The door groaned as Lucent open it, the rusted hinges protesting like a dying animal. The tunnel beyond stretched into darkness, the air thick with the scent of damp concrete and foul— of something old and rotting.
Kai took a step forward, the keycard clenched tight in his fist.
"Wait."
Karen's voice was rough, but clear. She had pushed herself upright, her back against the wall, her face pale under the sickly glow of the bioluminescent fungus clinging to the ceiling. One hand pressed against the ruin of her other hand, to keep herself from swaying.
"Take me with you."
Kai hesitated, glancing back at Lucent. The older man didn't even turn around.
"No."
Karen's jaw tightened. "I can still move."
Lucent finally looked at her, his expression unreadable. "You can barely stand."
She bared her teeth in something that wasn't quite a smile. "I don't need to stand to shoot."
Kai shifted uncomfortably. "She knows the lab. The codes. It could help."
Lucent's gaze didn't waver. "She's dead weight."
The words hung in the air, brutal and final.
Karen didn't flinch. "You leave me here, I am dead."
For a moment, no one spoke. The only sound was the distant drip of water through the tunnels, the occasional creak of stressed metal.
Then Lucent turned away. "Your choice."
Kai stared at him, then back at Karen. Her eyes were sharp, her breathing steady despite the pain. She wasn't begging. She was stating a fact.
He exhaled sharply and moved to her side, slinging her good arm over his shoulders. She was heavier than he expected, her body all wiry muscle and tension, but she didn't complain as he hauled her upright.
Lucent didn't look back.
The tunnels waited.
And the abomination wasn't the only thing hunting in the dark.
The tunnels stretched before them like the hollow veins of some long-dead beast, the walls weeping condensation that glistened in the sickly glow of Kai's Conduit. The air hung thick with the scent of rust and damp concrete, undercut by something fouler, the acrid tang of burnt wiring and spoiled meat that lingered in the back of the throat.
Karen's footsteps were uneven beside Kai, her weight shifting awkwardly with each step. The ruined socket where her augmented arm had been torn away oozed dark fluid that stained the makeshift bandage beneath her jacket. Every movement pulled at the wound, but she kept her jaw clenched tight, her breathing measured. Only the occasional hitch in her step betrayed the pain.
Then her stomach growled, a deep, visceral sound that seemed absurdly loud in the unnatural quiet.
Kai felt the vibration where her arm rested across his shoulders. Karen stiffened immediately, her head snapping up as if expecting the noise to summon something from the dark. When nothing came, she exhaled sharply through her nose.
"Three days," she muttered, more to herself than to them. "Living on stim tabs and whatever the fuck was growing in the water filters."
Lucent didn't turn. His silhouette moved ahead of them like a shadow given form, his boots making no sound on the grated flooring. The knife in his hand caught the dim light, the edge notched from recent use.
Kai hesitated, then reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. The protein bar he pulled out was wrapped in crinkled foil, the corners mashed from being carried too long. He held it out wordlessly.
Karen stared at it for a beat too long, her eyes narrowing slightly, as if trying to decipher some hidden meaning in the offering. Then she snatched it from his grip with a grunt, tearing the wrapper open with her teeth.
"Fancy," she said around a mouthful of the chalky, nutrient-dense paste. "You always carry around Spire-grade rations, pretty boy?"
Kai opened his mouth to respond, but Lucent cut in without breaking stride.
"Eat fast. We're not stopping."
Karen swallowed thickly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The protein bar was gone in three bites, but the way her fingers lingered on the empty wrapper said more than words could.
Kai reached for his own ration—then stopped as Lucent's hand shot out, gripping his wrist hard enough to bruise.
"Save it," Lucent said, his voice low. "You'll need it later."
The implication hung between them, unspoken but clear. If we make it that far.
Karen's lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Guess chivalry's dead after all."
The tunnels stretched on, the silence pressing in around them like a heavy weight. No skittering of claws. No wet, rattling breaths from the dark. Just the occasional drip of moisture from the pipes overhead and the faint hum of distant Aether nodes.
It was wrong.
The silence pressed against Lucent's eardrums like a physical weight. He slowed, boots scraping grit as he scanned the tunnel's yawning dark. No shrieks. No dragging footsteps. Just the distant drip of fluid seeping through cracks.
Kai exhaled, shaky with relief. "Maybe they're gone—"
"No." Lucent's knife was already in his hand. He pointed the blade at the walls—where the concrete bulged unnaturally, veins of bioluminescent fungus pulsing in sync. "That thing called them. You heard it."
The memory of the abomination's wail vibrated in Lucent's teeth all over again—the way the walls had shuddered in response, the Hollowed snapping to attention like puppets on strings.
Kai's throat moved. "So where are they?"
The silence between them was heavy, like a thick blanket muffling the world. Lucent kept his mouth shut because there were no answers worth giving. He didn't know where the Hollowed had gone, only that their absence made his skin crawl worse than their shrieks ever had. The empty tunnels seemed to press in around them, the dripping water echoing too loud in the stillness.
***
The ruins of the Myriad lab entrance gaped before them like a wound. Where there should have been a reinforced security door, there was only twisted metal framing curling inward in jagged teeth. The edges were blackened and blistered, the steel warped from some tremendous force that had punched through from the other side. Concrete dust still hung in the air, catching the dim light from Kai's flickering Conduit.
Kai's shoulder brushed the wall as he sidestepped debris, his boot suddenly catching on something half-buried in the rubble. He stumbled, looked down, and froze.
A steel talon, severed at the mounting bolts, lay partially covered in concrete dust. The fingers were locked in a final, clawing gesture, hydraulic lines dangling like severed tendons.
Lucent recognized the design instantly—Nex's work. That particular serrated edge pattern wasn't factory standard. His gaze tracked upward to where the rest of the prosthetic remained embedded in the wall, the surrounding concrete spiderwebbed with fractures from the impact. Not just torn off. Blown off.
Karen made a sound like a punched-out breath. She reached toward the talon embedded on the wall but stopped short, her fingers hovering inches from the scorched metal. Her throat worked silently before she managed words: "Overloaded his Conduit. Took the door...and Gristle… took himself with it." Her hand fell to her side, the movement heavy. "Bastard always said he'd go out making noise."
Kai opened his mouth—to ask or apologize, Lucent couldn't tell—but a sudden creak from the lab's depths cut him off. The darkness beyond the shattered doorway seemed to inhale.
Karen wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving a streak of grime across her cheekbone. "We moving or what?" The bravado in her voice cracked just enough to reveal the wound beneath.
Lucent stepped over the fallen talon, his shadow swallowing Kai's startled reflection in the prosthetic's polished steel. The lab waited, breathing its metallic stench into their faces. Whatever answers they'd come for would be written in blood and broken things.
The group moved cautiously through the skeletal remains of the lab's corridors, their footsteps muffled by layers of dust and debris. Karen's eyes darted across the walls, her brow furrowing slightly. The pulsating veins of flesh that had choked the walls days earlier were absent here—just cold, clinical steel and cracked polymer panels. It was almost...clean.
Too clean.
The reception area yawned ahead, its once-pristine desk now split down the middle like a rotten log. A large, faded floor map dominated the far wall, its surface scratched but still legible. Emergency lights cast a sickly amber-red glow over the schematic, barely enough to read by.
Lucent stepped forward, his fingers tracing the map's surface, brushing away years of grime. His nail stopped over a small square marked SUBSTATION B.
"Breaker's here," he muttered. "One floor down."
Kai leaned in, squinting. "That's past the containment zone. You really think the power's still intact?"
Karen exhaled sharply through her nose. "If Nex made it this far before blowing the door, then yeah. Myriad built these places to run on backup grids for decades." She glanced at Lucent. "You really wanna wander this place in the dark?"
Lucent didn't answer. His gaze lingered on the map's lower levels—the sectors marked in red, the warnings etched in bold, blocky text:
CAUTION: RESTRICTED ACCESS
AETHER CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS ACTIVE
A muscle in his jaw twitched. Then he pushed off the wall.
"Move."
The word wasn't a suggestion.
The stale air of the lab corridor clung to them like a second skin as they advanced, their boots kicking up fine particles of dust that glittered faintly in the dim emergency lighting. The walls here were unnervingly intact - smooth polymer panels still bearing the faded blue and white stripes of Myriad's corporate colors, though now cracked with age and spotted with patches of black mold.
Karen ran her fingers along the surface as they passed, her calloused fingertips catching on the occasional screw or rivet. The complete absence of the pulsating flesh-growths from the outer tunnels made her shoulders itch with paranoia. This place was too clean, too untouched, like a corpse that hadn't begun to bloat yet.
Lucent moved like a shadow ahead of them, his dark jacket absorbing what little light there was. He paused suddenly, one hand raised in silent warning. At his feet lay the shattered remains of a security drone, its spherical casing split open to reveal the complex nest of wiring and miniature glyph projectors inside. Thin tendrils of smoke still curled from its ruptured power core, carrying with them the acrid stench of burnt insulation and melted plastics.
The drone's single red eye flickered weakly as they approached, its cracked lens focusing and unfocusing in random spasms. A garbled voice crackled from its damaged speaker, the words cutting in and out like a bad transmission: "War...ning... un...auth...orized... bio...signatures... de...tected..."
Kai opened his mouth to speak, but Lucent silenced him with a sharp gesture. The older man's attention was fixed on the floor, where the thin layer of dust told a story more clearly than any words could. His knife flashed briefly as he angled it to catch the light, revealing the distinct tread pattern pressed into the grime. The prints were fresh, perhaps only hours old and led purposefully down the corridor toward the substation.
Karen crouched beside him, her breath stirring the dust near one particularly clear imprint. "Those aren't scavenger's boots," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. The tread was too deep, too uniform, military issue or corporate security. Definitely not the patchwork footwear of Junkyard survivors. She reached out but didn't touch, her finger hovering over the sharp edge of the impression. "And they're not running. Whoever made these was walking calm, deliberate."
A distant metallic groan echoed through the ventilation shafts, making them all freeze. The sound was too regular, too rhythmic to be settling debris. Lucent's head snapped up, his eyes narrowing as he tracked the noise. It came again - a heavy, measured thump-thump-thump that could have been machinery... or footsteps.
Kai's hand drifted unconsciously to his Conduit, his fingers trembling slightly as they hovered over the activation glyphs. The dim light caught the sweat beading along his hairline. "We're not alone down here," he breathed, not quite a question.
Lucent didn't answer. He was already moving, following the trail of boot prints with silent precision. His own footsteps made no sound as he ghosted forward, his body angled toward the shadows where the corridor branched left toward the substation. The emergency lights flickered weakly ahead, their intermittent pulses casting strange, elongated shadows that seemed to twitch between heartbeats.
Karen exhaled sharply through her nose and pushed herself upright, wincing as the movement pulled at her injuries. She met Kai's wide-eyed stare with a grim twist of her lips. "Guess we're about to find out if the lights are the only thing waiting down there," she muttered, before limping after Lucent into the swallowing dark.
The emergency lights cast long, skeletal shadows as they descended into the substation level, their footsteps swallowed by the cavernous dark. The air grew heavier here, thick with the scent of burnt air and something older—like the metallic tang of blood long dried into concrete. The lights barely piercing the gloom, revealing only glimpses of the decaying infrastructure: frayed wiring dangling like vines, conduits burst open to spill their copper guts, puddles of stagnant water reflecting their distorted silhouettes back at them.
The substation door appeared before them like a vault, its heavy steel frame sealed tight against the world. Lucent pressed his palm against the access panel, but the screen remained dark—no flicker of response, no hum of machinery. Dead.
Karen let out a slow breath, her shoulders sagging. "No power, no override."
Kai stepped forward, fingers brushing the door's edge where the locking mechanism sat dormant. "There's got to be another way—"
A sound cut him off.
A sharp, mechanical click echoed through the corridor. Then another. And another—the distinct sound of breakers engaging, one after another, racing through the facility's veins like a pulse returning to a corpse.
The light above them suddenly turned on.
A blinding, sterile white flooded the corridor, forcing them to shield their eyes. The hum of reactivated machinery vibrated through the walls, through their bones, as the substation door's mechanisms groaned to life. Hydraulics hissed. Locks disengaged.
And as their vision cleared, they saw it the door was opening.