### **Arc 12: Out of the Frying Pan**
The escape tunnel was a journey into the earth's memory. It was less a tunnel and more a scar, crudely bored through the bedrock, the walls rough and cold to the touch. Their only light came from Renji's weapon-light, a single, piercing beam that cut a path through the oppressive, fifty-year-old darkness. The air was thin and stale, and every breath felt stolen.
They moved in single file. Renji took the lead, his senses on high alert, every shadow a potential threat. Hikari followed, her hand often resting on the cold wall, her senses muted in the geologically dead rock. She focused on the steady, reassuring presence of her brothers. Kuro brought up the rear, a tablet clutched in his hand, its screen providing a faint, ghostly glow. He was running a constant scan of the tunnel's structural integrity, his mind unable to rest, always calculating the odds.
"The Soviets weren't known for their subtlety," Kuro muttered, his voice unnaturally loud in the silence as he analyzed the rock composition. "But this tunnel is remarkably stable. They must have followed a quartz seam."
"They were paranoid, not stupid," Renji replied, his voice a low rumble. "They always had a back door." He paused, his light catching something on the wall. It was a faded inscription in Cyrillic, half-covered by mineral deposits.
Hikari traced the letters with her fingers. "What does it say?"
Renji's Russian was functional, learned in the dark corners of his former life. "'The path of the righteous man,'" he translated slowly, his voice flat. It was an odd, almost poetic phrase to find in a Soviet military installation.
"That's all?" Kuro asked from the back.
"No," Renji said, his light moving to the rest of the text. "There's more. It says, 'The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.'" He fell silent for a moment. "It seems our Soviet friends had a flair for the dramatic."
They continued on, the strange, prophetic inscription echoing in the silence. They walked for what felt like hours, the only sound the crunch of their boots on the gravelly floor and their own ragged breathing. They were three ghosts walking a path laid by other ghosts, escaping a war their parents had started.