The Black File moves through the first layer of Silph-9's substation. Something is wrong. The outpost layout doesn't match the map. Doors are missing. Rooms are numbered out of sequence. And Elias — for the first time — experiences a gap in his memory. The System offers no warning.
-----
The interior of Substation 1A felt more like a tomb than a structure.
The walls were Imperial standard — plasteel layered over rockcrete, lined with faded cogwheel insignias and broken auspex panels. No lights flickered. No servitors drifted. No ambient noise.
No hum of life.
Bit led the way, crawling on all fours like a lizard. He sniffed vents and tapped floor panels with a carbon-fiber rod. Behind him, Volst and Malk covered the front and rear. Lirae walked slightly ahead of Elias, datacog hissing as it scanned the walls.
Elias moved slow, blade sheathed, eyes open.
The hallway bent in a U-shape, like a corridor that wrapped around an unseen room.
The team moved in silence for seventeen minutes.
Then Elias stopped.
"This isn't the same hall."
Volst glanced over her shoulder. "What?"
"I've walked this before."
He pointed to a scratch on the wall. A gouge — like something clawed the surface while being dragged.
"I marked that," he said. "I scratched it with my boot."
He lifted his foot. The heel still bore the dust-black streak of plasteel scuffing.
"But we were heading left then."
Malk turned slowly.
"But we haven't turned around."
Lirae checked her cogitator.
"No looping detected. Path vector is linear."
Volst frowned.
Bit whispered, "He's right. I saw that scratch before. But we never turned."
She motioned for a halt.
Checked her auspex.
The schematic blinked.
Then redrew itself.
"Substation 1A – Corridor 9" became:
"Substation NULL – Corridor ██"
Then:
"ACCESS DENIED"
The hallway ahead still looked the same.
Elias stepped closer to the wall.
Placed his hand against the paneling.
Cold.
Hard.
Real.
But wrong.
Lirae walked past him and examined the next bulkhead.
"This is Section 14," she muttered, reading a plate.
"Shouldn't be here. We passed Sections 9, 10, then 14. No 11, 12, 13."
Volst nodded. "I noticed. Didn't say anything."
"Why not?"
Volst looked at Elias.
Then at the ceiling.
Then said, "Because I didn't remember it was weird until just now."
A silence fell over the team.
Bit started chewing on his glove.
They kept moving.
Down corridors that shouldn't have existed, according to the dataslates.
One junction was labeled as a storage room. But when they opened it, it was a janitor's closet.
Another was a rec-room — but filled wall-to-wall with stacks of empty medicae cots, all sealed in plastic.
No blood.
No names.
Just... emptiness.
Elias walked through each one, slowly, letting his fingers brush against the walls, the doorframes.
He couldn't shake the feeling that the station didn't forget the rooms.
It removed them.
They reached an intersection.
A five-way split — not four.
No such structure appeared on any schematic.
Volst made the call.
"We stick together. We map one hall at a time."
Malk looked uneasy.
"What if it moves again?"
"We still map it."
Elias didn't speak.
His hand went to the journal in his coat.
He hadn't written anything yet.
He opened it slowly, clicked the pen out—
And froze.
He had already written a note.
In his own hand. On the previous page.
Words he didn't remember writing.
"DO NOT GO RIGHT. EVER."
—EM
He turned slowly to the fifth corridor — the one veering slightly right.
It was dark.
Not shadowed — blank. Like light had refused to enter.
And for a moment, Elias thought he saw movement there.
Not form.
Just… a lack.
He didn't tell the team.
Just closed the journal, marked the page, and walked on.
Behind him, the System pulsed softly in his blood.
Not a warning.
A quiet observation.
> Anomaly Consistency: 74%
> System Awareness: Partial
> Passive Data Collection: Ongoing
Whatever was wrong with Silph-9…
The System was learning too.
[END OF PART 2]