Dead By Daylight [Dead By Daylight]

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

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"At some point, the excitement of hooking one of us becomes more important than the desire to kill us."

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"Shouldn't we help the other woman?" Meg asked softly as she stalked through the forest with Laurie. The woman glanced over her shoulder, looking off into the distance.

"Ash already got her," she assured, stopping as they both came upon a generator. "Hopefully one of them finds a med kit and gets her patched up."

Meg looked around, tense as she strained to listen for the heartbeat. It was one of the few ways they knew a killer was coming, Laurie explained; the louder the heartbeat, the closer they were. She had learned from other survivors, however, that this was not always the case. A phantom cloaked himself in invisibility, silent and yet somehow unable to hurt them without first revealing himself. She was certain there were others like him, or perhaps those with a smaller radius that could not be touched, however the elder had yet to encounter such a killer.

"These generators . . . they power an exit gate?" Meg asked hopefully, keeping herself as quiet as possible.

"Five in total," Laurie murmured back, "and from what I've been able to tell, there's always ever only four of us - and one killer. Careful," she grabbed the girl's wrist as she attempted to cross some wires, green eyes giving her an intense stare, "if you mess something up and it explodes, it'll bring him here. Whatever he is."

"He has bear traps," Meg glanced around, trying to still the uncontrollable shaking of her hands. "I encountered one when I first woke up. I disabled it, but he could easily reset it . . ."

"Then watch where you step," Laurie muttered, sparks flying from her hands, yet she kept going. She too was looking around, the both of them tensing as a soft beat began to pulse against their ears. Laurie kept working, trying to not rush as she shifted her weight. The repairs were taking much longer than Meg would have liked, Laurie quietly murmuring instructions to her as the beat steadily grew louder.

"We should go," Meg whimpered, but Laurie shook her head.

"Wait," she hissed, looking up and around. Meg looked too, flinching as she saw a man dart through the woods. "He's on Ash. Come on, keep going. If he starts coming this way, I'll tell you to run. Remember what I told you about the pallets, windows, and lockers."

"Pallets will slow him down," Meg nodded, chewing her lip as the heartbeat kept its steady rhythm. "Pray he doesn't vault over the window to get to me."

And don't hide in a locker unless you know he won't find you.

Three hooks, and you're out.

That was the ritual, Laurie had explained. The killer hunted the survivors, most taking two hits to down them. It did not make much sense, the older woman admitted, but she suspected it was because the supernatural Entity overseeing every ritual required it to be this way in order to effectively harvest the soul. And, perhaps, it was just an easy way to gain entertainment out of the whole ordeal. Regardless, the first hit would incapacitate them, and a second would take them down. The killer would brutally hook them, and they had two minutes to be unhooked before they were sacrificed to the Entity. They found that if they were unhooked within the first sixty seconds, then the second time they were hooked they had yet another sixty to be rescued before the ritual was complete. But the third time, and they were dead. If they were not rescued after the first minute . . .