Chapter 5 Hopelessly hopefull

Prologue

The sheets are damp with sweat. The room is dark, save for the dull orange hue bleeding in through a slit in the curtain. Mathew lies still, chest rising and falling like the tide, clutching something tightly in his right hand-a small, weathered crucifix. His fingers twitch, and his eyes dart beneath closed lids.

Outside his mind, nothing moves. But inside, there is chaos.

Caves collapsing. Sinkholes yawning open. Screams. Faces he knows-James, Isabella, Peter, Drake, Andrew, Hermia-all spiraling through dreamscapes stitched together with fear and false hope.

And now, white.

An endless white room.

Episode 4

It's always been the same white room.

There are no clocks in the white room. No shadows either. No doors. No windows. Just an endless, spotless stretch of pale nothingness. It's like waking up inside a blank sheet of paper. And yet, here they are.

All of them.

No one speaks at first. The silence is thick, laced with lingering terror. They're all shaken-each of them bracing as if expecting the next twist of fate to drop at any moment.

Mathew's breathing is shallow. His eyes scan the white nothing like it's going to morph any second into a monster's mouth. James stands with arms crossed, eyes locked on the horizon, jaw tight.

Drake paces in frustrated silence. Andrew sits with his knees pulled close, head bowed. Peter and Isabella hold each other's gaze without saying a word. Hermia is the first to break the silence, whispering, "Is this... it?"

A pause. Then James mutters, "No clue. But I hate it already."

Minutes pass. Slowly, the tension begins to lift-not vanish, but loosen. Like lungs finally exhaling after being underwater for too long. The light doesn't change, but their bodies begin to relax despite the void. Stillness gives way to movement.

MATHEW & JAMES

James drops down beside Mathew, arms on his knees. "So... what's the game plan? Wait for God to drop a roadmap or keep spiraling in existential dread?"

Mathew chuckles dryly. "Neither. We try not to lose our minds."

"Cool. Already failing step one."

James squints around. "You ever dream of a place like this?"

Mathew nods slowly. "Once. Before any of this started. It looked just like this. I thought it meant the end."

James glances at him. "And now?"

"Now I think... maybe it's a second chance. Or limbo. Or maybe my brain just broke."

James cracks a smile. "Well, if your brain broke, at least it broke fashionably. White's a bold choice."

Mathew smirks. "Yeah. Goes with the insanity."

DRAKE & ANDREW

"You realize there's nothing here, right?" Drake says as he flips himself upside down into a handstand.

Thought maybe if I laid here long enough, the floor would turn into a mattress."

Drake flops beside him. "What if this is some sort of purgatory reality show? Like Big Brother but with eternal dread."

"Then we're the least entertaining cast ever."

"Speak for yourself," Drake says. "I'm bringing spice. Watch this." He stands and begins miming pulling open a fridge. "Welcome to the Drake Café. Today's menu: nothing with a side of nothing."

Andrew groans, but he's smiling now. "If you start charging us fake money, I'm staging a coup."

Drake grins. "Please do. I crave drama."

ISABELLA & PETER

Peter gently touches Isabella's arm. "How's your heart?"

"Still beating. Kind of wish it wasn't pounding so hard, though."

Peter leans back, folding his hands behind his head. "You've survived caves, nightmares, and God knows what else. A little white light shouldn't scare you."

"I'm not scared of the light," she says. "I'm scared of it never changing."

Peter turns toward her. "Well, at least I'm stuck here with you."

She raises a brow. "You flirting again?"

"Only if it's working."

"It might be."

They exchange a soft smile.

"I still remember that moment back in the cave," Peter says. "When we thought we were done for. You grabbed my hand."

Isabella nods. "You squeezed back. Like you knew it wouldn't be the end."

"Maybe it wasn't. Maybe this is the in-between."

"And maybe," she says, inching a bit closer, "being stuck in a void with you isn't the worst fate."

Peter bumps his shoulder into hers playfully. "Careful. That almost sounded like a confession."

She laughs. "You'll know when it is."

GROUP HUDDLE

Later, everyone reconvenes at what they unofficially dub 'the center'-though there's no way to tell where that truly is.

Mathew speaks up. "Alright. Ground rules. No freaking out, no pacing holes into the floor, and if anyone sees a door appear, you scream before walking through it."

"Wait," Drake says, "what if it's a bathroom door?"

"Still scream," James adds. "For science."

Isabella chuckles. "We're losing it already."

"Let's embrace it," Andrew says. "We're in a blank reality. We could reinvent civilization. I vote we assign roles."

"I call artist," Drake says, miming a brush in the air.

"James is our jester," Isabella suggests.

James bows. "I accept this honor with the utmost arrogance."

"What about Mathew?" Peter asks.

Everyone looks at him.

Mathew shrugs. "Narrator?"

"Fitting," Hermia says. "Since this all started in your head, right?"

Silence falls for a beat. Mathew doesn't deny it.

"But we're all real," Isabella says firmly. "Aren't we?"

He nods slowly. "Yeah. I think so. Or... I hope so."

As the tension fades, the atmosphere lightens. They laugh. They joke. For the first time in what feels like forever, no one's running, screaming, or hallucinating.

Maybe the entity is gone. Maybe not. But for now, they have each other.

And in the vast, echoing white, their voices sound louder than fear.

They lose count after what feels like five days.

Drake insists it's been six. Andrew says four. Mathew silently knows it's longer-much longer. Hunger hasn't clawed at them, but thirst has. Their lips are dry. Conversations are slower. Jokes land with less laughter. Their mouths crack with every syllable.

James once tried licking the floor. It didn't help.

Peter has taken to lying with his back against Isabella's, conserving energy, their fingers intertwined like ivy clinging for comfort.

"Wouldn't say no to a hallucination of orange juice," James mutters.

"We need water," Mathew says one morning-if it's even morning. "Something. Anything."

"And how do you suppose we summon water, Moses?" Drake snaps.

Mathew's head drops into his hands. "I don't know. But if this is my dream, maybe... I can force it."

Drake opens his mouth to mock him but stops. The desperation in Mathew's voice sounds too real.

[Surface – Weeks Later]

Flashes of red and blue, people walking back and forth, a timelape. Three weeks and they were empty handed, the best detectives on the case and yet its like this particular mystery is more fairy tale than reality.

You see, the human mind is clutered with logic, the ability to set ties where they were just ropes is what makes a detective, but this? This isn't a normal case, this is one of the supernatural.

It's what looks like 10pm. She rolls out of bed, ears ringing, she gets up too fast and the blood rushing down puts her in a slight daze.

The room is small, papers scattered everywhere

around the desk not short of half a meter from the bed. She's almost nucternal. Sleeps during the day and only operates her most mind bending case's at night. This night as well as many other night's, sophys been working non stop on a case, but no leads make any sense.

"What the actuall fuck is this case?" She mumbles to herself half asleep her hand placed on her cheek as she alternates back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness

"One more time" she takes a deep breath and removes her hand from her cheek and her eyes lock on her paper

"A guy, mathew takes these kids to a camping trip there's no one but him there, all of a sudden they all dissapear with no trace, I mean obviously he's the number one suspect, but finding him is proving insanely difficult" she says as she looks up at the clue board in front of her. A bit old school but it works nonetheless

"Hmm let's see" she looks up at the board again.

"multiple Footsteps leading to this field, rope scattered at one exact spot, I see 4 small and 2 big footprints so obviously he took 2 kids and forced the others to stay, then just gone. No dna, no more samples no nothing"

She scoffs to herself and grids her teeth for a split second in annoyance.

"OK I went to radar scans, airlift was the only logical conclusion, but there where no scans of any aircraft at these times" this to her is starting to look cold but she can't give up on this case. Not yet. She has to go there again for the third time. Maybe, just maybe, she may find something she hasn't seen yet. She calls in at 11pm and is there at 12.

"Detective, welcome, most of the forensics are off duty now but there are many who aren't should I call in?" A police man at the exact camping spot says to her while they

"No need" she responds

"I don't think there's any more detail you can get we haven't already gotten"

"If that was the case you wouldn't be here now would you" the officer says as he simultaneously smirks.

"Hm I stand corrected" she replies

"So why are you here?"

"To do just that"

Several minutes later her flashlight lands on the same camps, firewood and even keg that mathew used to pour the kids orange juice. Everything has barely been moved or touched, after all it's believed to be a crime scene.

Walking and walking, she almost gives up until she gets to where the sinkhole was before it closed up and she finnally, after soo many weeks, finnally she notices something. Theres a canopy around the area the footsteps stopped to protect it from the rain, and she slows down, and stands up, exactly at the center of the sink hole, not realising it, the officer, still behind her wondering what the heck she's doing, but then she yells "EUREKA!!!" Not exactly the right saying for a detective who struck a breakthrough, but it works just as well

"What happened? Are you ok?" The officer says

"Look at the footsteps around this canopy

There's one over there and here, the other detectives probably didn't make sense of it because the rain probably washed some away, but by inference in the way they look and the little that isn't faded it looks like most of them where standing in a circle looking down at something" she says while holding her chin

"Looking at what?" A confused expression on his face as he asks

"Something, I don't know what it is but I'll find out"

And just like clockwork a couple days later the sinkhole reappears and it aligns perfectly with the footprints proving her theory right and the other detectives use it as a forefront in thier investigation now.

The site is roped off. The sinkhole is still there, surrounded by caution tape and uncertainty.

A woman-Mathew's mom-sits in the passenger seat of a parked car, staring at the edge. She hasn't cried in days. She's past tears.

Beside her, Mathew's dad clutches a photo. It's old. A family picnic.

Inside the crater, forensics still come up with nothing. Drones have scanned every crevice, seismic readers have recorded silence, and ground-penetrating radar showed... anomalies.

Patterns. Moving shapes. Then nothing.

"They've got to be down there," Isabella's mom says, clutching her scarf. "They have to."

But no one answers. Not the officers. Not the scientists.

And certainly not the white room.

[Back in the Void]

The thirst grows. Andrew's lips are cracked so bad they bleed. Drake offers him his shirt to bite on.

"Remember soda?" Peter murmurs. "I'd drink anything with fizz right now. Even warm root beer."

James is pacing again, muttering theories. "Maybe the entity is testing us. Maybe thirst is the new fear."

Isabella leans her head on Peter's shoulder. "I want to go home."

"We will," he whispers. "Even if I have to walk out through Mathew's subconscious."

Mathew stares out at the white void. He clutches the crucifix tighter. He closes his eyes.

Let them go. Please. Let them go.

When he opens them again, a single droplet of water hangs in the air.

Just one.

But it's real.

And suddenly, the white doesn't seem so empty.

[To be continued...]