it was blocked by a metal gate nonetheless so there was no point in going that way.

Her right side led towards the management office, she could go through there, into the management office hallway and then enter the main entrance from there.

Nayoung’s description of the countless dead bodies assaulted her again, making her heart accelerate again. She closed her eyes, trying to keep her breath steady, before she started moving. Waiting wouldn’t do her nor the two people trapped in the second floor any good.

She marched towards the door, jumping over the fallen vent panel with ease, and tried to reach for the knob.

Instead, just before she could do it, the door opened harshly, making Siyeon fall back as she took the pistol she was carrying out of the holster and pointed it at the door.

“Jesus ing Christ!”-Kyungwon jumped back once she found the barrel of a pistol staring back at her - “Put that down, don’t aim it at me airhead!”

“Oh, Kyungwon…”- Siyeon relaxed her body, lowering the gun in the process - “You scared me”

“And you scared ME!”- Kyungwon crossed her arms, though the scowl on her face was soon replaced by a smirk - “Sheesh, pointing guns at an unguarded pretty lady, how shameful”

Siyeon allowed herself to let out a sigh, relieved that it wasn’t any kind of enemy and that she hadn’t reacted hastily. She was already jumpy as it was and didn’t need another problem added to her list.

“So, what are you up to?”- Now that the initial shock had passed, Kyungwon realized that Siyeon had exited the control room too - “Did you want to go to the bathroom too?”

“Umm... no… I…”- Racking her brain, Siyeon struggled to find a believable excuse - “Nayoung called me over the radio, yeah, that’s it, she needed my help in the… umm... in the front entrance!”

She wanted to slap herself for such a weak pretext. Anyone smart enough would realize that, in fact, if she had radioed Nayoung then Kyungwon would have been able to listen to that conversation with her own radio.

Still, Kyungwon, as bright as she may be when it came to tech, wasn’t actually a sharp individual.

“Cool, are you going to see Nayoung?”- The grin on her face grew even bigger as she took out a keycard from her back pocket, handing it to Siyeon - “Take this to her, maybe it’ll be useful, I’ll look what it does back in the control room and then tell you over the radio”

“LEO? What does it mean?”- Siyeon tried to make sense of the small letters that were shining on the keycard.

“I told you I don’t know; just remember to tell her it was me who found it”- Kyungwon warned, serious this time. - “Don’t steal my glory!”

“Sure… I’ll tell her”- Nodding indifferently, Siyeon walked past Kyungwon, examining the card on her hands.

“Cool, good luck with whatever you two want to do!”- Kyungwon shouted as Siyeon closed the management office’s door behind her, before walking towards the control room.

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Control room, Facility 1F, Ibis island

10:33pm

Kyungwon softly closed the door that led towards the hallway, leaving the room almost in the dark if not for the light source the four pairs of monitors provided.

She enjoyed the silent atmosphere as she sat back on one of the chairs, typing away on the computer.

“Odd”- The habit of talking to herself returned. After a few searches, nothing related to a keycard with the letters LEO appeared. She had tried using the word itself but met with the same result. It was as if the keycard itself wasn’t listed in the facility’s databases.

It seemed weird, but she paid it no further mind, opening the program that allowed her to use the cameras on the first three floors.

She quickly scrolled through the different parts of the building, spotting Nayoung back at the office hallway that led to the back entrance. After a few seconds she started scrolling again, finding Siyeon this time, inside the main entrance. She expected the girl to cross the hall and enter the office hallway but she didn’t.

Instead, Siyeon started walking upstairs.

This surprised Kyungwon even more, who brought her wrist radio up, intent on contacting Siyeon to tell her she was going on a different way. She was about to do it when she noticed something right beside her keyboard.

A wrist radio much like the one she was wearing.

Siyeon’s wrist radio.

“Nayoung called me over the radio, yeah, that’s it, she needed my help in the… umm... in the front entrance!”

The words Siyeon spoke back in the hallway returned to her.

“Nayoung called me over the radio”

“Called me over the radio”

“The radio”

“Radio”

“Radio”

“Radio”

Wait a minute, if Nayoung had called over the radio, then she would have had to hear it, right?

“So… she never contacted Nayoung at all and…”- Realization hit her like a truck – “Holy !”

She got up, making the chair she was sitting on fall, before she hurried out of the room.

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Office area, Facility 2F, Ibis island

10:34pm

Siyeon closed the door behind her, finally allowing herself to release the contained air in her lungs. She had crossed the entire hallway with her eyes half closed, already creeped out beyond imagination when she first saw the corpses all over the place. There was a moment she almost fell on them when she accidentally stepped on a hand, which caused her to jump back, aghast.

Once she had found the stairs, she had dashed to the second floor without sparing a single glance back.

The entirety of the second floor was straightforward to describe. The room was full of cubicles which probably belonged to the many ordinary workers of the facility, those who kept track of the expenses and incomes the place received. She counted a total of five rows and five columns, which made for a total of twenty-five cubicles.

The place itself was dark, the roof lamps were all turned off, and Siyeon saw no way of turning them on. The only real source of light coming from a few tall floor lamps that were near the doors that led to the lounge and the chief’s office.

The latter being the place in which the girl that had called, Kyla, and her brother were trapped.

But that door across the room, right on the other extreme of it, meaning Siyeon would have to walk through the cubicles to reach there.

*THUMP* *CLACK*

Something rattled inside one of the cubicles that were right in front of Siyeon, causing the girl to crouch, hiding behind one the nearest cubicle.

*HISS*

Her blood froze instantly when she heard the low hiss. She peeked around the corner of the slim laminated wall, watching a small, stretched snout appear from it. The rest of the figure followed soon after, trailing towards the door, probably following the noise Siyeon generated once she entered.

Scared, Siyeon tried to back up, moving along the cubicle’s wall to prevent the creature from seeing her.

*HISS*

Her heart jumped out of her body when another hiss disturbed the silent atmosphere, this one being even closer to her.

*THUMP* *CLACK*

Out came another raptor from the nearby cubicle and Siyeon paled even further when the creature almost grazed against her, who was still hugging the wall, making herself as little as possible. It stopped for a moment and Siyeon gulped while the carnivore raised its head high, taking a few short but sharp inhalations before it emitted another low but aggressive hiss.

The creature kept walking, probably going towards the door too, and hadn’t spotted Siyeon. A moment of rationality amidst the absolute fear allowed Siyeon to realize that the darkness of the place actually benefited her too, it was a wild, desperate bet, considering that she didn’t know jack- about those things and for all she knew they could be able to see in the dark. Still, it was the best she could come up with and the best kind of strategy she had, other than running straight towards the door, which would surely lead her towards her untimely death.

Something she absolutely did not want.

Once the raptor turned around the corner Siyeon finally gathered the mental strength necessary to move again. She peeked both left and right, watching for any other creature, before she crossed the space between cubicles.

Four more cubicles to go until she reached the door.

She stood still, listening for anything that could mean another threat, for a time, there was no sound except for the footsteps she left behind. She kept advancing while crouched, trying her best not to make any kind of noise. The place itself was huge and the cubicles themselves could have proven to be a literal maze had it not been for the direct sight she had of the chief’s office’s door.

Moving towards another cubicle, Siyeon repeated her previous actions, listening closely. There was a distant sound of chewing and Siyeon did not want to think about what was being chewed. She breathed, in and out, before she kept walking, leaving those noises behind.

Now a little bit more assertive, she kept advancing, letting the darkness cover her trail.

There was only one more cubicle left until she reached the door. She thought about going for it but decided against it in the end, a wrong step could cost her life.

*HISS*

She held her breath,