“Well, ,” Namjoon exhaled as he ran through the door. “We got the doors to lock, but they weren’t nearly strong enough. The damn thing got through.”

He hurried over to the blinking panel on the wall, and glanced at the different sections of the glass map as one after another, they started to turn red. Whatever the thing was, it was rapidly getting closer to where the seven young men were located - indicated on the map by a flashing green dot.

“What do we do?” questioned Jungkook frantically. “Just sit here and wait to die?!”

“No. We fight,” commanded Hoseok, his eyes opened wide in the insufficient light.

“Do we even know what this thing is?” wondered Jimin as he got up from his place against the wall. “Jungkook and I can’t feel it. I have no clue what it even is. Do we actually have a chance in hell here, or are we totally, irreparably screwed?”

“I have an idea what it might be,” offered Namjoon. “When I was reading through files, there was one thing that stuck out at me. A creature that was man-made, so to speak; created entirely by the imaginations of the researchers who were studying it. They called it ‘The Nightmare.’”

Jimin’s eyes widened at the mention of a man-made monster. That would certainly solve the issue Taehyung had brought up earlier about how a Level Seven creature would have been impossible to track and capture - even if the scientists had been able to use an Ultimate Sensor.

“Do you mean to tell us that you people knew that your belief in these creatures was what caused them to exist - yet you went ahead and created the worst one you could imagine anyway?” asked Jin in disbelief.

The oldest man’s voice was high-pitched and panicked, and Jin had broken his calm composure for almost the first time that Jimin could ever remember. He sounded genuinely scared of the unnatural beast - and that in itself was downright terrifying to Jimin.

“Hey, don’t look at me,” guarded Namjoon. “I’m not in charge of anything that goes on down here.”

“Besides, those researchers are probably dead now anyway,” added Hoseok. “Nobody escapes a Level Seven - artificially generated by their own minds or not.”

✧✧✧

“If the researchers are dead, then how does this thing even still exist?” questioned Yoongi. “Wouldn’t The Nightmare only be able to survive if it was sustained by somebody’s imagination?”

“Well, obviously that’s what went wrong,” argued Taehyung. “The Nightmare grew too strong to be contained by their thoughts alone. ’Cause it’s just as real as you and me now, and there’s nothing that either of us can do about it.”

“We can still defeat it,” encouraged Jimin. “I’m sure we can find a way; right, guys?”

He looked from face to defeated face, and even Hoseok seemed like he was starting to have doubts as the other men discussed the gravity of their situation. Finally, Jimin’s eyes settled on the panel on the wall, which was slowly being flooded with red backlights as more and more sectors were lost.

“Forget it,” shot down Taehyung. “It’s hopeless, Jimin. Yoongi and Jin were right; we were foolish to ever play with this stuff.”

Jimin was shocked at Taehyung’s sudden and dramatic change of heart. It was odd enough that the latter had taken this long to add his two cents since reentering the room, but now Jimin saw why, as the orange-haired boy was extremely distraught - almost shaking as he held himself pressed against the wall, in the farthest corner away from the closed metal door.

“Tae, come on,” urged Jimin. “Power doesn’t come without a price, remember? What’s this thing’s weakness? We can do this, Tae. Together.”

“No. We can’t,” Taehyung resolved. “This thing isn’t the stuff of legends; it’s the stuff of pure nightmares. Unbridled, raw, human terror. No one knows anything about Level Sevens; especially not ing ‘man-made’ ones. And the only people that might have are all ing dead, so there’s no way you can beat this thing. It’s better than you.”

Jimin hated to see his friend so disheartened, but the last thing the young man had said struck a nerve with him.

“It’s better than you.”

“Is that what you think of me, Kim Taehyung?” The other man didn’t respond, so Jimin continued, raising his voice. “That I’m weak? That I’m nothing?”

“Ugh. Jimin-”

“No. Stop it. Taehyung, I know you like working with Jungkook better than me. It’s fine, okay?” Jimin was almost in tears, and he felt his face burning up as everyone looked at him - almost as if he and Taehyung were in the middle of some sort of publically spectated marital spat. “If we make it out of this alive, you can be partners with him. But that’s not gonna happen if I don’t even try.”

“Jimin, I’m sor-”

“I thought we were more than this, Tae.” Jimin cut the younger man off as he wiped at his face, not sure if it was sweat, tears, or both that dampened his palm. “I thought I was different than all the other Sensors you work with and then dump - or maybe they dump you, ’cause you’re such a huge jerk.”

Jimin was facing the door with Namjoon by his side, who was ready to open it on the younger man’s signal. He didn’t look back as he said one last thing to Taehyung, cutting the orange-haired boy with his words.

“I thought you weren’t using me, but I guess I was wrong.”

Jimin nodded at Namjoon, and the two of them burst through the door, setting down the hall in the direction of Sector K. Jungkook followed quickly behind, and after glancing at Jin for confirmation, Yoongi and the older man both trailed at the end of the pack. Hoseok stood in the hallway with Taehyung, turning to the younger man as the others’ footsteps faded away.

✧✧✧

“Jimin? I have an idea,” panted Jungkook as he sprinted alongside the teary-eyed man.

Jimin himself was upset and confused - and normally he would have felt even worse about himself for accepting help from the Jungkook of all people - but now he was just glad to have somebody there with an actual plan.

“Let’s hear it,” he wheezed, getting closer every second to the un-Sensable threat.

“Well, this thing - The Nightmare - was a product of human imagination and belief, right?” began Jungkook. “The problem was that it got too powerful; probably because of the level of energy from the overwhelming fear of the people who worked with it.”

That all sounded good so far to Jimin, though he had no idea if any of it was true. None of that mattered at this point, however, because in just a few seconds, he was going to be face to face with a creature more horrible than he could even perceive. There was a terrible whirling sound echoing through the abandoned halls, and the only other noises besides the pounding of their feet were the blaring, thunderous alarms. Jimin nodded for Jungkook to continue as they turned a corner.

“Well, what if its weakness is that it needs that belief to survive?” hypothesized Jungkook. “What if you purposefully disbelieved in it so forcefully that it ceased to exist?”

“I think that sounds almost crazy enough to work,” agreed Jimin.

The howling winds were deafening now, and Jimin was about to take another right turn when something grabbed the collar of his shirt, and he was pulled backwards into a sitting position on the floor. The other four men were crouching by the corner of wall, and Jimin peeked around to see what had stopped them.

Down the hallway, in the crimson glow of the emergency lights and standing no more than five meters away, was a creature that could only be described as a being of pure terror. Jimin may not have been able to sense a tether in his mind, but he was certainly able to feel the beating of his own heart as it threatened to explode in his chest, frightened beyond expression as he gazed at The Nightmare in all its horrifying glory.

The Nightmare was black; a swirling array of every bad dream and long-clawed creature that had ever haunted Jimin’s thoughts. Its body - if it could be labeled as such - was tall and skinny, and its lanky, pointed arms brushed gently over the concrete floor. Smoke twirled around the thing, changing occasionally into the image of a dog.

A screaming face.

A distortion.

There were endless nightmares amassed into one, and Jimin had to be torn away by Yoongi as he continued to stare, aghast and astonished by it.

✧✧✧

“I think I’m going to need to get closer to it,” Jimin whispered as he turned his back on the creature.

The Nightmare itselt hadn’t seemed to notice them yet, but it wandered the halls, looking for victims as it transformed and reformed. Jimin took a deep breath, trying to instill some resolve in himself.

“I don’t know what could happen if I do that, though, so I just want to say thank you to all of you - for everything. And for coming here with me to…”

Jimin thought bitterly of Taehyung, whom he had seen shoving off Hoseok’s hand as the older man tried to comfort him while Jimin and the others ran away. Jimin had regretted looking back immediately, and he tried his best to push the incident out of his mind.

“Don’t talk like that, Jimin,” scolded Yoongi. “You’ll be fine. You have to be.”

“I don’t know if I will,” said Jimin honestly. “I’m not sure you can help me with this, Yoongi.”

“Of course we can,” grumbled Yoongi with forced annoyance and honest compassion. “We’re your friends, Jimin. Your real friends. And friends are people who don’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Yoongi was hasty to look away, but not before Jimin caught a glimpse of the tears in his flaming, dark eyes.

“No one wants anything to happen to you, Jimin,” agreed Namjoon as he shoved something small and plastic into Jimin’s shaking hands. “Two-way radio,” he explained as he held up an identical copy. “So we can keep in touch.”

Jimin nodded. The radio made him think of Taehyung and the young man’s myriad of funny-looking, sometimes broken devices, and Jimin remembered the latter talking about how he was never without an audio recorder in his back pocket. He shook these burdensome memories out of his head as he stood up as confidently as possible, bracing himself against the terror in his heaving chest.

✧✧✧

“Jimin, wait.”

It was Jin’s voice that stopped the young man as he took his first step around the corner, shaking as he abandoned the only barrier that separated him from The Nightmare. Jimin turned to look at the older man with the radio still clutched in his palm, its mouthpiece already hovering next to his terrified face.

“I can protect you, remember? Shield you with my essence just a little bit so you have a better chance at this.”

Jimin smiled as he thanked Jin for his help, emboldened by the older man’s offer of personal sacrifice.

“Here goes nothing,” Jimin stammered - fully aware that he was lying, but comforted by his own words nonetheless.

He took a cautious step around the corner, and gazed up at The Nightmare in front of him, swallowing painfully as the weight of everything truly dawned on him.

Somebody pushed past Jimin in a blind, frenzied dash toward the terrible creature; obviously unaware of where they were going or what they were headed towards. Jimin saw that it was one of the workers - a man twice his age that Jimin didn’t recognize.

Nor would it have mattered if the young man did, because as soon as the researcher got close to the creature, The Nightmare swallowed him up and turned him to dust, and the man’s white lab coat evaporated along with the rest of him.

“Did you guys see that?” Jimin choked into the radio, his hand quivering as he struggled not to drop it and run, but keep moving forward.

“That was slightly less than encouraging,” confirmed Namjoon, his voice staticky.

“Jimin, I’ve got you,” reassured Jin. “Just keep moving. We can do this.”

Jimin could indeed feel his friend’s aura enveloping him - almost as if the tether that attached the young man to Jin was wrapped around him like a protective cocoon. The sensation was strange, and yet oddly familiar in its comfort and warmth. Jimin took a step so that he was just at the edge of The Nightmare’s swirling cloud, and then he was inside - standing before the thing’s ever-changing central body.