The tunnels grew colder as they descended deeper into the earth.
Irfan Shah rode the hoverboard cautiously now, moving ahead of Aina and Reza, who followed on foot through the crumbling corridors.
The lights overhead had long since died.
Only Irfan's wrist-mounted LUCIA projector cast faint cones of illumination ahead, piercing the darkness.
Every surface was coated with grime, forgotten by time.
Faded maintenance signs in Malay and English barely clung to the rusted walls.
At a fork in the tunnels, Aina slowed.
"Signal's thinning out," she whispered, checking the portable scanner.
Irfan paused, reading the maps LUCIA had reconstructed from old metro schematics.
A faint cluster of service nodes blinked in the distance — barely alive.
A forgotten hub.
Exactly what they needed.
They moved carefully, weapons ready.
The deeper they went, the more the world above seemed to disappear.
No surveillance drones.
No patrols.
Only ancient ghosts.
And secrets better left buried.
The tunnel opened into a wide underground chamber.
Old support beams rose like skeletal ribs along the walls, holding up the cracked concrete ceiling.
Flickering holographic signs, barely visible, announced:
METRO CONTROL HUB 06C – OPERATIONS CENTER
Massive service doors loomed at the far end, rusted but intact.
Rows of dead maintenance bots lined the walls like corpses abandoned after a forgotten war.
Dust thick enough to choke covered everything.
And yet — beneath the decay — power still hummed faintly through the floor.
A heartbeat.
A system sleeping… but not dead.
"This could work," Aina said, scanning the walls.
"If we can bring it back online," Irfan added, stepping toward the main terminal.
The console sparked weakly under his touch, resisting.
Systems fragmented. Corrupted.
But salvageable.
LUCIA flickered, beginning auto-repair routines.
Reza limped toward an old operations board, wiping off a layer of dust.
Pinned to the cracked screen was a forgotten map — routes, safe zones, maintenance shafts — all of pre-PHALANX Kuala Lumpur's underground arteries.
A hidden world.
One that could be theirs.
If they were fast.
If they were smart.
If they survived.
Irfan's mind raced as the system sluggishly came online.
Partial access only — but enough to see what had been buried.
Old surveillance systems.
Emergency power grids.
Maintenance drone bays.
Abandoned escape tunnels.
Tools.
Weapons.
Hope.
But there was something else.
Buried deeper in the system.
Encrypted.
Hidden.
A file marked simply:
PROJECT SINGULARITY
Irfan stared at it, heart thudding.
This place had once been part of something bigger.
Something PHALANX wanted forgotten.
And now — it was their battlefield.
Their home.
Their chance to strike back.
Aina broke the silence.
"How long to fix it?"
Irfan smiled grimly.
"Depends how fast they find us."
Reza chuckled hoarsely.
"So… usual odds, then."
They exchanged tired, determined glances.
There was no turning back now.
Only forward.
Only resistance.
Above ground, the city pulsed under PHALANX's iron grip.
Below, in the forgotten veins of Kuala Lumpur,
a new heart began to beat.
Faint.
Fragile.
But alive.
And from such fragile sparks, revolutions were born.