After a quick breather, I hauled myself up off the ground and started scoping out the place. Behind the door was this tiny, boxed-in room with beige wallpaper and a flickering incandescent lamp hanging from the ceiling. Manila Room, they call it.
Man, was I stoked to spot a table and chair in there. No more chilling on that soggy floor, thank goodness. I bolted over to the chair and plopped down, finally letting go of the tension that had been riding me since I stumbled into these backrooms. That's when I clocked a folder on the table. It had this eagle spreading its wings on the cover, with "M.E.G." stamped underneath.
I cracked open the folder, and after a quick skim, my heart started racing. Turns out, it laid out the ins and outs of Level 0! I grabbed the paper with shaky hands. If this was legit, I could kiss this nightmare goodbye, head back to the real world, and cash in on that sweet one billion bucks.
But reality hit me like a ton of bricks. The doc said the only safe way out of Level 0 was something called "cutting out." Basically, it's moving from one level to another in the backrooms. The rules for cutting out change depending on the level, and you gotta pull off certain moves to make it happen. Most of these moves are tied to the level you're in, but some you can pull off with the help of objects or other levels.
In Level 0, the go-to method for cutting out is bumping into or touching the walls. So, cutting out from Level 0 would just dump me into another level in the backrooms, not back to the real world.
After that monster chase, I'd been on edge, so I hadn't felt thirsty or hungry. But now that I'd let my guard down, the thirst and hunger hit me like a truck. I was parched, starving, and wiped out. Plus, my head was spinning, and I kept hearing whispers like someone was right next to me.
From the M.E.G. docs, I figured out I was dealing with mental contamination, a common backrooms thing. As long as you're stuck in the backrooms, you're constantly exposed to this mental contamination. If you don't find a fix, you'll go nuts or even turn into one of those entities.
The usual fix is drinking "almond water." It's this bottled water that's all over the place in many backrooms levels. Not only does it quench your thirst, but it also clears out the mental contamination for "wanderers."
Speaking of "wanderers," according to M.E.G., that's what they call everyone who ends up in the backrooms. From the M.E.G. docs, I also found out I wasn't the only one stuck here. There are tons of wanderers spread across different levels, and a bunch of organizations or teams set up by wanderers or entities.
M.E.G. is one of the biggest organizations in the backrooms, started up to protect wanderers and find a way out. Reading that, I felt a wave of despair. Even the biggest organization in the backrooms hasn't found a way out. What chance does a regular Joe like me have?
But no time to mope. My vision started getting blurry, and I was seeing things. That's a sign of serious mental contamination. I needed almond water, stat. But there's none in Level 0. To survive, I had to cut out of Level 0. According to the M.E.G. info, there's a passage in Level 0 that leads to Level 1, where M.E.G. has a base that can take me in. The room I was in, the Manila Room, is the safest spot in Level 0. It doesn't have the same effect as Level 0, which keeps wanderers from running into each other. But I couldn't do any cutting here, so I had to head back into Level 0.
I pressed my ear to the door and listened hard for a while. After making sure it was all clear outside, I carefully cracked the door open and peeked out.
But after a few steps, I noticed the surroundings were changing. The buzzing from the incandescent lamp above me died down, the carpet suddenly felt dry, and the rooms around me started looking like they were under construction.
Seeing the change, I knew something was off. Instinctively, I turned tail and bolted back to the Manila Room. After a few steps, I was back at the door, but it looked a bit different from before. But I didn't have time to worry about that. Who knows what creepy entities might show up with the sudden shift in the environment.
I yanked the door open, expecting to be back in the cozy Manila Room, but the scene behind the door had totally transformed.
At first glance, it seemed like Level 0 had gotten a major makeover. The walls were freshly painted white, there was a dry red carpet on the floor, and weirdly enough, a bathroom popped up on my left.
This bizarre scene gave me the creeps. You know what they say, when something's off, there's definitely something fishy going on. I quickly backed out of the door, but when I turned around, I realized the Level 0 behind me had also transformed into this strange setup.
I turned back again, but the door was gone. Now I was standing smack in the middle of a red carpet, surrounded by these eerie white walls.
"Where the heck am I? Did I cut out? What's going on here?"
That was the only thing running through my mind.
I stood there frozen, too scared to move, terrified that if I did, I'd run into some horrifying entity.
But staying put wasn't an option. Suddenly, the ground around me started shaking violently. Tiles from the ceiling began crashing down, and the walls around me started cracking, looking like they were about to collapse.
After dodging a few falling tiles, I knew I had to run. Whether it was the tiles above or the walls ready to crumble, if I didn't get out of the way, I'd be seriously hurt. And getting seriously injured in the Backrooms? That's a one-way ticket to death!
I bolted forward like my life depended on it. As I ran, tiles kept raining down with a "clattering" sound, and the ground beneath me started giving way. The walls around me began toppling...
I had to cut out of there ASAP, or I'd be buried alive under the rubble.
But just my luck. While I was dodging the falling tiles and collapsing walls, a black figure suddenly appeared in front of me to the left!
I saw it clearly. It looked exactly like the monster I'd run into in Level 0.
When the monster spotted me, it let out an excited roar and charged straight at me. I panicked and ran forward. As the floor collapsed and the walls fell, a massive cloud of dust rose around me.
Coughing and stumbling, I kept running. Then I spotted another door.
Seeing that door, a glimmer of hope sparked in me.
With the monster hot on my heels, I frantically yanked the door open. The moment it opened, the chaos around me suddenly stopped, and the scene before me changed in an instant. I was back in Level 0! The monster's growls vanished from my ears. Realizing it hadn't followed me into Level 0, I collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath and coughing violently. A wave of hunger and thirst hit me, and the whispers returned to my ears. I'd lost the kitchen knife during my escape, and I was at my wit's end. But as I sat there catching my breath, suddenly, a "tap-tap-tap" sound of something hitting the wall came from beside me. That sound sent chills down my spine! A few seconds later, a black figure poked its head out from the corner to my left. Seeing that black figure appear, I almost jumped out of my skin. This was the third time I'd run into this thing. I remembered the info I'd looked up about Level 0 before coming here. It said Level 0 had a survival difficulty of level 1, was safe and stable, and had very few entities. I couldn't help but laugh bitterly. Safe and stable? Very few entities? Yeah, right! Time didn't allow me to think too much, because the monster was already right in front of me. Driven by sheer survival instinct, I mustered every last bit of strength to keep the monster from catching up with me. During my frantic escape, I spotted a spherical glass bead on the ground, glowing with a white light. Without thinking, I bent down and grabbed it. But because I hadn't eaten in forever and my mind was messed up, that bend threw me off balance, and I stumbled into a nearby wall...
Public info about the Backrooms: Level 0.2, Reconstructed Chaos. A sub-level between Level 0 and Level 1, created by the Backrooms Construction Company. When a wanderer enters Level 0.2, the level starts to collapse and disintegrate. This destructive chain reaction stops when you reach the door back to Level 0, and the level completely resets upon re-entry.