KEEP WRITING

The first thing James noticed wasn't the silence—it was his own heartbeat.

*Thump. Thump. Thump.*

Each beat echoed in his skull, a metronome counting down to... what? His eyes adjusted to the dim light, taking in grey walls that seemed to absorb shadows rather than cast them. The air felt wrong—stale, yet somehow charged with potential, like the moment before lightning strikes.

A wooden table occupied the center of the room. Upon it sat three items: an ink bottle, a quill, and a sheet of pristine parchment. Nothing else. No doors. No windows. No explanation for how he had arrived here.

James ran his fingers through his hair, a habit from his days debugging code at the tech startup. *Think rationally. Analyze the variables. Find the pattern.* But his training as a software engineer offered little comfort in this windowless box.

The scratch in his throat reminded him he was thirsty. How long had he been here? He checked his watch—8:47. But was it morning or evening? And was it even the same day he remembered leaving work?

Movement caught his eye. A section of wall slid open silently, revealing an identical room beyond. The similarity was unsettling, but what made his breath catch was the crumpled form in the corner. A body, skin waxy and pale, one hand stretched toward a dried inkwell as if reaching for salvation.

James approached cautiously, his mind racing through possibilities. *Murder? Experiment? Simulation?* A piece of parchment lay near the corpse's outstretched fingers. Despite the tremor in his hand, he picked it up.

The handwriting was frantic, words cramped together:

*Keep writing. It won't attack while you're writing. Please, if you find this, don't make my mistake. Don't try to outsmart it. Just write. -A.J.*

The initials nagged at him. Something about them felt significant, but his thoughts scattered as a presence filled the room. Not a sound, not a sight—but a weight, as if the air itself had gained mass and intention.

His heart rate spiked. The rational part of his brain tried to dismiss it as paranoia, but every instinct screamed danger. He grabbed the quill from the table, nearly knocking over the ink in his haste.

*My name is James Cooper,* he wrote, hand shaking. *I'm trapped in what appears to be a maze. Current location: windowless room, approximately 15x15 feet. One corpse present. Time is 8:47.*

The presence receded slightly. James continued writing, his software engineer's mind automatically structuring the information:

*Variables identified:

1. Writing appears to prevent attacks

2. Ink supply limited

3. Multiple rooms connected

4. Previous victim(s) present

5. Unknown hostile entity*

A soft scraping sound, like metal on stone, came from behind him. James's hand tightened on the quill, but he forced himself to keep writing:

*Hypothesis: Entity's behavior governed by specific rules. Possible neural network pattern? Need more data.*

The ink was running low. James watched the last drops spread across the parchment, his mind racing. The dead person's note suggested the entity wouldn't attack while he wrote—but what happened when he couldn't write anymore?

*Ink nearly depleted. Next steps:

1. Verify if movement possible between ink depletion and attack

2. Search for additional supplies

3. Document everything

4. Find pattern in—*

The quill ran dry.

In the silence that followed, James heard it clearly: *scrape... scrape... scrape...*

He bolted through the opening to the next room, his perfectly ordered list forgotten. As he ran, a new thought surfaced, one that made his blood run cold: What if he wasn't the only variable being tested?

What if he was just another node in a vast, deadly network, learning through trial and error—through life and death—what outputs would keep him alive?

Behind him, something followed, its movements precise and deliberate. Like an algorithm, optimizing its path to termination.

*Temperature: Dropping

Time since last water: Unknown

Status: Mind clear, body trembling*

James huddled over the writing desk, his breath visible in the cold air. The stone walls seemed to leech warmth from his body with each passing moment. Even the ink felt sluggish, resistant to his increasingly stiff fingers.

*Basic needs assessment:* he wrote, trying to organize his thoughts. *Rule of threes. Three minutes without air. Three hours without shelter. Three days without water. Three weeks without food.*

He paused, letting out a shaky breath. The cold was the immediate threat—far more pressing than thirst or hunger. His thin dress shirt offered little protection against the chill that seemed to emanate from the very stones.

A bundle of papers caught his eye, tucked beneath the desk. His hands shook as he retrieved them, but not just from the cold. The last cache of notes he'd found had been spattered with something dark and crusted.

The first page was written in neat, cramped handwriting:

*Day 2 (?)

Follow the warmth. I thought it was random at first, but there's a pattern. The killer herds us through the cold passages. Those who succumb to the chill move slower, think slower. Easier prey.

But the warm paths... they lead somewhere. I'm certain of it.

—M. Rodriguez*

The next note was barely legible, the letters jagged and desperate:

*LIAR! Rodriguez's "warm path" led to a dead end. Found what was left of him. Don't trust their notes. Everyone thinks they've found the pattern. Everyone dies.

—K.S.*

James's pen moved across his own paper:

*Conflicting data re: temperature patterns. Need more information before—*

He stopped. Something about the ink's flow had changed. Looking closer, he noticed frost crystals forming at the edge of the inkwell. The temperature was dropping faster now.

A new note lay partially hidden under the others, its edges torn:

*Cold comes before it does. Write faster when the chill sets in. But don't run yet. That's what it wants. The maze remembers our panic, feeds on it. Each terrified flight becomes another dead end for the next victim.

Temperature acts as a warning system? Or part of the testing parameters? Further observation nee—*

The note ended in a violent stroke across the page.

James added his own observations:

*Working hypotheses:

1. Temperature variation = navigational signal

2. Cold increases before killer appears

3. Previous victims' notes unreliable/contradictory

4. Possible deliberate misinformation?*

His fingers were growing numb. The ink moved like molasses now, each word requiring more effort. In the corner of his eye, frost patterns were spreading across the stone floor, beautiful and terrifying.

Another note, this one written on what looked like a piece of torn clothing:

*Don't overthink it. Your body knows. Animal instinct tells us warm = safe, cold = danger. The maze works on deeper patterns than logic. Trust your—*

The rest was missing, stained dark with what James desperately hoped was ink.

His own writing was becoming erratic as the cold seeped into his bones:

*Core temperature dropping. Estimated time to cognitive impairment: 30-40 minutes if temperature continues to fall. Need to move soon. But where?*

The last note in the pile was different. Written on proper paper, but in tiny, precise letters that covered both sides:

*Iteration 147:

The temperature gradients form a pattern that repeats every seven rooms. But the pattern itself changes based on our choices. Each wrong turn adds a new cold spot to the maze's memory. Each death leaves its mark in frost.

We're not just mapping the maze. We're training it.

Dr. Elena Volkov

Theoretical Physics Department*

James stared at the signature. Something about it nagged at him, but the cold made it hard to think. He forced his stiff fingers to write:

*Volkov's theory: Maze = learning system

Physical configuration adapts based on:

- Temperature variations

- Movement patterns

- Survival rates?*

The inkwell was freezing over. Soon he would need to move, but the thought of leaving this room—with its cache of valuable, if contradictory, information—made his stomach clench.

He wrote one final observation, his letters shaky from the cold:

*The killer may not be the real threat. The maze itself—*

The ink crackled as it froze solid.

And somewhere in the darkness, metal scraped against ice.

[Would you like me to proceed with the second part focusing on James's desperate escape through the corpse-filled passages?]

The frozen inkwell slipped through James's numb fingers, shattering against the stone floor.

For one terrible moment, all he could do was stare at the black ice spreading across the ground. The sound of the breaking glass seemed to echo forever, a dinner bell rung for something hungry.

*Scrape.*

The killer's approach was different now. Not the usual measured pace, but quick, excited. Like a predator sensing weakness.

*Move. Need to move.* But which way? The maze had changed again—where there had been one exit before, now three identical openings gaped in the walls. Cold air poured from the leftmost passage, while the right one...was that warmth he felt?

Rodriguez's note flashed in his mind: *Follow the warmth.* But then he remembered the other note: *Found what was left of him.*

The middle passage, then. Neutral. Safe?

The scraping grew louder. No more time for analysis.

James lunged for the middle passage—and his foot slipped on the spreading ink-ice. He crashed hard against the threshold, pain shooting through his shoulder. The narrow corridor ahead seemed to pulse with darkness, barely wide enough for him to squeeze through.

He forced himself forward, trying not to think about how the walls pressed in on both sides. His shoes squelched on something wet. In the dim light, he could see dark stains marking the path ahead.

Not all of them were old.

The passage twisted sharply left, then right. James's chest tightened—was the space getting narrower? His fingers brushed something soft as he braced against the wall. In the darkness, he could just make out a hand protruding from the stone, fingers curled as if still trying to claw their way free.

*Scrape. Scrape. SCRAPE.*

The killer was gaining. The sound bounced off the close walls, making it impossible to tell how far behind it was. James pushed forward faster, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The cold air burned his lungs.

He stumbled over something soft and yielding. A body, slumped awkwardly in the narrow space. No way around it. He would have to climb over.

The corpse's head lolled back as he tried to step past, revealing a face frozen in an expression of analytical interest—even in death, they had been trying to understand the pattern. A lanyard around their neck caught his eye: *Dr. Elena Volkov, Neural Architecture Research.*

James's blood ran cold. He had read her notes...dated three months ago. But this body couldn't be more than a few days old.

No time to process the impossibility. The killer's scraping was almost on top of him now. James scrambled forward, barely registering the other bodies he had to clamber over. Each one clutched papers, pens, frozen inkwells—fellow researchers who had tried to understand rather than survive.

The passage ended abruptly in another room. James practically fell inside, his legs shaking from cold and exertion. A fresh inkwell and pen waited on the usual table.

But something was wrong. The shadows in this room moved strangely, flowing like black water. And there, on the wall, written in what looked horribly fresh:

*The maze remembers. But memory isn't just about learning.*

*It's about HUNGER.*

The scraping stopped.

James reached for the inkwell with trembling fingers. He had to write, had to think, had to understand—

But as he lifted the pen, he noticed something that made his heart skip a beat. The liquid in the well wasn't black.

It was red.

And it was still warm.