The dark pressed in from all sides.
He stood still beneath the open shaft, eyes adjusting to the void. The faintest glow from above bled down around him—but it barely touched the floor. Just a circle of pale light, enough to outline his boots and a few centimeters of metal grating.
Everything else was shadow.
He took a cautious step forward.
The air here was dense. Dry. It tasted like powdered rust and synthetic oil. A chemical aftertaste clung to the back of his throat.
The walls felt different, too.
He reached out and touched the nearest one.
Rough.
Textured like stone—but warmer than it should've been. Not metal. Not concrete.
Something else.
He pulled his hand back slowly.
The corridor ahead was wide—wider than any he'd seen so far. And tall. The ceiling arched into darkness. Like this wasn't meant to be walked through.
More like it was built to contain.
Or hide.
He moved forward, step by step, each footfall swallowed by the silence.
Somewhere ahead… something waited.
Not watching.
Just present.
And now that he was here—
it knew.
He followed the corridor deeper.
The floor beneath his boots shifted from grating to solid plates. Each step echoed in a low, dull thump—like walking over a hollow drum buried under stone.
The walls were lined with recessed panels—smooth and black, interrupted every few meters by vertical columns of symbols. They weren't illuminated. Not etched.
Not written, either.
They looked… grown into the surface.
Organic shapes. Circular geometry. Fractals. A pattern he couldn't decipher, but couldn't ignore either.
He reached out and brushed his hand against one.
It was warm.
Not heated. Not hot.
Just… alive.
He froze, listening.
No sound. No hum. Just that impossible warmth beneath his fingers.
He pulled back and kept walking.
As he moved, something changed.
A pulse.
A faint flicker of light, somewhere ahead—white, barely visible, and gone before he could focus on it.
He stopped.
Waited.
It didn't return.
But it had been there.
He took a slow breath and continued.
Whatever this place was, it wasn't abandoned.
Not completely.
The corridor widened.
Ahead, the walls curved inward into a circular chamber, half-swallowed by shadow. No doors. No consoles. Just a single dais at the center, raised slightly above the floor—no higher than his knees.
And there, on its surface—
A light.
Faint. Soft. A slow, breathing pulse.
He stepped closer.
The platform was made of the same strange material as the corridor walls—stone, but not stone. Smooth, but uneven. Ancient, but precise.
The glowing shape at the center was no larger than his palm. A rounded disc, flush with the surface, emitting a rhythm like a heartbeat at rest.
Pulse.
Pause.
Pulse.
He crouched beside it, watching.
There were no controls. No cables. Just this… node.
He hovered his hand over it.
The light brightened.
Not much. Just enough to acknowledge him.
He hesitated.
Then lowered his hand—until his fingers touched the surface.
Nothing happened at first.
Then—
A whisper.
No sound. Just a shift.
The air changed. The pressure around him deepened. And far above—beyond the chamber, beyond even the walls—something responded.
He felt it in his bones.
A system.
Not awake.
Not watching.
Just… aware.
And waiting.
The glow beneath his hand brightened.
A soft click echoed through the chamber—followed by a thin vertical beam of light projecting upward from the dais. It expanded, curved, and formed into a semi-transparent display.
Not a screen.
A hologram.
Flickering. Faint. Blue-white.
Lines of text scrolled briefly, scrambled and unreadable. Then stabilized.
A voice followed.
Flat. Filtered. Neutral.
"System reboot complete. Core functions operational. Power reserves at six percent."
He stared, not moving.
The projection hovered silently, casting shifting shadows across the room.
"Minimum interface protocol online," the voice continued. "Energy conservation mode engaged. Awaiting user command."
He hesitated.
"…Who are you?"
The system replied immediately.
"This terminal is linked to Core Node H-13. Designation: Subsurface Relay Access. User authentication: unavailable."
He swallowed.
"Where am I?"
Pause.
"Relay network inaccessible. Local designation: Undersystem 04-Delta. Structural integrity: 41%. Environmental hazard level: moderate. Evacuation recommended."
Of course.
He stepped back slightly, arms crossed.
"Can you… show me where to go?"
The projection shifted. A circular map appeared, rotating slowly. Most of it was dark—entire segments blinked in red. But one line blinked green, extending from the node outward to a chamber labeled:
"Local Access Uplink - Auxiliary Path Alpha."
"Route identified. Navigation active. Manual traversal required."
The map shrank.
Then disappeared.
The voice returned, lower now.
"Warning: system autonomy compromised. External access: null. Primary grid offline."
Another pause.
Then, almost as an afterthought:
"Good luck."
He stood in the dark long after the hologram faded.
The image lingered in his mind—the projection, the voice, the map etched in impossible clarity.
Nothing about it made sense.
Not the materials. Not the interface. Not the language—though somehow, he'd understood it.
This wasn't Earth tech.
Not even close.
Not military. Not civilian. Not black-budget, off-the-books, or next-gen experimental.
This… was something else.
He paced slowly around the dais, breathing through his nose.
"Okay…"
He spoke aloud. Just to hear something.
"Let's… think this through."
None of it fit.
Cryogenic pod. Automated system. Relay network. Navigation instructions. A structure built into the earth—or into something that looked like earth—with machinery older than anything he'd seen, but still functional.
And now a guiding voice, flickering in the dark like a ghost.
He stopped walking.
Only two conclusions made any kind of twisted sense.
One: he'd been captured. Taken. Moved. By something capable of building this. Aliens. Some kind of intelligence that didn't care about his understanding.
Two: he was dead. Or dreaming. Or dropped into some alternate world where magic and machines blurred into something else.
Neither answer helped.
Neither gave him a way out.
He looked back at the dais. The glow had faded, but the platform still pulsed faintly—like a heartbeat heard through a wall.
He exhaled slowly.
"Right…"
"Let's go find a way out of your sci-fi fantasy nightmare, then."
And he started walking.
He followed the path the system had shown him.
There were no signs. No arrows. No glowing trail.
Just memory—and instinct.
He retraced his steps out of the circular chamber and entered a new passage branching off from the corridor. Narrower. Taller. The walls curved slightly inward, like the throat of some buried machine.
He kept moving.
The temperature dropped as he descended. Again.
Frost crept along the seams of the panels. The lights above—faint as they were—began to dim further. Then flicker.
His breath steamed in the cold.
The architecture shifted too.
No longer smooth and geometric—here, the walls bore traces of carving. Symbols. Engravings. Like letters, but curved and repeated in complex spirals. They reminded him of neural patterns. Or circuit boards.
But none of it looked human.
He reached a junction. Two corridors split left and right.
He paused.
Closed his eyes.
Tried to recall the map.
The left branch descended. A sharp turn. A room beyond.
He took the left.
The hallway grew tighter, and more cables lined the walls—like veins running just beneath the surface.
Some pulsed.
Faintly.
He didn't like that.
He tightened his grip on the metal bar and kept going.
Eventually, a door appeared.
Thick. Heavy. Half open.
And behind it, darkness again.
But this time… it smelled different.
Like dust and… fuel.
He stepped through.
He stepped into the darkness.
The door didn't open any further, but it didn't close behind him either.
The room beyond was larger than expected. Wide, tall, circular like the last—but colder. The air here was still, heavy with dust and something acidic, like battery acid and scorched copper.
A faint glow hovered in the ceiling, barely functional. It flickered as he moved, casting fractured shadows that danced across the floor.
His boots crunched over debris.
Cables. Shattered casings. Burned plates.
A console stood against the far wall—cracked, dark, long-dead. No light. No projection.
But something else caught his attention.
Footprints.
Faint, but visible in the dust.
Not recent. Not sharp. But real.
He crouched, traced them with his fingers.
Human. Or close.
They led from the broken console… to another doorway on the far side of the chamber.
But that door was sealed. Fully.
And something had tried to open it. Scratches. Impact marks. Even what looked like melted residue around the edge—like someone had tried to cut through.
He stood.
Whoever had been here—
They had been trapped.
And they hadn't made it through.
He turned back to the rest of the room.
Somewhere in here, he needed a way forward.
Or a way to understand what came before.
He moved past the sealed door, sweeping his eyes across the room again.
A soft draft brushed his face—barely noticeable, but enough to draw his attention. He followed it.
Behind a leaning cabinet, half-collapsed under debris, he found a narrow indentation in the wall.
Not a door.
Just a recess.
But behind it—another space.
He ducked and slipped inside.
The air was thinner here. Still cold, but… clearer.
This chamber was small. Cramped. Lined with panels, backup units, and one central terminal—dust-covered but intact.
He approached cautiously.
No lights.
But as he touched the edge of the console, a faint flicker stirred beneath the surface.
Then a shimmer.
A small square of holographic light formed just above the surface.
It didn't display language.
Just icons.
Crude. Minimal.
One blinked softly—like a heartbeat.
He tapped it.
Nothing.
He pressed longer.
The icon turned red.
Then—
A burst of static.
No sound. No image.
Just… static.
Then silence again.
He waited.
Nothing else appeared.
But the air now smelled of ozone.
He'd activated something.
Or maybe… disturbed it.
He stepped back, eyes scanning the alcove again.
There was more buried here.
He just hadn't found it yet.
He crouched again beside the console.
The light had faded, but the red icon remained faintly visible, pulsing once every few seconds.
Like it was waiting.
He ran his fingers along the terminal's base, feeling for seams, panels, anything that might open.
There—a hatch.
He pried it open with the end of his bar.
Inside: a dense cluster of cables, dust-choked fans, and what looked like a manual override switch.
He flipped it.
The machine groaned once. A mechanical shudder passed through the surface. And the red icon blinked twice—faster now.
Then the screen shimmered.
Text appeared.
Corrupted. Fragmented. But there.
CORE LOG: //sector//.linked.missing//...
Status: PARTIAL
Access Level: LOW
Last User: ——
The name was unreadable.
He tapped another corner of the display.
A new icon blinked into view—flickering, labeled only:
SYSTEM BRIDGE: AUX-T2
He pressed it.
This time, the response came faster.
Another pulse of static—
Then an overlay map, simpler than the first. Just a line. A room. A power grid. One flickering node.
Still connected.
His eyes narrowed.
If he could reach that bridge… maybe he could open the sealed door.
Or at least learn what had happened to whoever came before him.
He stood.
The air in the room now buzzed faintly.
The system wasn't alive.
But it wasn't dead, either.
He stepped away from the terminal, but not with confidence.
His legs felt heavy. Muscles tight. Ankles sore.
He hadn't rested since waking up. Hadn't eaten since that first ration. And the cold of the lower levels was creeping deeper into his joints now.
He rubbed his shoulder, rolling it in slow circles. Something in the muscle popped.
The suit helped—but only just.
His fingers were numb. Not from temperature, but from circulation. The cryostasis might've saved him, but it hadn't done his body any favors.
He caught his reflection in the edge of a black panel.
Pale. Hollow eyes. Tired skin stretched across a face he didn't fully recognize.
He looked like a ghost walking through someone else's grave.
And beneath it all—something else.
A subtle twitch in his left hand.
He clenched his fist.
The twitch stopped.
But the fear remained.
His body was starting to fail. Maybe not all at once. But it was starting.
If he didn't find something soon—supplies, shelter, answers—he wasn't going to last much longer.
He took one more breath.
Turned toward the exit of the alcove.
And pressed forward.
No more wandering.
Now it was about survival.