Silence.
No alarms. No roars. Just the sound of water dripping somewhere in the dark.
Seris woke with the taste of metal in her mouth. Every breath hurt—like the air was too thick, too heavy to belong underground. The glow from her wristband flickered weakly, cutting a narrow line through the dust and mist.
"…Hale?" Her voice cracked.
A cough answered from the rubble to her left. Then movement—the sound of shifting debris.
He was alive. Barely.
"Still here," Hale muttered, voice strained. "Don't—move too fast. Floor's unstable."
The air hummed faintly. Beneath their feet, the metal pulsed in slow waves, veins of faint light threading through it like blood through iron.
And then she remembered.
Theron.
Her heart kicked against her ribs. "Where is he?"
Hale didn't answer. His silence said enough.
The mist stirred before either could move. It curled upward in lazy spirals, glowing faintly, then splitting apart like breath on glass.
Theron stood at the edge of the light.
At least—it looked like him. His body was cracked with faint lines of white light, like veins of static under the skin. His eyes glowed faintly, but softer now—less storm, more ember.
"Seris…" His voice was rough, distant. "It's quiet down here."
She took a step forward, ignoring Hale's low warning. "Can you hear him?"
Theron blinked slowly. "He's… whispering. But not like before. It's—different."
Nine's voice cut through the quiet. A whisper that wasn't sound, pressing straight into their minds.
They built walls above us. Thought distance could contain divinity.
Hale raised his pistol again. "You're not divine, you're a virus."
And you're a symptom, Nine replied, calm as rain. But we'll cure that, too.
The floor trembled. Not violently—just a low, resonant thrum, like something alive deep below them was stirring in answer.
Seris turned her wristband light toward the walls. What she saw froze her blood.
The metal wasn't solid. It pulsed faintly, veins of circuitry running through it like living tissue. Shapes shifted just beyond the surface—faces, hands, brief flickers of movement.
"This isn't a foundation," she whispered. "It's a grave."
Hale stepped closer to the wall, his expression unreadable. "Sector Zero wasn't built over the old lab. It is the old lab."
Nine chuckled, low and distant, from everywhere at once.
Welcome home.
The lights in the metal veins brightened, spreading out like a pulse through arteries. The air thickened with static.
Theron clutched his head, groaning. "He's—trying to wake something. It's deeper."
"Can you stop him?" Seris demanded.
He looked at her, and for a moment, she didn't see Nine—she saw him, raw and terrified. "I don't think I want to."
The ground split beneath them with a deafening crack.
Mist surged upward like breath from the earth, and below the metal floor, a massive, beating heart of light began to glow—slow, steady, alive.
Nine's whisper came again, not in their ears this time, but through the pulse of the floor itself:
The system sleeps beneath the skin.
Shall I show you what it dreams of?
And the chamber erupted in light.