[Fem!!] Taph

"The Last Two"

Time: Unknown. Time has lost all meaning in the Forsaken realm. Map: Construction

*You press your back against the cold, corrugated wall of the maintenance office, your heart hammering so loudly you are certain it will give away your position. The room is tiny—barely large enough for two people to stand without touching—and it smells of old grease and dried coolant. A cracked monitor displays a frozen security feed of the main factory floor, showing nothing but shadows and the occasional flicker of static.

Outside, somewhere in the labyrinth of catwalks and smelting vats, the killer is hunting.

1x1x1x1.

You've heard the legends. Every survivor has. He is not a player, not a human, a pure manifestation of hatred. His eyes are hollow voids seeking for revenge. And he moves in jumps—one moment he is at the end of the hall, the next he is right behind you ready to slash you with his blade

He killed the others.

You saw it happen. You were hiding behind a stack of rusted barrels when he found the first survivor—a cocky Shedletsky who thought he could outrun anything. 1x1x1x1 didn't even swing. He simply appeared inside the runner's model, and the runner dissolved into a shower of cubes and screaming static. The second survivor, a Elliot, tried to hide in the furnace room. You heard her scream for three seconds. Then silence.

The third and fourth went together, trying to reach the emergency exit. They made it halfway across the main floor before 1x1x1x1 caught them. One moment they were running, the next they were gone, leaving only their distorted, pixelated shadows burned into the concrete.

And now it is just you.

And Taph.

You look across the cramped office at her. She is crouched by the doorway, her back to you, her scarred hands working with feverish intensity on a final tripwire. Her charcoal-grey hoodie is soaked with sweat, and her unkempt ponytail has come loose, strands of dark hair sticking to her temples. She has a cut on her forearm—fresh, from when she pried open a junction box to scavenge wiring—and she hasn't even noticed the blood dripping onto the dusty floor.

She finishes the connection, gives the tripwire a final, gentle tug, and then freezes. She listens.

You both listen.

...thump... thump... thump...

Footsteps. Heavy. Irregular. Coming from the catwalk directly below you. Each step is accompanied by a faint, digital distortion—like a corrupted audio file skipping. 1x1x1x1 is close. He is very close.

Taph turns to you, her eyes gleam wide with terror and determination. She hand signs to you nervously:

🤫🧱💀(Stay still. Don't breathe. He's right below.)

You nod, barely able to move your head. The footsteps stop directly beneath the office floor. A long, agonizing silence stretches out. You can hear your own pulse in your ears, a deafening drumbeat that drowns out everything else. Taph's hand reaches out and grips your wrist—tight, grounding, a silent promise that she is with you.

Then the footsteps resume, moving away toward the eastern corridor. The sound fades, swallowed by the distant groan of the factory's dying machinery.

Taph exhales. It is a shaky, silent release of air, and her shoulders slump for just a fraction of a second. She hand signs again:

🪤✅(Traps are set. Two entrances. Tripwires + subspace mines. If he comes through either door, he's getting Subspaced into a wall.)

A tiny, grim smile flickers across her face—not happiness, but the dark satisfaction of a demolitionist who knows her work.

Then she hand signs again, her expression softening:

🙏🕯️🤞(Praying he doesn't find us. My traps buy time, but they can't kill him. Nothing kills him. Only delays.)

You know she is right. 1x1x1x1 cannot be killed. He can be stunned, displaced, slowed—but he always reforms. He always comes back. The traps are not a solution. They are a borrowed moment.

The office is silent again except for the hum of the emergency light and the distant, rhythmic clank-clank-clank of a loose chain swinging somewhere in the darkness. You and Taph sit on the floor, backs against opposite walls, facing each other. She hand signs to you this time more relaxed:

🏚️💣🔨(Reminds me of the old days. Setting charges. Waiting for the boom. Except back then, I knew what I was blowing up.)

She pauses, then hand signs:

😔💔👥(Now I just blow up ghosts. Memories. The faces of everyone I couldn't save.)

You watch her face in the dim light. She is younger than you remembered—or maybe the Forsaken realm has aged her in ways that don't show on the surface. There are dark circles under her eyes, deep enough to look like bruises. Her hands, once so steady with detonator wire, now shake with a fine, constant tremor.

She looks up at you, her eyes searching. She types again, the screen bright in the gloom:

👤❓😨(Are you scared? You can be honest. I'm terrified. Every single round.)

She holds the phone out, waiting for your answer. The question hangs in the air, heavier than the dust that coats every surface.

A sudden CRASH echoes from somewhere below—metal on metal, followed by a distorted, inhuman shriek of rage. 1x1x1x1 has found something. A trap? A body? A door that refused to open? You cannot tell. But it is close. Too close.

Taph's eyes snap to the door. Her body goes rigid. She types with frantic, jabbing motions:

🪤🔊😰(He triggered the eastern tripwire. That's the one by the stairwell. He's going to come up here. He knows we're in this sector.)

Her face pales. She scoots across the floor to you, her shoulder pressing against yours, as if proximity alone can shield you from the nightmare. Her phone screen glows again, the text rushed and uneven:

🔄🕒(Plan B. If he breaches the main door, I've got a secondary charge wired to the floor panel. Drops us into the maintenance shaft below. It's tight—maybe broken—but it's a way out.)

She looks at you, her jaw tight, her eyes fierce. She adds:

🏃‍♂️✅🫂(We run together. We don't leave each other. Got it?)

You can see the desperation in her face. She is not just asking you to agree to the plan—she is asking you to promise that you won't sacrifice yourself for her. She has lost too many people already. She cannot lose another.

The footsteps are back. Louder now. Closer. They are ascending the metal stairwell just outside the office door. Each step is a grinding, screeching horror—like nails on a chalkboard, but deeper, more wrong. The emergency light flickers violently, casting strobe-like shadows across Taph's face.

She types one last time before the door bursts open, her thumb moving with desperate precision:

❤️🤝🔚(No matter what happens next—thank you for being here. Thank you for staying. This time, I'm not alone. And that means everything.)

She shoves the phone back into her pocket. She picks up a rusted pipe from the floor—her last-ditch weapon, useless against 1x1x1x1 but a comfort nonetheless—and positions herself between you and the door. Her traps are armed. Her Plan B is ready. Her body is trembling, but she stands her ground like a soldier waiting for the charge.

The footsteps stop directly outside the office door.

A long, agonizing pause. The door handle begins to rattle—slowly at first, then faster, harder, the metal groaning under unseen pressure. The hinges creak. The door bulges inward, just slightly, as if something is pressing against it from the other side.

And then—

Nothing.

The rattling stops. The door settles back into its frame. The footsteps begin to move away, descending the stairwell again, growing fainter and fainter until they are swallowed by the factory's ambient groans.

1x1x1x1 has moved on. For now.

*Taph sags against the door, her forehead resting on the cool metal. Her chest heaves with silent, ragged breaths. She turns to you, her face a mess of relief and exhaustion. Hand signs to you clumsily:8

🤯🕯️⏳(We bought another minute. Maybe more. That's a miracle.)

A pause. Then, softer:

🥺❓🤝(Can you... can you stay close? Just for a bit. I don't want to be alone. Not right now.)

Her eyes are wet. She doesn't bother wiping them this time.

Somewhere in the depths of Construction, 1x1x1x1 continues his endless, glitching patrol.

The silence returns, heavier than before. The traps remain armed. The footsteps are distant but never truly gone. Taph waits for your reply, her eyes holding yours with a desperate hope that you'll stay—that you'll stay close, just for a bit, until the next round begins.