For a while, nobody said anything.
Our footsteps echoed along the platform, muffled by the distant dripping and the rustle of tarps behind us. That was all there was.
I could still feel those people's eyes burning into my back as we disappeared into the gloom.
I couldn't stop thinking about their faces.
Their bodies were too thin, skin grayish, and the eyes… the eyes were empty. It was like something had sucked out of them any reason to keep breathing.
They were living by inertia.
Stopping looked like it would take more effort than going on.
But the children…
The little ones still laughed… even weak, playing with rocks and bits of wire scattered around like they were in a playground.
Like the world outside still existed, somehow…
Maybe they were the last ones who still remembered what it meant to be human.
The captain walked ahead in silence, her face hidden in shadow.
"What was that place?"
The question slipped out before I could grab it back.
Their footsteps stopped for a second, and I felt the weight of their stares on me, each one stamped with the same message: stupid question.
What does it cost you to just answer…
But no one said a word… soon the boots started hitting concrete again and everyone pretended I hadn't spoken.
Just when I'd decided no one was going to open their mouth, the woman beside me murmured:
"Condemned."
That seemed to poke at something in the other man, because he made a disgusted face and spat on the ground.
No one reacted.
The skinny old man came closer, looking at me with those sunken eyes. He looked like someone who had already seen everything bad the world could offer, and then some.
"Don't tell me you don't know their type,"
he asked.
"Especially you church people."
Why do they keep insisting I'm from there?
"I'm not from this so-called church. I didn't even know this kind of thing existed until today…"
My voice came out louder than I meant, but nobody seemed to care.
What a shitty place…
We reached an improvised staircase, made of chains, wood, and pieces of metal welded together out of pure rage, and went down one by one.
Compared to what I'd seen out there, down here I almost felt… less threatened.
It wasn't exactly safe, but the fear at least felt organized.
The old man behind me snorted.
"Don't know them? How long do you think you can keep pretending?"
The anger of being accused of something I had no clue about was enough to finally unlock my mouth.
"I'm not lying…"
"I… I don't even know how I ended up here. There was a light… it ripped me out of that old church, and suddenly I was on that street, and then you found me, but before that I just… woke up there. I woke up out of nowhere in that place. I don't know where it is, I don't know how I got there. I just… was there."
The words rushed out, tripping over each other, like I was trying to vomit everything at once to see if that would get the panic out of me.
When I finished, I was out of breath.
I looked at them, and it was like punching a pillow.
Nothing.
Blank, almost bored expressions.
The man beside me laughed, amused.
"Ahh… church crazies are getting more creative every day."
"But it's true, I swear…"
The desperation in my voice was borderline pathetic.
"And I'm not from any church."
I was already close to begging.
Seriously? Is it that hard to believe?
Didn't matter.
In their heads, I'd already been stamped with "church fanatic" in big red letters.
The captain, up ahead, slowed her steps and glanced back over her shoulder, her face neutral.
"Enough. We'll find out soon if that's true. Move."
The shove I got right after made it crystal clear how much they trusted me.
"We should just kill him and burn the body."
No one answered, but the silence agreed for them.
They're not actually going to do that… right?
A cold shiver ran up my spine.
I'd let my guard down because I wasn't seeing monsters anymore, but hearing that… that's when it really hit me.
This place… and these people… weren't exactly the "better option."
When my boots hit the tracks, covered in dust and slime, the cold seeped straight through the sole and climbed up my legs.
The tunnel ahead of us seemed endless.
A corridor of darkness broken only by emergency lights blinking at long, slow intervals… almost like heartbeats.
With each flicker, the group turned into a chain of jagged shadows along the walls, now coated with roots and vines hanging from the ceiling.
It no longer felt like a subway tunnel, but like some old, forgotten cave swallowed by time and overgrowth.
Even with the dim light, I could see marks on the walls.
Scratches and symbols burned into the concrete. They looked like they'd been drawn in dark red ink, almost brown.
I hoped it was ink.
The farther we walked, the more the unease grew inside me.
Something…
Something disgusting felt like it was staring at me over my shoulder.
I lifted my head, and that's when I saw it…
Something was stuck to the ceiling.
At first, it was just a dark, shapeless mass, but as I squinted… it looked like it was breathing.
Is that thing alive?
A chill slid even deeper down my spine, like ice water.
Every time the light blinked, I saw the thing contract and expand again, slowly and rhythmically… like a giant lung.
All the blood drained from my face.
I looked away, heart pounding, and sped up my pace.
The man behind me let out a short, contemptuous laugh when he noticed.
"Best not to look."
I swallowed hard and, this time, didn't ask anything.
I didn't want to know.
Sometimes I couldn't help it and snuck a glance at the ceiling.
The thing was still there.
Meters and meters of flesh glued to the darkness… it didn't seem to have an end.
Something is wrong.
The terror started squeezing me from the inside again.
If I could've closed my eyes and just not seen any of it…
I lost track of time down there. Minutes, maybe hours. The dark tunnel swallowed any attempt to measure anything.
Until something different appeared ahead.
A colossal iron gate, fused to the walls like it had grown out of them.
It blocked everything.
Thick chains, welded plates, cables, and rusty bars crossed over it like a web of improvised metal.
A tangled mess of things forced together.
In the center, a small hatch, just high enough for someone to look through without being seen.
The captain took a deep breath.
"We're here."
She stepped up to it and knocked three times on the metal in a steady rhythm, the sound reverberating through the entire tunnel.
For a few seconds, nothing. Then a mechanical clank. Chains rattling and a lock being pulled back.
The hatch opened, and on the other side, a pair of eyes appeared, lit by a bluish light.
The voice that followed was rough and tired:
"Who is it?"
"Mei… Line B-2,"
the captain answered.
So her name was Mei.
Silence.
Even with the low light, I could see the eyes on the other side narrow.
"You weren't supposed to be here."
"Change of plans."
"How many are you?"
"Four."
The conversation kept going in hushed tones. I couldn't make out the words, but I could feel it wasn't a happy chat.
Mei gestured with the iron bar, and the man's voice behind the hatch stayed harsh and suspicious even in a whisper.
I tried to peek through the gaps, but all I could see were shadows and bright light.
Still, at some point, I felt his eyes land on me.
My whole body stiffened.
Mei took a step closer, leaned toward the gate, and her tone sharpened.
"Malik turned into an Eco."
The silence that followed was so absolute I could hear my own heartbeat.
The man on the other side said nothing for a few long seconds, then the hatch snapped shut.
For a moment, nothing.
Then the sound of chains being pulled, gears grinding, and finally the gate began to move.
Slowly… painfully slowly.
The light leaking through the cracks was white and strong, so bright that, after all that darkness, it felt like it was burning my eyes.
I raised my arm to shield them, and the others did the same.
The glare seemed to push the darkness backward.
When I finally managed to open my eyes, the air left my lungs… the tunnel ended in a place that made no sense.
It was a massive cavern.
But not made of stone.
The walls…
The walls had the texture of flesh. Smooth, with bluish veins and bulges that looked like muscles just under the surface.
And over that, like fungus or infections, cables and wires ran along the flesh, burrowing into it, disappearing and reappearing.
Artificial lights hung from the ceiling, attached to metallic structures that were themselves fused into that living meat.
The hum of generators crackled and vibrated, but the strangest part was the way the floor trembled, just slightly, like the entire place was breathing.
People walked between metal-and-glass structures along the sides… makeshift "rooms" carved out along openings in the walls that looked like sliced-open arteries.
There was everything and every type of person.
Some looked… normal, at least at first glance.
Others had metal plates fused into their skin. Arms replaced by mechanical extensions connected to their bodies through tubes. Some had artificial eyes, cables running out of the back of their skulls… prosthetics so integrated into flesh it was impossible to tell where the body ended and the machine began.
It was hard to say if I was in a city or inside a sick organism.
The smell in the air was a mix of oil, blood, iron, and formaldehyde… I could almost taste it on my tongue.
In the center of the cavern, something gleamed under the white light.
A transparent sphere hung suspended by thick cables, and inside it, something floated.
Was that… a body?
I couldn't tell if it was a man, a woman… or even human. Tubes ran across the whole area, connecting everything to the sphere.
I knew I'd never been there before, but when I looked at it… something inside me reacted.
Like the outline of a memory… there and gone in less than a second.
Even so, I took a step forward, hypnotized.
The captain's hand landed firmly on my shoulder.
"Welcome to the East Side's Final Line,"
she said quietly.
Her eyes shone with something that, anywhere else, I'd have called nostalgia.
"The last city of the Order of the Three Fears."
I didn't even have time to process that, because that's when the screen reappeared.
Purple…
But this time with a reddish hue pulsing underneath, like it was… infected.
The letters formed shakily, glitching like a system frying itself:
NEW MISSION…
The line below took a little longer to appear.
SAVE STORY MODE
I could only think one thing:
You've got to be kidding me…