The heat, the steam, the endless, disorienting pipes—Alex had begun to adapt to them, to accept them as the new, agonizing baseline of his existence. He had learned the rhythm of the level's dangers: the hiss that preceded a steam blast, the groan that signaled a vibrating pipe. He had been lulled into a false sense of understanding, believing that the environment itself was the only enemy. He had forgotten the most important lesson of all: in the Backrooms, you are never truly alone.
He was navigating a particularly dense section of the pipe-jungle. The catwalk had ended, forcing him to pick his way across a treacherous floor of crisscrossing conduits, the gaps between them revealing a dark, ominous drop. The steam was thick here, the air hot and stagnant. The only light came from a single, grime-caked bulb far down the corridor, its weak yellow glow doing little to pierce the oppressive gloom. He was moving slower than ever, his focus entirely on his footing.
That's why he didn't see them at first. He felt them.
It was a subtle shift in the atmosphere, a change in the quality of the silence between the industrial noises. A feeling of being watched, but different from the raw, predatory focus of the Hound. This was a patient, lurking presence, a feeling of multiple sets of eyes fixed upon him from the deep shadows. He froze, his foot hovering over the next pipe, his body going rigid.
He slowly raised his head, his own eyes scanning the darkness ahead. The corridor stretched for about fifty feet before dissolving into a wall of impenetrable shadow where the light from the single bulb could not reach. At first, he saw nothing. Just the familiar shapes of pipes and valves, half-hidden in the steam.
Then, a pair of lights flickered on in the darkness.
They were not lightbulbs. They were two small, perfectly round pinpricks of bright, white light, floating in the void about four feet off the ground. They were utterly stationary, unblinking. Alex's blood ran cold. His first thought was LEDs, some kind of machine. But there was a biological quality to their stillness, a sense of latent focus. They were eyes.
As he stared, another pair of lights flickered on beside the first. And then another. And another. Soon, the entire far wall of the corridor was dotted with them, a constellation of silent, staring eyes in the abyss. They were all at different heights, some low to the ground, some higher up, suggesting creatures of varying sizes.
He was surrounded.
A primal terror, cold and absolute, gripped him. He was trapped, exposed on a floor of precarious pipes, with a chasm below and a wall of unseen watchers ahead. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He reverted to the only successful survival strategy he knew: absolute, petrified stillness.
For a long, agonizing minute, nothing happened. The eyes just stared, unblinking, their bright, white light a stark contrast to the sickly yellow of the level's illumination. He could hear the frantic, silent thumping of his own heart.
Then, one of them revealed itself.
Below one of the pairs of floating eyes, a second light appeared. It was not two pinpricks, but a wide, curving arc of phosphorescent white. It took Alex's oxygen-starved brain a moment to process the shape. It was a grin. A wide, impossibly broad, cartoonishly perfect grin, composed of what looked like rows of long, needle-like, glowing teeth.
Smilers.
The name from the graffiti in Level 1 slammed into his consciousness with the force of a physical blow. DON'T TRUST THE SMILERS. This was them. These were the native entities of this steamy, mechanical hell.
The sight of that grin broke something in Alex's paralysis. It was so alien, so fundamentally wrong, that it bypassed reasoned fear and tapped directly into a deeper, more visceral horror. The Hound was a twisted predator, but it was still vaguely animalistic. This was something else entirely. It was a living ideogram of malice, a creature that had evolved to perfect the act of a terrifying smile.
Another grin lit up in the darkness. And another. Soon, the wall of eyes was also a wall of teeth, a gallery of luminous, predatory cheerfulness. The silence was absolute. They didn't growl. They didn't hiss. They just watched. And they smiled.
Alex knew he couldn't stay here. Stillness had worked against the Hound because the Hound was blind and relied on sound. But these things could clearly see. They were watching him, waiting. For what? For him to make a move? For him to die of fright?
He had to retreat. Slowly, carefully, he began to back away, lifting his foot from its hovering position and placing it silently behind him on a pipe.
The moment he moved, the grins widened. It was a subtle, almost imperceptible change, but it was a definite reaction. A low, soft, chittering sound, like the clicking of a million tiny insects, filled the air. It was the first sound they had made, and it was a sound of rising excitement.
They were enjoying this.
Alex backed away faster, his silent, careful movements becoming more frantic. He misjudged a step. His boot slipped on a slick, condensation-covered pipe. He flailed with his good arm, his pipe-crutch swinging wildly to maintain his balance. The end of the pipe scraped loudly against another metal conduit.
SCREEEEE.
The sound was a shriek of tortured metal, catastrophically loud in the tense silence.
The reaction from the Smilers was instantaneous and terrifying. The chittering rose to a high-pitched, frenzied buzz. The floating eyes and grins began to move, surging forward out of the darkness. They were not walking or running. They were crawling, scuttling with an unnatural, arachnoid speed along the pipes on the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. Their forms were still just silhouettes against their own luminous features, but he could make out long, multi-jointed limbs moving with a horrifying, insect-like grace. They were spiders with human teeth. Crawlers.
Panic obliterated all thought. Alex turned and fled, his careful, silent shuffle exploding into a clumsy, hobbling run. He scrambled across the pipe-floor, the pain in his hip and shoulder a distant, unimportant signal. The high-pitched, chittering buzz was right behind him, a sound that promised a swift and terrible death.
He reached the relative safety of the catwalk and pushed himself into a lurching, painful sprint. He didn't look back. He didn't dare. He could feel their presence behind him, a wave of silent, smiling malice.
He rounded a corner, the catwalk stretching out before him. He needed to think. He couldn't outrun them. His broken body was a fatal liability. He needed a distraction. A diversion.
His eyes darted around, scanning his environment not as an obstacle course, but as a weapon. He saw a small, rusted valve wheel on a pipe beside the catwalk. An idea, born of pure, adrenalized desperation, sparked in his mind.
He fumbled in his jacket pocket, his fingers closing around a small, heavy object. He pulled out a nearly full bottle of precious Almond Water. Without a moment's hesitation, he hurled it with his good arm down the corridor, aiming for the wall far ahead.
The bottle flew through the air and smashed against a junction of pipes about a hundred feet away. The plastic shattered on impact, creating a loud, sharp CRACK that echoed through the tunnels.
The chittering behind him stopped.
He risked a glance over his shoulder. The Crawlers had frozen on the catwalk about fifty feet away. They were a writhing mass of spindly limbs and glowing features. Their heads, which he could now see were small and featureless save for their eyes and teeth, were all cocked in the direction of the sound. They were like a pack of hunting dogs, their attention instantly diverted by a new, more interesting stimulus.
A few of them detached from the group, skittering with impossible speed down the corridor towards the sound of the crashed bottle. The others hesitated, their luminous eyes flicking between the distant noise and Alex.
He had their attention, but not for long. He needed another sound. A different direction.
He reached into his other pocket. His fingers found the small, foil packets of Fire Salt. He pulled one out. He looked to his right, at a dark, intersecting tunnel. He threw the packet as hard as he could into the darkness.
It made almost no sound as it fell. For a heart-stopping second, he thought his plan had failed. Then he remembered. The Fire Salt was a chemical. He remembered the heat it produced on his tongue.
A bright, silent, orange flash erupted from the dark corridor, followed a split second later by a loud, percussive FOOMP! as the packet's contents reacted with the moisture in the air. The small, contained explosion was shockingly powerful, its concussion wave washing over Alex.
This new sound, louder and more violent than the first, had the desired effect. The remaining Crawlers all turned in unison towards the intersecting tunnel. The chittering started again, a frenzy of excitement, and the entire pack surged forward, crawling over one another in their haste to investigate the explosion. They poured into the dark corridor like a river of nightmares and vanished.
Alex didn't wait. He turned and hobbled away as fast as his broken body would allow, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the diversion. He didn't stop until his lungs were burning and the pain in his hip was a blinding, white-hot agony that forced him to a halt.
He collapsed against a wall, his body shaking uncontrollably. He had survived. He had faced a pack of smiling monsters and had survived. More than that, he had out-thought them. He had used his knowledge of his environment, his meager supplies, as a weapon. He hadn't just been lucky. He had been smart.
The realization was a potent antidote to the terror. He looked at his remaining supplies with new eyes. They weren't just for sustenance anymore. They were tools. The Almond Water bottles were throwable noisemakers. The Fire Salt packets were miniature flash-bangs.
He had learned a new lesson, one that built upon the foundation of silence. Silence keeps you hidden. But when you are found, noise, properly directed, keeps you alive. It was a dangerous, costly tactic, but it was another tool in his growing arsenal. He was learning to play the game. And in the dark, steam-filled corridors of Level 2, he had a sudden, terrifying thought: a small, ugly part of him was starting to enjoy it.